We do have to think long-term a bit. Our immediate need is to gain control of the government, de-fund the Left and set the stage where freedom and logic have a shot at winning. But the bottom line is that political success in a democratic Republic requires that the people feel like they’re getting advantage out of you being in power. This mostly translates into how are they doing economically.
Trump economic policy, carried through, will go a long way on this – we might be in for a rough year but the cessation of inflationary spending, the tax cuts and the regulatory easements will lead to rapid economic expansion. That’s good and if it comes soon enough it might even allow us to win – or at least hold our own – in the 2026 midterms. But we have to be cognizant of the fact that last November 75 million people voted for a talentless, ignorant person of zero accomplishments. A good number of those voters are just hate-filled, Democrat bigots – not reachable by us no matter what we do. But the fear is that a flip of just 1.5 million Trump voters means we lose. Think of the catastrophe we’d be stuck in right now if Harris was in office. We dodged a bullet – and we need to think of ways to ensure we dodge it going forward.
And the seeds of what we need to do are right there in the election results – Trump did better than any GOPer ever among traditionally Democrat constituencies. These people voted for hope: a hope that Trump would revive the economy and give them a shot. If we don’t deliver on that hope we’re doomed – but if we can deliver even better than expected, those voters might start to come over to us in droves, leaving the Democrats in the position of the GOP 1932-1952. Think of all the Democrats accomplished in that 20 year period we were out: total transformation of the USA. We can do that, too; if we have the power.
Lots of people will have lots of ideas on this and here is mine: an Urban Homestead Act.
All through the big cities we see swaths of totally abandoned residential and commercial land. You’ve seen the videos – just totally blighted buildings (when they’re still standing). Testament to a different America 60+ years ago when our urban cores were places of work and hope, not death and despair. I know what you’re thinking: not another urban redevelopment plan! It isn’t! Promise! Those old liberal urban plans were merely giveaways to cronies…if anything concrete was accomplished it was either useless or merely catered to upper class urban liberals (you know – building an arts center…places to display garbage liberal art and it is all staffed by well-paid liberal foot soldiers). I have something else in mind: to turn decayed neighborhoods back into thriving communities. Turning abandoned factories and stores back into thriving businesses. Here’s the nutshell of it:
The federal government does a survey in a city (let’s say min population has to be 100,000) and if they determine a certain percentage is blighted (I’d go with something like a figure equal to 25% of the blighted land in Detroit), it is seized under eminent domain and becomes federal land (not exactly what was intended with this provision but after Kelo totally reasonable, and what we’re doing is actually good). We don’t overly interfere with local zoning ordinances (except in such cases where they are just liberal NIMBY urban planning trash) – if it is zoned residential, it remains that. So, too, with commercial and industrial zoning. The government clears away the completely useless buildings, cleans up those buildings which are still usable (even if they need work). The resultant properties go into a pool and at fixed times and places, American citizens (only citizens, and never corporations) can stake a claim to the properties…just like the old Homestead Act, if you stay on it for five years and develop it (you know, build or repair the house; open a factory up in that industrial property, etc) then title is transferred to you.
First thing: this will cost. Probably a lot. Not in obtaining the property – under eminent domain the full market value has to be paid but we’re talking here about de-facto abandoned property. We’d have to draw up some rules on that but a rule of thumb would be if the city hasn’t collected property taxes on it for, say, five years before it is seized in eminent domain, then that is abandoned property – it has no legal owner. Sure, there would be lawsuits on it…we’d win them. But the real expense comes in clearing/cleaning the property. But that, my friends, is the first step in giving benefit to the people…this would open up a huge number of low skilled jobs in areas of highest economic blight. Anyone can haul away trash. We just created some jobs – sure, government funded, but still private sector (various contractors would obviously be employed here) and just in cleaning up the mess, that will start to improve the areas we’re working in.
Second thing: making sure we’re not screwing ourselves. One thing is to make sure that the corrupt city governments don’t get their greedy little fingers in here. That’s part of the reason to federalize the property…but it can’t stay federal forever and I don’t want, say, the mayor of Chicago licking his chops at how much property taxes he’s going to be able to collect in five years. So, such property after transfer of title remains federal land for twenty years – federal land, no local or State taxes on it. The provision against corporations getting the land is because I don’t want corrupt political machines in the cities setting up fake corporations to stake a claim and then in five years just selling it off at whatever price after Uncle Sam picked up the tab for cleaning the land. This act is for people, not for governments or corporations. After the title is transferred then what will happen will happen…but the connected are not taking this thing over.
