Violent crime in America, despite experiencing an overall <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/1tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_1_crime_in_the_united_states_by_volume_and_rate_per_100000_inhabitants_1993-2012.xls">dramatic decline</a> since the 1990s, has started to <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/25-years-crime-wave-back-republicans-refuse-talk/">surge back</a> over the past few years. Amidst this distressing social trend, alas, America&#8217;s <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/rnc-blasts-kamala-harris-not-pro-criminal-enough/">erstwhile</a> &#8220;law-and-order&#8221;/tough-on-crime political party has been ideologically and financially captured by pro-criminal libertarians who ally with the Left to spout hackneyed, outmoded orthodoxies like the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-dont-let-kim-kardashian-fool-you-america-josh-hammer">alleged (non-)issue</a> of &#8220;mass incarceration.&#8221; The most tangible result of this unholy alliance was the bipartisan 2018 passage of the harrowing First Step Act jailbreak law — a law enactment which President Donald Trump, viewing the <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191004/he-was-released-early-from-prison-in-february-now-hes-wanted-for-murder-on-federal-hill">murderous early results</a>, apparently already <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-reportedly-regrets-passage-jailbreak-first-step-act-gullible-conservatives-supported/">regrets</a>.
Alas, the leftist/libertarian alliance on &#8220;criminal justice&#8221; issues, just highlighted during last night&#8217;s Democratic Party presidential primary debate when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) touted her work with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on the crime-abetting issue of &#8220;<a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/jailbreak-epidemic-gang-member-released-6k-bail-now-accused-raping-12-year-old-girl/">bail reform</a>,&#8221;continues unabated. Which brings us to prominent libertarian lawyer/legal commentator <a href="https://www.cato.org/people/clark-neily">Clark Neily</a>, who has been on a roll, of late. Neily, who spent years with the rabidly <a href="https://ij.org/center-for-judicial-engagement/">pro-judicial power</a> libertarian legal group <a href="https://ij.org">Institute for Justice,</a> now works for the equally <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/proper-judging-means-principled-engagement-not-judicial-deference">pro-judicial power</a> libertarian Cato Institute. Neily&#8217;s title at Cato is &#8220;Vice President for Criminal Justice&#8221; and, based on his recent musings, he appears to embody the zealous leftist/libertarian jailbreak alliance.
The precise target of Neily&#8217;s recent ire is the prosecutor. More specifically, Neily is convinced that far too many prosecutors become federal judges — and that not nearly enough criminal defense attorneys become federal judges. In a highly revealing but nonetheless sober-minded recognition of his core readership for such anti-prosecutorial musings, Neily has published on the subject at both <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/studies/are-disproportionate-number-federal-judges-former-government-advocates">Cato</a> and, just this week, at left-wing <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/too-many-prosecutors-federal-judiciary.html">Slate</a>. The latter piece goes so far as to call for an outright &#8220;moratorium&#8221; on the nomination of former prosecutors to the federal bench.
I am not a former prosecutor. But I do have the benefit of education at a top law school and the experience of serving as a law clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. And I believe Neily is severely misguided in his anti-prosecutor crusade.
Crucially, Neily&#8217;s Cato <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/studies/are-disproportionate-number-federal-judges-former-government-advocates#summary-previous-studies">study</a> makes no attempt whatsoever to control for education, intellect, or legal credentials. To many lay observers, this may seem anodyne — after all, can&#8217;t former prosecutors and defense attorneys/public defenders, as classes of attorneys, be presumed to have roughly equivalent legal acumens and credentials? Well, no. For generations, gifted law students of all political stripes have seen the prosecutorial career path — be it via the Department of Justice (DOJ), local U.S. attorney&#8217;s offices, state attorneys general offices, or even local district attorneys — as a prominent avenue for vocational success. The DOJ <a href="https://www.justice.gov/legal-careers/entry-level-attorneys">Honors Program</a> has long been viewed as one of the most prestigious entry-level attorney tracks in the nation, and scores of lawyers hoping to one day be considered for a federal judgeship have routinely sought U.S. attorney&#8217;s office experience as a means of padding their resumes and evincing a demonstrable commitment to public service. Again, this holds true for lawyers and judges of all political persuasions and partisan affiliations: As but two prominent examples for those on the Left, 2016 failed Barack Obama U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is a former federal prosecutor and current presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is a former California attorney general.
This is simply not nearly as broadly true for those who pursue careers in the criminal defense bar — be they in private practice or working as public defenders. Leftists and libertarians can gnash their teeth and wail all they&#8217;d like, but the reality, as I <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1176324820771819520">tweeted</a> last month, is that in no sane world is the median defense lawyer of the same acumen and credentials as the median prosecutor. Representing drug traffickers, gangbangers, and felons in possession of firearms is not a dream job. Again, my claim is that this holds true for prosecutors and the defense bar, viewed as a class — obviously, there will be innumerable individual dispensations to such a broad rule, when comparing class sizes of this magnitude. But anecdotally, based on (1) my own personal experience knowing many individuals who have become prosecutors and defense lawyers, (2) my own law clerk experience and thinking back to a comparison of the median prosecutor&#8217;s brief and oral argument versus the median defense attorney&#8217;s brief and oral argument, and (3) discussing the issue with other former federal appellate law clerk friends, I feel eminently comfortable making such a claim. We should feel comfortable establishing a rebuttable presumption that prosecutors, considered as a class, have superior legal credentials to defense attorneys. Based purely on my own experience, I cannot even begin to count the volume of public defender&#8217;s office legal briefs I read that were of an immensely shoddy quality.
At a bare minimum, libertarians and leftists who would seek to place a moratorium on nominating prosecutors to federal judgeships ought to be asked how they can be so sure that they are not sacrificing legal acumen or credentials. I understand that such logic is arguably circular — anti-prosecutor libertarians and leftists could respond that such a moratorium may prophylactically disincentivize smart law school graduates who may aspire for judgeships from pursuing prosecutorial careers. But the salient point is that the general prestige of many prosecutorial career paths is so deeply ingrained in our legal culture. That is not something that can be easily reversed, and I highly suspect the criminal defense bar and its apologists have no particularly compelling argument to offer for how they might be able to do so.
Prosecutors do not write our nation&#8217;s criminal statutes — they merely enforce them. To the extent leftists and libertarians — hooked as they are on the anachronistic talking points of &#8220;mass incarceration&#8221; and &#8220;low-level non-violent offenders&#8221; — have substantive issues with our criminal statutes, they ought to lobby policymakers. By all accounts, considering both <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/needs-leftists-gop-texas-gov-greg-abbott-endorses-radical-ban-box-pro-criminal-mandate-employers/">state-level initiatives</a> and the aforementioned First Step Act, the pro-jailbreak cabal is quite successful in its lobbying efforts. Pro-jailbreak forces are wrong, on the policy merits, but that is an issue that can be debated in the political space. But it would be dangerous for justice and the rule of law, absent pro-jailbreak forces&#8217; ability to overcome the rebuttable presumption about the credentials of disparate vocational classes, for such forces to also take out their frustrations as part of the judicial nominations process.

Judge gavel with Justice lawyers, Businesswoman in suit or lawyer, Advice and Legal services Concept.

