By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author,
Speaker,
Instructor,
Radio Host
When the Affordable Care Act was first enacted, and the price of health insurance began its sojourn upward, it took away my access to health insurance. My wife and I make too much to qualify for subsidies, but too little to afford the increase in cost. As a partially disabled veteran I was thankfully exempt from the penalty of not having health insurance, but my Veteran's benefits only cover my injuries. All other health services for myself, and all health needs for my wife, disappeared for us, as a result. Had we have had a medical emergency, would our inability to cover the cost led to our bankruptcy? Or worse? How many people died due to losing their health insurance coverage as a result of Obamacare? Before Obamacare, those who the Democrats claim had no insurance did have services available through various State programs, all of which vanished with the emergence of Obamacare. In other words, the folks at the bottom of the economic ladder would have received care whether Obamacare existed, or not. Folks like me, however, were placed in a dangerous, and potentially fatal, place, when Obamacare was enacted due to the vicious rise in premiums that we could no longer afford.
Democrats constantly put into place policies like that, where they say they mean well, but what they cause is destruction, and sometimes, death.
Thankfully, despite the inability to repeal Obamacare legislatively, the Trump administration has taken action regarding eventually removing Obamacare. The
Justice Department has informed a federal court it would not defend the government in a lawsuit against the health care law.
My California Assemblymember Melissa Melendez recently told me about an initiative on the ballot in November that is sponsored by the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), among the most powerful unions in California, and an organization that runs hand in hand with the liberal democrats. The idea by the initiative is to force employees at dialysis centers to unionize. They tell you it is simply an attempt to cap revenue at dialysis centers (because, remember, all liberals think any kind of profit is bad). By trying to back dialysis center employees into a corner with the threat of a ballot initiative, what will actually happen is that it will force many of these treatment centers to close. For patients, most of whom must get dialysis 3 times a week for about 3 hours each visit, this is life or death. If they don’t get their dialysis, they will die. The democrats are not concerned about those lost lives, as long as they can force employees to start paying dues to the union, so that they can feed that money into the Democrat Party for the purpose of strengthening their political power.
A prominent Republican told me yesterday that the Democrats are also proposing a service tax. For example, when you get your car repaired, you already pay a sales tax on the parts, but now the Democrats want you to pay a service tax on the labor.
Sticking to the car repair example, for many people the added tax will hike up the cost enough where many folks will no longer be able to repair their vehicle. The cost will be too high. With a vehicle on the road without those needed maintenance repairs, the likelihood of vehicular accidents goes up. If the vehicle is no longer functioning, those folks who are already living on a shoe-string budget won't be able to get to work.
More lives destroyed by Democrat policies.
How about immigration?
While the liberal left is trying to target Trump as an unfeeling racist, and are even throwing around
images of children in cages that actually were taken in 2014 (during the Obama administration), the reality is, it has been Democrat Party policies that have been inhumane, and a risk to the lives of Americans.
Last week,
a U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot along the Arizona-Mexico border. It was difficult to find an article on the incident. The mainstream media is not reporting about the incident, and the search engines, when I entered "border patrol officer shot at border" all came up with articles about when "immigrants" got shot by the border patrol, with most of the stories over a year old.
How many people have been killed by illegal aliens because of Democrat Party policies on the issue?
Kate Steinle is the most well known case, where a young girl was shot and killed, and then a liberal jury in San Francisco let the illegal alien who committed the crime off scott-free.
What about the
ranchers near the border, and the fear they live in because illegals are swarming through their property, causing property damage, and sometimes death to their livestock?
You want to stop the deaths? It's easy. Eliminate the problem.
- Build the Wall
- End chain migration
- Terminate catch-and-release policies
- Eliminate the diversity lottery
- Defund Sanctuary Cities States because their policies are unconstitutional
- Require E-Verify
The grim reaper of the Democrat Party is especially active in the Democrat Party's gun control policies.
Almost all mass shootings have been at gun-free zones (
98%) . . . a liberal left policy.
All mass shooters except for two of them have been by youths whose fathers are not in the household (statistic presented during recent
American Freedom Alliance event, verbalized by
Warren Farrell, PhD) . . . a result of liberal left welfare policies and anti-traditional family policies.
Criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million Americans use guns to defend themselves each year. Out of that number, 400,000 believe that but for their firearms, they would have been dead.
Meanwhile,
those same anti-gun politicians have no problem using good guys with guns to protect their own children.
How about the deceptively named Healthy Homes and Schools Act, of which
even the Los Angeles Times has a problem with?
