Has the left already won?

No matter how you look at it, the political left seems to be winning the battle over the hearts and minds of most of the voters, especially the young college graduates. They have captured the colleges, the entertainment business, most of the social media, the nerds at Silicon Valley, the whole education system and the main stream media, including all the major networks. I don't know a single large city, even in Red states, that are not deep blue. And, they often swing the general elections in favor of the left every two years.

The Republicans get to sit at the head of the table now and then, but they don't get to stay there long. A combination of infighting and poor organization results in a short life in that position. Look at the last time they owned all the seats, both houses of the congress and the White House. In two years the legislature did one thing, enacted a big tax cut, which did, in fact, stimulate the economy and, as a side effect, made the rich even richer.  Every other move that was made was by executive order. They promised much and delivered little. 

In those states, where the bulk of the population resides in the large cities, you can bet they will put a Dem into office, in-spite of policies that result in increased crime, high taxes, over regulation and have become a magnate for illegal aliens, among other things. 

There was a time, not to long ago, when the center of the Democrat and Republican Parties where not that far apart. They did cooperate on many issues. It was that cooperation that led to the balanced budget during the Clinton years. But, those days are gone, probably forever. 

The Democrats have moved far to the left. Their agenda can be encapsulated in a nutshell as being WOKE. They have pushed for and managed to gain seats on school boards, in the county district attorneys office and city hall in almost every major city. Major funding from people like George Soros have made that possible. 

The Republicans, on the other hand, have moved to the right. They are embracing Populism, or American First, ideas. They have become the blue collar workers champion. The Republican Party, once the party of the more affluent, low taxes, business friendly and fiscal responsibility has become the party of the people who build our roads, who move our products, who build our buildings, who grow our food, who mine our minerals, who produce our oil and gas, who work in our factories, i.e the blue collar worker and small business owners. They are far more religious. They want a strong military and generally have the support of men and women in uniform, now or past.  There is no longer a common ground from which to seek compromise between the two parties. They have entirely different agendas. 

Why is that? Let's start with the colleges. The students go into college, in general, with no firm political position. While in college they are fed a constant stream about the evils of capitalism and glories of socialism and even communism. They drag up every sin, by 2023 standards, America ever committed and feed that to the students as if it is norm for this country. These ideas and that political philosophy is especially prevalent in the liberal arts schools of Political Science, Journalism, English, Creative Arts, like acting, Broadcast Journalism and all the newly created majors and minors like Black Studies. History is taught from the WOKE standpoint. If you ask what George Washington did, the answer would probably come back that he was a slave owner. 

How much the Chinese government influences the major universities is hard to pin down. It is clear the huge sums of money are poured in universities, with donations through front organizations, and in research grants to individual professors. We do know that China secured 120 million dollars in contracts with US universities in 2021. The US government "discovered" $6.5 billion in previously unreported foreign donations to universities from primarily China and Russia in 2020. The PRC is the largest source of foreign donations to US universities since 2013. In addition, tuition paid by Chinese students is worth an estimated $12 billion per year.  Chinese sources have participated in donations or contracts worth more than $426 million to US universities since 2011. Apparently Harvard and MIT both received huge amounts of money in one way or another from the Chinese. Something in the order of a billion dollars each.

Although the law requires reporting large donations from foreign countries, the schools routinely ignore the requirement. 

One might conclude that the big universities don't want to anger the Chinese.

Even the STEM and business majors are subjected to this influence. After all, the degrees require courses in the liberal arts.

The law schools do not teach that the constitution is a contract between the people and the states with the federal government, but rather is nothing more than a guideline that should be interpreted to fit whatever political position the courts will wish. 

The big cities are populated by several solid Democrat groups. The people who look to the government for hand outs (welfare precipitants), the liberal arts educated who work in the offices, first and second generation Hispanics, folks who work directly for local, state and federal governments (there is a lot of them).

They may not totally agree, or they may completely disagree,  with the lefts position on a lot of things, but they check the boxes of the Democrat ticket every 2 years.

They have doing this for a long time, so the ideas and teachings have found their way into the workplace over the entire spectrum, especially the media and academia. The didn't need much help with the entertainment industry, it has been far left leaning for a long time, ever since the actors, producers, writers and directors who served in WWII left the industry.

They completely ignore the advancements that have been made in race relations over the last fifty years and paint white people as inherently bad, have significant advantages over other races, and exploit that advantage to suppress other races, especially blacks. This is from professors that have no real world experience. They never created anything. They never held a job that wasn't within the halls of academia. They completely ignore the failures and experiences in socialism that other countries have tried and failed miserably.  

