Liberty & Prosperity Blog

Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump's chief economic adviser, has been saying "Save America. Kill the bill" for a couple weeks now. He's used that instant cliché about the Democrats' reconciliation bill. Apparently, Joe Manchin agrees with that. He's issued this statement to announce that he won't vote for Bernie Sanders' entitlement reconciliation bill. Early in his statement, Sen. Manchin states "What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity. Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue pay an unavoidable inflation tax. Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs r

Last night, Terry McAuliffe sounded like the teachers unions' spokesperson when he said "I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." McAuliffe knows he's in trouble because prefaced that quote by saying "I'm not going to let parents come into schools take books out and make their decisions." That's something that an elitist might say. McAuliffe put his foot in his mouth at the worst possible time. Glenn Youngkin, McAuliffe's GOP opponent, isn't letting McAuliffe's mistake slide. He's up with this video: In 2020, Joe Biden defeated then-President Trump in Loudoun County by 20 points. This year, parents of all political stripes are on the verge of recalling the Loudoun County School Board. This isn't a wedge issue. Education/CRT is a hot button issue that's triggering visceral reactions from across the political divide. Fairfax County is also experiencing lots of turmoil over education. These are 2

Time for History to Repeat Itself—for Good By Ramblin’ Rose Writer and philosopher George Santayana stated in 1905: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” When we consider education, that quote might be positive instead of negative. After the American Revolution, parents, not government, determined the how, what, and where of their children’s education. If only that were the state of affairs today. (That is conjecture—contrary to fact—a wish statement.) In the 1850’s, Massachusetts was the first state to advocate for government-funded and state-controlled public education. A century later, Milton Friedman wrote The Role of Government in Education . He confirmed the role of government in subsidizing the costs of education but not in controlling it. The control meant a loss of parental influence in the system. Of course, the ones who could afford had the choice of private schools for their children. But sadly, the majority had to send their children to governm

For over a week, Larry Kudlow has repeatedly told guests on his show and other audiences to "Save America. Kill the bill." The bill being referenced, of course, is the Democrats' reconciliation bill. Very recent events have changed the Democrats' timing, throwing a wrench in things in a big way. NBCNews is reporting "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Democrats on Monday that passage of the $550 billion infrastructure bill must not wait for President Joe Biden's multitrillion-dollar safety net bill, saying the larger package is not yet ready for a vote." NBC is reporting that Pelosi told her caucus "I told all of you that we wouldn't go on to the [infrastructure bill until] we had the reconciliation bill passed by the Senate. We were right on schedule to do all of that, until 10 days ago, a week ago, when I heard the news that this number had to come down. It all changed, so our approach had to change. We had to accommodate the changes that were b

Last Friday, Joe Biden insisted that his $5,500,000,000,000 reconciliation bill had a zero cost because it didn't add to the national debt. At the time, I didn't take it seriously because it obviously costs trillions of dollars. Further, I thought that some self-respecting journalist would ridicule Biden mercilessly for making that silly of a statement. I shouldn't have trusted the media to do the right thing. Like Democrats, aka the media's bosses, the media will always do the right thing when it's the only option left. Let's take Biden's lies apart piece-by-piece. First, the Build Back Better Act doesn't come close to being deficit-neutral. The Tax Foundation found that revenues increased by $1.06T, a gigantic amount away from $5.5T. It's obvious that there's a major shortfall between the revenue that the Biden/Democrat tax hikes would generate and the revenue that's needed to meet reconciliation requirements. If the parliamentarian rules

Many is the time I've heard that hordes of illegal immigrants will turn Texas blue. That's certainly what Joe Biden hoped when he implemented the Democrats' open border policies. Based on what Salena Zito wrote in her latest Washington Examiner article , Joe Biden's open borders policies are having the opposite effect. Ms. Zito wrote "Texans pummeled President Joe Biden in several border counties, with large numbers of Hispanic voters going for Trump. That shift away from Democrats may grow given the handling of the border. Already this summer, Republicans unexpectedly won two big mayoral elections in border towns that are overwhelmingly Hispanic and historically Democratic." That's similar to the Iron Range mayors in Minnesota endorsing then-President Trump in 2020. Prior to last year, the Iron Range was DFL-dominated. Ms. Zito also wrote "Last week, a Dallas Morning News/University of Texas, Tyler, poll showed that Biden’s approval rating with Hispa

When Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Psaki sang from the same hymnal about the Border Patrol whipping illegal aliens, people checked Paul Ratje's photos of the incident, then viewed the video to find out what happened. The people understood that certain Democrat politicians had lied to them previously. Democrats, according to Chuck Todd, have a credibility problem. (FYI- That's perhaps the first thing he's said recently that I've agreed with.) By hollaring 'racism' at the Border Patrol agents on horseback, Democrats hoped people wouldn't check out the video and pictures. That didn't work. People checked those things out. Why wouldn't they? Too many media outlets got the Covington Catholic kids story entirely wrong. The media, in general, isn't getting the benefit of any doubt anytime soon. It's especially noteworthy what VP Harris said about Whipgate. She said "It also evoked images of some of the worst times of our

There's no reason for DHS to continue their investigation into Whipgate, aka Horsegate. This isn't a legitimate investigation that seeks the truth. This morning, Joe Biden held a press availability, essentially to emphasize COVID-related issues. Surprisingly, Biden took a few questions. Predictably, he was asked about the Border Patrol agents whipping Haitians , which video shows didn't happen. Rather than answering honestly, Biden replie, saying "To see people treated like they did, horses barely running over, people being strapped — it’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay. There will be an investigation underway now and there will be consequences. There will be consequences." If the president has already reached a verdict, why continue with this investigation? It isn't a serious investigation. It's a sham and it should be stopped. The bigger point of this is that Joe Biden isn't interested in enforcing laws. It's dishonest for Sec

Julio Rosas's Townhall.com's Tipsheet article contains some interesting information on the Haitian 'refugees'. It doesn't question whether they're from Haiti. What's questioned is whether they're eligible for asylum: For starters, a majority of the Haitians who illegally crossed into the United States to seek asylum did not come directly from Haiti. Due to Haiti's long-standing problems and natural disasters, many Haitians have left the country and settled in other countries in Central and South America, particularly Chile and Brazil. While speaking with the immigrants at the makeshift camp under the international bridge in Del Rio, we noticed they could speak Spanish. Most Haitians who live in Haiti speak Haitian Creole or French. One man said he had been living in Chile the past few years before recently making his way up towards the United States, another said he was living in Brazil. The evidence the majority of Haitians not coming directly fr

It's probably wrong to ask whether Joe Biden will run for re-election but it's something I've thought about a few times lately. I'm not convinced he will but he wouldn't do well if the election was held this November. At least, that's what John Nolte wrote in this article . According to Nolte's article, " Rasmussen Reports , one of the country’s most accurate pollsters, shows that should Trump choose to run again in 2024, he would obliterate Joe Biden by a margin of 51 to 41 percent." Nolte then writes "I have never in my life seen a president, most especially one who lost re-election, hold on to his base of support the way Trump has. This year my wife and I have enjoyed two separate month-long camping trips, which have taken us through more than a dozen states, and Trump flags and banners and 'F*** Joe Biden' flags are still everywhere." Donald Trump is the most animating president of my lifetime. That doesn't mean I'll

Voters who thought that Joe Biden was a moderate and a nice guy have had their eyes opened. He's neither of those things. Those voters have gotten mugged by reality. Joe Biden's corruption, lack of gravitas and inability to rise to history-making moments is now exposed. There's a reason why he was a nobody for 40 years before being picked to be Barack Obama's vice president. When Obama picked Biden to oversee his summer of recovery for the stimulus bill, Obama said he picked him because "Nobody messes with Joe." At the time, people from across the political spectrum knew that Obama was attempting to build Biden up because they knew that Biden was a blowhard. When Robert Gates wrote his memoirs, he said that Biden had been wrong on every major foreign policy issue the past 40 years. Young people can appreciate that in light of the Afghanistan disaster and the drone strike that killed 10 civilians, including 7 children, but didn't kill any terrorists. Joe Bi

