Why Changing Demographics Mean More Democrats

They always shoot the messenger. Even when he’s being optimistic.

And Mitt Romney was optimistic when he said only 47 percent of the potential electorate wouldn’t vote for him because they were dependent on the government. The actual Census Bureau figures are much worse.

The bureau reports 49.2 percent of your fellow citizens received some type of benefit from one or more government programs. A more accurate term would be ‘residents’ since when bureaucrats display their compassion by distributing your money, a lack of documentation is seldom an obstacle. These particular recipients are not conservative, small government voters. They constitute a large portion of the Democrat base.

People in the US that receive means–tested government benefits actually outnumber the people who worked fulltime in 2011. In the fourth quarter of 2011, 108,592,000 individuals were on the receiving end of federal goodies compared with only 101,760,000 working fulltime.

This is a catastrophic situation for supporters of conservative, small government and it threatens to undermine the nation’s social fabric. Possibly you feel sorry for these unfortunates, at least the ones that don’t loot Walmart when the food stamp verification system crashes. But they don’t return the favor.

Our current situation is the equivalent of enjoying a business dinner at a popular restaurant. At the conclusion of the meal other diners, waiters, valet parkers, kitchen staff and the hostess look at the remnants of your prime rib repast and vote to have you pay for everyone eating dinner that evening and add a 25 percent tip to the bill.

(I know some of you parents are thinking, “Hey! That’s exactly what happened to me when my daughter got married!” But these are strangers sucking you dry, not relatives.)

Or you go to the doctor’s office and while you sit in the waiting room, the other patients notice your elegant topcoat and they vote to have you foot the bill for everyone’s treatment that day.

Farfetched? Unrealistic? A similar scenario takes place every Election Day when people who are essentially wards of the state vote for politicians who tell you to foot the bill for the ward’s benefits. Please don’t bore me with “but these people pay taxes, too.” Paying sales tax with taxpayer’s money is hardly “paying taxes.” It’s closer to an inefficient form of recycling.

Although these recipients are the vast bulk of the Democrat base, they are not alone. The big government base (BGB) also includes federal, state and local government employees; government contractors, grant recipients and the non–profit sector.

Here’s how the numbers break out:

20,269,000 total government workers

13,700,000 non–profit workers

4,400,000 government contractors

100,000,000 enrolled in one of 80 different and overlapping “means–tested” welfare programs                            (this figure does not include Social Security or Medicare recipients)

         TOTAL BGB: 138,369,000 individuals

In fact the federal government alone employs more people than the top ten private sector employers combined! Federal: 18,000,000 (not counting military) Vs. 5,677,046 for General Electric, Hewlett–Packard, Home Depot, Kroger, Target, UPS, IBM, McDonald’s, Yum! Brands and Walmart.

Factor in another 9,000,000 or so formerly illegal voters after “immigration reform” and we are well on our way to Argentina.

This goes a long way toward explaining Obama’s re–election.

Of course not all the 100,000,000 welfare recipients are voting age and not all government workers and contractors pull the Democrat lever. I know of patriotic government employees and contractors that put the good of the country before their own economic interests and I say God bless them.

Unfortunately, those stalwart individuals are more than offset by working Americans under the delusion Democrats favor the middle class. And don’t forget the workforce also includes moles that work for MSNBC and other propaganda arms of the BGB, along with private university professors and other assorted leftists.

This is why it doesn’t matter that the Obamacare website cost $500 million in hard–earned tax dollars and Chinese renminbi. That’s more than Facebook spent in six full years according to reporter Andrew Couts.

But aside from the embarrassment, no one in the BGB cares. Their criteria for success is not does the website work, is the program efficient or are we using tax dollars wisely. The BGB measure of success is: Did I get my check and did it cash?

Voters living on Uncle Sam’s dime are not going to be voting to downsize government. BGB economics are based on the existence of a money tree, possibly growing in China.

The Chinese and our other creditors would be the greatest gift to conservatives since Ronald Reagan if they simply refused to lend the Uncle Sam any more money. Limiting federal borrowing will limit the size of the federal government. Even our rapacious leftists couldn’t tax their way out of that hole.

Unless the size of the government shrinks — and that includes benefits — there is no hope for avoiding soft socialism in our future. And — judging by the number of government agencies that have their own SWAT teams — maybe not so soft at that.

There are principled conservatives in office who refuse to vote to increase spending without a corresponding cut to balance the total. That’s fine, but it’s not enough. They must also refuse to add to the number of government employees or contractors without a corresponding reduction in force in another part of government.

Otherwise potential death spirals won’t be limited to Obamacare.

How Advice from Three Frenchmen Could Have Won the Shutdown Battle

Don’t let the floppy hats fool you. The Three Musketeers could have helped during the Shutdown fight.

