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« on: January 28, 2016, 06:58:37 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 1-27-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest
Jan. 27, 2016
THE FOUNDATION
“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.” —John Marshall, 1819
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
The More Voters See of Clinton, the More They Don’t Like1
According to the most recent Fox News poll2, Hillary Clinton is bleeding followers nationally. A month ago, she was riding a wave of 56% support among Democrats. Sanders had a 34% following and 4% of the respondents didn’t know who they would support. In the poll conducted Jan. 18-21, Clinton’s support dropped to 49%, Sanders is up to 37% and 10% of Democrats don’t know who they should support in the rapidly approaching primaries.
One of the factors driving uncertainty in the Democrat Party is that her campaign might suffer a sudden death if Clinton is prosecuted by the FBI for mishandling classified information — more bad news3 dropping this week. The other is that Clinton’s policies lack the pop that Sanders' have. For instance, Sanders said he wants to hike taxes so that the government confiscates another $20 trillion4 over 10 years. Clinton’s tax plan proposes raising taxes by $498 billion over that same period — comparatively weak sauce for “progressives” wanting to stick it to the “rich.”
According to an analysis5 by the Tax Foundation, Clinton’s tax proposal would shrink U.S. GDP by 1%. Furthermore, as Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, said6, “Hillary Clinton’s tax hike plan is an absolute disaster. Not only do Clinton’s tax increases fail to pay for her $1.2 trillion spending spree, they will slow economic growth, drive down wages, and kill the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of full-time jobs.” And to think that the economic damage caused by Clinton’s tax hikes will be nothing to what Sanders might unleash on the economy.
CBO Lowers ObamaCare Enrollment Prediction7
Both the Obama administration and the “nonpartisan” Congressional Budget Office predicts a lackluster number of Americans signing up for health care through the federal exchange. In October, the administration estimated8 there would be 10 million signups in 2016, a modest increase from 2015. The CBO this week, however, revised down its prediction for the number of people getting their health care through Barack Obama’s system. Last year, the CBO estimated 20 million Americans would use ObamaCare in 2016, but now they say it’ll be just 13 million. Remember: The actual numbers of signups have come in well below past projections. Still, the Obama administration has just enough wiggle room to call the downgraded numbers a “success.”
But as the editorial board for The Wall Steet Journal pointed out9, “The truth is that liberals can either adapt to the same economic reality that businesses confront or they can keep their regulations in the name of fairness and social justice. If they continue to do the latter, they may find the system is so fair that no one can afford to participate.” The economic winners in the years after ObamaCare was implemented were the large insurance companies10. But as WSJ reports, the profit margin for UnitedHealth Group has shrunk to 3.7% from 4.3%. While all other sectors of its business have made money, the health care exchange has cost the company money, thanks to the rules the Obama administration established. As a result, UnitedHealth Group is threatening to leave the ObamaCare exchange, which would be a clear sign the whole system is not working.
Wages Lead to Trouble in Walmart-Land11
Walmart has announced that it’s closing 154 stores, most of them the company’s Express stores operating in small communities. After moving into rural communities, and often choking out independent small businesses, Walmart is tweaking its business model12. The reason? The rising cost of wages has overtaken the profit margins of those stores. On one hand, Walmart raised wages to keep workers, but it also announced the move in response to political pressure to raise the minimum wage. $15 an hour, anyone? The company also backed out13 of establishing stores in the District of Columbia, making the city’s liberal politicians “blood mad.” After all, the stores would have created jobs in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, while providing options for residents to buy groceries and goods. This led the editors at Investor’s Business Daily to write14, “Sorry, but forcing employers of unskilled, largely untrained labor to pay higher prices for their labor is a recipe for automation, layoffs and no job creation. It punishes the poor, unskilled and uneducated most of all. The leftist demagogues who push this nonsense should be ashamed.” And liberal politicians wonder where the jobs have gone.
FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Strange Bedfellows Lead to the Iowa Caucus15
By Louis DeBroux
With the Iowa caucuses less than a week away, the Republican race is the strangest nomination process in memory. After the flame-out of both establishment favorites and conservatives with experience, the race is quickly coming down to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, though Marco Rubio may still have an outside shot. How did we get here?
Cruz is loathed by the GOP establishment as a “whack job”16 because of his unbending allegiance to conservative principles, and for calling out the GOP leadership and establishment for their failures to govern according to the promises on which they campaigned.
Trump is the circus sideshow, a lifelong liberal Democrat with New York values17, a reality TV star and casino mogul supposedly without a chance of winning the more conservative Southern states — an absolute must for any Republican. He’s the narcissist who can’t stand to be out of the limelight, and he’ll insult anybody and everybody to get attention. He’s proclaimed he won’t participate in Thursday night’s debate moderated by Fox News, all because he’s seemingly afraid of Megyn Kelly, whom he’s already grossly insulted. Instead, he claims, he’ll host an event to raise money for veterans. We’ll believe it when we don’t seem him on stage, but has there ever been a politician with thinner skin?
But a funny thing happened along the way. Cruz quietly built up an impressive campaign war chest that made him a force to be reckoned with, and his principled conservative record and message, plus his refusal to attack Trump, led to a steady rise in the polls. Trump has defied all political wisdom and held a perpetual lead in the polls based almost entirely on his unapologetically un-PC rhetoric and his brash (if inconsistent) populism on illegal immigration, combating Islamic terrorism, and the economy. Angry voters consider him the best vehicle to express their outrage.
Cruz took the lead in Iowa about a month ago, and he immediately became the target of the GOP establishment18 — to whom he has been a huge thorn in the side. The establishment clearly prefers a “dealmaker” like Trump. That began to take its toll, and was compounded when the Trump/Cruz détente ended shortly before the last debate. Trump concern trolled about Cruz’s eligibility19 and began calling him a “nasty” person who can’t get along with anyone in DC. We thought that was a virtue to Trump supporters, but apparently not. Because out comes Trump, boasting that he can get along not only with the GOP establishment, but with Democrats like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer20.
It’s a testament to just how much blinding hatred there is among the GOP base for the party’s leadership that Trump — who is seen by the vast majority of his supporters as a stick in the eye to the GOP establishment — is the frontrunner. He is the establishment’s creation. Trump is the byproduct of a base that had to watch government grow under George W. Bush, grow even more under Obama, and see two historic wave elections in the last two mid-terms wasted when Republican majorities in the House and Senate caved again and again to the demands of Obama and the Democrats. Trump is seen by his supporters as a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners candidate who will do whatever it takes to win. |
