I generally like to avoid using personal anecdotes to illustrate a point. It’s bad practice that results in skewed evidence. That all being said and acknowledged, the internet has turned up no results confirming or denying (or acknowledging) the observation I wish to make, so here it is. A few weeks ago, I took a trip into the rural Ohio countryside. Those of us who live in the western half of the state like to tell people that Ohio is boring, flat, and uninteresting, which is really only true if you’re driving straight up I-75. I didn’t do that, though. I took state routes over gentle hills, around corn and soy fields, and through small towns and neighborhoods. (READ MORE: On Harris’s Bus…And Under It) I was about an hour into my trip, singing along to Arcadian Wild at the top of my lungs, when I passed a large sign in someone’s yard advertising the Harris–Walz ticket. The sign itself wasn’t odd — after all, it is a presidential election year — but what was strange was that it was alone. A few years ago, Washington Examiner journalist Salena Zito spoke to a gaggle of students at Hillsdale College. I believe she had just finished reporting on the 2020 election and was still riding on her laurels as one of the few political commentators who had correctly predicted the results of the 2016 election. Zito is the kind of woman who never takes the interstate and stops at local bars and diners rather than McDonalds when she goes on road trips. It’s not exactly the most convenient way to travel, but it is the most informative. Back in 2016, Zito predicted that Trump would win because, when she talked to Americans at mom-and-pop diners, they said they would vote for him, and when she drove around Pennsylvania, she saw Trump–Pence signs everywhere. In 2020, Zito told us, things changed. The yard signs never went up, and Americans became tight-lipped about their political beliefs. That, of course, was in the midst of the pandemic and the George Floyd riots. American politics were so heated, and the consequences of speaking out were so potentially damaging, that most Americans never took the risk. (READ MORE: How Trump Can Win (Or Lose)) But what about now? The pandemic is over, and this year’s riots are tame compared to 2020’s. But the yard signs haven’t come back. Way back in 2012, the Atlantic complained that yard signs were both ubiquitous and totally useless as a means of persuasion. More recently (in 2015), the Washington Post agreed, describing them as “similar to randomly handing out fliers at a grocery store: a waste of time, money and energy.” Perhaps Americans, after decades of lawn warfare, have gotten the hint, accepted the inevitable, and have retired their hideous plastic political yard signs. I find that theory unlikely. The two other explanations I’m able to concoct are a bit less optimistic. One explanation is that Americans still feel stifled politically. There is a growing gap between the beliefs of the average voter — e.g. sex is biological (60 percent), we shouldn’t be teaching gender ideology in schools (70 percent), and illegal immigrants should be deported (51 percent) — and the policies and political culture being pushed on Americans by Hollywood and liberal politicians. Normal people feel that they are in the minority, even though they are in the majority, and that could easily mean that they won’t choose to express themselves as loudly and proudly as they have in the past. Another explanation could be that Americans are less motivated and interested in politics than they have been in the past. It could be that, after four years of hyper-politicization, we’re all just done with politics. We’ve thrown up our hands in disgust and decided to better our yards with flowers rather than political signs. There’s some data to back that idea up as well. From the perspective of media companies, the average American’s disinterest in politics has meant fewer eyeballs on TV screens and webpages. Back in February, Axios noted that fewer Americans were reading the news when compared with numbers from the last presidential election. There likely has been an uptick since, although it’s still too early to get data on that. Looking at the bigger picture, major newsrooms were counting on the 2024 election cycle to stem the hemorrhage of jobs and profits they’ve experienced in the last couple of years. Even if the 2024 election cycle steps in to save media companies for another year, it’s a temporary and not a permanent fix. (READ MORE: A Political and Ideological Scoreboard of the Right to Separate the Sheep from the Goats) The fact is, political yardsigns weren’t a way to poll the nation to see which political candidate was more likely to win. They weren’t ever going to convince your diehard CNN-junkie neighbor to vote for Donald Trump. (They were intended to drive him nuts.) But they were a good way to get a feel for how excited and interested people were in the election. Now they seem to be gone. The post Where Did All the Yard Signs Go? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The problem with our legal system, comedian Steven Wright points out, is that “99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.” He must have hit a nerve. In 2006, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America realized their name wasn’t exactly generating warm fuzzies, prompting them to rebrand as the “American Association for Justice.” So, we had it all wrong. They’re not greedy trial lawyers, they’re here for “justice.” And get with the times, do not accuse them of “ambulance chasing.” How gouache. No, today’s justice warrior is modern and sophisticated, he can find all the victims in need of his services right on their living room couches or Posturepedics watching late-night TV. Like a mile-long tuna net dragging through the Atlantic, trial lawyers … er, justice guys, snag clients by the boatload with the help of lead generators and aggregators. In 60 seconds, TV viewers and internet surfers can quickly be folded into