Tag Archives: Issues & Insights

About Those Medicaid Cuts…

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On Tuesday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the ‘Draconian Medicaid cuts’ some Democrats are crying about.

The article reports:

When the Treasury Department released its final budget numbers for fiscal year 2026 on Friday, what little coverage there was focused on the deficit, which came in just a hair’s breadth short of $2 trillion.

But what the “news” media missed was the much bigger story the report told. Namely, that the ongoing claims about “massive” cuts to Medicaid are one big, pre-Ozempic-fat lie.

According to the latest “Monthly Treasury Statement,” revenues in FY 2026 came in at just over $5.4 trillion while spending was just under $7.4 trillion, leaving a deficit of $1.992 trillion.

News outlets such as CNN tried to blame Trump’s 2025 tax cuts, saying they are “starting to have an effect.” But revenue this year is up 3% over last year, which is ahead of GDP growth.

On the spending side, most news outlets focused on interest payments on the national debt. But that accounts for only $82 billion of the $385 billion spending increase this year. Where did the rest of it come from.

Most of it was entitlements. Social Security spending was up $86 billion, Medicaid up $76 billion, veterans’ benefits up $39 billion. And, believe it or not, Medicaid.

Yes, Medicaid. You know, the program that Republicans allegedly “slashed” with “draconian” cuts that were going to cause untold horrors. Even now, the media are peddling the claim that Republicans cut Medicaid to the bone, causing hospitals to close and cost thousands of people their lives.

Just for the record, I do not consider Social Security an entitlement. If the government wants it to be an entitlement, it needs to stop collected money for it from working people!

The article includes the following chart:

The article concludes:

Incredible as it might seem, Medicaid spending is projected to be higher under Trump’s “draconian” budget cuts than under Biden through 2031.

It’s only after that, when spending forecasts become completely unreliable, that the spending lines cross the other direction.

And already, spending under Trump is exceeding the CBO’s forecast.

According to the Treasury report, federal Medicaid spending in FY 2026 was $723 billion – which is $15 billion higher than the CBO had projected just seven months ago.

The question the mainstream press should be asking the Trump administration is: Why is Medicaid spending still going up nearly four times the rate of inflation?

Because any time the government gets involved, the cost goes up and the quality of service goes down.

Interesting Polling Numbers On The Iran War

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Whatever Americans think of the Iran war, the fact remains that we are there and that undoing Iran’s nuclear program is a good idea. On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article showing recent poll numbers on the war.

The article includes the following graph:

The article reports:

Men are also far more likely to back military action than women (55% vs. 34%), and married women more than single women (42% vs. 28%). (Polls consistently find married women more conservative on a wide range of issues than those who haven’t tied the knot.)

Beyond that, however, there are some unexpected pockets of support. For example, young people are far more likely to support military action than the elderly. The poll found that 53% of 25- to 44-year-olds back military action, but only 34% of those over 65 do.

Those of us over 65 remember the Vietnam war.

The article also includes a graph showing who supports the War in Iran:

The article notes:

The next question asked respondents, “How confident are you that U.S. military action will prevent Iran from developing or obtaining a nuclear weapon?” Overall, 47% express confidence in this outcome (24% are “very confident”), while only 37% aren’t confident (just 18% “not at all confident”).

As you might expect, these results track the previous question fairly closely. Confidence is highest among Republicans, conservatives, urban dwellers, young people, men, wealthier individuals, investors, college graduates, and parents. It’s lowest among Democrats, liberals, and seniors.

The third question asked, “How concerned are you that the conflict with Iran could turn into a prolonged war involving the United States?”

Unlike the previous two questions, concern about this possibility is widespread. Fully 73% say they are either very (44%) or somewhat (29%) concerned. A mere 6% are “not at all” concerned and another 12% “not very concerned.”

A country that believes in martyrdom having a nuclear weapon is simply not a good idea.

Forgetting The Lessons Of Economic History

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On Thursday, Issues & Insights posted an article about a Wall Street Journal survey that indicates that Americans have not yet learned the economic lessons of the past.

The article reports:

A new poll shows widespread support for a return to 1970s-style stagflation. Well, not exactly. But most people these days support the very policies that produced the wreckage of that decade.

George Santayana was right. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Unfortunately, this group now includes people such as the current vice president who claim to be conservative.

A new Wall Street Journal survey finds that “Americans in both parties back government-imposed price caps and other market interventions to make life more affordable.”

Significant majorities (more than 70%) also support caps on prescription drugs, credit card interest rates, and child care costs. Sixty-one percent back a wealth tax on millionaires, nearly 60% favor socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ government takeover of healthcare, known as “Medicare for all,” and 57% want to raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour.

Our own I&I/TIPP survey found a shockingly high number of adults support the idea of the government owning key industries. (See: “POLL SHOCKER: Socialism Is Infecting The GOP As Well.”)

The article concludes:

But now we have nationalist “conservatives” and party leaders like JD Vance, the putative successor to Donald Trump, treating the free market as an evil that must be tamed, and extolling the virtues of government interventions, also “for the greater good.” Vance has even taken to bashing Milton Friedman (saying it’s a good thing his ideas aren’t driving economic policy these days) and Margaret Thatcher, while praising Sen. Huey Long, “who advocated socialist policies and ran Louisiana as his authoritarian fiefdom,” in the words of Unleash Prosperity.

What’s next? Calls to re-regulate the airline industry? Slapping price controls on oil and gas? The return of wage and price controls? The rebirth of New Deal programs and FDR’s economically ruinous “bold, persistent experimentation”? Once you give up on the free market, there is no end to the mischief.

We know where this all leads. And it’s not a road that makes America great again. Just ask anyone who still can remember what times were like when Jimmy Carter was president.

Those of us who remember Jimmy Carter don’t EVER want to do that again.

Milton Friedman once said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.” If you want the economy to grow, keep the government out of it as much as possible.

When The Press Lies To Sway An Election

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The mid-term elections are almost here. Soon all of the television ads for the candidates will be gone. Soon the accusations will stop flying. I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, how accurate is the mainstream media’s reporting of the Trump economic record? According to the actual numbers–not very accurate!

On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the Trump economy and the media’s reporting on it.

The article reminds us:

Republican incumbent President George H.W. Bush lost the 1992 election to the Arkansas governor who ran on the slogan “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Americans voted for change after being told over and over by the legacy media that the economy was dragging. But it wasn’t. It had recovered from a downturn, yet the media continued to shop the lie, carrying Bill Clinton to the presidency.

