Regular readers will know that I am a West Indian black, and so I try to follow what’s happening in Latin America and South America. Everyone knows that Venezuela elected socialists and they are in a death spiral, but Argentina wasn’t far behind. Argentina’s been electing leftist after leftist, and their economy kept going down. Then they did the unexpected. They elected an economist.

First, let’s find out about him, and the recent election:

Javier Gerardo Milei (born 22 October 1970) is an Argentine politician and economist who has served as President of Argentina since December 2023. Milei has taught university courses in macroeconomics, economic growth, microeconomics, and mathematics for economists. He is an author on economics and politics, and also hosted radio programs on the subject.

Milei is known for his flamboyant personality, distinctive personal style, and strong media presence. He has been described politically as a right-wing populist and right-wing libertarian, and supports laissez-faire economics, aligning specifically with minarchist and anarcho-capitalist principles. Milei has proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s fiscal and structural policies.

I have my disagreements with libertarians. Usually, they are terrible on foreign policy and social issues – although Milei is pretty moderate on both of those. But if there’s one thing that libertarians know well, it’s economics.

When Milei took over, Argentina was ranked #27 out of 32 countries in the Americas region on the Index of Economic Freedom. They’re just above socialist disaster zones like Venezula, Cuba and Haiti. As soon as Milei got into office, he took a wrecking ball to the big government socialism of the previous leftist regimes. And now the results are starting to roll in.

This is from far-left Barron’s:

The Argentine government in January saw its first monthly budget surplus in nearly 12 years, as new President Javier Milei continues to push for strong spending cuts, the Economy Ministry announced.

January was the first full month in office for Milei, a far-right libertarian who took office in December, and it ended with a positive balance for public-sector finances of $589 million at the official exchange rate, the government said late Friday.

Now, if you are a Thomas Sowell fan like I am, then you will be able to recognize some of these economic polices that Milei has adopted:

• sharp cuts in government spending
• reduction of public debt
• switch economy to a stable currency (U.S. dollar)
• remove price controls (price controls means government sets the prices, e.g. – setting and raising the minimum wage)
• raising interest rates (a way to curb inflation)
• shutting down useless government departments
• privatize public companies (e.g. – USPS, AMTRAK)
• cutting subsidies to economic sectors
• eliminate rent control (a form of price control)
• open-sky policy (deregulate commercial air industry)
• ending import restrictions
• de-regulate satellite services
• lower the fiscal deficit

Conservatives love these economic policies. You can see economic policies like these in states where free market capitalists dominate, like Tennessee and Florida. Leftists hate these economic policies. You don’t see these policies in states where leftists dominate, like New York and California. These are the policies that communists hate.

I suggest that we keep watching countries in Latin America and South America that adopt free market principles, and then share those articles with other Americans, so they can learn what works and what doesn’t work. We can’t keep talking about follow your heart and don’t judge forever. We are running out of “other people’s money” to pay for this feelings-based nonsense. Already the next generation of Americans will be inheriting much more debt than you or I were born with. We have to vote smarter – vote for leaders who have a proven record of doing the things that Milei is doing.

What would you think if I told you that the same member of the Biden administration who was responsible for raiding the homes of peaceful pro-lifers and persecuting police officers for protecting the public from criminals is now suing the state of Tennessee? Why is she suing the state of Tennessee? Because Tennessee has a law that is tough on prostitutes who have HIV.

Her name is Kristen Clarke.

Let’s start with pre-dawn raiding the home of a pro-life activist.

Daily Signal reports:

Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy grilled the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice on Tuesday over the DOJ’s targeting of pro-life activists like Catholic father Mark Houck.

Kristen Clarke, who oversees investigations into violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, came before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government on Tuesday for a hearing on the “Oversight of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.”

[…]Roy drew attention to the fact that Clarke’s division charged at least 26 individuals with FACE Act violations in 2022 and more in 2023.

“Even under your watch, it’s at least 35 to 1 or 2,” Roy emphasized. “That is not even-handed. It’s far from even handed. And importantly, Mark Houck, who was targeted, had a raid of his home, prosecuted under this, was acquitted by a jury! Have you apologized to him on behalf of the Department of Justice for that grave violation of his civil rights? Having his family have to watch him being raided at his home? And then he’s acquitted by a federal jury? Have you apologized to him?”

She refused to apologize to Mark Houck. Roy replied to her non-apology:

“So the answer to that is no,” Roy said.

Houck was arrested at his home by heavily armed police, in front of his wife and 7 children, who were traumatized. Houck is now suing the Biden DOJ for “malicious and retaliatory prosecution.”

