by Jeffery Rendall
It’s no secret in today’s political universe that Democrats love the gullible, impressionable and naively idealistic youth of America. Heck, Democrats’ fondness for the demographic even extends beyond our borders to DREAMERS just waiting to come here illegally from other countries.
But occasionally those warm feelings are put on hold when a young person goes out of character and challenges one of them on their flimsy assumptions. Such an occurrence happened last week when a teenager asked Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to elaborate on a remark she’d made a few months back in reference to the Republican tax cut/reform plan.
Justin Caruso of the Daily Caller reported, “A student at Georgetown University confronted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Tuesday over her infamous ‘crumbs’ comment.
“The student brought up the multiple times that the California Democrat referred to the GOP tax cuts as ‘crumbs’ for the middle class, saying, ‘As the son of small business owners, I know that it’s helped my parents hire more employees. It’s helped us pay off our mortgage, helped put me through college.’
“’On a macro economic level, the economy’s growing, wages are rising for the first time in years,’ he continued. ‘Would you still refer to the effects of this tax plan on average Americans as crumbs?’”
Pelosi politely thanked the boy for his question and proceeded to awkwardly stumble through a response, of course remembering to include the standard boilerplate Democrat arguments against any tax cut proposal – namely, tax cuts unfairly benefit the rich at the expense of average people, they reduce revenue which balloons the federal budget deficit (like Dems really care about that!)…and 86 million middle class families will end up paying more in taxes…blah, blah, blah.
Since Pelosi is Pelosi she didn’t expand on where she got her stats and perhaps because she was confronting someone she felt was an outlier among the gobs of ill-informed youth who consider her a goddess, the California liberal bumbled through an additional couple minutes’ worth of mumbo jumbo about the future and happily looked forward to the next query.
Needless to say Pelosi didn’t address the main point of the student’s question – how could the Republican tax cuts be considered “crumbs” when they’re helping real people as opposed to just talking a good game and fighting for bigger and more costly federal subsidies? What would her answer have been if the guy had framed his inquiry more to her liking, something like “Madame Pelosi, you called the benefits from the Republicans’ tax cuts ‘crumbs.’ Since Americans can expect so little relief from these new rules, how are you intending to grow government to help all the starving students?”
When the basis of your argument is flawed there isn’t much you can do to defend it. But Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and every Democrat certainly give it the ‘ol college try, don’t they? Stir up class envy, demonize the rich and make everyone who succeeds feel guilty that they’re not doing enough to share their ill-begotten wealth – that’s the Democrat modus operandi.
In her retort, Pelosi didn’t speak to the employees the guy’s parents were able to hire with more certainty that their tax bill would be reduced and the multitude of good things that flow from economic growth and tax rate cuts. The old saying goes “a rising tide lifts all boats” — but it’s true; if your business is overflowing you need more labor to expand it.
As one example we recently had our well water treatment system serviced and the owner of the business (who’ve we’ve worked with for over a decade) mentioned his business is growing so fast he can’t keep up with it. He told me he was planning to buy another truck or two and hire a couple more employees to give him some time to enjoy his newfound prosperity.
Apparently those “crumbs” help people buy water treatment systems. Who would’ve thought?
To Democrats, this isn’t a victory story; they’d say the man’s success comes at the expense of someone else, right? Shouldn’t he be forced to pay higher taxes for people who aren’t as “fortunate” to already own trucks and haven’t sold so many water treatment systems that they can’t keep up with the maintenance demands?
Democrats see economics as a finite pie, one to be sliced according to political considerations. If you need any visible evidence of the utter failure of Democrat policies, just look to the horrible conditions of Democrat-controlled major American cities and states. It’s gotten so bad in many of them the productive people are getting the heck out.
Kristin Tate wrote the other day at The Hill, “Eventually, city and state taxes, fees, and regulations become so burdensome that people and corporations jump ship. More people are currently fleeing New York than any other metropolitan area in the nation. More than 1 million people have moved out of New York City since 2010 in search of greener pastures, which amounts to a negative net migration rate of 4.4 percent…
“And make no mistake: What’s happening in the Big Apple is a microcosm of what’s happening in the nation’s blue states, cities and towns. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago — the places where power and capital have traditionally congregated — have become so over-regulated, so overpriced and mismanaged, and so morally bankrupt and soft on crime that people are leaving in droves. Of course, these high-tax cities are the same places hit hardest by the removal of the SALT (State and Local Tax) deduction.
“The cost of popular moving truck services, like U-Haul, is largely created through the ironclad rules of supply and demand. Turns out, there is much higher demand for trucks leaving high-tax blue states heading to low-tax red states than vice versa.”
