Archive for the ‘Liberalism’ Category

Anyone that thinks liberalism is intellectually significant is kidding themselves. Think of this: liberals think that 18-year-olds are old enough to serve in the military but too stupid to make an informed decision about smoking and buying firearms. Further, Democrats think that that 16-year-olds can cast well-informed votes. If those facts don’t give you intellectual whiplash, then you’re a liberal.

This article almost gave me intellectual whiplash. Fortunately, I could tell from the title of the article that this was typical Democrat propaganda.

The article opens by saying “Akron City Council is expected to vote tonight on whether to prohibit the sale of tobacco products to those under 21. Proponents hope the rest of the Summit County will follow Akron’s lead.”

That sounds eerily similar to the arguments made by proponents of a similar measure put before the St. Cloud City Council. In that instance, the Council passed the proposed ordinance 4-3. After the motion was made and seconded in St. Cloud, Mark Fritz, the owner of E-Cig Emporium in St. Cloud, testified, saying “Your ordinance will not stop them. You need to recognize all you’re doing is hurting your local businesses.”

What Fritz referred to is the fact that St. Cloud’s neighboring cities haven’t adopted this ill-fated measure. It’s ill-fated because the 26th Amendment states:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The minute these laws get challenged, they’ll be flushed into the dustbin of history by the Supreme Court. One of the organizations pushing the 21 age limit for smoking in Minnesota is Clearway Minnesota / Minnesotans For A Smoke Free Generation. They present as fact this opinion:

Raising the purchase age to 21 will prevent youth tobacco use and save lives.

It’s impossible to verify this. Something else worth considering is whether the laws will be enforced. This video hints that they aren’t enforced:

That’s before talking about how high a priority preventing ‘under-age’ smoking is to police departments. I can’t picture a PD for a city the size of Akron will put a high priority on stopping underage smoking when there’s an opioid epidemic underway. There’s only so many hours in a day. Police departments don’t have unlimited resources.

That’s why passing these laws is a waste of time. If you want to decrease teenage smoking, education programs are much more efficient than banning products.

Technorati: Smoking Ban, Tobacco 21, Akron, St. Cloud, Clearway Minnesota, Minnesotans for a Smoke Free Generation, Law Enforcement, Ad Campaigns, Education

When I first read this op-ed, I didn’t take it seriously. Then I reread it. This time, the second time was the charm. While I’m far from agreeing with each of the opinions expressed by the author, I’m not dismissing them either.

For instance, the author is Peggy Grande, “the executive assistant to president Ronald Reagan from 1989–1999.” This isn’t some wild-eyed activist. This is someone who’s connected to California’s political culture. I won’t dismiss Ms. Grande when she wrote “Surprising but true, there actually are conservatives in California, but we have been silenced and powerless far too long and now are finding an unlikely alliance with common sense Democrats who feel abandoned by their party and realize it no longer represents them.”

Eventually, people won’t tolerate being ignored. That’s often where backlashes start. I’d certainly make a persuasive argument that that’s where Trump’s backlash came from. In 2015-16, people in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin switched allegiances in the presidential election.

Further, Ms. Grande wrote “It appears those in power here who have championed policies that continue to steer California further and further left may now have overplayed their hand. And the backlash has begun, with no end in sight. In fact, common sense Californians from both sides of the political aisle are coming together in solidarity to challenge policies and governing that has left them to endure the consequences of the decisions of their lawmakers, which has made life more expensive, more challenging, more dangerous, and in some instances even putting them into potential legal jeopardy. For example, business owners now face the quandary of being in compliance with the feds or being in compliance with the state with their employees and their immigration status. This is not a partisan issue. This is the very type of issue that continues to make California a difficult place to do business and disincentivizes businesses to come here and continues to drive successful businesses and taxpayers out of the state.”

Then Ms. Grande gives us a history lesson:

Ronald Reagan was a Democrat for many years before switching to the Republican Party. When asked why he changed parties, he said, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me.”

If high taxes, overregulation and dealing with a homeless/illegal immigration crisis isn’t enough to spark a backlash, nothing will.