According to The Hill's reporting , Democrats have reason to worry about Florida in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. According to the article, "In 2008, when former President Obama carried Florida by about 200,000 votes, there were nearly 700,000 more registered Democrats in the state than Republicans." Those were the good old day for Democrats. Those days are ancient history today: The latest voter registration numbers out of Florida show Democrats’ long-held voter registration advantage over Republicans shrinking to less than 24,000, down from about 100,000 at the beginning of the year. Dropping from a 700,000 registration advantage to less than 24,000 in a decade is dramatic and then some. Leadership matters. Ron DeSantis is the top Republican presidential candidate not named Donald Trump. Before him, Rick Scott did a solid job running the state. Throw in Marco Rubio, Michael Walz, Byron Donalds and you've got a formidable political party. This paragraph is lau

Yesterday, Alejandro Mayorkas visited Del Rio, TX while Jen Psaki delivered the daily White House press briefing from Washington, DC. Though they were 1,000+ miles apart physically, they were virtually inseparable from the standpoint of being committed to not telling the media the truth. "Fox News [White House] correspondent Peter Doocy" asked Psaki "why there was a different standard for foreign nationals traveling to the United States and illegal immigrants crossing the southern border into the United States." Psaki replied "As individuals come across the border, they are both assessed for whether they have any symptoms, if they have symptoms, the intention is for them to have to be quarantined. That is our process." Psaki added that the situations weren't the same, saying " They are not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time ," she said. "I don’t think it’s the same thing. It is not the same thing." Right. They'

Dan Wolgamott represents me in the Minnesota House of Representatives. This morning, I tried gathering additional information on a townhall meeting he's holding with Steve Simon, Minnesota's Secretary of State. I'd first seen this information in this article . When I got to Rep. Wolgamott's legislative Twitter account, this is the message I got: Rep. Wolgamott is a wannabe career politician. He isn't very talented. What he lacks in talent, he make up for in spin. Further, Rep. Wolgamott apparently doesn't like scrutiny. This arrived this afternoon for me from Rep. Wolgamott: The attack we saw on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th wasn’t the end of radical conservatives’ efforts to destroy our democracy for their political gain. Republican leaders in our state are also doubling down on Trump’s baseless lie to undermine Minnesota’s nationally respected election system. I won’t stand for it. Next week, I’m holding a Defending Democracy Town Hall with Secretary of S

The Senate parliamentarian ruled that Democrats can't include amnesty for illegal immigrannts in the Democrats' reconciliation bill. Fox is reporting that "Democrats can't use their $3.5 trillion package bolstering social and climate programs for their plan to give millions of immigrants a chance to become citizens, the Senate's parliamentarian said late Sunday, a crushing blow to what was the party's clearest pathway in years to attaining that long-sought goal." This is the right ruling from Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate's parliamentarian. Budget reconciliation was put into place for budget matters, not policy matters. Read this for a better understanding of reconciliation and the Byrd Rule. Also, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued this statement on the Parliamentarian's ruling: Senate rules never contemplated a majority circumventing the filibuster by pretending that sweeping and transformational new policies were mere budgetary

The US Department of Homeland Security is supposed to be a serious-minded organization. Instead, this article is filled with quotes that, at best, sound sarcastic. DHS is intent on fixing their southern border PR problem. The bad news is that they aren't interested in fixing their policy problem. According to the Washington Examiner article, "The DHS is "implementing a new, comprehensive strategy" to address the 12,000 people who have crossed the border this past week, roughly half of whom are believed to be Haitians, the department said. The six-pronged approach includes surging 400 Customs and Border Protection agents and officers to Del Rio, coordinating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard to relocate migrants to other processing centers, increasing the capacity of removal flights, working with nearby countries to repatriate their citizens and lawful residents, increasing humanitarian aid to prevent crowding, and coordinating with of

