Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Where’s the Oversight of Mueller?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

After spending millions of dollars on his 15-lawyer dream team, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted Paul Manafort primarily for failing to file paperwork that many Democrats also failed to file.  Indeed, a group co-founded by Hillary Clinton’s top adviser John Podesta failed to timely file the same paperwork that Manafort allegedly overlooked.

Yet Mueller did not indict anyone in Podesta’s group, or anyone opposed to Trump.  The American people elected Donald Trump as president after he promised to prosecute Hillary for her apparent corruption, and now the exact opposite is transpiring as it is Hillary’s side that is bilking the American taxpayers to lock up Trump supporters.

Many innocent people are being forced to spend enormous legal fees to defend against the out-of-control Mueller, who is acting like an independent federal prosecutor even though that law was terminated in 1999.  There was nearly unanimous consensus after abuses by independent federal prosecutors in the 1980s and 90s that such spectacles should not recur, yet Mueller apparently has carte blanche to pursue President Trump and his supporters.

Mueller was installed under the pretext of being merely a “special counsel” for the purpose of looking into possible interference by Russia in the 2016 presidential election.  Instead, Mueller has acted without accountability or real oversight in going far beyond the outer limits of his charter.

Nothing in Mueller’s indictment of Manafort has a shred of evidence connecting President Donald Trump or his Administration to the unusual charges against Manafort, which relate to activities predating his involvement with Trump’s campaign.  Where’s the beef that justifies giving Mueller a blank check on the U.S. Treasury to engage in such a partisan, one-sided witch-hunt against persons, rather than any real crimes that would be within Mueller’s authorization?

The real purpose of Mueller’s bizarre indictment of Manafort is not to end lobbying on behalf of foreign interests, which is rampant in D.C., but to intimidate former and current Trump officials into playing ball with Mueller’s war against Trump.  Already many potential targets of Mueller’s one-sided investigation are being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by having to hire $1,000-per-hour attorneys simply to defend themselves against alleged crimes that never happened.

Mueller’s top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, has a track record of over-the-top prosecutions ultimately reversed on appeal.  As pointed out in a stinging exposé at TheHill.com, Weissmann had a lead role in the destruction of the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen and the loss of its 85,000 jobs, by seeking a conviction that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed, after it was too late to save the company.

Supposedly Mueller’s conduct is made constitutional by a modicum of supervision and accountability that he should be receiving from the Department of Justice.  But judging by Mueller’s off-the-rails indictment of Manafort, Mueller is not being reined in by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or anyone else.

  It is time to do so.  President Trump, for whom the Department of Justice works, should begin by demanding an accounting of how much money Mueller’s team is wasting, and Trump should tweet that information directly to the American people.

With Attorney General Jeff Sessions having recused himself from this issue, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein is supposedly in charge of Mueller.  But Trump can fire Rosenstein, and should do so if there is not immediate transparency on Mueller’s expenses and significant changes that rein in the runaway prosecutions.

Mueller’s team is obviously picking the targets and then searching for crimes, even obscure ones, to charge that target with.  “Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted,” as renowned U.S. Attorney General (and future Supreme Court Justice) Robert H. Jackson observed in 1940.

The indictment against Manafort even seems to be written more for the newspapers than for a court of law.  “Conspiracy against the United States” shouts the first charge, a rarely used, politically misleading phrase.

The indictment also tosses in a laundry list of demands for forfeiture of assets, a widely criticized technique of prosecutors ordinarily reserved for drug kingpins and notorious criminals.  But its message is for other Trump supporters: tell us what we want to hear, or you’ll lose your home too.

“With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes,” the future Justice Jackson said to a gathering of U.S. Attorneys in 1940, “a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone.”  That is tyranny-by-prosecution, and Trump should instruct the Justice Department to stop it.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Friday, October 27, 2017

Have some say over our demographic future

The Clinton-sponsored site Media Matter complains:
CNN contributor Ed Martin, who has been appearing on the network to argue against “amnesty for illegals,” previously co-authored a book ...

Martin co-authored the 2016 book The Conservative Case for Trump, which aimed to persuade “well-meaning conservatives” that the then-Republican candidate “is worthy of every conservative’s vote.” ...

“Immigration that is in America’s national interest is one thing. Immigration that floods our welfare rolls and prisons, and that tears apart our nation’s heritage and social fabric is something else,” they added. ...

