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Published January 26, 2017
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.
SENATE SPENDING BILL FOR BORDER CRISIS INCLUDES FUNDS FOR WILDFIRES, ISRAEL
GARY B SMITH: I'm surprised they didn't throw in the old chestnuts like highway spending, food stamps, Medicare, and education spending, the mom and apple pie stuff that people would be voted against if they didn't support it. First of all, each of these bills should be voted on separately. They're all separate issues with separate debates back and forth. It's other peoples' money that the government is so good at spending without anyone really ever having a say.
CHUCK ROCHA: I think you can't plan for emergencies and I think things happen. I think that these lazy guys have about 5-6 more days to work before they take a month off because they've been really working hard and they're trying to group things together. The wildfires need to be addressed. The situation overseas needs to be addressed. And you couple that together with what's been going on the border with these children, America doesn't turn their back on these children.
TRACY BYRNES: My words for this are political trickery and the American people should know. There's nothing in this about immigration reform and we're using the wildfires, the soft spot, to pass more money through. It's $2.7 billion for what we don't know, just to get it through. And they're tugging at the heart strings of the American people for their own political gain.
JONAS MAX FERRIS: Are any of these really out of the blue? I think we have wildfires every drought season in these states. And I believe the illegal immigration problem has been going on for many decades at this point and the Middle East tends to have a lot of fighting going on that requires defense spending. I think all of these emergency solutions in our spending bill do need spending that could be tied to revenue models or put into perhaps a disaster fund.
JOHN LAYFIELD: All Congress wants to do is go home for five weeks. They want to go on vacation with all of these problems and be able to say to their constituents at the speeches they're going to give that they gave some money to Israel, we dealt with the wildfires, and we also dealt with the immigration. If I were the president I would stand at Capitol Hill and I would do a press conference until those guys came back; except for the fact of course that our president would rather be at fundraisers, golfing, or on vacation himself.
TEACHERS UNION LAUNCHES DOOR-TO-DOOR BUTZ TO ELECT DEMOCRATS IN NOVEMBER
JOHN LAYFIELD: If you have a person show up at your door and they tell you they are with a political party, you will have them thrown off your doorstep and then you will fumigate your house to get rid of the stench from the politics. But if you have a great teacher show up at your door, you tend to listen to that person. That is what the Democrats are trying to do to keep their unions in power, but instead of having your school teachers prepare for the next school season. We are ranked now 30th in math out of 65 ranked countries and we keep going lower. These unions have significantly hurt our education system. As long as unions stay in power, I think this is a massive conflict of interest.
CHUCK ROCHA: In 2010, all these Republican governors got swept into office with the Republican wave of 2010. These Republican governors who came into office when after we had the teacher unions who tried to beat him at that, the first thing they did was try to do away with collective bargaining, do limitations, etc. So now this is repercussions and it's smart politically, whether you agree with it or you don't agree with it. Everybody on this program, if you had an opportunity to elect your boss, you would. So these bosses, labor unions, and these teachers are trying to elect a Democrat to the governor who will be more sympathetic to their reasoning when they go to the collective bargaining table with the state legislature.
GARY B SMITH: I am shocked but I agree with Chuck. I think the strategy is brilliant. John laid it out. If you had a politician knock on your door, you throw them out but if it's a teacher who may have had your kid two years back, you let them in. Look they're on their own time; they pay their dues to the union. I think it's going to backfire by the way though.
TRACY BYRNES: I really think they should stay so far away from this because they of all teachers out there should be demanding performance pay, demanding tenure be abolished for the sake of their own jobs and own future. Truthfully for the sake of our kids, all that would help at the end of the day. John talked about how we are so far behind educationally in this country and I think that is a great place to start.
JONAS MAX FERRIS: You can make the case that doing national an election isn't such a great use because teachers' pay packages are really more of a local thing. I will say what better use of union when you're trying to get better pay packages for your teachers. I think it's very effective and even better for unions to do if their goal is to drive up a compensation package to their beneficiaries, which is what it is.
VERIZON LAUNCHES REWARDS PROGRAM; USERS MUST CONSENT TO "TRACKING"
TRACY BYRNES: This is so freaky to me. The only one that should be tracking my children is me, not Verizon who I happen to have a cellphone service with. I think it's awful that they can actually do this and anyone who agrees to it is kind of blowing my mind. You're willing to get freebees to give up your privacy to get free stuff; it's crazy.
GARY B SMITH: I think it's a great business strategy. Verizon obviously wants its data and they'll obviously use it for evil, corporate things but with that said, you can opt out! People are free to decide and I think it's smart of Verizon to do this.
JONAS MAX FERRIS: It's brilliant and it's the future. For all the noise of the privacy thing, you throw in a $10 cable credit and everybody will wire their house with cameras. The consumer gets really noisy about this until there's a discount or something you get as a reward.
CHUCK ROCHA: I don't always like for my girlfriend to know where I am but she always seems to find out. I say, I opted out and she says I opted in. So the way I look at is that they're going to know where you are anyway, it's just a tool to cover themselves. Now from a political perspective, if Verizon was to get all this data, a political operative like me would love to know where they shop because that helps with the communications but does get a little creepy.
JOHN LAYFIELD: Move into a cave if you don't want to be tracked. People like Facebook; they like the search engines and you think that's free but it's not free. They track everything you do. If you like it, opt in and if not, opt out.
PREDICITIONS
GARY B SMITH: LOVE PARIS HILTON, BUT BUY (MCD) FOR A SIZZLING 40 percent PROFIT IN 1 YEAR
JOHN LAYFIELD: VISA GIVES GLOOMY SHORT-TERM ECONOMIC OUTLOOK; (AXP) CHARGES UP 20 percent IN 1 YEAR
JONAS MAX FERRIS: SLOWING DOWN "DATA HOGS" HAS (VZ) RETURNING 10 percent GAINS IN 1 YEAR
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/senate-bill-for-illegals-includes-cash-for-wildfires-israel