Jeff Flake Argues Joe Biden is ‘More Conservative’ Than Trump on ‘Important Issues of American Democracy’
Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R.-Ariz.) said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour on CNN today that he believes that “on important issues of American democracy,” former Vice President Joe Biden is “more conservative than the president is.”
Flake served six terms in the House of Representatives and the one in the Senate—that ended in January 2019. He did not seek a second term in the Senate.
Amanpour asked Flake: “What is the conservative case for Joe Biden?”
Flake responded: “Well, conservatives believe in preserving and conserving institutions. To preserve what we know works. And the institutions of American democracy are freedom of the press, for example, or separation of powers, independent judiciary. And the president has shown that he either little understands or little appreciates these institutions. So, I’m not pretending that Joe Biden is as conservative as I am on fiscal issues and what not, but on those important issues of American democracy, frankly, he’s more conservative than the president is.”
Amanp
A GLIMPSE
INTO THE GLOBALIST AGENDA OF A NATION RULE BY AND FOR THE RICH AND WALL STREET.
THIS REQUIRES OPEN BORDERS FOR ENDLESS HORDES OF ‘CHEAP’ LABOR TO KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED AND FINISH OFF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS.
Rep. Mo
Brooks (R-AL) says the “Masters of the Universe” (HIGH TECH BILLIONAIRES) want more legal
immigration to the United States to further diminish the incomes of American
working and middle-class families.
So
why do the citizens of blue hells not rebel? That is the question -- Anton and
Hanson and Jenkins, like so many of us, know they must.
Maybe that’s part of it. I do
think that the movement in the direction of feudal, tyrannical governance is
being aided by the influx of millions of illegal immigrants from places where
this kind of government is the norm.
Is
Feudalism Our Future?
It’s
increasingly clear that one-party polities are corrupt, badly managed and serve
the interests only of those at the top and their courtiers. I think that if Biden
and Harris win, the entire country will devolve to a kingdom
of state and regional duchies composed
of often semi-hereditary rulers in the pay of the rich, donor
class, the clerisy (media scribblers, complaisant judicial appointees and
academic rent seekers who promote favored policies and shut out the
dissenters), an impoverished, smaller, and powerless middle class and a vast
layer of muzzled, docile poor serfs. They will rule by fiat (often
inconsistently and illogically) as they have been in dealing with COVID-19. Because they can, the
Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding.
In
a lengthy essay, Michael Anton details why he thinks the leftist
dream (which, in essence is a feudal form of tyranny) is within reach if Trump
loses. I urge you all to read in its entirety this thoughtful
article at your leisure. At best, I can only highlight some of the many salient
points he makes.
1. Since the 1960s policies and
practices have enriched the ruling class and “erode our natural and
constitutionally guaranteed rights and liberties” as they degraded our culture
and dishonored our heritage.
2. At present the office of the
presidency is seriously weaker than the unitary executive described in the
Constitution intended as an entrenched bureaucracy undermines, flouts and
disobeys the president at every turn if he dares to advance policies “unpopular
with the deep state.”
3. The benign phrase
“public-private partnership” is no less than “the use of state power to serve
private interests” and the relationship is one in which the senior partner is
always big business.
4. Congress, he argues “is a
joke.” Our government is run by “The cogs and lickspittles in the bureaucracy, led
by a small elite in corporations, above all in Big Tech and finance, will
determine all important policies, foreign and domestic.”
5. The COVID lockdowns and mandates
engineered by governors and mayors without laws to permit them based on
“expert” lies continue even as we know the virus is definitely not the plague
we were told it would be.
He
argues that should Trump lose we can expect increasingly anti-democratic
governance “committed to social engineering and grievance politics” and a
continued undermining of virtue and promotion of vice.
Anton
talks about the undermining of the right to self-defense and the outrageous
prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse, who in Kenosha did just that against three
attackers whose marauding had been encouraged by the Wisconsin governor’s
and local mayor’s refusal to enforce the laws to maintain order.
Attorney
Lin Wood, who successfully sued on behalf of Robert Jewell and Nick
Sandmann and who this week volunteered to
represent Kyle Rittenhouse (the hero of Kenosha) for defamation
says we are facing a revolution and need to prepare ourselves for the
fight.
