Here are my observations and opinions on my selected news of the day.

WASHINGTON’S “EMERGENCY” HYPROCRISY is the title of an overdue op-ed I’ve been thinking about since President Trump declared it last month. Thanks to Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute for bringing this to the attention of Wall Street Journal readers.

“For many years Congress has been handing over power to the president and the agencies of the administrative state,” he writes, “lawmakers are delighted to do this, because it relieves them of the difficult decisions involved in creating actual legislation.”

Kramerontheright readers will recall my earlier references of the power Congress has given to the administrative state, where agencies, like the EPA, are permitted to write their own rules.

Wallison reminds us that there was no objection when Bill Clinton declared an emergency to prohibit transactions with Sudan in 1997 or in 2003 when George W. Bush imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.

I contend that the hue and cry over a manufactured emergency on our southern border doesn’t reflect the real reason they are rejecting it; it’s all about the man, Donald Trump. They want to deny him a victory.

Congresses pleas that they have the power of the purse, and they are merely protecting that power is another hypocrisy. Wallison reminds us of when the Democrats created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Dodd-Frank in 2010. They gave up that protection while putting the funding under the Federal Reserve.

“Congress reserves itself the ability to complain about the abuse of it’s constitutional authority while happily giving it away when that is politically or ideologically advantageous,” concludes Wallison.

Politically and ideologically, Democrats see this as another means to obstruct the president as they develop their position against him in 2020. Halting illegal human and drug traffic be damned.

THOSE DEMOCRAT ECONOMICS EXPERTS – Surely you remember how the Democrats, all of them, failed to vote for President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. They called it a tax cut for the rich and laughed when it was sold on the promise that it would be paid for through growth.

The Commerce Department recently announced that GDP grew by 3.1 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018; the largest rise in 13 years.

While the “all holy” CBO had misgivings when the tax reform took place, with only a modest impact on growth, it now has stated that even if the current growth isn’t sustained, revenue residual from our current growth will pay for some 80 per cent of the cost of the tax reform.

The CBO has noted that the higher-than-expected growth will add an extra $1.2 trillion to federal revenue in the coming decade.

Are we going to allow the left to destroy this progress on prosperity President Trump promised in 2016?

SALENA ZITO, a true journalist whom I admire, spends a great deal of time talking to regular people, mostly those living in rural areas. With the sting of comments about middle America folks being white, stupid, racist engendered in Bill Maher’s belief that they really want to be one of the blue state elites, she set out to see how they really feel.

Included was Ken Garner, 56, who lives in the red state of Texas says he “enjoys the finer things in life: good food, museums, books, tasteful clothing, nice cars, high technology and classical music, all the things that Maher claims only blue state people like.”

Ken Oliver, 48, who grew up in Winder, Georgia works in blue Washington DC, but says he still maintains his red state values. He believes the attitudes of people like Maher are wrong-headed and dangerous.

As an aside, Zito noted that a recent Gallup poll revealed the startling fact that there are only six states where liberals outnumber conservatives – Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, Washington, New York and New Hampshire.

In California, she writes, conservatives and liberals are split 29 per cent to 29 per cent, and in every other state, conservatives outnumber liberals by nine percentage points.

“With the elite tilting ever more left-wards, 2020 is already shaping up to be another disastrous year for Democrats,” Zito claims.

THEY’RE AT IT AGAIN over at the left-leaning Arizona Republic. A half-page in their March 5, 2019 edition was devoted to Mark Kelly, who they seem to be endorsing over Sen. Martha McSally in 2020.

While the paper reveals that he voted for Obama in 2012, he once voted Republican and has long been a registered independent, and plans to run as a Democrat. Conveniently for Kelly, his voting records have been sealed under a state law passed in 2013. Has he ever voted for John McCain? Democrats would like to know.

Attempting to win over Arizona independents, Kelly says he’s running “not as a partisan, but as a patriot.” Well, I wonder what he’s going to tell them about his views on gun control. He’s been at the side of his wife, former Democrat Rep. Gabby “Gonna Grab Your Guns” Giffords during her pleas for gun control. Arizona Republicans and independents support the 2^nd Amendment.

SOCIALISM AS IN SWEDEN, the Democrat candidates pushing socialism in America are often heard saying, but Sweden is not really socialist. Sweden has a free market economy and doesn’t own the means of its production.

All the better, they might say, because Sweden is a massive welfare state and their people like it, but it costs them. In Sweden it is understood that if you want all of the benefits, everyone must pay for them. That means poorer Swedes pay a very high percentage of their income in taxes.

In other words, if you want a huge welfare state with all of the so-called “freebees,” you have to be willing to pay for it, and there is no consensus for that in the United States.

A recent survey to test the appeal of Medicare-for-all revealed that while there was support (71 per cent) when they were told it would guarantee health insurance as a right and eliminate premiums and reduce out-of-pocket costs (67 per cent), that support plunged to 26 and 37 percent, respectively when told that it would lead to higher taxes and delays in getting care.

Yet, those radical Democrats continue to campaign in favor of this. Go figure.

You should know that the United States is 22 times bigger in size than Sweden, and that our population of 326 million dwarfs Sweden’s 10 million.  Sweden has a GDP equivalent to the state of Georgia.

I WAS DISAPPOINTED when I learned that South Dakota Republican Rep. Kristi Noem decided to leave the U.S. House to run for governor of South Dakota. With the Democrat takeover of the House, I realize that her talents would be wasted there.

As governor now, she is out to make it difficult for those out-of-state funders of protests of the Keystone Pipeline. Included will be a fund to cover extraordinary law enforcement costs that could surface with intense pipeline opposition as was realized in North Dakotas

            May God bless the United States of America.