The best question was about the Supreme Court.  Hillary Clinton’s preposterous answers disqualify her for the office of President.

Unfortunately, we’ve come to a depressing moment in American history.  The political-media-academic establishment abhors the Constitution, shouting down anyone who wants it enforced and obeyed, calling us “extremist” or “nutcase” or “bigoted.”  This was the context for Moderator Chris Wallace’s first question.

WALLACE: The first topic is the Supreme Court….First of all, where do you want to see the court take the country?  And secondly, what’s your view on how the Constitution should be interpreted? Do the founders words mean what they say or is it a living document to e applied flexibly according to changing circumstances?

The first part was asked from, and affirms the point of view of the Progressive Left that somehow the Supreme Court could or should “take the country” to some new place.  But the second part of the question is critically important and asking it was an heroic act of defiance of the establishment. It identifies the core difference between what the establishment calls “the liberal wing” and “the conservative wing” of the Supreme Court. 

The Conservatives should be called Originalists because they do indeed believe that the founders words meant what they said, and the original plain meaning of the Constitution’s text should be applied by the Court to settle current disputes.  The liberals largely ignore the actual Constitution, substituting the opinions of modern elites and their own thoughts which they claim constitutes a “living” or “flexible” Constitution.

Here’s a portion of Hillary’s answer, including three rhetorical questions:

You know, I think when we talk about the Supreme Court, it really raises the central issue in this election, namely, what kind of country are we going to be?  What kind of opportunities will we provide for our citizens?  What kind of rights will Americans have?

Hillary’s thoughts and rhetorical questions are incoherent and utterly divorced from the the Constitution that created the Supreme Court.

1. The Constitution absolutely does not empower nine, non-elected judges to decide anything so expansive and ambiguous as “what kind of country are we going to be.”  The court’s job is to resolve disputes over the interpretation of the Constitution and/or federal law.
2. In asking “what kind of opportunities will we provide for our citizens?” who does Hillary mean by “WE”?  Well, among the elites in her progressive bubble “we” is always government. But the Constitution not empower the Court or any branch of government, including to provide opportunities, or to decide which opportunities to allow.
3. Her question, “What kind of rights will Americans have?” is comprehensively answered in the body of the Constitution and the first ten amendments.  The legitimate job, indeed the sworn duty, of judges is to support and defend that Constitution, not to determine now what rights citizens do or do not have.
   

Hillary Continued…

And I feel strongly that the Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people, not on the side of the powerful corporations and the wealthy.

Well, millions who own shares of corporations as individuals or through pension funds, mutual funds or 401K funds, and the employees of corporations, are also Americans, as are the wealthy. The Justice’s duty is not to take a fixed, predetermined “stand” against some Americans, but to judge and decide each case on its merits, in accordance with the law and the Constitution.  And by the way, the Justices all swore an oath of office that includes, “…I will administer justice without respect to persons and do equal right to the poor and to the rich…”

More of Hillary’s answer…

For me that means that we need a supreme Court that will stand up on behalf of Women’s rights, on behalf of the rights of the LGBT community…

The Justice’s duty is to protect the rights of every person, not just those of Hillary’s targeted voting blocks or one the Left’s favored “communities.”

Hillary ended up with…

I feel that at this point in our country’s history, it is important that we…stand up and basically say, the Supreme Court should represent all of us.

But the Justices are not representatives!  Under the Constitution we have 435 representatives in the House and 100 in the Senate.  Rather than represent anyone, the Supreme Court Justices’ job is to apply the Constitution, and/or laws duly enacted by Congress to decide the cases before them.

Hillary ignored the second, and most important part of Wallace’s question, should the Constitution be interpreted as if the words mean what they say, or should the Justices beliefs override those words.  She ignored it because her answer, if she were honest, would have to be that in her opinion the words of the Constitution are of little or no consequence.

What about Trump’s answer?  The first two-thirds didn’t address either of Wallace’s questions except to stress his support for Justices who would retain the second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms.  He did finally finish up with a direct answer, exactly the answer that one who wants to be President should have offered, to Wallace’s second question:

[T]he Justices I am going to appoint will interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted.  And I believe that’s very, very important.  I don’t think we should have Justices appointed that decide what they want to hear. It’s all about the Constitution, and so important, the Constitution, the way it was meant to be.

