Posted on Leave a comment

National Federation of Independent Business : U.S. Small-Business Optimism Index Surges by Most Since 1980

Pence and  Trump

January 10,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Small business Optimism soared in December by the most since 1980 as expectations about the economy’s prospects improved dramatically in the aftermath of the Trump election.

The National Federation of Independent Business gauge jumps to 105.8 in month after presidential election and expectations for business conditions are highest since 2002

The National Federation of Independent Business’s (NFIB) index jumped 7.4 points last month to 105.8, the highest since the end of 2004, from 98.4. While seven of the 10 components increased in December, 73 percent of the monthly advance was due to more upbeat views about the outlook for sales and the economy, the Washington-based group said.

Posted on Leave a comment

Measures of Economic Optimism Are Shooting Up All Over the Place After Trump’s Win

Pence and  Trump

A morning in America moment?
by
Luke Kawa
December 15, 2016, 11:39 AM EST

It feels like another ‘Morning in America’ moment — the animal spirits are just waking up.

Following the election, a number of indexes that track confidence have jumped, with respondents citing the potential for deregulation and tax cuts once President-elect Donald Trump takes office as the cause of their increased confidence.

Homebuilders are the latest segment of the economy to testify to this surge in optimism.

The National Association of Homebuilders’ index of sentiment soared to an 11-year highin December, despite the sizable rise in bond yields since the election.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/measures-of-economic-optimism-are-shooting-up-all-over-the-place-after-trump-s-win

 

Posted on Leave a comment

Banks to Donald Trump: Don’t Kill Dodd-Frank

Jamie Diamond

pic J.P. Morgan’s Mr. Dimon

Bankers admit they love the guaranteed bailouts, lack of competition and regulated margins of Dodd-Frank 
December 10, 2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Big banks have an unexpected message for President-elect Donald Trump: Don’t trash the Dodd-Frank Act.“We’re not asking for wholesale throwing out Dodd-Frank,” J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. chief James Dimon said at a financial-services conference this week where he and other big-bank executives spoke, often addressing potential regulatory changes for the first time since the election.

During his presidential campaign, Republican Donald Trump said he would “get rid of” Dodd-Frank — the sweeping legislation passed in 2010 to address problems underlying the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Dodd-Frank  a 2200 page monstrosity , was passed by congress like Obamacare without anyone reading the legislation , that is except for former NJ Congressmen Scott Garrett.

Dodd-Frank turned banks into utilities and did nothing to solve the ills that caused the banking crisis in 2008 ,it basically institutionalized the bad behavior that created the problem, put the bad debt in suspended animation and put taxpayers on the hook with its “too big to fail” provisions. Too big to fail also implies the corollary to big to really succeed.

Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan called “too big to fail” legislation a “moral hazard” , giving bankers the excuse to engage in activities that would otherwise risk their livelihoods, feeling confident in ever larger government ie taxpayer bailouts.

Some in Washington have called for full repeal of Dodd-Frank, the legislation passed in 2010 that imposed new constraints on banks and created new agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A proposal that would effectively replace Dodd-Frank, by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has gained momentum since the election.

The Trump team has talked about dismantling the law, although it has yet to state clearly whether this would involve a repeal of Dodd-Frank. Bank stocks have soared about 20% since the election, partly on the belief President-elect Donald Trump in some way will lighten banks’ regulatory load.

While banks favor a paring back of regulation, they tend to think in practical terms, rather than ideologically. And their core message seems to be: Make regulation simpler and less costly but don’t return banking to the Wild West days that preceded the financial crisis.

In many ways that is understandable. Banks have spent half a dozen years and hundreds of millions of dollars to adapt to the new landscape. This has caused them to exit businesses such as proprietary trading, rejig their corporate structures to make them safer and focus more on clients’ needs. While tearing up Dodd-Frank would seem to unshackle banks, starting with a new regulatory playbook would upend their new business models and divert management.

One of the biggest concerns for banks is that things don’t get worse. “The first thing I would ask for is nothing new, no new rules,” Citigroup Inc. finance chief John Gerspach said at the conference. “If you haven’t figured out yet how all the existing rules work together, don’t put on anything else.”

Banks acknowledge benefits to the new rules, noting they have helped improve the way firms manage risks and view their businesses. U.S. bankers have also said that having been forced to hold more capital, and build it quickly after the financial crisis, made their firms far stronger than troubled European peers.

So what would the big banks like to see changed?

Stress Tests—These annual exercises conducted by the Federal Reserve have become hugely important because they govern the amount of capital banks can return to shareholders, either through buybacks or dividends.

Banks want these to be based more on objective criteria and they want to have more of a view into the testing process and the Fed’s decision-making. And they should take less time and money to comply with, bankers say.

Bill Demchak, CEO of PNC Financial Services Group Inc., said his bank could theoretically get all the benefits of the stress-testing process with “60% of the effort.” He said that to comply with the tests, “you bring the place to a grinding halt once a year.”

The Volcker Rule— Banks say they aren’t eager to get back into the business of speculating on market moves using their own balance sheets. But they want the process around the Volcker Rule to be less burdensome and administered by fewer than five agencies.

Changes in this area could “probably make it easier to make markets” and improve liquidity, likely benefiting investors and other issuers, said Mr. Dimon.

“You have active market-marking in lumber, rebar, chicken, pork, cotton; we need it in financial instruments, it’s not different,” he said. “I do think a little more liquidity could be good.”

Mr. Gerspach said Citigroup would like less paperwork. “We don’t want to do proprietary trading,” he said. “But I also would love to work with regulators to lessen the burden of proving that we’re not engaging in proprietary trading.”

Capital and Liquidity—Banks say there are so many new rules relating to so many areas of their balance sheets that they too often run the risk of working against each other. And it isn’t clear when enough capital really is enough.

Wells Fargo chief Timothy Sloan cited differences between rules about how much capital a bank must hold and the amount of liquid assets a firm has to keep on hand. The intersections of these rules, bankers argue, hampers lending.

Bankers would also like more clarity around how much capital is enough for banks. Regulators have applied various capital surcharges to the biggest banks and these can change as regulations evolve.

“It’s getting certainty around the ability to have access to your capital return once you’ve met all the hurdles and whether those hurdles move up or down because of various people’s point of view,” said Bank of America Corp. chief Brian Moynihan.

J.P. Morgan’s Mr. Dimon said that regulators’ authority should be “cut back a little bit. It should be more prescriptive in exactly what they’re trying to accomplish.”

For all that, bankers are taking a wait-and-see stance before making any big changes to their businesses. “I think the difference going into 2017 is that we do have hope,” Citigroup’s Mr. Gerspach said. “But…we can’t build a plan on hope.”

The fact that the culprits of the Financial Crisis in 2008 are now opposing the repeal of Dodd-Frank is further evidence that things need to change dramatically . The entire financial sector of the economy has been moribund  under Dodd-Franks government imposed socialism . A vital and growing financial sector is paramount to an active and growing economy .

https://onesmallvoice.blogspot.com/2016/12/banks-to-donald-trump-dont-kill-dodd.html

Posted on 1 Comment

Did The Market Just Flash A Hindenburg Omen Warning?

hindenburg

by Tyler Durden
Dec 3, 2016 8:30 PM

Amid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the stock, bond, and commodity markets this week, a few ‘rotten’ things began to emerge. With major indices diverging notably, new highs and new lows soaring, and breadth deteriorating, analysts noted the re-awakening of The Hindenburg Omen signal…

As John Hussman previously wrote, when we think of market “internals,” the number of new highs and new lows can contribute useful information. To expand on the vocabulary we use to talk about internals, “leadership” typically refers to the number of stocks achieving new highs and new lows; “breadth” typically refers to the number of stocks advancing versus declining in a given day or week; and “participation” typically refers to the percentage of stocks that are advancing or declining in tandem with the major indices.

The original basis for the Hindenburg signal traces back to the “high-low logic index” that Norm Fosback created in the 1970’s. Jim Miekka introduced the Hindenburg as a daily rather than weekly measure, Kennedy Gammage gave it the ominous name, and Peter Eliades later added several criteria to reduce the noise of one-off signals, requiring additional confirmation that amounts to a requirement that more than one signal must emerge in the context of an advancing market with weakening breadth.

And this week saw renowned technician Tom McClellan declare a Hindenburg Omen had struck…

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-03/did-market-just-flash-hindenburg-omen-warning

Posted on Leave a comment

NJ TRANSIT ELECTRONIC TICKETING SETS NEW SALES RECORDS

Ridgewood_Train_station_train-_is_coming_theridgewoodblog

MyTix sales soar past one million tickets and passes for October

November 14,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, “The ease and convenience of purchasing tickets and passes right from a smartphone continues to become more popular with our customers each month, making NJ TRANSIT a national leader in this new technology” said Executive Director Steven H. Santoro.  “As we reach these milestones, we continue to look for new ways to add additional functionality to the MyTix program and lead from the front on this digital platform.” NJ TRANSIT’s customers are downloading their way to electronic ticketing in record setting numbers.  During the month of October, the digital system known as MyTix shattered its record for most tickets and passes sold in one month, and in doing so, crossed the one million mark for the first time.  In addition, November 1st set a single day sales record.

During the month of October 2016, more than one million tickets and passes were purchased through the MyTix feature, surpassing the previous monthly record of more than 990-thousand set in August 2016.  As a comparison, January 2016 saw monthly sales of 690-thousand tickets and passes.  Year to date MyTix sales have grown 46 percent.

On November 1, 2016, MyTix set a single day sales record with more than 71-thousand tickets and passes sold, breaking the previous single day record of more than 65-thousand set on August 1, 2016.

Posted on Leave a comment

Wall Street welcomes Trump with a bang

07trump-master675 (1)

by Matt Egan   @mattmegan5November 9, 2016: 4:10 PM ET

That didn’t take long. An overnight panic in global markets evaporated as Wall Street gave an emphatic welcome to President-elect Donald Trump.

The Dow soared 257 points and brushed up against lifetime highs on Wednesday, in defiance of those who predicted Trump’s election would bring about a plunge in the stock market. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose 1.1% apiece.

