What will matter at the end of the day on Nov. 5 is which candidate’s party turned out voters, whether in person or by mail.

After a full week of isolated “preparation,” President Joe Biden committed political suicide Thursday night in the first presidential debate. He struggled to put together a coherent sentence, with former President Donald Trump at one point telling moderators he was unsure what Biden was trying to say. And while Trump delivered a tempered and strong performance, Republicans cannot assume their polling and debate performances will be enough to win this November. The party must keep its foot on the pedal of ballot operations.

Biden’s performance rocked the left-wing apparatus, with the left fretting that he should not and cannot be the Democratic nominee. Biden spent the night incoherently rambling, muddling words, lying at least 20 times, and, when not speaking, standing with his mouth agape.

“Dems freak out over Biden’s debate performance: ‘Biden is toast,’” Politico headlined a piece.

CNN’s John King said “there has to be a conversation with the president after tonight” while Van Jones said Biden should “consider taking a different course now.”

Despite the worried reaction, if Republicans rest on their laurels, it’s possible that Democrats’ ballot trafficking operations could carry a candidate as weak as Biden across the finish line.

Democrats have spent years creating sophisticated on-the-ground ballot operations, from get-out-the-vote efforts to mail-in ballot collection. In the swing state of Pennsylvania, the state’s Democrat Party has worked with Biden’s campaign to set up more than a dozen offices focused on hosting “training sessions for volunteers, canvassing kickoffs and volunteer recruitment events,” according to the Pennsylvania Capital Star. It’s a move that deserves “credit,” Erie County GOP Chairman Tom Eddy told The Federalist back in May.

And it’s a move that could still deliver Biden a narrow victory if Republicans become overconfident that Trump’s killer debate performance alone can help him carry swing voters.

A May poll from the New York Times/Siena College found Trump led Biden in five battleground states. In some states, Trump’s lead over Biden narrowed slightly among likely voters compared to registered voters, suggesting Trump could benefit from targeted outreach to voters who are registered but may not plan on turning out to the polls on Nov. 5.

The field is also ripe for Trump to use targeted voter registration efforts to win more votes. A recent survey from Campaign Now found that in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan there are unregistered, likely Republican voters who want to be registered ahead of the election. The survey estimates there are 311,206 “unregistered, likely Republican voters in Wisconsin, and 581,173 unregistered, likely Republican voters in Michigan,” according to Center Square. The survey size was small — the group only received 300 responses after contacting thousands of unregistered voters — but Campaign Now’s John Connors insisted the survey results show “an opportunity” for engagement and that conservative campaigns and organizations need to make assisting those voters a “priority.”

It’s a sentiment I heard while in Pennsylvania recently at an RNC event to train poll watchers. Andy Meehan, founder of the grassroots organization RightForBucks that focuses on turning out voters in Bucks County, told me his organization was “doing a lot of the efforts on our own” but wanted “more direction from the [Trump] campaign.” And just a little more than a month ago, the RNC had little to no on-the-ground operations in key swing states, local grassroots leaders told The Federalist.

After Biden’s disastrous performance, surely there will be an appetite not only among Republican-leaning unregistered and registered likely voters, but also independents. Maybe even disillusioned Democrats. Whether it was Trump’s tempered debate performance or Biden’s abysmal performance that turned voters toward Trump matters not. What will matter at the end of the day on Nov. 5 is which candidate’s party turned out those voters and their peers, whether in person or by mail.

Brianna Lyman, The Federalist

We’re Past the Point of Debate

Posted on June 28, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

Posted on June 28, 2024Bookmark

Trump clobbered Biden in the debate? Of course he did. So what? They’re not going to step aside for Trump. They will cheat, declare martial law, a green emergency, a crime emergency. They will do anything but step aside. These people are not in favor of our Constitution. None of the Democrats, none of the RINOs. All of their actions support my point. They are tyrants. Tyrants don’t walk away from power unless forced.

We’re past the point of debate.

A true American’s attitude toward the lawless occupation puppet Biden regime should be: DO NOT COMPLY.

Elect Trump (if you can), arrest all of them, try them for treason — or secede.