We’re now in 2026, less than two months from the midterm elections, and the legacy media, which is nothing more than the Democratic Party’s propaganda arm, is doing the same to President Donald Trump in an effort to lift the Democrats to a congressional majority.

Clinton’s campaign was centered on his claim that the economy leading up to the 1992 election was the worst “in 50 years.” It was true that Bush’s term had a rough patch that began in July 1990. But “the recession ended in March 1991,” according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and “an expansion began at that time.”

Read that again. March 1991. Not March 1992. Nor March 1993.

The article notes:

While Trump’s handling of the economy is at just 35%, according to RealClearPolitics polling average, the data tell a story that the Democrats don’t want told. Instead, they want to screech about an economy they claim isn’t working for everyone, and yammer on about affordability hardships their policies have caused. Naturally, the media are happy to amplify the message. After all, electing Democrats is, as they see it, their job.

So they ignore:

We  have seen this play before. The question is whether or not voters will fall for this trick a second time.

Behind The Panic About Artificial Intelligence

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After a while, you have to be sleeping not to recognize when a campaign is mounted to influence how you view something. Recently we have seen a campaign whose goal is to force Congress to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI). Who is behind this campaign and why do they want government regulation?

On Tuesday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the AI panic that is currently being fed by the mainstream media.

The article asks the question:

Twelve years ago, Stephen Hawking said that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

Heck, Frank Herbert warned in his 1965 sci-fi classic, “Dune,” that “Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Countless other sci-fi plots involved intelligent machines killing off or enslaving humans.

So, why is this latest warning getting so much traction? And why did Jacob Coxon, a relatively low-level former employee at Anthropic, become an instant media celebrity?

Sunday, the New York Times home page prominently featured four articles — all free to read — about AI. (See screenshot at right.)

Also over the weekend, the four biggest AI labs called for the industry to slow down development.

The article notes:

Reporters pressed Trump for his take on “concerns about AI leading to human extinction.” His response was that “We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”

So, again, we ask, who is driving this narrative?

The media don’t seem to care. But there are clues. First is the fact that Democrats are playing it up for political reasons before the midterm elections. They want to win votes. Second is China, which would benefit from the U.S. putting itself into an AI straitjacket.

But there’s another clue. The urgent calls for regulations are coming from the leading AI companies.

Obviously China will benefit if America slows down AI and research into it, but there is another reason the companies involved want regulation. Regulation can create barriers for new companies in the industry. Making it harder for new companies to break into the industry will eventually create a monopoly formed by the companies already there.

Nothing reported in the media happens by accident.

Bring On The Class Warfare

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On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted an article about tax-the-rich idea to end the federal deficit.

The article reports:

The theater kids who have taken over the Democratic Party have brought to the forefront the long-held proposition of the left to tax the rich to pay for a utopian future. Even before the DSA surge, the party insisted there is plenty of money out there, all the government had to do was grab it and problems would be solved. It’s nonsense of course. An even more draconian tax structure than the one we have now wouldn’t fund the federal government for even a year.

Washington, now facing a $40 trillion debt, spent more than $7 trillion in fiscal 2025, doling out an average of almost $21,000 per person. Democrats have always argued that if they could just tax the rich hard enough, they could erase all of society’s ills while eliminating deficits and debt. Either they know better and can’t help but lie, which is an organizational foundation of communism, or their math is below grade-school level.

Using IRS data to make its case, the Cato Institute says that if the federal government in 2023 “had confiscated every dollar earned over half a million dollars, it still would have run a budget deficit.”

If that won’t work, then try harder, right? Go after the villains, the billionaires. So what if Washington seized every asset they owned, not just their annual income, but “every home, property, business, investment, car, and yacht, right down to their kids’ teddy bears — and sold it all for full market value?” asks researcher Jessica Riedl.

Wouldn’t that get the job done? Nope.

“That would raise enough revenue to finance the federal government for nine months,” she says. But not nine months every year. Nine months one time only. “Then, with no billionaires left to pillage, it’s gone — as is your 401(k), because most of that wealth would’ve been liquidated out of the stock market.”

It has been stated before–the problem is not the revenue–it’s the spending. These wonderful ideas of confiscating wealth fail to take into consideration that the wealthy have tax attorneys, places offshore to move valuables to, and other ways to avoid wealth confiscation. Also, why are you taking away the incentive to be successful just to fund an inefficient government that is rife with fraud and waste? It would make more sense to eliminate the fraud and waste.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

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California has just created a black market for tires. They didn’t mean to, but they did.

On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted an article on the new tire regulations in California.

The article reports:

Which state has the highest retail tire prices in the country? It’s not a data point that anyone, as far as we know, compiles, but artificial intelligence suggests that it’s California. What we can be sure about, though, is that in about three years, California drivers will be paying more for tires than they are today. 

Significantly more. 

It won’t happen because the tire makers and retailers will suddenly raise prices. It will happen because California’s hyperactive government launched yet another new rule last week. Beginning in 2029, all new replacement tires sold in the state will have to be “at least as energy efficient, on average, as tires sold on new vehicles,” according to the California Energy Commission, which bragged that it had “approved the nation’s first replacement tire efficiency standards.”

Supposedly the rule will help consumers pocket extra cash due to the tires’ low rolling resistance. The CEC estimates the savings will reach $1 billion a year in gasoline and electricity costs.

Companies that actually make tires and therefore might know what they are talking about say that the savings are a third-rate tall tale. The new compliant tires will cost far more than the few extra dollars each the CEC reckons. During the rule’s comments period, Goodyear said prices could spike by hundreds of dollars per tire while the rule will eventually eliminate about 70% of current replacement tire market.

The article concludes:

It’s painfully obvious that California will regulate anything, without conscience, without prudence, without remorse, with no regard for the consequences. It’s a single-party state where elected officials and unelected functionaries know no bounds.

There are state lines, though, and Californians will cross them to buy the tires they want and the tires they can afford. Enterprising off-the-books merchants will buy contraband tires in Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and elsewhere and sell them in California outside the normal channels to avoid the regulators.

Who knows, some might feel the rule is the straw that finally breaks their backs and sends them fleeing the state as so many others already have because policymakers continue to make living in California an intolerable burden.

