Is Candace Owens Really a Nazi Sympathizer?
The View from the Middle
Is there any possibility for compromise in our government today? Are our elected officials in Washington even capable of coming up with solutions to the many problems facing our country? If you are skeptical about our politicians' ability to come together, you’re not alone. According to KRC Research, 70% of Americans believe that our representatives in government lack the basic civility to collaborate on just about anything. And it’s not just the differences in policies or direction that keep us apart, it’s the fact that we have begun to impugn the motives of everyone who disagrees with us i.e. – “if you disagree with me on the abortion issue, you must hate women”. If you disagree with me on the balance between private/public education, you must hate children.” Where did all this malicious, disparaging vitriol come from? I believe it started with a reprobate named Saul Alinsky, who wrote a book called Rules for Radicals, and dedicated it to Satan, yes Lucifer, Beelzebub.
Saul’s fourth rule for radicals is, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” He continued, “It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.” He doesn’t, even for a minute, suggest that this is good for the country or that it will unite us toward achieving some higher, common purpose. In fact, he implies that it will do just the opposite. But, of course, unity was never his goal. He was a “win at all costs” guy, and could have cared less if the country thrived or not, as long as his side was in power. He even admitted in his book that he had no idea how to run things, he only professed to know how to acquire power.
According to Ellis Washington, Constitutional professor and author, “truth was not only relative (to Saul Alinsky), it was irrelevant” Saul admitted in his book that, “an organizer does not have a fixed truth…truth to him is relative and changing.” It is his dedication to disparagement (ridicule) and his tepid relationship with the truth that makes Saul Alinsky such a dangerous and even destructive influence on anything he touched. Unfortunately, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were protégés of Alinsky, and it appears that many in the Democrat party and the mainstream media are disciples.
Again, it is this willingness to ignore the truth and the overwhelming desire to demean opponents that led to the absolutely absurd suggestion by Democratic Representative from California, Ted Lieu, that Candace Owens, a brilliant, young, black woman and political activist, was a Nazi sympathizer. He did this in a House Judiciary hearing on online hate speech. What’s even worse is that, after playing a tape of Ms. Owens out of context, he didn’t even have the decency to ask her a question or allow her to respond. He was actually using hate speech in a hearing to contain hate speech. If you ask me, that was devious, disgusting, cowardly and hateful.
We, as Americans, must demand more and better from our politicians and the media. Whether it is calling tens of millions of Americans racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic or the constant comparison of Donald Trump to Hitler, they have become totally irresponsible. The word “hyperbole” is inadequate to describe the duplicity of these accusations. Do they even know who Adolf Hitler was? Read a book for goodness sakes.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.” The opposite is also true. We’ll never come together as a people and resolve our critical common problems until we start looking for the good in each other, expecting to find it. Reject the hyperbolic accusations and name-calling and demand cooperation, consensus and progress. That will insure our country’s position as the greatest country in the world for all of us and for our children’s children!!
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Thursday, March 21, 2019
The Old Bait and Switch
The Old Bait and Switch
The View from the Middle
During the 2018 mid-term elections, Democrats focused primarily on two issues – Health Care and Immigration. While I don’t support Medicare for all (it would actually be more like Medicaid for all), I was looking forward to a debate that might actually address the issues of access and spiral costs within our current Health Care system. When it came to immigration, I actually had hope that we might be able to work together to fix an issue that we have allowed to fester for over 30 years now. But now that the Democrats have taken over the House of representatives and Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker, what have they been focused on? Investigations, eliminating the Electoral College, dramatically changing the Supreme Court and changing the voting age to 16. Where did all this come from? Was this their true agenda? Let’s take a look at all of these topics to see if this is a worthwhile agenda.
As far as the investigations are concerned, I thought the Mueller Special Counsel report was going to shine the brightest of lights on the Trump administration’s sins before and after the election. Now that it appears that Mueller will not indict the President for collusion (which isn’t even a crime anyway) or obstruction of justice, Democrats promise a two year long political, economic and moral colonoscopy on the President to ensure that he is as distracted as possible and gets nothing accomplished for the American people. This may be a good strategy for the 2020 elections (or maybe not) but it certainly in not in the best interest of the country and hardly a campaign promise.
Isn’t it just a little ironic, also, that the party that was concerned that Trump might not accept the results of the 2016 elections now wants to change the rules of the game to gain an advantage by eliminating the Electoral College, even if it violates the very principles of fairness built into the Constitution. The framers feared “the tyranny of the majority” and thus created a bicameral legislature and the Electoral College to give power to all states, not just the behemoth population centers.
Alexander Hamilton may have expressed it best in his Federalist paper #68. Hamilton suggested that each state offered value to the union beyond just the bodies within their borders. Farming states like Indiana and Iowa have different issues and maybe even different values than populace states like New York and California. Mining states like West Virginia and Colorado face different challenges than the heavily populated states. The Senate and the Electoral College were designed to give all of the original 13 states a voice so that states like Georgia, Delaware and Rhode Island wouldn’t be absolutely dominated by states like Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Today, we don’t want New York and California to control the 47 states in between them (and Alaska too, of course). We don’t want the city slickers in New York and Los Angeles to be controlling the lives of the farmers and minors in fly-over country. Our President must govern all the people and all the states and the Electoral College insures that he or she must understand and address all of their concerns.
Donald Trump has already named two justices to The Supreme Court that will probably influence the court for 30 or 40 years and Democrats pray nightly for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health. They are also still smarting from the Republican’s rejection of Merrick Garland (and I can understand their frustration there). But their answer to their fear and anguish is to change the rules of the game and completely overhaul a process that has been in place for 150 years. I’m willing to have this discussion, but this not a plank in their platform in 2016 or in 2018. This whole debate is a distraction at best. Get back to the things you focused on during the election.
Finally, the Democrats are pressing to move the voting age down to 16. In my opinion this is a blatant and self-serving attempt to include a group of people who they think will support their emotionally driven platform. Winston Churchill famously said, “If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, (but) if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.” When we are young, before we have had to wrestle with the corruption, ineptitude and complexity of government, our vote is dominated by emotion. We can be lured in by images of a utopian world, which will never exist, and by promises that will never be fulfilled. Later in life our positions are tempered by real world experience.
I could just as easily make the case that our military and law-enforcement men and women should get two votes each election. After all, they put their lives on the line every day and deserve a bit more say on how our country is governed. You would tell me that this would be a self-serving idea from conservatives, and you would be right. Hopefully we can all see the same motivation behind the move to a 16-year-old voter.
The bad news in all of this for the American people is that the Democrat Party is not addressing the real needs of the country (healthcare, immigration, the economy), and I really hope they change direction. The good news is that all of these ideas (other than the investigations) will take amendments to the constitution which as arduous process that requires two thirds (67%) vote in both houses of Congress and three fourths (75%) of the state legislatures. Since all of this is so unlikely, why not focus on the things that actually can actually happen and move the country ahead? Anyone?
