Post by GronkAs of Trump’s 100th day, we counted
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454028/donald-trump-accomplishments-thanksgiving
And the best is yet to come. This Thanksgiving, Americans in general —
and free-market conservatives in particular — have plenty for which to
be grateful. And much of it would be absent had the White House’s
current occupant not become president on November 8, 2016. The day after
Donald J. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, Princeton University economist
Paul Krugman called Trump’s victory “the mother of all adverse effects.”
He predicted “very probably . . . a global recession, with no end in
sight.” • The Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, and S&P 500 all hit
record highs on Tuesday. The Wilshire 5000 Index calculates that some
$3.4 trillion in new wealth has been created since President Trump’s
inauguration and $5.4 trillion since his election. Fueled by the reality
of deregulation, expectations of lower taxes, and a new tone in
Washington that applauds free enterprise rather than excoriate it, the
economy is on fire. • Atop the second quarter’s 3.1 percent increase in
real GDP, and 3.0 in 3Q, the New York Federal Reserve Bank predicts that
4Q output will expand by 3.8 percent. This far outpaces the feeble
average-annual GDP growth rate of 1.5 percent on President Obama’s
watch. Meanwhile, the IMF expects global GDP to rise by 3.5 percent this
year. So much for a Trump-inspired “global recession.” • Unemployment is
at 4.1 percent, a 17-year low. New unemployment claims in September were
at their most modest since 1974. Goldman Sachs on November 20 “lowered
our unemployment rate forecast to 3.7 percent by end-2018 and 3.5
percent by end-2019.” According to the Wall Street powerhouse’s chief
economist Jan Hatzius, “Such a scenario would take the U.S. labor market
into territory almost never seen outside of a major wartime
mobilization.” • American companies have been expanding operations here
rather than shipping jobs overseas. Corning, for instance, announced a
$500 million investment in new U.S. production, launching 1,000
positions. • Foreign firms have been unveiling facilities and creating
jobs in America. Insourcing is now a thing. Taiwan’s Foxconn will spend
$10 billion on a new Wisconsin electronics plant with 3,000 new
employees. During Trump’s recent visit to China, Beijing agreed to
invest $84 billion in new energy projects in West Virginia. • If the
Senate cooperates, Santa Claus will deliver $1.5 trillion in tax cuts,
including a dream-come-true 43 percent reduction in corporate taxes,
from a 35 percent rate to 20 percent, well below the global average of
22.5 percent. This major blow for international competitiveness should
turbocharge the economy even further. • Obamacare remains alive, alas,
largely due to the flaccid leadership of Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell’s (R., Ky.) and his inability to control a handful of
Republican prima donnas. (As of November 2, the House had passed 394
bills; 308 of them — 78 percent — are moldering in McConnell’s inbox.)
However, the GOP may make Obamacare voluntary. Junking the individual
mandate will emancipate Americans from this unprecedented attack on our
freedom and, as an added bonus, make $318 billion available for deeper
tax cuts. • U.S. energy production is on the upswing. After languishing
under Obama, the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines are under
construction. Jobs to be created: 42,000. • Obama’s War on Coal is gone
with the wind. • Trump wisely extricated America from the bogus Paris
“global-warming” deal. • Obama’s “Clean Power Plan,” a $993 billion act
of economic self-sabotage, now rots — with Communism — atop the ash heap
of history. • For every new regulation that Trump has imposed, 16 have
been erased. • The FCC has begun to dismantle Obama’s “Net Neutrality”
takeover of the Internet, which functioned marvelously, thank you,
before his needless e-power-grab. • Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch
is on the bench, along with 13 constitutionalist lower-court judges. At
this stage in Obama’s presidency, the Senate had confirmed just seven of
his district- and circuit-court nominees. • President Trump signed
legislation to ease the firing of incompetent and corrupt officials in
the Department of Veterans Affairs. So far, according to the White
House, the VA has sacked more than 500 such undesirables, suspended 200,
and demoted 33. Trump also has endorsed bills that give embattled vets
greater choice in health care beyond the largely ruinous, highly toxic,
single-payer VA medical system. • Trump has revitalized ties with
America’s NATO allies, who finally have begun to pay their fair share