Launch the breakup. This government is fiscally and morally bankrupt, on the verge of collapse. Enough is enough.

A reader replies: “I don’t believe in seceding, I believe in taking it all back. Not a single inch of our country belongs to them.

They don’t get to come in and abuse us and lie, cheat, and steal from us, and then keep the children and half of our country.”

My reply: I agree. Secession is a last resort. However, if we don’t have the military and DOJ on our side, the federal government is our enemy, not our friend. We might have to secede first in order to take it back. I don’t see the occupation government in power stepping down for Trump, or for anyone.

They think if they can just eradicate Trump, all will be well. But why is Trump so popular? Millions support him and his message, and his policies. Leftists’ own polls show Trump possibly crushing Biden. If they succeed at eliminating Trump, will all that support evaporate? Or will they have to impose a dictatorship to suppress it all, as they’re presently trying to do? Can you suppress a movement supported by half or more of the American population? By tens of millions? That takes inconceivable hubris.

The smugness, ignorance and arrogance of leftists should not surprise us. If they think we can have Communism for the masses while letting the connected, powerful elites enjoy their billions, they’re failing to consider: Where will all the anger go? They say Trump’s support is all based on irrational anger and hatred. Even if that were true (of course it’s not), the anger has to go somewhere. If they imprison, silence or even murder Trump, the anger won’t just disappear. The leftists’ problems will intensify. Trump’s martyrdom could escalate into an American version of the French Revolution.

Leftists, media, academics and the connected, corporate left-wing totalitarian elites are playing with fire.

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The Energy Transition Thing That’s Really not Happening

Posted on June 27, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

From reading the left-wing media, you know (or think you know) that there is an energy “transition” going on. This is something that must happen as a matter of urgent necessity. Vast government subsidies are being disbursed to assure its rapid success. Fossil fuels are rapidly on the way out, while wind and solar are quickly taking over.

For example, you may well have seen the big piece last August in the New York Times, headline “The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think.”

Across the country, a profound shift is taking place . . . . The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as well as historically the most polluting, is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.

But if you read that piece, or any one of dozens of others from the Times or other “mainstream” sources, what you won’t find are meaningful statistics on the extent to which fossil fuel use is declining, if at all, or the extent to which renewables like wind and solar are actually replacing them.

That’s why the Manhattan Contrarian turns instead to dry statistical data to try to get the real story. Several years ago I discovered an annual book of energy data called the Statistical Review of World Energy. At the time, the Statistical Review was produced by the international oil company BP. I first covered one of these Reviews in this post from July 2019. A couple of years ago BP apparently decided to get out of this business, and turned the product over to something called the Energy Institute. EI then produced a Statistical Review in June 2023 (covering 2022), and now is just out on June 20, 2024 with a Statistical Review covering 2023.

Most of the Statistical Review consists of just spreadsheets of numbers. There are some charts, but relatively few. But the takeaways are too obvious to hide. The big one is this: there is no energy “transition” going on, at least not in the sense that “renewables” are actually supplanting fossil fuels. Yes there is some considerable amount of “renewable” wind and solar electricity generation getting built (with huge government subsidies). But it is not replacing fossil fuel generation. Rather, fossil fuel generation continues to increase, and its share of overall energy production has barely budged.

Here is EI’s June 20 Press Release, which summarizes the five “key stories” that it says emerge from the statistics. The first one is the big one — increasing energy consumption led by increased production and consumption of fossil fuels:

Record global energy consumption, with coal and oil pushing fossil fuels and their emissions to record levels. Global primary energy consumption overall was at a record absolute high, up 2% on the previous year to 620 Exajoules (EJ). Global fossil fuel consumption reached a record high, up 1.5% to 505 EJ (driven by coal up 1.6%, oil up 2% to above 100 million barrels for first time, while gas was flat). As a share of the overall mix they were at 81.5%, marginally down from 82% last year.

And of course, “emissions” continue to rise:

Emissions from energy increased by 2%, exceeding 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time.

No matter how much the federal government or any state threatens to punish you for your sin of fossil fuel use, aggregate global emissions from such use are not going to go down within our lifetimes.