The View from the Middle
During the 2018 mid-term elections, Democrats focused primarily on two issues – Health Care and Immigration. While I don’t support Medicare for all (it would actually be more like Medicaid for all), I was looking forward to a debate that might actually address the issues of access and spiral costs within our current Health Care system. When it came to immigration, I actually had hope that we might be able to work together to fix an issue that we have allowed to fester for over 30 years now. But now that the Democrats have taken over the House of representatives and Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker, what have they been focused on? Investigations, eliminating the Electoral College, dramatically changing the Supreme Court and changing the voting age to 16. Where did all this come from? Was this their true agenda? Let’s take a look at all of these topics to see if this is a worthwhile agenda.
As far as the investigations are concerned, I thought the Mueller Special Counsel report was going to shine the brightest of lights on the Trump administration’s sins before and after the election. Now that it appears that Mueller will not indict the President for collusion (which isn’t even a crime anyway) or obstruction of justice, Democrats promise a two year long political, economic and moral colonoscopy on the President to ensure that he is as distracted as possible and gets nothing accomplished for the American people. This may be a good strategy for the 2020 elections (or maybe not) but it certainly in not in the best interest of the country and hardly a campaign promise.
Isn’t it just a little ironic, also, that the party that was concerned that Trump might not accept the results of the 2016 elections now wants to change the rules of the game to gain an advantage by eliminating the Electoral College, even if it violates the very principles of fairness built into the Constitution. The framers feared “the tyranny of the majority” and thus created a bicameral legislature and the Electoral College to give power to all states, not just the behemoth population centers.
Alexander Hamilton may have expressed it best in his Federalist paper #68. Hamilton suggested that each state offered value to the union beyond just the bodies within their borders. Farming states like Indiana and Iowa have different issues and maybe even different values than populace states like New York and California. Mining states like West Virginia and Colorado face different challenges than the heavily populated states. The Senate and the Electoral College were designed to give all of the original 13 states a voice so that states like Georgia, Delaware and Rhode Island wouldn’t be absolutely dominated by states like Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Today, we don’t want New York and California to control the 47 states in between them (and Alaska too, of course). We don’t want the city slickers in New York and Los Angeles to be controlling the lives of the farmers and minors in fly-over country. Our President must govern all the people and all the states and the Electoral College insures that he or she must understand and address all of their concerns.
Donald Trump has already named two justices to The Supreme Court that will probably influence the court for 30 or 40 years and Democrats pray nightly for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health. They are also still smarting from the Republican’s rejection of Merrick Garland (and I can understand their frustration there). But their answer to their fear and anguish is to change the rules of the game and completely overhaul a process that has been in place for 150 years. I’m willing to have this discussion, but this not a plank in their platform in 2016 or in 2018. This whole debate is a distraction at best. Get back to the things you focused on during the election.
Finally, the Democrats are pressing to move the voting age down to 16. In my opinion this is a blatant and self-serving attempt to include a group of people who they think will support their emotionally driven platform. Winston Churchill famously said, “If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart, (but) if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.” When we are young, before we have had to wrestle with the corruption, ineptitude and complexity of government, our vote is dominated by emotion. We can be lured in by images of a utopian world, which will never exist, and by promises that will never be fulfilled. Later in life our positions are tempered by real world experience.
I could just as easily make the case that our military and law-enforcement men and women should get two votes each election. After all, they put their lives on the line every day and deserve a bit more say on how our country is governed. You would tell me that this would be a self-serving idea from conservatives, and you would be right. Hopefully we can all see the same motivation behind the move to a 16-year-old voter.
The bad news in all of this for the American people is that the Democrat Party is not addressing the real needs of the country (healthcare, immigration, the economy), and I really hope they change direction. The good news is that all of these ideas (other than the investigations) will take amendments to the constitution which as arduous process that requires two thirds (67%) vote in both houses of Congress and three fourths (75%) of the state legislatures. Since all of this is so unlikely, why not focus on the things that actually can actually happen and move the country ahead? Anyone?
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Don't Dive Into AOC's Empty Pool
Don’t Dive Into AOC’s Empty Pool
The View from the Middle
We have 11 years before entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed. Coastal flooding and crop failures will create an exodus of “eco-refugees” threatening political chaos. As the warming melts the polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations. Coastal regions will be inundated. One-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta will be flooded, cutting off its food supply. Shifting climate patterns will bring back the 1930’s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheat-lands, while the Soviet Union could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time.
Sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it. This Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really knows what she’s talking about. She’s not fear-mongering. These are FACTS, even though all of these FACTS will occur in the future. Sell everything and party hard, because the world looks like it’s going to end by 2030.
Wait just a minute. All of these predictions were not made by AOC. They were made by Noel Brown, the Director of the New York office of the U.N. Environmental Program or UNEP – in 1989. So, all of these apocalyptic events were supposed to happen by the year 2000. Let’s take a look at the accuracy of Mr. Brown’s predictions. The Maldives Islands are still there and have the same extremely low average elevation of six feet as they did in 1989. In fact, you can still play golf there at the Kuredu Golf Club where the only water hazards are the local pools and not flooding from Global Warming (sorry, Climate Change).
Bangladesh is still, well, Bangladesh, and I can’t find a single report of even one “eco-refugee” let alone the 23 million predicted by Mr. Brown. The Nile Delta in Egypt has not been flooded and their food supply has not been cut off, and a return of Dust Bowl conditions has not decimated the wheat-lands in the U.S. or Canada. None of Doctor Brown’s prophesies were realized by the year 2000 and have still not been borne out today – 30 years later. Not only have they not been fulfilled, there is zero evidence that there has been any headway at all towards these existential forecasts.
Do you remember in 2008 when Al Gore predicted that the polar ice caps would be gone in five years? That means they should have been gone by 2013. The problem for Al is, they’re still there and as large as ever (many argue they are bigger). Back in 2014 a group of science purists from the Journal of Nature Climate Change took a look at 117 of the latest predictions of the Climate Change community and found that 114 or 97.4% were wrong, overestimating global temperature changes. With that track record, is it OK for me to be a little skeptical about your future forecasts?
This all means nothing to AOC and the other climate fortune-tellers. They just restate the old predictions with a new end date. AOC now says the world will end in 2031 if we don’t reconstruct every building in America, eliminate all gas driven cars and planes and de-flatulate our country’s cows by then. There is more, of course. This is just the tip of the Green New Deal iceberg. Others have said that the earth will be uninhabitable by 2100, by which time they and we will all conveniently be dead. The fact checkers will have long forgotten this promise.
