Radio America Online News Bureau

Former FBI Bosses Under Fire, Pizza Delivery & Deportation, Sanders Snubs Son

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to reports that former FBI Director James Comey is described as “insubordinate” in the forthcoming inspector general’s report and former deputy director Andrew McCabe is asking for immunity before testifying to Congress about the Hillary Clinton email investigation.  They also push back against the outrage surrounding the arrest of an illegal immigrant delivering pizzas to a military base, pointing out the man told a judge he would leave the country eight years ago and never did.  And they’re puzzled by Sen. Bernie Sanders refusing to endorse his own son’s congressional bid when he’s been very active backing other candidates around the country.

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Simple Solution to Save Medicare, Social Security

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Social Security and Medicare are on the path to insolvency sooner than previously thought, and Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., is frustrated that Congress won’t act to stave off fiscal disaster when the solution seems obvious to him.

On Tuesday, the government announced that on their present courses, Medicare will become insolvent in 2026 and Social Security faces the same fate in 2034.  The Medicare projection moves the insolvency date three year’s closer than the government estimated just last year.

And it’s not just the warnings of impending fiscal chaos.  Brat says mandatory entitlement spending once consumed 25 percent of the budget and 75 percent was spent on defense and other domestic spending.  Now, he says entitlements gobble up 75 percent of the budget and it already has some people feeling the pain, since far less money is available for other priorities.

“People are starting to feel that and states are starting to feel that and localities, because the same money is not getting down to them,” said Brat, always ready with an example of the red ink engulfing the U.S. to the tune of $21 trillion and another $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

“In ten years or so, they’re saying the interest payment alone on the debt will be bigger than the defense budget,” said Brat.

He’s also keeping a close eye on Wall Street.

“The bond market is the ultimate arbiter here.  They will send the signal on what is too much debt.  The unfunded liabilities fit into that indirectly.  They put (on) pressure.  You’re getting a lot of new concerns from the market itself.

“That is unfortunately what it will take.  As soon as the bond market has a hiccup, then everyone’s going to get way more responsive,” said Brat.

The trillions of dollars in debt the nation faces is hard for anyone to fully comprehend, but Brat says there is a simple approach to restoring solid footing to Medicare and Social Security.

He says those programs began when the life expectancy in the U.S. was 65, so the government made money on the people who aid into the system but didn’t reach retirement age and had enough resources to provide assistance for those that lived longer.

That has changed.

“The programs still kick in at 65 but the average death age is now 83.  So you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the answer is.  But that’s politically explosive to rearrange these programs and reform them so that has to be bipartisan and it has to be done within an election cycle,” said Brat.

Brat suspects the Democrats will continue to argue that tax hikes on “the rich” will shore up the systems for the long haul.  Brat says that would barely make a dent.

“If I told you how much you would have to raise taxes to make these programs solvent, you wouldn’t believe it.  It’s through the roof.  Those aren’t politically palatable and if you put those tax increases in, you’d bring the economy to a halt.  You’d have zero growth or recession immediately,” said Brat.

“The Democrats don’t like spinach.  They’re more on the spending side.  They’re not trying to trim and save money over the long run.  They want to expand all of government,” said Brat.

Democrats strongly dispute the diagnosis for the encroaching insolvency.  Many politicians on the left and some policy experts contend the $1.5 trillion Republican tax cuts are the driving force behind the revised estimates on Medicare.

Brat pushes back strongly against that analysis.

“That’s just pure politics.  The tax cuts are $150 billion a year (over ten years) and if you grow at three percent they’re paid for.  The left said you’ll never get three percent and we’re at three percent,” said Brat.

He says reckless spending like the Democrats forced into the recent omnibus that also boosted military spending is how we got to this point.

“What they won’t tell you is that to get nine Democrat Senate votes at the end of the budget debate, we had to plus up the budget $400 billion – the tax cuts were $150 billion – to go sign a budget,” said Brat.

Brat says Congress must get it’s act together but shows no interest in doing so.

“No. Nothing. No response.  That’s what’s stunning.  People have internalized the politics and realized what it would take to achieve that change,” said Brat.  “We should be dealing with it right now if we’re rational and foresighted.”

He says the inaction leaves an unfair burden on upcoming generations.

“The only substantial power group that doesn’t have a lobbyist up here is the kids, and if you’re not represented, you don’t get attention,” said Brat

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French Parliament Considering Restrictive Bill in Effort to Combat Fake News

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By Mitchell Sanders

The French parliament is set to debate a bill on Thursday designed to regulate campaign-related misinformation.