On Tuesday night, an estimated 700-1,100 illegal immigrants sheltered unde the international bridge in Del Rio, TX. As of Saturday night, there are an estimated 15,000 illegal immigrants sheltering under that bridge. FNC's Bill Melugin has reported daily from Del Rio, TX since March. He's seen it all since he started his coverage this winter. These days, Melugin's reporting has proven that Joe Biden wants open borders. Illegal aliens travel back-and-forth across the Rio Grande "without resistance from either side." Del Rio is on the US side. Ciudad Acuña is on the Mexican side. Because the Border Patrol is totally overwhelmed, these illegal aliens cross the dam multiple times daily. Others hang out in what's best described as an international homeless shelter under the internationl bridge in Del Rio. This is what the homeless encampment looked like on Thursday: This is what it looks like Saturday night: Republican Rep. August Pfluger visited the homeless she

I don't blame Joe Biden for his early escape to his Rehoboth Beach estate Friday. Friday was the worst day of Joe's presidency. This article will highlight each of the major things that went wrong for Biden. FAA grounding of Fox drone fails Thursday night, the Federal Aviation Administration notified Fox News that they couldn't use their drone to report on the deteriorating conditions underneath the International Bridge in Del Rio, TX. This is what 'hell on earth' looks like: NEW: We’ve learned that the FAA just implemented a two week TFR (Temporary Flight Restrictions) over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX, meaning we can no longer fly our FOX drone over it to show images of the thousands of migrants. FAA says “special security reason”. pic.twitter.com/aJrjAPO2Pz — Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 17, 2021 Being the resourceful reporter that he is, Melugin hitched a ride in a TX Department of Public Safety helicopter. This video essentially rendered the

Joe Biden has declared his preferences in terms of who he'll welcome to the United States. Thanks to TX Sen. Ted Cruz's 'reporting' , we now know that "Eight days ago on September 8th, under that same bridge, there were between 700 and 1,000. That was what was coming a day, about 1,000, sometimes 1,100, but it would range between 700-1,100. Then 8 ago, on September 8th, the Biden administration made a political decision. They announced that they were no longer going to fly deportation flights back to Haiti. 85% of the people under there are from Haiti. They're fleeing from Haiti. They announced they weren't going back. There were about 900 Haitians who were getting ready to board the flights when the political operatives in Washington canceled the flights. Well, what happened? Those 900 people, they all pulled out their cell phones and they e-mailed their friends and they e-mailed their families and they texted their friends and their families. That was 8 d

Joe Biden's open borders policy has created another crisis for him to deal with. Of course, he won't do that because he prefers open borders. Fox News's Bill Melugin has doggedly reported on the crisis for months now. The other propagandist networks have hardly covered the crisis. One of the tools Fox border correspondents have used is a drone, which they've use to show illegal immigrants crossing the border or, today, show 9,000+ Haitians crowded under a bridge in Del Rio, TX. Tonight, Melugin reported that Joe Biden's FAA has grounded Fox's drone coverage: The Federal Aviation Administration has placed a two-week flight restriction along a bridge at the southern border inundated with thousands of illegal immigrants, which prevents reporters from flying drones to document the crisis. "We’ve learned that the FAA just implemented a two week TFR (Temporary Flight Restrictions) over the international bridge in Del Rio, TX, meaning we can no longer fly our FOX

There are times when Tucker Carlson can't help himself. Last night, he spoke about Gen. Mark Milley. It's time to either fire Carlson or find him better researchers. Last night, he said "Yesterday we learned that Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a danger to the country. That was not totally surprising. We already knew he was a reckless nutcase. In June, in the middle of a televised congressional hearing, Milley leveled a racial attack against more than half of this country. Milley told Congress that something called White rage was a national crisis. He never proved it or even defined the term and yet still he kept his job, which says as much about Congress as it does about him. Then in July, we learned that Milley had suggested the U.S. military was willing to use violence against Donald Trump, who was then the sitting president. 'We're the guys with guns,' he told fellow officers. Still, Congress did nothing." Republicans are in the

