By John F. Di Leo –
We have long been accustomed to accusations of corruption concerning the Clintons. Their family business is commonly known as the “Clinton crime machine,” and their biographies read like a rap sheet, listing scandal after scandal, from real estate fraud to rape, from investment fraud to bribery.
But the issue to be discussed today isn’t about Bill and Hillary Clinton and their personal corruption. It’s completely policy-based: Careful study of the Clinton-Kaine platform, amazingly, reveals – there’s just no other way to put it – a criminal-friendly, or arguably even pro-crime, agenda.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be so shocking, considering what we know of modern Democratic Party demographics and issue stances. But to have gathered it all together in one place is truly surprising.
No matter which position paper you select – immigration, voting rights, economics, race – sprinkled throughout is one common element: the Clinton-Kaine campaign’s support for criminals. They leave the support of the law-abiding citizenry, particularly the victims of crime, to the Republican ticket. Sometimes it’s blatant; other times it’s subtle. But it’s always there.
And the studious, thoughtful voter must eventually ask, Why?
On the Issues
They make it very easy for you, if you’re interested enough to look. On the campaign website, there is a tab labeled “Issues.” Just select an issue, and start reading. Most of it is standard, garden-variety far-left liberalism, which not long ago, everyone would have called socialism.
Unsustainable programs, unaffordable bureaucracies, outrageous handouts. This is what we’ve come to expect from Democrats, so, while it may drive a patriot to distraction, it’s not surprising. But then…
“A Fair Tax System”
This section of the Clinton-Kaine website spends most of its time on normal left-wing tax hikes, the usual class-envy approach to increasing personal and business tax rates, and grabbing as much as possible from capital gains. Such a tax increase would flatten the economy, depressing investment, causing retirement and pension funds to suffer, and killing jobs by the thousands… but that’s not enough for them.
To get the full flavor of the Clinton-Kaine approach, you have to read their position on the death tax. Currently a crippling 40% grab of large estates, this campaign wants to increase its reach, and “justifies it” (in their eyes) by calling for a massive 65% estate tax on the largest of estates.
This is property that has already been taxed, after all. The owners paid their income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes and capital gains taxes, years ago. It should be inherited tax-free, not as a windfall, but because the taxes have already been paid.
But that fact doesn’t stop them. The double taxation aspect, in fact, is part of what the modern left finds so appealing. And one must wonder if perhaps the destruction that results is appealing to them as well…
Large estates consist of businesses, real estate, stock and other investments. The tax must be paid within nine months of the death, which forces heirs to sell the farm, business or other investment to pay the bills, whether they can get a good price on them or not. Often, they must sell investments before they mature, at far less than they would eventually have been worth. Sell a business or real estate in the midst of a recession – like the present – and you’ll never get what the property is worth; but it has to be sold, to satisfy the Clinton-Kaine reapers, standing outside the mausoleum, ready to collect.
They present it as if all this is about the tiniest share of estates, but they’re not fooling anyone; this focus on the wealthiest is a cover for a broadening of all estate taxes, and it’s sheer theft. Destructive, malicious, and frankly, outrageous.
To grab two-thirds of the value of an inheritance – on which the taxes were already paid – is stealing. There is no better word for it.
Labor and Worker’s Rights
This one might not be as obvious, but it’s a crime as well. Along with the typical Democrat advocacy for forced unionization, unaffordable “infrastructure” spending (remember “shovel-ready jobs?”), and senior scaremongering about Social Security, they worked in a call for massive increases in the minimum wage.
Now, if a voter who never took an economics class supports the doubling of the minimum wage, it can be forgiven as a simple policy error. After all, it seems helpful… it feels thoughtful… to say that hard working people should make a living wage. Even though the minimum wage is almost completely destructive, if people don’t know that, they should be forgiven for the assumption that it’s a good thing.
But Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine, and the rest of their upper economic advisors do know the actual results of high minimum wage hikes. They know full well that every increase in the minimum wage costs jobs. They know full well that the jobs destroyed by minimum wage hikes make it hardest for the very people they claim to care about, because they eliminate – or move – the entry-level positions that young and poor people most desperately need, to get their start in a career.
As massive a minimum wage increase as the Clinton-Kaine campaign is calling for wouldn’t do the incremental damage that it usually does. This high a hike would drive whole industries out of the country – and especially, out of the cities, where the cost of living is highest already and companies struggle to survive already.
We don’t even have to talk about how this is robbery from the employers, depriving them of employees by making them unaffordable, even destroying their businesses by transforming the economic climate to make it impossible to survive. That is a crime.
