Warren Buffett – White Privilege Calling!
The View from the Middle
It makes me sad to see the level to which our political debate has devolved over the last 10 or 20 years. The United States is not perfect, and our founders knew that. They put in place two documents to guide us forever more towards our basic values and principles, and that is individual freedom and personal responsibility. In the long run these cornerstones would deliver equal opportunity for all and prosperity for our nation. It would lead us to a place where a person would not be judged by the color of his or her skin, but by the content of their character.
Despite the wisdom of those words and the obvious progress that we have made as a country, it has become acceptable, even vogue and fashionable to demonize, ridicule and dehumanize hundreds of millions of people just because of the color of their skin, as long as that skin is white. The “white privilege” smear campaign is designed to do two things. First, it suggests that if you are white and successful, you don’t deserve it and in fact should be ashamed of what you have. And second, your success has in fact caused others to fail. All the poverty and misfortune of others is actually your fault.
It’s a bit depressing that we have allowed one set of prejudices to replace another so easily. In this new era of “white privilege” demagoguery, Warren Buffet, Sam Walton, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos must be the most despised men in America, right? Combined, these four men and their families have amassed fortunes totaling about a half trillion dollars. That’s half of a trillion, with a “T” or $500 billion dollars. They must have inherited billions or at least hundreds of billions, right? They must have grown up in the lap of luxury with armies of servants, limousines, private jets and of course the proverbial silver spoons, right?
No. It almost couldn’t be further from the truth. All four of these gentlemen grew up in families that offered modest to moderate resources. They did share, however, a common thread of experiences. They all took their education seriously and got a good, if not great, education. They all took risks and all had legendary work ethics. So now, should they or anyone else who followed that formula feel ashamed of their success? Should our government feel free to take 70, 80 or 90% of their annual incomes? Should our government have the power to even confiscate their wealth?
America today is very different than it was in 1865 and even different than it was in 1965. Every child in America has access to primary and secondary education for free. Should we continue to improve the quality of those educations? Sure, and I have already written about a few ideas that could accomplish that. Also, with athletic, academic and need scholarships, most of our young people have access to a college education. We have come a long way in providing equal “opportunity” for all who desire to exercise the “personal responsibility” to take advantage of it.
The message should be clear to all the young people growing up in this great country. Take your education seriously. Take educated, calculated risks especially early in your life, and work hard. Don’t have a child before you get married, and certainly not when you are in high school. If you do those simple things, the likelihood of your success goes up exponentially. And when you achieve that success you won’t want any greedy, narcissistic, corrupt and inept politician to take it away from you. In fact, you will probably do what all four of these men are also famous for. All four are giving back to the community in which they grew up and to the country that enabled their success through the freedom to pursue their dreams. Their generosity is often targeted at causes that empower the next generation to strive for and achieve their dreams.
Or we can teach our children to be jealous of the success of others. We can teach them that they deserve an equal “outcome” even if they choose not to take their education seriously and not to work hard. This, however would have at least two devastating effects on our society. First, it would punish and disincentivize the successful. Second, it would encourage millions not to work hard and not to take risks. If that were to happen, the idea of America, the land of opportunity, would cease to exist. We would crumble into the abyss of history only to be replaced by the economic, moral and even physical decline that will surely fill our void.
P.S. to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – Even if you confiscated all the wealth of the Fortune 400’s richest people, not taxed their income at 70% but actually confiscated all of their assets, it wouldn’t run our bloated, inefficient, corrupt government for nine months. And it wouldn’t run the government YOU are planning for even four months. The answer isn’t a bigger, inept, corrupt, inefficient government. It is a smaller one.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Washington, Home of the Zax
Washington, Home of the Zax
The View from the Middle
Dr. Seuss has a great story about extreme stubbornness. It is the story about the Zax, which is sort of a brown hairy Grinch. It is a story of a North Going Zax, who will never take a step to either side, coming face to face with a South Going Zax, who will not move an inch to the east or the west. You can imagine the stalemate that occurs. They both stand there with their arms crossed, eyes closed and chins jutting out day after day, week after week and year after year. Of course, the world does not stop along with them. The days go by and the seasons change and they eventually build a highway over and around these disturbingly obstinate politicians, I mean Zax.
Last night, the country was treated to watching three Zax collide in our nation’s capital. And, just for good measure, these three Zax slathered their intransigence with a healthy dose of incompetence. While I think the President had a good message, we all must admit that he stumbled his way through the delivery. It could only have served as a distraction to his thesis.
