Democrats Vying for Presidential Nomination

So people are going to vote for socialism/wealth confiscation because Trump says mean things?

k

 

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Bush gained 8 seats in his first 2 years in office. He kepts a Republican house for 6 years. The last midterm election he had was when the house flipped

 

A long read but worthwhile and very damning look at E Warren especially. 1/2
A Squint at the Democratic Nomination Contest
And an Unflinching Look at Elizabeth Warren's Campaign Platform...

By P.J. O'Rourke

Not long ago there were more Democrats running for president than you could shake a stick at. (And they all wanted to tax the stick.) But lately it's looking like there are only two donkeys in the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination – Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden... with Warren ahead by a nose (that she wants to poke into everything).

Is Bernie Sanders still a serious contender? "Serious as a heart attack." Unfortunately that phrase has taken on a new meaning for the old guy. I'm no kid myself and, in matters of personal health, I wish Bernie the best. But I also wish him farewell. Goodbye to you, you New Left leftover.

Thus it's time to take a closer look at the Warren and Biden campaign platforms. One of them could win the White House. Both are leading Trump in head-to-head polls. (Although I have a feeling that Trump supporters use their phones to play catch with the dog when pollsters call.)

But before we get into specifics let's perform a rudimentary analysis called "Weigh the Bullshit" or "WBS." What we do is we Google "Political positions of Elizabeth Warren" and "Political positions of Joe Biden" and print out their respective Wikipedia entries.

Biden's is 25 pages long but liberally interspersed with photos of Joe-Looking-Presidential and Joe-Being-Statesman-Like. It includes 151 reference notes.

Warren's is 42 pages of dense gray print with 251 reference notes.

It is an axiom of American politics: If you value individual liberty and economic freedom, always pick the candidate with fewer ideas.

Access to our elite Venture franchise has cost as much as $10,000. And unlike the rest of our research, Porter has almost never allowed us to discount it for any reason. But this week, he's making a rare exception, because of an issue that's personal for every senior leader at Stansberry Research. Details here.
So, this month, let's go "first with the worst" and examine Warren's ideas.

And, gosh, does she have a lot of them. Just using the simple WBS metric, Warren is 68% more alarming than Biden.

If that's enough for you, consult the June 23, 2019 New York Times Magazinecover story by an admiring Emily Bazelon, titled "Elizabeth Warren Has an Answer for Everything." The second column of the piece includes this chilling passage: "As a presidential candidate, Warren has rolled out proposal after proposal to rewrite the rules... On the trail she says, 'I have a plan for that' so often that it has turned into a T-shirt slogan."

As scary words go, "I have a plan for that" is right up there with, "Hold my beer and watch this!"

Warren thinks we can improve our economy by returning personal and corporate income taxes to Clinton-era levels. Are higher taxes good for the economy? U.S. per capita GDP, adjusted for inflation: $44,314 in 1998, $57,821 now. Question answered.

Warren also wants to impose a wealth tax on the net worth of individuals – 2% on net worth above $50 million and 3% on net worth above $1 billion. The current yield on 2-year U.S. Treasury bonds is 1.5%. For a conservatively invested billionaire that means a 200% tax on income on top of the income tax he or she is already paying. In anything except politics we'd call this "stealing."

And what about a modestly middle-class retired couple, living on Social Security, who, years ago, just happened to buy a little cabin and some land in a place that has been gentrified all to hell such as Aspen, Colorado? Now they're worth $100 million whether they want to be or not. They'll owe the IRS $1,000,000 a year for the rest of their lives.

But don't try to take the money and run. Warren proposes a 40% "exit tax" on expatriation of wealth exceeding $50 million. The island that Wall Street's moneyed elite will be living on won't be Grand Cayman, it will be Riker's Island.

 

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Warren doesn't seem to like rich people very much. (Never mind that, according to public financial disclosure forms, she and her husband have a net worth of between $4 million and $11 million.) But who Warren really has it in for are big corporations – maybe just because they're big corporations. Nobody feels attraction to, or affection for, big corporations. Dissing them is, politically speaking, like swiping left on Matt Lauer's dating app.

Warren supports breaking up the tech giants – Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. And these particular big corporations are even more unlovable than most. But, given Warren's obvious economic ignorance, the way her break-up would work would be something like... There's only one Dollar General store in your town. Warren would divide the business so that your town had four stores – each selling everything for 25 cents.

And Warren favors a kind of "net neutrality" where Internet providers would be treated like public utilities. As if we didn't have enough infrastructure problems with the public utilities we have now. And, anyway, I would argue that the Internet already is a public utility – a sewage system that runs backwards pumping crap into your laptop and phone.