Hillary’s media cheer leaders are often heard bellowing that Trump is unfit, that his ideas have utterly disqualified him from the Presidency.  But if they were educated in the Constitution they would be appalled at her apparent lack of understanding.  They would have to, if they had any integrity, declare her apparent ignorance of the legitimate, Constitutional role of the court to be disqualifying.

So Donald Trump chose to immerse himself in the Manhattan-Hollywood celebrity culture and was caught on a hot mike boasting that his fame empowered him to abuse women.  Disgusting. 

Of course Hillary Clinton isn’t the least bit embarrassed that the disgusting, amoral Manhattan-Hollywood, celebrity culture where young women who haven’t yet “made it” are exploited and abused daily, supports Democrats in every election with celebrity endorsements and high-end fund raisers. When it comes to Hillary’s own campaigns, desire for cash supplants sanctimonious indignation.

Would a Trump Presidency be worse for women than a Clinton presidency? Let’s compare Trump’s trash-talk with a recent Obama Administration decree – fully supported by Hillary Clinton – that deliberately, unambiguously subjugates women and girls, in service of one of the Progressive movement’s trendy new causes.

Under new “guidance” from the Obama Administration any male student of any age who “self-identifies” as a girl has the right to, and must be permitted to, use girls restrooms, locker rooms and showers. Any girls or parents who object have no rights or recourse.

In May of this year the Obama Departments of Justice and Education sent a notice to every school district in America setting forth, and threatening financial penalties for disobedience to, the President’s new “Significant Guidance” with regard to transgender students.  Under the so-called “guidance” which is actually a set of requirements, a student IS whatever gender he/she asserts he/she is.  That his/her “gender identity” is simply mistaken, that it does not correspond with physical reality, is irrelevant. Common sense is irrelevant.

Here is the relevant, anti-female paragraph:

“Restrooms and Locker Rooms: A school may provide separate facilities on the basis of sex, but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity.  A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so.”

Again, for purposes of this “guidance” the definition of transgender is a student whose “gender identity” is the opposite of his/her actual, biological sex.  And a student’s “Gender Identity” is whatever the student says it is.  This same notice forbids school officials from applying any biological, psychological or legal criteria to verify a boy’s asserted female “identity.”  He is whatever he says he is, and he can change what he says he is any time for any reason or no reason.

In the bizarro Progressive world, if an 18 year old (the age most students reach in their senior year of high school) boy says he’s female, he must be permitted to shower and dress next to 15-16-17-18 year old girls. Objections from the girls or their parents are to be summarily rejected because, as the Directive from Washington arrogantly snorts…

“The desire to accommodate others’ discomfort cannot justify a policy that singles out and disadvantages a particular class of student.”

So, requiring a boy to use the boys locker room would somehow “disadvantage” him if says his gender identity is female.

So which candidate would, as President, would be more offensive to women and girls?  The one who, twelve years ago, acted like a trashy-mouthed frat boy while in the company of other trashy-mouthed frat boys, in a culture that favors teh Democrat Party and celebrates such behavior?  Or, the one who approves of, and will continue to use the menacing power of the federal government to force girls to submit to co-ed locker rooms, just so progressives can feel important.

In the second debate, just after Hillary Clinton avoided answering a question and instead demanded that DonaldTrump publish his tax returns Moderator Anderson Cooper jumped in with, “Actually on the topic of taxes, we have a question from Spencer Moss.”

The question from Mr. Moss:

Good evening.  My question is what specific tax provisions will you change to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes?

This question was an obvious setup to favor the Clinton campaign because it was based on an unproved assumption that is at the central feature of her campaign, the funding source that makes possible billions in new benefits and entitlements she promises to enact if elected.  That never-examined assumption is that “the wealthiest” don’t pay a “fair share” of income tax.

Neither candidate offered a coherent answer and Trump missed an opportunity to call out the obvious bias the moderators demonstrated in selecting that particular question.

