“I am not a politician,” insists the newly-elected City Councilman.  

If it Looks Like a Duck . . .

To get elected to an office requires registering to have your name placed on the ballot.  To win enough votes on Election Day requires campaigning:  designing, printing, and posting campaign signs, meeting voters, explaining why people should vote for you, and more.  

To be able to explain why you deserve votes requires gaining a knowledge of the responsibilities and typical duties of the office you seek to win.

Whether you say you are not a politician or do not, the efforts to win election are the same.

Once elected, you must quickly learn the detailed responsibilities and required actions of the job.  For a City Councilman, that includes the day-to-day operations involved in the running of the City:  police, fire, public works, zoning, creation and maintenance of parks, the pay and benefits of public employees, and more.  

Whether you say you are not a politician or do not, the job requirements are the same.  

In City Council meetings, you must knowledgably participate in discussions and vote on issues affecting the City and its residents.  Voters will note your participation or lack of it, and that will affect your success in the next election.  

All of these tasks and more are the responsibilities of a politician.  

Voters expect a politician to utilize all the tools available to run the City government.  A Council member – or any politician at any level – who does not fully exercise his responsibilities with all the means at his disposal is viewed negatively by voters.  Challengers can be expected at the next election, and their campaigns will include accusations of incompetence or lackadaisical attitude.  

At every level of politics, there are gray areas where the limits of political power are ambiguous.  By the nature of political power, politicians will venture into gray areas.  The most honest will not test beyond a line which they judge to be appropriate and which they believe voters will accept.  

Those politicians who to some degree are attracted to power for its own sake will continue testing the limits and venture ever further into gray areas, growing progressively more powerful as time goes on, gathering other like-minded politicians into a mutually supportive circle.  

Beyond the lawful limits of power lies corruption, increasing control through ever-increasingly oppressive new laws and regulations, the funneling of government money into coffers of their own, and holding a grip on power for increasing lengths of time.  

That gathering of the reins of power is more easily accomplished in those countries with a less well-designed constitution than that in the U.S. – one with flaws that can be used to a corrupt politician’s benefit.

Venezuela shows how power corrupts

Such is the case in Venezuela, where crises since 1989 resulted in the rise to power of Hugo Chavez and the socialists in 1998, who then turned Venezuela into a one-party system.  Chavez remained President until his death in 2013.  During Chavez’ Presidency, Venezuela went from being one of the richest countries in Latin America to one of the poorest – no coincidence.

Nicolas Maduro became President in 2013, and has remained in office to the present day.  Severe corruption and poverty continues.  The Socialist party controls all branches of government, so when the presidential elections were contested in 2024, it was no surprise that Venezuela’s Supreme Court validated the election results.  

Chavez and now Madura have amply demonstrated that their efforts have been to maintain a stranglehold on power, with no interest in economic growth and improving living standards for Venezuela’s population.

As a result, in the last twenty years, one third of the population has fled Venezuela.

President Biden

In the U.S., a Democrat Party Congress was elected along with Democrat President Biden in 2020.  

Questions remain unanswered about key popular votes in a few swing states that gave the Democrats the win.

The 2021-2022 Democrat-controlled Congress gave President Biden a $4 trillion spending package.  The result was the inflation of 15% in 2022-2023.  The American economy produces about $27 trillion worth of goods and services annually.  It is no coincidence that 4/27 equals 15%.

The GOP won control of the House in the 2022 elections (the Senate remained in Democrat hands), and they were not in favor of supporting further economic disaster due to Biden’s spendthrift policies.  While the GOP members of Congress are themselves no angels (with some GOPers – Republicans In Name Only (“RINOs”) – voting with Democrats against the efforts of a more responsible group of GOP Representatives), they have consistently voted down a Biden-style budget.  

Biden’s effort (whether unwitting or deliberate) to cause further economic disruption in the U.S. was foiled.  With an economy in tatters, Biden could have created a “Help the Poor” Socialist program, assuring votes for the Democrats for the foreseeable future from a bloc of voters addicted to receiving government handouts.

Such a move would have assured the Democrats’ hold on power just as such tactics had worked for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002.  

Deliberate Economic Disruption?

Were Biden’s efforts deliberate?  Granted, Democrats have no reservations about spending more money than the government receives in taxes, but is the resulting damage to the U.S. economy deliberate?  

On July 29th the Associated Press reported that “President Joe Biden is unveiling a long-awaited proposal for changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, calling on Congress to establish term limits and an ethics code for the court’s nine justices. He also is pressing lawmakers to ratify a constitutional amendment that would limit presidential immunity.”  

The Democrats have never complained about the Supreme Court’s actions in the past, when enough Democrat-nominated members assured a more Democrat-oriented Supreme Court.  

But now that President Trump assured a 6-3 Supreme Court bias of a more pro-Constitution and pro-individual rights and freedom, suddenly President Biden is calling for ways to disrupt the Supreme Court’s traditional operation.  He the first President to do so since Franklin Roosevelt tried to manipulate the Supreme Court to his Socialist way of thinking in the 1930s.  

Is this not a reflection of thinking that has more in common with Venezuela’s Chavez and Maduro than with America’s history of freedom?  

The AP quoted Biden as saying about the Supreme Court, “I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers.  What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms.”

When a politician starts a statement with, “I have great respect,” be assured that nothing could be further from the truth.  

What Biden calls “normal”, it would seem, is a Supreme Court that leans more to the left, as in decades past.  The article notes that “Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina pushed back that Democrats didn’t complain when a more liberal-leaning court ‘was pumping out opinions they liked.’”

Biden justified his recommendations when he added that “We now stand in a breach.”  Clearly, Biden views the loss of a left-leaning Supreme Court and a halt to the erosion of the Bill of Rights as a negative.  

The article noted that “The announcement marks a remarkable evolution for Biden, who as a candidate had been wary of calls to reform the high court.”

As Senator Graham further noted, “What’s been a threat to the country is an out-of-control liberal court issuing opinions that basically take over every phase of American life based on nine people’s judgment.”

In the Democrats’ ideal world, the Democrats would be in control of the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court.

The Democrats are well-known for favoring ever-greater government controls, not individual freedoms, with Democrats solidly in power and sacrificing productivity and high employment to that end.  

A quote from ex-President Trump shows he understands.  The AP article reports that “Trump has decried court reform as a desperate attempt by Democrats to ‘Play the Ref.’”

The Venezuelans will understand the impact of the Democrats’ efforts when Trump made the additional comment, “The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent.”

President Biden, a life-long Democrat and politician, is the epitome of Democrat political thinking.  

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