Democrats struggle to establish an effective campaign theme

August 27, 2024

After replacing President Joe Biden as the front-runner for the Democrat nomination for president in a curiously undemocratic way, Vice President Kamala Harris has spent the last month avoiding the press, giving no interviews, holding no press conferences, and did not even post her agenda on the campaign website.

A little over a week ago, however, her campaign did publish several proposals to “lower costs for American families.” Prior to that, she had also not introduced any initiatives, or defended current Biden administration initiatives.

These proposals include: a call for a federal law against price-gouging; more government control over prescription drug prices; extending financial assistance to people shopping for health insurance; subsidizing the construction and purchase of housing; reinstating a COVID-era cash stipend for families with children.

These will increase federal spending over the next 10 years by an estimated $2 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Also, Harris plans to pay for this government over-reach with a hike in corporate taxes to 28 percent, which would cover only about half the spending. It will also have a negative effect on businesses, increasing their costs, leading to higher prices to make up for the additional taxes paid.

Taking another shot at business, Harris has accused food companies of “price gouging,” saying that price controls are needed to bring down prices and check corporate greed. She, of course, knows full well that the wonderful creation of her and Joe’s administration — Bidenomics — is responsible for the higher prices on food and virtually everything else people need and want.

Bidenomics-caused inflation has kicked up costs generally by around 19 percent, and food prices are up even more, about 21 percent.

For their part, those in the food industry use logic to explain the high prices. With higher prices for labor and raw materials, higher prices on their products are the result, and significant profit margins are needed to finance new product development. Only common sense here.

Even The Washington Post editorial board criticized Harris' proposed method in an opinion piece before the convention. The board called it a "populist gimmick," saying that the nation is in need of "serious economic ideas." 

Other elements of misplaced blame were present in last week’s Democratic National Convention. Speakers at the event repeatedly falsely blamed former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump for several things. One of those is the previously mentioned cause of rising prices.

Both President Joe Biden and VP candidate Tim Walz accused Trump of planning a nationwide ban on abortion. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, warned that Trump would ban in vitro fertilization. “Trump’s anti-woman crusade has put other Americans’ right to have their own families at risk, because if they win, Republicans will not stop at banning abortion. They will come for IVF next.”

An informed person would know that Trump has suggested he might support a ban after 15 or 16 weeks, and more recently that abortion should be left up to the states. And in February expressed his support for IVF.

As reported by The Daily Caller, “Many speakers condemned Project 2025, an initiative led by The Heritage Foundation in partnership with over 100 other conservative organizations. The project, a policy blueprint for a future conservative presidential administration, offered to work with any political campaign open to supporting those policies. Heritage and its allies launched the project in April 2023, before Trump had won the Republican nomination. And while many Project 2025 staff had worked in Trump’s administration, the project did not consult with Trump or any other Republican candidate in drafting the document.

“Even so, Democrats repeatedly introduced Project 2025 at the convention as ‘Trump’s plan.’

“Michigan state Democrat Sen. Mallory McMorrow presented Project 2025 as ‘the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.’ She went on to claim that Project 2025 aims ‘to turn Donald Trump into a dictator.’”

However, Project 2025 has not been adopted either by Trump or the Republican Party.

They also continued spouting the fairy tale that Trump and Republicans ban books. “Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books — none of that will prepare our kids for the future,” former first lady Michelle Obama screamed on Tuesday.

However, removing books that are inappropriate for young children from their school libraries is not banning books. Even Obama and other Democrats should be capable of understanding that very significant difference. 

With two weak candidates, Harris and Walz, on the ticket, the Democrats have a steep mountain to climb. Both through the years have demonstrated an affection for criminals, illegal aliens, rioters, government control, gun control, and other things more associated with socialism and Marxism.

Perhaps they understand that enormous challenge, and are neck deep in desperation. Thus, exaggeration, lying and creating falsities has taken control of the Democrat campaign.