But what’s shocking is that these modern Democrats are not just attacking the employer – that’s come to be expected, for generations now… but that they are attacking the workers. Such a position is a crime; it deprives workers of not just their livelihoods, but of a chance at their livelihoods.
Everyone knows – from the concepts of apprenticeships, work-study programs, and unpaid or low-pay internships – that the value of an entry-level job is not in its salary, but in its experience. By wiping out hundreds of thousands – possibly even millions – of such entry level jobs, the future Clinton-Kaine administration is robbing many of these people of any chance in life; condemning them to a lifetime on welfare by denying them a start.
When accusing people of crimes, it’s important to know intent. Many violations, for example, are considered negligence or gross negligence under the law, unless intent can be proven. It’s normally only when intent is certain – when the perpetrator knows that he’s doing intentional damage by defrauding the other party, that it rises beyond negligence to the crime of fraud.
And the Clinton-Kaine campaign is made up of people experienced enough in the world to have studied the economics and to know the unavoidable results of this policy. This doubling of the minimum wage is a frontal assault on the American worker. If that’s not a crime, I don’t know what is.
Voting Rights
Everyone knows that the American election system is simple and clear: it’s one man, one vote, for US citizens over 18 who have not forfeited their voting rights by committing felonies.
There’s nothing complex about that; it’s been the law for generations.
But, amazingly, the Clinton-Kaine campaign wants to legalize certain types of vote fraud.
They have called for a national override to the standard ban on felon voting that most states still maintain.
Just as pedophiles are released at the end of their sentences but also get a lifetime ban on being near children, just as drug dealers may be released at the end of their sentences but also get a lifetime ban on going near high schools, just as corrupt doctors may be released from jail but are banned from practicing medicine anymore… the removal of voting rights for people convicted of felonies is a normal, traditional penalty in the American system. We don’t want criminals to be choosing our representatives.
But the Clinton-Kaine campaign does.
How about voter registration? The traditional process for voter registration has always been for a person to go to city hall or a similar government office, with appropriate documentation in hand (Driver’s License, Birth Certificate, Utility Bill or Lease or Mortgage Bill, etc.), and thereby prove both the right to vote and the truth of the address. This enables the local government to ensure that only legitimate people are voting. And with this step in the process, if you’re planning to move soon (as so many of us do, from transients to college students), you don’t register, so you don’t fill the records with inactive information.
The Democrats have, in recent years, promoted registration drives that overwhelm the registrars with people; even well-intentioned registrars can be quickly and easily conned by non-citizens or non-residents in the crush of numbers.
The Clinton-Kaine campaign tops even that: they have announced support for mandating that all states automatically register everyone as soon as they turn 18 unless they opt out! In a country with tens of millions of non-citizens living or studying here at any time, this ensures that the voter rolls will be padded with non-citizens and people who don’t actually intend to vote.
And why might Democrats like a well-padded voter list? The more inactive names there are, the easier it is for a corrupt party or corrupt election worker to steal votes. All you need is that name to draw a ballot. The more names available, the more fraud there will be.
The Clinton-Kaine campaign is consciously moving to legalize and enable voter fraud.
Technology and Innovation
How did America win the Cold War? Well, a big part of it was something called the United States Export Controls, a rigid set of regulations limiting the exchange of technology so that our enemies could not obtain the information and materials to use against us in war or terror.
The U.S. Export Control regime is chiefly managed by the Departments of State and Commerce, through the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and the Export Administration Regulations. These controls limit the sharing of technology of our military equipment, as well as the how-to of manufacturing missiles, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. It’s a robust system, enforced by the Office of Export Enforcement and others, and it works.
The Obama administration has been softening some aspects of these regulations in what they called Export Regulatory Reform, but they could make a case that it wasn’t intended to undermine national security.
The Clinton-Kaine campaign takes this softening to a new level, for three reasons:
- One is the experience of the first Clinton presidency, in which her husband issued pardons specifically to people who had been convicted of violating the U.S. Export Controls…
- One is the fact that Hillary Clinton cannot claim naiveté on the matter, since she actually headed one of the departments responsible for this, for four years, as Secretary of State…
- And One more is now the release of this segment of the campaign’s website, specifically calling for empowering the world scientific community with free and open exchanges of technology worldwide, without the slightest restriction for national security concerns.
If you ever wondered how foreign countries, and particularly, foreign terror cells, could manage to develop – on their own! – technologies that cost us years and millions in research to develop… well, now you know. This is how.
