Democratic Delusions

In the early stages of the 2020 presidential campaign, even as Democrat hopefuls have tried to distinguish themselves from their many rivals, one ideal they all seem to embrace is a disdain for wealthy people—other than themselves, of course. They consistently pander to the growing progressive base’s desire to lurch toward socialism; in the process they show an embarrassing ignorance of how a modern economy actually works.

Bernie Sanders is notorious for his double standard on the wealthy. A centerpiece of his surprising 2016 campaign was his criticism of “millionaires and billionaires,” yet he owns three houses and has earned over a million dollars each of the past several years. When challenged on the hypocrisy of this newfound wealth, he offered a remarkably condescending response: “I wrote a best-selling book. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”

As coincidence would have it, now that he’s a millionaire, he doesn’t bash that income level as much as he used to, and focuses instead on the bracket above even him. To that end, his economic proposals include a 77% tax on billionaires.

Rising to the competition, Elizabeth Warren has proposed something called a wealth tax, which would be applied only to certain incomes—a policy of questionable constitutionality. But that hasn’t stopped other Democratic candidates from embracing it, including Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke. And John Hickenlooper (yes, the former governor of Colorado is running) proposed a capital gains tax to “save capitalism.”

The rationale behind these policies is to fight economic inequality, based on the premise that inequality is inherently bad—even if household incomes are rising. To the left, financial prosperity is a zero-sum game. It’s an attitude specially crafted to create, or at least cater to, class conflict.

What Sanders, Warren, and other Democrats do not understand is that many of the industries they demonize are actually supporting jobs and local economies across America, including on their own main streets. According to a recent report by the American Investment Council, the private equity industry – a regular target of the left – invested over $685 billion across the country in 2018. In fact, the private equity industry supports jobs in every single state and Congressional district – including Boston and Vermont. The private equity industry actually employs more people than Walmart, Amazon and UPS combined. Instead of targeting these industries, Democrats should recognize their real and positive impact on the American workforce and get out of the way.

Fueling the uptick in job growth is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The reduction of taxes is helping businesses across the United States grow their workforce and their profits. The two are not mutually exclusive as the Democrats would have us believe. Candidates should celebrate tax cuts and a more robust economy. Instead, they falsely malign the cuts and instead want to push new ones on the wealthy to pay for their pet programs. Former Vice President Joe Biden recently joined the campaign to spread misleading messaging around the tax cuts, claiming of the tax cut, “All of it went to folks at the top and corporations”—a claim that doesn’t hold up to clear evidence that 65% of Americans paid less in taxes thanks to the Trump cuts. Similarly, Democratic warnings that the tax cuts would hurt blue states have not been borne out.

Lower taxes, along with deregulation, are a major reason that job growth has been so robust—and why unemployment is at its lowest rate in nearly 50 years. 50 years! Think about it: the last time unemployment was this low, President Nixon had just finished his first year in office. Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon only months before.

But attacking the rich is an excellent way for the Democrats to score cheap political points. For all their talk of national unity, they rely on this kind of division and resentment at the expense of economic fact. Republicans need to explain why Democrats are wrong about the wealthy. If they don’t, it’s not only the rich who will suffer.

This is why I say, giving the Democrats total control of the economy is like giving a kid a box of dynamite with a pack of matches. They have proved their case with the terrible economic outcomes as they have orchestrated, through taxes, overspending and regulations, the demise of Capitalism.

For instance, President Bush did not cause the economic collapse of 2008. The Clinton Administration, set the stage with the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act which repealed parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill was signed November 12, 1999 by Bill Clinton. The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act was designed to eliminate the gambling on securities prices known as Bucket Shops. It was this type of gambling that caused the world economic collapse in the Panic of 1907. People who forget history repeat it. Specifically, provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall act that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed. Economists Robert Ekelund and Mark Thornton have criticized the Act as contributing to the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis.