I have always agreed with the late Charles Krauthammer on this and described myself as a Climate Change agnostic. Climate (not weather) is such a complex system that it is impossible to predict. It’s OK to be skeptical, for as Niels Bohr, brilliant Danish Physicist of the early 20th century, said, “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
Now, all of this is not to say that I am in favor of trashing our planet. I believe that God made us stewards of his world and as part of that responsibility we should conserve, preserve and recycle in order to take care of the planet He entrusted to us. Should we be exploring renewable sources of energy? Of course. To quote Thomas Edison, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power. I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Now, before you jump off the fatalistic, climate change ledge, here are some facts. Scientists now are saying that even if the U.S. was wiped off the face of the earth it would only change global temperatures by half of a degree in the next 100 years. And that's a forecast, not a fact. We could be fighting global cooling in the next 100 years for all we know. Mother Nature is impossible to predict and full of surprises. No one really knows what is going to happen in the next 100 years. Don’t fall for the snake oil selling, doomsday promising charlatans who promise utopia in the future if you just give them all of your money and freedoms today.
We have more than a hundred years of oil and coal left on this planet to utilize. We should be working hard to develop solar and other forms of energy right now, but those sources are not adequate to satisfy our needs today. It is impossible to just turn off the spicket of our current energy sources. Total renewable energy sources only supply 11% of our total energy requirements and that is dominated by hydro-electric and biofuels (ethanol). Solar only accounts for a little over 1% of our energy requirements today. How do we convert the sun’s awesome power into useable energy here on earth is a question that needs to be answered? And we will answer it. But we can’t jump off the high dive into an empty pool on the promise that it will be full of water before we hit bottom. And that is exactly what AOC and the other maniacal Climate Change fanatics are asking our country to do.
The View from the Middle
We have 11 years before entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed. Coastal flooding and crop failures will create an exodus of “eco-refugees” threatening political chaos. As the warming melts the polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations. Coastal regions will be inundated. One-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta will be flooded, cutting off its food supply. Shifting climate patterns will bring back the 1930’s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheat-lands, while the Soviet Union could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time.
Sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it. This Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really knows what she’s talking about. She’s not fear-mongering. These are FACTS, even though all of these FACTS will occur in the future. Sell everything and party hard, because the world looks like it’s going to end by 2030.
Wait just a minute. All of these predictions were not made by AOC. They were made by Noel Brown, the Director of the New York office of the U.N. Environmental Program or UNEP – in 1989. So, all of these apocalyptic events were supposed to happen by the year 2000. Let’s take a look at the accuracy of Mr. Brown’s predictions. The Maldives Islands are still there and have the same extremely low average elevation of six feet as they did in 1989. In fact, you can still play golf there at the Kuredu Golf Club where the only water hazards are the local pools and not flooding from Global Warming (sorry, Climate Change).
Bangladesh is still, well, Bangladesh, and I can’t find a single report of even one “eco-refugee” let alone the 23 million predicted by Mr. Brown. The Nile Delta in Egypt has not been flooded and their food supply has not been cut off, and a return of Dust Bowl conditions has not decimated the wheat-lands in the U.S. or Canada. None of Doctor Brown’s prophesies were realized by the year 2000 and have still not been borne out today – 30 years later. Not only have they not been fulfilled, there is zero evidence that there has been any headway at all towards these existential forecasts.
Do you remember in 2008 when Al Gore predicted that the polar ice caps would be gone in five years? That means they should have been gone by 2013. The problem for Al is, they’re still there and as large as ever (many argue they are bigger). Back in 2014 a group of science purists from the Journal of Nature Climate Change took a look at 117 of the latest predictions of the Climate Change community and found that 114 or 97.4% were wrong, overestimating global temperature changes. With that track record, is it OK for me to be a little skeptical about your future forecasts?
This all means nothing to AOC and the other climate fortune-tellers. They just restate the old predictions with a new end date. AOC now says the world will end in 2031 if we don’t reconstruct every building in America, eliminate all gas driven cars and planes and de-flatulate our country’s cows by then. There is more, of course. This is just the tip of the Green New Deal iceberg. Others have said that the earth will be uninhabitable by 2100, by which time they and we will all conveniently be dead. The fact checkers will have long forgotten this promise.
I have always agreed with the late Charles Krauthammer on this and described myself as a Climate Change agnostic. Climate (not weather) is such a complex system that it is impossible to predict. It’s OK to be skeptical, for as Niels Bohr, brilliant Danish Physicist of the early 20th century, said, “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”
Now, all of this is not to say that I am in favor of trashing our planet. I believe that God made us stewards of his world and as part of that responsibility we should conserve, preserve and recycle in order to take care of the planet He entrusted to us. Should we be exploring renewable sources of energy? Of course. To quote Thomas Edison, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power. I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Now, before you jump off the fatalistic, climate change ledge, here are some facts. Scientists now are saying that even if the U.S. was wiped off the face of the earth it would only change global temperatures by half of a degree in the next 100 years. And that's a forecast, not a fact. We could be fighting global cooling in the next 100 years for all we know. Mother Nature is impossible to predict and full of surprises. No one really knows what is going to happen in the next 100 years. Don’t fall for the snake oil selling, doomsday promising charlatans who promise utopia in the future if you just give them all of your money and freedoms today.
We have more than a hundred years of oil and coal left on this planet to utilize. We should be working hard to develop solar and other forms of energy right now, but those sources are not adequate to satisfy our needs today. It is impossible to just turn off the spicket of our current energy sources. Total renewable energy sources only supply 11% of our total energy requirements and that is dominated by hydro-electric and biofuels (ethanol). Solar only accounts for a little over 1% of our energy requirements today. How do we convert the sun’s awesome power into useable energy here on earth is a question that needs to be answered? And we will answer it. But we can’t jump off the high dive into an empty pool on the promise that it will be full of water before we hit bottom. And that is exactly what AOC and the other maniacal Climate Change fanatics are asking our country to do.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
The Democrats' Shame Offensive
Democrats and “The Shame Offensive”
The View from the Middle
Remember the good old days when politicians differentiated themselves from their opponents by talking about policies they supported vs. the policies advanced by their adversary on the other side of the political aisle? They might have argued that they want more or less taxes, more or less regulation. They might suggest that they are for school choice or not or that they are pro-life or pro-choice. But the Democrats have abandoned the policy debate (I’ll suggest why later) and have embraced a strategy I will call “The Shame Offensive”.
This strategy has two components. First, they must convince everyone in the country that President Trump is a racist, a bigot, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe and somehow an anti-Zionist at the same time. But that’s not enough. In addition to accusing Trump of all of these heinous beliefs, they must also condemn anyone who would dare vote for him of the same disgusting views. They are suggesting that 60+ million Americans are racist, bigoted, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, Nazis. They don’t care that this accusation is ridiculous hyperbole that will tear this country apart. This strategy will pit brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend. It will encourage good people on both sides of the political spectrum to hate each other. But that’s Ok, because for them it is all about power. There are, however, a few flaws in this approach.
First, while this emotionally charged “Shame Offensive” may put their base into a wild-eyed, drooling frenzy, it does the same to the far-right supporters of the President. Even the people in the middle are beginning to sense the lack of substance in this approach and are shifting towards the President, as can be witnessed by recent increases in his approval rating.