The California legislature is giving residents another reason to leave the state.

Looking At The Platform Of The Democratic Socialists Of America

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On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted an article about how well the items in the Democratic Socialists Of America platform resonate (or don’t resonate) with Americans.

Here are some of the highlights from the article:

First, I&I/TIPP asked about DSA’s proposal for the “abolition of jails and prisons.”

Only 26% agreed either strongly (10%) or somewhat (16%) with this plan, while 62% disagreed strongly (47%) or somewhat (15%).

…Next up: “Defunding the Defense Department.” On this, overall 33% agreed either strongly (15%) or somewhat (18%), while a majority of 54% disagreed strongly (17%) or somewhat (37%).

…For a third question, voters were asked to agree or disagree with “amnesty for all illegal immigrants.”

This time, 34% agreed strongly (14%) or somewhat (19%), while a slim majority of 52% disagreed strongly (19%) or somewhat (33%).

…On the fourth question, respondents were asked about “getting rid of the U.S. president and U.S. Supreme Court to be replaced by a chief executive and high court selected by Congress, not the people.”

An overall 27% agreed either strongly (13%) or somewhat (14%) with this proposal, while a more than 2-to-1 majority of 57% disagreed either strongly (42%) or somewhat (14%).

…Finally, the fifth proposal of the DSA’s plan: “Government ownership of the largest corporations and important industries.”

Again, about a third — 33% — agree with the idea either strongly (13%) or somewhat (20%), while 52% disagree strongly (34%) or somewhat (18%).

If Americans actually read the platform, it doesn’t sound like the Democratic Socialists of America will get a lot of votes. The question is whether or not Americans read the platforms or just react to the personalities of the candidates.

The article notes:

Other polls find the same level of acceptance for socialism, which is what “control or own” clearly implies.

In a June survey, for instance, Economist/YouGov found that 34% of Democrats said socialism was a “better” economic system than capitalism, while only 22% said capitalism was better. Among all Americans, 44% preferred capitalism versus 19% choosing socialism. And overall, a third of all Americans said they’d vote for a socialist candidate.

Why is this?

One big reason could be age. In the I&I/TIPP Poll, 44% of respondents were in the 18-to-44 year age range. So even the oldest among this group would have only the vaguest of memories of the collapse of communism and the subsequent debunking of socialist ideas as economically workable.

Meanwhile, in recent decades formal public education has become saturated with leftist indoctrination, well documented in numerous studies, reports and first-hand accounts.

No surprise, then, that in the I&I/TIPP Poll, 46% of those 44 years and younger supported the takeover of major U.S. industries, while just 22% of those 45 years and older did. It’s a generational thing.

Inevitably, today’s students become tomorrow’s voters. This, perhaps as much as anything, explains the current positive feelings that many younger voters seem to harbor for socialist candidates and the ideas they espouse.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Americans need to educate themselves on what socialism actually means and what the results of embracing it are.

The Real Numbers On Gas Prices

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The war in Iran has caused gas prices at the pump to go up, but adjusted for inflation, where are they?

On Tuesday, Issues & Insights posted an article to answer that question.

The article reports:

Democrats were quick to make hay of President Donald Trump’s remark that the high price of gasoline “is peanuts.”

But what if he’s right? What if today’s prices are lower than they were, say, when we had a peanut farmer as president? Or many times since then?

Democrats called Trump “out of touch” with everyday Americans.

“’Peanuts’ isn’t how my constituents would describe the spiking gas prices that make everyday life more expensive,” said New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. “POTUS isn’t paying for this war. Middle-class Americans are, and he couldn’t care less.”

Trump is, of course, being maligned … again. What he said was that the cost of gasoline “is peanuts” next to what would happen if Iran got a nuclear weapon.

He’s certainly right about that.

The article includes the following graph:

The article notes:

Yes, the national average is around $4.60 a gallon. And yes, that means filling up a tank will cost you more than $50.

But every story about high gas prices leaves out one piece of critically important context. Inflation.

When you factor in inflation, you see that today’s prices aren’t nearly as high as they have been over the past several decades. In fact, the national average price hit $5.79 a gallon — in today’s dollars — under Joe Biden in June 2022. (Funny, but we don’t seem to recall gasoline price horror stories being written back then.)

Go a little further back, and you see that gas prices were higher than they are today practically the entire two terms of Barack “We Can’t Drill Our Way To Lower Gas Prices” Obama. In fact, the average inflation-adjusted price of gasoline during Obama’s eight years in office was $4.39.

Most of us have realized that when the war in Iran ends, gas prices will come back down, and the Democrats will have to find something else to complain about.

Policies Have Consequences

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On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the end of Spirit Airlines. We need to give credit where credit is due. The credit for the bankruptcy of Spirit Airlines goes to then Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The article reports:

If there’s a lesson to be learned from the collapse of Spirit Airlines, it is that today’s Democratic Party should never be in charge of anything.

Does that seem like a stretch? Not when you consider the facts.

Four years ago, Spirit and JetBlue started talking about merging operations. Spirit was struggling to stay afloat, thanks in part to the massive run-up in inflation under President Joe Biden. The merger would have been a lifeline to Spirit and would have ensured low-cost competition survived.

But Democrats — led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren — decided that they knew better. Warren pressured then Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the Biden administration to stop it, “expressing serious concerns about the proposed merger between JetBlue and Spirit Airlines.”

She bragged in early 2024 that she “has led the fight to ensure antitrust laws are enforced across the economy to prevent mergers that will reduce competition, jeopardize fair markets, and harm consumers.”

Her leadership paid off. Biden’s Transportation and Justice Departments teamed up to block the merger — claiming it would cost travelers $1 billion a year. Then a district judge in Boston sided with Biden.

All of them claimed the same thing. That they were doing this on behalf of air travelers.

Buttigieg said in 2023 that “it’s important to make sure that passengers have choices” and that they “have access to low fares.”

When the companies dropped the merger plans in the face of these assaults, Warren cheered, calling it “a Biden win for flyers.”

A win? Tell that to the 17,000 employees who just lost their jobs, the travelers who have paid for Spirit flights they’ll never take, and those families faced with a huge spike in travel costs.

The article notes:

Not surprisingly, these same Democrats are trying to pin the blame for Spirit’s collapse on President Donald Trump, saying, as Warren put it, “spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline.”

