Mayor Pete: All Words Matter
Yesterday, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a presidential contender, was the Democrats’ It Boy. Today, he stands accused of the high crime of being Unwoke:
In his State of the City address that March [2015], Mr. Buttigieg said it was “time for South Bend to begin talking about racial reconciliation.”
“There is no contradiction between respecting the risks that police officers take every day in order to protect this community, and recognizing the need to overcome the biases implicit in a justice system that treats people from different backgrounds differently,” Mr. Buttigieg said, according to a transcript of the speech published by The South Bend Voice.
“We need to take both those things seriously, for the simple and profound reason that all lives matter,” he added.
Mayor Pete tells CBS News that he will no longer say “all lives matter.” Jeezy, Pete. Only in the far-left Democratic Party of 2019 would saying “all lives matter” count as possibly racist. Read it all.
Pete Wehner left the Republican Party over his loathing for Donald Trump. But in this Atlantic column, he reminds us just how berserk the Democrats have become. Excerpts:
To more fully grasp the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party, it’s useful to run through some of the ideas that are now being seriously talked about and embraced by leading members of the party—ideas that together would be fiscally ruinous, invest massive and unwarranted trust in central planners, and weaken America’s security.
- The Green New Deal, a 10-year effort to eliminate fossil fuels “as much as is technologically feasible” that would completely transform the American economy, put the federal government in partial or complete control over large sectors, and retrofit every building in America. It would change the way we travel and eat, switch the entire electrical grid to renewable energy sources, and for good measure “guarantee” high-paying jobs, affordable housing, and universal health care. It would be astronomically costly and constitute by far the greatest centralization of power in American history.
- Medicare for all, which would greatly expand the federal role in health care. Some versions would wipe out the health-insurance industry and do away with employer-sponsored health plans that now cover roughly 175 millionAmericans. This would be hugely disruptive and unpopular (70 percent of Americans are happy with their coverage), and would exacerbate the worst efficiencies of an already highly inefficient program.
Oh yes there’s more:
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Abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which upholds immigration laws; protect “sanctuary cities” (local jurisdictions that don’t fully cooperate with federal efforts to find and deport unauthorized immigrants); and take down existing walls on the southern border, walls which Speaker Nancy Pelosi has referred to as “an immorality.” These policies signal that Democrats don’t really believe in border security and are mostly untroubled by illegal immigration.
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Eliminate the Senate filibuster, pack the courts, and put an end to the Electoral College. The effect of these would be to weaken protections against abuses of majority power.
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Reparations for African Americans to provide compensation for past injustices like slavery, Jim Crow laws, and redlining. (Senator Elizabeth Warren believes Native Americans should be included as well.) Reparations would pose countless practical problems and create unintended consequences, as David Frum argued in these pages.
Madness. And yet, the sitting Nut-In-Chief might be trying to sabotage his own re-election, according to a theory floated by Tucker Carlson. How else to explain some of the things he’s been doing lately? asks the host.
What a depressing damn year 2020 is going to be. But not dull! No sir, not dull.