The latest Marquette University Law School Poll results show that the long-predicted “blue wave” in November might not crash into Wisconsin after all. While 2018 may indeed be a big Democrat year, voters in Wisconsin are telling pollsters that they don’t much care for Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin.
After nearly a full six-year term, Senator Baldwin has the support of just 37% of the poll’s respondents, while 39% have an unfavorable view of her. A full 20% say they don’t know enough about her to form an opinion. In an election year, those numbers are nothing short of catastrophic for an incumbent. Not only is she underwater, she has clearly accomplished so little in her time in Washington that a fifth of Wisconsinites can’t say one way or another what they think about anything she’s done (or, more accurately, failed to do).
This means that her challengers, State Senator Leah Vukmir and businessman Kevin Nicholson, are still able to define for voters who exactly Baldwin is–a scary proposition for any vulnerable incumbent. Though Nicholson and Vukmir are still virtual unknowns–a whopping 80% of Marquette Poll respondents don’t yet know enough about either to form an opinion–they have a tremendous opening to build their candidacies on the back of Baldwin’s shameful negligence on opioid over-prescription at the Veterans Affairs facility in Tomah.
Because of Baldwin’s remarkably low profile in Washington, her refusal to listen to a whistleblower’s information about the problems at the VA is what overwhelmingly defines her term in office. This is a transgression that cuts through the static of nonstop election-year political advertising and either changes voters’ minds or steels their resolve to vote out their do-nothing Senator.
Let’s face it: “Senator Baldwin did nothing while our veterans died of overdoses” is a far more powerful message than “Senator Baldwin is wrong on trade policy.”
This is the uphill battle that Baldwin has to fight, and the fact that she is brazenly (and dishonestly) running advertisements touting her record on veterans affairs speaks volumes about how scared she is that this issue will cost her re-election.
Conversely, the poll shows that Governor Walker should be feeling confident in his bid for re-election. He stands at 47% approval with 47% disapproval–the exact same split he saw in the March, 2014 Marquette Poll. He went on to defeat Mary Burke rather handily that November even though Burke was the Democratic Party’s hand-picked candidate and faced no serious competition in the primary.
This year, a crowded Democratic primary field is ensuring that none of the candidates has eight free months to attack Walker. They must instead spend every moment and every dollar differentiating themselves from the rest of the pack. In all likelihood, this means moving to the left of the competition in a bid to secure the Democratic Party’s increasingly radical base.
Ask Hillary Clinton how well that worked two years ago.
Wisconsin’s Democrats made it clear during that primary that they wanted an avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders, and chose him overwhelmingly over the more moderate Clinton. Similarly, to escape the 2018 primary, a more moderate Democrat like Tony Evers (who is currently leading the field at 18%) will have to move left to fend off a challenge from the likes of Madison Mayor Paul Soglin or Firefighters Union President Mahlon Mitchell.
Making matters even worse for the Democratic field, 53% of Marquette poll respondents say Wisconsin is on the right track. With record-low unemployment and major business investments in the state during Walker’s tenure in office, it will be very difficult to change voters’ minds that the past seven years have been very good for the state.
The one bit of good news that Democrats received from this poll is the enthusiasm gap: While 54% of Republicans say they are very motivated to vote this year, 64% of Democrats say the same. It will therefore take far less convincing to get Democrats out to the polls and, as has been proven time and again in Wisconsin, winning requires that a candidate first and foremost turn out the base.
If Democrats can do this in far greater numbers than Republicans, then they can theoretically recapture the Governor’s mansion and hold onto the Senate seat, but there is simply no indication that the voter base that elected Walker three times in three years will suddenly abandon him in 2018. If that happens, and if enough of the 20% of voters who still don’t know about Senator Baldwin learn about and are repulsed by her handling of the Tomah V.A. scandal, then November might be far better for Wisconsin Republicans than they fear.
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1 comment on Meanwhile, back in the land of cheese …
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London’s Daily Mail:
The NRA has seen a huge surge in membership interest in recent weeks, after drawing noisy backlash over the shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Google searches for ‘NRA membership’ have risen roughly 4,900 per cent since the week before the February 14 shooting, with new members flocking to support the gun owners’ rights group.
