Tag Archives: political parties

Why It’s Useless…

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…to look for, much less work toward, bipartisanship with the Progressive-Democratic Party. Party is spending millions on an ad campaign targeted at a number of Republican Congressmen that centers on Party’s claim that

Last week, Republicans betrayed the American people—breaking their promise and paving the way to strip millions of men, women, and children of their health insurance[.]

Of course, this is a straight up lie by Party. While the Republican caucus is working overtime to find the billions to trillion-and-a-half dollars to cut in order to balance the tax reductions on offer, not a single red cent from Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security is included in those cuts or potential cuts. Indeed,

GOP lawmakers have consistently pointed out that Medicaid and other federal aid programs are not mentioned in the text of their framework for that legislation.

Beyond that, President Donald Trump (R) has made it clear that he will not accept cuts whatsoever to any of those programs, full stop.

But since Party has no alternative solutions to offer—they don’t even accept that a problem exists, so married and consummatory are they to their taxing and spending Big Government ideology—all it has is knee-jerk opposition (House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY) is already bragging that not a single Party member will work with Republicans on the current budget outline or on any subsequent allocation bill) and outright lies.

That dishonesty and automatic, unthinking, opposition makes it a wasted enterprise to try to seek bipartisanship or any form of compromise with the party that emphasizes opposition in its loyal opposition role.

When it comes to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY), in particular, nothing that he says or writes can be relied upon, including any “and” and “the.”

Yapping vs Action

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Republican Congressmen are starting to push back, ever so gently, against President Donald Trump’s (R) DOGE initiative and agency. They want more control, for themselves and for the several Department and Agency heads, over spending and Federal job cuts.

The calls come as some GOP lawmakers have pushed back against job cuts and characterized moves as haphazard, even as they largely agree with the broader goal of reducing government costs and inefficiencies.

That’s the difference between yapping and action. It’s necessary to be specific, to name programs and to name names, if actual action—cuts—are to be made. Republicans are exposing themselves now.

The House, with its alleged Republican majority, has passed its budget outline proposal, and already it does not include an aggregated ceiling for spending cuts that’s high enough to have room for all of the ones the DOGE effort is suggesting.

Certainly, it’s useful to not make cuts as sweeping as those on offer from DOGE and from Trump all at once; business and especially State budgets need time to adjust to the sharply reduced inflow of Federal dollars and outflow of ex-Federal employees, but that’s easily enough accommodated over a period of two years, so all the cuts proposed could be accomplished within a single Congressional session.

Just as certainly, the several constituencies of the several Republican Representatives have differing imperatives and needs—Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis’ (R, NY) constituents have different views of appropriate levels of cuts and where to make them than do Congressman Thomas Massie’s (R, KY), but in the Federal Congress, these Congressmen have national level constituents in addition to their local ones.

But, as ralflongwalker passed along to me:

You want to gore my ox? Oh, no!

Pick one, guys. Either you’re for spending cuts and reductions in the bloated Federal bureaucracy labor force, or you’re like a bunch of spendthrift Progressive-Democrats, just yapping differently.

“Another Reason to Move to Florida”

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The Wall Street Journal phrased its headline as a question, but it fits as a statement, also. James Freeman’s op-ed was centered on Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ move toward reducing/eliminating Florida’s property tax, but there’s a much broader item in play here.

Florida’s regular legislative session starts next week and state Senator Jonathan Martin (R, Fort Myers) recently filed a bill to study “a framework to eliminate property taxes…and to replace property tax revenues through budget reductions, sales-based consumption taxes, and locally determined consumption taxes authorized by the Legislature.

Consumption taxes are even more regressive than our existing national income tax structure is progressive. Replacing reduced taxes with budget reductions, though—that would be a strong move toward leaving Florida’s citizens’ money in the hands of those citizens.

If Florida can pull that off, it would be a strong reason to move there, and it would be a powerful empirically demonstrated example of how such a move would increase the prosperity of the citizens of the other 49 States, and of the United States.

