Tag Archives: politics

The only hotness in Hogg is that he’ll soon be bacon

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The Democrat who goes by the initials AOC is the hottest Democrat in Congress. I know that’s a low bar, but still.

It’s the main reason Democrats like her. Be honest: Who would you like to share a voting booth with – AOC or Nancy Pelosi? And then there’s also the possibility of voting from home . . . .

I’ll admit it’s a bit creepy to see Her Hotness and 163-year-old Bernie Sanders together on a stage performing Dem-porn acts such as “the rich don’t pay taxes” and “Republicans are a threat to Democracy” before at least one of them gets driven to one of Bernie’s mansions.

But in creepy cradle-robbing and grave-robbing stunts, they have nothing on the Republicans. Have you seen Bill Belichick’s new 24-year-old girlfriend? (I thought the guy was just a great football coach. Turns out, he’s a god!)

And then there’s a new kid on the block named David Hogg. He’s a hero because he was at school one day when a nutcase went ballistic with a gun.

Hogg saved several students. Well, no, he didn’t.

Hogg disarmed the gunman. Well, no he didn’t.

Hogg went to confront the gunman. Well, no he didn’t.

Hogg hid in a closet. Yes, he did.

Hogg has made a living selling the day he hid in a closet. His pitch is that we should ban guns. Forget about police protection in the schools. Forget about mental health issues. Forget about arming the teachers. No, we should ban guns.

Because then, the gunmen couldn’t get a gun legally at a gun store, and they’d have to get them illegally instead. They’d have to get one or more of the 400 million that are in circulation in America.

Democrats love this pitch. Not because it would reduce gun violence – remember the 400 million guns already out there?

No, Dems love the pitch for two reasons. One, it punishes gun owners, and they hate gun owners. Or at least they think they do. They forget that most gun owners are not pickup-drivin’ beer-drinkin’ tobacky-chewin’ GOP-votin’ rednecks. Most don’t drop their drawers or even their g’s. Most are people like you and me. Well, at least me.

Two, banning guns makes Dems feel virtuous. It means they’re doing something and, more importantly, it means they can say they’re doing something. In the world of Democrats, it doesn’t matter if what you do is effective. It only matters that you do it and talk about doing it.

Hogg rode this pitch all the way to the Democrat National Committee Vice Chairmanship. (I won’t make a comment about the Chairman of Vice, not with Belichick on the page.) Hogg became a male AOC. White smoke rose from the DNC office, and it wasn’t because they were burning emails. They all but christened him “His Hotness.”

Then he started saying some things apart from his DNC-approved gun-taking pitch. He suggested that the old Democrats should retire to make way for young ones. He himself, coincidentally, happens to be a young one.

But not all old Democrats should retire, he said. Only the powerless ones he thought he could risk offending. That wouldn’t include 85-year-old Nancy. She’s fine, he assured us. Really not even old!

He miscalculated. Turns out, the old powerless ones he said should retire do, in fact, have some power.

Hogg is now being ousted from his Chairman of Vice position. He’s cooked. He’s fried. He’s bacon.

But he’s still got his gun-taking schtick. Expect more books and speeches.

Joe, don’t go!

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On those rare occasions when I’m in need of an emetic, I’d rather have a finger stuck down my throat than have the image of Joe Biden stuck through my retina.

But he’s baaaaaack anyway. Democrats hate that he’s back.

What my enemy hates, I should like.  And so, I do. Even though it hurts my eyes and turns my stomach.

Democrats hate it for the same reasons that I like it. Every Joe sighting reminds people of why they voted against him. He demonstrates that he’s a creaky, corrupt, cardboard cutout that is incapable of thought and practically incapable of reading a teleprompter containing the thoughts of people who do his thinking for him.

Every appearance reminds people that the Democrats lied that he was “sharp as a tack” right up to the minute that he proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was dull as a dullard, at which time they dumped him like a stained, plaid Laz-Z-Boy from the 70s and declared that their hand-picked replacement (why bother with primaries to ascertain the people’s preference when you have Nancy, Chuck and Barack?) was

. . . wait for it . . .

. . . “sharp as a tack.”

And joyous, to boot. And no known hair plugs, capped teeth, or criminal family.

I almost feel bad for Joe that the Democrats are not even pretending to welcome him. Almost.