They wrote additionally about the country’s demographics: “Shouldn’t we have some say over our demographic future, of what America is and will become? Shouldn’t we have an immigration policy that serves America’s national interests? In Europe we have seen the danger of large unassimilated Islamic communities making historic changes in countries and their future; yet we seem blind to similar changes happening here.”
There is the difference between the Trump voters and Trump haters. Trump's side believes that we should have some say over our demographic future. The Trump haters want uncontrolled immigration instead.
Martin did not respond to a request for comment about his book and whether he stood by his citation of VDare.
The citation is actually to a report by Julián Aguilar in the Texas Tribune, which is a liberal newspaper in Austin, available here.

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

44.6% in California Don’t Speak English at Home

New US Census data:
In California--which with a July 2016 population of 39,250,017 is the nation’s most populous state--44.6 percent of the people five years of age and older do not speak English at home, according to data released this week by the Census Bureau.

At the same time, according to the Census Bureau, 18.6 percent of California residents 5 and older do not speak English “very well.”

That ranks California No.1 among the states for the percentage of people in both of these categories.

Nationwide, 21.6 percent speak a language other than English at home and 8.6 percent speak English less than very well.

Texas ranked second for the percentage of residents five and older who do not speak English at home (35.6 percent). New Mexico ranked third (34.5 percent); New Jersey ranked fourth (31.7 percent) and New York ranked fifth (31.0 percent).
They are obviously not assimilating if they do not even speak English.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Trump Wins Again with Transparency on JFK Files

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

President Trump wins more kudos for allowing the release of the JFK assassination files.  Proving again why he is a welcome alternative to the Establishment, Trump has stood up for the American people in ending the 50+ years of cover-up by government of these documents.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a radical communist who described himself as a "Marxist" during his post-assassination interrogation.  It was widely known then that Oswald hated America so much he sought to renounce his American citizenship, and he had even defected to the communist Soviet Union.

What is not yet known, which perhaps this final document release will shed light on, is who allowed Oswald back into the United States to pass out pro-Fidel Castro literature months before he assassinated President Kennedy in 1963.  Why would the federal government allow the known America-hater to immigrate back to our country after he attempted in Russia to renounce his American citizenship?

If that question sounds familiar, then it is because the practice of letting America-haters into our country, or back into our country, has continued until recently when President Trump issued his so-called travel ban to stop the influx.  Trump’s travel ban is designed to cut off the immigration of people from areas hostile to the United States, but federal courts have worked overtime to block Trump’s sensible executive orders.

  A half-decade ago, the federal government let Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev back into the United States despite being put on full notice of how much he hated our country.  To this day government withholds information about the likely participation by Tsarnaev in the brutal murder of Jewish acquaintances on Sept. 11, 2011. 

Obvious clues linking Tsarnaev to the 9/11 anniversary killings were ignored by law enforcement, just as the risks posed by Oswald to our Nation were downplayed.  After more anti-American training in foreign countries Tsarnaev was let back into the United States to carry out his bombing at the Boston Marathon in spring 2013, just as Oswald was let back in to hurt America.

Even the Warren Commission, not known for the depth of its investigation, admits that Oswald had attempted to murder the outspokenly anti-communist Major General Edwin A. Walker in Dallas in April 1963, less than nine months before his assassination of JFK.  The bullet that narrowly missed General Walker in his home was traced to the same make of rifle Oswald used against JFK, and Oswald’s wife admitted to her husband’s attempted murder of General Walker.

The narratives preferred by liberals about the JFK assassination are that Oswald was “a 24-year-old loser who was mad at the world and wanted to make a name for himself,” in the words of Minnesota federal judge Jack Tunheim, who reviewed these soon-to-be-released documents as Chairman of the Assassination Records Review Commission.

But an angry-at-the-world 24-year-old merely seeking to make a name for himself does not stalk to kill a little-known anti-communist general.  Similarly, Tsarnaev was not merely angry at the world or merely trying to make a name for himself when he bombed the Boston Marathon.

Judge Tunheim, after reviewing the documents, conceded that the federal government destroyed some documents after the JFK assassination, preventing the public from ever seeing them.  Whether that destruction was ideological or simply to avoid institutional embarrassment may forever remain a mystery.