The second “key story” relates to the contribution, or lack thereof, of solar and wind. Here EI engages in some modest spinning to make things look less bad than they are for the solar and wind promoters; but there’s not much they can do:

Solar and wind push global renewable electricity generation to another record level. Renewable generation, excluding hydro, was up 13% to a record high of 4,748 TWh. This growth was driven almost entirely by wind and solar, and accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.

4,748 TWh of renewable generation — wow, that’s a lot! Or is it? Do you notice how they suddenly switched units from Exajoules to Terawatt hours when they changed from talking about fossil fuels to solar and wind. Does anybody around here know the conversion factor? Yes — it’s 277.778 TWh per EJ. That means that the 4,748 TWh of “almost entirely” solar and wind power generated in 2023 came to all of 17.1 EJ, which is just 2.7% of the 620 EJ of world primary energy consumption. Could you have imagined that it could be so little, after decades of over-the-top promotion and trillions of dollars of subsidies?

And pay attention to that line “wind and solar . . . accounted for 74% of all net additional electricity generated.” Does that somehow sound like a transition is happening? It’s the opposite. If wind and solar were actually taking over, they would have to account for 100% of additional generation, plus large further amounts to replace fossil fuel generators. As long as wind and solar account for less than all of additional generation, then fossil fuels are continuing to increase, and there is no “transition” going on at all.

I mentioned that there were relatively few charts in the Review, but some of them are striking. Here is one of my favorites, showing global coal consumption from 1965 to 2023:

Over that period, North America and Europe have cut their consumption almost by half, from almost 40 EJ per year to around 20. But over the same period the consumption in the rest of the world has gone from about 20 EJ to around 140, multiplying by a factor of 7. And don’t be fooled by the apparent leveling off of increases in total consumption in the last several years. That reflects continuing decreases in North America and Europe, which are more than offset by larger increases in the Asia Pacific region.

Robert Bryce at his Substack has many more details from the EI Statistical Review, plus several charts that he has created from the EI data. He is much better at creating charts than I am. The title of Bryce’s article is “Numbers Don’t Lie.” Bryce also has a figure for the amount of government subsidies that have gone to wind and solar generation since 2004: $4.7 trillion. That much money to fund a supposed “transition” that isn’t occurring at all.

The story is going to be effectively the same every year until finally the promoters give up on the wind/solar scam.

Francis Menton, the Manhattan Contrarian

It’s not a Debate

Posted on June 27, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

I don’t plan to watch the rigged debate between Trump and Biden this week. I am confident Trump will handle himself extremely well — this amazing man, and what he’s enduring, truly make him one for the ages; but I can’t participate in a shared delusional psychosis that this charade is anything remotely like an objective conversation among (aside from Trump) even marginally serious people. Seeing Biden spit, sputter and slur his toxic fascist tantrums while media sycophants gaze with vacant, adoring pretense is too much to ask myself to endure when there are good books to be read and still so much else of worth to do. I can always reread “The Emperor Has No Clothes,” for a more accurate, honest representation of what’s happening. This, however, is unadulterated theater — not in a good way.

Yes, I will probably watch some interesting excerpts of the whole fiasco later, but I reserve the right to censor Biden and his media when viewing them. Squandering precious time watching the propaganda maneuvers of these pretentious glorified brats — a stupidly undeserving crime family, an almost entirely unchallenged gang of legalized mobsters calling themselves “Democrats”, and their own personal, fawning media — have nothing to offer: Nothing, except more painful reminders that a once great country based on the smartest, wisest, soundest principles EVER has degenerated into the miserable aftermath of a grisly accident — a genuine catastrophe, incredibly, still applauded by millions of ignorant morons.

Watch “PREMIUM MEMBER SPECIAL: Victor Davis Hanson on America’s Decline” on YouTube

Posted on June 26, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

Democrat Party: The Party of Political Violence

Posted on June 26, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

I’m concerned about the safety of so many people in this country, particularly people of color,” Waters told host Jonathan Capehart, suggesting that the political violence will come from racist MAGA supporters:

Donald Trump has said that if he does not win, it is going to be fraud, and because it is going to be fraud, there will be blood in the streets. He threatens about a civil war, and he threatens there’s going to be violence. I would say all of this talk is motivational with many of those who are racist, who are sitting at home listening to him, and they are taking him up on his threats even before the elections take place. It is about thousands, maybe millions of people being threatened and being at risk because of Donald Trump and his desire to seek revenge on anything and everybody.