The impressive market performance represents a dramatic reversal from the knee-jerk panic in global markets overnight as the results were coming in. Dow futures plummeted nearly 900 points at one point as investors expressed fear that no one would emerge victorious and concern about the inherent uncertainties brought on by a Trump White House.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/11/09/investing/dow-jones-trump-wins-election/

Posted on Leave a comment

Rep. Scott Garrett Signs ObamaCare Repeal Pledge

Scott_Garrett_took5_a_break_from_DC_theridgewood-blog

October 25,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ,  Today, Independent Women’s Voice announced that Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) has signed the ObamaCare Repeal Pledge. Garrett currently represents New Jersey’s 5th Congressional district.

As it turns out, pretty much nothing that Obama and his healthcare “experts” predicted about Obamacare actually came true.  With 2017 rates now finalized across the country, in fact, Obamacare premiums are expected to increase an average of 25% nationally according to data from the Kaiser Foundation.  Meanwhile, the 10 hardest hit states will see premiums increase an average of 62% while Arizona is officially the biggest loser with rates in Phoenix soaring 145%

Reg. Scott Garrett’s signature on the Pledge is a clear demonstration of his commitment to the full and complete repeal of ObamaCare and to end the harm that it is inflicting upon American families,” said Heather R. Higgins, President and CEO of Independent Women’s Voice.

“Scott understands that ObamaCare is hiking insurance premiums, diminishing quality of care, and reducing our choice and control in health care decisions,” added Higgins. “He understands that ObamaCare means bigger government and less freedom. For these reasons, and many more, it must be repealed.”

“ObamaCare has unequivocally failed,” said Rep. Scott Garrett. “Many Americans have lost their health insurance, and premiums and deductible costs have increased for families. I believe healthcare choices need to be in the hands of patients and doctors. I want to encourage innovation and competition while giving people more freedom and flexibility to make their own healthcare decisions. I want to take concrete steps to replace ObamaCare to achieve these better results for all Americans.”

“The Repeal Pledge was designed as a litmus test to help the American public understand which candidates and office holders are serious about repeal, versus those who claim to be but won’t actually take action,” continued Higgins.  “With this commitment, Cong. Scott Garrett passes that test.”

The Repeal Pledge is a project of Independent Women’s Voice, a 501(c)(4) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.

For more information on The Repeal Pledge, including a complete list of signers, please visit www.TheRepealPledge.com.

Posted on Leave a comment

TRUMP SPEECH TO THE ECONOMIC CLUB OF NEW YORK

-donald-trump-candidacy-speech-thridgewoodblog

TRANSCRIPT OF ECONOMIC SPEECH – DELIVERED TO THE ECONOMIC CLUB OF NEW YORK

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.

Today, I’m going to outline a plan for American economic revival – it is a bold, ambitious, forward-looking plan to massively increase jobs, wages, incomes and opportunities for the people of our country.

My plan will embrace the truth that people flourish under a minimum government burden, and it will tap into the incredible unrealized potential of our workers and their dreams.

Right now, 92 million Americans are on the sidelines, outside the workforce, and not part of our economy. It’s a silent nation of jobless Americans.

Look no further than the city of Flint, where I just visited. The jobs have stripped from this community, and its infrastructure has collapsed. In 1970, there were more than 80,000 people in Flint working for GM – today it is less than 8,000. Now Ford has announced it is moving all small car production to Mexico.

It used to be cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now, the cars are made in Mexico and you can’t drink the water in Flint.

We are going to turn this around. My economic plan rejects the cynicism that says our labor force will keep declining, that our jobs will keep leaving, and that our economy can never grow as it did once before.

We reject the pessimism that says our standard of living can no longer rise, and that all that’s left to do is divide up and redistribute our shrinking resources.

Everything that is broken today can be fixed, and every failure can be turned into a great success.
Jobs can stop leaving our country, and start pouring in. Failing schools can become flourishing schools. Crumbling roads and bridges can become gleaming new infrastructure. Inner cities can experience a flood of new jobs and investment. And rising crime can give way to safe and prosperous communities.

All of these things, and so much more, are possible. But to accomplish them, we must replace the present policy of globalism – which has moved so many jobs and so much wealth out of our country – and replace it with a new policy of Americanism.

Under this American System, every policy decision we make must pass a simple test: does it create more jobs and better wages for Americans?
If we lower our taxes, remove destructive regulations, unleash the vast treasure of American energy, and negotiate trade deals that put America First, then there is no limit to the number of jobs we can create and the amount of prosperity we can unleash.

America will truly be the greatest place in the world to invest, hire, grow and to create new jobs, new technologies, and entire new industries.
Instead of driving jobs and wealth away, America will become the world’s great magnet for innovation and job creation.

My opponent’s plan rejects this optimism. She offers only more taxing, regulating, more spending and more wealth redistribution – a future of slow growth, declining incomes, and dwindling prosperity.

The only people who get rich under Hillary Clinton’s scheme are the donors and the special interests.
In Hillary Clinton’s America, we have surrendered our status as the world’s great economy, and we have surrendered our middle class to the whims of foreign countries.

Not one single idea she has will create one net American job, or create one new dollar of American wealth for our workers. The only thing she can ever offer is a welfare check. Our plan will produce paychecks, and they’re going to be great paychecks for millions of people now unemployed.
In the course of this campaign, I have travelled all across this country and I’ve met the most amazing people. Every day, I’ve seen the goodness and character of our country, and brave citizens proudly fighting through hard times and difficult circumstances.

In many parts of our country, the hard times never seem to end. I’ve visited cities and towns in upstate New York where half the jobs have left and moved to other countries.

Politicians have abandoned these places all over our country and the people who live there.
Worse still, politicians have heaped scorn and disdain on these wonderful Americans. My opponent described tens of millions of American citizens as deplorable and irredeemable – how can Hillary Clinton seek to lead this country when she considers its citizens beyond redemption?

The hardworking people she calls deplorable are the most admirable people I know: they are cops and soldiers, teachers and firefighters, young and old, moms and dads, blacks, whites and Latinos – but above everything else, they are all American. They love their families, they love their country, and they want a better future. These are the forgotten men and women of America. People who work hard but don’t have a voice.

I am running to be their voice, and to fight to bring prosperity to every part of this country.
Too many of our leaders have forgotten that it’s their duty to protect the jobs, wages and well-being of American workers before any other consideration.

I’m not running to be President of the world. I’m running to be President of the United States – and as your President, I will fight for every last American job.

We are the nation that tamed the West, dug out the Panama Canal, won two World Wars, and put a man on the moon.

It’s time to start thinking big once again.
That’s why I believe it is time to establish a national goal of reaching 4% economic growth. In working with my economic team, we’ve put together a plan that puts us on track to achieve that goal. Over the next ten years, our economic team estimates that under our plan the economy will average 3.5% growth and create a total of 25 million new jobs. You can visit our website to see the math.

This growth means that our jobs plan, including our childcare reforms, will be completely paid-for in combination with proposed budget savings.
It will be deficit neutral. If we reach 4% growth, it will reduce the deficit.

It will be accomplished through a complete overhaul of our tax, regulatory, energy and trade policies.

Right now, under Obama-Clinton policies, the economy grew only 1.1 percent last quarter – that translates to millions of lost jobs. This is the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression.

Over the last 7 years, the economy grew only 2.1 percent, the slowest period in seventy years. Had the economy grown under Obama at the same rate as Reagan, it would have meant 10 million more jobs.

Perhaps most shockingly, 1 in 6 men aged 18-34 are either in jail or out of work. Meanwhile, another 2 million Hispanic-Americans have been added to the ranks of those in poverty.

On top of it all, the Obama-Clinton policies have doubled the national debt. It took more than 230 years for the United States to accumulate it’s first $10 trillion dollars in debt – it took President

Obama only eight years to add another $10 trillion.
Now, it would be one thing if that money had been used to completely rebuild our nation, our military, and our infrastructure.

Instead, the opposite happened. We doubled our debt and, in return, we have dilapidated infrastructure, failing schools, a badly depleted military, and another 14 million people who have left the workforce.

Never has so much money been spent so poorly.
But we’re going to turn that all around. Here’s how.
It begins with bold new tax reform.

As outlined in Detroit, our tax plan will greatly simplify the code and reduce the number of brackets from 7 to 3. The 3 new brackets will be 12, 25 and 33, but low-income Americans will pay no income tax at all – in fact, our plan will remove millions and millions of workers from the income tax rolls entirely.

By lowering rates, streamlining deductions, and simplifying the process, we will add millions of new jobs.

In addition, because we have strongly capped deductions for the wealthy and closed special interest loopholes, the tax relief will be concentrated on the working and middle class taxpayer. They will receive the biggest benefit – it won’t even be close.

This is a working and middle class tax relief proposal. The tax relief for these workers will be expanded by my childcare proposals that I have worked on with my daughter, Ivanka. These proposals are a central element of our comprehensive tax reform and economic growth plan.

Families will be able to fully deduct the average cost of childcare from their taxes, including stay-at-home parents. Because this deduction is capped, it will disproportionately benefit working and middle class families. The less you make, the larger a share of your income you can exclude from taxation.

Parents will also be able to enroll in tax-free dependent care savings accounts for their children or elderly relatives. Low-income households will benefit from both an Expanded Earned Income Tax Credit – in the form a Childcare rebate – and a matching $500 contribution for their savings accounts.

A married couple earning $50,000 per year with two children and $8,000 in child care expenses will save 35% from their current tax bill.

A married couple earning $75,000 per year with two children and $10,000 in child care expenses will receive a 30% reduction in their tax bill. By contrast, someone earning $5 million will receive virtually no change in their tax bill at all.

One of our greatest job creation measures is going to be our 15% business tax rate – down from the current 35% rate, a reduction of more than 40 percent. An explosion of new business and new jobs will be created. It will be amazing to watch.
We will also allow U.S.-based manufacturers to fully expense the cost of new plants and equipment.

