Resist! Resist! Resist!
Resist! Resist! Resist!
This is the new mantra of the Progressive Left
Hillary said it. Madonna said it. That nasty woman Ashley Judd said it. Michael
Moore said it and the new DNC chairman Tom Perez screeched it.
Evidently these people are all reading from the script. You would think that these so called creative, artistic type people could come up with their own original comments, rather than repeating the same old tired rant that has been spoken daily since the November election.
That said. Has anyone actually taken the time to find out what it is exactly that these people are against? I am fairly conservative, but I do try to be fair minded and understand the other side’s point of view. Try as I might, I am unable to understand what possible reason anyone could have for being against what President Trump is trying to accomplish.
One thing I know is that the left is against is free speech. Just look at the riots (progressives call them peaceful protests) that have taken place on college campuses recently. Numerous conservatives speakers have been uninvited by campus officials ( for their safety ) or have been shouted down by demonstrators. These people have been called fascists, racists, homophobes, and a lot of other names that I probably shouldn’t write in this blog.
By the way, has anyone ever seen a conservative group stop, or try to stop, a left wing speaker from speaking his or her views? It seems that it’s always people from the left who are shouting down conservative speakers, not the other way around. So who are the real fascists? What groups are violating other people’s civil rights and destroying private property?
It’s rarely, if ever, conservatives.
These so called peaceful protests are often led by left wing agitators and masked professional anarchists. These agitators are backed up by students, many of whom don’t know who the speaker is, or what he or she stands for. Lenin and Trotsky had a name for people like this. They called them “useful idiots”. Ignorant people, who follow blindly, with absolutely no clue what they are for or what they are against.
During the campaign candidate Trump promised to bring business, and therefore, high paying manufacturing and construction jobs back to the US. Why the left would want to resist this I am unable to answer, other than they just want the president to fail.
The idea is to get as many people working and contributing to the economy as possible. Do ten dollar an hour retail jobs help in this regard? Of course they do. But jobs that pay $50,000 a year or more help the economy expand and grow at a much higher rate and contribute tax revenue to the government. It’s a win, win situation. This is why bringing high paying manufacturing and construction back to the US is so important. Would you rather fund all these social programs you liberals want by borrowing or by tax revenue. The answer should be obvious even to liberals.
The most well known and most controversial of President Trump’s agenda items is illegal immigration and border control. The progressive left is strongly resisting this. They believe that the country should have open borders and that anyone who wishes to enter our country, should be allowed to do so. Only very stupid people would be in favor of letting anyone, including people who wish to do us harm, into our country without proper documentation and without being properly vetted. If you need another reason for controlling the border, look at the disaster in Europe. We don’t need that here.
Most Americans, including myself, are in favor of immigration. After all,1 million people are allowed to immigrate into our country every year. These 1 million people immigrate the old fashion way. The same way my grandparents, on both sides of my family, did in the late
1800’s. They came here legally. That’s the type of immigration that I, and most fair minded Americans, are in favor of.
This means going through the process of immigrating to this country, applying for citizenship, assimilating into our society, being vetted and going through any other procedures required by our immigration laws. Even after going through the process of being properly vetted and any other safety checks that the government wants to put these people through, their is still no 100% guarantee that these people are not here to do us harm. The 14 dead people in San Bernadino proved that.
Another campaign promise made by candidate Trump was to lower individual and corporate income taxes. No one should be against this. It’s good for the business community and it’s good for individual taxpayers as well. Also, depending on where the rates are finally set, it would be good for the country as a whole.
It’s estimated that the private sector, which is all non government spending, accounts for roughly ⅔ of the nation’s GNP. Lowering taxes for individuals and business puts more money into the hands of taxpayers. The more money taxpayers have to spend, the higher the demand for goods and services. The higher the demand for goods and services, the higher the level of production and thus, more jobs are created. This is basic economics and I think the logic of it is sound.
It’s also important to lower corporate income taxes. The two main points I have regarding corporate taxes are these. First, the US has the highest corporate income tax in the world. Secondly, lowering corporate taxes makes American business, and therefore, American products, more competitive on the world market. It would increase our exports ,and yes, create more highing paying manufacturing and construction jobs.
I want to add another point concerning corporate income taxes. American multinational corporations currently have between 2 and 3 trillion dollars sitting in foreign banks or invested offshore. The reason it’s sitting there is because the tax rate to bring that much money back into the country is too high ( the maximum corporate rate, I believe is 35%) and the people running these companies, who are responsible to their shareholders, are unwilling to pay the tax.
That money could do a lot of good here. It could be used to expand their businesses and, I getting tired of writing this, create more high paying manufacturing and construction jobs. I have one last point regarding corporate income taxes. Let’s suppose that there is 3 Trillion in corporate profits sitting offshore and the maximum corporate tax rate was reduced to 20%. The government would get a windfall of of approximately $600 billion the first year (assuming all these companies brought this money back to the US). This money could be used to fund the infrastructure program that both republicans and democrats have been talking about for the last several years. It’s good policy, and, it will create even ,more high paying manufacturing and construction jobs. I would really like to see this happen. It should have been done years ago. There’s no telling how high the country’s economic growth rate and the labor participation rate could rise and how low the country’s unemployment rate could drop.
