Colorado Teachers’ Union Passes Resolution Declaring That Capitalism ‘Inherently Exploits Children’

A major teachers’ union in the state of Colorado recently passed a resolution declaring that the capitalist system of economics “inherently exploits children, public schools, land, labor, and resources.”

According to Fox News, the final draft of the resolution passed by the Colorado Education Association (CEA) reads: “CEA believes that capitalism requires exploitation of children, public schools, land, labor, and/or resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing systemic racism (the school to prison pipeline), climate change, patriarchy, (gender and LGBTQ disparities), education inequality, and income inequality.”

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Article Shows Ellison Bashing Capitalism, Describing Fear of Crime as ‘White Hysteria’

In a brief Star Tribune commentary from nearly three decades ago, current Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison trashed capitalism for its “exploitation of labor” and accused the paper of contributing to “white hysteria.”

Alpha News obtained a photocopy of the Star Tribune edition printed on Saturday, Aug. 7, 1993. In the “counterpoint” section of commentary, the paper published a brief article by Ellison, a then-litigator who was identified as a participant in that year’s urban peace summit in St. Paul from July 14-18. One of the summit’s speakers appears to have been notorious anti-white racist and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Ellison’s piece responded to what he perceive

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Stacey Abrams Sits on Board of Organization That Donates Millions to Radical Far-Left Professors

Georgia’s Democrat gubernatorial candidate sits on the board of a far-left organization based in Seattle, that has handed out millions of dollars in grants to radical left-wing professors. 

Stacey Abrams is listed as a Board Member of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, a group that says it “supports leaders, scholars and initiatives focused on shifting the balance of power in society — building power for communities that continue to be excluded from shaping how society works and from sharing in its rewards and freedoms.”

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Tennessee Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Bill Requiring High School Students to Learn Virtues of Capitalism

The Tennessee State Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill, 25-6, that requires high school students to be taught the virtues of capitalism and the constitutional republic form of government in comparison to other economic systems and governmental systems.

The Tennessee State House of Representatives approved the House version of the bill on March 28, 68-21. Prior to the final vote, the Senate voted to substitute and conform to the House-approved version.

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Tennessee Senate Scheduled to Vote on Bill Requiring High School Students to Learn Virtues of Capitalism

The full Tennessee State Senate will vote on Tuesday, April 12, considering a bill that requires high school students to be taught the virtues of capitalism and the constitutional republic form of government in comparison to other economic systems and governmental systems.

The Tennessee State House of Representatives previously approved the House version of the bill on March 28, 68-21.

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Tennessee House Passes Bill Requiring High School Students to Learn Virtues of Capitalism and the U.S. Constitutional Republic

The Tennessee State House of Representatives passed a bill on Monday 68-21 that requires high school Students to be taught the virtues of capitalism and the constitutional republic form of government.

HB2742, sponsored by State Representative Dennis Powers (R-Jacksboro), “requires that high school students be taught about the virtues of capitalism and the constitutional republic form of government in the United States and Tennessee, as compared to other political and economic systems such as communism and socialism, as part of the social studies curriculum.”

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Schweizer: The Titans of Wall Street Are Among China’s Closest American Allies

TRANSCRIPT: McCabe: One of the great ironies in investigative journalist Peter Schweizer’s new book Red-Handed is the degree to which the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated the very heart of American capitalism on Wall Street. Schweizer told The Star News Network that the titans of Wall Street are among China’s closest allies. Schweizer: What China wants from Wall Street is access to Western capital with no questions asked. And unfortunately, the biggest firms on Wall Street are prepared to give it to them. So when the Trump administration pushed for tariffs and restrictions on Chinese economic activity in the United States, one of the first institutions to stand up and protest in the White House were the big firms on Wall Street. McCabe: Schweizer said one of the Chinese Communist Party’s biggest supporters on Wall Street is BlackRock and its CEO and co-founder Larry Fink. Schweizer: He basically runs a fund that that manages money that’s equivalent to half of the entire United States economy. So he has an enormous pull. McCabe: The investigative reporter said Fink is not shy about his support for the Chinese government. Schweizer: He has also praised the regime. He said that yes, you know,…

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Black Lives Matter Launches Christmas Campaign Against ‘White-Supremacist Capitalism’

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is attacking two of America’s most revered holidays, accusing Americans of “eating dry turkey and overcooked stuffing on stolen land” on Thanksgiving and promoting “white-supremacist capitalism” with Christmas.