On top of that, we will bring back trillions in business wealth parked overseas and tax it at a 10% rate. Some people say there are $2 trillion dollars overseas, I think it’s $5 trillion. By taxing it at 10% instead of 35%, all of this money will come back into our country.

We will turn America into a magnet for new jobs – and that means jobs in our poorest communities.

Next, comes regulations. One of the keys to unlocking growth is scaling-back years of disastrous regulations unilaterally imposed by our out-of-control bureaucracy.

Regulations have grown into a massive, job-killing industry – and the regulation industry is one business I will put an end to.

In 2015 alone, federal agencies issued over 3,300 final rules and regulations, up from 2,400 the prior year. Every year, overregulation costs our economy $2 trillion dollars a year and reduces household wealth by almost $15,000 dollars.

I’ve proposed a moratorium on new federal regulations that are not compelled by Congress or public safety, and I will eliminate all needless and job-killing regulations now on the books. This includes eliminating some of our most intrusive regulations, like the Waters of The U.S. Rule. It also means scrapping the EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan which the government itself estimates will cost $7.2 billion a year. This Obama-Clinton directive will shut down most, if not all, coal-powered electricity plans in America. Remember what Hillary Clinton said? She wants to shut down the miners, just like she wants to shut down the steel mills.

We’re going to put our great miners and steel workers back to work.

Energy reform is central to our plan as well
According to the Heritage Foundation, by 2030, President Obama’s energy restrictions will eliminate another half a million manufacturing jobs, reduce economic output by $2.5 trillion dollars, and reduce incomes by $7,000 dollars per person.
Hillary Clinton wants to go even further, and her plan could cost the economy $5 trillion dollars.

A Trump Administration will lift restrictions on all sources of American energy production. According to the Institute for American Energy Resources this will: increase GDP by more than $100 billion annually add over 500,000 new jobs annually
increase annual wages by more than $30 billion over the next 7 years increase federal, state, and local tax revenues by almost $6 trillion over 4 decades increase total economic activity by more than $20 trillion over the next 40 years.
In addition, we will streamline the permitting process for all energy infrastructure projects, including the billions of dollars in projects held up by President Obama – creating countless more jobs in the process.

Finally, comes trade – the foundation for everything
America’s annual trade deficit with the world is now nearly $800 a billion a year – an enormous drag on growth.

Between World War II and the year 2000, the United States averaged a 3.5% growth rate. But, after China joined the World Trade Organization, our average growth rate has been reduced to only 2 percent.

Predatory trade practices, product dumping, currency manipulation and intellectual property theft have taken millions of jobs and trillions in wealth from our country.

It is no great secret that many of the special interests funding my opponent’s campaign are the same people profiting from these terrible trade deals. The same so-called experts advising Hillary Clinton are the same people who gave us NAFTA, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, the job-killing trade deal with South Korea, and now the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The verdict is in. All of the special interests that the media race to for comment have been proven wrong about every single deal they’ve promoted – every lie and every prediction has crashed upon the rocks of reality.

Our manufacturing base has crumbled, communities have been hollowed out, wages have declined, and households are making less today than they were in the year 2000.

I have proposed a detailed plan to reform our trade policies and bring vast new jobs and wealth to America. This includes the following steps:
I’m going to direct the Secretary of Commerce to identify every violation of trade agreements a foreign country is currently using to harm our workers. I will use every tool under American and international law to end these abuses, and I will use our greatest business leaders and finest negotiators – and I know who you are, many of you are in the room.

We are going to start with NAFTA, which is causing so much damage to our country.

We will entirely renegotiate NAFTA into a deal that will either be good for us or will be terminated until a brand new and productive deal can be signed.

We are also going to keep America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Next, I am going to instruct my Treasury Secretary to label China a currency manipulator, and to apply tariffs to any country that devalues its currency to gain an unfair advantage over the United States.
I am going to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring trade cases against China. China’s unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO, and I intend to enforce those rules.

If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets and intellectual property, I will apply countervailing duties until China ceases and desists.

Just the single action of enforcing intellectual property rules alone would add millions of new American jobs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, improved protection of America’s intellectual property in China would add 2 million jobs a year to the United States every single year.

We are going to stop the outflow of jobs from our country, and open a new highway of jobs back into our country.

Here is how the plan adds up. We are proposing a $4.4 trillion tax cut that will score as $2.6 trillion under a dynamic growth model, which is how taxes should be scored. This includes the childcare plan.

Our economic team has further modeled that the growth-induced savings from trade, energy and regulation reform will shave at least another $1.8 trillion off of the remaining cost.

That leaves around $800 billion dollars. This money can all be saved through simple, common sense reforms. If we save just one penny of each federal dollar spent on non-defense, and non-entitlement programs, we can save almost $1 trillion over the next decade – again this is spending that does not touch defense, and that does not touch entitlements.

If our plan exceeds the 3.5% ten-year growth average, then our jobs proposal will actually reduce the deficit. Savings will be compounded by the fact that people who are currently receiving unemployment or welfare will finally be able to find jobs.

This is the most pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-family plan put forth perhaps in the history of our country.
This is what our new future will look like.

I am going to lower you taxes; I am going to get rid of massive amounts of unnecessary regulations, on business and in your life; I’m going to unleash American energy; I’m going to repeal and replace Obamacare; I’m going to appoint Justices to the Supreme Court who will follow the Constitution; I’m going rebuild our depleted military and take care of our vets; I’m going to save your 2nd amendment; I’m going to stop illegal immigration and drugs coming into our country, and yes, we will build the wall [Mexico will pay]; and I’m going to renegotiate our disastrous trade deals, especially NAFTA – and we will only make great trade deals that put the American worker first.

And we are going to put our miners and our steelworkers back to work. We will rebuild our roads, bridges, tunnels, highways, airports, schools and hospitals. American cars will travel the roads, American planes will soar in the skies, and American ships will patrol the seas.
American steel will send new skyscrapers into the clouds.

American hands will rebuild this nation – and American energy, harvested from American sources, will power this nation. American workers will be hired to do the job.

We will put new American metal into the spine of this country.

Jobs will return, incomes will rise, and new factories will come rushing back to our shores.

We Will Make America Wealthy Again.
We Will Make America Strong Again.
And Will Make America Great Again.
Thank you, and God Bless!

Posted on 8 Comments

Hillary Clinton, You’re No John F. Kennedy Thankfully Donald Trump and the Republicans understand the JFK-Reagan supply-side solution.

JFK

Hillary Clinton, You’re No John F. Kennedy Thankfully Donald Trump and the Republicans understand the JFK-Reagan supply-side solution.

By Lawrence Kudlow,

Sep 7, 2016

The election season is heating up, Donald Trump has pulled back even with Hillary Clinton, and every new economic number is being scrutinized for its supposed political meaning.

The unexpectedly soft August jobs report will lend a little political advantage to Donald Trump. In general, jobs came in 30,000 to 40,000 below expectations. Goods-producing and manufacturing jobs decreased, wages were near flat and retreated to 2.4 percent year-on-year, the private and manufacturing workweeks fell, and overall hours dropped.

However, this is far from a catastrophe. Jobs still climbed by 150,000 or so. And the third quarter ending in September will probably generate near 3 percent growth, as inventories reverse course and start rising again. These numbers may well lend some political advantage to Hillary.

But if you look under the economy’s hood, you’ll discover…

Continue reading →

 

The fascinating, suppressed history of how JFK pioneered supply-side economics.

John F. Kennedy was the first president since the 1920s to slash tax rates across-the-board, becoming one of the earliest supply-siders. Sadly, today’s Democrats have ignored JFK’s tax-cut legacy and have opted instead for an anti-growth, tax-hiking redistribution program, undermining America’s economy.

One person who followed JFK’s tax-cut growth model was Ronald Reagan.  This is the never-before-told story of the link between JFK and Ronald Reagan.  This is the secret history of American prosperity.

JFK realized that high taxes that punished success and fanned class warfare harmed the economy. In the 1950s, when high tax rates prevailed, America endured recessions every two or three years and the ranks of the unemployed swelled. Only in the 1960s did an uninterrupted boom at a high rate of growth (averaging 5 percent per year) drive a tremendous increase in jobs for the long term. The difference was Kennedy’s economic policy, particularly his push for sweeping tax-rate cuts.

Kennedy was so successful in the ’60s that he directly inspired Ronald Reagan’s tax cut revolution in the 1980s, which rejuvenated the economy and gave us another boom that lasted for two decades.

Lawrence Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic reveal the secret history of American prosperity by exploring the little-known battles within the Kennedy administration. They show why JFK rejected the advice of his Keynesian advisors, turning instead to the ideas proposed by the non-Keynesians on his team of rivals.

We meet a fascinating cast of characters, especially Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, a Republican. Dillon’s opponents, such as liberal economists Paul Samuelson, James Tobin, and Walter Heller, fought to maintain the high tax rates—including an astonishing 91% top rate—that were smothering the economy. In a wrenching struggle for the mind of the president, Dillon convinced JFK of the long-term dangers of nosebleed income-tax rates, big spending, and loose money. Ultimately, JFK chose Dillon’s tax cuts and sound-dollar policies and rejected Samuelson and Heller.

In response to Kennedy’s revolutionary tax cut, the economy soared. But as the 1960s wore on, the departed president’s priorities were undone by the government-expanding and tax-hiking mistakes of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. The resulting recessions and the “stagflation” of the 1970s took the nation off its natural course of growth and prosperity– until JFK’s true heirs returned to the White House in the Reagan era.

Kudlow and Domitrovic make a convincing case that the solutions needed to solve the long economic stagnation of the early twenty-first century are once again the free-market principles of limited government, low tax rates, and a strong dollar. We simply need to embrace the bipartisan wisdom of two great presidents, unleash prosperity, and recover the greatness of America.

https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Reagan-Revolution-American-Prosperity/dp/1595231145

Posted on Leave a comment

Trump Goes to Milwaukee, Wisconsin

-donald-trump-candidacy-speech-thridgewoodblog

August 16th 2016

verbatim speech

It’s so great to be here tonight. I am honored to also be joined this evening by Governor Scott Walker, Chairman Reince Prebius, and Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

We are at a decisive moment in this election. Last week, I laid out my plan to bring jobs back to our country. Yesterday, I laid out my plan to defeat Radical Islamic Terrorism. Tonight, I am going to talk about how to make our communities safe again from crime and lawlessness.