NRA President Wayne LaPierre announced last May that national membership had reached five million, but the group has not commented on the recent surge and didn’t immediately reply to calls from DailyMail.com on Sunday.
Though high-profile mass shootings often spur an increase in gun sales over fear of a crackdown, the Parkland shooting was different in the focus of vitriol that was directed at the NRA.
Some otherwise casual gun rights supporters said that the loud attacks on the NRA in the media by young Parkland survivors such as David Hogg drove them to sign up.
‘Thank you David Hogg for inspiring me,’ one Twitter user wrote. ‘I gifted my husband with an NRA membership. I felt now was an important time to support them,’ she continued, adding a screenshot of the membership confirmation email.
Other new NRA members said they were pushed to join because of perceived media bias and the rush to condemn gun rights in the wake of the shooting, in which 17 died.‘After ten minutes of CNN’s town hall “debate” I had already searched for gun safes, the closest firearms dealer near me, classes on gun safety, and an NRA membership,’ wrote Robert Norman in a column for the Federalist.
NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch appeared at the CNN town hall just a week after the shooting, receiving boos and curses from the packed arena.
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel piled on, drawing cheers from the crowd when he berated Loesch – days before information about critical law enforcement failures in Israel’s own department came to light.
‘The town hall was a display of tyranny,’ wrote Norman, on why it prompted him to join the NRA.
‘For tyranny has never come from a single person, but rather from a mob cheering for the destruction of liberty and rights from those with whom they disagree.’
Google searches for ‘NRA membership’ have risen roughly 4900 per cent since the week before the February 14 shooting, according to this Google Trends report
After the CNN town hall, several national brands withdrew from partnerships to offer discounts to NRA members – companies including MetLife, Enterprise car rental, and Norton AntiVirus.A new Morning Consult survey conducted last week found that net favorability ratings for those brands plunged when consumers learned of their moves to cut ties with the NRA – though the results were sharply split along partisan lines.
‘There is no one. NO ONE. Who joins the NRA for a discount on a rental car,’ Cleta Mitchell, an NRA member and former Oklahoma state lawmaker who sat on the NRA’s board from 2002 to 2013, said in an email to Time.
‘You can rest assured that the NRA will not lose a single member as a result of this,’ Mitchell said.
‘If anything, it should spur people to join the NRA as a means of demonstrating that we who believe in the Second Amendment will not be bullied by these left wing multi-billion dollar corporations
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Today in 1962, the Beatles recorded their first radio appearance, on the BBC’s “Teenagers’ Turn — Here We Go”:
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During the restart of the gun control debate since Feb. 14, many supporters of gun control have claimed they don’t oppose gun ownership or the Second Amendment, but …
But: Many of them are lying. National Review:
More than a third of the Democratic party would do away with the Second Amendment, a survey by The Economist and YouGov revealed.
Even 21 percent of the American public would support that plan, according to the study.
The poll was conducted from February 25-27, while the nation was still reeling from the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 earlier last month.
Student survivors of the shooting have marched on Washington, D.C., and the Florida capitol calling for gun control. President Trump met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday to discuss several measures, including an assault-weapons ban, raising the age to buy an assault rifle from 18 to 21, and reforming background checks.
The survey also showed that a majority of Democrats, 82 percent, are in favor of banning semi-automatic weapons, which include handguns as well as rifles. Only slightly over half of Republicans, 53 percent, are against this proposal.
Democrats are evenly split on banning all handguns (including revolvers) except those carried by law enforcement.
Half of the general population said that gun purchasers should be required to pass a mental examination before walking away with a firearm, with 68 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans supporting this idea.
Okay—so the new ban on so-called assault weapons has been put forward and to no one’s surprise is pretty much a total gun ban. A massive slate of weapons are slated to be banned since the legislation calls for the prohibition of semi-automatic rifles and handguns that have detachable magazines, and can carry more than 10 rounds (via Washington Examiner) [emphasis mine:
House Democrats have introduced a bill banning semi-automatic firearms in the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., announced Monday he is introducing the Assault Weapons Ban of 2018. More than 150 Democrats have signed on in support of the legislation, Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., said.
