• Why I Read The American Conservative (TAC) By Richard C. Young
• VIDEO: Will Credit Rating Agencies #FeeltheBern? By E.J. Smith
• A Tale of Two Cities and Clinton’s Dishonest Outrage By Debbie Young
• That $100 Billion for Iran? By Richard C. Young
• “13 Hours” and Hillary Clinton’s Complicity By Debbie Young
• Freedom or Free Stuff? By Richard C. Young
• Is Your State a Tax Hell? By E.J. Smith
• Surging John Kasich and Realist James Baker By Richard C. Young

I am head of global investment strategy for Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., chairman of richardcyoung.com, and editor of Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report . In my daily search for fresh, provocative wisdom, I rely on a network of old-line, trusted resources. At the top of my list is The American Conservative, published by my friend and long-time Cato Institute-supporter Jon Basil Utley. I am always searching for hot-off-the-press insights released by TAC editors, founding editors, and friends. Here I am referring to Daniel Larison, Rob Dreher, Pat Buchanan, Taki Theodoracopulos, Scott McConnell, Noah Millman, and Jon Basil Utley himself.

In a recent letter, TAC reminded supporters: “For the first time in many years, our principles—federalism, decentralized political power, fiscal responsibility, a foreign policy of prudence, respect for traditional liberties and communities—are waxing. A door has opened for traditional conservatives to do real damage to the reigning big government/interventionist consensus—the consensus that is always in favor of another war, more spending, taking away civil liberties, and ignoring the constitution.”

I regularly share the insights of TAC’s experts with my readers at richardcyoung.com. Below are some examples of what I have posted that will allow you to understand the esteem in which I hold TAC. My hope is that you will pass the word on to friends and associates. And like Dick Young, I hope you will become a supporter of America’s leader in “conservative realism and restraint” at The American Conservative.

Warm Regards,

Dick

• Jon: The military maintains some 4,000 bases inside the U.S. and 1,000 overseas with personnel in 140 nations; many installations have fewer than 100 troops. Many are simply tripwires filled with potential hostages so as to get America involved in new conflicts and wars. …  Weaponry is the greatest money sink of all. Weapons are designed to be built in key congressional districts, not to be the most efficient or cost effective, as during the Second World War. … Half of defense manufacturing workers are unionized, many with outdated work rules and few of the efficiencies instituted by competitive private industry.

• Scott: Hillary Clinton facilitated the rise of former Cheney aide (and wife of neocon strategist Robert Kagan) Victoria Nuland to the most powerful European post in the State Department. Obama had to placate Hillary, and the country looked the other way while Nuland pulled the levers to foment an anti-Russian coup in Kiev. Without this bit of caprice, would we be in the present showdown?

• Pat: Sanders and Trump both opposed the war in Iraq that the Bush Republicans and Clinton Democrats supported. Both Sanders and Trump oppose NAFTA and MFN for China and the free-trade deals that Clinton Democrats and Bush Republicans backed, which have cost us thousands of lost factories, millions of lost jobs and four decades of lost wage increases for Middle America. Trump has taken the toughest line on the invasion across the U.S.-Mexican border and against Muslim refugees entering unvetted. Immigration, securing the border, fair trade—Trump’s issues are the issues of 2016.

• Daniel: On the campaign trail, Marco Rubio is calling for a “new American century.” He’s also running a different type of campaign, one that eschews spending on policy staffers, field operations, and other traditional aspects of a winning bid in favor of television advertising and digital outreach.

• Pat: In the Middle East, where the crucial Western interest is oil, and every nation—Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Libya—has to sell it to survive—no nation should be able to drag us into a war not of our own choosing. In cases where we share a common enemy, we should follow the wise counsel of the Founding Fathers and entrust our security, if need be, to “temporary” but not “permanent “or “entangling alliances.” Moreover, given the myriad religious, national and tribal divisions between the nations of the Middle East, and within many of them, we should continue in the footsteps of our fathers, who kept us out of such wars when they bedeviled the European continent of the 19^th.

From Cato: Bernie Sanders wants to turn credit raters into nonprofits.

During the last Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton told the audience of her “outrage by what’s happening in Flint, Michigan.”

“Mrs. Clinton,” writes Jason L. Riley in the WSJ, “sees this as a crisis worthy of political exploitation because Flint is an impoverished majority-black city in a state with a white Republican governor.”

To appreciate the opportunistic nature of the former secretary of state’s indignation, compare it to her response Sunday morning when asked on “Meet the Press” about the 2014 death of Laquan McDonald in Chicago. The city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is facing questions over whether his administration covered up details of the police shooting last year to help him win re-election. The city hid from public view a dashcam recording of the incident that contradicted the police’s version of events. If released, it likely would have cost the mayor black support that he needed to win. The Justice Department is investigating.

When Mrs. Clinton was asked if Mr. Emanuel, a top aide in her husband’s administration, still had enough credibility to lead the city, she demurred. “That’s going to be up to him and up to the people of Chicago to prove,” she said. Calling out a Republican governor is more useful to Mrs. Clinton than is calling out the Democratic mayor of the president’s hometown. Her concern is not the plight of poor blacks in general but the plight of those blacks best situated to help her win the White House. In Michigan, the governor needs to be held accountable. In Chicago, the mayor gets a pass.

It’s pretty clear that Hillary is playing the race card. Her election mantra is that Democrats will give blacks a $15 minimum wage and free health care. And what will Republicans give? Voter ID laws and contaminated water. 

VIDEO: Clinton Dodges On Whether Rahm Emanuel Should Resign

Is the $100 billion “nuclear deal” foreign aid? No, the money is already Iran’s money. It simply has been freed up with expiration of sanctions.

Pat Buchanan writes,

Iran’s accusers should produce their evidence, if any, that Iran had, or still has, a nuclear bomb program. Otherwise, they should shut up with the lying and goading the U.S. into another war that will leave us with another trillion-dollar debt, ashes in our mouths and thousands more dead and wounded warriors.

Iran’s regime seems to have concluded that the path to power and permanence of the regime lies not in conflict with the United States, but in avoiding conflict—and taking the China road.

President Hassan Rouhani … described his triumph to the Iranian parliament: “All are happy except Zionists, warmongers, sowers of discord among extremists in the U.S. The rest are happy.”

FLASHBACK: Pat Buchanan DESTROYS Hannity Over Iran Deal

Had the Obama administration been straightforward and told the American people the truth about Benghazi, Benghazi would not be political hot potato it now is. “But with the 2012 presidential vote less than two months away, the White House tried to displace reality with the preposterous YouTube story,” writes Daniel Henninger in the WSJ.

But the only reason there is political controversy about Benghazi is that the Obama administration persisted in the false story that a YouTube video caused a spontaneous assault on the consulate. In fact, President Obama built his Sept. 25 speech to the U.N. around Chris Stevens’s death, citing the video six times.

And one other, impossible-to-flinch conclusion: There ought to be a political reckoning over this with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, her emails revealed, was complicit in a White House concoction she knew the night of the attack was untrue. She is now asking the American people to let her succeed Mr. Obama into the White House. Benghazi is toward the top of the list of reasons they should say “no.”

Official 13 Hours Trailer:

Americans need to understand, early in the presidential season, that Bernie Sanders is a philosophically linked cousin of Karl Marx. You know, the father of the Communist Manifesto. The old Soviet Union is a storybook model of Communism/Marxism. How did that all work out? Americans need to know that Sanders wants to take control of America’s corporate sector as run by the likes of job creators Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison and instead allow the federal government to control the means of production. Comrade Sanders is thinking a 70% or higher upper income tax bracket, the end of the medical insurance industry, and $15/hour minimum wage. Wal-Mart would be out of business.

America’s small business owners, along with the business titans noted above, create the majority of income-earning jobs for Americans. And not a single job creator in America would buy into the Sanders/Marxist delusions above. Sanders would take a wrecking ball to America. And the real danger is that Sanders appears to be completely devoid of any historical perspective or even basic Economics 101 knowledge. One wonders if Sanders even knows that Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong are 21^st Century All Stars of how to run a competitive international jobs creating machine.

Has America sunk so low that she is offering voters a world-class liar or a Marxist as the probable finalists for one of our two major parties?

On the other side of the coin, the presidential candidate with the clearest understanding of how a free economy should work, Rand Paul, has been totally marginalized. None of the other Republican candidates come even close to Rand Paul. Scared yet?

Then there is Mr. Trump…

Related video:

Is your state a tax hell? Some states pile on the tax burden, adding double digit percentage demands on top of their residents’ federal tax loads. New York, unsurprisingly, takes the cake with a 12.7% tax burden. Some of the other leading states may surprise you with their heavy toll.

The Tax Foundation writes:

Tax burdens go beyond tax collections. Taxpayers pay state and local taxes to their own state of residence, but also pay taxes to other state and local governments. For instance, when a family takes a vacation to Disney World, it pays a variety of taxes to Florida. The family might encounter taxes on hotel rooms, rental cars, food, and many other things. They pay taxes in Florida, but the actual burden of the tax resides back in their home state such as Indiana. Understanding how states shift taxes across state lines is a valuable component of state tax discussions.

For fiscal year 2012, 9.9 percent of personal income went to state and local tax payments. This is down from 10.1 percent fiscal year 2011. Average income increased at a faster rate than tax collections, driving down state-local tax burdens on average.

New Yorkers faced the highest burden, with 12.7% of income in the state going to state and local taxes. Connecticut (12.6%) and New Jersey (12.2%) followed closely behind. On the other end of the spectrum, Alaska (6.5%), South Dakota (7.1%) and Wyoming (7.1%) had the lowest burdens.

On average, taxpayers pay the most taxes to their own state and local governments. In 2012, 78 percent of taxes collected were paid within the state of residence, up from 73 percent in 2011.

State-local tax burdens are very close to one another and slight changes in taxes or income can translate to seemingly dramatic shifts in rank. For example, Delaware (16th) and Colorado (35th) only differ in burden by just over one percentage point. However, while burdens are clustered in the center of the distribution, states at the top and bottom can have substantially different burden percentages—e.g. New York (12.6%) and Alaska (6.5%).

FLASHBACK VIDEO: Scott Hodge Compares State Tax Burdens

Writing in The American Conservative, Scott McConnell tells readers that near the end of a recent event John Kasich was asked who he considered a good secretary of state. Kasich answered Jim Baker.

Scott continues, “Naturally I wondered whether Kasich was really up to date on the symbolic meaning of Jim Baker’s name in Republican foreign policy circles. Baker, who held up loans to Israel that were being used for West Bank settlement expansion, who doubted whether the Israelis were interested in a compromise peace. Baker, the demon figure of the neoconservative imagination, the figure who represented what was most wrong with the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Baker, who for the GOP’s remaining realists, was the symbol—along with Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft—of how a Republican president could be practical and tough-minded in defense of American interests without inflaming the world with futile military interventions… Baker, whose mere appearance on Jeb Bush’s foreign-policy advisory panel reportedly incited a Sheldon Adelson temper tantrum.”