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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.
The United States has long known about the brutal and bullying methods the Communist Chinese use to stifle dissenters within their borders. The protests that began in Hong Kong in early summer were sparked by a now-suspended law that would allow extradition of Hong Kongers to mainland China for trial. They have swelled to fever pitch and have the attention of mainstream American media. These protests differ from past dissention because the coordinators have remained fluid and elusive. This makes it difficult for the Chinese authorities to quickly root them out and turn them into a public example to scare the rest of the protesters into submission.
What has also caught the eye of the six o'clock news crowd this time is the bullying censorship tactics China uses to silence speech abroad. In the past, we have witnessed Hollywood change entire storylines to accommodate the Chinese government in order to get their movies played in Chinese theaters. However, the recent news of the National Basketball Association banning "Free Hong Kong" signs and throwing out ticket holders flashing them have given a lot of Americans uneasy pause. Likewise, Apple turning off a popular app in China because it was being used by protesters to track Chinese police shows the world that Apple is more interested in sales than they are in human rights violations. Finally, Blizzard's swift punishment and banning of Chung "Blitzchung" Ng Wai from his gaming win at a Hearthstone tournament for shouting pro-Hong Kong freedom slogans demonstrates the giant corporation's complete willingness to override basic freedoms in order to capitulate to the Chinese authoritarians guarding their lucrative market base. In short, money talks. China controls 10.93% of global imports, second only to the United States. Unlike in the U.S., businesses wishing to bring their wares into China are not only required to follow China’s regulations; they must also allow goods and services to be scrutinized and changed lest they expose the dark side of Chinese communism or the human rights violations rampant within the country’s borders. Apparently, China does not keep this bullying within its own walls. Using its market advantage, China is pressuring U.S.-based companies into suppressing the free speech of Americans in our own country. Simply put, the Chinese expect complete capitulation if a U.S. business expects to tap into the lucrative Chinese market. How far will these companies go to appease their Chinese overlords? If Americans’ freedom of speech is less valuable than China’s market base, what else are U.S. businesses willing to concede to the Chinese in order to stay in their good graces? To answer that question, one need only look as far as our now far-left Democrat party. Over the past few years, we have watched the National Football League, Anheuser-Busch, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Citigroup Bank, and many others cower to pressure from the left to the point of throwing any concern for future Constitutional rights violations to the wind in order to appease the outrage mob. If this hard-left mob, led by the leaders of the ‘Democratic’ Party, perceive a political opinion other than its own sordid philosophy, it is quick to rise up and make every effort to financially cripple any threat to their political ideology. In August, this outrage mob attacked Stephen Ross, a major real estate developer and major shareholder in Equinox and SoulCycle, simply for planning a fundraiser for President Trump at his home in the Hamptons. Unfortunately, conservatives have begun to pick up this abhorrent ‘cancel culture’ habit in retaliation to attacks from the left. This insanity must stop if Americans want their future to remain free from tyranny. While protesters in Hong Kong are laying their lives on the line to retain the freedoms and rights to which they are accustomed, the left seems to be busy implementing the Chi-Coms bullying tactics to silence climate change skeptics, Second Amendment advocates, pro-life advocates, and straight-white-conservative-Christian-males. We simply cannot permit the Chinese or the leftists' cancel culture within our own borders to control our businesses and our personal lives. If left to their own devices, this is precisely what they will do. They have already shown us their intentions. Now it is time to push back. Hard. Even if it costs us a few dollars. |
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
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