Trump’s answer should have begun with a rhetorical question: What share of total income tax revenue would be a “fair share?”  He could have presented the data captured in our graphs, drawn directly from annual reports issued by the IRS.  Most economic commentary comes from so-called “studies” which are estimates based on indirect sources of data.  But the data in IRS’s statistical reports comes directly from the millions of tax returns it receives each year.  The most recent IRS report is for the 2014 tax year.

Contrary to the perception Mrs. Clinton and the media continuously plant in the mind of the public, IRS data show that the SHARE of taxes paid by the top bracket earners is astoundingly high.  As the charts show, the top 5% of income earners pay 57% of all income tax revenue received by the government.

The average top-one-percent taxpayer, earning over $500,000, pays 99 times as much as the average bottom 95% taxpayer, earning less than $200,000.

Just one of every 100 taxpayers (Over $500,000) is paying an average of $350 of every $1,000 the IRS collects.  Ninety five of every 100 taxpayers pay an average of $4.52 each of every $1,000 the IRS collects.

Mrs. Clinton should be put on the spot with a simple question:  If the problem in America is the rich don’t pay their “fair share” what share would be “fair”?

We at Liberty Works have been skeptical of Donald Trump’s campaign. But we enthusiastically endorse his courageous tax cut proposal.  He’s received too little credit from Conservatives and free market supporters.  He should have promoted it as his answer to this rigged debate question.

Trump would dramatically reduce income tax rates for all businesses, from the largest corporations to the smallest mom & pop enterprise.  What makes his idea courageous? Read on.

Trump’s proposal is courageous because he knew the entire phalanx of political-media-academia elites would stampede to the cameras and keyboards to revile and denounce him, thundering the same accusation: “Trump’s plan is cruel to the poor and middle class while giving even more money to the wealthiest!”  Indeed, part of Mrs. Clinton’s answer to the debate question was:

His plan will give the wealthy and corporations the biggest tax cuts they have ever had. More than the Bush tax cuts by at least a factor of two. Donald always takes care of Donald and people like Donald. And this would be a massive gift. And  the way that he talks about his tax cuts would end up raising taxes on middle class families. 

But Trump’s cutting-edge proposal would energize what has been the moribund Obama economy with a new, low tax rate on all businesses, from huge corporations to modest mom and pop enterprises. He would set a maximum 15% tax rate on all business income.  Currently the maximums are 35% for large corporations and 39.6% for “pass through” medium size and small businesses.  We’ll explain pass through in a moment.

So what is Mrs. Clinton’s tax platform? In her campaign events she bellows endlessly that the rich, including those who own businesses and create jobs must begin to “pay their fair SHARE.”  She plans to increase taxes on business because, in her words,

“We’ll go where the money is!”

The national media don’t ask her the obvious followup question, what share of income tax paid would be “fair?”  But we know what the answer would be:  MORE!

What do the IRS statistics tell us about these highest income earners? How do they earn their wealth?  As the chart below shows, most of them – 89% – are business owners.

These businesses are organized – in IRS speak – as “pass through entities.”  They are sole proprietorships, S-Corporations, LLCs and partnerships who, under IRS rules, do not submit business tax returns like large corporations do.  Instead all business revenue, expenses and profits “pass through” to the owners’ personal tax returns.  According to census data 55% of all business employment is in pass-through companies.

Typically, these owners keep a portion of profits for personal/family consumption and leave a portion in the business to reinvest in improvements, upgrades and expansions or to pay down debt. But both portions – all income – is combined and reported as a lump sum, on a single tax return which does not differentiate.

Most of these high income taxpayers are the owners of of the “middle market” businesses that create nearly all the new jobs in America.

Middle market is generally defined as a business with annual gross sales in the millions.  They’re bigger than “small businesses” with less than $1 million in sales and – typically – a dozen or fewer employees, but smaller than “big business,” the huge corporations with annual sales in the billions and thousands of employees. One survey found that middle market businesses  average 367 employees each.

Should the rest of us, the 95% who earn less than $200,000, be for or against taxing away more of the profits of these businesses?  Is there a downside that Democrats’ emotionally charged campaign slogans don’t disclose as they encourage us to resent these business owner taxpayers? 

