I am never sure when to address the public policy questions that arise after a tragedy. I am always caught between a respect for the mourning of those who have lost loved ones and the real “public policy” questions raised by the tragedy. The challenge is that those on the left are not constrained by any moral compass. Every tragedy becomes the excuse for expanding government power, and the faster they press their agenda, the less constrained they are by the facts.

Within hours of the latest shootings by crazed young men, the left was in full “it’s the gun’s fault” mode, supplemented by the “we hate Donald Trump, so this has to be his fault” rhetoric. The media, quickly picking up on the left’s agenda, runs out to find facts that reinforce that construct. It doesn’t matter that the Dayton shooter had social media posts liked Antifa, was “radically” concerned about “global warming,” and supported Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, he was obviously driven by his “white supremacist” agenda and “Donald Trump’s rhetoric.” Don’t bother me with facts,… Read More

My friend, Dennis Prager, likes to say everything the Left touches they destroy. Whether that is true or not, when they grasp onto perfectly good words, they destroy them. For example, they destroyed the name Liberal so much that it was abandoned by them and leaving the remaining Liberals in a lurch as to defining themselves. The term has been reclaimed by Conservatives who assert they are classic Liberals. The Left then started calling themselves Progressives destroying that word. The only thing progressive about them is that they want to progressively restrict your rights and progressively take more of your money for their favored causes. Now they have destroyed the meaning of racist.

It certainly seemed we had spent about sixty years or so doing everything we could to not only eradicate racially biased policies from our governments, but to normalize the attitudes of individuals from different races toward each other. It certainly seemed like we did a wonderful job of socializing this akin to how we made it socially unacceptable to smoke cigarettes. We had treated anti-Black attitudes analogous to making people with racial bias feel like smokers standing in an… Read More

I thought long and hard about writing this column because you and I are sick at this point of hearing about the Mueller report, collusion, obstruction of justice, etc., etc., etc. Yet there are matters that need to be defined. Since this is never a me-too column, there are topics to be addressed. Just to be clear: this was a disaster for Mueller and the Democrats.

If you don’t think Mueller was a disaster for the Democrats think about this — the Dems had a mock hearing the day before. Yes, a mock hearing. They thought so much was at stake they actually rehearsed their hearing and the role of every single Democrat member of the committee. One must think they wanted the person playing Mueller (a staffer for Jerry Nadler) in the chair during the hearing instead of the real Mueller.

Mueller made something very clear. It has been asserted by some that the entire staff was hired by Andrew Weissmann who I consider a despicable person. He should not be allowed near a courtroom (look into Arthur Andersen LLP) and is a highly-partisan Democrat who attended Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election night party.

Mueller asserted he hired the entire staff,… Read More

For the past several months all we have heard from the Democrats is how Trump is issuing “racist” statements to rally his base and assure his re-election. Leave aside the fact that the things they have been saying have been completely untrue (it is not racist to say Baltimore is a rat-hole, when in fact it is). The only reason Democrats resort to the “racist” charge is to rally their base. They know the African American and Hispanic communities are doing well under the Trump administration, and the only way they can keep those votes in the Democrat column is by stamping the “racist” label on Trump. The Ds know two things: (1) the media will always be quick to assign the tag to any Republican upon whom the Dems post it, then do all the research they can to confirm that tag; and (2) some lesser Republicans will join in on the Dem chorus, either because they are media toadies or because they themselves are really racists, and they don’t want to be caught up in the media frenzy.

What really angers the Ds is that no Republican president has ever fought back against the Democrats on this stuff. The whole reason political discourse… Read More

The 2007-2008 mortgage crisis caused a serious recession in America affecting the world economy. We all lived through it. I did not think that anyone would stoop below some of the atrocious policies enacted by our government prior to that crash. Senator Harris has a plan called Combatting the Racial Homeownership Gap and it is remarkably more insane.

Let me take you back to the aftermath of the financial crisis where people were beginning to grasp what happened from the rearview mirror. I wrote Kill All The Bankers https://townhall.com/columnists/brucebialosky/2011/10/10/kill-all-the-bankers-n1048576 Congresswoman Waters proposed at the height of the mortgage boom leading to the crash that she wanted to expand the loans made to the Black Community. Her thought was if you can pay rent, you can pay a mortgage. She totally disregarded the other relevant costs like surprise necessary repairs that homeowners must make like a broken waterpipe or replacing a water heater.

Presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris has taken Waters’ utterly stupid and financially dangerous proposal and doubled down on it to appease two important Democrat constituencies: Blacks… Read More

The latest federal budget presented to us as “finished” proves one big point. Our government budgets, at the Federal, State, and Local levels, are out of control. Conservatives constantly campaign to control the size and scope of government, but once they get elected, and have to actually govern, conservatives fall short of correcting the persistent problem, the cause of the ever increasing size and scope of government and the erosion of individual freedom in this country, the budgets of the various governments.

Of course, the first problem is the self interest of the groups who make money off the budget. They are the largest contributors to the political process, and the ones most interested in the outcomes of budget negotiations. Whether it is police and fire unions, teachers’ or other education related unions, government employee unions, private sector operations who contract with the government for all manner of things and services, and even those who are regulated by the government, all have an interest in protecting the status quo, which generally means the “constant” growth of government. Word limitations on these types of blogs… Read More

The federal government just came out with its budget calling for an explosion of spending, and blowing the top off of the debt limit. Small government, pro-freedom conservatives are justifiably outraged.

Newt Gingrich tells the story of one of his conversations with Ronald Reagan at the end of Reagan’s presidency. Gingrich told then President Reagan that, while he had done some amazing things as President, he had failed to bring the budget under control. Reagan responded by saying, “I conquered international communism, I leave the budget deficit to you.” Since that time, Republicans have done a poor job of controlling federal government spending. Gingrich had a balanced budget for several years while he was Speaker of the House, but when he resigned, and Speaker Hastert took over, budget deficits returned. Bush couldn’t control spending, Republican majorities during Obama’s years didn’t, and total Republican control of all the levers of government during the first two years of President Trump’s time didn’t control it either.

We had the same problem here in California. While Pete Wilson was Governor, and… Read More

The virtue of a defined contribution plan is that once the employer has made their contribution, the employer’s obligation is fulfilled. The employee’s retirement benefit is based on a “defined” contribution – typically some fixed percentage of their base pay – that money is invested, and the retiree lives on the accumulated savings and interest. Often, with the same amount invested, these plans can offer participants a more lucrative retirement than a pension.

Given the potential of defined contribution plans to sometimes outperform pensions, why are public employee unions seemingly focused almost exclusively onthe alternative, the so-called “defined benefit” pension? Far more common in the public sector, these defined benefit plans offer the retiree a guaranteed “defined” amount in the form of fixed payments for as long as they live, usually adjusted upwards each year for inflation. What the employer has to contribute to the fund is undefined and fluctuates as needed to maintain those promised payments.

The problem, however, with defined benefits is they were sold as costing taxpayers very little,… Read More