for collective security — as their heretofore disregarded commitments
require. • The president of the United States movingly and eloquently
defended Western Civilization in a stirring speech in Warsaw, arguably
his best in office. • Trump urged Arab and Muslim leaders to “drive out”
militant Islam in a milestone address in Riyadh. • To that end,
U.S.-assisted forces have driven ISIS from an expansive caliphate with
many square miles of land to a horrid idea with a shrinking grasp on a
few sand dunes, soon to be pried from their filthy fingers. • With Trump
aboard, Air Force One flew the first direct flight ever between Saudi
Arabia and Israel. • Trump stood steadfastly by Israel at the Western
Wall and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Obama’s cold-shoulder
policy toward Israel is finished. • Asian heads of state were impressed
with Trump last week. Soon after he left China, the Chinese government
agreed to Trump’s request and released three UCLA basketball players who
were arrested for shoplifting and destined, most likely, to long prison
sentences. • Just after Trump returned to America, China sent a
delegation to talk some sense into North Korean madman Kim Jong-un. •
Pyongyang is as strongly sanctioned as it has been in ages, in part
thanks to the U.N. Security Council’s U.S.-led unanimous votes to that
effect. • The State Department this week returned North Korea to the
official list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. George W. Bush excused
North Korea from that deadly distinction, to little positive effect. •
The disastrous Iran nuclear deal soon may be shredded — as it should be.
For now, Trump has declared Iran no longer in compliance with the
agreement, flimsy as it is. • Guantanamo Bay remains open for business,
and Obama’s “catch and release” policy toward its militant-Islamic
detainees ist kaput. • Under this president, illegal-alien border
crossings are down 41 percent on the southern frontier, versus January
through October 2016, under Obama. • ICE has arrested 97,482 illegal
aliens under President Trump, as of October 27, up 43 percent
year-on-year. Of these 52,169 (53.5 percent) have been expelled — up 30
percent. Among those arrested, the White House reports, 70 percent were
convicted criminals. • Rather than ridicule vote fraud, as Democrats
routinely do, President Trump appointed a commission to investigate
shenanigans at the polls and how America’s entire system of casting
ballots can be made tamper-proof. Vice President Mike Pence chairs this
panel. Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R., Kan.) co-chairs. • The
Education Department’s due-process-crushing Title IX “guidance letter”
on sexual harassment on college campuses is null and void. • The Trump
administration is giving green lights to school-choice efforts across
America. • The Justice Department is investigating Harvard University
for possibly violating the civil rights of Americans of Asian descent
who argue that they are being rejected in favor of less qualified
applicants of other ethnicities. Ideas that center-Right activists have
demanded for decades are becoming public policy, one after another. •
Obama’s execrable war on the Little Sisters on the Poor, who literally
work for $0.00 per year, mercifully has ended. These powerless women no
longer must lose sleep because a nearly omnipotent guy in Washington
ordered them to provide contraceptives through their health-care plan,
their religious convictions be damned. Anyone covered by that order of
Catholic nuns, who wants birth control, can go out and buy such products
with her own money. • Obama’s federal transgender-bathroom patrol has
been disbanded. State and local school officials now will decide whether
or not to abide by the centuries-old, commonsense rule that humans with
male anatomy use men’s rooms and those with female anatomy use women’s
rooms. • President Trump’s re-embrace of the so-called Mexico City
Policy once again bars federal funding of abortions overseas. And much
more. The Never Trump faction still claims that the president of the
United States “is no conservative.” And yet, with rare deviations (such
as free trade), he spends nearly every day implementing the conservative
agenda. Ideas that center-Right activists have demanded for decades are
becoming public policy, one after another — to the pleasant surprise of
even some of Donald J. Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters. Ten months
down. Thirty-eight to go. The best is yet to come. Thank you, Mr.
President! — Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor and
a contributing editor with National Review Online.
Read more at:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454028/donald-trump-accomplishments-thanksgiving