“Joe, please go” Is their typical greeting. Guffaws are their typical reaction to his tiresome contention that he would have won the election (if only he’d had the courage not to quit). Yawns are elicited by his warnings that the Republicans want to end Social Security, end motherhood, and end the world.

Rage is the emotion generated by him reminding Democrats of his truculent, selfish refusal to quit when the quitting was good – back when the primaries were playing out and a competent new candidate could be chosen in the way they’re supposed to be. Embarrassment is what they feel when they see him stumbling, bumbling, humbling and crumbling on a stage.

Mind you, I don’t blame Joe for being semi-senile. Lots of people wind up there. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her final years comes to mind.

Ginsburg is another person whom I adore because she screwed the Democrats by quitting long after the quitting was good. Ginsburg’s encroaching senility so clouded her judgment that she could not see it encroaching, and so she failed to quit in time for Barack Obama to name her replacement.

She died at age 87 while still on the bench (when she was not in the hospital). After decades of reliably liberal votes, the legacy she left is that her replacement is Amy Coney Barrett, nominated by Republican President Trump and confirmed by a Republican Senate.  

Back to Joe being back. Surely, he can still distinguish between friends and enemies. Given that his friends wish he’d go away for good, and his enemies are happy he doesn’t, one might ask, why doesn’t he go away?

This might shock you, but politicians have big egos. They crave attention. It’s not exactly a monastic profession.

I don’t hold that against them. The need for attention is fundamental to mankind (and, to a slightly lesser extent, womenkind). Some people achieve it by being loved, others achieve it by being hated, and still others achieve it by writing stupid blogs where they weave themselves into the narrative.

What I hold against Joe is not his basic need for attention. What I hold against him is his terrible policies, his family corruption, his gross incompetence, and his shameless lies.

I’m glad he’s back to remind Americans of those things. As he continues to decline, I hope he sticks around. Cement that legacy, Joe.

Is the American Pope a case of follow-the-money?

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To everyone’s surprise, the new Pope is an American. Like almost everyone else in the world, I’d never heard of him before yesterday. But he looks like a straight shooter and a stand-up guy. And, as popes go, he looks pretty healthy.

For readers in my tribe who are dismayed that he once expressed some passing criticism of President Trump’s summary deportation of illegal aliens, I ask you: What’s a clergyman supposed to say – kick the SOBs out?

I did not expect to see this – an American Pope – now or ever. Reports are that the smoke-watchers crowding the Vatican grounds didn’t either, and were a bit disappointed.

That’s not because Europeans hate or even dislike Americans. The practice of scorning American tourists ended at least a generation ago. The days of ugly Americans are now replaced by the days of rich Americans – and everyone likes customers who are rich.  (That said, it doesn’t hurt to greet people in their language when you’re in their country. “Buenos dias” and “bonjour” fetch a lot more smiles than “Hey, howya doin?”)

So don’t be fooled by Americans who sanctimoniously advertise to fellow Americans that they identify themselves as Canadians, not Americans, when they go to Europe, ostensibly to trick the Europeans into liking them. Those Americans are revealing a dislike for Americans alright – by themselves. Those Americans hate America, and they project that hatred onto the world.

Although Europeans don’t hate Americans the way some Americans hate Americans, I still wouldn’t expect the sun-drunk, ecstasy-filled citizens of Rome milling about St. Peter’s Square this week to be whispering, “Let’s pray they elect an Americano!”

And they weren’t. So why did the Cardinals elect an Americano?

Here’s a relevant factoid: The Vatican has deep financial problems.

Here’s another relevant factoid: When the Notre Dame burned a few years ago, guess who donated the greatest amount for the rebuilding, apart from the French themselves (several of whom were extraordinarily generous). It was the Americanos.

Connect the dots. 

I hope the strategy pans out. We need the Catholic Church more than ever before – and I say that as a Protestant.

The Wall Street Journal debases itself in a misleading Trump headline

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I’ve read the Wall Street Journal for many years. I’ve even had a piece published in the Journal. The opinion page is excellent (even when I disagree with the opinions expressed there) and the news page is reliable (though it has drifted leftward over the years).

I was therefore surprised and disappointed to see the Journal’s coverage of a recent interview that President Trump gave to NBC News.

Trump was asked about the due process protections he should afford illegal aliens being deported. Here’s the transcript of the relevant part, as presented by NBC News itself:

“But even given those numbers [of illegals] that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Welker asked.