The official Twitter account of the self-described “collective of liberators” posted, “YOU ARE ON STOLEN LAND” (original emphasis), with the subheading “Colonization never ended, it just became normalized.”

BLM posted a series of Tweets on Thanksgiving about its ideology.

For example, one tweet said, “This #Thanksgiving we send our deepest love to families whose loved ones were stolen by state-sanctioned violence and white-supremacy.

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Terri Lynn Weaver Commentary: Why I Voted Red for the Blue Oval City

Terri Lynn Weaver

The Mega Site near Memphis has a long history; since FY08-09 to FY21-22, over $200M Tennessee Tax dollars have been appropriated to a 4100 acre piece of real estate in pursuit of a business that would bring jobs to this remote area of West Tennessee. It isn’t unusual that legislators from other parts of the state to partner with the administration to bring businesses to areas other than those they were elected to represent. In fact, Over the years I have voted for the budget and numerous businesses such as, FEDX, Amazon and Beretta which have brought needed revenue and most importantly, good paying jobs that are a blessing to Tennessee families.

During deliberations about the Blue Oval City development, my colleagues predicted that what amounts to a $1.3B investment will bring a “three- fold return that will stabilize West Tennessee, a rural forgotten frontier and give them a voice bringing high paying jobs that will put this town between Memphis and Jackson on the map. Literally changing the local landscape, The Blue Oval City will usher in businesses such as hotels, restaurants, plus the new construction of Tennessee College of Applied Technology (40M) to train the estimated work force (5,800) to build electric trucks and the batteries needed to operate these electric trucks. Who wouldn’t want this in their district? Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, why would anyone vote “red” NO for The Blue Oval City?

After deliberate and thoughtful review of the facts before me alongside with the current challenges facing Tennessee’s citizens, I cast a “red” No vote for the following reasons:

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Commentary: A.G. Garland’s Use of Police Power Against Parents Could Be His Undoing

Destruction of the family has always been at the center of the collectivist project. In chapter two of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels point out that the destruction of private property will never be complete until the “abolition [Aufhebung] of the family” is accomplished. The dream is perennial among snarling misanthropists. A couple of years ago, an interview in The Nation with a radical feminist explained that if you “want to dismantle capitalism” then you have to “abolish the family.”

It is worth keeping that in mind as the little drama of Merrick Garland versus the parents of America unfolds. I wrote about the attorney general’s absurd but troubling memorandum shortly after it was released on October 4. As all the world knows (but only some precincts of the world admit), Garland threatened to mobilize the entire police power of the state against parents. Why?

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Commentary: Break Up Big Tech Before It’s Too Late

With the rise of populist and bipartisan resentment against Big Tech monopolies along with the recent appointment of Big Tech opponent Lina Khan as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, government action against these companies seems imminent. People are waking up to the fact that they have way too much power and are a threat to the American way of life.

As if on cue, prominent conservatives have come to the defense of these monopolies. Most recently, Robert Bork Jr. argued in National Review that breaking up Big Tech would lead to “a slippery slope to the end of capitalism and the rise of political management of the economy.” He agrees with conservatives such as Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who says, “These [anti-monopoly] bills give power to the FTC, the new commissioner we all know is radically left.”

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Majority of Americans Want the Government to Fight Income Inequality, Poll Finds

Group of people gathered, talking next to an office desk

A majority of respondents believe that the federal government should push policies that reduce income inequality in the United States, according to a poll released Friday by Axios.

The Axios poll shows 66% of respondents say the government should work to lower the level of income distributed unevenly, up 4% compared to 2019.

Republicans surveyed who agreed the government should tackle income inequality increased by 5%, and Independents who responded similarly increased by 2%, according to the poll. Democrats saw an increase of 7% in favor of such policies compared to 2019.

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Commentary: Dismantling America Without a Replacement

Calls to dismantle this group or that institution have become the topic du jour in American politics. It started with police departments and the criminal justice system, then it spread to museums, and now one Democratic congresswoman is raising the bar on a logarithmic scale.

