Month: February 2020

I’m Envious of Billionaires Too!

America, Economy, Government, Health Care, Science, Society & Culture, Values

At last night’s Democrat debate schoolyard brawl/whine-fest, the unifying theme was, “Let’s bash millionaires and billionaires!” No, wait a minute…let’s just bash billionaires because everyone up there, perhaps with the exception of Boot Edge Edge, (although his CNN or MSNBC contract is waiting) is already a millionaire.

This is one of the big problems of the Democrats. SUCCESS ENVY. Does anyone honestly think, if having invented a product or service that makes a billion dollars, Klobuchar, Buttigieg or Sanders would say, “No, I’ve made too much money?” The hypocrisy of the Left stinks to high heaven.

Hey, I’m envious of billionaires too. I wish I had invented a better service than Quotron (the predecessor to the Bloomberg product/service) and made billions. I’ll bet the “My Pillow” guy is doing ok too!

The problem with the Left is their envy has always manifested itself in a Robin Hood complex. Unable to achieve success on their own, they demand that those who have it give the fruits of that success to them. They argue that those who succeeded either gamed the system somehow, or stepped all over exploited workers, cheated, or were successful because the government was responsible for that success (“You didn’t build that.” – Barack Obama).

It’s the winners against the losers. Irrespective of how the billionaires made their money, let’s think through what would happen if Sanders or Warren were elected and able to impose confiscatory taxes on people making, I think one of the suggestions is, more than $600,000 per year.

  1. The arithmetic is extremely simple and everyone with half a brain already knows that even if you taxed ALL of that income at 100% there wouldn’t be enough money to fund the Democrat utopian dream list.
  2. If you imposed those taxes, would the high income earners put the same amount of money away in private equity, venture capital, hedge or mutual funds, the pools of capital that fuel innovation, job creation, and which indeed trickle down (sometimes flash flood down) to employees thereby boosting the economy and growth in general? And what would that do to the American Spirit and the American Dream? Would people still work hard to advance their careers, think out of the box, invent new things, hire employees, shop more at Saks or WalMart? Of course not. Their consumption and spending would decrease as they would be deprived of the incentive to make more than the specified threshold.
  3. If you actually confiscate wealth as some Leftists have suggested, i.e. say to the wealthy…”I’m going to demand you give us X% of your 401(k) or stock portfolio or savings account so we can redistribute it by providing healthcare or tuition free college for all” for example, how hard will you want to work knowing you’ll be penalized if you’re actually successful?
  4. Look at those people on stage in South Carolina last night. Even if you’re the most altruistic person in America, would you really want ANY of them to decide how to redistribute and allocate the money they’ve taken from you in taxes?

For further understanding of what happens when Democrats take your money and redistribute it, you need look no further than Obama’s 2012 $800 billion, “shovel ready projects”, so-called “stimulus package”. Here’s the breakdown of how that our money was spent:

First of all, it galls me that “Individual Tax Cuts” are called “stimulus” at all. TAX CUTS ARE THE ABSENCE OF INCOME OR WEALTH CONFISCATION, NOT GOVERNMENT SPENDING! (TAX REBATES, by the way, are a RETURN OF YOUR OWN MONEY THAT THE GOVERNMENT PREVIOUSLY CONFISCATED) It’s RELIEF, not STIMULUS. Are you stimulated by the act of a government bureaucrat taking out the nail they drove into your forehead?

Same goes for Alternative Minimum Tax Relief, the second item in the chart. It too was just the absence of additional taxation and had nothing to do with “shovel ready projects”.

State Fiscal Relief wasn’t infrastructure spending either – it was handouts to fiscally irresponsible states, particularly Democrat-controlled states. As with “Aid to Directly Impacted Individuals”, it trickled down only to the public sector unions to fund their entitlement (pensions and healthcare) spending shortfalls and to shore up welfare spending as well.

The final category…Public Investment Outlays… paid for the signs you saw on some of the highways and parkways around you. Did we really see much of any benefit to our nation’s roads and railways from that $270 billion? No. And so only 1/3 of the so-called “Stimulus” went to “infrastructure projects”. The rest went to reward favorite Democrat constituencies, i.e. into the ether.

I used to think Liberals were altruistic. I’ve learned over the years that their motivations are either the garnering of power for power’s sake, or an unbounded arrogance that if they have power and control of our money, they can make everybody happy. Both are evil because they deprive us of the impetus to work hard and achieve success for ourselves, and by extension, our families, communities and our country.

