Tag: socialism

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ideological culture too much government

Shirkers of the World, Unite

socialism, freedom, control, democracy

“Now it is our turn,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told the crowd gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, last Friday, celebrating the 63rd anniversary of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington speech. 

Socialist Sanders was followed by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

“We the people demand guaranteed healthcare for every American as a right and not a privilege,” insisted AOC.

“We the people of the United States of America demand that one job with no need for overtime,” she declared, “should be enough for our most basic needs.”

Then Ocasio-Cortez added, “Which also include rest.”

“Exactly,” remarked Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, “We became number one in the world by resting and not working overtime.

“Right behind her is an army of socialist foot soldiers,” Kilmeade continued, “ready to work 30 hours and then take a break.”

That army is the Democratic Socialists of America — to which AOC had just re-upped her membership.

“Imagine taking a day off from work,” reads their program’s very first message, “in a future without capitalism.” You see, in that socialist utopia just around the corner, “You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you” and “you would control your own labor” and it would never be “just a job to pay the bills.” 

The promise of socialism fulfilled at last.

“Speaking of bills,” the DSA assures you won’t “really have them anymore.” And there will be “no debt”! Why, you won’t even “pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right.” Simple as that, plus, “Your retirement is publicly funded.” 

Sure sounds like they’re going to take care of us real nice. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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The Greed of Socialism

socialism, national debt

Do the young think that their trendy-again socialist notions are new?

There’s no hat older than socialism. Our civilization has been grappling with socialist ideas for at least two centuries. While the arguments for and against socialism are many and varied, maybe it all boils down to ignorance and greed.

“This century’s socialist wave starts at a big disadvantage,” wrote Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., for the Wall Street Journal, yesterday. “It arrives as the socialism we already have runs out of that famous quantity, other people’s money.”

Today’s allegedly “democratic” socialists use “the socialism we already have” as an excuse for more. Truth is, we cannot afford what we now must put up with.

“An American baby born today owes $376,000 in federal debt and unfunded entitlement liabilities, assuming the burden is evenly distributed,” explains Mr. Jenkins. “Of course, it isn’t. We oldsters plan on checking out before the bill comes due.”

The intergenerational conflict of actually-existing socialism has been buried under nice phrases like “Social Security” — even as that specific program teeters, insolvent, requiring re-jiggering to ratchet up burdens on the young every other generation. 

I see why the young would object. It’s harder to see why they would want more of the dog that bites them.

“Let me be the 1,000th to notice that the New York socialism of Mayor Zohran Mamdani seems to appeal especially to privileged young people, still supported in adulthood by their parents.” 

And let me be the millionth to observe that demanding other people do your work and pay your bills amounts to exactly what these very nice socialists have always railed against.

Greed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture tax policy

Uh & Other Naughty Words

Francesca Hong, Wisconsin, socialism

The love of other people’s money is the root of so much political evil. 

Francesca Hong, the Democratic front-runner in today’s gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin, embraces that evil. She’s even willing to add curse-words to declare her dedication to soaking the rich: “Tax. The. Fucking. Billionaires.” Or so she says on Facebook.

So edgy.

But Hong blanks out when it comes to the negative fallout of taxing the rich at higher rates. Says lame things; doesn’t use the f-word. She uses the u-word: “uh.” When challenged in last week’s debate, about what she’d do “if all the millionaires leave the state,” she responded with “You know, uh, discussing that hypothetical is, um, a little bit, uh — I’m confused about that.”

“Like most socialists, she is in denial about the costs and consequences of her proposals,” argues The Washington Post editorial board. 

“To fund ‘free’ child care, state-run grocery stores and more health care subsidies” she pushes an additional 1 percent in taxes on the top income bracket. “This might sound fine to a taxpayer who doesn’t make a million dollars, but Wisconsin — like every other state — relies on wealthy taxpayers to support state infrastructure, public schools and social programs,” WaPo explains. “The top 5 percent of earners pay about 40 percent of the state’s net income taxes.”

For years, journalists have enabled demagogues to lie about how much the highest income earners actually pay in taxes, fooling many voters into thinking that the goose that lays golden eggs can be plucked and plundered without consequences. A turnaround on the issue at WaPo is refreshing.

“Recent elections seem to suggest,” its editors conclude, “that Democratic voters no longer fear labels such as ‘socialist’ and are more interested in tearing down the party’s establishment. A better strategy to combat extreme policies is to explain the damage they will cause.”

Too late? I hope not. For Wisconsin and for other states.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies political economy

Trump-Approved Profits

Donald Trump, oil, prices, inflation, redistribution, socialism

Occasionally, President Trump takes an anti-capitalist rhetorical turn. He apparently supposes his unleashing of an Inner Mamdani will help him through a political rough patch. 

Or perhaps he is just momentarily confused.

The president recently asserted that oil companies are making too much money right now and “ought to give back” some of it to the public. This, although “I’m a big free enterprise guy.”

