Neil Patel from Creators Syndicate

January 19, 2025

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The Biden Justice Department Tried to Stop Us From Getting Records On Government Censorship Efforts for 06/09/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/06/23/the-biden-justice-department-tried-to-stop-us-from-getting-records-on-government-censorship-efforts
Fri, 09 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this week, The Washington Post let the American people know whose side they’re on when it comes to free speech versus government-backed censorship; they’re on the side of the censors.

To summarize, the Post’s lengthy piece frames efforts by Republican lawmakers, conservatives and media organizations, like the Daily Caller News Foundation, to hold a well-heeled and growing industry dedicated to fighting so-called mis- and disinformation accountable as “harassment.” We’re not making this up.

Of course, after everything we’ve learned from the Twitter Files and other investigative reporting into how these groups actually operate, it’s clear that fighting disinformation is almost always a euphemism for censoring facts and opinions they don’t like, especially from conservatives.

Updated: Fri Jun 09, 2023

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Earlier this week, The Washington Post let the American people know whose side they’re on when it comes to free speech versus government-backed censorship; they’re on the side of the censors.

It’s no coincidence that conservatives are overwhelmingly the ones being deplatformed, shadowbanned, fact-checked and censored on social media and Google. It’s no coincidence that conservative news outlets, not corporate or liberal ones, always make it onto the secret blacklists put together by pro-censorship groups and sent to ad agencies to deprive those sites of revenue.

The DCNF recently revealed a major group dedicated to demonetizing conservative sites was actually funded by the Biden State Department. In fact, many similar organizations that promote censorship also get giant checks from the feds. This should alarm every American regardless of party affiliation or ideology.

But WaPo wants you to ignore all that and believe it’s the government-funded censors who are the real victims, not the people they’re trying to silence. Sadly, the Biden Justice Department seems to agree.

Right after WaPo dropped its “censors are the real victims” piece, journalist Lee Fang published an email showing the Biden DOJ intervening to impede DCNF records requests regarding a little-known Department of Homeland Security panel advising the agency on combating mis- and disinformation.

Given everything we’ve learned over the years — especially from the Twitter Files — about federal government efforts to censor and silence opinions they don’t like, we wanted to see what this secretive panel was up to. It is, after all, our duty to inform the public about threats to their fundamental rights, especially freedom of speech.

A key member of this panel was Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, who founded the Center for an Informed Public. Not only does she sit on this committee, but she’s also raking in government research grants. Starbird actually featured prominently in WaPo’s piece defending the pro-censorship industry, but the paper conveniently left out Starbird’s role in advising DHS’s secretive little committee. I wonder why?

We thought the public had a right to know what this DHS advisory panel was up to, which apparently alarmed the Biden DOJ.

In a fawning email sent in September 2022, Assistant U.S. Attorney Annalisa Cravens asked the University of Washington to delay the release of records to the DCNF “so that we can have time to review them and assess whether we’ll have to file suit to protect them from disclosure.”

To be clear, we did get records from the University of Washington; it just took six months to get them all. Of course, now we’re wondering if we truly got all the documents we asked for. Rest assured, we’ve already filed follow-up requests to get to the bottom of it.

Someone has to. As WaPo’s puff piece made clear, the corporate and legacy media aren’t interested in holding the Censorship Industrial Complex accountable. In fact, major media outlets are often this insidious industry’s biggest enablers.

And now we know the Biden administration is a willing participant in the cover-up and apparently willing to use whatever legal channels available to keep the public in the dark about what their own government is doing to undermine core constitutional protections.

If there’s one issue that should unite Americans of all stripes, it’s government officials colluding with an industry dedicated to censoring ideas and information inconvenient to the party in power. If we don’t hold these powerful, secretive groups accountable today, we all run the risk of being silenced down the road.

Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

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The Culture War Has Moved to a New Phase for 06/02/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/06/23/the-culture-war-has-moved-to-a-new-phase
Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Left-wing nutballs have had the upper hand in America’s culture wars for a long time. They are hyperaggressive and focused on pushing America in a radical direction. They push their agenda on school boards, in local and national political venues, and on many corporations. To date, resistance has been isolated to a small number of dedicated conservative activists. Most Americans just want to get along whenever possible, not fight about sensitive social issues if they can help it and, most of all, not be mean to people. That’s a laudable attitude in general, but when up against radical, ideologically driven opponents, oftentimes you have to push back. If you don’t, they won’t stop. As we have now seen, just trying to get along can end in pure insanity. That’s precisely how we ended up with little kids being taught about super sensitive sexual topics at ages when they should be playing in sandboxes.

The upper echelons of corporate America have been occupied by executives with radical political agendas. Trained in increasingly left-wing elite colleges, these managerial-class leftists have continually pushed big companies further to the left. Senior managers often go along because they don’t want the fight or because they see it as good for business. Also, and perhaps most importantly, until now there was no real business peril in appeasing the nuts. The only consumer pressure was driven from the left. Companies could annoy the right without paying a price. That all seems to be changing. Normal Americans, for the very first time, seem to be screaming, “Stop!”

Anheuser-Busch and its parent company InBev, out of Belgium, are keepers of the iconic American beer brand Bud Light. If there were ever a beer associated with the American everyman, Bud Light was probably it — either that or Miller Lite. Each brewer’s marketing team knew this for decades, and they developed hilarious and creative ad campaigns to celebrate and cultivate this image. More recently, InBev hired some younger woke American marketing executives who found all this embarrassing. In their efforts to revamp the Bud Light brand, they engaged Dylan Mulvaney, a famous transgender activist, in a marketing campaign. As of today, it looks like this move may have forever changed the dynamic between the liberals running most huge American companies and their consumers.

Updated: Fri Jun 02, 2023

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A few things touched a nerve with the Bud Light/Mulvaney incident. First, Mulvaney isn’t just a left-wing political activist. Mulvaney specialized in marketing to young kids. Using Barbie dolls and singing songs about being a young girl were squarely in Mulvaney’s wheelhouse. There’s something seriously wrong with that; almost any normal person would agree. Second, soon after the controversy erupted, the beer marketing head who set it off was seen in an online video trashing Bud Light’s fratty marketing campaigns of the past and, by direct inference, trashing their very customers. The Bud Light drinkers of America had had enough. This was their brand, something that helped define them. And now the lefties couldn’t leave even that alone. Not only that, but the corporate chieftains didn’t care enough about them to stop it. For the first time in recent memory, a mass-scale boycott from right-leaning people took hold. The revolt was on.

Sales of Bud Light have tanked by over 25%. Meanwhile, sales of rival brands are up by huge margins. Anheuser-Busch’s stock itself is down 20%. Shares for rival conglomerate Molson Coors have gone up 19% in the same period. Shifts this large for brands this huge are unheard of. And the carnage extends to other Anheuser-Busch products as well.

Where does all this end? Nobody knows. Anheuser-Busch has notably placed the marketing geniuses behind this sales carnage on leave. They still have jobs. Someone at corporate headquarters must think they can sneak them back in. It’s not clear why they would want to do that, given all the damage they have caused to their brand and their entire company. They must be afraid of the left, but that’s telling in itself. What happened to “know your customer”? For those of us sitting back and enjoying the show, the drama upon reinstating these failed marketing officers will be a hilarious next act.

Most interestingly with all this, it seems that regular Americans have learned just how powerful a block they can be. For the first time, they seem to be flexing their muscles in the marketplace. The normal people’s revolt is now moving on to other brands. Clothing retailers Target and Kohl’s have stocked shelves with kids’ LGBTQ clothing and supported radical interest groups pushing gender transition on young children. Their customers are making them pay a price. Sales are down, and the stocks are taking a huge hit. Same with Disney stock, which is down 33% since its feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis began.

The right was asleep at the switch as they allowed radical left-wing activists to thoroughly take over American schools and universities. Somebody should have guessed that the result would be a takeover of the corporate management suites. But all of a sudden, there’s a price to pay for companies getting too political. Regular Americans have had enough. They are not haters. Quite the contrary — they genuinely want to get along. But the craziness levels have gone too high, especially when it comes to the left’s targeting young kids with overly politicized or sexual topics at a young age. That’s going to have to stop now or there will be a price to pay. That makes me want to crack a beer and celebrate.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

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It’s Time To Put Away Our Phones for 03/31/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/03/23/its-time-to-put-away-our-phones
Fri, 31 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Next time you go to a restaurant, take a look around the room. Chances are half the people will be sitting in silence staring at their phones. This includes people there with their friends and family. We are so used to this that we’ve grown numb to it, but it’s horrible.

What’s the point of going out to dinner in the first place? It’s not just to eat. People can do that at home and save a lot of money and time. Meals are social activities; they always have been. Going out to dinner is one of the most enjoyable social activities ever invented. For a family to do that and then each sit quietly staring at their phone is truly sad. And it begs the important question of what’s going to happen to the kids doing this.

Americans check their phones an average of 344 times per day or about once every four minutes. When you factor in sleep time it’s more like at least once every three minutes. In total, people spend about three hours a day staring at their phone on average. On a yearly basis, this means the average American is staring at their phone for 44 full days a year (again, this is without even factoring in sleep time, so call it 60 or 70 days a year). Seventy-one percent of people look at their phones within 10 minutes of waking up, and 74% say they can’t leave their phone at home without feeling uneasy.

Updated: Fri Mar 31, 2023

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It’s hard to look at these numbers and call it anything but an addiction. Given the long list of problems in America today, people are not talking enough about this device addiction. The dinner example is just an illustration. The real problems are 1,000 times worse than a lost social opportunity. The damage is real, and it’s extremely harmful.

Excessive use of mobile devices and social media causes stress and depression. This is true for everyone, but most acutely among young people. The numbers are startling, and they are the worst among teens. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of teens who experienced depression increased 59% from 2007 to 2017. For girls, it’s even worse.

Guess what else took off over the same exact time period? Smartphone use among teens. More and more kids started getting smartphones in this exact time period, and they’ve been starting to use them at a younger age every year. One percent of kids get their first phone by age 1 or 2. The numbers keep trickling upward until age 9 to 10, when 20% of kids get their first phone. An additional 26% join them between ages 11 and 12, and a final 20% between 13 and 14. After age 14, virtually all kids have smartphones. It’s past time to rethink all this.

In addition to depression, there are many other radical shifts among teens during this time of explosive phone use growth. As time with their phones went up, time with friends went down, and so did part-time jobs, dating and other personal interactions. Some signs seemed good. Teen pregnancy dropped, but I don’t think anyone would have offered up social isolation as a cure for that problem.

The ultimate cost of all this isolation and depression has been an explosion in teen suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, after holding pretty steady from 2000 to 2007, the rate of teen suicide jumped by 60% from 2007 to 2017.

Adults today had the luxury of growing up without these dangerous devices in our hands. The introduction of smartphones made our lives easier, or at least more efficient. Now we are just starting to realize the downsides for everyone. There is zero chance people’s brains are not being affected, but for kids, it’s a flat-out crisis.