[…]
The bill prohibits the “sale, transfer, production, and importation” of semi-automatic rifles and pistols that can hold a detachable magazine, as well as semi-automatic rifles with a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds. Additionally, the legislation bans the sale, transfer, production, and importation of semi-automatic shotguns with features such as a pistol grip or detachable stock, and ammunition feeding devices that can hold more than 10 rounds.
Cicilline’s legislation names 205 specific firearms that are prohibited, including the AK-47 and AR-15.
“Assault weapons were made for one purpose,” Cicilline said in a statement. “They are designed to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time. They do not belong in our communities.”
Deutch vowed during a CNN town hall last week to introduce a bill banning semi-automatic weapons. …
So, it’s the same old game. Democrats say let’s have a discussion, only to spring a trap on the rest of us—yelling, condemning, and denigrating those with whom they disagree on gun policy. They use children to shield them from criticism. I don’t play that game. If you go on national television, spew nonsense, and push for the evisceration of American civil rights—I’m going to attack you. And by nonsense, I don’t mean simple disagreements; I mean things that are demonstrably false. I’m a proud NRA member. Full disclosure: I am a damn proud member—and this latest anti-gun push is tempting me to become a life member and give consistent monthly donations. That does not make me a child killer, nor is this insane smear an accurate description of the other 4,999,999 brothers and sisters in the NRA who support American freedom, the Constitution, and our Second Amendment rights. The NRA does not sell guns; that’s another garbage lie. You can be for school safety and support our Second Amendment.
H.R. 5087‘s sponsors include Reps. Mark Pocan (D–Black Earth) and Gwen Moore (D–Milwaukee.)
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Though the media often attempts to twist the gun rights debate into a web of complexity, gun rights is in fact a rather simple issue — either you believe that people have an inherent right to self defense, or you don’t. All other arguments are a peripheral distraction.
Firearms are a powerful epoch changing development. Not because they necessarily make killing “easier;” killing was always easy for certain groups of people throughout history, including governments and organized thugs. Instead, guns changed the world because for the first time in thousands of years the common man or woman could realistically stop a more powerful and more skilled attacker. Firearms are a miraculous equalizer in a world otherwise dominated and enslaved by everyday psychopaths.
The Founding Fathers understood this dynamic very well. Despite arguments from the extreme left falsely insinuating that the founders are essentially barbarians from a defunct era that were too stupid to understand future developments and technology, the fact is that they knew the core philosophical justification for an armed citizenry was always the most important matter at hand. Today’s debates try to muddle meaningful discourse by swamping the public in the minutia of background checks, etc. But the following quotes from the early days of the Republic outline what we should all really be talking about:
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776“To disarm the people…[i]s the most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason, referencing advice given to the British Parliament by Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, June 14, 1788“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
– Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.”
– Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
– Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833“On every occasion [of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823The inborn right to self defense and the ability of the people to maintain individual liberties in the face of tyranny supersedes all other arguments on gun rights. In fact, nothing else matters. This key point is so unassailable that anti-gun lobbyists have in most cases given up trying to defeat it. Instead of trying to confiscate firearms outright (which is their ultimate goal), they attempt to chip away at gun rights a piece at a time through endless flurries of legislation. This legislation is usually implemented in the wake of a tragedy involving firearms, for gun grabbers never let a good crisis go to waste. Exploiting the deaths of innocent people to further an ideological agenda is a common strategy for them.
This leads us to the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. The narrative being constructed around this event is the same as usual — that stronger “gun control and background checks” are needed to prevent such things from ever happening again.
Of course, Nikolas Cruz, the alleged perpetrator of the shooting, obtained his firearms legally and by passing existing background checks. Being that these background checks have been highly effective in stopping the vast majority of potential criminals from purchasing firearms through legal channels, one wonders what more can be done to make these checks somehow “foolproof.”