But that’s a lie. Anyone not blinded by leftist ideology could see at the time that killing the merger was the nail in Spirit’s coffin.

Here’s how the Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni put it back in March 2024:

Without the merger, Spirit is all but condemned to death, and investors know it, selling off the company’s stock, which hit a record low after the plug was pulled on consolidating with JetBlue. The ratings agency Fitch downgraded Spirit’s credit rating, citing default as a real possibility, meaning the airline may soon be unable to pay its bills.

With operational losses, over $1 billion in bonds coming due soon, and the evaporation of available equity from the stock plummeting, Spirit’s collapse seems like a fait accompli.

(Besides, even if we disagreed with his plan, Trump at least tried to find a way to keep Spirit afloat.)

This can, however, be a clarifying moment for voters before the midterms — if Republicans are smart enough to seize it.

Voters, take note!

Who Was Protesting?

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On Saturday, the political left held No Kings rallies around the country. Just for the record, these were not grassroots rallies. There were a few people there who actually had an idea of what they were protesting, but videos of the protesters doing man-on-the-street interviews trying to explain what they were protesting are all over the internet and are genuinely funny. These were for the most part paid protesters who got pre-printed signs and were paid by the hour.

On Monday, Issues & Insights reported:

We wonder if anyone has conducted a demographic survey of the people who showed up at the “No Kings” protests around the country, because we suspect the results would be an embarrassment.

We noticed as a rally marched down the main street in Pasadena, California, that the protesters were comprised almost entirely of white people who were predominantly middle-aged or older. (This is a city that is 40% black and Hispanic, according to the Census Bureau.)

So we looked at videos and pictures from protests in other cities around the country this past Saturday, and noticed the same thing.

Seas of white faces. And lots of gray hair. Few, if any, blacks or Hispanics. Certainly not a representative sample.

This is a movement made up of people who pride themselves on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and champion illegal immigrants and “people of color,” yet from what we could tell, the protestors were less diverse than attendees at the annual CPAC conference.

The article concludes:

We won’t bother to guess why the mainstream media ignored the evidence in front of their eyes. Nor will we try to speculate as to why the participants are so monochromatic. Although it is interesting to learn about how socialists and communist organizations were putting big money behind the protests.

We would bet anyone that had these rallies been for low taxes and less regulation, the media would have been screaming about the lack of diversity.

Still, what does it say about a so-called movement that appears to attract mainly middle-aged white people? Is this really a power to be reckoned with? Or just a bunch of disgruntled baby boomers and aging Gen Xers pathetically trying to find some purpose to their lives?

Whatever the reason, we wonder when #OscarsSoWhite founder April Reign will start her #ProtestsSoWhite social media campaign.

We have reached mass insanity.

Policies Have Consequences

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On Monday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the opposing taxation trends between red states and blue states in America.

The article reports:

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the growing divide between blue and red states when it comes to income taxes. What it failed to mention is that this shows the genius of the nation’s founders.

“Republican-led states are racing each other to flatten, cut, and eliminate individual income taxes, with 23 states lowering their top income-tax rates since 2021,” Richard Rubin and  Jeanne Whalen write.

And, indeed, this year, nine states – all Republican – either cut their top marginal tax rate or lowered their flat tax rate. Ohio became the 14th state to adopt a flat tax.

“Democratic-controlled states are moving the opposite way,” notes the Journal, “pushing to increase taxes on top earners to combat inequality and plug budget holes expected from Republicans’ cuts to federal health and nutrition assistance programs.”

The article includes two graphs that illustrate the result of each of these policies:

The article notes:

The Journal notes that the number of states with top rates below 5% and above 10% have both been increasing.

“The middle ground is quickly disappearing.”

So how is this a good thing? After all, we’ve written many times in this space about the folly of playing the “tax the rich” game.

It’s good news because this is exactly how our system of government is supposed to work. States are free to experiment with their taxing, spending, and regulating policies – and suffer the consequences.

And that’s just what we’ve been seeing. Millions of middle-class Americans are voting with their feet – leaving high-tax “progressive” states for those that keep their government spending in check, regulations to a minimum, and their taxes low.

I guess my husband and I were not the only people to get out of Massachusetts as soon as we could!

An Interesting Place To Draw The Line

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On March 6th, Issues & Insights posted an article about Bernie Sanders’ new tax idea–tax the billionaires–they shouldn’t even exist. Okay, billionaires have a lot of money, much of it made in the technology field, but Bernie Sanders has a lot of money too, all of it made while he was a public servant.

The article notes:

There are not quite 1,000 billionaires in the U.S. Roughly 200 of them are still in California, even after the departures of PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and others who don’t wish to have their earned wealth seized by greedy hands and redistributed politically. It would take a while to drive them all to extinction, but it’s obvious that Sanders and the others who play the politics of envy would sadistically enjoy a painfully drawn-out eradication.

Naturally, they stake out a position based on morality, but if they get their way, they will do deep harm to the country. An advanced economy that has no billionaires is an economy that is in decline. Any economy that loses even a portion of its billionaires will suffer similarly.

Billionaires aren’t caricatures in board games. They are indispensable to prosperity, not just their own but that of all of us. They create wealth, generate jobs, add trillions in value to society, develop lifesaving innovations, efficiently allocate capital, fund charities and philanthropic causes, take risks few others would dare to, and send an immense amount of dollars to the U.S. Treasury (the top 1% of taxpayers were responsible for 40% of federal revenues).

And what has Sanders done? He’s built nothing and lives to tear down what others have produced. He stirs up resentment, rails against choice, has been trying to slay the oligarch dragons for more than three decades, and wants to force the country to join a commune that he designs and runs.

Maybe we were wrong. A single billionaire isn’t more valuable than a thousand Bernie Sanders. A single billionaire is more valuable than a million Bernie Sanders.

Just for laughs, let’s talk about Bernie Sanders’ wealth.

According to Gazette Direct:

Between 2009 and 2018, Sanders and his wife, Jane, reported a combined income of $4.7 million, largely fueled by his writing. His other books, such as The Speech: A Historic Filibuster on Corporate Greed and Where We Go from Here, added to his finances, with royalties ranging from $170,000 to $850,000 in peak years.

