The Haves and the Have-Nots (Of a Clue)

By Herman Cain

America is divided between the haves and the have-nots. In this case, I am referring to those who have a clue as to what's really happening to America, and those that have not a clue. The latter group is certainly not stupid, because as some people have observed, you can't fix stupid. They are just severely uninformed and misinformed.

The have-nots are being taken advantage of to pull off one of the biggest political power grabs in U.S. history at the expense of our nation.

No. It is not the Republican leadership in Congress or the White House. They simply disappointed us when they had a golden opportunity to solve some big problems in a big way during President Bush's first term. Now they are in the minority and are being bashed, stonewalled and whipsawed by the Democrats at every turn.

Yes. It is the Democratic leadership.

We may as well start with the Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid. In response to a losing vote to not end debate on the Climate Tax Bill, a.k.a. the Cap and Trade Bill or the Lieberman-Warner-Boxer Bill (S.2191 and now S.3036), Senator Reid complained about "the nerve of Republicans to dare talk about what the bill would do to raise people's gas and electricity prices, and how many manufacturing jobs would be lost."

In other words, how dare you tell people the truth!

By failing to end debate which requires the annoyance of 60 votes in the Senate, the bill will remain in limbo most probably until next year. This is when Sen. Reid and the Democrats hope to have 60 Democratic senators and a Democrat in the White House.

At that point, they can ram as much of their socialist agenda down our throats as they desire, which is a lot. Sadly, at least five Republican senators are ready to vote with them on Cap and Trade. Our only hope for continued defeat of the bill would be for it to not pass in the House.

There again, the Democrats are looking to increase their majority by an almost veto-proof number of Democrats in the House.

This kind of stuff (I wish I could use a more graphic word) goes unchallenged by the have-nots in this country. Just as they did not challenge the Democrats' voting down a bill to allow exploration and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf, and for oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

The Democratic leaders and their presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, have persisted with their pledge to allow the existing tax rates to expire. This will, in fact and not speculation, produce a devastatingly negative hit to taxpayers and the economy.

They are called the Bush tax cuts to constantly remind the have-nots that low taxes must be a bad thing. You see, the Democrats have succeeded at creating so much Bush hate with the have-nots, that if it were a fossil fuel we would not have an oil crisis.

The list of Democratic socialist desires is long, but we must at least mention their kumbaya national security strategy, and their denial that a federal spending tsunami is no longer over the horizon, it is around the corner. Despite this fact, the Senate has proposed a 5 percent increase in domestic agency spending for the 2009 fiscal year starting in October 1, 2008.

In Washington, they call that increase nominal. I call it irresponsible.

Neither the haves nor the have-nots have time to keep up with all of the Democrats' political jockeying and positioning, but at least the haves possess enough of an awareness to know when to challenge something that does not pass the common sense test.

If the have-nots do not wake up, then the federal government will have it all.

At that point, there will be no United States of America.