By Deplorable Andrew Allen
It’s fitting that the aftermath of the most watched Presidential debate is Alicia Machado.
I won’t dwell too much on Machado other than to note that the “controversy” is as fake as it is irrelevant. There’s a reason the media had stories lined up – complete with up to date images and video of Machado – ready to go the minute Hillary said “Alicia” on the debate stage – it was a set-up from the get go. Just like the Sandra Fluke “controversy”, some big league public relations firm pulled the media’s strings so the media would do Hillary’s talking for her.
When Fluke happened, PR firm SKDKnickerbocker arranged media coverage so that Democrats could push their “war on women” narrative. Looking at the SKDKnickerbocker website (http://www.skdknick.com), the who’s who list of Obama insiders affiliated with the firm, and the tweets they’ve put out supporting Hillary, chances are it’s SKDKnickerbocker that has driven post-debate discourse into the ditch it’s in today.
Alicia Machado, Yuge SJW Role Model for SJW’s Everywhere
We’re talking about a woman CNN (and much of the media SKDKnickerbocker is in cahoots with) fat-shamed in 1997- before fat-shaming was even a thing. We’re talking about a woman that won Miss Universe before many of 2016 election’s voters were even born, then went on to participate in live sex on a reality TV show and attempt to assassinate a Venezuelan judge after her boyfriend was indicted for murder. When she wasn’t screwing around on TV and trying to kill members of the judiciary, Machado was involved with South American drug lords and begging for a “peace between the Chinas” – “Chinas” being her reference to North and South Korea; had Trump said it SKDKnickerbocker would have run a media offensive based on it and they’d have called him racist too.
Chalk up a yuge win for Hillary. SKDKnickerbocker greased the skids so that Hillary could bait Donald Trump into Machado-gate. Machado-gate is situated somewhere between SJW territory and somebody’s sex tapes. What we aren’t talking about are policies Hillary alluded to during the debate. One policy in particular remains way under the radar: Hillary said she wants to “make” businesses “share their profits” with their “employees”.
Basement-dwellers Love This Stuff
The basement-dwellers – that’s how Hillary referred to Sanders supporters in recently leaked audio; never fear, SKDKnickerbocker is hot on the case convincing media outlets that Hillary really didn’t say the Sanders crowd were living in their parent’s basement (even though she did), hence “basement-dwellers” – recognize and love this bald-faced wealth redistribution scheme. It’s as close to Mao as they’ve come thus far in their natural lives. Think about it: government operating with a near monopoly on the use of force (isn’t that a part of the Black Lives Matter anti-police narrative?), rolling in to make sure any given business “shares” the wealth with their employees. Liberals love this stuff. They even have an Orwellian way to describe their blunt force coercion schemes.
“Well-designed regulatory objectives that business then follows”. California Governor Jerry Brown (isn’t it Mao-esque that he’s still treated like a deity by California progressives?) coined that bit of doublespeak when he spoke out in favor of the Paris climate change agreement last year. In the case of state-directed profit sharing, “well-designed regulatory objectives” would be the whatever law emerges that requires a business to share profits, and “business then follows” would be lock-step compliance for fear some regulatory agency might swoop in and destroy the business.
The Caring Is Sharing Act of 2017
Imagine you’re running a business. Let’s say it’s a commercial bakery. The Sharing Is Caring Act of 2017 was enacted into law. So you’ve got three choices:
– You can take all those “profits” – the ones you were going to use to grow your business and in time hire more people – and divide them among your workforce. No doubt there will be a federal algorithm you’ll adhere to in determining who gets what percentage of the money. That way the guy working nights that self-identifies as a rutabaga will get his fair share.
– You can do what you can to legally shield those profits so that someday maybe you can use them to grow your business but for the time being, those monies won’t be working for anybody anytime soon. They’ll be sitting in an account that’s probably taxed year after year instead of renovating your employees break room and buying the new commercial oven your head supervisor Lori has been begging for since March; the oven you have now takes longer and longer to produce product which is killing your bottom line.
– You can invest in that new delivery truck you need and a down payment on some equipment and in doing so, risk a court summons or a raid by armed IRS agents that can and will end your commercial baking and all the jobs that went along with it.
Again, liberals love this stuff. Especially when it happens in an urban community of color. A couple dozen black people out of work equals dependent Democrat voters. “By any means necessary”, isn’t that what the left lives by?
Share Profits? Why Not?
As great as discussing these kinds of points would be, it would be even better to review the fundamental belief behind Hillary’s profit-sharing plan. Why should a business share profits with employees?
