Democrats, the anti-worker party

 

Ask a Democrat why they're a Democrat and they'll usually say it's because the Democrat Party is the party of the working man. These people believe this so strongly that they'd vote for the Democrat over anyone else, even if the Democrat on the ticket was an old yellow dog.

It doesn't matter that Democrat policies have been devastating to the poor and middle-class workers in this country for almost 100 years. The poor and middle class still turn out in droves to vote for them. Democrat politicians have successfully positioned themselves as the party of the poor, and they've created an enmity between the poor and the rich.

Democrat leaders perpetuate this enmity with popular slogans like "living wage," "fair share," "working poor," "greedy rich," "rich Republicans" and "evil profits." Their rank and file have bought it hook, line and sinker.

The Great Society

By the late 1950s, America had somewhat recovered from the effects of Woodrow Wilson's policies — the Federal Reserve, the income tax and World War I — and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's policies — the New Deal and World War II — and prosperity was returning.

Then along came Lyndon Baines Johnson, the Great Society and the next great expansion of the nanny state. Previous Democrat administration policies had been devastating to the people they purported to help and, with his Great Society programs Johnson continued the assault on the poor under the guise of helping the "less fortunate" (as if success is only about how you're born, the opposite of the American ideal).

Within three years of assuming the Presidency in 1963, Johnson had requested 200 major pieces of legislation and Congress had approved 181 of them, according to Leslie Carbone in Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform.

"Roosevelt had peddled the drug of government give-aways primarily in the poor neighborhoods; Johnson set up shop in middle-class cul-de-sacs, and most Americans, willingly or unwillingly, wittingly or unwittingly, are forced to shoot up. Johnson's sweeping proposals sought to address almost every issue of concern to Americans: civil rights, poverty, education, health, housing, pollution, the arts, cities, occupational safety, consumer protection, and mass transit, to name only the most prominent," according to Carbone.

And what have these programs wrought? Mark Owen, adjunct professor of economics at Northwood University, wrote a column for LewRockwell.com entitled The Welfare State: Shredding Society. In it he said:

"While crime and family destabilization may be two of the more obvious results of the welfare state, there are many others. The stigma for single mother births has virtually disappeared. Intergenerational dependency on government programs with the related lack of skills for self-sufficiency, much like a farm animal unable to live without the farmer for food and shelter, has created people without hope or ambition."

The welfare state has created a cycle of dependency that perpetuates itself. Now there are third and fourth generations of single women living off welfare and raising children in single-parent homes.

Typically these women live in urban areas and their children are held hostage to failing inner-city school systems. And Democrat policies are to blame for these failing schools.

In 1965 Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, according to Carbone. It provided aid to poor children in slums and rural areas, created a five-year program for school libraries to buy textbooks and other instructional materials and provided for educational research, among other things. Essentially, the Federal government took over the education of children.

Carbone writes: "Representative Charles Goodell warned that the bill's 'clear intent is to radically change our historic structure of education by a dramatic shift of power to the federal level.'" Gradually, step by small step, this is the goal of all progressive, statist Democrats, as you can see today with the constant call for Federal laws and federal takeover of everything, but I digress.

The National Education Association (NEA) teacher's union, a supporter of Democrat candidates and causes, opposes any and all efforts to inject competition or reform into the failing schools. Much the opposite, in fact. Their national meeting this year was all about gender politics, as they sought to change "mother" to "birthing parent," "father" to "non-birthing parent," and "maternity leave" to "parental leave" in the name of LGBTQ inclusion in all contract language. The measure failed, this year at least.

Democrats support such "woke" attempts and also oppose any competition to progressive union teachers and school competition as well. Combined with local teacher unions, the NEA also fights efforts to change the tenure system which protects the jobs of bad teachers to the detriment of the children.

Echoes of FDR

Like Herbert Hoover, George W. Bush was a Republican without a conservative soul. And just like Hoover, his policies to battle the recession were all wrong. First was the stimulus bill of 2008, a $150 billion — 1 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) — kick in the economy through tax rebate checks that the government hoped would prevent or shorten the recession.

Next came the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free market," Bush said at the time.

Then Obama went one better than Bush. Just two months after taking office he pushed through Congress a $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. So within the space of one year more than $1.5 trillion new dollars had been injected into the economy, further eroding the value of the dollars the poor and middle-class hold.

Michael Barone wrote for The Washington Examiner, "One-third of the 2009 stimulus money went to state and local governments — an obvious payoff to the public employee unions which gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrats and got hundreds of billions of dollars in return, to insulate public employee unions from the effects of the recession which has affected everyone else."

And then there are the new tax increases in Biden's so-called "Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" which will do no such thing. How can it, with over $400 billion in new spending? Of course, growing government and creating a cycle of dependency is the goal of Democrat tax-and-spenders.

Party of the working man (or woman)? Not hardly. Only old yellow dogs waiting under the porch for handouts thrive under Democrat policies.

They're convinced they can spend any amount of money, steal any freedom, impose any onerous regulation or create yet another bloated bureaucracy and you will like it. If not, they have both free, fawning media coverage and also enough dough in their pockets to pay for glitzy television advertisements to convince you that whatever they are up to is for your own good.

How Democrats have managed to maintain the myth that their policies are beneficial to Average Working-class Joe (or Jane) is one of the great mysteries of all time — ranking up there with dark matter and how Joe Besser ever became one of the Three Stooges. For Democrat big-government policies have been devastating to the "working" man.

Yours for the truth,

Bob Livingston
Editor, The Bob Livingston Letter®

Should red states block federal agencies like the FBI and IRS from operating with impunity? Blue states already do it!