Lin Wood @LLinWood
(1) Republicans are talking “policy differences” while focusing on upcoming
election. They are not taking the current situation serious or they are just
plain stupid. They need to face truth that our country is under attack.
(2) The
former President, Barack Obama, is calling for sustained protests. The leader
of the resistance movement, Hillary Clinton, is saying that we should not
accept the results of the next election.
(3) The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is describing our President,
@realDonaldTrump, as an enemy of the state. Many radical members of Congress
are openly calling for the overthrow of our government.
(4) 1 + 1 + 1 = Revolution.
#FightBack
5:55 AM · Aug 29, 2020
The Duchy of Newsom as the Template of the New Order
No
better example of what Anton describes as our future can I find than the
sad state of California under the governorship of Gavin Newsom. I’ve written
elsewhere of the Green New Deal disaster he helped birth and which now plunges
much of his state into darkness and misery.
Victor David Hanson has written extensively on
what has brought his home state so rich in natural resources to its knees.
Here’s but one of his latest reports.
It begins (and then extensively documents): “Power outages, fires,
water shortages, rising taxes, crumbling and congested highways, dismal
schools, lawlessness…”
At
the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins, Jr. notes that
California politicians obsess about things like “climate change” they are
powerless to do anything about while ignoring serious problems they could do
something about if only they had the skills and will to govern. In that
one-party state there is simply no accountability for failure of vision and
execution:
Unfortunately, the people running the state,
including Joe Biden’s prospective veep, have been mostly meme-chasing,
pose-striking calculators. Their only career plan: nurse their standing with Hollywood
green activists, trial lawyers and public-sector unions. In a one-party state,
there is no serious clash of policy prescriptions. That’s how Kamala Harris
could reach middle age with a giant vacancy in her résumé where one would
normally find some connection to policy ideas.
If the state is to dig out of its deepening hole,
it will need something else. It will need, you know, ideas. In fact, only a
revolution of ideas can save it from the path it’s on. And the first idea is
easy to see. The state will have to wake up from the sheer ludicrousness of
devoting so much of its politics to a problem its politics can’t fix at the
expense to those it can.
So
why do the citizens of blue hells not rebel? That is the question -- Anton and
Hanson and Jenkins, like so many of us, know they must.
My
online friend “The Infamous Ignatz” sees it in psychological terms:
I don't think the people living in urban blue
hells want to live in hell, but irrationality on a mass scale is made up of
millions of little individual irrationalities collectivized.
An irrational person has a very, very difficult
time choosing the rational option because it involves so many self-negating
decisions, not least of which is stopping the magical thinking and the blaming
of others for the problem.
That's why I equate irrational society with
personality disorders. It's not that people in urban hellscapes aren't
miserable, they just don't see any way out. For those outside looking in,
American cities' electoral habits fit Einstein's apocryphal definition of
insanity better than anything I can think of.
What makes it even more incurable and persistent
is the very people the voters think they are hiring as their therapists not
only come themselves from the ranks of the disordered but they have very
powerful incentives making sure the patient never gets well.
Maybe
that’s part of it. I do think that the movement in the direction of feudal,
tyrannical governance is being aided by the influx of millions of illegal
immigrants from places where this kind of government is the norm. It gained force when
civics education was dropped in schools in favor of less significant subjects,
and the hollowing out of our higher education institutions, including law
schools, which since the 1960s have increasingly become there-oughta-be-a-law
schools which encourage future judges and law clerks to imagine themselves as
legislators and executives. Nor can we forget the role being played by the
tech giants, who are using IT as a weapon for social control and the
destruction of privacy. In any event, November will have us in the fight of
our lives. Be prepared.
Exclusive–Mo
Brooks: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of
Americans’
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says
the “Masters of the Universe” (HIGH TECH
BILLIONAIRES) want more legal immigration to the United States to further
diminish the incomes of American working and middle-class families.
In an exclusive interview with SiriusXM Patriot’s Breitbart News Tonight, Brooks said
recent demands to increase the number of foreign workers coming to the U.S. to
compete against American citizens for jobs is merely an effort by corporations
to deplete the earnings of Americans.
