“The whole political vision of the left, including socialism and communism, has failed by virtually every empirical test, in countries all around the world. But this has only led leftist intellectuals to evade and denigrate empirical evidence.”
– Thomas Sowell
“When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failures or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.”
– Thomas Sowell
Hey Taxpayers: It’s that time of the year, are you paying attention?!?
The progressive liberal Democrats who control Congress are heaping TRILLIONS of dollars’ worth of debt on your children and grandchildren. You can’t just pretend it’s not happening.
The Democrats are treating spending like a credit card they never plan on paying back…making minimal payments and pushing the principal off to the next generations. Ignorance is not bliss.
Free Stuff: When Biden and the Democrats keep offering more and more “free stuff”, remember, there is no such thing as free. They are borrowing more money, pushing interest rates up, causing inflation, ballooning the deficit and pushing unsustainable debt service/payments on our children and grandchildren for short term political gain.
Remember, government can NOT give anything to anyone without first TAKING it from someone else.
The Democrat’s electoral plan of robbing Peter to pay Paul will eventually fail…when government, like socialism, runs out of other people’s money.
Facebook Censors President Trump: I joined a group of conservative leaders calling out Facebook’s Orwellian censorship of President Trump. See our comments in the article below.
Facebook should avoid interpreting political free speech. Censorship is a dangerous slippery slope and exposes an unhealthy political bias against candidates some don’t like. If someone advocates violence and breaking the law, that’s not hard to determine. But the interpretive efforts that require subjective determinations is dangerous for a free society.
Liberal Democrats Theme Song: Sometimes a song says it all with a great little jingle.
–Saul Anuzis
Click Here for Past Commentary from Saul
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
In this week’s video rewind- Ron DeSantis gives bonuses to first responders, Saul Anuzis speaks out on Trump Facebook ban, and Biden’s Amtrak tale doesn’t add up!
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-florida-police-bonus-first-responders-1000
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-amtrak-story-fact-check-conductor-million-miles
Help Us Fight Corporate Tyranny!
We have launched “the Corporate Accountability Initiative” to send a message to public companies on Wall Street. We own your stock. We fund your companies. We have the power. Stop disregarding us, stop offending us, stop screwing us over! Or we’ll pull our money from your companies!
Join the Fight! Visit https://www.60plus.org/fightwithwayne/
What critical race theory is really about
By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals in the West had begun to acknowledge these failures. They recoiled at revelations of Soviet atrocities and came to realize that workers’ revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, which had large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living. Americans in particular had never developed a sense of class consciousness or class division. Most Americans believed in the American dream — the idea that they could transcend their origins through education, hard work and good citizenship.
But rather than abandon their political project, Marxist scholars in the West simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.
Fortunately, the early proponents of this revolutionary coalition in the US lost out in the 1960s to the civil rights movement, which sought instead the fulfillment of the American promise of freedom and equality under the law. Americans preferred the idea of improving their country to that of overthrowing it. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision, President Lyndon Johnson’s pursuit of the Great Society, and the restoration of law and order promised by President Richard Nixon in his 1968 campaign defined the post-1960s American political consensus.
But the radical left has proved resilient and enduring — which is where critical race theory comes in.
Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s and built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions over the past decade. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks and school curricula.
BLM may be doing more harm than good
Harmony among all shades of color is humanity’s shared dream. Sadly, the crusade against racial injustice has become little more than a perpetual-emotion machine, fueling the flames of conflict it purports to fight. Trendy Black Lives Matter (BLM) is only making matters worse for Black Americans by failing to address the root cause of their suffering. It’s not daggers of hate from the outside community, but ceaseless turmoil roiling the inner lives of children from broken families.
The proportion of births to unmarried non-Hispanic Black women in the U.S. reached 70 percent in 2019, according to a U.S. National Vital Statistics Report released March 23. The figures for unmarried Hispanic and non-Hispanic White mothers were 52 percent and 28 percent, respectively. Sadly, the United States has the world’s highest share of single-parent households in the world.
Children learn the natural boundaries on human behavior from their first authority figures, their parents. The word “no” is easiest on the ear when spoken with love. With a parent absent, basic behavior goes unlearned until dished out by a much less sympathetic authority figure, like a cop wearing a badge. It’s unsurprising, then, that so many Black youths instinctively believe police are to blame, rather than their own behavior, for their run-ins with the law.
BLM has become an indignation juggernaut, weaponizing the impulse to lash out. New research indicates that the growing national outrage over police shootings has had a dramatic effect on the use of lethal force by law enforcement. The response, though, may be the opposite of what Americans would expect.
Which U.S. Generation Wields the Most Political Power? Baby Boomer 57+ years old!
Measuring Influence in U.S. Politics, by Generation
Generations are a widely recognized and discussed concept, and it’s assumed people all understand what they refer to. But the true extent of each generation’s clout has remained undetermined—until now.
In our inaugural Generational Power Index (GPI) 2021, we examine the power and influence each generation currently holds on American society, and its potential to evolve in the future.