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

A fair reading of that exchange is: (1) the interviewer asked Trump whether he would uphold the Constitution in connection with his deportation of illegals, (2) he replied that he’s not a lawyer, so he doesn’t know what the legal requirements are, (3) he has many brilliant lawyers who will tell him, and (4) they’ll “obviously follow what the Supreme Court” says.

The Journal presented the clip, but accompanied it with a very misleading headline. The headline read,

“Asked if He Has to Uphold the Constitution, Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know’”

That headline was misleading in at least three ways. First, it leaves out the context, thereby implying a context much broader.

The question asked of Trump was not the general question of whether he “has to uphold the Constitution.” Rather, it was a very specific question: It was whether Trump has to afford due process protections to illegals being deported.

Second, the headline omits the rest of Trump’s answer. He immediately went on to note in connection with this Constitutional issue that he is not a lawyer.

That’s not just a quibble. Even most lawyers would struggle to define the necessary due process protections for illegals. Do they get a full-blown jury trial? Do they get summary adjudication by an administrative judge? Do they get something in-between? Even the Supreme Court has not been crystal clear on this point.

Third, Trump wound up his answer by explicitly stating that he would defer to whatever the Supreme Court says.

In context, it’s hard to see what Trump said wrong. He did indeed start his answer with “I don’t know” but immediately explained why he didn’t know, and gave assurance that he would do as told by people who do know — namely, the Supreme Court.

The Journal’s headline parrots a similar headline from the outlet that did the interview, NBC News. I was not surprised to see NBC sink this low to rake up muck, but I was indeed surprised to see the Journal follow them down there.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Liberal judges to violent, criminal illegals: “You’re Trump’s enemy, so that makes you my friend”

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Judges lately often exhibit acute cases of TDS. One in Milwaukee was preparing to preside over the trial of an illegal who’d been charged with domestic abuse. In layman’s language, he was charged with beating his girlfriend and others to the point that some required hospitalization. Federal agents showed up outside the judge’s courtroom with a warrant to arrest the man, presumably to deport him.

The judge stalled the agents for a bit by sending them down the hall, then returned to the courtroom. While the agents were away, she spirited the violent illegal out the side door.

The agents suspected a ruse, and went outside. They intercepted the man on the street, though it took a potentially dangerous rundown to catch him.

A judge in New Mexico was harboring three illegals who were apparently members of a notorious Venezuelan gang. The judge gave them guns. The judge also took a hammer to the phone belonging to one, evidently because it contained pictures of beheaded victims. He didn’t want the incriminating evidence to be discovered.

These acts by judges are not just intemperate and illustrative of bad, well, judgment. They’re also crimes. It’s a federal crime to conceal illegal immigrants. It’s a federal crime to interfere with the investigations of federal law enforcement officials. It’s a federal crime to lie to them. It’s a federal crime to destroy relevant evidence of a crime. The statutory punishment can involve decades in the federal penitentiary.

Ordinarily, these judges would not side with a wife-beater, or with a gang member with photos of his beheaded victims on his phone. Even judges who are Democrats are not that loony.

So why did the judges do so in these cases? Here’s my theory.

The reason the judges sided with criminals in these cases was because the person who was after them was Donald Trump.

These Democrat judges perceive Trump as their enemy (probably correctly) and they perceive these criminals as Trump’s enemy (certainly correctly) and so that makes the criminals their friend.

“My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is a crude and amoral way to pick friends, but I suppose people have the prerogative to use whatever criteria they like in such personal matters.

But judges sitting in their courtroom are not engaged in personal matters. They’re engaged in public matters. Their job is to judge, and they’ve sworn to do so in accordance with the law. They don’t have the luxury of putting the law aside in favor of personal prejudices such as “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” If they did, then they could decide that criminals are innocent simply because they happen to dislike the prosecutor. Or guilty because they happen to like the prosecutor.

I’m from the old-fashioned school, and so are almost all other lawyers and almost all judges and almost all civilized legal systems. In that school, the guilt or innocence of a defendant is based on what he did, not who he’s a friend or enemy of.

These judges know that, and they would agree with it – in the abstract. If offered a hypothetical where the evidence shows the defendant is guilty but the prosecutor is someone the judge abhors, the judges would say that’s the way the cookie crumbles. The defendant would be convicted on the basis of the good evidence presented, not exonerated on the basis of the bad prosecutor presenting it.

But in these particular cases – the real-life ones in Milwaukee and New Mexico mentioned above – the judges have become prisoners to their emotions. Their hate for Trump is so strong that they literally cannot think straight.