Brooks said:
I’m not a part of the Masters of the Universe crowd who thinks we
ought to be bringing in all this foreign labor and the reason for it is pure economics. This is the chance for Americans and lawful immigrants who are already here who are working
in the blue-collar trades, who are working in the places where
wages are not as high they ought to be, this is their chance to prosper. [Emphasis added]
And to the extent you import a lot of foreign labor, then you are
artificially increasing the labor supply which in turn means that you’re
artificially suppressing the wages of American families who are often hard-pressed to make ends meet So I
respectfully disagree that we need more foreign labor, to the contrary, I would like to see us reduce the foreign labor that comes into
America so that American families who are struggling to make ends meet, particularly those of us who are earning the least
amounts, would be better to take care of
their own families and less likely to be dependent on the welfare. [Emphasis added]
Brooks said Democrats support for mass legal immigration is
centered on the premise that increasing the number of foreign workers in the
U.S. will decrease Americans’ wages, thus forcing many into poverty and
becoming welfare recipients. This, Brooks said, is how Democrats create a
permanent dependent class of Democrat voters.
“Don’t get me wrong, [Democrats] want to decrease the incomes of
Americans so that they’re dependent on welfare,” Brooks said.
That makes them in turn likely Democrat voters and the best way to
do that is to have a huge surge in the labor supply, particularly illegal
aliens, that will depress their wages therefore creating more Democrats who are dependent on welfare at the same time as they
bring in illegal aliens who also under Democrat doctrine will be allowed to
vote and those types of voters, they’re also dependent on welfare. [Emphasis
added]
“About 70 percent of illegal alien households are on welfare …
plus this is a bloc of voters that seems unusually susceptible to the racial
divisions that the Democrats advance,” Brooks said. “You have to look at the
big picture in all of this, and to me, we should not be importing as much
foreign labor as we are. We should be helping the least among us earn more and
importing foreign labor that suppresses wages is not the way to do that.”
Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.2 legal immigrants
annually, with the vast majority deriving from chain migration, whereby newly
naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the
country. In 2017, the foreign-born population reached a record high of
44.5 million.
The U.S. is on track to import about 15 million new
foreign-born voters in the next two decades should current legal
immigration levels continue. Those 15 million new foreign-born voters
include about eight million who will arrive in the country through chain
migration, where newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of
foreign relatives to the country.
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM
Patriot Channel 125 from 9:00 p.m. to Midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m.-9:00
p.m. Pacific).
John Binder is a reporter for
Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
TRUMPERNOMICS:
Billionaires’
wealth surged in 2019
28
December 2019
As the second decade of the 21st century comes to a close,
its most salient feature—the plundering of humanity by a global financial oligarchy—continues
unabated.
Amidst trade war and the growth of militarism and
authoritarianism on the one side, and an eruption of international strikes and
protests by the working class against social inequality on the other, the stock
market is hitting record highs and the fortunes of the world’s billionaires are
continuing to surge.
On Friday, one day after all three major US stock indexes
set new records, Bloomberg issued its end-of-year survey of the world’s 500
richest people. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index reported that the oligarchs’
fortunes increased by a combined total of $1.2 trillion, a 25 percent rise over
2018. Their collective net worth now comes to $5.9 trillion.
To place this figure in some perspective, these 500
individuals control more wealth than the gross domestic product of the United
States at the end of the third quarter of 2019, which was $5.4 trillion.
The year’s biggest gains went to France’s Bernard Arnault,
who added $36.5 billion to his fortune, bringing it above the rarified $100
billion level to $105 billion. He knocked speculator Warren Buffett, at $89.3
billion, down to fourth place. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos lost nearly $9 billion
due to a divorce settlement, but maintained the top position, with a net worth
of $116 billion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates gained $22.7 billion for the year
and held on to second place at $113 billion.
The 172 American billionaires on the Bloomberg list added
$500 billion, with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recording the year’s biggest US
gain at $27.3 billion, placing him in fifth place worldwide with a net worth of
$79.3 billion.
It is difficult to comprehend the true
significance of such stratospheric sums. In his 2016 book Global
Inequality, economist Branko Milanovic wrote:
"A billion dollars is so far
outside the usual experience of practically everyone on earth that the very
quantity it implies is not easily understood… Suppose now that you inherited
either $1 million or $1 billion, and that you spent $1,000 every day. It would
take you less than three years to run through your inheritance in the first
case, and more than 2,700 years (that is, the time that separates us from
Homer’s Iliad) to blow your inheritance in the second case."