They will not hear the points of views that is contrary to their own. Supporters of the conservative view are not invited to speak at most large colleges, and if a Republican is invited by some group, like the Young Republics, they are shouted down and even had to endure violence. Even Bill Mayer, the classic liberal, has problems with the college crowd.

The term White Supremacy has been coined to shout down anyone who dares to question any of their pronouncements. 

The graduates of these schools now populate the media, both print and broadcast, the entertainment field and the nerds in Silicon Valley. 

The left wants to become the rulers of the country. After all, they know best what is right and will dispense equality, not of opportunity but of outcome. The left believes that if they were in charge, all the evils of the world would be addressed and resolved. Homelessness and poverty would be a thing of the past. The rich would pay their "fair" share to support the programs they prefer. 

The Republicans have a big hill to climb. The registered Democrats outnumber them by a fair margin. The Democrats are much better funded and understand how to win elections better than the Republicans. They seek out and register every potential Democrat voter and get them registered. The work very hard in the legislatures to make registration and voting easier. They encourage the use of mail in voting and want it made as easy as possible and then they will "help" any voter with their ballot. They fight any restriction such as the requirement to show an ID or to verify that the signature on a mail-in ballot is authentic. They push for changes in registration laws so that a person can show at the polls and register to vote right then, without showing ID, or any proof of citizen. They are good at ballot harvesting, sometimes even legally. They have teams of people to make sure the registered Democrat voters vote. They work at this at every level. Your local school board, city council, prosecuting attorney, mayor and any elected state, county and county official are well supported by the DNC if they have the right political slant. 

That is why you have prosecutors that don't prosecute, school boards that want to teach CRT to very young students, Mayors and city councils that put highly restrictive collars on the police and reducing police budgets. The declare their cities or states as sanctuary for illegal immigrants and refuse to cooperate with ICE to notify them when illegals are jailed or released. The homeless littering the streets don't bother them, even though they give lip service to doing something for the them. They are first in slamming police anytime there is a shooting of a black man by a police officer, no matter the circumstances. The list goes on. We have selective prosecution of rioters who burn stores during "peaceful demonstrations", they are not prosecuted, not even arrested.  Almost legalized shop lifting is common, and the store worker prosecuted if they try to interfere. And, the list goes on. 

And the citizens of the big cities just pulling the Democrat lever.

So I ask you? Who is winning this race?

  

 

American Future?

All the signs of American decline on the world stage are there. Not that we will not remain viable, but our position as the leading economic and military power decline is almost a sure thing unless something changes, and in the present atmosphere, I don't see that happening. 

What will happen then, with two large and hostile countries on the same planet? Especially China that wants to replace the USA as the worlds leader in the two big categories of economics and military.  Not only those two but, two others that don't like us very much, Iran and North Korea. Not too mention most of the Muslim countries are not our friends, we're the great Satin. India, the largest nation on earth, by population, seems to be siding with China and Russia. It is not a friendly world out there. 

It has been said that in any form of government lies the seeds of it's destruction.  For a democracy, or a democratic republic as we are, the seed sprouts when the populace realizes that it can vote itself the contents of the nations treasury. We begin to spend more than we take in as revenue. A trend that was started by FDR during the Great Depression escalated. New entitlements were created and older ones expanded to include more of the population, although the treasury couldn't really afford a lot them over the long haul. Money was essentially printed and just handed out every time there was down tick in the economy.

That produced an appearance of wealth for awhile among the population; but what happens when the treasury finally runs dry? The population loves the social programs that government funds, and the left want even more than they are getting now, so the government borrows and continues borrowing in order to fund those programs. The populace are not happy with anything less and so they back the political party the promises to give them more. They want a high standard of living and even more social programs, free medical care, free college education, forgiveness of all past student debt, more welfare programs, among other things, but don't want to pay for it through the exorbitant taxes that would be required. If the government had to borrow money to pay, that was fine.

The last time the budget was balanced was under Bill Clinton, even then the debt wasn't paid down, just not increased. The government started to step in every time there was a hiccup in the economy and poured money into the system to weather the storm. What really put the icing on the cake was the arrival of the Covid-19 virus from China. The government, in it's infinite wisdom proceeded to shut down the economy in order to prevent the spread of the virus, or so they preached. The economy went into a tailspin. To shore it up the government, first under Trump and the under Biden, in his case with spades, pumped trillions of dollars into the economy by just handing out money to workers that were told to stay home.  That had a predictable effect. Inflation took off. There was to much money chasing to little goods. As a side effect, the workers don't want to return to work when the lock-down was lifted.