Liberals are nervous about the upcoming data dump on Thursday and seek to downplay its significance, anxious to smear anyone who analyzes them as a "conspiracy theorist."  Yet liberals are currently wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on their wacky theory that there was a Russian conspiracy that somehow interfered with the 2016 presidential election.

Wikileaks is popular because for eight years the Obama Administration did conceal or lie about information.  Despite numerous laws like the Freedom of Information Act that attempt to compel the government to be transparent, Clinton and Obama routinely hid and withheld information from the public.

For example, the federal government continues to hide evidence about other potential crimes even older than the JFK assassination.  More than 200 years ago Meriwether Lewis died of a gunshot wound, either by murder or suicide, after having led the marvelous Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Northwest.

Lewis is buried in a national park owned by the federal government, and President Bill Clinton refused requests by historians and Lewis's descendants to exhume his body probably because Clinton did not want to set a precedent that might result in the exhumation of his deceased Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, sought around the same time.  The Bush Administration later approved an exhumation of Lewis in 2008, but then the Obama Administration blocked it without any reasonable justification, presumably as a favor to the Clintons.

Government will hide information as long as the public allows it.  Fortunately, President Trump is siding with the public.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Why Trump voters stick with him

Razib Khan gives a historical analogy, and explains:
Why Trump could murder someone and people would still support him

... many pro-Trump Americans perceive that Trump may protect them and their values, and see that anti-Trump politicians and leaders will never do so. ...

Many people on the Left and the Right in American culture see that white Christian America will be marginalized. Demoted. They seem that people are picking sides, and you have to stick to your tribe. It’s a matter of existential concern.

Many pro-Trump Americans perceive that the Left and the cultural elite hate them deeply in their bones. Wish they would disappear. Dislike their aesthetic preferences, think their religion is contemptible, and are simply waiting for their expiration date to come due so that history will march onward, and leave them an unpleasant memory.

Some of them see their livelihoods in danger, as they perceive that their political choices and identities will make them targets for being unpersoned, without a way to keep a roof over their heads or food on their family’s table. They accept the narrative of their marginalization, and are terrified of the consequences that will be meted out to them by their triumphalist adversaries in the culture wars.

When elite Americans argue that these voters are supporting a conman, they shrug.
He makes some good points, but I don't think he gets to the heart of the matter.

Vox Day tries to define the Alt Right as 16 principles:
In the interest of developing a core Alternative Right philosophy upon which others can build.

1. The Alt Right is of the political right in both the American and the European sense of the term. Socialists are not Alt Right. Progressives are not Alt Right. Liberals are not Alt Right. Communists, Marxists, Marxians, cultural Marxists, and neocons are not Alt Right. National Socialists are not Alt Right.

2. The Alt Right is an ALTERNATIVE to the mainstream conservative movement in the USA that is nominally encapsulated by Russel Kirk's 10 Conservative Principles, but in reality has devolved towards progressivism. It is also an alternative to libertarianism.

3. The Alt Right is not a defensive attitude and rejects the concept of noble and principled defeat. It is a forward-thinking philosophy of offense, in every sense of that term. The Alt Right believes in victory through persistence and remaining in harmony with science, reality, cultural tradition, and the lessons of history.

4. The Alt Right believes Western civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and supports its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the European nations, and the Graeco-Roman legacy. ...

TL;DR: The Alt Right is a Western ideology that believes in science, history, reality, and the right of a genetic nation to exist and govern itself in its own interests.
Trump voters do not necessarily have a lot of loyalty to him personally. They vote for him because they agree with him on policy and principles.

Read those 16 Vox Day principles. If you agree with most or all of them, then Donald Trump is your man. No one else is even close. Other Republicans seem pathetic by comparison.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

How Trump Is Improving Health Care

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

“Since Congress can’t get its act together on Health Care,” Donald Trump tweeted last week from his personal Twitter account, “I will be using the power of the pen to give great Health Care to many people.”  Trump’s tweet was followed by a series of presidential actions that offer substantial relief for middle-class Americans hurt by Obamacare.

Unlike Barack Obama’s executive actions that were justifiably criticized by conservatives, President Trump’s use of the presidential “pen” was entirely within his lawful powers under the Constitution. Trump’s new actions on health care were authorized by laws that were previously passed by Congress, including Obamacare itself.

