Category: national politics & policies

ideological culture national politics & policies

The Trump of the Will

Robert Mueller, disaster, testimony, collusion, exonerate, hearing,

It’s over — our long national nightmare is over.

Or is it?

Congress’s “movie” version of Robert Mueller’s book-length report on Trump-Russia collusion flopped. That is, Wednesday’s hearings were an “optics . . . disaster.”

The Democrats and their media cheerleaders had put so much stock in the event, hoping it would be a Triumph of the Will spurring the much-longed-for Trump impeachment, an inspiration to move the masses on to victory.

It turned out to be more an industrial film on early stage dementia, with Robert Mueller the befuddled protagonist, demonstrating that he was either slipping, or had not really been in charge of the report bearing his name.

Now, we sympathize with dementia patients.

But should we sympathize with congressional Democrats? And the Republicans, too?

They are as pathetic and evil and foolish and craven as they seem for reasons. We live in a time of crisis. They have politicked themselves into their respective corners; they now feel trapped.

Their desperation has given us Trump — The Antichrist to most Democrats and The Savior to most Republicans. I am pretty sure neither is true.

Trump is a sign of the times.

Maybe, in the smoldering ruins of the Mueller hearing conflagration, the case for impeachment — and for Trump as Russian Agent — will completely disappear. Democrats can regain their senses, and Republicans can go back to their theme of responsibility (as epitomized in their long-lost cause of balanced budgets and limited government).

But I won’t hold my breath.

The nightmare may be over, but Washington’s dementia is harder to recover from.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags collusion, disaster, exonerate, hearing, Robert Mueller, testimony

national politics & policies Popular

Bernie and Economic Law

One of the things Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is known for is his push for a $15 per hour “living wage.” But this is politics — a policy position is never complete until its advocates demonstrate just how idiotic the policy actually is.

As Bernie just did.

His presidential campaign has been embroiled in labor union negotiations and a mini-scandal.

Some staffers have been paid a flat salary, not according to a per-hour contract, making Bernie’s “living wage” commitment a bit murky. You see, these salaried employees worked longer hours than a typical 40-hour work week (as is common in political campaigns), dipping their wage breakdown below the $15/hour “minimum.”

Now, no one is more deserving of this bit of policy blowback than resplendent millionaire Bernie Sanders.

Yet, it’s his campaign’s response that is especially droll: reduced hours!

So, while in one sense staffers got a pay raise, they did not get more money. Which is, as Matthew Yglesias acknowledged at Vox, “exactly the point that opponents of minimum wage increases are always making — if you force employers to pay more, they’re going to respond by cutting back elsewhere.”

Ryan McMaken, at mises.org, dug deeper, noting that there are a number of ways that the new union deal could amount to cuts in real wages. By “cutting worker hours, the Sanders campaign elected to provide fewer ‘services’ in the form of campaign activities. In practice, this will likely mean fewer rallies, less travel, or fewer television ads.” Less chance for growth. And decreased likelihood for increased employment of other workers.

Not exactly shocking. But a lesson. A terrible way to run a business.

Or a campaign.

Perhaps we should say, “Thanks, Bernie!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Bernie Sanders, economics, ideology, minimum wage, socialism

national politics & policies too much government

Make Deficits Great Again?

money, case, window, floating, deficit, spending,

Is Donald Trump really “draining the swamp”?

It’s overflowing.

Stan Collender, writing last year in Forbes, noted just what a big spender the president really is. Now, an update: fiscal year 2019 sports a deficit of $1.09 trillion, up considerably from the $897 billion projected earlier this year; the next year is expected to nudge the deficit even higher, to $1.1 trillion.

The whys aren’t a mystery: it is politically difficult to cut an expected benefit to any constituency. It looks stingy — though it is the very opposite. Spending other people’s money — including taxpayers’ — is not generosity. For a politician, it is naked self-interest. Buying votes.

Worse than merely corrupt, it’s corrupting — since the People are increasingly tempted to look to government to supply special voting bloc advantages rather than the mutual, universal advantage of liberty and justice for all.

Collender speculated that a $2 trillion deficit is “definitely within view” because “Trump is demanding that federal spending and the government’s red ink be increased even further.”

Judd Gregg, writing yesterday for The Hill, summarizes current GOP fiscal policy as “now the most profligate and debt-driving party in the nation’s history.”

He’s not wrong, but I question his next line: “Fiscal restraint is no longer part of the cloth the Republican Party wears.”

Careful wording.

Republicans sometimes talk a good game, but are known to be big spenders when not opposing a Democratic president. The Class of 94 was effective against Bill Clinton. Under unified government in the aughts, though, under George W. Bush, they went on a spree.

