1) Government Deficits Don't Cause Inflation or Higher Interest Rates

Government budget deficits are bad things and we’d love to see the budget balanced. But one of the lessons we learned in the 1980s was that government deficits do NOT cause higher inflation or higher interest rates. The deficits went up and yet the interest rates and inflation came WAY down.

This chart is a useful reminder:

How can that be? Because it is not government BORROWING but government SPENDING that crowds out private savings and production. This is why raising taxes is no economic solution to the spending free-for-all that created the mountainous $38 trillion national debt in the first place.

2) Minnesota Madness

A stunning total of 77 individuals have been indicted in a series of fraud schemes involving Somali immigrants in Minnesota. Billions of dollars have been stolen from food, welfare and autism assistance programs. Much of the money was routed to Kenya and Somalia and the Al-Qaeda linked terrorist group Al Shabab.

The scandal is so big that national figures are weighing in.

“Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity,” President Trump declared.

Governor Tim Walz - the almost Vice President of the United States - is at the center of the controversy for his failed oversight of the programs.

Thank God this incompetent fool isn’t our VP.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah had a good take on the scandal.

3) One Reason Groceries Are So Expensive: At Least 60 Million Americans Get Food for Free

• 42 million Americans get food stamps

• 31 million children get a free breakfast and/or lunch at school

These two groups overlap by about 10 to 12 million kids who are on food stamps and also free school meals, which means there are at least 60 million people covered by one or both of these programs.

Then there are millions more who get food aid from a catalog of other federal "nutrition" programs. These include:

• WIC

• WIC Farmers' Market Nutrition Program

• Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Program

• Nutrition Assistance Program for Territories

• Child and Adult Care Food Program

• Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program

• National School Lunch Program

• School Breakfast Program

• Special Milk Program

• SUN Meals (Summer Food Service Program)

• SUN Bucks (Summer EBT)

• Commodity Supplemental Food Program

• Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations

• The Emergency Food Assistance Program

• Disaster Assistance

No wonder so many poor people are overweight.

4) Free the H-2B Visas

The H-2B visa program lets U.S. employers hire seasonal foreign workers in businesses like hospitality, landscaping, and seafood processing when no American workers are available.

Donald Trump’s hotels and resorts and golf courses operate with these visa holders.

But this year the caps have been met and employers who need workers from November to March - including Florida hotels and resorts, ski resorts, Alaskan seafood processors, Louisiana crawfish processors, Maryland crab processors - won't get the workers they need for unfilled jobs.

Demand by employers is for 200,000 of these temporary workers through March.  For the last eight years Congress has authorized DHS to release up to 64,716 additional H-2B visas each year.

This program fills seasonal labor shortages in a legal, above-board way, and then the workers go back home. This is a key alternative to illegal immigration. The Trump administration should release the supplemental visas as soon as possible, and Congress should increase the cap.

5) De-Weaponize the IRS

We have repeatedly called for the Trump administration to terminate the IRS's Biden-era war on business partnerships. Here we are 10 months into this presidency, and still these anti-business rules that could cost some businesses billions of dollars in higher tax liabilities remain on the books.

As if the IRS needs another reason to rescind the Biden rulemaking, the Trump IRS might want to consider that one major target of these made-up rules was Trump himself and his business interests.

The Washington Reporter reports:

The IRS's work announcing the team behind the Revenue Ruling 2024-14, the launch of the ruling, and the launch of a little-reported "complex exams" team tracks closely with the legal cases against President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization.

The IRS announced the team that would lead policy work on the Revenue Ruling on September 2023 -- just a few weeks after Trump's Fulton County mugshot was released. The actual Revenue Ruling was released in June 2024 -- just weeks after Trump was convicted by a New York City jury. The IRS announced another team to focus on "complex exams" -- which could include the Trump Organization -- in October 2024, right before the presidential election, and shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump's immunity from many criminal charges, although not from the type of civil liability for the Trump Organization that the IRS could target.

The Trump administration rolled back some of the related guidance. But the core piece, this ruling, hasn't been repealed. Republicans say the job isn't even close to done.

6) Only An Idiot Would Fall Into This Trap

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