Posts Tagged ‘democrats’

Democrats are the vote-buying party

Posted: September 4, 2022 by John Ruberry in elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Willie Wilson billboard in 2016 on Chicago’s West Side

By John Ruberry

“Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters’ own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.” Milton Friedman.

“But it can also be said that the social largesse of the boss system, the food, coal, clothing, and jobs provided for the needy, was there when it counted–with no delay and no paperwork–for those loyal to the system.” David McCullough, at the opening of the PBS American Experience documentary, “The Last Boss.”

Democratic politics has gone from handing out free stuff, ploys used by machine politicians including James M. Curley of Boston and Richard J. Daley of Chicago, to handing out free stuff again. In between, the social programs created Franklin D. Roosevelt, proved to be a better and more popular distributor of goodies. Daley, unlike most of the other big city bosses, adopted to the times a bit; he was able to siphon a generous chunk of the funds from Lyndon B. Johnson’s Model Cities boondoggle, for instance. 

Last month President Joe Biden, like a Democratic boss of old, in a legally tenuous move, announced that he would forgive $10,000 to $20,000 in student loan debt. That debt of course won’t disappear, federal taxpayers will get stuck with the tab.

You’ve heard about Dr. Jill Biden. The first lady uses that title because she has doctorate in education. Chicago has millionaire businessman Dr. Willie Wilson, who according to ABC Chicago, “is the recipient of a Doctor of Divinity degree from Mt. Carmel Theological Seminary, a Doctor of Humane Letters from Chicago Baptist Institute International, Honorary Doctorate in Humanitarianism from Swisher Bible College and a Doctorate in Humanitarianism from Denver Institute of Urban Studies and Adult College.” I haven’t heard of those schools either.

Wilson is a political gadfly. He has run for mayor of Chicago three times, including his current attempt at the office, as well as for US senator and president. But he is best known as a man who gives away stuff, through his foundation, of groceries, PPE masks, groceries, and gasoline. The local media falls for his ploy–and to be fair, they have been placed in a trap, as their audience likes freebies. Who doesn’t?

Oh, Wilson favors slavery reparations.

Laura Washington, a far-left columnist for the Chicago Tribune, rightly condemned the “Willie Wilsonization of politics” in a column ironically published two days before Biden announced his student loan debt forgiveness plan. And she didn’t stop with Wilson. First up was Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

From that Trib column, paid registration may by required:

Thanks to an “avalanche” of federal stimulus funds, Lightfoot is “running for reelection armed with a seemingly bottomless gift bag of giveaways that includes everything from gas cards, Ventra cards, bicycles, locks and helmets to more than $1,000-per-household in rebates to defray the cost of security cameras, outdoor motion sensor lighting, cloud storage and GPS trackers to hunt down vehicles in the event of an auto theft or carjacking,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June. 

Lightfoot’s “Chicago Moves,” is the city’s $12 million transit response to skyrocketing fuel costs and inflation. It will distribute up to 50,000 prepaid $150 gas cards and 100,000 prepaid $50 transit cards to Chicago residents. 

Earlier this year, Lightfoot pushed through a controversial guaranteed income program for low-income families. The pilot program will provide no-strings-attached $500 payments to 5,000 Chicago families per month for a year. The recipients were chosen through a lottery system.

For months, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is running for reelection in the Nov. 8 election, has ballyhooed a $1.8 billion tax relief plan in his campaign ads. It provides short-term tax reductions and freezes on purchases of gas, groceries and school supplies.

Pritzker’s “tax cuts” are quite dishonest. His gasoline tax reduction only delays a mandated tax hike–Illinoisans pay the second-highest gas taxes in the nation–until, how convenient, after Election Day. Gas station owners are required to post signs touting Pritzker’s tax “cut.” Those who refuse face a $500-a-day fine. The grocery tax “cut,” which also comes with a requirement that grocers post signage about it, although non-compliant grocers don’t face face a fine for refusing to obey. Next year, when presumably Pritzker has been sworn in for a second term, the grocery taxes return.

Because of unfunded public worker pension debt, both Chicago and Illinois face enormous fiscal challenges. In regards to those pensions, Lightfoot and Pritzker are doing what their predecessors have done worst–kicking the can down the road.

Amazingly, Pritzker is considering a presidential run. His chances of winning are dismal, I offer the reasons why here. But if Pritzker somehow succeeds in 2024, imagine all of the vote-buying possibilities for him! He already has the physique of Santa Claus. On the other hand, Christmas comes just once a year. The federal government is with us every day.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Pritzker meddled in GOP gubernatorial primaries

Posted: July 24, 2022 by John Ruberry in covid, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Amazingly, the quiet presidential campaign of J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire pol from the family that created the Hyatt hotel chain and more, continues. That says about the girth of Illinois governor’s ego and the threadbare status of the Democratic presidential bench, as the failures of the Joe Biden administration continue to mount.