If passed into law, the billwould allow French authorities to bar the publication of any information they deem false in the run-up to elections. Additionally, the bill would
allow the state to yank foreign broadcasters off the air if they are judged as attempting to destabilize France. It would also compel social media
networks to introduce measures that would allow users to flag content for official government review

The bill has sparked fears of censorship; critics assert it could be used by authorities to block unflattering or compromising stories. Legal expert Vincent Couronne insists that the law is “not only imperfect and unnecessary but also dangerous for the peace and diversity of public debate.”

Other experts agree, saying that the bill is a step towards censorship and insisting that the bill will turn judges into arbiters of true and false.

French politician Marine Le Pen questions, “Is France still a democracy if it muzzles its citizens?”

Under the bill, judges would have only forty-eight hours to make their decision.

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Ellison’s Exit, Entitlements Implode & America Yawns, Obama’s New Iran Lie

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome the news that outspoken liberal Rep. Keith Ellison is leaving the House of Representatives to run for statewide office in Minnesota, a venture they sincerely hope ends in failure.  They also lament that Medicare and Social Security are getting closer to insolvency and neither lawmakers nor most Americans seem all that concerned about it.  They also highlight yet another lie perpetrated by the Obama administration in getting the Iran nuclear deal done, this time allowing Iran access to U.S. banks while adamantly telling lawmakers it would not do so.

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Rogan Recalls Upheaval, Stacked Field 50 Years After RFK’s Death

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Fifty years ago Tuesday, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy eked out a narrow win in the California presidential primary.  Moments after declaring victory, Kennedy was fatally shot, throwing the 1968 presidential race into further turmoil and sending political shockwaves still being felt today.

Former Rep. James Rogan, R-Calif., who also served as one of the impeachment managers against President Clinton in 1999, is now a judge on the Superior Court of California in Orange County.  He is also the author of “On to Chicago: Rediscovering Robert F. Kennedy and the Lost Campaign of 1968.”

Rogan was 10 years old and finishing the fifth grade when Kennedy was killed.  His class was enthralled with the very competitive Democratic primary.  While most of the kids backed Kennedy, Rogan strategically supported Sen. Eugene McCarthy, D-Minn., to impress a cute girl in his class who was also on the McCarthy bandwagon.

Rogan remembers staying up past midnight, seeing McCarthy concede and Kennedy declare victory.  It was only in the morning that a classmate called to tell him Kennedy had been murdered.  He then flipped on his family’s new color television and saw the footage of Kennedy on the hotel floor.

“The first thing I saw was color footage from six hours earlier of Kennedy flat on his back on this concrete floor of a pantry of a hotel in Los Angeles, with this big pool of maroon blood seeping from the back of his head.  I had never seen anything like that before,” said Rogan.

Another Kennedy assassination would have been traumatic enough for the country, but his murder also followed the Tet Offensive in Vietnam that greatly galvanized the anti-war movement, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. two months earlier and the race riots that followed in over a hundred cities around the nation.

“People in 1968 really believed that a possible revolution was afoot,” said Rogan, who noted that the GOP candidates vigorously committed to victory in Vietnam and backing the police amongst the rioters in our urban centers.

America’s political and cultural environment was a powder keg in 1968, and Judge Rogan says he’s stunned by how many younger, well-educated Americans know almost nothing about it.

“We have generations of young professionals today who have never heard of Robert F. Kennedy or Nelson Rockefeller, or Eugene McCarthy, or Hubert Humphrey, people who were titans on the political stage in 1968,” said Rogan.

While people too young to remember Kennedy’s assassination or the upheaval of 1968 may think of it as ancient history, Rogan is quick to point out the same ideas seen on the campaign trail in 2016 found their roots in 1968.

“It really struck me how 1968 and 2016 had so many different parallels: a nation divided, the polarization of politics, the abject hatred that people had for the other side, the incendiary campaign strategies of some candidates,” said Rogan, who was working on his book during the 2016 campaign.

He says Bernie Sanders was not pushing anything new in the last campaign, because Kennedy and McCarthy were espousing the same ideas five decades earlier.

“If you go back and study their speeches, and their campaigns, and what their issues were, you can see it is a direct predecessor to what the progressives of today are talking about,” said Rogan.

“Anybody who wants to understand 2016 and 2018 needs to understand 1968 if you want to know where it all started and how the connection reaches back in time,” said Rogan.

Another parallel between 1968 and 2016 is the prodigious field of candidates.  But while 2016 featured 17 Republican candidates at one point, Rogan says 1968 was remarkable for the many prominent names all battling each other.

“Running against each other in one single race, you had President Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, three-term Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, Bobby Kennedy, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, George Wallace – who made Donald Trump look like a shrinking violet on the campaign trail – and Gov. George Romney from Michigan, who was Mitt’s dad,” said Rogan.