Let me begin by thanking the law enforcement officers here in this city, and across this country, for their service and sacrifice in difficult times. The violence, riots and destruction that have taken place in Milwaukee is an assault on the right of all citizens to live in security and peace. Law and order must be restored. It must be restored for the sake of all, but most especially the sake of those living in the affected communities.

The main victims of these riots are law-abiding African-American citizens living in these neighborhoods. It is their jobs, their homes, their schools and communities which will suffer as a result.
There is no compassion in tolerating lawless conduct. Crime and violence is an attack on the poor, and will never be accepted in a Trump Administration.

The narrative that has been pushed aggressively for years now by our current Administration, and pushed by my opponent Hillary Clinton, is a false one. The problem in our poorest communities is not that there are too many police, the problem is that there are not enough police.

More law enforcement, more community engagement, more effective policing is what our country needs.
Just like Hillary Clinton is against the miners, she is against the police. You know it, and I know it.

Those peddling the narrative of cops as a racist force in our society – a narrative supported with a nod by my opponent – share directly in the responsibility for the unrest in Milwaukee, and many other places within our country.

They have fostered the dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America. Everytime we rush to judgment with false facts and narratives – whether in Ferguson or in Baltimore – and foment further unrest, we do a direct disservice to poor African-American residents who are hurt by the high crime in their communities.

During the last 72 hours, while protestors have raged against the police here in Milwaukee, another 9 were killed in Chicago and another 46 were wounded. More than 2,600 people have been shot in Chicago since the beginning of the year, and almost 4,000 killed in President Obama’s hometown area since his presidency began.
How are we serving these American victims by attacking law enforcement officers?

The war on our police must end. It must end now!

The war on our police is a war on all peaceful citizens who want to be able to work and live and send their kids to school in safety.
Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter, the violent disruptor. Our job is to make life more comfortable for the African-American parent who wants their kids to be able to safely walk the streets. Or the senior citizen waiting for a bus. Or the young child walking home from school. For every one violent protestor, there are a hundred of moms and dads and kids on that same city block who just want to be able to sleep safely at night. My opponent would rather protect the offender than the victim.

Hillary Clinton-backed policies are responsible for the problems in the inner cities today, and a vote for her is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime, and lost opportunities.
I care too much about my country to let that happen.
We all care too much about our country to let that happen.
Good policing saves lives.

My dear friend, Rudy Giuliani, knows a thing or two about this. The policies put into place by Rudy ultimately brought down crime by 76 percent and murder by 84 percent. Think of how many families were saved, how much heartache was prevented, when police were put into communities and criminals were removed.

Imagine how many lives could have been saved, all across this country, if Democratic politicians hadn’t blocked in their cities what Rudy did in New York City? I’ll make sure we deliver safe neighborhoods here in Milwaukee, and all across this country.
It’s easy for Hillary Clinton to turn a blind eye to crime when she has her own private security force. I believe all Americans, not just the powerful, are entitled to security.

Hillary Clinton has had her chance. She failed. Now it’s time for new leadership. The Hillary Clinton agenda hurts poor people the most.

There is no compassion in allowing drug dealers, gang members, and felons to prey on innocent people. It is the first duty of government to keep the innocent safe, and when I am President I will fight for the safety of every American – and especially those Americans who have not known safety for a very, very long time.
I am asking for the vote of every African-American citizen struggling in our country today who wants a different future.

It is time for our society to address some honest and very difficult truths. The Democratic Party has failed and betrayed the African-American community. Democratic crime policies, education policies, and economic policies have produced only more crime, more broken homes, and more poverty.

Let us look at the situation right here in Milwaukee, a city run by Democrats for decade after decade. Last year, killings in this city increased by 69 percent, plus another 634 victims of non-fatal shootings. 18-29-year-olds accounted for nearly half of the homicide victims. The poverty rate here is nearly double the national average. Almost 4 in 10 African-American men in Milwaukee between the ages of 25-54 do not have a job. Nearly Four in 10 single mother households are living in poverty. 55 public schools in this city have been rated as failing to meet expectations, despite ten thousand dollars in funding per-pupil. There is only a 60% graduation rate, and it’s one of the worst public school systems in the country.

1 in 5 manufacturing jobs has disappeared in Milwaukee since we fully opened our markets to China, and many African-American neighborhoods have borne the brunt of this hit.

To every voter in Milwaukee, to every voter living in every inner city, or every forgotten stretch of our society, I am running to offer you a better future.

The Democratic Party has taken the votes of African-Americans for granted. They’ve just assumed they’ll get your support and done nothing in return for it. It’s time to give the Democrats some competition for these votes, and it’s time to rebuild the inner cities of America – and to reject the failed leadership of a rigged political system.

I’m not part of the corrupt system. In fact, the corrupt system is trying to stop me. I’ve been paying my own way. The voters in the Republican Party this year defied the donors, the consultants, the power brokers, and choose a nominee from outside our failed and corrupt and broken system.

The other party – the Democratic Party – nominated the personification of special interest corruption. The Democratic Party rigged the nomination to give it to Hillary Clinton, thus giving the soul of their party this year to the special interests.

I am running to listen to your voice, to hear your cries for help. The quiet voices in our society, not the loudest demonstrators, need to have their demands heard.

Jobs. Safety. Opportunity. Fair and equal representation.
We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton which panders to and talks down to communities of color and sees them only as votes, not as individual human beings worthy of a better future. She doesn’t care at all about the hurting people of this country, or the suffering she has caused them.

The African-American community has been taken for granted for decades by the Democratic Party. It’s time to break with the failures of the past – I want to offer Americans a new future.
It is time for rule by the people, not rule by special interests.

Every insider, getting rich off of our broken system, is throwing money at Hillary Clinton. The hedge fund managers, the Wall Street investors, the professional political class.

It’s the powerful protecting the powerful.

Insiders fighting for insiders.

I am fighting for you!

When we talk about the insider, who are we talking about? It’s the comfortable politicians looking out for their own interests. It’s the lobbyists who know how to insert that perfect loophole into every bill. It’s the financial industry knows how to regulate their competition out of existence. The insiders also include the media executives, anchors and journalists in Washington, Los Angeles, and New York City, who are part of the same failed status quo and want nothing to change.

Every day you pick up a newspaper, or turn on the nightly news, and hear about how some banker or some Washington insider says they oppose our campaign. Or some encrusted old politician says they oppose our campaign. Or some big time lobbyist says they oppose our campaign.

I wear their opposition as a badge of honor. Because it means I am fighting for REAL change, not just partisan change. I am fighting – all of us across the country are fighting – for peaceful regime change in our own country. The media-donor-political complex that’s bled this country dry has to be replaced with a new government of, by and for the people.

The leadership class in Washington D.C., of which Hillary Clinton has been a member for thirty years, has abandoned the people of this country.

I am going to give the people their voice back.
Think about it. The people opposing our campaign are the same people who have left our border open and let innocent people suffer as a result.

The people opposing our campaign are the same people who have led us into one disastrous foreign war after another.
The people opposing our campaign are the same people who lied to us about one trade deal after another.

Aren’t you tired of a system that gets rich at your expense?

Aren’t you tired of big media, big businesses, and big donors rigging the system to keep your voice from being heard?

Are you ready for change?

Are you ready for leadership that puts you, the American people, first? That puts your country first? That puts your family first?
Let’s talk about what this means for the inner cities of America.

It’s time to break through the television noise, the entrenched interests. I understand that a lot of powerful people in our political system – a lot of people who’ve created our problems – will lose a lot of their contracts, and their special gigs, if African-American voters, and all minority voters, support my campaign.

It’s time to stop making the special interests rich. It’s time to make the American people rich.

I am going to Make America Wealthy Again.

The Democratic Party has run every inner city in this country for 50 years, and run them into financial ruin.

They’ve ruined the schools.

They’ve driven out the jobs.

They’ve tolerated a level of crime no American should consider acceptable.

Violent crime has risen 17% in America’s 50 largest cities last year. Killings of police officers this year is up nearly 50 percent. Homicides are up more than 60% in Baltimore. They are up more than 50% in Washington, D.C.

This is future offered by Hillary Clinton. More poverty, more crime, and more of the same. The future she offers is the most pessimistic thing I can possibly imagine. It is time for a different future.

Here is what I am proposing.

First, on immigration. No community in this country has been hurt worse by Hillary Clinton’s immigration policies than the African-American community. Now she is proposing to print instant work permits for millions of illegal immigrants, taking jobs directly from low-income Americans. I will secure our border, protect our workers, and improve jobs and wages in your community. We will only invite people to join our country who share our tolerant values, who support our Constitution, and who love all of our people.

On trade, I am going to renegotiate NAFTA, stand up to China, withdraw from the TPP, and protect every last American job.
On taxes, I am going to give a massive tax cut to every worker and small business in this country, bring thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs onto our shores – and make it very difficult for our businesses to leave. I am going to reform our regulations so jobs stay in America, and new businesses come to America to hire workers right here in Milwaukee. Every policy my opponent has sends jobs overseas. I am going to bring trillions in new wealth back to the United States.

On education, it is time to have school choice, merit pay for teachers, and to end the tenure policies that hurt good teachers and reward bad teachers. We are going to put students and parents first.
Hillary Clinton would deny opportunities to millions of young African-American children, just so she can curry favor with the education bureaucracy. I am going to allow charter schools to thrive, and help young kids get on the American ladder of success: a good education, and a good-paying job.

On crime, I am going to support more police in our communities, appoint the best prosecutors and judges in the country, pursue strong enforcement of federal laws, and I am going to break up the gangs, the cartels and criminal syndicates terrorizing our neighborhoods. To every lawbreaker hurting innocent people in this country, I say: your free reign will soon come crashing to an end.