Maybe Republicans just need a good enemy.

Bernie Sanders for President?

Perhaps any socialist Democrat will do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags budget, case, debt, deficit, floating, money, spending, Trump, window

national politics & policies

Truth Squad

the squad, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, lhan Omar,Ayanna Pressley,Rashida Tlaib, socialism, racism,

“I hesitate to contribute to this freak show,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night.

I know the feeling.

“I don’t think President Trump is a racist,” added the senator. “I don’t think his original tweet was racist.”

While I haven’t peered into the president’s soul, I didn’t see racism in his tweet, either. But I did catch a whiff of other wrongs.

Xenophobia, for instance.

And nastiness.

I didn’t like Mr. Trump’s attempt to paint “the Squad” — Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — as somehow un-American or illegitimate by tweeting: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

All but Rep. Omar were born here, and immigrant Omar is just as much an American citizen as was George Washington.

“Our opposition to our socialist colleagues has absolutely nothing to do with their gender, with their religion, or with their race,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) rightly said. “It has to do with the content of their policies.”*

Let’s note that only two, AOC and Tlaib, have chosen the socialist label. Reps. Omar and Pressley have not, though their policy positions seem in sync.

It may be, as NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen wrote, that Trump’s tweet was designed to “flip the script,” ending the feud between the Squad and Speaker Pelosi, because “he wants the Democratic Party stuck to its progressive fringe.”

But the ends do not justify the means. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And our politics stinks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Cheney added (and I concur): “They are wrong when they pursue policies that would steal power from the American people and give that power to the government.”

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, lhan Omar, racism, Rashida Tlaib, socialism, the squad

ideological culture national politics & policies

Inslee, AOC, and the Watermelon

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 16, 2019
2 Comments on Inslee, AOC, and the Watermelon

Jay Inslee, Washington, president, election, socialism, watermelon, green on the outside, red on the inside,

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is running to lead the Democratic Party in the next presidential election to take back the imperial capital, Washington, D.C. His chief issue? Fighting “man-made climate change.” But he also dares to say goofy things, apparently on the theory that It Works For Trump.

Seeking to promote “more unity across the world and more love rather than hate,” he has said, in an apparent attempt at impish if instructive irony, that his “first act will be to ask Megan Rapinoe to be my secretary of state.”

Inslee is not referring to Ms. Rapinoe’s best-known statement, her infamous scream, upon a sports win last week, “I deserve this!”

Inslee is referring, instead, to her admonishment for everyone “to be better. We have to love more, hate less. We got to listen more, and talk less. . . .” And so on.

With this sort of inanity awarded by a major Democratic pol, you might wonder, is his primary policy plank equally hollow?

Not according to Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Talking off the cuff with the climate director for Inslee’s campaign, Chakrabarti praised the Democrat’s “comprehensive plan” for fitting together disparate parts.

As I noted several months ago, AOC’s Green New Deal suffers from an over-abundance of extraneous-to-climate change elements. But Chakrabarti insists that the “interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”

It was “a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Which brings us back to the old Watermelon Theory of environmentalism: “green on the outside but red in the middle.”

This “green” agenda isn’t hollow. It is dangerous.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags election, green on the outside, Jay Inslee, president, red on the inside, socialism, Washington, watermelon

ideological culture national politics & policies

Playing Cards with Democrats

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 15, 2019
1 Comment on Playing Cards with Democrats

“[T]he thing that really set me off this week,” former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) said on NBC’s Meet the Press, “was them going after Sharice Davids.”

The “them” are four freshman congresswomen — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — but it was specifically Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, who tweeted: “I don’t believe Sharice is a racist person, but her votes* are showing her to enable a racist system.”

“This is the first Native American woman elected to Congress,” McCaskill exasperatedly explained regarding Rep. Davids. “She is the second openly lesbian member of Congress in history. She represents Kansas, from a district that has been held by the Republicans for cycle after cycle after cycle. . . . The notion that they’re going after her and playing the race card, what are they thinking?”

Perhaps they’re thinking that the race card has worked quite well before.

And isn’t McCaskill tossing out her own “Native American woman” card? Not to mention suggesting that Rep. Davids’ sexual orientation is yet another trump suit, making her further immune to criticism.

Which seems both profoundly racist and sexist.

This comes on top of a wargame of words between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and freshman Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who, after being belittled by Pelosi on 60 Minutes, charged that the Speaker was “singling out . . . newly elected women of color.”

Perhaps there is another reason as well for this political fixation on race, gender, sexual orientation: the content of their . . . character?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The issue at hand was emergency legislation to increase border funding for detainees at the infamous “concentration camps” (as AOC called them) for people caught illegally crossing the southern border of the U.S. The “them” voted against the funding.