But oil companies don’t owe buyers anything more than the oil they supply. Nor, when prices are low, do buyers owe oil companies or gas stations more money than what they pay.

In markets, a sudden big drop in supply of a good — like oil, shipments of which might be blocked by wars in the Middle East — tends to lead to higher prices.

Companies unable to ship or sell the good lose money. If demand remains the same or increases, prices for the part of the supply still available go up. Which means more profits and more money to expand production and distribution.

Consumers of oil should want its producers to be as successful as possible. That’s just reason, common sense. High profits encourage and fund more digging, refining, and distribution, and attract more competition — ultimately increasing supply to reduce prices. 

Whenever supply of an urgently needed good takes a hit, producers should be as free as possible to deal with the problem and to enjoy the rewards of dealing with it successfully. Any big free enterprise guy should be able to understand this. 

You too, Mr. President.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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property rights tax policy thoughtNew

Two Horrors Don’t Make It Right

Zohran Mamdani, socialism, communism, New York City

The mayor of New York City, commie Mamdani, is trying to raise more money to pay for his socialism.

One scheme is to punish owners of a second home by imposing a so-called “pied-à-terre tax,” a tax on the second residence of wealthy New Yorkers above and beyond regular property taxes.

Now, the assumption that anybody with a second home, or an expensive second home in an expensive property market, must be rolling in liquid funds is faulty. The notion that if you have more wealth than somebody else it should be taken from you? Also faulty.

The new tax bill is going to many New Yorkers with only one home. And the website set up (speaking loosely) to permit challenges of the designation of one’s home as a pied-à-terre is proving nightmarish to navigate.

One recipient of an extra-tax bill, for $43,000, is Karen Young, who has lived in her brownstone with her husband for thirty years. Two minutes of research would have prevented the mistake, she observes. “Is this a witch hunt?”

New assaults on our rights often have two parts. One part is really horrific. The other part is even more horrific in some other way. The greedy government may eventually withdraw or correct the even more horrific form of the assault; at which point everybody is relieved . . . except anyone noticing that the first form, also horrific, and serving as precedent, is still ongoing.

Was that the game plan here?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies partisanship too much government

Socialists to Seize Power?

socialism, Democratic Party, prison, authoritarianism, totalitarianism

Evan Barker isn’t surprised. 

“The democratic socialist surge of the past several weeks has stunned the nation,” this former Democratic operative wrote last week. “From left to right and everywhere in between, people are asking: How did we get here? What does it mean? And will the Democratic Party survive it? The prevailing reaction has been shock.”

She’s not shocked, though, because for half a decade she had worked for “a slew of progressive candidates” teaching “DSA-aligned staffers how to build a money machine for the left; coached progressive politicians on how to speak to donors; and collaborated with billionaires to create a robust fundraising network.” 

But after the big loss for Kamala “Salad Slinger” Harris and Tim “Cringe” Walz, Barker left the party. And wrote a book, Nothing Left, regaling us with how she became disillusioned with “a leadership class” that had drifted “further and further from the working-class Americans they purportedly represented.”

Barker’s not alone. Others in the rah-rah crowd for an older Democratic Party have also expressed their chagrin. On the First of July, well-known “liberal” journalist Jonathan Chait published in The Atlantic “There’s Nothing Democratic About These Socialists.”

Noting that the Democratic Socialists of America despise the Democratic Party, with many of DSA’s stalwarts veering off into communist advocacy without much nudging, the question becomes why Democrats with some sense don’t come to their alleged senses.

Chait observes that Michael Harrington, the socialist founder of DSA, placed into its bylaws “the expulsion of members who were ‘under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization,’ a slightly jargonish way of describing communists.”

Yet, the Democratic Party isn’t as moderate as Harrington!

Truth is, “DSA supporters see internal division not as a risk but as a historic opportunity to seize power.”

And the “means of production.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

The Kill Western Civilization Caucus

democrat, socialism, communism, democratic party, elections, democracy

“These are not social democrats,” President Trump declared on Truth Social. “These are hardcore, godless communists.”

Unfortunately, the president is on target. 

He was referring to the three members of the Democratic Socialists of America who won Democratic Party primaries last week in deep-blue New York City congressional districts.

November’s General Election being a mere formality in the Big Apple, the trio will undoubtedly be joining the next Congress. All three — State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez (NY-7), former City Comptroller Brad Lander (NY-10), and professional “left-wing activist” Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13) — were endorsed and assisted by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

They’ll be just three out of 435 members of Congress, while the mayor is in a position to do more harm. Still, sprinkling a few Stalinists into Washington’s brew won’t help. 

Darializa Avila Chevalier worries me the most. Before launching her political campaign, CNN reports that she deleted “thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist.”

Her pursuit of a surely democratic-no-doubt-benevolent dictatorship of the proletariat to, you know, seize the means of production is . . . mighty concerning. What’s worse, however, is her hatred. 

Of America. 

In a 2019 tweet, Chevalier posted a smiley face emoji to say loud and proud: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” 

“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” explained a group she co-founded, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). 