Aside from being a taxpayer ripoff, the Healthy Homes and Schools Act, if put into place, would allow California officials to inspect your homes (and of course increase the size of bureaucracy in order to administer the new mandate). The surface argument is they are looking for lead paint in homes built before 1978.
Noble, you say? Remember, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The Times says it's an attempt to allow the paint companies off the hook due to a court ruling, and that they are putting profit over people. That may or may not be true. But, what it does do, as I said before, is allow State officials to snoop around your house to see if you have lead paint on the walls, and then if they notice anything else they don't like, nab you for it. The average home owner in a home that old will not be able to afford the change in paint job, anyway. So, they wind up out on the street. As for the rest of us, as a Democrat told me, "it's only for older homes, you have nothing to worry about. Besides, if you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem with allowing the government to inspect your home?"
Spoken like a true authoritarian.
Such good intentions is how it all starts.
In Nazi Germany it began with only the trade unionists. Then the communists. Then the Jews. Then the Christians who refused to offer support to the Nazis.
The Democrats even sought
to tax drinking water. While the initiative died before it got off the ground, it shows you how low these people will go in their attempt to squeeze every penny out of you in taxes. They have
a limit on water usage in place, due to go into effect in a couple years, too. Rather than work to increase water storage, they'd rather pass restrictive authoritarian laws telling you how much water you are allowed to use. For some, those limitations, and increased taxes, and increased water rates once the lower usage results in less revenue, will all cause deaths throughout the State due to simply unaffordability by some people.
The Gas tax does the same thing. How many people, as the gas prices go up, are no longer able to afford commuting to work? My efforts as a constitutionalist are now in serious jeopardy due to the gas tax. If the cost to do what I do goes up any more, I will probably have to cease all of my efforts.
What's worse, is that while some infrastructure projects by the State have emerged (of course they have, an election is coming up), for the most part the
gas tax money is not going where the Democrats promised. Meanwhile, people are suffering as a result of the increased tax. . . and the bulk of it hasn't even kicked in, yet. How many people will die because they lost everything due to the fact that they could no longer afford to live because of the rise in the gas tax?
The grocery bag tax is another killer. In fact, the grocery bag tax has been causing a severe health hazard situation. In California the flimsy plastic grocery bags have been outlawed. You must now pay a ten cent tax for a thicker "re-usable" bag that takes much more energy to create (a person in the industry told me it takes 26 times the amount of energy to manufacture the thicker bags, as opposed to the thinner bags - so unless each bag is being reused at least 26 times, they are actually worse on the environment in terms of energy used in production), and
much more time to decay, but most people I've talked to still use them once as they did with their flimsy brothers, making the "save the planet" argument not only a false one, but now the impact on the environment is worse than it was before. On top of all that, the homeless, who previously used to get their flimsy bags for free, now must also pay a dime for a bag, of which they can't afford to do. They used the flimsy bags to take a crap, and then would tie up the top of the flimsy bags and throw them away. Now that they can't get free bags, and the thicker bags are near impossible to tie at the top, they crap on the sidewalk or the bushes in public areas. They used to use the bags to throw away their needles, too. Now, in some cities in California, we have an epidemic of
needles and human feces in the public right-of-way, and the Democrats can't figure out why we suddenly have these problems. They are unable to recognize the consequences of their own policies. How many diseases will emerge from these hazardous conditions created by the Democrat Party's grocery bag policies?
Among the problems with illegal aliens is the diseases they are bringing across the border. That, too, is yet another deadly problem that we are experiencing due to liberal left policies. How many people have to get deathly ill as a result of liberal left
sanctuary state policies before they are willing to admit that those policies are deadly to Americans?
California is dead last in quality of life due to Democrat Party policies who have run this State for generations. But, it's not just Democrat-dominated California that is in the crosshairs of the Democrat Grim Reaper.
How many Islamic terrorists are in our midst due to federal Democrat policies regarding immigration and refugees? How many people must die before the Democrats realize that Islam is anti-American, and a violent ideology that seeks only the death of those who oppose them? In
Michigan a massive raid of terrorist activity just occurred, and of course the Democrats and the liberal media is not even talking about it.
What is worse is that the Democrats know that their policies are deadly. That's why they twist the truth, and report deceptively to get what they really want . . . political power.
They would rather defend MS-13, whose motto is "kill, rape, and control," because they want the votes.
They would rather be purveyors of deadly problems, than seek solutions, because for the Democrats, they believe deadly policies results in votes, political power, and more wealth for the Democrat Party. In short, their lust for political power is more important to them than your life.
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