September 4, 2024
GOVERNORS MAY MAKE THE BEST PRESIDENTS, BUT WALZ IS A JOKE
The late Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley once remarked that “Good Governance is Good Politics and Politics is Good Government.”
In other words, if you give people a superior, or at least more-than-tolerable quality of life then you will earn their vote. Failing that, just give people a job or a handout, creating a dependency, and you will control their vote.
That is the mentality of Washington and the 2.5 million bureaucrats who work for the federal government. It is in their self-interest to maintain the status quo and that means electing Harris-Walz on Nov. 5.
The federal fiscal year 2025 budget is $6.3 trillion, the deficit $1.6 trillion – which means incoming tax revenue is $1.6 trillion less than outgoing spending – and the national debt is approaching $36 trillion-- which costs taxpayers $1.5 trillion a year in interest to pay for money borrowed and already spent in the past. The budget is built on four pillars: $1 .5 trillion each for (1) Social Security/Medicare, (2) military and veterans, (3) government operations and pensions, and (4) interest on the national debt.
This is insanity. This is utterly incomprehensible to the average voter and blithely ignored by the governing class. Americans have developed mass tunnel-vision, which means they are focused 24/7 on the here and now. Forget that ancient troupe about building a better life for your kids.
Everybody is focused on preventing their own life from getting worse – and barely succeeding. Life is a daily struggle. Call it the misery index. When it gets too high some politician gets punished. But Joe Biden is not on the ballot.
And whoever is elected president – Trump-Vance or Harris-Walz – is not going to fix it anytime soon.
The Washington mentality is to seize power, use power, keep power for as long as possible, and then exit and let somebody else clean up the mess. Just keep spending. The U.S. economy is based on a fraud. Money used to be tied to the Gold Standard which meant the bills and coins in your pocket, purse or wallet were an IOU from Fort Knox giving you an ounce (or less) of a gold bar. Investors used to purchase U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds with the interest rate tied to the prime rate. Not anymore.
The prime, which is the rate the Federal Reserve Board (Fed) loans money to financial Institutions and which they re-loan to customers is at 5.5 percent, so mortgages and car loans are 2 percent higher. Bank credit cards are at 15 percent or more. Since the feds only pay 2 percent on their securities and since the FDIC bans banks from investing in the stock market (but not from issuing credit cards) a consumer savings account or CD get interest of under 1.5 percent. So the housing market is stagnant.
The monetary system is illusory. During the pandemic when the government needed $5 trillion right away the Fed just printed the money and bought-back Treasury securities as collateral.
So in effect the U.S. government owes itself tens of trillions of dollars and pays itself billions in interest on money already spent. And the interest will last literally forever.
But ignorance is bliss. For the public out-of-sight is out-of-mind. They, like their “public servants,” live-in-the-moment and the future is the next election or the next payday.
As of now, 8 weeks from the election, Trump is losing. That can change. But Trump has tokeep his (expletive) mouth shut. Every time he mouths-off, especially about the 2020 election, he reminds undecided voters why they DID NOT vote for him in 2020.
And as for Harris-Walz, who are economic illiterates, the operative acronym is KISS – meaning Keep It Superficial, Stupid. Utter platitudes, avoid promises, ignore Bidenomics, pretend Biden-Harris didn’t exist, be feely, happy, clingy and be the candidate of CHANGE – whatever that means
GOVERNORS ARE GOOD: Governors usually make the best presidents. They know the fiscal parameters. They cannot deficit spend. They cannot run up state debt.
They know their decisions, ranging from natural disaster response to civil disorder, impact their constituents’ quality of life. But forget about that if Harris-Walz win.
THE TIMID TIMMY STORY: There was a long-ago movie called “Hustler,” starring Paul Newman as the ambitious up-and-coming pool shark and Jackie Gleason as “Minnesota Fats,” the rotund champion of the pool table. You can deduce the story line: Fats gets de-throned. Which leads me to Tim Walz (D), the current Minnesota governor and 2024 Dem VP nominee who I call “Minnesota Farce.”
Way back in the day when I was a neophyte lawyer my then-mentor told me that 75 percent of being a lawyer is just showing up on time. The other quarter is having some modicum of brainpower.
This maxim is applicable to every other profession or endeavor. In politics 75 percent of long-term success and durability is running for the RIGHT office at the RIGHT time and winning.
In 2018, a Democratic Wave year, Walz capped 12 undistinguished years in Congress by getting nominated for governor with 41.6 percent in the primary (D) against two female candidates: Lori Swanson, the state attorney general, and Erin Murphy, a state legislator. The vote was 242,837-186,069-143,517. MN has a population of 5.7 million and 3.7 million registered voters. So something like 6.5 percent of the voters put Walz in the governorship. That’s how it works in a Democratic state like MN (and IL): Win the primary and it’s over. And the Woke/Left dominates primaries. But Walz would not have won if just one woman ran against him.
Democrats in MN are known as DFL, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. The state had a 3-party system dating back to before the 1920s – Rs, Ds and F-Lers, the liberal faction. Republicans always won statewide until the late 1940s when progressives merged. The seminal election was 1948 when Hubert Humphrey (D), an obscure pharmacist, got elected senator; he was followed in 1958 by Eugene McCarthy, a bland professor who had the guts to run against LBJ for president in 1968 as the anti-War candidate. He forced Johnson to retire. Humphrey became VP in 1964 and lost to Nixon in 1968.
Walter Mondale got HHH’s seat in 1965, ran (and won) for VP in 1976 with Carter, but lost to Reagan in 1984. There was even a Republican, Harold Stassen, elected MN governor in 1938 at age 31, who was a serious candidate for president in 1948. These men were not quite political titans, but they were Big Stuff back in Minnesota. Compared to them Walz is insignificant.
After the 2020 George Floyd killing Timid Timmy waited 4 days to mobilize the National Guard, so fearful was he of alienating the party’s Leftist base.
But some fun awaits: Should Harris-Walz win the new MN governor will be Peggy Flanagan, a Native-American woman who is the lieutenant governor But the deal was for Walz to step aside in 2026 for Keith Ellison, the man who is attorney general. OMG! Who to pick? The Lefties’ agony and ecstasy begins.
CHICAGO SCHOOL BOARD (CSB) UPDATE: In the upcoming election to fill 10 of the 20 new CSB seats, with an expectancy that the CTU will control at least 18 of them and the president, there has been some anti-CTU movement in the far Northwest Side 1st District: Chuck Hernandez, a retired CPD detective and 38th Ward Republican committeeman and proponent of school choice has withdrawn.
“The union (CTU) is backing Jennifer Custer,” a former CTU administrator, said Hernandez. By staying in the race, he added, “I will be dividing the pro-school choice vote with Michelle Pierre” and Custer will win. Hernandez has not endorsed Pierre, a former charter school official.
After the election Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU operative and teacher, will appoint 10 more Members from each of the districts and the president. Then in 2026 all 20 will run, with each district split in half and the president elected citywide.
Read more Analysis & Opinion from Russ Stewart at Russstewart.com
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