Speaker John Boehner is the Adm. Karl Dönitz of Republican politics. Hemmed in on one side by the pounding batteries of the Mainstream Media and on the other by a mob of howling leftists eager to send him to a self–criticism session on MSNBC — Boehner desperately tries to negotiate a surrender to Supreme Commander Obama that will leave him with a shred of dignity and continued access to the Congressional tanning bed.

What really sticks in Boehner’s craw is the realization he’s going to be stuck with the blame for the shutdown defeat! He warned the caucus what would happen if they followed a strategy designed by crazy people. But no, they were intoxicated by the crowds at the rallies and stem–winders on the Senate floor. Victory was at hand!

Yet now the loonies are out of the picture and here Boehner sits in the ruins of the Shutdown Bunker wondering if Harry Reid will allow him to smoke at the signing ceremony.

That’s what Boehner gets for trying to fight a two–front war. The struggle over Obamacare should have been either the continuing resolution shutdown or the debt ceiling. Not a bizarre push–me­—pull–you that blurred the two issues and made the public think the country hitched a ride with Thelma & Louise.

Giving credit where credit is due, Boehner started out well. The House GOP passed the initial continuing resolution with everything funded but Obamacare and sent the bill to the Senate where is disappeared like it was term limits legislation. So the government was at impasse.

It’s possible that if Boehner had donned a turban and started enriching uranium, Obama would have agreed to negotiate with him, but there wasn’t enough time to install the necessary number of centrifuges in the Rayburn office building.

During past shutdowns our leaders attempted to limit the inconvenience. This was a policy the Obama Administration could not afford to follow, as I pointed out last week, because after losing the sequester a painless shutdown would help make the case for even smaller government.

That’s why the Spite House made sure this shutdown hurt as many civilian bystanders as possible. Collateral damage was the order of the day. In total disregard of negative publicity Obama used his human drones in the Park Police to close the WWII monument, national parks, private businesses, roads, athletic fields and anything else they could get away with.

It drove Obama’s approval rating down to Jimmy Carter Land at 37 percent, which is an all time low for the light bringer. Yet he held firm, ironically enough employing the Nixon “madman” strategy. As Nixon once said, “I call it the Madman Theory… I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, “for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button.”

The only difference is Obama — totally lacking a foreign policy — uses the Madman theory to intimidate his Republican domestic opposition. It’s remarkable that a fellow who wears mom jeans and would probably have trouble bench-pressing a juice box, is so eager to roll the dice when other’s futures are at stake.

So as the nation’s busy borrowers at the Treasury threatened to crash into an unyielding debt ceiling, Boehner was genuinely worried that Madman Barack might actually cause the country to default, if it meant he would win the confrontation.

So Boehner blinked and surrendered.

Here is where the Frenchmen could have provided the margin of victory.

If only Boehner had employed the Three Musketeer Strategy the county and the GOP would have won in the long run. The Three Musketeer’s motto was: One for All & All for One.

Instead of allowing craven porkmeister Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–I’m not for sale, but I rent cheap) to seize the agenda and pass a combination government funding and debt ceiling agreement, Boehner should have had the House pass a bill that did that AND required everyone, every company and every member of Congress and their staff to submit to Obamacare this year without any waivers.

One for All & All for One; with the “All” in this instance being Obamacare. That way the fight is still about Obama’s signature bill, the one he shut down the government to save, but in a brilliant bit of political ju–jitsu his bill is turned against him.

Making the entire country suffer under the full Obamacare this year would have resulted in a disaster at the polls for Democrats in 2014. What’s more, the administration knows it, which is why it exempted employers from the mandate until AFTER the election.

Even better the Three Musketeer bill has the virtue of simplicity: all the money and all the Obamacare. With only two elements the MSM could not bury coverage of the Obamacare waiver removal, as it buried Obama’s plunging poll ratings. (Most poll stories trumpeted declining GOP ratings in the headlines and only mentioned the new low for Obama as a passing aside.)

A Three Musketeers bill would have been a poison pill for the administration. Signing it means a disaster at the polls next year. Not signing it and defaulting because Republicans were too bi–partisan and Obama didn’t want his signature bill to take effect for everyone would be a PR disaster even the MSM could not ignore. And Democrats would still face a wipeout in 2014. All victory would have required was for Boehner to hold fast regardless of Obama’s choice.

If the signature bill of the president is so good for the country, as the MSM claims, then Republicans should have done their best to make sure the nation gets it, as H. L. Mencken used to say, “good and hard.” After all, what’s wrong with using “settled law” to unsettle the populace?

Government Has Met the Enemy & It Is Us

Taxpayers sent to back of the bus as feds barricade MLK monument.

Americans are learning to their great surprise that Smoky the Bear has big, sharp teeth.