Some incentives:
Aside from being property-tax free for a total of twenty five years, I would also make the labor and material costs of fixing/building on the properties tax deductible. Full ride on it – whatever you spent to get that house or factory into working order, write it off your taxes…and you can allocate those costs over a twenty year period (you don’t have to take the write off in one year…you spent, say, $100,000 on it, go ahead and spread that tax deduction over five, ten or twenty years as seems best to you.
For contractors actually doing the work (as most of it will be) profits from such work are taxed at half whatever federal rate you pay on profits. Massive incentive for contractors to get into this…and pass at least part of the savings on to the customer. So, too, with materials sold to people building on the Homestead properties – you sell lumber then the lumber you sell for this is taxed less. The key here is to kickstart the thing – to make everyone want to jump in. And, of course, the goal was two-fold from the start: to revive these blighted areas, and to provide an increased market for goods and services. Because then the final step here: all materials used in these properties must be American made. We’re not doing this so China can sell us more drywall (some care will have to be taken here – if there is some aspect of this that is genuinely not available in the USA or not available in sufficient amount then we can grant some easements on this requirement…but just think about what is needed to build any structure and you know that 90%+ of it is easily obtainable in the USA). Think of the ripple effects in the economy as more lumber, nails, drywall, ducting, glass, wiring and on and on and on have to be made in the USA to rebuild America.
Anyways, that is the basics of my idea. Sure it would actually need refinement and there would be lots of nuance based on local conditions but the basic concept is to get Americans to rebuild America using American materials for the benefit of Americans. And I’m sure other people will come up with other ideas or improvements to this one. But we need the ideas. We need to talk about them. Send them along to those in charge or who have influence. Even if its just a tiny bit…that is how things are supposed to be done in the USA. Bottom up – the people are the prime movers, the government just clears the decks. And if we do this – and a hundred other good ideas as well – we’ll leave the Left out in the cold. They can’t come up with positive, helpful ideas – because they hate the USA and Americans. They don’t want us doing well – they want us punished for our sins, real and imagined. But as long as they can talk a game about helping, their message will resonate…if, however, we show the people that we’re helping, all the talk in the world won’t change the result.
Blogs For Victory 
I like the problem-solving approach. Even if discussion and investigation proves this idea unworkable, at least it’s an idea, and will prompt other ideas.
I’m seeing all sorts of movement based on innovative ideas. For example, when Trump talked about a big tariff on cars coming in from Mexico Toyota’s immediate response was that they would be moving their manufacturing to the United States. This kind of response gets no press, because it runs counter to the negativity of the Leftist narrative and its scare tactics about tariffs.
But if the threat of a tariff on imported cars means we start making more cars here, if a tariff on imported steel means that we start making our own steel, that means American jobs, and American jobs mean American paychecks, American tax revenue and American purchasing power—and purchasing power means buying more American-made products, which means more American jobs, and so on.
If other countries miss having our markets, they can drop their tariffs on American-made goods.
And we don’t need giant companies. If a small company can make nothing but a series of top-quality wrenches in six different sizes it will have a market and can be profitable, and Americans can buy good quality tools again.
I remember hearing one of the Robertsons talk about how they got their contract with Walmart. He took duck calls into Walmart stores and convinced each store manager to start selling them. Finally the product came to the attention of a Walmart executive, who was stunned to learn that several stores had been selling the duck calls as individual decisions by individual managers because they had personally been called on and asked to carry the products. This is such an inspiring story because it starts with a dream brought to life by people who believed in it and then brought to the public solely through hard work, through slogging through visit after visit to store after store. It’s the kind of thing that made America great, and it can be imitated in one way or another across the entire spectrum of American industry if we can get thumbs off the scales so the little guys have a level playing field.
In a way, that is sort of what I’m shooting for. Like this:
I demand that all these new/rebuilt homes use US-made nails. I’ll bet we hardly make any nails at all in the USA. But, let’s face it: they’re nails. Not exactly the most tricky thing to manufacture. My bet is that in response to this combined with Trump’s tariffs, we’d see all sorts of people enter the market. Anyone with a bit of metallurgical knowledge would quickly figure out how to make nails…and I’ll bet out of scrap metal that can be had for cheap. All of a sudden, a small time guy is not at a total disadvantage…Home Depot and Lowes will want to stock as many US-made nails as possible…they’d prefer to buy a bazillion at once from foreign slave labor…but now they won’t be able to. And the best two or three firms who start this will survive the shake out when the market reaches saturation. On and on like that.
I can’t wait to read Part 2.
It’s Sunday–you’ve got time to delve into this lengthy and scholarly article titled How Barack Obama Built An Omnipotent Thought-Control Machine… And How It Was Destroyed It parallels some recent work by Dr. Malone about the control of what he calls “psy ops” or manipulation of perceptions, and therefore of thought.
