A 25% Shutdown ? Most Americans Would Prefer a 50% Shutdown Permanently

SHUTDOWN? WHAT SHUTDOWN?? Without the constant media drumbeat, that's what most Americans would be saying about the 25% federal government shutdown. In fact, many Americans would add -- only 25%? Shut 50% down, save us tax dollars and let us lead our lives in peace !! • • • FRENCH CITIZENS AGREE. That is the basic argument that has driven thousands of everyday French citizens into the streets in the past two months. • But, unlike Americans, the French tend not to talk things over through their elected representatives. They prefer to get the government's attention by protecting. This time, it's be wearing yellow vests -- les gilets jaunes -- and telling President Macron in no uncertain terms that his policies do not help everyday French people, but prefer to tax them unmercifully in order to "save the planet" and carry out reforms in French society that may be needed but that do not sit well with the increasingly impoverished French citizens who are being asked to foot the bill. • Reuters wrote on Sunday that : "What began as a grassroots rebellion against diesel taxes and the high cost of living has morphed into something more perilous for Macron - an assault on his presidency and French institutions. The anti-government protesters on Saturday used a forklift truck to force their way into a government ministry compound, torched cars near the Champs Elysées and in one violent skirmish on a bridge over the Seine punched and kicked riot police officers to the ground. The French authorities’ struggle to maintain order during the weekend protests raises questions not just over policing tactics but also over how Macron responds, as he prepares to bring in stricter rules for unemployment benefits and cut thousands of public sector jobs." • On Sunday evening, Macron tweeted : “Once again, the Republic was attacked with extreme violence -- its guardians, its representatives, its symbols.” His tweet reflected his administration's hardening stance against the yellow vests after the protest movement appeared to have lost momentum over the Christmas holidays. Macron refuses to slow its pursuit of reforms to reshape the economy, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said on Friday, branding the remaining protesters agitators seeking to overthrow the government. Reuters noted that : "Twenty-four hours later, he was fleeing his office out of a back door as protesters invaded the courtyard and smashed up several cars. 'It wasn’t me who was attacked,' he later said. 'It was the Republic.' " • President Macron tried to head off the rebellion in December with a promise of tax cuts for pensioners, wage rises for the poorest workers and a reversal of planned fuel tax hikes, while pledging a national debate on key policy issues. His televised effort fell short, even though the price tag for those concessions -- 10 billion Euros ($11.39 billion) -- was enough to send French borrowing costs higher as investors fretted about debt levels and Macron’s ability to reform the Eurozone’s second largest economy. • Laurent Berger, head of the reform-minded CFDT trade union, France’s largest union, on Sunday accused Macron’s government of going it alone at a time it needed to reach out. Berger told French Inter radio : “We’re at an impasse. We have on the one side a violent movement...and on the other a government which thinks it can find the answers all on its own.” • Everyone in the French media is scrambling to explain why 50,000 normal French workers and mothers are protesting in the cities and towns in every part of France, including Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes and Marseille. • Gatestone Institute published an article titled "France in Free Fall" by the conservative professor Guy Millière on Sunday. Millière's long article is available at < https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13500/france-in-free-fall >. His point is this : "The author Éric Zemmour described the 'yellow vests' revolt as the result of the 'despair of people who feel humiliated, forgotten, dispossessed of their own country by the decisions of a contemptuous caste.' French President Emmanuel Macron seems to hope that weariness will lead the 'yellow vests' protesters to give up, but there seems no sign of it yet. On the contrary, the 'yellow vests' seem dedicated to bringing him down." • As the professor notes : "Macron and the current government, in fact, have been encouraging more migration : all illegal immigrants in France receive financial assistance if they ask for it, as well as free health care; and they run almost no risk of being deported. Each year, more than 200,000 residence permits are issued (262,000 in 2017), including to illegal immigrants. Many have no marketable skills, some receive for decades the minimum income paid to anyone in difficulty. Social support for migrants, legal or not, adds to the cost of an increasingly expensive welfare system. France today is the most highly taxed country in the developed world : compulsory levies correspond to more than 45% of GDP. Unemployment is high at 9.1%. Typical salaries are both low and stagnant. A public school teacher starting out earns 1,794 Euros per month ($2,052). A police officer after a year of service earns even less : 1,666 Euros per month ($1,906). Macron, when elected president, promised to boost growth and improve purchasing power. To encourage large and multinational companies to invest in France, he lowered their taxes and eliminated a tax on