Jerry Brown and Xavier Becerra spearheaded the initiative to turn California into a sanctuary state. Since I first wrote about the crisis, cities and counties started defying the will of the elitists. Eventually, people will reach a point where they join this guy:

On a more serious note, if Democrats don’t flip a bunch of seats in California, their blue wave won’t swamp the Republicans. It’s that simple.

Progressives often get lumped in with liberals. That shouldn’t happen. Progressives frequently resemble fascists. They frequently ‘win’ their arguments by accusing people of lying. That’s the case with Maria Cardona’s op-ed. Ms. Cardona wrote “Trump claims several untruths: that nothing has been found thus far in this investigation; that they have found absolutely no collusion; that the whole thing is a partisan witch hunt; and that the sacrosanct attorney-client privilege is dead.”

What BS. I’d love hearing Ms. Cardona list the things Robert Mueller has found thus far that proves collusion. After all, that’s what President Trump has consistently complained about. As for President Trump’s statement that Mueller’s probe being a partisan witch hunt, that isn’t a lie. It’s President Trump’s opinion. It’s virtually impossible to lie when stating an opinion. As for whether “the sacrosanct attorney-client privilege is dead,” I’ll leave that to Harvard Professor Emeritus Dershowitz, who wrote “Clients should be able to rely on confidentiality when they disclose their most intimate secrets in an effort to secure their legal rights. A highly publicized raid on the president’s lawyer will surely shake the confidence of many clients in promises of confidentiality by their lawyers. They will not necessarily understand the nuances of the confidentiality rules and their exceptions. They will see a lawyer’s office being raided and all his files seized.”

Professor Dershowitz is a principled, old-fashioned liberal. Old-fashioned liberals frequently displayed a commitment to civil liberties. They frequently had a libertarian streak in them, too. The point is that old-fashioned liberalism isn’t compatible with hardline progressivism. Often, they’re opposites.

I’m happy that President Trump won but I’m not a win-at-all-costs person. I’ve seen enough of Professor Dershowitz to say the same thing of him. Watch his principles in this interview:

I can’t say that about Ms. Cardona.

This afternoon, a loyal reader of LFR forwarded me an email newsletter from TakeAction Minnesota. Included in that email was a link to this article, which deals with the topics of voting and gun control.

It starts by saying “At last month’s March for Our Lives in Washington, DC, the 20 young people who spoke had a clear message for the hundreds of thousands of protesters: Vote. Specifically, they urged their supporters to vote out of office any lawmaker who stands in the way of gun control. ‘The voting is what we’re pushing here,’ Stoneman Douglas student and #NeverAgain activist Jaclyn Corin said in an interview with Crooked Media before the march. ‘The March is kind of a statement saying, ‘Hey, we’re gonna be voting in November. Watch out—all these people are voting against you.'”

This year, Democrats are pushing 2 things hard — raising the minimum age of buying certain types of guns to 21 and lowering the voting age to 16. Democrats are arguing simultaneously that 16-year-olds are wise enough to make informed decisions on who should represent people in Congress but 20-year-olds are too stupid to safely operate a semi-automatic firearm. Wouldn’t you love to hear David Hogg or Emma Gonzalez explain that?

Actually, the explanation is rather simple. First, Democrats want to flood the polling booths with as many uninformed voters as possible. People that think things through vote for conservatives more often than they vote for Democrats. That’s a statement of statistical fact. It isn’t a statement of derision. Next, raising the age of purchase to 21 is an emotional issue for people. The Democrats’ base will be fired up as a result.

Republicans need to frame this election as a referendum between sensible policies vs. irrational policies. Let’s illustrate:

1. There’s nothing irrational about enforcing our international borders. There’s nothing sane about opening our borders to drug cartels while fighting an opioid crisis.
2. There’s nothing irrational about reducing regulations and increasing competition.
3. There’s nothing sane about increasing regulations that cripple competition.
4. There’s nothing irrational about moving national guard troops to the Tex-Mex border to prevent human trafficking.
5. There’s nothing sane about letting human traffickers bring in sex slaves from Latin America.
6. There’s nothing irrational about shutting down the borders to prevent violent felons from entering the US.
7. There’s nothing sane about letting violent felons into the US by turning a blind eye towards the Tex-Mex border. That inevitably leads to new members of the Angel Parents ‘club’.

