“And what about Stormy Daniels, and all the others?”
“Also, don’t forget his tweets!”
You’ve heard all these and many others before. It’s the never-ending loop of Trump criticism—a critique which seems inconsequential when compared to his four years in office and the record of his policy accomplishments. From crushing the ISIS caliphate to creating a pre-COVID economy the likes of which America—and the world—had never seen, to the many displays of his inconvertible commitment to conservative causes, such as his being the only serving Republican president to address the annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C.. These are matters of record.
Yes, I worked for the man, and am still serving as his presidential appointee in a Defense Department position (Biden hasn’t sent me a “Resign or be Fired!” letter yet as he has to others like Sean Spicer and Gen. H.R. McMaster. Not yet.), so call me biased, but I challenge anyone who calls themselves a Republican or just a conservative, to prove to me that where it mattered, the 45th president’s achievements weren’t some of the most impressive and traditionally conservative since Reagan left the White House. It’s simply impossible.
Despite this record and the success of a new America First conservatism, we still have a seemingly insurmountable problem within our movement—namely the dominance of an establishment Republican-in-name-only class that controls our party, especially in D.C.. From Mitt Romney’s niece at the top of the RNC to Mitch McConnell (who just facilitated another obviation of the debt ceiling for Biden, Schumer, and the Democratic swamp) in the Senate, the pseudo conservatives still seem to be in charge.
But do the RINOs hold all the cards across the nation? Is the MAGA movement condemned to slowly fizzle out as entrenched lobby-funded special interests creep back to “business as usual” and collusion with the Left? What should be a patriot’s response to unrepresentative elitist forces that appear immovable? When an election leaves you with the choice between a Democratic candidate enthralled to a radicalized DNC defined by the socialist policies of AOC and Bernie Sanders, or a milquetoast establishment RINO, what do we do? Here’s my response.
A very successful, handsome businessman, Glenn Youngkin, wants to be the next governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and is running for that position as a Republican against one of the sleaziest politicians in America, Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe. And when I say sleazy, I mean reptilian level low-life, with McAuliffe happily admitting in his memoir that he left his wife crying in the car with their newborn child, having just left the hospital, as ran inside to appear at a Democratic fundraiser.
Youngkin has presented himself as a true blue salt-of-the-earth Virginian, a real conservative, despite the fact that before he decided to run, he was CEO of The Carlisle Group for 14 years, a company that epitomizes the Big Government/Beltway bandit nexus. As a Virginian, I am of course disgusted at how an historically conservative state has markedly drifted to the Left in recent decades, mainly as a result the influx of new residents coming to work in and around D.C., either as overpaid federal bureaucrats or drones for the legion of other Beltway trough-feeders such as Booz Allen Hamilton, etc.. And as someone who knows just how conservative Virginia is outside of the gravitational pull of a D.C. that voted 90+ percent for Hillary Clinton, I want those who love America to take back Virginia. But is Youngkin actually a conservative, or just another proto-RINO? I decided to find out by inviting him on my national radio show and also discover what it means for all of us, in every state of the Union.
For months my producer was given the runaround by the Youngkin campaign, despite the fact that I had met the candidate, had his personal cell, and had been told that someone very close to him confirmed that he did, indeed, want to come on the show. Eventually, after one of his team let it slip that there was a serious issue with him coming on because I had, months prior, tweeted that Youngkin’s official stance on the lack of fraud in the last election was “classic RINO,” I decided not to wait any longer and to simply discuss him on my show whether or not he called in to join me. (Remember Clint Eastwood and the empty chair?)
I didn’t “bash” the Republican candidate, but as the host of an avowedly MAGA show, I did ask the tough questions that millions of America First listeners wanted him to answer. None of my team expected what happened next.
After the break, someone called “Todd” phoned in to challenge me on air, asking why would I “attack” a true conservative like Glenn and to list all the great things Youngkin had just that day announced his commitment to pursue. Smelling a rat, I asked Todd if he worked for Youngkin. In the meantime my sterling producer was looking up the caller’s phone number which came back to someone who did in fact work on the Youngkin campaign and who’s name wasn’t, in fact, Todd. You can watch the whole hilarious exchange here.
Was “Todd” officially monitoring my show and was he ordered to call in under a fake name? That would be a real RINO move. But there was no way to know. It could just be a stupid lone actor So, we kept the pressure on Youngkin through overt and back channels, and a mutual friend who also wants to save Virginia got involved and finally it worked and Youngkin stepped up to the plate and agreed to come on AMERICA First live.