I recently saw firsthand the effects of limiting smartphone usage among kids and adults. Last summer, my family went on a backcountry river rafting trip in the Frank Church Wilderness of Idaho. At over 2 million acres total, this is the largest contiguous federal wilderness area in the lower 48. Along with the rest of its natural beauty, there are no cell towers. For a week straight, my family and three others lived life the way we used to. I noticed the change even in myself. The first morning I woke up in my tent and instinctively reached for my phone. Then I remembered there was nothing to check. It was honestly an amazing feeling. One that I had not had since the 1990s. I didn’t touch my phone again for the rest of the trip. As liberating as I found it, the best part was seeing the effects on the teenagers among the four families. There were 11 total. Most had never met each other. With no phones, they got to know each other fast. And by the end, each one said they loved it.

As awesome as this smartphone break was, we aren’t going to get rid of phones altogether, even among teens (or maybe especially among teens), so where do we go from here?

The first step is probably admitting the problem. As much as devices have added some convenience and efficiency, there’s something truly horrible about them. My sense is we all know this but don’t want to admit it. We should start. Society used to be more accepting of all sorts of bad things. Where I grew up in the 1970s, littering was still socially acceptable. That’s no longer the case anywhere. It starts with a public acknowledgement and some condemnation. Littering is no longer socially acceptable anywhere. Staring at your phone at dinner shouldn’t be either.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

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What’s Driving Speech Codes and Bank Failures — It’s All the Same Problem for 03/24/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/03/23/whats-driving-speech-codes-and-bank-failures-its-all-the-same-problem
Fri, 24 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Why are so many institutions and government agencies all of a sudden interested in regulating speech? Why is so-called misinformation a much bigger issue today than it was in the past? The answer you hear most often is that the efficiency of mass communication through social media has necessitated restrictions on speech. Misinformation flows rapidly now over the internet, so the government has to regulate it. That’s what they tell us.

This is a bogus argument. The truth has a way of winning out in a true marketplace of ideas. The truth flows just as rapidly through the now-efficient means of communications as the lies. That was true before the internet, and it’s true today.

The real reason for all the new speech restrictions is a breakdown in trust. The American people have lost trust in their leaders and their institutions. Many are at the point where they don’t believe anything they are told through official channels. For years now, trust in America’s leaders and top institutions has been in freefall. Nobody denies this, yet based on their actions, those leaders and institutions don’t seem to care. They make no effort to address the issue; in fact, they continue to make it worse. They don’t answer obvious questions. They hide. They pack their press briefings with toadies who won’t ask real questions. They dodge legitimate requests for information. In short, they keep taking actions that increase the perception that the system is rigged.

Updated: Fri Mar 24, 2023

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The breakdown in trust can be traced back to the original government bank bailouts. Those bailouts were predicated on the notion of “systemic risk” to our economy. The idea was that some financial institutions are so big that their failure would cause a chain reaction of failures, taking down the financial system and destroying the broader economy. This concept can be debated, but what can’t be debated is the societal cost of bailing out the wealthiest individuals and firms without total transparency.

The fact that nobody really went to jail for causing the financial crisis bothered a lot of Americans. The fact that the very firms involved, from credit rating agencies to major banks, seemed to not just survive but thrive, as a result of the government bailouts funded by average Americans, rubbed most people the wrong way.

The most telling single anecdote of this entire episode was Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson having 24 phone conversations with the head of Goldman Sachs, his old bank, in just one week, five in just a single day, just as he orchestrated a bailout that netted the firm billions of dollars. Rather than suffer, its bankers were receiving record bonuses just a year later. When asked about this episode, Paulson’s spokesperson said he couldn’t answer questions because he was “busy writing his memoirs.” It’s now nearly 15 years later. Paulson still hasn’t answered. Perhaps more troubling, there’s little sign that the media has really pressed the issue. To be clear, I’m not alleging that Paulson is corrupt. There are many legitimate reasons he could have been talking to his former bank. I am suggesting that he owed it to the American people to describe every conversation in great detail when, as the top public official in charge of bailouts, he sent billions of dollars to his former firm, which he talked to up to five times a day at the heart of the crisis.

Ducking questions and not explaining these sorts of issues comes at a steep price. People lose the most necessary attribute of any democracy: trust in the system. In the financial crisis example, you can draw a clear line from these events to Occupy Wall Street to the Tea Party to the rise of Donald Trump. Once people lose faith, they grow desperate for options outside the system.

The most tangible real-world effect from the loss of faith is the nation’s current posture toward free speech. There is no more bedrock American principle than freedom of speech. Once America’s leaders lost the trust of the people, they lost their ability to compete effectively in the marketplace of ideas. Once the Food and Drug Administration said that opioids were safe, with the guy who said it taking a lucrative job for an opioid maker, people were a lot less likely to listen to them on vaccines. That’s not complicated, but it seems lost on America’s leaders.

Because they have lost the ability to persuade, they are turning to force. This dynamic, not the efficiency of communication over social media, is what’s really driving the growing desire to regulate speech on social media and to stamp out so-called misinformation. Once trust is broken, leaders can’t govern effectively. Force is the only solution. This is what’s being tried in America today, and it’s not working. Speech codes and health mandates are not going to work. They just make people angry.

If the destruction of bedrock American First Amendment principles aren’t enough motivation for those in charge to start trying to rebuild trust, maybe the destruction of the American banking system will be. That’s exactly what’s happening today. What’s at the core of banking? You guessed it: trust. People have to trust that this place where they send all their money will have it for them when they need it. Once they start doubting that, they pull their money out fast. This is the cause of the so-called bank run that hit Silicon Valley Bank. Sure, the American government can raise its bank insurance to cover all the losses, but then we no longer have a private banking system. We have a government-run utility. And what happens when people lose the ultimate trust even in the guarantee made by the U.S. government? That’s lights-out America.

That’s where we are heading. Trust must be restored, or there is no hope for America.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

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The Truth About Jan. 6 for 03/10/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/03/23/the-truth-about-jan-6
Fri, 10 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol have been so highly politicized that it’s almost impossible for anyone to get to the truth anymore. We don’t know all the facts, even after months of investigations and hearings; nobody does for sure. What I do know for sure is if the situation were reversed, everyone’s opinions on it would be reversed, too. That’s sad and says a lot about where America is today. Americans are more dug into partisan bubbles and tribalism than at any time in recent history. It’s so bad that many people can’t even see the truth. Or don’t want to look for it.

In the case of Jan. 6, imagine if a Republican president were elected and on the eve of his inauguration, a mob of Democrats, some peaceful but others not, including hardcore antifa types, overran the U.S. Capitol. Imagine that the worst of them knocked down barricades, assaulted police officers, smashed windows, kicked down doors, ransacked offices and defaced property once they were inside. We know how conservatives would react. They would call for arrests. They would talk about law and order. They would decry the rioting and the mob.

We know this reaction for a fact because it’s the same reaction conservatives had the prior summer when left-wing mobs took over and damaged so many American cities. It’s true that many of the summer’s riots were even more harmful and violent than the tragic events at the Capitol, but the basic principle of adherence to the rule of law applies. Without it, you have anarchy. That’s why when so many on the left were claiming the summer riots were “mostly peaceful,” conservatives were pointing out the absurdity of that statement. “Mostly peaceful” with a side of violent rioting is not acceptable in America.

Updated: Fri Mar 10, 2023

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We also know this because in 2016, the shoe was on the other foot. Coordinated groups of violent rioters injured numerous police officers in an attempt to disrupt President Donald Trump’s inauguration. They smashed store windows, tore down bus stops, lit cars on fire, disrupted Trump supporters trying to get to the inauguration and threw rocks at police. Eventually, over 200 rioters were arrested. When prosecutors dropped the charges on all of them, many conservatives were rightly incensed. What happened to law and order?

The same is of course true of the events at the U.S. Capitol. Many of the actions that day cannot be excused. That’s not how civilized countries handle politics. It’s not acceptable behavior in the United States, where we still believe in law and order. But none of that justifies the left’s politicization of the Capitol mob. The takeover of the U.S. Capitol was horrible, but it was nowhere near a “coup” or an “insurrection.” It just wasn’t. Those trying to portray it as such are milking the situation for political gain.

The political nature of the Capitol riot investigation was given away when the committee hired a TV producer to direct the whole thing. But the release of the unedited videos to Fox News has raised more important questions. The first set of videos show police calmly walking around the Capitol building with Jacob Chansley, the famous “QAnon Shaman.” The video shows Chansley walking with two officers, at one point even walking past a group of several officers who do not try to arrest or stop Chansley.

The first obvious question is why this video was not disclosed to Chansley’s defense attorneys before he was sentenced to 41 months in prison. The government is required to disclose exculpatory evidence in its possession in a criminal proceeding. Should this video have been disclosed? The second and more important question is why were the Capitol police calmly walking this guy around? Why did they not arrest him?

To date, the police have not answered these questions. The closest they have come is a line in the Capitol police chief’s letter to his team noting “I don’t have to remind you how outnumbered our officers were on January 6.” That’s certainly true, but they were not outnumbered in the newly released videos. The guy was surrounded in otherwise sparse corridors, yet police were opening doors for him instead of arresting him? Why? If they received orders to stand down, from who and for what reason?

If getting to the truth is the goal in any sense at all, then why weren’t more of these videos released publicly from the start? The argument that further disclosures pose a security risk seems thin. Public tours roam all around the Capitol. So do the thousands of staffers who turn over regularly. Both tourists and staff take pictures and videos all the time. It’s not a secret military facility. And to the extent that there really are some very selective places that pose a real security risk, those could be redacted and an explanation provided. The security argument is, in short, a thin and sort of sad attempt to keep the public from the truth. Without a broader public video release, everyone gets to accuse each other of selectively editing. The right says the official Democrat-dominated investigation released only the most violent clips to politicize the event as much as possible. Now the left is making a similar accusation about the clips showing police making no attempt to impede movement around the building, and in at least one clip, literally opening a door for Chansley.

There are two solutions. First and most obviously, release the videos. All of them. Let people see for themselves. Second, how about the officials in charge of security that day actually answer detailed questions about what is occurring in the footage? And not questions in front of a partisan, produced and prime-time panel. There are videos showing police on the grounds that day frustrated with the lack of preparedness and leadership. There were also numerous prior warnings about potential trouble that day. Why so little security in the first place? People still don’t have answers to these basic questions.

This is a novel concept in modern America. Leaders and institutions repeatedly ignore basic questions. There is often no accountability. It’s one reason the public’s trust in institutions is at record lows. How about breaking the trend on this one?

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Neil Patel
Opinion

22c337af25059a4e46ae9d935c822449
China Is Openly Infiltrating Our Political System and the American Media Doesn’t Seem to Care for 03/03/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/03/23/china-is-openly-infiltrating-our-political-system-and-the-american-media-doesnt-seem-to-care
Fri, 03 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The American media has been liberal for decades, but the utter disregard for the truth that pervades much of the reporting today is something new. With all the alarm over misinformation on the right, little attention has been paid to the much broader form of misinformation that dominant corporate media perpetrates today.

One of the biggest stories of our time is the way Communist China has co-opted so many leading American institutions and individuals. How is it that America, a country committed to human rights, is freely trading with China, a country currently operating slave labor camps? That’s a serious and important question, but it’s one the media barely addresses.

Many well-intentioned Americans believed that free trade would liberalize China and provide low-cost goods, ultimately helping American families. In reality, free trade fueled Communist China’s rise, minus the promise of liberalization. Moreover, these policies left America overly dependent on Chinese-made goods, including key products needed for America’s security, its health care and even, astoundingly, its military.