HAMMER: In Defense Of Prosecutors

Constitution

Crime

Department of Justice

Drugs

Federal Government

Guns

Homicide

Judicial Branch

Judiciary

Kamala Harris

Unfortunately, for many years, Republicans have been on the &#8220;losing&#8221; end of the poverty debate. Democrats have taken the spotlight with talking points pertaining to income inequality, the shrinking middle class, and programs for the poor &#8212; but conservatives have just as much to say about reducing poverty.
On Thursday, I had the opportunity to speak with Whitney Munro, the Vice President of Communications for the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative-leaning public policy organization focused on &#8220;using work to lift people out of dependency &#8230; and to empower them to take control of their futures,&#8221; according to their official website.
In part one of this interview (which you can read <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-i-foundation-for-government-accountability-talks-about-the-conservative-approach-to-fighting-poverty">here</a>), Munro discussed the messaging issues plaguing the Republican Party when it comes to poverty, why progressives seem to hold all the cards in the debate, and what policies conservatives can advance.
In part two below, Munro speaks about misleading claims against their proposals, the pervasiveness of welfare abuse, workforce issues, student loan debt, and more.
<blockquote>DW: There&#8217;s a Vox article that claims the FGA is trying to push over three million people off of food stamps. What is your response to those types of pieces from left-leaning sources?
MUNRO: You&#8217;ve gotta love Vox. So, when we hear things like that &#8212; the reality is yes, if our reforms are passed, some able-bodied, working age adults would be removed from the food stamp rolls if they chose not to work, train, or volunteer for 20 hours a week. We&#8217;re not asking for the world. We&#8217;re saying, &#8220;Hey, if you are able-bodied, you are working age, you don&#8217;t have young children at home, you’re not taking care of an elderly parent, you don&#8217;t have a disability, you need to be trying to work, train, or volunteer 20 hours a week.&#8221; If you do that, you can keep your benefits. It&#8217;s very common that when people hear that, they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Wait, you&#8217;re not actually just taking people randomly off food stamps? You&#8217;re just saying, here&#8217;s a requirement for able-bodied, working age people who should, in theory, also have this goal for themselves in mind?&#8221; [This is a] requirement that Congress passed in 1996 and Bill Clinton signed and around 80 percent of Americans support but just isn’t being enforced.
DW: Can you talk about how pervasive welfare abuse is?
MUNRO: One of the things we hear from people on a regular basis is that welfare fraud doesn&#8217;t exist. We&#8217;ve done studies, and almost every single state – looked at asset requirements, looked at income requirement – we’ve found people who are getting food stamp benefits, as well and other types of welfare programs, who have won the lottery, who have assets of more than a million dollars in the bank, who are taking their food stamps and EBT cards and selling them on the streets.
One of the law enforcement officers that we worked with in the past actually went <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w183fOHXG0">undercover for six months</a> in Jacksonville, Florida, and was on a street corner pretending to be homeless to document people selling their EBT cards for drugs.
190 people in that town alone were busted because of welfare fraud, waste, and abuse in the drug trade, and then exchanging it for beer or different things at grocery stores. We find it everywhere. If you go on Craigslist, there’s story after story of people posting, &#8220;Hey, I have an EBT card. I’ll trade you for this, or this, or cash.&#8221; It&#8217;s everywhere, and some of the reforms that we work on put in place stopgaps for that.
Even if state systems just talk to one another. For example, if someone wins the lottery, the state knows that database should be crosschecked with people who are getting public benefits to make sure that no one who has won the lottery is still receiving food stamps years after the fact when they have those assets in the bank.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9dl9Ot29sU">Rob Undersander</a> was a Minnesota millionaire who was volunteering with elderly populations in his community, helping them navigate state aid programs, when he realized that there was not an asset test for food stamp enrollment. So he thought, &#8220;Well, gosh! I&#8217;m going to see if I can qualify.&#8221; He had more than a million dollars in real estate assets, and he did, and he collected them, and then he went to the state and said, &#8220;Hey, I shouldn&#8217;t be allowed to collect food stamps, but under your law, I am allowed to.&#8221; So, he&#8217;s also been trying to raise the awareness that that’s not fraud; that’s what the law is allowing people to do because there are not systems in place to check those things.
DW: Is there anything that we haven&#8217;t touched on in the interview that you&#8217;d want our readership to know?
MUNRO: FGA founder Tarren Bragdon started this organization eight years ago really around the idea that there are a lot of opportunities out there for people to better their lives and take a step up from where they are. It’s some of the things that we&#8217;ve discussed &#8212; the work requirement for benefits, because we actually believe, and unlike what the Left would tell you, that those safety nets need to be there for the truly needy, and they need to be there for the disabled, for those who are unable to help themselves, for poor children, for the elderly, for people who find themselves in temporary periods of hardship. When we are allowing millions and millions of able-bodied, working age adults to collect benefits, that means those programs are not serving the people that they were truly intended for.
We’ve covered things like the Medicaid waiting list where there are people who should qualify for Medicaid benefits, but Medicaid expansion has crowded them out and provided benefits to working age adults who are capable of working.
We say that the power and dignity of work is the number one way for people to improve their lives.
On the flip side, we&#8217;ve also done a lot of work in workforce issues. So we&#8217;re looking at what barriers are in place preventing people from working. We&#8217;ve worked on occupational licensing reform. We had a fresh start initiative to help people who come out of jail to be able to get licenses to work if they were a nonviolent offender who maybe just wants to be a barber, or a cosmetologist, or a massage therapist. What can we do to make sure that they are in the workforce and not in dependency or, even worse, back in jail or prison.
We’ve looked at lobbying boards and the type of cronyism that exists to stop people who are new to a profession &#8212; veteran, veteran spouses, young people. We really do focus on that aspect of things as well. It&#8217;s not just looking at entitlement programs, it&#8217;s looking at those barriers to work that exist for people once they are active and getting them back into the workforce, and other ways that licensing laws just don&#8217;t make any sense.
On the health care front &#8212; how can we help people get access to affordable yet quality health care? We&#8217;ve worked on association health plans, and short-term plans. We are involved in Telemedicine and direct medical care &#8212; ways to open the market up so that people have choices and opportunities, and the cost of health care isn&#8217;t the thing that&#8217;s restricting their opportunities.
How is student loan debt and this problem affecting millions of Americans, and what are the actual solutions? Because the solution to the student loan debt problem is not, &#8220;Let’s forgive everyone&#8217;s debt&#8221; or &#8220;Let’s make college free for everyone to attend.&#8221; That’s actually a really bad band-aid that would bankrupt the country and not hit the problem at the core of where it lives, and so we&#8217;re currently looking for those solutions. We know this is hurting a generation. No, we don&#8217;t want this problem to continue, but we also know the solutions on the table aren&#8217;t the ones that we need.
So how do we provide transparency and accountability so that students make the right choices, so we can extend access to vocational education, and career and technology education, and really promote alternatives to that four-year-college set goal for those who can&#8217;t afford it [and] don&#8217;t want to go there, and then that, in turn, would help prevent some of the dependency that we see occur.
That’s a long-winded answer to kind of tell you, we&#8217;re looking at this from all sides. We&#8217;re trying to think from different perspectives, and outside the box. We believe that these solutions actually exist and that they&#8217;re powerful and that they work. We&#8217;re always looking for that next opportunity to help people.</blockquote>
I’d like to thank Ms. Munro for speaking with me about such a vital issue. For more information about the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) and their policy ideas, you can visit their official website <a href="https://thefga.org/">here</a>.

Charity line.

INTERVIEW (Part II): Foundation For Government Accountability Talks About The Conservative Approach To Fighting Poverty

Conservatism

Economy

On Thursday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles discusses the insanity of Berkeley, California eliminating “gendered” language from their municipal facilities, making them non-binary to please the woke crowd. Video and partial transcript below.
The city of Berkeley is banning gendered language from government. Of course, it&#8217;s happening in Berkeley, California. No policemen, only police officers; no chairman, only chair people; no manpower, only human effort, that&#8217;s the new politically correct term. “No manholes,” now it&#8217;s maintenance holes. Frankly, I think maintenance is a little too close to man for my liking, but I guess it’s a progressive step in the right direction. No more he or she, they won&#8217;t use pronouns anymore. Only singular pronouns in the Berkeley city government, only the singular &#8220;they,&#8221; like &#8220;they is drinking from the Leftist Tears tumbler, they likes tears.” That&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve reduced our language to.
This is significant, the council member there, a Rigel Robinson said, &#8220;There is power in language. This is a small move, but it matters.” He&#8217;s absolutely right, he&#8217;s being completely honest. These little small moves in language matter a lot, that&#8217;s why the Left fight so hard to change them. That&#8217;s why 0.2 percent of the population, if that, is confused about their biological sex and we&#8217;ve spent years now debating whether we can say &#8220;he&#8221; or &#8220;she&#8221; or if we have to use the singular &#8220;they,&#8221; which is an assault on the English language because it radically changes our understanding of reality in the past.
When you use language, the kind of language you use radically changes how you think of reality. For instance, the reason they do the pronoun battle is, if I hear about a transgender girl that beats a girl at a high school track meet, I think okay, well a transgender girl who is a type of girl, beats a different girl, who is another type of girl, at a track meet; that seems fair. But, if I use accurate language and I say a boy in a dress beats a girl at a high school track meet, I&#8217;ll become aware of the injustice of that.
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Because men are physically stronger than women, and they&#8217;re faster. That&#8217;s not fair, that&#8217;s wrong, I don&#8217;t think that boy in a dress should be able to take a scholarship away from a girl at a girl’s track meet. I think the boy should compete with the boys and the girls should compete with the girls. So, they have to change the language, because if I just say &#8220;she&#8221; to refer to the boy in the dress, if I just say &#8220;transgender girl,&#8221; even though I am aware of what that means, I&#8217;m explicitly talking about the image in my mind is of a girl, and that&#8217;s what language does.
Rigel Robinson then goes on: &#8220;Having a male-centric municipal code is inaccurate and not reflective of our reality. Women and non-binary individuals are just as entitled to accurate representation, our laws are for everyone and our municipal code should reflect that.&#8221; Here, he is completely wrong, it&#8217;s not male-centric, &#8220;man&#8221; can refer to a man like me, or it can refer to mankind, which is gender-neutral.
In the Book of Genesis, it reads &#8220;God created man, both male, and female, he created them.&#8221; There was male and female of man because we&#8217;re talking about mankind. When the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon, Neil Armstrong said &#8220;one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.&#8221; There&#8217;s that distinction there between a &#8220;man,&#8221; which is Neil Armstrong and &#8220;man&#8221; referring to &#8220;mankind.&#8221; You don&#8217;t have to say humankind, you don&#8217;t have to say people kind, man can be gender-neutral as well.
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Download full episode of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on iTunes.</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/michael-knowles-show">Watch &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on-demand!</a>

