{"id":1312904,"date":"2019-07-28T20:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T02:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/manieri-column-ultra-progressivism-leading-dems-down-the-maintenance-hole\/"},"modified":"2019-07-28T20:28:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T02:28:00","slug":"manieri-column-ultra-progressivism-leading-dems-down-the-maintenance-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/manieri-column-ultra-progressivism-leading-dems-down-the-maintenance-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Manieri column: Ultra-progressivism leading Dems down the \u2018maintenance hole\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Rich Manieri<\/strong>
BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

I have a long history of dumb ideas.<\/p>\n

It was my idea to buy a used, 1999 diesel Volkswagen Beetle. There\u2019s a reason you don\u2019t see many of them on the road today.<\/p>\n

It was my idea, as a boy, to play darts near our old gas furnace. How was I supposed to know a dart could puncture a gas line? The fire department was wondering the same thing.<\/p>\n

And it was my idea to put a pan of burning oil under a running faucet. The little mushroom cloud that followed generated a surprising amount of black smoke.<\/p>\n

Expect for the dart incident \u2014 for which half the block was evacuated \u2014 my dumb ideas have been generally victimless, unless I count myself as a victim.<\/p>\n

When governments come up with dumb ideas and create laws to support them, the consequences can range from insignificant to far-reaching.<\/p>\n

For example, in the city of Wells, Maine, it\u2019s illegal to advertise on your tombstone. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to see that cemeteries would eventually be an untapped marketing resource.<\/p>\n

Neither Republicans nor Democrats have the market cornered on bad and\/or dumb ideas. American history is replete with legislation aimed at scoring political points with various constituencies.<\/p>\n

But lately, progressives have been outdoing themselves.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite wacky proposals is the \u201cFreedom Dividend,\u201d courtesy of tech mogul and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang. He wants to give every American between the ages of 18-64 $1,000 a month for doing absolutely nothing. It\u2019s a massive, wealth-redistribution proposal that would be paid for by \u2014 surprise \u2014 raising taxes, including a 10 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) on just about all goods and services.<\/p>\n

As part of her Green New Deal, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also promised economic security for anyone \u201cunable or unwilling\u201d to work. The \u201cunwilling to work\u201d line was on her website until she walked back the verbiage and took it down. She still wants to give away money for nothing, but she\u2019s just calling it something else.<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s Democratic colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib has proposed that the federal minimum wage be raised to $20 per hour. Why stop there? Why not just raise it to $50? The result will be the same \u2014 scores of small business will either go under or be forced to lay off employees.<\/p>\n

And in a moment that might have raised the bar for political pandering to new heights, New York City mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill DeBlasio \u2014 while attending the parade for the U.S. women\u2019s national soccer team \u2014 promised to sign an executive order requiring equal pay for male and female athletes. That sounds great as a platform talking point but it\u2019s much more complicated than proponents would have you believe. For starters, the men\u2019s World Cup generated $6 billion last year. This year\u2019s women\u2019s World Cup took in about $131 million. Thus, the disparity in prize money.<\/p>\n

But for a real-life glimpse at ultra-progressivism, I take you to Berkeley, California, a city that bills itself as a bastion of free thought, at least until someone with an unpopular opinion shows up and trash cans start flying through windows.<\/p>\n

The Berkeley City Council recently voted to eliminate gender-specific language from its municipal codes. The measure passed unanimously.<\/p>\n

Among other things, this means that the word \u201cmanhole\u201d will be replaced with \u201cmaintenance hole.\u201d \u201cManpower\u201d is now \u201chuman effort.\u201d A \u201cpregnant woman\u201d is a \u201cpregnant employee.\u201d Sororities and fraternities are now \u201cCollegiate Greek system residence.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can have a long discussion about gender neutrality versus the obvious uniqueness of men and women. The movement by progressives to eliminate gender-specific language is a lot of things \u2014 disturbing, unnecessary, perhaps even dangerous. It\u2019s also incredibly silly.<\/p>\n

Surely there are Democrats out there who find this kind of stuff equally silly, though they\u2019re very quiet about it.<\/p>\n

And as long as they remain silent while the party\u2019s hijacking to socialism continues, it\u2019s going to become increasingly difficult to convince voters \u2014 especially independents \u2014 that the Democrats are a viable alternative to the status quo.<\/p>\n

What will this ultimately mean to the Democrats\u2019 chances of winning the White House in 2020?<\/p>\n

Yes, right down the maintenance hole.<\/p>\n

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, \u201cWe Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me,\u201d is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at manieri2@gmail.com<\/a>. Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rich ManieriBLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer I have a long history of dumb ideas. It was my idea to buy a used, 1999 diesel Volkswagen Beetle. There\u2019s a reason you don\u2019t see many of them on the road today. It was my idea, as a boy, to play darts near our old gas furnace. How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1312904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 11:06:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}