Trump’s first action was to restore the freedom to buy short-term policies as a viable alternative to high-priced Obamacare policies.  These policies were increasingly popular until Obama imposed a nationwide 90-day limit on such policies, which severely limited their usefulness.

Short-term policies lack some of the costly coverages that many Americans do not want or need, such as maternity care and drug rehab, but they are much more affordable.  Typically costing less than half of what Obamacare-compliant policies cost, they could be just what the doctor ordered for millions of middle-class Americans who have been priced out of the individual market for health insurance.

Only about 20 million Americans rely on the individual and small-group market for health insurance, but that small fraction of our nation has been forced to bear the burden of caring for people with costly pre-existing conditions.  That unfair burden of cost-shifting is the main reason premiums and deductibles have been rising so rapidly.

Although some low-income people have received credits to help pay those rising premiums, millions of self-employed and other middle-class people are not eligible for any subsidy.  About 8 million Americans have been hit with Obamacare penalties despite the lack of affordable insurance. 

The unaffordability of Obamacare has not affected the 155 million Americans with employer-based health insurance, which continues to benefit from a loophole dating back to World War II.  Not only do employer plans receive a $260 billion-a-year tax break, which is by far the largest so-called “tax expenditure,” but large and medium-sized employers can also opt out from many of the regulations that increase the cost of individual policies.

The employer-based tax break can be changed only by Congress, but President Trump is doing what he can to alleviate the unfair discrimination against individual and small group insurance.  In the second part of his health care order, Trump ordered the U.S. Department of Labor to consider how associations of small employers (including self-employed individuals) can qualify for the same privileges as large employers.

The Labor Department is already authorized by Congress to enforce a 1974 federal law called ERISA, which regulates employer health plans.  For decades, large employers have exploited ERISA to exempt themselves from some of the regulations that drive up the cost of individual and small group health insurance.

Association health plans have long been promoted by Senator Rand Paul, a medical doctor who specialized in eye surgery before being elected to the Senate in 2010.  Despite voting against the unwieldy repeal-and-replace bill that failed in Congress last summer, Senator Paul recently enjoyed a round of golf with the President at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

The goal of association health plans is to create a level playing field so that small employer groups and self-employed individuals can obtain the same type of health insurance as large employers who currently enjoy an unfair advantage.  While the Labor Department goes through the process of changing its regulations under Trump’s direction, Congress should pick up on this idea and extend to individuals, whether employed or not, the right to buy health insurance across state lines.

Trump took another welcome action last week, by cutting off “cost sharing reduction” (CSR) payments to insurance companies.  “That money is a subsidy for insurance companies,” Mr. Trump said as he announced his long-awaited decision. “Take a look at their stocks. Look where they are. They’re going through the roof.”

A federal judge in Washington, D.C. ruled last year that the CSR payments by Obama were illegal, because Congress never appropriated the money to fund them, but the liberal litigation factory is gearing up to block Trump’s decision to discontinue them.  Democratic attorneys general announced plans to file a new lawsuit in California, where they are more likely to find a judge willing to issue an injunction against Trump.

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell backing failed candidates as he did in the recent Alabama primary, and criticizing the America-first populism of Steve Bannon, it is unlikely the Senate will accomplish anything soon.  Fortunately, President Trump is taking the initiative to lead Americans out of Obamacare and other failed programs of the prior administration.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Sandwich is a crime against feminism

Man-hating feminism has infected Australia:
WHEN young Sydney mother Maddie asked her closed Facebook group of 26,186 mothers for some tasty alternatives to sandwiches for her husband’s lunches, she wasn’t expecting the backlash.

“I would love to hear what other mums make their hubbies for lunch and snacks throughout the work day,” she posted on Tuesday. “We are getting over sandwiches.”

You would think she’d asked for a hemlock recipe, judging by the torrent of scolding which erupted.

She was nothing but a “slave” and a “1950s housewife”.

She was “weird” and no one in their right mind or a “pink fit” would do something so demeaning as make their husband lunch. Let alone snacks.

“Your husband is a grown up and you’re not his mother”, wrote one member of the North Shore Mums Facebook group.

“My husband can make his own damn lunch.”

“I make my husband the same thing he makes me. Nothing!!”

“Stuff that, hubby is a grown man. I already do his laundry and keep his children alive.”

“Our advice is to stop making his lunches.”