The judge’s best defense to the charges against them for aiding the criminal illegals, therefore, is a plea of insanity. And I think that plea is a pretty good one.

They’re deranged, and I mean that in a clinical way. Donald Trump has a way of doing that to Democrats. This derangement is not helping them with voters.

Glenn Beaton practiced law in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Hating on Jews is all the rage

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Young people are slaves to fashion. (That’s one vice I’ve never been accused of, even when I was young.)

You name it – mustaches, bell-bottom jeans, Barack Obama, hula hoops, big hair, Burt Reynolds, electric cars, transexuals, solar panels, line-dancing to country music, etc., etc., etc.

Someday, there may be a fashion convergence on Netflix where we have a mustachioed Barack Obama, sporting big hair and bell-bottomed jeans, line-dancing to country music with a transexual Burt Reynolds playing with a hula hoop as they both get run over by a Tesla fired by a solar panel.

Meanwhile, we have antisemitism.

It’s all the rage. Ignorant college students chant “from the river to the sea” but can’t tell you the name of the river or the name of the sea.

These kids believe that Jews are racists for “occupying” the land between those two unnamable waters – for some 3,000 years. And so, they hate them and their Jewishness.

The reason they believe this is (1) because they’ve been told it’s true by the kids who are cool because their skin is dark and their foreign accent is strong, (2) because human nature is such that hate produces pleasurable endorphins, and (3) because it’s fashionable.

They still celebrate the torture and massacre of Jews on that horrible October 7, even as they caution (sometimes, but not usually) that it’s not the Jews they want massacred, but the Israelis. At the same time, they harass and persecute Jews on campus who have no attachment to Israel other than Jewishness.

Like most fashions that come around, this one has been around before. The first Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC. The second temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The subsequent Jewish diaspora scattered thousands of Jews through Europe where they were persecuted for two millennia through soft bigotry and hard pogroms.

The discrimination reached an apex in a holocaust. Until the middle of the 20th century, that word meant “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale.” Now, the word is inseparable from an event of unspeakable horror, “The Holocaust.”

European bigotry immigrated to the Americas. As late as the 20th century, Harvard refused to admit Jews. Even now, they impose an informal limit on the number of Jewish admittees. Those who are admitted have been advised not to wear a visible Star of David, lest they trigger the Jew-haters.

When prestige schools occasionally protect the Jewish students, it is reluctantly and ambiguously. The leftists running these outfits smugly justify their tolerance for bigotry and even violence on the grounds of academic freedom. “Free to Hate” could well replace “Veritas” at Harvard.

As it has for thousands of years, Jewish merit overcomes much of this bigotry. Although Jews comprise only about 0.2% of the worldwide population and only about 1% of the American population, some 22% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish.

But the soft discrimination continues in matters not governed objectively by merit. For example, Americans have never elected a President or Vice President who was Jewish. (To their credit, the Jews have not clamored for one. That’s not the way they roll.)

Antisemitism particularly burns in the Middle East. Jews have been essentially expelled from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – practically all of the Muslim countries of the Middle East. Jews are not so much discriminated against in those countries – they’re banned.

You might think that Israel has responded in kind, but they haven’t. Non-Jews exist side-by-side with Jews in Israel. In fact, about 21% of Israelis are Muslim.

It is this Jew-hating bigotry for which the young idiots on college campuses are useful. While they enjoy sunny springtime hijinks designed mainly to prove up their fashion consciousness in the college cocoon, Jews in the real world are actively discriminated against, threatened existentially, and occasionally raped, taken hostage, beheaded and murdered.

Fads pass and fashion is fleeting. If only this one were.

JD Vance would be a terrific President right now

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He wasn’t exactly a product of “white privilege.” He was born an Irish-Scot in Appalachia to a woman who was an alcoholic and drug user. His parents divorced when he was a toddler. He was abused, neglected, and impoverished.

He was raised mainly by his grandparents. Against the odds, he survived childhood. He enlisted in the Marines right out of high school. He served in Iraq, and was medaled and promoted.

He came home to enroll in the local landmark, Ohio State University. He graduated with a dual major in Philosophy and Political Science.

From Ohio State, he enrolled in Yale Law School. If you think it’s easy to get into Yale Law School without being a DEI applicant, try it sometime.  (For the record, I don’t contend that you learn anything at Yale Law School, but it’s indisputable that it’s extremely difficult for a white male to get in.)

