Tag: Nancy Pelosi

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ideological culture meme national politics & policies Popular too much government

More of the More

trap, socialism, democratic socialism

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s triumphant entry into Washington, DC, as a United States Representative-​Elect, is quickly proving a cautionary tale for Democrats. She’s an enthusiastic socialist. Or “progressive,” to use the preferred euphemism. And thus Democrats see her as a fresh breeze to air out the stodgy, musty chambers of …

Nancy Pelosi’s office. 

Ocasio-​Cortez showed up in the House office building last week, along with other protestors “flooding,” as Politico put it, the Minority Leader’s work area. 

But what she is proving to be is not a breath of fresh air. And she is not merely “more of the same” in leftist agitation. 

She may be “more of the more.”

Progressives cannot seem to formulate an upper limit to their ideology. Dr. Jordan Peterson, trying to be “precise,” warns that this is the main problem of the left today: a lack of any sense of “going too far.” 

If government growth is always good, then … all the way to the socialism of Stalin, Mao and the Castros? The result of “always more” is “most.”

Real socialism is the  trap. “Democratic socialism” is the bait.

Their usual rebuttal? “We just want to be more like Scandinavian countries.” But these countries have less regulation on markets than America does currently. We should believe the “Scandinavian Limit” precisely when progressives earnestly push to repeal some regulations. 

Ideology aside, this may be mainly … politics. Ocasio-​Cortez proclaimed herself “looking forward” to “working together” with former and likely new Speaker Pelosi, and left the protest before the police began making arrests.

A statesperson in the making.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture local leaders media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Strange Money

House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, U.S. Senator, Luther Strange, Washington, establishment

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sure is popular … in Washington. 

Elsewhere? Well …

In Alabama, a Republican runoff on the 26th pits controversial Judge Roy Moore, who gained national attention fighting to keep a Ten Commandments monument on court grounds, against U.S. Senator Luther Strange, appointed to the office by Governor Robert Bentley.*

The third place finisher was U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, who, while complimenting Judge Moore for running “a very honest campaign,” has declined to endorse either candidate. As for Strange, Brooks offered: “I want to congratulate the people who were behind him: Mitch McConnell, the Washington establishment, the K street lobbyists. They put together some very tough ads …”

McConnell has poured nearly $7 million from the Senate Leadership Fund into Strange’s campaign, giving the incumbent what the Birmingham News called “a staggering financial edge over Moore.” 

And yet the paper’s report also noted that this “money advantage has not translated so far into votes.” A recent poll shows Judge Moore with a double-​digit lead over Sen. Strange — 52 to 36 percent.

President Trump has also endorsed Strange, which with Trump’s popularity there is likely to help. Meanwhile, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows endorsed Moore, warning that McConnell, a fellow Republican, would flood the state with “millions of dollars in false advertising.”

GOP advertising in Georgia’s June special election bypassed the Democrat running to instead make Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi the face of opposition Democrats. It seemed to work.

Similarly, Roy Moore’s campaign may very well ignore Strange to make Sen. Mitch McConnell the face of the opposition Washington establishment.

Possible slogan: “The Washington establishment’s choice is Strange.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The governor was, at the time of the appointment, under investigation by Strange, then Alabama’s Attorney General.

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Accountability national politics & policies too much government

As Stupid Does

“Stupid is as stupid does,” said the great American prophet, Forrest Gump.

Meanwhile, Obamacare maestro and MIT professor, the illustrious Dr. Jonathan Gruber, has declared in not one but a multitude of videos that the American people are, well, “stupid.”

You see, when the elites wielding political power lie to us, trick us, cheat us — as with Obamacare — they think that proves that “We, the People,” aka their victims, are all morons. I’m not a fan of fraud or fraudsters; I don’t think it forms the basis for a very happy, healthy society.

Still, I do get their perverted logic. Problem is that, even as far as it goes, the American people didn’t fall for the deceit at the heart of the Affordable Care Act. Poll after poll leading up to Congress passing the ACA demonstrated that most folks opposed it, disbelieving Gruber’s and Obama’s distortions.

