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Ted Cruz suspends campaign: what next for conservatives? #NeverTrump

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Donald Trump with some of his supporters
Donald Trump with some of his supporters

I’ll comment after quoting some of this brief message from Ben Shapiro, posted at Daily Wire.

Excerpt:

So, Donald Trump is the nominee.

After all the fighting, after all the lies, after all the conspiracy theories and bloviating and position-shifting and progressivism, after all the insults and racist pandering and economic illiteracy, after all the cruelty and full-fledged stupidity, Donald Trump is the nominee.

What does this mean?

It means that standing against Trump means more than ever.

Early in this race, I stated repeatedly that the way to defeat Trump would be to point out to Republican primary voters that he wasn’t conservative. After all, I reasoned, conservative voters were outraged with the Republican establishment that had caved over and over to President Obama; they’d want to nominate someone who wouldn’t cut deals with the wild leftists of the Democratic Party.

I got it wrong.

It turns out that a huge bulk of Trump supporters don’t care that he’s a leftist. They think he’s a tough guy who will fight for them; they think he’ll fulfill the promise emblazoned on his ridiculous red “Make America Great Again” hats. They buy his two-bit promises, his stripper glitter showmanship, his foghorn bravado. And they do so because they don’t give two good damns about conservatism.

[…][T]he Trump movement rejects conservatism. They don’t care about the Constitution – it’s a passé document that must be discarded in favor of a Dear Leader who can lead America back to Greatness. They don’t care about the Declaration of Independence – they are an interest group, and they want their payoff. They don’t care about traditional concepts of negative rights, or economic freedom, or foreign policy strength.

They don’t care about conservatives.

So conservatives must stand against them.

[…]Trump’s “something new” is something quite old, and quite un-American. If conservatives want a future, they must stand against him and his corrupt, bankrupt philosophy.

2016 could have been a time to reap the harvest of conservatism. Instead, Trump burned down the field.

It’s time to plant anew. We should do so with alacrity rather than embracing the man holding the match.

Right. There is not a single authentic conservative that voted for Trump. Trump is not a conservative, in any way, shape or form – on any issue. We should stay home during the general election and let him lose rather than let the label “conservative” be connected to a clownish liberal sociopath.

UPDATE: Don’t stay home, go vote in the other races, and just write someone in or leave it blank for President. (I stand corrected on this)

The people who voted for Trump were basically idiots who had failed in their own lives, and wanted to blame someone other than themselves. That’s what Trump promises: he will help the losers who want to win vicariously through him. Most of his support came from white registered Democrats who never completed college, and probably had never held a decent job in their lives for any length of time. But there are enough self-made losers in America, apparently, that a clown can be selected as the nominee of a major party.

Consider this post by Kevin Williamson in National Review magazine:

The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

David French, who grew up in Kentucky, and then attended Harvard Law School, adds this in National Review:

These are strong words, but they are fundamentally true and important to say. My childhood was different from Kevin’s, but I grew up in Kentucky, live in a rural county in Tennessee, and have seen the challenges of the white working-class first-hand.Simply put, Americans are killing themselves and destroying their families at an alarming rate. No one is making them do it. The economy isn’t putting a bottle in their hand. Immigrants aren’t making them cheat on their wives or snort OxyContin. Obama isn’t walking them into the lawyer’s office to force them to file a bogus disability claim.

For generations, conservatives have rightly railed against deterministic progressive notions that put human choices at the mercy of race, class, history, or economics. Those factors can create additional challenges, but they do not relieve any human being of the moral obligation to do their best.

Yet millions of Americans aren’t doing their best. Indeed, they’re barely trying. As I’ve related before, my church in Kentucky made a determined attempt to reach kids and families that were falling between the cracks, and it was consistently astounding how little effort most parents and their teen children made to improve their lives. If they couldn’t find a job in a few days — or perhaps even as little as a few hours — they’d stop looking. If they got angry at teachers or coaches, they’d drop out of school. If they fought with their wife, they had sex with a neighbor. And always — always — there was a sense of entitlement.

And that’s where disability or other government programs kicked in. They were there, beckoning, giving men and women alternatives to gainful employment. You don’t have to do any work (your disability lawyer does all the heavy lifting), you make money, and you get drugs. At our local regional hospital, it’s become a bitter joke the extent to which the community is hooked on “Xanatab” — the Xanax and Lortab prescriptions that lead to drug dependence.

