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Last week, I tallied Joe Biden’s spending plans. This week, President Trump’s.

Which presidential candidate will bankrupt America first?

When Donald Trump ran for president, he promised “big league” spending cuts. Once in office, he again said he’d cut the budget, adding, “There’s a lot of fat in there.”

There sure is.

Since I was born, spending has grown faster than inflation most every year.

Then, President Obama, as Trump liked to out, “put more debt on than all other presidents of the United States combined!”

It’s true. But then Trump increased the debt just as much. Now even more, with the COVID-19 spending.

One of his first biggest increases was the $738 billion defense spending bill. Trump bragged that it was “an all-time record!” He said Democrats had “depleted” our fighting ability, so he “had” to “fix our military.”

“The ‘fix’ looks a whole lot like bloated defense spending,” says Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union. “It’s more than our rivals around the world could even hope to spend.”

Sepp’s organization has fought government spending for decades. Sadly, they’ve had little success.

Now federal spending will grow even faster because:

1. The COVID-19 “stimulus” will grow.
2. Both political parties love spending your money.
3. Old people like me keep living longer.

Sorry about that last one. But I, rudely, decline to die.

Soon, my generation’s Medicare and Social Security checks will crowd out everything else in the budget. (No, fellow geezers, we don’t just “get back what we put in.” We’ll get, on average, almost triple our FICA deductions.)

Sadly, no presidential candidate expresses much interest in addressing that: Trump promises to “protect” Social Security. Biden says he’ll increase it!

Trump was also eager to spend on special interests. He gave $16 billion to farmers and ranchers, $1.6 billion more to NASA and, despite government’s horrible track record at “picking winners,” he tried loaning $765 million to Kodak Pharmaceuticals.

After the pandemic hit, Trump joined Democrats in authorizing $6.2 trillion in new spending.

Signing that, Trump joked: “I’ve never signed anything with a “T” on it. I don’t know if I can handle this one!” The politicians standing behind him laughed.

But it’s not funny.

Now Democrats want to add even more spending.

Trump at least made some cuts, prepandemic. Sepp acknowledges that he made “important progress in reducing overhead (and) personnel costs.”

He also cut the budget of his own office, plus the Departments of Labor, Education and State. Good! The State Department is bloated with 60 subdepartments, and its spending had increased at triple the rate inflation.

Still, media pundits whined about every cut. On CNN, one “expert” called the cuts to the State Department “insanity.”

When Trump proposed other cuts, or just slowing the growth of government, Congress wouldn’t let him. Trump’s 2021 budget would still have increased spending by $39 billion. Rep. Chuck Schumer rejected that, calling it “a blueprint for destroying America!”

To sum up: What’s Trump’s total budget impact been?

Spending is up by more than $1 trillion a year. The national debt is over $26 trillion.

“Deficits and debt destroy economic growth,” says Sepp.

“Nobody’s talking about this stuff. You must be frustrated,” I say.

“Very,” he responds. “After 51 years as an organization, to see this kind of attitude and carelessness…”

When it comes to increasing spending, who is worse, Trump or Biden?

“Biden,” replies Sepp, because he promises $1.2 trillion a year in new spending. “We’re already trillions in the hole. He’s spending money out of an empty pocket!”

And Biden is favored to win.

Of course, some argue that when it comes to Republicats and Democans spending your and your grandkids’ money, it doesn’t matter who wins.

“Washington just seems to grow at the expense of everyone else, no matter who is in power,” concludes Sepp.

So, next week, I’ll report on an alternative to Biden and Trump.

COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

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If Donald Trump’s sister is right that he “has no principles,” he does at least have a few enduring instincts. Perhaps the most persistent is the president’s conviction that American greatness is threatened by voluntary economic exchange, the most powerful engine of peace and prosperity in human history.

Each of us has a fundamental right to the fruits of our labor, which includes the right to exchange the money we earn for products and services. When governments respect that right, mutually beneficial transactions replace zero-sum interactions that forcibly transfer resources from losers to winners. The value of those voluntary transactions does not depend on where buyers and sellers happen to be located.

Trump’s rejection of those principles pervades the second-term agenda he unveiled this week. He promises not only to “create 10 million new jobs in 10 months”—which itself betrays a basic misunderstanding of the president’s powers and the way a market economy works—but also to “keep jobs in America” through “Made in America” tax credits and “fair trade deals that protect American jobs.”

Even keeping jobs in America is not enough to satisfy Trump, who also wants to dictate who can fill those jobs. He would use immigration law to “prohibit American companies from replacing United States citizens with lower-cost foreign workers.”