Real estate is another pillar of Sanders’ wealth. He and Jane own three properties. Their primary home is a four-bedroom house in Chittenden County, Vermont, purchased in 2009 for $405,000, now valued at around $440,000. They also own a townhouse in Washington, D.C., bought in 2007 for $488,999, which has appreciated to an estimated $685,000. Their vacation home, a lakeside cabin in Vermont, was acquired in 2016 for $575,000, a steal compared to its original listing price of $775,000. These properties, though mortgaged, contribute significantly to his assets.

Notice that Bernie Sanders is going after billionaires–not millionaires (because he is one). Somehow socialists always want other peoples’ money while keeping their own.

Moving From Accepting Benefits To Theft

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On Thursday, Issues & Insights posted an article wondering how easy it is to steal from the American government.

The article reports:

Some of us are old enough to remember Matthew Lesko, the lanky, fast-talking late-night TV pitchman who promised people free government money to those who bought his books.

There are, Lesko said in one of his countless ads decades ago, “15,000 programs you can use to get a better job, get an education, or start your own business. Those who know about the programs are the ones who get the money!”

The article notes:

But Minnesota is hardly the only place where scammers have gone way beyond what Matthew Lesko promised in his books.

As Charles Silver and David Hyman note in the City Journal,

Frauds against government health-care programs are both common and costly. Fraudsters routinely scam (Medicare and Medicaid) for billions of dollars. States themselves run schemes of their own. COVID-related frauds, for example, exceeded $280 billion, with another $123 billion wasted or misspent. Obamacare enrollment fraud is pervasive, likely costing taxpayers $27 billion in 2025 and $21 billion in 2024.

California is under federal criminal investigation for wasting $37 billion to fight homelessness. It lost $20 billion in COVID-19-related federal unemployment money — the most of any state. Nearly half of the state’s increase in Medicaid spending went to pay for health care for illegal aliens. And it’s under investigation to see where the $4 billion in federal money for California’s never-ending bullet train project ended up.

Fox News reports that the Education Department found that “during a 12-month period between 2024 and 2025, scammers stole at least $10 million in federal financial aid from community colleges in California.”

The article concludes:

Why is it so easy to steal from the federal government? Because, unlike a private business, nobody in government really cares if money is wasted. Who has lost their job after some major scam was uncovered?

Plus, as we pointed out in this space, fraud is good for big-government types because it creates new constituents and new sources of campaign cash.

The answer to this problem isn’t just to unleash armies of auditors and federal police. It’s to close the spigot entirely.

The federal government spends more than $3.6 trillion on what it calls “direct payments for individuals” and another $833 billion in grants to states that are supposed to end up in individual pockets.

That’s about two-thirds of the entire federal budget!

As long as there’s that much money flying around, fraudsters will flourish. And taxpayers will be bilked.

It’s time to act on the waste and fraud that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found. People are never as careful with other people’s money as they are with their own money.

Voting With Your Feet

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On January 12, Issues & Insights posted an article about the reaction to a proposed California tax on billionaires. It should not be a surprise that billionaires do not want to pay this tax.

The article reports:

The Billionaire Tax Act isn’t even officially on the California ballot yet, but that hasn’t stopped businessmen, entrepreneurs, and investors from fleeing the state, taking $1 trillion in wealth – along with jobs and opportunity – with them.

Tech entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya has been keeping track of who’s decided to leave the state in advance of this “temporary” tax.

“We had $2T of billionaire wealth just a few weeks ago. Now, 50% of that wealth has left – taking their income tax revenue, sales tax revenue, real estate tax revenue, and all their staffs (and their salaries and income taxes) with them,” he posted on X this weekend.

“In other words, by starting this ill-conceived attempt at an asset tax, the California budget deficit will explode. And we still don’t know if the tax will even make the ballot.”

Among those who’ve given up on California are Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The New York Times reports that 10 days before Christmas, Brin “terminated or moved 15 California limited liability companies that oversee some of his business interests and investments out of the state” and “more than 45 California limited liability companies associated with Mr. Page filed documents last month to either become inactive or move out of the state.”

The Laffer Curve is an illustration of what is happening  in California:

Millionaires and billionaires have tax accountants, lawyers, and other people who help them legally avoid many of the taxes the rest of us pay. Voting with your feet is one of the easiest ways to avoid excessive taxes. Voting with your feet is one of the reasons Texas and Florida are the fastest growing states in the nation. Their tax policies make them very attractive to businessmen.

The article concludes:

This is a state, after all, that has managed in the past few years to kill its other golden goose, the film industry – the Wall Street Journal last fall said  “L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie.”

It’s a state that sits at the top of the list for highest tax rates, but the bottom of the list for just about everything else. (See “Do Californians Realize How Badly They’re Getting Ripped Off?”)

It’s a state that – despite idyllic weather and natural beauty – has driven more than 1.6 million residents away. (See “The Great Divorce Continues.”)

As we noted in this space a couple of weeks ago (See “California’s ‘Get Out Now’ Tax”), “Businesses and people are fleeing because lawmakers and blue voters are stuck in a Bolshevik rut.”

The question is, what will it take to get California’s lawmakers and voters unstuck?

Eliminating Fraud In Government

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On January 5th, Issues & Insights posted an article with a suggestion for ending government fraud.

The article notes:

Some are estimating that more than half of federal income tax revenues are devoured by fraud. This should not come as a shock. A massive government that funds everything from small businesses to health care to child care to housing is a rich target for thieves. Sharply reducing its size would limit the opportunities to steal from taxpayers.

Bandits have been defrauding of the U.S. government on such a colossal scale that even the legacy media has had to cover it, at least somewhat. The Minnesota Somalis looting the public fisc blew the lid so high that now smart folks are finding institutionalized fraud far, wide, high and low.

As noted in a March executive order, “the Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses between $233 and $521 billion annually to fraud.” That higher number might be in reality a low-end estimate, because the money flows from Washington from a number of orifices outside the Treasury Department, and an accurate tracking is simply not possible.

We say this because in fiscal 2024, non-Treasury disbursing offices “were estimated to be responsible for 181 million payments totaling over $1.5 trillion,” says the White House, roughly 22% of the entirety of federal dollars disbursed. Combine this fact with the fraud that is being uncovered and it’s obvious we’ve reached crisis levels.

The article concludes:

The only logical solution is to limit the possibilities by thoroughly downsizing the beast, which has grown well beyond the point to which its size has nurtured and sustained the “professionalized the pathways of corruption” and “is doing many more things than can be done with tolerable honesty.”