Warren wants to tax corporations' global profits in addition to the U.S. taxes they already pay and no matter what other taxes they pay overseas. I guess the idea is to get U.S. investment out of the global marketplace and back home. But this is like shooting your neighbor's cows in hopes of getting more milk from your own.

Warren has proposed that large corporations should be required to allow employees to elect 40% of corporate board members. And that's how somebody's brother-in-law wearing flip-flops, cargo shorts, and an Antonio Brown Patriot's jersey ended up at the board table scratching his stomach and drinking a beer. You can't blame the guy from the loading dock who nominated him. His wife had been on his ass for years to get her brother a job.

She also proposes eliminating the "gender pay gap" with "Paycheck Fairness Act" legislation. Finally, Mary T. Barra, CEO of General Motors, and the guy on the assembly line who put your Silverado's tailgate on upside down (who's out on strike anyway) will achieve compensation equity.

And Warren thinks the federal minimum wage should be $22 an hour. The kid bagging groceries will be making $47,760 a year. And, no, damn it, don't load the case of beer on top of the egg carton.

Of course she favors universal single-payer health care or, as it's properly called, "Health care that's free – and worth it."

Plus subsidized universal childcare. I have several friends with children in their 30s who still need quite a bit of parental caretaking. My friends sincerely hope that Warren's program will address the darn kids' rent, car payments, and debit card overdrafts.

Of course, Warren has all the predictable "woke" political positions on civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, transgender rights, and every other kind of rights you ever heard of... except for Second Amendment and property rights, which apparently go to sleep when somebody gets woke.

Like any good lefty, she supports campaign finance reform and wants to "take the money out of politics." Although in the last three months she's raised $24.6 million in campaign funds compared to the $15.2 million that less-lefty Joe Biden has raised. $24.6 million sounds like money to me.

She also has the typical left/liberal views on abortion and the death penalty that, personally, I find deeply perplexing. I can understand the cold, pragmatic logic of being in favor of abortion and the death penalty. And I can understand the moral sense and consistency of being opposed to all killing whether it's in an abortion clinic or on a death chamber gurney. What I can't understand is people who condone the death of itty-bitty babies but think a school shooter should get a time out.

However, I'm not here to psychoanalyze Elizabeth Warren. (Although in my opinion running for president is a symptom of psychosis in the first place.) I'm just here to briefly summarize her campaign platform and try to make reading that summary a little less painful.

Yet, while we're on the subject of people who do not seem to be perfectly psychologically stable, we should note that Warren is not the perfect "Anti-Trump."

She's made a number of statements opposing free trade and actually agrees with Trump's tariffs. She supports withdrawing troops from Syria and Afghanistan. (And deploying them in Boston, I guess. According to Wikipedia, "Warren has worked to protect military spending in her home state of Massachusetts.") She also takes Trump-like stands on getting tough with China and negotiating with North Korea. And, at least by the standards of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, she's a fairly strong supporter of Israel. (With the usual sanctimonious "Two State Solution" noises.)

She has not called for the forgiveness of all student-loan debt, though she has called for lower student loan interest rates and other forms of relief for scholars-in-hock. Once, years ago, in a book written with her daughter, she even expressed approval of school vouchers.

She's not an open-borders extremist. Yes, she's against the Wall, for the Dreamers Act, wants border-crossing decriminalized, and deplores – not without reason, I may say – the conditions in migrant detention camps. But in 2013 she voted "Yea" on a Senate bill to toughen immigration laws.

So, although Warren has found a dunghill of left-wing economics to stand atop and crow, she is not a complete cock-a-doddle-doo.

Although there is one item on her agenda that does make you wonder. She wants climate-change regulation to be put under the control of the Department of Homeland Security.

"Don't worry about being late for your plane because of long lines at airport security, TSA has ordered good flying weather for the next three days!"

 

Here is direct evidence of the perils of having progressives run a government.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/...is-failing-california-new-york-massachuestts/

 

Speaking of Cali, that Kamala bitch is about out of the race. Getting her ass spanked like @shane0911 ’s first wife on their honeymoon.

 

somehow I’m picturing you with a wistful look on your face, secretly wishing it were you instead of her....

 

Glad I’m an independent!

 

Hope you guys will take the time to read Winston’s 2 lengthy posts on Warren’s positions. Informative and funny, too. Any author that disparages the made up word “woke” earns my applause.

I cannot comprehend the state of the nation where our choices will most likely be Trump, Warren, or Biden.

 

Your attitude and views gaurantees we will get a Warren or a Biden.