Why are liberals so happy to raise your taxes? Because so many of them benefit directly from higher taxes - entitlements, government contracts, holdbacks, employment and just plain cash, or because higher taxes don’t affect them. They are either too rich or too poor to care. It’s the folks in the middle that end up carrying the load. The math is rather simple: Raise everyone’s taxes to 50% or more. Then, pour all that money into the pockets of those who don’t pay taxes or don’t pay their fair share. Or, maybe they make their entire livelihood from taxpayer dollars. It’s like winning the lottery for these people. They don’t care what the tax rate is because any money that’s realized is still a jackpot. And, if you’re politically connected, the government doesn’t expect you to work very hard to make that money.

If you make a few million with a well-placed phone call (can you spell B-I-D-E-N?) and then give up half in taxes, who cares? It’s the cost of doing business and it’s free money, anyway. In fact, it’s taxpayer money. More on that thesis: In early 2009, Andrew Wilkow, conservative talk radio guy, stated he could prove that a significant percentage of Obama’s ’stimulus’ spending would end up in various Kennedy family-owned enterprises. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Ted Kennedy’s or Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama would come cheaply. Further, Barack Obama netted million-dollar paydays for ghost-written books as an unknown Illinois legislator. Did all those books get sold through real booksellers at full price? And then there’s Al Gore. By creating panic over non-existent global warning, Gore amassed a $100 million fortune in less than 8 years. Finally, there’s the grand-daddy of all political hacks — Bill Clinton, who manages to snag outsized ‘consulting’ gigs that can net him $100 million in a year’s time. What’s certain here is that liberals can make a darn good buck at being ‘concerned’ and ‘compassionate’.

Liberals and liberal politicians spend taxpayer money with a zest and enthusiasm that takes your breath away, and for some of the stupidest reasons imaginable. The basic premise is simple - if you are incompetent, lazy, stupid, ignorant, irresponsible, incorrigible and/or immoral, you will be rewarded. If you live within your means, pay your taxes and take personal responsibility for your actions, you will be preyed upon. In fact, if you uphold the law and carry your own weight, the liberals consider you a stooge, a dupe, someone who deserves to be ripped off.

The secular progressives, the liberals and the out-and-out socialists have turned this country on its head. The strengths and virtues that made this country the single greatest expression of man’s intellectual and socia potential has been perverted into a culture of entitlement and a cesspool of personal excesses. Is America perfect, or was it ever perfect? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean one gives up the effort to better oneself or society. That’s what liberals want average Americans to do: give up on the American Dream and instead opt for the false hopes and promises of socialism. They want to create a dark, dreary utopia where only the liberal elite can have a chance at happiness and prosperity.

The fact that Congress has even bothered to bring to a vote the matter of AIG bonuses should signal loudly that the Golden Age of Parasites has arrived. Senator Chris Dodd denies inserting language into the mystery-shrouded economic stimulus package that was so quickly passed by both houses of Congress. The White House denies prior knowledge of the bonuses, even though staffers admit to it. Treasury Secretary Geithner himself crafted some of the foundational language of the bailout arrangement while George W. Bush was still in office. And now, every congressional aide’s best friend, Barney Frank,  is screeching that a 90% tax on those bonuses is justifiable. The parasites can now take away anything from anyone. Screw contract law. Screw constitutional guarantees. Screw the Bill of Rights. They can take what they want when they want it with the full backing of an ocean of parasites that now comprises the voting public. Mobocracy has arrived, cheered on by the media.

It’s revealing that only 44 protesters showed up to take a bus tour of AIG executives’ homes, even though every one of them was paid by A.C.O.R.N. with our tax dollars to do so. A crushing mob of reporters and cameramen from around the world showed up to document the circus. At the same time, hundreds of tea parties were being staged around the country to protest the Democrats’ uncontrolled spending and yet nothing has been reported on this groundswell of conservative activism.