Yes!

These high income business builders don’t react to tax hikes by moving their families into smaller homes or buying cheaper cuts of beef.  When government shrinks their after-tax income they react with shrinking investments in the start-ups and expansions that generate new jobs and raise the demand for employees which results in higher wages.  This is why Mrs. Clinton’s call for targeting these specific business owners for higher taxes directly contradicts her vague promises to help small business create jobs.

In a rational world the government would set lower, not higher tax rates on these entrepreneurs and investors, to benefit the middle class.  This is exactly what Donald Trump has proposed.

Nothing the government could do would juice the economy and increase the demand for employees more rapidly than Donald Trump’s proposal to tax business income at no more than 15%.  The share of income tax paid by the top one percent would likely decline slightly.  But so what?  We have a simple choice: tax increases designed to raise the SHARE of taxes paid by business owners, or tax cuts to free them to create jobs – which also creates tax payers –  and to raise wages and spread prosperity?

By now anyone interested in the Presidential election has heard the viral video clip of Hillary Clinton’s, vile accusations while speaking to an audience of elite, liberal donors at the posh Cipriani Club 55 on Wall Street in Manhattan.

You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic?—?you name it…Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable. But thankfully they are not America.

The phrase “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” was delivered in a deliberately obnoxious, screeching tone of voice that could have been an embittered man’s imitation of a nagging, irritating woman.

Democrats are unable to win elections solely by promising that their next big government scheme will make our lives better.  Polls show historic highs in public contempt for and distrust of politicians and government.  So, they have become ever more strident in warning women and minorities – actually everyone except straight, white men – to vote against Republicans in order to avoid being victimized by dark forces of bigotry.  

Thus, we small government advocates are accustomed to accusations of racism, as if women and minorities don’t benefit from liberty.  Republican candidates are routinely called racist and those other ists and ics in Mrs. Clinton’s rant.

But it is unusual for a politician to revile tens of millions of private citizens with such venom.

Good, decent people know that racism – prejudice or antagonism or attacks or government sanctions against people of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior – is evil. Thus they consider an accusation that they are racist to be a deeply offensive accusation that they are evil.

Good, decent people who have suffered losses in the Obama economy are especially offended when they hear themselves attacked as evil in front of a giggling, cheering audience of the smug, government-media-Wall Street elite, the guys we’re told we must trust to “manage” the economy, but are fully insulated by our tax dollars from the consequences of their own malfeasance.

Millions of Good, decent people have decided they have little to lose and are willing to roll the dice on the mercurial, erratic Donald Trump.  It’s a way to wave their collective middle finger at the elite.  It’s a way to express hostility to regulatory schemes that enrich, Wall Street and K Street players and the politicians they fund, while diminishing or even destroying Main Street livelihoods.  It’s a way to say “we’re fed up with your lies and your arrogance.”

Hillary’s “deplorable” remark seems to have opened an angry, ugly fire hose of racism and bigotry accusations from Washington’s usual suspects, spraying Trump, the Republicans and their voters.  Our prediction is that in the end it will be a net gain for Trump.  If Trump is smart he’ll use it as an opening to intensify his effort to persuade Black and Latino voters that the establishment elite have nothing to offer them but more of the same vacuous slogans.  He should add that while Democrats think racial conflict is in their political interest, it’s not in the economic or social interest of any ethnic group.  It’s a net loser for everyone, of every race.

Someone should explain to Mrs. Clinton and her surrogates that they won’t overcome the pain their false accusations of bigotry have caused good, decent people by hauling out the bull horns to more fiercely repeat the same accusations.

Opinion polls consistently show Americans disappointed and dissatisfied with the nation’s economy.  The chart below confirms their opinions are grounded in objective reality.

On Friday, July 29 the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis published it’s second quarter GDP report.  In April, May and June the economy grew by a pathetic 1.2%.  Previous quarters were revised downward.

With President Obama’s support Hillary Clinton has been campaigning on the claim that things really aren’t as bad as Donald Trump and the Republicans say.  So, this report should have been a major setback for her and a boost for the Trump campaign.  However, instead of holding Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats accountable for the anemic economy Mr. Trump diverted the media to seven days of wall-to-wall coverage of more of his self-inflicted wounds.