And then Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer couldn’t have looked, sounded and acted more ridiculous. They were instantly compared to The American Gothic, the painting by Grant Wood of the stern, pitch fork wielding farmer and his equally gloomy wife. You really must admit that they were bad when they got mocked by MSNBC anchor, Brian Williams and Bill Clinton’s hatchet-man and Democrat commentator, James Carville.
I hope everyone has realized that we aren’t in the middle of a Trump shutdown, or a Pelosi shutdown or even another Schumer shutdown (although you have to admit that “Schumer Shutdown” just rolls off your tongue). This shutdown is owned by 536 anal-retentive politicians in Washington D.C. (The House, The Senate and the President), and what’s more disgusting is that this is being driven by an issue that the American people could resolve in about five minutes.
Nearly 80% of Americans believe we have either a crisis or a problem on our southern border. If you break that out along party lines, 91% of Republicans believe it is a crisis or a problem and even 71% of Democrats do. Those numbers line up almost perfectly, as you might imagine, with the percent of Americans who want better border security. So, this is yet another example of politicians intentionally confusing the “what” with the “how”. 80% of Americans agree on the “what”. We need better border security. What these third grader impersonators are throwing a tantrum about is “how” to deliver on that agreed to goal.
The Democrats say they want more drones, more people, more camera’s and more scrutiny at the ports of entry. Great! The vast majority of Americans would gladly agree with that. The Republicans want a physical barrier, not across the entire 2,000 miles, but about an additional 600 miles or so for a total of 1,250 miles. The cost for that in this budget is about five billion dollars. That is one tenth of one percent on our total government budget and I don’t believe that even needs to be additional spending at all. Remember, Nancy Pelosi’s current bill asks for $54 billion in foreign aid to other countries like Gaza, Syria and Pakistan. Pakistan? Really? This is $12 billion more than the President asked for. Cut this to $7 billion extra or a total of just under $50 billion dollars and we can build the wall and give money to people who would like to slit all of our throats.
63% of Americans, almost two out of three support a wall or some sort of barrier on our southern border in exchange for considerations for the DACA recipients. I’m sure this number is higher amongst Republicans than Democrats, but that is what real negotiations looks like. Democrats get something, like citizenship for two million DACA young adults, and Republicans get an extension of our current wall and badly needed repairs for the 650 miles of walls and fences already in place. No one has to lose in this compromise. We, as a country, only lose if the pigheaded, narrow-minded, obdurate, anal-retentive politicians can stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about the American people.
Oh, have I mentioned the term limits amendment for Congress that Ted Cruz and Francis Rooney are proposing? There may be a connection here!!
The View from the Middle
Dr. Seuss has a great story about extreme stubbornness. It is the story about the Zax, which is sort of a brown hairy Grinch. It is a story of a North Going Zax, who will never take a step to either side, coming face to face with a South Going Zax, who will not move an inch to the east or the west. You can imagine the stalemate that occurs. They both stand there with their arms crossed, eyes closed and chins jutting out day after day, week after week and year after year. Of course, the world does not stop along with them. The days go by and the seasons change and they eventually build a highway over and around these disturbingly obstinate politicians, I mean Zax.
Last night, the country was treated to watching three Zax collide in our nation’s capital. And, just for good measure, these three Zax slathered their intransigence with a healthy dose of incompetence. While I think the President had a good message, we all must admit that he stumbled his way through the delivery. It could only have served as a distraction to his thesis.
And then Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer couldn’t have looked, sounded and acted more ridiculous. They were instantly compared to The American Gothic, the painting by Grant Wood of the stern, pitch fork wielding farmer and his equally gloomy wife. You really must admit that they were bad when they got mocked by MSNBC anchor, Brian Williams and Bill Clinton’s hatchet-man and Democrat commentator, James Carville.
I hope everyone has realized that we aren’t in the middle of a Trump shutdown, or a Pelosi shutdown or even another Schumer shutdown (although you have to admit that “Schumer Shutdown” just rolls off your tongue). This shutdown is owned by 536 anal-retentive politicians in Washington D.C. (The House, The Senate and the President), and what’s more disgusting is that this is being driven by an issue that the American people could resolve in about five minutes.
Nearly 80% of Americans believe we have either a crisis or a problem on our southern border. If you break that out along party lines, 91% of Republicans believe it is a crisis or a problem and even 71% of Democrats do. Those numbers line up almost perfectly, as you might imagine, with the percent of Americans who want better border security. So, this is yet another example of politicians intentionally confusing the “what” with the “how”. 80% of Americans agree on the “what”. We need better border security. What these third grader impersonators are throwing a tantrum about is “how” to deliver on that agreed to goal.
