Current Day Publius

Pelosi’s famous blurt of truth on Obamacare is coming back again and with the same likely disastrous outcome for our country. The social spending bill that Democrats attempted to pass off as “infrastructure” is coming down to the wire. Note that nothing has been put into bill form yet. All the conversation is around the framework and the total dollars split up around “themes”. When you’re talking about trillions of dollars, the devil is beyond the details; it’s everything! A billion here, a billion there needs some “splainin as Ricky would say.

Mind you, detailing trillions of spending will require pages and pages of written words and figures. This Democrat controlled Congress wants to pass such a bill in hours, not months and with nary a debate on its merits. Must be nice to be able to spend money like Michael Jackson did walking through a toy store. Problem is its our money and we may not want it spent on their toys.

Joe Manchin has been an adult among the children and has called for a pause on this massive spending. Spending that has already spurred inflation that shows no attributes of “transitory”. After nearly $2,000,000,000,000 thrust into the economy earlier this year and not yet spent, here comes the actual infrastructure bill of $1,900,000,000,000 on which the Democrats want another $3,500,000,000,000 to $5,000,000,000,000. Don’t be fooled by the lower estimates. They only play games with duration and timing of the new entitlements that will further enslave those who are increasingly made dependent on the largesse of us taxpayers.

Both the real infrastructure and the “social infrastructure” bills are folly and deserve the trash bin…. once written.

Gerrymandering is now at the heart of the racism being thrown around at every turn. Districts are being redrawn using all kinds of data but the most pronounced is race. Apparently, race determines what policies you prefer and which office holders you want to represent you. Pity the poor soul who is not of that race but happens to live in that new district. That “minority” is just collateral damage. I know, I live in such a district/state where it is a monolithic voting block honed over the years to marginalize (eliminate?) contrary views.

The Voting Rights Act of 1964 established race as a cudgel for states to draw districts along racial lines. The intent was to “right the wrongs of the past” and in doing so, created more wrongs of the present and future. Along with Affirmative Action, both have far outlived whatever good intention they may have had. Instead, we have more tribalism and less Americanism.

Who is the racist when the demand is to draw a district based on the race of its residents? I may understand politicians bent for making districts secure by using registered voter roles to identify where more of their particular party reside. Heck, that’s almost par for these entrenched career politicians who seek only to assure their livelihoods. But race?

Funny how it was the Democrats that pushed through the “New Deal” which saddles us with untenable entitlements. It was the Democrats that pushed through the “Great Society” that has exacerbated the separation of our citizens into tribes based on the color of their skin rather than unite them. Not so funny that they are now back for another bite of the apple ignoring the deleterious impacts of their failed and failing policies. HR4 and race based congressional districts will cement their total control of our federal government and the disintegration of our heterogenous society will be complete.

Major shortages of workers. Fire anyone who doesn’t get vaccinated.

Inflation is transitory. Transitory defined as “for the foreseeable future”.

Supply chain issues making Christmas presents sparce. We’re just buying too much.

Kill the Keystone pipeline, stop drilling on federal lands and throw environmental roadblocks up for oil and gas companies. Gas $1 more a gallon.

Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are scheduled to run out of money in the next few years. Creating and installing new entitlements won’t cost anything.

The border is closed and we’re making significant progress. Over 1,500,000 persons have entered our country illegally and we don’t know where most of them are.

The tax cuts of 2017 have hampered our economy. Tax receipts were up 18% in 2020.

The Afghanistan withdrawal was a massively successful for having extracted nearly 120,000 people. Thirteen servicemen and women were killed, hundreds of American citizens and thousands of allied Afghanis were left behind.

Congressman Schiff writes a book and goes on TV spouting how truth is critical. Still waiting for the incontrovertible evidence he said he had during the Russian hoax debacle.

One of the most striking things about attending my son’s graduation from Harvard College was looking at the relative size of the different colleges. The two largest were the schools of law and Kennedy which touts its public policy education and is the primary source of our federal bureaucracy personnel. One look at the website for the Kennedy school tells you a lot about their bias and the current state of our federal government.

” What ails American democracy, and what to do about it

These faculty essays examine the nature and scale of the threat and weigh potential avenues for protecting and nurturing democracy. “

The first two sub topics are about January 6^th.

The indoctrination that our K – 12 graders have been subjected to are reinforced and amplified by this elite (and other) institution’s unabashed bias for socialism. Sitting on an endowment of over $42 billion allows one to pontificate on the dangers of capitalism, personal responsibility and the role of government in making sure everyone does the right thing.

