Friday, February 7, 2020

THE LITTLE DECLITED MUSLIM SHIT ILHAN OMAR WANTS TO BLAME AMERICAN FOR EVERYTHING.... BUT DOESN'T WANT TO RETURN TO SHITLAND SOMALIA



Ilhan Omar Wants People to Blame America for Every Problem in the World

Bronson Stocking
|
Posted: Feb 07, 2020 3:40 PM
Ilhan Omar Wants People to Blame America for Every Problem in the World
Source: YouTube/Screenshot
On Friday, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), two progressive members of the so-called "squad," spoke to a group of far-left activists at a Democracy Now event in Washington, D.C. Rep. Omar took issue with people for not connecting the dots and being able to see how America is responsible for everything bad that happens all around the world. 
"When we think about it now in Congress," Omar began, "We're having a conversation about cross-border negotiations happening for workers because all of our destinies are tied together. When you see a Somali refugee, or an Iraqi refugee, or a Libyan refugee -- we often are like 'Oh, this is my neighbor -- they must have survived some struggle.' We don't ever pause to think, 'What American policy made them come over here?'"
The crowd applauded Omar's comments. 
"When you see a flooding happening in a country abroad," Omar continued, "and you are urgently raising money for these lives to be saved, you don't think about, 'How have I contributed to the climate warming that has led to these floods and these catastrophes that are taking place abroad?'"
Omar went on to say that it was important for those in the crowd to "have these connections" when thinking about the problems of the world. 
Doing some last-minute campaigning for Bernie Sanders in Iowa last week, Omar described her experience coming to America as a Somali refugee and being disappointed with the country she found. 
"Because the America we were shown in the orientation tapes when we were coming here from the refugee camp in Kenya had beautiful homes with white picket fences," Omar explained, "happy families eating a full meal in their beautiful living rooms. It had happy children getting on the bus to go to their beautiful schools. It had pictures of amazing malls, mega-malls, and had pictures of beautifully built bridges and highways. It was a picture of abundance. Now that is the ideal."
That sounds like the America the MAGA train is head toward. But remind me why we need refugees in this country who hate us and want to blame America for anything bad that ever happens in the world? 

TRUMP BILKS TAXPAYERS AND LIES ABOUT IT - But isn't that Trump's life story???

Report: Trump Organization Is Bilking Taxpayers and Lying About It

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump has been claiming that his Ukraine extortion scheme was motivated by an earnest concern about corruption. The president and his allies say they are so outraged that Hunter Biden made money off his relationship to a sitting vice-president that they held up military aid to Ukraine, and are opening an investigation into the matter now, half a decade later. “I probably have a legal obligation, Mr. Attorney, to report corruption,” Trump told the country yesterday.
Meanwhile Trump is engaged in massive personal, ongoing corruption. The Washington Post has obtained Secret Service receipts from Trump’s properties. It reveals a massive profiteering scandal.
There are several important takeaways from the Post’s report. First, it shows that the Trump Organization has flat-out lied about the benefits it gets from the government business Trump throws its way. Last year, President Trump briefly sought to host a G-7 summit at one of his properties. Eric Trump, an independent entrepreneur who operates at arm’s length from his father’s administration, explained that the move would actually save taxpayers a lot of money. “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” he told Yahoo Finance. “If he stays at one of his places, the government actually … saves a fortune because, if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know, we charge them like 50 bucks.”
This promise turns out not to be exactly, or even approximately, true. In fact, the Post finds that the Secret Service routinely paid $396 a night for rooms, and on many other occasions, paid $650 a night. So unless Eric Trump is such a terrible businessman he underestimates the cost at one of the properties he is running by thirteenfold, he (on behalf of his father’s business) is intentionally deceiving the public.
Second, the Trump Organization appears to be overcharging the Secret Service for the use of its cottage properties. At Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, the Secret Service paid $17,000 a month for a three-bedroom cottage. “Since fall 2017, there have been 100 rental listings for homes with three or more bedrooms in Bedminster, according to the website Zillow.com,” the Post finds. “None were anywhere near Trump’s rate; the average rental rate was $3,400, and the highest rent listed on Zillow was $8,500.”
So the Secret Service paid twice as much as the most expensive available listing in order to sleep on Trump’s golf property.
Third, the federal government is withholding documentation about just how much it is spending on Trump properties. The Post pieced together its story from fragmentary receipts it was able to obtain. But the Secret Service has failed to fully report its spending there. While it’s required to report such expenses to Congress twice a year, it’s only filed two of the six required reports. What’s more, the reports it did file omitted key details. And other mandated avenues for disclosure, like usaspending.gov, omit any detail about payments to Trump clubs.
And finally, as one might infer from the lack of disclosure, there may be a lot worse stuff out there. The Post notes NBC News asked the Department of Homeland Security for records of Trump’s spending at his Washington, D.C., Hotel. DHS said it spent $159,000 there in Trump’s first year. But the record did not include the rate the Secret Service paid on those stays, or explain why it is spending money to stay there at all, when Trump’s Washington residence — you know, the largeish white house on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks from Trump’s hotel — is already financed by taxpayers?
It stands to reason that, if these questions had innocent answers, Trump would be disclosing more information.  Trump claims he has a “legal obligation” to report corruption by people who happen to be running against him for president, but he is refusing even to comply with the current legal obligations to disclose his own profiteering at public expense.

