The Great Society Is Dead and While Trump Is Draining the Swamp of Its Flotsam, He Needs to Knock Some Sense into the House GOP Caucus

It has been 52 years since President Lyndon Johnson created the phrase "Great Society" in his annual message to the Congress on the State of the Union on January 4, 1965. In his speech, Johnson said : "We seek to establish a harmony between man and society which will allow each of us to enlarge the meaning of his life and all of us to elevate the quality of our civilization. This is the search that we begin tonight. World affairs will continue to call upon our energy and our courage. But today we can turn increased attention to the character of American life. We are in the midst of the greatest upward surge of economic well-being in the history of any nation. Our flourishing progress has been marked by price stability that is unequalled in the world. Our balance of payments deficit has declined and the soundness of our dollar is unquestioned. I pledge to keep it that way and I urge business and labor to cooperate to that end. We worked for two centuries to climb this peak of prosperity. But we are only at the beginning of the road to the Great Society. Ahead now is a summit where freedom from the wants of the body can help fulfill the needs of the spirit. We built this Nation to serve its people. We want to grow and build and create, but we want progress to be the servant and not the master of man. We do not intend to live in the midst of abundance, isolated from neighbors and nature, confined by blighted cities and bleak suburbs, stunted by a poverty of learning and an emptiness of leisure. The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed. It proposes as the first test for a nation: the quality of its people. This kind of society will not flower spontaneously from swelling riches and surging power. It will not be the gift of government or the creation of presidents. It will require of every American, for many generations, both faith in the destination and the fortitude to make the journey. And like freedom itself, it will always be challenge and not fulfillment. And tonight we accept that challenge." Then, Lyndon johnson laid out the Great Soxciety's agenda : "a program in education to ensure every American child the fullest development of his mind and skills...a massive attack on crippling and killing diseases...a national effort to make the American city a better and a more stimulating place to live...increase the beauty of America and end the poisoning of our rivers and the air that we breathe...carry out a new program to develop regions of our country that are now suffering from distress and depression...make new efforts to control and prevent crime and delinquency...eliminate every remaining obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote...honor and support the achievements of thought and the creations of art...make an all-out campaign against waste and inefficiency." Johnson called for strengthening the confidence of investors and business, temporary income tax cuts, pecial funds for job-creating public programs, a major effort to find new approaches to reduce the heavy cost of our farm programs and to direct more of our effort to the small farmer who needs the help the most, a regional recovery program to assist the development of stricken areas left behind by our national progress, further efforts to provide our workers with the skills demanded by modern technology, for the laboring-man is an indispensable force in the American system. Finally, President Johnson turned to Americans "still trapped in poverty and idleness and fear," citing the elderly, the poor and the unfortunate, and immigrants. Then, he turned to "Negro Americans," calling for the enforcement of the civil rights law and elimination of barriers to the right to vote, and offering better education opportunities from pre-school through university. Johnson also emphasiyed "The City," saying : "An educated and healthy people require surroundings in harmony with their hopes. In our urban areas the central problem today is to protect and restore man's satisfaction in belonging to a community where he can find security and significance. The first step is to break old patterns--to begin to think and work and plan for the development of the entire metropolitan areas. We will take this step with new programs of help for the basic community facilities and for neighborhood centers of health and recreation. New and existing programs will be open to those cities which work together to develop unified long-range policies for metropolitan areas. We must also make some very important changes in our housing programs if we are to pursue these same basic goals [he created the Department of Housing and Urban Development.] Every citizen has the right to feel secure in his home and on the streets of his community. To help control crime, we will recommend programs to train local law enforcement officers, put the best techniques of modern science at their disposal, and discover the causes of crime and better ways to prevent it." Ending his State of the Union address, Johnson said : "A President does not shape a new and personal vision of America. He collects it from the scattered hopes of the American past. It existed when the first settlers saw the coast of a new world, and when the first pioneers moved westward. It has guided us every step of the way. It sustains every President. But it is also your inheritance and it belongs equally to all the people that we all serve. It must be interpreted anew by each generation for its own needs; as I have tried, in part, to do tonight. It shall lead us as we enter the third century of the search for "a more perfect union." This, then, is the state of the Union: Free and restless, growing and full of hope. So it was in the beginning. So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith." • • • OBAMA AND THE TRASHED JOHNSON LEGACY. One is hard-pressed to disagree with anything Lyndon Johnson said in 1965. But, after 52 years of time and money wasted -- around $10 trillion -- the dreams of a Great Society have been trashed by the Democrat Party Johnson led. • Americans saw the election of Barack Obama, the first black President of the United