“My role is childcare during working hours and that’s it.” ...

Leader of the attack pack was Polly Dunning, daughter of professional feminist Jane Caro, and mother of a toddler about whom she infamously wrote last year, recounting her horror at finding out she was pregnant with a boy: “I felt sick at the thought of something male growing inside me.”

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Rescuing Columbus from the Savages

THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly

On the 525th anniversary of the European discovery of America, the 90-foot tall monument in New York’s huge Columbus Circle escaped damage — but only because the NYPD maintained a 24-hour honor guard during the entire 3-day holiday weekend.  Police protection was needed because the violent leftwing movement known as “antifa” had announced a nationwide campaign to “deface Columbus Day.” 

Statues left unguarded were not so fortunate.  Around the nation in recent weeks, statues of Columbus have been toppled, splattered with paint or otherwise vandalized. In downtown Los Angeles, a Columbus statue in front of the county courthouse was shrouded in a white sheet, ostensibly for its own protection, after the L.A. City Council voted to rename the paid holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day.

The mayor of New York City, who was born Warren Wilhelm but changed his name to the Italian-sounding Bill de Blasio, had let it be known that the monument in Columbus Circle was at risk.  He has appointed a commission to review the political correctness of hundreds of monuments, plaques and statues throughout the city.

New York’s Columbus monument was built and paid for by Italian immigrants in 1892, to honor the 400th anniversary of discovery, around the time the Chicago was preparing to host the World’s Columbian Exposition.  Italian Americans are rightly proud of Columbus, but his voyages were actually sponsored and financed by Spain, his crewmen were Spanish, he spoke Spanish and wrote his journals in Spanish.

Americans were already celebrating Columbus on the 300th anniversary of discovery, in 1792, when a Columbus monument was erected in Baltimore. Despite the lack of Italian or Spanish people in the original 13 colonies, the English settlers recognized that Columbus’ discovery of the New World was the event that made America possible.

Our nation’s capital is the City of Washington in the District of Columbia, honoring the two men who made our country, and Columbus’ name is reflected in many other places, including two state capitals (Ohio and South Carolina).  For much of the 19th century, the word Columbia was often used as an alternative to America.

As President Trump said in proclaiming the federal holiday, Columbus’ voyages “undeniably and fundamentally changed the course of human history and set the stage for the development of our great Nation.”  On Columbus Day, Trump declared, “we honor the skilled navigator and man of faith” for his “courageous feat — even in the face of extreme doubt and tremendous adversity.” 

What a contrast with the apologetic tone of Obama’s proclamation one year earlier, which omitted any praise of Columbus or recognition of his greatness.  Instead Obama whined that “we must acknowledge the pain and suffering of Native Americans” which he said has been “marked by too many broken promises, as well as violence, deprivation and disease.” 

By apologizing for Columbus as a man allegedly responsible for bringing pain and suffering, violence and disease to America, Obama was apologizing for America itself.  Such ideas are far too common in our schools and colleges, where Columbus is wrongly accused of oppressing the native people with slavery, white supremacy, and even genocide.  

The National Education Association, which supplies teachers to most of our public schools, adopted a resolution that “formal apologies are long overdue to the indigenous people of the United States.”  The fierce campaign against Columbus is motivated by hatred for America, and will continue even if his statues survive.

It is impossible to exaggerate how great Columbus was, and how much our world depends on what he accomplished.  In the 2,000 years since Jesus Christ, it would be hard to name any one man who achieved so much for the betterment of mankind. 

Columbus was, first of all, the greatest sailor and navigator who ever lived up to that time, as detailed by the famous historian Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, himself a sailor who recreated Columbus’ voyages.  Yes, a Viking named Leif Erikson apparently landed somewhere in Canada about 500 years earlier, but Erikson left no permanent settlement or any trace that he was ever here.  

Yes, there were people already living in North and South America when Columbus came.  By comparison to the European explorers and settlers, however, America’s native people lived in extreme poverty and brutality, lacking the skills that are necessary to build a civilized nation.

Yes, the European settlers brought new diseases such as smallpox that infected the native people (unintentionally, of course), but they were repaid in tobacco, which caused far more deaths among Europeans.  Columbus wrote about tobacco in his journal on October 15, 1492, just three days after he arrived in the West Indies.

