When you reduce regulations, cut taxes, and limit government, prosperity follows.
December 12, 2020
ITEM #1: President Trump’s efforts to untangle the red tape strangling U.S. businesses “breaks with the decades-long accumulation of mandates that place high costs on the U.S. economy,” as the Council of Economic Advisers recently put it.
“Under President Trump’s Administration, regulatory costs tracked by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs have fallen by $50 billion, and costs are on track to fall by at least as much in Fiscal Year 2020.”
At the heart of this success is President Trump’s Executive Order 13771, “which requires Federal departments and agencies to eliminate two regulatory actions for each new regulatory action.”
There are many policy-based reasons behind the economic boom our country is currently enjoying. This rollback of burdensome regulations is among the most significant, along with the reduction of tax rates on America’s job creators, individuals and families.
The common thread through all of this, of course, is a commitment to policies that get government out of the way, and free up our private economy to generate growth and prosperity.
Last week’s outstanding jobs report — which brought news of surging payrolls, increased wages and another dip in the unemployment rate — is just the latest evidence that President Trump’s economic agenda is delivering big-time for the American people.
And it’s also evidence that national Democrats — with their agenda of big government, higher taxes, and more job-killing regulations — are completely out of touch with the interests of the American people.
ITEM #2: Here’s your weekly check-in on California lunacy.
Los Angeles has lots of problems: homelessness, crime, failing schools, drugs, sky-high rent prices, TRAFFIC. And now city officials have turned their attention to a new “crisis.”
According to a New York Times article, the lack of shade trees in poor neighborhoods is the latest example of how the affluent get the gold mine while low-income families get the shaft.
So “the city is rushing to deploy shade to nearly 750 bus stops, using trees, shade sails and umbrellas” and has hired a “forestry officer.”
What’s really funny is that the “crisis” stems from predictions that the number of days of “extreme heat” — thanks, of course, to “climate change” (soon to be referred to as “global meltdown”) — is expected to rise above the current average of seven per summer.
Now here’s the punchline: “Extreme heat” is “defined as 95 degrees or higher.”
You know what we call a summertime temperature of 95 degrees in Las Vegas? A cold snap.
ITEM #3: During a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL) pointed out that U.S. taxpayers are shelling out some $60 BILLION a year on education for illegal immigrants.
“That cost,” Byrne noted, “is not being borne by those of us in Washington. It’s being borne by men and women and the states and local school systems around the United States of America. But really the cost is being borne by children who are being denied the programs that they should have. Children who are citizens of the United States, whose parents are citizens of the United States, they’re being denied programs because we’re forcing their state and local school systems to take on an expense that we should be taking on because we’ve failed to enforce our own laws.”
Not exactly an “America First” situation, is it?
ITEM #4: The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has “left in place a Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients before abortions.”
The left-wing ACLU, which sued to block the law, argued that “ultrasound laws violate physicians’ speech rights under the First Amendment.”
We’d be more inclined to listen to the ACLU’s complaint if they weren’t so hypocritical. The same organization opposes a doctor’s right, citing religious and moral objections, not to perform abortions.
You can’t have it both ways.
ITEM #5: New York City Councilman Rafael Espinal has introduced a bird-brained ordinance to stop feathered creatures from flying into skyscrapers.
The bill would force builders to install “dotted patterns on transparent surfaces, tinted or glazed windows, sheer barriers on façades to cushion collisions, and limited interior lighting (to minimize nocturnal attraction).”
Thank goodness New York City doesn’t have any crime, homeless or education problems to worry about!
INSANITY IN AMERICA: The town of Wausau, Wisconsin, has made it illegal to throw snowballs “in the interest of public safety.”
“Snowballs are lumped in with missiles, rocks, and arrows, none of which are you allowed to throw in Wausau,” Fox6Now reports. “The ordinance decrees that you can’t throw snowballs anywhere on public property — not on sidewalks, city streets, or at school. If you do, you could be fined.”
Is nothing sacred?
NOTABLE QUOTE
“Progressives used to claim that welfare would be a hand up, not a handout. Today their only measure of policy success is how many more Americans they can make dependent on government.” – Wall Street Journal editorial