States, as a landmark achievement. The expectation was that President Obama would finally create the Great Society, lift up the socioeconomic status of Blacks throughout the nation and rid the country of its attitudes of racial discrimination and bias. But, the Obama presidency produced the opposite. Obama’s record of Black achievement is dismal. His policies have put Blacks out of the work force, their unemployment rate has risen, as have the use of welfare and food stamp enrollment. Obama's failures came as he spent and borrowed more money than any government leader in world history -- not just US history. • How this historical expenditure failed to lift up the economic status of Black Americans is the most important issue of Obama’s presidency. But, an analysis of the history of the treatment of Blacks by the Democrat Party will show that Democrats have never been concerned with raising the socioeconomic status of Black Americans. To the contrary, history shows that Democrats have been focused on controlling Blacks, segregating them into impoverished communities, and restricting their families to lives of poverty, crime, incarceration, and desperation. The Democrat Party supported slavery in the South from the time of the nation's founding. The Civil War was fought to abolish slavery. Two amendments to the US Constitution -- the Thirteenth and Fourteenth -- were passed to abolish the practice. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing Blacks from slavery. But, after the Civil War, Democrats in the South formed oppressive vigilante groups and wrote laws to hinder the participation of Blacks in politics. The laws written to suppress Black voting were not banned until President Lyndon Johnson forced through Congress the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- and it needed minority Republican support in Congress to pass. The Civil Rights Act was filibustered by Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, an active KKK leader and recruiter. The KKK was started after the Civil War to intimidate Blacks and keep them from voting. And, Hillary Clinton, who called herself a protector of civil rights, supported Senator Byrd and called him a man of “nobility,” “protector of the constitution” and her “mentor.” The anti-Black agenda of the Democrat Party persists to this day. • During the 2016 presidential election, President Obama and other Democrat leaders started the Black Lives Matter movement, with the funding help of George Soros. Democrats are now renewing their efforts to maintain control of Blacks by talking about “white privilege” and “white supremacy,” as if it were the problem, when in fact it is a creation of the 21st century Democrat Party. They fail to accept that it was and is their Democrat government policies that are the real obstacles faced by Blacks, and now Hispanic, Americans. They blame the oppression of racial minorities on Republicans, but Republicans were not responsible for the big city ghettoes and barrios where Democrats are now creating a second, oppressed racial group, Hispanics. The promotion of illegal immigration and the segregation of illegal immigrants into barrios in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York proves that Democrats still cling to their principles of impoverishing minorities by race and then truning their despair into votes. • • • TRUMP'S VICTORY THREATENS DEMOCRAT CONTROL OF BLACKS AND HISPANICS. The frenzy of attacks on President-Elect Trump often focuses on opposition to the repeal of Obamacare, and the reversal of Obama’s illegal executive orders, as the main issues of the election. But, the real fear of the Democrat establishment elites is the fear of the appointment of a strongly conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Unable to persuade ordinary Americans to agree with their radical Progressive agenda, the left long ago turned to the courts, instead of to the elected Congress. Their last and final chance -- the judiciary -- is soon to be led by conservatives they regard as barbarians. Gone are Democrat dreams of expanded abortion laws, an eradication of the traditional concept of family, and abolished Second Amendment rights. Is this an exaggeration? Many commentators expect that on Inauguration Day, mobs of desperate Democrat lackeys will attempt to seize the day as Trump’s hand reaches toward the Bible to take the oath of office. In the first hundred days after that, expect the Democrat minority in Congress to skillfully execute every conceivable maneuver to cancel the will of American voters, to scheme and plot, and to frustrate every action of President Trump and the Congress he helped to elect. It is now beginning with a Democrat lament over Trump's "billionaire" cabinet choices. The Democrat leadership is threatening to delay as long as possible any confirmations. • • • OBAMA LEADS THE DEMOCRAT ATTACK. President Barack Obama, the recipient of the most fawning media coverage of any President ever, is ending his presidency on an ugly and discouraging note. He seems to suffer form the delusion that he was unfairly treated by conservative media, and is whining about it. Jennifer Calfas writes in TheHill : "President Obama said Fox News and conservative media 'vilified' him throughout his presidency. In several interviews with The Atlantic, Obama said he felt more confident about his presidential run in 2008 because he hadn’t been targeted yet by Fox News and conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh. But, he said, stereotypes about African-American politicians and liberals -- "some image of me as trying to take away their stuff and give it to Black people, and coddle criminals" -- quickly began to take hold. Obama believes : "You started to see that kind of prism being established towards the end of the 2008 race, particularly once Sarah Palin was the [vice presidential] nominee. And obviously almost immediately after I was elected, it was deployed in full force. And it had an impact in terms of how a large portion of white voters would see me." • The real pity -- the tragedy -- of Barack Obama is that he never understood that it was not about race and conservative media -- it was about his agenda, the Progressive agenda, and the way he governed. How