Notwithstanding his vociferous rejection of the “socialism” he ascribes to the Democrats, Trump believes the government must manipulate the economy, which means overriding the choices Americans otherwise would make, to ensure his preferred outcomes, down to details as mundane as the location of air conditioner and washing machine factories. In his mind, trade is not a right to be respected but a process to be managed by politicians.

Ignoring the principle of comparative advantage as well as the self-evident benefits of transactions that both parties freely choose, Trump believes Americans should not be using oil, pharmaceuticals, or medical supplies produced in other countries. To “end our reliance on China” and “bring back 1 million manufacturing jobs,” he would provide tax benefits to companies that “bring back jobs from China” and deny federal contracts to businesses that “outsource to China.”

Trump’s obsession with stopping Americans from buying Chinese goods is at odds not only with his party’s former support of free trade but also with its avowed resistance to tax increases. Taking into account retaliatory tariffs as well as the taxes Trump imposed directly, his trade war with China is costing American consumers an estimated $57 billion a year, on top of the costs borne by U.S. farmers and manufacturers caught in the crossfire.

In contrast with his positions on, say, abortion or gun rights, Trump’s beef against free trade is longstanding and seemingly sincere. No matter what pointy-headed economists say, he knows in his gut that money spent on foreign goods is wasted, that immiserating autarky is the key to American greatness, and that something nefarious is going on whenever imports from a particular country happen to exceed exports.

“You only have to look at our trade deficit to see that we are being taken to the cleaners by our trading partners,” Trump wrote two decades ago in a book that likened peaceful economic exchange to warfare. “If we didn’t trade,” he averred two years ago, “we’d save a hell of a lot of money.”

When Trump ran for president in 2016, the Republican platform likewise bemoaned “massive trade deficits,” even while paying lip service to “open markets.” This year the party decided to forgo a platform, saying it stands for whatever Trump has in mind.

Whatever that is, we can be pretty sure it will ignore a wise warning from the 2016 GOP platform. “We are the party of a growing economy that gives everyone a chance in life, an opportunity to learn, work, and realize the prosperity freedom makes possible,” the Republicans said then. “Government cannot create prosperity, though government can limit or destroy it.”

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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President Donald Trump pardoned Jon Ponder, a formerly incarcerated man who now runs a nonprofit to help others coming out of prison, in a video recorded Tuesday.

The video played at the Republican National Convention (RNC) Tuesday night during a program that focused on Trump’s record on criminal justice reform. 

“I will continue to give all Americans, including former inmates, the best chance to build a new life and achieve their own American dream,” Trump said.

On the National Day of Prayer, Hope for Prisoners founder Jon Ponder came to the White House to share his story with the American people.

Today, President Trump welcomed Jon back—and signed his full pardon. pic.twitter.com/LsFxjGFoRR

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 26, 2020

Ponder is the founder of Hope for Prisoners, a Nevada nonprofit that offers support services and training to formerly incarcerated people. Trump met with Ponder at the 2018 National Day of Prayer at the White House, and the president was a guest speaker at a Hope for Prisoners graduation ceremony in February. 

Trump’s pardon wipes away a federal bank robbery conviction from Ponder’s record.

“Today, praise God, I am filled with hope,” Ponder said. “A proud American citizen who has been given a second chance. My transformation began in a prison cell, while I found myself a three-time convicted felon facing yet another sentence. I gave my life to Jesus.”

The pardon was the latest in a string of high-profile commutations and pardons by Trump. Alice Johnson, a former federal inmate who was serving life in prison before Trump commuted her sentence in 2018, is also expected to speak at the RNC.

But while criminal justice advocates have applauded pardons and commutations issued in deserving cases like those, there have been criticisms that the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, the regular office that handles clemency applications, has been sidelined. The Washington Post found the vast majority of the pardons and commutations under Trump have gone to cases that caught his attention on TV or were brought to him personally by advocates or celebrities.

At a July 13 White House press briefing, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked specifically about Ponder’s possible pardon and the neglect of regular clemency applications.

“It’s absolutely not the case that only those who are politically connected get a pardon. This president is the president of criminal justice reform,” McEnany responded. “This president did the FIRST STEP Act. This president has fought for those who are given unduly harsh sentences more than any Democrat who like to talk about it but never actually did it.”

Trump’s tendency to pardon his cronies has led to some calls to restrict the executive’s pardon powers, but that would be a terrible mistake. There are thousands more Jon Ponders and Alice Johnsons in the federal prison system, many of them passed over by the Obama administration’s clemency initiative. Precious few of them have the sort of connections to get their case to the president’s ears. If Trump wants to show he will fight for their second chances—and isn’t just putting on a show or helping his pals—he can and should prove it.

