Liberal Senators Look to Funnel Money into Gaza

Posted on May 5, 2020 by First.One.Through

On March 26, 2020, a group of six liberal United States senators sent a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Authored by Elizabeth Warren with co-signatories including Bernie Sanders, Chris van Hollen, Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown (all even more liberal than Warren), the senators asked for $75 million to be sent to Palestinian territories to fight the coronavirus pandemic. A few days later on March 31st, Warren joined Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Barbara Lee in asking ask Pompeo to provide financial relief to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yes, that same Iran which is the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Those were the only foreign entities which concerned Warren during the pandemic.

On April 2, she got around to caring about a US territory, Puerto Rico.

But Palestinians first.

The letter stated:

“Gaza, with a population of approximately 1.8 million people and one of the most densely populated areas of the world, has a weak public health system, and has been subject to a blockade and border restrictions since 2007…. Given the spread of the coronavirus in the West Bank and Gaza, the extreme vulnerability of the health system in Gaza, and the continued withholding of U.S. aid to the Palestinian people, we are concerned that the Administration is failing to take every reasonable step to help combat this public health emergency in the Palestinian Territories.”

As Joe Biden, would say, this is malarkey.

The public health system in Gaza is run by UNRWA, the United Nations agency specially devoted to Palestinian Arab refugees (now descendants of refugees). It is over-staffed and over-funded relative to the other UN agency, UNHCR, which cares for every other actual refugee in the world fleeing immediate wars and disasters. Under UNRWA, the Palestinian Arabs have longer life expectancy than the Arab and Muslim countries that surround them (they also have the highest literacy and lowest infant mortality rate.)

In regards to the “blockade and border restrictions,” the progressive senators failed to write that it was put in place by America’s ally, Israel, after the terrorist group Hamas took over Gaza. Sworn to Israel’s destruction, that terrorist group has waged three wars against Israel since it took over Gaza. It uses international relief money to stockpile weapons and brainwash children to kill Jews.

It is because a terrorist group controls Gaza, the Palestinian Authority which controls Areas A and B in the West Bank incites and funds violence against Israeli civilians and refuses to come to the peace negotiating table, and that UNRWA abuses its humanitarian mission that the United States has withheld money to the PA and UNRWA – not to the Palestinian people as crafted in Warren’s letter.

In regards to the coronavirus pandemic, Gazans are not so vulnerable. The people are among the youngest in the world, with a median age of 18 (it is 30 in Europe where the pandemic has hit hardest). They also rarely travel due to the blockade.

The statistics prove this out. Forty days after the left-wing senators wrote their appeal to funnel money to Palestinians, only two people in the area have died, in one of the lowest death rates from pandemic, at a rate of 0.4 per 1 million people. Israel has had 237 deaths, a rate of 27 per million or 67 times higher than Palestinians.

Puerto Rico has a death rate from the pandemic of 29 per million people (95 people), almost 75 times the rate of Palestinians.

Elizabeth Warren prioritized sending money to Palestinian Arabs who were never particularly at risk of dying from the coronavirus, before, above and beyond people from Puerto Rico and Israel who have been dying at much higher rates. She also singled out sending money to Iran, a country which calls for the destruction of Israel.

It is a sad state of the priorities of “progressives” in America.

Elizabeth Warren in Las Vegas, Nevada, November 17, 2019.
(photo: Carlo Allegri | Reuters)

From “You Didn’t Build That” to “You Don’t Own That”

Posted on August 5, 2019 by First.One.Through

The Democratic Party is continuing to move in an authoritarian manner to strip people of their liberties and properties.

In July 2012, President Obama addressed a crowd in Virginia while he sought a second term in office and said “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” The comment irritated his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, who responded that

“to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motors, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza … To say something like that, it’s not just foolishness. It’s insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America … And by the way, the president’s logic doesn’t just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself [sic] up a little further … The president would say, well you didn’t do that. You couldn’t have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn’t have gone to school without teachers. So you didn’t, you are not responsible for that success. … what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?”

Americans didn’t seem to notice or agree with Romney’s remarks and voted Obama to a second term in office by a margin of 332 to 206.

So, the progressive presidential candidates are at it again.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is extending Obama’s line of reasoning in the hopes that it will be even more popular with Americans. While Obama gave the government and teachers credit for playing a large part in entrepreneurs’ success, Sanders’ socialist philosophy concluded that such a government system which enables entrepreneurs to achieve so much wealth must inherently be corrupt and sinister. Therefore, Sanders wants a complete revolution to destroy America’s capitalistic economy.