This is simply false rabble-rousing. Trump has not “threatened” violence over the election, and her insinuation that his followers are racist is an unconscionably ugly smear – but par for the course with Mad Max. This is the same woman, you will recall, who once incited her followers to harass and intimidate Trump officials in public places and “tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

She added on MSNBC, “I do believe having listened to Donald Trump so many times and having the attack, the insurrection that took place on the House of Representatives in Congress, on the Capitol, the Capitol grounds, we could be in for more killings like that.”

Killings like what? First of all, there was no attempted insurrection, only FBI-facilitated crowd confusion laced with a containable dose of hooligan opportunism. No one attempts an insurrection without weapons, a carefully-constructed plan, and a leader – none of which the January 6 participants had. Second, the only people who died on that date – four, to be exact – were all Trump supporters. The only killing that day was the shooting of unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt by a Capitol police officer who later claimed ridiculously that he “saved countless lives” by opening fire.

The Democrats, who never let a good crisis go to waste, have exploited the Deep State-instigated Capitol chaos of January 6^th to smear Trump supporters relentlessly as violent, white supremacist insurrectionists who are A Threat to Democracy™. The Dems have done this in order to fear-monger about the upcoming election, which they know they cannot win on the strength of Biden/Harris’ accomplishments or popularity, both of which hover just above nonexistent.

The very next day after Waters’ interview aired on the propaganda outlet MSNBC, left-wing Hamas supporters and Jew-haters targeted a pair of Los Angeles synagogues to harass Jews violently. Freedom Center Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield was actually present for one of the incidents and wrote about it for FrontPage Mag’s “The Point” blog. In the post, Greenfield shared his X (Twitter) posts in which he wrote,

There were multiple instances of Jewish community members being maced/bear sprayed with no police response the LAPD was deployed in riot gear but did nothing for nearly an hour, failed to separate protesters from counter-protesters, intervene or put up barriers.

He added, “Hamas supporters were able to freely roam around a Jewish neighborhood in the Pico-Robertson area threatening people. A Muslim man in a keffiyeh told me ‘billions will come to kill you.’” Why did “these Hamas thugs feel empowered to come into the Pico Robertson neighborhood at the Adas Torah synagogue on Pico Blvd and threaten Jews? Because Los Angeles Democrats have their back.”

Greenfield concluded,

The violence was bad enough that politicians have condemned it (rather than the specific perpetrators) even as the media, including the LA Times, predictably describes “clashes erupting between both sides” condemning the Muslims and Marxists who attacked a synagogue and the Jews who didn’t want their synagogue attacked.

Muslims and Marxists – what David Horowitz calls the “unholy alliance” of Jew haters. The anti-Zionist antisemites harassing and assaulting Jews in L.A. were left-wing, not right-wing. Jew haters on the Right share the Left’s hatred of Israel and Jews, but they don’t march in the streets alongside Queers for Palestine and Code Pink, or settle in campus encampments with cultural Marxists waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags. They mostly just congregate online in the comments sections of X (Twitter), posting “Christ is King” dog whistles, sharing video clips from slimy white supremacist leader Nick Fuentes, and cheering social media grifter Candace Owens. No, the hordes of antisemites who have physically taken to the campuses and streets to support and celebrate Hamas’ October 7^th savagery, and to promise more of the same, are left-wing.

The entrapment of January 6^th “insurrectionists” notwithstanding, the overwhelming amount of political violence in modern American history has come not from the Tea Party or the MAGA crowd, but from the Democrat Party. And yet the Left’s gaslighting about which side dominates political violence continues. One can find no end of articles online hyping the threat of Trump-sanctioned MAGA violence. The left-wing Washington Post, for example, keeps up a steady drumbeat of fear-mongering editorials warning of rage and retribution from Trump “militants.”