In her article Tate included the going rates for renting a U-Haul truck from California to Texas as opposed to from Texas to California. You guessed it, it costs over twice as much to go east than it does west. Still it’s a price people are willing to pay, apparently, as Texas is rapidly becoming home to a new class of voluntarily displaced Golden Staters. I wonder if this means Texans will stop speaking with a deep southern drawl and begin sounding like surfer dudes instead?
There will always be those who prefer urban living and not only don’t mind paying the high taxes – they support the politicians who impose the usurious rates too. If you don’t care about shelling out several thousand bucks a month for a cracker box apartment to be part of the “energy” of the city, more power to you. Tate is right – if blue cities truly want to quell the exodus of the productive class they can always reduce the cost of living (through the tax and regulatory) burden.
Or pave the way for electing more Republicans with new ideas on reviving inner city businesses to generate tax proceeds. Trump discussed urban renewal numerous times during the 2016 campaign but the issue has largely been buried by more pressing political matters since inauguration day. I doubt he’s forgotten about it, however – but the GOP tax bill alone should make doing business more attractive everywhere.
A new survey released last week indicated voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on economics and taxes (but the tax bill itself is still underwater). That’s great news for GOP candidates, but there’s little doubt many of their fortunes will still be tied to Trump.
Democrats remain hopeful Trump’s presidency will be cut short – or at least discredited to the point of irrelevancy. One former Democrat presidential candidate thinks Trump’s days could be numbered. Nicholas Ballasy of PJ Media reported, “[Al] Gore applauded special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s influence on the 2016 presidential election.
“’I think our country is extremely fortunate to have a man of such character, experience, wisdom and professionalism in a position that may turn out to be the pivot point of the early part of, a pivot point for American history,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember a time when a single individual in a position of that kind was so almost universally respected. There has been, of course, the White House has orchestrated a campaign to try to attack him.’
“Gore expanded on his ‘pivot point’ statement. ‘Well, we’re only a little over a year into this experiment with Donald Trump, and in science and medicine some experiments are terminated early for ethical reasons,’ he said to laugher from crowd.”
Gore was speaking in Washington at a discussion sponsored by Axios, no doubt to a mostly friendly audience predisposed to laughing at such a comment. The balance of Gore’s interview proved the 2000 loser hasn’t changed one iota in the years since his stunning defeat (remember the “dangling chads” in Florida?).
Gore is every bit the unbalanced borderline nutcase he was in 2000 when he tried to physically intimidate George W. Bush during a presidential debate.
As far as Gore’s point about Robert Mueller being “universally respected,” I’m not sure which worldly existence the former VP is dwelling in. Earlier in his talk Gore bashed on Fox News – which it’s pretty clear he doesn’t watch, or he would recognize there’s an awful lot of skepticism surrounding Mueller, his team and his activities. As Rush Limbaugh often says, to liberals it isn’t the nature of the evidence that counts – it’s the seriousness of the charge.
The fact is Mueller’s Russian “collusion” investigation – and the internal review being conducted by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General – has only served to establish a prima facie case for charging the Deep State and its Obama administration handlers with a series of crimes. So yes, thank you, Robert Mueller!
Along the way Mueller has been able to nab a couple lower level Trump associates – and former campaign manager Paul Manafort (for alleged crimes committed years before he became associated with Trump’s run for president) — while helping expose the FBI and DOJ leadership as a corrupt collection of keystone cops and crooked lawyers hell-bent on stopping Trump.
The previous administration certainly changed the rules of American politics. Victor Davis Hanson concluded the other day at National Review, “Bush careerists, including Clapper and Brennan, were now damning the very counterterrorism practices that they once helped put in place, while offering Obama-like politically correct sermons on the benign nature of Islamism.
“Surveillance and jailing were appropriate punishments for suspected Obama apostates (ask James Rosen or Nkoula Basseley Nakoula). The IRS was weaponized for use against Obama’s ideological opponents. Suggestions that the president was unfit or worse became near treasonous. Unity was the new patriotism. The assumption was that Obama had ushered in a half-century of progressive norms, not that he so alienated the country that he birthed Donald Trump.
“The danger to the country this time around is that the Left has so destroyed the old protocols of the opposition party that it will be hard to resurrect them when progressives return to power. We are entering revolutionary times. The law is no longer equally applied. The media are the ministry of truth. The Democratic party is a revolutionary force. And it is all getting scary.”
Scary indeed, though evidently not to Al Gore and the rest of the Democrats. The concept of loyal political opposition has changed so drastically in the past three decades we can likely never return to the days when disagreement over policies wasn’t taken personally.
Nancy Pelosi gets away with calling a tax cut “crumbs.” She might as well just say, “Let them eat cake.”
Democrat elites’ contempt for average Americans is sometimes well-hidden but crops up often. Washington swamp creatures know (or care) little about the struggles of the common folk – and with the tone of political debate deteriorating by the moment, there’s scant hope it will ever improve.