massive multi-billion-dollar tort litigations against medical companies or other businesses unfortunate enough to have the financial assets that make them worth targeting. Of course, there are people with legitimate claims, but the attorneys behind the ads don’t care whether the viewer actually suffers a condition or if that condition is tied to the targeted company; the more plaintiffs that sign up, the higher the likelihood of forcing defendant companies to settle for outrageous amounts of money. With contingency fees that may be as high as 40 percent, lawyers rake in the cash as their clients receive a mere pittance, if anything at all. The attorneys and firms that specialize in this kind of litigation are expanding. In 2021 alone, an estimated $971 million was spent on 15 million TV ads for legal services or soliciting legal claims. Utilizing this strategy enables attorneys to aggregate personal injury cases they can turn into mass tort litigations or federal court Multidistrict Litigations (MDLs) that allow similar allegations to funnel down to a single judge. The court system is being swamped, as the volume of these cases has tripled from 2013 to 2019, with nine out of 10 consisting of mass torts or product liability cases. Tort litigation moves slowly, and plaintiff attorneys benefit from the substantial costs of prolonged discovery and endless motions that drive up their fees at settlement or final judgment. Even more appalling is that these efforts are frequently funded by high-dollar investors who expect a big return. And that return comes directly out of our pockets. The price tag of our nation’s exploding litigation industry is closing in on $500 billion annually, over 2 percent of our GDP, while costing the average U.S. household $3,621 in 2020. In an election year where the economy and inflation are the top issues, reform of our nation’s tort system should be as well. Yet unlike the numbers flying by on the gas pump or the credit card hit from a grocery store, the tort tax remains hidden. Settlements, of course, are the desired outcome for the lawyers who script litigation. With lawsuits that can be based on junk science and dubious causal evidence, TV attorneys try to avoid court like a cat avoids water. Otherwise, there is no windfall payday unless they painstakingly substantiate their claims in court. The authenticity of their clients can be quite suspect as well. Vague and often misleading advertisements to recruit plaintiffs can lure in people who have suffered no harm but see a path to a quick buck. Mass tort litigation is a serious and expensive problem for our nation. From 2016 to 2020, the direct economic costs of the tort system grew at an annual rate of 6 percent, more than twice as fast as GDP. With the election under 80 days away, this issue should be something on every voter’s mind. Mass tort litigation costs everyone and needs to be reined in by our lawmakers. New rules are needed to control deceptive legal advertising. The First Amendment allows restrictions on commercial speech that cannot be substantiated. Requiring ads to be truthful and that attorneys disclose the plaintiffs’ and their own projected financial remuneration would go a long way toward pulling the brakes on this runaway locomotive. Ending these elaborate corporate shakedowns will take money from lawyers’ pockets and put it back into the productive economy and consumers’ wallets, where it belongs. Gerard Scimeca is an attorney and chairman of CASE, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, a free-market oriented consumer advocacy organization. The post Time to Curb Lawyers’ Late-Night TV Ads appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

From Ben Stein 602 N. Crescent Drive Beverly Hills, Ca. 90210 8/20/24 To: Mr. Vivek Sankaran CEO – Albertsons Companies 250 East Parker Blvd. Boise, Idaho 83706 Dear Mr. Sankaran: My name is Ben Stein. I am a lawyer, economist, journalist, novelist, actor, screen writer, law teacher, husband, and many other things. I live in Beverly Hills and in Malibu. I am an avid grocery shopper at your super good supermarkets in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Malibu. My wife since 1968 does not like to shop at grocery stores, so I do that with great pleasure. I especially like to shop at your stores in Beverly Hills and Malibu. These have become my favorite spots in Southern California. They are clean, with friendly, respectful staffs, adequate parking, excellent guard services, and fast, reliable checkout clerks. Above all, they have super meats and fish. My wife and I especially love your Prime Ribeye steaks, your Skuna Bay salmon fillets, your Dover Sole fillets, your magnificent Idaho baking potatoes (we used to live in Sandpoint, Idaho), and your fabulous sliced roast beef and sliced Boar’s Head honey ham. These are not cheap, but they are great bargains. I used to shop often at Gelson’s, Whole Foods, and some others. Your foodstuffs are FAR better quality and value than any others that I know of. Plus, my fellow shoppers are extremely friendly, often greet me by name, and remember small details of my wife’s and my culinary preferences. They also know our health stories well, and ask us friendly but never nosy details of our lives. I am a small-scale movie star and a well-known writer and TV news commentator. I also had a successful TV game show career that yielded several Emmys. I am writing simply to say that I believe you offer the single most pleasant shopping experience in LA right now. I have had a good career, including being valedictorian of my law school class (Yale ’70) and serving as a speechwriter for GOP Presidents Nixon and Ford. Kind people have said that I have a decent sense of good and bad. In that spirit, may I thank you for Pavilions and please keep it going for a long time in this tangled web that we know as “life.” Best wishes, Ben Stein benstein@aol.com 602 N. Crescent Drive Beverly Hills, Ca. 90210 The post A Letter to My Favorite Grocer appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

