ACTION

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

You can tell that someone feels threatened by you when they publicly degrade and poke fun at you.    Given that standard, the Tea Party has been under the skin of Democrats from the day that it sprung to life a little more than 2 years ago.  As recent as the current budget battle, Harry Reid blames the Tea Party for not allowing Republicans to compromise on the Federal budget and perpetuate the excessive government spending.   Thanks Harry.  That’s the nicest thing you’ve said about the Tea Party in recent memory.

But why does the Democratic leadership actually fear the impact of the Tea Party?  Yes the Tea Party is on the other side of the ideological spectrum from the Far Left wing of the Democratic Party.  Clearly the Tea Party is fiscally conservative, believes in constitutionally limited government, and favors free market solutions.   However those positions are an accurate description of most conservative voters’ beliefs so that isn’t what is under the Democratic leaders’ skin.

The average Tea Party member is over 35 years old.    That fact aligns with the  typical  conservative voting demographic that  includes individuals over 35 years of age with a skewing of the population to those 55 and older.   So the Left’s concern isn’t caused by the fact that the Tea Party is a threat to the Left’s hold on older voters.   The older voting population has always been split between the left and the conservatives.   The older Americans with a taker mentality are liberal, and those with a builder mentality are conservative.

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

When you examine Obamacare in detail, you find that the facts of the legislation contradict most of the selling points that the Liberals used as their basis for voting for the bill.

#1 – 18 Million People Added to Medicare while Cutting $500 Billion from the Program

Obamacare claims to cover 34 million new individuals with insurance.  The primary approach that the legislation uses to cover the uninsured is to expand the number of people under Medicare.   Yes, Medicare.  The same Medicare that was already scheduled to go bankrupt by 2017 before Obamacare passed.   The new legislation will add 18 million people to Medicare while reducing funding for Medicare by $500 billion.  Thus there is no choice but to reduce benefits to the existing Medicare recipients.  Given that more than half of the doctors in the United States do not accept Medicare, the further constraint of doctor availability will be another form of institutionalized rationing.

#2 – 17.1 Million Individuals with Private Insurance Will Lose Their Existing Coverage

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

As part of their dogma, the Left believes society only operates “fairly” when more power is concentrated in the Federal Government and fewer rights are exercised independently by individuals. In their view, one of the major purposes of the Government is to equalize outcomes across society (try to find that in the Constitution). Note that it’s the equality of outcomes, not equality of opportunities, that is their definition of fairness. To achieve that goal, Liberals need an excuse to take rights and responsibilities from individuals and shift that power to the Government. Then that Governmental power can be used to institutionalize fairness by passing laws and regulations that provide for the equality of outcomes across society. However in spite of these plans, the Left has a major cultural roadblock in their way. One of our traditional American values is to treasure and defend our individual rights. When Americans are thinking rationally, we rarely, if ever, voluntarily give up any of our rights.

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism Blog

President Reagan is probably best known for three major accomplishments: rekindling the American spirit of entrepreneurship, defeating the Soviets in the Cold War leading to the eventual collapse of the USSR, and creating the most robust peacetime economic expansion in American history. In this posting, we’ll focus on topics more applicable to Reagan’s economic accomplishments. Reagan’s economic philosophy has been referred to by many names including Reaganomics and Supply Side Economics.

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism Blog

My wife was seated in the airport waiting to catch her flight back home. So far so good. She was already past security waiting in the gate area. As usual, she was reading a book trying to pass the minutes until it was time to board. My wife can be as entertained by people watching as anyone. However if she has a good book, she would rather tune out the world and slip into a well written story, but not today. On this day, she along with everyone else in the gate area were going to have their concentration shattered by a guy on his cell phone. For sake of discussion, let’s call him Barry. Barry had a pretty deep voice, and he was talking loud.

It didn’t matter if you had on headphones, wore hearing aids or were half-deaf, you could hear Barry. His baritone voice blasted through the atmosphere at the gate such that everyone could hear every word he was saying. It became very clear, very quickly he was trying his best to get out of the dog house. It was obvious from his side of the conversation that Barry was in deep TROUBLE. He was in trouble with his girlfriend Liberty, and she was really ticked off. You couldn’t hear her side of the conversation, but it definitely was NOT PG-13. Barry was doing his best to convince his girlfriend over the phone that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. She wasn’t buying it.