Immigration Reform
We are all aware of the bipartisan failure to control the borders over the past half century. The result of this failure is 20 million illegal aliens, millions of whom are good people suffering from a bad choice, while millions of others are criminals, committing voter fraud, rape, robbery, assault, murder, and drug dealing.
The Clinton-Kaine campaign has thrown in with the open borders crowd, full force. Their policy is to issue blanket amnesty, with full citizenship rights, enabling tens of millions more foreigners to legally vote in our elections, formally abandoning America’s longstanding process of a long waiting period for citizenship that required assimilation and at least an effort to learn how Constitutional government works.
The policy calls for “full and equal citizenship within her first 100 days in office,” and “ending the three and ten year bans,” and further broadening of the anchor baby concept in which once one person gains citizenship, that person can pull in his whole extended family. They call for closing all detention centers on the border, both public and private… and while they’re at it, they specifically mention that they’ll guarantee full government-supported “affordable health care to all families”… even if they just arrived this morning.
This is nothing less than a wholehearted effort to cancel out the votes of the American citizens already here, raised in our traditions, who studied civics in junior high and high school.
If you can’t beat the people who still respect the Constitution, you can outnumber them… by essentially importing a voting army.
That’s what the Clinton-Kaine campaign formally supports. The Democrats have long encouraged non-citizens to vote, but many still do not, either because they can’t or they know they’re not allowed to. This policy plank eliminates those two impediments, and paves the way for another 20 million or so Democratic votes, virtually immediately. And that’s just counting the ones here already.
Criminal Justice Reform
The fact of Democrat “softness on crime” is also nothing new. But despite generations of support for criminals through such techniques as the Exclusionary Rule, Miranda Rights, and other forms of technicality acquittals designed to set guilty criminals free because of often-minor police errors, the Democrats could at least claim to also be on the side of law and order, as long as mistakes aren’t made in the arrest.
No longer.
The Clinton-Kaine campaign is calling for shocking changes in the criminal justice arena. For example:
- “National guidelines on the use of force by police officers” – essentially emasculating local police, by unconstitutionally federalizing the rules governing local and state police. The Clinton-Kaine campaign calls for “non-violent conflict resolution methods,” as if a policeman can be expected to talk a killer out of killing, or counsel a drug dealer out of knifing a rival. They call it “de-escalation.”
- “Acknowledging that implicit bias still exists across society – even in the best police departments,” and “Supporting legislation to end racial profiling.” The Clinton-Kaine ticket wants to mandate an end to consideration of criminals’ looks in pursuit… and they’re committing a billion dollars to counseling police to overcome their bigotry, in short, accepting the full outrageous claim of the Black Lives Matter crowd, blaming the Law Enforcement community for crime, and making police pay for the criminals’ crimes.
- “Alternatives to incarceration.’ In a nation plagued with criminals on the streets because we don’t execute killers anymore and we don’t have enough jail cells for our villains, the Clinton-Kaine campaign is calling for even less jail time. They are demanding that we stop using imprisonment as our go-to punishment for convicted criminals, and that we just set them free for counseling or community service instead. Just for the record, all the people committing crimes NOW are people who were set free instead of being jailed longer. How has this been working out so far?
- “Strengthening the U.S. Department of Justice’s pattern or practice unit.” This is the DoJ process that takes over local police forces, on trumped-up “civil rights” grounds, as they have done in cities like Ferguson, Missouri and other cities across the country.
Need we go on? On section after section, issue by issue, the Clinton-Kaine campaign has thrown in their lot with lawbreakers. They support the cheater over the cheated, the criminal over the victim… to the ultimate conclusion of federalizing local police who try to do their jobs. A Clinton-Kaine administration won’t just go easy on crime; they’ll throw in their lot with the criminals full force.
One has to ask if this is a conscious choice or not. Has the American Left so mutated, in the era of the Clintons and Obamas, that they are truly opposed outright to the rule of law? It is difficult to imagine, but studying their policy stances, it’s even more difficult to see any other explanation.
Stealing inheritances, driving hardworking, honest employers out of business. Rewarding fence-jumpers with benefits, while outnumbering legal American voters by new arrivals who don’t even speak the language of the campaign commercials, much less understand what the “oath to defend the Constitution” even represents. Watering down the controls on defense technology secrets. And ending punishments for convicted criminals, while punishing the police for trying to catch them.
This is not a normal American political campaign. It may sound extreme, but when you study their issue stances, you can only come to one conclusion:
It is a crime campaign.
Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is an international trade compliance lecturer and transportation expert. His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.
Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included.