The author, David Samuels, covered the Obama Iran deal. He writes, of Walter Lippman’s theory that ““The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do”:
He went on to discuss the eventual recruitment of David Axelrod into Obama’s apparatus. One part of his discussion of Axelrod struck me, as it echoes my often-stated theory that the main allure of the Left is that it promises a shortcut to the Higher Moral Ground. Axelrod has a similar though differently expressed theory:
There is an amazing amount of information to unpack in this article, written by a true journalist who observed the evolution of media manipulation and has put together a beautifully written and detailed explanation of it. There is so much think about, and so many ways to apply it to what we see today, it’s worth reading and re-reading and archiving.
While the author covers a LOT of ground here, I think these are his core messages about what he observed in action.
First, it usefully warned of the potential distance between an underlying reality and an invented reality that could be successfully messaged and managed from the White House, which suggested a new potential for a large-scale disaster like the war in Iraq, which I—like Rhodes and Obama—had opposed from its beginning.
Second, I wanted to show how the new messaging machinery actually operated
When I linked this article in an email to a friend I realized that it an article titled “rapid onset political enlightenment” which I think is a great explanation of what a lot of us have been going through, though not on the same level as the author.
In writing about the article to a friend I just linked it to, I said this: “I have always thought that the majority of Dem voters pull that lever because they have come to believe that the party stands for goodness, light, fairness, equality, all sorts of virtue, and by supporting it they are therefore virtuous themselves. Axelrod dug a little deeper to the more superficial aspect of that, which is not so much how supporting the Left makes people feel about themselves as how they think this makes them appear to others.”
That is a more cynical belief than my theory that it is important for some people to FEEL virtuous if that can be achieved merely by supporting something seen as virtuous, but I think for many it might be more accurate—not how they see themselves but how they want others to see them.
And the final key component here: ignorant population. We haven’t taught anything like history in schools for more than half a century. Even when I was in school is was already vastly simplified (dumbed-down, to be impolite). One of my irritations in high school was how bad the history curriculum was…because I knew better thanks to my father’s books. People these days just don’t know how the world came to be or how it works…so, if you have uniformity in official messaging it can easily seem convincing to a lot of people…while those few of us who know better are disdained because we lack credentials. Fortunately, Musk buying X blew a hole in that – just needed one major social media platform to allow the truth to come out and, whammo, the Lie Machine was crippled. Not that it can’t lie, but it can’t lie unchallenged.
The liberation of Twitter proves how dependent the Left is on controlling a false narrative.
It’ll be interesting to see if this turns out to be true, and it if goes anywhere. Illinois does seem to have a tradition of its governors ending up in jail.
This is why the shrieks were so loud, I think. Even if what happened isn’t an actual violation of law, political families raking it in off taxpayer funds is just a horrific look…the kind of thing that makes populations vote the bums out.
“the kind of thing that (should) make populations vote the bums out, (but too often does not)
Hillary Clinton still had a shot at the White House even after word got out about Benghazi, after her illegal email server was made public, after she flouted Congressional subpoenas and blatantly destroyed official records, after word started to leak out about her Pay To Play schemes as Secretary of State, after the public learned about the Clinton Foundation scams, etc.
Obama would probably be reelected today, or at least get 50 million votes.
Depressing, isn’t it?
I do think the key is that some people believe, whether it is a conscious thought or not, that the Left embodies good. And that, of course, means that the Other Side is, by definition, bad.
All we can do is keep expressing contempt for the posturing and antics of radical Leftists and let them hang themselves with their surliness and violence and spewing of hate. I think people are tired of conflict and hate, and that is all the Dems have to offer, while on our side of the aisle people seem pretty happy and cheerful and optimistic, and are getting a lot of good stuff accomplished.
A lot of assumptions and beliefs on the Left are being damaged and I think the information about Covid and Fauci may shatter a lot of more. In the meantime Democrats have to be wondering why they are against cutting waste, or deporting dangerous and violent criminals. What happened to that “the world hates Trump” theme we have been hearing for so long?
As a side note to this—I think Musk and Vance have created a little safe zone around Trump, a couple of wing men if you will who give him a lot of support, and he seems happy to sit back and let them take charge, which is a new look for him. He’s still The Boss, he still steps in when he has to, but he has a couple of guys he can count on, and that seems to be giving him the freedom to let his warm and even silly side show through. I don’t remember seeing Trump grin like he has been. He is openly having fun, and it is contagious—as well as a great contrast to the Chuck and Andy show on the other side of the aisle.