October, 2015, By The Numbers, Part 1: What America Wants Is Not What American Polticians Deliver (Or Really Care About)

Today’s post will kick off a few days worth of discussion of “by the numbers.” We do this theme occasionally where we look at the reality of the numbers in the world and not the lies, deceptions, and spin of the American political class. I used to work for a boss whose favorite quote was: “There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the correct number.” By looking at the statistics, trends, and numbers in our world we can cut through the politicians’ smoke screen to truly understand what is going on and hopefully, remedy the issues of the day.

The numbers we will look at this week will often have a common thread running almost through all of them: the views, positions, and opinions of the majority of Americans are often the exact opposite of the views and related actions that our politicians own. Since we are supposed to be living in a representative government system one would hope that the laws, rules, and government functions that our politicians oversee reflect the thinking, hopes, and views of the American citizenry.

As the numbers will usually show, that is nowhere close to reality, which I think reflects two underlying negative trends:

1. American politicians vote and act for their own personal interests first, Americans’ interests and well being being of secondary consideration. If a politician’s actions can get them more votes or more campaign cash for their perpetual reelection campaigns, than that is their priority, usually not the priorities of their constituents.
2. Second, I personally believe that today’s American politicians take care of their special interest friends and financiers first and foremost, and the interests of those special interest friends (e.g., unions, corporations, lobbyists, etc.) are usually not in alignment with what the majority of Americans have as their priorities.

Keep these two possibilities in mind as we go “by the numbers” for the next few days and try to show the major disconnect between what Americans want and what politicians are doing:

1) According to a new public opinion poll by Clout Research that was reported on by the Washington Examiner:

• A whopping 85% of voters think that America is going down the wrong track.
• Only 9% of Republicans, only 15% of Independents, and only about half of Democrats think the country is headed in the right direction.
• These results are based on a sample size of 800 likely voters.
• Despite an $800 billion economic stimulus plan, an energy revolution that dramatically reduced energy costs, and the Federal reserve printing trillions of dollars that were injected into the economy, 80% of respondents described the current state of the economy as "very fragile" or "somewhat fragile" after seven years of President Obama's economic policies.

If you polled members of Congress and the current President, I would bet that they would have radically different views of life in America today. I would bet that they think they are doing a great job, a complete disconnect from what most of America believes is the reality of living outside of the Washington Beltway. And why not since inside the Beltway unemployment is low, salaries are sky high, and unemployment is never a possibility for those inside the American political class.

2) It is pretty obvious that border security and the deportation of people illegally in this country is a very low or a non-priority for the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress. If it was a priority, than many fewer innocent American citizens would not be dying at the hands of illegal immigrants and the number of deported illegals would not be declining rapidly as it is under the Obama administration.

Which brings us to the second major disconnect between Washington and America, as measured by the numbers. A recent public opinion poll from the Investors Business Daily polled 913 adults across the country if they “support or oppose the mandatory deportation of illegal immigrants in the U.S.”

Unlike many in Washington and the mainstream press, 59% of the total sample size said that they did support mandatory deportation of illegal immigrants in this country. This reality and number may help explain the success of Presidential candidate Donald Trump since a whopping 87% of Trump supporters are in favor of deportation.

Democrats in Washington want to allow illegal immigrants to stay in this country, border security be damned, while the vast majority of Americans want illegal immigrants deported. Massive disconnect.

3) Let’s stay with the disconnect between Washington and the rest of America as it pertains to illegal immigration since after this 59% number was made public, another survey reinforced this finding. According to Ben Bullard, writing for the Eagle Rising website on September 4, 2015, the latest public opinion poll from the YouGov organization found that an even larger percentage, 72%, of Americans support building a fence along our Mexican border to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into this country.

Only 27% of those polled believe that we should NOT build a fence on the border. I doubt that there is not a 72% vs. 27% consistency with the Washington political class because if there was, that much needed fence would already be under construction. Instead, we have people in Washington that want to continue to give government handouts to illegal immigrants, not send them back or fence them out. And while these top line numbers are overwhelming in favor of building a fence, the sub-category numbers are more amazing:

• The concept of building an effective border fence is more popular than unpopular within every single subgroup in the poll.
• More Democrats support building a fence than Democrats support not building a fence.
• More African-Americans support building a fence than African-Americans support not building a fence.
• And amazingly, more Hispanics (49%) support building a fence than Hispanics support not building a fence (38%).

If ever Washington could find a single, unifying set of numbers to build a consensus on, this would seem to be the concept: build a fence to stop the overwhelming flow of illegal immigration. But as usual, what the people want and what Washington’s politicians do is often the exact opposite.

That will do it for today but we have lots more numbers to cover in the upcoming days, numbers that usually show that what America wants is the exact opposite of what Washington wants, works on, or delivers. As these days unfold, please refer back to one of our most popular posts of all time at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2010/11/american-freedom-pyramid-where-it.html

That post describes the so-called freedom pyramid and how the American political class has corrupted the concepts of freedom, liberty, and representative government in our democracy. Once you understand how that corruption has happened, it is not surprising when you read how Americans views and desires take a back seat to what politicians do.


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http://www.reason.com
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w