In a sense, don’t businesses do that already? Beyond wages (paychecks aren’t shared profits; they are fair compensation agreed upon between employer and employee in exchange for the latter providing time and talent to the former), most employers offer benefits. No, health insurance doesn’t count since it is now a federally mandated “well designed regulatory objective” called Obamacare people “follow” by purchasing insurance, paying a fine, or meeting armed IRS agents at their front door. Various businesses offer all kinds of benefits. Look at Google and Facebook to see the generous benefits Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg offer their employees for example.
Are all employer-provided benefits equal? Of course not and that’s great. That means, if someone is working for Company A and finds that Company B offers a benefits package that better suits them, that worker can go to work for Company B. Similarly, if Company C really needs to attract the best talent around, one tool they can use is to up their game when it comes to employer provided benefits. Company C could – as some businesses do right now – share profits, if they thought it would help them attract talent.
That’s one way to look at the “why”. When profit sharing is viewed as a voluntary thing, it makes sense. Add “be required” to the question and the disturbing philosophy behind Hillary’s plan is revealed. Why should a business be required to share profits with employees?
$5
How much cash do you have on you right now? Let’s say $5. That is $5 of YOUR wealth, right? You can pretty much do whatever you want with it. Let’s say you take it to a bakery and buy donuts. You have just voluntarily transferred $5 of your wealth to the bakery. The bakery’s wealth has grown by $5 as a result. That $5 is THEIR wealth until they do something with it. It will, along with all THEIR other wealth, go towards paying liabilities (wages, materials, operating costs, etc.) with hopefully a little left over afterwards so the bakery doesn’t go broke, close its doors, and unemploy the eleven people working there.
As that $5 moved around, with the exception of any taxes paid, it did so through voluntary exchanges.
Hillary’s plan, as with taxes, requires an involuntary exchange of money. The way liberals justify the involuntary exchange of wealth ought to rattle every red-blooded American to his or her very core.
Who “Owns” Wealth?
Liberals believe government is the owner and originator of all wealth. Rare if ever will they say this to your face in those terms. Just like Governor Brown had to come up “well designed regulatory objectives that business then follows” when he really meant “we’re smarter than everyone else so you will do what we say chump”, liberals hide behind tongue-twisters and fluff. So it’s necessary to catch them when they slip up and let the truth sneak out:
• “You didn’t build that” comes to mind,
• “because it’s not their money” does too. That was Bill Clinton explaining why, after a record tax surplus, he didn’t support a tax cut for the American people.
• “We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right…do you really want to run the risk of squandering this surplus?” Bill Clinton again, doubling down and refusing to give taxpayers a break.
• The term “tax expenditures”. It comes up from time to time in Congressional hearings and in wonky left of center think thanks. Liberals view tax cuts as “expenditures” because in their view, when taxes are cut the American people are being given money that would otherwise have been in the government’s hands. Or in the words of the Tax Policy Center, “tax expenditures perform very much like spending programs, which mean they may serve or harm the public depending on whether they serve a legitimate public purpose”. Yes, they questioned the legitimacy of you getting a tax cut.
Only when you believe that all wealth belongs to the state collective, can you stand behind a podium on a debate stage and talk about an involuntary profit sharing mandate as though it was a good thing. But don’t worry, Team Hillary has some SKDKnickerbocker-ready fluff to alleviate any worries you might have over state-sanctioned wealth redistribution:
• “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good”. Hillary said in June 2004. Cue the video of the frightened children watching Trump on TV and follow with the one that extols all those ideas Hillary admits “the country can’t afford them all”. But they’re for the common good.
Fluff and Hobgoblins and Fluff, Oh My
Even if Machado hadn’t emerged as the #1 topic after the debate, other ridiculousness no doubt would have. Like the hopeful social media posts I’m seeing lately from leftists that think it’s great that “the UN is going to address injustices faced by African Americans in America”. As if it would be a great idea to put a bunch of blue-helmeted “peacekeepers” in Oakland, Baltimore, Ferguson, Baton Rouge, Charlotte, Tulsa, and elsewhere to rape and pillage the black community the way UN peacekeepers raped and pillaged black people some years back when they arrived to pacify the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Or to pretend that some UN council chaired by North Korea and Iran has the moral legitimacy to address injustice when the fact that their ruling regimes exist is an injustice imposed upon the world.
H.L. Mencken was on point when he said:
Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
Imagine the outrage SKDKnickerbocker would have manufactured for Americans to focus on if Donald Trump had called Machado a hobgoblin.
Image: Screen Shot; http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/09/27/donald-trump-alicia-machado-1997-3.cnn
