The Socialist vs. the Tycoon or Socialism vs. Capitalism?

Ever since billionaire tycoon and former New York mayor
Mike Bloomberg entered the Democrats' presidential
nomination race as a latecomer the contest has come down
to just a few remaining hopefuls, with recent departees
including former South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg
and California billionaire Tom Steyer, who unlike Bloomberg
is not as well known and never got any traction for moving
forward. And the final two contestants may be the marquee
matchup that many political observers inside and outside
of the Democrat Party are eager for: Socialist U.S. Senator
Bernie Sanders (who is an independent caucusing with the
senate Democrats) and Bloomberg, someone who has
benefited greatly from our capitalist system and is its
champion, to at least some degree. The political/economic
championship bout: Socialism vs. Capitalism. As this post
goes to press, both of these combatants are still in the running
for the Dems' laurels.

However, Bloomberg has spent $3 million of his fortune
over the past decade on campaign contributions to
Colorado legislature candidates and PACs, according to
state and federal campaign finance records; The New York
billionaire has been courting the support of community
leaders around the country for his presidential campaign,
as well as his campaigns for more and tighter gun control
laws in as many cities and states as possible. One such
entity to assist with the latter, Everytown for Gun Safety,
has spent nearly $2 million in Colorado since 2014.

For his part, Sen. Sanders won the Colorado caucuses
in 2016 with 59% of the vote. In August of that year,
Sanders launched Our Revolution, a non-profit political
group. Although this entity raised over $9.5 million
between 2016 and 2018, it spent a miniscule $500 (!)
on Colorado campaigns while amassing thousands of
"Berners" in that state.

Bloomberg made a crack putting down the Colorado state
senators who voted against his gun control agenda legis-
lation in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone in which he
had begun to exhibit his view of non-wealthy, workaday,
politically conservative Americans, particularly those
who dared to openly disagree with him, saying that the
legislators were from "a part of Colorado where I don't
think there's roads." Very recently, Bloomberg made
belittling remarks about farmers and farming in a speech
before an assembly at Oxford University in Great Britain:
"I could teach anybody .. to be a farmer, ... It's a process.
You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add
water, up comes the corn." It has never come to Bloomie's
attention that farmers have to do research on the quality of
soil that they have to work with, study seasonal weather
forecasts, buy and maintain farming equipment to help
them with the planting, the harvest, and the nourishment
in between for their crops, among other things. There are
agricultural colleges and universities which prepare
people for being farmers, awarding degrees in agricultural
management. But when one lives and works up in the
Ivory Tower away from the real world and real people
such things are bound to escape one's notice.

Bernie has "Berned" more than a few of his supporters over
time with an attitude of "My way or the highway!",
according to a former Colorado Democrat Party Rick Palacio.
Sanders has made campaign staff "feel disregarded, verbally
assaulted," Palacio has averred. Apparently what some had
thought to be crotchety behavior normal for a septuagenarian
may well be just good old-fashioned megalomania.

The chief difference between Bloomberg and Sanders is the
respect that the former has for capitalism and the maintaining
of the free market, although with stiff regulations on corpor-
ations concerning their "environmental sustainability" in
their practices, i.e. using compostable packaging and recy-
clable materials along with diversity in their staffing ---
having the desired (by Big Brother Bloomie) staff gender
and racial makeup of their workforce. Add to these
some new taxes to pay for, among other things, health
care and environmental protection programs. Sanders has
no faith at all in the free market, and desires greatly
to replace private insurance in the equation regarding the
way we shall pay for our health care, touting what he calls
"Medicare for all". This name he gives his plan is simply a
euphemism for socialized medicine with the attendant total
government control. While Bloomberg values the free
market, he has little or no regard for most of those who
participate in it, endeavoring to make a fortune for themselves;
Hizzoner Bloomberg is like so many wealthy liberals in that
he thinks that capitalism is fine and dandy --- for himself;
just don't let the hoi polloi get their greasy fingers into it.

