HAS TELLING UNTRUTHS BECOME A REQUIREMENT OF THE CONSERVATIVES?

…The conservative’s, conservative: Mr. George Will

It’s sad to see those conservatives you could previously trust, as questionable as those at Fox News.

I find it interesting that the conservative pundits, such as Mr. George Will, continue to go after the negative aspects of where the liberals are headed and where they say the US government is spending.  However, you never hear them compare that position to the conservative approach.

In his latest column, Mr. Will stated that entitlement spending, which he says is income redistribution, exploded from 28% to 66% of federal spending since 1960.  However, I can’t seem to find where to confirm these numbers….?  

 

He also says that since 2010, government at all levels redistributed more than $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services to US recipients. He says that this is 14% of our GDP and is equal to $7,200 per person, or almost $29,000 for a family of four.  Again, where do I confirm that information…?

On this last one, I can’t find those numbers anywhere and I also haven’t heard of any American families of four that are doing nothing and still receiving $29,000 per year from the US government…? 

This is sounding more and more like Ronald Reagan’s famous “Welfare Queen”. 

 

Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” was the urban legend he spread about the woman living on welfare while driving a new convertible Cadillac.  The national press tried for a number of years, but no one was ever able to find that elusive woman with the new convertible.

As with the Queen, where are these Americans receiving all this tax payer money?

Will many times treats Social Security as if it is money that we tax payers are paying out to Americans who have never paid a dollar into the system. 

Is he referring to his “entitlements” as those receiving Social Security or those on permanent disability?  If these were or are working people, we have all been paying into the system for decades, most of us for over 40 years.  Will also claims that the medical and retirement payments to the elderly are swallowing the federal budget….?  

 

But all the major studies have shown that the Social Security system is not in trouble and it would only take a slight increase in the current arbitrary income cap that was set years ago to make it solvent to 2070.   As for Medicare, after the many Baby Boomers have passed on, and if the Congress would stop raiding Medicare, that program would also be OK. 

Does Will really think this is all just tax payer money that is being freely doled out of the US treasury?

What you never hear these pundits talking about is where they would or are spending taxpayer’s money. 

 

As an example, when did you ever hear from the Mr. Wills things like in 1960, the federal spending on the military was $344 Billion, but the military spending budget for 2011 was $610 Billion.  Gee, that’s a 56% increase over about 50 years that you probably never hear about from them.  (Just a bit above the annual cost of living increases.)  The conservative are always wanting to spend more tax payer money on the military.  And that spending doesn’t include that the Pentagon has never stayed within their spending budgets.

There is one item that even George Will did admit.  Per Mr. Will, “…in any given year, [entitlement] growth was on the whole over 8% higher if the president happened to be a Republican rather than a Democrat.”  At least, even he couldn’t avoid that whatever the cause, the spending goes on regardless of which party is in the White House, but it’s even higher when the president is a Republican.

But this time, Will’s article changed the subject and he went on to bad mouth the anticipated Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.  He did this by saying that Hillary’s convictions about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, the Keystone XL pipeline, the increasing of Social Security benefits, will all be decided when she is told by her team what her actual policy convictions are at the time. 

Where does he get this bogus information?  Oh, I know, as with those at Fox, he just makes it up.

But this time he didn’t stop with Hillary.  He then went after the other Democratic candidate, the Independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. 

Sanders, who says he’s an independent and a socialist, this is Bernie’s way of saying he’s a very serious liberal.  Anyone that knows Bernie knows that he is no more a real Socialist as he doesn’t believe in having the government running all the major businesses.  That is what real Socialists do, as in China today, and as it was in the old Soviet Union. 

 

In addition, he is an independent that caucuses with the Democrats and he is currently running for president as a Democrat.  Yes, he is for sure, more of a liberal and more like a Democrat than a Republican. 

This must all really be a problem for someone like Mr. Will.

But Mr. Will also falsely claims that Bernie wants the US to be more like the European economic failure, Greece, which couldn’t be further from the truth. 

 

Senator Sanders does feel that many of Europe’s social democracies such as Denmark and Sweden have the right idea in that they provide their citizens with free health care and a free college education, which is the way it was for college students at one time in some US states.

Senator Sanders isn’t running and actually expecting that he will be the next US president.  However, he is showing Hillary that many Americans agree with much of what Bernie is selling.  He is hoping that he can get Hillary to bend more to the liberal side of the equation.  And so far, he and many Americans are making his points very clear to Hillary.

More and more, when the conservatives run out of ideas and their bogus talking points, then they just make things up or fudge the truth.  I use to trust Mr. Will for getting the real conservative scoop, but lately he has started to make things up just like those on Fox News and within the GOP.

The conservative have been so wrong for so many decades.  At some point, I am hoping the smart ones will come to their senses and start telling us the truth.  But I doubt that this will ever occur in my life time, and I for sure, won’t be holding my breath.

Copyright G.Ater  2015