On healthcare, we are going to get rid of Obamacare – which has caused soaring double-digit premium increases – and give choice to patients and consumers. Aetna, just today, announced they are dropping out – as are many of the major insurance companies.

On government corruption, I am going to restore honor to our government. We’ve seen the corruption of Hillary Clinton, the mass email deletions, the pay-for-play at the State Department, the profiteering, the favors given to foreign corporations and governments at your expense. We’ve seen a former Secretary of State lie to Congress about her illegal email scheme, risk innocent American lives, and bring dishonor onto our government.
In my Administration, I am going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.
I am going to forbid senior officials from trading favors for cash by preventing them from collecting lavish speaking fees through their spouses when they serve.

I am going to ask my senior officials to sign an agreement not to accept speaking fees from corporations with a registered lobbyist for five years after leaving office, or from any entity tied to a foreign government. This is all just the beginning.

We are going to make this a government of the people once again. This is our chance to take back power from all the people who’ve taken it from you. The reason you see the establishment media lining up behind my opponent is because they are scared that you, with your vote, can take away their power and return it to your family and community.

These are tough times. But I know we can make American Greater Than Ever Before. To do this, we are going to need a fighter in the White House. I will be your fighter.

To defeat crime and Radical Islamic Terrorism in our country, to win trade in our country, you need tremendous physical and mental strength and stamina. Hillary Clinton doesn’t have that strength and stamina. She cannot win for you.

Most importantly, she has bad judgment. Bad judgment on terrorism, bad judgement on foreign policy, bad judgment on trade.
The only individuals she’s ever delivered for is her donors – not the people.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. My opponent asks her supporters to repeat three-word pledge.

Her pledge reads: “I’m With Her.” I choose to recite a different pledge. My pledge reads: “I’m With You – the American people.”

I will fight to ensure that every American is treated equally, protected equally, and honored equally. We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its forms, and seek a new future of security, prosperity and opportunity – a future built on our common culture and values as one American people.

I am asking for your vote so I can be your champion in the White House. We will once again be a country of law and order, and a country of great success.

To every parent who dreams for their children, and to every child who dreams for their future, I say these words to you tonight: I’m with you, I will fight for you, and I will win for you.

Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.

We Will Make American Safe Again. And We Will Make America Great Again.

Thank you, and God Bless,
Donald J. Trump

Posted on 1 Comment

Zika Virus Infection and Infant Microcephaly not so Fast

mosquito-blood

Theoretical Cause and Effect Relationship Between Maternal Zika Virus Infection and Infant Microcephaly is Not Proving Out in Reality

Brazil’s microcephaly epidemic continues to pose a mystery — if Zika is the culprit, why are there no similar epidemics in other countries also hit hard by the virus? In Brazil, the microcephaly rate soared with more than 1,500 confirmed cases. But in Colombia, a recent study of nearly 12,000 pregnant women infected with Zika found zero microcephaly cases. If Zika is to blame for microcephaly, where are the missing cases?

Comments:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160624150813.htm

Posted on Leave a comment

AN AMERICA FIRST ECONOMIC PLAN: WINNING THE GLOBAL COMPETITION

-donald-trump-candidacy-speech-thridgewoodblog

AN AMERICA FIRST ECONOMIC PLAN: WINNING THE GLOBAL COMPETITION

Please read the transcript from Mr. Trump’s speech at the Detroit Economic Club.

________________________________

Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. It’s wonderful to be in Detroit.

We now begin a great national conversation about economic renewal for America. It’s a conversation about how to Make American Great Again for everyone, and especially those who have the very least.

The City of Detroit Is Where Our Story Begins

Detroit was once the economic envy of the world. The people of Detroit helped power America to its position of global dominance in the 20th century.

When we were governed by an America First policy, Detroit was booming. Engineers, builders, laborers, shippers and countless others went to work each day, provided for their families, and lived out the American Dream.

But for many living in this city, that dream has long ago vanished.

When we abandoned the policy of America First, we started rebuilding other countries instead of our own. The skyscrapers went up in Beijing, and in many other cities around the world, while the factories and neighborhoods crumbled in Detroit. Our roads and bridges fell into disrepair, yet we found the money to resettle millions of refugees at taxpayer expense.

Today, Detroit has a per capita income of under $15,000 dollars, about half of the national average. 40 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty, over two-and-half times the national average. The unemployment rate is more than twice the national average. Half of all Detroit residents do not work.

Detroit tops the list of Most Dangerous Cities in terms of violent crime – these are the silenced victims whose stories are never told by Hillary Clinton, but victims whose suffering is no less real or permanent.

In short, the city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent’s failed economic agenda. Every policy that has failed this city, and so many others, is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton.

She supports the high taxes and radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community…and the crime policies that have made you less safe…and the immigration policies that have strained local budgets…and the trade deals like NAFTA, signed by her husband, that have shipped your jobs to Mexico and other countries… and she supports the education policies that deny your students choice, freedom and opportunity.

She is the candidate of the past.

Ours is the campaign of the future.

This is a city controlled by Democratic politicians at every level, and unless we change policies, we will not change results.

Today, I will outline my economic vision. In the coming weeks, we will be offering more detail on all of these policies, and the ones we have already rolled out can be viewed on my campaign website.

Our opposition, on the other hand, has long ago run out of ideas. All Hillary Clinton has to offer is more of the same: more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucrats, more restrictions on American energy and American production.

If you were a foreign power looking to weaken America, you couldn’t do better than Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda.

Nothing would make our foreign adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and our jobs out of existence.

The one common feature of every Hillary Clinton idea is that it punishes you for working and doing business in the United States. Every policy she has tilts the playing field towards other countries at our expense.

That’s why she tries to distract us with tired political rhetoric that seeks to label us, divide us, and pull us apart.

My campaign is about reaching out to everyone as Americans, and returning to a government that puts the American people first.

Here is what an America First economic plan looks like.

First, let’s talk tax reform.

Taxes are one of the biggest differences in this race.

Hillary Clinton – who has spent her career voting for tax increases – plans another massive job-killing $1.3 trillion-dollar tax increase. Her plan would tax many small businesses by almost fifty percent.

Recently, at a campaign event, Hillary Clinton short-circuited again – to use a now famous term – when she accidentally told the truth and said she wanted to raise taxes on the middle class.

I am proposing an across-the-board income tax reduction, especially for middle-income Americans. This will lead to millions of new good-paying jobs.

The rich will pay their fair share, but no one will pay so much that it destroys jobs, or undermines our ability to compete.

As part of this reform, we will eliminate the Carried Interest Deduction and other special interest loopholes that have been so good for Wall Street investors, and people like me, but unfair to American workers.

Tax simplification will be a major feature of the plan.

Our current tax code is so burdensome and complex that we waste 9 billion hours a year in tax code compliance.

My plan will reduce the current number of brackets from 7 to 3, and dramatically streamline the process. We will work with House Republicans on this plan, using the same brackets they have proposed: 12, 25 and 33 percent. For many American workers, their tax rate will be zero.

While we will develop our own set of assumptions and policies, agreeing in some areas but not in others, we will be focused on the same shared goals and guided by the same shared principles: jobs, growth and opportunity.

These reforms will offer the biggest tax revolution since the Reagan Tax Reform, which unleashed years of continued economic growth and job creation.

We will Make America Grow Again.

In the days ahead, we will provide more details on this plan and how it will help you and your family. It will present a night-and-day contrast to the job-killing, tax-raising, poverty-inducing Obama-Clinton agenda.

The State of New York has already lived through Hillary Clinton’s failed leadership. The Washington Post just published a devastating article on Hillary Clinton’s broken promises. She pledged 200,000 jobs for upstate New York as Senator. But what happened? The Washington Post writes, and I quote: “upstate job growth stagnated overall during her tenure, with manufacturing jobs plunging nearly 25 percent…the former first lady was unable to pass big ticket legislation… Many promised jobs never materialized and others migrated to other states as she turned to her first presidential run…data shows that upstate actually lost jobs during Clinton’s first term.”

Compare that to my record. In a recent New York Post article by Steve Cuozzo, “How Donald Trump Helped Save New York City,” the paper writes that I – and this is a direct quote – “waded into a landscape of empty Fifth Avenue storefronts, the dust-bowl mugging ground that was Central Park and a Wall Street area seemingly on its last legs as companies moved out…almost by force of will — [he] rode to the rescue. Expressing rare faith in the future, he was instrumental in kick-starting the regeneration of neighborhoods and landmarks almost given up for dead.”

This is what I want to do for our country – I want to jumpstart America.

Now let’s look at what the Obama-Clinton policies have done nationally.

Their policies produced 1.2% growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression, and a doubling of the national debt.

There are now 94.3 million Americans outside the labor force. It was 80.5 million when President Obama took office, an increase of nearly 14 million people.

The Obama-Clinton agenda of tax, spend and regulate has created a silent nation of jobless Americans.

Home ownership is at its lowest rate in 51 years.

Nearly 12 million have been added to the food stamp rolls since President Obama took office. Another nearly 7 million Americans were added to the ranks of those in poverty.

We have the lowest labor force participation rates in four decades.

58 percent of African-American youth are either outside the labor force or not employed.

1 in 5 American households do not have a single member in the labor force. These are the real unemployment numbers – the five percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics.

Meanwhile, American households are earning more than $4,000 less today than they were sixteen years ago.

The average worker today pays 31.5 percent of their wages to income and payroll taxes. On top of that, state and local taxes consume another 10 percent.

The United States also has the highest business tax rate among the major industrialized nations of the world, at 35 percent. It’s almost 40 percent when you add in taxes at the state level.

In other words, we punish companies for making products in America – but let them ship products into the U.S. tax-free if they move overseas.

This is backwards. All of our policies should be geared towards keeping jobs and wealth inside the United States.

Under my plan, no American company will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes. Small businesses will benefit the most from this plan. Hillary Clinton’s plan will require small business to pay as much as three times more in taxes than what I am proposing, and her onerous regulations will put them totally out of business. I am going to cut regulations massively.