Sanders does not mask his contempt for the free market and
for those who have done well in it, including Bloomberg.
Bloomberg restricts his attempts at controlling any aspects
of our lives to concerning himself with how much salt we
consume and how much soda we drink --- remember his ban
on large-size sodas in New York? And forbidding salt shakers
at New York restaurant tables? You could ask for salt, though;
This part of the measure was a mere compromise to get
Nanny Bloomberg's legislation passed at City Hall.
But Bernie concerns himself with a larger, wider range of
things that go on in our everyday lives, looking to place as
many of them under government control as possible, such as
how we are cared for when we are ill or injured, how much
money we can keep (apparently very little!) from our
annual incomes, with the rest going to fund his expansive
and expensive programs for this, that, and the other.
The transplanted New Yorker-turned-U.S. Senator from
Vermont has even remarked that we have too many brands
of toothpaste (!), that we really need only "two or three" (!!),
and that we also have too many brands of athletic shoes to
choose from (!!!). I guess this illustrates ol' Bernie's antipathy
to the free market, it just affords too darn much freedom to
we peasants.

So The Peasant says this to the aforementioned political
observers: If the Democrats' presidential battle royal comes
down to Senator Bernie Sanders and former Mayor Mike
Bloomberg you'll get a battle between two bumptious
New Yorkers, one an avowed socialist and one an example
of pinnacle-reaching capitalist success --- but not between
socialism and capitalism. And whichever wins the Dems'
brawl at their party convention this July, that candidate will
go down in flames come November. The American people
will stick with the leader who not only is a testament to the
possibilities of accomplishment in the free market but also
reopened its doors wide so as to welcome back the workers
who were sent away, along with the entrepreneurs and those
hoping to be, by his immediate predecessor.


MEM


UPDATE (March 5): Minutes after I went to press with this post, your
faithful Peasant saw an online article announcing that Mike
Bloomberg ended his presidential campaign, and that he is
now supporting former Vice President Joe Biden after the
latter's super Super Tuesday, winning most of the fourteen
primaries/caucuses held. After much discussion with his
campaign manager and some influential Democrat officials,
Bloomberg saw no way of catching up to Biden or to runner-
up Senator Bernie Sanders and called it a day on his pursuit
of the presidency. It looks like the big matchup won't be
taking place after all. What might have been (?).

Big Brother's Buddies

In the United States the government does not, at any level,
censor speech; the spoken word, the printed word, musical
productions, prayers in houses of worship --- nor should it.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits
this restrictive, chilling practice. That said, the keen-on-regulating
-every-aspect-of-American-life Democrats are leaving one area
of life in our country to their patrons and allies in Silicon Valley,
that being our freedom of speech. How so? Some social web sites,
Facebook being but one, are policing the content of political ads
placed by politicians as well as online political discussion groups
(Tea Party groups have long been a favorite target). They have
warned said parties about posting material that supposedly violates
the site's "Community standards" which are supposed to protect
certain users of these sites from speech which would prove "hurtful",
could possibly "trigger" certain emotional reactions in said users,
"hateful", and basically politically incorrect. If this sounds familiar
to you, my grand readers, it is because you have read articles about
colleges and universities employing such tactics against conservative
voices on their campuses. Here, the Left is taking it all to a bigger
scope.

Facebook's vice president of global affairs and communications
Nick Clegg recently stated that Facebook does not believe that its
role is to "prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience
and being subject to public debate and scrutiny." Oh, really?
Facebook has faced heavy criticism for content suppression,
and rightfully so. Either conservative's FB pages were shut down
or they were "shadow banned", meaning those that have these pages
can still post on them, although nobody but them can see what they
post. Twitter, Google, and some other social media sites use such
tactics against conservatives as well.

