Powerhouse Progressive Watchdog Media Matters Hunkers Down amid Legal, Financial Challenges

Media Matters

On Sunday, a meeting of something called Democracy Alliance kicked off with attendees and presentations from powerful Democrats including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the party’s wealthiest donors, including George Soros. 

On the agenda, according to The New York Times, is a discussion about Democrats, who this election lost the White House and Senate, needing to “go on offense in a splintered media environment where conservatives have amassed more influence.”

Read More

Lawmakers Oppose Trump Pledge to Restore Confederate Names to Military Bases

Donald Trump

Following former President Donald Trump’s pledge to restore the names of military bases that were named after Confederate figures, members of both parties in Congress vowed to oppose any such efforts.

As Politico reports, President Trump made another campaign promise on the culture war front on Friday, during a town hall event in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Read More

Commentary: Let’s Leave the Marxism on the Capitol Steps

Elizabeth Warren

The United States has become the largest market in the world, and at the same time it delivers the highest standard of living to its citizens compared to the world’s other major economies. Contrast this success with other large economies such as China, where despite being the world’s second-largest economy, its citizens have a standard of living that has more in common with the developing world than a global powerhouse. Now China is facing demographic challenges that raise the prospect that as a nation, it may get old before it gets rich. Layer its long-standing repression and authoritarianism on to its economic challenges, and one is hard-pressed to see a domestic policy regime worthy of emulation.

Likewise looking to America’s south, and one is struck by the generations of squandered opportunities for prosperity in South America. As a region, South America has been buffeted by financial collapses, runaway inflation, and geopolitical instability. For nations digging out from a legacy of ruinous fiscal and economic policies, there is no easy route forward, only difficult tradeoffs. Argentina has certainly charted a new course and there is hope that near-term pain may pave a path forward to stability and long-term growth. But the present pain is very real.

Read More

Commentary: The DEI Trap

Kamala Harris and KBJ

Kamala Harris’s sudden ascendancy within the Democrat Party, with nary a peep from other ambitious Democrats, spotlights the uncomfortable contradictions of identity politics and the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement. 

Americans universally believe that everyone should have a fair shot at opportunities regardless of sex or race, which is why the kind of racism and sexism that was once so prevalent is so rare today.

Read More

Commentary: Is ‘The Great Illusion’ in Ruins?

President Joe Biden

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

Read More

Republican Candidates Need Not Apply: Media Tracker’s New Study Shows Just How Politically Biased Google’s Search Results Are

Google has long been accused of suppressing conservative speech, but a new study shows the internet search engine giant is playing favorites with Democrats in the 2024 presidential race.

By typing in just one query, “Presidential campaign websites,” Google returned only Democratic Party candidates — some of whom are not even running in 2024, according to Media Research Center, the media watchdog and parent of conservative news site NewsBusters, which is “committed to exposing and combating liberal media bias.”

Read More

Liz Warren, JD Vance Join Forces to Punish Execs of Failed Banks

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance are uniting to introduce legislation announced Thursday to reduce the risks of large bank failures.

The Failed Bank Executives Clawback Act would propose harsher penalties for failed bank executives, which serves as a bipartisan response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in early March, according to Warren’s office. The proposed legislation would require the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to recover some or all of executive payments from the three years prior to their bank’s failure, covering larger banks with more than $10 billion in assets.

Read More

Commentary: Nationwide Rent Control Is a Dangerous Proposition

Some of our nation’s politicians seem to know very little about basic economic principles despite constantly proposing legislative action on economic issues. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D–N.Y.) now want federal regulators to impose rent control on the entire nation. In their letter to the Biden administration, which was signed by 50 members of Congress, Warren and Bowman request that the administration “pursue all possible strategies” to control high rents. These politicians portray themselves as fighting for the average American, but, if they get their way, the results will be catastrophic.

Read More

Tall Tales: Before George Santos, Politicians from Biden to Clinton Fibbed About Their Past

Well before Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) admitted to fabricating key details of his biography, lying about one’s past was a rich political exercise. President Joe Biden got caught boasting about bogus academic credentials, Hillary Clinton made up a sniper attack in Bosnia, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren had to apologize for claiming Native American heritage.

Santos made headlines this week for admitting to the New York Post and WABC radio that he lied on the campaign trail about his education and work experience – specifically about where he attended college and his alleged employment history with high-profile Wall Street firms.