KNOWLES: Berkley Bans ‘Man’ From Manholes

California

Gender Pronouns

Michael Knowles

We are living in a time of increasing domestic tension. Some of it stems from the presidency of Donald Trump. Another part of it is various advocacy groups on both sides of the political spectrum demanding one cause or another. But nearly totally ignored is how growing government control over our lives, along with the betrayal of constitutional principles, contributes the most to domestic tension. Let&#8217;s look at a few examples.
Think about primary and secondary schooling. I think that every parent has the right to decide whether his child will recite a morning prayer in school. Similarly, every parent has the right to decide that his child will not recite a morning prayer. The same can be said about the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, sex education and other hot-button issues in education. These become contentious issues because schools are owned by the government.
In the case of prayers, there will either be prayers or no prayers in school. It&#8217;s a political decision whether prayers will be permitted or not, and parent groups with strong preferences will organize to fight one another. A win for one parent means a loss for another parent. The losing parent will be forced to either concede or muster up private school tuition while continuing to pay taxes for a school for which he has no use. Such a conflict would not arise if education were not government-produced but only government-financed, say through education vouchers. Parents with different preferences could have their wishes fulfilled by enrolling their child in a private school of their choice. Instead of being enemies, parents with different preferences could be friends.
People also have strong preferences for goods and services. Some of us have strong preferences for white wine and distaste for reds while others have the opposite preference &#8212; strong preferences for red wine. Some of us love classical music while others love rock and roll music. Some of us love Mercedes-Benz while others love Lincoln Continentals. When&#8217;s the last time you heard red wine drinkers in conflict with white wine drinkers? Have you ever seen classical music lovers organizing against rock and roll lovers or Mercedes-Benz lovers in conflict with Lincoln Continental lovers?
People have strong preferences for these goods just as much as they may have strong preference for schooling. It&#8217;s a rare occasion, if ever, that one sees the kind of conflict between wine, music and automobile lovers that we see about schooling issues. Why? While government allocation of resources is a zero-sum game &#8212; one person&#8217;s win is another&#8217;s loss &#8212; market allocation is not. Market allocation is a positive-sum game where everybody wins. Lovers of red wine, classical music and Mercedes-Benz get what they want while lovers of white wine, rock and roll music and Lincoln Continentals get what they want. Instead of fighting one another, they can live in peace and maybe be friends.
It would be easy to create conflict among these people. Instead of market allocation, have government, through a democratic majority-rule process, decide what wines, music and cars would be produced. If that were done, I guarantee that red wine lovers would organize against white wine lovers, classical music lovers against rock and roll lovers and Mercedes-Benz lovers against Lincoln Continental lovers.
Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena. Again, the prime feature of political decision-making is that it&#8217;s a zero-sum game. One person&#8217;s win is of necessity another person&#8217;s loss. If red wine lovers win, white wine lovers would lose. As such, political allocation of resources enhances conflict while market allocation reduces conflict. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict. That&#8217;s the main benefit of limited government.
Unfortunately, too many Americans want government to grow and have more power over our lives. That means conflict among us is going to rise.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: How To Create Conflict

Education

At this point, any fair-minded observer of our contemporary politics who does not conclude that our <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48281/hammer-trump-has-unilateral-power-stop-migrant-josh-hammer">full-on border security and migrant influx crisis</a> is anything other than the most urgent and dire national issue is, to be blunt, delusional. We are experiencing monthly border crossing/apprehension numbers <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dhs-secretary-reveals-startling-stat-on-asylum-seekers-who-skip-hearings-disappear">not seen in decades</a>, and our political elite&#8217;s failure to properly deter, <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/deter-defend-demagnetize-10-ideas-trump-stop-illegal-mass-migration/">demagnetize</a>, and ultimately secure our beleaguered southern border ultimately serves the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46609/report-smugglers-and-cartels-profited-23-billion-josh-hammer">financial interests</a> of the <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/armys-response-incident-mexican-soldiers-send-cooks-lawyers/">paramilitary</a> transnational criminal organizations that the mainstream press generally still refers to as &#8220;Mexican drug cartels.&#8221;
Hold aside for a second the absolutely horrific recent revelation that up to 80% of women trafficked from the Central American &#8220;Northern Triangle&#8221; up through Mexico are <a href="https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/09/where-is-metoo-for-women-at-the-border/">abused and raped by the piggish cartel thugs</a> &#8212; the broader reality, as Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/government-data-shows-the-entire-family-separation-crisis-was-built-of-lies/">wrote way back in 2013</a>, is that our liberal asylum regime and mass catch-and-release status quo &#8220;successfully complete[s] the mission of the criminal conspiracy&#8221; fostered by the cartels, human smugglers, and trafficking rings. Our porous border &#8212; and all the accompanying deadly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42908/breaking-record-fentanyl-seizure-made-border-ryan-saavedra">narcotics</a>, <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/illegal-immigrant-health-crisis-enough-reason-shut-border-migration/">infectious diseases</a>, and <a href="https://www.meforum.org/57569/trump-and-the-gop-were-hardly-the-first">Special Interest Aliens from the Middle East</a> that flood over that border daily &#8212; literally finishes the work of <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/">Hezbollah-linked</a> paramilitary rapists lurking south of the Rio Grande.
But from a broader perspective, the reality is that border security is always among the most solemn duties of the federal government. And it is important to understand why.
When the states formed the new federal government &#8212; it was not, of course, the other way around &#8212; following the 1787 constitutional convention that sweltering Philadelphia summer, the states delegated to the new government carefully delineated powers. As James Madison, in <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed45.asp">The Federalist No. 45</a>, famously phrased it: &#8220;The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.&#8221; But the totality of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei">Article I, § 8&#8217;s</a> carefully prescribed congressional powers that deal with &#8220;calling forth&#8221; and &#8220;disciplining&#8221; the militia, combined with <a href="https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/the-executive-power-over-foreign-affairs">&#8220;the executive power&#8221;</a> and commander-in-chief prerogative of which <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii">Article II</a> speaks, makes clear that the predominant responsibility for securing the republic against foreign foes falls in the hands of the unifying federal government that the states created. As a purely logical matter, this ought to make a great deal of intuitive sense: The government primarily responsible for defending the collective security of the entire United States must, by definition, be the government expressly established to govern on behalf of that same collective entity.
But what is border security if not a mere extension of national security? It is true that, in our federalist system of dual sovereignty, the states are quasi-sovereign actors: As Justice Antonin Scalia <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/harrowing-pronouncement-scalia-make-president-trumps-authority-secure-border/">noted</a> in his brilliant 2012 dissent in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/11-182">Arizona v. United States</a>, an individual state&#8217;s sovereign status necessarily means that it retains an ability to secure its own borders and exclude unwanted aliens, regardless of whether the federal government also secures that individual state&#8217;s own borders. But the responsibility to secure our nation&#8217;s international borders falls, first and foremost, with the federal government. The primary responsibility to secure our ranchers against the predations of transnational paramilitary criminal organizations and human smuggler thugs falls to our federal government. The primary responsibility to preclude the smuggling in of lethal contraband, like the de facto chemical warfare that is fentanyl, falls to the federal government. The primary responsibility to thwart the cartels&#8217; &#8220;criminal conspirac[ies]&#8221; &#8212; rather than to &#8220;complete[]&#8221; them, as Judge Hanen warned &#8212; falls to the federal government. The primary responsibility to handle the nuanced underlying diplomacy and hard-nosed tactics alike that come with dealing with the venal Mexican narco-state is something that falls to the federal government.
Above all else, the primary responsibility to ensure that the United States &#8212; for which We the People that the Constitution&#8217;s Preamble references are the ultimate sovereigns &#8212; remains a distinct and sovereign nation-state falls to the federal government. And, by very definition, a country with insecure and/or undefined borders not only cannot be sovereign &#8212; it is hardly a country at all.
If we do not secure our borders &#8212; if we do not secure ourselves, more generally &#8212; then what do we have left as a nation?
The federal government is presently failing to properly counter the hitherto unprecedented Central American migrant deluge that inundates our border daily. That is nothing short of tragic, because our continuing status as a nation-state depends on rectifying that glaring deficiency. And it is the federal government&#8217;s solemn responsibility to take the lead in securing our sovereign viability as a nation-state. Let&#8217;s hope they get it right sooner rather than later.

HAMMER: The Federal Government Has NO More Important Function Than Border Security. Here’s Why.