else can we explain the massive GOP wins the past 6 years at all levels of government? Obama, in his self-pitying miasma of incompetence and arrogance never got it -- he never could come out of his self-built bubble where he was Emperor of the World in order ot deal with the real world where Americans disagreed profoundly with his policies. • • • THE TRUMP AGE. We are now on the threshhold of a new age -- the Trump Age -- in which the Republican Party will try its hand at doing what Lyndon Johnson and all the Democrats who followed him into the White House and Congress, often as the majority party, could not do, and which Barack Obama almost brought to a final perdition -- govern America for all Americans. The magnitude of the rejection of Obama and his Progressive Democrat Party -- and of the mainstream media that deified Obama -- is so massive that if we search for vilification of an incoming President, the level of hatred, misinformation, distortion and outright character assassination directed at President-Elect Trump dwarfs anything Obama ever received. • Shortly after the election, Ray Dalio -- the brilliant founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund -- said he believes Trump could set off a "major reversal" that could last for years. Dalio shared his latest thoughts on Trump on social-media network LinkedIn : "Now that we're a month past the election and most of the cabinet posts have been filled, it is increasingly obvious that we are about to experience a profound, President-led ideological shift that will have a big impact on both the US and the world. This will not just be a shift in government policy, but also a shift in how government policy is pursued. Trump is a deal maker who negotiates hard, and doesn't mind getting banged around or banging others around. Similarly, the people he chose are bold and hell-bent on playing hardball to make big changes happen in economics and in foreign policy (as well as other areas such as education, environmental policies, etc.). They also have different temperaments and different views that will have to be resolved." Dalio believes the shift under Trump could be even more significant than those in the US under Reagan or in the UK under Margaret Thatcher, and suggested readers brush up on their Atlas Shrugged to get a sense of what's coming. So, if you haven't read Ayn Rand lately, do it, because her books pretty well capture the new mindset coming to Washington to "drain the swamp." Dalio says the Trump administration hates weak, unproductive, socialist people and policies. It admires strong, can-do, profit makers. It wants to, and probably will, shift the environment from one that makes profit makers villains with limited power to one that makes them heroes with significant power. The Trump administration boldness will make the next four years incredibly interesting and will keep America and the world on their toes. • So, don't worry about Donald Trump or his cabinet. Worry for the pampered weaklings in the Washington elites who will have to face them. • • • DEAR READERS, Paul Ryan has been sworn in as Speaker, and, along with Ryan, the 115th Congress is sworn in and now officially at work. BUT, Trump had to straighten ou the GOP rank and file even before they were sworn in. Trump on Tuesday morning criticized House Republicans for "weakening" Congress's independent ethics watchdog. His tweet went directly to the point : "With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance!" Trump added “#DTS” -- that's short for “Drain the Swamp.” House Republicans had voted Monday evening to shift the Office of Congressional Ethics to a position underneath the House Ethics Committee, which could weaken the OCE's independence. The proposal also would bar the ethics watchdog from considering anonymous tips about potential ethics violations and prevent disclosures about investigations. Early on Tuesday, Representative Marsha Blackburn was on CNN to defend the GOP-backed OCE amendment. Blackburn said the amendment would provide more transparency in investigations : "What it will do is provide more transparency. Anytime you can provide more accountability and more transparency to any process that is in place, then you're going to take another step toward draining the swamp, and I am all for draining the swamp." • Could anyone with a brain have doubted that the blowback from Democrats and the media would be swift. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi attacked the argument that the rule change would "drain the swamp" : “Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions. Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress." • The House GOP caucus got the message. So, House Republicans at an emergency conference meeting on Tuesday withdrew the proposal about changes to the OCE ethics watchdog, even before the new Congress had even formally gaveled in. The Tuesday meeting came after Trump's series of tweets questioning the timing and importance of the proposed changes. • Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy both reportedly opposed the changes. But, it seems they couldn't stop the Monday vote. Trump recognized the self-inflicted wound in the making, and he stopped it immediately. He also saw the stupidity of wasting time on a meaningless procedural change instead of working on repealing and replacing Obamacare and getting busy on tax reform. • "Drain the Swamp." President Trump ought to add, "Train the Political Troops." It is incredible that after the 2016 presidential campaign and the aftermath of Democrat 24-hour attacks on Trump and the GOP, Republican House members would not have a better sense of self-preservation. Apparently not. Politicians will be politicians, as they say. And, this little incident should remind all of us why we elected Donald Trump -- just because Trump is in the White House, it doesn't mean that the GOP elite has become overnight what we want and need in government leaders. • "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." This has often been attributed to Sun Tzu, but Marlon Brando also said it as The Godfather. For President Trump, it could read : "Keep your friends close, your enemies even closer, and your congressional caucuses on a very tight leash."