Conservatives, it’s time for you to ask yourselves if you want Congress run by people who won’t protect its citizens by electing Democrat majorities in the House and/or Senate or whether we’ll tell our friends, neighbors, co-workers and church family to get out and vote for sane conservatives, then voting ourselves. What’s required from conservatives is gritty determination to vote. Losing the House and/or the Senate will stop President Trump’s common-sense agenda on immigration, regulations and shutting down gangs like MS-13.

It’s ok to disapprove of President Trump’s tweets. Some of his tweets are inexcusable and shouldn’t be defended. His economic and national security agenda, however, aren’t just defensible. They’re essential.

Finally, it’s essential that all patriots vote to save this republic. I know that sounds a bit melodramatic but it’s where we’re at right now. Democrat progressives hate the principles that this nation was founded on. That’s how they can advocate for raising the minimum age to buy a gun to 21, then immediately argue that it’s essential to lower the voting age to 16. These aren’t sensible arguments. They’re the arguments of irrational people. Liberalism isn’t a political philosophy. It’s a mental disorder.

Apparently, progressives aren’t as altruistic as they pretend while getting interviewed. Recently, the “Orange County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to scrap its plan to move hundreds of homeless people from alongside the Santa Ana River to temporary shelters in three cities.”

According to the article, “ahead of the meeting, a caravan of 22 chartered buses arrived at Santa Ana’s Hall of Administration carrying more than 1,200 Irvine residents who urged the Orange County Board of Supervisors to scrap the controversial plan to create emergency homeless shelters in their community and others.”

The activists must’ve prohibited altruistic people from boarding their buses. It was stunning to hear that the “meeting was packed with residents who oppose putting emergency shelters in their neighborhoods.” People like Angela Liu, of Irvine, who owns a legal services company, who said “I don’t know. They need to put them somewhere, maybe somewhere else in California. I really don’t know where they can go, but Irvine is beautiful and we don’t want to get destroyed.”

“Who cares?” added Abby Moore, a retiree from Laguna Niguel. “This is not our responsibility; we are not elected to handle this crisis. I just don’t want to be near the homeless.”

Meanwhile, the crisis keeps getting worse:

When Tucker interviewed Fabio, Democrats ridiculed both men. That’s why I’m expecting to get ridiculed, too. That’s fine. The homeless crisis in California isn’t getting better. It’s getting worse without an end in sight. Fabio explained why it isn’t getting better when he stated that “5,700 people paid 37% of California’s state income tax.” Further, Fabio stated that the movie industry has left California for all intents and purposes and the middle class is leaving the state thanks to Jerry Brown’s economic ‘leadership’.

Supervisor Lisa A. Bartlett apologized to the affected cities during the meeting. “There has been a lack of clear information and that has caused unnecessary panic,” Bartlett said. “Nothing was approved or built and no homeless were ever relocated to any of the cities.”

That’s what happens when the progressive checklist is followed to a T. California taxes the middle class while protecting criminal aliens. Jerry Brown came close to ruining California during his first time in office as governor. This time, he’s returned, along with supermajorities of Democrats, to finish the job he started when he was nicknamed Gov. Moonbeam and while he dated Linda Ronstadt.

More than anything, California needs another Reagan to save it from the Brown family. Back in 1966, Reagan defeated Pat Brown, Jerry’s father. Unfortunately, California’s insanity returned with a vengeance.

California once was called the Golden State. Since the influx of illegal immigrants started, California’s image has suffered mightily. Homelessness has risen dramatically. The middle class have started leaving the state. Income inequality has risen despite Gov. Moonbeam’s sticking to the progressives’ script to a T. It’s gotten so bad that the LATimes is writing about California’s homeless crisis.

It’s stunning to read that “next year, the state expects to spend $700 million on homelessness.” The more California follows the progressive checklist, the more they’ll experience income inequality, the more they’ll trigger the middle class flight that they’re experiencing and, eventually, the more that they’ll increase homelessness.

The only way to fix California’s multiple crises is to return to capitalism and the rule of law. Right now, California’s calling card is a chaotic society. That won’t attract people. It’ll repel them. Reports like this won’t attract people:

It’ll just tell them that California’s economy is rigged in favor of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. It says that the American Dream is only alive for the well-connected. You won’t attract people with that image.

