U.S. No Longer Considers Cuba State Sponsor of Terrorism

Five months after President Obama‘s announcement that the United States and Cuba would move to normalize diplomatic relations, the State Department has officially removed the island nation from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

According to Bloomberg Business and multiple other outlets, Cuba’s removal from the list was officially announced via an emailed statement on Friday morning.

“While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions,” cautions department spokesperson Jeff Rathke, “these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.”

President Ronald Reagan added Cuba to the State Department’s list back in 1982. In order for the announced removal to occur, Congress either had to approve (or not block) the the action during the 45-day period following Obama’s April 14th announcement of a massive “four-month interagency review.” No prominent steps were taken to block the removal, hence Friday’s announcement.

However, this has no effect on the trade embargo the U.S. first placed on Cuba back in 1960 during Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s presidency. It remains in place until both countries have had adequate time to normalize diplomatic relations.

Via: Mediaite

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The Costs of a $15 Minimum Wage

In the 1970s, when oil prices jumped, most liberals embraced a simple solution: price controls. It should be illegal, they thought, to sell oil or gasoline for more than a certain amount. Americans should be able to drive without being fleeced by oil companies and foreign governments.

The impulse was understandable. Gasoline is an essential commodity for most people. When the cost rises, it imposes a heavy burden on consumers, most of whom have few transportation options.

In 1971, in an attempt to tame inflation, Republican President Richard Nixon imposed controls on almost all prices. By 1974, he had lifted most of them. But those on gas remained. Under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, they led to widespread shortages and long lines at service stations -- and didn't keep prices from rising. But the controls lasted until his successor, Ronald Reagan, lifted them in 1981.

Liberals learned an unforgettable lesson: Price controls on gasoline don't work. In recent decades, when gas prices have soared, Democrats have shown no desire to repeat the lesson.

But they embrace a similar approach for another problem: low pay for many workers. Chicago decided last year to boost the minimum wage to $13 an hour by the middle of 2019. Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles have gone even higher, raising the floor to $15 an hour in the next few years, and other cities may follow suit. It's a price control on labor.

Their intentions are good. Full-time employment at the current federal minimum of $7.25 an hour provides an income of just $14,500 a year. For an adult supporting one child, that's well below the poverty line of $15,930.

The problem is that a higher legal minimum wage is at odds with the prevailing supply of and demand for labor. If you set the minimum too high, you will get a shortage of jobs. Forbidding employers from paying $9 or $12 an hour means that many of their workers won't get $13 or $15 an hour. They will get zero per hour, because those jobs will disappear.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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#ProudAmerican: Ronald Reagan-Memorial Day 1984

"Memorial Day is a day of ceremonies and speeches. Throughout America today, we honor the dead of our wars. We recall their valor and their sacrifices. We remember they gave their lives so that others might live.

We're also gathered here for a special event -- the national funeral for an unknown soldier who will today join the heroes of three other wars.

When he spoke at a ceremony at Gettysburg in 1863, President Lincoln reminded us that through their deeds, the dead had spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could, and that we living could only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they so willingly gave a last full measure of devotion.

Well, this is especially so today, for in our minds and hearts is the memory of Vietnam and all that that conflict meant for those who sacrificed on the field of battle and for their loved ones who suffered here at home."

Via: FOX NEWS

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Brown’s State of the State: It’s Morning in California

The theme of President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign was: It’s Morning in America. He won 49 states, losing only rival Walter Mondale’s native Minnesota.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s State of the State address this morning kicked off a similar theme in what effectively was his re-election pitch. He didn’t imitate Reagan and say, exactly, “It’s Morning in California.” But the meaning still was there. The governor enthused:

“What a comeback it is. A million new jobs since 2010, a budgetary surplus in the billions and a minimum wage rising to $10 an hour! 

“This year, Californians have a lot to be proud of. For a decade, budget instability was the order of the day. A lethal combination of national recessions, improvident tax cuts and too much spending created a financial sink hole that defied every effort to climb out. But three years later, here we are – with state spending and revenues solidly balanced, and more to come.”

Of course things are better than when he took office three years ago to clean up the wreckage of the disastrous Schwarzenegger administration. But unemployment in California remains stubbornly high, at 8.5 percent, sixth worst in the country; and well above such rivals as Texas at 6.1 percent and Florida at 6.4 percent. Both those states lack a state income tax, compared to the hefty top California rate of 13.3 percent because of Brown’s Proposition 30 tax increase.

The increase in the minimum wage Brown touted also likely will kill jobs, making unemployment worse.

And a November study by the U.S. Census Bureau found that, when California’s sky-high cost of living was figured into calculations, the state suffered the country’s worst poverty rate.

Via: California Political Review

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2014: Obamacare Puts Down Roots for the Long Haul

Yes, Obamacare has raised premiums, caused people to lose their health coverage, raised taxes, and more. But on January 1, Obamacare started digging in for the long haul: putting down the deep roots of entitlement programs.

Entitlements—like the big three of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—are the biggest causes of America’s spending and debt crisis. And Obamacare creates a new entitlement program while expanding another.

The creation of a new entitlement: Taxpayer-funded subsidies for millions of Americans

Obamacare created insurance exchanges to sell and subsidize government-approved health care plans. Most of those who attain coverage through the exchanges will have their costs partially subsidized by federal taxpayers.

By 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that 24 million people will obtain coverage in the exchanges, 19 million of whom are expected to receive subsidies. CBO estimates that together, the subsidies will cost taxpayers nearly $1.1 trillion from 2014-2023.

Who can get a subsidy?