The vast redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top
of society is the outcome of a decades-long process, which was accelerated
following the 2008 Wall Street crash. It is not the result of impersonal and simply
self-activating processes. Rather, the policies of capitalist governments and
parties around the world, nominally “left” as well as right, have been
dedicated to the ever greater impoverishment of the working class and
enrichment of the ruling elite.
In the US, the top one percent has captured all of the
increase in national income over the past two decades, and all of the increase
in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
The main mechanism for this transfer of wealth has been the
stock market, and the policies of the US Federal Reserve and central banks
internationally have been geared to providing cheap money to drive up stock
prices. The cost of this massive subsidy to the financial markets and the
oligarchs has been paid by the working class, in the form of social cuts, mass
layoffs, the destruction of pensions and health benefits, and the replacement
of relatively secure and decent-paying jobs with part-time, temporary and
contingent “gig” positions.
Since Trump was inaugurated in January of 2017, pledging to
slash corporate taxes, lift regulations on big business and dramatically
increase the military budget, the Dow has surged by 9,000 points. This year,
Trump and the financial markets applied massive pressure on the Fed to reverse
its efforts to “normalize” interest rates. The Fed complied, carrying out three
rate cuts and repeatedly assuring the markets it had no plans to raise rates in
2020.
This windfall for the banks and hedge funds was supported
by the Democrats no less than the Republicans. In fact, Trump’s
economic policy has been given de facto support by the Democratic Party all
down the line—from his tax cuts for corporations and the rich to his attack on
virtually all regulations on business. Even in the midst of impeachment—carried
out entirely on the grounds of “national security” and Trump’s supposed
“softness” toward Russia—the Democrats have voted by wide margins for Trump’s
budget, his anti-Chinese US-Mexico-Canada trade pact and his record $738
billion Pentagon war budget.
This has included giving Trump all the money he wants to
build his border wall and carry out the mass incarceration and persecution of
immigrants.
Trump’s pro-corporate policies are an extension and
expansion of those pursued by the Obama administration. It allocated
trillions in taxpayer money to bail out the banks and flooded the financial
markets with cheap credit, driving up stock prices, while imposing a 50 percent
across-the-board cut in pay for newly hired autoworkers in its bailout of
General Motors and Chrysler. Obama oversaw the closure of thousands of
schools and the layoff of hundreds of thousands of teachers, and enacted
austerity budgets that slashed social programs.
Two of those running for the 2020 Democratic presidential
nomination are billionaires—Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg. The latter, with
a net worth of $56 billion, is the ninth richest person in the US. He entered
the race as the spokesman for oligarchs outraged over talk from Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren of token tax increases on the super-rich.
The oligarchs are not frightened by Sanders and Warren—two
longstanding defenders of the American ruling class, who seek to mask their
subservience to capital with talk of making the oligarchs pay “their fair
share,” a euphemism for defending their right to pillage the population. The
billionaires are frightened by the growth of mass opposition to capitalism that
finds a distorted expression in support for the phony “progressives” in the
Democratic fold.
Between them, Bloomberg and Steyer have already spent $200
million of their own money in an effort to buy the election outright.
The impact of the policy of social plunder is seen in the
deepening of a malignant social crisis in country after country. In the US,
society is marching backwards, as the crying need for schools, hospitals,
affordable housing, pensions, the rebuilding of decrepit roads, bridges,
transportation, flood control, water and sewage, fire control and electricity
grids is met with the official response: “There is no money.”
The result? Three straight years of declining life
expectancy, record addiction and suicide rates, devastating wildfires and
floods, electricity cut-offs by profiteering utility companies. And a climate
crisis that cannot be addressed within the framework of a system dominated by a
money-mad plutocracy.
Not a single serious social problem can be addressed under
conditions where the ruling elite—through its bribed parties and politicians,
aided by its pro-capitalist trade unions and backed up by its courts, police
and troops—diverts resources from society to the accumulation of ever more
luxurious yachts, mansions, private islands and personal jets.
