This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 20, 2016:
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its report on student loan repayments on Tuesday, revealing that 114,000 Americans age 50 and over had their Social Security checks garnished (the GAO calls them “offsets”), including 38,000 over age 65. In total the government recovered $171 million from this group last year, putting many of them into poverty.
Under the law,
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, June 26, 2017:
The Coat of arms of Venezuela
Thanks to Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the lessons being taught by the on-going destruction of Venezuela have been codified. It’s called “10 Biggest Lies of Socialism” and seven of them apply directly to the once-prosperous oil-rich South American country. First the lie is stated and then the reality:
The sad forced transition of Venezuela into a backward, third-world country whose starving citizens are forced to barter has been tracked extensively. Starting in April,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 27, 2018:
The rebound in stocks on Wall Street on Monday and early Tuesday that followed last week’s sell-off was triggered by the reality that Trump’s tough talk on tariffs was little more than an opening bid to get China’s attention. It did, as was noted by Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin: “We’re having very productive conversations with them. I’m cautiously hopeful [that we can] reach an agreement.”
It helped that over the weekend investors began to understand that Trump’s threat, even if fully applied, would have very little impact on the overall economy. Part of the initial confusion was the media’s constant repetition that Trump intended “to impose at least $60 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports” as the Washington Post expressed it. Whether deliberate or not, the Washington Post should have said that Trump intended “to impose tariffs on at least $60 billion worth of imports, particularly imports of steel and aluminum.”
That’s a vastly different, more accurate and less concerning statement.
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, March 26, 2018:
Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Schuylkill County
It’s no wonder they laughed. When testifying before the Pennsylvania House Education Committee, Blue Mountain School District superintendent Dr. David Helsel told about a plan he installed two years ago to defend his students against an armed shooter intent on shooting them:
Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone. If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks and [he] will be stoned.
He added:
At one time I just had the idea of river stone: they’re the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard, and they will create or cause pain, which can distract.
He failed to mention that “very hard” meant hurling a 3- to 4-inch diameter stone at speeds up to 60 mph compared to a round exiting the barrel of a Glock handgun (the firearm of choice among most mass shooters) at 900 feet per second.
But that’s what happens when common sense options aren’t allowed. What’s left are options that appear laughable. One of the legislators asked Helsel, “Can I come out and watch?” which was greeted with laughter from others on the committee.
But Helsel is serious:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, March 21, 2018:
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is about to enjoy learning what the Old Testament teaches about the sins of his father:
The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.
In the 1970s, many of us still remember the pain and suffering that Saudi Arabia’s kings inflicted on the United States and its citizenry in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel: long lines at gas stations, alternate days to fill up, double nickel highway speeds, daylight “savings” time, and other punishments.
The prince, born in 1985, won’t remember those days, but his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, most certainly does. And during his two-week sales tour of the United States, the prince is going to learn about justice delayed. He now needs the help of the United States to keep his sand castle from falling into the sea or disappearing into the Arabian desert.
Specifically, the prince has a dream – Vision 2030 – but
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, March 9, 2018:
Friday’s numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) were predicted a day earlier by ADP/Moody’s Analytics, which said that private payrolls in February jumped by 235,000. But few expected the BLS to report what one surprised forecaster called “unbelievably strong” new jobs numbers. Further, the Labor Department said that its jobs reports for December and January understated the reality, adjusting those two months’ reports upward by another 54,000 jobs.
The economy continues to gain strength.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 26, 2018:
Chad Robichaux, a former special agent with the U.S. Federal Air Marshall Service, has been here before. Objections to arming pilots following the Islamic terror attacks on September 11, 2001 were the same as those being raised against arming teachers. Said Robichaux on Breitbart News Tonight last Thursday: “Well, you trust them [pilots] flying your airplane. So now people are saying, ‘We can’t trust teachers with firearms.’ We trust them with our children!”
Robichaux worked with the Federal Air Marshall Service in developing and implementing the pilot training program launched following the 9/11 attacks and said that the present hostility toward arming teachers is the same that was voiced against the arming of pilots.
Prior to 9/11, airplanes were in essence “gun free” zones, an inviting target for terrorists:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, January 17, 2018:
Former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie
After all, they don’t work. They are fraudulent from the very beginning, implying that a government is merely buying back firearms from private citizens that it initially sold to them. But still the failed “experiments” in reducing gun violence continue.
They lack logic. Criminals seeking to rid themselves of an offending weapon aren’t likely to show up at a police station or other public place, relying on the promise that there will be “no questions asked.” Not when a much easier alternative exists: toss it into the river.