Now, as private companies the aforementioned firms can set these
policies as they see fit. But some in the legal field declare that
since many people, millions in fact, post on these pages found on
these companies' web sites, these sites are no longer considered
to be private places whose rules can be established by its owners
but public meeting places, albeit online, meaning they they enjoy
the free speech rights protection granted by the First Amendment
to the entire public. While threats of violence and calling obscene
names are not so covered, allowing the corporate owners of said
social media sites to prohibit such speech, people are able to
express themselves as they see fit. Your mirthful Peasant knows
that this news will give the Silicon Valley elites conniptions,
but these legal points may have a wonderful chance to be upheld in
court. By the by, do you realize that there are lefties who think
that Facebook and friends have not gone far enough in stifling
the speech of conservatives online? Scary times, folks.

And these same people shout to the heavens that conservatives
are escorting the United States into the nether world of autocracy!
Yet they have no qualms about banning conservative content
from the internet whenever and wherever they can.
Oh, if George Orwell could come back for just a day ...


MEM

Jeff Bezos' and Amazon's Progressively Worsening Dilemma

The wealthiest man on the planet Jeff Bezos and his company
Amazon take pride in their progressive politics and values,
but may be tripped up by that very brand of politics and its
practitioners on Seattle's City Council, and their fall will be
prove quite painful.

The two came to loggerheads in 2018 when the Seattle City
Council imposed a $250 "head tax" for each employee at
any business which garners $20 million or more in annual
revenue to fund housing and various services for the homeless.
Amazon, having over 53,000 employees in that particular area,
strenuously objected to what they rightly saw as a tax on job
creation. Moreover, Amazon sparked a pushback that caused
the City Council to vote to repeal the levy, 7-2,  just one month
after unanimously passing the measure.

With a local election coming up, there were seven seats on Seattle's
City Council to be contested in a local election. Amazon had
given over $1.4 million to a PAC run by the Seattle Metropolitan
Chamber of Commerce. Mark McIntyre, the PAC's executive
director, said although there were no genuine conservative
candidates running for the seats being contested, Seattle's voters
had a choice between left-of-center "candidates who see an
opportunity to work with businesses (both) large and small,"
and those "who would prefer to demonize the business
community." One of the incumbents, Kshama Sawant, is
squarely in the latter camp, as a member of the Socialist
Alternative Party. He wanted an even bigger head tax
($1,000!) per employee and called the repeal a "cowardly
betrayal".

Although 56% of Seattle's voters back a tax on large businesses
to fund housing, they aren't exactly enamored of the City
Council; according to the Crosscut/Elway poll released just
a week ago 69% had a negative opinion of the Council,
and 67% said they want to change the direction of the Council,
being on the lookout for candidates who would bring about
that change.

The national Democrats were paying close attention to the Seattle
races and have treated Jeff Bezos as if he had joined the Repub-
lican Party, with socialist-inclined Democrat candidates
for president Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
obliquely attacking Bezos via decrying corporate money spent
trying to slant elections in their favor. The far-lefties in Seattle,
with their allies on the City Council, want in fact to tilt their
elections forever in favor of the progressives and other lefty
apologists favoring economic ideas which would make it
difficult, if not outright impossible, for businesses of any and
all sizes to do business in Seattle. The progs plan to make
Seattle's system a lasting tool for their political whims,
maintaining and increasing power. It must then behoove Bezos
to ask himself why he is a progressive, and weigh the pros and
cons of remaining one. Your bemused Peasant wants to see
the look on his face when he sees the scale tilted so far toward
radical statism with all its business and economy-choking
taxes, regulation and unrestrained government that it falls over
on its side. And now that Seattle's elections have been held and
have been won by the radicals, we'll get to see that very sight.
It isn't likely to be a pretty one.


MEM

A Quick Note of Endorsement

For my readers in Wisconsin, your mindful Peasant wants to
remind you that Tuesday, February 18 is a primary election
day. On the ballot will be interim State Supreme Court
Justice Dan Kelly, who was appointed by Gov. Scot Walker
to serve the remainder of retiring Justice David Prosser's
term on the state's highest court. Like Prosser a judicial
conservative, adhering tightly to the Wisconsin Constitution,
Justice Kelly will continue to be one of the present five
voices for judicial restraint and constitutional prudence
out of the seven justices on Wisconsin's top court.