Where social reform is impossible, social revolution is
inevitable. The solution to the impasse is to be found in the growth of the
class struggle. The movement of workers and youth all over the world—from mass
strikes in France to strikes by autoworkers and teachers in the US, protests in
Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil, strikes and mass demonstrations in Lebanon,
Iran, Iraq and India—reveals the social force that can and will put an end to
capitalism.
The watchword must be—in opposition to the Corbyns, the
Sanders, the Tsiprases and their pseudo-left promoters—“Expropriate the
super-rich!”
ALL
BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS. ALL BILLIONAIRES WANT OPEN BORDERS FOR MORE CHEAP
LABOR AND NO CAPS ON IMPORTING CHINESE AND INDIANS TO WORK OUR TECH JOBS CHEAP.
Obama’s State
of Delusion ... OR JUST ANOTHER "Hope & Change" HOAX?
”The
delusional character of Obama’s State of the Union
address on
Tuesday—presenting an America of rising living
standards and
a booming economy, capped by his declaration
that the
“shadow of crisis has passed”—is perhaps matched
only in its
presentation by the media and supporters of the
Democratic
Party.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“The general
tone was set by the New York Times in its lead editorial on Wednesday, which
described the speech as a “simple, dramatic message about economic fairness,
about the fact that the well-off—the top earners, the big banks, Silicon
Valley—have done just great, while middle and working classes remain dead in
the water.”
OBAMANOMICS:
The report
observes that while the wealth of the world’s 80 richest people doubled between
2009 and 2014, the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (3.5
billion people) was lower in 2014 than it was in 2009.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
In 2010, it
took 388 billionaires to match the wealth of the bottom half of the earth’s
population; by 2013, the figure had fallen to just 92 billionaires. It fell to
80 in 2014.
THE OBAMA
ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
“The goal of
the Obama administration, working with the Republicans and local governments,
is to roll back the living conditions of the vast majority of the population to
levels not seen since the 19th century, prior to the advent of the eight-hour
day, child labor laws, comprehensive public education, pensions, health
benefits, workplace health and safety regulations, etc.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“In response
to the ruthless assault of the financial oligarchy, spearheaded by Obama, the
working class must advance, no less ruthlessly, its own policy.”
New Federal Reserve report
US
median income has plunged, inequality has grown in Obama “recovery”
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a
massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is
just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer
Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class
living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich
and the super-rich.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S
BILLIONAIRES’ GLOBALIST EMPIRE requires someone as ruthlessly dishonest as
Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to be puppet dictators.
http://hillaryclinton-whitecollarcriminal.blogspot.com/2018/09/google-rigged-it-so-illegals-would-vote.html
1. Globalism: Google
VP Kent Walker insists that despite its repeated rejection by electorates
around the world, “globalization” is an “incredible force for good.”
2. Hillary Clinton’s Democratic
party: An executive nearly broke down crying because of the candidate’s loss. Not
a single executive expressed anything but dismay at her defeat.
3.
Immigration: Maintaining
liberal immigration in the U.S is the policy that Google’s executives discussed the
most.
Why the rich favor the Democrats
There's little doubt that today's Democrat Party
is the party of the rich. Actually, that's an
understatement. Far more than billionaires are involved. A better
expression of reality would be to say a fundamental core of Democrat coalition
is the managerial class, also known as the elite. These are the
people who run the media, Hollywood and the entertainment industry, the big
corporations, the universities and schools, the investment banks, and Wall
Street. They populate the upper levels of government
bureaucracies. These are the East and West Coasters.
The alliance of the affluent with the Democrat
Party can be seen in the widely disproportionate share of hefty political
donations from the well-to-do going to Democrats and a bevy of left-wing
causes. It's also why forty-one out of the fifty wealthiest
congressional districts are represented by Democrats.
BLOG: DEMS LOVE SOCIALISM FOR ILLEGALS TO KEEP
THEM COMING AND BREEDING ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE AND SOCIALISM FOR BANKS.
TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF IT!
Bernie Sanders is an
exception. But he's an anomaly viewed as dangerous to the party,
which is why he's being crushed by the Democrat establishment.
Why do the wealthy align with the
Democrats? The answer may seem counter-intuitive, but it is really
quite simple. It's surely not ideals or high-minded
principles. Nor is it ignorance. Rather, it boils down to
raw self-interest.