We are realists and understand that shrinking Washington is about as easy as threading a needle with a rope.

But Donald Trump was elected to decrease the length, width, and depth of the federal government, and while his efforts after eight years will be modest at best, Americans do have the ballot box to elect presidential and congressional candidates who will continue what he started. Maybe the Minnesota scandal is a watershed moment that will anger voters enough for them to understand what they have to do.

Shrinking government was at the root of the founding of the Tea Party. Unfortunately, some of the people involved in that movement have either aged out and become complacent. It is time for everyone to get involved in putting pressure on the government to downsize and cut spending.

The Impact Of The Biden Administration On The Poor

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The Biden administration was economically rough for most Americans. Inflation skyrocketed, wages did not keep up, and jobs growth (after the real numbers came out) was slow. On October 3rd, Issues & Insights posted an article providing some concrete information about the impact of the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Even before he was president, Biden was fond of demanding that the rich pay their “fair share,” which makes a snappy sound bite but leaves open exactly what a “fair share” is and who gets to decide what rates are “fair.”

Fortunately, Biden never got his billionaire tax.

But he did succeed in making life more difficult for the poor. Both the overall and child poverty rates swelled while he was in office. The overall poverty rate grew by 40.2% from 2020 to 2024. The child poverty rate spiked by 38.1% over that same period.

“If you choose 2019 as your point of comparison, the increase in poverty under Biden is bad. If you choose 2020, it’s catastrophic,” says Jacobin magazine, which considers itself “a leading voice of the American left” that offers a “socialist perspective.”

As it happens, 2019 was the year Biden told “rich donors at a ritzy New York fundraiser” that poverty was “the one thing that can bring this country down.” Salon said he “listed several new programs to help the poor that he would fund if elected.”

“We have all the money we need to do it,” he said.

This is typical of Democrats. They have promised for the better part of a century that they will pull the poor out of poverty if they can just get their hands on more of other people’s money. Yet it never works that way. Biden and others can whine that poverty soared during his miserable presidency because they couldn’t raise taxes on the wealthy, but soaking the rich does nothing for the poor but hurt them.

Our history clearly shows that when tax rates are cut, economic growth follows, and everyone, yes, even the poor, benefits. Economist Art Laffer, who drew that famous curve that “showed the relationship between tax rates and tax revenues” and helped shape Ronald Reagan’s growth-boosting economic policies, has made a career of explaining why this is.

He has argued, quite accurately, that the economy underperforms when the highest marginal income tax rates are raised, and that the opposite occurs – the economy overperforms – when the highest marginal income tax rates are cut. He has further said that redistributing dollars to those with lower incomes from those who are more well off diminishes both parties’ incentives to work.

People are more inclined to work hard when they get to keep what they earn. It is demoralizing (to say the least) for a worker who works overtime to support his family to have to send 30 or 40 percent of his earnings to the state and federal government.

Google Really Hasn’t Changed

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On September 29, Issues & Insights posted an article about their recent experience with Google censorship.

The article reports:

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, the tech colossus said that under pressure from the administration, it silenced voices that were challenging Joe Biden’s COVID-19 policies.

“Senior Biden administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies,” it said in a letter to Jordan.

And, as a supposed sign of good faith, Google said it would “provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”

That this admission comes amid the left’s screaming fits about President Donald Trump’s supposed efforts to silence dissent is interesting. But what’s more curious, and more troubling, is the fact that Google continues to violate what it claims to be its “unwavering” commitment to free speech.

The article includes the following:

The article concludes:

Opinion columns that point out peculiarities in the 2020 elections are routinely blacklisted. We’ve even had our “What We’re Reading” news roundups and articles reporting on our own I&I/TIPP Poll results demonetized by Google.

Is this what Google considers an “unwavering commitment” to free expression?

Our articles may be hard-hitting. People might disagree with them – as many of our readers do in the comments section. We make mistakes from time to time (which we acknowledge and correct).

But none of this comes anywhere close to being “dangerous” or “harmful.”

We also seriously doubt advertisers are clamoring for their ads not to appear on Issues & Insights. Which means that Google’s ad bans are nothing more than an attempt by this unrepentant left-wing behemoth to handicap content it doesn’t like by demonetizing it.

We aren’t cowed by this pressure. In fact, we are hoping to raise a relatively modest amount of money from our readers to permanently go ad-free. (See our Kill the Ads campaign here.)

But we are quite certain that many publishers simply won’t touch subjects that Google considers off limits for fear of a massive revenue hit.

Perhaps Rep. Jordan can follow up with Google and ask it what it is, exactly, that this company considers “free expression” and why it continues to demonetize content for purely political reasons.

Censorship isn’t dead. It’s up to the voters to look past the censorship and develop their own sources.

Another Obama/Biden Scandal

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There is an Obama scandal that has not been widely discussed. This is the scandal that is actually the most important one to every American.

On Friday, Issues & Insights reported:

Weren’t we assured that Barack Obama went “into and out of office with not a whiff of scandal”? Yes we were. Former Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen told us so, as did many others. But it wasn’t true. There are many, the most recent a claim that Obama, and then Joe Biden, pressured bank executives to deny services to conservatives. It’s a serious charge that, like the Russia hoax, makes Watergate look like a sandbox squabble.

Here’s what we’ve learned: According to Fox Business, major bank executives said “they were under pressure by the Obama and Biden administrations to deny services to individuals and businesses for political reasons.”

One executive said the “pressures were very, very real. When your regulator gives you a suggestion, it’s not a suggestion, it’s an order. The political stuff is very real, those pressures are real.”

This is known as “political debanking” and is “the involuntary termination of banking services to individuals and organizations based on their political or religious views,” says Todd J. Zywicki, a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, who further “argues that access to financial services is a prerequisite for exercising constitutional rights.”

…Operation Choke Point was a creation of the Obama Justice Department. Its mission was “to ‘choke out’ companies the administration considers a ‘high risk’ or otherwise objectionable, despite the fact that they are legal businesses,” says a House Oversight Committee report. “The goal of the initiative is to deny these merchants access to the banking and payments networks that every business needs to survive.”

The whistleblowers told Fox that “ambiguity in federal laws was exploited by regulators under the Obama and Biden administrations in order to pursue political objectives. According to one executive, banks were pressured to deny services to certain industries as part of Operation Choke Point and Operation Choke Point 2.0,” which was “carried out by the prudential regulators to target and debank the digital asset ecosystem” during the Biden years.