Dario Anselmo is chief author of a bill that would raise the minimum smoking age in Minnesota to 21. State Sen. Carla Nelson “introduced similar legislation last year.” They both insist that their legislation has bipartisan support.

If that’s their best argument, this legislation should be immediately defeated in committee and never see the light of day again.

Rep. Anselmo has a warped view of state government’s role. At his press availability, Rep. Anselmo said “This is sort of what government is here for. It’s here for our public safety, national and local. It’s here for our public health, and this is a big one. I tell them if we’re the party that talks about cutting health care costs, its $3 billion direct cost that go to the cost of smoking.”

What type of liberal thinking is that? First, Republicans are the party that preaches the gospel of individual responsibility. Rep. Anselmo apparently thinks that adults who aren’t 21 aren’t capable of making intelligent decisions. I’d love hearing Rep. Anselmo explain why he thinks people who are prosecuted as adults aren’t capable of making intelligent adult decisions. Check out the first segment of Friday night’s Almanac to watch Rep. Anselmo explain his legislation:

This is legislation in search of a problem. There isn’t a smoking crisis. There isn’t a hint of a smoking crisis. Further, this is a perfect example of busybody legislating. Rep. Anselmo should admit that adults should be left alone to make their own decisions.

In the aftermath of Friday morning’s jobs report, Jerry Brown’s statement seems positively foolish. Brown infamously tweeted “At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don’t work here. SAD!!!”

What’s he talking about? The economy is hitting on all cylinders. Wages are increasing. Ditto with take-home pay. We might be on the verge of a major foreign policy breakthrough with North Korea. What’s the “unprecedented political turmoil” that Gov. Moonbeam is talking about?

The only possibility is that he’s talking about the state of turmoil that his state is in. California’s homelessness is at a historic high. There’s deficits for as far as the eye can see. The middle class is racing to get out of the state. The Democratic Party is selectively listening to the American people.

California just got rated last in the US in quality of life:

A 2017 Harvard University report said that one-third of renters in the Los Angeles area are “severely rent burdened,” meaning they spend at least half their income on housing. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles County has increased 67%, according to Zillow’s Rent Index, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Here’s the criteria they were judged on:

U.S. News ranked each state in seven other areas, which were weighted based on a survey that determined their importance to the public: health care, education, economy, opportunity, infrastructure, crime and corrections, and fiscal stability.

Then there’s this:

California finished No. 43 in fiscal stability, No. 46 in opportunity, and No. 38 in infrastructure. It posted relatively high marks in health care (11th), economy (4th), and crime and corrections (28th).

This is immoral:

Homelessness has surged a stunning 75 percent in the last six years, the Los Angeles Times reports, and there are now at least 55,000 homeless people in the county.

People are leaving California because it’s a total mess. Jerry Brown is easily the worst governor in California history. The next Democrat governor will inherit a crisis, which they’ll immediately make worse. When the rich pay 40% of their gross income, it’s safe to say that the formerly middle class get hammered. It isn’t a stretch to say that Gov. Moonbeam’s policies have made things worse.

That’s the location of today’s political turmoil.

Kurt Schlichter is onto something in his newest column when he wrote “No one who wants us to give up our guns does so because they want us to be more able to defend ourselves from crime or tyranny. Their agenda is clear, no matter how much they lie and deny. Disarmament is key to converting us from citizens to subjects, and we’re just not playing that game. So they mutter about the NRA, which you need to join if you dig freedom, and we keep buying guns and ammunition to create the facts on the ground that will ensure their long-sought after end state of another Venezuela will never happen here.

After last week’s shooting, Democrats reflexively jumped back onto the gun control bandwagon. That was handed a stinging setback on Friday. That’s when the FBI admitted that they’d recently received specific information that was actionable, then didn’t follow up on the tip that might’ve saved 17 lives.

Thus far, I haven’t heard anyone say that the US should adopt Australia’s gun laws — yet. President Obama and Secretary Clinton have touted those laws in the past as a model the US should follow. They talked specifically about Australia’s ‘gun buyback’, which was actually a gun confiscation program:

The crucial fact they omit is that the buyback program was mandatory. Australia’s vaunted gun buyback program was in fact a sweeping program of gun confiscation. Only the articles from USA Today and the Washington Post cited above contain the crucial information that the buyback was compulsory. The article by Smith-Spark, the latest entry in the genre, assuredly does not. It’s the most important detail about the main provision of Australia’s gun laws, and pundits ignore it. That’s like writing an article about how Obamacare works without once mentioning the individual mandate.