Updated: Fri Mar 03, 2023

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More broadly, the loss of American manufacturing has harmed many formerly thriving American communities and helped upend the American political system. It turns out that free trade theory may not work out when one party is a developed free economy and the other is a mercantilist system marked by corruption and slave labor.

In addition to the American leaders who botched these policies through well-meaning intentions, there are others who were economically or politically conflicted. Many American companies made billions by moving factories to China. Wall Street made even more by financing the whole thing. Some American companies and elite institutions were flat-out co-opted by Chinese interests. The Chinese Communist Party has an organized effort to influence American policymakers and business leaders. Most Americans don’t even know they’ve been targeted by Communist Party operatives. They are drawn in by the potential for financial gain or by a desire to bring the two countries closer together.

The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Philip Lenczycki is one of the leading American reporters covering the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations in the United States. With 20 years of experience traveling frequently to China, six years living in China full time, fluency in Mandarin, a master’s degree in Chinese language and culture, sources all over China and as the top student at Harvard’s Beijing Academy, it’s hard to point to a more well-equipped reporter elsewhere in American media.

Lenczycki recently made two astounding discoveries, which he detailed in a series of articles. First, he revealed how California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu served for over a decade as the “honorary president” of an organization whose leadership includes several individuals who’ve belonged to alleged Chinese intelligence front groups. Lenczycki also revealed how Chu was named “honorary chairwoman” of an alleged Chinese intelligence front group back in 2019.

Second, Lenczycki exposed how Dominic Ng, CEO of East West Bank, who President Joe Biden recently appointed to represent the U.S. at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings, had been a member of at least two groups allegedly linked to Chinese Communist Party intelligence efforts.

Top U.S. leaders associating with groups linked to alleged Chinese intelligence efforts is, of course a huge story, yet the corporate media did not touch it.

Republican members of Congress called for investigations as a result of Lenczycki’s reporting. The Democrats’ response to all this was basically their standard playbook in 2023: ignore the facts altogether and claim the whole thing is driven by racism. When the facts aren’t with you, change the subject and attack the messenger. That’s not good behavior; in fact, it’s utterly juvenile, but it’s how politics often works.

Reporters are supposed to be different. They are supposed to search for the truth. They are supposed to ask tough questions. Of course, the legacy media did not do that. In reporting on the whole incident, corporate media outlets have yet to examine the actual facts Lenczycki unearthed. They instead summarily wrote his work off as “unsubstantiated.” Lenczycki’s reporting is well-documented, and, more importantly, it’s on the web for anyone to analyze. Any reporter who felt the need to further substantiate it could go to his articles, find links to the source materials and experts who commented, and do all the necessary substantiation. But not a single corporate media reporter did that. Why? They don’t want to get to the truth. They don’t like where it may lead. It’s much cleaner to call it “unsubstantiated” or “racist” and write it off. This is the same way they handled the Hunter Biden laptop story, the story of whether COVID came from a lab in China and so many other story lines that they do not want to explore for political reasons.

It’s important to note that Lenczycki never once alleged in his reporting that either Ng or Chu were knowingly doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party. He didn’t allege that because he doesn’t know if it’s true. What is true is that both parties have troubling ties to alleged Chinese intelligence front groups. Besides tarring those looking into these serious allegations as “racists,” both Chu and Ng have defended themselves either by totally denying any affiliations with these groups or by downplaying any ties as having fizzled out years ago.

There could be some truth to that, but these top American leaders’ mere associations with parties doing the bidding for the increasingly brutal Chinese Communist state is worthy of more scrutiny. This is doubly true in this case, where the subjects’ excuses don’t line up with all the available facts. And if it’s all innocent, then it seems really odd that these alleged Chinese intelligence groups are busy scrubbing their websites to try to retroactively cover their tracks.

The corporate media has not pressed Ng and Chu on any of this. Chinese Communist influence operations in America is not a story that interests them. Besides NBC News, none of the media outlets branding Lenczycki’s reporting as “racist” even reached out for comment — a journalistic norm that Lenczycki offered to both Ng and Chu numerous times without success.

The story of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence operations in the U.S. is in many ways part of the story of our time. America’s financial and political leaders put in place policies that helped China’s Communists at the expense of the American middle class. Many of America’s major media outlets were part of the problem. They took millions of dollars to run Chinese Communist propaganda for many years. Included among the news outlets that ran this paid propaganda were The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times. More recently, all the major D.C. newsletters — Axios, Playbook and Punchbowl — are on the Chinese dole. Semafor was even more bold: They enthusiastically announced partnership with a barely concealed Chinese influence group.

Maybe that explains why they’re all so uninterested in the story. Maybe it isn’t money. Maybe academic notions of racial intersectionality and “Asian hate” have paralyzed them into submission. In either case, this much is clear: China is aggressively targeting American leaders and institutions, and it is succeeding. That’s a huge story. We aren’t intimidated by the name-calling; if the legacy media won’t cover it, we certainly will.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

62e9e3ba7b18bae4c4a573d3ad0393aa
How to End the Ukraine War for 02/24/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/02/23/how-to-end-the-ukraine-war
Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The war in Ukraine has been tragic for Ukrainians. It’s in America’s interest to dissuade other countries from rolling through their neighbors’ borders. Stability matters in the world.

Oher things matter, too.

From an American policy perspective, the long-term security of the American people should always matter most. That’s obvious, but it doesn’t seem to be the driving force today. America’s long-term security includes, more than anything, not putting young American lives at risk in a war with Russia. Given this paramount concern, it seems odd that important and obvious questions are not being asked and answered. Specifically, how will the war come to an end in a way that doesn’t put those young American lives in danger? As the father of an 18-year-old, I’m keenly interested. So are many others.

Updated: Fri Feb 24, 2023

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The war in Ukraine has been tragic for Ukrainians. It’s in America’s interest to dissuade other countries from rolling through their neighbors’ borders. Stability matters in the world.

Oher things matter, too.

The war has been going on for more than a year. The Ukrainians have hung on longer and fought more bravely than many experts would have predicted. Russia has taken some huge losses. America, a country with increasingly worrisome national finances, has thrown in massive support for the cause. What is the end game? For anyone interested most in long-term peace and security and in making sure the situation doesn’t lead to World War III, figuring out a plausible and acceptable end to the shooting seems pretty important. Yet this topic has somehow been off-limits in the national discussion. Just asking it will get you accused of supporting Putin. You don’t have to be a Putin sympathizer to want to protect American kids from fighting Russia or to care about the ultimate nightmare of driving Russia and China closer together. Yet that’s just what the strategy to date seems to be doing.

The Western world has largely galvanized against President Vladimir Putin’s assault on a neighboring state’s sovereign border. The response has been dramatic. Sleepy European NATO countries stepped up their military budgets. They are also providing weapons and aid for Ukraine. The U.S. has, of course, provided massive levels of support. Remember when the experts said Donald Trump’s border wall was not a real option because America couldn’t afford it? The total cost was estimated at $20 to $25 billion. The U.S. has already sent $100 billion to Ukraine, and the meter is still ticking. Beyond the fiscal impact, the weapons systems sent to Ukraine are growing more and more deadly. All this has helped the Ukrainians hold the line and inflict reportedly huge losses on Russian forces. Yet, as the impact of more and more deadly American weapons systems grows, and as each day passes without a resolution, the danger of the U.S. being drawn into the conflict increases. That’s just a fact.

Increased NATO defense spending is a good thing. The U.S. has subsidized the rest of NATO for too long and cannot afford to do so forever. Other results have not been positive. Russia has already announced its withdrawal from its nuclear reduction treaty with the U.S. Perhaps even more worrisome, the American and European response to Russia’s Ukraine incursion has driven Russia and China closer together. Due to Western sanctions, Russian trade with China is skyrocketing. Russia and China have agreed to increase military cooperation. It’s difficult to come up with a worse outcome from an American perspective.

The really big question is where does this all end?

The default presumption by Washington and much of the West seems to be that Russia must be completely defeated. It’s difficult to see this happening in the real world. Everyone seems to agree that Putin is a mad man and an autocrat. Is there really any scenario where Putin leaves Ukraine completely and just admits defeat? Would Putin even be able to remain in power if he did? Driving Putin out of power seems like a positive development, but it’s foolish to presume he would do that voluntarily. And even if he did, would the chaos left in his wake in a country with the world’s biggest nuclear stockpile — be even worse from an American perspective? These are basic questions, but they couldn’t be more important, and we don’t hear them discussed much.

If Putin is as autocratic and unstable as we are told, would he resort to attacking a NATO ally or using nuclear weapons if facing ultimate defeat? Can anyone be certain this option is off the table for him? That’s a big bet, but it sure seems like the bet America is making. If a desperate Putin did use nuclear weapons, America has already said it would result in “catastrophic consequences.” This is a nightmare scenario that must be avoided at all costs.

All risks considered, a negotiated settlement appears to be the best way out of this war. A recent report by the Rand Corporation, the world’s preeminent defense policy think tank, came to just this conclusion. The Rand authors concluded that the U.S. cannot support the war in Ukraine long-term and simultaneously press forward other priorities like protecting Taiwan from China. Yet, to date, the U.S. policy has not pushed for a settlement of any sort. To the contrary, President Joe Biden has emphasized that support will continue for as long as necessary and that decisions on negotiations are for Ukraine alone.

In the plainest terms, the current policy is essentially “here’s a blank check” available forever. This honestly does not seem like an adult strategy. It’s fanciful. Given America’s financial state, its other priorities, the risk of the war expanding to draw in NATO, the fact that the current strategy is drawing China and Russia closer together, and the risk of a desperate Putin using nuclear weapons, it’s past time for a more realistic strategy. That strategy has to include a push to end the war without American blood being shed. You don’t need to be a Putin sympathizer to have this view. You just need to be someone looking out for America’s interests and protecting the lives of Americans above all else. It’s time for the U.S. to press for peace.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

9be34ea0a436165bf9fd9b513443467f
The Truth About the Debt Limit Fight for 02/03/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/02/23/the-truth-about-the-debt-limit-fight
Fri, 03 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As with so many of our national debates, the truth about the current debt limit fight is not just different from the narrative set forth by the corporate media; it’s the opposite. The media narrative, to recap, is that the debt limit can and should be increased as a matter of course. Anything that veers from this automatic debt limit increase, the story goes, is just flat-out irresponsible. This narrative is being pushed not just in the media, but by Wall Street, corporate America, the Democrats in Congress and even some Republicans. That?s not surprising since those groups are increasingly allied. Unfortunately, since this issue is so much more important than most, this narrative is not just wrong but flat-out dangerous.

Wall Street and corporate America are concerned, more than anything else, with next quarter’s profits. This focus is so strong that anything that endangers next quarter?s profits, like a fight over America’s debt crisis, has to be avoided at all costs. This sort of short-sighted financial thinking is usually derided by those who should know better. Thinking only about the next financial quarter can result in some seriously horrible outcomes further down the road. But the alignment between corporate America, the corporate media and the Democratic Party has grown so strong that there is virtually no dissent. The result is the near unanimity across the country that a clean debt limit increase must happen and those in the way are irresponsibly endangering the country?s financial security.