Our lower business tax will also end job-killing corporate inversions, and cause trillions in new dollars and wealth to come pouring into our country – and into cities like Detroit. To help unleash this new job creation, we will allow businesses to immediately expense new business investments.

No one will gain more from these proposals than low-and-middle income Americans.

My plan will also help reduce the cost of childcare by allowing parents to fully deduct the average cost of childcare spending from their taxes.

We are also going to bring back trillions of dollars from American businesses that is now parked overseas. Our plan will bring that cash home, applying a 10 percent tax. This money will be re-invested in states like Michigan.

Finally, no family will have to pay the death tax. American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death – it’s just plain wrong. We will repeal it.

Next comes regulatory reform

As with taxes, I will have one overriding goal when it comes to regulation: I want to keep jobs and wealth in America.

Motor vehicle manufacturing is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. The U.S. economy today is twenty-five percent smaller than it would have been without the surge of regulations since 1980.

It is estimated that current overregulation is costing our economy as much as $2 trillion dollars a year – that’s money taken straight out of cities like yours.

The federal register is now over 80,000 pages long. As the Wall Street Journal noted, President Obama has issued close to four hundred new major regulations since taking office, each with a cost to the American economy of $100 million or more.

In 2015 alone, the Obama Administration unilaterally issued more than 2,000 new regulations – each a hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American economy.

It is time to remove the anchor dragging us down.

Upon taking office, I will issue a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations. My running mate, Mike Pence, signed a similar order when he became governor of Indiana. This will give our American companies the certainty they need to reinvest in our community, get cash off of the sidelines, start hiring for new jobs, and expanding businesses.

I will also immediately cancel all illegal and overreaching executive orders.

Next, I will ask each and every federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on Americans which are not necessary, do not improve public safety, and which needlessly kill jobs. Those regulations will be eliminated.

We are in a competition with the world, and I want America to win. When I am president, we will.

One of the most important reforms of all is trade reform

As Bernie Sanders has said, Hillary Clinton has bad judgment. We’ve seen this bad judgment overseas, in Libya, Iraq, and Syria. We’ve seen it in Iran. We’ve seen it from President Obama, when he gives $150 billion to Iran, the number one terror state, and even gives them $400 million in money-laundered cash as a ransom payment.

But we’ve also seen the terrible Obama-Clinton judgment right here in Detroit.

Hillary Clinton has supported the trade deals stripping this city, and this country, of its jobs and wealth.

She supported Bill Clinton’s NAFTA, she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, she supported the job-killing trade deal with South Korea, and she supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Let’s talk about South Korea for a moment, because it so perfectly illustrates the broken promises that have hurt so many American workers.

President Obama, and the usual so-called experts who’ve been wrong about every trade deal for decades, predicted that the trade deal with South Korea would increase our exports to South Korea by more than $10 billion – resulting in some 70,000 jobs.

Like Hillary Clinton’s broken promises to New York, these pledges all turned out to be false. Instead of creating 70,000 jobs, it has killed nearly 100,000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Our exports to South Korea haven’t increased at all, but their imports to us have surged more than $15 billion – more than doubling our trade deficit with that country.

The next betrayal will be the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Hillary Clinton’s closest friend, Terry McAuliffe, confirmed what I have said on this from the beginning: if sent to the Oval Office, Hillary Clinton will enact the TPP. Guaranteed. Her donors will make sure of it.

A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for TPP – and it’s also a vote for NAFTA.

Our annual trade deficit in goods with Mexico has risen from close to zero in 1993 to almost $60 billion. Our total trade deficit in goods hit nearly $800 billion last year.

This is a strike at the heart of Michigan, and our nation as a whole.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in Michigan. Today, that number is only 160,000.

Detroit is still waiting for Hillary Clinton’s apology. I expect Detroit will get that apology right around the same time Hillary Clinton turns over the 33,000 emails she deleted.

Hillary Clinton’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be an even bigger disaster for the auto industry. In fact, Ford Motor Company has announced its opposition to the deal.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. trade deficit with the proposed TPP member countries cost over 1 million manufacturing jobs in 2015.

By far the biggest losses occurred in motor vehicles and parts, which lost nearly 740,000 manufacturing jobs.

Michigan ranks first for jobs lost as a share of state workforce due to the trade deficit with TPP members.

Just imagine how many more automobile jobs will be lost if the TPP is actually approved. That is why I have announced we will withdraw from the deal before that can ever happen. Hillary Clinton will never withdraw from the TPP. She is bought, controlled and paid-for by her donors and special interests.

Because my only interest is the American people, I have previously laid out a detailed 7-point plan for trade reform, available on my website. It includes strong protections against currency manipulation, tariffs against any countries that cheat by unfairly subsidizing their goods, and it includes a renegotiation of NAFTA. If we don’t get a better deal, we will walk away.

At the center of my plan is trade enforcement with China. This alone could return millions of jobs into our economy.

China is responsible for nearly half of our entire trade deficit. They break the rules in every way imaginable. China engages in illegal export subsidies, prohibited currency manipulation, and rampant theft of intellectual property. They also have no real environmental or labor protections, further undercutting American workers.

Just enforcing intellectual property rules alone could save millions of American jobs. According to the U.S. International Trade Commission, improved protection of America’s intellectual property in China would produce more than 2 million more jobs right here in the United States.

Add to that the saved jobs from cracking down on currency cheating and product dumping, and we will bring trillions of dollars in new wealth and wages back to the United States.

Trade has big benefits, and I am in favor of trade. But I want great trade deals for our country that create more jobs and higher wages for American workers. Isolation is not an option, only great and well-crafted trade deals are.

Also critical to our economic renewal will be energy reform

The Obama-Clinton Administration has blocked and destroyed millions of jobs through their anti-energy regulations, while raising the price of electricity for both families and businesses.

As a result of recent Obama EPA actions coal-fired power plants across Michigan have either shut down entirely or undergone expensive conversions. The Obama-Clinton war on coal has cost Michigan over 50,000 jobs. Hillary Clinton says her plan will “put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.”

We will put our coal miners and steel workers back to work.

Clinton not only embraces President Obama’s job-killing energy restrictions but wants to expand them, including going after oil and natural gas production that employs some 10 million Americans.

According to the Heritage Foundation, by 2030, the Obama-Clinton energy restrictions will eliminate another half a million manufacturing jobs, reduce economic output by $2.5 trillion dollars, and reduce incomes by $7,000 dollars per person.

A Trump Administration will end this war on the American worker, and unleash an energy revolution that will bring vast new wealth to our country.

According to the Institute for Energy Research, lifting the restrictions on all sources of American energy will:

Increase GDP by more than $100 billion dollars annually, add over 500,000 new jobs annually, and increase annual wages by more than $30 billion dollars over the next 7 years;

Increase federal, state, and local tax revenues by almost $6 trillion dollars over 4 decades;

Increase totaleconomic activity by more than $20 trillion dollars over the next 40 years.

The reforms I have outlined today are only the beginning

When we reform our tax, trade, energy and regulatory policies, we will open a new chapter in American Prosperity.

We can use this new wealth to rebuild our military and our infrastructure.

As part of this new future, we will also be rolling out proposals to increase choice and reduce cost in childcare, offering much-needed relief to American families. I will unveil my plan on this in the coming weeks that I have been working on with my daughter Ivanka and an incredible team of experts.

Likewise, our education reforms will help parents send their kids to a school of their choice.

We will also give our police and law enforcement the funds and support they need to restore law and order to this country. Without security, there can be no prosperity. We must have law and order.

In the coming days, we will be rolling out plans on all of these items. One of my first acts as President will be to repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare, saving another 2 million American jobs.

We will also rebuild our military, and get our allies to pay their fair share for the protection we provide – saving us countless more billions to invest in our own country.

We also have a plan, on our website, for a complete reform of the Veterans Health Administration. This is something so desperately needed to make sure our vets are fully supported and get the care they deserve.

Detroit – the Motor City – will come roaring back. We will offer a new future, not the same old failed policies of the past.

Our party has chosen to make new history by selecting a nominee from outside the rigged and corrupt system.

The other party has reached backwards into the past to choose a nominee from yesterday – who offers only the rhetoric of yesterday, and the policies of yesterday.

There will be no change under Hillary Clinton – only four more years of Obama.

But we are going to look boldly into the future.

We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, sea ports and airports that our country deserves.

American cars will travel the roads, American planes will connect our cities, and American ships will patrol the seas.

American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring.

We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation.

It will be American hands that rebuild this country, and it will be American energy – mined from American sources – that powers this country.

It will be American workers who are hired to do the job.

Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo.

Our country will reach amazing new heights.

All we have to do is stop relying on the tired voices of the past.

We can’t fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place.

We can’t solve our problems by relying on the politicians who created them.

Only by changing to new leadership, and new solutions, will we get new results.

We need to stop believing in politicians, and start believing in America.

Before everything great that has ever happened, the doubters have always said it couldn’t be done.

America is ready to prove the doubters wrong.

They want you to think small. I am asking you to think big.

We are ready to dream great things for our country once again.

We are ready to show the world that America is Back – Bigger, and Better and Stronger Than Ever Before.

Thank you, and God Bless You.

Posted on 1 Comment

DONALD J. TRUMP ON THE STAKES OF THE ELECTION

-donald-trump-candidacy-speech-thridgewoodblog

DONALD J. TRUMP ON THE STAKES OF THE ELECTION

Today I‘d like to share my thoughts about the stakes in this election.

People have asked me why I am running for President.

I have built an amazing business that I love and I get to work side-by-side with my children every day.

We come to work together and turn visions into reality.

We think big, and then we make it happen.

I love what I do, and I am grateful beyond words to the nation that has allowed me to do it.

So when people ask me why I am running, I quickly answer: I am running to give back to this country which has been so good to me.

When I see the crumbling roads and bridges, or the dilapidated airports, or the factories moving overseas to Mexico, or to other countries, I know these problems can all be fixed, but not by Hillary Clinton – only by me.

The fact is, we can come back bigger and better and stronger than ever before –Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Everywhere I look, I see the possibilities of what our country could be. But we can’t solve any of these problems by relying on the politicians who created them.