Joe Biden's terrible policy decisions have caught up with him. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal hurt him. Before that, his wild-eyed spending spree hurt him through inflation. Prior to that, Biden's open borders policies were seen as foolish.Further, they saw Biden's open borders policies as vindictive as most people recognized them as Biden's attempt to erase President Trump's legacy. This week, Biden's getting hurt by the Democrats' attempts to raise taxes and by Gen. Milley's attempt to ignore the Constitution. When Nancy Pelosi called him to take the nuclear football away from then-President Trump, the proper response would've been to tell her that the Constitution created a unitary commander-in-chief, which is the president: "This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes

Tuesday's hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee turned into the day Republicans, with some Democrats, turned US Secretary of State Antony Blinken into a human piñata. The first Republican to inflict damage to Secretary Blinken's shrinking credibility was Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Sen. Rubio's office provided this transcript of Sen. Rubio's questioning of Secretary Blinken. In Sen. Rubio's first body blow to Blinken, Sen. Rubio said "The Afghan government was still fractious and corrupt, and the Taliban had unchallenged safe haven in Pakistan. Put another way, and paraphrasing your own words from your opening statement, if after 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in support, equipment and training, there’s not enough for the Afghan government or the Afghan security forces to become more resilient or self-sustaining, what did we think was going to happen as that support began to be removed? What did we think was going to happen when that

Predictably, Joe Biden's War on Fossil Fuels will cause higher home heating bills this winter. This was widely predicted when Biden took office. The higher prices are the result of a "slow rebound in production from the hurricane, globally tight supplies, and bad energy policy." This "could equal a natural gas nightmare before Christmas." This isn't confined just to home heating bills, either: Natural gas is one of the preferred sources of energy in this country not only for electricity and factories but mainly as a heating source for people’s homes. Over 50% of U.S. homes are heated by natural gas and even those that use electric heat pay for natural gas price increases through the backdoor as 38% of total U.S. natural gas consumption goes into providing electricity. Joe Biden's obedience to the environmental activist wing of the Democrat Party is hurting We The People in the form of higher home heating and electric bills. A year ago, the US was ener

Some things are eternal truths, even in politics. One eternal truth in politics is that Donald Trump's base is the strongest in recent political history. Salena Zito's reporting in this article is proof that Trump loyalty isn't diminishing with time. In the article, she wrote about a newlywed couple, who said "But one thing remained constant no matter what state, city, town or village they passed through, Drew said, 'and that was the amount of Trump signs we saw everywhere. And I mean everywhere,' he added for emphasis. 'They were in wealthy suburban neighborhoods, blue-collar middle class towns. You would see them in farm fields and painted on the sides of businesses. Most of them were either large flags, although plenty of them were hand-painted homemade signs too.'" If Biden keeps making one terrible decision after another on issue after issue, he'll drive voters into Trump's campaign. That's because Joe Biden is the opposite of Pr

Based on this article , the Democrats' civil war is a matter of when, not if. The reconcilliation bill that's secretly being put together by Bernie Sanders and other Democrat socialists isn't playing well with Joe Manchin, aka the King of the Senate. Last week, King Joe told Chuck Schumer that he wouldn't vote for Bernie's $3.5 trillion reconcilliation bill. That's thrown the Democrats' orbits into a tailspin. Nancy Pelosi doesn't have much in the way of leverage on this bill because a handful of House 'moderates' refuse to terminate their political careers for Pelosi. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer has less maneuverability than Pelosi because he needs every Democrat to vote yes to pass the reconcilliation bill. Manchin instead called on Democrats to whittle down the amount, perhaps by more than half, while reeling in broad swaths of their still-forming proposal — including some of its programs to address child poverty and combat climate change. T