We don’t have royal weddings in America; our spectacle is Congress grilling business executives. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg appeared earlier in the year, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai is scheduled for this week.

When tiny Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook sat on a cushion to testify on privacy before the Senate, his condescension was palpable. First, the 75-year-old senators had no idea how to even access their iTunes password and should not have been the ones questioning him. Second, by day two Zuckerberg was so confident he was not going to be punished that he intimidated some senators by mentioning their favorite pets, mothers’ maiden names and where they met their spouses.

The concern Americans have is that we let a few leftist companies control the algorithms that determine what information we get. If this outcome is bad for those tech titans, better Google it now while you can.

I am a free-market libertarian, and I never advocate for more regulation — mainly because it doesn’t work, especially when it is done by government (which I trust only one-tenth as much as I trust business).

If you study history, you find that our nation’s biggest financial problems stemmed from highly regulated areas: the mortgage crisis, bank bailouts, federal deficits, the Great Depression, Smoot-Hawley/tariffs, wars of choice, Dodd-Frank, ObamaCare, etc. And soon, student loans.

All financial calamities happen because government’s grifting hands of regulation are on them. And government is supposed to “protect” us?

That said, the public must know that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter (stocks I own) have undermined conservative thought and promoted leftist values in very nefarious ways.

Tucker Carlson, the best anchor on TV, has talked about this issue and tried to square it with his libertarian sensibilities. It’s tough. But public shaming and good reporting, not regulation, are the best fix. Government is never the solution unless the question is, “How do we make things worse and more expensive?”

When I was young there was no Twitter or Facebook. Someone in Columbia, TN had to drive out in the country, then a mile down a chert road to my house to call me an idiot to my face.

We live in a world now where Twitter has blurred the difference between the Town Crier and the town drunk.

Google terminated the employment of an engineer for writing a thoughtful (but un-PC) piece on the differences between women and men. But the truth is, we are different. Men commit 91 percent of all homicides, a huge gender gap. So if women ever expect to be equal to men, they really need to get better at killing.

Google has a 90 percent percent market share in search advertising, a virtual monopoly. You know where to hide the body of someone you killed? On the second page of a Bing or Yahoo search page. The #1 search on Bing is “Google.”

Google, Twitter, Facebook, and now Amazon (which owns The Washington Post) have inordinate sway over what people see and read, and they manipulate everything to fit their arrogant, left-coast-bubble view of the rest of us.

The “Big Three” control content so well that even when I asked Google, “Is Google or Facebook a monopoly with a leftist agenda?” to research this column, I was directed to some adorable cat videos which I enjoyed for hours.

It’s creepy what Google does with your information. I searched one time for a Porsche online and started getting solicitation emails for Cialis.

The hypocritical thing about all this is that liberal politicians, who are anti-big business, love breaking up monopolies. But because Google, Facebook and Twitter manipulate information to help Democrats, they look the other way. Talk about intellectual dishonesty.

Technology moves fast. Conservatives should fight their instincts to try to regulate or censor the Internet. Perhaps the best solution is a Fox News-like business that takes on the left’s bias in the free market. If Twitter and Google are censoring content to fit their liberal narratives, it would not be hard to fund a competitor. Peter Thiel or others could do it. I’d invest.

In Europe, citizens can better control their personal information to remain anonymous on Google. Lawyers for Google went to the International Court of Justice to fight this movement. The Court said there is a right to be forgotten. Not a bad idea; it has done wonders for Anthony Weiner.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Google CEO is the next Silicon Valley oligarch grilled by Congress

For something to be funny there has to be truth in it. So it is with the new board game that is flying off the shelves, Monopoly for Millennials. It will be fun for all the entitled hipsters in your family. It is replete with ninth place trophies and, of course, they do not own real estate, so the best case would be that their parents get them a bigger basement apartment. 

If you are not positive who millennials are, they are the young folks who never use the word "millennial." For these 22- to 36-year-olds, it has become a pejorative word of their own making. 

To define this generation, there have been disconcerting polls taken by millennials. One thousand millennials took the polls, and only five hundred finished them. But all 1,000 of the millennials' parents took them out to dinner and bought them something nice for trying. 

Troubling information has come from these recent polls. Millennials are on average $42,000 in debt, mostly government student loan debt for degrees in inane majors from indoctrination institutions, not educational institutions. Strapped with this debt, they do not take risks, start families or buy homes like previous generations; had they done these things at the same pace as two earlier generations, 3.7 million more millennials would own their own homes now. 