• Those earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($11,490 to $45,960 for individuals and $23,550 to $94,200 for a family of four in 2013) will be eligible for premium subsidies that are applied on a sliding scale, with the lowest income receiving the highest premium subsidy.
• Those who purchase a silver plan in the exchange and earn between 100 percent and 250 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for cost-sharing subsidies to help offset their out-of-pocket costs, in addition to the premium subsidy.

Via: The Foundry

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Getting Back on The Right Path

“As an individual you incarnate American ideals at many levels. As the final responsible authority, in any hour of great challenge, we depend on you.”

 — William F. Buckley Jr., to President Reagan, 1985

“Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.”

 — Ronald Reagan, 1984 State of the Union address

You could not then — or now — buy the kind of coverage Time magazine gave Ronald Reagan in midsummer 1986. The cover featured a portrait of Reagan with the question, “Why Is This Man So Popular?” Inside, beneath the headline “Yankee Doodle Magic,” Lance Morrow wrote:

Ronald Reagan has found the American sweet spot. The white ball sails into the sparkling air in a high parabola and vanishes over the fence, again. The 75-year-old man is hitting home runs. Winning a lopsided vote on a tax-reform plan that others had airily dismissed. Turning Congress around on the contras. Preparing to stand with a revitalized Miss Liberty on the Fourth of July. He grins his boyish grin and bobs his head in the way he has and trots around the bases.

Via: NRO
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RONALD REAGAN’S 1985 THANKSGIVING ADDRESS

Below is the text, followed by the video, of President Ronald Reagan’s Thanksgiving Address from 1985:

Good morning, everyone. You know, the Statue of Liberty and this wonderful holiday called Thanksgiving go together naturally because although as Americans we have many things for which to be thankful, none is more important than our liberty. Liberty: that quality of government, that brightness of mind and spirit for which the Pilgrim Fathers braved the seas and Americans for two centuries have laid down their lives.

Today, while religion is suppressed in perhaps one third of the world, we Americans are free to worship the Almighty as we choose. While entire nations must endure the yoke of tyranny, we are free to speak our minds, to enjoy an unfettered and vigorous press, and to make government abide by the limits we deem just. While millions live behind walls, we remain free to travel throughout the land to share this precious day with those we love most deeply – the members of our families. 

My fellow Americans, let us keep this Thanksgiving Day sacred. Let us thank God for the bounty and goodness of our nation. And as a measure of our gratitude, let us rededicate ourselves to the preservation of this: the land of the free and the home of the brave.

From the Reagan family to your family: happy Thanksgiving and God bless you all.

Via: Tea Party News Network

Obama-contra Column: Obamacare isn’t Katrina. It’s Iran-contra

Reagan's televised address apologizing for the Iran-contra scandal and Obama apologizing for the Obamacare rollout / AP

BY: Matthew Continetti
November 15, 2013 4:59 am

Of all the analogies being drawn between the calamitous rollout of Obamacare and other government muck-ups throughout history, one deserves a closer look. What’s happening to Obamacare right now isn’t this president’s Iraq war, or his Hurricane Katrina, or his Lewinsky moment. It’s his Iran-contra scandal: a complicated and controversial policy dispute that involves deception, a hostile Congress, and the bludgeoning of presidential credibility. Iran-contra marked the end of the Reagan Revolution, and it’s not hard to see how the implementation of Obamacare might mark the end of the Obama Revolution as well. A boy can dream.

The analogy rests on the following similarity between presidents Reagan and Obama: For much of their time in office, the two men were more popular than their policies, and enjoyed higher personal approval than job approval. Ronald Reagan was always more popular than tax and spending cuts, and Barack Obama has been more popular than Obamacare and the stimulus. Reagan was hard to dislike. Obama is too, or so I’ve been told.

The news in 1986 that the Reagan administration had violated the arms embargo against Iran and traded weapons for hostages, with the proceeds of the weapons sales going to the anti-Sandinista insurgency in Nicaragua, threw the White House into disarray. The subsequent investigations into what exactly happened distracted Reagan and his team and damaged the president’s reputation. It’s hard to recall, especially as Reagan himself was never fully implicated in the scandal, but his approval ratings fell to a second-term low of 47 percent in the Gallup poll and his personal favorability fell as well.

Via: WFB

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Ronald Reagan's Lost Legacy

Twenty-five years ago this November, Americans elected the successor to our greatest president, Ronald Reagan.  George H. Bush won an easy election in November 1988.  He proceeded to purge many of Reagan's best soldiers from the White House and notoriously pledged that he would institute "A kinder, gentler America."  There was no sensible interpretation of that odd statement except that Bush perceived Reagan's conservative policies had been, somehow, mean.

Reagan left America and humanity in much better shape than when he took office.  Although the Berlin Wall did not fall during his administration, it fell soon after he left, and this was due to the "troika" of Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II -- aided, of course, by wise and good men like American Thinker contributor Herb Meyer.  A world war had been won without bloodshed.  Consider that again, because it is so truly stunning: A world war had been won without bloodshed. 

President Reagan also left us with a "Peace Dividend," because our bloodless victory in the Cold War meant that we could safely reduce defense expenditures without affecting domestic programs at all, and his adoption of "Supply Side Economics" meant that Reagan left us also with a strong economy that entailed more tax revenue and less need for social welfare programs. 

What made Reagan who he was?  He was a brilliant man content to be thought of as an "amiable dunce" if that meant that his policies prevailed.  Consider the contrast between Reagan and Obama.  Our current president has a craving to be considered a genius when, of course, by all appearances he has the most pedestrian intellect of any man to sit in the Oval Office.  His ego, more than anything else, drives Obama. 

Via: American Thinker

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