 The debt continues to grow as the government, through their elected officials spent more and more. Neither party seems to be willing to take on the problem, although the Republicans were able to slow down the massive increase desired by Biden and Dems during the last budget raising game. Maybe there is some hope for the future if the GOP can capture the legislature for any period of time, long enough to make a difference. And, if they have the guts to start making inroads in reducing the ever increasing debt or at least stop increasing it.

A look at the public debt reveals that we are now in a position where we owe more, with respect to the GDP,  than anytime since WWII.

 

   Public Debt over time as Percent of GDP

Our spending is really out of control over the last 8 years, especially since the Dems took the White House and both houses of congress in 2020. In 2022 we spent more than a trillion dollars more than we took in. We have locked ourselves into entitlement programs that leave little room to maneuver. So the Government printed money, lots of money. The result is high inflation. Wages are creeping up but inflation is raising faster. To make matters worse, Biden and the Democrat congress passed a measure called the inflation recovery act, which dumped even more trillions of dollars in the already over heated economy. That's Trillion with T. An ungodly amount of money, considering that the United States has less than 350 million people to pay it.

 

 The 2022 Spending and revenue

 All the borrowing is fine until you have to pay the interest on the debt. When you have to borrow more in order pay the interest on the current debt, you are headed for a big problem. After all the interest keeps compounding. Only Medicare and Social Security will grow to to remain larger than the money we have to pay in interest in the near future, but in the long term the interest will become the largest single item in the budget. And growing by the day, unless something is done, and soon.

The left believes that the way out is tax the rich and the corporations, with high capital gains and corporate taxes, not to cut back on spending, especially their pet social programs.
But, a bit of insight into the way the economy works would show that that is not a good idea. History has shown that it doesn't work. It would not produce enough revenue and the liberal forgets that money walks. The rich and their money will find other places for their investments.

Sometime, in the not to distant future, the chicken will come home to roost. We will have to do something to meet our obligations to pay our bills, or declare bankruptcy. Most of the options range from unpleasant to catastrophic. The one the politicians will choose is probably just to print even more money. The result will be massive inflation on a scale this country has never seen. The Federal Reserve will keep increasing interest rates trying to battle the inflationary spiral which might, and probably will, throw the economy into a recession.

What should be attacked is the large entitlement programs, and it should be attacked soon. Social Security, Medicare and Medical are the biggest items in the budget, dwarfing the defense budget. You would not have to take a hatchet to the two entitlement programs, just put some common sense into them. After all, when Social Security was enacted the average life span was about 68 years. It has not risen to around 72. People who reach Social Security retirement age will probably be on Social Security longer than they worked. What will be attacked is defense spending. Especially, if the Dems are in charge. They will not give up their entitlements without a fight. We will shave our military drastically. The politicians don't have the nerve to modify Social Security or the other entitlements. Ron DeSantis and others have tried to offer some solutions but, got no where, and is the subject of the Trump advertisements against him in the current Republican race for the White House. 

There will be no one left who can challenge the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and the North Koreans, if they choose unleash their forces into areas they want. I suspect they will. Eastern Europe, all of Indochina, the middle east and most of the Pacific could very well be ruled by the communist governments or the Iranians. So far those areas are protected under the umbrella of the United States military power. That could well disappear in the future as we struggle with the public debt. 

How else have we shot ourselves in the foot?

We, you and me, along with help from the rest of the Western World, have pulled the Chinese from a third world country into the second largest economy in the world. How and why did we do that?

The United States emerged from WWII as the leading industrial power in the world. Our industries were intact, not having been bombed into to rubble as had many other of the worlds industries. We turned out products for the US market and for exports at a phenomenal rate as the world woke up from the war and started to want the goods that were only being produced in numbers by the United States.  This produced the highest standard of living in all of history for the vast majority of the American public. An explosion of the middle class emerged. The average worker could buy a house, a car, appliances for the home and could live a life that would have been the envy of older generations.

That generation suffered through the great depression and WWII. They remembered the past and showered their children with everything they never had. The Baby Boomers grew up having all the necessities of life and many of the luxuries. And, they liked it. Their children liked it even better and the later generations began to think of it as their right, their due. 

American manufacturers looking to capitalize on the abundant market rushed to get products out the door and shipped.  The products they were producing were still at pre-war standards. In their rush, they began making many poor products. The machine tools were still being made as they had been in the pre-war days. Large tolerances were the norm so the the mass production methods developed the US would keep running. 

But then, the other nations started to recover and rebuild their manufacturing. Their factories were newer and more efficient than the older American ones and in the Asian countries especially, they had an abundance of cheap labor. 