Is this because the candidate is desperate and because he’s just 4 percent behind McAuliffe in the latest polls and needs every vote? I don’t believe so. Coming on a platform to talk with a former strategist to President Trump is not what RINOs do. Ever. It takes guts and has predictable consequences, as almost immediately the most despicable and immoral uber-RINOS came out of the woodwork to viciously attack Youngkin. (Congrats Glenn: if the Lincoln Project has you in its sights, you’ve proven yourself a good guy). Youngkin’s decision and his performance impressed me. He may have RINOs working for him, but I do not believe he is one. You can see our interview here:
So here’s the lesson I have drawn. Youngkin is a solid candidate but he was influenced by RINOs who focus more on tweets than issues. (Sound familiar?) He overcame the RINOs as my team and I kept the pressure on him to engage. Recently J.D. Vance was asked on live TV what will stop him becoming a RINO swamp creature if he wins his Senate race? He gave the correct reply: I won’t surround myself with the D.C. advisers and hang out with the lobbyists because that’s how you become one of them. Instead, J.D. said he will surround himself with his loved ones and the patriots who propelled him to office to represent the people of his state. Are you listening, Glenn?
President Trump will run in 2024. If he wins he will need to excise the embedded RINOs and swamp-dwellers in the capital. In the meantime all of us need to keep the pressure relentlessly on all those who say they are conservatives or Republicans, especially if they are listening to, and letting themselves be influenced by, those who care more about “mean tweets” than they do open borders, or a collapsing economy. Yes, the RINOs are too influential—but it’s up to you and me to change that.
When the Australian government began beating their citizens in the street for leaving their houses and protesting against severe lockdown rules, I said –somewhat tongue in cheek at the time– to watch Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Xi Jinping (China) trigger U.N. security council sanctions against the Australian government for human rights abuses.
The point I was making earlier was to highlight a danger. If Western governments continued to devolve into totalitarian regimes, global autocratic leaders will take the opportunity to exploit vulnerabilities created by such open undemocratic hostility toward the principles of freedom.
Putin, Xi and the Mullahs in Iran can easily enlarge their global influence if citizens in formerly free democratic nations react to western COVID mandates by rightly and appropriately rebuking their national and regional leadership.
CONSIDER– What population inside a western democracy is going to want to fight Russian or Chinese geopolitical aggression when they view their own national leaders through the same totalitarian prism?
Think about it carefully, because we are at this inflection point.
♦Ex. If China takes military action against Taiwan, and the leaders of France, Germany, the U.K, Australia and the United States want to do something about it, their internal credibility accounts are overdrawn. Western populations writ large will not support those requests, because the citizens no longer view those leaders through the prism of freedom, liberty and democracy. This is the current situation. This is the danger western leaders ignored when they jumped into their totalitarian COVID mindset.
In a clear example of how autocrats can exploit this self-inflicted vulnerability, check out this speech during a plenary session of the 18th annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, by Russian President Vladimir Putin (h/t Rebel News):
Vladimir Putin:“We look in amazement at the processes underway in the countries which have been traditionally looked at as the standard-bearers of progress,” Putin said. “Of course, the social and cultural shocks that are taking place in the United States and Western Europe are none of our business; we are keeping out of this.”
“Some people in the West believe that an aggressive elimination of entire pages from their own history, ‘reverse discrimination’ against the majority in the interests of a minority, and the demand to give up the traditional notions of mother, father, family and even gender, they believe that all of these are the mileposts on the path towards social renewal,” said Putin, elaborating on the cultural decline of the west in the name of social justice.
“Listen, I would like to point out once again that they have a right to do this, we are keeping out of this,” Putin continued. “But we would like to ask them to keep out of our business as well. We have a different viewpoint, at least the overwhelming majority of Russian society — it would be more correct to put it this way – has a different opinion on this matter. We believe that we must rely on our own spiritual values, our historical tradition and the culture of our multiethnic nation.”
“The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness,” he added. “Godspeed, hoist the flags as we say, go right ahead.”
“The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all,” Putin continued, and highlighted the similarities between woke progressives to the Soviet revolutionaries who took over Russia.
“It may come as a surprise to some people, but Russia has been there already,” he said. “After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones – all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today. By the way, the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs.”
