Jim Bohn

The percentage of young adults that live with their parents is higher now than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Almost one in two now live with parents.

The inability of young people to form their own households is a long-term negative for American society.

Moving out of one’s parent’s home is an important marker on the road to independent adulthood.

But today, young people are finding it difficult to strike out on their own. 

Young people were harder hit than older Americans from job and income losses from the COVID lockdowns.  Now they’re facing an unstable job market, the hangover from the high cost of college and student debt, and falling income in real terms.

However, the biggest barrier to independent living is probably sky-high rental and housing prices.

Marriage and family are for most people a source of personal happiness and a fulfilling life.

The inability of young people to form their own households will inhibit marriage and birth rates.  Married couples want their own space and to live their lives outside of parental authority.  Unaffordable rents and home prices are causing young people to delay getting married and having children.

Though marriage rates and average family size have declined over the past fifty years, Americans still want the joys of family life. 

In fact, the percentage of Americans that view three or more children as ideal in 2023 is higher than at any time since the start of the 1970s.  According to Gallup, almost 50 percent of Americans view three or more children as ideal.  Only 2 percent of Americans view zero children as ideal.

The early years of adulthood are a critical time in our lives.  Until now, it is the stage of life in which so many important life decisions are made.

High housing costs and a bad economy limit the flexibility of young Americans to explore life’s possibilities including those concerning marriage and family and to make those choices that produce the greatest happiness and fulfilment in the long-run.

There’s plenty of evidence of rigged elections and vote fraud in Democratic Party primary elections.  Why is it so hard for the media to acknowledge that the same thing goes on in general elections? 

These days if a Republican complains about vote fraud and rigged elections, the media thumbs its collective nose and the Department of Justice hands down indictments … against the Republican. 

To avoid getting into trouble, in this post I’ll highlight election rigging and voter fraud in cases where both candidates are members of a protected group–Democrats. 

Evidence abounds that Democrats are rigging and committing voter fraud in their own elections. 

This is true of national elections.  Just look at the ever-shifting rules of the Democratic party’s presidential nominating process.

Since 1972 The first two contests of the presidential primary season have been the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.  For the Dems, no more. 

To protect an unpopular Joe Biden, who was shellacked in both states in 2020, the Democrats have suddenly changed their primary schedule to the benefit of … Joe Biden. 

Coincidence?  Hardly.  As Robert F. Kennedy (who is both a Democrat and a Kennedy, two protected classes) is clear on that.  He outlines how the party has rigged the election in a WSJ piece titled The Democratic Party Rigs the Primaries. 

Or consider the use of superdelegates.  In 2016, the Democratic Party’s superdelegates arguably kept Bernie Sanders from having a shot at the nomination.  Sanders himself claimed that the election was rigged. 

The rules changed in 2020.  Now the superdelegates are back for 2024. 

When rules change with every election that pretty strong evidence that they are being rigged to someone’s benefit. 

There’s also plenty of evidence of voter fraud in Democrat v. Democrat contests.  Yet the media would have us believe that there’s absolutely no funny business going on in Democrat v. Republican contests. 

One such case involves the Democratic Party primary in the mayor’s race in Bridgeport, CT.  The loser in the race has produced video evidence of an operative of his opponent stuffing the ballot box with illegal absentee ballots. 

There’s also evidence that the incumbent’s operatives strong armed and intimidated voters and of felons voting in the election. 

The corporate media would have us believe that some geniuses in Bridgeport just thought up the idea of stuffing the ballot box with “absentee” votes or invented the idea of strong-arming voters. 

A more reasonable explanation is that this is learned behavior.  Behavior learned from other Democratic Party operatives and corrupt election officials. 

The USA Today’s “fact check” claims that there’s no evidence of fraud in mail-in balloting.  So, what are you going to believe—the USA Today or what you see in the video from Bridgeport?  

In another case in Mississippi, the losing candidate in a Hinds County, MS supervisor’s election claims that operatives for his opponent tampered with voting machines to ensure his loss. 

To their credit the local media—Jackson lies in Hinds county–has covered this story.  I was unable to find any mention of it in the left-leaning corporate media. 

This brings us full circle to our original question. 

If there’s ample evidence of election rigging and voter fraud in Democratic Party primary elections, there’s no reason to believe that the same operatives and election officials are not doing the exact same thing in the general election as well. 

If someone asked you what you thought of Joe Biden, what would you say? 

The Associated Press asked Americans what word or phrase came to mind when you think of Joe Biden.

The results of the survey appear below.

26 percent had some variation of too old.  Another 15 percent had some variant of confused or idiot.  Only 24 percent had any type of positive association with Biden.

My answer would be “demented fool.”

Here’s Biden claiming on Monday that he literally (yes, his own words) talked Senator Strom Thurmond into voting for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

There are a couple of problems with Biden’s story. First, Biden wasn’t in Washington at the time. He was a 22 year old college student in Delaware. Second, Thurmond voted against the Act. 

The founders saw energy as an essential attribute for the Presidency.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No 70 that “a feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government.  A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.  Taking it for granted, therefore, that all men of sense will agree in the necessity of an energetic Executive.”

The last superpower to be run by a leader as infirm as Biden was the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union had a string of aging and ailing authoritarian leaders–Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko—in the decade preceding its collapse. 

Will our aging and feeble political class and their enablers in the media cause the United States to have the same fate?  Only time will tell. 

Oliver Anthony’s Rich Men North of Richmond could be the anthem of our times. 

Anthony sings of the corruption in Washington, deep state spying, inflation and the rotten economy.  Most Americans can identify.

Rich Men North of Richmond is at the top of iTunes chart.  In number two place is Anthony’s Ain’t Got a Dollar. 

The anthem of millions of forgotten Americans

Have a listen.  Check out his other stuff too. 

Best of all, Anthony is just an ordinary guy. 

Joe Biden wants us to think that the economy is doing great.  In fact, the Biden economy has large numbers of Americans living on the edge. 

Morning Consult survey found that only 32 percent of Gen Z report that they could pay for an unanticipated emergency expense with cash.  Just two quarters ago, 39 percent of Gen Z could handle a $400 emergency expense. 

The normal pattern of saving over one’s lifetime is that as one ages holdings of financial assets should grow as one saves for retirement. 

However, the Morning Consult survey shows that Millennials and Gen X are making very little progress in building wealth.  

The survey found that only 36 percent of Millennials and 41 percent of Gen X said that they could handle an unanticipated $400 expense.  These percentages are not materially different from Gen Z. 

Seen differently, Gen Xers are now more than twenty years into their adult lives and their finances are not much more stable than the finances of new college graduates. 

The survey also asked whether the $400 expense would require putting off payment of other bills.  38 percent of Gen Z and 39 percent of Millennials and Gen X would have to put off payment of other bills. 

It’s not just Americans.  A video posed by TikTok user Simone (@simonesdays) shows how after paying taxes and bills, the paycheck from her CAD75,000 corporate job leaves her with exactly in $80 spending money for the next two weeks. 

Her TikTok video has been viewed 2.7 million times and has 184,000 likes as of Friday the 4th. 

Here are some of the comments on her TikTok page from other young people struggling to get by. 

At the core of the financial struggles of young Americans is a lack of economic opportunity.  The inability of the Millennials and Gen X to improve their finances so that they are closer to the Baby Boomers than Gen Z is particularly concerning.

Fitch ratings announced that it has downgraded the credit rating of the U.S. government from AAA to AA+  Every American is going to pay for Washington’s irresponsibility though higher taxes and higher interest rates. 

Fitch’s announcement of their rating change highlights the massive amount of borrowing by the Biden Administration in addition to the decades of fiscal irresponsibility and governance failures in Washington and many state capitals: 

“In Fitch’s view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters, notwithstanding the June bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt limit until January 2025. The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management. In addition, the government lacks a medium-term fiscal framework, unlike most peers, and has a complex budgeting process. These factors, along with several economic shocks as well as tax cuts and new spending initiatives, have contributed to successive debt increases over the last decade. Additionally, there has been only limited progress in tackling medium-term challenges related to rising social security and Medicare costs due to an aging population.“

Fitch projects that Biden’s spending will blow the top off U.S. debt levels.  Interest on the debt will consume 10 percent of all government spending by 2025.  Interest rates are going to be higher making it even more difficult on young Americans afford a home. 

“Fitch forecasts a [general government] deficit of 6.6% of GDP in 2024 and a further widening to 6.9% of GDP in 2025. The larger deficits will be driven by weak 2024 GDP growth, a higher interest burden and wider state and local government deficits of 1.2% of GDP in 2024-2025 (in line with the historical 20-year average). The interest-to-revenue ratio is expected to reach 10% by 2025 (compared to 2.8% for the ‘AA’ median and 1% for the ‘AAA’ median) due to the higher debt level as well as sustained higher interest rates compared with pre-pandemic levels.“

The response from the Biden administration has been predictable.  Hit the snooze alarm and spend, spend, spend. 

S&P downgraded the U.S. in 2011 and China’s Chengxin International Credit Rating service downgraded the U.S. in May of this year. 

The Republican party lags far behind the Democrats in attracting young voters.  What is the Canadian Conservative Party doing right and the Republican Party doing wrong? 

Polling data from Canada shows that the Conservative Party has a significant lead among Gen Zs and Millennials over Justin Trudeau’s ruling Liberal Party. 

A June 2023 Ipsos poll puts Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives at 37 percent overall compared top 32 percent for the Liberal Party. 

Importantly, Conservatives are ahead among Canadians of every generation. 

Conservatives have an 18 point lead over the Liberal Party among Gen Z and a 1 point lead among Millennials. 

This is enough for a huge swing in Canadian politics.  Like the United States, Canada has a first past-the-post electoral system control requires only winning the most seats, not a majority of the overall vote since Canada has a multiparty system.  Trudeau’s ruling Liberals only got 33 percent in the last Canadian federal election.  Yet they control the national government. 

