Townhall Review | Commentaries

A new poll from Trafalgar tells us what all of us outside of the political, financial and media ruling class already know … Americans are sick of corporate CEOs sticking their noses into politically contentious issues. According to a new poll from the Trafalgar Group, 87 percent of likely voters would stop doing business with a company because they disagree with the company’s political stance.  

That includes Republicans at 93 percent and Democrats at 84 percent, probably representing the fact that corporate political meddling tends to favor the left over the right. A poll last year found that only 39 percent of respondents found it appropriate for companies to engage in political speech. 
 
So, if we don’t want it, why do they do it? For some, it’s an ego trip. But for others, they are just taking the line of least resistance, which amounts to giving in to left-wing pressure groups. Only now is the rest of the country, the center and the right, speaking up. Let’s continue to speak loud and clear, telling CEOs to stick to your day job!

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Seven years ago, the Supreme Court ruled to redefine marriage throughout our nation. In a poorly reasoned 5-4 decision, Anthony Kennedy struck down good marriage laws across America—without any real justification.
 
No one should vote to redefine marriage legislatively—because marriage isn’t a creation of the state. Marriage is a natural and supernatural institution which government rightly recognizes, supports, and promotes—but doesn’t create, and certainly can’t recreate.
 
Now, Congress is attempting to actually go further than the Court’s ruling—and a number of congressional Republicans are going along as cheap dates.
 
Voting for this bill just adds cultural fuel to the fire of those who seek to shut down Catholic adoption agencies, coerce religious schools, and sue bakers, florists and photographers. 
 
No one should vote for this bill, but if a Republican is going to defect, at the very least they should demand a price—and insist on protections for citizens and organizations who believe the truth about marriage. 
 

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The White House has begun playing word games about the meaning of “recession” ahead of this week’s report on the economy in the second quarter. Joe Biden insisted that “we are not going to be in a recession,” while his economic adviser Brian Deese made the media rounds to argue that two consecutive quarters of negative GDP does not automatically indicate a recession. Karine Jean-Pierre floated out a new term, “pre-recession,” only to deny that we’re in one of those as well. 

What nonsense. American households don’t care what technical term describes their current economic misery. What matters is the actual misery itself. This week alone, we have seen:

• Consumer confidence hit a one-year low
• Nearly half of all households extend debt while cutting expenses
• Housing markets stall

Voters don’t need to have Biden define recession to know that his economic policies are failing. They live Biden’s economic misery every day regardless of what Democrats call it – and they will vote for people who acknowledge it.

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Boris Johnson has now stepped down as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak—both Tories—will succeed Johnson.

It’s been startling to see most of American news media pay scant attention to the story, to this contest. No ally of the United States has been more critical to the battle with global terrorism than the British. Just as the election of Margaret Thatcher to the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1975 marked a sea change for the West, so could the Tories’ choice now of a new leader.

What we need now is a West recommitted to freedom, personal and national. A “woke” future is as dreary as California’s dystopian landscape. A hesitant response to China won’t create the future we all need. And strong leaders matter.

The U.S. news media should be doing its best to alert Americans to the stakes, the personalities and the agenda ahead in Great Britain — because of what it portends not just for the U.S. politics but for the world.

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Environmental extremists and their congressional allies are urging President Biden to declare a national climate emergency. Doing so could allow the president to take extraordinary measures like banning crude oil exports, halting new oil and gas drilling, and curbing fossil fuel imports and exports.

Although emergency powers are supposed to be temporary, don’t count on it. Forty-one emergency declarations—some more than four decades old—are still in effect today.

Using emergency powers to impose unpopular policies is an abuse of office. Under the separation of powers set forth in our Constitution, if the president wants to enact new laws, he’s got to work with Congress to do it.
For people who talk so much about “democracy,” you’d think President Biden and his staff would actually try to respect the democratic process.

Executive actions and the use of emergency powers are no way to run a democratic republic.