Read More

Big Tech Colludes with Abortion Industry and Democrats to Discriminate Against Pregnancy Care Centers

Yelp announced Tuesday it will add a “prominent consumer notice to crisis pregnancy center listings,” in order to distinguish the pro-life centers from abortion clinics.

Read More

Jerome Powell Confirmed for Second Term as Federal Reserve Chair

The Senate voted 80-19 on Thursday to confirm Jerome Powell to a second term as Federal Reserve chair, even as inflation has hit record highs under his watch.

The 19 “Nay” votes came from 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats and included a range of Senators from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Read More

Commentary: The Presidential Candidate Menu for Democrats in 2024 Churns the Stomach

“I’m not sure, I think I need a couple more minutes to decide.”

We’ve all been in a restaurant scenario where, once the party is seated, the server makes repeated visits to the table and one or more members of the group equivocates and stonewalls on what to order, sending the poor waiter or waitress schlepping back to obscurity due to someone’s indecision or just plain laziness. After a couple semi-desperate attempts to pin down the holdout(s), he or she then gives up asking and doesn’t return until beckoned to do so by an impatient leader of the hungry contingent. Essentially, everyone waits while one or two souls deliberate.

Read More

Manchin Objects to Dems’ Billionaire Tax, Saying They ‘Create a Lot of Jobs’

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin came out against his party’s plan to tax billionaires in order to finance their social-spending package just hours after it was first released.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday morning, describing billionaires as people who “contributed to society and create a lot of jobs and a lot of money and give a lot to philanthropic pursuits.”

Read More

Democrat Push to Expand Government, Inject Race Alienates 2022 Swing Voters, Polling Shows

Newt Gingrich, who crafted the Contract with America that upset Washington’s political status quo a quarter century ago, has quietly been conducting one of the most extensive polling operations ever of swing voters ahead of the 2022 election. His takeaway: Democrats’ big government, race-focused and America-disparaging agenda could bust the fragile coalition that put Joe Biden in power last November.

His polling, shared with Just the News, shows Americans overwhelmingly think the United States is the greatest county in history, prefer free-market capitalism to big government socialism, reject the premise of critical race theory that skin color is a predeterminant to success, and oppose defunding the police.

Read More

Commentary: Be Very Skeptical About Sen. Warren Throwing More Money at the IRS

Elizabeth Warren

Closing the “tax gap,” or revenue owed to the federal government that goes uncollected, has long been a favorite deus ex machina for lawmakers who want more revenue without having to raise rates. But Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Chuck Rettig really put dollar signs in lawmakers’ eyes when he claimed the tax gap could be as large as $1 trillion. Always eager to appear knowledgeable on policy issues, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is putting forward a plan to collect extra revenue that only gets worse the deeper you dig into it.

First and foremost, it’s important to understand how far off on an island Rettig is with his estimate. The IRS’s last official estimate of the size of the tax gap placed it at a far, far lower $381 billion. Even considering that this estimate may not have factored in underpayment from cryptocurrencies, offshore holdings, and pass-through businesses, the tax gap still remains far closer to $500 billion than to $1 trillion.

Read More

As Biden Taps Elizabeth Warren Ally to Oversee Student Loans, Debate over Canceling Debt Looms Large

Elizabeth Warren

The Biden administration has chosen a close ally of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to oversee the nation’s expansive federal student loan program.

On Monday, Rich Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration, was announced as the new head of the Education Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid, which oversees over $1.7 trillion in loans to U.S. students.

In a statement following his appointment, Cordray said he sought to “create more pathways for students to graduate and get ahead, not be burdened by insurmountable debt.”

Read More

Analysis: Senator Elizabeth Warren Appears to be Distorting Reality in Order to ‘Sell’ Her Wealth Tax Proposal

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently revived her campaign proposal for a wealth tax on taxpayers with a net worth exceeding $50 million. Unfortunately, the plan retains the same defects as her previous proposals to tax wealth, along with the same distortions she used to defend it last time.

Warren’s proposal, introduced along with companion legislation in the House sponsored by Rep. Jayapal (D-WA) and Rep. Boyle (D-PA), would tax wealth above $50 million at a rate of 2 percent, and wealth above $1 billion at a rate of 3 percent.

Senator Warren has routinely presented her wealth tax proposal as a minor, moderate tax on the ultra-wealthy. Just as she did on the presidential campaign trail, Warren is describing her plan as a “two cent” tax. This dishonest framing allows Warren to pretend that the tax is small.

Read More