The Democrats say they want more drones, more people, more camera’s and more scrutiny at the ports of entry. Great! The vast majority of Americans would gladly agree with that. The Republicans want a physical barrier, not across the entire 2,000 miles, but about an additional 600 miles or so for a total of 1,250 miles. The cost for that in this budget is about five billion dollars. That is one tenth of one percent on our total government budget and I don’t believe that even needs to be additional spending at all. Remember, Nancy Pelosi’s current bill asks for $54 billion in foreign aid to other countries like Gaza, Syria and Pakistan. Pakistan? Really? This is $12 billion more than the President asked for. Cut this to $7 billion extra or a total of just under $50 billion dollars and we can build the wall and give money to people who would like to slit all of our throats.
63% of Americans, almost two out of three support a wall or some sort of barrier on our southern border in exchange for considerations for the DACA recipients. I’m sure this number is higher amongst Republicans than Democrats, but that is what real negotiations looks like. Democrats get something, like citizenship for two million DACA young adults, and Republicans get an extension of our current wall and badly needed repairs for the 650 miles of walls and fences already in place. No one has to lose in this compromise. We, as a country, only lose if the pigheaded, narrow-minded, obdurate, anal-retentive politicians can stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about the American people.
Oh, have I mentioned the term limits amendment for Congress that Ted Cruz and Francis Rooney are proposing? There may be a connection here!!
Sunday, January 6, 2019
The Bankrupt Left
The Bankrupt Left
The View from the Middle
The purpose of this article is to help the Democrat Party regain some sense of purpose. I believe America is better off when we have two parties who are battling over principles and policies and then compromising in a place that is good for the American people. The Democrat Party of 2018-19 needs to decide what it is “for” and communicate their ideas to America.
In the 2018 mid-terms they ran an almost completely negative campaign. We were told that they hated Donald Trump. We know that they were against anything that Donald Trump was for. We know they wanted to impeach Donald Trump. They didn’t even bother to lay out the grounds on which they would impeach him. They just don’t like him! He’s rude! He’s a bully! While I might even agree with some of these characterizations, they just don’t pass constitutional muster when it comes to impeaching a President. But don’t take my word for it, read or listen to Alan Dershowitz, Harvard constitutional law professor. You can even read his book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump.
They also ran against building a wall (or fence or barrier or whatever) on our southern border, even though they voted for it in 2006 and in 2013. They ran against I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but they might try to describe this as a positive position. They could say that they ran “FOR” abolishing I.C.E. Is running “for” abolishing something a positive thing? I’m going to say no because they never suggested what they would replace that enforcement agency with. They just followed their abolishment statements with some vague comment like, “we need to ‘reimagine’ I.C.E.” I’m not really sure what that means and neither do they.
They are not for the tax cuts, which Nancy Pelosi said would deliver “Armageddon” on our financial markets. I guess that forecast didn’t materialize. They are against moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which they suggested would cause a volcanic eruption of violence there, but that didn’t happen either. They’re against reduced regulations which has helped ignite our economy and deliver both job growth and increase wages. I’m not sure why they like mountains of regulations, but they do. It probably has something to do with the polar ice caps.
They also like to call millions of Americans racists, bigots, misogynists and worse. This shows they are still clinging to the old Hillary Clinton “basket of deplorables” mantra, which I believe actually lost her the election. I guess they think that all of this negativity helped them take over the House in 2018, but let me give them fair warning. Republicans had a record number of incumbents (40) who did not seek re-election for the House last year and I believe that had much more to do with their success than their negative, no-vision, no-policy positions.
And now that they have taken over the House, what are their big legislative ideas? They want to impeach Donald Trump – of course. On what grounds? They think they don’t need any! They have also created legislation to abolish the electoral college. Yah! I’m ready to turn over the entire federal government to New York and California, how about you? I wonder what the Founding Fathers would say about that? They also have drafted legislation to limit the President’s power to fire the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller. The hell with the constitution, and who is even calling for the termination of Mueller? No one, but the dems keep talking about.
But, as if these efforts weren’t distant enough from the issues that Americans are actually concerned about, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting legislation that would ban fossil fuels and have our government move us to 100% renewable energy. Not only was this not in the top 10 issues among the American people, but her plan is as unrealistic, unmanageable, reckless and naïve as her economic plan to offer free college, free healthcare and guaranteed income to everyone. That will cost us all 20 to 30 trillion dollars over 10 years. That’s 20 to 30 TRILLION dollars!!! And she has zero plan on how to collect that extra 20 to 30 trillion dollars from we the tax payers, because, as I constantly point out, the government has NO money. Everything they spend comes from us or is borrowed in our name.