Contrast that with the United States.  Sixty-five percent of voters 30 and younger voted for the Democrats in 2022, up from 62 percent in 2020. 

Young voters were the key to the Democrats maintaining control of the U.S. Senate in 2022.  Were it not for younger voters, Republicans would now control both houses of Congress. 

Young people are fed up with Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the relics governing our country.  A New York Times survey found that only one percent of 18 to 29 year-olds strongly approve of the job that Joe Biden’s been doing.  That’s one percent. 

Yet the Republican Party badly trails among younger voters and has no identifiable plans or strategy for outreach to twenty- and thirty-somethings. 

For a glimpse at what Canadian Conservatives are doing right, here’s Jordan Peterson’s interview with Pierre Poilievre.

Lesson 1: Communicate.  Notice how clearly and calmly Poilievre speaks.  Contrast that with Joe Biden’s mumblings or Kamala Harris’s word salads.  Bureaucratic speak and empty talking point won’t do it.  Younger voters want leaders that express themselves in terms the average person can understand. 

Lesson 2: Have principles.  Poilievre’s statement on the importance of the free market is more forthright than anything that’s come from an American Republican politician since Ronald Reagan.  The Republican Party needs politicians that can speak to free market economics or other conservative ideals with the same passion as Mr. Poilievre. 

Lesson 3: Be for change.  Poilievre clearly contrasts the Conservative agenda with the of the ruling Liberals.  Young Americans are looking for change too.  Surveys show that more than 90 percent of young Americans are either angry or frustrated with the federal government. 

Lesson 4: Have an agenda for younger voters.  Notice how Poilievre talks about housing costs and opportunities—two issues of core concern for younger voters.  being against won’t do it.  The Republican Party needs an agenda that speaks specifically to the concerns of twenty- and thirty-year-old Americans. 

Republican politicians and operatives should look to Canada as a model on how to broaden the base by brining younger voters into the coalition.  If not, Republicans will find itself in the political wilderness, unable to win elections or influence the future direction of the United States. 

Karl Marx wrote that communism would solve the unemployment problem created by capitalism.  Evidence from China shows he had it backwards.

In 1847 Marx wrote: 

“Big industry constantly requires a reserve army of unemployed workers for times of overproduction. The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it, i.e., when the overpopulation is the greatest.”

But does his critique of capitalism hold? 

China provides a natural experiment.  Were Marx correct that socialism solves the unemployment problem then we’d expect to see little or no unemployment in China. 

China is the world largest communist regime.  The Chinese Communist Party has been in power for 74 years.  Surely they must have gotten it right by now. 

Well, not so much.

The figure below contains the unemployment rate for young Chinese (between 16 and 24).  Their reported unemployment rate is almost 20 percent.  And since the Chinese government often fudges its figures, the actual youth unemployment rate may well be far higher. 

Compare that to the United States.  Youth unemployment in the United States never got above 20 percent.

This comparison show that socialism, even when practiced in its most extreme form (communism), doesn’t solve the unemployment problem.  In fact, it makes it worse.

The figure below from my forthcoming book contains average unemployment rates among young people between the ages of 20 and 34 for the advanced countries of the world (OECD member countries) over the past ten years.

The chart clearly shows that unemployment rates are lower in countries with economies that are closer to the capitalist economic model (more economic freedom) than those with larger public sectors and more regulation (less economic freedom).

Bottom line: socialism fails young people wherever its been tried.  And that’s a fact.   

Gallup recently asked about pride in America.  The results show a large gap between the parties with Republicans having much more pride in America than Democrats.  So isn’t it a problem that the people with the least pride in the USA control all of our major institutions?  You bet it is. 

The fundamental rule of management is that you want the people at the top to be dedicated and enthusiastic about the organization and its mission.  If you are in business, you want the CEO to be a relentless optimist, a cheerleader for the company.  How confident or dedicated would you be in your work if the CEO of your company were constantly running down the organization?  Not too much I suspect.

Or consider your house of worship.  You wouldn’t want your parish priest, rabbi or pastor to be a non-believer or atheist.  Unless it’s clear that the leader passionately believes, followers won’t believe or follow either.  The pews will be empty. 

However, when it comes to America’s major institutions, the fundamental rule of management is turned on its head.

The people that control all the major institutions of American life are the people that have the least pride in the United States of America. 

Below are the results from Gallup regarding pride in America.  Barely half of all Democrats are very or extremely proud to be American versus 84 percent of Republicans.

Or looked at it another way, 48 percent of Democrats are just so-so on the country we live in.  They say “meh” about the USA.  

Yet the Democrats that control all our major institutions: Hollywood, the media, higher education, primary education, the arts, administrative government and in the last few years the military and big business too. 

Ponder this: In the 2020 presidential election, Democrats received 92 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia.  That percentage is far higher than in any state (next was Vermont at 66 percent).  If DC Democrats are like Democrats nationally (if anything, DC Democrats are more liberal) then it’s likely the case the bureaucrats that run our national government have less pride in the country than any comparably sized group anywhere in the United States.  How messed up is that?

The reason that most Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track is that the wrong people, the people with the least pride in the USA, are the ones running every major institution in America. 

We need to get back to management rule number one; have people that believe in and take pride in America be the ones in control of our major institutions if America is ever to be a great country again.   

The media and Democrats portray young Americans as firmly behind affirmative action.  This isn’t true.  Young Americans are ready to put racial discrimination behind us. 

Don’t believe the media and Democrats on the Supreme Court decision to end racial discrimination in college admissions.   

Democrats and the media portray Gen Z and Millennials as fully behind the use of race in college admissions.  The truth is much different. 

A plurality of Americans oppose the use of race in college admissions.  A survey by the Pew Foundation found that 50 percent of all Americans opposed the use of race versus only 33 percent that approved.  Hispanics were equally divided, 39 percent to 39 percent.  Less than half of blacks (47 percent) approve of affirmative action.

Still, universities cling to the use of race.  This demonstrates how out of touch higher ed has become with middle America. 

Young people are at best split on the issue of affirmative action.  Just as many young people disapprove of using race for college admissions and hiring as do. 

Harvard University’s Youth Poll regularly asks Americans between the ages of 18 to 29 whether “qualified minorities should be given special preferences in hiring and education.”

In the most recent poll, only 30 percent agreed with affirmative action.  33 percent disagreed.  This that held strong opinions were more unfavorable toward affirmative action.  Only 12 percent strongly agreed with affirmative action while 18 percent were strongly opposed. 

Given that young people are at most evenly divided on the issue, the predominance of young backers in the media reflects not reality but instead the media’s preferred narrative. 

Instead of attacking the ruling, President Biden should stop dividing Americans based on race.  His own record on racial matters is a dismal one.    

Polling by Harvard shows that most young people don’t like the way Biden is handling race relations.  58 percent of 18–29-year-olds disapprove of Biden’s handling of race relations, only 38 percent approve. 

55 percent of blacks and 38 percent of Democrats between 18 and 29 disapprove of how Biden’s handling race relations.

The Daily Mail asked voters for their one-word descriptions of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.   The responses of Democrats and Republicans on the leading candidate of their own party is telling.

Most Republicans see Donald Trump in a positive light.  The words that Republicans most associated with Trump were “leader”, “patriot”, “businessman”, “awesome”.   All good stuff. 

The word cloud below is from the Daily Mail site.

Now contrast that to how Democrats see Biden in the word cloud below.

“Old” came through in huge bold letters.  Democrats themselves see Joe Biden as a relic, not up to the job.  “Incompetent” also came through pretty strongly among Democrats. 

Most Americans have had enough of Biden and his far-left policies.  Biden’s approval has been underwater for almost two full years. 

A majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again. 

And that’s especially true of young people.  A New York Times poll just last year found that 94 percent of young Americans don’t want Joe Biden to be the Democratic party’s nominee in 2024. 

The Democratic Party isn’t listening to the voices of young people or even their own voters.  

Instead, they shut down fresh, new ideas like those of Robert Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard. 

Here at GOUSA, we offer new ideas for making America the land of opportunity.

Ideas like rating politicians on whether they support and vote for greater opportunity for all Americans. 

And we hold them accountable with our OppScore opportunity scoring system.

Democrats and most of the legacy media are elated at the indictment of Donald Trump on charges relating to the possession of classified material.  They should moderate their glee.  Politically motivated prosecutions often don’t go as intended. 

The indictment of former president Donald Trump on charges relating to the possession of classified documents was met with glee by the media and Democrats.

Democrats didn’t bother to even maintain the pretense that the prosecution had nothing to do with their political objectives.  Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) celebrated saying the indictment is “one of many steps” toward eliminating Trump.  Cori Bush (D-MO) tweeted out a canned clip of women furiously applauding.

MSNBC expressed their “excitement” at the indictment and as upfront in their hopes that the indictment would serve the political goal of taking Trump out of the 2024 race. 

However, Americans see the charges as politically motivated.  According to an ABC New/Ipsos poll, 47 percent of American adults see the charges as politically motivated.  Only 37 percent think that the Biden DOJ is operating on the level. 

Democrats and the media should temper their glee.  Political prosecutions often don’t go the way that their backers hope that they do.

The most notable case of politically motivated prosecutions was the 1936-1938 show trials in the Soviet Union.  The trials were directed at members of the regime accused of being Trotskyists and members of the Right Opposition.

Those put on trial included Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamanev.  Zinoviev and Kamenev, along with Stalin, were the leaders of the Soviet Union following the debilitation and death of Lenin.  Zinoviev and Kamenev were on the wrong side of a power struggle with Stalin over the policy of Socialism in One County.

Defendants in the Moscow trials were accused of trying to assassinate Stalin and restore capitalism in the Soviet Union.  As documented by Stephen Kotkin and other scholars, the charges were preposterous.   

All defendants were found guilty and shot by the NKVD. 