Let’s recap. This Scottish-Irish hillbilly went straight from Appalachia to a tour of duty as a Marine in Iraq, to a dual major in Political Science and Philosophy at Ohio State, to Yale Law School.

Along the way, he was publishing political stuff, and befriended billionaire conservative entrepreneur Peter Thiel.

Don’t ask me how he met Thiel and convinced him to give him the time of day. But I’m guessing it’s the same qualities that got him from Appalachia to Yale Law School.

I’d say he never looked back, except he did. At this point in his life, he started work on what became an inspirational best-seller about his early life, Hillbilly Elegy, which was later made into a great movie directed by Ron Howard. Rent it and watch it.

He was elected a U.S. Senator at age 38, and Vice President of the United States at age 40.

Ah, Vice President of the United States. That’s the recent waiting room of some men who later sat in the Oval Office, some good ones and some bad ones – Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush. (I don’t even count the old senile guy with a “doctor” wife to lead him around to collect payola for the family business while the world went to hell.)

So, is JD Vance of Presidential timber?

First, does he have the ambition? Well, yes. If he didn’t, he’d be in Kentucky driving a pickup truck of moonshine.

Is he smart? Yes. See, Yale Law School, above.

Does he take it personally if someone takes a position in opposition to his? Not as far as I can tell, but he’s likely to demolish that person’s position.  

Does he go around picking fights he cannot win just because he enjoys fighting and enjoys  the attention? No, I don’t think so. From what I’ve seen, he picks a fight because that particular fight is an important one and he knows he has a good chance of winning it.

Perhaps as a Marine in Iraq he learned an old saying of pilots in the Air Force: There are old ones and there are bold ones, but there are no old, bold ones.

Can he criticize a person’s position without name-calling? Yes, he can and he does. Calling people names is for people who are losing the argument.

Is he vague and unpredictable? Usually not. He may have learned something in the practice of law: Only be vague and unpredictable on purpose, never accidentally.

Does he tweet in ALL UPPER-CASE LETTERS as if he’s shouting at you? No, the little letters seem to get his point across just fine. He knows that, as in name-calling, shouting is for people who are losing the argument.

Does he have a beautiful wife who seems to genuinely love him? (Indulge me here. I like a First Lady to be firstly a lady.)

Yes, He appears to. They’ve been together since he was barely out of Appalachia.

I could go on, but you get the point. JD Vance is Presidential material.

Ah, you say, but maybe he’s unelectable.

Ah, says me, that’s the genius of this. See United States Constitution, Article II, Section 4 . . . Impeachment.  

To impeach Vance’s boss (whom I voted for three times), we would need the help of the Democrats. An impeachment conviction in the Senate requires 67 votes, and the Republicans have only 53.

Would the Democrats be so deranged as to vote to convict Vance’s boss in the Senate, and persuade a dozen and a half Republicans to join them there, thereby putting JD Vance into the Oval Office without ever being elected to it?

Yes. Recall what the “D” stands for in TDS.

“Abundance” is the left’s latest rebranding, but it all means the same

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First, there were Marxists. The Marxists got a bad reputation for destroying economies. Seems the approach of taking from people in accordance with their ability to give, and giving to people in accordance with their ability to take, sounded nice but didn’t work well.

So, they rebranded to “communists,” as in community-ists. Everyone likes a community, right?

Same result, this time at the point of a gun. And murdering 100 million people in the “community” didn’t help their reputation.  

Then they rebranded to “socialists.” What’s not to like about being social?

The socialists didn’t pack guns, but did pack prison terms for people who refused to pay confiscatory taxes. People liked the prison terms about as much as they liked the point of a gun. 

Then they rebranded to “liberals.” That was shrewd, because it co-opted a word that meant the opposite of their Marxist, communist, socialist, censorious, confiscatory, murderous authoritarianism.

It took a while for the people to catch on, but they eventually did. The people came to realize that the “liberals” were anything but liberal in the true sense of that word.

Don’t even get me started on “woke.”

So, they rebranded to “progressives.” Sounds good – who could dislike progress? But it turned out that their idea of “progress” was to turn the clock back to nineteenth century Marxism, etc.

But this time they schemed to buy the votes of the few people who are oppressed – and the many who imagine they are – with “free stuff.” Free money in the form of free no-payback student loans, free health care, free or subsidized solar energy, free maternity/paternity/no-ternity leave, free vacations, free “working” from home, free federal government where the bottom 50% pay only 3% of federal income taxes, and free parking. (OK, that last one is made up.)