Second, it is amazing that this same Donald Trump was not a misogynist or a xenophobe when he was a Democrat appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show. It is equally amazing that he wasn’t a racist or a bigot when he was a Democrat who was donating money to Jesse Jackson and his rainbow coalition. Back then he was charming, noble and generous. But now he is a Republican President who had the audacity to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. He must be destroyed no matter what it does to this country.
The Democratic leadership also misses a very simple reason why millions of people might have voted for Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate. I wrote an article back in 2016 that pointed out that we had just nominated the two most unlikable candidates in the history of presidential politics. We had a virtual tie on the despicability meter. Then Hillary decided to insult millions of people with her “basket of deplorables” comment and to not visit Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the closing weeks of the campaign. Throw in her actual differences in policy with Trump on things like immigration, education, healthcare and the Supreme Court and there were plenty of legitimate reasons to choose Trump over Hillary.
The big problem for Democrats is that they can’t win on the issues. They have already declared themselves the official resistance to Trump. They must be against everything the President supports, and in favor of everything he opposes. That means they must be for higher taxes and more regulations. They have to be against the criminal justice reform that just passed and they must be for socialism which the President just denounced in his State of the Union speech.
That fact is that many of his policies are working. The economy is roaring. Unemployment is at its lowest levels in over 40 years and it is at record low levels for Blacks and Hispanics. We have a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico which replaced the disastrous NAFTA agreement. Consumer confidence is hitting record highs and the stock market is obviously anticipating an historic trade deal with China. We have moved our embassy to Jerusalem and the world didn’t end. North Korea hasn’t tested a nuclear bomb or launched a missile in over a year. There are other positive things going on in this country that you will never hear about from CNN or the mainstream media, but the Democrats MUST be against all of this, because they are the resistance.
So, where have they gone. First, they must ridicule every American who voted for Trump before and might vote for him again. They can’t win your vote with their policy positions, so they must make you ashamed to vote for him. I just don’t think this is a winning strategy in the long run. Second, they must take positions that are so far away from Donald Trump that they have begun to slip off the left edge of the political spectrum. They are now the party of the “Green New Deal” which the CBO just estimated would cost the country $93 Trillion over ten years (only one Trillion off my estimate of a month ago). They are the party of “abortion during delivery”, and the party of totally open borders (Beto O’Rourke now wants to take down the existing 700 miles of walls on our southern border). Unfortunately, none of these positions are winners with the vast majority of the American people.
I actually fear for the Democratic Party and for the country if they actually get the power they crave. What happened to the JFK’s and the LBJ’s and even the Bill Clintons (minus the moral shortcomings) of the Democratic party? I encourage the Democrats to get off the “hate train” and enter the political debate with some reasonable, positive policy positions. If they do not, I predict another four years of President Trump.
The View from the Middle
Remember the good old days when politicians differentiated themselves from their opponents by talking about policies they supported vs. the policies advanced by their adversary on the other side of the political aisle? They might have argued that they want more or less taxes, more or less regulation. They might suggest that they are for school choice or not or that they are pro-life or pro-choice. But the Democrats have abandoned the policy debate (I’ll suggest why later) and have embraced a strategy I will call “The Shame Offensive”.
This strategy has two components. First, they must convince everyone in the country that President Trump is a racist, a bigot, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe and somehow an anti-Zionist at the same time. But that’s not enough. In addition to accusing Trump of all of these heinous beliefs, they must also condemn anyone who would dare vote for him of the same disgusting views. They are suggesting that 60+ million Americans are racist, bigoted, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, Nazis. They don’t care that this accusation is ridiculous hyperbole that will tear this country apart. This strategy will pit brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend. It will encourage good people on both sides of the political spectrum to hate each other. But that’s Ok, because for them it is all about power. There are, however, a few flaws in this approach.
First, while this emotionally charged “Shame Offensive” may put their base into a wild-eyed, drooling frenzy, it does the same to the far-right supporters of the President. Even the people in the middle are beginning to sense the lack of substance in this approach and are shifting towards the President, as can be witnessed by recent increases in his approval rating.
Second, it is amazing that this same Donald Trump was not a misogynist or a xenophobe when he was a Democrat appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show. It is equally amazing that he wasn’t a racist or a bigot when he was a Democrat who was donating money to Jesse Jackson and his rainbow coalition. Back then he was charming, noble and generous. But now he is a Republican President who had the audacity to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. He must be destroyed no matter what it does to this country.
The Democratic leadership also misses a very simple reason why millions of people might have voted for Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate. I wrote an article back in 2016 that pointed out that we had just nominated the two most unlikable candidates in the history of presidential politics. We had a virtual tie on the despicability meter. Then Hillary decided to insult millions of people with her “basket of deplorables” comment and to not visit Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the closing weeks of the campaign. Throw in her actual differences in policy with Trump on things like immigration, education, healthcare and the Supreme Court and there were plenty of legitimate reasons to choose Trump over Hillary.
The big problem for Democrats is that they can’t win on the issues. They have already declared themselves the official resistance to Trump. They must be against everything the President supports, and in favor of everything he opposes. That means they must be for higher taxes and more regulations. They have to be against the criminal justice reform that just passed and they must be for socialism which the President just denounced in his State of the Union speech.
That fact is that many of his policies are working. The economy is roaring. Unemployment is at its lowest levels in over 40 years and it is at record low levels for Blacks and Hispanics. We have a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico which replaced the disastrous NAFTA agreement. Consumer confidence is hitting record highs and the stock market is obviously anticipating an historic trade deal with China. We have moved our embassy to Jerusalem and the world didn’t end. North Korea hasn’t tested a nuclear bomb or launched a missile in over a year. There are other positive things going on in this country that you will never hear about from CNN or the mainstream media, but the Democrats MUST be against all of this, because they are the resistance.
So, where have they gone. First, they must ridicule every American who voted for Trump before and might vote for him again. They can’t win your vote with their policy positions, so they must make you ashamed to vote for him. I just don’t think this is a winning strategy in the long run. Second, they must take positions that are so far away from Donald Trump that they have begun to slip off the left edge of the political spectrum. They are now the party of the “Green New Deal” which the CBO just estimated would cost the country $93 Trillion over ten years (only one Trillion off my estimate of a month ago). They are the party of “abortion during delivery”, and the party of totally open borders (Beto O’Rourke now wants to take down the existing 700 miles of walls on our southern border). Unfortunately, none of these positions are winners with the vast majority of the American people.
I actually fear for the Democratic Party and for the country if they actually get the power they crave. What happened to the JFK’s and the LBJ’s and even the Bill Clintons (minus the moral shortcomings) of the Democratic party? I encourage the Democrats to get off the “hate train” and enter the political debate with some reasonable, positive policy positions. If they do not, I predict another four years of President Trump.