“This, I believe, should call to mind some of what we are witnessing now,” he said. “Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices, which we, fortunately, have left, I hope, in the distant past.”
“The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past — such as Shakespeare — are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward,” he said. “The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood, memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what colour or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
“Countering acts of racism is a necessary and noble cause, but the new ‘cancel culture’ has turned it into ‘reverse discrimination’ that is, reverse racism,” noted Putin, who apt went on to describe the woke obsession with race and gender.
“The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people, when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin colour,” said Putin in reference to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech.
“I specifically asked my colleagues to find the following quote from Martin Luther King: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character.’ This is the true value,” he said.
“However, things are turning out differently there,” he added. “By the way, the absolute majority of Russian people do not think that the colour of a person’s skin or their gender is an important matter. Each of us is a human being. This is what matters.”
“In a number of Western countries, the debate over men’s and women’s rights has turned into a perfect phantasmagoria. Look, beware of going where the Bolsheviks once planned to go — not only communalising chickens, but also communalising women. One more step and you will be there,” Putin warned.
“Zealots of these new approaches even go so far as to want to abolish these concepts altogether,” he said. “Anyone who dares mention that men and women actually exist, which is a biological fact, risk being ostracised.”
Putin then remarked upon the transgender activist movement and widespread efforts to erase femininity and womanhood.
“‘Parent number one’ and ‘parent number two,’ ‘birthing parent’ instead of ‘mother,’ and ‘human milk’ replacing ‘breastmilk’ because it might upset the people who are unsure about their own gender. I repeat, this is nothing new; in the 1920s, the so-called Soviet Kulturtraegers also invented some newspeak believing they were creating a new consciousness and changing values that way. And, as I have already said, they made such a mess it still makes one shudder at times,” he said.
“Not to mention some truly monstrous things when children are taught from an early age that a boy can easily become a girl and vice versa,” said Putin, remarking on childhood gender transitions and the embrace of non-binary identities to the exclusion of parents. “That is, the teachers actually impose on them a choice we all supposedly have. They do so while shutting the parents out of the process and forcing the child to make decisions that can upend their entire life. They do not even bother to consult with child psychologists — is a child at this age even capable of making a decision of this kind? Calling a spade a spade, this verges on a crime against humanity, and it is being done in the name and under the banner of progress.”
“Well, if someone likes this, let them do it. I have already mentioned that, in shaping our approaches, we will be guided by a healthy conservatism,” said Putin. “That was a few years ago, when passions on the international arena were not yet running as high as they are now, although, of course, we can say that clouds were gathering even then. Now, when the world is going through a structural disruption, the importance of reasonable conservatism as the foundation for a political course has skyrocketed — precisely because of the multiplying risks and dangers, and the fragility of the reality around us.”
“This conservative approach is not about an ignorant traditionalism, a fear of change or a restraining game, much less about withdrawing into our own shell,” he noted. “It is primarily about reliance on a time-tested tradition, the preservation and growth of the population, a realistic assessment of oneself and others, a precise alignment of priorities, a correlation of necessity and possibility, a prudent formulation of goals, and a fundamental rejection of extremism as a method. And frankly, in the impending period of global reconstruction, which may take quite long, with its final design being uncertain, moderate conservatism is the most reasonable line of conduct, as far as I see it. It will inevitably change at some point, but so far, do no harm — the guiding principle in medicine — seems to be the most rational one. Noli nocere, as they say.” (Kremlin Website)
You likely found yourself nodding in agreement with almost everything stated in that speech, me too. However, in the bigger picture, it is important to recognize who has inflicted this shifting dynamic in global and geopolitical perspectives. Western leadership, writ large, have only themselves to blame.
Traditional Fascism was authoritarian government working hand-in-glove with corporations to achieve totalitarian objectives. It didn’t work because the principles of free people cast aside the authoritarianism. Then along came a new approach to achieve the same objective.
The World Economic Forum was created to use the same fundamental associations of government and corporations; only this time the WEF was organized for multinational corporations to assemble and tell the various governments how to cooperate to achieve control. Fascism is the underlying objective. The WEF just flipped the internal dynamic.
Some have called this corporatism. However, the relationship between government and multinationals is just fascism essentially reversed with the government doing what the corporations tell them to do. Brutally obvious example: Big Pharma telling governments to promote the vaccine, and figure out the control details later….