The final topic I want to cover is the repeal and replacement of Obamacare. At least as far as this topic goes, I can understand why the left is trying is trying to save it. If it fails, and it is well on its way to failing, President Obama’s signature legislative initiative will have become a complete failure. As I said the plan is failing. Insurance companies are pulling out of the market. They’re not pulling out because they don’t like former president Obama or because they were against the plan for political reasons. They’re pulling out because these insurance companies are losing money. Some companies have lost as much as $1billion per year.
The concept of insurance works because the risk of the policyholders is spread over a very large number of people. Some of those people will be young and healthy and some will be older and less healthy. Young people will have very few claims and older people will have more claims. Young people were supposed to sign up for the plan and pay an insurance premium or pay a tax penalty. What happened was that these young healthy people are also young very smart people. They figured out that they didn’t need health insurance because they were young and healthy and that it was cheaper to pay the penalty. So, that’s what they did. The insurance companies were forced to pay claims on the older, sicker policyholders without the benefit of the insurance premium from the younger healthier people who decided not to buy a health care policy. The healthcare claims exceeded the amount of health care premiums and therefore the insurance companies lost money. This occurred because the architects of the plan assumed that young people would pay the insurance premium rather than pay the penalty. This was a huge miscalculation and cost the insurance companies dearly. This is why insurance companies who were writing these policies are pulling out of the market.
Other problems with the plan which are directly related to the companies losing money are rising premiums and higher deductibles. Insurance companies raised premiums to increase revenue and increased deductibles to lower claims. Evidently, it was not enough to save the plan.
I mentioned earlier that the left is against repealing and replacing Obamacare. They are against it because it is president Obama’s premier legislative achievement. This healthcare insurance plan with his name on it is failing and will implode under its own weight. I wouldn’t want the fate of my legacy to have to depend on Obamacare. President Obama will have to because he accomplished very little else of note.
His other accomplishments were a negative for the country and for the American public as a whole. For example, he commuted the sentences of hundreds of convicted felons. I don’t know the percentage, but I would be willing to bet that a good many of these people have returned to their old occupations or illegal enterprises. He also released (here again I don’t have the exact number), well over a hundred terrorists from Gitmo. All these detainees were trying to kill Americans, or may have killed Americans in the past. From news stories and information I have been able to gather it appears that 30 to 40 % of these released terrorists have returned to the battlefield and are fighting and possibly killing Americans again.
Another example of a bad policy decisions, that I don’t think will impact his legacy positively, is the hornets nest we call the middle east. In all fairness, with the fall of Mosul and the positive reports coming out of Raqqa, the situation in those two areas, at least, seems to be calming down. But there are still problems in Nigeria and Yemen and this doesn’t even begin to talk about Iran and the nuclear treaty where we gave them back about $150 billion. They are now using this money to fund their terrorist operations in several different countries.
Another thing president Obama did that will not appear as a star on his record is the fact that he flat out lied to the American people regarding ObamaCare. He told several lies and he told them on numerous occasions over the course of several months. I admit that President Trump has been known to stretch the truth on occasion and the press is all over him for doing it, and justly so. Where were the guardians of the constitution when president Obama was making up stories to sell Obamacare to the American public. They were standing right there being silent.
Finally, the biggest and the worst of president Obama’s policy decisions which, unfortunately, took place over the entire eight years of his presidency, was his decision to borrow $10 Trillion. He amassed more debt during his eight years as president than the other 43 previous presidents combined and from my perspective he got little or nothing in return. He borrowed this money when interest rates were historically low. Rates are now rising. How much they rise will determine how difficult of a problem this will become for president Trump and future presidents to deal with. As I said in a previous blog, no matter how prosperous our economy becomes, we will never be able to grow our way out of this hole. This will be with us for decades, if not centuries. If you left wing progressives wanted to resist something, you should’ve resisted this. The problems this debt will cause our country are now just beginning to become apparent.
I have covered several Trump agenda items which, in my opinion, if enacted, would move the country forward. Lowering individual and corporate rates would spur economic growth and create good high paying jobs. It would also make America more competitive on the world market. Why would anyone want to be against that.
The answer, of course, is Hillary Clinton. People on the left will never be able to get over her loss. She didn’t lose because of “ Russia, Russia, Russia”, or because of Jim Comey, or because of any other feeble excuse. She lost because she was not a good candidate and was perceived as dishonest by many, including myself. She lost because she got less electoral votes than Donald Trump. End of story.
It’s time to put the election behind us and get behind the president’s economic initiatives.They are already beginning to have a positive effect on our economy. This years second quarter GNP came in at 3%, which was a significant improvement from the overall growth rate during the Obama years. Let’s put people back to work and get the country moving forward again. Lowering individual and corporate tax rates will help in this regard. Also, if corporate tax rates are lowered enough we may get a corporate tax windfall from those corporate profits that are out of the country because it’s too expensive to bring that money back to the US. That tax windfall could be used as a down payment towards rebuilding our infrastructure.
The president needs to send a comprehensive tax reform bill to congress who should pass it as quickly as possible. The faster these reforms are passed the faster the economy will begin to recover. Making the economy stronger and putting people back to work with good high paying jobs should not be a partisan issue. It’s something every American should support. I can see no downside to any of this. This needs to be done.