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When Donald Trump campaigned for president in 2016, one of his most memorable and oft-repeated promises was to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. This catchy phrase resonated with millions of Americans who felt alienated from their government and frustrated with political favors. However, eight years later, both the Harris and Trump campaigns are making it clear that their candidate doesn’t want to drain the swamp. They’d like more of us to jump in. The “drain the swamp” slogan originally meant clearing out the entrenched interests, self-serving practices, rent seekers and systemic corruption that have taken root in our nation’s capital. Well-connected companies scratch the backs of politicians and in return get subsidies, tax breaks, protections and other special privileges. The rest of us are left to foot the bill. In addition, there’s the revolving door between government and lobbyists. There are career politicians who seem more interested in their own power and income-earning opportunities than in serving the people. There’s the influence of big money, whose loudest detractors often fail to mention that an ever-expanding government creates the perfect swamp habitat. Draining the swap is all fine. As someone who’d like to see all government-granted favors to private businesses terminated either constitutionally or legislatively, I’m for it. How many Boeing-type scandals do we need before legislators are embarrassed to continue passing out subsidies (including through the Export-Import Bank, an agency many of us call “Boeing’s Bank”)? How many more reports like those showing that most Inflation Reduction Act subsidies went to projects that were already in the works? These debacles, and others like Solyndra, are cautionary tales about how politicians waste your money to help their friends and political allies — that is, their cronies. Sadly, most Americans don’t realize government handouts don’t do what politicians tell you they do. And so, during Trump’s first term, we saw him proudly announcing steel tariffs — essentially a tax paid by U.S. consumers — on national television, surrounded by all his steel CEO friends. He distributed subsidies and bailouts to various companies, as well as payouts to farmers who were hurt by his tariffs. Then, with several enormous pieces of legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act and the infrastructure bill, the Biden-Harris administration took corporate welfare to a level unseen before. The swamp is thriving and the creatures it supports are alive and well. Now both candidates want to add more swamp creatures to the mix: some of us. Take Trump. During this campaign, rather than touting far-reaching pro-growth policies, he’s promised one favor after another to handpicked constituencies, including cutting taxes on Social Security benefits and maybe even lifting all taxes on the police and the military. Not to be outdone, Kamala Harris promises forgivable business loans for specific minority entrepreneurs, better regulation of cryptocurrency to protect Black men, and subsidies for parents needing childcare and for working mothers. Both have promised extensive tax credits to parents, no taxes on tips, and subsidies to first-time homeowners. If you don’t fit into the right categories, you’re out of luck. That’s because your tax bill will be higher than that of the Americans who receive the better breaks. More will come out of your pocket as the favors extended by pandering politicians take the form of debt and higher future taxes. Inflation, fed by all that circulating handout cash, will eat away at your savings and jack up the price of food and other necessities. And, as if these consequences aren’t bad enough, both Harris and Trump have plans for those they like to blame for America’s problems. Harris is committed to punishing whomever she can for the inflation that happened on her administration’s watch and hurt us all. That includes grocery stores and other retailers. When she speaks of taxing the rich, that mostly means innovators, employers and the highly successful. Trump, as always, promises to punish with tariffs consumers who feel compelled to purchase affordable goods and services originating abroad. He also promises to deport immigrants, including, it seems, many who work and cause no trouble. Trump’s promise to drain the swamp tapped into a real and justified frustration with Washington. Entrenched corporate interests shouldn’t be rewarded by politicians with handouts at our expense. Neither should individuals singled out for favors by politicians on the campaign trail. Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post Will Trump or Harris Drain the Swamp, or Invite You In? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of State’s presidential election data, in 2020 Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. When he did so, Pennsylvania Democrats had a 685,818 voter registration advantage over Republicans.  But today, thanks in significant part to an aggressive and prolonged statewide Republican voter registration campaign, the Democrat advantage has been reduced to 297,824.  Regarding this remarkable achievement, the October 24 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer offered the following: “We’ve made up ground … since the last presidential election,” Trump senior adviser and Pennsylvania native Tim Murtaugh said. “Do you think that happened by magic? That’s the ground game. Registering voters is tangible proof of the strength. This hasn’t been cooked up in the last month. It takes a long time to make up a [300,000] voter registration advantage.” With the close last week of registrations,  the voter tally is 3,971,087 Democrat, 3,673,242 Republican, and 1,442,944 unaffiliated or other parties.  