It is imperative that we come out to the polls to vote for
Kelly, as we cannot ensure his being on the ballot in the
general election later this year if we are not at the polls.
Primaries are as important as the general elections, for
they are a part of a funnel-like process in choosing a
candidate for elective office. If you see a candidate
whom you think will be a standout in the office being
contested early on in the election season, you must
support your candidate by helping said candidate to
win the primary in order to advance to the general.
As it is a habit of many voters to skip the primaries
while turning out for the generals, this being so for
voters from both major parties, this is all the more
reason to get to the polls this Tuesday to vote for
Justice Kelly; I do not know if this will be an open
primary, in which all the candidates from both parties
will be running against each other or a closed primary
which will have Republicans running against same,
ditto for the Democrats, so if it turns out to be the former
we must see to it that Kelly gets enough votes to send him
on to the general election. It would be a tragedy if the
general election had only liberals to choose from
and Dan Kelly having to sit on the sideline on Election
Day.

One more reason that makes this election, primary and all
so vital, is that the conservative majority on the Wisconsin
Supreme Court along with the Republican-controlled state
legislature make our buffer against the left-wing ideas of
current Gov. Tony Evers and the Democrats. This includes
protecting Gov. Walker's reforms, including Act 10. We
don't dare let up as we did when Justice Rebecca Dallet
defeated a conservative judge for a seat on the court which
cut the conservative majority to 4-3, necessitating us to
fight like hellcats to help Justice Brian Hagedorn to win
a very close race to get that fifth seat back. Not as many
of our voters came out to the polls for that one. We need
to maintain our solid majority, and not take any of the seats
in conservative hands for granted! So please join your
favorite Peasant in going to the polls, heading to your
polling precincts to cast your votes for Daniel Kelly
to give him a full 10-year term. Our prosperity, our
liberties, and our quality of life in our wonderful state
is in our hands.

See you at the polls!


MEM

Orson Bean, R.I.P.

As a boy, and throughout my early adulthood, I enjoyed seeing
Orson Bean, a wonderful comedic actor and stand-up comedian
whenever the opportunity arose --- and did it ever! Having made
over 200 visits on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,
being a recurring character or a guest on many television shows,
among which were Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman; How I Met Your
Mother; Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; Fernwood 2Night; 
Normal, Ohio; and The Ed Sullivan Show. his film credits include
doing some voices for two characters in two animated movies
based on  The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins;
Being John Malkovich; and The Equalizer 2. And there were
appearances on many TV game shows, as a panelist or as host:
To Tell The Truth, What's My Line, Super Password, Match Game,
and Concentration were just a few of the game shows that Bean
appeared on. And there were many, many appearances in night
clubs and comedy clubs from Boston to Los Angeles, not to
mention theatre, including appearances on Broadway.

Born Dallas Frederick Burrows on July 22, 1928 in Burlington,
Vermont to one of the founding members of the American Civil
Liberties Union, George Frederick Burrows, the young comic
received considerable exposure to both politics and the law.
A staunch liberal for most of his life, Bean turned conservative
in his later years, but always had a wide variety of politically
active friends and never, ever disrespected anyone for having
a different political point of view. His third cousin, twice removed
was Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States and a rock-
ribbed conservative. His daughter married the late Andrew Breit-
bart, founder and publisher of Breitbart News, an online
conservative political publication in which Bean wrote a column.
He once opined that being a conservative in 21st century
Hollywood was a lot like being a suspected communist in the
1950s; Bean spoke from personal experience here, as he was
blacklisted during that period for having, as he humorously
put it, "a cute communist girlfriend". His squeeze at the time
was a communist party member. Despite being blacklisted,
Bean still had steady work through the '50s, although he did
not work in television for a year.