Despite the obviously political nature of the trials, many left-wing “intellectuals” in the United States approved of the trials and their outcome.   In 1938, 150 Americans leftist supporters of the Soviet Union issued “A Statement by American Progressives” in support of the Moscow Show Trials. Among the signers were playwright Lillian Hellman and poet Langston Hughes.  Hellman never recounted her support for the trials. 

However, there was considerable blowback in the West.  The New York Times wrote: “It is as if twenty years after Yorktown somebody in power at Washington found it necessary for the safety of the State to send to the scaffold Thomas Jefferson, Madison, John Adams, Hamilton, Jay and most of their associates. The charge against them would be that they conspired to hand over the United States to George III.”  

The trials also fractured support for the Soviet Union in the west.  Communist party leaders in most western countries denounced the Moscow show trials and led many to break with Stalinism.

Politically motivated prosecutions are problematic.  There are a lot of unknowns as to how a trial involving former president Trump would go.  The case may satisfy the Democrat’s political goals, variously defied as keeping Trump off the ballot or, the opposite, ensuring that Republican anger will increase support for the former president. 

Th indictment sets in motion a process the outcome of which is hard to predict.

The run up to the trial and courtroom proceedings would provide Mr. Trump with a platform to make his case.

The clear disparities between the treatment of Donald Trump on one hand and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden regarding similar acts calls into question the integrity of the Justice Department. 

Finally, the indictment make America look like a banana republic in the eyes of the world.  It opens up America to criticism by foreign leaders, such as Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who previously labeled Alvin Bragg’s charged against Trump as political. 

One wonders whether they still teach Orwell in schools these days.  Almost one in three members of Gen Z says that they would accept government surveillance cameras in their home.    

A new survey from the Cato Institute asked Americans about their view on government surveillance and central bank digital currencies. 

The survey found that large numbers of young Americans would be happy having Big Brother watching them. 

Almost one third of 18- to 29-year-olds said that they would favor having the government install surveillance cameras in their home to monitor them for illegal activity.    Only 6 percent of Baby Boomers would allow Big Brother into their homes.   

It’s not just their homes.  Gen Z also is happy having Big Brother in their pockets.  32 percent of Gen Zers support CBDCs.

In fact, 24 percent of Gen Z would support CBDC even if it meant that government could freeze the bank accounts of political protestors. 

That’s exactly what happened in the Canadian trucker protests in which the government ordered banks to freeze the accounts o truckers and other protesting the government’s authoritarian (and unnecessary) COVID lockdown. 

History shows that when governments have the ability to squelch dissent they will do it. 

Whether it is the East German Stasi, the Chinese Communist Party’s social credit system or the National Security Agency’s domestic bulk data collection program (for which they lied to Congress about its existence), the tools of government surveillance are the tools of totalitarianism. 

It’s not just woke ideologies infecting college campuses these days.  Here’s a roundup of news stories of violent, fraudulent and just plain stupid things that college professors are doing.

Professors gone wild!

A friend who, like many GOUSA members and followers has spent a lot of time in academics, told me that there are two kinds of professors on college faculties today: one type consists of faculty that are truly insane.  The other type are faculty that merely act like they are insane to keep their jobs.

Without trying to separate the flotsam from the jetsam, here’s a quick roundup of some of the crazier items in just the month of May concerning those highly credentialed individuals that are molding young minds (snicker, snicker).

Hunter College (New York) professor threatens reporter with machete.  Amazingly she was fired for threatening to decapitate the reporter.  In higher ed, it’s OK to have lost your mind, but chopping off someone else’s head is still a no-no (at least for now).      

Michigan State University professor sued for forcing students to fund “progressive’ group.   According to the plaintiffs “Wisner allegedly forced her roughly 600 students to pay a $99 membership fee to “The Rebellion Community” as part of her class requirements during the spring 2023 semester.  Barbieri and Radomski soon discovered that Wisner was the creator and controller of The Rebellion Community and alleged she used the estimated $60,000 collected from them and their peers to fund groups like Planned Parenthood that go against their anti-abortion beliefs, according to the 88-page complaint filed last week.”  Donations still being accepted to the Human Fund. 

Northern Idaho College professor assaults college board member.  “According to NIC, the assistant professor, Zackary Shallbetter reportedly went to Banducci’s office, walked past reception and verbally threatened him.  That’s before he then reportedly threw a bucket of liquid over Banducci, his desk, computer and other office equipment.”    

University of Albany (New York) professor arrested for disrupting a pro-life event, struggling with police

University of Michigan professor claims boycott of target is ‘literal terrorism’.  None of the 3,000 dead Americans on 9/11 could be reached for comment.    

Stanford University professor claims aliens live on earth.  Call the men in Black.  We’’ll accept that maybe visitors from other worlds inhabit faculty lounges, but aliens (from space) in society large, no.  Well maybe Cambridge. 

And here’s one that show that it’s not just professors at American universities that are nuts:

Delhi University professor arrested for impersonating Indian state Lieutenant Governor.  “According to the officials, Singh had called the Vice Chancellor of the IP University twice over the landline phone impersonating the LG.  In the first instance, Singh got his leave sanctioned and in the second instance on September 30, 2022, he tried to get his sister appointed as faculty in the English Department of the GGSIPU.”  

The U.S. military used to be held in the highest esteem by the public.  No more.  Public confidence in the military has plummeted.  The military has gone woke and is increasingly becoming a joke. 

Contrast the way that the Navy used to recruit sailors with today.

Here’s how the Navy used to do it:

Here’s how the Navy does it today:

Despite a military budget close to $1 trillion a year, the Navy and the other services are facing a recruitment crisis.

That shouldn’t be a surprise.  Why go through all the trouble of joining the Navy for drag shows when you can find than at your local public library or elementary school?

The problem is not with the ordinary soldier.  Rather, it’s with the top brass that have become overly politicized. 

A 2022 poll showed that 62 percent of Americans say that they have lost some or a lot of confidence in the military because it has become overly politicized. 

In that same poll, only 48 percent of Americans said that they had a great deal of confidence in the military.  In 2019, the last time that the poll was taken during the Trump Administration, 63 percent of Americans said that they had a great deal of confidence in the military.

It’s not just that the values of General Milley and company don’t reflect those of middle America.  It’s that they insist on rubbing our noses in it.  They treat small town and middle-class Americans—the demographics most likely to join the services—as the deplorables they think we are.

We can laugh at this one episode.  You can be sure that the late night shows will.  But this is not an isolated case.  Consider the set of military recruitment ads in the video below. 

Russia, China, Italy, Brazil and even Germany portray military service as filled with adventure, action, travel and being around cool stuff like tanks, planes and ships.  

And the U.S. military: progressive politics. 

It’s no wonder few want to join.

With Joe Biden likely to announce a run for a second term, a Granite State Poll shows Biden overwhelmingly rejected by NH Dems, especially younger ones.

A Granite State Poll released on April 20 shows that Joe Biden has almost no support whatsoever among young Democrats in New Hampshire and tepid support at best among all New Hampshire Dems.   

With Biden’s numbers in rock bottom among young voters, will the GOP finally come up with an agenda and candidate that’s attractive to Americans under the age of 45?  Time will tell. 

When asked who they would like to see as the Democratic party’s 2024 nominee, only nine percent of likely Democratic voters between the ages of 18 and 34 chose Joe Biden.  Just. Nine. Percent.

50 percent of young New Hampshire Democrats state that they definitely do not want Biden to run.  Another 23 percent say that they probably would want to see Biden run again.  That 73 percent of young New Hampshire Democrats that are thumbs down on Biden 2024.    

And 49 percent of young New Hampshire Democrats have an unfavorable view of Joe Biden.

Biden’s numbers among all New Hampshire Democrats are also awful.

23 percent of all likely Democratic primary voters have an unfavorable impression of Biden.  Scranton Joe is particularly disliked among working class Democrats.  44 percent of likely Democratic voters that make less than $45,000 and 40 percent with a high school degree or less have an unfavorable impression of Biden.  

Joe Biden’s numbers are better than one national Democratic politician—his own Vice President.  44 percent of likely Democratic voters that make less than $45,000 and 53 percent with a high school degree or less have an unfavorable impression of Kamala Harris.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who just announced his candidacy has 27 percent favorable/17 percent unfavorable among young New Hampshire democrats.  Kennedy’s opposition to the deep state, corporatism, and endless wars contrasts with the authoritarianism, cronyism and militarism of the Biden Administration.

Kennedy’s appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show is well worth watching. 

GOUSA hasn’t yet published a rating for Robert Kennedy.  A rating will be available once more information becomes available about his positions.  

To quote Forrest Gump: Stupid is as stupid does.  The Biden Administration now wants homebuyers with good credit to subsidize homebuyers with bad credit.  You’d think that Washington politicians would have learned something from the 2008 financial crisis.  No.  Stupid is as stupid does.   

The Biden Administration is making chumps out of every hard-working American that carefully saved up for a down payment on a new home.  New pricing rules that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac plan to implement will force home buyers with good credit that put a lot of money down to subsidize those with bad credit. 

Here are the details from the New York Post:

“Loan level price adjustments (LLPAs) are upfront fees based on factors such as a borrower’s credit score and the size of their down payment. The fees are typically converted into percentage points that alter the buyer’s mortgage rate.

Under the revised LLPA pricing structure, a home buyer with a 740 FICO credit score and a 15% to 20% down payment will face a 1% surcharge – an increase of 0.750% compared to the old fee of just 0.250%.  When absorbed into a long-term mortgage rate, the increase is the equivalent of slightly less than a quarter percentage point in mortgage rate. On a $400,000 loan with a 6% mortgage rate, that buyer could expect their monthly payment to rise by about $40, according to calculations by Stevens.

Meanwhile, buyers with credit scores of 679 or lower will have their fees slashed, resulting in more favorable mortgage rates. For example, a buyer with a 620 FICO credit score with a down payment of 5% or less gets a 1.75% fee discount – a decrease from the old fee rate of 3.50% for that bracket.”

