Monthly Archives: September 2019

The Progressive-Democratic Party

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Today’s Party, the evolution of the Democratic Party, is little distinguishable from the modern Progressive movement as devised by that movement’s founders, Herb Croly, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.

Brief for instances:

Roosevelt and Wilson both wanted to nationalize broad swaths of the American private economy, and Wilson did so, until the Supreme Court struck his move and released his seizure.

Today’s Progressive-Democrats take pride in their Progressivism, including seeking to nationalize broad swaths of today’s economy: Barack Obama seized our health care and health care coverage industries, and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden wants to expand on that.  Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates and Senators Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) want to go further and replace our health industries with Medicare-for-All and to eliminate altogether all vestiges of privately obtained health insurance.

Both want to seize our wealth property in the form of much higher taxes—in Warren’s case, an explicit tax on the mere possession of wealth.  Ex-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio (D) is even clearer, if that’s possible: he says there’s plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands.  And we need to seize it and put it where we say it belongs.

Beyond that, today’s Progressive-Democrats are proud of their Progressivism: Hillary Clinton is a proud Progressive, Biden says he’s the most Progressive of the current Party candidates.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) have averred their pride in their Progressive policies.  Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) are so far Progressive, they’re openly Socialist.

Today’s Party shares, also, the movement founders’ contempt for ordinary Americans.  Croly said the average American was inadequate to his duties as a democrat, and Wilson wrote that Americans generally could not handle a republican form of government and that blacks in particular were so incapable that they should be grateful for the protection of segregation.

This is echoed with ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) dismissal of Americans as nothing more than bitter Bible-clingers and gun-toters, Hillary Clinton’s slur that tens of millions of us are irredeemably deplorable, racist, and homophobic.  Others in Party dismiss Republicans as Trump-cultists and say that anyone who supports Trump is necessarily racist.

The list goes on for a long distance.

Market Demand

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In a Letter to the Editor in a recent Wall Street Journal, Thomas Michaels wrote,

John E Stafford asks why “starting salaries for public-school teachers in many states are under $40,000 a year….” The answer is supply and demand. There are more “qualified” teaching graduates looking for a job than there are openings in their desired location. Union protection and state-mandated benefits assure that placeholders stay in place. Market theory says that when there are more goods available than the market requires, the price goes down.

A bit of basic high school-level economics, a subject that isn’t taught in high school very much.

That brings me to another reason why teacher salaries are so low.  Public school pupils fare poorly in progress testing, in college preparation testing, in their ability to function in a modern workplace. This is so in absolute terms, in comparison with peer and near-peer national competitors, and in comparison with domestic charter and voucher schools.  The quality of the product just isn’t that great.

Medicare-for-All and Middle Class Taxes

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Even Stephen Colbert wants to know: under Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D, MA) payment scheme for her Medicare-for-All scheme, will middle class Americans’ taxes go up? He put the question to her in so many words:

You keep being asked in the debates how are you going to pay for it, are you going to be raising the middle-class taxes…. How are you going to pay for it? Are you going to be raising the middle-class taxes?

Warren’s answer:

So, here’s how we’re going to do this. Costs are going to go up for the wealthiest Americans, for big corporations…. and hard-working middle-class families are going to see their costs going down.

Colbert tried again:

But will their taxes go up?

Warren evaded again:

Health care is a basic human right. We fight for basic human rights, and that’s Medicare-for-all.

The plain and simple meaning of Warren’s evasive answers is yes, middle class taxes will go up as part of her payment scheme. Their taxes will go up a lot.

Censorship

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Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) seems to have failed her Progressive-Democratic Party’s purity test.  She votes for what she views as right rather than knee-jerkishly IAW Party diktat.  As a result, she

may face a censure vote by Arizona’s Democratic Party because she votes too often in favor of President Trump’s agenda
…
Since joining the Senate in January, Sinema has opposed Trump 81% of the time, The Arizona Republic reported, citing data from the FiveThirtyEight Trump Tracker.
That’s apparently not often enough to satisfy many of her fellow Democrats in the Grand Canyon State.

Here’s Dan O’Neal, Progressive Democrats of America (a Progressive-Democrat PAC) National Field Team Director and Arizona State Coordinator:

[T]he way she is voting is really disappointing. We want Democrats to vote like Democrats and not Republicans.

Think about that.

Sinema was elected to the Senate by her constituents, the good citizens of her Arizona district, not by the Progressive-Democratic Party.  She, like all elected politicians in an ideal world, was elected to do her best to carry out her constituents’ instructions, and where those instructions are unclear—where there is no consensus among her constituents—to carry out her best judgment.  The quality of that performance, and the consequences of unsatisfactory performance, are up to her constituents to decide.  They’re not up to Party.

This is what bipartisanship looks like for the Progressive-Democratic Party.  This is what free speech looks like for the Progressive-Democratic Party.  Remember this in the fall of 2020.

EU Version of Brexit

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EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says that the risk of a no-deal Brexit is very real.  He also says he told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

…I have no emotional attachment to the backstop.  But I made clear that I do have an intimate connection to its commitments. I have asked the prime minister to make, in writing, alternatives.

The commitment of the backstop, the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which violates a central premise of the vote to leave the EU—British control of British borders—still amounts to a backdoor to partitioning Great Britain. Keep in mind that one of the EU’s early offers on this backstop was that Great Britain could put its hard border on the Irish Sea coast—an offer quickly deleted when its purpose was recognized as too obviously presented.

On top of that, Juncker has shown his unseriousness in these “negotiations” with his demand that Great Britain offer all the alternatives. Juncker has no need, apparently, to stoop so low as to offer his own.

Indeed, led by chief negotiator Michel Barnier,

EU negotiators say that he [Johnson] is yet to offer a viable replacement solution.

Because if they offered their own solution, and Great Britain accepted it, then Juncker and his court would have actually to say, “Yes,” finally.

It’s hard to see how negotiations can get more bad faith than this.  Juncker is like an emperor on the throne awaiting the pleas of his supplicant.