"It's just shoplifting, what's the big deal? Everything is insured. The stores just write it off, right?

"But anyone who has ever stood in front of a locked case of toothpaste, waiting for someone to free the Colgate, knows it's far more than that.

"Worse, anyone who has lived in an area that shops are abandoning en masse due to the shoplifting problem knows what is lost.

"The impulse to dismiss shoplifting as no big deal is wrong. A mass shoplifting problem is evidence of societal decline and degradation."

Read the entire article here.

"Hunter Biden's offer to testify before the House Oversight Committee is a clever evasion, nothing more. The president's son says he will testify only if the hearing is publicly televised. Nice try. Subpoenaed witnesses don't get to set the terms. The committee does.

"Why make an offer that is bound to be rejected? For two reasons. The PR goal is for Hunter to appear willing to testify, when he actually wants desperately to avoid it. The legal goal is to prevent, or at least delay, the committee from enforcing its subpoena. Hunter and his hardball attorney, Abbe Lowell, probably figure the Biden administration's Department of Justice won't go to court and demand compliance. That's not a bad bet. If the DOJ does refuse, the House will go to court itself, but that will take time and may not succeed.

"This kerfuffle over testimony is only the latest twist in the investigation of Biden family influence peddling. The complexity of that family operation makes it easy to lose sight of what we know, what we don't, and how deeply the president himself is involved.

"It is useful to unpack the whole operation because it has lots of moving parts, law enforcement has covered it up, and the legacy media has remained deaf, dumb, and blind."

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"The Biden administration has outpaced other recent presidents in issuing significant regulations that place a financial burden on taxpayers, according to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"Under President Joe Biden, the federal government completed 89 economically significant rules in 2022, defined as those with at least a $100 million economic impact, which is higher than any point in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations when deregulation is accounted for, according to CEI's 'Ten Thousand Commandments Report.' Regulations as a whole resulted in $1.939 trillion in added costs for the average American in 2022, exceeding every form of tax except income tax, which it rivals at $2.263 trillion."

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"As lawmakers race to strike a deal before the end of the year that could unlock billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, they are struggling to find consensus on U.S. border and immigration policies, a critical piece of the bill in order to gain Republican support in both chambers.

"Senate Republicans want to see a crackdown on asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border in exchange for their support for President Joe Biden's request for $106 billion that includes the emergency funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan as well as funding to strengthen the U.S.'s immigration system. The White House's supplemental request also includes $14 billion for border security."

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"Congress just passed -- and President Biden just signed -- the latest short-term government funding bill to keep the government running.

"The bill, which essentially kicks the can down the road, ensures that taxpayers will continue to pay for a bloated government until January, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) said: '...avoiding a (government) shutdown is so very far from mission accomplished. We have a lot of work to do after the dust settles and before the next shutdown deadline comes up.'

"In the past, this fake scenario of a government shutdown has meant preserving all current spending while adding new debt. It is doubtful this time around will be much different.

"Because this 'work' is unlikely to include reforming Social Security and Medicare -- the biggest driver of debt -- fiscally conservative Republicans should focus on other spending to shame the profligate spenders (which sadly include too many Republicans) and inform voters that their tax dollars and borrowed money are being wasted."

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"In economics, the law of diminishing returns states that the benefits gained from an enterprise will be proportionally smaller the more money, time, or energy is invested in it.

"Thankfully this is not true in the realm of ideas, as the career of the economist Thomas Sowell attests. Now 93 years old and the author of more than 40 books, Sowell's most recent contribution, Social Justice Fallacies, tackles the many misguided social experiments of the past few decades and their often malign fallout.

"Any discussion of social justice benefits from the clarifying wisdom of Sowell, but in this book, he provides a further service beyond the forensic accounting of the mistakes made by social justice advocates in areas such as race, criminal justice, wealth redistribution, and other forms of would-be social engineering: He reminds readers of the importance of understanding the history behind contemporary ideas and he offers useful international comparisons that reveal just how myopic the debate over social justice in the United States has become. With his trademark directness in describing the facts and his wry humor, Sowell is always a pleasure to read; despite the slim size of this volume, it contains a thorough debunking of the fallacies noted in the title."

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"The rate at which prices are rising has slowed somewhat, but prices are still going up. The vast majority of the public is unhappy about it and expects things to get worse.

"And as long as President Joe Biden is in office, that is a reasonable expectation, for Biden's Office of Management and Budget pushed through new regulations this month that will make it easier for every federal agency to raise the regulatory costs of everything people want to do.

"At issue is the discount rate that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs uses when calculating costs and benefits of proposed regulation. These analyses are not required by statute, but the White House has performed them since President Ronald Reagan issued an executive order mandating them in 1981. Presidents from both parties have since embraced Reagan's requirement, although each president has tweaked the process in one way or another.

"Biden's new twist to the formula would cook the books in favor of costly new regulations. Regulators face many uncertainties when calculating the costs and benefits of regulation, including balancing the trade-offs between higher costs now and benefits decades in the future."

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"The Senate easily passed a stop-gap spending bill in bipartisan fashion late Wednesday, averting a federal shutdown for the holidays but setting up a historic clash early in the new year over shrinking government.

"Senators voted 87-11 to approve the plan and send it to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it. Ten Republicans and one Democrat voted against the measure. ...

"While both sides cheered avoiding a holiday, shutdown, the vote only postponed an epic struggle early into the 2024 election year over House Republicans' promise to shrink federal spending and the government for the first time in decades.

"House Speaker Mike Johnson has set in motion a novel two-tier plan to fund the government with separate spending bills in January and February, which will force the Senate to end years of practice of funding the entire government with omnibus legislation."

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"Even as war continues to rage in Gaza, there already is much talk about the 'day after,' meaning what happens there when the guns go quiet.

"The chatter assumes Israel will rout Hamas and that a new entity will fill the governing vacuum.

"Finding a solution is a huge challenge and while America will have a big say, there is another 'day after' issue also demanding our attention.

"It involves the shocking explosion of antisemitism on elite college campuses.

"It, too, must be eliminated because it is morally wrong, and because history leaves no doubt about where it leads.

"Washington has a role to play, but the real action must happen where the problem is -- on the campuses.

"University leaders must lead, or get out of the way."

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"House Republicans released a report that totaled the costs of record-high illegal immigration at the southern border under the Biden administration and estimated that U.S. taxpayers have paid nearly half a trillion dollars.

"The House Homeland Security Committee on Monday debuted a 49-page document that broke down the education, healthcare, law enforcement, and other costs that the arrests of more than 6 million illegal immigrants have generated since early 2021.

"'Every day, millions of American taxpayer dollars are spent on costs directly associated with illegal immigration and the unprecedented crisis at the Southwest border sparked by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas' policies,' the report stated. 'Mass illegal immigration, accelerated by Mayorkas' open-borders policies, now represents a massive cost to the federal government and state governments alike, as well as the pocketbooks of private citizens and businesses.' ...

"The GOP report, authorized by Chairman Mark Green (R-TN), cites data calculated by conservative- and liberal-leaning immigration organizations as the basis for its cost estimates. The highest estimate was generated by the right-leaning Center for Immigration Studies, which concluded taxpayers would have to contribute $451 billion to cover the price of caring for immigrants released from the border into the United States.

"New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to date responding to thousands of immigrants who have traveled to these sanctuary zones in search of housing, jobs, and assistance. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, stated earlier this fall that the border crisis 'will destroy' the city."

Read the entire article here.