Studies showing their failure to reduce crime don’t impress anti-gun politicians. The first gun buy-back program in the United States happened in Baltimore, Maryland in 1974. It was considered a failure when, during the program’s two-month existence, gun violence and assaults actually increased.
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, January 5, 2018:
It may be a little early to tell, but at the moment the middle class is doing just fine. Life goes on; if Armageddon occurred, the media missed it. That “punch in the gut for the middle class” is about to be caused by heavier wallets, thanks to tax cuts showing up in their February paychecks.
For hundreds of thousands, that punch in the gut was immediate:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, January 4, 2018:
The surprising thing about the Dow’s volcanic eruption through the 25,000 level on Thursday is that it was matched by all-time highs in other key stock market indexes such as the S&P 500 Index, the NASDAQ, and the Russell 2000. Even more surprising is that this isn’t happening in an American vacuum: Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average hit a new 26-year high, rising above 23,000 for the first time since January 1992. The Hang Seng (Hong Kong) Index just touched a new 10-year high, while major stock market indexes in New Zealand, the Philippines, and Thailand also set new records on Thursday.
The reasons why aren’t surprising:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 21, 2017:
Without a single Democrat vote in either the House or the Senate, the tax reform bill headed for President Donald Trump’s desk on Wednesday is likely to cost them dearly in the midterm elections. That is, if the bill works as intended: giving Americans “more take home pay” as the president expressed it, adding. “It will be an incredible Christmas gift for hardworking Americans.”
Most of those hardworking Americans won’t see a thing until
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, December 14, 2017:
US Retail Sales 1992–2010. Threy’ve been on a tear ever since.
Economic forecasters continue to fall behind reality, as shown by the latest numbers from the Commerce Department. Forecasters predicted that November’s retail sales would increase just 0.3 percent over October. Instead, retail sales jumped an astonishing 0.8 percent. In an economy where two-thirds of economic activity is geared toward providing consumers with goods and services, that’s huge miss — on the order of a three-quarters of a billion dollar miss.
October’s numbers dumbfounded them as well:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 13, 2017:
New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado
It’s taking more than hope and good feelings to protect houses of worship from crazed attackers. Tomie Barker attends Christ Lutheran Church in Seguin, Texas, about 15 miles north of Sutherland Springs. She and her husband own firearms but have never taken one to church, until now: “Why should we take a gun to church? We feel like we ought to be safe [there].” But from now on they’ll have the assurance that comes not only from the Holy Scripture but from a firearm: “[My husband’s] not leaving home without it now.”
Many churches are waking up to their vulnerability.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 8, 2017:
Ed Gillespie
The win by Democrat Ralph Northam over Republican Ed Gillespie in the Virginia governor’s race on Tuesday has breathed desperately-needed oxygen into Democrats who have lost race after race since President Trump was elected a year ago. Some have gone over the top, suggesting that it’s the Republican Party that has now become carrion, whose bones will be picked clean in 2018.
The Washington Post’s James Hohmann could scarcely contain his glee:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 8, 2017:
Before the market opened on the day after Donald Trump won the election a year ago, futures were predicting a precipitous drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 900 points. By the close of business that day, sentiment reversed and the market closed up 250 points, to 18,500.
That was 5,000 points ago,
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, November 6, 2017:
John Godfrey Saxe
The oldest attribution isn’t to Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, but to an American poet, John Godfrey Saxe. Back in 1869, he said it best: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire in proportion as we know how they are made.”
Imagine, then, making sausages on the deck of the Titanic just after it hit an iceberg on the glassy sea of the North Atlantic in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. The wonderful smells might have distracted the passengers from the reality that within two hours and forty minutes the unsinkable ship would disappear beneath the surface of the icy waters, taking 1,550 passengers with her.
That picture may be too dramatic for our purposes. But
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, October 31, 2017:
One measure of how the U.S. economy continues to exceed expectations is the Economic Surprise Index published by Citigroup. It’s a tool that is used to measure how the economy compares to those expectations and, at the moment at least, it reflects the ebullience reported elsewhere. Any reading above zero indicates that the economy’s performance is exceeding projections. On Tuesday it hit 40 — its highest level since April.
That performance has repeatedly been reported in The New American and elsewhere, with these notable results:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 27, 2017:
Putting in its best six-month performance in three years, the U.S. economy barely skipped a beat in the third quarter, growing at a three-percent annual rate. That was just slightly behind the second quarter, which grew at 3.1 percent, but way ahead of economists who had forecast growth for the third quarter at just 2.5 percent.
The Commerce Department said
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