There are 67 counties in Pennsylvania, and Republicans have had net registration gains in 60 of them. Democrats have increased their registration advantage in only three counties. But, since 2020, there have been 1,139,176 new voter registrations of which 431,820 are Democrats, 399,354 are Republicans, and 308,002 are unaffiliated. Put another way, though the Democrat new registrants led the Republicans by only 32,466, the unaffiliated new registrations are close behind both parties. This movement to the unaffiliated ranks is underway across America.  The point here is that, with 1.4 million unaffiliated registered Pennsylvania voters and a 2020 victory margin of 80,555 votes, the overall significance of the narrowing of the Democrat-Republican registration edge — though encouraging — becomes somewhat murky. In any event, after four years of Bidenomics, the Democrats’ hold on Philadelphia has begun to erode. Consider the story bearing this headline from the Oct. 2 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer: In deep-blue Philly, working class voters are shifting toward Republicans. Democrats have lost the most ground in neighborhoods where poverty rates are the highest. It could hurt Kamala Harris in November.  [Author’s note: As a former contributor to the Inquirer, it is a credit to the paper’s hyper-woke editorial board that they ran this piece despite what must have been their overwhelming anguish at doing so.]  What follows is a well-sourced analysis of the profound changes in the Philadelphia electorate as the Democrats have become the party of the wealthy managerial class and the Republicans have become the party of the working class. It opens with the  story of Gabriel Lopez, a 27-year-old home health aide, who “grew up in a family of Democrats in the Kensington neighborhood of deep-blue Philadelphia.”  Mr. Lopez voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but this year switched his registration to Republican and plans to vote for Trump. Here’s what he told the Inquirer: “Democrats keep saying [Trump] is going to bring down the economy, but he was already president for four years, and taxes were lower. We’re tired of the same politics. We got a different kind of guy, and the people actually love him.”  Then there is this from Rafael Alvarez Febo, a Puerto Rican LGBTQ community leader who plans to vote for Kamala Harris: “Many of us have people in our families who have gone to jail, or gone to schools that have failed us. We’re not trustful of the government. Then you have someone like Trump, who is a liar, and for some people it’s like, ‘you know something? He’s an honest representation of what we feel.’”  Then there is Charlie O’Connor, a Republican leader in Philadelphia’s 45th Ward, who advises that hundreds of former Democrats in his area have switched to Republican. Quoth Mr. O’Connor: “The question you ask at the door — doesn’t matter, Black, white (sic) — is: Are you better off than you were four years ago? That’s the universal message. And people aren’t.”  And later in the article, Mr. O’Connor sums it up this way: “When I first started in politics in 1978, the managerial class was Republican — no one votes the way their bosses vote. Now, most people in the managerial class vote Democratic and no one is voting the way their boss is. Most of the Democrats and the Democratic Party has (sic) become the party of the upper middle class.”  The article notes that, in 2020, Philadelphia accounted for 20 percent of Pennsylvania’s Democrat vote. But by 2022, that had dropped to 15 percent and is expected to go lower in 2024 as the working class — Black, White and Latino — continues to “move right.”  All of this, of course, is good news for Trump. The challenge facing Philadelphia’s Democrat machine is how to convince working class voters that the “reproductive rights” so valued by relatively well-off suburban women and “saving democracy” from Trump (who somehow forgot to destroy democracy during his previous term in office) are more important than eating, having a roof over your head, and paying the bills.  Or, as Mr. Alavarez Febo described Democrat efforts to turn out the Philadelphia vote, “They’re saying Kamala is going to save our democracy. That means very little for people who can’t keep the lights on.” But in the end, what does all this mean when it comes to actual voting? The Republican registration effort is premised on the belief that, as a general rule, people will vote consistent with their party affiliation. However, while the increased Republican registrations are welcome news, it is prudent to consider this note of caution from the Pew Research Center: Partisan identification provides a broad portrait of voters’ affinities and loyalties. But while it is indicative of voters’ preferences, it does not perfectly predict how people intend to vote in elections, or whether they will vote.  Just so. In fact, party registration all too often lags behind voting behavior.  On the other hand, increased voter registrations do provide party leaders with longer lists of potential donors and more targets for voter turn out efforts.  Which brings us to the massive and — for Republicans — innovative efforts to “chase the vote” that are underway in Pennsylvania. That will be the subject of my next installment. So stay tuned. George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor and retired trial lawyer. For many years he was a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer before it descended into woke madness. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net. Photo: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: King of Hearts / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 The post Report From Pennsylvania: Part Two appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.