Illinois, despite the influx of COVID bailout cash, remains a financial basket case. At best, Pritzker and his fellow Democrats have only chipped away at the state’s pension bomb. Illinois has the worst-funded public pension system among the states. In 2021 the Prairie State lost 122,000 residents, only New York and the District of Columbia, percentage-wise, saw a bigger population drop.

At Wirepoints, Mark Glennon, justifiably eviscerated Pritzker in his critique of the governor’s trial run of a presidential campaign speech given last weekend in Florida. Yes, Florida, the place that Democrats, including Pritzker’s wife during the worst period of the COVID-19 lockdowns, flock to, despite the governorship of Ron DeSantis, a man they hate. Oh, while in Florida–Pritzker was there to give the keynote speech at a gathering of Florida Democrats–he contracted COVID. I wish him well–as someone who was afflicted with COVID last month, I can say that it is not an enjoyable experience. 

I’m going to focus on just a couple of items from Pritzker’s dishonest Florida speech. “We honor the results of elections,” Pritzker said, obviously alluding to the Capitol Riot and its show trial investigation of it by the House January 6th Committee. In response Glennon retorted, “In Illinois, that would be elections based on the most gerrymandered map in the nation, which he approved in violation of what many regarded as his most important campaign promise – to deliver fair maps.” Yes, Pritzker repeatedly vowed as a candidate in 2018 to veto gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps. The Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly–in place because of the 2011 gerrymandered map–sent to Pritzker’s desk new contorted legislative maps, which Pritzker signed into law. 

Pritzker lied–and free and fair congressional and state legislative elections in the Land of Lincoln died. But since Glennon’s article was posted, the Chicago Tribune revealed that Pritzker this year contributed $24 million to the Democratic Governors Association. That group spent millions on ads supporting the most conservative Republican candidate running to replace Pritzker this autumn, state Sen. Darren Bailey, who easily won the GOP nomination. Yes, I voted for Bailey. 

As with other races the DGA has meddled in, the group saw Bailey as the most conservative, or in their likely thoughts, the most extreme candidate. And presumably the easiest one for Democrats to defeat in November. But such a ploy might backfire. In another Republican gubernatorial primary race that the Democratic Governors Association meddled in, its preferred “extreme” candidate, Doug Mastriano, trails the Democratic nominee by only a few points. Yes, he can win, which has some Dems nervous. 

On the flipside, imagine the mainstream media uproar if Republicans funded the campaigns of a Bernie Bro socialist running in a Democratic primary. They’d cry, “Election interference,” and “This is undermining free and fair elections!”

A couple of times in my lifetime–on the presidential level–Democrats received the GOP general election candidate they were rooting for, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Donald Trump in 2016. You know what happened.

Bailey, in deep blue Illinois, faces a tougher hurdle than Mastriano. But much can happen in the next four months, and Joe Biden’s continued mismanagement of the economy, the border–heck, his complete mismanagement of everything–may compel moderate Land of Lincoln voters to send a message to the Democrats. 

Are there enough such Illinoisans to send Pritzker packing? 

Not yet, as a recent poll tells us.

Because of high taxes, Illinoisans suffer from among the highest gasoline prices in the nation. Pritzker, under the guise of a tax cut, is forcing Illinois gas station owners to post signs informing motorists of the “tax cut,” which is really a delay in an inflation adjustment, suspending it until December. Gas station operators who refuse to post the required signage face a $500-a-day fine. Without the fine threat, Illinois grocers are also being forced to post similar signage about a one-year suspension of a one-percent sales tax.

If Pritzker prevails over Bailey, look for his presidential campaign to begin. It will fail. Pritzker is not a likable candidate–and Illinois’ standards are low. His flat speeches are drenched in condescension. Pritzker comes across as a sleazy closer at a Las Vegas timeshare presentation, a meeting that you only agreed to endure after being promised free show tickets and two glasses of wine “Sign here,” he’d say, “you won’t regret it,” as all 350 pounds of him leans into you.

But not even alcohol can make Pritzker more palatable. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

“Centrist uprising” against Boudin in San Francisco shows how extreme the “Ultra Left” Democrats are

Posted: June 12, 2022 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

The big political news from last week, unless that is, your only news sources are MSNBC and CNN, was not the prime-time January 6 show trial masquerading as a hearing, but the resounding vote by San Francisco voters to recall radical leftist so-called prosecutor Chesa Boudin. 

Oh, he is a piece of work, this one. Boudin’s parents were Weather Underground terrorists, both of whom served long prison terms for their crimes, including murder. Boudin’s guardians were two other ex-Weather Underground terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, he attended an elite private high school, and he is a Yale law school graduate. Boudin was served a translator for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. In 2019, campaigning as if he was a woke social worker, Boudin was elected district attorney for San Francisco. “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes,” Boudin the candidate said. “Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted.” Well, I’ll concede this fact to him. Boudin honored his campaign promises.