Along the way Orson Bean won an Oboe Award, and was
nominated for a Grammy and a Tony. And he attracted lots
of fans and made lots of friends. He also was a nurturer and
encourager of young talent trying to rise in a challenging
business, giving his best advice to many a newcomer to
the footlights, the big screen, and to TV.

This selflessly generous gentleman who loved people (and
was in turn loved right back) and his country, along with
the right to speak your mind without reprisal and the many
other rights afforded to her citizens, lived to the great old age
of 91, and would still be advancing to an even greater, older
 age if it weren't for a fatal accident in which he was crossing
a street in the Venice district of Los Angeles where he lived
in his later years, being struck by two cars (!). Although we
never got a chance to say a proper goodbye to this fine
entertainer who brought smiles and laughter to so many
people, your appreciative Peasant is giving Orson Bean
a tribute here on my humble blog. Orson, you left us
suddenly and tragically, but you left us a legacy of comedy,
mirth, and joy. For that we shall always remember you with
great fondness and gratitude. Requiescat in pace.


MEM

Prayers for Rush Limbaugh

Friends, as I was enjoying Rush Limbaugh's radio show just the other
day I heard El Rushbo take a serious turn toward the end of his show.
A warm, humorous, happy warrior for the cause of conservatism, his
voice became devoid of the easygoing timbre that it usually has in
the remaining minutes of his show's broadcast. Rush prefaced his
message by stating that he wanted to share something imporatnt
with us, his audience of "Dittoheads", his name for listeners who
call in and begin by saying that they love Rush, that they listen to him
daily or nearly so, and have for years. Rush also said that he had
informed his staff of what he now wanted to announce to us.

My heart skipped a beat or two when he revealed to us that he had
recently been diagnosed with "advanced lung cancer".

And now I reckon that many of you, my grand readers, are having a
skipped heartbeat or two over this shocking news, those of you who
have not yet heard or read about the sad revelation from the most
listened to radio show host in the country, the man who made conser-
vative political talk radio a truly national phenomenon and remains its
brightest star. He is a great favorite with many of you in this radio
category, as he certainly is with your loyal Peasant. A former cigarette
smoker, having been off the "ciggies" for over a decade although a
longtime cigar affecionado, Rush's lung cancer diagnosis comes as
an unpleasant surprise to us.

Rush said that he was diagnosed in January, and that he had increasing
incidents of shortness of breath which led him to see his doctor.
Good thing he did; his doctor and other medical advisers have told him
that he has a better chance of beating the disease because he went to
his checkup appointment. Rush missed a few consecutive days (highly
unusual for him) from the Golden EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting)
mic as he quickly began treatment for his illness, and said that there
would be other times down the road where he'll need to take some days
off for the scheduled treatment sessions and to rest and regain his
strength after them. Rush leavened the news of his fight to regain
his health by stating that medicine and medical technology have
advanced to the point where lung cancer, even in an advanced state,
is much more treatable and with greater odds of success. So there's
that for Rush. But "The Big C" is still nothing to take lightly.

In the meantime, let us pray for Rush's battling his lung cancer into
remission and gaining full recovery. Rush has always been there for us
on the radio, during politically good times and bad; let us now be there
for Rush while he wages the fight of his life. And in case he reads
this blog with any frequency, let us say here and now "Rush, we love
you. We are in your corner just as you are and have always been
in our corner, and that of our wonderful country."

And let us now be brave.


MEM

Sir Roger Scruton, R.I.P.

A true warrior for Western culture has passed from this world.
Seeing culture as "a vessel in which intrinsic values are captured
and handed on to future generations," Sir Roger Scruton thus saw
the accumulations of traditions, lessons, and habits necessary for
a good life and a just society go into that vessel; these all being more
beautiful and real than anything made by the most brilliant
planners and intellectuals, especially the intellectuals on the left.
He thought the latter were contemptuous of the wisdom of the past,
always trying to replace it with ideologies which either were untried
or have been tried but failed miserably, i.e. socialism.