It isn’t easy to make Vladimir Putin look good, but the Democrats are giving it their best shot. Somehow, they have managed to get to Putin’s left. The Telegraph reports:
Vladimir Putin said the anti-racism agenda in the West was dividing society as he compared cancel culture warriors in liberal democracies to the Bolsheviks of Russia’s 1917 Revolution.
“The incessant emphasis on race pushes people further apart whereas the true fighters for civic rights tried to eliminate those differences,” the Russian president said. *** He said: “Fighting racism is a necessary and noble thing but the new cancel culture turns it into reverse descrimination, reverse racism.”
That’s true.
In a speech at the Valdai Discussion club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, he lashed also lashed out transgender rights, accusing the West of being “monstrous” to children. *** “People who dare to say men and women still exist as a biological fact are almost ostracised,” he said.
“Not to mention the simply monstrous fact that children today are taught from a young age that a boy can easily become a girl and the other way round.”
That’s true too. But this goes too far:
Mr Putin went as far as to compare Western activists pushing for a progressive agenda to Bolsheviks of Russia’s 1917 Revolution “who were also utterly intolerant of opinions different from their own.”
I think it is true that progressives are as intolerant as the Bolsheviks, but their methods have not advanced so far. Yet.
You know things have reached a nadir when Vladimir Putin sounds like a voice of sanity.
When news broke earlier this week that the FBI had raided two homes connected to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the corporate media and some of the main figures in the Russia-collusion hoax spun the story as related to Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the propaganda-pushing press left unreported Derispaska’s connections to Christopher Steele, Bruce Ohr, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., as well as evidence suggesting Steele engaged in potentially criminal lobbying on behalf of Deripaska in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA.
On Tuesday morning, FBI agents searched a home used by Deripaska in New York’s Greenwich Village and in D.C. on Washington’s Embassy Row,accordingto The New York Times. “A spokesman for the F.B.I. office in New York would say only that the agents were ‘conducting a law enforcement operation pursuant to a law enforcement investigation,’” the Times reported, while Deripaska’s spokeswoman “issued a statement confirming the searches, and saying that the investigation was related to U.S. sanctions.”
The Trump administration sanctioned Deripaska in 2018, explaining then that the Russian oligarch had acted, or purported to act, for a senior official of the Russian Federation. “Deripaska has been investigated for money laundering, and has been accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering,” according to the Treasury Department. The announcement of the sanctions added that “there are also allegations that Deripaska bribed a government official, ordered the murder of a businessman, and had links to a Russian organized crime group.”
The search warrants may focus, as Deripaska’s spokeswomen claimed, on purported crimes related to the U.S. sanctions levied against Deripaska. But the interest in Deripaska likely extends beyond the Southern District of New York — to Special Counsel John Durham. And Deripaska may well be the player that proves the downfall of Steele.
While Steele remains most famous for his work for Fusion GPS, crafting and peddling the Steele dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign, his clients included more than the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign. Significantly, according to another New York Times report, Steele worked for one of Deripaska’s lawyers.
However, after reporting that one of the Russian oligarch’s attorneys had hired the former MI6 agent, the Steele-friendlypressignored the importance of this fact — even while reporting details of several of Steele’s conversations with government officials, including former Associate Deputy Attorney General Ohr, on behalf of Deripaska.
If Deripaska’s attorneys were paying Steele to represent the Russian oligarch’s interests, that implicates FARA, which requires individuals lobbying on behalf of foreign individuals or governments and seeking to influence U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws to register with the federal government. Steele, however, never registered as a foreign agent.
In covering the news of the FBI’s recent searches of Deripaska’s houses, the establishment media portrayed Steele’s apparent lobbying for the Russian oligarch as efforts by the FBI and DOJ “during the campaign,” “to turn Mr. Deripaska into an informant” — efforts that failed.
It is true that there were efforts to turn Deripaska into an informant, but those attempts followed Steele’s feeding of supposed intel on Trump and Deripaska to Ohr, and, significantly, Steele’s efforts continued for many months after the election.
The timing proves significant because the general five-year statute of limitations applying to FARA crimes is quickly running out on any illegal lobbying that occurred before the November 2016 election. Ohr, however, continued to meet with Steele after the election, with the FBI then interviewing Ohr to learn the latest from Steele, the latter of whom had been fired as an FBI source. From the 302 interview summary forms, it appears Ohr met with Steele through May of 2017.
