Tag: Bernie Sanders

To prepare for this pandemic, our liberal and conservative leaders failed us

To prepare for this pandemic, our liberal and conservative leaders failed us

A lot of liberals won’t like this post. Please don’t read it if you are a liberal because you will get mad. It hurts when facts smack you in the face, so you should avoid doing that. This article points out that liberals completely failed to help the US prepare for a pandemic.

To be fair, conservatives shouldn’t read this post either because that same brick wall of facts is going to hit you in the face as well. Don’t read it as conservatives haven’t prioritized preparing for a pandemic either.

This is an article from 2009. It is from NPR, so no one is going to say it right-wing bias. Conservatives will say that it is MSM, but the facts on the ground have proven this article to be very accurate. 

Here is another article by Sheri Fink that covers the various studies in 2006-2009 about how woefully prepared the US is in handling a pandemic.

In 2007 and 2006, the country did studies that showed that during a pandemic, NYC would be short 15,000 ventilators, and 150K people could die. Sound familiar? There were probably studies since the publication of these articles. So did Bush or Obama do anything? Not much, and I will suggest they did zero. Trump didn’t come into office with any insight and initiative to fix this known problem, so he is just as guilty as Bush and Obama.

There has been a total lack of leadership by Bush, Obama, and Trump on this issue.

And Governor Cuomo? Nope. He didn’t fight for it either—more lack of leadership.

And neither did Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, Schumer, or any other leader of our Congress. A complete lack of leadership for a situation that everyone knew would eventually happen.

BTW, the current candidates for POTUS in 2020: Biden, Sanders, and Trump – nope. None of them did anything when they were in positions that could have influenced this.

All of our government leaders failed us on both sides of the aisle. They taxed the hell out of us. They whined and complained about other stupid shit. They gave incentives for solar energy, oil production, buying stuff on the internet, buying health insurance, fighting bad guys in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria. But prepare the country for a pandemic? Nope. 

They all said, “Hopefully, that pandemic will happen when I am not in office, and the next person can worry about that.” Guess what, we are the next person. We are now worrying about it, and our bickering Federal government messed up big time.

The Federal government is really only good at two things

  1. the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands or millions of people rely on
  2. the defense of our country and people.

To be honest, the government isn’t all that good at those two things, but it is the only entity that can do them. The government shouldn’t be doing other things. It should focus on doing those two things and do them as well as possible, giving the inefficiencies of an organization that has no competition.

It is woefully incapable of doing anything else well. In just about every case other than the two cited, private industry that competes with others will do a better job. Will the private sector screw something up? Absolutely! But then that private enterprise will be displaced by a competitor that will perform better. 

Pandemic relief falls into both categories. It is the defense of our people, and it is the infrastructure to support that defense. We did both poorly for pandemic relief, and it is now costing us dearly.

What is the solution? Throw the bums out. Every damn one of them. They failed us. They screwed up. They should be rewarded with losing their jobs.

We need politicians that are focused on just doing the two things that only the federal government can do. We need politicians to look at a bill and say, “Is this something that ONLY the federal government can do and therefore is in the above two categories?” If the answer to that question is NO, then the politicians need to vote it down. If the answer to that question is YES, then the politicians need to approve it and give it the appropriate funding and oversight that it is done as well as possible.

Header Photo by Parentingupstream (Pixabay)
A Bernie Sanders supporter called me last night

A Bernie Sanders supporter called me last night

I live in Ohio, so I wasn’t surprised that last night I received a call asking me to support a Presidential candidate. I was surprised that the candidate was Bernie Sanders.
I almost felt sorry for him but in the end, I did suggest that when he hung up that he should leave the volunteer center and go home and stop trying to ruin America now that he had received a lesson in economics and voting record.

What I was most amazed at was that this young man thought that Bernie Sanders would “fix Wall Street.” I wasn’t surprised that the young man liked Bernie’s call for socialized healthcare and extremely high minimum wages. We discussed these topics for several minutes, and I explained economics to him, but it didn’t surprise me that the young man liked Bernie’s ideas – after all, who doesn’t want something for nothing! However, the uninformed young man didn’t realize that when it came to Wall Street, Bernie is quite simply lying when he says that he will “fix it” simply because the fixes that Bernie already supported CAUSED the financial crisis that has hurt so many people. In fact, I am simply amazed that any low to middle-income person in the US would want to support Mr. Sanders simply because his lack of judgment has hurt so many poor people already.

bernie sanders photoThe caller had no knowledge that Mr. Sanders actually voted FOR the legislation that ultimately caused the “too big to fail” banks and limited the regulation of financial derivatives (the Financial Services Modernization Act) that was passed under Bill Clinton. He was also completely uninformed that this massive bill that dramatically changed banking in the US was primarily supported by Democrats (and Mr. Sanders as an Independent) while the majority of the Republicans voted against it. That is correct, the party of those that will “fix Wall Street” are primarily the ones that “broke Wall Street”. For those that are keeping score, Republicans 58-131, Democrats 182-1, Independent (Sanders) 1-0.

The young man was also uninformed as to the second major contributor to the financial crisis of 2008. That was The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. This act forced home loans to people that were very unlikely to pay back the loan. This created the bad loans which then the banks wanted to sell to get them off their books which caused the problems because of lack of control in the Sanders’ supported Financial Services Modernization Act. Mr. Sanders also voted for The Housing and Community Development Act of 1992. In fact, so did 95% of the Democrat Congressman. Unfortunately, the Republicans are not as clean on this as 75% also supported this ill-fated bill.

In true transparency, Mr. Kasich was also serving at that time, and he voted for The Housing and Community Development Act and voted against the Financial Services Modernization Act. Mr. Cruz was too young to hold federal office. Mr. Rubio was too young to hold national office. Mr. Trump was not in public office and was probably dealing with his first of several bankruptcies which occurred at about this time. Ms. Clinton did not hold public office at that point, but was the First Lady and likely supported both bills as they were both signed by her husband, President Bill Clinton.

What is the lesson to be learned here? There are two. The first is that Bernie Sanders had a helping hand in creating the situation that caused the 2008 financial crisis so saying he can now fix it is a stretch of the imagination. The second lesson is that if you are going to call me to have me support your candidate, be prepared to have to defend the candidate with solid facts and reasoning otherwise it won’t be an enjoyable phone call for you (even though I will probably enjoy it immensely).

Photo by origamidon