DONALD TRUMP - INSANE CRIMINAL HELD A PARTY TODAY TO CELEBRATE ANOTHER CON JOB



The Insane Criminal President Held a Party Today


This is not a news conference. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
On Wednesday, 48 U.S. Senators officially affirmed that Donald Trump has abused his power so profoundly that he deserves to be the first president ever removed from office by congressional order. Among those who took this extraordinary stance was one member of the president’s own party. Never before in U.S. history had a senator voted to remove a co-partisan from the White House. Meanwhile, several Republican senators who voted against Trump’s removal publicly declared his conduct worthy of condemnation. Nevertheless, he was not convicted.
On Thursday, the president celebrated his newly confirmed immunity from both legal and constitutional accountability. “This is really not a news conference, it’s not a speech,” the president informed a room full of gray-haired, white-skinned men who dutifully complied with his every tacit request for laughter or applause. “It’s not anything, it’s just — we are sort of — it’s a celebration.”
The most powerful government official on planet Earth went on to say that the the investigation into his alleged obstruction of justice had been “bullshit” — and, also, that if he hadn’t fired the FBI director who was overseeing an investigation into his campaign, he might no longer be in power. “Had I not fired James Comey,” he said, “it’s possible I wouldn’t even be standing here right now.”


At points, the man with unilateral authority over America’s 4,000-plus nuclear weapons became too disgusted by the very thought of congressional oversight to keep his expressions of contempt confined to proper syntax. “It was evil,” he said. “It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars.” He praised a congresswoman for being “downright nasty” and “mean” in his defense. He described the world-historic persecution he had endured at the hands of his ever-scheming enemies in cryptic terms and at improbable length. He sounded like nothing so much as a bus-stop crank making unrequited conversation with a crowd of increasingly unnerved and impatient commuters.
But he was actually the president of the United States speaking before a room full of federal lawmakers who responded to his paranoid ravings with an admixture of feigned and genuine delight.
Republics don’t keep forever. Someone flip over that Constitution and double-check the expiration date. Something tells me it’s already passed.


"This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation."

Trump gloats over impeachment, but popular opposition mounts to his administration