Federalist

Illegal Immigration

Immigration

National Security

Southern Border

Appearing on &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends&#8221; with host Steve Doocy Thursday morning, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who had written an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45502/hammer-we-have-crisis-civics-start-teaching-josh-hammer">op-ed</a> calling for educating American students as young as second grade on American civics, noted the results of a survey that showed fewer Americans knew all three branches of the federal government than those who knew none of them, quipping, &#8220;It seems like Americans are about as confused and struggling with the branches of government as Bernie Sanders might be looking at a supply and demand curve from an economics 101 course.&#8221; He also decried the &#8220;mini-Robespierres&#8221; who come on college campuses to try to shut down free speech.
Doocy began by citing a recent survey showing only 32% of respondents knew all three branches of the federal government, and that even more so, 33%, could not name even one branch. He commented that it was scary that so few Americans knew governmental structure, and noted that Hammer had stated that children as young as second grade should be taught about the Constitution.
Hammer replied:
<blockquote>
I think starting with identifying the scope and the depth of the problem is a pretty great place to start, and as you note, the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, does this annual survey every Constitution Day, around September. And what they found just this past year is that 32% of Americans can name all three branches of the federal government, but an even higher percentage, 33%, cannot name a single branch of government.
</blockquote>
Hammer lacerated Bernie Sanders:
<blockquote>
Personally, Steve, I look at these numbers and it seems like Americans are about as confused and struggling with the branches of government as Bernie Sanders might be looking at a supply and demand curve from an economics 101 course. So, we need to start by identifying the scope of this problem and here is really, from a constitutional structure standpoint, why it&#8217;s so important.
</blockquote>
He pointed out that those citing the Bill of Rights as the anchor of what made America great were missing what truly was the linchpin of American greatness: The separation of American branches of government, adding, &#8220;It is the separation powers of those three branches that secure liberty by diffusing power.&#8221; He quoted the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had cogently noted that tinpot dictators have also had their own bill of rights. He stated:
<blockquote>
Every Constitution Day I hear all sorts of paeans, people talking about the Bill of Rights and how the Bill of Rights is the anchor of all that we are great. And look, I love the First Amendment; I love freedom of speech, freedom of religion. I love the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. I even love the Third Amendment&#8217;s prohibition against quartering of soldiers in the homes, okay?
But what famously makes America great is actually not the Bill of Rights. Justice Antonin Scalia, the conservative icon on the court for decades, was fond of saying how every tinpot dictator could have a Bill of Rights. And sure enough, the Stalinist constitution in the Soviet Union in 1936, purported to have a bill of rights. But as Scalia said, it&#8217;s actually structure that dictates destiny. And insofar as we&#8217;re not even naming the three branches of government, it is the separation powers of those three branches that secure liberty by diffusing power. It is our federalist system of dual spheres of sovereignty between the states and federal government that secure power. So we need to start by identifying this problem, talking about why constitutional structure is so important in contradistinction to the Bill of Rights.
</blockquote>
Doocy noted that Hammer&#8217;s mother is a fourth grade teacher, and this education should start at the second grade level because by the time they get to high school, it&#8217;s too late.
Hammer replied, &#8220;It&#8217;s way too late. We have these mini-Robespierres who come on college campuses these days, they&#8217;re wreaking all sorts of havoc, they&#8217;re trying to shut down free speech. My boss at The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, faces this pretty much every time he speaks on a college campus.&#8221;
He concluded, &#8220;So this really is a problem and needs to start way, way earlier than that. I think second grade is totally appropriate.&#8221;
Doocy added, &#8220;And, of course, it&#8217;s a states&#8217; rights issue; let&#8217;s see what the states do.&#8221;
Video below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video">Watch the latest video at &lt;a href=&#8221;https://www.foxnews.com&#8221;&gt;foxnews.com&lt;/a&gt;</div>

WATCH: Hammer On Fox &#038; Friends: Start Educating Kids On American Civics In 2nd Grade

Bernie Sanders

The Office of the Inspector General (IG) at the Social Security Administration (SSA) has released a <a href="https://oig.ssa.gov/sites/default/files/audit/full/pdf/A-15-18-50632.pdf">March 2019 internal audit</a> that sought to determine whether the SSA has been doling out benefits to dead people in Maryland and Michigan. The answer, as it turns out, is a resounding &#8220;yes.&#8221; Overall, the IG found that the SSA had paid out nearly $42 million to about 500 dead people.
Yes, really.
The Daily Caller <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/25/dead-people-social-security">reports</a>:
<blockquote>
The SSA identified 160 individuals who had possibly died, with 57 from Michigan from 1971 through 2010 and 103 from Maryland from 1979 through 2015. Around $16.9 million in payments were issued to 145 individuals who reportedly died in these states. The remaining 15 were alive.
There was an instance where a woman received payments for a person who died in 2000 and used it for personal benefit. She pleaded guilty for theft and was required to pay nearly $170,000 back to SSA. Another person also received Social Security benefits that was posted under the deceased person&#8217;s record since 1997. The beneficiary had died in 1974.
</blockquote>
As The Daily Caller also notes, a separate Texas-specific SSA audit found that nearly $25 million in Social Security payments had been given to 336 dead Texans.
Overall, the $42 million represents a small percentage of the total funds dispersed through SSA. In the federal government&#8217;s fiscal year 2018, for instance, roughly 70 million people received more than $1 trillion through Social Security programs. But each penny nonetheless represents a discrete waste of taxpayer funds.
The IG report&#8217;s <a href="https://oig.ssa.gov/sites/default/files/audit/full/pdf/A-15-18-50632.pdf">conclusion</a> explains how SSA has responded to the results of the IG&#8217;s audit:
<blockquote>
SSA identified 160 beneficiaries who were likely deceased and in current pay status. Fifteen beneficiaries were determined to be alive. For the remaining 145, we determined Maryland and Michigan death information was not always recorded on SSA&#8217;s records. As a result, SSA issued approximately $16.9 million in payments to 145 individuals who reportedly died in Maryland from 1979 through 2015 or Michigan from 1971 through 2010. Correcting these cases represents an opportunity for SSA to reduce its exposure to future overpayments and improve the accuracy and completeness of the death information it maintains.
As of January 9, 2019, SSA had suspended or terminated benefits and added death information to its records for 95 of the 145 beneficiaries. SSA had posted about $10.5 million in overpayments. In addition, [IG] continued reviewing the remaining cases. Therefore, we made no recommendations for further corrective action.
</blockquote>
Social Security is one of America&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45131/hammer-republicans-need-be-adults-and-talk-about-josh-hammer">primary bankrupting entitlement programs</a>. As Brian Riedl <a href="https://economics21.org/html/yes-entitlements-are-driving-long-term-debt-3025.html">wrote</a> at the Manhattan Institute&#8217;s &#8220;Economics 21&#8221; blog last April:
<blockquote>
As for Social Security, CBO forecasts that its annual non-interest cash deficit will gradually rise from 0.4 percent to 1.8 percent of GDP over the next 15 years, and then level off for the rest of the 75-year window. The Social Security trust fund (which is also a liability for taxpayers who must repay the loans), accounts for just over $3 trillion of the system&#8217;s $19 trillion cash deficit through 2047, according to CBO.
Overall, CBO projects that Social Security and Medicare will run annual cash deficits that rise to 6.6 percent of GDP within three decades &#8211; or 10.5 percent when including the resulting interest costs. In no way is that &#8220;roughly the same size&#8221; as (at most) one percent of GDP in long-term tax cuts. &#8230;
Reasonable people can disagree on how to close the future deficits (although deficit reduction would likely require a large value-added tax to close the $80 trillion gap without significant benefit reforms). But the first step is to accurately diagnose the long-term debt as indisputably driven by the $82 trillion projected cash deficit for Social Security and Medicare. 
</blockquote>

GOVERNMENT WASTE: Audit Reveals Tens Of Millions Of Dollars In Social Security Payments Went To Dead People