 From Brandon Smith of Bob Livingston's Personal Liberty Digest 17 August 2022

The concept of "sanctuary cities" has long been implemented within predominantly leftist states in America. It's not anything new. Any operations by DHS and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) within blue states to arrest and deport illegal immigrants is often met with aggressive resistance by Democrat-run city governments.

Keep in mind that foreign individuals have no right under the constitution to reside in the U.S. without first gaining citizenship. Leftists say they don't care and are happy to welcome millions of illegals into the country with open arms in direct violation of laws protecting our borders as well as the stability of our economy and society. They do this NOT because they are foolishly humanitarian; rather, they see it as a means to import a massive voting block that will give leftists whatever they want because they believe they will get citizenship in exchange.

If they didn't want millions of illegal votes, then Democrats would not be constantly attempting to block voter ID laws.

Obviously, the political left is openly hostile to federal agencies when those agencies happen to obstruct their agenda. Though it's rare these days for blue states and the feds to be at odds, it does happen. ICE and other agencies might try to find ways around sanctuary status, but there is never any question of "treason" or "insurrection." Blue state politicians don't get raided or arrested as national enemies.

I bring up this issue because many readers have asked me to comment on the events at Mar-a-Lago and the FBI search of Donald Trump's home. From my research, every president in history has been given access to classified information after they leave the White House, especially if they are planning to run for office again. One can debate the merits of this policy, but it is a policy just the same. Presidents also have sweeping authority to declassify documents and information when they feel it is justified. Meaning, if documents were found in Trump's possession, it's completely plausible that he simply declassified them before taking them.

The main leftist position is more about the nuances of how the documents are stored and if Trump followed proper procedures through NARA. While the secondary argument by leftists is basically that Trump is a criminal and should not be allowed the same access as other presidents (though impeachment failed, and he has never been criminally charged). Until the information on the raid is unsealed, we really have no idea if Trump actually had any dangerous or top-secret documents in his possession. It's all hypothetical at this point and the progressive media is running wild with the story simply because they hate Trump and are hoping against hope that this event will stop him from running for office in 2024, where Biden would be easily crushed.

My personal feeling on the issue is that people are missing the bigger picture. The Mar-a-Lago raid is much like the Jan. 6 trials. It's all a circus and a distraction. Nothing substantial will come from these actions, it's all about optics and influencing public perception. If anything, the raid on Trump's home actually makes him look MORE appealing to a large number of Americans, who have grown tired of the incompetence and chicanery of the Biden Administration. This event HELPS Trump in the long run instead of hurting him.

The only other possible scenario that makes sense here is that there will be an attempt to arrest Trump on thin charges. Such a move would be seen as purely political in nature and would enrage millions of Americans to the point of civil unrest. But maybe that's the goal...

I have never had much trust in Trump, and I was always highly critical of the fact that he loaded his cabinet with known banking elites and globalists after attacking those same people during his election campaign. This article is not meant to defend Trump or admonish him. Frankly, I don't care.

What I do care about, though, is the increasing tide of federal aggression and the use of federal agencies as a political club to intimidate or beat down opponents of the leftists and globalists. The FBI raid in Florida is one example, then there was the FBI seizure of PA congressman Scott Perry's cellphone, and the Jan. 6 investigations, in general, are purely about intimidation and not about justice.

The message of the Jan. 6 trials is this: Leftists are allowed to violently riot and burn buildings to the ground across the country. Conservatives are not allowed to do anything. If we do, then we will be rounded up for "insurrection." At least, that's what they want us to believe so that we self-censor and live in fear of ever protesting again. We are at an impasse. There is no diplomacy to be had and no agreements to be made. They want us gone, and now we want them gone because they want us gone. This is not going to change.

Another growing concern among many Americans is the sudden explosion in agent recruitment at the IRS, with an implied need for agents that are willing to execute raids and violence. The "Inflation Reduction Act" contains no measures to actually reduce inflation but does contain a climate change agenda, socialized health care measures and an extreme boost to the IRS.

The agency is slated to receive an $80 billion boost from the Inflation Reduction Act and the institution is now looking to hire 87,000 more employees. If the mission is to reduce inflation by using the IRS to steal more money from American consumers, then I guess that could work, but it would also cause recessionary carnage and even more public discontent and anger.

Obviously, not all of the 87,000 new IRS agents will be field agents. Finding that many people with training who are also willing to risk their lives for the IRS would be exceedingly difficult. Many of them will be sitting at a desk, but thousands of them will be strapped and this is what worries people. The mainstream media claims that these new agents will be targeting "rich tax dodgers" but we all know better. The IRS was used extensively under Obama to put pressure on conservative organizations and individuals that were not "rich," and there's no reason to think Biden would not do the same thing.

The IRS even had to apologize to conservative groups for their over-scrutiny as part of a legal settlement in 2017.

They've done it before and they'll do it again, but this time with a massive payout from the Biden White House and probably more leeway to bend the law. So, with federal agencies being utilized more and more as political weapons, should conservative states step in and block their operations?  Blue states do it, why not red states? This is an apples-to-apples comparison and absolutely fair. I would say that what blue states are doing with illegal immigrants is highly destructive in comparison to red states stopping alphabet agencies from using intimidation against conservatives who are legal citizens.

This question leads to a whole gamut of conflicts for sure, there will be endless cries by leftists of "treason." But who cares? We realize that there is a double standard and it's only expanding in the favor of social justice extremists that want to fundamentally disrupt and change the foundations of our country. Why should we play by their rules when they don't play by any?

Red states should enforce a moratorium on federal agency operations until the threats of political abuse are addressed. It is not possible to reach an understanding with leftists at this time because they operate through a lens of zealotry. They cannot be reasoned with because they believe that everything they are doing is righteous and anyone that stands against them is pure evil, so it is better to separate and prevent them from implementing biased policy within our state borders until the conflict is resolved.

To truth and knowledge,

BRANDON SMITH