It’s difficult to fully explain the motives of TV network programming executives, editorial directors, news writers and reporters. Some of it can be characterized as pure envy and malice — the mainstream media have assumed a rather pompous and sanctimonius position on social justice and economic opportunity without really delving into the causal relationships driving the disparity in income and social advancement. But then, that’s too difficult. It would require getting an education beyond ‘journalism’ or ‘communications’ which is as useful and intellectually challenging as ballroom dancing or basket weaving. No insult intended to the latter. It might require reporters, editors, columnists, newsreaders, producers and all of the other unionized (that’s right, they’re unionized) media ‘professionals’ to actually work hard and think before they open their yaps. It’s much easier to descend into pure envy and malice - the stock in trade of unions in this country. Hey, it worked for the unions.

But the primary reason that media outlets are effectively propaganda machines for the Left is that they’ve been intentionally been purposed to do so. Much like the contagion of leftist thinking that has demolished independent thought on college campuses, the Left has worked hard to spread its infection into the field of journalism. It’s an aggressive form of journalism, where the ‘reporter’ or ‘anchor’ insert themselves into the story, insult or attack their subject, then apply ‘context’ and ‘analysis’ that follows the party line. The strategy has worked extraordinarily well. Ask Sarah Palin. Where there are gaps in the all-out assault on American principles and ideals and those who uphold them, George Soros fills in with hundreds of bloggers funded through his many front organizations. 

Democratic politicians, media boobs and their wealthy patrons are playing with fire. They don’t understand that if the mob gets loose, at some point they too, will become targets. Even Karl Marx understood this. Obama and the Democrats think they can control mob impulses and turn them to their political advantage, much like Mussolini or Hitler did early on in their despicable regimes. History has proven them wrong. Either the actions of the mob descend into utter madness, or the politicians attempting to control the mob become dictators. This should not be America’s fate.

Olympia Snow, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter are traitors to America. They joined the other traitors, that being the Democratic members of the Senate, to push through legislation that they know destroyed this great country. They did it for political expediency, for personal gain, for the benefit of friends, relatives and political allies, and they did it to intentionally insult and harm the greater number of Americans who still believe in the Constitution and the American promise. They did it to repudiate free-market capitalism, social mobility and self actualization. They did it to solidify the power of the liberal elite, to reward unions and government bureaucrats, to provide incredible wealth to political insiders.

President Obama promised open government, open transactions and elimination of earmarks. This trillion dollar spending bill (there is no real economic stimulus) was crafted behind closed doors without the participation of the minority party. There was no public review or public comment, and a 90-minute floor debate before the vote was pushed through. Over 1,000 pages was voted on in both the House and Senate without even a single reading by any member of Congress. This isn’t democracy. This is Stalinism. Obama promised 48 hours of review. It never happened. This man lied to all of us. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid lied to all of us. The Democrats threw out 100 years of procedure and safeguards to rush this monstrosity through both houses. The few Republicans who could have stalled this, Snow, Collins and Specter, decided to betray the core principles of the Republican Party and throw in their lot with the Marxists running this country. History will not be kind to them. 

The bill is corrupt, misguided and destructive on so many levels that an entire book can be written about it. And yet, those Americans who will end up paying for this are silent. The producers aren’t protesting. They’re not flooding the offices of Democratic politicians with petitions, angry letters and emails. There’s nothing. Emboldened, the Democrats will advance their agenda until they hit opposition. The parasites are rejoicing. They actually believe they won’t have to pay for energy costs or their mortgages, or even work for a living anymore. Some are even asking our President for a new kitchen. This is what America has descended into - a populace so stupid, so self-absorbed that they have no idea what they’ve given away for a welfare check or a paltry $13 a week in handouts.

The Porkulus bill will be examined by historians in great detail — much more detail than the leftist Democrats who shoved it through Congress back in 2009. That was the year democracy died.