wealth. As he apparently did not wish to increase the French budget deficit (2.6% in 2017), he created new taxes and increased a few of the taxes paid by the entire population, including fuel taxes. It was in this context that the 'yellow vest' protesters -- who have been rioting throughout France for the last eight weekends, came into being. They have vowed to keep on demonstrating. The new taxes, plus the increase in existing taxes, have led many people into real financial straits. Many also saw the reduction of taxes on large companies coupled with the removal of the wealth tax for the rich as outrageously unfair. They see perfectly well that a lack of security is spreading, that immigration is exploding and that the government is not providing sufficient law and order." When Macron signed the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which defines immigration as "beneficial" for the host countries, and requires signatory states to pledge to "strengthen migrant-inclusive service delivery systems," a group of retired generals published an open letter, saying that signing the Global Compact was a further step towards "the abandonment of national sovereignty" and noted that "80% of the French population think that immigration must be halted or regulated drastically....In deciding alone to sign this pact," the generals wrote, "You are guilty of a denial of democracy, even treason, with respect the nation." • • • DOES THAT SOUND FAMILIAR TO AMERICANS? It should. It is the battle now going on in America. BUT, the roles are reversed. President Trump is with the 'protesters' and is trying to bring the big-spending Progressive Democrat elites into line with the needs and expressed demands of American voters. President Trump wants border security, lower taxes, less federal government regulation, elimination of global "accords" in American political decision-making, fewer federal grips on the US economy, and, above all, President Trump wants to cut the grip that the elites in the Washington Swamp have on every facet of American life. • • • THAT'S WHAT THE SHUTDOWN IS ALL ABOUT. It is first and foremost about securing the southern border and respecting American sovereignty. BUT, the Washington Times wrote on Sunday that the Trump administration has vowed to make this shutdown less onerous than previous closures has helped keep some sites open --the open-air monuments on the National Mall in Washington, DC; the Arizona Grand Canyon National Park stays open with state workers running the park while federal employees are furloughed; the national military park commemorating the Civil War siege at Vicksburg, Mississippi, is being kept open through private donations. QUESTION : if most federal sites were given over to the states for management, would that be noticed by American tourists? Only positively, in their taxpayer pocketbooks. • Rick Logis put it so well in his American Thinker article on Monday that his words make me cheer : "The Wall is a black and white policy issue for Trump. He knows he can't cave to the Democrats. If he acquiesces, read my lips: Clinton will be the 2020 Democrat nominee, and she will win. But worry not. The Wall is Fort Sumter; there's no going back from it now. The Wall isn't anti-immigrant; in fact, it might be the most pro-immigrant expenditure in American history -- a ubiquitous reminder that America is the most generous nation in the history of the world – which admits two legal immigrants every minute of every day and will welcome with open arms those who adhere to our rule of law. Nationalism is the glue that holds this whole American experiment together. Some Presidents wants freeways, hospitals, and airports named after them. Not our President. The Donald J. Trump Great Wall of America is what he wants, and it's what the majority of people in the majority of states want. Time to get this 'elections have consequences' party started. Build that wall along all 2,000 miles on the southern border, Mr. President. Build it high, build it wide, build it tall, as tall as the sky. Our only regret about The Wall will be that it's not visible from outer space." • You can read the full article, and it is superb, at < https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/the_great_wall_of_america_will_break_the_democrats.html#ixzz5bwySgPD1 >. • • • THE #NEVERTRUMPERS AND RINOs ARE SIDING WITH PELOSI & CO. What else would we expect? Liberty Headlines reported last Friday that RINO Senators Collins of Maine and Cory Gardner of Colorado called on President Trump to reopen the federal government without the requested funding for the border wall. Collins joined Gardner in expressing support for the House Democrats’ plan : “I’m not saying their whole plan is a valid plan, but I see no reason why the bills that are ready to go and on which we’ve achieved an agreement should be held hostage to this debate over border security,” Collins said, according to the Press Herald. • Only Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stands in the way of the RINOs in his GOP senate caucus. McConnell restated that the Senate will not vote on any bill that President Trump would refuse to sign : “I’ve made it clear on several occasions, and let me say it again : The Senate will not take up any proposal that does not have a real chance of passing this chamber and getting a presidential signature. Let’s not waste the time. Let’s not get off on the wrong foot, with House Democrats using their new platform to produce political statements rather than serious solutions.” • • • A