It worked no better that time around. Turns out, the “free stuff” was not actually free. It produced a multitrillion-dollar deficit and 9% inflation.

They deflected from the deficit and the inflation by suggesting that their opponents are racist. But people didn’t like being called racist any more than they liked the deficit, the inflation, the pointed guns, the confiscatory taxes, and the 100 million murders.

So, they lost another election. Big time.

Now they’re out of power. No White House, a minority in Congress and state legislatures and governorships, and they’re outnumbered 6-3 on the Supreme Court.

You might think they’d pause and reflect. Marxism/communism/socialism/liberalism/progressivism/free-stuff-that-ain’t-free might not be such a hot recipe for winning elections. Maybe they need a new idea or two?

Nah. Let’s just rebrand the free stuff, they say. Call it “abundance.” It’ll take people years to recognize that there’s no such thing as an abundant lunch any more than there’s such a thing as a free one.

Even then, they can be told that the abundant lunches provided for people who vote “correctly” are paid for by a tax on people who don’t. In other words, there may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there’s such a thing as lunch paid for by other people, and that’s almost as good. In fact, it’s better – because you get to punish the other guy for being more successful than you.

If that doesn’t work, they still have the race card. Maybe.

The fix is in to repeal Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights

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Back in 1992, the citizens of Colorado passed an amendment to the state constitution to limit tax increases. They called it the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

TABOR did not eliminate taxes, nor did it prohibit tax increases. Instead, it merely limited tax increases to the rate of inflation plus the population growth of the state.

Even those limits can be exceeded by a mere majority of the voters of the jurisdiction seeking to exceed it. If the voters of Colorado want to raise the state income tax rate, for example, they can do so with a simple majority vote in the next election. Likewise, if the citizens of a municipality want to raise the city sales tax, they can do so by a simple majority vote in the next election.

The people of Colorado love TABOR. That’s true even now, when Colorado is a solid blue state with a Democrat governor, a Democrat majority in the state legislature, an all-Democrat state Supreme Court, and a population that voted for Kamala Harris by an 11-point margin.

But the Democrat establishment hates TABOR, and it’s not just because it has the dreaded “Bill of Rights” phrase in its name. They hate it because it accomplishes its objective – it limits tax increases that are not approved by the citizens being taxed. Democrats want taxes to go up far faster than inflation and population growth, and they want it to happen without the OK of the voters.

Democrats have tried to repeal TABOR, have tried to challenge TABOR in court, and have tried various work-arounds, all unsuccessfully.

But Democrats might succeed with their latest challenge. The Democrat-controlled legislature is passing a resolution calling for the legislature as an entity to sue the state for a court declaration that TABOR is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The purported violation is that TABOR runs afoul of the Constitutional mandate that states be run by a “republican” form of government. That’s “republican” with a small “r.”

A “republican” form of government is one where the people elect representatives to pass laws, as distinguished from a direct “democracy” where the people themselves pass the laws. The Democrats contend that a system where people have the right to approve or disapprove tax increases by direct vote, is not a “republican” government, and therefore is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Note the irony. The Democrats are suing on the grounds that the Constitution prohibits a democratic form of government and mandates instead a republican one.

Whatever the semantics, the Democrats have a lousy argument. But the fix is in.

You see, the plaintiff in this lawsuit will be the state legislature which, as mentioned, is controlled by Democrats. Fair enough.

But the defendant in the lawsuit will be the State of Colorado – which is also controlled by Democrats.  In fact, the attorneys who will represent the state in a purported “defense” of TABOR are the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. That office is an elected position, and is currently held by a declared Democrat who ran as one.

In short, to get TABOR thrown out, the Democrats are bringing a collusive political lawsuit against other Democrats. One set of Democrats sues a second set of Democrats, and the second set pretends to defend the suit. Wink-wink.

It gets worse. The federal district court in Colorado where this case would be heard is comprised of mainly Democrat appointees. Five of the seven active judges were appointed by Joe Biden.

The final insult is that the taxpayers will pay the legal fees for both sides of this farcical suit. Because the plaintiff legislature is a state entity, the state will pay for its lawyers. Because the defendant state is also obviously a state entity, the state will also pay for its lawyers. Although the Colorado Attorney General’s Office which will pretend to “defend” the lawsuit may not do so vigorously, it will certainly run up a healthy legal bill.