The Democrats accuse Trump of “going backwards.” However, by moving back to what Trump did, we actually are moving the country forward, away from the catastrophe this Democrat administration created that actually did move us backward.

America would be so much better off if a few thousand DC Democrats loved their country like Harry Truman did, instead of trying to change it.

America’s future is threatened by those who want to change everything

April 9, 2024

The future of the United States of America may be less secure than at any time since its inception. The country that has provided so much for so long, and has set a standard that no other country in the world has ever matched, is now seen by a large faction as no longer good enough.

What made America so great? Many things. A tripartite government with no single branch more powerful than the others. Each branch has the ability to respond to the actions of the other branches in our system of checks and balances. 

We don’t have a ruler; no king/queen, emperor or czar. Our leaders are our employees — they work for us! And the President, Vice President and members of Congress are selected at the ballot box by the eligible voters, who choose from candidates that they have participated in choosing. Judges and Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President and approved by the Congress, and others are simply hired as employees.

Our system provides vast amounts of personal freedom, with a Bill of Rights that guarantees us the freedom for important things, like speech, the press, religion, peaceable assembly, redress of grievances, security in our homes, fairness in legal matters, national defense.

So long as what we do does not violate a constitutional principal or sensible laws, we may do as we please. We can buy whatever house, car, appliances, clothing, entertainment, or personal items we choose.

Our Constitution provided the greatest degree of personal freedom in the history of human beings, but it is being replaced by restrictions on virtually every conceivable area of life. This is not new, of course, but has taken a dose of amphetamines in recent years.

Personal freedom, once a hallmark of the nation, is seen by this dissatisfied faction as a threat to the future. And the secret to a positive future in the mind of these people is a life that is much more controlled, with the bureaucracy having much more authority over the people.

Many restrictions exist on what we can and cannot do with our property, what kinds of things we can and cannot purchase. We are told there are legitimate reasons for these limitations. that is true, up to a point. But the number of federal, state and local regulations is huge, and cumbersome.

And many of the regulations are made by unelected bureaucrats, and are not approved by Congress, but nonetheless have the force of law.

The Code of Federal Regulation has 50 subsections where the government has seen fit to issue regulations that control what we can do, and how it must be done. One example of this was discussed by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) on its website.

A NAM survey last summer found that “U.S. manufacturers’ concerns over federal regulations have reached a six-year high as nearly 100 new major regulations — from 30 federal agencies and offices — threaten jobs and investment.”

Ohio Manufacturers’ Association President Ryan Augsburger noted that “In the next year, the Biden administration plans to issue even more regulations — approximately 3,200, including about 280 ‘major rules’ and 1,326 ‘significant rules.’”

Augsburger wrote that “More than 63 percent of manufacturers are spending more than 2,000 hours per year complying with federal regulations, diverting resources that would otherwise go towards employee compensation, new hires and additional investment in U.S. facilities,” citing the NAM’s Q2 2023 Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey.

He then listed examples of the cost of these burdensome regulations:

** The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed particulate matter rule, which is expected to cost “up to $197.4 billion in U.S. economic activity and endanger as many as 973,900 current U.S. jobs”;

** The Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed climate-disclosure requirement, which the NAM recently advocated against in testimony before the House; and

** The Federal Trade Commission’s proposal to ban noncompete agreements, which 70 percent of manufacturers use to safeguard their intellectual property.

Negative consequences such as these are not limited to manufacturing; they occur in virtually every area of work.

Our government is too big, too controlling and spends too much. Our national debt is $34.6 trillion. That comes to just under $103,000 for every person in the country.

Is it possible that this large faction of Americans desiring to impose restrictions on our freedoms actually has a plan for a better country in mind? Well, yes, they have a plan. But it is not a plan to make America better. 

Their plan is for a larger, more restrictive government, and much less personal freedom for the people. It is very much opposed to the concept that our Founders had in mind, and for which they created our governmental system. They and their plan are un-American and anti-American.