We will never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who rigged it in the first place.

The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money.

That’s why we’re asking Bernie Sanders’ voters to join our movement: so together we can fix the system for ALL Americans. Importantly, this includes fixing all of our many disastrous trade deals.

Because it’s not just the political system that’s rigged. It’s the whole economy.

It’s rigged by big donors who want to keep down wages.

It’s rigged by big businesses who want to leave our country, fire our workers, and sell their products back into the U.S. with absolutely no consequences for them.

It’s rigged by bureaucrats who are trapping kids in failing schools.

It’s rigged against you, the American people.

Hillary Clinton who, as most people know, is a world class liar –

just look at her pathetic email and server statements, or her phony landing in Bosnia where she said she was under attack but the attack turned out to be young girls handing her flowers, a total self-serving lie.[1]

Brian Williams’ career was destroyed for saying far less.

Yesterday, she even tried to attack me and my many businesses. But here is the bottom line: I started off in Brooklyn New York, not so long ago, with a small loan and built a business worth over 10 billion dollars. I have always had a talent for building businesses and, importantly, creating jobs. That is a talent our country desperately needs.

I am running for President to end the unfairness and to put you, the American worker, first.

We are going to put America First, and we are going to Make America Great again.

This election will decide whether we are ruled by the people, or by the politicians.

Here is my promise to the American voter:

If I am elected President, I will end the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C.

The other candidate in this race has spent her entire life making money for special interests – and taking money from special interests.

Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft.

She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund – doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.

Then, when she left, she made $21.6 million giving speeches to Wall Street banks and other special interests – in less than 2 years – secret speeches that she does not want to reveal to the public. [2] [3]

Together, she and Bill made $153 million giving speeches to lobbyists, CEOs, and foreign governments in the years since 2001.[4]

They totally own her, and that will never change.

The choice in this election is a choice between taking our government back from the special interests, or surrendering our last scrap of independence to their total and complete control.

Those are the stakes.

Hillary Clinton wants to be President. But she doesn’t have the temperament, or, as Bernie Sanders’ said, the judgement, to be president.

She believes she is entitled to the office.

Her campaign slogan is “I’m with her.”

You know what my response to that is? I’m with you: the American people.

She thinks it’s all about her.

I know it’s all about you – I know it’s all about making America Great Again for All Americans.

Our country lost its way when we stopped putting the American people first.

We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism – focusing on what’s good for America’s middle class – to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy.

We reward companies for offshoring, and we punish companies for doing business in America and keeping our workers employed.

This is not a rising tide that lifts all boats.

This is a wave of globalization that wipes out our middle class and our jobs.

We need to reform our economic system so that, once again, we can all succeed together, and America can become rich again.

That’s what we mean by America First.

Our country will be better off when we start making our own products again, bringing our once great manufacturing capabilities back to our shores.

Our Founders understood this.

One of the first major bills signed by George Washington called for “the encouragement and protection of manufactur[ing]” in America.[5]

Our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned us by saying:

“The abandonment of the protective policy by the American government will produce want and ruin among our people.”[6]

I have visited the cities and towns across America and seen the devastation caused by the trade policies of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton supported Bill Clinton’s disastrous NAFTA, just like she supported China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization.[7]

We’ve lost nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs since these two Hillary-backed agreements were signed.[8]

Our trade deficit with China soared 40% during Hillary Clinton’s time as Secretary of State — a disgraceful performance for which she should not be congratulated, but rather scorned.[9]

Then she let China steal hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property – a crime which is continuing to this day.[10]

Hillary Clinton gave China millions of our best jobs, and effectively let China completely rebuild itself.

In return, Hillary Clinton got rich!

The book Clinton Cash, by Peter Schweitzer, documents how Bill and Hillary used the State Department to enrich their family at America’s expense.

She gets rich making you poor.

Here is a quote from the book: “At the center of US policy toward China was Hillary Clinton…at this critical time for US-china relations, Bill Clinton gave a number of speeches that were underwritten by the Chinese government and its supporters.”

These funds were paid to the Clinton bank account while Hillary was negotiating with China on behalf of the United States.[11]

She sold out our workers, and our country, for Beijing.

Hillary Clinton has also been the biggest promoter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will ship millions more of our jobs overseas – and give up Congressional power to an international foreign commission.[12]

Now, because I have pointed out why it would be such a disastrous deal, she is pretending that she is against it. She has even deleted this record of total support from her book – deletion is something she is very good at — (at least 30,000 emails are missing.)[13]

But this latest Clinton cover-up doesn’t change anything: if she is elected president, she will adopt the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and we will lose millions of jobs and our economic independence for good. She will do this, just as she has betrayed the American worker on trade at every single stage of her career – and it will be even worse than the Clintons’ NAFTA deal.

I want trade deals, but they have to be great for the United States and our workers.

We don’t make great deals anymore, but we will once I become president.

It’s not just our economy that’s been corrupted, but our foreign policy too.

The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars – and unleashed ISIS across the world.

No Secretary of State has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton.

Her decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched.

Among the victims is our late Ambassador, Chris Stevens. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed — that’s right, when the phone rang at 3 o’clock in the morning, she was sleeping.

Ambassador Stevens and his staff in Libya made hundreds of requests for security.[14]

Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused them all.

She started the war that put him in Libya, denied him the security he asked for, then left him there to die.

To cover her tracks, Hillary lied about a video being the cause of his death.[15]

Here is what one of the victim’s mothers had to say:

“I want the whole world to know it: she lied to my face, and you don’t want this person to be president.”[16]

In 2009, before Hillary Clinton was sworn in, it was a different world.

Libya was cooperating.

Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence.

Syria was under control.

Iran was being choked by sanctions.

Egypt was governed by a friendly regime that honored its peace treaty with Israel.

ISIS wasn’t even on the map.

Fast forward to 2013: In just four years, Secretary Clinton managed

to almost single-handedly destabilize the entire Middle East.

Her invasion of Libya handed the country over to the ISIS barbarians.

Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Iran is now the dominant Islamic power in the Middle East, and on the road to nuclear weapons.

Hillary Clinton’s support for violent regime change in Syria has thrown the country into one of the bloodiest civil wars anyone has ever seen – while giving ISIS a launching pad for terrorism against the West.[17]

She helped force out a friendly regime in Egypt and replace it with the radical Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military has retaken control, but Clinton has opened the Pandora’s box of radical Islam.

Then, there was the disastrous strategy of announcing our departure date from Iraq, handing large parts of the country over to ISIS killers.[18]

ISIS threatens us today because of the decisions Hillary Clinton has made.

ISIS also threatens peaceful Muslims across the Middle East, and peaceful Muslims across the world, who have been terribly victimized by horrible brutality – and who only want to raise their kids in peace and safety.

In short, Hillary Clinton’s tryout for the presidency has produced one deadly foreign policy disaster after another.

It all started with her bad judgment in supporting the War in Iraq in the first place.[19]

Though I was not in government service, I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started.[20]

But Hillary Clinton learned nothing from Iraq, because when she got into power, she couldn’t wait to rush us off to war in Libya.

She lacks the temperament, the judgment and the competence to lead.

In the words of a Secret Service agent posted outside the Oval Office:

“She simply lacks the integrity and temperament to serve

in the office…from the bottom of my soul, I know this to be true…Her leadership style – volcanic, impulsive…disdainful of the rules set for everyone else – hasn’t changed a bit.”[21]

Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is that she refuses to acknowledge the threat posed by Radical Islam.

In fact, Hillary Clinton supports a radical 550% increase in Syrian refugees coming into the United States, and that’s an increase over President Obama’s already very high number.[22]

Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on Earth – with no way to screen who they are or what they believe.[23] [24]

Already, hundreds of recent immigrants and their children have been convicted of terrorist activity inside the U.S.[25]

The father of the Orlando shooter was a Taliban supporter from Afghanistan, one of the most repressive anti-gay and anti-women regimes on Earth.[26]

I only want to admit people who share our values and love our people.

Hillary Clinton wants to bring in people who believe women should be enslaved and gays put to death.

Maybe her motivation lies among the more than 1,000 foreign donations Hillary failed to disclose while at the State Department.[27]

Hillary Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.

Here is some more of what we learned from the book, Clinton Cash:

A foreign telecom giant faced possible State Department sanctions for providing technology to Iran, and other oppressive regimes. So what did this company do? For the first time ever, they decided to pay Bill Clinton $750,000 for a single speech. The Clintons got their cash, the telecom company escaped sanctions.[28]
Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while 9 investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.[29]
Hillary Clinton appointed a top donor to a national security board with top secret access – even though he had no national security credentials.[30]
Hillary Clinton accepted $58,000 in jewelry from the government of Brunei when she was Secretary of State – plus millions more for her foundation. The Sultan of Brunei has pushed oppressive Sharia law, including the punishment of death by stoning for being gay. The government of Brunei also stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Hillary’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she would absolutely approve if given the chance. [31]
Hillary Clinton took up to $25 million from Saudi Arabia, where being gay is also punishable by death.[32]
Hillary took millions from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and many other countries that horribly abuse women and LGBT citizens.[33]
To cover-up her corrupt dealings, Hillary Clinton illegally stashed her State Department emails on a private server.

Her server was easily hacked by foreign governments – perhaps even by her financial backers in Communist China – putting all of America in danger.[34]

Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted.[35]

While we may not know what is in those deleted emails, our enemies probably do.

So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be President of the United States.

This fact alone disqualifies her from the Presidency.

We can’t hand over our government to someone whose deepest, darkest secrets may be in the hands of our enemies.

National security is also immigration security – and Hillary wants neither.

Hillary Clinton has put forward the most radical immigration platform in the history of the United States.

She has pledged to grant mass amnesty and in her first 100 days, end virtually all immigration enforcement, and thus create totally open borders in the United States.[36]

The first victims of her radical policies will be poor African-American and Hispanic workers who need jobs. They are the ones she will hurt the most.

Let me share with you a letter our campaign received from Mary Ann Mendoza.

