RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-11-5-running-out-of-other-peoples-money-new-york-and-federal-versions

I’m old enough to remember a time when government officeholders thought that a significant part of their job was prioritizing various options for public spending, in recognition that overspending on lower priorities would mean that nothing would be left for higher priorities. Somewhere along the line, that old-fashioned idea has fallen away. The new fad is an unending tidal wave of proposals for new government programs and spending initiatives which will, any day now, bring perfect justice and fairness to the world. Which ones will we implement? All of them!

But what about Margaret Thatcher’s famous observation that “eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Dramatic examples of that principle at work can be observed, for example, in Venezuela; but then, Venezuela seems to be just too far away for most Americans to pay attention. So how about looking closer to home, like in New York?

The budgeting process in New York City under the reign of uber-progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio and a like-minded City Council has been one where any idea that sounds like it might be “doing good” promptly gets funded. And thus the budget for a city of 8.5 million people has gone from $75 billion in de Blasio’s first budget five years ago, to $93 billion in the current fiscal year. (That’s well over $10,000 per capita, if you want to compare it to your city’s budget.) The New York Times from June 15 provides some instances of things added in this year’s version:

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/11/06/the-democrats-real-impeach

The statement President Donald Trump made that rendered his impeachment inevitable was not on July 25, 2019, when he said to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it.”

It was on Feb. 6, 2019, when he said to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the assembled members of Congress during his State of the Union, “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Ronald Reagan was as much an enemy of socialism as any president, but even he never looked the domestic opposition in the eye and explicitly declared war against the Democratic Party’s militant left for all the world to hear. But then, by the end of Reagan’s presidency in the late 1980s, even the oldest member of The Squad was still in high school; the few hard leftists among House Democrats were no threat to the power of their party’s leadership, as The Squad and its following are today.

In response to Trump throwing down the gauntlet, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s strategy has been to conduct private depositions to determine the specifics of their preferred narrative, then burn it into the brains of Americans in the impeachment of this president, with an eye toward winning big in 2020 – regaining the White House, and possibly even the Senate, and retaining the House.

As they shift to public testimony, the impeachment resolution House Democrats passed last week deprives the chamber’s minority party of important powers, and the president of self-defense rights – a stark contrast to the precedents of both the Nixon and Clinton proceedings.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted it as “no due process now, maybe some later,” adding that “‘only if we feel like it’ is not a standard that should ever be applied to any American and it should not be applied here to the president of the United States.”

Using Alinsky’s Weaponry To Combat Socialism