So do we really want Bernie Sanders, Elisabeth Warren, Joe Biden or any of the other megalomaniacal, power-famished hypocrites who were on that stage last night in charge of the government?

To Buffet and Gates’ credit, they’re working hard to give much of their wealth away and there are a lot of true needs and programs where philanthropy is the beginning of a solution. The various charities that build water purification plants in Africa such as “Action Against Hunger” or Doctors Without Borders are good examples, or here at home, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation or the Appalachia Service Project. Do you really want any of those Democrat candidates determining how money should be doled out for such projects? Not all, but the vast majority of Democrat controlled spending consists of handouts to “victims” who with hands out will vote to keep them in power.  

I’d like to be a billionaire too. I wouldn’t buy a yacht. I wouldn’t buy a bigger house. I would still insist that my kids and grandkids work at McDonalds when they turn 16, or stock shelves as mine did. And I’d find those meaningful charities that TRULY support the TRULY needy, or that promote self-reliance, meritocracy, the production of goods and services that advance the frontiers of science and health, human longevity, and natural resource renewal and preservation (NOT ENVIRO-FASCISM BUT CLASSIC CONSERVATION).

Please let’s stop allowing the Left to serve as our nanny, putting spoonful’s of pablum in and wiping the corners of our mouths while congratulating themselves over champagne on how well they’re taking care of us. Please America, just at the point where we’re starting to get back to basics, let’s not empower demagogues such as we saw at the debate last night to spew their utopian fantasies or, God forbid, enact more of their soul-crushing plans.

Schadenfruede

America, Economy, Politics, Reason, Society & Culture, Values

I can think of no better word to describe the feeling I had last night watching the Democrat debate. The spectacle gave whole new meaning to the expression “circular firing squad”. What’s more, it highlighted, again, the absurdity of the Democrats’ positions on just about everything.

Trying to focus on the issues at hand was darn near impossible. It was a food fight extraordinaire…a stage where each tried to out-perform the other. Bloomberg hid behind his lectern (.sic), and acted small, arrogant, smug, and clueless and as he tried hard to stoically look ahead while taking deserved incoming fire. Warren was her usual shrill, unhinged self, screeching #metoo platitudes and demonstrating once again how poorly an academic understands the real world. Sanders with his hand and arm gesticulations continues to look like he might fly away, and while he’s authentic alright, he’s authentically idiotic. Poor Joe Biden with his face lift and newly whitened teeth tried his best to look energetic but appeared the geriatric politician completely disconnected from today’s world, still stumbling and unable to find the right words to insert in his sentences and pitching the “good old days” when his boss was President – coattails on which Obama has made him unwelcome. Pete Boot Edge Edge represented himself, and his whole generation of snowflake millennial spoiled brats superbly, demonstrating his glibness and immaturity at the same time. Finally, Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. Senator believe it or not, looked completely outclassed, childishly defensive: “Are you trying to say that I’m dumb? Or are you mocking me here, Pete?”

What a bunch of clowns!

But I flipped to the Phoenix rally that Trump was holding court over and saw, regrettably, another jester’s performance. Trump really doesn’t act like we should expect a President to act. He still acts like he’s running The Apprentice. It’s embarrassing.

But here’s the kicker…Obama, with his nose in the air and his imperious attitude, his eloquence and presence, was highly ‘presidential’, and spent eight years fundamentally trying to transform America into some two-bit foreign midget while Trump, with his bumbling act, is fundamentally trying to save America from that fate. He may be the most inarticulate President we’ve ever had, and contra-presidential in many ways, but his intentions, his actions and his results have been spot on. I wish I could read what historians will write about him 50 years from now.

If I were a Democrat candidate, and I really wanted to defeat Trump in November, I’d embrace his nationalism, embrace his policies, applaud and thank him for his efforts and suggest that with minor tweaks, the path we’re on could be straightened and smoothed to accommodate the other half of the country who want a more liberal or “progressive” (although I’d avoid that term altogether because it’s a joke) approach. I’d adopt a presidential diction, speech and demeanor and present a serious, no-nonsense persona to contrast myself with Trump’s antics.

I’d still lose, of course, because more than 50% of the population, irrespective of Trump, are happy with the Country’s direction and are optimistic about where we’re going. But at least I’d have a chance to help down ballot Democrats with their runs, and I might even have a respectable run myself.