Last time this happened, the state spent over half a million dollars on lawyers, just for representing one side of the case. This time, the state will pay for the lawyers on both sides, and lawyer rates are higher now.

Welcome to Cali-rado.

The tariffs are a needed blow to the “progressive” tax system

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Democrats think Americans pay too little in taxes. More specifically, they think “rich” Americans fail to pay their “fair share.”

They play fast and loose with those terms “rich” and “fair share.” Their unstated definition of “rich” is people who make more than the Democrat hurling the allegation. And they never do define “fair share.” It’s always just more, more, more on the rich, rich, rich.

Never mind that the top 1% of earners pay 40% of federal income taxes, the top 5% pay 61%, and the bottom 50% pay only 3%.

There’s another kind of tax in the news this week. President Trump announced tariffs on imported goods. The tariffs vary by country and by goods, but the broadest one is 10%. Some things are exempt from the new tariffs, and some things are subject to a higher one.

Democrats argue that these tariffs are, in effect, a sales tax on American consumers. The argument is that foreign manufacturers importing their wares into America will simply pass the tariff cost on to American consumers in the form of higher prices.

That’s approximately true but not entirely, for several reasons. For one, the foreign manufacturers will probably absorb some of the tariffs themselves by taking it out of their profit margins. To the extent that happens, the tariff is a tax alright, but it’s a tax levied on foreigners.

I like the idea of foreigners paying some of Americans’ taxes.

For another thing, Americans will probably shift their buying habits somewhat away from foreign goods once tariffs make them more expensive. It’s hard to predict how much of that will happen.

For simplicity, let’s assume what the Democrats and their media allies have assumed – the worst. Let’s assume that the quantity of imports does not decline, that this 10% winds up getting levied on all of them, and that the whole 10% gets passed on to American consumers.

What would that add up to in dollars?

America imports about $4 trillion worth of goods annually.  Therefore, under those assumptions, a 10% import tariff would cost Americans about $400 billion in higher prices.

The Democrats would have you believe that this $400 billion goes up in smoke. It does not. Like any other tax, it goes to the U.S. Treasury.

Even Democrats know this. (Well, maybe AOC doesn’t.) But they nonetheless rail against this particular tax, while supporting all other taxes.

I suspect that their real opposition is not to the tax, but to the taxer. The Democrat’s mantra is Orange Man Bad, and so everything he says and does is bad, even when he proposes something they usually love – a tax increase.

Now here’s an interesting connection. In Trump’s first administration eight years ago, the Republicans passed sweeping tax cuts. Tax cuts benefit the people who pay real taxes. Duh.

As pointed out above, the people who pay real taxes are largely the people who make real money. Double duh.

And so, the Trump tax cuts benefited real people who make real money and therefore pay real taxes. They didn’t much benefit people who don’t make money and therefore don’t pay taxes. Triple duh (and let’s get out the tiny violin).

Those Trump tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year. If that happens, the result will be a tax increase amounting to about $400 billion/year.

If that number sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same number mentioned above in connection with the tax revenue that will be realized by the new tariffs.

That’s right, the tariffs will approximately pay for extending the tax cuts. A coincidence? I think not.

There’s another twist. The people who will benefit from extending the tax cuts are not the same people who will pay the tariffs that offset the cost of them. The tariffs will be paid by everyone buying imported goods – people who buy Japanese cars, Korean electronics and South American vegetables. In short, they’ll be paid by pretty much everybody.

But extending the tax cuts will benefit people in proportion to how much they pay in taxes. The people who pay a lot of tax will get a lot of benefit. As pointed out, those are people who are wealthy.

An apt slogan might be, “To each according to what was taken from each.” Apologies to Karl Marx.

The end result is to chip away, a bit, at the progressiveness of the tax system – the system where wealthy people not only pay more because they make more, but also pay at a higher percentage.

That progressive tax system is how we got into an arrangement where the bottom 50% pay only 3% of federal income taxes while the top 1% pay 40%.

You may like this outcome, or not, depending on where you fall on the income spectrum.

But as a matter of social policy, it’s clear that our current progressive tax system leaves the bottom 50% as non-stake holders. Those non-stake holders naturally push for higher taxes because they know they themselves won’t have to pay them. They get to free load.

Democrats have pandered to those free loaders for a long time. That’s been successful for the Democrats, but destructive to the nation.