I personally know someone who was in Washington, D.C. on January 6th. She attended the Trump speech, but did not go to the Capitol–she has stated that she saw Antifa people changing into Trump gear and decided to go back to her hotel. She used her Bank of America debit card to buy a hamburger. Bank of America shared any transactions made in Washington on that weekend with the government. As a result of that transaction, her business PayPal account was canceled. This is not acceptable behavior.

Let’s Go Back To Real Cars With Real Engines!

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On Friday, Issues & Insights posted an article about an item in the Big Beautiful Bill that was not highly publicized.

The article reports:

One of the most important provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill has gone completely unnoticed, but promises to make the auto industry great again.

For 50 years, the federal government has been forcing fuel economy standards on auto companies. If the average fuel economy of the cars sold in a year exceeded a federal standard, the companies had to cough up enormous penalties.

Passed in 1975 as a way to deal with an energy crisis (that was caused by government price controls), “corporate average fuel economy” (CAFE) standards – required the fleet of cars sold by an automaker to achieve an arbitrary miles-per-gallon goal. If they missed the goal, they paid hefty annual fines.

From the beginning, these standards were a disaster, forcing automakers to radically downsize their fleet, which research showed cost thousands of lives because, all things being equal, smaller, lighter cars are less safe than larger ones.

In fact, a 2002 National Academy of Sciences found that these fuel economy standards not only boosted the cost of cars, but may have caused as many as 2,600 more traffic fatalities just in 1993.

The article notes:

In this first term, Trump rolled the standard back a bit, only to have Joe Biden come in and impose standards specifically designed to force most cars sold to be electric. The standards would have cost automakers billions in fines for failing to meet the fuel-economy targets.

This time around, Trump is again planning to roll the CAFE standards back. But Congress did him one better. Rather than wait for regulators to rewrite the rule, which can take years and be subject be endless lobbying and litigation from various interest groups – lawmakers simply zeroed out the penalty as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Now, if a car company sells cars that, on average, exceed whatever the fuel-economy limit is technically in force in a given year, they pay… nothing. The mandate is still in place, but the penalty is now $0.00. (Republicans pulled off the same trick with the dreaded Obamacare insurance mandate — zeroing out the penalty rather than trying to get the mandate repealed.)

Hopefully this will be the end of the electric Ford Mustang where they have to manufacture the engine growl electronically and the beginning of going back to the real Mustang design with the real growl!

How The Media Works

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On July 11th, Issues & Insights posted an article about food stamps. The article is about how the media has dealt with the use of food stamps in the past few years. We heard very little about food stamp usage during the time the President Biden was in office. Now it is again important (according to the mainstream media) to bring up the  subject.

The article reports:

A headline in Axios over the weekend carried this scary warning: “An increasing share of American adults are going hungry.”

The “shocking data point” comes, the story says, “at a time when the stock market is hitting record highs and President Donald Trump just signed a bill slashing food benefits.”

But take a look at the chart Axios published in that tear-jerking story, which is based on data from Morning Consult. Notice anything?

Look at what has happened since Trump has been in office. It’s back down to where it was nearly two years ago and appears to be moving sideways.

Axios is hardly the only news site to claim that the One Big Beautiful Bill “slashes” food stamps – which now goes under the euphemism Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – and will cause millions to go hungry.

The article concludes:

Instead, Biden was praised for massively expanding spending on food stamps.

In his first year, SNAP spending shot up 43%. The New York Times reported at the time that Biden engineered “the largest permanent increase to benefits in the program’s history,” which will “add billions of dollars to the cost of a program that feeds one in eight Americans.”

All the OBBB does is set food stamp spending back on its previous, pre-Biden course.

Bear in mind that all this information is easily available to any reporter covering this story.

Of course, there’s the deeper problem with all these horror stories – namely, the assumption that a decline in the number of people getting food stamps is a bad thing.

Shouldn’t the goal be that nobody is getting food stamps? That no one is dependent on government to help them afford groceries, because the economy is booming, people are earning decent wages, and inflation is under control?

We can expect more of the media’s “we’re all going to die” scenario as the Big Beautiful Bill goes into effect.

The Circles And Graphs Tell The Story

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On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted the results of polls taken to evaluate the presidency of Joe Biden. The numbers were not surprising.

Here are some of the circles and graphs:

The article notes:

To say Biden’s time in the Oval Office is viewed by most Americans as a disastrous presidency is no exaggeration. It would be hard to find another president who so comprehensively failed in key policy areas in the eyes of voters.

And these bad grades are for specific policy issues, as noted, not for other factors that have also seriously hurt Biden’s presidential reputation.

These include such things as the Big Media and Democratic Party’s efforts to downplay Biden’s obvious age-related mental decline, the socially damaging COVID lockdowns, the 20% jump in overall inflation, an 18% surge in homelessness over the last year, Biden’s alleged corruption in taking millions of dollars from foreign sources and pardoning his own son for crimes he committed, and an under-reported surge in in crimes by illegal immigrants crossing largely unprotected borders.

Biden has been a disaster for Democrats, but an unexpected bonus for Donald Trump and a newly revived Republican Party. In the recent election, the GOP made inroads in traditionally Democratic demographic groups, including Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans.

Dissatisfaction with Biden in specific and Democratic policies in general has led to a significant political realignment in the U.S., with Republicans broadening their base voters among key minority groups while also making strong inroads with working class voters who have typically supported Democratic candidates.

It is interesting to me that the majority of Democrats polled chose to park their common sense at the door.

A Familiar Story

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Recently, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supervisor was fired for telling workers to avoid houses with Trump signs. Now, Marn’i Washington, the fired employee, is saying that she is a scapegoat and the problem is much higher up. Before we dismiss this as the complaint of a disgruntled ex-employee, there are some things we should consider.

On Wednesday, Issues & Insights posted an article reminding us:

And the New York Post reported yesterday that:

A former FEMA official backed up Washington’s claims, telling The Post that the practice of skipping Trump-supporting houses is an open secret at the agency that has been going on for years.

The rest of the mainstream press seems utterly uninterested in this new revelation. We couldn’t find a story in either the Washington Post or the New York Times about it in the past 24 hours.

If this all sounds familiar, it should.

Those who’ve been around a while will remember the IRS scandal during President Barack Obama’s tenure, when the IRS was caught red-handed targeting conservative groups in the run-up to the 2012 election by holding up their applications for non-profit status.