She lost her amazing son, Police Sergeant Brandon Mendoza, after he was killed by an illegal immigrant because of the open borders policies supported by Hillary Clinton.[37]

Sadly, the Mendoza family is just one of thousands who have suffered the same fate.

Here is an excerpt from Mrs. Mendoza’s letter:

“Hillary Clinton, who already has the blood of so many on her hands, is now announcing that she is willing to put each and every one of our lives in harms’ way – an open door policy to criminals and terrorists to enter our country. Hillary is not concerned about you or I, she is only concerned about the power the presidency would bring to her. She needs to go to prison to pay for the crimes she has already committed against this country.”

Hillary also wants to spend hundreds of billions to resettle Middle Eastern refugees in the United States, on top of the current record level of immigration.

For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America.

Hillary’s Wall Street immigration agenda will keep immigrant communities poor, and unemployed Americans out of work. She can’t claim to care about African-American and Hispanic workers when she wants to bring in millions of new low-wage workers to compete against them.

Here are a few things a Trump Administration will do for America in the first 100 days:

Appoint judges who will uphold the Constitution. Hillary Clinton’s radical judges will virtually abolish the 2nd amendment.
Change immigration rules to give unemployed Americans an opportunity to fill good-paying jobs
Stand up to countries that cheat on trade, of which there are many
Cancel rules and regulations that send jobs overseas
Lift restrictions on energy production
Repeal and replace job-killing Obamacare — it is a disaster.
Pass massive tax reform to create millions of new jobs.
Impose tough new ethics rules to restore dignity to the Office of Secretary of State.
There is one common theme in all of these reforms.

It’s going to be America First.

This is why the stakes in November are so great.

On Election Day, the politicians stand trial before the people.

The voters are the jury. Their ballots are the verdict. We don’t need or want another Clinton or Obama.

Come November, the American people will have a chance to issue a verdict on the politicians that have sacrificed their security, betrayed their prosperity, and sold out their country.

They will have a chance to vote for a new agenda with big dreams, bold ideas and enormous possibilities for the American people.

Hillary Clinton’s message is old and tired. Her message is that can’t change.

My message is that things have to change – and this is our one chance do it. This is our last chance to do it.

Americans are the people that tamed the West, that dug out the Panama Canal, that sent satellites across the solar system that built the great dams, and so much more.

Then we started thinking small.

We stopped believing in what America could do, and became reliant on other countries, other people, and other institutions.

We lost our sense of purpose, and daring.

But that’s not who we are.

Come this November, we can bring America back – bigger and better, and stronger than ever.

We will build the greatest infrastructure on the planet earth – the roads and railways and airports of tomorrow.

Our military will have the best technology and finest equipment – we will bring it back all the way.

Massive new factories will come roaring into our country – breathing life and hope into our communities.

Inner cities, which have been horribly abused by Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party, will finally be rebuilt.

Construction is what I know — nobody knows it better.

The real wages for our workers have not been raised for 18 years — but these wages will start going up, along with the new jobs. Hillary’s massive taxation, regulation and open borders will destroy jobs and drive down wages for everyone.

We are also going to be supporting our police and law enforcement — we can never forget the great job they do.

I am also going to appoint great Supreme Court Justices.

Our country is going to start working again.

People are going to start working again.

Parents are going to start dreaming big for their children again – including parents in our inner cities.

Americans are going to start believing in the future or our country.

We are going to make America rich again.

We are going to make America safe again.

We are going to make America Great Again – and Great Again For EVERYONE.

——————————————————

[1] (“Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Remarks on Iraq” The George Washington University, 3/17/2008)

[2] (“2013 Tax Return,” Hillary Clinton, Accessed 6/22/2016)

[3] (“2014 Tax Return,” Hillary Clinton, Accessed 6/22/2016)

[4] (Robert Yoon, “$153 million in Bill and Hillary Clinton speaking fees, documented,” CNN, 2/6/2016)

[5] (“Statement submitted by Thomas O. Marvin, Secretary Home Market Club, Boston,” Committee of Ways and Means, 1/10/1913)

[6] (“Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works,” John Nicolay and John Hay, 1894)

[7] (Domenico Montanaro, “A Timeline Of Hillary Clinton’s Evolution On Trade” NPR, 4/21/2015)

[8] (“All Employees: Manufacturing,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Accessed 6/22/2016)

[9] (“Trade in Goods with China,” U.S. Census Report, Accessed 6/22/2016)

[10] (“The Report of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property,” The IP Commission Report, May 2013)

[11] (Lauren Carroll, “Fact-checking ‘Clinton Cash’ author on claim about Bill Clinton’s speaking fees,” Politifact, 4/26/2015)

[12] (“Press Release, “Fast-Track Would Give Obama Green Light To Form EU-Inspired ‘Pacific Union,’ Surrender Congress’ Treaty Powers,” Senator Jeff Sessions, 6/8/2015)

[13] (“Paperback version of Clinton’s ‘Hard Choices’ omits her former TPP trade pact support” Fox News, 6/11/2016)

[14] (Melanie Hunter, “More Than 600 Benghazi Security Requests Never Reached Clinton’s Desk, But Reports on Libya from Her ‘Friend’ Did,” CNS News, 10/22/2015)

[15] (Press Release, “State Department Belatedly Releases New Clinton Benghazi Documents,” Judicial Watch, 4/14/2016)

[16] (“’I Want the World to Know That Hillary Lied to My Face,’” Fox News, 8/22/2013)

[17] (Anne Barnard, “Death Toll From War in Syria Now 470,000, Group Finds,” The New York Times, 2/11/2016)

[18] (“Obama: All US Troops Out Of Iraq By End Of Year,” NBC News, 10/21/2011)

[19] (Adam Lerner, “Hillary Clinton says her Iraq war vote was a ‘mistake,’” Politico, 5/19/2015)

[20] (Donald J. Trump, “Your World With Neil Cavuto,” Fox News, 1/28/2003)

[21] (“Secret Service agent’s book claims Clinton has ‘volcanic’ leadership style,” Fox News, 6/6/2016)

[22] (Rebecca Kaplan, “Hillary Clinton: U.S. should take 65,000 Syrian refugees,” CBS News, 9/20/2015)

[23] (Michael Patrick Leahy, “Politifact Says Trump Is Right: Hillary Clinton Supports ‘500% Increase in Syrian Refugees’” Breitbart, 6/15/2016)

[24] (Melanie Hunter, “FBI Director Admits U.S. Will Have No Basis to Vet Some Syrian Refugees” CNS News, 10/21/2015)

[25] (Judson Berger, “Anatomy of the terror threat: Files shed light on nature, extent of plots in US,” Fox News, 6/22/2016)

[26] (Jonathan Landay and Yeganeh Torbati, “Father of Orlando shooter hosted political show on Afghan-Pakistan issues,” Reuters, 6/13/2016)

[27] (Joshua Green and Richard Rubin, “Clinton Foundation Failed to Disclose 1,100 Foreign Donations,” Bloomberg Politics, 4/29/2015)

[28] (Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross, “Bill Clinton Cashed In When Hillary Became Secretary of State,” ABC News, 4/23/2015)

[29] (Jo Becker and Mike McIntire, “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal,” The New York Times, 4/23/2015)

[30] (David Sirota, “Clinton Foundation Donors Got Weapons Deals From Hillary Clinton’s State Department,” International Business Times, 5/26/2015)

[31] (“Office of the Chief of Protocol; Gifts to Federal Employees From Foreign Government Sources Reported to Employing Agencies in Calendar Year 2012; Notice,” Department of State, 8/20/2013)

[32] (William La Jeunesse, “Rights groups silent as Clinton Foundation takes millions from countries that imprison gays,” Fox News, 6/17/2016)

[33] (“Contributor and Grantor Information,” Clinton Foundation, Accessed 6/22/2016)

[34] (Josh Gerstein and Rachael Bade, “Clinton server faced hacking from China, South Korea and Germany,” Politico, 10/8/2015)

[35] (Paula Reid and Hannah Fraser-Chanpong, “Report: FBI pulls deleted emails from Hillary Clinton’s server,” CBS News, 9/22/2015)

[36] (Monica Alba, “Hillary Clinton Calls Trump a ‘Bully’ Who Threatens Economy,” NBC News, 5/23/2016)

[37] (Megan Cassidy, “Mom is angry that man who killed son wasn’t deported,” USA Today, 7/11/2014)

Posted on Leave a comment

Showdown over iPhone reignites the debate around privacy

iphone_2018021b

By Todd C. Frankel and Ellen Nakashima February 19 at 11:32 PM

The Justice Department calculated that it held a winning hand — the passcode-locked Apple iPhone of a terrorist — when it went to a federal court in Riverside, Calif.

Not only did the agency want Apple to build special software to help the FBI crack open the phone, but the government also knew the order would be made public.

After a mass killing that provoked national outrage, the government hoped to win support far outside the courtroom in its bid to gain access to encrypted phones in criminal and terrorism cases.

“They picked this case to increase the chances of getting public opinion on their side,” said a former federal prosecutor.

Now, a single iPhone has reignited a broad debate about government surveillance and the needs of law enforcement vs. the need for privacy. The showdown escalated Friday with the Justice Department accusing Apple of putting its “brand marketing” ahead of the law. The stakes have soared, well beyond the fate of any particular iPhone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2016/02/19/cd99473e-d740-11e5-9823-02b905009f99_story.html

Posted on 2 Comments

Guns topping Christmas lists thanks to terrorism concerns, fear over restriction

guns

by Taboola

The convergence of fears over terrorism, a perceived threat of gun laws being changed and the Christmas holiday have sent gun sales soaring in what is already the busiest month of the year for firearm purchases.

Guns are at the top of many Christmas lists, especially if November is any indication.

Last month, the FBI ran more than 2.2 million firearm background checks on potential buyers, a 24 percent increase from November 2014. On Black Friday, a record 185,345 background checks were processed by the FBI.

https://www.today.com/news/guns-topping-christmas-lists-thanks-terrorism-concerns-fear-over-restrictions-t63321