He’s never met a government monopoly he didn’t love, or a free market service he didn’t distrust or despise…
…but don’t worry, he’s not really a socialist!
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Category: ideological culture
Bernie Sanders is worse than merely wrong about the rich not paying their fair share of taxes.
It’s we, the much-lauded “Ninety-nine Percenters,” who don’t pay enough!
At least, when we figure taxes paid against direct subsidies/services rendered: taxes minus transfers. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, only the top quintile of income earners — including the much-abhorred One Percenters — pay appreciably more in taxes than they receive in “benefits.”
In a republic, you would expect the masses to pay taxes, receiving only indirect benefits, like a broadly defined “security” and “the rule of law.”
The calculation of who is and is not a net tax-payer or net tax-consumer has to be difficult. I certainly haven’t vetted the studies carefully. But previous accountings also show that the super-rich pay the bulk of income taxes in America.
How to put the system aright?
Don’t tax us more!
Bernie’s preference, to tax a whole lot more as well as to provide more subsidies and “benefits,” will only make a bigger mess.
Unfortunately, doing the right thing (cutting back on the giveaways at all levels) is politically . . . tricky.
But there’s something missing in all this: the indirect hazards of the “benefits” . . . the opportunity costs involved when we get hooked on hand-outs. The most trapped people in America are those who pay the least and take the most. The dollar-value of their received transfer payments measure neither their dependency nor their consequent lack of upward mobility.
How could we figure real harms and helps embedded in the current system, when some “benefits” are, in fact, detriments?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The Iowa caucuses were pretty much a dead-heat for the Democrats, with Hillary Clinton winning a number of precincts by the flip of a coin and barely edging out Sanders.
Leaving aside conspiratorial notions like trick coins, the Democratic results are most interesting in one obvious way: half of the Democratic activists in this Midwestern state proved themselves just fine with voting for a self-proclaimed “socialist”; the other half were apparently hunky-dory to cast their ballots for an ethically-challenged political insider most often described by voters in an ABC News survey with the word “liar.”
No red flags, Dems?
Though Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly keeps talking about Mrs. Clinton’s possible indictment, partisanship being what it is, how is that going to happen? Despite a rising swell of support for Sanders, Clinton’s juggernaut seems fated to roll over the land.
But really, which is more disappointing:
- Lack of revulsion or censure for Clinton’s haughty incompetence and disregard for the law? or
- Lack of incredulity at someone identifying his Big Gov redistributionism as “socialist”?
Monday wasn’t a red letter day, it was a red flag day.
On the Republican side, the establishment took a drubbing. Former Gov. Jeb Bush, son and brother of former presidents, received less than three percent of the Republican vote — even though, including SuperPACs, he has raised the most money. By far — his campaign shelled out $2,884 for each Iowa vote.
Moreover, Ted Cruz, the GOP establishment’s worst nightmare, won. Let’s hope his success overcoming attacks from the governor and the crony corn lobby will help others find the political courage to oppose ethanol subsidies and mandates.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A real-life politician has admitted to having been wrong, even going so far as to dismiss his own previous comment as “stupid.”
He wasn’t abject about it — didn’t “apologize.” He simply explained how and why he had erred.
This . . . from a presidential contender.
No, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton, she of many errors and untruths. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders, whose love of Big, Intrusive Government is an error in and of itself. And it wasn’t Trump, known hyperbolist.
The erring politician? Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico.
Johnson, who is currently running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, told Reason last year that banning the burqa would be a reasonable step in protecting the rights of women. Here in America.
Sound sort of Trumpian?
Earlier this month, Johnson retracted his statement. Last week on Fox Business Network’s Kennedy, he explained why prohibiting the face-veil wouldn’t work.
“We need to differentiate between religious freedom, which is [sic] Islam, and Sharia law, which is politics,” he said — and I add a “sic” there because he is obviously driving at this point: religious freedom means we cannot prohibit the religion of Islam, but Sharia law amounts to a religious intrusion into the legal and political realm. And thus must be opposed as “contrary to the U. S. Constitution.”
The reason Johnson had earlier floated the banning of the Islamic face-veil was to save women from Islamofascist enforcement of Sharia’s mandate to go around in public only when completely covered.
“We cannot allow Sharia Law to, in any way, be a part of our lives.”
I’m with him. Let’s hold tight to both religious and political freedom. And how refreshing for a politician to admit an error.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“The word ‘socialist’ is a really hard word,” warned former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
“Now, I love Bernie Sanders, really,” Granholm added, acknowledging she’s okay with his socialist policies — just not the term.
Not in mixed company.
The former governor of the Wolverine State was responding to a question — “How about the charges ‘he’s a socialist’?” — from Martha Raddatz, who was hosting ABC’s This Week that week.
“The socialist label is something that he applies to himself, right,” Granholm noted. “So the question is how does that play across America?”
Armed with a Gallup poll, Granholm answered that socialism doesn’t play very well at all. Voters are “even” less apt to vote for a “socialist” than for an “atheist.” In case you wondered.
So, what is the difference between a socialist and a Democrat?
