At war with socialism

This is almost like a war. We’re fighting socialism on so many fronts. One wave of the dreaded enemy is approaching from the west as California seeks to tax soft drinks, tires, guns, car batteries, even lawyers. Anything the socialists don’t like they tax. Another big battle front is in the southwest. The one at the southern border. They’ve penetrated our defenses with thousands of illegal aliens with an invasion wave designed to destabilize the country. And then there’s the east in Washington, DC. The socialist enemy has infiltrated the Democrat Party to the extent that they’re on the verge of taking it over, and with that they take control of the House of Representatives.

Their inroads into the Democrat Party are almost complete. Although Joe Biden still leads in the polls, he’s been badly wounded by the socialists’ planned attack on his character as some sort of sexual predator. Bernie Sanders, an unapologetically avowed socialist, is leading the pack of socialists who are gaining on him. He’s followed by other socialists like Beto O’Rourke, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker. There’s hardly a declared candidate for the Democratic nomination who isn’t a socialist.

This should come as no surprise. For the first time since Gallup has been asking the question, more Democrats approve of socialism than capitalism. It’s no longer on the fringes. At least not in the Democrat Party. In fact, with Democrats socialism is now mainstream. What exactly does this new breed of socialists want?

They want greater control of corporations by labor unions. In fact, they want workers to control some of the seats on corporate boards. That particular idea is big with Elizabeth Warren. That assumes several things. It assumes that just by working for a corporation that you’re somehow entitled to help run it. It also assumes that you know what you’re doing. Putting a worker on a corporate board just because they happen to work for a company will lead to that board member most likely voting for things that will help the workers even if it hurts the company. Which misses the point of the company altogether.

Socialists believe companies exist to provide them jobs. They don’t. Nobody ever started a company with dreams of employing people. At least nobody who’s ever run a successful company. Let’s go back to the infant stages of one of our largest corporations. Take Amazon, for example. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994 to sell books online. He saw an opportunity. People were driving to bookstores to browse a limited inventory. Bezos allowed you to browse the bookstore in your bathrobe with a virtually unlimited inventory that would be delivered to your doorstep. I doubt Bezos started Amazon with a socialist dream of employing hundreds of thousands of people. It just so happens that Amazon needs about a half-million people to do what it does. However, if Amazon can find a way to do some of the things it does without people it will. Its distribution centers are already using robotic technology to stock and distribute product. That’s because the goal of a company is not to employ people. It’s to make money for its shareholders. Think of it this way. If you were to start a business today what would be your goal? Exactly.

Workers are the beneficial side effect of business. If they ever become the primary focus then the company stops being profitable and fails. And guess what. Everybody loses their job.

Socialism is a failure and will always be simply because it does not understand that basic principle of business.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

The race to Venezuela is on

There’s this guy named Andrew Yang. You’ve probably never heard of him. The San Francisco Chronicle is singing his praises. Why? Because he’s running for president and he’s promising a ‘freedom dividend’ to every adult American. What’s a freedom dividend? It’s $1,000 a month just for being alive. How does he expect to pay for this? Oh, he has no idea, but they’re lapping it up in San Fran.

Yang’s yet another socialist in the crowded field of Democrat presidential contenders who are trying to out-promise each other to the nomination. They think that if they can just get the party crown it’ll be a cakewalk over Donald Trump to the White House. Not so fast.

A recent Siena College poll showed more people in New York had a favorable impression of Trump than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Granted, neither of them broke 40 percent popularity, but AOC was less popular than Trump. The primary reason is the recent Amazon debacle. AOC spearheaded an effort to run Amazon out of New York and it worked. They had planned a massive job-creating headquarters in Queens and she and her socialist minions killed it. It’s encouraging to see that even in liberal New York jobs still trump free stuff. But for how long?

Beto O’Rourke is on the campaign trail promising everything to everybody. He brought in over $6 million in campaign contributions in his first 24 hours. He even out-socialisted socialist Bernie Sanders. What does he stand for? Who knows? If it’s socialist, he’s in. He was asked recently if he was for abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy. He said he was unequivocally for a woman’s right to make that decision, to roaring applause from the crowd. That’s great red-meat politics for the whacked-out Democrat base, but murdering a kid on his delivery date is a non-starter with the rest of sane America.

But these Democrat candidates don’t care, because right now there’s socialist blood in the water. It’s a veritable feeding frenzy of big government ideas, and each candidate is trying to prove to the Democrat base that they are willing to go as far as it takes to give them free everything.

Meanwhile back in Realville, President Trump announced that he wants to cap federal student loans. You want to know why the official school bird of your favorite state-supported university is the building crane? It’s because the federal government took over student loans during the Obama error and is shoveling tuition money into the public college oven like a runaway steam locomotive. Our nation’s student debt has more than tripled since 2003 to $1.5 trillion. All of the Democrats currently on the campaign trail want to continue shoveling more money into that furnace. I’ve long predicted that it’s the next financial cauldron to blow.

Never in our lifetimes have we seen such a race to socialism by one political party. As I’ve observed before, they see Donald Trump as so vulnerable that they believe the American people will even turn the ship of state toward Venezuela rather than stay on our current course. They may be in for a rude awakening. A new CNN poll shows 7 in 10 Americans give the economy high marks, and the majority—just barely at this point—give Trump the credit.