Around 1.5 million 4473 forms (background checks) have been rejected by the ATF in the two decades since more stringent background checks were instituted. As many as 160,000 forms are denied each year for multiple reasons, including mental health reasons.
So, the question is, did background checks fail in the case of Nikolas Cruz? And would any suggested amendments to current 4473 methods have made any difference whatsoever in stopping Cruz from purchasing a weapon? The answer is no. No suggested changes to ATF background checks would have made a difference. But there are stop-gaps to preventing mass shootings other than the ATF.
The FBI, for example, had been warned on multiple occasions about Cruz, including his open threats to commit a school shooting. Yet, the FBI did nothing.
Could the FBI have prevented the killings in Parkland by following up repeated warnings on Nikolas Cruz? I would say yes, it is possible they could have investigated Cruz’s threats, verified them and prosecuted for conspiracy to commit a violent crime, or at the very least, they could have frightened him away from the idea.
Was the Parkland shooting then a failure of background checks or a failure of the FBI? And, if it was a failure of the FBI, then shouldn’t anti-gun advocates focus on revamping the FBI instead of pushing the same background check and gun show “loophole” rhetoric they always do?
They aren’t interested in instituting changes at the FBI because this could help solve the problem, and they do not care about solving the problem, they only care about pursuing their ultimate goal of deconstructing the 2nd Amendment for all time.
Gun control advocates will conjure up a host of arguments for diminishing gun rights, but just like the background check issue and Nikolas Cruz, most of them are nonsensical.
They’ll make the claim that guns for self defense are fine, but that high capacity military grade weapons were never protected under the Constitution. “The founding fathers were talking about single shot muskets when they wrote that…” is the commonly regurgitated propaganda meme. This is false. High capacity “machine guns” (like the Puckle gun and the Girandoni rifle) and even artillery were actually common during the time of the founders and were indeed protected under the 2nd Amendment. In fact, the 2nd Amendment applies to all firearms under common military usage regardless of the era.
They’ll claim that high capacity “assault weapons” are not needed and that low capacity firearms are more practical for self defense. They obviously are ignoring the circumstances surrounding any given self defense scenario. What if you are facing off with multiple assailants? What if those assailants are mass shooters themselves and obtained their weapons on the black market as the ISIS terrorists in Paris did in 2015? What if the assailant is a tyrannical government? Who is to say what capacity is “practical” in those situations?
They’ll claim that tougher gun laws and even confiscation will prevent mass shootings in the future, yet multiple nations (including France) have suffered horrific mass shootings despite having far more Orwellian gun laws than the U.S.
Criminals and terrorists do not follow laws. Laws are words on paper backed up by perceived consequences that only law abiding people care about. The vast majority of successful mass shootings take place in “gun free zones,” places where average law abiding citizens are left unarmed and easy prey.
So, what is the solution that gun grabbers don’t want to talk about? What could have stopped the shooting in Parkland? What is the one thing that the mainstream media actively seeks to avoid any dialogue about?
The solution is simple — abolish all gun free zones. If teachers at the high school in Parkland had been armed the day Nikolas Cruz showed up with the intent to murder, then the entire event could have gone far differently. Instead of acting helplessly as human shields against a spray of bullets, teachers and coaches could have been shooting back, actually stopping the threat instead of just slowing it down for a few seconds. Or, knowing that he might be immediately shot and killed before accomplishing his attack, Cruz may have abandoned the attempt altogether. There is no way to calculate how many crimes and mass shootings have been prevented exactly because private gun ownership acted as a deterrent.
Most gun grabbers are oblivious to this kind of logic because they are blinded by ideological biases. Some of them, however, understand the truth of this completely, and they don’t care. They are not in the business of saving lives; they are in the business of exploiting death. They want something entirely different from what they claim they want. They are not interested in life, they are interested in control.
I would not suggest teachers who don’t want to be armed in school should be required to be armed. Teachers who do want to be armed should be. As the phrase goes, when help is needed in seconds, police are there in minutes. That is not criticism of police; it’s reality, as is the fact the world is full of bad people.
