The President and First Lady are taking on an initiative to address barriers keeping 62 million women around the world from getting an education. Given the tragic attack on Istanbul recently, it is more imperative than ever to stop terrorism before it starts. That means giving women a meaningful education and future so that they do not succumb to the nihilistic propaganda that ISIS offers. Ms. Obama flew to Africa and Spain in furtherance of these initiatives.
The Free Beacon, of course, whined that her trip cost taxpayers $600,000, while Breitbart reported that she participated in the breaking of the Ramadan Fast while in Morocco, implying, of course, that she and the President are Muslim. But I submit that is money well-spent. The Republican Party and Donald Trump like to talk awfully tough about terrorism. But when it comes to actually trying to prevent it from happening and changing the attitudes that lead to it, they do absolutely nothing.
Meanwhile, the rest of us living in the real world know that Michelle’s trip received rave reviews such as this:
Michelle looked stunning in a brightly patterned sleeveless dress, showing off her well-toned arms. She wore minimal makeup and her hair was parted down the middle.
Michelle, of course, did not come just to put on a fashion show at our expense.
The 52-year-old announced that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is dedicating up to $27 million to educational programs in Liberia, as well as expanding the “Let Girls Learn” Peace Corps Program.
In Morocco, she launched a $100 million girls fund.
US First Lady Michelle Obama launched a $100 million aid package in Morocco Tuesday to promote the education of girls in a country where half of females over 15 are illiterate.
Visiting Marakech with actresses Meryl Streep and Frieda Pinto of the "Slumdog Millionaire" film, she told girls in attendance she wanted them to be part of a global conversation on female education.
"We want to share this conversation with young girls around the world, particularly in the United States," she said.
These are initiatives that the governments are welcoming, since it helps promote stability in their societies. In Spain:
Significant media attention will be devoted to her activities on Thursday, when she is scheduled to visit a central Madrid neighborhood to present her “Let Girls Learn” project to some 500 female students of all ages, who will listen to her recount experiences from some of her world travels and lobby for providing an education to some 62 million gradeschool girls and teens around the world who currently prohibited by local laws and customs from attending school.
If Michelle Obama can inspire so many young girls around the world to reach for the stars, how much more will Hillary Clinton be able to do once she becomes the next President of the United States? While the US is reaching out to the rest of the world in an effort to build peace and goodwill, Donald Trump’s “solution” to “Make America Great” is to return to the failed policies of Herbert Hoover and shut us off from the rest of the world.
We tried things Donald Trump’s way once. While there were many other factors contributing to the Great Depression, one of the biggest factors was Herbert Hoover’s signing of the Smoot-Hawley bill, which completely gutted the US economy.
In early May 1930 1,028 leading American economists presented President Hoover, Senator Smoot and Congressman Hawley with a letter urging Hoover to veto the bill if it passed Congress. (The organizer of the letter was Dr. Claire Wilcox, my economics professor in college.) The economists argued that the tariff increases would raise the cost of living, limit our exports as other countries retaliated, injure U.S. investors since the high tariffs would make it harder for foreign debtors to repay their loans, and damage our foreign relations. Unfortunately, this is what happened.
Jude Wanniski argues that the stock market crash itself was heavily affected by Smoot-Hawley, even though the start of the market’s collapse preceded the signing by some eight months. Wanniski argues that “the stock market started anticipating the act as early as December 1928” and it fell over the next year as the legislation to raise tariffs looked likely to pass and rose when it seemed the legislation might fail.
Some economists argue that the Smoot-Hawley tariff act may have been a very bad idea but that it did not cause the Great Depression. They point out that exports only accounted for some seven percent of the U.S. gross national product in 1929 and the decline in U.S. exports in the ensuing years may have been caused by the depression itself and not solely by tariff retaliation. Some note that the U.S. had also enormously raised tariffs in 1922 and that this did not cause a depression.
Those who blame Smoot-Hawley counter that the drop in exports was significant. From 1929 to 1933 American exports declined from about $5.2 billion to $1.7 billion, and the impact was concentrated on agricultural products such as wheat, cotton and tobacco. As a result, many American farmers defaulted on their loans, which in turn particularly affected small rural banks.
Today, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs represent a cautionary tale. Regardless of whether they were the major cause of the Great Depression or not, they definitely were a truly terrible idea. In today’s world where Central Banks have been pumping out liquidity and inflating stocks, similar to the case in the 1920s, we must hope that we don’t repeat the mistake of Smoot-Hawley.
While President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and the Democrats would open us up to the rest of the world, Donald Trump would repeat the mistake of Herbert Hoover and shut us off from the rest of the world. Herbert Hoover’s signing of the Smoot-Hawley bill made the Great Depression much longer than it should have been and contributed to the rise of Hitler, since it negatively affected our relations with the rest of the world.
And, of course, for publications like Breitbart and Free Beacon, the well-being of women doesn’t matter. This conveniently ignores the fact that when women are shut out of the process, war is the logical consequence.