Most governments are subject to corruption.  However, governments that are also subject to any form of electoral politics are compelled to conceal or at least camouflage their corruption.  When the news media, AKA the Fourth Estate, are a party to the corruption, the Corruptocrats tend to get fairly sloppy when it comes to hiding their nefarious endeavors since they are accustomed to being protected.  At least sort of.

The release of the full load of Jan. 6 surveillance footage has tipped the scale.  This was foreshadowed by the obvious rigging of the congressional hearing on the subject — where so much information was withheld and the members of the panel were selected almost entirely for their bias.  The resulting political demise of Liz Cheney meshes well with today's cascade of dominoes.

Although the Jan. 6 "event" will have little, if any, actual effect on the destiny of our nation, the Deep State's big guns had to come out.  Why?  Because they have to destroy Trump.  Their lapdog media's bullets are just bouncing off his chest...and their many malfeasances are becoming ever more obvious.  Proving Trump a criminal is their only way out, and their acquired sloppiness is helping to escort them to the losing side of history.

Biden's recently proposed budget is a lame gesture, intended to enforce (alleged) public opinion that Democrats are divinely generous benefactors to the ordinary person.  Such corrupt nonsense will never get past the Republican House of Representatives.  The Dems will attempt to characterize such resistance as perverse hatred for America's seniors, but America is not yet a third-world hellhole.  The fairly vast majority of U.S. households are owner-occupied.  Interest rates, the stock market, and government fiscal policies are commonplace kitchen table topics of conversation.  They are not the exclusive domain of some privileged elite.

Heaped onto this struggle between corruption and pragmatism is a legacy of historical deception.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt takes the top spot.  First off, he defeated Hoover in 1932 not because he had a plan to end the (not yet fully materialized) Depression.  He got elected because he was going to repeal Prohibition and let Americans, once again, consume alcoholic beverages.  I read this in Paul Johnson's Modern Times and then bounced it off my mother.  It was her first election as a voter.  She slapped her forehead.  "You're right!  Roosevelt was a Wet and Hoover was a Dry."

FDR also didn't end the Depression, as Fareed Zakaria claimed.  It was Pearl Harbor that ended the Depression.  The New Deal actually prolonged the agony — one example being the legislative prohibition that prevented corporations from retaining some of their profits in order to self-finance expansion and modernization.  They were, instead, forced to bequeath those profits to their stockholders, as dividends, in order to put more money into the hands of the public.  This all culminated in the Recession of 1938, where unemployment rose back up to 19% and the GDP contracted by 3.3%.  By 1943, unemployment was below 2%.  What a difference a war makes.

Another fallacy that has, for years, been propped up and exploited by demagogues of the left is that organized labor is responsible for our improved standard of living.  The real cause for this pleasant development is technology.  I witnessed this firsthand when I acquired a new form of printing press for my print shop.  The new technology vastly increased the profitability of the company...which allowed us, for the first time, to provide employee benefits such as paid vacation, health insurance, and higher wages.  As a result, there was less staff turnover — training new employees is costly, since it can be months before their level of productivity yields a profit.

Talking about wheels falling off juggernauts, our culture was severely damaged when unions took over the public schools.  I and my contemporaries are products of pre-union public schools...and it is saddening for us to observe how poorly educated are the younger generations.  School choice, AKA vouchers, has been simmering across the landscape — especially in the inner cities, where the schools have become dumping grounds for misfit teachers and students.  The COVID pandemic moved this issue onto the front burner.  There are now seven states that have some effective form of school choice:  Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Iowa.

A common myth about vouchers is that they are mostly preferred by affluent families, whereas the reality is that they are particularly popular in the inner cities...because these are the folks who are the most familiar with the problem of failed schools and are thus the primary victims.  Years ago, I saw a TV debate on school choice between Milton Friedman and a local "community activist" named Angela Blackwell.  Friedman had the audacity to mention the particular popularity of vouchers in the inner cities, and Blackwell sprang back, using anecdotal "knowledge" by saying, "Not the inner-city people I know."  Friedman just rolled his Nobel laureate eyes and told her that the Gallup Organization has surveyed the inner cities on the subject for years, and the support for school choice in the inner cities has continued to increase well ahead of the suburbs.

The left's fierce resistance to school choice, however, is not particularly ideological.  The teachers' unions are where the Democrats get a huge chunk of their funding, and the more ignorant the general population is made to be, the easier it becomes for villainous demagogues to succeed.  A recent example of this just happened when President Biden announced that depositors in Silicon Valley Bank will have all of their money refunded, even in excess of the FDIC limit of $250,000...and all this is without using any taxpayer contributions.  Really?

Image via Pxhere.