But, Trump came back strong as he presented his economic plan in a televised speech to the Detroit Economic Club on March 8.  Among several criticisms of the economic status quo was this:

Let’s look at what  the Obama-Clinton policies have done nationally. Their policies produced 1.2% economic growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression.

With these words Mr. Trump was right on point. 

The Obama administration insists that any assessment of its economic record begin, not with his inauguration in January, 2009 but seven months later, after the recession ended and the post-recession recovery began.  Fair enough!  He did inherit the recession.

As it happens, this year’s second quarter marked the seventh anniversary of the Obama era (so-called) recovery.  Our handy charts put it in perspective.

As the charts above and below show we’ve just completed seven years of the weakest recovery since the government began the current system of quarterly GDP reports in almost 7 decades ago.   

And Trump was absolutely right.  GDP growth in the most recent quarter as 1.2%.  Average GDP growth over the seven year Obama recovery was 2.1%, compared to an average of 4.7% for all post-recession, recovery quarters since 1948.

The modern Democrat party has been captured by people who propose ideas and make promises based on the assumption that the President has unlimited power and authority to implement any idea.  And it absolutely does not matter if said idea is or is not authorized by the Constitution.  They simply don’t care.

For illustration we picked just one of several examples from First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech.  But first a brief review of Article II of the US Constitution, establishing the Presidency and granting to the President certain limited powers and obligations.

• Commander in Chief of the US Military
• With the Advice and Consent of the Senate the President has the power to:

a) make treaties, provided that two thirds of Senators concur;

b) Appoint Principle officers of executive branch departments such as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, Ambassadors, Federal Court Judges, and Supreme Court Justices;

• The power to appoint people to such lower level offices as Congress creates without the advise and consent of the Senate;
• The power to veto legislation passed by Congress.  But Congress can override a Presidential veto with two-thirds vote of both houses.  The Constitution does not give the President the power to enact laws.
• The power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States
• The obligation to “take care” that laws enacted by Congress “be faithfully executed.”  In other words, the President oversees the management of the departments of government to ensure that laws enacted by Congress are implemented and obeyed.

Obviously, the last obligation is enormous, especially in the modern era after Congress has created scores of departments and agencies that were never authorized by the Constitution, to redistribute income and to regulate nearly every facet of American life.

The Constitution does not delegate any other powers or responsibilities to the President and most of the powers the executive branch does wield through the panoply of departments and agencies were never authorized by the Constitution.  The founders sought to LIMIT the scope of federal government power to just a few specific functions in order to leave the states and the people free to conduct their own lives without federal intervention.  With that in mind consider the following excerpt from First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic Convention:

Make no mistake about it, this November, when we get to the polls, this is what we are deciding. Not Democrat or Republican, not left or right. In this election, and every election, it is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives. In this election, there is only one person who I trust with that responsibility, only one person who I believe is truly qualified to be president of the United States, and that is our friend Hillary Clinton.

Keep in mind that these remarks were not the “off the cuff” adlibs Mr. Trump is famous for.  The First Lady read her speech from the teleprompter.  It was painstakingly prepared with the help of the most skilled speech writers the Democrats can can find.  Every word was considered and reconsidered by the White House, the Democrat Party and the Clinton Campaign. 

So, we have to conclude that Mrs. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and the party elites believe, and want us to believe and accept, this assertion that it is the job of a President to “shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives.”  Your children, your neighbor’s children, other children in your extended family, approximately 60 million children and teenagers are each the personal responsibility of the President. 

And by the way, The President is also Commander of 1.4 million men and women who make up the US Military, and another 1.4 million civilian employees of the government!

Obviously, investing “the power to shape our children” in one person is utterly preposterous.  Of course the authors of the Constitution never considered such an outrageous idea because it’s simply impossible to implement.  But the Democrats want you to believe it’s somehow plausible for the President to shape your children and all the other 60 million children in America.  And, that is a primary reason the First Lady gave you, at a dramatic moment in her speech, to thunderous applause from the assembled delegates, to elect Mrs. Clinton!  See, she knows children, or likes children, or cares about children or something.