Significantly, Ohr also took a lead in pushing to reach a deal with Deripaska and did so based on Steele’s supposed intel. We know this from the Inspector General’s report, which noted that “on December 7, 2016, Ohr convened an interagency meeting (including representatives from the FBI) regarding strategy in dealing with” Deripaska.
Following that meeting, a DOJ colleague asked Ohr “why the U.S. government would support trying to work with” Deripaska. The colleague told the Inspector General “that Ohr told her that Steele provided information that the Trump campaign had been corrupted by the Russians” and went “all the way to the President.”
Deripaska never “flipped,” however, maintaining that there was no collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. But now, following the execution of the search warrants, the Russian might have more to say, albeit about Steele and the FBI agents who attempted to use him to take down Trump during the heat of the Russia-collusion hoax.
The Russian oligarch might also have some interesting details to provide concerning efforts his then-officially registered foreign agent Adam Waldman undertook to connect Steele with Warner, the Democrat senator. A slew of text messages between Warner, who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Waldman, who had registered as an agent for Deripaska, detailed efforts between the two to get Warner access to Steele.
While Steele continues to present himself as a “patriot,” as seen most recently in the Hulu special, “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier,” his actions tell a different tale — one of a man paid by his clients to sell a story.
We already know he was paid by the Clinton campaign to peddle the Steele dossier. The question remains whether Deripaska also paid Steele for the former MI6’s efforts to smooth things over with the federal government.
At least two men know the answer to that question, and now one may have a pretty strong incentive to share that knowledge.
Yes, we should be worried about the economic decline of America’s men — to say otherwise is to ignore the facts.
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that women now represent a record-setting 60 percent of new enrollees on America’s college campuses. Given the fact that higher education tends to engender brighter economic prospects, today’s abundance of freshwomen relative to freshmen is a recipe for a future in which jobs are more abundant for women than for men. With men’s relative decline potentially in the offing, some have warned of a looming existential crisis to boot. Is this angst merely economic alarmism, or a fear grounded in facts?
Unfortunately, the prophets of doom have the facts on their side. Everyone should be fearful of an economy such as the one the Journal’s report forebodes. In fact, for some Americans, the crisis that accompanies the economic “end of men” has already arrived.
The American communities whose job markets have been heavily exposed to automation preview a future in which men become obsolete at a faster rate than women. Why? Automation in America, research indicates, has destroyed about two jobs for men for every one job that it has destroyed for women. Communities with labor markets that have been upended by advances in robot technology, then, are microcosms of what will happen in the U.S. if men fall behind economically relative to women.
Something akin to a statistical crystal ball, the chart above compares life among the 10 percent of the American population most exposed to automation with life among the 10 percent least exposed.
The relative obsolescence of men does create headline figures that some would welcome. Male and female employment rates do converge. And it should be noted that among the 10 percent of Americans most exposed to automation, the employment-to-population ratio is still higher for men than women. But the employment-to-population-rate disparity between men and women is a whopping 31.4 percent lower than it is among the 10 percent least exposed. There are other consolations from the new employment landscape: In collecting fewer paychecks, for instance, men are less likely to run up bar tabs and make their way into the driver’s seat. Per capita rates of drunk driving, a crime perpetrated by men 80 percent of the time, are 26.3 percent lower among those most exposed to automation. This suggests that the effects of automation may complicate the well-documented tendency of lower rates of employment to, historically, raise local rates of alcohol abuse and other substance abuse.
But this is no happy tale. When marriages are formed, they tend fall apart more frequently. Rates of divorce are 19.1 percent higher among the 10 percent most exposed to automation than among the 10 percent least exposed. Sex crimes, per capita, are a whopping 98 percent higher. Some crimes may grow less frequent, but crime as a whole does not. The per capita rate of crime overall among the most exposed is 65.7 percent higher.
Headlines about women’s share of college enrollment underscore the extent to which “the future is female” is an aphorism likely to prove true, at least within America’s workforce. There is certainly much to celebrate in that. But there is also much to fear about the economic decline of America’s men. To say otherwise, now, is to ignore the facts.
Two companies are at the root of the current shortage.
Americans need to get wise to this conspiracy by monopolists
Ammunition comes to the local sporting goods store in
Waco, Texas, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you find yourself
driving by at quarter to nine on one of those days, you will see a line
of people snaking along the side of the building, waiting for the
opening and their chance to buy rounds. Any other day of the week, the
shelves are empty.