By contrast, Google the term “political violence” and try to find coverage of left-wing violence in American news. Try to find mainstream articles labeling as “political violence” the incalculable devastation and deaths wrought by the Marxist revolutionaries of Black Lives Matter and the anarchic shock troops of Antifa. The mainstream media has previously whitewashed BLM rioting as “mostly peaceful protests,” and defended the brownshirts of Antifa as just “an idea, not an organization,” as Biden himself stated.

political violence continues. One can find no end of articles online hyping the threat of Trump-sanctioned MAGA violence. The left-wing Washington Post, for example, keeps up a steady drumbeat of fear-mongering editorials warning of rage and retribution from Trump “militants.”

Despite the disinformation and bias in Big Tech resources like Google, and the relentless gaslighting and projection from the left-wing mainstream media like MSNBC and Democrat leaders like Maxine Waters, the demonstrable truth is that all but a fraction of political violence – not only recently but for decades – is attributable to the Democrat Party. From the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers to today’s Hamas supporters, violent revolution drives the Left.

If Trump loses in November – which will only happen through massive Democrat voter fraud – it is possible that some fed-up Trump supporters may lash out in violence. Indeed, I wrote recently about the very possibility that we are on the verge of a hot civil war, which another stolen election could trigger. But that would pale in comparison to the level of left-wing political violence we will witness if Trump wins in November. It will dwarf the unrest this country has suffered over the last 60 years, including during the 1969 “Days of Rage” and the “Summer of Floyd” rioting of 2020.

And still the media will label it “mostly peaceful,” justifiable “resistance” to the perceived fascism of Donald Trump and his voters who just want to make America great again.

Mark Tapson, Front Page Magazine

More Scenes from the Decline of the American Empire

Posted on June 26, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

“Former President Donald Trump holds a 5-point lead over President Joe Biden in battleground Georgia, according to a new Atlanta-Journal Constitution/University of Georgia survey released Tuesday.”

Should be interesting to see what happens to that lead when Atlanta suffers a pipe burst and a sudden infusion of mail-in votes on election night. But no … they certainly wouldn’t try THAT again!

**************

“The CIA interfered in the 2020 election by colluding with the Biden campaign to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story, a congressional report found Tuesday.” [Breitbart]

Keep in mind: If true, this was (in 2020) the CIA under the Trump administration. It means the federal government is so wildly out of control that it’s probably too late for a decent president to save it. When a government is at war with its own people, and also with its own Constitution, it’s time to arrest everyone involved and start over. Or, if all else fails — secede. Sadly, this is war.

**************

“It’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” CDC (Communist Disease Center) Redfield told News Nation last week.

It’s not a question of WHEN, either. The bird flu “pandemic” will occur when it politically SUITS them. Quite probably this October.
Remember, Fauci promised a pandemic before the end of Trump’s term, back in 2017. These people keep their promises.

Government Employees are Overpaid

Posted on June 25, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES ARE OVERPAID

Remember the good old days when it was possible to talk about “public servants” with a straight face? In 1958, liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a book titled The Affluent Society, in which he contrasted America’s fabulously wealthy private sector with its alleged poor relation, the public sector. Galbraith was probably wrong, even then–he was wrong about nearly everything–but in the decades that have since gone by, the idea that the public sector is underpaid has become increasingly risible.

Today, we live in a two-tier society, with government and its employees and hangers-on lording it over the rest of us. Governments are the greediest institutions in our society, and government employees use their power to, among other things, overpay themselves.

A number of economists have tried to quantify the difference in compensation between private sector and public sector workers. This calculation by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity is not as disproportionate as some I have seen. That is likely because it only applies to state and local government employees:

We keep harping on this outrageous scandal of the pay inequity between government and private employees. This taxpayer rip-off has been going on for 40 years and NOTHING happened.

Our CTUP economist, EJ Antoni, notes that taxpayers are paying a 40% premium to state and local government employees over comparable private employees. The data show that taxpayers pay public sector employees 23% higher salaries and a whopping 79% higher benefits than private employers. This doesn’t even include the value of lifetime tenure (i.e. you can’t get fired from a government job no matter how poor your performance).

The disproportion is probably even more grotesque with regard to federal employees. At what point will taxpayers tell our employees that we are no longer able to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed?