The truth is that America is running straight into a debt crisis. Oddly, the voices who were warning of this impending catastrophe back when America had a $10 trillion national debt are now largely silent, even as America has surpassed a $30 trillion national debt. It’s as if the problem has grown so big that even all the wise men have given up. The silence is eerie. It?s as if America is in a national suicide pact. National crisis is approaching, but nobody can even mention it anymore. It’s gotten so bad that those now raising this very real issue are derided as ?debt alarmists.?

Updated: Fri Feb 03, 2023

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The reality is America does need a debt alarm. The debt is now larger than the entire country’s annual output. The obligations for Social Security and Medicare are growing. The interest payments on the debt are crowding out other priorities. It’s no longer the situation that we had until recently, where the debt is just owed back to the U.S. Treasury. A huge chunk of the debt is now foreign-owned. America?s bills are coming due. Fixing this will be painful. The longer we wait to begin fixing it, the worse the pain is likely to be.

Given this reality, it would be flat-out irresponsible for leaders who understand the gravity of this issue to not use the debt limit increase as some leverage to both draw attention to the situation and to hopefully begin to address it. Responsible members of Congress know this.

The vast majority of Democrats? preferred answer on the nation?s looming debt crisis is to ignore it. They have even developed wild theories to explain it away. Most Republicans know better, but they are conflicted. First, the corporate world that dominates Washington is not focused on the issue and is instead hyper-focused on the near-term economic damage that a debt limit fight may endanger. Second, many Republicans view the imperative of defense spending, and currently of Ukraine military aid, as dwarfing the longer-term debt concerns. Finally, Republicans have been so hypocritical on the debt issue that it’s now politically difficult to take a stand on principle.

Most Republicans were silent as the federal debt exploded under George W. Bush. Republicans then screamed about the debt as it exploded even more under Barack Obama. Then they fell silent once again as it exploded to record levels under Donald Trump. Now, as Joe Biden continues the irresponsible fiscal policies of his predecessors, it’s politically difficult for Republicans to once again preach about fiscal restraint without looking like complete partisan hypocrites. It’s definitely a tough position to be in. Yet none of this changes the fact that addressing the debt is the right thing to do.

In politics, doing the right thing is not always rewarded. With all the hypocrisy, posturing and even lying across party lines, a political reward for those willing to push hard on debt reform is definitely not a sure thing. It?s therefore vitally important that the small band of Republicans pushing the issue the hardest be reasonable and smart about their goals.

What the debt issue needs more than anything today is principled leadership. This means not doing what?s most popular, but leading the American people toward what?s right for the country. This sort of leadership is, to understate things, in short supply in America. This is an opportunity to exert it. Many Americans are yearning for just that. Saddling our children and grandchildren with a debt-ridden and weaker country is fundamentally un-American. People know that deep down. They just need to be reminded. Pulling that off would be a win in itself. Handling this moment in a smart way is a huge opportunity for anyone capable.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

590e8c418cd7e6fd417c4d86ac4fac64
What’s Really Going On With the Phony Trump/Biden Document Scandal for 01/20/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/01/23/whats-really-going-on-with-the-phony-trumpbiden-document-scandal
Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Even by Washington standards, all the fake posturing and hypocrisy over the Trump/Biden classified documents scandals is reaching new heights. The Donald Trump era, which we are still in by many measures, has shattered many norms. Some of it has been healthy. A lot has not. The vigor by which the left and some of the establishment right has gone after Trump has certainly shattered many norms that the country will regret.

The presidency is important. The system is based on respecting that office even when you don’t like the occupant. From the phony Russia collusion story all the way through the overhyped classified document scandal, many of Trump’s opponents unfairly attacked not only Trump but the office of the presidency itself. That’s playing out today with the classified documents scandals. Trump certainly should not have had classified documents in his Florida compound, but the FBI mob-style raid and the overwrought reaction by many commentators, including President Joe Biden, was truly unhinged. Now, facing a similar circumstance, the whole thing is coming back to bite Biden. Norms were shattered, and now the country, including the current president, will live with the consequences.

The first thing to understand about classified documents is there are just way too many of them. Former Pentagon special counsel and Yale law professor Oona Hathaway told NPR: “There’s somewhere in the order of over 50 million documents classified every year. We don’t know the exact number because even the government can’t keep track of it all.” The government office in charge of protecting national security information confirmed in a 2021 report that it cannot keep up with the numbers and count how many documents are now classified.

Updated: Fri Jan 20, 2023

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It’s of course important to protect certain national security information from America’s enemies. Obvious examples like the technical details of high-tech weapons systems or the identities of American spies must be protected to the maximum extent possible. Anyone remotely familiar with the current system knows it has grown from this important national interest into something wholly different. Way too much information is classified. This is important because classification runs directly contrary to another important government priority: transparency. The American people have a right to know how their government operates. Classification can be used to hide all sorts of information. At a time when the decline of trust in national institutions has plummeted to record lows, this is not a trivial matter. Transparency builds trust.

The second important point missing from the overhyped classified documents scandal is the unique role of the president and the vice president in our system of government. The president is not a king. He’s not above the law. But the president and the vice president are the only two elected officials in the executive branch of government. They have extraordinary power in the American system. The entire classified document regime flows from that power. They can classify and declassify information on their own with no review or interference from any bureaucrat. They should be able to do that. Nobody else in the executive branch of government is directly accountable to the American people.

Given the endemic overclassification of documents, the president and vice president are drowning in classified materials. As the person in charge of papers for the vice president for four years, I have seen firsthand the sheer overwhelming volume at issue. Everything these days is classified. Most of it is boring and its release would not endanger anything. This does not relieve a president from protecting the materials, but any honest or fair review of what’s really going on has to take into account the broader context of the office.

Trump should not have had boxes of classified materials in his office, but any remotely fair observer knows that the overdone reaction was political. Trump is a danger to the country who must be destroyed; that’s the mindset of many of his biggest detractors. Once you have this mindset, the methods become less important. We still don’t know the official details of exactly what Trump had, including whether they were declassified in any way under the president’s authority to do that. Damning information has flowed to the public from unauthorized leaks by government investigators, but if the past is any guide, those can’t be relied on as hard facts. Given this, it’s fair to say the FBI raid was overdone. The precedent of that sort of action against a former president of the United States is flat-out dangerous to the office itself. Biden, the current holder of that office, knows this, but he went along anyway.

By going along with the overheated Trump document scandal, Biden got himself a political issue that no doubt helped in the midterm elections. He’s now paying the price. Biden should certainly not have had classified materials in his garage or at his think tank. Waiting to disclose that fact until after the midterm elections and even after the important follow-on Georgia Senate election was possibly the biggest abuse of all. Like Trump, though, Biden’s actual possession of the documents is more of an administrative slap on the wrist violation and less of a national scandal. Hillary Clinton’s violation, involving classified materials placed on unclassified computers tied to the public internet, was much more egregious than anything Trump or Biden have been accused of, and even then, there was no criminal sanction. Yet Biden played along with the unfair treatment of Trump. After pretending the Trump scandal was more than it was, Biden and his allies are now hamstrung coming out and explaining this reality. “What goes around comes around” will be fun for Biden’s opponents, but none of this is good for America, and it’s certainly not good for the office of the president.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

3c4afce5aca5107a059ed7c4af6c59b9
The House Speaker’s Race is Worth Celebrating for 01/06/2023
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/01/23/the-house-speakers-race-is-worth-celebrating
Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a lot of alarmism going on right now about the race for speaker of the House. Many are calling it a crisis or a “three-ring circus.” What it is really is the first sign that the reckoning and subsequent healing needed among Republicans may finally be upon us.

There is a huge split within the Republican Party. The party establishment sees an America that’s fundamentally the same as it was in 1985 and has a policy agenda fit for just that moment. These Republicans still see big business as their allies. They equate policies that help big business with policies that help America.

The other wing of the Republican party — some call themselves populists, some reformists, some national conservatives or “natcons” — sees a country slipping away. They want real reforms. They see the establishment as too tied to corporate America. They see corporate America as too tied to international interests, especially China, and not focused enough on the lives and well-being of everyday Americans.

Updated: Fri Jan 06, 2023

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This is a debate worth having. It’s a debate that’s been kicked under the rug for too long. It’s not chaos; it’s democracy.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy is a well-liked guy among Republicans. He’s not known as a policy leader. He’s particularly well-connected to the corporate influence world that dominates Washington today. The congressional Republicans opposing McCarthy are opposed to this camp. They are also unhappy that Republican leaders allowed a bloated, wasteful and chock-full of bad policy $1.7 trillion spending bill to pass. They want to get back to fiscal discipline, a former bedrock Republican principle that has been lost in recent years.

The press would like to make this into a MAGA/Trump revolt against the establishment, but that’s not accurate. Some of the most MAGA members are lined up with McCarthy, as is the former president himself. What we are seeing today is instead a push by back bench members to return to conservative principles, regular order and debate in Congress.

The problem identified by the conservative upstarts is the bills coming out of Congress overlap very little with the priorities of most conservative voters. Besides the overall spending issues and the coming fiscal catastrophe that most Republicans want to pretend is not on the horizon, the recently passed spending bill will actually make the border crisis even worse. Reasonable people understand that some compromise is necessary with a divided government, but the spending bill did a lot for every entrenched Washington interest and did nothing for average American voters concerned about vitally important issues such as border security and fiscal discipline.

Under the current system, there is no mechanism for members of Congress to effectively raise these issues. Republicans following corporate America’s agenda cut deals with Democrats who have a similar worldview. Each side gets their top priorities covered. Beyond that, amendments are not allowed. There is no real debate on issues. There can’t be, because besides those in on the negotiations, nobody even knows what’s in the bills. The rules requiring time to read the bills are waived virtually every time there’s a big bill in question. Thousands of pages pop out after secret negotiations between leadership. The vote is then held within hours. This is a broken system. There’s nothing radical about trying to reform it.

The furor over this speaker’s race has been intense. Rep. Dan Crenshaw called those opposing McCarthy “terrorists.” Others likened them to the Taliban or called them grifters. The honest truth is those holding up the works are a diverse bunch. There are a few grifters and rabble-rousers thrown in. There are some Republicans who have shown a lot more skill at social media posturing than they have at governing. Some have also bought into whacky conspiracies. None of this means they are wrong on this specific matter.

More importantly, aside from some of the most eccentric, there are also serious members of Congress involved in the speaker’s challenge. These members see their country in decline. They see regular American’s interests fall way to corporate interests. They see a lack of leadership among Republicans to address the country’s real problems in a remotely serious way. They are looking for leverage to force a debate on these matters and to force procedural changes that would allow for more substantive and robust policy debate going forward. This is what democracy is all about.