In a different Daily Signal article, Virginia Allen notes that Clarke has a reputation for far-left activism:

Well, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is responsible for investigations into crimes against pro-life pregnancy centers, and the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is run by a woman named Kristen Clarke. Kristen Clarke is pro-defund the police. She is for supporting Antifa, BLM, and she is on her own Twitter account vehemently opposed to pro-life pregnancy centers. So, you’ve got a major conflict of interest within the DOJ, and you’ve got [Attorney General] Merrick Garland running cover for her, insisting that the DOJ is being perfectly evenhanded.

Virginia says “Kristen Clarke is pro-defund the police”. To assess that, let’s take a look at this article from Daily Wire:

The U.S. Department of Justice is opening a civil rights investigation into the City of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department to determine whether there is a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the constitution or federal civil rights law, the U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday.

Time will tell whether this is a serious investigation, or something more like what happened with Mark Houck. One thing for sure – Memphis has a reputation as an extremely high-crime, high-violence area.

According to this article by WREG News Channel 3:

Homicide rates dropped dramatically across the country in 2023, but Memphis is bucking the national trend with a triple-digit increase in killings.

Memphis Police records show 393 homicides in Memphis as of Dec. 28 this year, and 337 of them were considered murders. At least two more people have been killed in the past 24 hours.

The city is poised to end the year with about 400 homicides. That is roughly 100 more than last year and 50 more than 2021.

Do you think that Kristen Clarke’s actions will produce good results for law-abiding Memphis taxpayers?

OK, now let’s look at Kristen Clarke’s actions against the conservative state of Tennessee.

This is from April 2023, in Christian Post:

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Tennessee for passing a law that bans chemical castration and body mutilating surgeries from being performed on youth who are confused about their sexual identity.

[…]Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement that she believed no one “should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status.”

And here is the very latest from February 2024, in Daily Wire:

The Biden administration’s Justice Department filed a lawsuit Thursday against Tennessee’s aggravated prostitution law for people with HIV.

[…]“People living with HIV should not be subjected to a different system of justice based on outdated science and misguided assumptions,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s civil rights division said in a statement.

If you think that I am being rough on Kristen Clarke, then take a look at these interesting articles from Daily Signal:

• Kristen Clarke Is Unfit to Be in Government
• DOJ’s Kristen Clarke: A Pro-Abortion Activist Enforcing the Law Against Pro-Lifers
• This Fits the Definition of ‘Domestic Terror,’ Pregnancy Care Center CEO Says After 2nd Attack
• DOJ Hiding Data on FACE Prosecutions, Congressman Says

I really recommend that you check those articles out.

Also, pray for Kristen Clarke. I noticed that she comes from a West Indian black background like me. (Except I have multiple STEM degrees, and immigrated here by merit through employer sponsor). Pray that God would lead her and give her more wisdom to treat Christians and conservatives fairly. It’s too bad that we can’t have more Bible-believing Christians in high places, but we can always pray that God would change the hearts and minds of those who are there now.

If there’s one thing that the secular left wants you to believe about the police, it’s that white police officers are constantly shooting innocent black people with no criminal records for “crimes” like wearing “baggy pants”. When I speak with secular leftists, especially women, this view is taken as being as true as the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun. But is it?

You might not know about this, but there is a pretty interesting black professor of Economics teaching at Harvard University. The Free Press has an article about him:

Roland Fryer, an economics professor at Harvard, is a superstar by any measure. At the age of 30, he became the youngest black person ever to receive tenure at the Harvard. The MacArthur Foundation declared him a genius in 2011. And in 2015 Fryer won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, given yearly to the most promising economist under 40.

[…]Abandoned at birth by his mother, Fryer clawed his way out of poverty to land a spot at the University of Texas, Arlington, earned his Ph.D. at Penn State, done postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago with the Nobel Laureate Gary Becker, and, finally, wound up at Harvard, where he eventually met his wife, a biologist, and became one of the university’s most celebrated professors.

OK, that’s very interesting. But now he’s authored a new study that has caused him to require armed security.

Here’s a report about it from the Daily Caller, based on a recent interview with Bari Weiss.

Harvard economics Professor Roland Fryer needed armed security with him to go out in public after he published a study finding no evidence of racial bias in officer-involved shootings, he said in an interview with The Free Press founder Bari Weiss.

Fryer, a top economist who became the youngest tenured black professor in Harvard’s history at just 30 years old, published a study in 2016 showing there was “no racial differences in officer involved-shootings.” After he published the study, “all hell broke loose,” Fryer told Weiss, noting people “lose their mind when they don’t like the result.”

“I lived under police protection for about 30 to 40 days,” he said during the interview. “I had a seven day old daughter at the time…I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with an armed guard.”

And here is his conclusion:

“On the most extreme use of force – officer involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account,” Fryer’s study found.

[…]He said he was “surprised” by the result because he expected to find evidence of bias.

[…]After the study was complete, Fryer said he hired eight additional freshmen to redo the study but came up with the same result.

Here’s a clip from the podcast that was posted on Twitter:

If you want to listen to the full podcast, it’s up at The Free Press.