A Hail Mary Solution to the Debt Crisis

Posted on June 25, 2024 by theartfuldilettante

Eevery U.S. citizen now owes roughly $100,000 in federal debt. That is the grim news from the most recent study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO data show that federal debt has been growing at an unsustainable rate for decades and will continue to do so in coming years. At some point, the United States will hit a fiscal cliff, when lack of confidence in the ability of the federal government to repay the debt will result in sharply higher interest rates and default. We are in the final years of our debt crisis.

Congress is simply unable to bring federal expenditures into balance with federal revenues to stabilize and reduce federal debt. Congress has passed numerous statutory rules mandating this solution, but these rules are routinely circumvented and suspended. There is little discussion of the debt crisis in this election year because elected officials have in effect thrown in the towel.

However, the states have now launched a Hail Mary to solve the debt crisis. State attorneys general will soon file a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court, which seeks a Declaratory Judgement against Congress for failing to fulfil its constitutional duty under Article V to record and count state applications for a fiscal responsibility amendment.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution gives the states as well as Congress the power to propose amendments. The states have submitted applications for a fiscal responsibility amendment for centuries, but Congress has failed to record and count these applications. In 1979, two thirds of the states had submitted applications for a fiscal responsibility amendment, but Congress failed to count these applications or call the amendment convention.

This year, Rep. Jody Arrington (R-TX) filed HCR 24, which would require Congress to fulfill its constitutional duty to record and count state applications for a fiscal responsibility amendment and call the amendment convention if the requisite applications by two thirds of the states is met. Unfortunately, this legislation has made little headway in Congress.

Citizens are now left with the Hail Mary solution. The Supreme Court must issue a Declaratory Judgment against Congress for failing to record and count state applications for a fiscal responsibility amendment. Congress must then record and count the state applications. If the requisite two-thirds of the states have submitted such applications, Congress must then set the time and place for an amendment convention. If two-thirds of the states in the convention agree on a fiscal responsibility amendment, the proposed amendment must be submitted to the states for ratification. Three-fourths of the states must ratify the proposed amendment for it to be incorporated in the Constitution.

This is a Hail Mary solution for several reasons. The states have never amended the Constitution through an Article V amendment convention. The Supreme Court must issue an unprecedented Declaratory Judgment requiring Congress to record and count the state applications, a major legal hurdle. Two-thirds of the states must agree on a fiscal responsibility amendment in an Article V amendment convention, and three-fourths of the states must then ratify the proposed amendment. These are major barriers in bringing a fiscal responsibility amendment to the states for ratification. But before we throw in the towel, it is important to note the precedents for incorporating effective fiscal rules in the Constitution.

Countries such as Switzerland have been successful in using constitutional fiscal rules to solve their debt crisis. The Swiss have a long history of incorporating fiscal rules in their constitutions at all levels of government through direct democracy. The Swiss debt brake was incorporated in the Swiss Constitution through a referendum with support from 85 percent of Swiss citizens. The debt brake simply requires Swiss legislators to bring expenditures into balance with revenue in the near term. A cap is placed on the rate of growth in federal spending equal to the long run rate of economic growth. The debt brake allows for emergency spending in the short term, but deficits must be offset by surplus revenue within a six-year period.

The importance of the Swiss debt brake was revealed this year when the Swiss Parliament rejected a proposed budget that exceeded the spending limit and would have required suspension of the debt brake. The Swiss Parliament also rejected legislation earmarking funds for the Ukraine War because the spending violated the debt brake rules. In contrast to the United States, the Swiss debt brake has imposed effective constraints on fiscal policies over the long term. The debt brake helped Switzerland to stabilize and reduce federal debt as a share of national income.

Polls reveal that an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens support a fiscal responsibility amendment to the Constitution. So, if a fiscal responsibility amendment is ever submitted to the states for ratification there is a high probability that the measure would pass. However, the odds are against the United States enacting a fiscal responsibility amendment in the Constitution though the Article V process. We are like the football coach with one play left to win the ball game; we don’t have much choice.

Barry Poulson (think@heartland.org) is a policy advisor with The Heartland Institute.

Image: RawPixel.com