But the Democrats can’t help themselves. They’re so caught up in hysterics, theatrics, hypocrisy, misandry (.sic), megalomania, and victim-celebrating they’ve completely forgotten about the true majority: the millions of Americans with their heads down working hard caring for themselves and their families, supporting their friends and communities, productively contributing to the growth and welfare of our entire Nation. The Democrats have bought into the notion that the disadvantaged, the downtrodden, the tiny minority of true victims should be helped no matter what the cost to the rest of society or the nation.

When I was a kid we used to use the expression “My heart bleeds purple peanut butter for you” when feigning sympathy for a buddy who skinned his knee. I’m not so callous anymore, but I cannot support, for example, crushing the agriculture industry in California by restricting water flows thus jeopardizing farmers and crops and livestock production because some whiny biologists are distraught that a tiny fish might go extinct (I’m referring, of course, to the famous “snail darter” here.)

What about the vast MAJORITY? How about we celebrate the WINNERS? How about we celebrate EXCEPTIONALISM? How about we celebrate INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT? How about we reserve the use of NANNIES for our toddlers instead of treating everyone as if we needed the government to serve as one.

Trump may be crass, undignified, inarticulate and may appear at times to be off his rocker, but he’s crazy like a fox in that, like Reagan (“just a dumb actor from California” according to the Democrats), he loves this country, he believes a rising tide lifts all boats, that growth (i.e. GROWING the pie instead of trying to slice the pieces thinner and thinner) solves the problems of the vast majority of our people and indeed, for the whole world.

The Democrats whine we’re destroying the planet. While that is simply nonsense (see George Carlin’s famous routine about “Saving the Planet“), my response to the unlikely possibility that mankind will use up ALL of the Earth’s natural resources or somehow so upset Nature that we will all die of carbon dioxide or monoxide poisoning, or that our orbit will decay such that we fall into the Sun, is to go out and find ourselves another planet to live on (which is exactly what we’re doing)!!!

Growth. Prosperity. Equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. To each according to his MERIT, CONTRIBUTION and RESULTS, not his “needs” is the answer. So long as the Democrats continue to whine and stamp their feet, I’ll keep smiling as they seek to destroy one another.

Schadenfreude.

Despicable Them

Morality, Politics

With apologies to the producers and directors of the cartoon movie hit “Despicable Me”, the label “Despicable Them” aptly applies to politicians in general, but to Leftist politicians in particular. As always, it’s a question of degree. The degree to which the Democrat leadership (note I say leadership, not ALL Democrats) exhibits despicable behavior and spews despicable rhetoric dwarfs, as Jupiter dwarfs the Earth, anything the Republican leadership has done or said.

Examples abound but probably the best one is that of Nancy Pelosi ceremoniously ripping the State of the Union speech in half and claiming it was all lies. As regards despicable rhetoric: Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Bill deBlasio, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Linda Sarsour…the list of those with verbal diarrhea goes on and on. Every time any of these people open their mouths, nothing but despicable falsehoods and bile emerge.

How do they get away with this? Edmund Burke had the answer: The Fourth Estate. In Thomas Carlyle’s book On Heroes and Hero Worship he attributes to Burke: “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”[i] He was of course referring to the Press, or in today’s language, the “Media”.

The term “fourth estate” and “fourth branch” are both used to describe what used to be journalism, which clearly doesn’t exist anymore. Someone I know with a degree in Journalism from Columbia University, arguably the pre-eminent journalism school in the country, grudgingly admits that the principles taught there are violated continuously.

Fourth Estate as a term is meant to emphasize the independence of the Media, while the related term “Fourth Branch” suggests the Media is an extension of the government. In my opinion, it’s hardly the latter, but the Media’s ability to influence (i.e. brainwash) inattentive or non-critical-thinking minds is obvious. Abandonment of journalistic principles such as three-source corroboration or the vetting of sources to ensure reliability, coupled with the power of the internet to broadcast the most salacious lies and twisted arguments, has fostered an environment where despicable behavior and rhetoric thrives.

Given that the professional Media is predominantly Leftist, as are the indolent with too much time on their hands to do anything productive but tweet and post (I hasten to defend that the reason I have the time is that I’m retired after working hard for fifty years), the Left are provided with overwhelming covering fire. The saturated with Leftist garbage airwaves thus leave little room for any reasonable debate or reflection. That same cover gives impunity to the most despicable, even immoral Leftist behavior in both the commercial as well as political realms.