It has been this way for months. Gun magazines and websites discuss the “Great Ammo Shortage,” which started during the pandemic, but which is projected to last into 2022.
Folks on the internet speculate that ammunition plants have shut
down, and that companies and/or the government are stockpiling bullets
to drive up demand and prices. It got so bad that the president of the
biggest ammunition producer in the U.S., Jason Vanderbrink of Vista
Outdoor, made a YouTube
video because he was “tired of all the hate mail.” Vanderbrink walked
through Vista’s production process and told angry gun owners that
hearing about the conspiracy theories related to the “so-called
ammunition shortage” is “getting really old.” The video has nearly two
million views.
But the conspiracy theorists are in one sense right. There is a
scheme to control the ammunition market, though it’s not a particularly
colorful one.
The ammunition monopolies do not just supply the hunter or sportsman, but the government and law enforcement.
At a glance, Americans appear to have a variety of ammunition
companies to choose from: Remington, Winchester, Speer, CCI (Cascade
Cartridge, Inc.), Federal Premium. Winchester bills itself as “The American Legend” and has been in business for over 150 years, while Remington has been making guns and ammo for over 200 years and states that their company is as “boundless as the American spirit.”
These companies associate their brands with freedom, independence, and
toughness. What most customers do not know, however, is that they are
all owned by the same two entities: Olin Corporation and Vista Outdoor.
This consolidation in the small arms ammunition market by
corporations and private equity firms is hurting businesses, consumers,
and workers. And it’s producing a massive shortage, just as demand for
ammunition picks up. It looks like the problem could get worse, not only
in the commercial shooting market, but where it really matters: for our
national security.
The ammunition monopolies do not just supply the hunter or sportsman, but the government and law enforcement,
including the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the Secret
Service, and the FBI. With diminished public capacity, when the military
or police need ammo, they must go to these firms. So monopolization in
this market can lead to higher government costs, and shortages can cause
problems for training, readiness, safety, and mission accomplishment.
THE AMMUNITION INDUSTRY is particularly prone to
shortages because it is highly cyclical. Hunting season drives annual
changes in demand, but multiyear changes are largely based on the
election cycle. Partisan fearmongering is a great industry advertising
strategy.
Democrats in the White House have historically led to more demand; President Obama was often credited with being the greatest gun salesman of all time. By contrast, Republican presidents bring demand down, and contested elections restart the cycle: Olin Corporation’s February 2020 operating results announced
that during the third quarter, their “Ammunition business delivered
positive revenue growth for the first time in eleven quarters.” In other
words, ammunition sales were down for nearly three years under
President Trump, but started rising as the election approached.
In short, if gun owners think their guns are going to be taken away,
they stock up. Savvy gun owners know this and tend to store excess ammo
for these periods, which can also lead to a run on ammo. Just like
toilet paper during the pandemic, individuals stocking up because they
think there is a shortage will inevitably cause a shortage. Ammo and gun
manufacturers even list “changes to government regulations and laws or changes in their interpretation” as a material business risk.
The cyclical nature of ammunition markets, coupled with the pandemic
and social unrest, led to record-breaking demand in 2020. Yet despite
four years of Joe Biden and likely elevated desire for ammo, companies
are still not building new plants. In fact, there are fewer companies
that are even capable of doing so.
Like making semiconductors, ships, or steel, ammunition production
requires massive long-term investment, both in building plants and
sustaining a highly skilled workforce. It would be expensive to lay off
skilled individuals only to rehire them later, or to mothball plants
when demand is weak. Sagging demand creates the need for more capital to
continue producing and storing product. To benefit from the good times,
companies must be able to weather the bad times.
The cyclical nature of ammunition markets, coupled with the pandemic and social unrest, led to record-breaking demand in 2020.
But due to consolidation within the industry, only a couple of
incumbent companies have that ability to make it through low-demand
periods. When demand surges, they are no longer forced to produce, but
can focus instead on “efficiencies.” They can raise prices and generate
shortages, knowing that no one else exists to meet the demand that they
cannot or will not fill.
Such refusals to invest in increased capacity can clearly be seen as
Vista’s plan over the last few years. According to their annual reports,
Vista is focused on “long-term shareholder value,” and when they have
influxes of cash, they acquire more companies that “deliver top-line
growth … within one year of purchase.” They do not build more plants, even though they project more long-term increased demand; building a plant to increase capacity is a long-term project, one that does not return a profit in a year, much less a quarter.