Social Security

A lawsuit was filed in federal court in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month challenging the constitutionality of a federal law that restricts people under the age of 21 from buying handguns from federally licensed dealers.
The plaintiffs, 20-year-old Tanner Hirschfeld and 18-year old Natalia Marshall, were turned away by local firearm dealers when trying to purchase handguns because they were underage.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits the sale of handguns by a federally licensed dealer to citizens under 21 but does not prohibit those under 21 from carrying handguns or buying them from a private dealer.
Elliot Harding, the attorney from Charlottesville who filed the suit, told <a href="https://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/courts/suit-challenges-illegality-of-handgun-sales-to---to/article_df3dbf38-da4e-11e8-ada9-cb27eb09c962.html">The Daily Progress</a> that the law conflicts with the Constitution.
&#8220;The federal ban relegates young adults to an unregulated, limited market of private, personal transactions for handguns,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The suit seeks to preserve equal protection of the fundamental liberty to defend oneself, as guaranteed by the Second and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States.&#8221;
Hirschfeld said he was turned away from buying a .357 magnum revolver from a pawn shop; he planned to use the firearm for self-defense and sport-shooting. Marshall was turned away from buying a pistol from a sporting goods store, a firearm which she planned to use for self-defense because she claims she works in a remote area and was previously in an abusive relationship that led her to file a protection order.
&#8220;Personally, I would like a handgun for self-defense and home defense; however, I would like to purchase it through the safest and most legal way because I don&#8217;t have a lot of friends out there who are able to sell me one,&#8221; Hirschfeld said in an interview with The Daily Wire. &#8220;I&#8217;d rather buy one that is new or professionally examined to ensure it is working properly.&#8221;
&#8220;If people are going to buy guns, they should do it in a safe way which is through dealers, but the law encourages people to buy them without having background checks because it only allows those under 21 to buy them in private sales,&#8221; Hirschfeld added.
The suit names the previous U.S. Attorney General (prior to his resignation), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and the ATF&#8217;s acting director, Thomas Brandon.
The defendants have until November 26 to reply to the complaint.
Virginia law does prohibit those under 21 from obtaining a concealed carry permit, but does allow 18 to 20-year-olds to open carry handguns, according to The Daily Progress.
In 2012, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Houston <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-handguns-decision/court-upholds-ban-on-handgun-sales-to-people-under-21-idUSBRE89O1D120121025">ruled against</a> the NRA in a suit that challenged the Gun Control Act of 1968 on the grounds that it violates the Second Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment. The unanimous three-judge panel ruled that the 1968 law was to curb violent crime and that the nation&#8217;s founders, courts from the 19th century, and commentators didn&#8217;t believe the right to bear arms was violated by restricting specific groups.
&#8220;Congress was focused on a particular problem: young persons under 21, who are immature and prone to violence, easily accessing handguns,&#8221; Judge Edward Prado wrote for the panel according to Reuters. &#8220;The present ban appears consistent with a longstanding tradition of age- and safety-based restrictions on the ability to access arms.&#8221;
Hirschfeld said that if he is required to sign up for Selective Service at 18 years old, &#8220;there is no reason why I shouldn&#8217;t be able to buy a handgun for self-defense.&#8221;
Hirschfeld also said he hopes the Supreme Court takes on this case, especially with the court leaning more conservatively since the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 
&#8220;I think it is time for the Supreme Court to have more Second Amendment jurisprudence as gun rights become more of issue Congress focuses on,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I think there is a strong possibility that the court will protect my rights as someone under 21.&#8221;
Hirschfeld and Marshall also <a href="https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/enforcing-our--rights/">started a crowd-funded campaign</a> to help pay for the costs of litigation and so far have raised more than $2,800.

Lawsuit Challenges Federal Law Prohibiting Handgun Sales To Adults Under 21

Gun Laws

Gun Sales

Second Amendment

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York&#8217;s 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Her argument came on the heels of the Senate&#8217;s confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.
Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College. Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, &#8220;You won&#8217;t be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it&#8217;s time to abolish the Electoral College.&#8221;
Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminently fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities. Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College reflects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. Regarding miseducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, &#8220;Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.&#8221; His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, &#8220;Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.&#8221;
A large part of Americans&#8217; miseducation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy. The word &#8220;democracy&#8221; appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation &#8212; the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, our Constitution &#8212; in Article 4, Section 4 &#8212; guarantees &#8220;to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.&#8221; The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, &#8220;there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.&#8221; At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that &#8220;in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.&#8221; John Adams wrote: &#8220;Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.&#8221; At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton said: &#8220;We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty&#8221; is found not in &#8220;the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. &#8230; If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.&#8221;
For those too dense to understand these arguments, ask yourselves: Does the Pledge of Allegiance say &#8220;to the democracy for which it stands&#8221; or &#8220;to the republic for which it stands&#8221;? Did Julia Ward Howe make a mistake in titling her Civil War song &#8220;Battle Hymn of the Republic&#8221;? Should she have titled it &#8220;Battle Hymn of the Democracy&#8221;?
The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admitted would be coequal with every other state. The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, whether large or small in area or population, has some voice in selecting the nation&#8217;s leaders. Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states. They would be states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41 percent of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government &#8220;of the people&#8221;; instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states.
Political satirist H.L. Mencken said, &#8220;The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: The Electoral College Debate

Electoral College

CRTV host and bestselling author Mark Levin ripped into FISA court on the Thursday edition of Sean Hannity&#8217;s Fox News show. 
Speaking about a letter that his organization sent to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court on controversies surrounding the memo by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), Levin told Hannity, &#8220;If you&#8217;re a judge &#8230; and you don&#8217;t do something about it? Congress needs to look into this!&#8221;
&#8220;I damn well expect federal judges serving as FISA court judges to make sure that [misconduct] wasn&#8217;t committed in front of them,&#8221; he said. &#8220;These federal judges sitting on this FISA court act like they have no role in this. They were abused. The court was abused. The court was misled. People should be held to account.&#8221;
&#8220;We presented this judge with the evidence and filed it. Congress needs to find out now why these judges, even today, aren&#8217;t holding these people accountable!&#8221;
Levin stated that if the FISA court could not do its job and be accountable to the American people, then it was time to dissolve and replace them. 
&#8220;It&#8217;s time to abolish the FISA court. It&#8217;s time to create a new, a counter-intelligence-related court. It should not consist of existing federal judges,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They should be confirmed, not for life terms, for given terms. The FBI and the Justice Department, when they go into that court, should not be alone any more. There ought to be an office within the federal government that&#8217;s there to ensure that civil liberties are protected.&#8221;
You can watch the clip below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="330" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jKHVAHPB6KM" width="640"></iframe></div>
<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/03/02/mark_levin_abolish_secret_fisa_court_if_judges_cant_be_held_accountable.html">H/T RealClearPolitics</a>

WATCH: Mark Levin Slams ‘Accountable’ FISA Courts

Congress

Mark Levin

Sean Hannity

Supreme Court

When I was a young boy growing up in Detroit, my mother needed help to provide a roof over our heads, which we thankfully received through the strength and generosity of our extended family. These many years later, other families need similar housing assistance, and I now lead a federal agency that provides this critical support to <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/FY13BUDFSHUDCLIENTS.PDF&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1530967188859000&amp;usg=AFQjCNF6Hw4Bqan0h6_kOQpA5zgBMc8IoQ" href="https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/FY13BUDFSHUDCLIENTS.PDF" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">more than 5 million</a> households annually.
For generations, the idea of the government providing housing assistance meant one thing&#8212;helping to pay the rent. But we must think about how we can help families access and move beyond that assistance. In other words, we must consider how to help them become self-sufficient.
As a physician for many years, I learned that I could treat a patient&#8217;s symptoms, or I could treat the patient. Treating a patient&#8217;s symptoms may help in the short term, but it rarely cures a long-term ailment. In my current position as Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), I am trying to apply this same holistic mindset through an innovative new approach to community and government assistance called EnVision Centers.
The idea is simple. Assemble a team of stakeholders from many disciplines in a central location where they can offer intensive support to low-income families struggling to get ahead. EnVision Centers are specifically designed to help households achieve self-sufficiency through economic empowerment, educational advancement, character and leadership development, and health and wellness training. This is treating the patient.
Many of the services low-income families need already exist. EnVision Centers will bring together government and non-profit services together under one roof so that residents and communities can easily access them. By assembling programs in one space, HUD is leveraging existing funding and supportive services&#8212;whether its job training, mentorship, or health services&#8212;in a holistic manner.
But EnVision Centers would do more than centralize services. They would coordinate a wide range of federal agencies, state and local partners, non-profit organizations, private companies, community and faith-based groups&#8212;all coming together in an unprecedented partnership to provide the full range of necessary support and outreach.
There are no one-size-fits-all solutions, so no two EnVision Centers will be alike. They will be designed by local communities with input from residents who understand the unique needs of their neighborhoods.
But one thing will be consistent, EnVision Centers will be places that HUD-assisted residents can go to access the services they need to climb the ladder of opportunity.
The EnVision Centers will be located in buildings that already offer some services, so they are already funded and staffed. The new programs and services provided by the stakeholders HUD organized will not add additional cost to the Centers. By collocating existing programs in one space, HUD is leveraging existing funding and wrap around services in a cohesive manner.
HUD is in a transition period, moving away from measuring &#8220;success&#8221; by the number of persons participating in our programs. If we want to measure real success, we need to consider the number of persons who no longer require our programs, and those who gain the financial independence to now be able to rent, or even buy, their own homes. After all, you would not gauge success by the number of patients entering a hospital; rather, you would focus on the number of people exiting the hospital healed.
Across this country, many unassisted households are waiting to get access to some form of housing assistance, many for nearly a decade. If we succeed in helping families to become self-sufficient, more families will be able to access the housing assistance they so desperately need.
George Washington Carver once said, &#8220;where there is no vision, there is no hope.&#8221; If we ever hope to succeed in helping families, we need to envision a new path forward &#8212; one that focuses on the whole family and not just the roof over their heads.
Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D., is the 17th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

