Democrats may win on empty promises

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”—Benjamin Franklin

As of this writing, the midterm elections are around the proverbial corner, and due to weekly deadlines, this column will be published two days after Election Day. The media and our friends in the Democratic Party expect to be the majority party post Nov. 7. If not, I expect their usual carping about Election Day “fraud” and disenfranchised voters as the reasons they’re not running the show—although I would look at their inability to articulate what they stand for. Still, it’s not as though we don’t already know their platform: infanticide, racism and cut-and-run.

They just prefer euphemisms like right-to-choose and stem-cell research, affirmative action, and “a strategy.” Because as we all know, had John Kerry been elected president back in 2004, Christopher Reeve would have walked, Michael J. Fox’s bout with Parkinson’s would be over, and Iraq would be a paradise on Earth.

Still let’s look at the early voting results for this election to date. The Associated Press reported that a record number of Washoe County took advantage of early voting. Some 20 percent of the 190,845 eligible voters had voted by end of day Nov. 4.

“Statewide, election officials said the combined total of early and absentee ballots would approach 300,000—half of all those expected to vote by the time polls close next Tuesday.”

About 15,000 mailed in absentee ballots, continued the article. “A breakdown of the more than 55,000 early and absentee voters in the county shows that 21,721, or 39 percent, were Democrats and 26,012, or 47 percent, were Republicans.”

It should come as no surprise that these numbers were eminently encouraging to your never-humble host. Of course, if you are curious as to why, consider that even when Democrats hold voter registration drives, that is no guarantee those they register will show up to vote. I mean, why should they? Your average Democrat has bigger problems in life. We’re talking about a group of people that can’t get their “stuff” together long enough to become financially self-sufficient in the wealthiest nation that has ever existed.

That may explain the reason Democrats prefer to give ex-felons the right to vote. Or perhaps not.

What is equally stupefying is that this crowd continually votes for wealthy white guys who keep telling them they will tax other wealthy white guys up the ying-yang and that this will create jobs. And as we all know, higher taxes mean the poor and downtrodden get taken care of, right? Which perhaps explains why, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov, high-tax blue states have lower incidences of home ownership than lower-tax red states. For example, the People’s Republics of California, New York and the District of Columbia are at 59.7 percent, 55.9 percent, and 45.8 percent of home ownership. Nevada, Wyoming and Texas by comparison clock in at 63.4 percent, 72.8 percent, and 65.9 percent.

And yet Understanding Poverty in America by Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson found the following: 46 percent of “poor” households own their homes, 76 percent have air conditioning, 75 percent own one car, with 30 percent owning two, 97 percent have at least one color television; 62 percent have cable or satellite and 25 percent had cell phones.

Here’s noted economist and author Walter E. William’s suggestion: “Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.”

This sounds to me like Franklin’s sage advice.