Ready For War, Tale Of Two Presidents, Bureaucrats Hid Massive Waste, Progressive Demands

BREAKING NEWS: The president of Japan's SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, met with President-elect Donald Trump today. As he left their meeting, Son announced plans to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and create 50,000 new jobs. Let's see how long it takes for Big Media and Juan Williams to try to explain to us why this is a bad idea.

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Ready For War?  As we have been warning, every day of the Trump transition and the early days of the Trump/Pence Administration will be political warfare with the left. By the way, it was political war during the early Reagan days too. When the first bulletins went out that President Reagan had been shot, and had possibly died, there were reports of students cheering the news.

Now liberals are threatening to fight the confirmations of key Trump cabinet officials. Politico reported yesterday that Senate Democrats are vowing to "turn the confirmation process into a slog," hoping to "sap momentum from the president's first 100 days." Some are saying this is exactly what Republicans did to Obama. Well, not exactly.

For example, former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar was sworn in as secretary of the Interior on January 20, 2009, the same day Obama was sworn in as president. He received a unanimous confirmation vote in the Senate.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was sworn in a day later after a unanimous confirmation vote. Same for Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Of course, there were some controversial nominees and the Senate took a little longer to review them. Eric Holder was nominated to be attorney general on January 20, 2009. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved his nomination on January 28th and the Senate confirmed Holder five days later after a 75-to-21 vote.

And what about Hillary Clinton? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee debated Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state for a whopping two days and approved her on January 15th. Clinton was confirmed by the full Senate six days later after 94-to-2 roll call vote.

It is outrageous that the leftists who control the Democratic Party are demanding that liberal senators deliberately delay crucial appointments. But I'll tell you something else that is outrageous. When the next left-wing president is elected, it will be outrageous if Republicans return to the rules that only they are following.

Whatever standard the Democrats set in the days going forward, Republicans should follow in the future. Nobody cares how nice you are. What matters is results.

A Tale Of Two Presidents  -  Trump's critics who are carping about his Carrier deal, which saved 1,000 manufacturing jobs in Indiana, should know that a new poll finds that the deal is hugely popular.

Sixty percent of voters -- 87% of Republicans, 54% of independents and 40% of Democrats -- view Trump more favorably as a result of the Carrier deal. Just 9% view him less favorably.

By the way, news broke late yesterday that the Obama Administration is strongly backing a deal that will allow U.S. companies to manufacture F-16 fighter jets in India, potentially costing about 1,000 American jobs. Let's poll that deal!

There are good reasons for the United States to bolster its strategic relationship with India. But I don't understand why we can't continue to make planes here and sell them to our allies.

Bureaucrats Hid Massive Waste -  Today's Washington Post has a front page story that helps to explain why Donald Trump won the White House.

A few years ago, the Pentagon commissioned a major study from the Defense Business Board to find out how much money could be saved by streamlining the defense bureaucracy. Here's just a brief summary of what they discovered:

• The Pentagon was paying more than 1 million people "to fill back-office jobs."
• There were 457,000 people involved in logistics and maintenance; 207,000 in purchasing; 190,000 in property management; 84,000 in human resources; and 30,000 people involved in healthcare administration -- not doctors and nurses
• The report found that $125 billion could be saved simply by streamlining the bureaucracy and making better use of technology.

The findings were so shocking that top officials essentially classified the data with secrecy restrictions and buried the report.

Why would they react this way? For one thing, the report would have exposed the false talking points Obama was using against the Republican Congress, which was trying to hold the line on his spending.

But at the end of the day, the bureaucrats were really just protecting the bureaucracy. As one official told the Post, the Defense Business Board just "fundamentally misunderstood how difficult it is to eliminate federal civil service jobs." As Ronald Reagan used to say, the closest thing to immorality on earth is a government program.

Here's an idea: Within days of taking office, President Trump should direct every cabinet secretary to replicate the Pentagon study in their own departments and begin cutting immediately. Let's get serious about shrinking the size of government!

Progressive Demands - Not long after the election, the Progressive Student Union at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., submitted a list of demands to administrators. The list includes:

• The university must recognize the prevalence of white supremacy and take immediate steps to combat it.
• The university must protect students, but not through the campus police. Because the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Trump, having black students "in the care" of campus police constitutes "an act of violence." No, the way to "protect" students is through more financial aid.
• The university must "increase the acceptance of Palestinian international students" in order to protect them from "escalating state-sanctioned genocide."
• The university must become a "sanctuary campus" for illegal immigrants.
• The university must provide "all-inclusive bathrooms" to accommodate LGBTQIA+ students.
• The university must divest from "unethical corporations" that are involved in "the prison industrial complex, border violence, fossil fuels and colonialism and apartheid in Palestine."

This nonsense is happening at college campuses all across the country. Our institutions of higher learning are increasingly divorced from reality. If these students spent more time learning their history, they might appreciate America's exceptionalism.

Thankfully, there is some pushback in Congress. We told you yesterday that Old Glory was flying once again at Hampshire College in Massachusetts. Perhaps Hampshire College administrators heard about the Protect the Flag Act.

The bill was introduced in the House last week by Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio. It's short and to the point. Congress will cut off federal funds to any institution of higher learning that "removes, censors, takes down, prohibits, or otherwise halts display of a flag of the United States." Fifty-four members of the House -- all Republicans -- are co-sponsoring the bill.

Liberals will undoubtedly howl, claiming they have a right to burn the flag. They do. And Congress also has a right to cut funding to radical universities that encourage anti-American behavior.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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