Formerly warm and cuddly branches of government — the Park Service, Forest Service and other granola–based management teams — have suddenly turned on innocent taxpayers who only wanted to scratch behind their ears.

You’re no doubt familiar with the WWII veterans who removed barriers the US Park Police erected to block the formerly law enforcement–free WWII Monument on the Mall. (Best sign of the Shutdown: “Normandy was closed when we got there, too.”) But that’s only one of many incidents.

The Washington Post interviewed a visitor from San Antonio who “expressed indignation at the petty ways that officials prevented people from enjoying national landmarks.” Her family had no problem looking at the cemetery itself since putting barriers in front of each tombstone was too much for even Smokey Bear. But they were unable to peek inside Arlington House because “they put black plastic in the windows so we couldn’t look in.”

If the reporter could have found a spokesperson not literally manning the barricades, I’m sure the response would have been the plastic was simply part of the annual preparations for the ‘Old Virginny Haunted House of Slavery’ that takes place in the mansion every October.

(SEE ‘Marse’ Robert with blood on his hands! GASP as Stonewall Jackson sleeps during Christian services, dreaming of denying women the right to fight on the front line! SCREAM as Virginia terrorist Col. John Mosby provides inspiration for modern TEA party insurgents while he works for a TOTAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN!)

Any intimation that plastic–covered windows are a Glad bag thumb in the eye to conservatives is simply more delusional ranting from a party on Cruz control.

As the shutdown continues it’s obvious there is an air of desperation surrounding this whole petty, vindictive exercise on the part of the Obama Administration. The illegality, over reaction and simply hateful response of “public servants” to the actual public is so obvious even the media can no longer ignore it.

The question is why the federal tantrum? The answer is the Spite House (thank you Michelle Malkin) can’t afford to lose this fight like they did the sequester. Instead of being “the end of life as we knew it,” the sequester has become an accepted fact of life. Sequester was designed to be so destructive to defense that responsible Republicans would rescue the Pentagon, even if it meant more deficit spending on social programs.

The calculation failed. Setting a spending cut precedent was so important Republicans decided the 2,666 miles separating China from the USA would have to defend the country for now. In the event of a Chinese invasion, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–LaRaza) would remove any hostile intent by putting them on the fast track to citizenship.

Budget talks now start with the sequester cuts as the baseline, and not an extraordinary one–time nick to the budget. Obamacrats can’t risk the public leaning they can function without 100 percent of the federal government.

Which is why duplicitous, politically motivated “public servants” are working hand–in–hand with the White House to provide the maximum inconvenience with the least blame for the administration. A painless 5 percent sequester, followed by a 17 percent government shutdown that isn’t a disaster for someone might create a climate where rolling back the size of government becomes a reality.

Hence the no–knock shutdowns. The Washington Times found Bruce O’Connell, the owner of the Pisgah Inn located on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, fighting the arbitrary shutdown of his business. According to the story, “O’Connell said his workers are not federal employees, and his fire, police and rescue services all come from the county, so he isn’t drawing any federal funds.”

Uncle Sam’s only role before the shutdown was taking money from him in the form of fees. In the light of the nation’s budget situation, staying open would make money and possibly prevent that sequester–enabled Chinese invasion. Instead Obama spends money to prevent income after O’Connell refused to close. That act of defiance won him a visit from park rangers who were suddenly stationed in his driveway turning away paying customers.

Under the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of bureaucratic whim, if the Park Service thought it had the authority to close the inn it would have requested an injunction from a federal judge. O’Connell’s failure to close is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. There is no threat to public safety, only a threat to Big Government collectivists. Since time and the law were not on its side, the Obama administration used implied force to perform an arbitrary seizure.

Here in the Washington area, our rulers dispatched Park Police to close Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. Once again the facts don’t support federal action. Mount Vernon is owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the only investment the Park Service has is shared ownership of a parking lot.

The service could have posted a sign on their half of the lot warning drivers to park at their own risk and beware of paint chips stirred up by passing motorists. Instead the Park Service closed the entire facility, which is simply illegal, until the doughty Ladies Association fought back and reopened.

The feds tried the same shuffle with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, instructing him to close several parks. Gov. Walker not only refused to close any parks, he also ordered state officials to remove barricades the feds had installed to prevent taxpayers from using their own facilities.

(This act of courage could backfire, as federal memories are long. If Wisconsin some time in the future suffers a hurricane or the glaciers return I predict federal response will be very slow.)

Walker has the advantage of controlling his own law enforcement resources and in a pinch, the Wisconsin National Guard. So he can prevent illegal attempts at seizures by having his people intimidate their people.

Unfortunately, the rest of us don’t have that option when “public servants” stop serving the will of the people and start imposing their will on the people.