Comrade-in-arms Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who is also running for president doesn’t want to destroy the successful companies as much as she wants to seize them away from management and investors. Warren’s goal is to give 40 percent of a company’s board seats to employees if the company has annual revenue over $1 billion. Additionally, she wants to take 2 percent of people’s wealth over $50 million.

And why not? Obama laid the philosophical groundwork that the rich profit off of the efforts of others as well as the governmental system and economy, so why shouldn’t the employees get a giant say and take in the outcome of a company and the government come to lay claim to its just rewards?

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren

It is easy to see a future Democratic Socialist presidential candidate following Warren and arguing that labor should get 70% of boards on all companies with revenue over $100 million, and that the government will take 5 percent of all personal wealth over $5 million, then 10% on wealth over $1 million, as that is the nature of a voracious government that eyes success suspiciously.

While Warren will claim that she is more of a capitalist than Sanders to appeal to moderates, it is a nuance without difference. While Sanders wants to destroy capitalism immediately, Warren is simply seeking to establish the mechanisms to kill investment and motivation. Her long-term goal is to let capitalism choke under the weight of government, until such time that the income and wealth gap is flattened to such a level to satisfy the alt-left.

In 2012, Romney repeated the vision of the role of government protecting liberty as conceived by America’s founding fathers in a warning about Obama’s grand government. But today, nobody is sounding the alarms on alt-left politicians laying claim to corporate and wealth takeovers in gestures prevalent in failed socialist societies like Venezuela. Such is a society which stokes populism rather than freedom.

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The Democratic Socialists Tell Lies and Half Truths About Lobbyists

Posted on July 31, 2019 by First.One.Through

The July 30, 2019 debate with Democratic candidates for president covered little ground. Much of the discussion centered around healthcare in which the two leading contenders – Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) – were calling out the terrible role that pharmaceutical and insurance companies play in the ecosystem of healthcare. Each took a turn to slam the amount of money the industries spend on lobbyists.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Sanders said that the pharma and insurance industries spent $4.5 billion on lobbyists last year. He was wrong. They spent a total of $441 million according to OpenSecrets.org, off by a factor of ten times.

Put that aside.

Sanders asked all of the Democrats running for office to pledge that they would not take any money from these two industry groups, as it put them in direct conflict in being able to negotiate healthcare honestly and effectively after these groups paid their way into office.

However, what was not discussed is the much more toxic money that public sector UNIONS pay into elections. These are groups that are sitting directly across the table from elected officials in negotiating their salaries and benefits. The union lobbying dollars are blessed bribes. Graft. It is a direct conflict of interest worthy of banana republics.

But the Sanders/Warren camp won’t discuss the poison, because they contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrats. The socialist psychos would rather paint the entire lobbying fight of mega multi-national corporations squashing the poor little guy.

Here are some union lobbying figures for 2018:

Carpenters and Joiners Union $41.5 million
Service Employers International Union $41.5 million
Laborers Union $31.5 million
American Federation of Teachers $31.1 million
American Federation of State/County/Muni Employees $14.1 million

That’s $160 million just from these five unions, of which 99% went to Democrats.

By way of comparison, here are top multi-national corporations payouts for lobbyists:

Bloomberg $95.9 million (100% for Democrats)
Las Vegas Sands $62.4 million (100% for Republicans)
Microsoft $14.1 million (87% Democrats)
Amazon $13.6 million (69% Democrats)
Koch Industries $12.1 million (99% Republican)

Sanders called out the Koch brothers, and in the past he has slammed Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas Sands owner. Those two are the epitome of the bad billionaires for the socialists, presumably because they are top givers to the Republicans.

Somehow, they neglect to mention the lobbying money of “Fahr LLC” which gave a whopping $73.1 million in 2018 – all to Democrats. Fahr is the middle name of Tom Steyer, a billionaire Democrat who is spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying people in congress to fight climate change and to impeach Donald Trump.

The leading liberals talk about the evils of lobbying money – but very, very selectively. They pretend to be more ethical in talking about the corruption of lobbying dollars, but only for those contributing to Republicans.

There is nothing more pernicious that allowing government unions to contribute money into elections, and it happens at the federal, state, county and local levels every day.

In New York, “government unions collectively spent more on lobbying last year [2017] than the state’s biggest trial lawyers, landlord, tobacco and hospital interests combined. And topping the list, as usual, was New York’s powerful conglomerate of public education unions.” Would it surprise you that New York is a deep blue (Democratic) state?