CARSON: A New Vision For Helping Families

Welfare

Thanks to very productive cows, and declining American interest in drinking milk, the nation is suffering from what experts call a &#8220;cheese surplus.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/28/americas-cheese-stockpile-just-hit-an-all-time-high/?utm_term=.86f8620b3e84">According to The Washington Post,</a> the U.S. has amassed the largest store of cheese since regulators began keeping tabs on American cheese production around a century ago. The Agriculture Department reports a 1.39-billion pound stockpile &#8212; 6% more than this time last year, and enough to give each and every American around 4.2 pounds of cheese.
Dairy production analysts say that the cheese surplus came about because the United States has a milk surplus, and excess milk is better stored as cheese. Americans drink less milk than they used to, and they drink even less in the summer. School cafeterias that serve milk shut down for June, July, and August, and restaurants serve fewer cheesy dishes when it&#8217;s hot outside.
&#8220;Milk production continues to trend up, and that milk has to find a home,&#8221; one expert told WaPo. &#8220;The issue this year is that, with so much supply, it&#8217;s going to be tough for a lot of farmers to be profitable.&#8221;
Cows are also more productive now than they were a century ago, and milk production is best in the spring, right before the demand for milk tanks.
The solution? Americans need to eat more cheese, drink more milk, and use more butter &#8212; and right now, thanks to a dearth of demand, prices on dairy products are at an all-time low.
The United States can also ease the burden by buying farmers&#8217; production and turning it into literal &#8220;government cheese.&#8221; In 2016, American taxpayers footed the bill for more than 90 million pounds of cheese, just so that the price wouldn&#8217;t drop so low, farmers couldn&#8217;t make a profit.

America Is Suffering From A CHEESE SURPLUS. Time To Start Eating.

A new study confirms what conservatives have long maintained: bigger government kills religion. While it&#8217;s not always a deliberate targeting of religion &#8212; though the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union">20th century</a> is replete with examples of just that &#8212; the bigger a government grows, the more religiosity declines.
&#8220;Researchers call it an exchange model of religion: If people can get what they need from the government (be it health care, education or welfare) they&#8217;re less likely to turn to a divine power for help,&#8221; reports the <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article209279189.html#fmp">Miami Herald</a>.
The new paper from psychology researchers, &#8220;<a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167218764656">Religion as an Exchange System: The Interchangeability of God and Government in a Provider Role</a>,&#8221; shows that the stronger role government has in people&#8217;s lives, especially in providing material needs, the less people are likely to seek comfort in religion. This makes perfect sense, especially in light of religion&#8217;s continued capitulation to liberalism by billing itself as a social services club rather than an outlet for eternal salvation.
Written by Miron Zuckerman and Chen Li of the University of Rochester and Ed Diener of the Universities of Utah and Virginia, the research suggests &#8220;that if the function that religiosity provides can be acquired from some other source, the allure of religion will diminish.&#8221;
Between 2008 and 2013 in the U.S., the researchers found that &#8220;better government services in a specific year predicted lower religiosity 1 to 2 years later.&#8221;
&#8220;If a secular entity provides what people need, they will be less likely to seek help from God or other supernatural entities. Government is the most likely secular provider,&#8221; the researchers concluded. &#8220;We showed in two cross-sectional analyses, one using world countries and one using states in the United States, that better government services were related to lower levels of religiosity. If the benefits acquired in the religious exchange can be acquired elsewhere, religion becomes less useful.&#8221;
The paper suggests a bias in favor of bigger government as a means of eradicating religion, as seen in the language of the text, including phrases with embedded value judgments like &#8220;better government services.&#8221; The paper&#8217;s lead author, Zuckerman, previously <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868313497266">published a study</a> allegedly showing that the more &#8220;intelligent&#8221; one is, the less religious they become.
However, none of that means the researchers did not discover something true. In fact, Church leaders (I&#8217;m looking at you, Catholics) could take a valuable lesson from this. For instance, the researchers had a tendency to use the word &#8220;useful&#8221; regarding religion in the face of big government. Since the 1960s, both Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism have largely conducted themselves as charitable organizations with a cross on it, opting to show their &#8220;usefulness&#8221; to people rather than presenting a more spiritually-focused message.
Religion, like all the finer things in life (art, music, philosophy), has no utilitarian &#8220;use.&#8221; The act of going to church, listening to music, and staring at a Rembrandt is to specifically engage in something &#8220;useless&#8221; in the worldly sense, but infinitely useful in the spiritual. If churches want to stop seeing the government take their sheep, then they need to get out of the business of being &#8220;useful&#8221; and focus on being more spiritually engaging: preach the truth, encourage people to turn from sin, create artistic masterpieces, build strong communities.
Though the researchers did not touch on this, another reason that big government kills religion is that it takes away an individual&#8217;s incentive to create for themselves, which requires a tremendous amount of faith to undertake. Building one&#8217;s own business from scratch, for example, and facing the fear of failure that involves, requires some measure of faith. The more one deals with the realities of life, its challenges, unknowns, potential pitfalls, the more one is likely to seek answers and comfort from a higher power.

STUDY: Big Government Kills Religion

Religion

On Tuesday, ReasonTV uploaded a new video featuring John Stossel. The topic of the video is &#8220;eminent domain.&#8221;
<blockquote>
Is your property yours? Not if government takes it &#8212; and it can for what it calls public use. Eminent domain law has long allowed politicians to grab your property to build roads, railroad tracks, border walls.
&#8230; I get it that a highway or a border wall is public use, but 13 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that New London, Connecticut could bulldoze this little pink house to make room for a new business development.
</blockquote>
Stossel then spoke about Susette Kelo, the owner of the home, whose story has been made into a major motion picture titled &#8220;Little Pink House.&#8221; In the film, Catherine Keener portrays Kelo.
<blockquote>
The law does require the government to give you &#8220;fair value&#8221; for your property, but the bureaucrats decide what fair value is. &#8230; Susette Kelo didn&#8217;t want the money. She wanted to keep her home, but the government said no. So the bulldozers came. 90 families left. Susette and six others refused to leave.
</blockquote>
According to Stossel, &#8220;a libertarian law firm, the Institute for Justice, took Susette&#8217;s case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where Justice Sandra Day O&#8217;Connor pushed back against the taking.&#8221; However, &#8220;the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against Susette.&#8221;
Stossel then noted that following the ruling, multiple states &#8220;passed laws limiting their politicians&#8217; right to grab your property.&#8221;
<blockquote>
Years later, I went with Susette Kelo to look at the place New London said was gonna be a booming development &#8230; even today, 13 years later, there&#8217;s no development. It&#8217;s just unused land. The politicians were wrong.
</blockquote>
Watch the full video here:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9yRHmAfiMSs" width="720"></iframe></div>

WATCH: ReasonTV’s John Stossel On The Government Seizing Your Property Using ‘Eminent Domain’