This continued degradation of the brilliant system we inherited must be reversed, or before much longer America as it was designed will no longer exist. Our freedoms must be restored and protected. And our government must be returned to its intended limited status.

Biden’s weak policies increase our risk of terrorist activity

December 5, 2023

No objective person can look at the chaos at the southern border and not be alarmed. Of course, the Biden administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, insists that the border is closed.

However, the New York Times reported in October that “Migrants were caught crossing the southern border of the United States more times in the past year than in any other year since at least 1960, when the government started keeping track of the data.

“It is the third record-setting year in a row,” and there were “more than 2.4 million apprehensions in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended in September. That tops the previous record, set a year earlier, of more than 2.3 million, according to government data released on Saturday. During the 2021 fiscal year, there were more than 1.7 million apprehensions.”

Question for Mayorkas: If 2.3 and 2.4 million people can enter the country illegally in two consecutive years, and those numbers have set records for illegal entry going back 50 years, how many illegal entries constitute a situation where the border could reasonably be considered open?

No doubt the response will be: crickets.

And while states on the border are suffering immensely, and illegals are being transported around the country by the federal government, even the sanctuary states and cities are beginning to understand the pain of these lax federal policies, and want action to be taken.

Critics point out that while many or maybe most of these illegal aliens merely seek a better life, many of them have other intentions: trafficking children, women, and drugs; gang violence; and worse. 

In former President Donald Trump’s final 32 months in the White House, Border Patrol agents apprehended 1.9 million illegal aliens. By contrast, in the first 32 months of President Joe Biden’s tenure, the Border Patrol apprehended 6.3 million illegal aliens.

In addition to the millions of illegals apprehended, there have been 1.5 million “gotaways,” illegals that were spotted and counted, but not apprehended. As the number of those apprehended increases, so does the number of gotaways. We don’t know who they are or why they came. And we don’t know where they went.

Illegals on the terror watch list that have been apprehended have increased in number since fiscal year 2017, when two were caught. In 2018, there were six; in 2019 there were none; and in 2020 there were three.

And then the increases began. In 2021 - 15; in 2022 - 98; in 2023 - 169.

If that by itself isn’t bad enough, wait until you see which countries they are coming from.

From October 1, 2021 to Oct. 4, 2023 some 73,000 “Special Interest Aliens” entered the country from places including Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Syria. 

In the first half of October of this year, more than 30 came from Iran and Pakistan each. More than 100 came from Russia. Almost 2,000 came from China.

Are any of these illegals associated with Iranian terrorist proxies, like Hamas or Hezbollah? And many of these illegals are military age males. And what about those from China, our most serious adversary?

This is the reality that the feeble and perilous Biden border policy has produced.

To call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil,” Wray said.

“Terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States,” said the fiscal year 2024 threat assessment by the Department of Homeland Security.

And, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters on a call in October that “Here in the U.S., we cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or their foreign terrorist organizations could exploit the conflict to call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil.”

The weakness demonstrated by the Biden administration on the southern border has not gone without notice around the world. Since the butchery carried out in the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, Iranian terrorist proxies have attacked U.S. military installations in the region 75 times. The U.S. response has been meek and scarce. The only good news is that while some military personnel have been injured, none have been killed.

This sort of under-reaction will not deter future attacks; they invite more. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the end of October, two weeks after the attacks began, “Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces. We will not let them. If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people.”

Austin’s words had no effect on Iran and its terrorist proxies; the attacks have continued. And the tough talk threatening “further necessary measures” has not led to one significant retaliatory strike.

Biden hasn’t been moved to stand up to Iran and order an action to exact a substantial price from the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And until Iran is shown that we will back up our words with significant action, these attacks will continue, and likely get worse.

Democrats want to turn the United States upside-down

CNN’s marathon townhall last Wednesday may have set some records. The broadcast lasted a full seven hours. It featured 10 of the numerous candidates for the Democrat nomination to run for president in 2020. They were, alphabetically: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and Elizabeth Warren.