In this video, Mark Halperin took time to engage in a debate with Charles C.W. Cooke on gun control:

Saying that it didn’t end well for Halperin is understatement. Halperin initially states “I agree with the President. People have to find solutions to this and not talk about what won’t work and that it’s so complicated. We can’t be the only country in the world that’s like this.” Cooke quickly replies “Alright then, what’s your plan?” Halperin spends the next minute dodging and slipping Cooke’s question. Ultimately, Halperin’s answer is that he isn’t a “gun policy expert.” Talk about stating the obvious.

What’s required is to harden the schools. Have only 1 entry/exit point. Shut and lock the doors when school starts anyone wanting in or out has to ring the alarm and be let in. It’d be great if government didn’t miss the tips they’d received about the various shooters, most recently, the Parkland shooter.

What’s painfully obvious is that Democrats are ideology-driven, not solutions-driven. That’s why the generic ballot is trending away from them.

The Democrats’ battle cry on all things migration and immigration has been ‘that’s not who we are’. Democrats don’t tell taxpayers whether we can afford to accept more refugees. They simply tell us that it’s imperative that the U.S. accept tens of thousands of refugees each year.

When President Trump said halt!, Lutheran Social Services screamed. As I’ve written about before refugee resettlement is how they make the money that pays their executives’ lucrative salaries. At the time, I wrote “LSS gets paid $1,000 for each refugee it finds a home for. This year, LSS will get $225,000 to resettle refugees. That doesn’t sound like humanitarian work. That’s what a lucrative racket sounds like.”

Public servants like St. Cloud City Councilman Jeff Johnson has tried to find out how much refugee resettlement costs St. Cloud taxpayers. For being fiscally responsible, the special interests have criticized him constantly. Thankfully, Johnson is about to get some answers:

Did you know that welfare spending in Minnesota is going up about 20 percent or more a year? K-12 budgets are ballooning, as well. All we have is a promise that the Office of Legislative Auditor is going to tell lawmakers in 2018 what costs are currently tracked, so lawmakers can presumably order HHS and other state agencies to begin tracking the costs.

Think of that last statement. At present, lawmakers haven’t told state agencies to track the costs of refugee resettlement. Here’s why that’s important:

Think about this a minute. From 2002-2014, there’s been an outmigration of Minnesota-born people. While that’s been happening, there’s been a strong inmigration of people born in other countries, sometimes hitting 15,000 international-born refugees.

Further, let’s remember that Minnesota’s welfare spending is increasing by 20% per year. What math-minded person thinks that’s sustainable? It’s one thing if a minor department’s budget increases by 10-15% per biennium for a couple biennia. That’s something that we can probably absorb without running a major deficit. The HHS budget is the second biggest line item in the state budget, behind only K-12 Education. Astronomical increases to the second-biggest department in Minnesota’s budget isn’t sustainable.

Our reigning elite, including so-called feminists, have ignored the pleas and shouted down the concerns of Americans who dare to wonder out loud how to deal with incoming cultures that openly reject religious tolerance, profess an allegiance to Sharia law, practice polygamy and mutilate their daughters. These are not the loser racists who show up in ridiculous man-boy outfits to rant and rave at alt-right gatherings. These are good, decent Americans who wonder, “What about my culture? Does that get any respect?”

This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a bipartisan issue. Businesspeople from both parties love cheap labor. If they have to drive the middle class out of Minnesota while importing low-skill international workers that they pay a pittance, then that’s what they’re willing to do.

That isn’t to say that all businesspeople think that way. They don’t. I’m just identifying the fact that there are some entrepreneurs who do think that way. Often, they’re found in the hospitality and meat-packing industries.

The point is simple: importing thousands of international refugees isn’t sustainable. Politicians that tell us otherwise are either lying or they’re too stupid to serve us properly.

Technorati: LSS, Catholic Charities, Refugee Resettlement Program, Budget Deficits, Welcoming Community, St. Cloud, Jeff Johnson, Donald Trump, Accountability, Office of Legislative Auditor