Neither America nor the Republican Party is going to fall apart if there’s no speaker of the House for a few days. The country will fall apart if more bills like the $1.7 trillion mess that was just passed with no debate keep coming. The corporate media narrative that this speaker vote has been dangerous and chaotic is, as is so often the case, the opposite of true. America’s continued slide toward fiscal catastrophe is dangerous. A truly open border is dangerous. A Republican Party not willing to fight for these basic principles is dangerous. When the status quo is failing, sometimes you need a little bit of chaos to shake things up. The system certainly needs a shake. What’s happening on Capitol Hill is healthy. It’s long overdue.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

af8762f96ddfd441e5bae32a32906ff3
Normal People Are Crying Out for a Leader for 12/23/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/12/22/normal-people-are-crying-out-for-a-leader
Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The leftward shift of the Democratic Party has provided a huge opportunity for Republicans. People are completely put off by many of the radical policies Democrats are pushing. What a gift this should be for Republicans. So why have they been so thoroughly unable to capitalize?

A huge chunk of the Republican Party’s Washington establishment is still living in 1995. They are thoroughly unable to get their heads around the profound changes in America. As with so many Americans these days, they are defined by their own bubble. The people they know best — corporate America and those in leadership positions — are generally thriving. They haven’t stopped to consider whether the trade, immigration, spending, defense and other policies that define them need an update in light of the country’s current circumstances. The giant wave of political unease in America — even after a reality TV host kicked their door open and took over the living room! — has caused almost zero self-reflection among Republicans.

The more reformist side of the Republican Party understands the problems facing the country. They understand that Republican trade and China policies have contributed to America’s decline. They understand that real border security is a prerequisite for most Americans before any broader discussion on immigration. They know that the bloat, waste, inefficiency, lack of focus and often outright corruption in America’s defense establishment have allowed competitors like China to close the military gap while spending at a fraction of the cost. Most of the leaders on this side of the party have a solid sense of what’s really happening. Their problem is competence and sanity.

Updated: Fri Dec 23, 2022

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There are some amazingly talented and sane reformist Republican politicians, but their coalition includes too many crazies, dummies and outright scammers. Simply put, the leadership vacuum in the Republican Party has allowed too many nuts to occupy the field. The downside to this dynamic was in stark display this past election cycle. Crazies scare away normal people. Normal people are turned off by Democrat policies on open borders, woke education and crime. They’re begging for something better, and they are there for the taking. But they recoil from leaders incapable of dismissing QAnon, Black Hebrew Israelites or child slave dungeons. Corporate media loves to overplay these weaknesses, but too many Republicans regularly give them the ammunition they need.

The end result for Republicans is chaos. The debate over the massive congressional omnibus spending bill is just the latest example. This spending bill is the definition of what Republicans should unite to oppose. Republicans have an incoming majority in the House of Representatives. They will soon have the leverage to cut a better deal. They are afraid to use this power. Their thin majority and lack of real leadership, and the resulting power vacuum between the warring factions, has left too many Republicans too frightened to stand up to even the most damaging policies.

As a result, many Senate Republicans are going to vote for a bill that says the Border Patrol can’t use its operating and support budget for border security. The funds can only be used to improve border processing. Have any of these senators been to the southern border? American border towns are being overrun. Literally millions of people are crossing per year. The government has no idea how many. All they know is that the Border Patrol encountered a record 2.3 million people. They can only guess how many more walked across without getting caught. With these people came enough fentanyl to kill everyone in America. Fentanyl killed over 100,000 Americans last year. It’s an epidemic. As with the opioid crisis before it, Republican leaders are asleep at the switch.

As bad as it is, the border insanity is not the worst part of the bipartisan spending package. The worst part is the complete waste of spending with not even a sliver of reform. At $1.7 trillion, the new spending bill once again massively increases funding for just about everything. Many Republicans view this as a win because they got more defense spending as part of the package. Without needed reforms, most of this defense money will be wasted in a broken system. And as a result of this bill and so many before it, when the history of this sad era is written, the total dumping of spending discipline and the crisis it ends up causing the country will be viewed as a monumental failure.

America is now past the point when the country’s spending catastrophe should be driving a real reform debate. Sharply increased interest rates and massive emergency spending have brought the country much closer to the pending entitlement crisis and fiscal catastrophe that is coming. Instead of debating reforms, Republicans have decided to join in on the spending binge. Democrats have always been for more spending, but now most Republicans have decided to join the party. The current waste-ridden spending bill just continues and expands this trend.

No doubt, fiscal discipline is a tough issue politically. Leadership is the ability to overcome tough issues and speak the truth that people need to hear. America has a thirst for truth right now. When our children and grandchildren are suffering as a result, when the country ends up weaker as a result, we will all be to blame, but none more than the Republicans who deep down knew better and sold out anyway.

Republicans have the 41 votes needed to stop this spending binge. They also have a very appealing political alternative. They can agree to pass a short-term spending package to fund the government until the new Congress can fix things or at least until Republicans will have more votes to add a little balance.

This alternative makes sense but is unlikely. Republicans are scared of their own chaos. This is unsustainable. Democrats are driving America over the edge with insane policies, and Republicans are in too much chaos to do a thing about it. If ever a country were crying out for leadership, it’s now.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

5c2648d98101fe6e8a967b80aabfbd69
Conservatives Are Dying for a House Speaker Like Nancy Pelosi for 11/18/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/11/22/conservatives-are-dying-for-a-house-speaker-like-nancy-pelosi
Fri, 18 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Nancy Pelosi will rightfully go down as one of the greatest speakers in the history of the U.S. House. I’m not sure I would agree with Pelosi on a single policy issue; that’s not the point. As far as leadership ability and political smarts, Pelosi ran circles around the bumbling Republicans of her time. She got things done for the left in a way no recent Republican leader could for the right. When the stakes were highest, she was able to corral her votes. Simultaneously, when the far left went too far, she was willing to slap them down. There’s a name for all this. It’s called leadership. Republicans are desperate for a leader like this in the House.

Before the 2006 elections, as the Bush administration began cratering politically, the far left began pushing to impeach over the Iraq War. Pelosi led the charge against impeachment. She took on the far left directly. They hated her for it. But Pelosi knew that Democrats were winning politically and was smart enough to see that impeachment had the potential to shake that up. It worked. As a result, Democrats gained 30 seats in the House and took back control of the chamber for the first time in 12 years. This effectively ended the Bush administration’s power and paved the way for Barack Obama. In the process, Pelosi was elected as the first female House speaker in history. She didn’t get it due to some 2022-style artificial diversity push. She earned it.

If Pelosi’s first big political test was holding off the far left, her second test required walking moderate Democrats right off a cliff in the name of historic left-wing progress. In 2010, Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority by losing a special Senate election in Massachusetts of all places. Even Obama saw this surprise Massachusetts defeat as the end for Obamacare. He was ready to cave and replace the massive federal health care takeover with a series of smaller bills. Pelosi wouldn’t have it. With the push for Obamacare, unlike the impeachment debate earlier, Pelosi found a cause she deemed more important than politics. Moderate Democrats knew their votes would cost them their seats, but Pelosi was able to get them to vote for Obamacare anyway.

Updated: Fri Nov 18, 2022

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In the end, Obamacare passed, and because of it, 63 Democrats predictably lost their seats in the 2010 midterms. Pelosi lost the speakership. Through this process, she did something no recent Republican leader has come close to doing. She proved she was willing to lose political power to get things done. Democrats viewed Obamacare as the holy grail. To them, implementing it was worth the cost.

Conservatives should ask themselves, is there a single issue recent Republican leaders feel that passionately about? What’s the point of winning elections if you aren’t going to do big things?

You don’t have to like Nancy Pelosi or Obamacare to admire this level of leadership and smarts. It’s precisely what has been lacking among congressional Republicans. On the right, the reformist side is so desperate for progress that they sometimes end up tilting at windmills, often at their political peril. Even worse, the larger establishment bloc is not really interested in getting things done. To them, the election itself is the end game. Washington service is largely a tryout for a career in corporate influence. They are happy to make some attempt at stopping the most left-wing policies, but real progress on a conservative agenda is not even something they contemplate. They don’t say it out loud, but the unwritten rule is anything at all that threatens reelection is off the table. This is, of course, a perversion of the political process, but it’s 100% the mindset of the majority of Republicans in Washington.

Republicans love to hate Pelosi, and often for good reason. She was tough and even mean sometimes. On issues like COVID and congressional member stock-trading, she helped break trust with the American people. More broadly, she pushed through many policies that will hurt America badly. This record is nothing to celebrate. But as a purely political matter, Pelosi has been by far the greatest congressional leader of our time. She ran her caucus with tight control. Nobody really crossed her, and she got things done. The gap is so huge that the House Republicans she’s gone up against were really never in her league. She was both tougher and smarter than them. She usually ran circles around them. The honest truth is conservatives are dying for a House leader of Nancy Pelosi’s caliber.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

afbd631cf9141a00f7a8971259a56d86
Republicans Should Use Their Brains a Little When Picking Candidates for 11/11/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/11/22/republicans-should-use-their-brains-a-little-when-picking-candidates
Fri, 11 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The lessons from this election cycle are the same as the lessons from all election cycles: Good candidates matter, especially so for Republicans who are not playing on an even field. Conservatives can go with any competent candidate they like in deeply red states and districts. From my perspective, I’d like them to go with the most conservative candidate possible in those places. Politicians from deeply conservative places should challenge a system that’s clearly in need of reform.

Conservatives in swing states risk a lot by going with that strategy. Just “go with your heart” may work when picking a girlfriend or a baby name. Not super smart in politics. The old rule for conservatives still applies: Go with the most conservative candidate you can find who still has a strong chance of winning. That calculus is, of course, very different in a state like Wyoming than it is in a state like Massachusetts. That’s not rocket science. You don’t run Sarah Palin in Connecticut if you want any hope of winning. Yet, somehow, an idea that simple seemed to be lost on many people this election cycle.

Beyond this, competence matters. Candidates cannot be judged only by their celebrity or the size of their social media followings. Americans are facing serious challenges. They are worried about their family finances, our country’s future, and both personal and national security. Picking candidates who can’t exhibit a deep understanding of these issues is playing with fire. A candidate may win the support of the right-wing base by having the right instincts, but instincts alone are not enough to win the crucial middle needed in most swing states. All of this is doubly true for Republicans. The corporate media will look for any excuse to give a Democratic candidate a pass for mixing something up or saying something controversial. If you are a Republican, any slip will be used against you as a weapon for as long as it works. That’s not fair, but it’s reality.

Updated: Fri Nov 11, 2022

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There were numerous examples in this cycle of candidates who were probably too conservative or too undisciplined in their commentary for the states or districts they ran in. On pure incompetence grounds, though, nobody compared to Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Oz may be a nice guy, a great doctor and even a great TV host, but he was not a good political candidate. Oz changed his views on many issues when he ran for Senate. People change their views for legitimate reasons. God knows that I have, on many issues, but when you can’t explain it well or refuse to do so, voters will know you’re a phony. There are few bigger turnoffs than a politician who doesn’t seem to believe in anything. Being able to run a competent campaign is also vital in any close race. When Oz honed in on the price of veggies for his “crudites,” he defined himself as out of touch forever with many Pennsylvania voters. While Donald Trump’s love for McDonalds made him more relatable for many Americans, the “crudites” moment was the opposite. The worst part of this campaign malpractice was that this entire event was not some unscripted scene captured by a photographer. It was an official campaign video. Someone reviewed it and decided it was good politics. News flash: It wasn’t. Conservatives downplayed the crudite gaffe, but it really hurt Oz. Voters want a candidate who they can relate to. Some politicians truly represent their districts. Others are so good at faking it that it doesn’t really matter. Oz didn’t fall into either of these categories.

