Wackadoodle politics …

Has America gone nuts? 

On one side of the political spectrum we have people who ignore reality.  On the other side we have people who … well, also ignore reality. 

Here’s reality:

We’re out of money. 

We are over $18 trillion in debt. The Chinese hold a huge part of that debt. And that $18 trillion doesn’t include our future Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid obligations, government pensions, bailing out big company pensions that go bust, or a whole range of other things. We have to borrow more money every day just to fund current operations.

We simply cannot afford to maintain the entitlements we have now, much less add more. There’s no extra money under the seat cushions to pay for free college tuition for everyone, write offs of student debt, to bail out speculators, to rescue poorly run companies or cities, or to fund pie-in-the-sky pork-barrel projects.

We’re broke. We need to cut expenses. Not increase them. 

We have to raise taxes on everyone. 

We’re in such desperate straits that we can’t keep the tax system we have.  Right now – through various credits, exemptions, and subsidies set up by both parties – about half the population pays no Federal taxes at all, and some people who pay no taxes get a refund on taxes they didn’t pay.

That’s no way to run a country. Hell, you couldn’t run a lemonade stand like that.  If half your customers paid nothing, and some got more money back than they paid,  you’d go under.   

Yet that’s our tax system in a nutshell. The only solution is to tax everyone at some rate and at the same time eliminate all the extraneous credits and exemptions. 

For example, there should be no mortgage interest deduction.  There should be no offset against your Federal taxes for the state and local taxes you pay. There should be no earned income tax credit, no dependent exemptions, no child-care credit, no credits for buying anything. 

End all the exemptions, credits and subsidies and you can lower the effective income tax rate overall to something more manageable and responsible, and then apply it to everyone. 

All the blathering about a “fair tax,” a “flat tax,” a VAT, a national sales tax or some other variant is just hot air unless it gets rid of all the other crap in the tax code and makes everyone pay taxes.

If anyone says, “well, of course we’ll exempt the first X thousands of household income” they aren’t serious about solving the problem.  If they claim they can raise revenues by taxing the rich more and leaving the rest of the tax structure in place, they are too stupid for any elected office. 

Everybody, and I mean everybody, has to pay taxes. Until every American has skin in the game and their own money on the line, they won’t care how much government spends and on what. 

The economy sucks. 

It’s a mile wide but only an inch deep. The oft-heralded unemployment figures hide a lot. Most of the job growth is in low-paying jobs.  Or government jobs that only increase government spending and increase the debt further. Better paying manufacturing jobs are moving to lower wage countries abroad; there’s absolutely nothing anyone can do about that.

The unemployment rate is going down not because more people have jobs but the exact opposite:  fewer people are looking for full-time jobs.  Some have simply given up and are now living on various forms of public assistance or entitlements while they wait for Social Security to kick in. Others have settled for part-time jobs.  In either case, they are technically no longer looking for full-time employment, and that’s what the unemployment rate counts.  It’s a mirage.   

Actual household income has declined dramatically in recent years. Less income means less consumer spending, and less consumer spending means the economy isn’t moving forward.  

Too many immigrants drive down wages.    

That’s why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is in favor of allowing more immigrants – illegal or legal – into this country. Big Democrat supporters, like Silicon Valley tycoons, want more loopholes in immigration laws to hire cheaper talent from abroad, which will reduce good-paying opportunities for U.S. citizens.

Access to cheaper labor is also why businesses – particularly agribusiness conglomerates – oppose E-Verify and enhanced penalties on companies that hire illegals – cheaper labor helps them boost profits. Forget about the handful of illegals working in restaurants; they are just the tip of the iceberg compared to the thousands upon thousands working for next to nothing in meatpacking and chicken processing operations, and the thousands of South Asians making good money working on H1Bs in technology and big pharma companies.

The old line is that you can’t get Americans to do these jobs, or that you can’t find Americans with the qualifications needed to do these jobs.

The truth is you can’t at the wages these companies are willing to pay. The whole support by businesses of open borders and lax immigration enforcement is about one thing:  profit.  

And the only reason Democrats want to open our borders is pure politics. They love it when Republicans rant about illegal immigrants and closing our borders.  That drives those immigrants and their families into the open arms of the Democrats. 

We need a national identity card with biometrics. 

Enough already about how this would be an invasion of privacy – you need a picture ID to board a plane, buy cigarettes or liquor, or to purchase Advil Cold & Sinus tablets at Costco or Walmart. 

But for some reason that’s too much to ask for anything else, like voting. 

In this day and age a national ID card with biometrics makes sense. If we had one we would know who is here.  We could verify who is a citizen, and entitled to the benefits of citizenship, and who isn’t.  Yet that’s the very same reason why there’s such fierce opposition to it – a lot of folks and institutions have a vested interest in claiming not to know that.

Eliminating voter fraud is just one benefit. The real payoff would come from stripping non-citizens of benefits and entitlements they now receive but shouldn’t.  Democrats like to say that this fraud isn’t widespread, but it is – by its own admission, the IRS alone has paid out billions in fraudulent refunds and bogus earned income tax credits to illegals over the years.

While illegals aren’t supposed to get food stamps or other public assistance by law, do you really think they aren’t? 

Curiously, when we have trouble tracking down illegal immigrants once they get here, whether by jumping the border or overstaying their visa, nobody in either party has brought up a national ID card as part of the solution.    

Instead, they talk about building a wall or not building a wall. A national identity card would be a lot cheaper and a lot more effective.

The hardcore supporters of Trump and Obama are cut from the same cloth. 

They both want a king.  And they couldn’t care less about the Constitution.

Trump and Obama make statements that are blatantly false, ignore or try to rewrite history, resort to personal attacks when things don’t go their way, and say outrageous things that defy logic. Both are narcissistic blowhards and bullies who show a complete and utter disdain for the rule of law, or even good manners.

Their supporters don’t care. 

As Trump famously said, he could shoot someone in Times Square and his supporters would still be all-in for him.  As arrogant – and downright stupid – that sounds, he’s probably right.  Obama releases known Taliban terrorist leaders in exchange for a deserter and celebrates that in the Rose Garden, calling the deserter a hero, and his supporters don’t care.   

Trump blames George W. Bush for not preventing 911 and lying about WMDs as a pretense for invading Iraq – almost a word-for-word restatement of the far left’s position – and his supporters don’t care.  Obama tries to humiliate Justices of the Supreme Court, sitting right in front of him, in a State of the Union address and his supporters don’t care.

Trump says he would revoke the right of citizenship to children born on American soil to noncitizens, which is probably unconstitutional at worst and legally iffy at best, and his supporters cheer him on.  Obama claims that he doesn’t need the approval of Congress to do whatever he wants as long as he has “a pen and a phone,” and his supporters cheer him on. 

Too often Trump and Obama are wrong about history, wrong about what’s in or not in the Constitution, wrong about the powers of the President, wrong about a lot of things.

But they are dead on about what their hardcore supporters want – an all-powerful king.

Americans aren’t interested in solving our real problems. 

They’d rather watch cat videos online and spout bumper-sticker logic. 

That’s how Trump can get away with his “Make America Great Again” slogan without providing any details.  It’s how Sanders can get away with his nutso proposals that can’t possibly be paid for even if you sucked every dime out of the economy. And it’s how Hillary – a multimillionaire, former Senator and Secretary of State – can get away with claiming women still suffer from income inequality and lack of opportunities because of gender discrimination. 

It’s all bullshit. But nobody cares.