As the new year begins, it is an appropriate time to take stock of the year 2018 and consider our hopes for 2019. Despite all the turmoil and the largely one-sided negative reporting by the media, 2018 was a good year for America. My hope for 2019 is that we will continue to make progress on policies that benefit our country, and that the media will retreat from its partisan role and return to its job of objective reporting. Initial signs regarding the media are not good, as the year started with yet another episode of fake news, in this instance an unsupported story alleging that Michael Cohen had confessed to the Mueller investigators that he had been instructed by the President to lie to Congress. Unbothered by the lack of corroboration to support the "bombshell" accusation, the chattering class was at a fever pitch, devoting hours of coverage and pages of newsprint to what they concluded was surely grounds for impeachment. The problem for the anti-Trump crowd is that a spokesperson for the Mueller team stated the reports regarding Mr. Cohen's testimony, simply put, "are not accurate." Fake news, however, dies hard. A quick on-line search turned up dozens of hits reporting the story that President Trump had instructed Michael Cohen to lie, and only a minimal number of hits on the Department of Justice statement that the story was not accurate. This latest example is in keeping with studies that show coverage of the Trump administration is over 90% negative. How are we to trust the "news" we read or hear or see on the television when confronted with such obvious and unapologetic bias?

Even if the media chooses not to report the news accurately and objectively, there is much that happened in 2018 that should make us hopeful for 2019. Despite the doomsday forecast regarding the President's tax policy and his renegotiation of NAFTA, those policies in fact helped spur the economy to grow by 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018 and by 3.4 percent in the third quarter. The growing economy produced more jobs and opportunities, leading to near-record unemployment rates for the workforce overall and for minorities in particular. In 2018 we witnessed an increase in household income, a decline in the number of people living in poverty and millions of fewer people on food stamps.

The Treasury Department reported that individual income tax collections for FY 2018 totaled $1.7 trillion, an all-time high. As a fiscal conservative I am not thrilled that the government extracts record amounts of tax revenue from taxpayers and still runs record-setting deficits, but the narrative by the media pundits that the tax cuts diminish revenue and contribute to the deficit is plainly wrong.

For decades American policy has been to become more energy-independent and to decrease if not eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and our involvement in far-off lands. 2018 saw major strides toward that goal. The United States is now pumping 11.6 million barrels of oil per day and is once again the leading oil producer in the world, in addition to being the largest producer of natural gas.

On the foreign front, while North Korea remains a dangerous enigma, diplomacy in 2018 resulted in a halt to North Korea's nuclear testing and its policy of intimidation by launching missiles over our allies in the east. As to our NATO allies, for the first time in decades many have been forced to acknowledge that they have not paid their share of their own defense, and that the US taxpayers will not continue to carry that unfair burden. ISIS has been largely decimated, and there are signs of hope for new alliances between Israel and certain of the moderate Middle Eastern states.

In sum, although the media serves up a daily dose of negative reporting on our current state of affairs, the truth is that in 2018, America flourished and became more secure. Let's hope these trends continue in 2019, and that the media can demonstrate its objectivity by reporting on facts, both positive and negative, instead of advancing a political agenda.