A Governor’s Disingenuousness

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Maryland’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Wes Moore showed all of that in his Monday letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section.

For the third year in a row, we won’t raise the sales or property tax.

Didn’t raise sales or property taxes? For three whole years? Whoopty-do. While that’s an unusual achievement for a Progressive-Democrat, keeping taxes unraised, if not lowered, should be the norm, not a braggable unusual act.

[I]t’s true that under our new plan, those who have done exceptionally well financially will pay a quarter point more….

Once again, a Progressive-Democrat refuses to say what the fair share is for the rich, other than by empirical action: more, always more.

“Little Consensus on Message or Direction”

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That excerpt from the subheadline says it all regarding the Progressive-Democratic Party’s assessment of its current status and its plans for its—and our nation’s—future.

One of their solutions—far from the only one, which illustrates the problem—is this:

The fact that some of Trump’s cabinet nominees received Democratic votes angered many in the party.
In an interview, [Senate Minority Leader Chuck, D, NY] Schumer said the governors wanted senators to vote “no” on all nominees.

Right. And it’s not just about Trump’s nominees; it’s don’t work with Republicans at all on governing, even as they spent the last dozen years inveighing Republicans to work with them on governing. No, be knee-jerk No on anything not their own. That’s this faction’s Everything in the Party, nothing outside the Party, nothing against the Party mantra.

Then there’s this solution, from another Party faction, led by Schumer:

On Monday he issued a letter detailing new plans, including a portal for whistleblowers to report concerns, support for states’ lawsuits against the administration and amping up messaging to voters.

The portal already has been inundated with “whistleblower” reports detailing Joe Biden’s, Kamala Harris’, and Schumer’s own misbehaviors. The latter especially contained details of Schumer standing on the Supreme Court building steps explicitly threatening two Supreme Court Justices.

This solution also proudly seeks to continue the Progressive-Democrats’ lawfare assaults, now in overt defense of the rot and corruption in its several agencies and departments.

And that messaging bit—that’s Party’s contempt for us Americans. It’s not that their policies are bad—no. no, those are perfection personified—it’s that we’re simply too stupid to understand perfection when it’s placed right in front of us.

Party politicians, from top to bottom, still will not (not cannot) recognize, much less accept, that it’s not their messaging or “direction” that’s at issue. That position, in fact, exemplifies those politicians’ contempt for us average Americans: we’re just too stupid, as far as they’re concerned, to understand what they’re telling us.

Never mind that we are, in fact, not stupid; we understand exactly what they’re telling us, and we don’t like their policies at all. We rejected them in toto last November. We also rejected their attitude toward us. Those policies are well and succinctly summarized by Gerald Baker in his op-ed regarding Party actually objecting to DOGE’s efforts to root inefficiencies:

…the many strange battle lines the Democratic Party has chosen to defend these past few years: illegal migrants over citizens, teachers unions over parents and children, criminals over victims, men-turned-women over girls. Good luck with that, Democrats. …
Choosing to die on the hill of the right of permanent government officials to spend money without hindrance from the president’s delegates is an especially odd decision.

There’s yet another solution:

Some Democrats have begun talking about withholding votes on a spending deal as leverage, even if it shuts down the government….

These Party wonders want to just sulk and throw temper tantrums. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for our nation, the quorum required to do business is a simple majority in each house of Congress (and on each committee in each house), and Republicans are that majority. It only requires a measure of unity within the Republican Party to allow business to go forward, more easily to boot without those Party children under foot.

On top of all of that—or beneath all of that—there’s the inherently racist nature of Party, exemplified by Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D, TX):

…the only people that are crying are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out by people that historically have had to work so, so much harder.

Until they recognize and accept any of that, and take concrete, publicly measurable steps—with equally concrete results—to rid themselves of their racism, their future in our politics will continue to be limited. And that’s good for our nation.