DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING "Cost of Freedom Recap" CONTAINS STRONG OPINIONS WHICH ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF THE OPINIONS OF FOX NEWS AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS INVESTMENT ADVICE WHEN MAKING PERSONAL INVESTMENT DECISIONS. IT IS FOX NEWS' POLICY THAT CONTRIBUTORS DISCLOSE POSITIONS THEY HOLD IN STOCKS THEY DISCUSS, THOUGH POSITIONS MAY CHANGE. READERS OF "Cost of Freedom Recap" MUST TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN INVESTMENT DECISIONS.
Civility vs. Competence
John Tamny: Well, I want the opposite competence, and i want these guys constantly at each other's throats. When politicians are working in harmony, that means that we see our freedoms reduced, and we see the size of government grow in ways that zap the economy's vitality. This notion of bipartisanship is a good thing. It's vastly overrated. Gridlock equals growth.
Bruce Japsen: I would say civility because when you have the situations -- some of these guys don't even go out for drinks or dinner with each other anymore, and so they're not getting anything done. Either good or bad. You know, alcohol is the root of –
Elizabeth Macdonald: You know, listen. Even the Founding Fathers were known for their verbal savagery. George Washington was called a treacherous hypocrite. They were courageous. They were brave. They didn't back down. They stood up for what was right.
Sabrina Schaeffer: The lack of civility is tremendously concerning now. I don't knowing there's ever been a golden age of political civility. There's plenty of hostility in congress, and all sorts of things. The reality is that we do need people to get along. This is not a one-party town. I don't think we want that bipartisanship that you are upset about, but i think we need to be able to come together on important issues.
Rich Karlgaard: Well, look, board member Tom Perkins wrote a letter in Carly's defense, so, you know, and he was there sitting right -- had a front row to the whole thing. I think we need competence. Kip Weinberger and George Schultz in Reagan's administration used to argue behind closed doors all the time. They hashed it out.
Steve Forbes: Well, they did, and the fact of the matter is Reagan showed you can have civility and competence. They're not mutually exclusive. He got big things done. Even though he was nice about it. Stock prices of all high end companies crashed during that period of time, and some have never come back leak stock prices like cisco, even though the companies were owned.
HILLARY CLINTON: WE'LL HAVE HALF A BILLION MORE
SOLAR PANELS BY THE END OF MY FIRST TERM
Steve Forbes : We saw this in the 1970s, David. This war on police when you didn't have a sense of safety, economies don't thrive. The first task of government is security from our enemies outside, and from criminals within our borders. The government has not been able to do that or doing it less and less because of this war on police. The former commissioner, police commissioner under Michael Bloomberg has come out with a searing tough quote about how New York is backsliding because we're not doing what worked in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Bruce Japsen: I think when you have is a situation if it is a war against police. We have issues going on in this country, including the mental health crisis. In the 1990s it's more about federal dollars, other dollars, and crime statistics went down, and there's a bill in the congress right now about increasing community policing grants for cities and states. I think it should be looked at. I hope the presidential candidates are talking about it.
Rich Karlgaard: The Democratic Party is basically siding with the people who want to declaw the police. You know, if you are a Democratic candidate today, you can't even say that all lives matter. That's considered racist. You can't talk about black on black crime. We have a real vacuum of leadership here.
John Tamny: One of the solutions to this is to end the drug war. It's been a miserable failure, and it's forced police departments to put a lot of resources towards fighting it rather than protecting people from real criminals.
Elizabeth Macdonald: The broken windows, meaning that you can stop little crime, and that saves the minority lives. When you stop crime from spreading. We saw that, you know, over the last decades. We saw crime plummeting when those measures are put in place. By the way, that keeps businesses in place.
John Tamny: Part of the problem, David, is that if you look at the cities where you have had long trends in rising homicide rates like, let's say, Michigan, Detroit, and flint, you go to Missouri, St. Louis, and Jackson, you also have long population declines. What happens is the people who have the money and can afford to, they leave. The people without the money, many of which in those cities were minorities, they stay, and they suffer.
Steve Forbes: It's a throwback to the 1980s and 1990s. We know what works for the republicans. Take off the handcuffs and stop these insidious attacks. It starts with the white house. Always victims of the police. Never victims of crime.
NORTH DAKOTA ALLOWING POLICE TO USE DRONES ARMED WITH NON-LETHAL WEAPONS
Elizabeth Macdonald: It's time for change. In fact, there are 55,000 students in Illinois who are in charter schools. Full disclosure, my beloved god daughter is the vice principal of a charter school in Harlem. You know, minority families want charter schools. In Harlem, the Bronx, and the most desperate neighborhoods in Illinois. They want them. Across the board test scores have gone up, and, by the way, these are not private schools. These are public schools that are funded by nonprofit.
Bruce Japsen: It is true. There are a lot of problems and my family from outside of the area, you don't have enough liquor in your liquor cabinet or time on your hands. It's not just a union issue. We have had four or five superintendents here in the last ten years, and we just -- the most recent superintendent was kicking millions of dollars to a principal education program. Mayor Daley, before that, was losing two schools rather than forcing the mayor to close them all at once.
Rich Karlgaard: It's how you get rid of the incompetent teachers. What i really encourage is there are more and more success examples of charter schools. The most recent being the extraordinary comeback of New Orleans schools.
Steve Forbes: Well, you also have a great experiment under way in Nevada if they don't use something there. They have educational savings accounts. Every parent $5,000 or more. They can choose which school their kid goes to no matter what. Or even pick specific courses outside the school to help their kids. That's the way to go. Free markets work in education.
Bruce Japsen: I agree with Mike. I think they have enough ways to fight crime and some of them aren't even doing that very well. If Barney Fife only needed one bullet in rural America, that's all they need.
Mike Ozanian: in competition is how you make every industry more efficient, whether it be schools, clothing, or food. It doesn't matter. You know, the hypocrisy here is that many of these public schools that don't want competition from charter schools are the same places where you have to compete to make the basketball team or the soccer team or whatever.
Sabrina Schaeffer: Look, i am solidly in the camp for educational freedom. I visited with a number of them. I do have a concern over charter schools, and that is that it's only reforming public sector education. These are public schools. One of the drawbacks is they actually a lot of times pull students from private schools and ultimately there's less competition, less diversity of educational options. We have to consider these different ways of solving educational freedom problems.
STOCK PICKS
Elizabeth MacDonald: Quest Diagnostics
John Tamney: Houlihan Lokey
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