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It’s official: Michael Bloomberg, multi-billionaire former mayor of New York City, has announced his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg, much like most people in the United States, believes that the current gaggle of Democrat hopefuls lack the potential to win the 2020 presidential election against the incumbent. Known for his oppressive policies as NYC mayor and his blatant anti-Second Amendment rhetoric and activism, Bloomberg believes he alone stands a chance to wrest the Oval Office from that dastardly outsider Donald Trump. The months leading up to the election will be very telling for the DNC. The introduction of Bloomberg into the primary race is going to show us exactly what Democrat voters really stand for, even with the filter of the Democrat-run media and the boisterous hard-left special interest groups in place. It will answer questions about how far left the common Democrat has really moved since the first days of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Bloomberg is a powerful advocate of ‘common-sense gun control’ via over-taxing and halting the production of most models of common semi-automatic weapons until only the wealthy elite have access to them. Recently, he jumped on the ‘man-made climate change’ bandwagon by launching the $70 million American Cities Climate Challenge. He even admits that the wealthy should, in fact, be paying more taxes. He certainly sounds like the ideal candidate the left has been longing for. But the current Democrat presidential candidate front runners didn’t seem very receptive to the new challenger. It seems a battle is brewing. (Excuse me while I go pop some popcorn, because this is going to be interesting.) Reacting to Bloomberg’s $34 million television campaign announcement, far-left extremist Bernie Sanders fired a shot across the Bloomberg campaign machine’s bow when he hit Twitter and spewed: “We do not believe that billionaires have the right to buy elections. That is why multi-billionaires like Michael Bloomberg are not going to get very far in this election.” Likewise, Democratic presidential candidate hopeful and sworn enemy of Wall Street Elizabeth Warren fired her shot at the wealthy candidate via Twitter: “Mike Bloomberg is placing $34 million in TV ads in one week—the most of any presidential candidate in history. That’s one way to pay less under my #WealthTax. Because in a Warren administration, he and his billionaire friends would finally have to pay their fair share.” It seems Mike Bloomberg will be fighting an uphill battle within his own party. Or will he? Bloomberg is a self-made man. He’s the fourteenth wealthiest person on the planet and the eighth wealthiest in the United States, according to Britannica.com. If we are to believe Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and their fringe Socialist base, this should automatically make him the enemy. Judging by Warren and Sanders’ recent rhetoric, he is the problem and should be ostracized by left-leaning voters everywhere even though he now professes to adhere to the farthest left of the left’s Socialist ideology. This makes for an interesting scenario. Bloomberg’s success in the Democrat primaries will be a measuring stick as to how much emphasis Democrat voters place on wealth accumulation. It will also be a standard to measure just how far out of touch the coastal DNC has become with ‘flyover’ America. Setting aside Bloomberg’s tendency to create and enforce oppressive laws such as trans fat bans, large soda bans, strict tobacco control and many others, his billionaire status will be his first major hurdle with the rest of the Democrat candidates. If his numbers rise to rival Biden, Sanders, and Warren, it is safe to say that the Democrats’ billionaire vilification is yet another out-of-touch Democrat witch hunt.
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At the close of the Obama administration, the top 50% of income earners paid 97% of the tax revenue collected by the IRS, while the bottom half paid a paltry 3% (the split being at $40,087 adjusted income). The total income tax collected was $1.4 trillion in individual income taxes. I know numbers are boring, but they are important when considering Democrat presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren’s “Medicare for All” platform that the Massachusetts senator hopes will secure her the Democrat nomination.
Warren says her plan will cost a mere $20.5 trillion and that the middle class will not incur a tax increase. Taxpayers will allegedly also enjoy the manifold fruits of her socialized, single-payer healthcare plan at no cost to them. She claims that the revenue to fund this plan will come through military spending cuts, eliminating VA and current Medicare costs by rolling both programs into the new plan combined, of course, with punishing those ‘evil billionaires’ with a staggering income tax increase. Several questions are starting to surface, however, that may bury her presidential hopes in 2020. Many who are not blindly salivating over the idea of ‘free stuff’ have begun raising questions ranging from the actual cost of the program to the quality of single-payer healthcare. Estimates from places like the Rand Corporation, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and the Urban Institute estimate the additional government spending for Warren’s “Medicare for All” plan will be closer to the $31-$34 trillion range, with recent estimates from the Urban Institute as high as $59 trillion in a ten year span. Given that the outlay of the federal government was $4.1 trillion in 2018 and the individual income tax collected was $1.7 trillion (total revenue collected was $3.3 trillion), Senator Warren’s promise of shielding the working class from more taxation echoes Obama’s empty promise “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” Adding another $2.4 trillion to federal spending (using the $34 trillion/ten year figure less the $1 trillion a year spent on current medical programs) will increase the outlay to $6.5 trillion, effectively broadening the federal deficit to $3.2 trillion. 
The shortfall will be taken out of the pockets of the middle class both directly and indirectly, no matter how much Warren tries to persuade voters of the opposite (she recently told Andrea Mitchell that no one who isn’t a billionaire will pay one penny more in tax). If Senator Warren goes after Wall Street to fund her plans, she will be attacking middle class retirement investments and siphoning off dividends that belong to 401k and IRA investors. This means YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class. Likewise, increasing business tax will mean lower income, fewer full-time jobs, and another recession for workers and small business owners to overcome. Simply put, workers will be on the hook for Warren’s monster regardless.
Senator Warren has also promised to force down medical costs. On the surface, this seems like a great idea, but what costs will actually get reduced? Will doctors accept less pay? Will unionized nurses bow to the Democrats and accept fewer benefits? Will medical supplies, research and development, and lawsuit insurance magically experience a reduction in cost? Highly doubtful on all matters. What will suffer is the quality of healthcare for the individual. Reductions in staff, reductions in the number of qualified doctors, and fewer facilities will add up to longer waits, more misdiagnoses, and a dysfunctional records system. To fix this broken system, the middle class will be called upon in the future to foot the bill ‘for the greater good’. Senator Warren has a decent chance to win the Democratic presidential primary. A Warren presidency openly threatens Wall Street, big business, and billionaires. But make no mistake, the working class will be attacked just as severely if she is allowed to carry out her “Medicare for All” plan. Whether directly or indirectly, working-class America will pay dearly for her hard-left politics. |
MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
January 2024
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