Of course we should have compassion even as we call on people to do better. I have compassion for kids who often see the worst behavior modeled at home. I have compassion for families facing economic uncertainty. But compassion can’t excuse or enable self-destructive moral failures.

We have Trump as the nominee because there are just too many of these low-information voters voting. Some of my friends are blaming the public school system, for destroying the quality of American education. Others are blaming the churches, for focusing on feelings rather than intellect. Those are both true, but I think we should blame the TV-watching Trump cultists themselves: first for failing at life, second for voting. If you’re an illiterate loser who cannot hold a job and you blow all your money on alcohol, drugs and cigarettes, then you should not be voting.

Sadly, there is no job interview for voting. Any imbecile who knows more about sports than policy can vote. The way forward is simple. We need to play defense more than ever before, because things are going to get worse. And we need to continue to argue and explain why conservative principles and policies work better than the policies of liberal Democrats like Trump and Clinton.

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New study: Taxing top earners will not reduce wealth inequality

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Lets take a closer look at a puzzle
Lets take a closer look at a puzzle

New study! Here’s a report on it from Real Clear Markets:

The top 10% of Americans control roughly three-quarters of the nation’s wealth, and the minority of Haves are continuing to accumulate more than the majority of Have-Nots.

This is wealth inequality in the United States. And though it doesn’t attract as much attention as income inequality, it’s arguably far more important, imposing economic instabilities and social strife.

To decrease wealth inequality, pundits, politicians, and economists often suggest raising income tax rates on top earners to as high as 50, 70, or even 90 percent.

The idea sounds plausible, but according to a new study published to PLoS ONE it probably won’t work in practice.

[…]In their model, income inequality was tied to a metric called the Gini index, a statistical measure of inequality used for decades. They found that altering income inequality to a Gini index of 0.1 (very low inequality) resulted in the top 10% controlling 78.6% of wealth in 2030, while raising income inequality to a Gini index of 0.9 (very high inequality) resulted in the top 10% controlling 79.3% of wealth in 2030, hardly a significant difference.

Do you know what does work to help people – growing the economy so that everyone can find work. It’s actually been done before.

The conservative Heritage Foundation describes the effects of the Bush tax cuts from 2001 and 2003.

Excerpt:

President Bush signed the first wave of tax cuts in 2001, cutting rates and providing tax relief for families by, for example, doubling of the child tax credit to $1,000.

At Congress’ insistence, the tax relief was initially phased in over many years, so the economy continued to lose jobs. In 2003, realizing its error, Congress made the earlier tax relief effective immediately. Congress also lowered tax rates on capital gains and dividends to encourage business investment, which had been lagging.

It was the then that the economy turned around. Within months of enactment, job growth shot up, eventually creating 8.1 million jobs through 2007. Tax revenues also increased after the Bush tax cuts, due to economic growth.

In 2003, capital gains tax rates were reduced. Rather than expand by 36% as the Congressional Budget Office projected before the tax cut, capital gains revenues more than doubled to $103 billion.

The CBO incorrectly calculated that the post-March 2003 tax cuts would lower 2006 revenues by $75 billion. Revenues for 2006 came in $47 billion above the pre-tax cut baseline.

Here’s what else happened after the 2003 tax cuts lowered the rates on income, capital gains and dividend taxes:

  • GDP grew at an annual rate of just 1.7% in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the six quarters following the tax cuts, the growth rate was 4.1%.
  • The S&P 500 dropped 18% in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts but increased by 32% over the next six quarters.
  • The economy lost 267,000 jobs in the six quarters before the 2003 tax cuts. In the next six quarters, it added 307,000 jobs, followed by 5 million jobs in the next seven quarters.

The timing of the lower tax rates coincides almost exactly with the stark acceleration in the economy.

Please note: revenues actually went up as a result of the tax cuts, because more economic growth means more taxes are collected on the income that is generated.

Whenever people with savings take risks to grow their wealth, there will be jobs created. The solution to helping the poor isn’t giving them someone else’s money. The solution to helping the poor is to let productive job creators keep their own earnings, so that they use their money to create more jobs. That way, people who want to work have multiple job offers and can pick the best one. Productive people are not the enemy. Productive people give you money to work for them. That’s good for you.