The result, according to industry pros: pricier monthly mortgage payments for most homebuyers — an ugly surprise for those who worked for years to build their credit, only to face higher costs than they expected as part of a housing affordability push by the US Federal Housing Finance Agency.

“It’s going to be a challenge trying to explain to somebody that says, ‘I worked my whole life for high credit and I’ve put a lot of money down and you’re telling me that’s a negative now?’ That’s a hard conversation to have,” one worried Arizona-based mortgage loan originator told The Post.

Subsidizing bad credit is exactly what led to the 2008 financial crisis.   Making those that carefully managed their finances pay an extra $500 a year (more if you have a larger mortgage) is unjust.  It punishes saving and thrift and rewards irresponsible behavior.   

What makes this worse is that Fannie and Freddie have a near monopoly on the mortgage market.  Sixty percent of all mortgages are held by these two quasi-government agencies.  So chances are when you get a mortgage from your bank or lender, you are going to have to pay a lot more if you have good credit.

The Biden administration is doing to the housing market exactly what they are doing for student loans.  Making those that behaved responsibly bail out the irresponsible.

The new rules also demonstrate how deeply politicized the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has become.  The FHFA’s mission is to regulate Fannie and Freddie.  These toxic twins of the mortgage market have been in bankruptcy for the past fifteen years.  Ostensibly the reason that they are still being overseen by the FHFA  is to restore them to a sound and solvent condition.  So how does giving loans to people with bad credit in a housing market with inflated valuations (courtesy of the Federal Reserve) restore these massive government entities to solvency.  It doesn’t. 

However, if you view Fannie and Freddie as honeypots for Washington politicians it all makes sense.    

Feel like your government is taking you for a chump?  You are not alone.

GOUSA believes that responsible behavior be rewarded, irresponsible behavior discouraged.  Government does exactly the opposite.  These new rules should be an affront to every responsible homeowner that carefully built up their credit and put money away to buy the home of their dreams.   

So make your voice heard.  Join with us.  Or kick in a few bucks on our donations page.  You will be glad that you did. 

A new CNBC survey finds that three in four Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are under stress because of their personal finances.

Just over two years into the Biden and Americans are under a huge degree of financial stress.  Seventy percent of Americans report being stressed about their personal finances.  Stress levels are highest among young Americans, a voting group that supported Biden by a 2-1 margin. 

37 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 are very stressed over their finances.

Two in three 18- to 34-year-olds told CNBC that they are living paycheck to paycheck (versus 58 percent of all Americans). 

Americans are poorer since Biden took office.  Inflation has eaten into wages.  Real wages (wages after accounting for inflation) have declined by 4 percent.  Prices are up by 14 percent, wages up by only 10 percent.   

Stock market values are also down after accounting for inflation.  The S&P 500 closed today (April 14) at 4137.  After inflation, that’s a 5 percent loss in value since Biden took office. 

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage is now 6.3 percent, more than twice the 2.77 percent rate when Biden took office. Housing affordability is at a record low.

Inflation, economic instability and high interest rates are the primary sources of stress.  All of these are a direct result of the Biden Administrations reckless spending and borrowing policies.

Interestingly, student loans hardly enter American’s stress levels.  Less than one in four 18- to 34-year-olds (and one in seven Americans overall) report being stressed over student loan debt.   Only 27 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds told CNBC that they have any type of student debt.  The fact of the matter is the student loans are an elite concern and that Biden’s forgiveness plan amounts to welfare for the well off.

Biden’s economic policies are making Washington insiders richer and everyday Americans poorer.

The RESTRICT Act, which would ban TikTok, is far worse than that.  It’s largest assault on our First Amendment rights to speech and expression since the Patriot Act.  are behind it.

A group of establishment Republicans and Democrats are pushing the aptly-named RESTRICT Act, ostensibly to ban TikTok, but really to further clamp down on freedom of speech and expression in the United States. 

The bill would actually give the federal government the power to shut down any internet source from any foreign country or a company that operates in the United States that the government claims is affiliated with a foreign country. 

We all know where this is going.  Like Patriot Act 1.0, this Patriot Act 2.0 is ripe for abuse.  Trump supporters know all too well how the FBI used the Clinton dossier to trick FISA courts in to allowing them to spy on Americans.  The RESTRICT Act provides the deep state the power to shut down your access to information on their wars and other misdeeds.  You can be sure that they’ll use the RESTRICT Act to restrict your liberty in ways you can’t even imagine today.         

Here’s what Congressman Ron Paul had to say about the RESTRICT Act.

“Like the PATRIOT Act, the RESTRICT Act plays on people’s fears to make them silent while Congress takes away more of their liberty. This bill is a blatant violation of the First Amendment that the Founders intended to protect our right to engage in political speech and share political information and opinions with others. We should stop Congress from violating our right to discuss and share ideas on TikTok and elsewhere that challenge the political class.”

Banning TikTok is a bad idea on its face.  First, the content on TikTok and other social media sites is generated by Americans for the purpose of communicating with other Americans.  What the RESTRICT Act would do is stop Americans from freely communicating with other Americans.

If China wants to put propaganda on the site, so what?  After seeing tens of thousands of ad messages in our lifetime, Americans are pretty good at spotting lies.

Second, banning TikTok is anti-competitive. No surprise that Big Tech companies, and especially Meta, are the ones pushing for this legislation.  The reason is that TikTok is eating Instagram’s lunch.  Big Tech seeks to do with TikTok and ByteDance exactly what they did with Parler—use their political influence to run a competitor out of business.      

The RESTRICT Act cosponsors include ethe usual list of authoritarians from the Republican and Democratic establishments.  Here’s the list of original cosponsors:

Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Republican Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah. 

Bonus: Here’s a clip of the hapless Lindsay Graham (R-Endless War) claiming on Fox News that he doesn’t support the RESTRICT Act.  Actually, he’s a cosponsor:

And 14 more voted “present”

A total of 100 Democrats either voted against or voted present on a House resolution denouncing the horrors of socialism and opposing the implementation of socialist policies in America.

The list appears below—sorted by state and including vote position.  Since many GOUSA team members are from New England, I have highlighted the members from this six-state region. 

Every Republican member voted for the resolution.  Three were absent.    

Every Connecticut member voted against the resolution.  No word yet on when Connecticut plans to change its nickname from “The Constitution State” to “Workers of the World Unite!”

Three Massachusetts members – McGovern, Neal and Pressley voted against the resolution.  Surprisingly Katherine Clark (D-Cambridge) voted for the resolution.  One wonders if the Democratics Socialists of America are going to take back their endorsement of Clark.

Also voting against were Maine’s Pingree, Vermont’s Balint and Rhode Island’s Cicilline.

Both New Hampshire Democrats voted for the resolution.

Polls show that Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the future of the country and their personal economic situation. For too many Biden’s America is no longer land of opportunity.  GOUSA wants to change that.     

The March 2023 Wall Street Journal/National Opinion Research Center survey of Americans provides evidence of a growing pessimism about the economy and the future of our country.

By a 4 to 1 margin, most Americans think that the current state of the economy is either poor or not so good.  And a plurality of Americans – 47 percent – think that the economy is going to get worse in the last three quarters of this year. 

The primary concern among Americans is inflation.  65 percent of Americans view inflation as a major problem and 30 percent view inflation as a minor concern.  Only 4 percent of Americans are not concerned about inflation. 

The Biden economic agenda is clearly not working.  His spending programs are not the source of prosperity.  Rather, the massive increase in government spending and borrowing during the first two years of the Biden presidency are the cause of inflation and the loss of economic confidence in both the short- and long-term.    

According to the survey, only 21 percent of Americas are confident that their children will be better off than they are versus 78 percent that are not.  The Wall Street Journal reports that the percentage of Americans that have little or no confidence that life will be better for the next generation is the highest it’s been since they began to ask the question in 1990. 

Belief in economic mobility is also low.  The survey found that 44 percent of Americans thought that they did not have a good chance to improve their standard of living in the future. Only 28 thought they have opportunities for a better life. 

The survey also found that a majority of Americans—56 percent—no longer viewed a college education as worth the cost.

Here at GOUSA we are working to make America the land of opportunity again. 

Our research program identified 25 separate dimension of opportunity that are part of the five cardinal opportunity types—personal, economic, social, national and educational opportunity. 

Our OppScore system provides voters and the public with an indication of which politicians support and opportunity agenda and which do not.

If you’d like to learn more or become part of our opportunity research agenda, send us a note from the contact button below.  We are looking for volunteers that want to help restore the promise of opportunity to all Americans.   

This week Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is likely to indict Donald Trump on a case that would never, ever have been brought against a Democrat or anyone else for that matter.  Ever wondered what it’s like to live in a banana republic?  You are living in one now.

For a party that claims to care about “democracy” the Democrats are sure working hard to destroy your faith in every democratic institution.  This week George Soros-funded Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg may indict Donald Trump for the non-crime of paying hush money to stripped Stormy Daniels.

First, some facts.  It is not illegal to pay hush money.  Trump did absolutely nothing wrong.  Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz explains:

“The president is entitled to pay hush money to anyone he wants during a campaign. There are no restrictions on what a candidate can contribute to his own campaign.“

As constitutional law scholar Jonathan Turley puts it, Bragg has no case:

It should be remembered that Donald Trump paid this money out of his own pocket.  Far worse are the many, many cases in which politicians had the government pay hush money n their behalf. 

The use of hush money and non-disclosure agreements negotiated and paid for by the government is quite common.  In fact, in Massachusetts, the use of hush money and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) is coming to the fore thanks to the work of State Auditor Diane DiZoglio. 

Auditor DiZoglio is looking into the use of NDAs in Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states, and the Democrats are having a fit.  Auditor DiZoglio herself was subject to such a gag order.  