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Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager was recently the subject of an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, which found that its CEO, Larry Fink has been aggressively using his power position to pursue a political agenda which the report refers to as “saving the world.” Billionaire gadfly Sam Zell had a different take “I didn’t know Larry Fink had been made God.” 

What are Fink and Blackrock trying to save the world from? The use of fossil fuels—which remain the most abundant and affordable energy sources. They also have their eyes on a weakening of RFRA—the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They are also against our system of shareholder capitalism which leaves corporate managers accountable to investors.

And: They’re using your money to do this. It’s time to contact your financial advisor and see if your money is being used against your views—or contact the funds you own directly and ask them what they’ve been supporting in your name. 

Use your power or lose your power.

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As pro-choicers work to discredit the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, suddenly pregnancy is being portrayed as a fearsome medical condition that jeopardizes women’s lives.

Please. Globally, maternal mortality has fallen 43 percent since 1990. In the United States, it fell 99 percent between 1955 and 1985. By 1973, pregnancy so rarely posed a mortal danger that doctors had dropped “life of the mother” as a justification for abortion – a fact noted in the oral arguments that year for Roe v. Wade.

In fact, the US maternal mortality ratio in 2019—the last pre-pandemic year available—was a vanishingly small 17.4 out of 100,000 pregnancies.

Of course, it is always possible that a pregnancy might need to be terminated to save a mother’s life. But those who present this heartbreaking circumstance as common are propagandists. And they are not to be trusted.

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In the wake of the Dobbs holding overturning Roe v. Wade, pro-choicers have been desperate to discredit the decision. That’s how the story about a ten-year-old pregnant girl came to the media’s attention. Supposedly three days too late for an abortion under Ohio’s post-Dobbs legal regime, the child was taken to Indiana to have her pregnancy terminated.

With no rape ever reported to law enforcement, skeptics raised questions about this heartbreaking pro-abortion narrative. And as it turns out, there was much more to the story.

The little girl had been raped, repeatedly, by her mother’s boyfriend—who was an illegal alien.

It’s tragic that many cases like this have been obscured by the permissive abortion regime Roe enabled. With individual states now able to regulate abortion for themselves, at least it may be harder for criminals to coerce the most vulnerable into paying the price in secret for their own evil deeds.

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Who says Americans disagree on everything? Some truths are so obvious that they even transcend partisan lines—and distrust of the media has become common ground in the US. In Gallup’s decades-long survey, consumers rate the credibility of both newspapers and television news at all-time lows. Only 16 percent of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in either.

Media outlets have rushed to blame this on partisanship. However, Gallup’s data shows that only small minorities trust the media to deliver real news—whatever their party affiliation. Twelve percent or fewer of both Republicans and independents trust newspapers or TV news, only 20 percent of Democrats trust TV news, and only 35 percent of Democrats trust newspapers.

The real problems are media partisanship and the serial failures of narrative journalism over direct and factual reporting. Media outlets should spend less time posing as “fact checkers” and more time as “fact presenters.”

The data is clear: They have a long way to go.

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No wonder Democrats are pressing the “panic” button as this year’s elections approach. They’ve long assumed an entitlement to the votes of people of color.

But black and Hispanic voters are telling them, “not so fast.”  Joe Biden’s approval with black Americans plummeted 30 points in 2021. Now Hispanics are evenly divided over which party they’ll support this year. Perhaps Democrats were hasty in deciding an “Emerging Majority” of minority voters would support them, world without end.

Here’s the truth: People are people first, regardless of race. No one wants surging inflation, skyrocketing crime, failing schools or an open border. And Americans in urban centers pay most dearly for the left’s social experiments.

With increasingly nationalized elections, Democrats can’t easily distance themselves from their vocal leftists. So they’re learning the hard way: Americans of color don’t want elite condescension, “wokeness,” and victimhood. They just want safety, prosperity and their shot at the American Dream. 

And they deserve it.

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