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Think of parasites as an organizational pyramid or multilevel marketing enterprise. Maybe a better descriptor is Ponzi scheme. At the top of the pyramid are the liberal elite, the union bosses, trial lawyers, environmental gurus and political hacks that exhort Americans to sacrifice more, tighten their belts and stop complaining about higher taxes, loss of personal freedoms and economic opportunity.

At the bottom are the stupid schmucks that support and believe in the parasite elite, expecting to get something out of this whole pyramid scheme. They usually get the short end of the stick - a few handouts and some useless programs. The middle class gets stuck paying for handouts to the parasites, including the very top of the pyramid.

Let’s use trial lawyers as an example. When one of these parasites is advertising for slip and fall injuries or asbestos-related disease on television, they’re aiming at the bottom of the pyramid. They promise to get their clients big money awards with no fees and no risk. Obviously, they neglect to tell these poor folks, who indeed may have a legitimate claim, that they’ll receive just a small fraction of any award. The trial lawyers aren’t advertising to the upper middle class (aka the taxpayers). No self-respecting small business owner, corporate exec, doctor or professional would even consider representation by an ambulance-chaser. The trial lawyers aim their advertising at the poor, unemployed, hopeless and desperate. They are typically in financial trouble, uneducated and unfamiliar with how these legal parasites work their game. So, they end up signing away their rights in a class action suit or bundled case, and receive far less than they deserve. The trail lawyers, on the other hand, make millions, usually by overwhelming the court or the accused with hundreds of simultaneous claims. Just to the clear the docket, many judges will urge the accused to settle, even if they’re completely blameless.

Obviously, trial lawyers resist any legal reforms that would stop this gravy train. They invest heavily in the Democratic Party, donating millions. In fact, in most states, trial lawyers are the largest political donors. They have enormous influence.

Politicians work the system in a similar manner. They promise the poor, uneducated, hopeless or shiftless just about anything to get elected, knowing full well they can’t possibly deliver on those promises. Once in office, they create programs and laws that take money from working Americans and redistribute it to those who can’t or won’t provide for themselves. But, the government is incredibly inefficient in the redistribution of wealth. For every dollar collected in taxes, only 20 cents actually makes it to the person who needs it. The other 80 cents is used up by the government to ‘administer’ the redistribution. Wouldn’t we be better off with private charities doing this work? After all, even the least efficient private charity still delivers 70 cents of every donated dollar to the proper recipient.

Socialist politicians masquerading as Democrats don’t really want private charities to exist because they are competition. Instead, they want government to assume the roles of benefactor, parent, guidance counselor, personal financier, doctor and therapist in the name of ‘fairness’ and ‘compassion’. What’s really going on is that socialist politicians have been able to manipulate the poor and working class to their own advantage, creating a powerful voting bloc. That voting bloc is kept motivated by promises of even more government handouts at the expense of the ‘rich’, who truly don’t deserve their wealth no matter how hard they worked for it. By inciting class warfare, they keep themselves in office.

Much like the trial lawyers who promise big cash awards and instead grab most of it for themselves, politicians promise the poor and working class handouts and special privileges, knowing they can’t deliver. Instead, that money is absorbed by the politicians’ real constituency - huge government bureaucracies, the labor unions representing them and politically connected government contractors who are themselves unionized or generously underwrite liberal causes. There is one other, very important beneficiary of the redistribution game - activist organizations that directly engage with the poor, the disenfranchised and working poor or pretend to represent them in some way. Many, like the ACLU and A.C.O.R.N., receive direct government funding so that they can continue to foment class hatred and despair among millions of Americans, instilling in them a sense of entitlement instead of a sense of empowerment.