And criminals received the message. Shoplifting soared under Boudin, as well as what one Nation writer, Sasha Abramsky, called other “low-end crimes,” including burglary and car break-ins. To me, a low-end crime is littering or jaywalking, but I am not a leftist. For many people, particularly renters and the poor, an automobile is their most valuable asset. Low-end? Really? Abramsky, you are quite out of touch, but of course you are, you write for the Nation.

The murder rate went up under Boudin. His misrule was a validation of the Rudy Giuliani’s “broken windows” policy of policing. Notice that I didn’t call it the “broken windows” theory of law enforcement.

I’ve only visited San Francisco once, in 2010, which residents of the City on the Bay probably look back on as “the good old days.” I was appalled by the level of homelessness there, and by all accounts, there are now many more indigents sprawled out on San Franciso sidewalks. Tellingly, during my time there I noticed the strong smell of urine even in the best neighborhoods. Boudin couldn’t smell the pee?

I’ve heard there are Republicans in San Francisco, albeit very few. The two Republican opponents of Nancy Pelosi–her entire district is within the city–collected 11-percent of the vote in 2020. But 60 percent of voters in San Francisco voted to purge Boudin last week. Earlier this month, another Nation writer, Christopher D. Cook, warned of a “centrist uprising” against progressivism in San Francisco. And all of this time, particularly from the left, I’ve been told we need more moderation in our politics, which of course to them means conservatives veering over to their side. In fact, as Democrat policies, from Biden down to Boudin, prove toxic, it’s liberals who are heading to the center, which is best exemplified by Bill Maher’s regular attacks on the far-left. 

Over at the Washington Post, Perry Bacon Jr. warns of centrist Democrats attacking far-left policies on crime. Writing for the New York Times, Shane Goldmacher commented, “Centrists and former law enforcement leaders hailed the successful San Francisco recall as a crushing blow to progressives.”

Oh, those evil centrists, they are taking America down a treacherous moderate path.

Boudin, true to form for any leftist, blamed “right-wing billionaires” for his defeat. Oh, what’s this? Radical leftist billionaire George Soros contributed to an anti-recall political action committee.

The Democrats of course don’t possess the right side of the political spectrum. And they are losing the center. Or perhaps it’s already lost to them. Which leaves the Democratic Party with the extreme left, or to channel Biden’s insult on conservatives which ricocheted against him, the Ultra Left.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Democrats are destroying the United States because they are true believers

Posted: June 9, 2022 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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It is self evident that modern Democrats live in a fantasy world.  A world where the most fundamental natural laws do not exist.  In order to exist in that world they must ignore reality.   Facts and evidence are meaningless.  All that matters is what they feel and believe.   The state of conscious they inhabit resembles that of mystics who belong to a primitive religion. 

Progressivism, and all other offshoots of Marxism, are primitive religions who worship a harsh and unforgiving god, the all powerful State.  Modern Democrats follow the same Marxist religious belief system.

Every individual is free to believe whatever they wish.  No one has a right to force their beliefs on anyone else.  Unfortunately leftists believe they have every right to force their religious beliefs on the rest of humanity.  They force others to follow their belief system.

If an individual follows a belief system that is completely devoid of reality, that individual alone suffers the consequences.  Because leftists force others to follow their belief system, others suffer the consequences. When Democrats gain power over a community they try to force their belief system on everyone in that community.  The entire community then suffers the negative consequences.

This is exactly what is happening here in the United States. Ever since the Democrats stole the presidential election from Donald Trump they have been forcing their Marxist belief system on the entire United States,  The entire United States is paying the price for the Democrats denial of reality.

Democrats believe that man made climate change is destroying the planet, with every fiber of their being.  Man made climate change only exists in deeply flawed computer models.  Because of the belief in man made climate change, Democrats are destroying the economy of the United States, by forcing us to abandon fossil fuels, in favor of deeply flawed wind and solar power.  Millions are suffering because of skyrocketing gas prices.  How many will die during extreme cold and heat because of brownouts caused by the abandonment of fossil fuels to generate electricity, in favor of wind and solar.

Democrats believe Marxism is superior to capitalism, despite the devastation caused Marxism, compared to the overwhelming prosperity brought about by capitalism.  Because they believe this Democrats are destroying the economy of the United States.

Because Democrats believe their Marxist philosophies are superior to the founding principles of the United States, they have indoctrinated countless children into this mistaken belief system, destroying our education system, and potentially our entire nation.

I am a Roman Catholic.  I believe my religion is the best religion.  I know I have no right to force my religion on any other individual.  I have never tried to.  The United States would still be the freest and most prosperous nation if Democrats did not force their Marxist religion on everyone else, in direct violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

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