Barely a majority of the clueless Congress even fell for the lies! All of them were Democrats.

No, stupid would do something like rake in $6 million from government contracts obtained from politicians with a direct probe into every American’s pocketbook and then call all those Americans paying his lavish tab names. Indeed, Gruber does make a cogent argument about the wisdom of purchasing his services.

Stupid also does stuff like deny even knowing that Dr. What’s‑His-Name fellow … though previously raving, on camera, about what a wizard the stupid-​slinging Prof. Gruber is.

Right, Mr. Obama, Mrs. Pelosi?

Goodness, the American people seem brilliant in comparison. But it’s a low bar.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Unions versus Obamacare

Former friends of Obamacare keep discovering that the law treats them as enemies.

Three years after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, Kinsey Robinson, president of United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International, says that many provisions “were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences … inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer-​sponsored coverage could keep it.”

Robinson worries that members who now enjoy multi-​employer health plans through the union will lose both benefits and employment as Obamacare goes into effect. Small contractors not required to offer insurance coverage under the law will enjoy an unfair bidding advantage. So he now calls for “repeal or complete reform” of Obamacare. (Let’s do the repeal, then restart with the right reforms.)

I’m no fan of unions, which have too often acted to quash competition in the labor market. But as long as unions exist, if they’re going to oppose something, let Obamacare top the list until it is gone.

No doubt many more expressions of shock and dismay await us as people discover the consequences of the law. In 2010, then-​Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that the health care bill had to be passed so we could learn what was in it; after which, free of the fog of partisan debate, we’d all come to understand at last that lumbering Big Brother is indeed our very best friend.

We’re finding out alright, we’re discovering that with friends like BB, and Pelosi, who needs fiends?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Second Amendment rights

A Terrible Accusation

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, much of the self-​righteously impassioned rhetoric about gun control carries an accusation: those who oppose further gun curbs are “allowing” children to be murdered.

Ridiculous.

None of the newly proposed gun and ammunition bans — all of them old proposals, of course — would, if put in place long ago, have prevented the atrocity in Connecticut.

A more cogent indictment spotlights supporters of gun control. For politicians who have long believed they can halt all acts of violence and save lives by outlawing this weapon or that or limiting ammo clips, what does it say that they did nothing?

“The first two years of the last Obama administration,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told NBC News, “Congress and the Senate and the White House were all in the hands of the Democrats and they did nothing.”

According to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Bloomberg’s “point is well taken.”

Connecticut Congressman John Larson argued that, “To do nothing in the face of pending disaster is to be complicit.”

President Obama first suggested that elected officials, afraid of the gun lobby, put their own positions ahead of the safety of six and seven year old children, stating, “[W]e’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

In short, even when politicians believe their gun grabbing will save lives, they won’t act to protect those lives if it might risk their political position. They act or fail to, not on principle, but on their own political benefit.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a rational, constitutional step toward reducing the risk of a future massacre.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

The Realpolitik of Illusion

It’s a race against time. Obamacare is going into effect, piece by piece, link by link, yard by yard.

The idea when legislating big programs such as this is to push up as many benefits as possible early in the timeline, and shove the burdens as far down the road as possible. The strategy depends on enough voters noticing the benefits before the extravagant costs become clear. (And the full costs never become clear.) Once the program has been around long enough, the benefits will turn enough voters into special interests, and the costs will remain dispersed enough to discourage over-​burdened taxpayers from fighting the inertial mass of the program.null

About the only thing that can go wrong is that the costs become all-​too-​clear all-too-soon.

That’s Nancy Pelosi’s realpolitik, as she honestly explained in her proud defense of “the health care law” (as if there were only one!):

We think the more people know about this legislation, you see it has changed even in the past week, the support for it has increased and as people understand what we all heard here today — how it affects their lives directly — that will even grow. So as I’ve said before, the politics be damned.…

That line, “the politics be damned,” is disingenuous in the extreme. The politics, here, is everything. And the Democrats have big government’s “home court” advantage, the illusions of interest-​group cost-​benefit analysis.

And against them? A Republican presidential candidate who had previously supported the same kind of law, supported by the same kind of illusions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.