In a Tuesday press conference devoted to discussing America’s alleged systemic racism, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, D-MN, called for dismantling “the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

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Commentary: Education Entrepreneurs Are the Only Ones Who Can Disrupt the Status Quo

Transforming entrenched systems and industries comes through disruptive innovation and entrepreneurship. Coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, disruptive innovation is the process by which new ideas and inventions create value and ultimately topple existing competitors. A visionary individual or group spots opportunity and develops new solutions that meet consumer demand faster, better, and more cheaply. This innovation improves our lives through efficiency and cost-effectiveness, allowing us to keep more of our hard-earned money with better service and satisfaction.

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New American Populist Founder Jeff Webb Proposes the ‘Temporary Income Replacement Act’ as a Bold Solution to Help Bolster American Families and the Economy

Live from Nashville, Tennessee Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. Jeff Webb, founder, and chairman of The New American Populist (TNAP) joined Leahy on the newsmakers line.

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Commentary: Black Friday Is Capitalism at Its Most Beautiful

I went to a Daily Mass on Black Friday last year. The priest didn’t waste too much time with the homily, but he made a few comments about Thanksgiving and a statement about Black Friday which I found hopefully refreshing. He said, “This is a day for the poor.” Of course, he’s right, but how often do we think of Black Friday in those terms? As Thanksgiving and Black Friday approach once again, let us reflect on this concise but incredibly profound statement.

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Commentary: Slavery Did Not Make America Richer

In the past few decades, a new subfield of history has emerged: the history of capitalism. The subfield is widely popular in the media as a result of hugely influential books such as those of Sven Beckert and Edward Baptist. These two particular authors tie the “peculiar institution” of slavery in American history to capitalism. Many media pundits, as witnessed by recent articles in the New York Times and Vox, jumped on the works of these authors to claim that slavery was “the building block of the American economy” and it made America richer.

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Ohio’s Tim Ryan Says He’s ‘Concerned’ With Rise of Socialism in His Party, But Calls Health Care a ‘Human Right’

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH-13), a 2020 presidential hopeful, said on CNN Wednesday that he’s “concerned” about the rise of socialism within the Democratic Party. “I’m concerned about it because if we are going to de-carbonize the American economy it’s not going to be some centralized bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. that’s going to make it happen. It’s going to be part targeted government investments that do need to be robust, but it’s going to be the free market that’s, at the end of the day, going to make that happen,” Ryan said on CNN’s New Day. Ryan said that only the “innovation” and “creativity” of the free market will allow for America’s economy to go carbon free. “You can be hostile to concentration of wealth. You can be hostile to income inequality. You can be hostile to greed. We can’t be hostile to the free-enterprise system. That’s how we get past China,” Ryan continued. 2020 hopeful @RepTimRyan says he’s “concerned” about socialism and the Democratic Party. “You can be hostile to concentration of wealth, you can be hostile to income inequality … We can't be hostile to the free-enterprise system. That’s how we get past China.” pic.twitter.com/ahlwI09rqb — New Day (@NewDay)…

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Commentary: Game of Thrones Might Be the Greatest Advertisement for Capitalism Ever Written

by Barry Brownstein   Consider these numbers. The final season of Game of Thrones cost about $100 million to film. In 1300, the entire medieval English real GDP was only 40 million English pounds. Game of Thrones doesn’t hide the desperate poverty of common people living in a fantasy version of medieval times. We see rulers indifferent to the filth, disease, and starvation endured by the average individual. Citizens are treated as objects put on earth to better the lives of their rulers. Game of Thrones could be the greatest advertisement ever written for capitalism. For the curious, an obvious question is, How did we progress from the poverty of Westeros to modern society? Redistribution of Wealth Game of Thrones poses a few answers to that question. Thrones is mostly about conquest and the redistribution of wealth, not the creation of wealth. Sadly, that is what modern politics has become. Politicians battle over how to legally steal from one group to benefit government and those they favor. The end of grinding poverty didn’t occur when a medieval version of “Bernie Sanders” redistributed wealth from the rich to the poor. What, then, has improved the lives of billions since medieval times?…