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The number one British album today in 1965 was “The Rolling Stones No. 2”:
The number one single today in 1965:
Today in 1970, an album was released to pay for the defense in a California murder trial.
You didn’t know Charles Manson was a recording “artist,” did you?
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David Blaska reports the latest incident of Madison stupidity:
The aborted bank robbery on Madison’s far east side is what separates our liberal-progressive-socialists acquaintances from the rest of us.
Thursday’s was the fourth robbery in 14 months at the Chase branch bank on Milwaukee Street, located in a residential neighborhood. Following the one in early December. All of them armed or thought to be armed.
An armed bank security guard shot the suspected robber dead with a single bullet. Would that his security guard been on duty at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School! We’ve said this before: we protect our money with force of arms but not our school children.
About this time, the AnonyBobbers will cavil that an armed policeman patrols each of the four Madison public high schools. Not if the social justice warriors get their way. Consider, also, the difference between the lobby of a branch bank and the sprawling campus of a Madison high school enrolled with over 1,500 students plus a couple hundred staff.
Alder Amanda Hall represents the neighborhood surrounding the Chase branch bank. If you did not know Ald. Hall was a Madison liberal-progressive-socialist, the lady gives it away with her response to the crime, as reported by the WI State Journal:
Hall said the city and the community should reflect on the crime and assess what action can be taken and services provided that could prevent people from turning to crime or violence.
“What this looks like to me is we have a young man, who didn’t have the community support and the community opportunity to make a different choice with what he was going to do with his Thursday,” Hall said. “And now he’s dead.”
Notice the lack of human agency? The resort to victimology? The disinterest in the threat the armed robber posed to innocent civilians? The appeal to More Free Stuff? Yes, now the poor bastard is dead. His death is on your conscience, you heartless conservatives.
- Walker, Trump, and Koch Brothers! You denied the dead bank robber the services that could have prevented him from meeting his needs at the bank till, at the expense of honest working people.
- CPAC, Legislative Exchange Council, Federalist Society! Guilty of immigration reform, school choice, and constitutional textualism when what was needed was a nationwide Madison Schools’ Behavior Education Plan!
- Fox News, NRA, WMC, and Right to Life! You prevented the dead robber from making a different choice with what he was going to do with his Thursday. Not enough neighborhood centers, apparently. All those “Help Wanted” and “Now Hiring” signs mocked the poor fellow’s need for instant cash.
One could say that the bank security sharpshooter prevented crime, at least on the part of that one perp.
The State Journal reported Friday:
A man shot and killed by a security guard Thursday afternoon was unarmed when he allegedly tried to rob a Far East Side bank, Madison police Chief Mike Koval said.
The man, who is believed to be a Latino man in his 20s, entered the Chase Bank at 4513 Milwaukee St. at about 4:50 p.m. with his face covered, Koval said.
The man kept his hands covered or obscured while forcefully demanding money, Koval said, which he said could imply the man had a gun.
The armed security guard, employed through Off Duty Services of Katy, Texas, shot the man, who died from a single gunshot wound, Koval said.
The Dane County District Attorney’s Office will decide whether the shooting warrants charges, Koval said, and the guard’s name would not be released unless charges are filed.
This fact doesn’t change my opinion of this in the least. The security guard should get a medal for saving the other people in the bank from what they all had to believe was a threat to their lives, irrespective of whether the bandit thought he could scare them by saying he was armed when he wasn’t.
The deceased is Luis Martz Narvaez, 35, South Milwaukee, who was most recently convicted of speeding 30 to 34 mph over the speed limit in Milwaukee County. By the time Narvaez reached his 18th birthday he had been convicted of felony car theft, felony escape from criminal arrest twice, retail theft twice, misdemeanor bail jumping, and resisting or obstructing an officer.
The felony escape charge sentences (five years on probation and one year in jail, respectively) were assessed while Narvaez’s official address was listed as the federal penitentiary in Jonesville, Va. Narvaez was there because he was convicted of bank robbery in 2003. His sentence of 170 months in prison was reduced in 2011 following a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, knocking five years off his sentence. Draw your own conclusions.