  Among the gifts that Columbus brought to America was Christianity.  Evangelization of the native people was a prime motivation for Columbus and his Spanish backers.  Columbus gave Christian names to places he visited, such as San Juan (St. John the Baptist), which became Puerto Rico.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Bannon Promotes Trump’s Economic Nationalism

THE PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY REPORT
by John and Andy Schlafly

Steve Bannon may be gone from the White House, but the agenda he championed is moving forward on many fronts.  “If there’s any confusion out there,” Bannon told Bloomberg News, “let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America.” 

In a series of recent interviews, the strategist who spent 12 months at Donald Trump’s right hand laid out the case for putting America first.  Bannon said the Republican establishment, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, simply “do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. It’s very obvious.”

Bannon took a victory lap following former Justice Roy Moore’s 10-point victory in the Alabama Senate runoff, despite being outspent 15 to 1 by the Establishment candidate. “The populist-nationalist movement proved that a candidate with the right ideas and a grassroots organization can win,” Bannon crowed.

Bannon’s success in helping Roy Moore to his stunning triumph sent shock waves through the swamp, which wants to pretend Trump is a one-time phenomenon that will blow over without catching on.  Instead, Moore is another Trump-like figure who promises to shake up the self-serving U.S. Senate.

On 60 Minutes, Bannon gave Charlie Rose a history lesson that children rarely learn.  “Economic nationalism is what this country was built on.  What built America is called the American system — a system of protection of our manufacturing, a financial system that lends to manufacturers, and the control of our borders.”

The idea of controlling our borders seemed to offend to Charlie Rose, who complained, “We’re all immigrants, except the Native Americans. It’s what people respect America for.” Bannon replied, “You couldn’t be more dead wrong. America was built on her citizens.”

In response to another tired question, “You want a trade war with China?” Bannon pointed out that “China is at economic war with us. Through forced technology transfer and through stealing our technology, China is cutting out the beating heart of American innovation.”

“The forced technology transfer of American innovation to China is the single biggest economic and business issue of our time,” Bannon told Bloomberg Businessweek. “Until we sort that out, they will continue to appropriate our innovation to their own system and leave us as a colony — a tributary state.”

Bannon’s view is supported by Robert Lighthizer who remains inside the White House as U.S. Trade Representative.  “CEOs come in to see me continuously,” Lighthizer said recently, “and almost every CEO of a major company will say they’re having a problem with China forcing them into joint ventures, turning over intellectual property, having to license their intellectual property at less than market value.”

Those CEOs won’t complain publicly for fear of Chinese retaliation, so Lighthizer has opened a formal investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act.  That law authorizes the President to penalize countries that violate the rules of fair trade, as China does. 

“Expect change,” Lighthizer said recently.  “The sheer scale of [China’s] coordinated efforts to subsidize, to create national champions, to force technology transfer, and to distort markets throughout the world, is a threat to the world trading system that is unprecedented.”

In his executive memorandum authorizing the use of Section 301, President Trump condemned Chinese policies that “encourage or require the transfer of American technology and intellectual property to enterprises in China.”  China’s conduct, Trump said, could “deprive United States citizens of fair remuneration for their innovations, divert American jobs to workers in China, contribute to our trade deficit with China, and otherwise undermine American manufacturing, services, and innovation.”

As Steve Bannon told Charlie Rose, “Donald Trump, for 30 years, has singled out China as the biggest single problem we have on the world stage.”  In an interview with Bloomberg, Bannon said, “the heart of the economic-nationalist movement is standing up to China.”

Lighthizer agreed:  “While some politicians can be accused of changing to populist positions to get votes, this cannot be said of the President.  If you go back 10, 20, 30 years, or even longer, you see a remarkable consistency.  He has been a critic of so-called free trade deals and of their effects on workers.”

Bannon explained that China requires American companies to give “tribute” to that country by sharing our technology secrets.  “That’s what it takes to enter their market,” Bannon observes, and they’ve taken “$3.5 trillion worth over the last 10 years — the essence of American capitalism: our innovation.”

After Bannon’s departure from the White House, the aides whom Bannon had previously derided as “the New Yorkers” rolled out a package of tax reforms that will require the cooperation of Congress to enact.  But protection of our innovation, the wellspring of American jobs, can be achieved despite congressional inaction and Bannon is paving the road to that success.
 
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.