But it’s not just the poor and working class Americans who look to government handouts. Wall Street has snagged billions in taxpayer money to prop up billionaires and a culture of entitlement. Unlike the millions of poor and working poor that have only one vote to cast, the relatively small number of Wall Street honchos and financiers write big campaign donation checks. They buy their political clout, just like trial lawyers. Ask Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. When the Wall Street people overstep their bounds, when they truly screw up, these cobras lean on the American taxpayer. And the American taxpayer is completely unaware that the government, steered by politicians, dispenses money based on political considerations above all else. So, if billions are handed out to the poor, millions of poor each get a couple bucks. If billions are handed out on Wall Street, millions of bucks go to just a few people. The top of the parasite pyramid generally gets the same amount of money as the bottom of the pyramid - it’s just spread out among fewer people. And they have no problem taking it. After all, it’s free!

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich recently appeared on a Discovery Channel program that attempted to explain economics and capitalism. Reich, a seemingly well-educated man, kept referring to capitalism as simply dressed-up greed. In his fevered mind, there appeared to be no place for capitalism in the world, because it was based on greed. He referred to the writings of Adam Smith as proof that greed was the underlying motivation for capitalism - not personal achievement or bettering one’s life, not even providing the best for one’s family. It was just simple greed. Reich is not an idiot, but he is a demagogue. He’s entitled to his opinions, but when they are amplified and broadcast across the country, his extremist views influence others. The program provided no opposing views or commentary. This insult to our open, free-market economic system went unanswered, as do many other such insults.

Contrast Reich’s opinions with the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French writer and political scientist who toured America in the early 1800s. He was struck by the incredible energy and vitality of everyday Americans - simple men and women who worked doggedly at improving their lot in life. He observed that this was possible only in America, because only in America did hard work pay off for the common man. Therefore, it wasn’t ‘greed’ that motivated Americans over the last 200 years, it was the possibility, the certainty, that if they worked really hard, no one could take their newly found prosperity away from them. It energized them, it gave them hope for a better tomorrow. And yes, a very few people became very rich doing so. But, the more important point is that hundreds upon thousands became very prosperous - much more so than if they’d remained in Europe. It was the growth and political stability of a solid middle class that distinguished America from any other nation at any other time.

This has always been the central argument against capitalism — the poor are exploited by the greedy rich. In Europe, the poor had been exploited by the rich and powerful for centuries, well before capitalism existed. And, there were proportionately more poor people in Europe during the 1800s than in America. They were held back by social barriers, denied education and opportunity, prohibited from relocating to areas with better economic conditions. This was the reality of life in England and Europe. Slavery was abolished in the United States by presidential decree in 1861. But only after pressure was applied by other European governments did Russia finally abolish serfdom for Ukrainian peasants in 1862, freeing hundreds of thousands from centuries of bondage. The lack of opportunity and incentive was a fact of life for millions of Europeans.

In America, those who escaped the rigid social and economic structure of Europe were becoming landowners, opened small businesses and sent their children to universities. This was impossible anywhere else in the world and in many places is still impossible today. What America’s largely classless society was able to accomplish was the marvel of the modern world - a relatively well functioning capitalist system with minimal interference by aristocrats, autocrats and bureaucrats. Was it perfect? No. Did excesses and failures occur? Yes. But, it’s still the best system ever devised by man. The irony is that the liberal elite who preach against a free-market economy and capitalism have benefited most from its bounty.

Take Robert Reich as an example -  he attended Dartmouth College and won a Rhodes scholarship to study in England. The Rhodes scholarship was endowed by Cecil Rhodes, a capitalist and diamond merchant. Reich then taught at Harvard University, the wealthiest educational institution in the world. Harvard endowments exceed $45 billion, most of them gifts from capitalist alumni. At Brandeis University he was the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economy Policy at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management. He’s currently a professor at UC Berkley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Maurice Hexter, Florence Heller, Richard and Rhoda Goldman are philanthropists who endowed the institutions that paid Reich’s salary. Where did their money come from? Capitalism. This ingrate, along with his former girlfriend Hillary Clinton and thousands of other liberals, have no problem taking money from capitalists only to turn around and bite the hand that feeds them.