“You’re the chairman of the Democratic Party, tell me the difference between you and a socialist,” Chris Matthews had implored Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on MSNBC months ago.
“The relevant debate we’ll be having over the course of this campaign,” dodged the DNC chair, “is what’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.”
Chuck Todd, noting that Bernie Sanders “is an unabashed socialist” who is always praising European social democracies, echoed the question on Meet the Press: “what is the difference?”
“It’s always fun to be interviewed by Chris Matthews and I know that he enjoys that banter,” bobbed an answer-less Wasserman Schultz. “The important distinction we’ll be discussing in this campaign [blah, blah, blah] . . .”
Earlier this month, Matthews likewise asked Hillary Clinton to state the difference. Mrs. Clinton said she wasn’t a socialist but, instead, “a progressive Democrat.”
“Debbie Wasserman Schultz wouldn’t answer the question either,” Matthews replied.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The modern age sports an amazing feature that used to be hard to detect, because so drawn out: a shorter-than-ever-before lag between the proposal of some popular inanity and its complete debunking.
It used to take seemingly forever for a bad idea to be shown up, either in argument or evidence. Now it can be a matter of days or even hours. Call it the Buncombe/Debunking Lagtime.
Take the Flint, Michigan, water fiasco.
When the story hit the news cycle, almost immediately the progressive meme machinery began cranking out slogans imposed upon visuals — jpegs and gifs — to the effect that the poisoned water was the result of Republican “austerity” or (even) “libertarian” policy.
Somehow a Democratic mayor was less to blame than a more distant Republican governor, but in the minds of knee-jerk partisans, common sense is not as important as an in-your-face accusation.
But now, days and scant weeks into the story, it turns out that the story behind the story is not merely wrong, but entirely, upside-down wrong. The Flint water fiasco was caused by a stimulus project, and the switch from bad to worse water sources was made to promote “jobs”!
In the words of Reason’s Shikha Dalmia, “the Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong.”
Yes, another failed Big Government policy — just like progressives are always pushing.
And it didn’t take years for the truth to seep out.
Hooray for today’s accelerated history! Now, if we could only decrease the lagtime between lesson given and lesson learned.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Local Moralist Doing His Part to End Income Inequality”
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Mugger photo by Flikr user cometstarmoon
Yesterday, we decried the rigged superdelegate voting process used by establishment Democrats to Hillary Clinton’s benefit — and party members’ detriment. Today, we switch parties to find the GOP establishment in full panic mode, so terrified at the prospect of a Ted Cruz victory that they’re now rallying around Donald Trump.
Republican Party stalwart Bob Dole, the 92-year-old former Senate Majority Leader and a 35-year Washington insider, called Sen. Cruz an “extremist.” A Cruz victory would lead to “cataclysmic” losses for the party, Dole contends, and by the way . . . “Nobody likes him.”
“Nobody in Washington,” Dole means.
As for Trump? Dole thinks Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”
The right personality?
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a fixture in Congress for the last 41 years, introduced Trump recently by clumsily validating Trump’s campaign slogan: “we have an opportunity, once again, to make America great again.”
And again.
According to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Trump does not have any particular enemies down here. I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning and is irritated with him. That’s not how it is with Cruz.”
Former GOP congressman turned lobbyist Vin Weber says that the establishment’s hated of Cruz “has forced some people to look past all of Trump’s issues and think about what he could offer.”
Offer?
The Republican establishment really, really, really despises Sen. Ted Cruz. But they can live with Donald Trump.
Hmmmm . . . advantage Cruz.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Democrats aren’t very good at democracy.
Consider the party’s presidential contest, as I did yesterday at Townhall.
As an appetizer, I noted the Democratic National Committee policy of hiding their debates from viewers by placing them on weekend evenings pitted against major sporting events.
For meat and potatoes, ponder my warning of the very ugly scenario of Sen. Bernie Sanders capturing as much as 58 percent of the primary and caucus vote and resulting delegates, but still losing to Hillary Clinton.
How could that possibly happen?
Because of folks designated as “superdelegates” — those awarded voting delegate status for holding a party office or being an elected or former elected official.
Democrats brag that they’ve reduced these insiders’ impact. Democratically-unaccountable superdelegates once accounted for 30 percent of Democratic Party convention delegates; now it’s only 15 percent of the total. Still, Clinton leads Sanders 380 to eleven among superdelegates.
At that rate, she could lose the actual state elections and still win the party’s presidential nomination.
The Democrats’ dereliction of democratic duty doesn’t end there, either.
The process by which various powerful party “interests” endorsed either Sanders or Clinton is quite telling. Journalist Zaid Jilani reports in The Intercept that, “Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.”
“Meanwhile,” Jilani found, “all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process.”
Seems the insiders have decided Mrs. Clinton will be on the Democratic Party presidential menu, whether Democrats like it or not.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Government failure checklist. . .
Reference:
The Government Poisoned Flint’s Water—
So Stop Blaming Everyone Else
Flint’s water crisis isn’t a failure of austerity. It’s a failure of government.
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