Political power by generation was one of three key categories we used to quantify the current landscape. Before we dive into the results, here’s how the Political Power category was calculated.
Measuring Generational Power
To begin with, here’s how we categorized each generation:
President Joe Sanders?!? The patent decision is the latest example of Biden’s arrogant, far-left governance.
The White House this week proposed to strip drug companies of their vaccine patents, an act hailed by adulators as “moral leadership.” It’s better seen as the encapsulation of the Biden presidency—a case study in fictional narratives, executive overreach, recklessness, and kowtowing to the left.
The biopharmaceutical industry in under a year accomplished a modern miracle—designing a breakthrough vaccine to counter Covid-19; engineering a ground-up production process; and climbing a logistical Everest. It was a triumph of innovation, investment and capitalism, a moment that deserves to be celebrated.
Instead, the Biden administration supports a proposal in the World Trade Organization that would “waive” the intellectual-property rights of the companies that accomplished this feat, giving away their technology to every drugmaker in the world. Put another way, Mr. Biden is freely handing American invention to China—the country that routinely steals it, and whose Wuhan lab might have been the source of the virus.
The move is in keeping with the administration’s refusal to acknowledge the history of the vaccine achievement. Team Biden continues its willful disregard of Operation Warp Speed, in part because it is too petty to give credit to any person, company or initiative connected to the Trump administration.
It has instead pushed the claim that the Biden administration alone deserves credit for the vaccine rollout. This rewriting of reality is becoming routine. The administration declares there is no “crisis” at the border, as illegal crossings surge. It says Georgia’s election-law update is “Jim Crow,” although the state provides more voting opportunities than others. It redefines entitlement spending as “infrastructure.” The press only encourages these fictions, making it easier for the administration to ignore biotech’s lead role in beating the pandemic and to hand over its work to the world.
Biden’s Spending Binge Is Costlier Than Advertised
President Biden’s first three domestic spending programs will give taxpayers a $5.7 trillion sticker shock, with advertised costs of $1.9 trillion for Covid-19 relief, at least $2 trillion for infrastructure, and $1.8 trillion for family benefits. Not seen are the hidden costs and burdens that will accompany the tax increases he proposes. When a private company invests in a new factory or warehouse, the costs are clear. The company has to pay for architects, materials and contractors who build the facilities. There are no hidden costs or excess burdens.
That’s not the case for the government. There are hidden costs and excess burdens associated with the imposition of taxes. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, must extract taxes from taxpayers, and the costs of operating the IRS are significant. Look no further than Mr. Biden’s proposal to increase IRS funding $80 billion to collect the taxes to fund his new big-government programs.
There are also burdens placed on taxpayers that go well beyond the visible tax payments they make. These include myriad compliance costs: record-keeping, studying tax laws, making calculations, filling out forms, grappling with enforcement actions, and so on.
These administrative and compliance costs are relatively easy to comprehend. A more difficult concept is the excess burden of additional taxes—the disincentives and distortions they impose on the economy. Without those taxes, the economy would generate more income and do it more efficiently.
Newt Gingrich: Beware Biden’s hidden tax increase
Every American is going to pay higher taxes due to the Biden administration’s policies.
Remember that inflation is a hidden tax. It is a powerful (and often unseen and unstoppable) way for a government to pay for its goods and services without raising visible taxes that make people angry.
Warren Buffett is widely regarded as the best long-term investor in America. He clearly has moved from concerns about unemployment to concerns about inflation.
“We are seeing substantial inflation,” Buffett said at the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. “We are raising prices. People are raising prices to us, and it’s being accepted.”
Buffett’s private sector experience is reinforced by former Secretary of the Treasury and Ph.D in economics Larry Summers, who warned during a forum that inflation indicators were “flashing red alarm” and that “all the signs are for inflation starting to break out.
“We were providing demand well in excess over the next couple of years of any plausible estimate of the economy’s potential to produce, and that meant substantial price increases,” Summers said.
Conservatives Condemn Facebook’s Indefinite Suspension of Trump: ‘Un-American,’ ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Obscene’ (Saul Quoted in the Article)
Conservative groups condemned Facebook Oversight Board’s decision Wednesday to continue to block former President Donald Trump’s Facebook page and Instagram account as “un-American” and an “obscene” abuse of power, pointing out that if it treated liberals like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) the same way, people would be outraged.
As CNSNews.com reported, the Oversight Board said “it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension” of the former president’s account.
The board called on Facebook to review its decision “to determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.” The review must take place “within six months of the date of this decision.”
The decision was panned by conservative groups:
How the Boycott-Georgia Movement Flopped
As usual, the movement’s hysterical leaders were the last to realize that they’d been shooting themselves in the foot.
The thing about boycotts is that they don’t work too well in a vacuum. If you start a parade and no one gets in line behind you, you aren’t a leader; you’re just a fool walking down the middle of the street twirling a baton.