This may be a defining moment for the Democrats, but it should also be a defining moment for the Republicans. As the Dems bleach their hair blonde the Republicans need to go full brunette. Instead I fear they may opt for dirty blonde.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show. He's also the co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

Donald Trump is our only hope

I told you last week that President Trump had turned a corner with his State of the Union address. He is in full campaign mode, and no one is better on the campaign trail than Donald Trump. But the liberals are handing him ammunition. The Green New Deal is a dream come true for Trump. That’s why it’s so important in this moment of American history that we have someone like Trump in the White House. He is the clear delineation between capitalism and socialism.

This is where the Democrats have been heading for a long time. It could be argued that this is where they’ve been for a long time. Tip O’Neill didn’t start the slide to socialism for the Democrats, but he’s emblematic of the bridge between the likes of Sam Rayburn and Nancy Pelosi. When my father was a Democrat in Congress in the ‘80s, people like Pelosi and Barney Frank were considered the left fringe of the party. Now they’re the middle of the road of the Democrat Party. They’re also being edged out by the more radical voices of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris.

Some are frightened of these radical new voices, and well they should be, but these voices also offer a clear contrast to capitalism in this country. Trump is capitalism personified. He loves this country. He knows what made it great. He’s an American success story. Had we even had someone as business-minded as Mitt Romney as president we wouldn’t have this clear distinction. Romney tends to be mushy on the important issues like illegal immigration and global warming. He would surely be compromising with the likes of AOC.

Trump understands his role in history. He is the bulwark against a total transformation of this country from capitalism that made it great to socialism that has failed wherever it’s been tried. That is the litmus test. Ask any proponent of AOC and socialism to cite any example—past or present—where socialism has worked. They can’t. The irony of all of this is they cry for taxing the ‘tippy top’ at 70 percent while Venezuela, which did exactly that, crumbles before our eyes.

Speaking of irony, Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced her candidacy for president and scolded the Republicans about the dangers of global warming in the midst of a blizzard. Of course, the people who spent decades telling us the earth was going to burn are now telling us the frigid weather is climate change. These are the same people who point to floods as climate change but were just telling us we were running out of water.

Any other Republican president would be buckling to the pressure from the radical global warming crowd. Not Trump. He made fun of Klobuchar’s announcement, and well he should. The liberals are fond of saying, “Speak truth to power.” Trump is speaking truth to liars. This Green New Deal would be a disaster for America. It would cut off the lifeblood of capitalism which is affordable energy. It would reward people who don’t work. It would cost the taxpayers trillions they don’t have.

Global warming like Occupy Wall Street and myriad other left-wing causes are merely vehicles to destroy capitalism and give rise to socialism. Socialism is complete government control. If you don’t know what that looks like remember this. The Nazis were socialists. Like I said, socialism has been tried many times before and failed.

Trump is now above 50 percent in approval. He is what stands between us and another Venezuela. Our only hope is that he prevails. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show. He's also the co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

The latest liberal fear? Robots

You want to know how out of touch the Democrat Party is? Let me first give you some background. In a recent Rasmussen poll 72 percent believe parents should be required to prove they are legal residents when registering their kids for school. Eighty-one percent oppose granting in-state tuition to illegal aliens. Sixty-six percent believe gaining control of the border is more important than amnesty for illegals. Yet there he was. Keith Ellison, the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, on May Day in Minnesota sporting an ‘I don’t believe in borders’ t-shirt.

By the way, May Day is an anti-capitalist socialist/communist celebration. It was a very important holiday in the old Soviet Union. It’s also a mandatory holiday in communist China, and prior to 2008 lasted for three days. The socialists love to try and mask it as “pro-labor” but its celebration by communists all over the world tells the true story.

The socialists/communists have always plowed in the fertile field of labor. This is where it’s easiest to sow discontent. And that’s not to say that much of that discontent hasn’t been legitimate. However, socialism/communism was never the answer. The Democrats have a long history of peddling in fear. Fear of Big Business. Fear of global warming. Fear that the mean ole Republicans are going to take away your Social Security. Fear that Trump is going to pull the safety net out from under you.

Do you remember what Nancy Pelosi said was going to happen if Congress passed Trump’s tax cuts? Armageddon. It was going to be the end of the world as we know it. Just a few months after its passage we see unemployment at an 18-year low. Black and Hispanic unemployment are at historic lows. Confidence in the housing market is at an all-time high. Companies are moving back to the United States and pouring billions into the economy. Workers are getting raises and bonuses.

So, what’s the next big fear from the left? Robots.

I’m not kidding. The left is trying to sell this story to the millennials that they won’t have any jobs because of robots. Therefore they have to support the universal basic income. A piece from futurism.com provides a list of at-risk jobs because of robots. For instance, they claim 99 percent of insurance underwriter jobs are at risk. They say 88 percent of construction jobs and 79 percent of truck driver jobs could be replaced by robots. The solution, of course, is a universal basic income. 

They admit it will cost upwards of $3.2 trillion annually, but they have a plan to pay for it all. Carbon taxes, higher income taxes, a VAT (value-added tax or national sales tax), more taxing on earnings from investments, and decreased military spending.

They also highlight the story of Harper Lee being given an envelope in 1956 with a year’s salary in it. She was told she had a year to write anything she wanted. She, of course, wrote To Kill a Mockingbird which went on to sell 30 million copies worldwide. They act as though the only way to write a bestseller is through socialism. Harper Lee is the exception, not the rule. Most successful novelists succeed through hard work and not hand-outs. The same for successful people in general.

We have had robots for decades and they’ve always made our lives better. The Democrats are counting on mind-numbed robots to follow them over the socialist cliff. Hopefully the recent prosperity has opened their eyes.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.