The Democratic governor of &#8220;sanctuary state&#8221; California has not responded well to the Trump Justice Department taking legal steps to force his state to abide by federal immigration laws. In fact, he&#8217;s talking about &#8220;war&#8221; and a &#8220;reign of terror.&#8221;
Gov. Jerry Brown&#8217;s hyperbolic declarations have largely been directed at U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who filed <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/27927/trump-doj-sues-california-interference-immigration-joseph-curl">a lawsuit</a> Tuesday night against the state&#8217;s three new &#8220;sanctuary&#8221; laws that impede federal authorities&#8217; ability to enforce federal immigration laws, including on illegal immigrants with criminal records. Sessions also traveled to the state Wednesday to tell law enforcement leaders there that all the Brown-imposed &#8220;sanctuary&#8221; lawlessness is coming to a swift end.
&#8220;The Department of Justice and the Trump administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair, and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you,&#8221; Sessions told law enforcement officers at the California Peace Officers Association Wednesday. &#8220;We are fighting to make your jobs safer and to help you reduce crime in America. And I believe that we are going to win.&#8221;
Brown has responded to Sessions&#8217; actions in increasingly hysterical terms.
&#8220;At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don&#8217;t work here. SAD!!!&#8221; he tweeted Wednesday.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don&#8217;t work here. SAD!!!
&#8212; Jerry Brown (@JerryBrownGov) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryBrownGov/status/971202824045445120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
&#8220;This is basically going to war against the state of California, the engine of the American economy,&#8221; Brown said at a press conference on Wednesday, the <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article203920624.html">Sacramento Bee</a> reports. &#8220;It&#8217;s not wise, it&#8217;s not right and it will not stand.&#8221; The lawsuit, claimed Brown, is just a &#8220;political stunt.&#8221; The Democratic governor went on to describe Sessions&#8217; attempt to stop California from impeding the enforcement of federal law as &#8220;initiating a reign of terror.&#8221;
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra ironically insisted during the presser that it was the DOJ, not his ICE-thwarting &#8220;sanctuary state,&#8221; that was not giving proper &#8220;respect&#8221; to the Constitution. &#8220;Here in California, we respect the law and the Constitution,&#8221; claimed Becerra. &#8220;We expect the federal government to do the same.&#8221;
Sessions&#8217; Justice Department responded to Brown&#8217;s hysterical declaration of &#8220;war.&#8221; The <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article203920624.html">Sacramento Bee</a> reports:
<blockquote>
In a statement, U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said &#8220;the only war that has been declared by the Attorney General and the Trump Administration is on violent crime, transnational criminal organizations, and the drug crisis.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Brown has since been obsessively tweeting about the issue in posts he apparently believes are an effective means of presenting what he claims is his &#8220;wise&#8221; and &#8220;right&#8221; policies. A few examples of Brown&#8217;s various tweets, which include threadbare cliches like &#8220;build bridges, not walls,&#8221; and &#8220;act like the good Christians they claim to be,&#8221; and emoji-filled &#8220;reminders&#8221; that some law enforcement personnel are not totally opposed to Brown&#8217;s sanctuary laws:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
This is a time to build bridges, not walls; to pull Americans together, not set us apart. <a href="https://t.co/YXBPBcLiND">pic.twitter.com/YXBPBcLiND</a>
&#8212; Jerry Brown (@JerryBrownGov) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryBrownGov/status/971503024878247937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
&#8220;I call upon Mr. Sessions and Mr. Trump to act like Americans, act like the good Christians they claim to be and work with us to get a good immigration law,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryBrownGov?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JerryBrownGov</a> tells <a href="https://twitter.com/JudyWoodruff?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JudyWoodruff</a>. <a href="https://t.co/8BhwBPXec6">pic.twitter.com/8BhwBPXec6</a>
&#8212; PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) <a href="https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/971536841676435457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
ATTN Jeff Sessions: Here&#8217;s a reminder of what the <a href="https://twitter.com/CalChiefs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CalChiefs</a> (a major participant in the <a href="https://twitter.com/CalPeaceOfficer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CalPeaceOfficer</a> event you&#8217;re speaking at) said about <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SB54?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SB54</a> before <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryBrownGov?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JerryBrownGov</a> signed it last year. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KnowYourAudience?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#KnowYourAudience</a> <a href="https://t.co/60KerAddOD">pic.twitter.com/60KerAddOD</a>
&#8212; Gov. Brown Press Office (@GovPressOffice) <a href="https://twitter.com/GovPressOffice/status/971407828123402240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 7, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>

Trump DOJ Sues &#8216;Sanctuary State&#8217; California. Governor Doesn&#8217;t Respond Well.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Jeff Sessions

Jerry Brown

White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney deserves enormous credit for doing something that has long been needed. He wants to reform the food stamp program in America. The program has waste, fraud, and abuse issues. It is not terribly efficient. There are people in the program who do not necessarily need to be there. So hats off to Mick Mulvaney for undertaking the thankless job of reform.
The problem is not that Mulvaney undertook reform, but what the proposed White House solution to the food stamp program is. They want to send food stamp recipients boxes of food each month. Mulvaney describes it as a &#8220;Blue Apron&#8221; style program.
For those unfamiliar with Blue Apron and its competitors like Hello Fresh (disclosure: I am a Blue Apron customer and love it), they are programs where a company sends you food each week with recipes. As an example, I recently received a box containing a recipe for soy-glazed chicken. The box contained all the ingredients necessary to make the meal as well as a very nice recipe card with step-by-step directions.
Each week, prior to the food shipment, I can go online, select the recipes I want for the week, and end the week with a box containing enough for two different meals to feed four people. The programs work around food allergies, variable meal sizes for large or small families, as well as the number of meals one might want each week. I do two meals a week for a family of four.
This is the program the White House suggests will save the government money. The savings will, in part, come from buying food in bulk that the government will then package and ship. That last part is where it all begins to fall apart.
I have a hard time believing former Congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) would ever support the program being proposed by himself now in the role as White House Budget Director. In fact, when Mulvaney was in Congress, his Republican colleagues were criticizing the Obama White House for altering the school lunch program. It is really hard to believe that people who want to privatize the post office are suddenly fans of the government boxing up and shipping food to people. Why not outsource it to the private sector and let existing companies bid?
Lest we forget, the federal government ran headlong into a disaster setting up the Obamacare website that crashed repeatedly and had to be reworked. How, other than a website, would they let the poor set up their schedules, preferences, allergies, etc? And who would be responsible for managing those preferences? What liability would the federal government have when the family with peanut allergies reacts because of cross contamination?
Beyond those issues, if Republicans do this they are setting themselves up for future attacks should the federal government ever shut down. An army of reporters will jump at the chance to cover poor people who have not received their boxes of food due to a shutdown. The Republicans will be accused of literally starving people.
The whole idea also sounds ripe for abuse. The program would only use American goods and produce. Which farms would be selected to provide the produce? Which vendors would be allowed into the program? How long before a future administration decided a cereal manufacturer had not made enough campaign contributions and so would be excluded? This system would be asking for fraud, mismanagement, and abuse in a way sending money to an EBT card does not. It introduces a greater human element susceptible to coercion and corruption.
A boxed food program sounds more command and control Soviet than it does American. One need only a little imagination to see how a future administration would determine Americans need more Brussels sprouts, so that goes in the box. &#8220;Eat it or starve,&#8221; the commissar would bark.
There is an alternative. The government could do what it does now. It puts money on EBT cards for the poor who then get to engage in the very American concept of choosing their own food. Further restrict locations for EBT usage and root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

ERICKSON: A Dumb Idea

Food Stamps

Trump Administration

The Environmental Protection Agency is on track to slash 47% of its total staff by the end of President Trump&#8217;s first term, according to a report in the Washington Examiner. After just one year, EPA chief Scott Pruitt has reduced his staff to levels unseen since the Reagan administration. If just those federal employees set to retire by 2021 do indeed leave, Pruitt will have cut more than 7,000 bureaucrats.
&#8220;We&#8217;re proud to report that we&#8217;re reducing the size of government, protecting taxpayer dollars, and staying true to our core mission of protecting the environment,&#8221; Pruitt boasted. Meanwhile, other federal agencies have followed suit after President Trump&#8217;s January 2017 hiring freeze hit large swaths of the executive branch. Trump&#8217;s order stated, &#8220;No vacant positions existing at noon on January 22, 2017, may be filled, and no new positions may be created, except in limited circumstances,&#8221; including those pertaining to national security. Although the freeze technically lifted in the spring, most agencies have continued to abide by its guidelines. The last president to enact a major federal hiring freeze was Ronald Reagan.
With the exception of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and Interior, all Cabinet departments by September had fewer permanent staff than the day Trump took office. In addition, Trump&#8217;s proposed spending cuts triggered a spending slowdown across agencies despite the absence of a 2017 budget from Congress.
Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union representing 150,000 federal workers at over 30 agencies laments, &#8220;Morale has never been lower. Government is making itself a lot less attractive as an employer.&#8221; Taxpayers can only hope that Trump&#8217;s government labor policies soon put Reardon himself out of a job, as even left-wing labor pioneers Samuel Gompers and Franklin Roosevelt understood that government workers should never have the right to unionize, as the natural tug and pull of union dealing disappears when the government negotiates with itself.
Not all federal employees dislike the cuts. An annual survey of federal workers shows a slight uptick in job satisfaction. Stephanie Valentine, a program analyst at the Education Department, explained, &#8220;Oftentimes we run on autopilot and continue to fund programs that don&#8217;t produce the results that were intended. You can&#8217;t keep blindly spending because that&#8217;s what we&#8217;ve always done.&#8221; Valentine has reportedly never perused a Democrat Party platform.
Before his death in 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia observed that unaccountable, overgrown executive agencies posed the greatest threat to American liberty. If President Trump can reduce bureaucracy to Reagan era levels within a year, Americans might hope to press on to Coolidge era numbers by his second term. For an administration that promises to make America great again, at least it&#8217;s a good start.

