OPINION

We Are the Enemy

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Never before in American history has an entire political party, including its President, acted in ways that consistently harm the electorate.  Without a mandate to lead America to socialism, President Biden and the far-left leadership of the Democrat Party are doing just that through actions that repeatedly attack the lives, liberties, and properties of the American people.  To the President and Democrat leadership in Congress, we are the enemy. With a degree of deafness to public discontent that rivals Louis XVI’s on the eve of the French Revolution, Biden is his party’s sacrificial lamb for the socialist cause, to bury the republic and raise authoritarian rule before the 2024 presidential election.  Biden and his handlers aim to eliminate in one term the greatest empire of liberty the world has ever known, replacing it with socialism delivered through a phony “climate change” agenda.  The Inflation Reduction Act is the latest major action unsolicited by the electorate that predictably harms the American people as it furthers the movement to replace freedom with socialism.  

The Democrats are in a race to achieve what Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden call “transformational change” in one presidential election cycle.  They must get there before popular will blocks completion of the change.  By “transformational change” they mean: destruction of the fossil fuel backbone of the American economy; establishment of a corporatist state in which all enterprise is under government control; abandonment of the rule of law and cessation of prosecution of crimes when committed by the “disadvantaged;” relinquishment of border defenses enabling unchecked invasion of aliens, drugs, gangs, sex traffickers, and terrorists; elimination of impartial and colorblind justice; rejection of the Constitution; condemnation of America’s founding principles, founders, and history; censorship of dissenting opinion through big tech government proxies; and indoctrination of youth to accept the view that America is irredeemably racist and unworthy of defense, that parental guidance, religion, and the nuclear family are oppressive and dispensable, that genders are fluid, that government dependency is preferable to self-reliance, and that the worth of youth is defined by their support for the Marxist effort to overthrow our republic.  

No foreign power could be more successful at ripping apart the essential fabric of America than this Administration and this Congressional leadership.  The American people, the founding fathers, and allies around the world who have trusted the United States to remain a bastion of liberty have all been betrayed.

The Inflation Reduction Act is an excellent case in point.  Containing no provision that reliably reduces inflation (e.g., nothing to reduce the 3.6 trillion dollars of inflationary expenditures Democrats have enacted since 2020), the bill’s title reveals it to be a fraud.  That point is underscored by the fact that Democrat leaders colloquially refer to the law as the “climate change” bill, not the inflation reduction act.  No one with knowledge believes it addresses inflation at all.  

Instead, it compounds American misery in the midst of a recession by increasing IRS enforcement, taxes, and fossil fuel costs.  It also reduces further fossil fuel supply and cuts American jobs.  According to CBO, the Act raises about $20 billion in revenue by increasing audits on those making less than $400,000 per year (proving Biden’s contrary promise a lie).  A primary aim of the bill is to increase IRS funding by about $80 billion over ten years so that IRS can engage in more enforcement actions against taxpayers to recoup hundreds of billions more from those believed to be under-reporting.  An important aim of the legislation is to eliminate so-called “tax gaps.”  Of all underreported taxable income, 78% to 80% is said to come from taxpayers who earn less than $200,000 per year.  Only 4% is estimated to come from those earning $500,000 or more per year.  Thus, to raise the over $150 billion in revenue expected from IRS enforcement under this law, the IRS will have to squeeze the middle class by extensively auditing and recouping taxes from those earning less than $400,000 per year.

Of the $740 billion price tag for the law, $369 billion goes to tax credits, subsidies, and outlays in furtherance of the Administration’s climate change agenda, which aims to eliminate fossil fuels within a decade.  The push-pull of the legislation on that industry ensures that there will be less and less domestic fossil fuel available, thus increasing the cost of gas at the pump by working a reduction in supply.  Adding to that injury, the bill increases the superfund tax on crude oil and imported petroleum as well as taxes and fees on fossil fuel businesses nationwide, which will be passed on to consumers and may exert upward pressure on prices at the pump.

The Tax Foundation estimates that the bill will reduce about 29,000 full-time equivalent jobs, reduce GDP by .2 percent, and reduce after tax income across every income quintile, thus exacerbating the already stiff take of inflation on effective spending power and on savings and investment.  The bill brings about that change by, among other things, raising the minimum corporate tax to 15% for corporations earning $1 billion or more per year, adversely impacting the beleaguered American manufacturing sector.

As with all socialist revolutions, the Democrats’ “transformational change” depends on a compliant public, made so either by fear or by naïve belief in the false redistributionist promises coming from deceitful socialist politicians.  In the United States, the socialist resurgence has come amidst a pandemic in which the public was led to a state of fear, even panic, and told that only by relinquishing their rights could they hope to survive; amidst a false “chicken little” assertion that the world would soon come to an end due to an unproven, scientifically contradicted, catastrophic climate change; and amidst an equally false contention that all American institutions are systemically racist (in particular, the police who far-left politicians demanded be disrespected, defunded and stripped of immunity from prosecution).  

As the pandemic has subsided, and the power grabs dependent on these falsities have been revealed, the public has increasingly awakened to the reality that America’s great strengths (freedom and free enterprise) are being destroyed by politicians whose lust for permanent control and self-love crowd out entirely any concern for American welfare.  Indeed, as Hunter and Joe Biden’s profitable influence peddling and violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause reveal, we are being led by people who lack basic integrity and are willing to sell out the nation for personal profit.  Shorn of deception, the “transformational change” Schumer, Pelosi, and Biden seek is a massive transfer of sovereignty from the individual to the state whereby the state is no longer the servant of, but the slave master over, the American people.  In other words, Schumer, Pelosi, and Biden want nothing more than to make Americans slaves to their socialist agenda.  They are zealously amassing authoritarian power at the expense of the principled foundations of the nation and of individual liberty.

There is only so much ruination of lives, liberty, and property that the American people can take before they will be pushed to the breaking point.  Much depends on how much trust the people retain in voting power, in the courts, and in essential institutions to reverse the assault now underway on their freedoms and the Constitution.  So long as Americans remain confident that they can reverse the assault through the ballot, they will resort to that method to restore the republic and the blessings of liberty.  But this Administration and the Democrat Congress appear willing to risk it all to replace the republic with a socialist state.  No amount of popular discontent appears to move them.