The State Journal tries to generate sympathy for the deceased felon:
On Nov. 26, 2003, U.S. District Judge John Shabaz sentenced Narvaez, who was 21 at the time, to just over 14 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to robbing Wisconsin Community Bank in Middleton in 2002.
According to a transcript of his sentencing hearing, a prosecutor said the gun Narvaez used in the robbery was a BB gun, although tellers believed it was an actual gun.
His lawyer, Anthony Delyea, told Shabaz, according to the transcript, that Narvaez’s father spent a lot of time in prison, while his mother moved around a lot. He said Narvaez’s life deteriorated after his father got out of prison. He had struggled with drugs and with family problems, Delyea told Shabaz, and struggled to find work.
“But this young man is just that, a young man with lots of potential,” Delyea told Shabaz. “He made a mistake, he accepts his mistake and he is prepared to pay the price, pay restitution, turn his life around and move on.”Narvaez told Shabaz that he wanted to get help for his drug problem and get an education.“Since I’ve done this I’ve had some time to think about it and I realize I’ve thrown a big part of my life away,” Narvaez said. “I don’t know if it was the drugs or the stress but I made a really bad decision and I want to change.”
In 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ordered Narvaez to be re-sentenced without a sentencing enhancement as a career criminal, due to a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the appeals court said applied to Narvaez’s case. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb re-sentenced him to just over eight years in prison, essentially commuting his sentence to the time he had served.
According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, Narvaez was released from prison on May 23, 2012.
In November 2013, Narvaez transferred his federal supervision to Minnesota. His supervision ended in 2015.
Narvaez has already become a martyr given his listing on GunMemorial.org and GunViolenceArchive.org. Neither site acknowledges why Narvaez is no longer among the living.
An incident like this came up when I was on Wisconsin Public Radio some time ago, and my opponent claimed that the dead guy in that case didn’t do anything to deserve being killed by, I believe in this case, police, and that his due process rights were violated, blah blah blah. Due process is something government (that is, the court system) is required to do. Due process is not something someone threatening to harm others should get.
While capital punishment is not a deterrent, the bank robber won’t be robbing banks or engaging in any more criminal activity. If we had more instances like this, where the bad guy ends up dead, our crime rate would drop.
My last reflection on this crime is that Hall and her ilk are on the wrong side and shouldn’t be in office. Given that I grew up in that part of Madison, which was comparatively, well, less liberal than the rest of my hometown, I have to wonder who moved into my neighborhood and voted for this criminal sympathizer.
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Republicans are rightly criticized when their fiscal-conservative rhetoric doesn’t meet their now-in-office reality. Republicans are generally good about cutting taxes, but they are much better at increasing spending than cutting spending.
Republicans, however, have nothing on Democratic First Congressional District candidate Randy Bryce, according to Chris Rochester:
Randy Bryce, who likes to milk his public persona as a mustachioed “everyman” iron worker, outlined his economic agenda on Monday at the Wisconsin Council of Machinists. The plan is familiar to anyone versed in far-left big government manifestos – most of it seems to have been plucked straight from the Bernie Sanders platform.
And it comes with a similarly eye-popping price tag: $50 trillion.
Bryce, a candidate for Wisconsin’s First Congressional District, told the union members he supports a $15 minimum wage, increased infrastructure spending, and new regulations on scheduling employees. His website also presents a laundry list of big government schemes ranging from a slate of new regulations on employers, sops to unions, a $1 trillion green energy spending program, and “Medicare For All.”
Long a dream of the far left, “Medicare For All” would create a national single-payer health care system and effectively socialize all of medicine. And it isn’t cheap – the price tag has been pegged at $32 trillion over 10 years, a jaw dropping figure that Bryce struggled to defend on CNN.
“There’s a lot of people that are getting away with not paying their fair share in taxes right now,” Bryce told the network last summer when asked where the $32 trillion – nearly twice the entire economic output of the United States in 2012 – would come from.
“You want to raise $32 trillion in taxes?” asked host John Berman.
