Coronavirus Is Quickly Draining Social Security
Wednesday June 3, 2020 | Craig Eyermann

The 2020 Social Security Trustees’ Report is out, and it is not good news. According to Social Security’s trustees, the Old Age and Survivors’ Insurance Trust Fund will run out of money in 14 years, meaning that beginning in 2035, all of Social Security’s beneficiaries will have their monthly income checks slashed by 21 percent. Here’s the chart from the Trustee’s report that shows that happening under the Trustees’ intermediate (“most likely”) assumptions: (more…)

President Trump Will Be Reelected in November
Wednesday June 3, 2020 | Randall G. Holcombe

In this presidential election year, President Trump faces lots of challenges, including civil unrest, massive unemployment, and questions about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But if I were a betting man, my money would be on President Trump to win reelection in November. Despite many polls showing Biden as the favorite, my money would be on Trump for one main reason: he’s the incumbent, and incumbents almost always win. (more…)

Are Gov. Newsom’s Contact Tracers the Best for the Job?
Wednesday June 3, 2020 | K. Lloyd Billingsley

The current pandemic has turned up a need for “contact tracing,” the process of finding those actually infected with the coronavirus and who might, in turn, have infected others. According Kate Murphy in the New York Times, contact tracing is harder than it sounds, but it has been managed with some success. The best contact tracers, it turns out, came out of a venereal disease investigation after World War II. Syphilis was then rampant, and carriers weren’t exactly eager to talk about it. (more…)

Do Incumbent Presidents Always Win?
Wednesday June 3, 2020 | Randall G. Holcombe

In a recent post on The Beacon, I predicted that President Trump would be reelected in November, because he is the incumbent, and incumbents almost always win. Here are incumbent reelection rates for the Senate and House of Representatives, but how about the presidency? Let’s consider presidential reelection rates back to the beginning of the twentieth century. I’ll argue that setting aside special circumstances, incumbent presidents have failed to be reelected only twice over that time period. (more…)

K Street Lobbyists Go on a Feeding Frenzy
Wednesday June 3, 2020 | Craig Eyermann

“Never allow a good crisis go to waste” is not just a mantra for crooked politicians looking to impose their vanity on the people. It is also the motto of the K Street lobbyists who aggressively panhandle Washington, D.C., politicians for scraps of cash to benefit special interests at the taxpayer expense. Politico‘s Theodoric Meyer looks at who is lining up for the “free” money that the U.S. Congress has authorized the federal government to borrow: (more…)

George Floyd and the Future of Police Misconduct
Monday June 1, 2020 | Samuel R. Staley

The death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer with a history of excessive force complaints has spurred protests, demonstrations, and riots across the nation. Peaceful protests are more than justified. However, the lawless riots are not; they are enacting the very injustices they claim to contest and on a colossal and catastrophic scale. (more…)

Media Up In Arms Over Twitter, Remains Silent on EARN IT Act’s Threat
Saturday May 30, 2020 | Mary L. G. Theroux

The media is up in arms over Trump’s threat to sign an executive order removing the legal immunity that social media platforms currently enjoy. Yet they have for months been completely silent on Congress’s greater threat that utilizes the exact same legal provision: the proposed EARN IT Act that would weaken Americans’ online privacy and security precisely at a time that our lives are lived almost entirely virtually. (more…)