ACTA, VOC, & Hillsdale College Show Socialist/Communist Trouble For Trump Reelection

On September 10 ACTA (the American Council of Trustees & Alumni) released their annual signature publication What Will They Learn? 2019-2020.  Long time readers know that I feature the release of ACTA's annual report every year as well as information about other ACTA projects as they occur during the year.  The ACTA website is an invaluable asset in helping to choose a college that will provide a useful learning experience @ the lowest tuition.  There are thousands of students & parents responsible for large student loans for students who received useless degrees that wish they had been aware of this resource.

 

This year's ACTA report graded 1,124 schools that enroll more than eight million undergraduate students - & awarded 2% of the schools with an "A" & 12% with an "F".  Eight-two percent of schools do not require a course in U.S. government or history so it is not surprising that 1 in 5 Americans think that AOC is the author of the New Deal.  This type of misinformation helps explain the current American preference for socialism & the rise of ill-informed citizens who are stupid enough to graduate from college with tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt totally unprepared for the workforce.  They are naturally attracted to Democrat presidential candidates who promise to expunge that debt for starters.

 

It is natural for the the education gap, the income gap, & every other measure of the excellence of high personal achievement to widen versus the collective mediocrity of socialism & government dependence.  For instance, the median annual income for math majors graduating from MIT in 2019 was $120,000.  These graduates had a median student debt of just $8,219 – the lowest debt to income ratio for bachelor's degrees.  These people really understand math – & economics.

 

Hillsdale College reports:

 

1)  Only 30% of millennials believe it is essential to live in a democracy – a 2017 Gallup poll found that 55% of 18 – 29 year olds had a positive view of socialism & a YouGov.com poll reported that 44% of millennials would rather live in a socialist country instead of a capitalist one such as America;

 

2)  61%  of Americans aged 18 to 24 (the generation that will make up 10% of the voting electorate in 2020 & could be the cohort that denies Trump reelection if they turnout to vote) had a positive reaction to the word "socialism" – beating out capitalism @ 51%;

 

3)  In 2016, socialist Bernie Sanders received 13 million votes for president in the Democrat presidential primaries – more than 2 million votes for him were cast by those aged 17 to 29 amounting to 72% in this age category & 45% of Bernie's voters were college graduates, who have little or no idea what they are passing up; &

 

4)  In just the last two years the Young Democrat Socialists of America experienced a 280% increase in active chapters on college campuses across America.

 

And the fourth Annual Report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, & Collectivism released by the Victims Of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) found that 36% of Millennials support communism – an increase from 2018.  Opinions of capitalism took a decline over the past year with only half of Millennials (ages 23 – 38) & Generation Z (ages 16 to 22) having a favorable opinion of capitalism.  Socialism's favorability decreased over the last year except for Millennials & the Silent Generation (ages 74+). 

 

The VOC survey polled 2,100 people in the U.S. who were 16 & older.

 

The results of the survey prompted Marion Smith, Executive Director of VOC, to properly appraise the situation in America today when he said "The historical amnesia about the dangers of communism & socialism is on full display in this year's report.  When we don't educate our youngest generations about the historical truth of 100 million victims murdered @ the hands of communist regimes over the past century, we shouldn't be surprised @ their willingness to embrace Marxist ideas.  We need to redouble our efforts to educate America's youth about the history of communist regimes & the dangers of socialism today."  The increasing support among younger Americans for socialism & other ideas destructive of liberty is because these younger Americans take their liberty for granted – thinking it will always be there under any system of government, which of course it won't.