When these kids do not date (which is the leading cause of marriage), it does not bode well for society. Throw in the #MeToo movement, and men are scared to death to make any contact with women except over the Internet. With Tinder and other hook-up sites, men get their "friends with benefits" needs taken care of. Young women presumably have friends with batteries. 

Either way, relationships and children are not what this generation wants. They do enjoy sex, but it pales compared to the jubilation of the test coming back as "Not Your DNA" on the Maury Povich Show. 

Gallup polls also showed that 51% of Americans under age 30 have positive views of socialism. This is a problem resulting from years of Obama, "Fauxcahontas" Warren and that millennial heartthrob, Bernie Sanders, who appeals to 22- to 36- year-olds because all of his suits are that age.  And 29-year-old Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embodies the millennials' naïve thinking on economics. She does not believe in free speech, just free health care. They think socialism's great free offerings are education, medicine and health care. Yet they are never taught history's great lesson: socialism's three great failures always end up being breakfast, lunch and dinner.  

Their logic would conclude that, if socialism is good, capitalism is bad. Capitalism is the way their parents and grandparents got the money to support them. One of the Monopoly game pieces is "Rich Uncle Pennybags," who gives millennials money so they can have "experiences." The hipsters then can use the money to meditate at a retreat in Arizona or be the first to discover a new vegan bistro. 

The wildly popular Millennial Monopoly game was initially priced at $20, but you cannot even find it at Wal-Mart now for less than $75. This might actually be a good lesson in supply and demand economics for millennials and might get them interested in business. If they spent more time creating the supply in business that meets a demand, they might not be so broke.

Millennials prefer weed to cocaine and cats to dogs. They dislike cocaine because  they cannot see their image in the mirror when they do a line. They prefer cats to dogs because a cat will not lead the police to where you hide your weed. 

So far, their contributions to society seem to be craft beer and avocado toast.

Craft beers are those expensive, warm and syrupy beers with stupidly cute names like "Hoppy Ending Pale Ale," "Audrey Hopburn," " Pathological Lager," or "Citra Ass Down." My generation didn’t have cute names for drinking. We had serious and simple names like bourbon, beer and cirrhosis of the liver. 

Millennials drink a lot because of all their spare time. The national Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence says there are twenty million functioning millennial alcoholics, which also helps explain the alarming rise in karaoke bars.  

So for Christmas, millennials, do not buy your parents a six-pack of craft beer.  Buy them a big bottle of bourbon — because you are why they drink.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Hasbro Makes Monopoly Game for Millennials

Soviet Marxist leader Joseph Stalin's infamous boast about elections was "It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes."

No group knows that better than today’s power-hungry Democrats, especially in Broward County, Florida. They do not want to have substantive debates on issues; they would rather paint the other side as evil. Once you label the other side as “evil,” you can justify anything you do: the Justice Kavanaugh slander or vote fabrication in South Florida when there is a close race.

So if you voted in these politically divided times, you are either a socialist or a bigot.

If Russians saw the way the media divides us or watched an American try to work the scanner at the grocery store automatic checkout line, they would never spend another $100k on divisive Facebook ads. Our country is divided and falling apart faster than Kavanaugh accusers’ stories.

The good news is that since the mid-term elections ended, cable news can go back to its normal ads instead of these perpetual political ads. Fox will resume selling My Pillow, catheters and gold, and CNN can crank back up on T-Mobile and those Alanis Morissette "save a wounded dog" ads. Fox plays to scared old people with gold, and CNN knows its viewers can only afford T-Mobile.  And, since they feel more than they think, those viewers are the lawful prey of any group raising money that shows a picture of a dog being mistreated.

After the Florida election ended the new Democrat Party "found" 93,000 ballots, which included the registered Parkland High School shooter (currently incarcerated). They are resourceful.

It looks like Dems will not be able to manufacture enough votes for Senator Bill Nelson (who looks like a 700 Club preacher who got his plastic surgery at Sam’s Club), to win.

A second tenet of the Stalinist playbook Dems believe is what Stalin’s ruthless secret police head, Lavrentiy Beria, said and universally employed toward political opponents:  “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” That explains the Russian collusion probe (based on a false Hillary/DNC dossier), and the Kavanaugh concocted sexual misconduct stories, a product of an orchestrated leftist smear campaign.

Dems may not win elections, but they can take solace in the fact that they caused Special Prosecutor Mueller to spend 40 million of our tax dollars to send Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos to prison for 14 days.