For more than a century the Progressive movement, represented by the Democratic Party has systematically violated the Constitution by adding unauthorized powers and functions to the federal government.  Most are attempts to implement the core progressive principle that elite experts, armed with governmental power to tax and regulate by force, can make us better. 

When in control of Congress progressives have created scores of department and agencies that are patently Unconstitutional because they have within themselves all the powers the founders deliberately dispersed among the three, separate branches of Government:

1. Legislative,
2. Executive,
3. Judicial.

Most government expansion is sold to the public with blatantly emotional appeals.  Some of those appeals seem to make a bit of sense.  But most are, like Mrs. Obama’s notion that a President could, even if he or she wanted to, “shape our children” utter nonsense.

The monthly jobs report was published July 8.  The unemployment rate ticked up from 4.7% to 4.9%.  So, the media and the President’s spokesmen celebrated an above average increase in jobs after two months of far below average results.  But as usual they did not acknowledge the deception in that unemployment rate due to the consistent, unprecedented decline in workforce participation, as millions of jobless men and women are reclassified from “unemployed” to “not in the labor force” because they’ve become discouraged and don’t actively look for employment every week.

The Obama Administration began with a roar in January 2009.  The nation was in the depths of a severe recession and the President’s top advisor, Ram Emmanuel famously issued a call for action

For over seven years we’ve endured the results of the this President’s audacious experiment, testing the Progressive theory that the federal government can generate prosperity by spending mountains of borrowed money on priorities of the governing elite.

The results are in. The chart below tracks the unprecedented increase in government debt and the resulting decline in the labor force participation rate.

Obama Misery Graph

The gradual decline in the unemployment rate since it peaked at 10% in 2009 coincides with a an unprecedented decline in the labor force participation rate as shown in the chart.

• The Labor Force is the sum of all persons who have jobs plus all who are officially classified as “unemployed.”
• The labor force participation rate is the percentage of the total civilian, working age population that is counted as in the labor force.
  
• The unemployment rate is the percentage of the labor force that is jobless and actively seeking employment.  It’s computed by dividing the number of unemployed by the the total labor force.

Since the unemployment rate began to fall from it’s peak in October 2009 over six million  jobless people have been reclassified from “unemployed” to “out of the labor force.”  Excluding people from the labor force this way artificially lowers the unemployment rate.  If they were still counted as in the labor force and unemployed, the June Unemployment rate would have been 8.2%

If the labor force participation rate were the same now as it was at the beginning of the recession in 2008 the June Unemployment Rate would have been 9.8%

What has the Obama Administration purchased with this unprecedented increase in debt which will burden us for generations? Nobody seems to be able to tell us.

In every speech Mrs. Clinton calls for spending even more borrowed money on the same old list of priorities including infrastructure,  (remember Obama’s promise that his huge increase in spending would fund “shovel ready” projects?) inefficient alternative energy schemes that can never replace fossil fuels, and expanded education bureaucracies.

The Republican campaign must drive home the point that Obama-Clinton economic theories are already in effect and have utterly, miserably failed.

“They had no regard for their own lives. They surrounded me and my son”

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

July 4, 1776:

Visionary men published radical ideas that altered the course of history.

The Declaration of Independence

We humbly suggest that part of every American family’s July 4th celebration should be rereading and reflecting on the great truths of The Declaration of Independence.  We individual, patriotic citizens must make sure all American children are exposed to this greatest of all political documents. We can no longer depend on government schools.

This revolutionary document established the “self-evident” truths that we are all created equal and that our rights are “endowed” by or are received directly from God, our creator.  The only legitimate purpose of government is to protect, not to dispense or withhold those preexisting, God-endowed rights.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Continued

Astounding history from Ronald Reagan’s Second Inaugural Address:

Two of our Founding Fathers, a Boston lawyer named Adams and a Virginia planter named Jefferson, members of that remarkable group who met in Independence Hall and dared to think they could start the world over again, left us an important lesson.