Pennsylvania has been trending blue for quite a while. It’s hard for Republicans to win there. This cycle could have been different. The Democrats nominated an exceedingly weak candidate of their own. Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, was clearly diminished by his recent stroke. He refused to debate until early voting had already been going for more than a month. In the interim, Oz’s campaign mocked Fetterman’s condition and even the role his weight may have played in it. This may make for good social media, but making your opponent more likable and relatable was not good politics. By the time the debate finally happened, it was clear that Fetterman’s speech was slurred, and he often seemed confused. But it was too late. Oz’s mismanagement of his campaign, inability to relate to voters and the late date proved too much to overcome.

Conservatives will rightly blame the press coverage. Fetterman does not seem like he’s really recovered. The press helped him hide that. Reporters who dared to tell the truth about this were pummeled by their colleagues. Fetterman’s problems were covered on conservative media and largely glossed over by the larger corporate press. The problem is this bias is one of the only things Republican candidates can rely on. The corporate media is never going to be fair to Republican candidates. Republicans have to nominate candidates who can overcome this, as many have. Especially in blue states, they have to be perfect. Oz wasn’t close.

America is still a very divided country. Anyone pretending conservative views are now dominant is deluding themselves. Approximately 31% of Americans identify as Democrats, 25% identify as Republican, and 41% as independent. This changes a lot state to state and even district by district, but only in the reddest areas are conservative views clearly in the majority. You have to convert some people in the middle to win in many places. Candidates who are much more conservative than their district will usually have a harder time doing that. Candidates who lack self-control in their messaging will be abused by the biased corporate media. Conservatives don’t get the passes that Democrats do. It’s a reality you have to work around. And based on that reality, there were a bunch of candidates this cycle who made the odds for Republicans a lot longer than they needed to be.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

2d073c4c6e5bca0855eedc195178d02c
The Misinformation Police Are Coming for You for 11/04/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/11/22/the-misinformation-police-are-coming-for-you
Fri, 04 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The latest data seems to show voters may be breaking for Republicans in next week’s midterm elections. That’s good news for them in the short term. In the bigger picture, if that happens, everyone better buckle up. The left and their media and tech partners are going to have a fit.

If Democrats lose broadly in the election, their first move should be to look inward. Their policy choices have contributed to historically high and destructive inflation. By showering the country with too much COVID relief spending and pressuring the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates too low for too long, they helped drive up prices across the board. Their anti-fossil fuel agenda also helped push up energy prices. These choices hit every American budget. Certainly, there were factors at play out of any politician’s control, but major glaring policy mistakes played a part. Voters know it, and they seem eager to make the perpetrators pay a political price.

Democrats have also turned off many normal Americans by failing to stand up to the most radical elements in their own party. Taking down the border control policies of the prior administration without a competent replacement plan in place contributed to the growing border crisis. Democrats’ efforts to deflect political blame have failed largely because many Democrats expressly called for decriminalizing illegal border crossings in the nationally televised presidential debates. Throw in radical policies on education and criminal justice and it would be hard for any political group to turn off voters this much if they tried. The results have been devastating. Republicans are outraged, but so are millions of other voters. Most crushing is the huge loss of support for Democrats among their fast-growing and vital Hispanic base.

Updated: Fri Nov 04, 2022

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Rather than wrestle with these self-inflicted mistakes, many Democrats and their media allies are going to be looking for scapegoats. The first will be the American people themselves. There’s a growing sentiment on the left that the people have let down the country. According to this worldview, Republicans are now a threat to democracy. The events of Jan. 6 are just a precursor for what could be coming. President Joe Biden is set to give a national address making this very point. According to this mindset, the midterms are too important to worry about regular Americans’ family budgets, about jobs, or even about crime and physical security. Voting, the story goes, is about the future of democracy itself. The story, of course, ignores all the Republican politicians and Republican-appointed judges who steered America through its most recent election controversies.

The same mindset has convinced many Democrats that something as benign as requiring an ID to vote is another Jim Crow. Voting Republican just because you think they may better manage the economy is, according to this growing worldview, essentially a selfish act. More than selfish though, this sort of behavior can only be explained by a breakdown in the system. The system must be reformed, they will say. The reform they will push hardest is an increased crackdown on misinformation. Once you have deluded yourself into believing all these things, and a massive number of Democrats, media and tech figures definitely have, then it’s easy to conclude that misinformation must be the cause of all the problems. If people had good information, they would agree with us. If people don’t agree with us, they have to be misinformed.

So where is all this headed? We can look to the last presidential election for one sign. When the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, it was viewed as a threat. Emails on the laptop showed a series of shady business dealings, and they contained hints that Joe Biden himself may have had some involvement. The reaction was swift and brutal for anyone interested in free speech or fair elections. The story was censored.

The predicate for censorship was an allegation that the entire story was likely Russian disinformation. A cavalcade of former intelligence and law enforcement luminaries signed onto the effort to give it credibility. Law enforcement officials used this argument to pressure Big Tech companies. The story was banned altogether on Twitter and buried by the Facebook algorithm. All this was done despite the lack of any actual evidence of Russian manipulation. All this was done despite the fact that anyone who wanted to could have authenticated the contents of the laptop within hours using the available digital evidence. Our news company, The Daily Caller News Foundation, did just that at the time. The Washington Post used the same technique to come to the same conclusion. The only difference was they waited 17 months to do it well after the election and well after the analysis would have been relevant.

When you’re fighting not just to win an election but to save democracy itself, it’s easy to rationalize almost any restriction. This is how well-meaning people spiral into committing horrible acts. In that regard, there are growing signs that the laptop saga may have just been a precursor of what’s to come. According to news reports, the FBI agent who pushed to suppress the legitimate laptop story is now advising the Biden administration on actions to address misinformation. It would be hard to make up something that insane.

What sort of actions are we talking about? We can look to Brazil for one scary sign. Like ours, Brazil’s constitution prohibits government censorship. However, in the name of fighting misinformation, Brazil’s election board pushed their media to censor stories in their recently concluded election. Some stories were cut-and-dried, like the false claim by the winning left-wing party that Brazil’s populist conservative president was a cannibal. However, as with all issues of free speech, things quickly became more complicated. The election tribunal even pressured news companies and tech platforms to restrict stories about the winning left-wing candidate’s prior conviction for corruption. Those stories were true.

Every authoritarian knows that the power to control information is paramount. The laptop story proves that the misinformation claim was already used in America for partisan purposes. The Brazil example shows these are not theoretical concerns. If next week’s American election goes as expected, watch out for the misinformation police.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

1eb666d11e1423d8aa2453ac89e2b843
America’s Dumb Energy Debates for 10/21/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/10/22/americas-dumb-energy-debates
Fri, 21 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If forced to pick one main reason the Democrats are going to get routed in a month, I’d go with their crazy energy policies. In no other area is the link between their radical policies and people’s real lives as directly connected and easy to understand.

Crime is close, but the crime boom is mostly happening in deeply blue cities. Law-abiding members of these communities are certainly rethinking politics. Many of them are minorities. Many Hispanic, Asian and Black Americans are repulsed by much of the university-driven radical woke agenda being pushed on them in democratic cities. They see the results daily. Their pushback in places like San Francisco and Seattle offers reason for hope for normal people everywhere, but it will take time and won’t move the needle in a huge way this election cycle.

Energy will.

Updated: Fri Oct 21, 2022

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Energy will.

Energy affects everyone. People fill up their cars and notice. People pay heating bills and notice. And it’s hard for normal people not to put at least some of the blame for the sky-high energy costs at the feet of the Democratic Party. Democrats, including President Joe Biden, campaigned on “getting rid” of fossil fuels. They implemented many policies aimed at doing just that. Perhaps most importantly, they strongly support so-called environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investment standards to choke off fossil fuel investments. All of this has contributed to higher energy costs and will continue doing so in the future.

People also notice the national security side. It’s not as politically potent as pocketbook issues, but — shocker — Americans like a strong America. The fracking boom helped America become a net energy exporter for the first time in decades. Energy is a weapon as much as it’s a commodity. It always has been. He who holds the gas has a lot of strategic power. America held the gas, but the Democrats decided to give it away. This has empowered the Saudis, Russia, China and others. America could today be exporting liquid natural gas to Europe. The Democrats have done all they can to slow up that potential. By doing that, they have undercut America’s power and handed power straight to Russia. I’m not pretending every voter has studied this. But I am positive that most have a sense something’s not right.

Democrats voluntarily gave away this enormous American power. Normal people don’t like that.

If energy does end up helping Republicans get back to power, they are going to have to come up with their own policies going forward. There’s a huge sentiment on the right to oppose renewable energy altogether as if it’s some sort of left-wing trap. This is the sort of tribal thinking dominant in America today, and it’s moronic.

The reality is that as far as energy policy goes, you would have to be a total idiot not to favor cleaner renewable energy if all other factors were even. If you’re old enough to remember the 1970s smog or you travel enough to see the pollution in India and China, you know that cleaner energy is clearly better. Some conservatives think the left is being overly alarmist about climate change. Others point out that our best option for climate change is to grow our economy as strong as possible and count on man’s ability to innovate and adapt to deal with problems down the road as technology improves. For any of these camps, however, cleaner energy should still be viewed as better if all other factors were equal. There are too many other benefits.

The problem, of course, is all other factors are not equal. Clean energy technology cannot compete evenly with fossil fuels on a global or even national scale. The technology is not there yet. The main drawback is the battery technology. Wind turbines and solar arrays work great when there’s wind and sun. Guess what happens to a windmill when there’s no wind or to a solar panel when there’s no sun? Yes, no energy. The only way around this is massive battery storage capacity. There is no such technology available today at any price point that’s even remotely affordable.

Given all this, the Democrats’ energy policy is essentially based on a hope that raising fossil fuel costs will incentivize more renewable energy investment and innovation. If that happens, then over time, the cost gap between renewables and fossil fuels will narrow. That’s already happened a bunch. It’s not a totally crazy idea. Incentives work. If there’s more money to be made in renewables, more investment will go in. Over time, innovation should lower the costs. The problem is we are not there yet.

Not only is cost still an issue, but due to today’s battery technology problem, without fossil fuels, people will literally not have enough energy. That’s what happened in California this summer when the governor had to beg residents to turn off their air conditioners to avoid blackouts. That happened in America in 2022.

The reality Democrats need to understand is fossil fuels could be here for years or even decades to come. There is no magic. Democrats can incentivize renewables and battery technology all they want, and there’s still some chance scientists just can’t get there any time soon. Clean and safe nuclear fusion technology has been a goal for over 70 years now. Researchers have spent billions on it. There is still no solution on the horizon. The same could prove true with the battery issue. There’s a chance it doesn’t pan out at scale in a way that’s remotely economical, at least not for decades.

The reality for conservatives is renewable and nuclear technologies are improving and costs are dropping. Innovation is working. That’s a great thing. Be for all of it, as long as it’s done in a way that doesn’t harm hard-working Americans. That’s the winning strategy.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

1d7390c3081d406702306b827926da43
The First Step to Pulling America Out of Its Tailspin for 10/07/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/10/22/the-first-step-to-pulling-america-out-of-its-tailspin
Fri, 07 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The bad news for America keeps coming in, fast and heavy. The current and future challenges are lining up at a truly unprecedented rate. To say they look scary would be a huge understatement. America’s future is on the line. Unless the country starts healing, that future looks bleak.