In his book, The Age of
Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Christopher Caldwell notes
that rich Americans think themselves to be as vulnerable as
blacks. They are a relatively small minority of the
population. They fear being resented for their wealth and power and of
having much of that taken from them. Accordingly, the wealthy seek
to protect what is theirs by preventing strong majorities from forming by using
the divide and conquer principle.
As R.R. Reno writes when reviewing
Caldwell's book: "Therefore, the richest and most
powerful people in America have strong incentives
to support an anti-majoritarian political system." He goes
on: "Wealthy individuals shovel donations into elite institutions that
incubate identity politics, which further fragments the nation and prevents the
formation of majorities."
Some of the rotten fruit of the wealthy taking
this approach include multiculturalism, massive immigration of diverse people,
resistance to encouraging assimilation, racial strife, trying to turn
white males into pariahs, and the promotion of gender
confusion. Through it all, society is bombarded with
the Orwellian mantra that "diversity is strength," as if
repeating it often enough can make it so. It is also why patriotism
and a common American culture are so disparaged today. Those from
the upper strata of society project the idea that if you're a flag-waving
American, you must be some kind of retrograde mouth-breathing
yokel.
The wealthy as a groups are content to dissolve
the glue that holds the U.S. together. And it is all done to enhance
and preserve their power, wealth, and influence. This is why they so
hate Donald Trump. He strives to unite people and the country,
although you'd never know that that is what the president is
doing if you live in the media
bubble. Trump's MAGA agenda is an anathema to the
managerial class.
To quote Reno one final time:
The next decade will not
be easy. But it will not be about what preoccupied us in the
sixties, and which Caldwell describes so well. Rather than the
perils of discrimination we are increasingly concerned with the problem of
disintegration — or in Charles Murray's terms, the problem of "coming apart."
Trump and the GOP he is molding are the vehicles
to restore and strengthen national solidarity. Trump said at the Daytona 500,
"No matter who wins, what matters most is God, family, and
country." That is not the Democrat agenda. As
seen in Democrat politicians, their policies, and the behavior of their major
contributors, the aim is to further weaken the social and national bonds in
America. There is a lot at stake here. If solidarity
wins, the Republic can survive and prosper. If the Democrats
and their wealthy cohorts do, then the middle class withers, the Republic
dies, and the rich and their managerial class get to rule the
roost. That is what it comes down to.
ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS. ALL
BILLIONAIRES WANT WIDER OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY AND HELL NO TO E-VERIFY!
In addition, establishment Republicans are no
better than Democrats at stemming the flow of illegal immigration because big
businesses reap the benefits of this cheap labor
without incurring any of the social costs.
This is why
the SEIU supports blanket amnesty for illegal aliens.
Democrats:
The Party of Big Labor, Big Government...and Big Business
There
is a widespread perception that the Democrat Party is the party the working
class and the Republican Party is the party of big business. Even
though Republicans on average received slightly more from corporate employees
prior to 2002, the overall difference between both parties from 1990 to 2020 is
statistically insignificant (Table 1). In fact, Democrat
reliance on big labor gradually shifted toward big business following the
involvement of solidly Democrat corporate giants in 2002, and from 2014 to
2020, Democrats consistently surpassed Republicans in corporate donations
(Tables 1 & 2).
Based
on data compiled by Open Secrets, Soros Fund Management, Fahr LLC (Tom Steyer),
and Bloomberg LP ranked among the top ten for political contributions that gave
over 90% to Democrats. In sharp contrast, the right-leaning Koch
Industries made the top ten only in 2014. In nearly all other years,
Koch ranked well below the top twenty.
Whether
or not this trend is long-term, there is no denying that large corporations on
average no longer lean right. But what does it mean to be "the
party of big business"? Donations are not definitive
evidence. What ultimately matters is what politicians do once they
get elected.
Many
liberals believe that big government is needed to "rein in" big
business and that in the absence of federal intervention, corporations will
"run roughshod" over the average American. Many liberals
also believe that corporations are the main beneficiaries of laissez-faire
economics and that free-market conservatives who want to scale back regulations
are somehow "in the pocket" of big business.