“It was the ultimate throwdown in American politics,” he added.  Nixon ultimately won the election over Humphrey, with Wallace winning a handful of states as an independent candidate.

In addition to recalling the horror of Kennedy’s assassination and the fallout on our nation, Rogan’s book also examines what would have happened if Kennedy had not been killed.  The idea has intrigued Rogan since learning Kennedy probably would have made a full recovery if Sirhan Sirhan’s bullet had been off course by just a centimeter.

“I wanted to explore, not based on sentimentality or that Camelot sentimental nonsense.  I wanted to explore the issue, based on the facts and the evidence, what really would have happened if Bobby Kennedy had survived and continued his campaign: what would have happened to the Democratic Party, what would have happened to the Republican ticket and what would have really happened in November 1968,” said Rogan.

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Tedious Anthem Spat, Cruz Speechless Over Pardons, Starbucks Boss’s Venti Dream

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America groan as President Trump disinvites the Philadelphia Eagles from their White House visit, after most players decided to boycott the event.  They also laugh as the normally loquacious Sen. Ted Cruz is left speechless after being asked if he thinks President Trump has the power to pardon himself.  And Jim rips outgoing Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz for his pathetic noncommittals on the 2020 presidential race, while explaining how Schultz would likely be a flop in the Democratic primary.

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‘A Significant Win for Religious Freedom’

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of the Colorado baker who refused to customize a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony, exciting defenders of religious liberty but leaving some of the broader issues of free speech and religious expression unresolved.

The 7-2 decision reversed a decision by the Colorado Court of Appeals and resolved a six-year legal dispute between Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips and the same-sex couple who allege Phillips discriminated against them.

“This is a significant win for religious freedom and it’s a great decision from the court that affirms the basic freedom for everybody to live and work according to their religious beliefs, without fear of unjust punishment from the government.  That’s a great thing for Jack and that’s a great thing for everybody today,” said Kate Anderson, legal counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Masterpiece Cakeshop in this case.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015, also wrote the ruling this case.

“I was in the courtroom when this decision was handed down and when Anthony Kennedy was the one reading the decision, it really made me nervous,” said Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver, a fierce critic of Kennedy on many cases related to marriage over the years

“You couldn’t tell which way he was going at the very beginning, but as his discussion of the case moved forward it was clear the court ultimately sided with Jack Phillips,” added Staver.  “To get seven justices to agree on this particular issue, whether it’s narrow or broad, is a spectacular event, and it’s a good day.”

The legal battle began in 2012, when Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins entered the shop, looking to order a cake for their same-sex ceremony.

“He offered to sell them anything in his shop.  He just explained that he cannot create custom wedding cake designs that send a message that violates his conscience, in this case a cake that is custom in nature and sends a message celebrating a vision of marriage that violates his conscience,” said Anderson.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission came down very hard on Phillips.

“The commission ruled against him and showed a great deal of hostility in that ruling.  They ordered him to create cakes for same-sex weddings despite his religious beliefs if he created any wedding cakes, so he has had to stop creating wedding cakes.  It’s been about a 40 percent hit on his business.

“The commission also ordered him to re-educate all of his staff in accord with the commission’s views on marriage.  Mostly it’s his family that works for him, so he was ordered, essentially, to re-educate his family on these issues,” said Anderson.

It was that “hostility” that drove Monday’s court ruling.

“[I]t must be concluded that the State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’ sincere religious objections in away consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed. The official expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioners’ comments—comments that were not disavowed at the Commission or by the State at any point in the proceedings that led to affirmance of the order—were inconsistent with what the Free Exercise Clause requires,” wrote Kennedy

“The Commission’s disparate consideration of Phillips’ case compared to the cases of the other bakers suggests the same. For these reasons, the order must be set aside,” he added.

Anderson says the ruling is great vindication for Phillips.

“Now he can live according to his religious beliefs, which is a great thing for everyone.  The court was clear that the government cannot be hostile to religious beliefs and that the government, in applying the laws,  must be fair and respectful of people’s religious beliefs,” said Phillips.

But the decision is being characterized many many as narrow, not due to the margin in the court’s vote but to the impact of the ruling.

“The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved
with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market,” wrote Kennedy at the end of his opinion.

Staver says that means the battle goes on.

“One thing for sure is that it didn’t settle once and for all this issue of the clash between the first amendment and the LGBT agenda.  That will be saved for another day,” said Staver.

Anderson agrees in principle but says the condemnation of hostility could apply to other cases, such as Washington state florist Baronelle Stutzman, who is also on the legal ropes after refusing to service a same-sex wedding for clients she served for other purchases for years.

Anderson contends Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson demonstrated very similar hostility to Stutzman, moving forward with a case before he even had a client.