The Left is guilty too of what I think is one of the most despicable behaviors: Projection. Albeit in its weak-mindedness much of the Left doesn’t even see it, or its hypocrisy, it’s axiomatic that if they are whining about something, accusing the Right of something, falsely claiming credit for or denying culpability for something, it is precisely what they are guilty of. Just today Chuck Schumer sent a letter decrying Attorney General William Barr’s throwing of the BS flag on the Roger Stone sentencing. Said the spotlight-hog/grandstander/demagogue Schumer: “This situation has all the indicia of improper political interference in a criminal prosecution.” Sure, and the Left has NEVER improperly interfered in a criminal prosecution…Schumer’s statement is stupid as the President and Attorney General are empowered to intervene ex officio, and the public knows damn well the prosecutors are piling on a Trump ally. (But put a microphone and a spotlight within a hundred miles of Schumer and he will RUN to it!).

Projection.

Thank God we now have pro-justice leaders like Barr who are willing to wade into the Swamp with a flame-thrower to destroy the truly despicable, poisonous rot of the Left that has festered for so many years.  

[i] Wikipedia: article – “Fourth Estate”

Perception

America, Politics, Society & Culture, Values

I’ve written about this before, but it’s plain to see that two halves of our population can look at the exact same set of facts and firmly believe positions that are 180 degrees apart. But it is astounding that ANYONE in this country can look at the Democrats’ impeachment antics as credible, or the horrifying (to those of us with brains who are paying attention) stupidity coming out of the mouths of the Democrat candidates for President as believable, yet there are many, even if not 50% of the population, who do. THAT’s what’s scary about what we’re witnessing…that ostensibly ‘normal’ people could buy the nonsense the Left is peddling.

Don’t they get it? How is it that they can’t see how perniciously calculating, conniving, dishonest and hypocritical the Left is?

I have a theory. It goes back to the basic principle that our perception is based on our experience (see my post (https://grumpsreport.com/?s=Briggs). In my opinion, the experiences of half the country have consisted of Leftist indoctrination, read brainwashing.

The Left is brilliant at manipulation, false-impression-creation, misrepresentation, and above all, in knowing how to play on human emotions. They cannot appeal to peoples’ left brains so they go after the right hemisphere and heart strings. Play the right music in the background and a horror film becomes a comedy. Set the lights just right and the ugly can appear beautiful. Put just the right amount of quiver in your voice and twist the story line and you can make anyone a victim. Celebrating losers and victims is their stock-in-trade. Disagree with that and you’re a racist, bigot, heartless, entitled, privileged old white person the product of a discriminatory society bent on crushing the less fortunate.  

Hollywood is of course the crucible in which all the leftist soup is created. The world’s greatest experts in deception and heart-string manipulation, Hollywood has fed generation after generation since the Greatest Generation with emotional drivel which, while entertaining, is taken as reality. It is THIS emotional drivel that has been the diet of those, in my opinion, who believe what the Left is saying and doing.

It’s no wonder therefore that the EXPERIENCE of half the country…the half that have swallowed the drivel with little to no critical thinking, are empty vessels into which the current Leftist nonsense can be easily poured. It fills their souls with emotional satisfaction to hear concepts like “Medicare for All” and Welcoming (i.e. ‘Open’) Borders. And it’s what allows them to believe the lies about children in cages and every other lie put forth by the Left.

It’s not FAKE NEWS, it’s blatant indoctrination, messaging with an agenda, subjective twisting of facts, figures, data to push a narrative that anyone with a functional LEFT brain sees as destructive to mankind and the world. The “Media” is just a court jester, pandering to whomever will buy their verbal diarrhea for the highest amount.

Follow the money. Always. The self-righteous and hyper-hypocritical Left will do whatever maximizes the cash in their pockets, and the quickest way to undeservedly do so is to amass and exercise POWER.

To be fair, there are plenty on the RIGHT who subscribe to this strategy and who take advantage of it. But like so many other things, IT’S A QUESTION OF DEGREE. The Left is guilty of lying, cheating, and indiscriminately acting in ways that benefit themselves thousands of times more frequently than the Right.

Not until the weak-minded and gullible face REAL reality ( I can’t believe I’ve had to use such a term ) or have their heart strings pulled by Goodness, Grace, God or the Holy Spirit, or whatever universal positive Force you subscribe to, or, alternatively, have an experience or experiences that wake them up to the real world, will they make their way back to the realm of the grounded human race with traditional values and practices, and will our Country revert to its position as Light Shining on the Hill.

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