The second shoe would drop in the fall of 2006. The media and associated public culture celebrated the landslide win of Democrats in congressional elections that brought strong majorities in both the House and Senate. Under the leadership of Chris Dodd in the Senate and Barney Frank in the House, the speculative housing market was deregulated for the government-sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that controlled trillions of dollars in American mortgage equity. The regulation that was eliminated, was specifically intended to protect the free market from government interference. Good regulation was destroyed for its intended purpose. As a result, the housing market in the U.S. devolved into a dangerous leveraged global gambling operation that financed a vulnerable house of cards over European banks. The leadership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac knew that the election of Democrats in the House and Senate would prevent any further calls by the Bush administration to tighten the regulations on these dangerous GSEs. This enabled the Democrats to orchestrate the collapse, which we saw in the fall of 2008, with the decline and collapse of the U.S. and global economy. The financing of American homes saw the evaporation of 6 trillion dollars in values.

What did the Obama Administration do to further the collapse? They initiated Keynesian bank bailouts, which is the absolute wrong thing to do as history has consistently proved. The impact on the economy by the Obama Regime has its intended purpose: high unemployment, market decline, and economic stagnation, as we saw through two terms of office. And the Democrats with, their socialist/Marxist objectives, will further their war on Capitalism if they are returned to power. Bank on it.

Besides socialism (gag)....Bernie and AOC have a lot in common.
AOC’s COS used to be Bernie’s....wait for it.....”Director of Organizing Technology.”

AND THIS—Saikat Chakrabarti, is a proven tech expert.
(A) He co-founded a web design tool,
(B) He built up the product team at the payment processor “Stripe”.........
(C) He then came to the Sanders campaign after (cough) growing disillusioned with the tech world.

Saikat Chakrabarti was Bernie’s Director of Organizing Technology. Even old man Bernie knew enough to hire a tech expert.

So, I guess (smirk) Chakrabarti’s tech skills musta come in mighty handy when donations to Bernie were
wire-transferred to the DNC and ended up in 2016 candidate Hillary’s account.
Debbie W/S headed the DNC at the time and was ousted b/c of her bias for Hillary.

Course, none of us heard about any of this, but.....
<><> Chakrabarti-the-tech-whiz did find out about the DNC theft, didnt he?
<><> Chakrabarti did speak to D/W/S about it, or to Debbie’s tech expert, Imran Awan, didnt he?
<><> Chakrabarti did tell Bernie he was fleeced, didnt he?
<><> Chakrabarti WAS working for Bernie, wasnt he?

Now the stunning details about that FEC complaint:

The FEC complaint asserts that AOC’s COS, Saikat Chakrabarti, early on established two PACs that raised big bucks for AOC’s campaign:
<><> the “Brand New Congress PAC,” and,
<><> the “Justice Democrats PAC.”

After mucho money was raised, Chakrabarti systematically transferred $885,000+ in PAC contributions to his private companies with similar names:
<><> the “Brand New Campaign LLC,” and,
<><> the “ Brand New Congress LLC.”

Saikat Chakrabarti’s private companies, unlike PACs, are exempt from reporting all of their significant expenditures.
NOTE WELL: it’s a much-used criminal act to enrich oneself, to open bank accounts using similarly named
entities to siphon off money, to hide it from partners, associates, investors etc.

SIPHONINGS A CINCH It’s easy to siphon off money for oneself by putting checks into the new accounts with similar names, depositing checks that were made out to
the original entity. Even your bank advises that if a check-writer “mis-spelled” your name, to just endorse the check with the correct name.

AND PRESTO: a check made out to Brand New Congress PAC, is deposited in the Brand New Congress LLC account.

ANALYSIS -— Chakrabarti’s companies appear to have been set up for the sole purpose of obscuring how AOC’s donations were used. The arrangement skirted reporting requirements and may have violated the $5,000 limit on contributions, according to the FEC complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

Campaign finance attorneys described the arrangement as “really weird” and an indication “there’s something amiss.” They said there was no way of telling where the political donations went — meaning (A) the donations could have been pocketed, or, (B) used by the LLC’s to pay for off-the-books campaign operations.-—SNIP-—SOURCED FROM FR.

JUST WONDERING .....does Chakrabarti have a reputation among Democraps for facilitating the conversion of campaign donations?

Maybe we should ask millionaire landowner Socialist Bernie (smirk)?

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