In the near term, on the economic front alone, there is inflation, recession and the potential for the dreaded stagflation of the 1970s (continued inflation coupled with unemployment/recession). On top of this is an energy security crisis with the potential for supply shortages and even blackouts, almost all self-inflicted and driven by an overaggressive transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy before the technology was ready. On immigration, America’s border problem has grown to a full-blown crisis with millions of people flowing across annually (the U.S. government has no idea how many million). In addition to migrants, those crossing the border include dangerous people and drug smugglers illegally importing deadly drugs like fentanyl that are ravaging American communities. As if all of that were not enough, on the national security front, for the first time in history, an official nuclear power state is openly threatening nuclear war.

Even if America were to somehow deal with all these near-term crises, none of which we are even close to addressing, the long-term challenges don’t ease. If anything, they get worse. For starters, America’s turn as the world’s only superpower looks like it may be shorter than anyone had anticipated. An increasingly assertive, and increasingly belligerent, China is looking to displace or at least join the U.S. as a world power. China is not acting alone. They are being helped in that quest by many of America’s leading companies.

Updated: Fri Oct 07, 2022

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Finally, but perhaps most importantly, America is walking right into a debt crisis. The new numbers just came out, and they are horrifying. Data just released by the U.S. Treasury shows national debt passing $31 trillion for the first time in history. This debt crisis is a bipartisan failure, built up over decades, but the pace at which the debt is currently growing is staggering. In the last five years alone, America added a whopping $10 trillion to the national debt. The last two years alone are responsible for nearly $6 trillion in total debt. That growth rate is unprecedented and completely unsustainable. The numbers are too big to comprehend so look at it on a per capita basis. The debt is now $93,000 for every single citizen and nearly $250,000 for every taxpayer.

If all this isn’t scary enough, three factors make the debt numbers even more depressing. First, America hasn’t gotten much for all this spending. Unlike China’s infrastructure explosion or its famous “belt and road” investments to increase its foreign power, America’s spending binge has been accompanied by a near complete punting on its real long-term challenges. Second, and most daunting, America’s looming entitlement crisis is approaching. Zero effort has been made and zero dollars have been spent on managing this catastrophe. America’s elderly and sick have been promised entitlements that the country will have no money to afford. This problem is no longer 50 years out. It’s approaching fast. Fixing it will cost even more money. And finally, the current debt burden is about to rapidly accelerate due to the huge increase in debt service interest rates caused by the Federal Reserve’s tightening. Even with slower spending growth, the interest payments are about to explode.

With all of these challenges, there is no solution that will be politically viable unless the American people regain trust in their national leaders and institutions. Everyone bemoans the lack of national trust, but nobody to date has made much effort to win it back. Without trust, politics break down. To take just one example, the Food and Drug Administration lost the trust of millions of Americans by allowing pharmaceutical companies to sell opioids on a previously unimaginable scale by claiming a novel and now largely repudiated reduced risk of addiction. As with most national institutions that have failed in recent years, the FDA has felt no need to explain its role in this debacle, one that left hundreds of thousands of Americans dead. Each of these victims had families. Millions were affected. All these people are fixated on the FDA’s corruption.

At the onset of COVID, all this was ignored. Yet somehow national leaders were surprised that so many Americans did not trust the FDA when it came to vaccines. That trust was broken years ago. Trust in the FDA was broken due to a perceived or real undue corporate influence on the FDA process. Top FDA officials repeatedly go to pharmaceutical companies to get rich when they leave government service. The FDA official who signed off on the bogus and deadly claim that time-released opioids were less addictive ended up at Purdue Pharma, the maker of those opioids. Rather than address this abuse head on and institute reforms, the agency has largely glossed it over. That’s been the model for all broken American institutions. That model does not work.

Unless America’s leaders and America’s leading institutions address the trust issue head on, the country will be paralyzed in dealing with all the mounting challenges. The FDA is just one glaring example. It applies across the board. Trust is treated as an abstract or even immaterial matter in America’s national discourse. Everyone acknowledges the breakdown, but nobody has come up with a solution. Nobody has even tried. Trust must be earned. Until it is, there will be no progress. Given the challenges that are here today and those coming tomorrow, all this must change if America is going to have a chance.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

4641756a68a1438e515ffe55519d6e8e
Ron DeSantis Found a Way to Finally Get People to Focus on America’s Open Border Catastrophe for 09/23/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/09/22/ron-desantis-found-a-way-to-finally-get-people-to-focus-on-americas-open-border-catastrophe
Fri, 23 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What’s been happening at America’s southern border is so crazy and so out of control that it’s almost hard to comprehend. As with all national issues, the power of the corporate media to set the narrative for the massive (but shrinking) number of Americans who still rely on them exclusively to stay informed has also played a role. The media is not interested in the border story. Sure, they cover it when they absolutely must, but they have been downplaying the catastrophe from the start. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are changing all that. They are creating a story that even the corporate media can’t ignore. In the process, Americans are being forced, for the first time, to confront the reality of the tragedy on America’ southern border.

You don’t have to be anti-immigration to believe in national borders. Countries need borders. It’s a fundamental aspect of national sovereignty. It’s crazy to have to write down something so obvious. Every normal person knows this. But our border policies are not being run by normal people. They are being run by left-wing ideologues with views completely outside mainstream political thought. The result has been catastrophic for America. It’s also been a tragedy for many migrants, but no one has paid a larger price for the complete breakdown on the border than America’s border towns.

Many of these small communities have been crying out for help. They are overrun. They don’t have the resources to cope. There are many completely innocent migrants crossing the border. They are risking everything to get their families to a better place. They have energy and guts. They are just the sort of people our country should want; we just can’t take them all in without some orderly system. To the extent that they cover the border crisis at all, the corporate media is fixated on telling their story.

Updated: Fri Sep 23, 2022

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There is another side of the border crisis. The part that the corporate media loves to downplay is not all the migrants crossing are innocent and noble. When you, in effect, open the border completely, it’s an invitation to the non-innocent. Gang members, criminals, drug dealers and even terrorists can cross with the rest. These people are all landing in America’s border communities. Many of these small towns have been completely transformed in the process. Jails are overflowing. Hospitals can’t keep up. Crime is booming. Drugs are everywhere. People don’t feel safe. Trash is piled up. And the strain on local budgets is astounding. It’s a true crisis.

The biggest problem with the growing border crisis is nobody seems to care. The towns hit hardest are predominantly small and isolated to a few states. The people who write for America’s top newspapers and the talking heads on American television are in the big cities. Conservative media is all over the story. My news company, The Daily Caller, has had reporters all over these border communities. The corporate media? Not so much.

As with the opioid crisis that predated it, crises more isolated to smaller communities can take a long time to seep into the national consciousness. Opioid overdoses and deaths were skyrocketing to record levels for many years before anyone in America’s media centers seemed to notice. As huge swaths of America were in full crisis, elite America was still celebrating the Sackler pharmaceutical family who was at the center of the problem. As overdose deaths and crime were booming to record levels in places like Appalachia, the Sackler name was going up on museums, universities and libraries in New York City and other high-wealth locations. There are literally two Americas.

The transport of migrants to elite northern towns has broken the bubble. Suddenly, Washington, D.C., New York and even Martha’s Vineyard have a problem. Now, not surprisingly, everyone’s interested.

The main controversy is whether the internal movement of migrants is a human rights violation. Once someone enters a country illegally, the most appropriate legal course is to deport them altogether. By that standard, it is not necessarily unreasonable for the country to move them to the most appropriate location. Nonetheless, there is certainly something that seems un-American about moving people, even those entering the country illegally, against their will.

In this case, however, it doesn’t seem to have happened that way. When migrants were bussed from Arizona to Washington, D.C., the D.C. mayor alleged that they were tricked and taken against their will. Our reporter interviewed migrants just as they were getting off the bus in D.C. The people she spoke with indicated it was totally voluntary. In fact, they were grateful for the opportunity to be transported to these so-called sanctuaries. DeSantis told us the same is true of the migrants he sent.

None of this solves the border crisis. The border has been a huge issue for years, but it’s important to remember that the current acute crisis is voluntary. Biden scrapped the policies put in during the Trump administration, even though he had no replacements in place. They literally opened the border. America cannot let in millions of people per year with no meaningful screening or limits.

This week, as flight radar indicated one of his planes was headed for Joe Biden’s vacation town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, rumors flew that Ron DeSantis must be sending migrants there. We sent a reporter to check it out. Turns out the whole thing was a hoax. Our reporter didn’t find any migrants, but she found a lot of other reporters. That’s something that never happens on her trips to the Rio Grande Valley. As she said, “I’ve never seen this much media at the border, just here in Delaware.”

Now at least people are talking about the issue. By America 2022 standards, that’s progress.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

bb56dbf374ac167e4b2730f3e8aea077
It’s All About the Midterms for 09/16/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/09/22/its-all-about-the-midterms
Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What’s gotten better in America since Joe Biden took office? It’s hard to come up with a list. The economy is in tatters. Inflation is booming. Food and energy prices are out of control. The poorest Americans are hurting more than they have in years. With an increasingly belligerent China and Russia joining forces, America’s national security looks more precarious than it has in decades. In the face of this record, the Biden team has gone low. With no record to run on, Biden’s advisers knew they had to flip the narrative. The new strategy is clear: Gin up your own base, and vilify your opponents.

Why would Biden take that course now? What’s changed since his inaugural address focus on national healing and unity? Only two things: No. 1: He has no record of accomplishments to run on; and No. 2: The midterm elections were looking like a disaster. The problem with sewing division to win the elections, or at least to not lose as badly as you otherwise would, is America is already at a breaking point. How much more political instability can the country take?

The huge strategic errors under the Biden administration are too numerous to catalog. Upon taking office, there were signs that the government was already overstimulating the economy. In the wake of this, really for purely ideological reasons, Biden insisted on adding even more stimulus. With a thin Democratic majority in Congress, Biden managed to inject almost $2 trillion more into the economy. Even liberal economists, the few independent enough to be honest, called out this huge mistake at the time.

Updated: Fri Sep 16, 2022

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Economists will debate how much of the current runaway inflation Biden caused, but there’s not a lot of debate that it added to the problem. On top of this, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates too low for too long. Biden encouraged this with his initial theory, shared by the Fed chairman, that inflation was just “transitory.” Biden then rewarded Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who was responsible for this historic mistake, with another term. In the process, in a political sense at least, he came to completely own the inflation problem. There is still no issue more important to voters. With midterm elections approaching, this was a disaster. The newest inflation numbers and the huge stock market drop that came with them just solidify the enduring nature of this catastrophe.

Besides their financial well-being, voters care about safety and security. Biden gets an F on both of those as well. Crime, drug overdoses and suicide are all booming. Police are quitting at record levels. They are also increasingly refusing to risk their own personal safety to make arrests when left-wing prosecutors will allow the criminals to walk within days. The southern border is essentially wide open. Even the most pro-immigration Americans don’t understand the logic of an open border. Only left-wing ideologues can defend this record. Outside of the Democratic primaries in a few of the most left-wing districts, candidates are running scared.