The event did not set a record for the number of viewers it attracted. During the 5:00 p.m.-12:00 a.m. broadcast, CNN pulled only 1.1 million viewers, compared to MSNBC’s 1.7 million, and Fox News’ more-than-double 2.5 million during that time period.

The focus of the event was climate change. “So, based off [a BBC] study, CNN will produce 57.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions while warning about increasing carbon dioxide emissions,” wrote Timothy Meads on Townhall.com prior to the event.

The candidates expressed their ideas about what they say is an existential threat to life on Earth. These ideas include doing away with fossil fuels and nuclear energy, red meat, plastic straws, incandescent light bulbs, carbon, fracking, combustion engine vehicles, and babies.

Abortion was high on the list for some. “Human population growth has more than doubled in the past 50 years. The planet cannot sustain this growth,” an audience member said to Bernie Sanders. He agreed, and promised to back more U.S. funding for abortions in the developing world.

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club have warned that Africa and Asia are producing way too many babies, and this will threaten the future of the Earth. Former Vice President Al Gore once said the we “have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management” in the developing world to fight climate change. 

And Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered an opinion some time ago. “[A]t the time Roe (v. Wade) was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Was that a racist comment?

If over-population truly is a problem, Gore’s fertility management solution, if that means pregnancy prevention, would be far preferable to killing developing humans in the womb.

"We are fighting for the survival of the planet Earth, our only planet. How is this not a major priority?" Sanders asked.  He boasted that his was the most serious approach of any presidential candidate in history. It will only cost us $16 trillion. That is roughly equal to all federal spending for four years.

Cory Booker has changed his super-identity from “Spartacus” to “Star Trekian.” This transformation may have come after his discovery that non-white and low-income people are disproportionately affected by climate change, though he did not explain how this occurs. Economic and environmental justice therefore demand that we transition to a carbon-neutral economy as soon as we possibly can, he said, in order to restore the balance of the effects of climate related issues.

Getting millions of vehicles off the road was posited by Joe Biden, the most moderate candidate, who vowed to lead the whole world in this effort if elected president, not just the U.S.

Asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if the Green New Deal’s plan to ban all fossil fuels, 99 percent of cars and planes, and meat within the next decade was “unrealistic” or “promising too much?” Biden answered, “No, no it’s not.”

Pledging to do away with carbon energy, but also to do away with nuclear energy by 2035, Elizabeth Warren urged Democrats not to get distracted by sideline issues like the environmental consequences of plastic straws, cheeseburgers and light bulbs. "This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry hopes we're all talking about," she said.

Taking a different tack on the issue, admitted cheeseburger lover Kamala Harris wants to eliminate barriers to forcing her radical views on we the people by ending the Senate filibuster. Currently, ending debate on legislation requires 60 votes. Harris supports a simple majority vote to speed along her efforts at control.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., commented on that idea. "The legislative filibuster is directly downstream from our founding tradition. If that tradition frustrates the whims of those on the far left, it is their half-baked proposals and not the centuries-old wisdom that need retooling," he wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times.

Harris also said she would use executive power to order the Justice Department to go after oil and gas firms. Is that an American ideal? Or does Harris believe that when you can’t win through better ideas and honesty, you must change the rules, or play dirty?

The list of past environmental catastrophe predictions that didn’t come to be is long: in 1975 a coming ice age; the acid rain threat; over-population producing mass starvation; global temperatures melting ice floes and flooding coastal cities. And now, only 10 or 12 years left to save the world. Again.

The alarmists point to a “scientific consensus” that millions cling to. There were scientists selling the past failed predictions, too. Even if these predictions of doom are true, the only way to stop the threat, apparently, is to spend trillions and turn the United States upside-down, and impose government control.