The failed boycott-Georgia movement illustrates the limits of the Democratic Party’s tactic of attaching hysterical overreaction and claims of racism to virtually any Republican idea, even a routine package of voting reforms. The Democrats turned the volume up to eleven on the Georgia elections bill signed into law March 25, labeling it the second coming of Jim Crow even before it was signed. Joe Biden, in a “Hello, fellow kids” moment meant to prove he was hip to cutting-edge Democratic thinking, on March 31 asserted that this ordinary, dull piece of good-government legislation was actually worse than Jim Crow, and that most of the country was in the process of becoming something more awful than 1957 Mississippi. “This is Jim Crow on steroids, what they’re doing in Georgia and 40 other states,” Biden said on ESPN on March 31. He was unaware that New York and many other states already have on the books policies comparable to, or more restrictive than, the new Georgia law, such as bans on outside groups’ providing things of value to voters waiting in line at the polls.
The fanciful Jim Crow comparisons were meant to fire up Democratic activists and donors, but once you’ve unleashed such a heinous allegation, the allegation tends to take over. So Biden said he would “strongly support” MLB’s moving the All-Star Game out of Atlanta, and two days later, on Good Friday, MLB obliged.
Biden Rejects Permit for Annual POW-MIA Motorcycle Ride
Under President Joe Biden’s leadership, the Pentagon has rejected a permit for the annual Rolling to Remember motorcycle ride that is held in Washington, DC, each Memorial Day to honor POW/MIA veterans.
The event is organized by AMVETS, a veterans group, which submitted permit requests and petitions for the event to multiple federal agencies. According to a press release from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), “AMVETS received approval from the Department of Transportation, the Department of Interior, and multiple other state and local authorities.”
Originally, the Pentagon granted a permit to AMVETS for the event in March, however it was later rescinded without explanation.
“There are no options with as much space and convenient routes to the memorials, meaning it will be more difficult, disruptive, and expensive than if the Pentagon parking lots were available,” said Joe Chenelly, the national executive director of AMVETS.
“The administration included AMVETS in this new group as ‘a trusted voice in communities across the United States,’ but the Pentagon wouldn’t have a conversation with us to share their concerns and give us the chance to address them before deciding to refuse our application,” Chenelly added.
In past years, the Rolling to Remember motorcycle ride, formerly known as Rolling Thunder, had used the Pentagon parking lot as the pre-ride staging area to line up for the processional ride from the Department of Defense to the war memorials on the National Mall.
Kamala Harris has gone 40 days without a news conference since being tapped for border crisis role
Vice President Kamala Harris went 40 days without holding a news conference or visiting the U.S. border with Mexico after she was tapped by President Biden to tackle what is seen by many as her single biggest challenge.
Harris has been active with other tasks over the weekend. She announced that she will chair the National Space Council and also appeared in a video message throwing her support behind California Gov. Gavin Newsom who faces a recall election.
“I want to thank our friend and governor, Gavin Newsom, for his leadership,” she said. She continued, “I support him 100%.”
The White House has defended Harris and said that her job in dealing with the border surge is to make gains diplomatically with countries from the Northern Triangle.
Are Americans Becoming Sovietized?
What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system?
Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin’s lies and hypocrisies that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?
Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism. Ask yourself whether we are headed down this same road to perdition.
1. There was no escape from ideological indoctrination—anywhere. A job in the bureaucracy or a military assignment hinged not so much on merit, expertise, or past achievement. What mattered was loud enthusiasm for the Soviet system.
Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion. Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument…
G-7 Scolds China and Russia Over Threats, Bullying, Rights Abuses
The Group of Seven scolded both China and Russia on Wednesday, casting the Kremlin as malicious and Beijing as a bully, and expressed support for Taiwan and Ukraine.
Founded in 1975 as a forum for the West’s richest nations to discuss crises such as the OPEC oil embargo, the G-7 this week addressed what it perceives as the biggest current threats: China, Russia and the coronavirus pandemic.
G-7 foreign ministers, in a 12,400-word communique, said Russia was trying to undermine democracies and threatening Ukraine while the Chinese communist regime was guilty of human rights abuses and of using its economic clout to bully others.
There was, however, little concrete action mentioned in the communique that would unduly worry either Chinese leader Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The G-7 said it would bolster collective efforts to stop China’s “coercive economic policies” and to counter Russian disinformation—part of a move to present the West as a much broader alliance than just the core G-7 countries.
How the Senate’s Long-Term Equilibrium Could Shape Democratic Decisions on the Filibuster
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE
— A majority of states are now either solidly Republican or solidly Democratic on the presidential level, and the party a state prefers for president increasingly has a big edge in winning the state’s two Senate seats. Given these patterns, it’s possible to game out the basic contours of what the Senate “should” look like in the near future, barring some unexpected upheaval.
— Allocating Senate seats based on current presidential preferences produces an equilibrium of about 53 seats for the Republicans and 47 seats for the Democrats.
— This complicates the Democrats’ decision on whether to ditch the filibuster, because in a chamber where they may end up spending a lot of time in the minority in the future, ending the filibuster may destroy one of the few points of leverage the party would have.