THE SMALL ARMS AMMUNITION MARKET was not always
controlled by two corporations. The industry roll-up involves a tale of
brothers, bullets, and a dog guarding Hell.
Omark was in turn bought by Blount International, Inc., in 1985. Blount also added
Federal Premium to its assets in 1997. After a complicated series of
mergers and spin-offs, the firm renamed itself Vista Outdoor. Last year,
Vista added Remington Arms, one of America’s oldest gun manufacturers,
to its list of brands.
Remington’s story involves some twists and turns and financial
engineering. In 2007, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management
bought the then-thriving Remington, using it as a piggy bank. To execute
the buyout, Remington borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars it
immediately handed over to Cerberus, which meant that Cerberus would
make money on the deal no matter whether Remington succeeded.
Initially, Cerberus made “hundreds of millions of dollars”
from Remington, due to high gun sales during the Obama years. But when
demand decreased after Donald Trump’s election, Remington was forced to
file for bankruptcy in 2018. The firm restructured its debt and
continued operating under new creditors, but due to continued
mismanagement and lawsuits, Remington filed for bankruptcy again in
2020. Vista Outdoors bought Remington’s ammunition brand later that
year.
Winchester’s story is more straightforward. Chemical producer Olin Corporation bought Winchester in 1931 and is now “a leading U.S. manufacturer of ammunition.” Olin’s most recent annual report
revealed that Winchester sales increased from $665.5 million in 2019 to
$927.6 million in 2020. This increase is reportedly due to “higher
commercial and military sales, which included ammunition produced at
Lake City, and higher commercial ammunition pricing.” Olin won a $28.3 million, ten-year contract
to operate the Department of Defense’s Lake City Army Ammunition Plant
in September of 2019. It also won contracts with the Secret Service,
Customs and Border Protection, and the FBI.
The extensive restructuring of publicly owned ammunition
capacity was done during the Clinton-era “reinventing government”
privatization mania.
Olin’s management of the Lake City plant illustrates another aspect
of consolidation with small arms ammunition. During World War II, the
U.S. government owned and operated 84 ammunition plants. Now there are soon to be just 14, and they require extensive modernization. Lake City is the only producer of military-grade small arms ammunition, producing “85 percent of DoD’s small caliber ammunition.”
The extensive restructuring of publicly owned ammunition capacity was
done during the Clinton-era “reinventing government” privatization
mania. With the end of the Cold War, the defense budget shrank
and the Defense Department shifted from needing more traditional
ammunition to higher-tech, increased-precision rounds. In the 1996
National Defense Authorization Act, Congress told the Army that they
should write a report on ammunition production management. That study,
completed the next year, recommended reliance on the private sector for
ammunition procurement, and the conversion of government facilities to
commercial entities.
Two years later, the Government Accountability Office released a report entitled “Army Could Achieve Efficiencies by Consolidating Ammunition Management”
to review how the Army implemented the 1997 study objectives. This push
for finding efficiencies in structure and business practices, and the
commercialization of the sector, contributed to the market
consolidation. This, combined with the consolidation of commercial small
arms manufacturers, has created problems with prices, supply, and
industry resiliency.
AS WITH OTHER INDUSTRIES, including health care, media, and tech,
corporations and private equity firms involved in ammunition production
thrive on consolidating markets and extracting profits at the expense
of businesses, workers, and consumers.
But problems in the small arms ammunition market do not affect only
the regular citizen trying to hunt or go to the shooting range. They
also affect government costs and military readiness, which encompasses
real-world mission accomplishment, safety, training, and logistics. This
ultimately becomes a national-security issue.
For example, in 2014 government officials from Alabama agreed to pay Remington millions
of tax dollars to open a new factory in their city. Government
subsidized Remington’s refurbished plant, electricity, and tax
abatements. The citizens of Alabama paid the price again when the jobs
and wages that were promised as part of the deal never materialized.
Remington’s collapse and sale to Vista removed one of the few
remaining independent small arms ammunition manufacturers in America.
With a market controlled by two major players, companies have the
latitude to raise prices without fear of competition. Vista sent a letter
to dealers in January of this year stating that effective in March,
ammunition prices would increase “3-15% across all products” due to
hikes in raw-material costs and pandemic-induced effects. Even with
these increases, they still cannot meet demand.
