Of Democrats and (willful) ignorance.

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Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 10/16/15

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From the Democratic candidates debate the other night the word that comes to mind is, “oblivious.” All of them – frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders especially so – are in a headlong rush to the left, oblivious to the fact that the majority of Americans are, on a number of key issues, moving to the right.

One such issue is government. According to any number of public opinion polls, one of the top concerns voiced by voters is the size and scope of government. The majority of Americans now believe that government has gotten too big and is trying to do too much.

Yet, the candidates stood on the debate stage in Las Vegas and did little other than promise more government – from universal health care to activism on “climate change” to free college for everyone.

What no debate moderator ever asks of Democrats – indeed what too few Republicans ever ask of Democrats – is this: How have the big government programs of the past half century worked in actual practice?

A truthful answer, if you could get one, is ‘not so well.’

The redistributionist, big government programs that began taking root in the 1960s have done very little to help the poor or expand opportunity while doing a great deal to damage the fiscal health of the country.

Examples abound.

  • We have spent more than $17 trillion since 1965 on anti-poverty programs and yet the poverty rate remains essentially unchanged from when those programs were launched.
  • We have twisted the marketplace for health care into a grotesque and unrecognizable shape in the name of making health care more affordable and yet health care is more unaffordable for more Americans than ever before.
  • We as a nation spend more per pupil on education than every country in the world save for Switzerland and yet the academic performance of American students is among the worst in the developed world.

All of this big government spending has done little to make the lives of ordinary Americans better while doing much to cloud the future for our kids and grandkids.

Yet Hillary and Bernie prattle on.

What the country needs desperately is a robustly growing economy. However nothing the Dems said on that stage in Las Vegas will bring one about.

Democrats and their media enablers are remarkably oblivious to the fact that the states and cities that most enthusiastically embrace Democratic policies are always the ones with the weakest economies, the greatest financial distress and the largest out-migration of wealth, talent and capital. (Just ask the mayor of Torrance, California why he lost Toyota’s USA headquarters to Plano.)

Since the 1960s, none of the pet policies of those aging 1960s children that we saw on the Democratic debate stage has worked. From welfare to education to health care to economic policy. None of them.

And yet, Hillary and Bernie and the rest remain truly (or willingly) oblivious as they continue in their race to get to the left of one another.

Lord help us if one of them wins.

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Paul Gleiser

Paul L. Gleiser is president of ATW Media, LLC, licensee of radio stations KTBB 97.5 FM/AM600, 92.1 The TEAM FM in Tyler-Longview, Texas.

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4 Responses

  1. Michael Gauthier says:

    This year our federal politicians have spent nearly half a trillion more than they took in. Democrats spend on every conceivable program and the republicans continually promise to stop them but always fail. At the same time both parties are content to divide us on spending, race, religion, gay marriage, equal pay, taxation, healthcare, minimum wage, guns, abortion, immigration, welfare, energy, the environment, education, college tuition and many other issues. It doesn’t matter what either side says about a balanced budget, today’s report and history proves overspending has continued unabated year after year for decades.

    Many of the issues mentioned above contribute to overspending but it is only the fact that they continually overspend that is the most urgent and dangerous problem. This financial recklessness is not sustainable. At worse, it can result in the financial collapse of the country and at best it will impoverish generations to come.

    Most people will vote for the candidate or party they believe will do the most good for themselves or their family. This divided vote results in a divided voter message. Nothing will get the attention of politicians like people voting for a common purpose. In the upcoming elections, I hope we can put aside all special interests at least for a while and vote for people who will take action to balance the budget.

    “When there is food, there are many problems; when there is no food, there is only one problem.” — Chinese proverb.

    http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/3248723000000-federal-taxes-set-record-fy-2015-21833-worker-feds-0

  2. Jena Smith says:

    I believe that being a liberal is a form of mental illness.

  3. Linda E Montrose says:

    The only thing that comes to mind is the definition of INSANITY…Doing the same thing over and over and over but expecting a different outcome each time, The left is insane because they do and promise the same things over and over and over, expecting a different outcome, yet it always comes out the same way…WE always end up with the short end of the stick!!! When are people going to wake up to the fact that the left has NO ONE’S interest but their OWN when they make promises they KNOW they can not keep! Yet people keep electing these insane people to office over and over and over! Does it mean that insanity is catching???

  4. Christopher J Rankin says:

    At some point government becomes too big to actually manage itself…the day to day becomes chaos. The Constitution details exactly what the federal government is responsible for. Everything else is left to the states where it is much more likely to be properly managed. What is so hard to understand about that? So why big government? Vote buying of course.

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