Townhall Review | Commentaries

Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor of Chicago in April to much national fanfare as a triumph of identity politics. She labeled herself “a triple threat” because she’s black, gay and female.

Now: Six months in and amid Chicago’s second teachers’ strike in seven years, Lightfoot has discovered math doesn’t care about her intersectionality and neither does the Chicago Teachers’ Union.

Chicago teachers, already the highest paid in the nation adjusted for cost of living, rejected a 16 percent pay increase over five years that would bring the average teacher salary to nearly $100,000. That doesn’t include the net present value pension of more than $2 million guaranteed for which teachers contribute only 2 percent of their salaries.

The Chicago Public School system currently has nearly $20 billion in bills and less than $3 billion to pay for them.

Chicago’s democratic politicians have done a torch of a job on the city’s finances … rivaling what fire did to the physical city in 1871.

Lightfoot is just the latest pyromaniac.

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When they’re not obsessing over Ukraine and Giuliani, the media is spending its time bashing Trump for his Syria pull-out. But not a word is said about who got us into this mess: President Obama.

Many have been critical of Trump’s sudden pull-out of Syria, but long before Trump came into office, Obama allowed Syria to go from a revolution to a long and lethal civil war.

Obama said Assad must go; his CIA spent $1 billion funding and training Syrian rebels to that end.

The US-led effort to oust Assad paved the way for ISIS and the current chaos that Trump is trying to get us out of.

Back in 2013, many conservatives opposed Obama’s plan to overthrow Assad, because we thought that it would extend the civil war. That is exactly what happened. While the media attacks Trump for blundering out of Syria, they’ve forgotten that Obama blundered us into it.

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A passing of the torch happened last weekend, when one progressive icon—Bernie Sanders—accepted an endorsement of his campaign from another progressive icon, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Her endorsement came as no surprise to political observers, but heralded an important moment for the ascendancy of far-left wing politics within the Democratic Party. No longer can socialist policy positions be considered the fringes of the American left. Indeed, the movement led by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez isn’t merely a minor blip in history to be dismissed with the next political cycle. It is the pathway down which the Democrats will take their politics, policymaking, and rhetoric in the years to come.

The ascendancy of the socialist left is a gift to President Trump and Republicans in Congress, who will run as defenders of a free-enterprise system that—while not perfect—has been the linchpin of American prosperity for generations. That’s an electoral fight that will be tough for Democrats to win.

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Conservatives’ message was individual liberty and limited government, but it’s been narrowed to a defense of capitalism and free markets. This message is a dead-end for younger voters, especially.

Young people view both government and markets with suspicion but they think government is fairer. Having lived through 2008, facing student debt, wage stagnation, lower-paying jobs — they dislike the harshness of markets.

A 2017 Pew poll found that 57 percent of younger Americans want a “bigger government with more services,” which is what liberals offer.

There is a larger point to conservatism than just free markets and capitalism. Young people love their individualism and resent being told they have to wear helmets and pads through life. They can still be reached with a message of individual liberty and limited government, which is where conservatives need to begin.

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Critics of President Trump often express bafflement over why his broad support among conservatives is so enduring.

The answer is short and simple: Trump is establishing a record of genuine and possibly lasting conservative reforms.

The latest came on October 9, when he signed two executive orders designed to improve transparency when government agencies issue or enforce “guidance” on how best to comply with a law or regulation.

Don’t be fooled by that word “guidance.” These informal missives from the vast federal bureaucracy carry extraordinary real-world costs and sometimes extremely destructive punishments.

Now: Trump is bringing down the hammer on the guidance-addicted bureaucrats.

“This regulatory overreach gravely undermines our constitutional system of government,” Trump said.

Now that is conservatism.

And it’s conservatism that attracts conservatives.

How blindingly obvious.

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LeBron James recently made headlines for his comments about China. James argued that when Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supported Hong Kong democratic protestors, he was “misinformed.” Morey’s support caused “harm,” James said.

For those paying attention, there’s a revealing hypocrisy here. It’s common today among the left to speak against “immoral capitalism” and to decry unjust politics practiced by supposed American tyrants. Whatever one thinks about America, China is run by an actual tyrannical regime. Free speech doesn’t exist. Dissidents are placed in “re-education” camps.

There’s a reason NBA stars are speaking out for China here. They make tons of money from sneaker sales in China. There are many wonderful elements of the free market—but supporting tyranny to make millions is not one of them.

After the public outcry, LeBron says he’s staying quiet. But the damage is done.

Count this a big loss for LeBron … and the NBA.

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CNN’s recent Equality Town Hall was an earthquake—morally, politically, and culturally.

In case you missed it: When Beto O’Rourke was asked if he would strip the tax exemption from religious organizations that hold what he considers to be the wrong view of marriage, he responded with an unequivocal and unconditional “yes.”

Shortly after that, Beto O’Rourke then tweeted his own statement, making clear he was proud of it.

Some on the left were extremely troubled, not because they disagreed with him, but because he let the cat out of the bag.

Michael McGough, senior editorial writer for The Los Angeles Times, ran a piece with the headline, “Beto O'Rourke's ‘church tax’ idea plays into conservative paranoia about same-sex marriage.”

Conservative paranoia?

Conservative evangelicals are now called “paranoid” for listening to the words actually spoken by those who are running for president, and being concerned about those words.

That’s not paranoia.

That’s called reality.

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An important new study from the American Medical Association makes the point that children hurt their school performance not by the total hours they spend on “screen time” but by the kind of screens they choose to watch.

In the journal Jama Pediatrics, the authors summarize 58 studies published in recent years. Their conclusions show that time spent watching TV or playing video games is just as destructive as experts have long maintained—particularly damaging children’s achievement during their teenage years.

But other sorts of screen time—like social media on smart phones, or surfing the web—prove far less destructive because they’re less passive, more communicative.

In an era when parents sometimes spend thousands on tutors to boost a child’s academic prospects, they could produce better results by strictly limiting time gawking at the tube, or lost in the fantasy world of video games.

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On CNN last week there was a deeply disturbing exchange between Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke and Don Lemon, who asked:

“Do you think religious institutions—like colleges, churches, charities—should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?”

“Yes. There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break, for anyone, any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us.”

Just to be clear, this not about whether donors should be allowed to deduct contributions or not. This is an open call for the state to tax the church, to seize the assets of the church—and synagogue and mosque—and not of churches in general, but targeted at the ones who retain the orthodox positions of their respective faiths.

It’s an argument for the state suppression of religion.

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On my radio show in recent days I have been asking beltway reporters if they think House Democrats run the risk of turning their impeachment “inquiry” into a kangaroo court by repeatedly breaking with the precedents of impeachments past?

They all agreed. Yes: There is a risk, though each evaluated the size of that risk differently.

Simply put: Democrats are moving forward without a full floor vote and without the legal standards that have marked impeachments throughout our nation’s history.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone points out—and I quote—“precedent for the rights to cross-examine witnesses, call witnesses, and present evidence dates back nearly 150 years. Yet the Committees have decided to deny the President these elementary rights and protections that form the basis of the American justice system …”

This is not just about the president.

Speaker Pelosi and her party are rejecting the deeply embedded ideals of due process for the accused.

It’s a terrible mistake.

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