NATIONAL EMERGENCY? In a Friday press conference, President Trump suggested that Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who ran crying to the media after a closed door meeting aith the President at the White House, was correct when he said that the President said "he'd keep the government closed for a very long period of time, months or even years." Reporters then asked Trump, probably hoping for a fuzzy answer. They got a Trump 'plainspeak' of an answer : "Absolutely I said that," President Trump said, while clarifying that he hopes the partial shutdown doesn't last more than a few more days. He said it could be opened "very quickly" if they come to an agreement on the wall. • Then, President Trump said : "We can call a national emergency [to build a border wall] because of the security of our country. I may do it. If we can do it through a negotiated process, we're giving it a shot." • American Thinker notes that : "Here are three things Trump understands about most Americans that the exploding-head liberal media don't : 1. They want the wall built. Brian Kolfage's "build the wall" GoFundMe is pushing $20 million. 2. They love the spectacle and the drama of Trump's barbs and zingers. "Civility" is something for thickly bespectacled pajama boys and NeverTru,p thumb-suckers to obsess over. The rest of the country is pulling the popcorn out of the microwave. 3. A partial shutdown simply does not bother most Americans. It takes tremendous tone-deafness to fret to the heartland over how the USA will ever function without the TSA or the IRS. For most people, a government at 75% capacity is a Christmas present." • American Thinker editor Thomas Lifson made the point last week that an eternal shutdown will hurt Democrats much more than Republicans, as the hold on paychecks for federal workers, a major Democrat constituency, becomes unbearable. Lifson speculated that Trump knows this : "With Schumer and Pelosi backed up against the wall, Trump can say any inflammatory thing he wants to. Hysterical shriekers like the three stooges at the Washington Post will lavish him with free air time, and red America will lap it up and beg the president for more." • President Trump's departure from the spineless, bland Republican status quo is a delight to watch, says American Thinker : "It's also a national emergency for once-complacent Democrats." • As Lifson pointed out : "By far the biggest and most powerful political faction within the Democrat camp negatively affected by the shutdown is federal employees, who are forced to live on savings. The loyalty of federal employees as a partisan constituency -- as voters and especially as donors -- has had many benefits for the Democratic Party, including ongoing obstructionism of President Trump. But President Trump sees the other side of that coin, one that Pelosi, Schumer, and others are blind to. Most people as well paid as federal bureaucrats (they earn substantially more than the general public they 'serve' at all but the top levels) can handle one or two missed paychecks. High school graduates in the federal civil service earn 34% more in wages and 93% more in benefits than private sector high school graduates. For college graduates, it is 5% more in wages and 52% more in benefits. Only federal workers with graduate degrees earn less than if they worked in the private sector....In another month, in February, those paycheck-less federal employees are going to see exactly how much interest has accumulated on their credit card bills. March will be much worse for them, as interest accumulates on top of the new bills that have to be charged to the plastic. In other words, a prime segment of the Democrats' coalition is in a financial hole that gets deeper and deeper with each passing day -- all because Nancy Pelosi says a border wall is 'immoral,' a nonsense proposition that only sycophants can mouth without inner doubts. The position that not even a dollar should be spent on a border wall is not viable, which means that a compromise on calling it a 'slatted fence' or 'border protection' or some other euphemism is going to get more attractive to the federal employees and to the political bosses. How long will it take? My guess is that a second unpaid credit card bill for federal employees whose last paycheck was last year -- at about the time the electric utilities, mortgage lenders, and landlords start sending warning letters -- is when the pressure on Pelosi and Schumer becomes unbearable." • • • DEAR READERS, it's a 50-50 proposition that French President Macron will survive for his entire 5-year term. But, on Monday, President Trump was far ahead of his Democrat heel-nippers. He said he would visit the southern border on Thursday. And, he will address the nation in prime time on Tuesday evening about the shutdown and national security. So we ask again -- WHAT SHUTDOWN?? While federal workers feel the pinch of the shutdown, the public learns every day that life goes on pretty much as usual with a federal government only 75% as big as it was last year. If the shutdown lasts until April 15, who knows what conclusions might be drawn? Someone has suggested that Americans could follow the example of the French yellow vests and begin a "Taxpayers Protest." How would that play out in the Swamp? With horror and outrage that Americans would dare to refuse to pay for the ProgDem elites' favorite globalist and anti- American projects. And, who would be smiling like the Cheshire Cat -- our MAGA President Trump, who stands tall with the American people every day.