Last, in the Soviet Union fascists and Stalinists controlled the media and the education system and thus the narrative, like the Dems do in America. Consider the watchers of news:

Conservative news viewers average:

• Fox/FNC: 2.1 million 
• Liberal sources of “news” viewers:
• NBC, ABC and CBS:  5.6 million
• NBC, ABC and CBS morning news: 3 million
• NBC, ABC and CBS Sunday morning news shows: 2 million
• PBS: 1 million
• Cable News:
• CNN:    1 million
• MSNBC: 1.7 million

So while Fox News is number one on cable, the right-of- center media they represent are only about 10% of the overall media Americans watch. 90% of media is controlled by the left.

Plus, the left controls the visceral anti-right content on Comedy Central, movies, TV shows and late-night shows. Ditto for Google, Facebook and Twitter.  And then there are newspapers. Even in the South, liberal editorial boards endorsed every Democrat candidate for office from Jefferson Davis to George Wallace.

How much damage is done when liberals control of 90 % of the narrative? They hide facts and they lie. I’m surprised conservatives ever win at all.

It is also not a surprise that Republicans finally found someone in Donald Trump, indelicate and bombastic as he is, to fight back against the underhanded tactics of the left. For too long the media and the courts have bullied the likes of gentlemen such as George Bush and Mitt Romney.

Even when out of power because the voters distrust their tactics and lack of workable ideas, the Democrats (“The Resistance,” as they like to heroically call themselves) control media, education, courts, minority voters, and voter return tabulation manufacturing plants like Broward County, FL. And just try getting a decent hair dye job by anyone other than a Democrat.

Now that they will finally have the House back (apparently democracy does work when they win), Dems say they "want to work" with Trump — much in the same way Saudi Embassy thugs worked with dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi with their bone saws.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Even out of power, democrats control a lot with Saul Alinsky tactics

When President Trump stopped for a rally in Chattanooga, TN, one of the papers that carries my column got me press passes to go. So, in order to better understand this slice of Americana, I went. It was fun being in the press cesspool during the rally, with Trump pointing at us and calling us "Fake Media."  Although our roots are in England, getting a nickname from Trump is the closest thing we have in America to being knighted.

The crowd was huge; thousands could not get in and waited outside in the rain to hear his speech, blasted to them on a loudspeaker. The crowd was whiter than a Barry Manilow concert — and more polite. There have not been that many cheering people in the UT-Chattanooga basketball arena since Brandon Born ruled the courts in the 1990s, when upwards of 225 people would show up.

And there have not been that many white Southerners cheering a philandering billionaire since Tiger Woods was in contention at the Masters.

Having been to an Obama rally back in the day, what struck me was is that the  attendees at the Trump rally were there because they wanted to be. An Obama rally was basically a bunch of public service union workers in matching SEIU T-shirts at 2 p.m. on a "work day," backing him. It was not as organic as a Trump rally, nor as substantive.

Sure, maybe a couple of the 15,000 were a bit twitchy looking, and perhaps I’d be OK with police searching their vans, but 99.9 percent were great Americans, the kind who fight our wars, repair your air conditioner and whom you would welcome to help you fix your roadside flat tire. They just want to reduce the chokehold government has on our lives and to live free. It’s not that hard to understand.

Unlike the Clintons’ upcoming fourteen-city speaking tour, the Trump rally was free. The Clintons’ last grifting tour will cost you about $80 for the cheapest seats. Imagine how much the Clintons would charge if they were not "share the wealth" socialists who condemn capitalism.

Chattanooga is the bluest city in East Tennessee. Trump won Hamilton County by only 16 percent in 2016, his thinnest margin of victory in this part of the state. By contrast, Trump won Cleveland, Tennessee's Bradley County by a 59-point margin.

Trump had to come to Tennessee because the Democrats have their only viable candidate for Senate there. Many, like me, actually like Bredesen more but we know he will vote with Schumer and Pelosi, which is contrary to Southern values. Bredesen: great guy, wrong party.

Our editorial board interviewed Bredesen earlier in the campaign when he had a four-point lead — before the Kavanaugh accusers were marshalled forward by the Dems. When I asked if he would vote for Kavanaugh, he demurred and said he had not studied Kavanaugh’s record. (Translation: no.) Then I asked him if he would have voted for Gorsuch since all his information was out there, and he punted on that question, too. Later in the race and down in the polls, Bredesen had a revelation and said he would have voted for Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. To me, that was a shock collar Schumer had on him and would continue to have in the Senate. 