A lack of competition means fewer bids for government contracts and higher prices. In 2016, Olin was awarded a contract
for .38 and .45 caliber and 9mm ammo worth $99 million. Only one bid
was solicited and received. It must have been difficult for the
contracting officer awarding the contract to determine a competitive
price for small arms ammo, with no other company’s prices to compare.
Bloated military budgets are in part caused by consolidation driving up
prices.
A lack of competition means fewer bids for government contracts and higher prices. In 2016, Olin was awarded a contract
for .38 and .45 caliber and 9mm ammo worth $99 million. Only one bid
was solicited and received. It must have been difficult for the
contracting officer awarding the contract to determine a competitive
price for small arms ammo, with no other company’s prices to compare.
Bloated military budgets are in part caused by consolidation driving up
prices.
Too much efficiency can lead to a brittle industrial base, which is
terrible for national security. In the case of large-scale demand, like a
war, manufacturers would quickly hit their production capacity, leading
to product shortages. Americans cannot hunt, and police officers cannot
train, but tomorrow’s service members may not have enough bullets to
send down range.
In a concentrated market, the government could face an even scarier problem. Instead of a situation where industry cannot produce to meet government requirements, there is a situation where industry will not produce. When a single company holds all the cards, it can call all the shots. This has happened before. During World War II, Alcoa had a monopoly on aluminum.
They controlled supply and could raise prices indiscriminately, even if
it meant that the U.S. didn’t have enough aluminum for the war effort.
Despite increasing revenue for the few companies that make small arms
ammunition, there is still a shortage of ammo, with no end in sight. Small arms ammunition demand seems poised to grow globally
due to an increase in sales for personal weapons, increased arming of
law enforcement, and military modernizations around the world.
Despite increasing revenue for the few companies that
make small arms ammunition, there is still a shortage of ammo, with no
end in sight.
There are also supply chain issues that could become increasingly
problematic. Lead, zinc, and copper (the latter two are used to make
brass) are all necessary materials for making ammo, and the United
States relies heavily on other countries to produce these materials. In 2020,
the U.S. imported 710,000 metric tons of refined zinc products (83
percent of total U.S. consumption), mainly from Peru and Canada. About
one-quarter of lead and one-third of copper was imported, mostly from
the Americas.
While the U.S. is primarily getting its imports from nations in North and South America, China has a huge share in this market. In 2020,
China produced 35 percent of the world’s zinc, and around 40 percent of
the world’s refined copper and lead. If China decided it wanted to
disrupt U.S. supply chains, who knows what effects it could have on the
global market. The U.S. government has already expressed national-security concerns about the rare-earth mineral supply chain and China’s monopoly on production for years, but these more common metals could also be affected, especially as demand increases.
DESPITE ALL THE ISSUES with the small arms market, there are steps that can be taken to help.
As in other industries, the Federal Trade Commission has been lax
when it comes to enforcing antitrust regulations, so the FTC must get
quicker on the draw. Further consolidation of the market should be
stopped, but this does not unwind the last 50 years of mergers, which
must be studied and potentially unwound.
The boom-and-bust cycle of ammunition demand, changing with the
occupant of the White House, can make consistent production difficult,
especially for small companies that may not have enough cash flow to
withstand periods of difficulty. But while it is harder to predict, much
less control, commercial market whims, the Pentagon can change how and
when they want ammo.
The government could set consistent purchase requirements over a
period of time, and then ensure that there is enough ammo stored in
reserve to absorb any variations. Need more ammo than purchased in a
year? Pull the extra out of the reserves. Didn’t use all the ammo that
year? Put the extra in storage. The Defense Department could absorb and
account for shifting demand instead of the small business, leaving them
able to maintain consistent and robust supply chains and production
capabilities. The Pentagon could also buy ammunition as futures to
smooth the demand signal so that it is more predictable.
The government should methodically support small businesses through
reliable contracting to build back a robust industrial base. To
encourage this, the government could also split contracts, awarding them
to multiple smaller companies, versus huge winner-take-all contracts.
This would ensure competition and give smaller companies consistent
military demand, and cash flow, to help weather dry spells.
Americans need to get wise to this conspiracy by monopolists. Large
corporations line shareholders’ pockets while killing American jobs,
costing government resources, and harming national security, in multiple
industries, including ammunition. In the name of liberty, let this be
the shot heard round the world.
Vladimir Putin:
