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What pretty lies Republicans tell, most of all about themselves. And what a gorgeous opportunity they have given Democrats to steal that bogus rhetoric right out from under them.

Try this on for size: Democrats are the party of family values because they promote the creation of more families. They did precisely that with their advocacy of marriage equality, which didnt tug the country away from convention but toward it, by encouraging gay and lesbian Americans to live in the sorts of arrangements that conservatives in fact extol.

Democrats also want to give families the flexibility and security that help keep them afloat and maybe intact. Thats what making the work force more hospitable to women and increasing the number of Americans with health insurance do. And Republicans lag behind Democrats on both fronts.

Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility because they dont pretend that they can afford grand government commitments whether distant wars or domestic programs without collecting the revenue for them.

Democrats are the party of patriotism, because theyre doing something infinitely more urgent and substantive than berating football players who kneel during the national anthem. Theyre recognizing that a hostile foreign power tried to change the course of an American presidential election. Theyre pressing for a full accounting of that. Theyre looking for fixes, so that we can know with confidence that we control our own destiny going forward. The president, meanwhile, plays down the threat, and Republicans prop him up.

Democrats are the party of national security. They dont taunt and get into Twitter wars with the rulers of countries that just might send nuclear warheads our way. They dont alienate longtime allies by flashing contradictory signals about their commitment to NATO. The leader of the Republican Party does all of that and more, denying the G.O.P. any pretense to stewardship of a stable world order.

Democrats are the law-and-order party. While many Republicans and their media mouthpiece, Fox News, labor to delegitimize the F.B.I. and thus inoculate Trump, Democrats put faith in prosecutors, agents and the system.

Democrats are the party of decency and modesty. None of their highest leaders uses the public arena to bully private citizens in the way that the Republican president does. None advances his or her financial interests as brazenly or brags as extravagantly.

Democrats are the party of tradition, if its interpreted and it should be to mean a news media that operates without fear of government interference, an internet to which access isnt tiered, judicial appointees who have a modicum of fluency in trial law.

Under Trumps thumb and spell, the Republican Party is watching the pillars of its brand crumble. Democrats should grab hold of and appropriate them. And theyre starting to, fitfully and imperfectly. Jettisoning Al Franken as the Republican National Committee reteamed with Moore was part of that effort.

Who among us doesnt care about family values, defined justly and embraced honestly? Who doesnt see the good in patriotism, tradition and decency? Theyre neither hokey words nor musty concepts, and thats why Republicans have been using (and misusing) them. But in the age of Trump, they constitute a language that Democrats can more credibly speak.

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Democrats Are the New Republicans - The New York Times

Im starting to think that all too many Democrats believe that private citizens and private corporations dont actually own their private income or their private property.

Otherwise, how can we explain the Democratic insistence, repeated endlessly over the last 24 hours, that Republicans somehow are poised to execute a grand heist by cutting corporate and individual tax rates, granting an estimated 80.4 percent of taxpayers an average tax break of $2,140.

The rhetoric was remarkable, and the hysterics werent confined to fringe figures on the left.

Heres House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi:

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

Democratic presidential frontrunners Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders weighed in:

Note the key words. A tax cut is a heist. Its looting the governments money. Youre robbing and ransacking the middle class. Schumer is the most measured, and even he acts like the government is giving people money by granting a tax break.

Yes, part of this is just talking points. Theyre words chosen to win a news cycle. But they also betray a deeper problem. Taken at face value they represent a fundamental redefinition of private property. Its part of the Democratic march towards socialism, and it doesnt just have implications for tax rates, it has grave consequences for civil liberties as well.

The traditional view of private income and private property is clear. You own and control the money you make or the property you possess. By the consent of the governed the state can tax a portion of that money and regulate your use of your property, but the fundamental presumption remains its your property. Its your money.

To put it in legal terms, the government bears the burden of establishing the need for your funds or the necessity for regulation. Indeed, the Constitution establishes the primacy of individual rather than state ownership by noting that the government can take your property only for public use and only after paying just compensation.

Increasingly, however, the American Left is flipping the proposition. Whats yours is the array of government goods and services established by the vast and growing federal bureaucracy. Whats yours is the bundle of bureaucratic and regulatory rights created by an increasingly regulatory state. Thus, private property is in reality a public resource. Private businesses are public accommodations that can easily be commandeered to become instruments of social policy just ask the Christian business owners required to furnish free abortifacients to their employees or to use their artistic talents to celebrate immoral events.

Read through that lens, and you can easily see why Democrats use the rhetoric of theft. In Barney Franks memorable phrase, Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together. Its the core expression of American community and the primary expression of American values. Its the centerpiece of American life.

In other words as with so many other elements of our public debate were back to first principles. Were back to culture war. Red and Blue America are once again like ships passing in the night. A conservative hears the language of theft and laughs. Im not stealing from anyone if Im allowed to keep more of my own cash. The progressive hears the same word and nods. After all, the government must fund our welfare state, and the more money a person has, the greater the governments moral and legal claim on his resources.

Culture wars arent static. The boundaries arent fixed. The gospel of private ownership and personal prosperity can and should win converts, especially when contrasted with the extraordinarily high real-world cost and staggering inefficiency of the Sanders/Warren model of immensely expanded government. But gospels need evangelists, and Republicans need to remember that good ideas still need good advocates. The policy has passed. The sales pitch is just beginning.

READ MORE:NR Editorial: A Solid Accomplishment on TaxesFinal Tax Bill: The Biggest Cuts Are for the Middle ClassMost Americans Believe False Claims about the Tax Bill

David French is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

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Democrats: Republican Tax Bill Is Theft | National Review

If youve read any conservative commentary on the war on poverty in the past week, youve likely seen this talking point: We spend $1 trillion each year on welfare and theres been no reduction in poverty. Thats crazy! Then, a sentence later, youll probably see a line like this: Its true. According to a recent report, we spend a trillion dollars on means-test programs each year, yet the official census numbers show no reduction in poverty.

If you are reading that second line quickly, you probably think it bolsters the credibility of the first line. Its an official number, and the census and the report probably quote accurate numbers too, night? They do, but the second sentence is actually used as an escape hatch to say something that isnt true. We dont spend anywhere near a trillion dollars on welfare unless you mangle the term welfare to be meaningless, and we do reduce poverty.

First, Dylan Matthews has already dissected the claim that poverty hasnt declined. It has. Its just that the official poverty rate doesnt factor in the earned-income tax credit or food stamps in its calculations. Given that these are two of the most direct ways that the government tries to lift people out of poverty, thats a major problem. These programs do, in fact, lift people out of povertyit just doesnt show up in the official rate, because thats how the rate is constructed.

The claim about $1 trillion on welfare is more interesting and complicated. It shows up in this recent report from the Cato Institute, which argues that the federal government spends $668 billion dollars per year on 126 different welfare programs (spending by the state and local governments push that figure up to $1 trillion per year).

Welfare has traditionally meant some form of outdoor relief, or cash, or cash-like compensation, that is given to the poor without them having to enter an institution. As the historian Michael Katz has documented, the battle over outdoor relief, has been a long one throughout our countrys history.

However, this claims says any money mostly spent on the poor is welfare. To give you a better sense here, the federal spending breaks down into a couple of broad categories. Only about one-third of it is actually what we think of as welfare:

1) Cash and cash-like programs: As Michael Linden of Center for American Progress told me, there are five big programs in the Cato list that are most analogous to what people think of as welfare: The refundable part of the Earned Income Tax Credit ($55 billion), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ($21 billion), Supplemental Security Income ($43.7 billion), food stamps ($75 billion), and housing vouchers ($18 billion)and the Child Tax Credit. All together, thatsaround$212 billion dollars.

2) Health care: This is actually the biggest item on Catos list. Medicaid spends $228 billion on the non-elderly population, and childrens health insurance plan takes up another $13.5 billion. This is also roughly a third as well.

3) Opportunity-related programs: These are programs that are broadly related to opportunities, mostly in education or job-training. So you have things like Title 1 grants ($14 billion) and Head Start ($7.1 billion) in this category. But as Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Donna Pavetti notes, these programs dont all go to poor people. For instance, Title I benefits school districts with a large share of poor children, however that money will help non-poor students attending those schools.

4) Targeted and community programs: What remains are programs designed to provide certain services to poor communities, which make up the bulk of the number of programs. Adoption assistance ($2.5 billion) and low income taxpayer clinics ($9.9 million) are two examples here.

So what should we take away from this?

The federal government spends just $212 billion per year on what we could reasonably call welfare. (Even then, the poor have to enter the institution of waged labor to get the earned income tax credit.) And there have been numerous studies showing that these programs, especially things like food stamps, are both very efficient and effective at reducing poverty. They just dont show up in the official poverty statistics, because thats how the poverty statistics are designed.

Publicly funded services have never been thought of as welfare. I drive on publicly funded roads, but nobody analytically thinks of roads as belonging to category of welfare. If the poor take advantage of, say, a low-income taxpayer clinic, how is that welfare? Do taxpayer clinics encourage illegitimacy, dependency and idleness and other things conservatives worry about when it comes to welfare? This confuses more than it illuminates, which I imagine is the point.

Medicaid makes this very obvious. If a poor person gets access to decent health care, thats not free money they get to spend on whatever they want. They arent on the dole.

The fact that Social Security and Medicare, major victories of the War on Poverty, arent here makes it clear something is wrong in the definition. Even though these are anti-poverty programs associated with the War on Poverty, nobody thinks of them as welfare, though they should fit this definition as well.

Its interesting to see conservatives consider opportunity programs to be welfare, because those programs broadly involve things they say they are for. Perhaps you think these programs are good investments or perhaps you dont, but they are a whole other conceptual category than welfare, or just giving poor people money when they need it.

Its also interesting to see conservatives lament the sheer number of anti-poverty programs. One reason this set-up exists is because so many programs are run through nonprofit groups (a set-up that makes us unique among developed countries). But conservatives have long tended to favor this arrangement, since nonprofit groups are supposed to boost civil society and provide an antidote to the nameless, faceless Big Government bureaucrats.

Read that again: conservatives complain that we should have less welfare and more opportunity and civil society, only to turn around and also call those things welfare too when the time comes.

Perhaps some of these programs should be discontinued, or expanded, or turned into straight cash. (How about cash instead of food stamps?) But we cant have a productive conversation unless we make it clear what the government is, and is not, doing. And it is spending a lot less on welfare than conservatives claim, and getting fantastic results for what it does spend.

Mike Konczal is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where he focuses on financial regulation, inequality and unemployment. He writes a weekly column for Wonkblog. Follow him on Twitterhere.

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San Juan County Democrats | Democratic Party

Our Values

Health of the physical environment directly impacts the short-term and long-term health of our citizens, communities, economy, and wildlife, and must be protected.

Fossil fuels are a finite and dwindling resource and we must swiftly transform our economy and technology to be based on renewable energy sources.

All countries and governments must respond swiftly and strongly to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to slow the rise in the global temperature and reduce the long-term effects of climate change, ocean acidification, and rising oceans levels.

Regulations must be used to ensure that the cost of environmental degradation be paid for by those who create the pollution or benefit from the action that caused the pollution.

Preservation of biological diversity, including endangered and threatened species, and restoration of previously extirpated species.

Place greater emphasis on public and non-motorized transportation modes, such as walking, bicycling, buses, ferries, and passenger rail service.

Protect the integrity and purity of Lake Whatcom, the drinking water supply for Bellingham.

2016 Policy Priorities

Federal Government: Tax carbon and tax methane in terms of CO2 equivalents, and use the revenues for two purposes: 1) Research and development of technologies that drastically reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses; 2) Fund Social Security and Medicare, while reducing the highly regressive payroll tax.

Washington State Legislature and Executive Branch: Adopt a comprehensive state-level climate policy that will meet the emissions targets set in RCW 70.235.020. Tax carbon and tax methane in terms of CO2 equivalents, using the revenues to fully fund K-12 education as mandated by the state constitution, and to finance research and development and subsidies for technologies that drastically reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses. Eliminate all electricity from coal, including electricity generated from coal in other states. Mandate LEED or equivalent standards for construction.

Federal Government: Maintain the ban on oil drilling and exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Whatcom County and city governments: Enact local laws, regulations, and zoning that enable local public and private initiatives to develop renewable energy sources. All new public buildings should follow LEED environmental standards.

Whatcom County, City of Bellingham: Convert to public power in order to promote higher use of renewable energy and smart grids.

Federal Government: Clean up and eliminate the Hanford Nuclear Reservation site as a repository of additional nuclear waste.

Washington State, British Columbia: Clean up the Salish Sea and waters emptying into it, and enact new laws or regulations as needed to eliminate pollution at the source.

Whatcom County: Comply with the Growth Management Act.

Washington State Legislature: Ban fracking.

Whatcom County, Cities of Bellingham, Ferndale, Lynden, Blaine: Improve pedestrian and bicycle accessibility through multiple-use paths, bike lanes, traffic calming, and similar initiatives aimed at increasing the percentage of trips using muscle power instead of fossil fuels, and in so doing contributing to fitness and health.

Washington State, Amtrak: Improve passenger rail service between Whatcom County and points north and south, making service faster and more frequent, as a viable alternative to using and expanding I-5.

Washington State: Protect newly reestablished wolf populations.

National Park Service, Washington State: Restore a self-sustaining grizzly bear population in the North Cascades.

Washington State, Whatcom County: Limit urban sprawl and preserve farmland, wildlife habitat, and natural resources essential to our economic and environmental well being.

Washington State, Federal Government, Whatcom County: Protect our critical environmental areas, including wilderness areas, old growth forests, wildlife habitat areas and corridor, wetlands, streams, the Columbia River, Salish Sea, coastlines, and Pacific Ocean, through vigilant monitoring and planned growth management.

Washington State, Whatcom County: We oppose plans to ship coal to other nations.

Washington State Legislature: Develop a statewide rail plan in cooperation with local jurisdictions, Amtrak, and freight railroads to substitute grade separation for existing grade crossings; to account for future expansion of rail lines and rail traffic; to identify safety improvements to mitigate the shipment of hazardous cargoes; and to equitably share the costs of these changes.

Federal Government: Implement safety standards for rail tank cars carrying flammable liquids including crude oil and petroleum. Mandate replacement or retrofitting of existing tank cars to meet the new standards.

Washington State Legislature: Increase safeguards for oil spill prevention and response. Mandate tug escort requirements for oil tankers. Improve emergency response for oil transport by rail and pipeline. Close the oil tax loophole and assign the revenues to improved public service.

Federal Government: We oppose the Keystone XL pipeline and similar oil pipelines.

City of Bellingham: Make Food Plus and recycling mandatory for all food service businesses.

City of Bellingham and Whatcom County: Fund the Lake Whatcom invasive species inspection program entirely from registration fees.

City of Bellingham and Whatcom County: Ban all fuel motorized craft from Lake Whatcom, source of Bellinghams drinking water supply.

City of Bellingham: Convert a downtown street into a pedestrian mall (as in Boulder CO, Burlington VT, Santa Monica CA).

City of Bellingham: Promote denser development as practiced in the New Urbanism school of city planning. Follow the Comprehensive Plan, including urban villages and the design standards. No more sprawl.

Port of Bellingham, City of Bellingham: Support a public waterfront.

Washington State, Whatcom County, City of Bellingham: commit to moving entirely to renewable energy in twenty years (as in San Diego). Divest from fossil fuels (as in Seattle and Portland).

Federal government, Washington State, Whatcom County, City of Bellingham: No new fossil fuel infrastructure.

WTA: We encourage expansion of bus routes to better access work sites, services, recreational areas (e.g. Artist Point) and expanded weekend service.

Port of Bellingham: Offer seasonal foot & bike ferry service to San Juan Islands from Bellingham Cruise Terminal.

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Whatcom Democrats About Who We Are - Platform and ...

In this holiday season, I want to take a moment to simply say thank you on behalf of your Denton County Democratic Party. 2017 has been a whirlwind year around the country and certainly here in North Texas. Denton County is home to several of the fastest growing cities in the state of Texas and even the country. With that, we have seen an influx of new Democrats becoming involved with the Party and various outside groups that support the par...ty. The entire leadership team expresses its gratitude for your support. Thank you for your energy. Thank you for your involvement. Thank you for your contributions. Thank you for helping to spread our message with family and friends.

When any organization expands rapidly, it experiences growing pains. We certainly are not immune to that. Our priority is to quickly adapt to this growth so that we can facilitate the transition to becoming a larger, stronger organization. We almost doubled our number of Precinct Chairs in the last year, yet we still need more. We have recruited more talent to the executive team, and still are adding more. We have added city clubs in the farthest corners of the county, yet we need more.

As the County Chair, I am committed to building a foundation that supports this rapid growth and future growth, secure our proprietary data, and lead us into 2018 with the momentum to WIN ELECTIONS and TURN DENTON COUNTY BLUE.

The 2018 Coordinated Campaign Committee, chaired by Amy Taylor, is pleased to announce that, with the leadership of our Democratic candidates, we reached our fundraising goal of $5,000 for our most ambitious mail-in ballot program ever - that will turn out more reliable Democratic voters who are eligible for mail-in ballots. This is the first of many steps the coordinated campaign will take to work with candidates and others in our community to turn Denton County blue.

I am thankful for all of you, my Democratic family. Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. I challenge you to stay engaged and find ways to bring new people into the Partys activities and efforts as we head into the 2018 election year. Together we win!

Phyllis WolperChairDenton County Democratic Party

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