Outgoing Senator Bob Corker chose wisely by not being a part of the spectacle, and has been diplomatically Switzerland on the race to replace him. Some of what Trump mentioned were his new sanctions on Iran which have brought that regime to the table; they might have been one reason Corker stayed away. Trump is replacing Obama and Corker's Iran nuclear deal with his own. Of course, since it is Trump’s deal, it is younger, fresher and entails a larger bomb rack.

The introductions of Trump at the rally had, like most political ads in Tennessee, a very religious overtone. But Trump, who said he was "very religious," was put on the spot and said his favorite Bible verse was "Corinthians 2." He might be able to  bridge our nation’s religious divides. Trump had just come from the Jewish temple in Pittsburgh where he attended a vigil. You would have never heard the words "Jesus Christ" uttered so many times in a northern synagogue until he came in.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Trump Rally: Modern-Day Barnstorming

Teen Vogue showed the ignorance of a poorly educated and lazy generation by trashing capitalism in favor of socialism. The magazine told kids who act like they read Teen Vogue that capitalism has left the world in a “dystopian ‘Mad Max’ nightmare in which resources have dwindled and rich plutocrats own everything.” In this view we should strive for the much more desirable system of socialism. It went on to espouse the virtues of socialism over capitalism. That tone of lazy economic ignorance could foretell problems for our country.

Years of the influence of Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren and the populist left media have left today’s youngsters thinking that socialism is a utopia of wonderful things for which no one has to pay. They think socialism’s great offerings are free education, health care and housing. Yet they are not taught history’s clear lesson: Socialism’s three great failures always end up being breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I hope this generation can reverse this mind-set. Statistics show that the percentage of adults under age 30 who own a business is the lowest in 30 years. Today, only 4 percent own a stake in a private company, compared with 6.1 percent in 2010. Even more troubling, this number was 11 percent in 1989.

The trend toward a lost generation of entrepreneurs has profound implications for the growth of our economy. We have raised kids averse to risk and hard work. More Americans want a government job or a disability check. When they think of “free markets,” they think they are free because government pays for them — and should.

It was once a source of Puritan pride to own a business. Now many people prefer to collect food stamps, unemployment and disability benefits. Why is the younger generation not starting businesses? Obama’s “You didn’t build that” speech made palpable his disdain for business owners, and it presupposed government is responsible for everything good — not the individual, the collective.

Maybe this generation has been raised in bubble wrap. No bike riding (certainly not without a helmet and shin guards), no dodge ball in school, no playing outside in the neighborhood, no drinking from garden hoses and no talking to strangers. We give ribbons for ninth place, and everyone gets to play. Forty years ago, we rode dirt bikes and bumper cars, our popular rides of choice, at the county fair. Today, the most popular rides are those motorized shopping carts at Wal-Mart. Are we raising a generation of wimps?

If we have something to fear, it is that we fear too much. Risk is good. Risk teaches lessons. Risk provides good things. Failure is necessary; it’s a byproduct of risk and should not be ridiculed. What deserves ridicule is not trying.

The massive student loan debt carried by kids coming out of liberal colleges might also impede their risk taking. They are told that capitalism is evil and that, somehow, “making a difference in the world” involves some lame government bureaucracy job.

I’ve got news for you, kids: It’s hard to change the world when you are making $35,000 a year working in a cubicle at the IRS. Go start a business, provide a product or service that people willingly buy, employ lots of people and enhance their lives. Create other millionaires in your wake. Then start a huge foundation that, in retirement, you can use to really change the world.

We have been importing many entrepreneurs who value the opportunity our country once represented. A comedian said his immigrant father came to America from India ten years ago with only $35 in his pocket. Then he paused and said, “He had $4.6 million in stocks and bonds, so I guess what I am saying is that he was not big on carrying cash.”

It is critically important to our economy that we have people starting businesses — not only for employment, taxes and growth, but also for the new ideas they generate. Think Apple, Google, Uber, oil fracking technologies and pharmaceutical companies.

The new American Dream? Getting a lawyer who advertises on the side of a bus who will help today’s young “adults” qualify for some of that sweet disability money and live in their parents’ basements for free. Yet they have this odd sense of accomplishment. Many strut around their parents’ basements like they rent the place.

Ron Hart is a libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author. Contact him at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: A lost generation of entrepreneurs