Japan decided that the future that MacArthur wanted them to go, wasn't in their best interest and they set upon a goal of achieving high levels of reliability and quality in their products. Their machine tools were the latest technology and far surpassed those of the American manufacturers. Consequently after a few false starts and a national commitment, the Japanese started turning out products noted for their high quality and reliability and because of cheaper labor and more efficient machines they were turning them out cheaper and better than the American manufacturers. This was especially noticeable in the auto market with the rise of Toyota and Nissan and the impact on the American market. Today Toyota is the worlds largest selling auto brand. 

After a few missteps by the Chinese, they abandoned their experiment in socialism as unworkable and took a big step toward capitalism.  Not exactly free market capitalism as we know it, but a form with the government heavily involved in over all direction of the economy. Even those large companies owned outright by the state are run as businesses under capitalist rules. They were run for profit. Those companies had to compete in the global market so the old Soviet Model wouldn't work. The Chinese created as many billionaires as the western world.  A strong one party system can do that. The Chinese had a very cheap and very abundant labor pool and could turn out any manufactured product far cheaper than the American manufacturers.

Manufacturing of goods and raw materials started moving to China. Pretty soon virtually everything that was for sale in American stores or online was made in China. The great American factories that had out produced the world during WWII were closed down. Americans were unwilling to pay the higher prices that local products would cost. They liked using cheaper foreign made products. The factory jobs that once were the backbone of American economy disappeared.

American Companies, like Nike, Adidas, Coca Cola, Disney, the NBA to name a few, saw that huge market of a billion people or a huge amount of cheap labor to produce their product and couldn't resist the urge to capitalize. Your Michael Jordan's shoes are made  by cheap child labor in China. Most American based companies that wanted to do business on a global scale sucked up to China.  

We did not produce enough goods of all kinds to export to China and other foreign countries to balance the scales, so we borrowed money to pay for those goods coming into the United States.  Other countries were also exporting goods to the US but not anything like China. So, a growing trade deficit emerged over time.

Where did the Chinese spend all that American cash they reaped from sales to the US markets? They begin to buy up America. They invested in real estate and other items. That GE refrigerator you bought was money that went into the bank in China. The appliance division of GE is owned by a Chinese Company. The holdings of Chinese in American is extensive and just too many to list, but a few may surprise you. 

AMC, Smithfield Foods, The Waldorf Astoria, Strategic Hotels Resorts, Legendary Pictures, Sheraton Universal Hotel in LA, Motorola Mobility, Terex Corporations, Marriott Hotel in LA, Ingram Micro, are wholly owned by Chinese companies to name a few. In addition the have a stake in Morgan Stanley, VISA, Ford, Reddit, Blackstone, GM and many more. Enough of a stake they have a seat on the board. Of course everyone knows that the social media TicTok is owned and run by a Chinese company.

If you want to do business in China you have to have a Chinese partner and transfer the technology you use to do that business to the Chinese partner. The same as giving it to the Communist party. 

The Chinese have infiltrated American business at many levels and influenced the politics of America for years. They give liberally to the Democrats and a little to the Republicans. They have a huge influence on the World Health Organization which went to great lengths to cover up Chinese involvement in the Covid-19 virus. 

They want and have a seat at the table for almost any discussion about China. Look at the Covid-19 episode. They did everything they could to muddy the waters about the origins of the virus. They have so much influence that the government went right along with them and worked to mislead the American people. 

The main government funded medical organizations, the NIH and the CDC were afraid to point the finger at China research, probably because they funded that research. The social media platforms worked, along with the Chinese, to misdirect the discussion of the virus origins. No posting on Facebook or Twitter that questioned the governments position was allowed. Serious researchers and doctors in the specialty of infectious diseases were banned from the social media platforms. 

Mainstream media, ABC, NBC, NY Times, Washington Post, CNN and others pretty much toed the government line.  Only Fox seemed to point the finger at the Chinese Wuhan lab as the culprit. 

They are engaged in a massive and intensive cyber war against the United States. They are after military and state secrets as well as personal data on American citizens. They are infiltrating every level of our society and mining information at a horrific pace. They are using social media to plant their ideology into the minds of the American youth. And we are helping them. Every posting on Tiktok is available to the Chinese. American youth seem to be in love with that platform and uses it constantly. 

I don't see how we get out of this mess until we hit bottom and the electorate wakes up and stop electing left wing politicians that advocate a global reach, even at the expense of the American citizen.  Perhaps I'm too pessimistic. I hope so. If I'm not, then our grandchildren will have a tougher time of it than the current generation had. For the first time the next generation will have less than their parents. That seems to be happening already is some ways.