I encourage Democrats to come up with some realistic, positive plans that can be compared to Republican plans and then negotiated in a good-faith manner. Do they still want citizenship for the DACA kids? Trump wants a barrier on the southern border! Let’s start there.
I do have to applaud Ted Cruz and Francis Rooney, both Republicans, who are proposing a constitutional amendment that will invoke term limits on members of Congress. 80% of Americans are in favor of this amendment, and I believe it may be the key to bringing some integrity, civility and productivity to Washington. Just when I think we’re circling the drain, someone proposes some common sense idea that gives me hope again. Well done, Ted and Francis.
The View from the Middle
The purpose of this article is to help the Democrat Party regain some sense of purpose. I believe America is better off when we have two parties who are battling over principles and policies and then compromising in a place that is good for the American people. The Democrat Party of 2018-19 needs to decide what it is “for” and communicate their ideas to America.
In the 2018 mid-terms they ran an almost completely negative campaign. We were told that they hated Donald Trump. We know that they were against anything that Donald Trump was for. We know they wanted to impeach Donald Trump. They didn’t even bother to lay out the grounds on which they would impeach him. They just don’t like him! He’s rude! He’s a bully! While I might even agree with some of these characterizations, they just don’t pass constitutional muster when it comes to impeaching a President. But don’t take my word for it, read or listen to Alan Dershowitz, Harvard constitutional law professor. You can even read his book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump.
They also ran against building a wall (or fence or barrier or whatever) on our southern border, even though they voted for it in 2006 and in 2013. They ran against I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), but they might try to describe this as a positive position. They could say that they ran “FOR” abolishing I.C.E. Is running “for” abolishing something a positive thing? I’m going to say no because they never suggested what they would replace that enforcement agency with. They just followed their abolishment statements with some vague comment like, “we need to ‘reimagine’ I.C.E.” I’m not really sure what that means and neither do they.
They are not for the tax cuts, which Nancy Pelosi said would deliver “Armageddon” on our financial markets. I guess that forecast didn’t materialize. They are against moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which they suggested would cause a volcanic eruption of violence there, but that didn’t happen either. They’re against reduced regulations which has helped ignite our economy and deliver both job growth and increase wages. I’m not sure why they like mountains of regulations, but they do. It probably has something to do with the polar ice caps.
They also like to call millions of Americans racists, bigots, misogynists and worse. This shows they are still clinging to the old Hillary Clinton “basket of deplorables” mantra, which I believe actually lost her the election. I guess they think that all of this negativity helped them take over the House in 2018, but let me give them fair warning. Republicans had a record number of incumbents (40) who did not seek re-election for the House last year and I believe that had much more to do with their success than their negative, no-vision, no-policy positions.
And now that they have taken over the House, what are their big legislative ideas? They want to impeach Donald Trump – of course. On what grounds? They think they don’t need any! They have also created legislation to abolish the electoral college. Yah! I’m ready to turn over the entire federal government to New York and California, how about you? I wonder what the Founding Fathers would say about that? They also have drafted legislation to limit the President’s power to fire the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller. The hell with the constitution, and who is even calling for the termination of Mueller? No one, but the dems keep talking about.
But, as if these efforts weren’t distant enough from the issues that Americans are actually concerned about, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting legislation that would ban fossil fuels and have our government move us to 100% renewable energy. Not only was this not in the top 10 issues among the American people, but her plan is as unrealistic, unmanageable, reckless and naïve as her economic plan to offer free college, free healthcare and guaranteed income to everyone. That will cost us all 20 to 30 trillion dollars over 10 years. That’s 20 to 30 TRILLION dollars!!! And she has zero plan on how to collect that extra 20 to 30 trillion dollars from we the tax payers, because, as I constantly point out, the government has NO money. Everything they spend comes from us or is borrowed in our name.
I encourage Democrats to come up with some realistic, positive plans that can be compared to Republican plans and then negotiated in a good-faith manner. Do they still want citizenship for the DACA kids? Trump wants a barrier on the southern border! Let’s start there.
I do have to applaud Ted Cruz and Francis Rooney, both Republicans, who are proposing a constitutional amendment that will invoke term limits on members of Congress. 80% of Americans are in favor of this amendment, and I believe it may be the key to bringing some integrity, civility and productivity to Washington. Just when I think we’re circling the drain, someone proposes some common sense idea that gives me hope again. Well done, Ted and Francis.
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