Repeat: unlike Trump’s case which involved his own funds and his own attorney, when Massachusetts and other governments pay out settlements and then seal the case, this is taxpayer money and NDAs negotiated by government attorneys on the public payroll.

It’s no wonder that Mark Twain called politicians America’s only native criminal class.

There’s more.  It’s not just states.  The federal government that routinely pays hush money to make troublesome cases go away for members of Congress: $17 million dollars in all.   Want to find out who this money was paid to?  Good luck.  They ain’t telling.  All the victims have NDAs.

To the ordinary citizen, this stuff shows how corrupt the legal system has become.  Prosecutors should bring cases for which they have reasonable legal grounds, not to get headlines or pursue vendettas against those with whom they have political differences.

A majority of Americans no longer trust state courts to deliver justice.  According to the National Center for State Courts, 49 percent of Americans now say that state courts, like the one the Mr. Bragg practices in, do not deliver equal justice compared to 43 percent of Americans that do.

Politicized prosecutions like that of Mr. Trump are a toxin on the legal system.

When those who, like DA Bragg, are supposed to treat the law with respect instead bastardize the system because they have a political ax to grind, they shred the constitution and whatever respect remains among the general public for the institutions of American life.

Biden’s Medicare plans look like they came straight out of the playbook of the AARP.  His plans demonstrate that the Democratic Party doesn’t care about young Americans. 

On Tuesday (March 7) President Biden announced his plan to save Medicare.  His plan disinherits the young: it sacrifices the interests of young Americans to benefit the old.  That may be good politics.  Young people have little political power in America.  But it’s bad for the future of our country.

Here’s a quick roundup of three ways that Biden’s plans harm young Americans:

First, Medicare is going bankrupt because it provides the elderly with benefits that cost far more than the amount of taxes that they out into the system.  But Biden wants to make Medicare even more generous and thus more costly to younger taxpayers.

Biden wants to reduce the age of eligibility from 65 to 60.  That means that millions more will become eligible for government benefits.  That costs the system in two ways.  First, more people will be part of the program which means benefit costs go up.  Second, Medicare and Social Security payroll tax revenues are going to go down since people will take advantage of the benefits by retiring earlier. 

The responsible thing is to raise the age of eligibility from 65 to 70.  The average life expectancy of Americans has increase by 9 years since Medicare started in 1966 so retirees in America are already collecting benefits far longer than originally intended.  Reducing the age to 60 means that the average retiree would get 25 years of taxpayer subsidized health care.

Second, Biden wants to hike taxes on Americans earning more than $400,000 a year.  Currently, Americans in this range already pay an extra 3.8 percent on top of the existing federal income tax rate of 37 percent.  Biden wants to increase the rate to 5 percent which means that the top federal rate is now 42 percent.  Then add state taxes on top of that.  So high earners in California are going to be taxed at the astounding rate of 55 percent (47 percent in Massachusetts, 50 percent in Wisconsin).

High taxes reduce economic activity.  Hiking taxes on the most productive, hard working and entrepreneurial Americans will only these people to do three things: (a) become less productive; (ii) not work as hard; and (iii) be less entrepreneurial.  The result: slower growth and fewer career opportunities for young Americans in a stagnant economy.     

Third, Biden wants to force down process for prescription drugs.  That sounds good in the present.  But lower prices mean less incentive for the development of new drug treatments.   Economists Tomas Philipson and Troy Durie of the University of Chicago estimate that price controls for prescription drugs would lead to a 29 to 60 percent decline in the number of new drug treatments brought to market by 2039.  As a result Millennials and Gen Z will have fewer treatments available when they need them in later life.

It true that Medicare is going bankrupt.  But is it doing so because of political myopia and the craven desire of Washington politicians to channel benefits to the politically influential (the elderly) while stock the costs to the politically weak (the young).

What America needs is statemen that think of the next generation, not politicians like Biden that only think of the next election.

A statesman would acknowledge that life expectancy has increased dramatically since the program began.  Therefore, rather than lowering the age of eligibility to 60, a statesman would raise it to 70.

A statesman would recognize that Medicare is a very good deal for current retirees.  Economists C. Eugene Steuerle and Karen Smith estimate the even high earning individuals are getting more out of the program in terms of benefits than they paid in in taxes.  It shouldn’t be too much to ask for them to pay a little more in premiums to support the program.

Unfortunately for young Americans, statesmen are in short supply.  Washington is full of politicians.  And that’s why you are routinely fleeced by the likes of Joe Biden. 

Good news is coming out from lots of places.  The push back against wokeness is finally working.  Here’s a quick roundup of some evidence.

K-12 Education

Campus Reform reports that school districts a dumping the woke curricula that college education programs have been pushing.  The reason: horrible reading scores from the use of work curricula materials.  They write:

“The nationwide low reading proficiency for K-12 students is attributed, in part, to these curricula. Though Campus Reform has identified teachers colleges as sites of social justice and anti-racism, a popular approach to reading sold by teachers colleges failed to close achievement gaps.”

Higher Education

It looks like we’ve started to see some light in the long dark tunnel that is American higher education.  Florida is taking a string stand for academic freedom and freedom of expression on college campuses and cutting spending on divisive DEI programs   So are some elite universities.   

It’s also looking like college presidents themselves aren’t as enamored of the whole DEI thing as they make out. 

Government Employment

Hiring on the basis of merit and capabilities is making a comeback in state government—well at least state governments in red states.  Texas Governor Abbott issued a memorandum directing state agencies to hire the best candidate for the job.  Radical stuff!

Big Business 

Wokesters have been hit especially hard in the business world.  Investment giant Vanguard is getting out of investing on the basis of politics.  Their own investment research showed that claims of higher returns from ESG investments is a bunch of bunk.  The Wall Street Journal summarizes what Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley told them in an interview:

“Fewer than 1 in 7 active equity managers outperform the broad market in any five-year period. Over the past five years, not one relied exclusively on a net-zero investment methodology.  Betting his clients’ money on politicians and regulators consistently doing the “right” thing would be irresponsible.  There is a receding chance the globe will be at net zero by 2050. No one should promise to base his entire investment strategy on such odds.”

Moreover, DEI layoffs have skyrocketed in the tech sector as companies see tougher economic times ahead.   

Looking Ahead

Wokeness is still the prevailing ideology—some would say religion—in America’s elite institutions.  There’s a long way to go to put this divisive, dehumanizing ideology to bed.  That’s going to take a long term struggle by those of us who believe in individualism and in judging others on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.  But there are hopeful signs that we’re getting past peak woke. 

The Wall Street Journal documents how inflation, rising home prices, and fallout from COVID are driving young Americans deeper into debt.  One wonders how long they’ll keep voting for the politicians that are impoverishing them.

The Wall Street Journal reports that debt levels and credit card delinquencies are rising more rapidly among young Americans than any other demographic group.

The article cites three factors, all of which have their basis in government policies. 

First, there is inflation, a creation of frenzied Federal Reserve money creation.  The Journal writes:

“Now, rapid inflation is forcing many to spend more on gas, groceries and rent, eating into pandemic savings. The last round of stimulus checks went out in 2021. Families are back to commuting, traveling and eating out again. The Federal Reserve’s campaign to curb inflation has pushed up interest rates on credit cards and other types of loans.”

Then there’s COVID.  The Journal points out that families had to spend a lot more on child care when schools were closed—and teachers given paid vacations—during the pandemic.  The Journal writes:

“Some changes are hurting millennials in particular. Many spent unplanned thousands of dollars on child care or tutoring when schools closed. Some relied heavily on a pandemic-era program, the government’s monthly child tax credit payment, but that has lapsed.”

And third, we have skyrocketing home prices.  The Journal writes:

“Many 30-somethings are trying to buy their first homes and have been squeezed by higher rates and home prices. The median price for an existing home was $359,000 in January, more than $90,000 higher compared with three years earlier. In recent years, prices rose the most in lower-cost neighborhoods that are more likely to be in millennials’ budget range.”

The factors that lead to home price inflation can all be traced back to government policy in some form.

 The Federal Reserve’s free money policies of the last fifteen years did nothing for home buyers.  Sure, you could get a mortgage on the cheap.  But that also meant that there was a lot of competition among buyers so sellers could get a high price. 

On balance, low rates did nothing for home buyers.  Home ownership rates for young people didn’t go up during Bernanke, Yellen and Powell’s decade and a half of monetary madness.     

Couple that with NIMBYism and zoning restrictions that make it very difficult to build new homes because that’s no land.  As Mark Twain said about land: “they ain’t making any more of it” and as long as local governments won’t allow greater density, they ain’t making more homes either.

Unfortunately, the Baby Boomers and Gen Z have proven slow to learn that government is the source of, not the antidote, to their problems.

As long as young people keep voting for more government, they’ll continue to get the shaft, and go deeper into debt to make ends meet.

Polling shows Biden continues to tank with young voters and little difference in approval among young voters between the Democratic and Republican parties.  Will the GOP finally reach out to young voters?  We can only hope.

Some things are a near certainty: a long cold winter in New England, that the Detroit Lions won’t win the Superbowl, and the Republican Party will somehow find a way to blow it with younger voters.  So this essay is a lot like what Oscar Wilde said about a second marriage—a triumph of hope over experience.  But here goes.

Polling results from Quinnipiac show that Joe Biden continues to tank among young voters. 

Here are Biden’s numbers by age.  According to Quinnipiac a mere 7 percent of 18-34 year olds strongly approve of Biden’s job performance.  In fact, younger voters are less likely to strongly approve of Biden’s performance than any other age group.  The only group where Biden cracks 40 percent approval is 65 plus.   

Now take a look at how Americans view the two parties. 

Here’s how Americans answer the question ”does the Republican Party care about people like you?”

Notice that there’s no difference in the response by age.   Republicans do just as well with 18-34 year-olds as among older age groups.

Now compare with how Americans answer the same question “does the Democratic party care about people like you?”