On Thursday, President Donald Trump hailed his acquittal in the Democrats’ impeachment drive with a foul-mouthed, rambling tirade in which he called his opponents “evil,” “corrupt” and “scum.”
In a 90-minute rant broadcast on every major US TV channel, Trump called the impeachment “bullshit,” forcing newscasters to apologize for violating FCC guidelines on profanity.
The former reality TV star referred to ex-FBI Director James Comey as a “sleazebag” and called the impeachment a “battle” in a “war.” This came just hours after White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said Trump’s opponents should be “made to pay.” Trump added that under other circumstances his adversaries would “be in jail for a long time already.”
President Donald Trump holds up a newspaper with a headline that reads “Trump acquitted” as he speaks in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, February 6, 2020, in Washington [Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci]
The media, its impeachment drive in shambles, responded to this deranged rant with mute acceptance.
By this point, no one should be under any illusion as to what Trump represents. American capitalism has vomited up a figurehead who expresses its most predatory and criminal features: its greed, violence, backwardness and ignorance.
Trump represents the intersection of two powerful impulses within American society: the parasitic growth of social inequality and US imperialism’s perpetual war drive.
Less than 10 years before Trump was elected, the Obama administration carried out a bank bailout that handed trillions of dollars to the financial oligarchy, even as millions of people lost their homes and their jobs as the result of an orgy of criminal swindling unprecedented in American history—for which no one was punished.
Since the 2008 bank bailout, the stock market has nearly quadrupled, massively enriching the wealthiest 10 percent of society, which owns 84 percent of stocks, even as working class incomes have stagnated or fallen.
In this context, Trump’s off-the cuff rant, in which he rambled aimlessly from one topic to another, naturally honed in on his central appeal to the ruling class: He will make it richer. He declared:
Let me tell you, if we didn’t win, the stock market would have crashed, and the market was going up a lot before the election because it was looking like we had a good chance to win. Then it went up tremendously from the time we won the election to the time we took office, which was November 8 to January 20, and that’s all our credit.
At the same time, decades of continuous war have brutalized the country and eroded whatever vestiges of democratic rule remained.
After the Republicans’ failed impeachment drive against Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, with the blessings of the Supreme Court, stole the 2000 presidential election. He then used the September 11, 2001 terror attacks to launch a frontal assault on democratic rights under the cover of the “war on terror.”
The United States went on to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, led an air war to overthrow the government of Libya in 2011, and fomented a devastating civil war the same year in an attempt to bring down the government of Syria. These wars have killed millions of people and destroyed entire societies.
Within the framework of the “war on terror,” the United States has tortured thousands of people—an example of which was revealed in the horrific Abu Ghraib prison photos. It has carried out mass warrantless domestic spying and committed thousands of extra-judicial assassinations, including of American citizens.
All of these wars and attacks on democratic rights have been carried out on a bipartisan basis, expressing the impulses of the financial oligarchy that dominates American society.
These tendencies are embodied in the person of Trump—the right-wing bigot and demagogue descended from the fascistic “America First” strain in American politics that was aligned with Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
These reactionary impulses have been strengthened by the impeachment debacle. The Democrats’ demoralization in the aftermath of Trump’s victory was summed up in an editorial published Thursday by the New York Times. The Times wrote that Trump’s State of the Union speech showed that “Mr. Trump, unlike the Democratic Party, has a simple, powerful message.”
The newspaper added that “it was perhaps a human reaction on the part of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to tear [the State of the Union address] to shreds.” But, it continued, “It was still disappointing to see her stoop to the kind of stunt the president himself would pull, and, as she certainly knows as well as anyone, a gesture like that won’t defeat the president’s argument. So, what will?
“Not the incoherent, if not to say chaotic, display the Democratic Party has mustered to date.”
The editorial fails to answer the question it asks in the headline: “What Will Finally Defeat Donald Trump?” The “newspaper of record” is simply out of ideas.
The strategy of the Democrats has ended in shambles. From the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the Democrats have pursued the methods of palace coup, with the primary aim of deflecting and disorienting popular opposition to the Trump administration.
Again and again, Trump has been saved by the Democrats. Their qualities of cowardice and fecklessness are determined by the interests of the privileged social layers for which they speak.
The Democrats have sought an escalation of the conflict with Russia. Beyond that, they have no fundamental differences with Trump. If they were forced to choose sides between Trump and a movement of the working class, they would unreservedly back Trump.
This may be the last word for the Times, but it will not be the last word for masses of workers and young people in America. It is easy for Trump to intimidate a feckless party of the oligarchs that has no stomach to fight him. It is a very different thing to face an insurgent popular movement.
Millions marched to oppose Trump in the wake of his inauguration. He remains hated, with an approval rating among the lowest of any post-World War II president. His crimes against immigrant children, his racist overtures to fascists, his advocacy of torture and his sadistic militarism have made his name a profanity, a synonym for vulgarity, criminality and brutality.
The processes that created Trump—above all, the unprecedented growth of social polarization and economic inequality—have also created the social basis for his removal. Millions of workers throughout the United States live in hardship and oppression, toiling every day for the enrichment of the oligarchy, totally excluded from political life, yet yearning for equality, peace and democracy.
This broad popular opposition to Trump must find expression and will find expression. But it will do so only to the extent that it breaks from the Democratic Party.
Trump can be removed only by mobilizing the American working class, in alliance with the working class of the whole world, and uniting all of the progressive elements within the population.


A VERY STABLE GENIUS


“This taut and terrifying book is among the most closely observed accounts of Donald J. Trump’s shambolic tenure in office to date.” - Dwight Garner, The New York Times

THE BOOK

Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.
“I alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration is loyalty - not to the country, but to the president himself - and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.
Leonnig and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.
This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement - but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.