As we approach another pivotal election, voters are once again being bombarded with messaging that paints the two main candidates as opposites. We’re told Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump represent radically different visions for America’s economic future. They don’t. When it comes to economic policy, there’s far less daylight between Harris and Trump than either would care to admit. Let’s start with trade policy. Trump’s protectionist stance is well-known, with his administration imposing tariffs on a wide range of goods, particularly from China. He has since announced that he would like to impose an across-the-board 10 percent and then 20 percent tariff on imports to the U.S., on top of the those already in place. But Harris’ stance is hardly better. She has embraced a “worker-centered” trade policy that looks suspiciously similar to Trump’s “America First” approach. Both emphasize protecting existing American jobs and industries, even at the cost of higher prices for beleaguered consumers, fewer resources to start new firms that will lead to more opportunity for the next generation of workers, and reduced economic efficiency. And let’s not forget that during the last four years, the Biden–Harris administration has imposed its fair share of tariffs while keeping many of Trump’s. Both candidates have a penchant for industrial policy — the idea that government should actively shape the details of the economy by supporting specific industries or companies. Trump’s efforts to prop up the steel industry and other handpicked companies are mirrored by Harris’ push for green energy subsidies and tax credits. The Biden administration has extended many huge sums to the business world through large-scale legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act’s $1.2 trillion in subsidies through 2032. Also, let’s not forget that both parties favor giving away billions of dollars in subsidies to Intel through the CHIPS Act for the construction of semiconductors in the United States. Never mind that Intel is laying off thousands of workers because of its string of bad business decisions in the last 15 years. In too many arenas today, we see the government attempting to play economic kingmaker, a role it has historically performed poorly. Yet, both Harris and Trump think that’s a good idea. Unsurprisingly, when it comes to government spending, both candidates are reckless. While the Republicans pay some lip service to cutting waste and abuse, neither Trump nor Harris appears willing to reform the utterly unsustainable financing behind Social Security and Medicare — not even to preserve these programs for lower-income Americans. Not only that, but we will have a catastrophic debt crisis if they’re not reformed, yet neither candidate cares. Both sides want to subsidize homeownership. The Republican platform advocates for the government to “promote homeownership through Tax Incentives.” The Harris campaign has announced a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers. Both plans would subsidize housing demand, thus putting upward pressure on housing prices. Great for people who already own homes; not so great for the new homebuyers themselves. There are notable differences between the GOP and Democrats’ positions on regulations, taxes, and immigration, but diminishing the ideological distinction is Republicans’ new fondness for labor unions. The Harris campaign, meanwhile, echoes some other Trump–Vance policies, like the desire for enormous and unfunded child tax credits and the elimination of federal income taxes on tips. And I’ll bet we can expect more equally irresponsible fiscal gestures in the weeks to come. Why does this matter? For one thing, the result of so many tired and tried ideas is ballooning deficits, cronyism, and exploding national debt, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. For another, voters deserve to understand the choice before them. The media narrative of stark contrasts hides the fundamental similarities in each candidate’s approaches to economic policy. Both Harris and Trump represent variations on a theme of big, fiscally irresponsible, hyper-interventionist government. Yes, Trump would deregulate some part of the economy (the best part of his economic plan), but in the end, neither the Republican nor Democratic candidate believes in comprehensive market-oriented reforms. Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver does understand the power of free markets, the danger of unchecked government growth, and the importance of fiscal responsibility. But he is relegated to the background of this political fight. On the main stage, we’re left with the illusion of choice between two sides of the same economically interventionist coin. Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE: The Tariff Paradox: Americans Love Free Trade More Than They Realize Social Security Can’t Afford Tax Cut to Benefits The post How Similar Are Harris and Trump’s Economic Policies? Let’s Take a Look. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from The Jimmy Dore Show: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics: The exodus from blue states has not waned since the pandemic. Americans are seeking lower taxes, crime, and tyranny as half of our nation descends into utter chaos. A recent poll by SmartAsset found that Americans earning $200,000 or more have been the most eager to flee states like New York […]

Make America Venezuela Again?! At one point Venezuela was the richest Country in it’s Continent. Now Democrats will try to emulate it’s freefall to the bottom here. VP and chosen Presidential Candidate, Harris offered up a solution to the O’Bidenomics– inflation crisis. Although most of us do agree that price gauging is not necessarily a... The post Make America Venezuela Again! appeared first on DogFacePonia.

Suzi Quatro on paving the way for other women in rock, social media, age and working hard