News

Which candidate will defend religious liberty as President: Trump or Cruz?

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

First, let’s see a story is from the Business Insider, about the latest attack on religious liberty. Then we’ll compare the candidates on religious liberty.

Excerpt:

An Illinois inn that refused to allow a same-sex couple hold their civil union ceremony on the property was fined more than $80,000 by the Illinois Human Rights Commission on Tuesday.

An administrative law judge with the commission ordered TimberCreek Bed & Breakfast to pay $15,000 each to Todd and Mark Wathen for emotional distress.

[…]TimberCreek, located about 100 miles south of Chicago, must also pay $50,000 in attorneys’ fees and $1,218.35 in costs.

“We are very happy that no other couple will have to experience what we experienced by being turned away and belittled and criticized for who we are,” Todd Wathen said in a statement.

Ah, yes. The “Human Rights Commissions” that only ever go after Christians and conservatives, never secularists and liberals. It’s now more important that gays not feel “belittled and criticized” than that Christians have their religious liberty respected. Christians must be forced by the government to act like non-Christians – that’s apparently the law. A law that many Christians voted for when they voted for Democrats.

OK, now let’s see what the presidential candidates think about the issue of gay rights vs religious liberty. Let’s start with Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz

Pro-marriage activist Maggie Gallagher reports on what Ted Cruz said about the Georgia governor’s decision to side with gay rights over religious liberty:

Ted Cruz once again proved he has the courage to go up against the GOP establishment in the person of Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, who sided with leftists, big business and Hollywood by claiming conscience protections for gay marriage dissenters are “discrimination”:

“I thought that was very disappointing to see Gov. Deal of Georgia side with leftist activists and side against religious liberty,” Cruz said. “It used to be, political parties, we would argue about marginal tax rates and you could have disagreements about what the level of taxation should be. But on religious liberty, on protecting the rights of every American to practice, live according to our faith, live according to our conscience, we all came together. That ought to be a bipartisan commitment and I was disappointed not to see Gov. Deal not defend religious liberty.”

Now will any reporters ask John Kasich, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump the same question?

No need to ask Hillary Clinton what she thinks, she been endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign – she’s a hardcore gay activist who opposes religious liberty 100%. Bernie Sanders is the same – 100% opposed to religious liberty.

But what about Donald Trump?

Donald Trump

This is from Bay Windows, which bills itself as “serving New England’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities”.

Here’s what they wrote:

The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination today promised “forward motion” on gay and lesbian equality if he is elected.

In an interview with NECN’s Sue O’Connell just days before the crucial New Hampshire primary, Trump cast himself as a uniter on LGBT issues.

O’Connell, who is also Bay Windows’ Publisher, identified herself as a lesbian in a question that noted the progress the LGBT community has made in the last two decades and asked Trump if voters can expect him to continue that momentum if elected

“When President Trump is in office can we look for more forward motion on equality for gays and lesbians?” O’Connell asked him.

“Well, you can,” Trump answered. ” And look, again, we’re going to bring people together, and that’s your thing and other people have their thing. We have to bring all people together and if we don’t we’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Recall that during the Iowa primary, Trump declared how much he loves evangelicals, and even held up a Bible he supposedly got from his mother as evidence of his genuine, authentic Christian faith. But the Iowa primary is over now, so no more Bible prop needed.

What about John Kasich?

John Kasich

Kasich considers same-sex marriage to be the law of the land, and he opposes legal protections for Christians who are sued by gay activists.

He gets an F on marriage from pro-marriage activist Maggie Gallagher for his stance on same-sex marriage:

The Supreme Court overturns the marriage laws of your state and many others by inventing a new right?  That gets a big yawn from John Kasich: “I do believe in the traditional sense of marriage—that marriage is between a man and a woman.  But I also respect the Supreme Court of the United States.  The Supreme Court of the United States made the decision, and as I have said repeatedly we’ll honor what the Supreme Court does—it’s the law of the land.”

And he opposes protections for Christians who are sued by gay activists:

What will you do, Gov. Kasich, to protect the rights of gay marriage dissenters?

[…]Gov. Kasich has refused to say whether he would support [the First Amendment Defense Act].

Ted Cruz has pledged to sign the First Amendment Defense Act, and quickly, too. No hesitation, because religious liberty is in the Constitution, and Ted Cruz is crazy about the Constitution!