On the broader national security questions, during Biden’s time in office, America’s standing in the world has dropped. His hurried and botched withdrawal from Afghanistan came at the cost of innocent American lives. More broadly, it signaled weakness to our enemies. Would Russia have attacked Ukraine anyway? We will never know, but we do know that Russia and China sense a weaker America. Voters don’t like this.

In the face of this impending political disaster, we have seen two of the most cynical moves in American politics. First, Biden unilaterally, without Congressional authorization, decided to relieve what may amount to more than $1 trillion in student loan debt. If a Republican president dared to try anything so audacious, the newspaper headlines would be screaming about unfettered executive power. What’s worse, Biden did not even limit his largess to those most in need. Americans nearly wealthy enough to be in our top tax brackets are eligible for this giveaway. Recent data shows that these groups are the only ones still thriving in the Biden economy. The poorest Americans are hurting the most. Most others are just stagnant with cost increases gobbling up any wage growth they are seeing. The only Americans seeing actual growth are those with Bachelor’s degrees or higher.

In other words, Biden is stretching the law to the breaking point to benefit one of the only groups already doing well in today’s economy. With so many others hurting more, why would the president do this? Those Americans with Bachelor’s degrees or higher are now the base of his political support. Elections are around the corner. Is it all just about politics? Hard to come up with other answers.

If Biden’s real goal was to gin up his base voters with a student loan giveaway not tailored to those who need help the most and not even authorized by Congress, that’s pretty bad, but it’s not even half as corrosive as upping the ante on America’s current political chaos by, in essence, declaring half of all Americans as enemies of the state who must be destroyed. Why would an American president, especially one who claims to want to unite the country, take such a position? The press, of course, gave Biden’s actions the most charitable interpretation. Democracy and the rule of law are under attack, and the president had no choice but to speak out. That’s their take.

There are two big problems with this. First, the issues Biden is highlighting have been around since his inauguration. Biden only now has changed his tone and decided that half of all Americans are actually now fascists. Second, and even more damning, if this was all really a principled stand for democracy and the rule of law, why is Biden’s own party supporting many of the most MAGA candidates in Republican primaries with tens of millions of dollars in funding?

It’s all about the coming midterms. The president is not popular. His policies have failed. He’s determined to win, no matter the cost.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

5a945d45fa9100324b8f399c3a239bfb
Time for Those in Power to Change Strategies Before It’s Too Late for 09/02/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/09/22/time-for-those-in-power-to-change-strategies-before-its-too-late
Fri, 02 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The accelerating pace at which the U.S. is falling apart is matched only by the increasing hope among those in power that all will be solved if they just get Donald Trump out of the way. That, of course, is wishful thinking of the highest order. More than half a decade after Trump first came down the escalator, those running nearly every institution in America still don’t realize that he is a symptom of what’s going on in the country — not the cause. Even more damaging, those in power have lost confidence that the political system will get rid of Trump, so they are now resorting to brute force. And now the criticism is not just of Trump or of those who stormed the Capitol and deserve it, but of all Trump’s voters as well. Upping the ante like they have has taken a country on edge and moved it that much closer to catastrophe. If there are any cool heads left in American leadership, it’s time for them to step up.

The first casualty in the establishment’s war on Trump was free speech. The left now celebrates censorship over the battle of ideas. Some ideas are just too dangerous is the new attitude. They should not be heard. This crazy un-American notion began in the classroom and is now a widespread view among most American journalists and certainly among those running the social media platforms where speech is now conducted. The problem, of course, is trying to suppress ideas does not work. Bad ideas must be overcome by good ideas. Those espousing ideas must fight it out in the court of public opinion. You can’t short-circuit this process by force. Numerous authoritarian countries have tried this, and it has never worked for long.

The newest casualty seems to be the rule of law. Nobody in America should be above the law. Many on the American left have argued against this notion in recent years. Crime has boomed in many cities as a result. Latching on to these crazy radical ideas is one of the reasons Democrats are suffering politically. Most Americans would agree that if Trump broke the law in a meaningful way, then he should be held responsible. Everyone also knows that prosecutors and law enforcement are given a great deal of leeway in how laws are enforced. In the case of a violation of classified document regulations by a former president, the complications are compounded by the enormous power the U.S. Constitution places in American presidents. If the public feels that those in authority are misusing their prosecutorial discretion for political purposes, that the laws are not being administered fairly, then the repercussions could be devastating.

Updated: Fri Sep 02, 2022

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If Hunter Biden is given a free pass after potentially violating major laws, then America is one step closer to becoming a Third World country. If the Biden administration’s Justice Department unfairly went after the president’s biggest political opponent just months before elections, they need to give a full explanation. The Biden administration amazingly does not seem to have considered this factor at all before conducting a mob-style raid of the former president’s home. No explanation was offered for days, and when it was, the vast majority was literally redacted. To date, the government still has not explained why the treatment of Trump differed so much from the treatment of Hillary Clinton for what seems to most people like similar behavior.

Nobody can force the Biden administration to explain in detail their justification, why means short of a mob raid could not have been used, and how this differs in substance from how Clinton was treated. There are court efforts to force answers to these questions, but they will likely not succeed unless the administration wants to explain. The administration should want to do just that. If this is not political at all, you would expect them to want to bend over backward to explain how and why. The absence of that explanation is the most damning part of it all.

All of this has upped the national temperature to a breaking point. Headlines in major U.S. newspapers now debate whether the country is headed for a civil war. Politicians and activists are betting on who would win. The greatest country in the history of the world is literally falling apart. It’s time for those who care about America to step up. The current course is unsustainable.

Those controlling the levers of government, media, corporate, entertainment and academic power have a clear choice going forward. They must go back to fighting and trying to win the battle of ideas. Many of the policies that have benefitted elite Americans are not working for everyday people. That’s been the source of all the current political unrest. It started with the financial crisis. Elites also got richer helping the rise of an authoritarian China. How was this good for everyday Americans? It’s time to engage in this debate and so many others head on. If mistakes were made, it’s time to admit it and find solutions. Those in charge of America’s leading institutions hold all the power. Nobody can make them engage. They have to want to do it for love of country. Ignoring the underlying problems and hoping to win by increasing levels of brute force is another option they can try, but it will not work. It will only push an amazing country further and further toward the abyss.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

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Starter Steps in Case Anyone in Washington Is Interested in Fixing Our Broken Political System for 08/19/2022
https://www.creators.com/read/neil-patel/08/22/starter-steps-in-case-anyone-in-washington-is-interested-in-fixing-our-broken-political-system
Fri, 19 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest reasons American politics have turned upside down over the past few years is growing numbers of Americans do not think leaders represent their interests. That simple sentiment underlies nearly every recent problem in American politics. Yet for some reason, almost nobody has engaged in the process of figuring out how this happened and how to fix it.

It’s hard to trust elected representatives if you think they are in it to line their own pockets. Voters also don’t trust politicians who seem to prioritize foreign interests or special interests over their own well-being. Those are precisely the sentiments many voters feel today.

It has now been over six years since America’s political class was put on clear notice that their voters are not happy. During those six years, almost zero effort has been expended to understand why voters are so frustrated and turned off. It’s much easier for a politician to bemoan the state of the country than look inwardly at a system in clear need of reform. Go to any dinner party or any after-work trade association get-together in Washington, D.C., and you will hear a lot of complaining about the political system breaking down — which it has. What you are unlikely to hear, however, is much introspection or proposed solutions. Trust in government continues to plummet year over year, to previously unimaginable depths, and those in power still refuse to look for solutions. Until they do, the system will not heal. If they are ever interested in starting, here’s a good starting place.

Updated: Fri Aug 19, 2022

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No. 1: The culture of Washington.

The days of the citizen legislator are certainly gone. George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson famously served the country and then left politics to go back to their farms. Many civic-minded leaders since did stints in Washington as part of their broader business, military or other careers. Today’s leaders do stints in Washington to make inroads with the corporate lobbying community. Their time in Congress is, in essence, a tryout for a career in corporate influence. This may sound overheated, but the numbers tell the story. Departing members of Congress are now more likely to go into the lucrative corporate influence field than not. Over 50% of those leaving Congress take this route.

With a highly regulated economy, there is nothing wrong with corporations hiring people to protect their interests. There is something wrong with a system where the majority of elected representatives go into this line of work.

It begs some obvious questions: Who do these people represent when they are in Congress? When the interests of their constituents conflict with the interests of their potential future corporate employers, which side are they on? Many Republicans ignore this inherent tension because they believe that what is good for corporate America is good for America. With many big businesses more focused on growing profits in China or other overseas markets than with their legacy American businesses, those days, if they ever existed, are clearly over. The interests do not necessarily align. Anyone who has driven through the thousands of once-thriving American communities decimated over the past 20-30 years of record corporate profits knows this is the case. And if it is in fact the case, then there is a huge problem when the majority in Congress are really trying out for jobs lobbying for big international businesses.

If those in Congress began to really address this issue, complicated as it is, they would be taking the first step to rebuild lost trust.

No. 2: Prioritizing American interests.

In a representative democracy, the politicians are supposed to represent the interests of their constituents. Many voters are not confident this is happening. Upper-echelon Americans have thrived under America’s trade, immigration and economic policies. The donor class gets things done. Others feel left out of the process. Wall Street and multinational American corporations in particular have thrived by fueling the rise of a newly assertive China and its fast-growing economy. Whether those policies have benefited average Americans is much more in question.

Voters also worry that their leaders are not focused enough on truly American interests. There are legitimate humanitarian concerns around the world. Those concerns should be taken into account when leaders consider things like immigration and foreign policy. Most voters would agree. The problem is many voters see their elected officials as even more concerned about these sorts of matters than they are with their own interests. They see their communities stagnating (or worse) and worry that opportunities are shrinking.

America has benefited immensely from immigration, but America cannot continue as a stable country with a wide-open border. The country is headed for a debt crisis, yet the idea of asking other countries to pay for the benefits Washington bestows on them seems foreign to American leaders.

This was not always the case. America has no closer ally than England. Yet in the early 1940s, when England was in its greatest time of need and reached out to America for help, that help was not structured as a giveaway funded by American taxpayers. It was structured as a loan to be paid back by a fellow wealthy country.

Many Americans are convinced that their politicians no longer care about such trivial matters. They spend American taxpayer dollars around the world for many goals that do not directly benefit Americans (or that benefit others even more than they do Americans), and they don’t seem to even consider being paid back. Why should American taxpayers foot the bill for the security of other rich countries? Why should America unilaterally take down its fossil fuel industry in the name of climate change only to allow China and India to pick up the slack? Are Chinese coal emissions better for the climate than American natural gas emissions? These are reasonable questions many Americans are asking. They don’t find many politicians vigorously taking up this mantle.

American citizens would like American interests to be weighed more heavily in these decisions. That doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

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Neil Patel
Opinion

Neil Patel

Neil Patel co-founded The Daily Caller, one of America's fastest-growing online news outlets, which regularly breaks news and distributes it to over 15 million monthly readers. Patel also co-founded The Daily Caller News Foundation, a nonprofit news…