Trump Slashes Federal Bureaucracy, ‘Morale Has Never Been Lower’

Donald Trump

The longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history announced this week that he will finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally retire.
That&#8217;s seven &#8220;finallys&#8221; &#8212; one for each of the consecutive six-year terms Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, served. He begin his occupancy in 1976, when all phones were dumb, the 5.25-inch floppy disk was cutting-edge, the very first Apple computer went on sale for $666.66, the Concorde was flying high, O.J. Simpson was a hero, Blake Shelton was a newborn, the first MRI was still a blueprint, and I was a gap-toothed first-grader wearing corduroy bell-bottoms crushing on Davy Jones.
This encrusted longevity will be marketed by Hatch, 83, and his supporters as proof of his &#8220;statesmanship.&#8221; Indeed, The Atlantic magazine described him this week as &#8220;an elder-statesman figure in the GOP.&#8221; Newsweek likewise reported on the farewell announcement of the &#8220;elder statesman.&#8221; And Hatch&#8217;s own press minions have disseminated press releases quoting other entrenched politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., hailing their boss&#8217;s &#8220;reputation as a statesman.&#8221;
But that word doesn&#8217;t mean what Beltway barnacles think it means.
Merriam-Webster defines a &#8220;statesman&#8221; as a &#8220;wise, skillful, and respected political leader.&#8221; Earning the approbation of other office-clinging politicians doesn&#8217;t make you a &#8220;respected political leader.&#8221; It makes you an echo-chamber chump.
Wise? Skillful? Hatch was a Big Government business-as-usual dealmaker. His wisdom was of the wet-finger-in-the-wind variety, claiming a Reagan conservative mantle during election cycles and then throwing constitutional conservatives under the bus once comfortably back in his well-worn Senate committee seats.
Hatch joined with his old pal Teddy Kennedy to create the $6 billion national service boondoggle and the $8 billion-a-year CHIP health insurance entitlement.
He preached about the &#8220;rule of law,&#8221; but was an original sponsor of the open-borders DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout, and, despite claiming to oppose it, he voted to fully fund the unconstitutional Obama amnesty during the lame-duck session.
He crusaded for &#8220;fiscal conservatism,&#8221; yet voted for massive Wall Street bailouts, 16 debt ceiling increases totaling $7.5 trillion, and scores of earmarks totaling hundreds of millions of dollars for porky projects. He ends his four-decade reign as the Senate&#8217;s top recipient of lobbyist cash.
And for the past two years, Team Hatch allies have spearheaded a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign, squeezing donations from corporate donors and pharma and tech lobbyists to subsidize a &#8220;Hatch Foundation&#8221; and &#8220;Hatch Center&#8221; to commemorate the Hatch legacy.
&#8220;Statesman&#8221; isn&#8217;t a titled earned by mere length of service. It&#8217;s not a cheap status conferred like an AARP card or IHOP senior discount. A politician who notches decades of frequent flyer miles back and forth between Washington and his &#8220;home&#8221; state, enjoying the endless perks of incumbency, does not acquire statesmanship by perpetual re-election and political self-aggrandizement.
The idea of amassing $4 million to $6 million campaign war chests, as Hatch did the past two election cycles, is antithetical to the ideal of statesmanship. In the days of Cincinnatus and George Washington, self-sacrifice and civic virtue marked true statesmen. Affability, which Hatch is credited with possessing by his backroom Democrat chums, was no substitute for the humility exhibited by statesmen who volunteered to relinquish power at the very height of it &#8212; not in its waning twilight.
So: Call Hatch a clock-puncher. Time-bider. Log-roller. Deal-cutter. Back-slapper. Call him most anything else now that he&#8217;s finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally called it a day.
Just please don&#8217;t call him &#8220;statesman.&#8221;
Michelle Malkin is host of &#8220;Michelle Malkin Investigates&#8221; on CRTV.com. Her email address is writemalkin@gmail.com. To find out more about Michelle Malkin and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

MALKIN: An Unfond Farewell To Un-Statesman Orrin Hatch

Republican Party

We are supposedly a nation of laws, not men, but our lawmakers have ensured over the years that we are increasingly at the whim of men, elected or appointed, instead of the law. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declared that he will reverse an Obama Administration position allowing states to decide on marijuana legalization. Now, local United States Attorneys will be empowered to decide.
But neither the Obama Administration nor Jeff Sessions should do anything other than enforce the law, and federal law criminalizes marijuana. The solution here is not to ignore the federal law, but to repeal it. To do otherwise empowers individuals beyond the rule of law and puts the whims of officials ahead of the will of the people.
Near where I live, a local police officer pulled over a man for the audacious offense of driving while eating. There was no complaint and there was no evidence that the man was distracted in his driving. But the young police officer decided to use the distracted driving charge to ticket the man, whose local officials eventually threw out the citation. We live in an age where there are more and more complaints of overzealous police officers and overzealous cities nickel and diming the citizenry on old laws.
It is, I am told, against the law in Cleveland, OH to sneeze outdoors. If a police officer wanted to, he could ticket you for sneezing and the burden would be on you to fight the citation. The correct remedy is to repeal a stupid law. Again, as long as the law is on the books, it allows a bureaucrat or politician to have extraordinary and capricious control over your life. It allows politicians to change their minds and reverse other policies. It puts men ahead of the law. And our Congress is notoriously good at passing laws then abdicating their constitutional responsibilities to bureaucrats who they can blame at election time.
You may think there is nothing wrong with legalized marijuana. All but three states now have some form of legalized medical marijuana and several states now have legalized recreational marijuana. California is the latest and also a case study in the legalization of marijuana as a new form of revenue and regulation.
Regardless, as long as a federal law is on the books making marijuana possession a criminal act, a bureaucrat in Washington can wipe out the market and a thriving industry. You can scream all you want that they should not do it, but they can and the only thing in life more certain than even death and taxes is that a bureaucrat will act arbitrarily and capriciously when the mood strikes.
This, though, is the logical outcome of the federal government stepping in to the criminal law field, something our founders would be appalled by. Tough on crime politicians run for federal office insisting they will make federal criminal laws and the result is placing people in situations where they can be prosecuted under a state law, then have a federal prosecutor prosecute them for the same thing when a U.S. Attorney seeks to build his name for his own run for office. No, it is not double jeopardy because the federal government and state governments are separate entities. Ironically, many of the tough on crime politicians getting elected to expand the federal criminal law are also Republican politicians who claim to want to return power to the states.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated there was no federal law criminalizing the assassination of a President. Only in 1965 did Congress act. Now we have a federal crime for virtually anything you can think of and federal bureaucrats with their own SWAT teams to enforce not just criminal laws, but bureaucratic regulations.
Congress should scuttle most of the federal criminal law in an effort to restore the balance of power to the states. I am indifferent on marijuana legalization, but many states are not and Congress should let the system and rule of law work instead of undermining the rule of law by empowering the arbitrariness and capriciousness of men.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

ERICKSON: The Rule Of Law Goes To Pot

Marijuana

We are a nation of 325 million people. We have a bit of control over the behavior of our 535 elected representatives in Congress, the president and the vice president. But there are seven unelected people who have life-and-death control over our economy and hence our lives &#8212; the seven governors of the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board controls our money supply. Its governors are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate and serve 14-year staggered terms. They have the power to cripple an economy, as they did during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Their inept monetary policy threw the economy into the Great Depression, during which real output in the United States fell nearly 30 percent and the unemployment rate soared as high as nearly 25 percent.
The most often stated cause of the Great Depression is the October 1929 stock market crash. Little is further from the truth. The Great Depression was caused by a massive government failure led by the Federal Reserve&#8217;s rapid 25 percent contraction of the money supply. The next government failure was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which increased U.S. tariffs by more than 50 percent. Those failures were compounded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal legislation. Leftists love to praise New Deal interventionist legislation. But FDR&#8217;s very own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, saw the folly of the New Deal, writing: &#8220;We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. &#8230; We have never made good on our promises. &#8230; I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started &#8230; and an enormous debt to boot!&#8221; The bottom line is that the Federal Reserve Board, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal policies turned what would have been a two, three- or four-year sharp downturn into a 16-year affair.
Here&#8217;s my question never asked about the Federal Reserve Act of 1913: How much sense does it make for us to give seven unelected people life-and-death control over our economy and hence our lives?
While you&#8217;re pondering that question, consider another: Should we give the government, through the Federal Communications Commission, control over the internet? During the Clinton administration, along with the help of a Republican-dominated Congress, the visionary 1996 Telecommunications Act declared it &#8220;the policy of the United States&#8221; that internet service providers and websites be &#8220;unfettered by Federal or State regulation.&#8221; The act sought &#8220;to promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for American telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.&#8221;
In 2015, the Obama White House pressured the FCC to create the Open Internet Order, which has been branded by its advocates as net neutrality. This move overthrew the spirit of the Telecommunications Act. It represents creeping FCC jurisdiction, as its traditional areas of regulation &#8212; such as broadcast media and telecommunications &#8212; have been transformed by the internet, or at least diminished in importance. Fortunately, it&#8217;s being challenged by the new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, who has announced he will repeal the FCC&#8217;s heavy-handed 2015 internet regulations.
The United States has been the world leader in the development of internet technology precisely because it has been relatively unfettered by federal and state regulation. The best thing that the U.S. Congress can do for internet entrepreneurs and internet consumers is to send the FCC out to pasture as it did with the Civil Aeronautics Board, which regulated the airline industry, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulated the trucking industry. When we got rid of those regulatory agencies, we saw a greater number of competitors, and consumers paid lower prices. Giving the FCC the same medicine would allow our high-tech industry to maintain its world leadership position.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

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