Many of the best minds in our country are not pursuing public office. Who can blame them when politics has become a blood sport? President Trump suffers financially and is hounded with spurious legal inquiries. Many a businessman has thrown their towel in after being bludgeoned by a complicit media that seems to have our country’s ruin as their objective. Apparently, we want saints for leaders and preferably those without any successes in their past that may have accrued in monetary gains.

Who we get are academics coming out of liberal/progressive/Marxist curriculums with no real-world experiences like making and keeping to a budget hence “Modern Monetary Policy”. We get people who never missed a meal, vacation or a Christmas present and now want everyone else to live their life of luxury but on someone else’s dime. I don’t question their sincerity because it’s clear, they know no better. They have been living in this bubble world all their lives.

Why is there no discussion of limited liability for companies regarding Covid 19? The topic was hot early on but not a peep now. Companies are being forced by federal mandates to inoculate their employees. Why, as Southwest is learning, would they jeopardize their operations for an unlawful requirement? There is no force of law behind Bidens’s edict. What is behind it is the powerful Democrat funding group; the trial lawyers of America.

Whether you comply or ignore the mandate, the spigot will open up for a deluge of personal injury lawsuits. That is, those who refuse to get the vaccine will sue for wrongful termination, back pay, resumption of careers and whatever else the lawyer can throw in. Those who took the vaccine and had adverse reactions will get medical malpractice thrown in with the charges of violating right-to-work laws. Those who work at companies that did not follow the mandate will be represented by lawyers arguing their client was put a severe risk and God forbid, they contract the disease, get sick, have to be hospitalized and die….well you can see the zero’s adding up.

Having shuffled any discussion of limited liability for employers off to the garbage bin, the possibilities for litigation have ballooned and all at the expense of we citizens. Just another example of how this administration is looking out for we little people and how the Republicans retreated once again.

The recently published “Pandora’s Papers” outing the use of off shore facilities to hold massive wealth is a learning opportunity for we little people. Most of what was reported is actually crafty and legal use of current laws. That is, it is fine to stash away loads of money and other wealth to avoid domestic taxes. Looking at the names of who is doing this should tell you something very important. The people using these tactics are the very same people responsible for writing and implementing the rules.

Facebook and other social media are in the crosshairs of our esteemed Congress. Both sides of the aisle want to do something. Beware of letting the same thing happen to free speech here as has happened with domestic and international rules on banking. The people writing the rules will naturally have a bias toward making sure those rules are to their benefit and not yours. Resist any attempt to define “truth”, “misinformation”, “protected speech” or any other euphemism for throttling speech. God gave us the inherent right to speak what we think and our Constitution and the first amendment codify this right eloquently.

Senator Joe Manchin clearly espoused the insanity of the attempt to bankrupt our country with an additional $3,500,000,000,000 of spending. Spending that only gets the spigot open for a continuous firehose flow of unproductive dollars. Only those hellbent on securing permanent power can propose instituting 3 new behemoth entitlements (Universal Pre – K, Child Care/Credits and “free” Community College) when the current ones are unsustainable. The lies that are being proffered about how these and the other spending items are “critical” don’t stand up to even the simplest of arguments.

Pre – K – The “Head Start” program was born in 1964 as part of the “war on poverty”. Here is what it is supposed to do.

“Head Start is a Federal program that promotes the school readiness of children from
birth to age five from low-income families by enhancing their cognitive, social, and emotional
development. Head Start programs provide a learning environment that supports children’s growth in many areas such as language, literacy, and social and emotional development.”*

It, along with the other parts of the “war on poverty” have done such a great job, we now need another layer of bureaucracy and expense.

Child Care/Credits – This would shift the current tax credits to actual payments and further insert the state raising children. It exacerbates disasterous single parent households ignoring the science that proves how detrimental these households are for children. As was the case with the “war on poverty” that exploded the number of single parent households, this will throw gas on that fire. More babies = more money.

“Free” Community College – This proposal merely ackowledges our current education system is broken. Many of the current students coming out of the targeted populations will require remedial learning to get up to real college level. Look for this “camel’s nose in the tent” to move quickly to “free” 4-year college where the standards will more closely resemble those of high school.

Thank you Progressive caucus for demanding the “infrastructure” bill go forward only in unison with this boondoggle. Thank you, “moderate” Democrats, for demanding a vote on the “infrastructure bill before moving on to the kitchen sink “human infrastructure” bill. This circular firing squad is an example of how the Democrats roll.