Sir Roger subscribed to a worldview based largely on the philosophy
of Edmund Burke, an 18th century Irish-born statesman who served
in the British Parliament and is a forefather of modern conservatism.
As a young man in Paris in the 1960s, Scruton witnessed the 1968
unrest which turned him away from the radicalism of the socialists
and communists and toward conservatism. He was vindicated upon
seeing the mass privations and suffering perpetrated upon other
parts of the world, and took a principled, if lonely stand, in the realm
of academics as a university professor; a conservative prof in a
crowd of far left-wing sorts is not at all a comfortable situation.
Scruton often told the story of how he watched protesters in the
streets outside his window in his Paris apartment, during which he
came to realize that building things of value, i.e. communities,
societies, nations, legal and economic systems, educational systems,
and other institutions of civil society is difficult and requires much
time, while it is so easy and quick to destroy them. This realization
thus triggered another, that Scruton was a conservative, or was on
the way to becoming one.

Scruton was by and large known as a "conservative philosopher",
and there was more than a little truth to that. But always a loyalist
to the truth, he wanted always to honor the truth in full. So Sir
Roger would show the sense in which a particular opinion of his
was conservative. As with conservatives of all kinds, Scruton
despised communism and all forms of socialism, regarding these
ideologies were soul-eroding abominations as well as failures
at delivering economic prosperity. Consequently, he had little use
for his native Britain's Labor Party, even during its more moderate
era when Tony Blair was their leader, later becoming Prime Minister.
He also viewed with equal disdain the Democratic Party of the
United States, even before its leftward land-rocket ride in the past
twenty years.

However, Sir Roger was not copacetic with the economic philosophy
of the British Tories (conservatives) or the American Republican
Party. Although he believed in market mechanisms and was strongly
opposed to central planning and what he recognized as a dependency-
inducing welfare state, Scruton denied that the outcomes of free
exchanges in the marketplace are automatically just. Liberty, in his
mind, was but one important value among community and solidarity,
order and decency, honor and faith. As a result, Scruton believed that
some amount of regulation was just and necessary for the purpose
of protecting persons and institutions of civil society --- drawing upon
his hero Edmund Burke, who called these the "little platoons" which
should play the lead role in promoting health, education and welfare,
and ensuring that new generations would receive and utilize the
virtues which people need to thrive and to contribute to society.

Although Scruton would ally himself with classical liberals, even with
Austrian-school liberals in the struggle against communism (Sir Roger
held seminars and built underground institutions behind the Iron
Curtain), he rejected "individualism" in any serious sense. Most funda-
mental to his moral and political thought was the dignity of the human
person. He did, it must be noted, acknowledge that in order to flourish
persons need relationships, beginning with the family. It followed,
then, that Scruton believed that one naturally and quite rightly had
a special and unique love for, and a duty toward, members of one's
own family, tradition of faith, local community and region, and one's
own fellow citizens.

Scruton categorically rejected "multiculturalism" which he regarded
as anti-cultural in that it lumped and melded all the different cultures
into a monoculture of contemporary upscale progressive ideology.
Sir Roger was then shrilly accused of racism, xenophobia, and other
crimes against "political correctness" when in fact he respected cultures
much more than those who hurled their emotionally-based epithets
at him. Scruton learned Arabic in order to read and study the Quran.
He also made in-depth studies and analysis of Hindu and other Eastern
Traditions of faith to discover for himself the wisdom he thought them
to possess.

Leftist philospophers, such as Karl Marx, believe that the point of
philosophy is to illustrate how the world should be remade, quote:
"The philosophers have thus far merely interpreted the world; the point
is to change it." Sir Roger did not think that philosophy, or really any-
thing else, could usefully plan or radically reform the world, nor did
he want to see it happen in the first place. But he did believe that philo-
sophy could help us see the value of good things, things which should
be preserved by doing small repairs via moderate reforms, so as not to
throw the baby out with the bath water.

Sir Roger Scruton passed away, aged 75. We could sure use a lot more
people like Sir Roger in our topsy-turvy world. Rest well, Sir Roger.


MEM