 

The following graphic is from the VOC report. 

click on graphic to enlarge

Click here to see a video of students @ Carleton College in Minnesota support free college (their annual tuition of $54,759 is the highest in Minnesota) but with no idea of how to pay for it.  The student with the hammer & sickle shirt provides a good idea of where these student are coming from & the communism they are going to – see photo below.

click on photo to enlarge

But the Democrat onslaught doesn't stop with free college.  For instance Bernie's plans are typical of all the Democrat presidential candidates - they total $97.5 trillion in new spending over the next ten years made up of Medicare for All @ $32 trillion (unrealistically low as documented on this blog in previous posts), climate change @ $16.9 trillion, full-time government employment that pays $15 per hour plus benefits guaranteed to all Americans @ $30 trillion, free college tuition @ public colleges & forgiving all student loan debt @ $3 trillion, expansion of Social Security (a program actuarially running out of money) @ $1.8 trillion, housing plan @ $2.5 trillion, paid family leave @ $1.6 trillion, infrastructure plan @ $1 trillion, K-12 education plan @ $800,000 billion, & higher education teacher salary plan @ $400 billion.  Source – City-Journal.

The above programs would double the number of Americans who work for the federal government, increase total government spending to 70% of GDP from the current 40% level, & bring annual budget deficits to the 30% level.  Doesn't sound good – but it does sound like socialism & communism.

Anybody who has been paying the least bit of attention – anybody who is breathing – knows that the Democrats have a sick obsession with President Trump simply because they cannot accept that he won the 2016 presidential election.  Democrats have to get rid of Trump for no other reason than he is just too anti socialist & anti communist for their own good.  Trump is pro-business.

When Trump took office there were 1.9 million more people unemployed than there were job openings.  Since March 2018 there has been a dramatic reversal with more than a million more job openings than people who are unemployed.  The November 2019 Unemployment report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on December 6 showed the number of people marginally attached to the labor force fell from 1,678,000 to 1,246,000 in the last year as more & more people have hope of finding gainful employment.  In addition, & in this same line, the BLS report showed that the % of long term unemployed people fell to 20.8% in November compared to 24.7% – BO's last full month in office. This is dangerous to Democrats because it flies in their government dependent faces that prefer to think of people as discouraged workers who have given up looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them, victims of something, anything, that in turn makes it easy for anyone to become dependent on government – & them.

Americans are constantly being asked whether they believe in personal responsibility or not.  Democrats entire existence is to make this decision easy by putting temptation in front of people in the form of one government giveaway after another by taking money from the haves to give to the have-nots – until we are all have-nots with no one creating wealth any longer.

We need an educated workforce of people who can provide valuable services but instead we have had 19 straight months of a million more job openings than we have unemployed people.  Many police recruits in South Bend, Indiana – Mayor Pete Buttigieg, presidential aspirant - fail the required written exam as the high school graduation rate in South Bend fell to 77% from 83% in 2015, about 11 points lower than statewide.

Over twenty years ago Professor Friedman said "America has been more than fifty percent socialist for many years & we are not getting our money's worth."  It doesn't take much first hand experience with government projects to know the inefficient government road to ruin we would be on if any of the Democrat candidates win the presidency in 2020. 

Social spending totals 20% of the economy already & Americans currently spend 18% of GDP on healthcare with projections of 21% by 2027 before continuing to rise further.  Add the additional programs listed above from Bernie's plan & you can clearly see Professor Friedman's point even before including current state & local government spending. 

Socialism means that the government is entitled to the proceeds from the income private enterprise receives.  Take federal, state, & local spending & add the unfunded mandates government imposes on private spending (about 12% of the laws enacted between 2001 & 2011) – mostly utilized in regulation of civil rights, anti-poverty programs, & environmental protections (ADA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, No Child Left Behind, & fees for continuing education training & licenses for engineers, pharmacists, tattoo artists, & hairdressers – as examples) & over 50% of the output of the country is controlled by the government – this is equivalent to saying the government owns 50% of the means of production.

Four of the five wealthiest counties surround Washington DC indicating the degree of entrenched socialsim.  We will have turned communist when it is five out of five.

Our Founders, the first five presidents, mutually pledged their lives, their fortunes, & their sacred honors to each other & most importantly to fight for the liberty of their new country when they renounced their status as British subjects in favor of being citizens of the United States of America.

Hillsdale College reports that only 19% of Americans younger than forty-five can pass the U.S. Citizenship Test.  This shows just how far we have gone – down.