THANK YOU, Senator Manchin, for standing up and saying the emperor has no clothes. Stand strong for the good our country.

* https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/616

The best thing keeping Biden in office is his second in command and the next in the line of succession. We may have not only the first woman president, but the second and all in time to run out this presidential term. There is a clear and very Constitutional path for the Speaker of the House to become President of the US. As outlandishly unlikely as it is to actually happen, posit this.

Joe’s apparent decline is the opening to invoke the 25^th amendment. You’ll recall that Pelosi set it up years ago with the Trump lie that his cabinet was thinking of using it to remove him from office. She knew then it was a faint but cleverly, it sets up the country to learn about the constitutional amendment and get accustomed to its use.

Step 2 is the continued casting of VP Harris as inept and not up to the job of even the one she holds, let alone leader of the free world. While VP Harris is doing well on this front all by herself, even the lap dog media is starting to pile on no longer hiding her gaffes. Once Joe is removed and Harris is in office, get the impeachment process going. The swords will be out to slay the dragon Harris for incompetence or some other reason. It really doesn’t matter. After all, they used a phone call and a rally speech to get Trump. Hell, she may find out she is the proverbial dog that caught the bus and resign on her own!

 Who then rides in to save the country, democracy and of course, the children? Our own Speaker of the House; the third in the line of succession. The first woman President gets whacked leading to the second woman to be leader of the free world. She’ll “accept” being drafted and will assure the country that she is not interested in running for another term, but that is a lie. She’ll come around to campaigning because only she can save the country and the world. After all, what would happen to the children?

Let this possibility sink in.

Democrats and their adopted Marxism idealogues are doubling down on extracting as much as possible from those who still have something to extract. After paying for their own children’s education, they want these same people to pay for everyone else’s children’s college through higher taxes and fees. They are floating proposals ranging from $10,000 reduction to 100% waiver of all student debt. The estimated $1,600,000,000,000 of outstanding debt is mostly held by, (guess who) YOU!

Starting in 1965, the federal government began to backstop college loans. That year, they became the guarantor and subsidizer of privately issued loans. Not happy with the lack of control over our lives, the Obama administration in 2008 concocted a house of cards outlook that actually showed providing direct loans would be a money maker for the feds. RIGHT! Federal held student loan debt began to explode going from $150,000,000,000 in 2009 to $1,000,000,000,000 in 2016 thanks to a provision in of all things, Obamacare. The connection of student debt to health care should be obvious to……who?

So once again, our astute federal government has taken over a private sector process and turned it into a loser. For that, we taxpayers who saved for our kids’ education get to pay twice. Going forward, the solution to this man-made problem is simple; forget loans altogether – just make it “free”. Free for who? Certainly not the taxpayers. Next up – Immigration Processing

SNAP, just like that, the feed bag got bigger. In yet another naked attempt to enslave a significant part of our population and entice millions to make a dangerous trek to cross our border, food assistance was increase by regulation 27%. Because the state wants to encourage healthier eating and the costs of healthier food is rising (precipitously), a family of four will now receive $835 a month for “supplemental” food purchases. The number was $537 just two years ago.

Despite the clear connection between obesity and a host of ailments including susceptibility to Covid – 19 (pick your variant), there are no restrictions on what can be bought. Studies show about 20% of purchases are on snacks and sugary drinks. Other studies show that people in the same socio-economic cohort actually eat healthier than those receiving food stamps, aka SNAP. Of course, much of these credits never make it to the mouth of the families as they are sold for cash to be spent on other things like drugs.

Despite this ill conceived and executed program totaling nearly $80,000,000,000 in 2020, Woman Infant and Child (WIC – another nutrition program) and school lunches, the Marxists want to add, $3,500,000,000,000 in new entitlements for free day care, pre-K, a dumbed down and racist elementary and high school curriculum before providing free community college. Completing the menu of total dependency, state supplied/subsidized housing.* This while also wrecking our economy by insisting we become a third world country on energy.

The hits just keep on coming.

*Current housing assistance programs include Section 8 vouchers and project-based rental assistance, public housing, housing for the elderly (Section 202), housing for persons with disabilities (Section 811), rural rental assistance (the United States Department of Agriculture’s Section 521 program), Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), HOME Investment Partnerships Block Grants, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), homeless assistance programs, Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and Department of Veterans Affairs mortgage insurance, and the mortgage interest deduction in the tax
code. (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL34591)