Yes, young people are somewhat more likely to view the Democratic Party as caring about them.  But the difference is nowhere close to the two-to-one margin by which Democrats routinely carry younger voters in presidential and off-year elections. 

And the poll results also show that Republicans are way behind among the 65 plus crowd, the group that Republican candidates traditionally cater to.

Young people are the great growth opportunity for the Republican Party.

But will the GOP fail to realize that opportunity? 

Well … the national GOP just reelected a chairwoman that presides over three disastrous election cycles.  Looks to us like the consultant class that controls the Republican National Committee is setting course for a fourth drubbing.

Karoline Leavett, 25, who ran for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022 points to the Republican establishment as the problem: ”The establishment and the leadership needs to get on board,” Leavitt said. “If we want to win elections, we don’t have a choice.”

Karoline is right.  The Republican establishment is about as with it as the Simpson’s C. Montgomery Burns.

Here at GOUSA we believe in opportunity.  That’s exactly what young people want and need.  Young Americans opportunity to live life the way they see fit.  And that means having opportunity in each of the five domains of life: education, personal, national, economic, and social opportunity.

The failure of government schools to provide poor kids with a basic education is a handicap that few are ever able overcome.  Rather than a social leveler, government schools are the driving force for inequality in America.

In Baltimore there are 23 elementary schools in which not a single student is proficient in math.  No one student in the entire school.  In the entire city, only seven percent—one in fourteen students—is proficient in math.

In one Baltimore school, a GPA of 0.13 places a student in the top half of the class. 

To call Baltimore schools a public school is a misnomer.  They don’t serve the public.  Instead, they serve the teachers unions, administrators with lifetime appointments, and the craven politicians who benefit from a captive voting block of government dependents. 

Here’s a story from the Baltimore Fox affiliate on the failure of government schools in that city.

If the Fox Project Baltimore story doesn’t make you mad, check your pulse to make sure that your heart is still beating.

The same story plays out in government schools throughout the United States. 

In Chicago, there are 33 schools where not a single student is proficient in math and a total of 53 schools where not a single student is proficient in math in the state of Illinois.

In Milwaukee, just 11 percent of fourth graders are proficient in math.

In California statewide, only 27 percent of eleventh graders met or exceeded statewide standards for math.   

Just 30 percent of Boston public school students—less than one in three–are proficient in math. 

The primary reason for inequality in America is not racism or the police.  It is the government school system. 

Consider what life is like for the students in these 23 Baltimore schools.  They’ve been robbed of the opportunity to have an education, to develop their minds.  And when you don’t have educational opportunity, you don’t have life opportunity either.

It’s not just that they’ve been victimized by the Baltimore school system today.  They’ll continue to be victims for the rest of their lives. 

So many important decisions in life require quantitative reasoning skills.  Managing your finances requires quantitative reasoning skills.  Weighing risk against reward requires quantitative reasoning skills.  Running a business requires quantitative reasoning skills. 

Those who can manage their finances, understand risk, and run a business get ahead in life.  Those who can’t find themselves falling victim to scammers, loan sharks and flim-flam artists throughout their lifetime. 

GOUSA stands for educational opportunity for all Americans.  That includes school choice, school vouchers, charter schools and more parental involvement in the classroom.  It also means teaching factual American history, US politics and civics in schools – and not political indoctrination.   

Our rating system identifies those politicians that support greater educational opportunity versus those that stand with the entrenched interests that have made government schools the engine of inequality in American society. 

Martin Gurri discusses the possibility for the development of a right/populist agenda in the most recent issue of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.  Great stuff.  Read the whole thing. 

Martin Gurri is a very smart fellow and a keen observer of the modern political scene.  In Gurri’s view, American politics today is a conflict between the elites who control all the major institutions and the rest of us that are seeking change. 

The elites know what they want: control.  The problem for those of us challenging the elite establishment in Gurri’s mind is that the populist movement on the right has a varied agenda.  Thus, Gurri casts the conflict as between the “politics of control” (i.e., the elites) and the “politics of incoherence”.

If you’ll allow me to skip ahead, there is a right populist agenda out there.  It’s the one that we offer here at GOUSA.  But first, back to Gurri.

Gurri’s view is that the establishment and leftwing populists have an alliance, albeit an uneasy one. 

“A vast apparatus of control—an octopus-like conglomerate of institutions that includes the federal bureaucracy, the news media, and the digital platforms—has been deployed to stop the populist wolf from crashing through the door. The panic evoked by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter betrays an unhappy suspicion that the beast will break in anyway. The system is as nakedly rank-based as Marie Antoinette’s France. Having assumed guardianship over the complexities of twenty-first-century life, the elites must govern because they are who they are.

Ostensibly, the center seeks power to preserve the establishment. Left populists seek power to destroy it. The Left views current social structures as the end product of a history of subjugation and annihilation. Except for a small band of heroic rebels, only two classes remain: oppressors and victims. Oppressors must be hounded without mercy. Most belong in prison. To ensure perfect equity, the state must intervene in every outcome. To protect victims from harm, hatred must be interpreted as broadly as possible and criminalized. To save the earth, capitalism and industry must be suffocated.

…

The politics of control unite the extreme center and left populism: at present, the two factions share an uneasy alliance. This is only partly a contradiction. The center is ideologically exhausted and requires justification for control. In identity and environmentalism, the Left supplies that justification. The center is also aware that institutional power has decayed and verges on collapse. By its ability to summon the digital mob, the Left can offer social control over a restless public. At any rate, left populism today is not revolutionary but performative: it needs the media to build a proper stage on which to strut. The young rebels are often the children of the elites, getting credentialed in moral drama before they ascend to leadership.“

It’s hard to argue with his conclusion.  The left-wing crazies are clearly in control of the Biden Administration including agencies and department that ostensibly should be neutral like the FBI and the Defense Department.  As Sarah Huckabee Sanders put it in her rebuttal to the Biden State of the Union Address, “the dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.”  Agreed.   

So where is a right populist agenda that opposes the establishment and seek to empowers the American people?  It’s right here. 

Gurri argues that a right populist agenda should be formed around the concepts of Sovereignty, Equality and Obligation to each other.  That’s not much different from the GIUSA agenda of Unity, Liberty and Opportunity.

Moreover, GOUSA has been working on our pro-unity, pro-liberty, pro-opportunity agenda for years.  We even have a rating system in place to determine which politicians are pursuing the politics of control (as Gurri put it) and which politicians are pursuing the politics of individual empowerment and opportunity.

Gallup poll out this week shows that Americans view their own government as the nation’s number one problem.

In 1838 Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.  The speech concerned America’s institution.  In his speech, Lincoln said that if America ever fell, it would not be from an external enemy, but from within.   

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

How prescient Lincoln was.

This week Gallup released a poll in which they asked Americans to name the nation’s top problem.  The most frequently mentioned top problem: Government.

Both Democrats and Republicans choose Government as America’s #1 problem.

The frequency by which American’s cited Government as our #1 problem increased by 6 points from the last time that Gallup asked the question.

The results should be little surprise to anyone.

The federal bureaucracy and politicians in Washington have been out of touch with the average American for a very long time. 

That’s true for both parties.

The Republican Party just reelected Ronna McDaniel to a fourth term as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. 

A mere 6 percent of rank-and-file Republican voters thought that McDaniel deserved another term.  Seventy-three percent wanted someone else.  The GOP just told three quarters of its supporters to go to hell.

You can count on the national GOP to keep the stupid in the stupid party. 

The Democratic Party is no different.   

Democrat-run cities are crumbling.  The failed public school system is the primary engine of inequality in American society. In Chicago, almost half of all public students are chronically absent. Yet nothing will change because Democratic politicians are in bed with the teachers unions. 

Solid majorities disapprove of Biden’s immigration policies.  Refugee policies are a farce. Yet nothing will change.

It’s no wonder that Americans view the government as the country’s number one problem.  It is.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is meeting this week in Davos, Switzerland.  This is an annual affair in which the elites of the Western world show how shockingly out of touch they are with the concerns of the people that they govern.

Yes, these are the people who are bringing you the Great Reset.  Not that they are interested in changing their ways.  Rather, they want to make your life more miserable.

This gathering is headed by Klaus Schwab who looks like the villain in a James Bond movie but is really much more evil.

Take climate change.  Schwab and company think that’s for the little people.  As is the case for every climate conference, nobody flies coach. Instead, the Davos the attendees arrived in at least 1,040 private jets.   Fox News quoted Greenpeace’s Klara Maria Schenk on the private planes: 

“the rich and powerful flock to Davos in ultra-polluting, socially inequitable private jets to discuss climate and inequality behind closed doors.  … Davos has a perfectly adequate railway station, still these people can’t even be bothered to take the train for a trip as short as 21 [kilometers] … Do we really believe that these are the people to solve the problems the world faces?”

So what big ideas are these worthies interested in?  One speaker wanted to make it illegal to own a car.  Presumably he was not laughed off the stage.  Yes, the same people that arrived in Davos in massive motorcades want to ban the private automobile. 

Of course, saving humanity by telling people to eat bugs is hard work so there comes a time when even the most benighted need to let their hair down (figuratively in Dr Schwab’s case).  So prostitutes are flooding into Davos to pleasure attendees and their entourage.  Lest there be any confusion, the prostitutes to which I refer as sex workers, not bankers or politicians. 

These ladies and gentlemen of the evening are earning top dollar for their services, around $700 an hour.

Worst of all, this convention of the world’s preeminent douchebags is financed by you O’ lowly U.S. taxpayer.   The United States government has given the WEF $60 million over the last eight years to fund this soiree.  Not that the attendees are pressed for cash.  634 corporate CEOs are at Davos including the CEOs of Amazon, Citigroup and Blackrock. 

So big dollars for privileged, elitist grifters while you can’t own a car and have to eat bugs.  Maybe the Great Reset ain’t so great after all.     

The legacy predictably characterized the vote for the election of the new speaker in the most negative light.  However, the conditions that the Republican holdouts sought for their votes were very reasonable. 

Zero Hedge has a roundup of what Kevin McCarthy had to agree to win the speakership on the 15^th ballot:

• It will only take a single congressperson, acting in what is known as a Jeffersonian Motion, to move to remove the Speaker if he or she goes back on their word or policy agenda.
• A “Church” style committee will be convened to look into the weaponization of the FBI and other government organizations against the American people
• Term limits will be put up for a vote.
• Bills presented to Congress will be single subject, not omnibus with all the attendant earmarks, and there will be a 72-hour minimum period to read them.
• The Texas Border Plan will be put before Congress.
• COVID mandates will be ended as will all funding for them, including so-called “emergency funding.”
• Budget bills would stop the endless increases in the debt ceiling and hold the Senate accountable for the same.

Every one of these items is very popular with the American people.  These are the 60-70 percent approval items that the Republican party should be addressing.     

For instance, 63 percent of Americans want Congress to investigate collusion between big tech and the FBI.

82 percent of Americans think it would be a good idea to place term limits on members of Congress.

75 percent of Americans are worried about the national debt and federal spending.

By a margin on 53 to 18, Americans believe that our country is experiencing an invasion at our southern border. 

The American people strongly back everything that the hold out stood for.

Indeed, the members that held out against McCarthy are already seeing positive results from their actions.

Here at GOUSA we advocate for real solutions to America’s problems.  We believe that there’s no challenge that America can’t overcome. 

Like the House holdouts, we seek to identify and advocate for solution that have 60 percent or more approval among the American people.  Our OppScore system identifies those politicians that are working to expand opportunity and prosperity in America and those that don’t.   

A new survey of the financial condition of Americans shows that nearly one in two Millennials and Gen Zers report that they regularly run out of money.  And this is before the likely recession in 2023.

Janet Yellen might not see signs that Americans are hurting but a new survey of personal financial conditions tells a different story. 

Prudential Financial’s most recent Pulse Survey found that 49 percent of Millennials and 40 percent of Gen Zers report that they regularly run out of money and have to rely on credit cards or parents for financial support. 

The survey also found that 46 percent of Gen Z and 42 percent of Millennials say that they would not be able to support their current lifestyle without parental support.

Financial difficulties are a major source of stress for young Americans. Half of the Millennials surveyed reported that they had trouble sleeping during the past year because of financial stress. 

The financial difficulties facing the Millennial generation are particularly concerning because most Millennials should be well into their careers at this point.

The Millennial generation is typically defined to include those born in 1981 through 1996.  The youngest Millennials are 26 and the oldest 43. 

That so many young Americans are struggling financially underscores the weakness of the Biden economy.

And this is before the much-anticipated recession of 2023.

GOUSA is working for greater opportunity for all Americans. Our economic policy agenda and rating system for politicians allows us to pinpoint which elected leaders support greater opportunity for Americans and those that don’t.

If you believe as we do—that economic opportunity is best achieved through the free enterprise system and smaller government rather than central planning and government control—then won’t you join our team or send us a donation?  You’ll be glad that you did.

Americans should not count on big business to support Americans values.  Businesses that stopped advertising on Twitter demonstrate that they don’t believe in the First Amendment. 

Ask yourself the following question.  What’s worse: (i) child sexual exploitation and the promotion of violence; or (ii) asking whether COVID came from a lab?  The vast majority of Americans would say of course violence and sexual exploitation are horrible things.  And a majority of Americans—72 percent according to this poll—believe that COVID came from a lab.  So in the minds of most of the public (i) is far worse then (ii).

Child porn was rife on old Twitter.  Elon Musk is purging child porn from the site.

So were calls for violence from Antifa and far left groups.  That was OK on the old Twitter. 

Corporate America was perfectly copacetic with the above.

Now comes along Elon Musk and the new Twitter.

Elon believes in free speech.  On the new Twitter, you can debate things like whether COVID had natural origins or came from a lab.  You can debate whether the lockdowns were worth it.  You can also discuss …. (deep breath) … the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop.   

You’d think that corporate CEOs would be delighted with new Twitter.  Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. 

The possibility that Americans may now have a platform to discuss important issues without fear of censorship caused corporate America to have a meltdown.

Below is a list of companies that have stopped or paused advertising on Twitter. 

The number of Twitter users has soared since Elon Musk took over.  Clearly there’s no business reason for these corporate actions. 

So it must be that these companies are more comfortable with the old Twitter than the pro-free speech new Twitter.

As Christmas is right around the corner, I’ve highlighted those companies that are in the consumer products sector.

Abbott Laboratories, Allstate Corporation, AMC Networks (movie theatres), American Express Company, AT&T, Big Heart Petcare, BlackRock, BlueTriton Brands, Boston Beer Company, California State Lottery, CenturyLink (internet), Chanel (cosmetics), Chevrolet, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Citigroup, CNN, Dell, Diageo (Black Label Scotch), DirecTV, Discover Financial Services, Fidelity, First National Realty Partners, Ford, Heineken N.V., Hewlett-Packard (HP), Hilton Worldwide, Inspire Brands (Dunkin donuts, Arby’s), Jeep (Chrysler), Kellogg Company, Kohl’s Department Stores, Kyndryl, LinkedIn Corporation, MailChimp (The Rocket Science Group), Marriott International, Mars Petcare, Mars (Candy),  Merck & Co., Meta Platforms (Facebook), MoneyWise (Wise Publishing, Inc.), Nestle,  Novartis AG, Pernod Ricard, PlayPass, The Coca-Cola Company, The Kraft Heinz Company, Tire Rack, Verizon, Wells Fargo, Whole Foods Market IP, Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, KFC).

Most disappointing are the automakers.  Ford, Chevrolet (General Motors) Jeep (Chrysler/Stellantis) are all on the list. 

General Motors was the first automaker to jump and it still hasn’t returned to Twitter. 

Automakers always wrap themselves in the American flag to sell their products.

Yet these automakers don’t stand for American values like free speech and free expression. 

If these companies don’t support American values, who needs them?

You don’t see Japanese or Korean companies on the list, do you? 

If big companies don’t have it in their heart or head to support free speech do they deserve your dollars?  Of course not. 

The Christmas shopping season is upon us.  Let’s send these corporate hypocrites a message and tell then “hell no, we are not buying your products.”  Rather, we’re only opening our wallets to companies that believe in free speech and freedom.

House Democrats voted down a bill that would provide for an audit of where military and economic aid to Ukraine is going.  Why are they afraid of accountability?

The House Foreign Affairs Committee rejected by party line vote a bill introduced by Marjorie Taylor Greene that would have provided for an audit for where aid to Ukraine is going.   Over on the Senate side, Rand Paul has made similar calls for oversight of aid programs which are now closing in on $100 billion.   

Given Ukraine’s history of corruption calls for an audit or other oversight are entirely reasonable.  Ukraine ranks 122^nd among the nations of the world according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.  That’s not far from Russia itself which was 136^th. 

Given the amount of spending and the high likelihood that some of the lethal weapons being shipped to Ukraine will end up in the hands of terrorists or international criminal gangs, oversight is appropriate.

Nevertheless, the corporate media in the United States continues to give escalation of the war in Ukraine a good leaving-alone or as CBS News did, buries its own story about military aid going missing. 

However, the media overseas is far more forthcoming. 

The Manchester Guardian spoke with Jurgen Stock, the head of Interpol, amount his concerns that weapons sent to Ukraine are ending up in the hands of international criminal gangs.  He said:

“Once the guns fall silent [in Ukraine], the illegal weapons will come. We know this from many other theatres of conflict. The criminals are even now, as we speak, focusing on them,” Stock said. “Criminal groups try to exploit these chaotic situations and the availability of weapons, even those used by the military and including heavy weapons. These will be available on the criminal market and will create a challenge. No country or region can deal with it in isolation because these groups operate at a global level.”

Similar warnings appear in the Canadian press.  Here’s an excerpt from a report by CBC News, a government-run broadcaster:

“There is the real threat that the Ukrainian government can potentially not control all of these weapons,” said Kelsey Gallagher, a researcher with Project Ploughshares, a Canadian non-government disarmament group. “They could end up anywhere.”

The $100 billion spent so far on Ukraine is just a drop in the bucket compared to the amounts that the United States will have to spend to rebuild the country after the war ends or an armistice is declared.

The cost of Ukraine nation-building will dwarf the $2-3 trillion that the U.S. spent on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Zelensky himself estimates that rebuilding Ukraine will cost over $1 trillion and the war isn’t even over yet.

These costs will be borne almost entirely by the young Americans because, as in the past, America’s endless wars are financed through debt. 

On the upside, the more expensive the war and rebuilding, the more successful careers in foreign policy it will create.  Here’s a link to a master class in nation building for those interested in getting an early start on a new and promising career.

As for future costs, Europeans will argue that they shouldn’t pay because they bore the brunt of the cost of Russian sanctions.  Moreover, the Europeans are already accusing the U.S. of profiting from the war. 

Countries in the developing world will argue that they didn’t care for the war in the first place.  No nation outside of the traditional Western alliance—not Mexico, Brazil, India or China—have imposed sanctions on Russia. 

Given the enormous sums that the U.S. taxpayer is going to be spending on Ukraine it’s high time to establish some oversight over these programs.  Hopefully the next Congress will insist on oversight before appropriating more for this war. 

Inflation from reckless spending and massive Fed money printing are putting a damper on holiday cheer as Americans have to dig much deeper to afford a holiday dinner this year. 

The American Farm Bureau reports that the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner is 20 percent higher this year than last year.  He computes the cost to feed a gathering of 10 is $64.05 this year versus $53.31 last year and $46.90 in 2020.  Comparing 2022 to 2020, the cost of Thanksgiving dinner is up 37 percent in just two years. 

As usual the Biden Administration blames … wait for it … Putin for the debacle.  Vladmir Putin, is there anything he can’t do???