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Heed the Advice of Abraham Lincoln
Let’s Heed the Advice of Abraham Lincoln
The View from the Middle
My favorite President, Abraham Lincoln, once famously said, “If you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it, you surely will.” This was just part of President Lincoln’s effort to encourage Americans to take off the blinders of hate and prejudice and don the lenses of balance and truth. The President knew instinctively that if he could get people to open their hearts and minds, he could remove the wedges of division that had been driven into America’s conscience and unite the country.
The same maxim can be applied to a country. If media and politicians continue to focus only on the negative (90%+ of the coverage of this administration is negative) it will mislead and discourage the public and turn citizen against citizen in America. And as if the negative emphasis is not enough, we are now plagued by a proliferation of “rush to judgement” journalism and even intentionally fraudulent accusations.
A recent example of journalistic incompetence is the story about the Covington Catholic student, Nick Sandman, who was accused of accosting a Native American Indian, Nathan Phillips, and spewing hateful, bigoted rhetoric. The story spread like wildfire throughout the mainstream media. The only problem? The story was completely inaccurate. Nathan Phillips actually advanced on Nick Sandman, and the hate filled rhetoric came from a small crowd of Black Hebrew Israelites who were verbally attacking the Covington Catholic students. But after the 100 minutes of initial reporting and the 10 seconds of retraction (exaggeration intended) the stench will remain on the MAGA hat wearing students and on Donald Trump and anyone who supports him. Mission accomplished.
And then we have the pinnacle of “looking for the bad” and that is deliberately lying to fit a narrative. Jussie Smollett is the most recent example of the hoax reporting phenomenon, but reporter Andy Ngo has published a long list of these counterfeit claims. Jussie reported to the police in Chicago the two white men wearing MAGA hats attacked, him, beat him up, poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck. Since this is just the kind of picture that some of the media and some politicians are hoping exists in this country today, the story absolutely exploded across TV, radio and newspapers around the world. Again, the problem is that it appears that this story was a hoax, invented, staged and executed by Jussie Smollett. No matter. The picture of the white, MAGA hat-wearing thugs has been indelibly etched onto the minds of an eager public just waiting for affirmation of their worst beliefs.
But let me shine a little light of truth, encouragement and hope on this dismal picture. This is already the greatest country in the world, and it will only get better because of the wisdom of our founding fathers who put in a self-correcting system of government tethered to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
Our capitalistic, democratic system has delivered the world’s largest economy and strongest military. We are arguably the freest country in the world when you combine economic, personal and religious freedom. We fought a bloody Civil War to eradicate slavery in this country and saved the world at least two times in our two world wars with precious loss of life and resources here.
We have also made tremendous progress against discrimination and prejudice. In 1870 we finally had the first two African American members of Congress in Senator Hiram Revels and Representative Joseph Rainey. By 1965 we had only progressed to six members in the House, but today we have 55 Black Senators and Representatives (over 10% of the total of 535) and we have finally experienced the first two Black Attorneys General in Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. Under George W. Bush we had our first African American Secretary of State in Colin Powell and in 2008 we elected the first Black President of the United States, Barack Obama.
But, for me, maybe the best evidence of the progress we have made in racial harmony is anecdotal. Brenda, my wife, and I are very active in our grandchildren’s lives, and we are constantly blessed to witness them interact with children of other races at school and in the world in general. If they are any indication, their generation may be the first truly colorblind citizens, and that’s a good thing.
America is still the best country in the world in which to live in today, despite all the mud-slinging from the media and politicians. Our economy is the biggest in the world by far. Our stock market is approaching an all-time high, again. Unemployment is hitting record lows for Blacks, Hispanics and Women and is the lowest for all Americans in decades. There are actually more jobs available today than there are people who are unemployed, and wages are growing at the highest rate since 2008. Of course, you won’t hear this on most newscasts, which represents journalistic malfeasants. Is it any surprise that our trust in the media is scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel?
In my opinion there are three things for Americans to be concerned about today. First, our debt. We have just surpassed $22 Trillion, and I will be looking for this Administration to show some progress in this area over the next two years. Second, our moral compass. I have heard cheers for passing legislation that would allow an abortion of a child while the mother is giving birth even if the mother’s life is not at risk. This is a fundamental lack of respect for life that will decimate the very fiber of our society.
Finally, we need to avoid electing candidates who want to “fundamentally change” our country or our current economic and governmental system. We have a past to be proud of. Our current situation is strong both economically and even culturally, and our future is bright unless we abandon the self-correcting ship that brought us here. May God continue to bless America.
The View from the Middle
My favorite President, Abraham Lincoln, once famously said, “If you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it, you surely will.” This was just part of President Lincoln’s effort to encourage Americans to take off the blinders of hate and prejudice and don the lenses of balance and truth. The President knew instinctively that if he could get people to open their hearts and minds, he could remove the wedges of division that had been driven into America’s conscience and unite the country.
The same maxim can be applied to a country. If media and politicians continue to focus only on the negative (90%+ of the coverage of this administration is negative) it will mislead and discourage the public and turn citizen against citizen in America. And as if the negative emphasis is not enough, we are now plagued by a proliferation of “rush to judgement” journalism and even intentionally fraudulent accusations.
A recent example of journalistic incompetence is the story about the Covington Catholic student, Nick Sandman, who was accused of accosting a Native American Indian, Nathan Phillips, and spewing hateful, bigoted rhetoric. The story spread like wildfire throughout the mainstream media. The only problem? The story was completely inaccurate. Nathan Phillips actually advanced on Nick Sandman, and the hate filled rhetoric came from a small crowd of Black Hebrew Israelites who were verbally attacking the Covington Catholic students. But after the 100 minutes of initial reporting and the 10 seconds of retraction (exaggeration intended) the stench will remain on the MAGA hat wearing students and on Donald Trump and anyone who supports him. Mission accomplished.
And then we have the pinnacle of “looking for the bad” and that is deliberately lying to fit a narrative. Jussie Smollett is the most recent example of the hoax reporting phenomenon, but reporter Andy Ngo has published a long list of these counterfeit claims. Jussie reported to the police in Chicago the two white men wearing MAGA hats attacked, him, beat him up, poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck. Since this is just the kind of picture that some of the media and some politicians are hoping exists in this country today, the story absolutely exploded across TV, radio and newspapers around the world. Again, the problem is that it appears that this story was a hoax, invented, staged and executed by Jussie Smollett. No matter. The picture of the white, MAGA hat-wearing thugs has been indelibly etched onto the minds of an eager public just waiting for affirmation of their worst beliefs.
But let me shine a little light of truth, encouragement and hope on this dismal picture. This is already the greatest country in the world, and it will only get better because of the wisdom of our founding fathers who put in a self-correcting system of government tethered to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
Our capitalistic, democratic system has delivered the world’s largest economy and strongest military. We are arguably the freest country in the world when you combine economic, personal and religious freedom. We fought a bloody Civil War to eradicate slavery in this country and saved the world at least two times in our two world wars with precious loss of life and resources here.