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Commentary: Capitalism Saved Sweden

by Michael Munger   Josh Billings famously diagnosed a problem with beliefs: “I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.” I am astonished at how many students, and for that matter adults, in the U.S. honestly believe that the U.S. should model itself after Sweden because Sweden has shown that socialism works. I will leave aside the question of whether the U.S. should try to “be like” Sweden; they are very different countries, with different histories and different institutions. But it is important to refute, using simple and widely available empirical evidence, the claim that Sweden is “socialist.” It is not. In fact, Sweden is one of the most robustly capitalist nations on earth. By socialism, I mean a system that relies on state ownership and control of the means of production, state direction of production decisions, and direct state control of education and employment decisions of individuals. If one does not mean those things, then that would require a little more thinking about what “socialism” means. If by “socialism” you mean prosperity and rule of law, then you are confused. There are several important issues to discuss, to understand the differences between…

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Commentary: The Myth of Millennial Socialism

by Christopher Gage   My old man tells me he left college in the 1970s and walked into a job for life. He tells me his first home cost twice the average salary. Then he tells me, without a soupçon of jest, “things were still pretty tough back then.” His brow—unapologetically smooth for its 65 years, cheeks plumped fat and youthfully blooded from unbroken stretches of Boomer ease—fails to crumple with measured faux sympathy. “They have it too easy,” he says, thumbing the newsprint importantly. “We didn’t have iPhones when I was 30.” Tough crowd. What kills me about my reluctant status of being a Millennial nestles between the thickets of Boomer philosophy. My old man, a cosmic improvement on the genetic one, tells me how easy everything was back in his day, and how, conversely, such ease built indomitable “character.” My old man is Schrödinger’s Boomer. Of course, there’s always a medicine cabinet teeming with nerve-smoothing cures for Millennial woes. We need to save more. We should stop buying avocado toast. We just need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We need to carve our own slice of the world that Boomers built and broke and bestowed upon…

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Commentary: Right-Wing Intellectuals Hate Trump for Smashing Their Pretensions

Max Boot

by Deion Kathawa   More than two years into President Trump’s historic presidency, it behooves us to think more deeply about a persistent sticking point in the political life of the nation: Why do (most) right-wing intellectuals loathe him? This kind of nearly unified opposition cries out for explanation. After all, it is not simply that all left-wing intellectuals oppose him; that is baked into the political cake, a totally banal reality. (Is water wet?) What is more interesting is why most right-wing intellectuals despise him, wish for his failure, derive such glee from “dunking” on him on social media and in their think pieces, and the like. To understand this phenomenon, the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick’s essay, “Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?” is a veritable treasure trove of insight. Nozick’s 1998 explanation of intellectuals’ opposition to capitalism is remarkably relevant and can be transplanted with only minor cosmetic changes to understand why the vast majority of right-wing intellectuals oppose Trump. Nozick begins by explaining what he means by “intellectuals,” describing them as “those who, in their vocation, deal with ideas as expressed in words, shaping the word flow others receive. These wordsmiths include poets, novelists, literary critics, newspaper…

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Commentary: Empathy is at the Core of Capitalism

by Barry Brownstein   You don’t have to search far to read claims that capitalism is centered on greed and selfishness. For some, the assertion seems self-evident as they read, for example, stories of pharmaceutical companies dramatically increasing the price of important drugs. Those who hold a “capitalists are greedy” belief fail to distinguish between crony capitalists — who make their money through subsidies, mandates and government restrictions on competition — and entrepreneurs who make their money through fulfilling the most urgent needs of consumers. The Instant Pot is a little story of how entrepreneurs unselfishly better our world. If you don’t have an Instant Pot or don’t cook, you are probably wondering what the fuss is about. If you have one, you know. Without traditional advertising, Instant Pot has become a best-selling item on Amazon, selling 215,000 units on Amazon Prime Day. Bloomberg Magazine calls it a “magical pot.” The Wonders and Success of the Instant Pot Reimagined for the 21st Century, the Instant Pot combines slow cooker and pressure cooker features and adds others. We have two Instant Pots on our kitchen counter; most days, we use both. Meals with whole grains and beans are staples in our home. When our pressure cooker didn’t seal, the meal…

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Walter Williams Commentary: Our Ignorance Of Socialism is Dangerous

by Walter E. Williams   A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51 percent of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42 percent prefer the latter. Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favorably. Lenin was the first premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Half of millennials have never heard of communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1959 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people. The number of people who died at the hands of Josef Stalin may be as high as 62 million. However, almost one-third of millennials think former President George W. Bush is responsible for more killings than Stalin. By the way, Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, was responsible for the deaths of about 20 million people. The Nazis come in as a poor third in terms of history’s most prolific mass murderers. According to professor Rudolph Rummel’s research, the 20th century, mankind’s most brutal century, saw 262 million people’s lives destroyed at the hands of their own governments. Young people who weren’t alive…

