Unless you’ve played ostrich, you know the lessons of the presidential election. Republicans must give up their principles and be more like Democrats, or they’ll go extinct.
Media sages insist the GOP must learn to love tax increases and the job of being the tax collectors for the welfare state. They must become pro-choice and “get over this obsession with life,” as one so-called conservative put it. The religious beliefs of Evangelicals, Catholics and others must be tossed overboard if the party wants to attract those single women who are married to the Democratic Party for birth control and abortion.
The list of Republican fatal flaws goes on, never mind that Mitt Romney fell only about 360,000 votes short in the four swing states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire combined.
Had he won their 64 electoral votes, we’d be hailing him as brilliant, and dissecting the downfall of Barack Obama. But, in politics and football, winning is everything, so the demolition derby of the GOP is inevitable.
But the expiration date has arrived, so let’s move on to an alternative question: How long can the business model of the Democratic Party last?
The short answer is, not very. Dems are doomed by their success at creating ever bigger government with ever more handouts and entitlements. All the giving can’t go on and the Obama binge has created a crisis.
Deficits exceeded $1 trillion in each year of his first term, and his combined debt is a staggering $5 trillion. It brings the nation’s total to $16 trillion, and the possibility of default already has caused one rating downgrade.
And there is no end to the spending spree. Obama’s last budget, although chock full of rosy scenarios, still projected the debt would grow by $6.7 trillion over 10 years.
Thus, if all goes as planned, he will leave office with a national debt of $20 trillion, and a debt-to-GDP ratio far above 100 percent.
That’s Greece. It is an unsustainable governing model, so we should be asking not just about the demographic destiny of the GOP, but also how soon Dems will be condemned by the fiscal facts.
Clearly, they don’t want to face the numbers. The president has a fetish for hiking taxes on high earners, saying he didn’t care whether they would produce more revenue because “fairness” was more important.
He wasn’t kidding, as his continuing campaign proves. He declared Monday that Republicans would ruin Christmas for millions of families if they didn’t agree with his tax plan, proving again that re-election didn’t soften his “my way or the highway” attitude.
Equally revealing, congressional Dems tell The New York Times they refuse to make major changes to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, even though those programs are driving the debt and deficit.
Yet liberal senators, including Tom Harkin of Iowa and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, urged Obama to reject changes that “would cut benefits, shift costs to states, alter the structure” of the programs or pare them for deficit reduction.
That stance perfectly captures the party’s contribution to gridlock. Even as Republicans agree to increased revenues through reducing deductions in the tax code, Dems reject any changes to entitlements. So, who is really playing chicken at the fiscal cliff?
That so much attention is focused on whether Republicans will agree to tax hikes reveals mainstream media bias and Obama’s efforts to distract attention from the frightening dimensions of his fiscal folly.
Even if he gets his tax hikes, he would collect at most $90 billion a year, and that assumes growth would not be affected. What spending cuts is he prepared to demand from his party as part of a deficit-reduction deal?
So far, the answer is zero, a number that corresponds to the chances that Dems will govern responsibly.
No readin’ or rightin’ crazy HS grades
They’re the bad pennies of city schools. High-school report cards are back, and once again rely on a formula that only a gimlet-eyed educrat can decipher.
The one clear thing is that the Department of Education sees a Lake Wobegon system, where all the children, or at least their schools, are above average. Of 420 high schools, 142 rated an “A,” 159 a “B,” 88 a “C”, 21 a “D” and only 10 got an “F.”
Grade inflation lives thanks to extra credit for schools helping “at-risk” students, although fewer than one in five overall are ready for a career or college after four years at most schools. Some ratings are based on “results” that later come into question.
For the class of 2011, the Academy for Social Action in Harlem reported a graduation rate of 86.5 percent, but only 36.5 percent for the class of 2012. Something’s fishy.
There are mysteries baked into the standards. It Takes A Village Academy in Brooklyn got an “A” and scored 98.7 out of 100, the highest point total of all, even though a mere 12 percent of grads were ready for college. The points make the school seem better than Stuyvesant or Bronx Science, which is a joke.
Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky defended the school’s “A” by telling The Post that college readiness was a small part of the formula, at only 10 percent.
However, another publication quoted him making the opposite point to defend higher grades: “Three years ago, none of us were talking about college readiness. Now it’s one of the biggest goals we’ve set for our schools.”
Give him an “A” — for double talk!
Need true pedi cure
The City Council is not totally asleep — just mostly. Months after The Post reported that a pedicab driver ripped off a tourist family to the tune of $442.54 for a 12-minute ride, the council comes pedaling to the rescue. Or not.
A new law would still let drivers set their own prices, but would require them to post rates and hand passengers a rate card before the ride begins. Try enforcing that.
Here’s a better idea: Banish the damn things altogether, or at least confine them to parks. On Midtown streets, the pedi-pests are a menace to passengers, pedestrians and vehicles as the drivers recklessly weave in and out of traffic, go through red lights and create a sense of chaos.
The real problem isn’t the price tourists pay. It’s the price New Yorkers pay when their streets become a tangle of third-world congestion and confusion. That’s what should keep the council awake.
Porn to be wild
A study in the Journal of Sex Research, probably paid for with tax dollars, finds that 177 porn actresses “had more sexual partners” than women not in pornography.
Thank God for studies.
The crucifix is in
A painting that features President Obama posed as Jesus Christ crucified is on display in Boston, but the artist insists his work is a metaphor, not blasphemy.
“My intent was not to compare him to Jesus,” Michael D’Antuono told Fox News.
Not to worry. Only artists who mock Islam go to jail in America.