“Well…I’m not saying that…that, we have to look at ways to, um, just increase complete costs. There’s a lot of things that we can look at as far as making things cost effective,” Bryce said, restating his apparent belief that raising taxes on the rich could somehow cover the massive tab of his “Medicare For All” quest.
Bryce has said the $1.5 trillion Republican tax cut should have been put toward “Medicare For All.” Interestingly, after excoriating the Ryan-led bill as a “#TaxScam” just two months ago, on Monday he called for the extension of the middle class tax cuts it contains.
Bryce seems to be using both sides of his mustached mouth when talking about the federal tax overhaul.
“It’s a horrible bill,” Bryce said of the sweeping GOP tax overhaul when it was before Congress in December. “Unless you’re a billionaire or a multi-millionaire, you’re not going to see any benefit from this,” he stated in a campaign video posted at the time. Bryce was hopping on a bandwagon of Democrats who derided the tax cut plan as “armageddon,” a conservative coup d’état, and the end of the Republic, among a slough of other overheated claims about the long-overdue tax overhaul.
Those claims of doom and gloom fell spectacularly flat as the tax cuts, signed into law by President Trump just before Christmas, began to yield immediate dividends for American workers. More than 4 million Americans – many of them not billionaires or multi-millionaires – have already gotten raises, bonuses, enhanced retirement contributions, or other perks as a direct result of the reform, according to Americans for Tax Reform.
But $1,000 bonuses and $15 minimum wages voluntarily instituted by companies are just “crumbs,” according to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California). Former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) echoed the sentiment.
“I’m not sure that $1,000, which is taxed, taxable, goes very far for almost anyone,” she said.
Bryce agrees, repeatedly tweeting that the tax cut is designed to benefit the rich and not the middle class.
“The GOP’s tax bill isn’t helping working families…It’s lining the pockets of people like @realDonaldTrump,” he tweeted, ignoring that an estimated 80 percent of taxpayers will get a tax cut averaging $2,100 in 2018.
Other estimates say 90 percent of Americans will see a tax cut, which Bernie himself said is a “very good thing.”
With new polling showing 51 percent of Americans now in support of the tax law just weeks after the new rates went into effect – up from 37 percent in December – it looks like a majority of Americans disagree with Pelosi, Wasserman Schultz, and Bryce.
Costly single-payer utopias and confused opposition to tax cuts aren’t the only pet liberal causes Bryce touts. He’s also calling for a mandated $15 per hour minimum wage, another long-sought bullet point on the far-left, unionista checklist. But according to a study by the Heritage Foundation, a $15 federal minimum wage would cost Wisconsin 138,000 full-time equivalent jobs. Nationwide, 7 million people would be out of work if this plank of the Bryce platform were to make it into law.
Bryce and his ideological allies have yet to offer more than platitudes about “millionaires and billionaires” when asked how they’d pay for their budget-busting new spending schemes, which amount to $18 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the Urban Institute Health Policy.
That doesn’t include the Bernie-Bryce “Medicare For All” plan, which would blow another $32 trillion hole in the budget.
Simple math shows that the price tag of Randy Bryce’s plans adds up to $50 trillion. That’s nearly 15 times the entire annual federal budget and nearly 2.5 times the current $20.7 trillion national debt.
If the ballyhooed “blue wave” hits Wisconsin’s First Congressional District this fall, America’s “millionaires and billionaires” – and everyone else who pays taxes – should get ready to whip out their checkbooks.
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Today in 1955, Elvis Presley made his TV debut, on “Louisiana Hayride” on KWKH-TV in Shreveport, La.
The number one album today in 1966 was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’ “Going Places”:
The number one single today in 1966:
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The Grammy Awards premiered today in 1959. The Record of the Year came from a TV series:
Today in 1966, John Lennon demonstrated the ability to get publicity, if not positive publicity, when the London Evening Standard printed a story in which Lennon said:
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.
Lennon’s comment prompted Bible Belt protests, including burning Beatles records. Of course, as the band pointed out, to burn Beatles records requires purchasing them first.
The number one single today in 1967:
Today in 1973, Pink Floyd began its 19-date North American tour at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 