But then, this is what liberals do. They resent the fact that someone else has worked harder, worked smarter or had the good fortune to accumulate wealth. Envy is a powerful emotion. It’s corrosive, destructive and insidious. Envy, dressed up as public policy, is what threatens free market capitalism. Demagogues like Reich and Obama have used envy to whip up class warfare, turning it to their own advantage. Socialism is their choice of socio-political structure, not because it’s inherently better than capitalism, but because it can be easily controlled by a small elite. That’s right: Socialist activists like Reich and Obama firmly believe in their own superior intellect and abilities, and they’re more than happy to impose their ideology on the rest of America. The average American can’t seem to grasp this. Why would someone dedicate their lives to telling other people what to do? There doesn’t seem to be any profit in it. And that’s the key - Americans are so conditioned to a direct linkage between effort and material reward that the desire to accumulate personal power is totally foreign.

They don’t understand it because they’ve never lived under despotic rulers or communist totalitarianism. Josef Stalin murdered millions and destroyed entire civilizations. He controlled the Soviet Unions economy with an iron fist. As the supreme ruler, he could have any material thing he wanted. And yet, he lived like a pauper. This is unfathomable to the average American. Unfortunately, Americans will need to get used to it. Obama’s monstrous plan to grow government means that all Americans will be working for the government, whether they understand it or not and whether they like it or not.

Reich, Obama and other well-educated liberal elites have no problem taking money from capitalists to feather their own nests. They have no problem taking money from taxpayers, either. Using our tax dollars, they will build a utopia in their own image and likeness. And, they’ll do it in the name of ‘fairness’. At some point, Americans will wake up and find themselves yoked to a huge and unyielding machine that sucks the life out of them. But it will be too late. Betrayed by liberal ideals, Americans will have allowed the most despotic form of government to take hold. They will have thrown away their freedoms and their future.

Labor unions are starting to collect on their investment in a Democratic victory at the polls, and now it’s time for the mainstream media cabal to do the same. After all, it costs big money to harass Sarah Palin and her family, send teams of investigators up to Alaska and distribute slanderous allegations nationwide. Hollywood has already received its $300 million in tax credits, discreetly buried deep inside the pork-ridden bank bailout bill. Now, it’s the media barons’ turn to belly up to the trough. The New York Times and the LA Times are both losing readership and classified ad revenues. They haven’t been able to make much money online. Conservative pundits attribute this to extreme bias and pandering to the left, resulting in an exodus of subscribers. That’s only partially true. The big problem isn’t readership, it’s reading.

In a twist of supreme irony, the same newspapers that championed diversity and multiculturalism, that tirelessly promoted social engineering and socialist causes, are now reaping their just reward. Americans who no longer feel compelled to learn English are not going to read a newspaper printed in English, or its online analog. Americans who no longer feel compelled to be engaged in the national discourse are not going to read a newspaper, English or otherwise. Americans who have come to live in this country in order to enrich themselves and not participate in public life or public institutions are not going to read a newspaper. And finally, those who might consider reading a newspaper or its online equivalent can’t, because they have been so poorly educated by the very same unions and public schools these newspapers have always supported.

Now that bailout spending has reached an epic $7-plus trillion and President Obama promises another trillion in handouts, the newspaper guys think it’s just as well to stick their hands out. One problem - a government subsidizing only a select few media outlets effectively makes those outlets nothing more than propaganda tools. Not that they haven’t already functioned as propaganda tools. This would just formalize the arrangement.  A government-supported New York Times is as dangerous as a government-funded ACLU. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that those who don’t benefit from the government’s largess will be at a competitive disadvantage. But then, fair play has never been a concern of mainstream journalists and TV news anchors. Just ask Bristol Palin.