Staver says the court could add additional heft to Monday’s decision when it rules on another hot-button issue later this month.

“I think what we’re going to see between now and the end of June is a case out of California, involving crisis pregnancy centers and forced speech.  The state is forcing them to give a pro-abortion message.  I believe the court is going to come down on the side of the crisis pregnancy centers against the forced speech,” said Staver.

While the broader issues have yet to be resolved, Anderson says all Americans should celebrate what happened on Monday.

“Civil liberties run together so when one person’s rights to live according to their beliefs are violated, everybody’s beliefs are at risk.

“I hope that everyone can see that, that this strong decision that government needs to respect people’s ability to live and work according to their beliefs is something that goes both ways.  It means that everybody’s protected in their particular beliefs,” said Anderson.

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1st Amendment Takes the Cake, Bill Clinton Hasn’t Changed, Trump & Pardons

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America cheer the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a Christian baker who was sued for not customizing a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony but note the ruling focused on this particular case rather than broader issues of conscience and religious liberty.  They also cringe as Bill Clinton still sees himself as the victim in the Monica Lewinsky scandal and scolds an NBC reporter for even bringing it up.  And they’re incredulous as President Trump boldly announces he has the power to pardon himself and Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, contends Trump could not even be indicted for killing former FBI Director James Comey while still in office.

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Economy Strong and Only Getting Stronger

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U.S. unemployment fell to its lowest rate in 18 years and is on the brink of matching the lowest numbers in 50 years, and a former Labor Department economist is confident the economy is only getting stronger.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported 223,000 new jobs were created in May, higher than the 188,000 predicted by experts.  The report also shows the unemployment rate dropping to 3.8 percent, the lowest since 2000.  The U-6 rate, which also factors in part-time workers seeking full-time work and discouraged job seekers dropping out of the labor force, is at 7.6 percent, the lowest rate since 2001.

“The jobs market is performing very, very well.  I think that everyone can be happy with the numbers that came out today,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who served as chief economist at the Department of Labor for President George W. Bush and later as the chief of staff for Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Furchtgott-Roth is confident the numbers are only going to get better as the benefits of the corporate tax cuts kick in.

“As companies start to realize and implement plans based on the 21 percent corporate tax rate, we’re going to see a lot stronger economy going forward.  Don’t forget, the tax cuts were only passed January 1.  Businesses are still changing their plans based on those tax cuts,” she said.

The May jobs report also showed a 0.3 percent rise in wages, edging the expectation of a 0.2 percent gain.  Many economists contend that rate is still anemic considering the overall strength of the economy, but Furchtgott-Roth says a close study of the numbers explains why.

“If you look at the jobs report carefully, you can see that the unemployment rate went down the most among people without a high school diploma and and people with a high school diploma and no college.  Those are the lowest-skilled people in the workforce and they come in at a lower wage.

“One needs to realize this is an average wage and when the economy is employing more low-skilled workers, as we want it to do, then the average wage will not rise as quickly as if all the gains were among the group who had a BA,”said Furchtgott-Roth.

She also says the wage number does not factor in the many benefits all workers are receiving such as health benefits and time off for vacation and maternity leave.

Tthat said, Furchtgott-Roth is confident wages will soon be rising more substantially.

“I think the tightness of the labor market, the 3.8 percent unemployment rate, does augur very, very well for future wage increases within one’s particular group,” she said.

The labor participation rates dipped slightly once again, remaining at a stubbornly low 62.7 percent.  Furchtgott-Roth suspects some of that may be due to women waiting until school starts in the fall before returning to work, but she says the rate is simply too low.

“That is definitely something we want to address, especially among workers in the prime age group of 25-55 (years old),” she said.

While Democrats found little to criticize other than President Trump tipping his hand on the jobs report before the numbers were released, experts on both sides of aisle fear new tariffs against China and allies in Europe could stunt economic growth.  Furchtgott-Roth is not worried and believes such moves are necessary to protect vital economic interests.

“One has to realize this is is a negotiating tool and also that China is stealing America’s intellectual property, so something has to be done.  President after president has ignored the theft of America’s intellectual property and it needs to be addressed,” she said.

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Great Jobs Numbers, Virginia GOP Caves on Medicaid, Reid-ing Between the Lines

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America toast better-than-expected unemployment numbers, the best in 18 years.  They also lambaste Virginia Republicans for rolling over and approving the Obamacare Medicaid expansion they claimed to oppose for years.  And they dig through more eye-opening posts from Joy Reid’s supposedly hacked blog, including her likening of John McCain to the Virginia Tech shooter, endorsing the removal of the Israeli government to Europe, and likening illegal immigration to slave labor for multinationals.

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