“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” ---Aldous Huxley
“One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.” ---Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
According to Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) the Democrats’ Build Back Better legislation is not dead. Cardin said Democrats are open to potentially passing some parts of the bill as standalone items. “That’s a strategy decision that’s being negotiated. We are open to a way to reach the finish line,” Cardin said.
The finish line is a complete takeover of America by Progressives forcing through the Democratic Socialists’ agenda. It is the implementation of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. There is nothing democratic about it. And it will be the end of American Freedom. The flame of Liberty will be extinguished and replaced by the artificial light of an over-arching Supreme central government purveyed by non-elected bureaucrats. Even now, the irrational Pelosi cabal is rooting out political dissent with her January 6th committee while America sleeps in a Chinese-delivered COVID coma.
Weak Republicans have fallen for the bait and switch of yielding “just a little” in exchange for what they perceive to be their constituencies’ share of the pie. But they didn’t ask their constituencies first. They just assumed they knew best. They have been wrong. They yielded enough to keep “the BBB beast alive.”
Consider retiring Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) The Senator said that he opposed the overall BBB package, but assumed there were things in the bill that he could support as standalone items such as an initiative he had been working on with Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan). “Surely there is something in there that I would be for, Senator Stabenow and I have worked for years to try to see that we treat mental health like all other health. That’s a relatively small item in this bill. I think it’s in there, but that’s an item if we put on the floor by itself, Republicans and Democrats would vote for,” Blunt said.
Well, that’s the way it was supposed to work in Congress, but it never has been that way. Republicans concede and get nothing in return. And that is just wrong.
If the money wasted on the implementation of Obamacare had been directed towards private sector mental health, perhaps things would be better. If veterans suffering from PTSD and drug addiction along with other mentally ill patients hadn’t been released onto the streets as mental hospitals closed up shop, perhaps things would be better, even in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco. But that would be rational and that’s not politics.
As a key architect of the citizen government envisioned in our U.S. Constitution, Benjamin Franklin warned in “Dangers of a Salaried Bureaucracy” (1787) of ambition and avarice: the love of power and the love of money. He worried rightly that the longer a citizen governed, the more politics would corrupt the individual. After 25 years representing in Washington D.C., Roy Blunt is a perfect example of Franklin’s concern.
In 2002, just days after Mr. Blunt was appointed to be House Majority Whip, he tried to sneak a pro-tobacco provision into the bill that created the Department of Homeland Security. According to CBS News, “Blunt's close personal relationship with a Phillip Morris lobbyist named Abigail Perlman may have influenced his actions.” Months later, Mr. Blunt divorced his wife of 31 years to marry Miss Perlman.
Big Tobacco continued to be one of Mr. Blunt’s major supporters, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars, which raises another dictum: “Follow the money.”
USA Today reported in 2009 that Missouri Rep Roy Blunt collected more cash from lobbyists than any of the other 434 U.S. House Representatives, more than any of the 100 U.S. Senators – more than Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, more even than Charles Rangel and John Conyers who were under investigation for corruption and bribery. Only the Republican and Democratic National Committees collected more. And the payback?
Blunt championed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Wall Street banks bailout, $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money -- after it was first defeated September 28 because of public outrage. But as Minority Whip, he arm-twisted fellow Republicans into eventually passing a week later what has turned out to be a lucrative deal for Mr. Blunt.
According to the April 27, 2010 Wall Street Journal, since then Blunt received more contributions from commercial banks than anyone in Congress except New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg. And according to a CNN story entitled “The Best Government Wall Street Can Buy,” Blunt continued to oppose financial regulatory reform.
Perhaps worse, in 2019 Senators Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduced the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, a bill that would remove per-country caps for employment-based green cards – in other words, open wide the doors for an unlimited number of high-tech workers from India and China while our own U.S. tech grad were having a difficult time finding jobs. Fortunately, that bill stalled at the end of the 116th Congress.
In the classic Frank Capra film, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Jimmy Stewart is idealistic, young Senator Jeff Smith. He tries to be a role model to the Boy Rangers of his home state, but he is nearly seduced by the corrupt, political machine. Tempted to flee, his instincts are right to stay and fight. But a decade later in Washington’s social whirl, would he have kept his values and virtue? Senator Blunt was no Senator Smith -- good riddance to him.
Thank you Michael. We need citizen legislators, not professional politicians.