More information essential to evaluate the renewable energy idea

What we hear about almost ceaselessly is the impending environmental catastrophe facing the world. Despite the tremendous progress the U.S. has made in reducing its carbon emissions, which we are told is what is causing, or hastening, the crisis, more must be done.

We must spend trillions of dollars and turn our lifestyles upside down to make a very fast transition from traditional fossil fuel production of energy through coal, oil and natural gas to so-called “green” renewable energy sources.

We hear repeatedly how bad fossil fuels are as primary energy sources, and how wind and solar power are our salvation. However, much needed detail about this transition is left out.

So much of what those on the left offer regarding climate change, and their proposed solutions to the problem, is what economist and columnist Thomas Sowell calls “Stage One Thinking.” This involves identifying a problem and proposing a solution that sounds effective and satisfying, but doing so without thoughtfully looking at what happens after that initial action – Stage One – is taken.

Mark P. Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has gone beyond Stage One to look into what is involved in replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources in his column “If You Want ‘Renewable Energy,’ Get Ready to Dig.”

“’Renewable energy’ is a misnomer,” he wrote. “Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from nonrenewable materials. And they wear out. Old equipment must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste. The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that solar goals for 2050 consistent with the Paris Accords will result in old-panel disposal constituting more than double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste.”

Mills’ excellent article appeared in The Wall Street Journalin July. He helps us understand the enormous amount of raw materials needed for electric vehicles, and where we will get them. For example, “A single electric-car battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving and processing more than 500,000 pounds of raw materials somewhere on the planet,” he explained. “The alternative? Use gasoline and extract one-tenth as much total tonnage to deliver the same number of vehicle-miles over the battery’s seven-year life.”

Wind and solar power involve similar problems: “Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic. Solar power requires even more cement, steel and glass—not to mention other metals. Global silver and indium mining will jump 250 percent and 1,200 percent respectively over the next couple of decades to provide the materials necessary to build the number of solar panels the International Energy Agency forecasts. World demand for rare-earth elements—which aren’t rare but are rarely mined in America—will rise 300 percent to 1,000 percent by 2050 to meet the Paris green goals. If electric vehicles replace conventional cars, demand for cobalt and lithium, will rise more than 20-fold. That doesn’t count batteries to back up wind and solar grids.”

And, what the greenies do not want you to know is that so much of the production of renewable energy devices requires the burning of fossil fuels. “What’s more, mining and fabrication require the consumption of hydrocarbons,” Mills explains. “Building enough wind turbines to supply half the world’s electricity would require nearly two billion tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. More than 90 percent of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electric grids.”

Mills referenced a Dutch government-sponsored study that concluded “that the Netherlands’ green ambitions alone would consume a major share of global minerals. ‘Exponential growth in [global] renewable energy production capacity is not possible with present-day technologies and annual metal production,’ it concluded.”

He adds that Europe and the U.S. will not be able to produce the minerals needed for this gargantuan undertaking. “Instead, much of the mining will take place in nations with oppressive labor practices. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces 70 percent of the world’s raw cobalt, and China controls 90 percent of cobalt refining. The Sydney-based Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global ‘gold’ rush for minerals could take miners into ‘some remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven’t yet been disturbed.’”

And his coup de gras: “Engineers joke about discovering ‘unobtanium,’ a magical energy-producing element that appears out of nowhere, requires no land, weighs nothing, and emits nothing. Absent the realization of that impossible dream, hydrocarbons remain a far better alternative than today’s green dreams.”

So much of what the increasingly socialist left proposes sounds good, but fails the pragmatism test. Its ideas: are ridiculously expensive; increase government control; impinge on constitutionally guaranteed freedoms; or all of the above.

These solutions are sold to the people through fear of impending catastrophe, such as that climate change is caused by or made worse by human activities. Scientists who produce contrary scientific evidence, and those who believe them, are “science deniers,” which is somewhat the same as being a “deplorable.”

Resistance to this dogma is essential if America is to survive intact.