In
reality, the opposite is true: big business and big government
go
hand in hand because government meddling in the economy
encourages rent-seeking by businesses that
can afford to pay
for
the lobbyists. This crony capitalism grew exponentially as
a result
of New Deal regulations that squeezed out competitors
during
the 1930s. Establishment politicians and well
connected corporations
are beneficiaries of the myth that big
government
and big business are adversaries because it hides
their
unholy alliance.
In
all fairness, neither party has had a monopoly on the dispensation of corporate
welfare: the TARP funds that propped up financial institutions deemed "too
big to fail" during the Great Recession were released by the Bush
administration. In addition, establishment Republicans are no better than
Democrats at stemming the flow of illegal immigration because big
businesses reap the benefits of this cheap labor
without incurring any of the social costs.
If
both parties are playing this game, what is the basis for labeling the Democrat
party "the party of big business"? What policies from
Republicans support small business?
Free-market
conservatism benefits small businesses because the government does not pick the
winners and losers by means of subsidies, tax breaks, and cumbersome
regulations. You will not see policies like these coming from
Washington in a major way because proposals for shrinking the federal
government rarely see the light of day in Congress.
Based
on data collected by Gallup and Thumbtack, red states far outscore blue states
in small business friendliness (Table 3). This may be why less
affluent Americans are fleeing states that score abysmally like California, Illinois, New York, and Hawaii. This might
also be why small business–owners are more likely to vote Republican.
The
Trump administration has been good for businesses of all sizes mainly due to
the unprecedented rate at which it scaled back stifling regulations. This may be
why some of the president's highest approval ratings now come
from small businesses.
Donald
Trump set himself apart from the ruling class when he latched onto the
third-rail issue of illegal immigration and called out the corporate darling Jeb Bush (AKA
"Low Energy Jeb") for his lack of grassroots support. This
may explain in part why Bain Capital, the firm co-founded by Mitt Romney,
switched teams and contributed solidly Democrat in 2018. In 2012,
Democrats accused Bain Capital of destroying jobs by systematically dismantling
the companies it bought off. Times have changed...
Small
businesses generate well over half of all new jobs. Most
importantly, many are family-owned, have strong ties to their communities, and
provide upward mobility for millions of Americans who never attended
college. The Democrats' undermining of this quintessentially
American institution is shameful and disqualifies it as the "party of the
working class." Contributions from big labor do not count
toward "labor-friendliness" because mega-unions care more about
recruitment than about the welfare of working Americans. This is why the SEIU
supports blanket amnesty for illegal aliens.
Democrats
fed up with the corporate status quo are now choosing their own
anti-establishment candidate, not realizing that socialism is just a more
impoverished version of the crony capitalism they are rejecting. Many
Sanders-supporters are also morally shallow because they want to harness the
power of the state to muscle in on the wealth of Americans who borrowed
responsibly and worked hard to pay their bills.
After
the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin said, "This Constitution ... is
likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in
despotism ... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic
government." If Democrats implement the dystopian policies of
California on a national level, their corporate allies will do
fine. It is small business–owners and working-class Americans with
nowhere to flee who have the most to lose. Be careful what you wish for.
To view the tables below, click the links.
Table 1: Top contributors to Democrats and Republicans as compiled
by Open Secrets.
*The red lettering highlights a funding
advantage for Republicans. The blue lettering highlights a funding
disadvantage for Republicans.
**Based on a T-test, the difference is
insignificant at P = 0.46
Table 2: Top ten contributors to Democrats and Republicans by category
(union, corporate, and ideological) as compiled by Open Secrets:
*In 2008 Goldman Sachs donated 74% to
Democrats. All other groups in this column donated between 40 and
69% to both parties. This column does not differentiate between
giving equally to both parties and giving 70–79% to Democrats or Republicans.
**This number includes the "City of
New York." Although it is officially listed as
"other" by Open Secrets (not corporate, union, or ideological), I was
personally informed by someone from the organization that Michael Bloomberg was
the main source of this funding.
Table 3: Small business scores states scored by Thumbtack ranked
according to their Democratic advantage by Gallup:
*GPA scores are based on the following
numerical equivalents: A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1, F = 0, A+ = 4.3, A- = 3.7,
etc.
** Not scored.
***Mean GPA ± standard error. Based on a
T-test, the difference is significant at P = 0.00001.
our sent out a tweet that included a video of the exchange.
No comments:
Post a Comment