At first, the IRS claimed it was the work of two rogue agents in its Cincinnati office. That turned out to be a lie, as evidence started to emerge that the instructions were coming from officials in Washington, D.C., all the way up to the head of the IRS’s tax-exempt division, Lois Lerner.

…And when it turned out there was a coordinated effort – one specifically designed to thwart conservative attempts to get out the vote in 2012 – the press buried it and moved on as quickly as possible.

As a result, the Justice Department let Lois Lerner skate – she retired on a full pension. The head of the IRS at the time, John Koskinen, who lied and stonewalled a congressional investigation, served out his term. Obama dismissed it as a “phony scandal.”

And in the end, nothing was done to root out the politicization of this agency. In fact, as soon as Democrats had a chance under President Joe Biden, they showered the IRS with an additional $80 billion to hire more enforcement agents.

The article concludes:

…And like the IRS scandal under Obama, and the FBI scandals under Trump, the media will show zero interest in finding out just how high this weaponization of government goes or how many other agencies are infested with political vermin who are willing to use their powers to coddle liberals and attack conservatives.

Nope. Instead, they are writing stories about how terrified government staffers are at the prospect that Trump will finally carry out his plan to drain the swamp of political hacks masquerading as non-partisan government bureaucrats.

And that is the reason President Trump was elected.

The Ins And Outs After The Election

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On November 6th, Issues & Insights posted an article providing a list of “ins and outs” following President Trump’s election victory. The list is a beautiful illustration of biased media reporting and how quickly it can change.

Here is part of the list”

  • Out: Questioning election results is anti-Democratic!       
  • In: Trump stole the election!!
  • Out: Election fraud is not a real problem!          
  • In: Trump stole the election!!
  • Out: There’s no evidence of election fraud, saying otherwise is a lie!       
  • In: Trump stole the election!!
  • Out: Trump is an authoritarian!
  • In: Trump wants to cut the size of government!!
  • Out: Our elections are the most secure in the world!   
  • In: Trump stole the election!!
  • Out: Questioning the president’s mental health is unpatriotic!      
  • In: Trump misspoke!! Invoke the 25th Amendment!!
  • Out: Government censorship is no big deal!      
  • In: Trump will censor us!!
  • Out: “Weaponization of government” is a right-wing fantasy!      
  • In: Trump will take away Justice’s ability to target Republicans!!
  • Out: The economy is doing great!                      
  • In: Why hasn’t Trump fixed the economy yet??
  • Out: There’s no border crisis!                             
  • In: Why hasn’t Trump fixed the border crisis yet??
  • Out: Crime rates are falling!                              
  • In: Why hasn’t Trump done anything about rising crime rates yet??
  • Out: Jan. 6, 2021, was an attempted insurrection!  
  • In: Congress must refuse to certify the election results on Jan.6, 2025!!
  • Out: We must save democracy!                          
  • In: Down with democracy, it failed us!!
  • Out: Violence is never the answer!                    
  • In: Emotions are running high!!
  • Out: I’m leaving the country if Trump wins!     
  • In: I’m still planning to leave, dammit!!
  • Out: Project 2025!
  • In: Project 2025?
  • Out: Trump will take away our freedoms!         
  • In: Trump wants to repeal government mandates!!
  • Out: Trump is a fascist.
  • In: Trump can’t make the trains run on time.
  • Out: Trump is a racist, fascist, threat to democracy, and his supporters are semi-fascist garbage.
  • In: It’s up to Trump to unite the country.
  • Out: Kamala is amazing!                                    
  • In: Harris was a terrible candidate!!
  • Out: Kamala is smart to avoid taking positions on issues!
  • In: Harris should have talked more about the issues!!

Please follow the link for the rest of the list. It is awesome!

Using Taxpayer Money To Create The Illusion Of Fiscal Responsibility

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On Thursday, Issues & Insights posted an article about a change in Medicare law included in the Inflation Reduction Act and the consequences of that change.

The article reports:

We have no doubt that, in the years to come, the media will describe the Biden-Harris administration as “scandal-free.” But that’s only because for the past four years they’ve vigorously ignored any and all scandals.

Case in point is the $15 billion giveaway that Biden-Harris snuck through this summer without a single hearing, vote, or advance notice, in an attempt to buy seniors’ votes. Followed up by a campaign email to these same seniors on behalf of Kamala Harris, also paid for by taxpayers.

Is any of this legal? Who cares, if it helps Harris win in November? At least, that’s how the mainstream press is treating this scandal.

The article explains:

The criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” that Joe Biden signed on Aug. 16, 2022, after Harris cast the tie-breaking vote, including among its many horrid provisions, several that affected Medicare Part D – the drug benefit for seniors – is set to go into effect in 2025.

Biden and now Harris have been running around claiming that this was a tremendous deal for seniors, except those provisions added huge costs to these drug plans that were going to jack up monthly premiums for this benefit by an average of $110 – a 179% increase!

So, to avoid that, the administration conjured up a “demonstration project” whereby insurance companies would agree to hold monthly premium increases to $35 or less in exchange for a pile of cash.

The Congressional Budget Office figures this will cost $5 billion a year – in borrowed money – plus another $2 billion a year in added interest costs on the national debt.

Critics have pointed out that this wasn’t a “demonstration project,” normally understood as a small-scale effort to test a change in rules governing a program. Instead, it was a subsidy handed out to every insurance company offering Part D plans.

So basically, all Americans are paying for seniors’ Part D Medicare so that the public won’t know that the cost went up. Well, I just told them.

The Health and Human Services sent out a letter touting the Medicare changes.

This is a part of that letter:

“I want to make sure you’re aware of the historic changes to Medicare that are lowering health care costs,” it begins, that are “a result of the Inflation Reduction Act that I signed into law and that Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to secure.” It goes on to say that “these are just some of the ways my administration has worked to help you save money on your health care costs.”

(No mention is made of the $15 billion they’re planning to spend to make budget-shattering premium increases.)

The letter is flagrant electioneering, paid for by taxpayers, and in clear violation of the Hatch Act, which outlaws the use of federal staff or resources “for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

Last week, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel saying that the email “was entirely political in both its purpose and language,” and “has been described as ‘a sales pitch for Kamala Harris.’”

Don’t look for this story in the mainstream media.