Of course, the Biden Administration’s claims are completely silly.  Unless you plan to celebrate the day with a big bowl of borscht and black bread the items on your table come from U.S. farms and those farmers are subject to the same monetary and spending policies that are eating away at your paycheck and standard of living. 

But never fear.  The elites in Washington have money saving ideas for you.  Here are a few:

• NPR recommends that instead of having mashed potatoes (price up 20 percent YoY) try mashed lima beans instead.  Added bonus: afterwards, you can amuse your friends by recreating that hilarious fart scene from Blazing Saddles.   
• The St. Louis Fed suggests having tofurky (repulsive) instead of turkey.   The suggestion was so outrageous that some thought it was a parody but no, it’s a real blog post. 
• Reduce food waste by changing the five second rule to the ten second rule.  OK we made that one up. 
• Take the advice of Democratic Congressman Sean Maloney and serve Chef Boyardee for Thanksgiving.  Mmmmm, beefaroni.    

And keep your hope up.  In two years, it will all be over (hopefully). 

Happy Thanksgiving from GOUSA!

According to the Washington Post: absolutely nothing of any importance.

The August FBI raid on the home of Donald Trump’s private residence was something straight out of the playbook of banana republic dictatorships.  Never in the history of the United States has one administration ever searched the private residence of a previous president or a political opponent.

Of course, the FBI would never have treated a Democrat this way.  But this type of thuggish treatment by the hopelessly politicized FBI and Justice Department is the norm when it comes to Republicans.  See for instance the treatment of Peter Navarro or Roger Stone. 

So what did the FBI find in it’s raid.  Nuclear secrets?  No.  Other important stuff?  Hardly.

According to the Post, what Trump had in his possession were merely trophies and mementos of his time in office. 

“Federal agents and prosecutors have come to believe former president Donald Trump’s motive for allegedly taking and keeping classified documents was largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Of course, it was obvious from the beginning that the FBI was on a fishing expedition.  For instance, the New York Times reports that 99 of the documents seized by the FBI were newspaper and magazine clippings.   

All Americans should be disturbed by the creeping authoritarianism at the FBI and the Department of Justice.  The raid and the treatment of Republicans shows that this country truly has a two-tiered justice system. 

Hopefully the Republicans in the House of Representatives will investigate and force a thorough house cleaning at the top of the FBI and DOJ.  Such a house cleaning is long overdue.    

CNBC reports that most beneficiaries of Biden’s student loan forgiveness program plan to spend their extra money on vacations, dining out, alcohol, video games and gambling.

The Biden Administration claimed that their student loan bailout program was intended to help “middle-class borrowers struggle[ing] with high monthly payments.”

In fact, most beneficiaries plan to spend the cash on luxuries.   

A survey by Intelligence.com found that 73 percent of beneficiaries plan to spend their additional cash on luxuries like vacations, dining out, alcohol, video games, and even gambling.

 “Overall, 73% of applicants say they are likely to spend their extra money on non-essential items. Men are more likely than women to say they will use the additional money this way (84% vs 65%).  The plurality (52%) of applicants say they are ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to buy new clothing and accessories with the extra funds they’ll have. Using the money for a vacation (46%) or eating out at restaurants (46%) were also popular answer choices.  Additionally, applicants say they are likely spend the extra money on: Smartphone (44%); Investing in the stock market (43%); Gifts (42%); Gaming system (36%); Wedding (30%); Drugs/Alcohol (28%); Gambling (27%).”

The bill, of course, is going to be dropped in the lap of everyday Americans who will no doubt be delighted to pay more in taxes to pay of the loans of Theatre majors.    

One wonders where the Republican party was on this during the past election.   As Kevin O’Leary points out on CNBC, this would have been a great issue for the Republicans.

Here at GOUSA we didn’t see the Republicans make an issue of Biden’s bailout for the bourgeoisie.   Time for new leadership at the GOP.  Yes, long overdue.   

Young Americans Will Soon Realize Debt Forgiveness Isn’t a Good Deal

In the shell game, a street corner huckster places a ball underneath one of three cups.  Then after moving the cups around on the table the ball seemingly disappears.  That’s not the case.  A solid ball doesn’t just vaporize.  The ball is still somewhere.  The only change is that the location of the ball is just then out of sight. 

Political hucksters play the same game using debt.  You can move debt around.  But the debt doesn’t just go away.  Rather, it’s just someone else that bears the cost. 

In the case of student debt, young people celebrating the announcement of Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan will soon find that the debt hasn’t gone away.  Rather, it’s still a burden, just in a different form.     

Consider the balance sheet of the federal government.  Student loans are an asset to the federal government. 

Student loans are an asset because the federal government expects to receive interest and principal from borrowers.  Student loan payments are revenues from the government’s perspective. 

The same is true for a bank.  Loans are also an asset to the bank because the bank expects that the borrower will repay the loan and the bank will collect interest in the meantime. 

Forgiveness eliminates a source of revenue for the federal government.  In the case of the Biden Administration plan, the loss in future federal revenues is very large.  The Congressional Budget Offices that forgiveness will reduce federal revenues by $400 billion over the next thirty years.  The Penn-Wharton Budget Model estimates that the forgiveness plan will cost $600 billion over the next ten years. 

The loss of revenues from borrower repayments leaves Congress with three possible choices:(1) reduce spending; (2) increase taxes; or (3) borrow more to make up the difference.  Assuming government is spending money on things that are worthwhile (admittedly a big “if”) then reduced spending means that young people today won’t get the benefit from whatever federal programs that are cut.

Options (2) and (3) are where things get really interesting. 

Say for instance that government makes up for the loss in revenue by raising taxes (option 2).  Who’s going to pay?  Well for the most part, it’s going to be the same young Americans that were the borrowers in the first place. 

Some of the tax burden might fall on older Americans.  But the vast majority of student loan debt is held by young people.  According to the Department of Education seventy six percent of outstanding student loans are owed by borrowers aged 49 and below.  The author of this article is 59.  That means that I’m not going to be paying taxes much longer.  But if you’re a 22 year-old just receiving your sheepskin, you’ve got many, many, many years of tax payments ahead of you. 

This doesn’t mean that it’s unfair for Americans that never went to college to chip in too.  Plumbers, electricians, waitresses all pay taxes too.  But in general, adults with college degrees earn more and therefore pay more taxes than those that didn’t.  Therefore, the bulk of the taxes necessary to make up for the loss in revenues from loan forgiveness will be paid for by other college educated adults.  Seen this way, forgiveness is just a shell game replacing one expense borne by college-educated Americans (loan payments) with another (higher taxes). 

In fact, the borrowers that really make out from loan forgiveness are the 2.6 million borrowers over the age of 62 that collectively owe $104 billion who are unlikely to pay any meaningful amount of taxes in the future (but will be collecting Social Security–thank you very much).    

Suppose the government chooses option 3, borrow the money.  Borrowing isn’t free.  For one, the government is going to have to make interest payment to holders of the bonds issued to plug the budget gap.  Second, government borrowing crowds out private investment which means slower economic growth. 

Slower growth doesn’t mean much to a 59 year-old like myself.  In fact, I might like it.  Lower growth generally means lower prices for stuff and higher unemployment means fewer cars on the road.  But for a young person, slower economic growth is devastating.  Slower growth means fewer job opportunities.  Plus, since growth is cumulative, a small decline in annual growth rates means meaningfully lower living standards many years in the future.  Milton Friedman famously said that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  So too with the forgiveness of student loans.  Young Americans may be celebrating today.  But soon it will become apparent that forgiveness amounts to nothing more than a shell game. 

GOUSA stands for ending endless wars.  The military-industrial complex and the Biden Administration thinks otherwise.

Rather than seek a negotiated solution to the war in the Ukraine, the Biden Administration is plunging the United States into yet another endless war.  As if the twenty-year war in Afghanistan and the eighteen-year war in Iraq worked out swimmingly.  The same goes for U.S. involvement in the wars in Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen.  I’m sure I’m leaving some out.

The doctrine of endless war is bankrupting the United States and is bringing us to the brink of nuclear war. 

Duck-and-cover is back.  New York City released a public service announcement telling people what to do in the event of a nuclear war.  The message from the smiling presenter: just go inside and you’ll be OK.  Even the New York Times labeled it “bizarre”.   

Ukraine’s President Zelensky recklessly suggested that NATO to conduct strikes against Russia’s nuclear capabilities.  As Russia would take such a strike lying down.   

He’s also declared that Ukraine is a de facto member of NATO.  A statement sure to escalate the war.      

President Biden stated that the “prospect of Armageddon” today is greater than at any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.  Actually, today’s situation is even more dangerous.  During the cold war the United States and Soviet Union were at least talking on a regular basis.  Not today.    

Even with the prospect of nuclear annihilation hanging over us the United States refuses to engage in discussions with Russia or to push the Ukrainians to do so. 

Polling shows that a majority of Americans—Democrats, Republicans and Independents—support negotiations to end the war.  

Instead, the United States is now essentially running and financing what is becoming another endless war.  Not with a small country in the Middle East.  Rather with a country with a stockpile of 6,000 nuclear warheads.   What could possibly go wrong?

During the last two decades, the United States spent $2 trillion on the war in Afghanistan and another $2 trillion on the war in Iraq with little to show for it.  Rather than creating liberal democracies., Afghanistan and Iraq today are among the most repressive regimes on the planet.

The war in Ukraine is going to be far more expensive.  U.S. spending on the war is running at about $50 billion per calendar quarter–$200 billion a year.  That’s equal to the burn rate of spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.  And just yesterday Ukraine asked for another $55 billion to cover its 2023 budget deficit. 

Saner figures in Washington, like Henry Kissinger and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, want to stop escalating and start negotiating. 

However, with Joe Biden and neocons like Lindsey Graham (R-Raytheon) in charge, our next endless war is just at the beginning.