Shouldn’t we take them at their word?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets litigation U.S. Constitution

Punish Energy Producers?

global warming, climate, hysteria, courts, litigation, lawsuit, socialism, government

The latest attempt to hamper our ability to do things? A series of lawsuits against oil companies for allegedly committing global warming. The plaintiffs want billions and billions to be extracted from these companies for fueling civilization.

Litigation before the Supreme Court, Suncor v. Boulder County, is “one of the most consequential energy cases in decades,” argue Michael Toth and Sarah Harbison in the New York Post. 

Boulder County is just one of many seeking to make oil and gas companies fork over massive damages. 

To whom? Entities like Boulder County.

The high court’s response will help determine the viability of future such litigation and “whether the United States remains an energy superpower.”

Energy superpower status is not what people trying to drive their cars and heat their homes at a reasonable cost are worried about. If the court accepts the plaintiffs’ reasoning, the sky’s the limit as far as the liability of the energy industry. 

And those new sky-high liability costs for gas and oil providers will result in new sky-high costs for you and me.

Looting all of us is fine with lawsuit supporters like David Bookbinder of Environmental Integrity Project. “This is a rather convoluted way to achieve the goals of a carbon tax,” Toth and Harbison claim. “The people who use the products pay for the damage that they cause.”

The Post’s authors urge the Supreme Court to “shut down” this attempt to circumvent the Constitution. And confirm that U.S. energy policy “can’t be dictated by local lawsuits.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies partisanship

Promising & Not

Endorsements, Democratic Party, socialism, Mamdani

“We are capitalist, not socialist.”

Those words are from the “Promise to America” pledge promoted by a new group of the same name and unveiled last week by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California). 

“Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 are launching a pledge for their party’s candidates they hope will act as a rallying cry for centrists,” explains a Washington Post article, dubbing it “a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.”

"We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist." Adam Gray, Tom Suozzi, Democratic Party

“We want safety,” their “Promise” continues, “not lawlessness.”

“No, duh,” would have been the response to such a statement years ago. But today? “Refreshing!”

These Democrats call for “secure borders, safe communities, honest government, and an orderly immigration system that protects the country, strengthens the economy, and treats people with dignity.” It’s a far cry from: Free healthcare for those here illegally!

“We believe America remains indispensable to global stability, democratic values, international security, and strong alliances,” the document expounds. “In a dangerous and uncertain world, America must lead with strength, purpose, and partnership.”

In closing, they declare: “We are proud, not ashamed of America.”

The Post suggests, however, that this slogan “could be polarizing on the left.” 

Sure, it is a much different message than Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has expressed. On an online forum back in 2021, in a discussion on securing disability benefits from the VA, a fellow veteran vented, “Fuck Uncle Sam,” to which Platner added a clarification: “Fuck him and take his money.”

Which message for Democrats?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Sorry for the foul language but, frankly, I did not want to cushion the blow.

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Super Under-Blown

Seattle, socialism, democratic socialism

Just 60 years ago, we were talking the end of ideology. Thirty years ago, we were talking about the end of socialism — and of history itself! — as capitalist democracies seemed triumphant after the fall of the USSR.

But here it’s A.D. 2026 and we have socialist mayors in New York and Seattle and . . . we don’t need to argue about definitions. They call themselves socialist.

While New York’s Mamdani has grabbed much of national attention, let’s not forget the Evergreen State’s Emerald City. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson showed her defiance of economic common-sense in her defenses of many anti-business, anti-rich tax and regulation policies by her city and the state.

“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are,” she asserted, “like, super overblown.”

Her notion being that, since Washington State has a sales-tax-dominated “regressive tax system,” adding a progressive layer wouldn’t matter. New high-income-focused taxes would only make things better!

Not to those targeted by the tax, though. Not with socialists in charge. After all, she’s showing her true colors, taking photos with antifa terrorists, pooh-poohing welfare fraud (and refusing to investigate), expressing solidarity with Somali immigrants accused of fraud in Washington, and pushing for non-citizen voting.

Mayor Wilson’s response to those who have exited the soviet of Washington has been a chuckle, a wave, and a cheerful “bye.”

But then a major Democratic funder in the state, Nick Hannauer, wrote a think-piece for GeekWire suggesting that both the city, Seattle, and the state, Washington, were going too far. “Making the total tax burden here 5–10 times the alternatives isn’t progressivism; it’s stupidity.” The Daddy Warbucks, who’d promoted capital gains taxes and opposed Tim Eyman’s tax limitation measures, wants to put the brakes on Evergreen State spoliation — plundering— noting that “virtually every wealthy friend I have has either left or is planning to.”

Seattlites and Washingtonians sure seem stuck with “the usual Socialist disease — they’ve run out of other people’s money.” For the “other people” are fleeing fast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE (first paragraph references): Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (1960), Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), and Robert Heilbroner, “The Triumph of Capitalism,”The New Yorker (January 23, 1989). Concluding allusion: Maggie Thatcher on socialism.

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