The Wizard of Oz, aka The Messiah, The Anointed One, The One You’ve Been Waiting For, etc. known formally as President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama is as of today still clear of any entanglements in the Rod Blagojevich affair. Therefore, His Anointedness is proceeding with his Yellow Brick Road plan to create a socialist nirvana, naming ever more extreme leftists to important government positions. The pace hasn’t slowed, even though the Wicked Witch of the MidWest, Rahm Emmanuel, may be called to testify before a grand jury of hopefully not his peers, but average Americans, instead.

The YBR plan (remember, this is a new kind of President) will incorporate lots of pork, handouts and populist pronouncements without doing anything substantial to solve the underlying problems. In fact, it’s more than likely that a Marxist President and a socialist Congress will create many more problems than they will solve and it will take decades to unwind the mess. Think FDR and LBJ. The first is federal insolvency. With a debt load of $40 trillion already on the books and threatening the US economy, His Bad Self is proposing yet another massive Democratic spending spree dressed up as an economic stimulus/green technology package. There’s no point in discussing the benefits of such a trillion-dollar mistake because there are none, unless you happen to be one of the parasites in line to profit from it. The poor, the working poor and the lower middle class will see none of those benefits, because Obama’s ‘vision’ doesn’t include them. That money is intended for unions, specifically labor and government unions, that will see their membership swell exponentially. Government contractors are basically provided their cut for distributing the money to union employees. Government employees are hired to watch over the government contractors. Nothing actually has to be accomplished for all that money, as long as it’s all used up.

Therefore, the only measurable result will be to add more zeroes to the existing debt load. Based on projected government revenues ( our taxes) and how little the government actually puts toward easing its debt load, that $40-plus trillion will be paid off in 3 or 4 centuries, but only if our government stops spending money it doesn’t have. Not money it doesn’t have today, or next year, but money it arithmetically shouldn’t be able to have until 2400 AD. Unfortunately, the money supply continues to grow, printing presses are running on overtime, and entire forests are disappearing to fuel the government’s need to boost inflation. Oh yeah, in case the mainstream media missed this one:  The government wants inflation to go into hyperdrive. Why? The federal deficit can be paid off with zillions of worthless dollars. Problem solved. Back to the printing presses and make it snappy. Will raging inflation destroy middle class Americans? Absolutely. Not the Anointed One’s problem. Hyperinflation gives him and the loony toons in Congress more spending loot and the resulting misery that will keep Democrats firmly in power. The bonus is that they get to blame the Republicans for it.

His Anointed Self Obama is now pledging to spend $1 trillion to ’stimulate’ the economy in 2009 with additional spending bills heaped on top of an already bulging, pork-laden 2009 budget that quietly passed earlier this year. That would put government spending in 2009 at roughly $5.5 trillion, or 4 times the ‘normal’ bulging, pork-laden budget that sails through Congress. That kind of money could rebuild every road in America, re-string every power and telephone line in the country and even build a few dozen new nuclear power plants. But that won’t happen. There will be a few signature projects, all of them failures, and the rest of the money will disappear down a rathole, leaving only debt service for taxpayers to fund well into the next century or four.

Our government is on the brink of insolvency. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Frank, Dodd and the rest of the socialist elitists controlling Congress and the White House will bankrupt this country. And, they don’t care. The more misery that exists, the more fodder they have for ratcheting down on those who suffer, blaming the rich and the Republicans for the mess the Democrats alone created. What a perfect setup: Lie to the American people. Make them suffer even more. Blame the uninvolved. Grab more power. It’s the Democratic way.

And what do conservatives and Republicans (not necessarily the same) do about this? Nothing. Instead of rabble-rousing the way liberals and socialists have, they hold back. They discuss. They write letters. No, that just won’t do any more.

As liberals in Congress and the media push America into the clutches of a socialist oligarchy, they fail to mention that as part of this utopian fiction we’ll be giving up most of our personal freedoms. In exchange for government handouts and subsidies, Americans will sacrifice prosperity. In exchange for free medical coverage, Americans will sacrifice their personal health. And, in exchange for ‘fairness’, Americans will give up their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a bad deal all the way around. The few who understand just how bad a deal this is are outnumbered 100 to 1 by the idiots who think they’re getting something for nothing.

