Broken Promises

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They say, "never assume malice for something more easily explained by incompetence". But they also say, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!" What we know is that on the big issues, the left is almost never right. And for some reason, that creates trust issues for the self aware, and it doesn't for the biased and polemic. This is a list of big things that the progressives got wrong, to support the point. Of course I'm not claiming that they never get anything right. Just that there's a good reason for folks to be skeptical and remain critical thinkers whenever a politician is promising something. Doubly so, if that politician is a lefty or progressive.

List of things that progressives got wrong

Social Programs

  • The welfare state would reduce the poverty rate, help the poor, and help with crime
  • Medicare costs were vastly underestimated
  • “Investing” more taxpayer money in the primary and secondary school systems would result in better outcomes.
  • Headstart would result in permanent gains and better scores for poor children

Foreign Policy

  • Afganistan and Vietnam would be easy
  • Defending Kuwait and Iraq would result in tens of thousands of American lives lost... or more
  • The threat is from “al-Qaeda” not from Islamic jihadism
  • Overthrowing Ghadaffi would lead to a stable ally and not get any Americans killed
  • We should reset relations and do business with Russia (they'll love us)
  • Capitulating and being nice to North Korea would persuade them to end their Nuclear ambitions
  • Capitulating and being nice to Iran would persuade them to end their Nuclear ambitions ~ Pending

Economics

  • Cash for clunkers would stimulate more car buying
  • Lowering taxes – especially the top marginal rate – would reduce tax revenues; (Raising them would raise them).
  • Forcing lenders to make home loans to unqualified borrowers would be good for the economy;
  • The Dodd Frank legislation would break up the big banks and reduce their market share; stop too big to fail.
  • The economy would crash if Donald Trump was elected and remain at no more than 2% growth for the for seeable future
  • Keynesianism: everything about it has been wrong

Misc

  • Every malthusian claim about over-population, food supply, the environment or the future
  • apocalyptic climate change predictions that have not happened;
  • Trump would lose, Hillary would win
  • Gun control, or assault weapon bans would help
  • Eliminate of gun control (or liberal conceal and carry laws) would result in the OK Corral across this country; in Florida, D.C., Chicago, Austin, and so on

Obama election promises

  • Obamacare would cut healthcare costs (by $2,500), offer universal coverage, not include a mandate, you could keep your doctor/plan, it wouldn't have death panels or cover illegal aliens, it would be so popular that Democrats would be a lock in for the next election and the Republicans would have to remake the party entirely
  • to unite us more as a nation, be bipartisan, and improve race relations, all of the above energy policy
  • to not raise taxes on the middle class, improve government efficiency, be a fiscal conservative and cut back on spending
  • to put waiting periods on major legislation, "unprecedented transparency", to "nail shut" the revolving door of lobbyists
  • to make immigration a top priority and pass comprehensive reform in his first year (including a legal pathway to citizenship)
  • to improve our standing in the world, to close Gitmo (though I was on the other side of that one), get Iran to stop funding terrorism
  • to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan -- and pulling out of Iraq (or arming terrorists in Syria) wouldn't lead to a fanatical caliphate (ISIS)
  • And of course just the absurd promises that I really didn't take seriously: create 1M new manufacturing jobs, lead the world in college graduates, double exports, create a 2 state solution in Israel, halve deficits, slow the rise of the oceans, and other absurdities that the rational never bought but the supporters assured people would happen

Lies, Lies, Lies

The problem is that as the Democrats broke promises, or got exactly what they wanted, they couldn't own mistakes -- they had to lie about the failures. And usually that involved blaming the other side. Not delivering on a promise, just makes you incompetent or self deluded. You shouldn't be given power once you've demonstrated that repeatedly, but it's still not malice. But when you lie and say things that an even slightly informed person would know is not true, that takes it to another level. You're not just incompetent, but evil and dishonest. Things like:

  • Obamacare was modeled after a Republican Plan
Progressives gave us

You often hear advocates claiming, "if it wasn't for progressives, you wouldn't have X...", then they explain without progressives, we wouldn't have roads, schools, police, fireman, military, or some other thing we had for decades or centuries before progressives. But I wanted to compile the other side of the equation (the balances). Here's a reminder of what they gave us that wasn't so great, or started off fine but entropied into something bad, so people can decide if jumping on every new big-government bandwagon is a good idea… or if a little prudence, caution and research is warranted before gobbling up the bandwagon fallacy and putting on that Che Guevara T-Shirt.

The short list of losers would include the following:

  • Financial servitude: centralized banking/money (the Fed), fiat currency backed by debt (and the inflation that results in), they gave us the 16th amendment, the IRS, the worst tax code in the free world (73,954 pages), they fought for every tax increase and against all relief or simplification (to fund themselves), and then they piled on 174,545 pages of regulations (over 1,040,940 restrictions spread among them) in our regulatory code, and that’s not touching the 23,000 pages in our federal legal code (and over 300,000 criminal punishments burried within the discretion of administrative agencies).
  • Bigotry: centralized education with the admitted intent of reprogramming the youth (against their immigrant/catholic parents), they were champions of racism (and still are in affirmative action), supported eugenics, created our anti-immigration quotas and policies as a favor to unions (then call anyone that wants to enforce those laws a xenophobe), FDR blocked all immigration for a while, interned even 2nd generation Japanese, Germans and Italians,
  • General Statism: they replaced the constitution with federalism (jurisprudence and precedence over original intent), invented supreme court stacking and judicial activism, they gave us the 17th amendment (popular vote senate which broke the constitution and states rights completely), they gave government the power to take our property (eminent domain, national parks/federal lands), and to control what we can do on our land (via the EPA and other agencies)
  • Too big to fail: they have always been in bed with big business (like organized labor) and created the biggest cartels and trusts in the nation (utilities, unions, federal reserve, banking, Fanny/Freddy, tort lawyers, AMA, and so on),
  • Enemies of liberty: they gave us Prohibition and the post-prohibition drug war, they granted the Fed it's own unconstitutional police forces (FBI, NSA, DEA, OSS/CIA, IRS), centralized transportation (like Amtrak), used centralized road as a way to force things on the states that were unconstitutional (like the 55MPH speed limit, forced raised the drinking age, and so on), then they complain that our federally mandated highways and bridges are crumbling (the agencies they created, failing to do their charter), they invented the anti-liberty regulatory state: the FDA was created so they could control what we put in our own bodies, the FCC and fairness doctrine were created to control our free speech (so FDR could bully any TV/Radio stations that did unfavorable pieces on the administration or it’s policies), they gave us FISA warrants and invented domestic spying (look at Espionage and Sedition Acts of the 1917-1918 and how they empowered government to read our mail, listen on phone calls, and how they undermined free speech), they created American imperialism (and got us into the Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, Kosovo, Bosnia, Vietnam, and Central/South America), they gave us conscription/draft, they took away our guns for our own good, invented the poverty industrial complex (which is over 2/3rds of our budget and 9/10ths of our future liabilities), they made it harder to save for our retirement and replaced it with a youth-tax ponzi scam calls Social Security, then they raided the Social Security Trust fund and left IOU’s in their place (for our kids to pay for our debts/sins), they invented congressional appointed agencies to give congress plausible deniability and more opacity in government, and most of all, they won’t accept responsibility for any of it. It’s all the Republicans fault.

more...

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📚 References