REPORT - STATES FACE MASSIVE TRILLION DOLLAR UNFUNDED LIABILITIES ON HEALTH BENEFITS FOR RETIRED EMPLOYEES - So, then why are Dems hell bent on handing Mexico "free" healthcare??? - "The 10 Democrat candidates participating in Thursday night’s presidential debate were unanimous in their response when asked to raise their hands if their government-run health care plan would cover illegal aliens."

Watch: All Democratic Presidential Candidates Say They Would Give Health Insurance to Illegal Aliens 

By Craig Bannister | 

The 10 Democrat candidates participating in Thursday night’s presidential debate were unanimous in their response when asked to raise their hands if their government-run health care plan would cover illegal aliens.
Every candidate on stage raised his or her hand when asked:
“A lot of you have been talking about government health care plans you proposed in one form or another. This is a show of hands question and hold them up so people can see. Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.”
The 10 Democrats participating in Thursday's debate were:
  • Joe Biden,
  • Rep. Eric Swalwell,
  • Sen. Michael Bennet,
  • Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand,
  • Sen. Kamala Harris,
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders,
  • Mayor Pete Buttigieg,
  • Andrew Yang,
  • John Hickenlooper,
  • Marianne Williamson

 

Free Health Care for Illegal Aliens Could Cost American Taxpayers up to $660B a Decade

AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
JOHN BINDER
 28 Jun 20196,634
3:35

Providing free health care for all illegal aliens living in the United States could cost American taxpayers an additional $660 billion every decade in expenses.

This week, half of the 24 Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination confirmed that their healthcare plans would provide free health care to all illegal aliens at the expense of American taxpayers — including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).
Center for Immigration Studies Director of Research Steven Camarotta told Breitbart News that only rough estimates are available for what health care for illegal aliens will cost American taxpayers, and though a comprehensive study has yet to be conducted on this specific issue, taxpayers can expect to pay a “significant” amount.
“If we offered Medicaid for illegal immigrants, it is possible the costs could be over tens of billions of dollars,” Camarotta said. “However, it would depend on eligibility criteria as well as how many illegal immigrants actually sign up for program once it was offered. So while the actual costs are uncertain, the size would be significant for taxpayers.”





8


Every 2020 Dem in Second Debate Supports Healthcare for Illegal Aliens




A reasonable estimate of health care for each illegal alien, Camarotta said, is about $3,000 — about half the average $6,600 that it currently costs annually for each Medicaid recipient. This assumes that a number of illegal aliens already have health insurance through employers and are afforded free health care today when they arrive to emergency rooms.
Based on this estimate, should the full 22 million illegal aliens be living in the U.S. that Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have estimated there to be, providing health care for the total illegal population could cost American taxpayers about $66 billion a year.
Over a decade, based on the Yale estimate of the illegal population and assuming all sign up for free health care, this would cost American taxpayers about $660 billion.
Even if there are only 11 million illegal aliens living in the U.S., as the Pew Research Center and other analysts routinely estimate, American taxpayers would still have to pay a yearly bill of $33 billion a year to provide them all with free, subsidized health care.
Should only half of the illegal population get health care, it would cost American taxpayers about $16.5 billion a year — almost the price of what it currently costs taxpayers to provide subsidized health care to illegal aliens.
Today, Americans are forced to subsidize about $18.5 billion worth of yearly medical costs for illegal aliens living in the U.S., according to estimates by Chris Conover, formerly of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
Nearly every Democrat running for their party’s presidential nomination has endorsed having American taxpayers pay for free health care for illegal aliens. Those who have endorsed the plan include Biden, Sanders, Gillibrand, Buttigieg, and Harris, along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), author Marianne Williamson, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), entrepreneur Andrew Yang, and Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO).
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

  

California’s $215 Billion Budget Includes Health Care for Illegal Aliens

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
29 Jun 2019109
1:42

California’s Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $215 billion budget on Thursday, which includes taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens.

