Boogeyman threats

This column does not once revert to the argument “you’ve had three-and-a-half years, why haven’t you fixed it?” I think 97.45 percent of the electorate grasps that. No, I’m going after the boogeyman. And I’ll start with the true existential threat to democracy, the continuing attacks on free speech. Former presidential contestant and first election denier Hillary Clinton again this week called for criminal charges against those who don’t follow the Democratic Party-approved political position on issues. Czar Hillary was interviewed by Democratic lapdog Rachel Maddow, who slobbered all over herself at the thought of her competitors (all way more highly viewed than she) being arrested for opposing her extremist views. Surely the unintelligent herds will watch her show then!

What is surprising is that only 70 percent of “journalists” are bothered by the First Amendment threat posed by Hillary and her ilk. The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government—all government—out of the business of evaluating the content of speech. No matter what the other side is saying, they are allowed to say it. The government will not get involved. We have those inalienable rights. Unlike Europeans (think kings, queens, emperors, fascists, Marxists, globalists, pacifists, etc.), our elites, like Hillary, don’t have any power. Unless we elect them. Beware, or we end up with European “antifree speech” laws. Hillary (is Kamala far behind?) wants it now.

Next boogeyman? Those darn food middlemen. They will be rooted out and prosecuted by Ms. Harris for rising food prices during the Harris/Biden administration. I’ve argued against “price gouging” for years, and I still feel like a well-regulated free market is the best way to lower prices to maximum efficiency. The same government that pays $640 for a toilet seat or $200,000 for a portable toilet is hardly in a position to tell us when a middleman pork producer is overcharging $.01 per pound. It is just too easy to blame some nebulous boogeyman for your own economic policy failures.

A similar boogeyman is the pharmacy middleman but everyone is against high pharma prices, right? In my multi-million dollar fight against cancer, I’ve had a chance to observe the inordinate insurance and government reporting requirements that have to be responsible for much of the price of pharmaceuticals. Couple that with the fact that hospitals charge paying customers to cover nonpaying customers, they obviously are going to make up the difference somehow. We all know it happens, but we express shock at the $80 Tylenol pill. I don’t have the answers, but nameless boogeymen are not to blame.

The last political commercial I saw said Ms. Harris was going to go after unscrupulous real estate investors who have falsely raised real estate prices. I have no idea who that boogeyman is. If she’d threaten a national freeze on local government property taxes, that’d get her some votes in my neighborhood, but the reality is that many real estate holdings are more valuable than ever. But these unidentified unscrupulous investors mean nothing. 

I will say, I think some of the Harris/Walz’s populist commercials are effective. Are they effective enough? Time will tell. But boogeyman commercials are beneath all of us.

Kelly Burke, attorney, former district attorney, and magistrate judge, writes about the law, rock’n’roll, and politics or anything that strikes him. Contact Kelly at dakellyburke@gmail.com to comment on this article or suggest articles you’d like to see, and visit his website at www.kellyrburke.com.