Don's Tuesday Column

            THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   7/14/2020

All things Trump through partisan lens

What should be a rather uncomplicated issue—reopening schools through higher ed—is being overlaid with unnecessary concerns for the risks to students. A few unfortunate cases get magnified, without context, by a news media drumming up needless hysteria; the young are the least vulnerable to COVID-19 infection and death. The educators are a manageable concern; those over, say, 50 should give virtual classes.

It would seem therefore to be a national priority—for the mental and emotional health of students, and our economy which depends on workers whose children are under teachers’ care—that schools open from coast to coast. President Trump’s been urged to exercise executive authority elsewhere; any president would apply pressure to reopen schools. Nowhere in America are there dangerous health risks for young people.

So, why the outcries over Trump’s threat to withhold funds from schools that won’t reopen? Could it be that the education industry complex of teachers, unions, higher ed institutions and their paid-for government lackeys—who as a class vote and advocate against Trump at every turn—are acting out of partisan animosity?

Of course it could, especially for those opposed to Trump’s threat now but who, under Barack Obama, cheered his funding threats over mandates that existed only in the radical realm of “gender identity.” “In May of 2016, the Obama administration declared that the Departments of Justice and Education would both ‘treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of enforcing Title IX,’ and issued a directive to all public school districts in the country to allow students to use the bathrooms matching their ‘gender identity.’

“So, if you are a boy, and you wanted to use the girls’ bathroom…or wanted to get a peek at girls changing in the girls’ locker room, you could claim to identify as a girl and the school would have to oblige or risk losing their Title IX funding.” Likewise, for mediocre male athletes looking to claim female identity, play on their team and crush the competition. “Thanks to Barack Obama, the school not wanting to risk losing their Title IX funding, would have to oblige.” (“Barack Obama Threatened to Defund Schools, and Democrats Were All For It,” Matt Margolis, pjmedia.com)

A similar overreach was imposed on colleges and universities over sexual assault policies that had been a matter for law enforcement and courts—with the universal principle: “innocent until proven guilty.” With nothing more than a written memo of “guidance,” Obama’s federal power threatened to defund schools that refused to set up “kangaroo courts” where “guilty until proven innocent” became the standard for women whose sense of violation became the sole evidence of guilt.

Forget about their apparent satisfaction; the passage of time brought persuasion, by female “friends,” that they were imposed on by their sexual partner. The perpetually aggrieved class cheered the new rules, now thankfully getting proper disposal by the same “letter of guidance” under President Trump. Falsely accused men winning costly lawsuits in court also weighed on colleges.

Similar partisan lens-viewing produces the outrage over Trump’s commutation of long-time associate Roger Stone’s sentence. While neither a legal authority, nor scholar, I can make the observation that had there never been the Mueller investigation of now debunked charges of Russian collusion against Trump et al, there would never have been any charges, let alone convictions, in Mr. Stone’s case. Every “witness,” and everyone in the DOJ/FBI in a position to have observed said “collusion,” had to admit under oath to never having seen or possessed evidence to that crime. Peter Strzok even called it a “nothing burger,” showing the vacuous nature of Mueller’s years-long legal jihad.

Presidents Clinton and Obama pardoned criminal Mark Rich, traitor Bradley/Chelsea Manning and convicted terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera; the Democrat left cheered.

Local Trump haters undoubtedly cheered columnist Dick Polman’s Trump-deranged diatribe. Historical facts refute his “businessman bad/government politician good” narrative. The truth: 100 years ago, a financial/economic crash, under President Warren Harding, was quickly resolved to the detriment of insolvent institutions, liquidated and taken over by the financially sound. “Too big to fail” didn’t guide reallocation of assets; the remaining banks fueled economic expansion, resulting in the “Roaring 20s” growth, not profligacy.

Harding’s demise left a true businessman, Calvin Coolidge, in charge of continuing the prosperous 1920s economic exuberance. The economy—after WWI, the “Spanish Flu” and Woodrow Wilson’s dalliance with socialism—rebounded with vigor.

Prices and wages retrenched and rebounded, much like the Reagan (not Clinton) boom of lowered taxes and economic expansion. All Clinton did was relent to Republican demands that he not raise taxes.

Republican Herbert Hoover was no private sector, limited government president, notwithstanding his short mining executive background. He’d led international and American relief groups; as Wilson’s “food czar” he endeared himself to progressives. His position as Coolidge’s Secretary of Commerce and “Undersecretary of all other departments” gave him no claim on business acumen and, moreover, left him with few ideas for recovering from the 1929 crash beyond government controls and interference.

Having failed at that, he was easily made the scapegoat for the nation’s ills by the ultra-progressive Franklin Roosevelt, whose policies of price, wage and economic control—ultimately found largely unconstitutional—extended the Great Depression by seven years (search: “FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate” by Meg Sullivan, 12/14/2015, ff.org).

Obama did nothing to end the recession—it ended by June 2009, before Obama’s policies or stimulus started. GDP growth (non-recession/pandemic) was better under Trump than Obama as were all measurements of employment and wages. Nice try, Mr. Polman, but the voters will easily retain Trump.