When thousands stand in line for a flu shot, are denied a heart bypass because they’re too old, or are turned away for medical treatment because their racial quota has already been filled, it will be too late. America is turning itself into a socialist monster of unparalleled dimensions. Unlike Russia and China, which were largely underdeveloped and ethnically homogeneous when communism was imposed, the US is a huge and diverse society with a titanic, sprawling economy. What inequities exist will now by vastly magnified as the ‘experts’ from Washington try to micromanage our lives and livelihoods. For every stupid and short-sighted fix there will be dozens of unintended consequences, each radiating outward and interacting with other stupid and short-sighted fixes. These socialist dilettantes actually believe that they know what they’re doing. And we are their guinea pigs.

That’s where the true genius in the Constitution lies — it created a simple but rigid framework upon which to build a dynamic society and a robust economy that allowed the people, not the politicians, to direct their common fate. No micromanaging required. Society and markets regulate themselves. It may not be terrifically efficient and it occasionally gets messy, but it beats socialism hands down for one simple reason: the innate human drive for personal betterment trumps mediocrity imposed from above.

Barack and Michelle Obama chose not to send their daughters to Washington DC public schools. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama adamantly opposes choice for children attending DC public schools, characterized as the nation’s worst public school system. This is not an unusual stance for a Democratic politician. The Democratic Party in general doesn’t want any choice in education, reflecting the wishes of its major constituents - teacher unions, public employee unions, socialist activists and the ACLU. For those unfamiliar with the true mission of the ACLU, removing parental choice and parental influence in education is one of its highest priorities. ACLU members are and always have been dedicated to a socialist agenda. The ACLU is and always has been wedded to the Democratic Party.

Therefore, Democrats are unfailingly opposed to any reforms of the public education system or any serious competition. Charter schools have found Democratic politicians to consistently adversarial. Further, a good many Democrats are supporting a nationwide ban on home schooling because it poses a minor threat to the hegemony of the union-controlled public system. As test scores sink, truancy and dropout rates increase, the National Education Association and its rival American Federation of Teachers can only offer a single solution - more money. This despite the fact that the US spends more than twice as much as the next biggest spender, and still ranks 55th in scholastic achievement globally.

Teacher unions, academics and schools of education ignore calls for reform. Study after study has shown that the techniques and fads embraced by public educators and many college professors are flawed, stupid and wildly inappropriate. And still, the education monopoly plows forward, confident in its political heft and gamesmanship.

One need only to watch as DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee attempts to reward good teachers and fire incompetent teachers. The firestorm has now involved not only teacher unions and the ACLU, but Congress itself, simply because the chancellor wants to strip tenure away from truly bad teachers. But, why should elementary and secondary public school teachers get tenure when 60% of college professors don’t have tenure? In fact, tenure doesn’t even belong in public schools in the first place. The concept of tenure was developed in the late 1800s to protect the religious beliefs of a college professor, can you believe it? And here, teacher unions have applied tenure to the protection of incompetent, even dangerous, teachers who are screwing up our kids. And the Democrats back them 100 percent.

Democrats have no problem backing the teacher unions and the ACLU. After all, incompetent teachers create ignorant citizens. Ignorant citizen don’t discriminate between BS and reality when it comes to political discourse. Ignorant citizens can make their way to the voting booth as easily as informed citizens. Unions provide shuttle buses for the ones who can’t find voting booths on their own. For Democrats, a screwed up public education system is all upside and no downside. It perpetuates and grows a solid, consistent voting bloc. Could it be that Democrats are so cynical and self-serving that they are perfectly willing to ruin millions of lives, destroy this country’s future and impair opportunity for the sake of power? You betcha.