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How the Myth of the ‘Robber Barons’ Began – and Why It Persists

by Burton Folsom   We study history to learn from it. If we can discover what worked and what didn’t work, we can use this knowledge wisely to create a better future. Studying the triumph of American industry, for example, is important because it is the story of how the United States became the world’s leading economic power. Free markets worked well; government intervention usually failed. Capitalism Worked, but We Were Told It Didn’t The years when this happened, from 1865 to the early 1900s, saw the U.S. encourage entrepreneurs indirectly by limiting government. Slavery was abolished and so was the income tax. Federal spending was slashed and federal budgets had surpluses almost every year in the late 1800s. In other words, the federal government created more freedom and a stable marketplace in which entrepreneurs could operate. To some extent, during the late 1800s—a period historians call the “Gilded Age”—American politicians learned from the past. They had dabbled in federal subsidies from steamships to transcontinental railroads, and those experiments dismally failed. Politicians then turned to free markets as a better strategy for economic development. The world-dominating achievements of Cornelius Vanderbilt, James J. Hill, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles Schwab validated America’s unprecedented limited government. And…

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Amazon: The World’s Most Dangerous Crony Capitalist

by Rick Manning   The bedrock of American commerce – and of the broader capitalist experiment – has always been competition.  If you can build a better mousetrap, invent a longer-lasting light bulb or more efficiently churn out widgets (or in this case, clichés), odds are your endeavor will encounter success. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like or what you believe – what matters is what you can produce. Competition fuels all of the forces that drive our free market – inspiration, innovation, efficiency, accessibility, profitability and prosperity.  It is what cures diseases, crosses continents, crushes despots, cradles civilizations and – just to make sure we aren’t forgetting the point here – creates wealth. Capitalism is the great invention that makes all other inventions possible – which is precisely why it must be protected from crony capitalist companies like Amazon. Amazon is not operating on a level playing field.  Not only that, it is rigging many once-level commercial playing fields in favor of larger retailers – secure in the knowledge that it will get a larger slice of profits if it picks winners and losers based on volume. It is also picking up government subsidies at a bargain basement price.  Since…

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Three Ways Milton Friedman Improved the Field of Economics

Milton Friedman

by Luis Pablo De La Horra   Milton Friedman is probably the most important free-market thinker of the twentieth century. His ideas in defense of capitalism and economic freedom had an enormous influence on the shift towards free-market policies that took place from the 1970s onwards. Countries like the UK, China, Chile, or Estonia followed the economic recipes contained in best sellers like Free to Choose or Capitalism and Freedom, unleashing the power of free markets to create wealth and prosperity. Yet the contributions of Friedman as an economist are often overlooked by non-economists. Here are three that will help you understand a bit better his work. 1. On Methodology In 1953, Friedman wrote a very influential essay titled The Methodology of Positive Economics, where he puts forward what he thinks is the right methodological approach to economics. According to Friedman, the assumptions on which a theory rests don’t have to be realistic: as long as they are “sufficiently good approximations for the purpose in hand” (which is to make accurate predictions), the theory is valid and useful to analyze the world. Let’s draw upon an example to better understand what he meant. We are all familiar with the theory of perfect competition, which is based on…

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Commentary: College Professor Debunks 4 Common Capitalism Myths He Hears from Students Every Day

by James Davenport   One of the most disappointing things I face as a college professor is the lack of understanding most students have regarding capitalism. The simple fact is, despite its importance to our daily lives, relatively few people have a strong grasp of what causes economic growth and why markets are so central to continuously rising standards of living. In my teaching, I have encountered several myths or misperceptions about capitalism from students as well as individuals outside the classroom. Dispelling these myths has become a focus of much of my teaching. Myth #1: Capitalism Was “Created” One of the most pervasive misunderstandings about capitalism is the idea that it was created by someone. Some of this can be attributed to the language used to describe Adam Smith’s role in explaining the market process. The common reference to Smith as “the father of modern economics” can lead people to assume that he in some way created the market system. It is also not unreasonable to conclude that, since socialism is generally reliant on planning, many would assume that capitalism is as well. However, as Friedrich Hayek explained, the market system is not really “created” as much as it is…

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