Newsom signed the massive $214.8 billion funding bill into law, which includes a provision that would expand health care for people who are illegally in the U.S. and penalizes people who do not purchase health insurance, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The California Democrat had proposed expanding health care for illegal aliens long before he took office.
In an August 2018 interview, Newsom said he would use an executive order to give universal health care to those residing in the U.S. illegally. Once Newsom took office in January, he proposed expanding Medi-Cal, the state version of Medicaid, to illegal aliens up to 26 years old.
The plan sailed through California’s Democrat-controlled legislature, although there were concerns over how much money the state should provide for expanding Medi-Cal for low-income illegal aliens.
Newsom proposed that $98 million in the budget should go to expanding taxpayer-funded health care for illegal aliens between 19 and 25 years old, but one state Assembly bill proposed setting aside $3.4 billion to cover all illegal aliens over 19 years old.

The bill is Newsom’s first budget since he took office in January, largely helped along by a $21.5 billion surplus carrying over from his fellow Democrat, former Gov. Jerry Brown’s, administration.


Report: States Face $1 Trillion in Unfunded Liabilities


February 6, 2020 Updated: February 6, 2020
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States are facing more than $1 trillion in unfunded future liabilities related to health and life insurance benefits for their retired employees, a growing shortfall that amounts to about $3,100 for every person in the United States, according to a new report by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC, which has come under attack by left-wing advocacy groups in recent years, describes itself as “the nation’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators, with more than 2,000 members across the nation.”
Its mission is “to discuss, develop, and disseminate model public policies that expand free markets, promote economic growth, limit the size of government, and preserve individual liberty.”
The new study, the latest in an annual series from ALEC’s Center for State Fiscal Reform, comes after critics have complained for years that cash-strapped states don’t adequately fund their retiree-related obligations, which has allowed those sums to accumulate.
Its authors say that, “in the end, government must be held accountable for its actions.” Without policy changes, these liabilities could lead to future tax increases or force cuts to core public services in states.
Making governments use “more prudent actuarial assumptions and increasing transparency prevents state governments from making impossible promises and allowing unfunded liabilities to accumulate,” the report states.
These unfunded benefit programs for retired public employees fall under a category that fiscal analysts call “other post-employment benefits,” or OPEB. OPEB excludes public pension plans but includes benefits to retired workers such as health insurance, life insurance, supplemental Medicare insurance, and more. The study examined 132 OPEB plans from fiscal 2013 to 2017, drawing on the most current Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) and Actuarial Valuation Reports.
“While a trillion dollars is a rounding error in Washington, D.C., at the state level, it’s a huge threat to government programs and taxpayers,” Jonathan Williams, chief economist and executive vice president of policy at ALEC, told The Epoch Times in an interview.



Epoch Times Photo
Jonathan Williams of the American Legislative Exchange Council. (Courtesy American Legislative Exchange Council)

“Governments, if they want to spend more money on new programs, need to view OPEB liabilities as a threat, so I think there is something for both parties to like from tackling these liabilities.”
Public pensions have generally been prefunded at 80 percent in order to be considered healthy, “but now a lot of us are thinking 100 percent is better.” OPEB items, by contrast, have generally not been prefunded at all, he said.
“OPEB liabilities have flown under the radar, but they have become more visible as a result of federal accounting rule changes that force states to list them on their balance sheets,” Williams said. Even so, they have been “overshadowed” by fiscal problems in Detroit and Puerto Rico.
“Unfortunately, this new transparency has left us with these very huge liabilities,” he said.
The states with the largest OPEB liabilities are California ($166.6 billion), New Jersey ($130.4 billion), New York ($129.3 billion), Texas ($115.7 billion), and Illinois ($64.4 billion), according to the study. The states with the smallest OPEB liabilities are Nebraska and South Dakota, which Williams said are tied at zero because they don’t pay for retired employees’ health care, followed by Kansas ($285,000), Oklahoma ($9.1 million), and Utah ($210.9 million).
“There is a lot of doom and gloom in the report,” but there are also a handful of states that are doing a good job getting a handle on their OPEB liabilities, Williams said.