While I admire the socialist twin’s calls to stay away from pharma lobbyist money, I consider their voices vacuous unless there are louder calls to stop the most sinister lobbying in the country: from public sector unions.

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This July 4, I am Leaving the Democratic Party that Left Me Long Ago

Posted on July 3, 2018 by First.One.Through

I have been increasingly unhappy with the far-left direction of the Democratic Party for several years. Its horrible handling of international affairs under Obama, its refusal to actively combat antisemitism in preference to “Islamophobia,” the welcome mat for Senator Bernie Sanders and Cornel West, the refusal of party members to actively rebuke racist Louis Farrakhan are just some of the reasons.

I held off leaving the party when it elected Tom Perez as head of the Democratic National Committee instead of alt-left wing Congressman Keith Ellison who was supported by liberal stalwarts including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer and Sanders. I thought the party had dodged a bullet.

But that was just wishful thinking. The Democratic Party has been hijacked and it doesn’t look like it will be returning.

On July 3, 2018, the current Chair of the DNC, Tom Perez praised Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who had recently won a primary. He described this self-described Democrat-Socialist in the mold of Bernie Sanders as “the future of our party.”

It is a future of extremism of which I want no part.

Libertarians / Conservative Democrats like me have been vanishing from the Democratic Party for a decade. From 2000 through 2009, The percentage of Conservative Democrats was relatively stable, going from 23% to 22%, while the Liberal wing grew from 28% to 32%. While a minority of the party, I still felt that I had a voice and a place, as the moderates still had the largest slice at over 40%.

That disappeared since the Obama inauguration.

As shown in the graph above from the Pew Research Center, Liberals account for 48% of the party as of 2017, while the Conservative branch has shrunk to just 15%. The DNC Chair and 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls have taken notice and are endorsing far-left candidates and positions. It is time for moderates and conservative Democrats to go.

To celebrate this great country’s Independence Day, I will change my party affiliation which I have had for several decades. If you live in New York, you can use this form to join me. If you live in another state, look up your Board of Elections to find the form.

Roughly 44% of U.S. adults identify as Democrats. While I used to be part of that group, I no longer recognize the party that has been seized by the alt-left that now more closely resembles the Green Party and Working Families Party then the Democratic Party of 20 years ago.

Please join me in saying goodbye.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts is the Most Racist State in the Country

Posted on November 20, 2016 by First.One.Through

On November 14, 2016, the FBI released its statistics for hate crimes in the United States. Most media outlets opted to cherry-pick facts from the report. As detailed in “NY Times Discolors Hate Crimes,” the media pushed a focus on the jump in crimes against Muslims as it implied that hate crimes were coming from angry, racist white Trump supporters, even while the media refused to publish the steep decline in whites as the attackers, from 61% of the total in 2008, to 49% in 2015.

So with the backdrop of the far-left wing Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren saying that President-elect Donald Trump is “doubling down on racism,” it is worth telling people what the media refuses to publish: Massachusetts is the most racist state in the union.

The FBI’s 2015 Hate Crime Report broke down the number of hate crimes by state. It also included the population in the areas that report the crimes, as different counties and regions do not always file reports, and it enables an easier comparison between states with a wide range of populations.

Massachusetts had the greatest number of hate crimes by a wide margin, with one hate crime on average for every 16,000 people.

By way of comparison, states that had race riots in 2016 such as North Carolina and Missouri experienced one hate crime for every 61,000 people. Maryland, which had riots in 2015 after the police killing of Freddie Gray, had one hate crime per 146,000 people. The deeply conservative state of Texas had one hate crime for every 143,000 people.

Massachusetts faired terribly compared to liberal states of similar size as well. New Jersey (one per 27,000) and Washington (one per 26,000) were the typical averages for hate crimes in 2015. More conservative, but similarly sized Arizona (one per 24,000) and Tennessee (one per 30,000) give a sense of the national average among states with 6-7 million people.

So why did Massachusetts, which elected a radical liberal to the senate, have 63% more hate crimes on average than most states? Why has the frequency gotten progressively worse in her state every year (one hate crime per 17,300 people in 2014, one per 18,500 in 2013)?

The two primary choices are either that: 1) Massachusetts residents are much more inclined to label acts as a “hate crime” compared to the rest of the country, or 2) Massachusetts is the most racist state in the USA.

Either way, it makes the shouts of “racist” coming from the Warren fringe, a bit problematic.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren