Posted on February
15, 2021
Blue Meanies
Dems deliberately inflict economic harm
by
Daniel
Clark
As we can tell from their bumper stickers, there's
nothing that Democrats hate worse than mean people. That's why their political arguments always
turn personal. Their opponents can never
just be wrong on policy, but must instead be denounced as morally inferior
beings. Whenever there's a budget
impasse, we can always count on Democrats to declare their Republican foes to
be "mean-spirited," just for wanting to spend slightly less of the taxpayers'
money than they do.
If we were to take them at their word, we would
conclude that Democrats are so viscerally repulsed by meanness that they
themselves could never possibly be mean to others, at least not to those 70
percent of us who have managed to escape the womb. Let's see if that's true.
On
the very first day of his presidency, Joe Biden signed an executive order
halting construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. With a stroke of the pen, he put about a
thousand people out of work and prevented the employment of as many of ten
thousand others, with no more consideration than he gave to selecting a running
mate. In fact, this order was just one
clause in a more extensive order focusing on "renewable energy." The displaced workers, he reasons, can simply
get "good" jobs in the new "green economy."
Because of the intractable limitations of wind and
solar power, most of these "good" jobs are never going to materialize. Even if Biden believes they will, he knows for
sure that they don't exist right now. To
suggest that the victims of his order can simply transition from oil to solar
panels shows about as much genuine concern for their wellbeing as if he were
telling them all to take up interpretive dance and apply for grants from the
NEA.
Such cavalier destruction of people's livelihoods is
nothing new for Biden and his party.
When he was vice president, he glibly suggested that the coal miners who
had been pink-slipped by the Obama administration go into the field of computer
programming. "Anybody who can throw coal
into a furnace can learn how to program," he said, without having given a
moment's thought to what it takes to do either job.
As much as they congratulate themselves for their
empathy, Democrats never look at things from the point of view of those
affected by their economic policies.
When President Bill "I feel your pain" Clinton held a 1994 town hall
event to promote Hillary's health care plan, Herman Cain, then CEO of Godfather's
Pizza, asked how he was expected to afford the cost of compliance. Without hesitation, Clinton told him to raise
the price of his pizza. Extrapolated
across the whole economy, this would have meant a dramatic increase in the cost
of living, but that was of no concern to the man who a year earlier had signed
the largest tax increase in history.
When Barack Obama was president, he bragged that he
would bankrupt the coal industry, which was mean enough in itself before he
acknowledged the impact it would have on consumers. "Under my plan of a cap and trade system,
electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."
Excuse us if we don't find that spiffy, to borrow one of his favorite
words.
Democrats seldom have any compunction about taking
more of our money, but their ideas for punitive taxation contain an element of
sadism. Don't want people consuming as
much red meat, sugary drinks or fatty foods?
Make it more economically painful for them to do so. Especially vicious are their ever-increasing
taxes on cigarettes. In 1996, they
savaged Bob Dole for his contention that not all cigarette smokers are
addicted. Since they take the opposite
position, that means they are exploiting people's addictions in order to raise
revenue. Their exorbitant taxes, then,
are not meant to change behavior, but only to punish people over something they
cannot control.
Not only have Democrat governors imposed draconian
COVID lockdown measures, but they've obviously relished doing so. They've treated honest, struggling business
owners as if they were ... well, not common criminals, because Democrats like those. Mounting evidence of the inefficacy of the
lockdowns has done nothing to mitigate their zeal in persecuting those citizens
who try to stand up to their lawless gubernatorial proclamations.
So much of the Democratic Party agenda consists of
inflicting economic harm, and even devastation, on the very people they pretend
to serve. Still, it's not as if they do
anything really mean, like using factually correct pronouns, or anything.
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