We have also made tremendous progress against discrimination and prejudice. In 1870 we finally had the first two African American members of Congress in Senator Hiram Revels and Representative Joseph Rainey. By 1965 we had only progressed to six members in the House, but today we have 55 Black Senators and Representatives (over 10% of the total of 535) and we have finally experienced the first two Black Attorneys General in Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. Under George W. Bush we had our first African American Secretary of State in Colin Powell and in 2008 we elected the first Black President of the United States, Barack Obama.
But, for me, maybe the best evidence of the progress we have made in racial harmony is anecdotal. Brenda, my wife, and I are very active in our grandchildren’s lives, and we are constantly blessed to witness them interact with children of other races at school and in the world in general. If they are any indication, their generation may be the first truly colorblind citizens, and that’s a good thing.
America is still the best country in the world in which to live in today, despite all the mud-slinging from the media and politicians. Our economy is the biggest in the world by far. Our stock market is approaching an all-time high, again. Unemployment is hitting record lows for Blacks, Hispanics and Women and is the lowest for all Americans in decades. There are actually more jobs available today than there are people who are unemployed, and wages are growing at the highest rate since 2008. Of course, you won’t hear this on most newscasts, which represents journalistic malfeasants. Is it any surprise that our trust in the media is scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel?
In my opinion there are three things for Americans to be concerned about today. First, our debt. We have just surpassed $22 Trillion, and I will be looking for this Administration to show some progress in this area over the next two years. Second, our moral compass. I have heard cheers for passing legislation that would allow an abortion of a child while the mother is giving birth even if the mother’s life is not at risk. This is a fundamental lack of respect for life that will decimate the very fiber of our society.
Finally, we need to avoid electing candidates who want to “fundamentally change” our country or our current economic and governmental system. We have a past to be proud of. Our current situation is strong both economically and even culturally, and our future is bright unless we abandon the self-correcting ship that brought us here. May God continue to bless America.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Scrooge vs The Hunger Games
Scrooge vs. The Hunger Games
The View from the Middle
From the beginning of our country, our founders struggled over the proposed size of our government, especially our federal Government. They understood the need for some government to protect our citizens from selfish, unscrupulous people who might abuse their power and they wanted to provide for our national defense. They also feared the bondage which would accompany an all-powerful, despotic government that would strip away the freedoms and rights of our citizens and replace them with forced compliance.
There are two books/movies that will help illustrate the perils of erring on either extreme side of this ideological spectrum – too little or too much government. The first is the classic novel written by Charles Dickens called A Christmas Carol. In order to deliver this story of eventual redemption, Dickens created the selfish, greedy character called Mr. Scrooge. Scrooge is the personification of what a country could look like without empathy for and protection of all of its citizens. The disparity between the rich and poor would become exaggerated and the disadvantaged would be frustrated by their inability to affect change.
If you haven’t watched my video on “The Wealth Gap” you should do so immediately. I’ve pasted a link to that video below. Just copy this link and paste it into your browser to view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMFiGQ55qjw
While I still think this is the greatest country in the world, you will see that I believe we should be paying some attention to the gap between our have’s and have not’s. There are also some mostly private sector solutions to this problem in my video so I really encourage to take a look.
The second book/movie, The Hunger Games, is a classic tale of government gone wrong or government gone too big. The story begins after the people have given away all their rights or had them stripped away by a now gluttonous, pampered and arrogant “Capitol”. The citizens of Panem have traded in their rights for a guaranteed life of bare existence and servitude. I’m sure that’s not how the deal was initially described by “The Capitol”. The promise probably went something like this. The country and you personally are doomed, but if you give us (the government) complete control of your lives, we will guarantee a utopian existence.
Yes, fearmongering accompanied by vague, even outrageous promises can convince people to do almost anything, which brings me to the Green New Deal. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. It is only about 13 pages long in its double space, wide margin format. It could be reduced to a typical newspaper article if a little efficiency of space were applied.
I only bring it up because it is an excellent example of the other end of the extreme ideological spectrum. Its first goal is scare the living (you know what) out of everyone. Of course, that’s no problem for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). She’s already predicted that the world will end in 12 years, so put a stop order on those “Class of 2031” T-shirts. Next, AOC promises to solve every issue in our country from the wage gap to racism by retrofitting every building in the country, totally eliminating air travel and completely decimating our current energy industry in the next 10 years. She also suggests that The United States should finance this fantasy (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) globally without suggesting a cost to any of this anywhere in the document. This is the very definition of “over promise and under deliver”. Her motto is, “Scare, Promise, Tax, Repeat”.
As you all know, I’m a global warming agnostic. I agree with Al Gore’s climatologist who said years ago that our world’s climate is so complex that it is impossible to predict. We can barely forecast if it’s going to rain tomorrow, let alone predict what the globe’s temperature average will be almost 100 years from now. Even MIT estimated that if all the promises were kept by all the countries in the Paris Climate Accord, it would only reduce the world’s temperature by one degree Celsius by 2100. And let’s face it, that’s not a promise but a forecast. So much can change between now and then it’s almost worthless to even go through that exercise.
Now, I’m also not in favor of trashing the environment. We are stewards of God’s world and we should be doing all we can to protect it, short of committing economic, social and physical suicide. We should be conserving our resources and developing renewable energy sources and applying advances when they are ready, but we shouldn’t give up our freedom to fearmongers today who promise utopia in the future.
We don’t want to be Scrooge or Katniss Everdeen. We will never find truth or well-being in the extreme elements of our political ideologies. If we are to survive and even prosper, we must compromise and find solutions in the middle as our Founding Fathers did at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Their accommodations to each other delivered a document and structure that has guided us for over 230 years and established the greatest country in the world today and maybe in all of history. Don’t abandon that approach now. Throw out the extremists in Washington and replace them with patriots who care more about the country than they do about their own political futures. Oh, and support term limits in Congress. It may be our last, best hope to save ourselves from ourselves.
The View from the Middle
From the beginning of our country, our founders struggled over the proposed size of our government, especially our federal Government. They understood the need for some government to protect our citizens from selfish, unscrupulous people who might abuse their power and they wanted to provide for our national defense. They also feared the bondage which would accompany an all-powerful, despotic government that would strip away the freedoms and rights of our citizens and replace them with forced compliance.
There are two books/movies that will help illustrate the perils of erring on either extreme side of this ideological spectrum – too little or too much government. The first is the classic novel written by Charles Dickens called A Christmas Carol. In order to deliver this story of eventual redemption, Dickens created the selfish, greedy character called Mr. Scrooge. Scrooge is the personification of what a country could look like without empathy for and protection of all of its citizens. The disparity between the rich and poor would become exaggerated and the disadvantaged would be frustrated by their inability to affect change.