Leaving the Democrats
I was brought up a military brat.  My father did 22 years in the United States Air Force.  In 1954 when he joined, they promised if he made a career of it, he and his wife, my mother, would be taken care of for life.  He got out in 1976 after extending his service a couple of extra years so I would not have to switch high schools in Florida.
We moved out west after my father retired and I finished high school.  In 1978, I got a job in the wood products industry at a particleboard factory and began work a schedule that just became normal to me. seven days on, two days off, working nights, weekends, and most holidays.  I wore “save the whales” t-shirts at work.
The industry came under attack because of environmental concerns for the spotted owl.  The lumber and wood products industry in the West was decimated over the next 15-20 years.  We tried to muster support from our government, but our efforts fell on deaf ears.  Eventually after 22 years, the facility I worked at closed.  The ability to do what we did, which was to recycle sawdust and discarded wood into a usable product, became too expensive as we had to go further and further away for our raw materials.  The logging industry was gone because of environmentalism and government policies to put animal concerns ahead of humans.
The spotted owl (the Mexican spotted owl in the southwest) was noted later on to be mating with other ‘species’ of owls.
It occurred to me if they can call an owl of a different color another species, then this should be applied to humans.  By a definition of species, we are all our own species based on external color, size and shape, etc..  Why were we not being looked after by our government in our lives?  We paid taxes and worked our butts off, only to be told we were killing the planet.  Where was the Human Protective Agency?  Why was I paying taxes to have the government pay bureaucrats to work against me?
In the 90s, I watched the Clintons. Bill at that time seemed to be a pragmatist but Hillary, the unelected first lady, tried to take over the healthcare system.  I saw it as a blatant power grab by an overly ambitious person in government.  By this time, we were well into the spotted owl era, and my distaste for the government sticking its nose into our lives was huge.  My save the whales t-shirts were history long before this.
Now, my parents were Roosevelt Democrats who fed on the nightly news: Huntley-Brinkley, Walter Cronkite.  That was the source for news.  In their minds, republicans were the evil ones trying to take away their VA benefits promised to them in the 50’s.  They believed the nightly news.  There was no internet, no counterpoint.  When I reached adulthood, we argued over politics a lot more than we should have.  My Mother actually believed the SPLC was a conservative organization.  We believed the same things really as she espoused conservative positions, but she thought the Democrats had her back on it all.  I swore to my mother I would never vote for a party that would put a damn bird above a human.
It has only gotten worse.
After securing a job at a hospital, I watched ObamaCare tear through healthcare and then almost immediately watched as our pension benefits were frozen as a result of having to comply with new rules and regulations.  My wife and I lost 3000 dollars a month in future retirement income as a result of her company having to reorganize, and my pension is a private plan. Not a single Republican voted for the ObamaCare scam. But hey, 70 million dollars later the hospital has EPIC.  My Chart anyone?  I understand the CEO of that company has a lot of ties to Obama.

Hospitals now have departments of people working just to make sure all of the I’s are dotted and T’s crossed and the punctuation is correct just so we get paid for taking care of those on Medicare and Medicaid.  I can imagine on the other end that the government bureaucracy has people just looking for mistakes and ways not to pay out.  It is really mindboggling.
I watched my father get piss-poor treatment at the VA hospital, waiting months to get appointments and then just handed more drugs.  He struggled with issues from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam.  He had back surgery there without any physical therapy follow-up.  He could not straighten out his back to lie down or stand up straight after the surgery.   He died in 2011 after having to live and sleep in his easy chair for years due to the pain. I want to say he was taken care of for life as promised years before without sounding sarcastic.  But I can’t.
I watched as my mother walked away from the Democrats.  She quoted Reagan…. they left her.  She voted for President Trump.
I never went to college, I am totally self-taught.  I am a doer of many trades and master of none.  I have had a great life in the greatest country on earth.  All along the way, the Democrats have stepped on me, taxed me more, lied to me, called me names, and demand I give up my rights.  Democrats were the ones pushing environmental causes at the expense of humans and government takeover of healthcare.  They have mismanaged everything they get their hands on, and then blame others for their own deeds.  I watch them lie and cheat and twist words.  Democrats have alienated their own base to the point they have to argue for foreigners to come into this country illegally in order to vote for Democrats, mainly by calling those of us opposed to this "racist."
In all fairness, the weak Republicans in our government have hardly stood in their way.  But that is another day, another rant.
I am now called racist, homophobic, misogynist, and Islamaphobic.  A gun-toting, Bible-believing bitter clinger.  A deplorable.  A white nationalist.  Nazi. I can’t remember all of my Democrat party subtitles.
But I am middle class. I have been given nothing by our government and have given too much to it.  And it always wants more, telling me I have to pay my fair share.  It is a sad state when you get to a point in life of maximum dollars earned that it is taken away by higher tax brackets and the loss of deductions.
I will never vote for anyone advocating for more government control.  Or for anyone who is trying to denigrate me by name-calling or label-making.  The reason is my life.

American horror story