06 Nov Insanity Definition (doing the same thing and expecting a different result) Illustrated
Yesterday, the day before Election Day 2012, after completing my last “knock on door and distribute literature” assignment as part of the Mighty Texas Strike Force, I drove from the Cleveland suburbs into the city, to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections building. This election location was open for Early Voting on election eve, and the lines were literally multiple city blocks long.
En route from suburb to city, I passed through neighborhoods featuring sagging front porches, roofs missing more tiles than remained intact, litter strewn and weed-overgrown empty lots, more businesses shuttered than functioning, and a depressing sense of bygone bustle and business. The main still-in-business entities I saw were bars.
In the immediate area surrounding the Board of Elections, the dreary, depressing picture was the same. Additionally, there were many lots advertising “voter parking,” one featuring an attendant who wore an Obama mask and blasted loud rap music that competed for attention against bullhorn blasts from parked vans that implored voters to stick with their Democrat elected officials and their Party, and vans and trucks circling the block touting the virtues of unions and urging voters to support unions and Democrats. One enormous bright yellow banner referenced the IFFUA and screamed that the firefighters’ union supports the Democrat party. Obama/Biden signs abounded.
Amidst the glaring poverty and decline in the area surrounding the Board of Elections is a very new, modern, substantial Building Laborers’ Local 310 Union Hall, paid for no doubt by the forced dues collections of thousands if not tens of thousands of hard-working Americans who could have used that dues money to put food on the family table. Talk about building an empire on the backs of the poor.
Support by America’s poor for the Democrat Party remains one of America’s modern enigmas. By now many Americans know that the job market in those Republican-run states improved 50% faster than the national rate. Contrast that with the fact that states that chose Democrat governors experienced either increased unemployment or small reductions in unemployment moving no faster than the national average.
Compound that with the undeniable reality that Democrat-run California is awash in high taxes, “vote for Democrats and we’ll make everything free” fairy-tale government, debt and decline, and experiencing an exodus from that haven of perfect weather and beaches, with many of the individuals and businesses relocating to Republican-run Texas with its lower taxes and friendly business climate that keeps Texas’ unemployment numbers far below the national average. Using available numbers, as of 2010, Texas created more private sector jobs than any other state in the nation, and has the lowest unemployment rate among the ten largest states. Texas, a right to work state (meaning unions cannot force individuals to join a union), was well ahead of all other large states in private sector job growth, showing a ten year gain of 9.3% over, for example, California which experienced a 2.72 loss in that same time.
Today’s election is sadly too much about personality, slogans and emotion, and too little about ideas, facts and truth. Cleveland is just one example. Informed voters of every background have figured out that the Democrats’ unending promises of more free stuff for everyone (now that includes free birth control for women!), paid for by more taxes and more regulations on the working people and the businesses that actually create jobs, is the ultimate failed policy. The idea that America can thrive and prosper under the “government as master controller and orchestrator of the economy and the redistributor of wealth system,” which today’s Democrat Party epitomizes and advocates, is a faulty premise, a genuine snake-oil salesman notion that more Americans must understand. Regardless of the outcome of today’s election, it is incumbent on the Republican Party and conservatives to tell our story more broadly and persistently, so that more Americans vote based on facts and not fairy tales.