If you haven’t watched my video on “The Wealth Gap” you should do so immediately. I’ve pasted a link to that video below. Just copy this link and paste it into your browser to view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMFiGQ55qjw
While I still think this is the greatest country in the world, you will see that I believe we should be paying some attention to the gap between our have’s and have not’s. There are also some mostly private sector solutions to this problem in my video so I really encourage to take a look.
The second book/movie, The Hunger Games, is a classic tale of government gone wrong or government gone too big. The story begins after the people have given away all their rights or had them stripped away by a now gluttonous, pampered and arrogant “Capitol”. The citizens of Panem have traded in their rights for a guaranteed life of bare existence and servitude. I’m sure that’s not how the deal was initially described by “The Capitol”. The promise probably went something like this. The country and you personally are doomed, but if you give us (the government) complete control of your lives, we will guarantee a utopian existence.
Yes, fearmongering accompanied by vague, even outrageous promises can convince people to do almost anything, which brings me to the Green New Deal. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. It is only about 13 pages long in its double space, wide margin format. It could be reduced to a typical newspaper article if a little efficiency of space were applied.
I only bring it up because it is an excellent example of the other end of the extreme ideological spectrum. Its first goal is scare the living (you know what) out of everyone. Of course, that’s no problem for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). She’s already predicted that the world will end in 12 years, so put a stop order on those “Class of 2031” T-shirts. Next, AOC promises to solve every issue in our country from the wage gap to racism by retrofitting every building in the country, totally eliminating air travel and completely decimating our current energy industry in the next 10 years. She also suggests that The United States should finance this fantasy (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) globally without suggesting a cost to any of this anywhere in the document. This is the very definition of “over promise and under deliver”. Her motto is, “Scare, Promise, Tax, Repeat”.
As you all know, I’m a global warming agnostic. I agree with Al Gore’s climatologist who said years ago that our world’s climate is so complex that it is impossible to predict. We can barely forecast if it’s going to rain tomorrow, let alone predict what the globe’s temperature average will be almost 100 years from now. Even MIT estimated that if all the promises were kept by all the countries in the Paris Climate Accord, it would only reduce the world’s temperature by one degree Celsius by 2100. And let’s face it, that’s not a promise but a forecast. So much can change between now and then it’s almost worthless to even go through that exercise.
Now, I’m also not in favor of trashing the environment. We are stewards of God’s world and we should be doing all we can to protect it, short of committing economic, social and physical suicide. We should be conserving our resources and developing renewable energy sources and applying advances when they are ready, but we shouldn’t give up our freedom to fearmongers today who promise utopia in the future.
We don’t want to be Scrooge or Katniss Everdeen. We will never find truth or well-being in the extreme elements of our political ideologies. If we are to survive and even prosper, we must compromise and find solutions in the middle as our Founding Fathers did at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Their accommodations to each other delivered a document and structure that has guided us for over 230 years and established the greatest country in the world today and maybe in all of history. Don’t abandon that approach now. Throw out the extremists in Washington and replace them with patriots who care more about the country than they do about their own political futures. Oh, and support term limits in Congress. It may be our last, best hope to save ourselves from ourselves.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
The Democratic Party is Completely Off the Rails
The Democratic Party is Completely off the Rails
The View from the Middle
The new Democratic Party seems to be debating over two different campaign slogans. The first goes something like this, “Everything will be free or guaranteed and you will never have to take any personal responsibility for anything if you vote for us.” The other motto in contention is more to the point. It would brag that, “We can morally and financially bankrupt this country in under 10 years, vote for us.” They’ll probably go with the first tagline, but both are true.
Their plan to ruin the US economy and bring on a national “wild ride” leading to insolvency, lost jobs, plummeting individual income and a crushing national debt is already on display for all to see. Any one of their programs would be a gut-shot to the country that would lead to a lingering death for our economy and for our people. The combination of their policies would perform a mafia hit (two in the back of the head) to our values and financial stability.
Before I show you the price tags and knowable consequences of their strategies, let me remind you how big our government is today. In 2018, our government brought in a little over $3.3 TRILLION dollars in taxes from you (remember, the government has NO money). As you might guess, our government still managed to spend almost $800 billion more than they brought in, so they had to borrow that $800 billion in the name of the American people so that they could spend $4.2 TRILLION. That picture alone should frighten us all. The continued annual deficits and mounting national debt is one of my biggest disappointments with Donald Trump’s leadership. His ten-year budget does, however, balance and I’m hoping he will make good on that promise.
Now, here are the new programs being proposed by the Democratic Party. First, there is Medicare for all (except Congress I’m sure). Not only will this throw 155 million people off of their employer supplied health care plan, which they love, but it will also decimate the US Insurance Industry, eliminating the jobs of two and a half million people in the process. The working people in the insurance industry will become the new coal miners for the Democratic party. Remember how Hillary Clinton coldly stated that her energy plans would “put a lot of coal miners out of work”. Now they are saying the same thing to the insurance industry workers. And oh, by the way, the price tag for this “Medicare for all” pipedream is $32 TRILLION dollars over 10 years.
The “New Green Deal” is even worse. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting that we rip apart our entire energy industry and replace it with a 100% renewable system in just 15 years. She doesn’t explain what we are going to do with all of our gas stations around the country or the refiners, etc. Does she understand the absolute chaos it would create in our automobile industry? Oil and coal currently deliver about 90% of the energy used by this country, and renewables only have the small portion they do because they are heavily subsidized. Even Michael Bloomberg, the former Democratic Mayor of New York and potential Democratic Presidential candidate in 2020, called her plans “pie in the sky” and “disingenuous”. He may have said this because he knew they wouldn’t work, or maybe because of the price tag. Projections show that the “New Green Deal” would cost us $49 TRILLION over ten years.
When you add in AOC’s guaranteed income plan, which would cost $13 TRILLION over 10 years, these three programs alone would add $94 TRILLION in costs to our budget or about $9.4 TRILLION per year for the next ten years. This alone ( I’m not throwing in free college and preschool which she also proposes) would more than triple the size of our government. You can’t get all of this money from the “tippy-toppy” 1% of America’s wealthy. If we taxed the income of the top 1% in our country at a rate of 100% (in other words we took it ALL) This would only produce $1.2 Trillion dollars. Where is she proposing to get the other $8.2 Trillion a year. She would have to tax every dollar made by every American citizen and business at a rate of 81% just to pay for the plans she has currently proposed. And that’s just the federal income taxes. Once you add in state and local taxes, Americans would have no income at all, and would be working 100% of the time just to fund government. Maybe that’s why Michael Bloomberg calls these plans “pie in the sky” and “disingenuous”. Let me add that they are “unrealistic, naïve and even dangerous”.
These plans would financially cripple our country in almost no time, but that’s not good enough for Democrats. They must bankrupt us morally and spiritually too, and the new abortion legislation is designed to do just that. New York has already passed legislation that will allow abortions through the third trimester as long as a woman and a doctor agree, and states like New Mexico, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont are lining up to follow suit. Think of that. We’re not talking about unviable lumps of cells. We are talking about fully formed, healthy babies (human beings) can now be aborted (murdered) up to and including the time the mother is in labor, as long as a doctor and the woman agree that it might have a negative impact on the woman’s mental health. Given the challenges in raising a child today, that could technically be applied to virtually every baby born in this country.
You should watch the video of Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia, whose late term abortion bill has not passed YET because it is the most extreme. The legislation would allow for an abortion even during labor on a fully formed and healthy baby, but the governor talks about aborting (killing) a baby that has actually been born. Let me quote the governor, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.” The governor tries to cover himself by saying that this is for babies who are not viable or have severe abnormalities. The governor, however, is misleading everyone. I have read the proposed bill and that is not a requirement. This bill allows for one doctor and one woman to decide if a perfectly healthy baby should be murdered. Given the fact that the New York legislation has already passed, if this bill in Virginia passes, we would have to revisit the conviction of the serial killing baby doctor, Kermit Gosnell. His brutal, disgusting and repulsive actions may actually be legal by these standards.
I can only hope that someone will send a calculator to the DNC so that they can figure out how unrealistic their financial plans are. Michael Bloomberg has done the math. Let’s hope a few more Democrats see his light. If, however, they can’t figure out how important it is to value and protect the lives of healthy babies within seconds of being born or even after birth, then the Democratic party is truly lost. They will be denying the first unalienable right outlined in our Declaration of Independence – the right to Life. If we abandon respect for the sanctity of life, the foundation of our great republic will crumble. “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.”
The View from the Middle
The new Democratic Party seems to be debating over two different campaign slogans. The first goes something like this, “Everything will be free or guaranteed and you will never have to take any personal responsibility for anything if you vote for us.” The other motto in contention is more to the point. It would brag that, “We can morally and financially bankrupt this country in under 10 years, vote for us.” They’ll probably go with the first tagline, but both are true.
Their plan to ruin the US economy and bring on a national “wild ride” leading to insolvency, lost jobs, plummeting individual income and a crushing national debt is already on display for all to see. Any one of their programs would be a gut-shot to the country that would lead to a lingering death for our economy and for our people. The combination of their policies would perform a mafia hit (two in the back of the head) to our values and financial stability.
Before I show you the price tags and knowable consequences of their strategies, let me remind you how big our government is today. In 2018, our government brought in a little over $3.3 TRILLION dollars in taxes from you (remember, the government has NO money). As you might guess, our government still managed to spend almost $800 billion more than they brought in, so they had to borrow that $800 billion in the name of the American people so that they could spend $4.2 TRILLION. That picture alone should frighten us all. The continued annual deficits and mounting national debt is one of my biggest disappointments with Donald Trump’s leadership. His ten-year budget does, however, balance and I’m hoping he will make good on that promise.
Now, here are the new programs being proposed by the Democratic Party. First, there is Medicare for all (except Congress I’m sure). Not only will this throw 155 million people off of their employer supplied health care plan, which they love, but it will also decimate the US Insurance Industry, eliminating the jobs of two and a half million people in the process. The working people in the insurance industry will become the new coal miners for the Democratic party. Remember how Hillary Clinton coldly stated that her energy plans would “put a lot of coal miners out of work”. Now they are saying the same thing to the insurance industry workers. And oh, by the way, the price tag for this “Medicare for all” pipedream is $32 TRILLION dollars over 10 years.
The “New Green Deal” is even worse. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is suggesting that we rip apart our entire energy industry and replace it with a 100% renewable system in just 15 years. She doesn’t explain what we are going to do with all of our gas stations around the country or the refiners, etc. Does she understand the absolute chaos it would create in our automobile industry? Oil and coal currently deliver about 90% of the energy used by this country, and renewables only have the small portion they do because they are heavily subsidized. Even Michael Bloomberg, the former Democratic Mayor of New York and potential Democratic Presidential candidate in 2020, called her plans “pie in the sky” and “disingenuous”. He may have said this because he knew they wouldn’t work, or maybe because of the price tag. Projections show that the “New Green Deal” would cost us $49 TRILLION over ten years.
When you add in AOC’s guaranteed income plan, which would cost $13 TRILLION over 10 years, these three programs alone would add $94 TRILLION in costs to our budget or about $9.4 TRILLION per year for the next ten years. This alone ( I’m not throwing in free college and preschool which she also proposes) would more than triple the size of our government. You can’t get all of this money from the “tippy-toppy” 1% of America’s wealthy. If we taxed the income of the top 1% in our country at a rate of 100% (in other words we took it ALL) This would only produce $1.2 Trillion dollars. Where is she proposing to get the other $8.2 Trillion a year. She would have to tax every dollar made by every American citizen and business at a rate of 81% just to pay for the plans she has currently proposed. And that’s just the federal income taxes. Once you add in state and local taxes, Americans would have no income at all, and would be working 100% of the time just to fund government. Maybe that’s why Michael Bloomberg calls these plans “pie in the sky” and “disingenuous”. Let me add that they are “unrealistic, naïve and even dangerous”.
These plans would financially cripple our country in almost no time, but that’s not good enough for Democrats. They must bankrupt us morally and spiritually too, and the new abortion legislation is designed to do just that. New York has already passed legislation that will allow abortions through the third trimester as long as a woman and a doctor agree, and states like New Mexico, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont are lining up to follow suit. Think of that. We’re not talking about unviable lumps of cells. We are talking about fully formed, healthy babies (human beings) can now be aborted (murdered) up to and including the time the mother is in labor, as long as a doctor and the woman agree that it might have a negative impact on the woman’s mental health. Given the challenges in raising a child today, that could technically be applied to virtually every baby born in this country.
You should watch the video of Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia, whose late term abortion bill has not passed YET because it is the most extreme. The legislation would allow for an abortion even during labor on a fully formed and healthy baby, but the governor talks about aborting (killing) a baby that has actually been born. Let me quote the governor, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.” The governor tries to cover himself by saying that this is for babies who are not viable or have severe abnormalities. The governor, however, is misleading everyone. I have read the proposed bill and that is not a requirement. This bill allows for one doctor and one woman to decide if a perfectly healthy baby should be murdered. Given the fact that the New York legislation has already passed, if this bill in Virginia passes, we would have to revisit the conviction of the serial killing baby doctor, Kermit Gosnell. His brutal, disgusting and repulsive actions may actually be legal by these standards.
I can only hope that someone will send a calculator to the DNC so that they can figure out how unrealistic their financial plans are. Michael Bloomberg has done the math. Let’s hope a few more Democrats see his light. If, however, they can’t figure out how important it is to value and protect the lives of healthy babies within seconds of being born or even after birth, then the Democratic party is truly lost. They will be denying the first unalienable right outlined in our Declaration of Independence – the right to Life. If we abandon respect for the sanctity of life, the foundation of our great republic will crumble. “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.”
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