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Birds have been a problem for wind power. Wind turbines, whatever their other merits, have the tendency to kill birds, and possibly bats. This has been a longstanding problem, particularly because those areas best for wind power are often important for birds, particularly those species that tend to ride on wind currents.

The bird problem has meant that environmental organizations have been inconsistent advocates of wind power, endorsing the such carbon-free power in the abstract, but often opposing particular wind power development proposals. I wrote about this problem over twenty years ago in The Weekly Standard, and it has not gone away.

New research suggests that one solution to the bird problem is rather simple: Painting one blade black dramatically reduces bird kills by wind turbines–70 percent in one location under study. This is an important development because the effect appears quite large, and it’s a relatively inexpensive fix. Assuming this research pans out, there is a cheap way to address the biggest environmental drawback of wind power, and that’s a big deal.

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Today, in Thompson v. Marietta Education Association, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected a constitutional challenge to a law requiring government employees to accept exclusive representation by a public sector union. This requirement would seem to be in conflict with the principles underlying Janus v. AFSCME, but an older as-yet-not-overturned Supreme Court precedent upheld such arrangements, so the Sixth Circuit panel’s hands were tied.

Judge Thapar wrote for the court. His brief opinion for the court begins:

By signing on the dotted line, public employees accept the government as their employer. In Ohio, the law requires them to also accept a union as their exclusive bargaining representative. It’s a take-it-or-leave-it system—either agree to exclusive representation, which is codified in state law, or find a different job. This take-it-or-leave-it system is in direct conflict with the principles enunciated in Janus v. AFSCME, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018). But when the Supreme Court decided Janus, it left on the books Minnesota State Board for Community Colleges v. Knight, 465 U.S. 271 (1984). And because Knight directly controls the outcome of this case, we affirm the district court’s decision upholding the challenged Ohio law.

Later in the opinion, Judge Thapar writes:

Thompson’s first claim is that Ohio law impermissibly allows the Marietta Education Association to speak on her behalf during collective-bargaining sessions, and that this amounts to compelled speech and association in violation of the First Amendment. See Ohio Rev. Code §§ 4117.05(A), 4117.11(B)(6).

The First Amendment protects “both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.” Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 714 (1977). Likewise, “[f]reedom of association . . . plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.” Roberts v. U.S. Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 623 (1984). These rights capture the more basic truth that “[f]orcing free and independent individuals to endorse”—either implicitly or explicitly—”ideas they find objectionable is always demeaning.” Janus, 138 S. Ct. at 2464. The Supreme Court has thus explained that “designating a union as the exclusive representative of nonmembers substantially restricts the nonmembers’ rights.” Id. at 2469. And the Court has deemed exclusive public sector bargaining “a significant impingement on associational freedoms that would not be tolerated in other contexts.” Id. at 2478.

Given the Supreme Court’s language, one might think that Thompson should prevail. Yet Supreme Court precedent says otherwise. And lower courts must follow Supreme Court precedent. See Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237 (1997).

The primary precedent blocking Thompson’s way is Knight. There, a group of non-union community college instructors challenged Minnesota’s collective-bargaining statute. They objected to the State’s recognition of an exclusive representative to speak for all employees at “meet and confer” sessions. These sessions concerned subjects outside the scope of mandatory collective bargaining. See 465 U.S. at 274–78. But the Supreme Court rejected the challenge. It held that Minnesota had “in no way restrained [the instructors’] freedom to speak . . . or their freedom to associate or not to associate with whom they please.” Id. at 288. To the contrary, the Court held that the instructors’ First Amendment rights were not unduly infringed because they remained “free to form whatever advocacy groups they like” and were “not required to become members of [the union].” Id. at 289.

Knight controls here. If allowing exclusive representatives to speak for all employees at “meet and confer” sessions does not violate the First Amendment, we see no basis for concluding that the result should be different where the union engages in more traditional collective bargaining activities. It appears that every other circuit to address the issue has agreed. . . .

To be sure, Knight‘s reasoning conflicts with the reasoning in Janus. But the Supreme Court did not overrule Knight in Janus. And when an earlier Supreme Court decision “has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to [the Supreme] Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Exp., Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989). We do so here.

This strikes me as the proper way for a lower court to handle controlling Supreme Court precedent. There may well be conflict within the Court’s own precedents, as Judge Thapar observes in his opinion, but resolving this conflict is the work of the Supreme Court, not lower courts.

 

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