They had become political rivals in the Presidential election of 1800. Then years later, when both were retired, and age had softened their anger, they began to speak to each other again through letters. A bond was reestablished between those two who had helped create this government of ours.

In 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, they both died. They died on the same day, within a few hours of each other, and that day was the Fourth of July.

In one of those letters exchanged in the sunset of their lives, Jefferson wrote: “It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passing harmless … we rode through the storm with heart and hand.”

What if there was a shocking employment statistic but nobody paid any attention?

Measured by the norms in place in 2008 the May Unemployment Rate would have been 9.8%, not the 4.7% reported by the Administration.

The Commerce Department published a depressing monthly jobs report on June 3. Public and private sector employers combined created a pitiful 38,000 jobs during the month of May, less than one-fifth of May’s one-month increase in the working age population.

But the media are obsessed with Donald Trump who showed no interest in the report.  Instead he captivated the “news” for a week by deploying the prestige of the Republican Presidential Campaign in pursuit of a small-minded, personal grudge against a judge who’s presiding over a lawsuit in which he’s a defendant.  Thus the media had little air time for the jobs report’s most discouraging finding, further decline in Labor Force Participation.

The White House, relieved that the expected withering, election year criticism from the Republican campaign wasn’t heard, issued a subdued announcement that emphasized the unemployment rate, which had ticked down to 4.7% from 5% in April.

But it turns out the gradually declining unemployment rate of the Obama era is misleading.  This is the first time since monthly job reports began, eight decades ago, that a falling unemployment rate is bad news. Why? Because it results not from jobless people finding employment but rather from jobless people being reclassified from “unemployed” to “out of the labor force.”

As This chart shows, the gradual decline in the unemployment rate since it peaked at 10% in 2009 coincides with a an unprecedented decline in the labor force participation rate.

• The Labor Force is the sum of all persons who have jobs plus all who are officially classified as “unemployed.”
• The labor force participation rate is the percentage of the total civilian, working age population that is counted as in the labor force.
  
• The unemployment rate is the percentage of the labor force that is jobless and actively seeking employment.  It’s computed by dividing the number of unemployed by the the total labor force.

Since the unemployment rate began to fall from it’s peak in October 2009 over six million  jobless people have been reclassified from “unemployed” to “out of the labor force.”  In just the month of May another 458,000 jobless men and women were reclassified as “out of the labor force.”

Excluding people from the labor force this way artificially lowers the unemployment rate.  If they were still counted as in the labor force and unemployed, the May Unemployment rate would have been 8.2%

If the labor force participation rate were the same now as it was at the beginning of the recession in 2008 the May Unemployment Rate would have been 9.8%

Thus, the decline in the unemployment rate throughout the Obama era has been due almost entirely to reclassifying jobless workers from “unemployed” to “not in the labor force.”

The next chart shows the first 80 months of recovery after the recession President Reagan inherited in 1981.  While the political-media establishment relentlessly reminds us of their opinion that President Obama inherited the worst recession ever, the data tell a different story.

The unemployment rate spiked higher in 1982 than it did in 2009.  In the early eighties mortgage interest rates soared to above 15% compared to about 5%  during the 2008-09 recession and 3.5% today.  One of the causes of the 1981-82 recession was a monetary crisis that drove inflation as high as 15% compared to around 1% during the past 8 years.

But the recovery from the 1980s recession was spectacularly successful because Reagan’s policies of cutting taxes and reducing the regulatory burden on investors and businesses released the economy to grow and create more jobs.  The result was a much more rapid reduction in the unemployment rate coinciding with a dramatic increase in the labor force participation rate.

It turns out that in every previous post-recession recovery the labor force participation rate was flat or increased.  The current era is the first time participation has declined during a recovery.  Thus, the current era is the first time a declining unemployment rate is not an indicator of a better economy.

At the basic, philosophical level, Ronald Reagan believed in economic liberty while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton believe in the progressive dream of a powerful government directing and controlling the economy from Washington.  The practical results of these conflicting beliefs are clear and have been demonstrated over and over. Yet, the progressive Left doggedly pursues it’s continuous government expansion project, always promising that more control will make us more prosperous.