economy | Bertram's Blog

Shenanigans of the Political Class

June 25, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I find it ironic that politicians who scream about citizens making (ie: creating) too much money and profess the need to confiscate that wealth through punitive taxes, never once promise to give back the millions that have stuck to their fingers during their tenures as “servants” of the people. The mega-millionaires in Congress seem to be the loudest of the “eat the rich” contingent yet don’t see themselves as one of the problems. Apparently, their money is theirs. And so is everyone else’s money.

Too many people agree because they don’t understand that created wealth — wealth that is invested in business and creating thousands of jobs — is not the same as money in the bank. They complain that the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and yet if everyone were taxed at the same rate, those same people would be complaining about their tax bill. The richest pay around 35% of their income in federal taxes. The middle group pays about 15%. The workers at the lowest end either pay minimal taxes, or they don’t pay into the system at all but are instead given money via Earned Income Tax Credits. (There is a wide range in each of these categories, but these are the averages I found.)

An even bigger irony comes from those communist mayors (calling them democratic socialists doesn’t change the nature of their rhetoric) who have never held a job in their life, led affluent lives because of family wealth, and yet now pretend to be bringing about a better life for working people while a) making things worse, and b) somehow getting richer.

I’ve never understood why working-class people listen to such hypocrites, except perhaps that they think that when the billionaires are taxed to death, then some of the money will be parceled out to them. I certainly don’t understand this push toward turning the United States into a communist country; it’s the surest way for everyone to go broke. Except for those at the top, of course.

A current scheme is a wealth tax, which never worked in the countries that tried it, but apparently, people still think it’s a good idea. But the trouble is, if they tax unrealized capital gains, then the owners of the company will have to sell off part of the company, which means people losing their jobs, which means fewer taxes overall. Also, all sorts of retirement funds that are invested in those companies lose money, because the sell-off will lower the value of the stock, which means the vulnerable also lose out. And of course, the politicians won’t bother giving a rebate for the loss of the rich person’s wealth when the stocks go down. And yet, when the stocks go back up again, they will again tax those unrealized gains, which means double tax on the same money. So bizarre!

I guess the moral of the story is that one doesn’t need to know economics to be in congress — or a mayor — though it should be a requirement. But then, it’s never about the truth, just the perceived truth. At least as long as it gets them reelected.

Which brings me to the biggest irony of all — that I, who have always had a head-down approach to the shenanigans of the political class, am not only aware of such doings but am blogging about it.

I might have to do something about that — not the shenanigans, which I have no control over, but the writing.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One

Posted in blogging, history/myth, life. Tags: communist mayors, democratic socialists, economics, economy, irony, political irony, politics, pride in the flag, pride in the United States, punitive taxes, taxing the rich. 2 Comments »

On My Soapbox

June 23, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I was going to write about the history behind what is happening today, going all the way back to Alexander Hamilton’s economic system of tariffs, domestic manufacturing, and sovereignty, but then changed my mind because I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get on my soapbox in today’s political climate. Still, Hamilton’s system is worth a mention because it is what made American great, what created wealth in this country, what developed an unprecedented middle class who kept the money they earned without it being taxed away. (Tariffs were always supposed to be the way the United States government supported itself, not taking from its citizens.) This Hamilton system (what is left of it) is the very system that that globalists want destroyed. For over one hundred years, their mission has been to gut the USA middle class, leaving only high earners who make the money and a political class that takes the money and gives what it doesn’t keep to low earners. It’s why manufacturing was sent overseas — the globalists convinced the political hacks that people wanted cheap goods more than they wanted jobs, and so the middle class dwindled. (You can’t have a one world government if one country is wealthy while others are mired in chaos, so since they couldn’t raise the entire world to the USA standards, they decided to lower the USA to third world standards.)

It’s been hard watching this destruction my whole life. And no, it’s not a democrat vs. republican thing — it’s a combined political class that bought into the corruption, thinking that having all countries run by a so-called “world-based order” was a good thing. (The globalists kept their power by playing one country against the other politically, where the Hamilton system was about creating working relationships with other countries by trading as equals.) Many political hacks have kept their own power through several degrowth cycles, though I wonder if they ever see their end — the end, of course, is rule by an international elite that makes the political class in each country obsolete. I also wonder if they are as ignorant as they seem — too many of them seem to think wealth simply exists. They don’t seem to see that wealth needs to be created. Hamilton knew this. You’d think that people who have been running this country for decades would know the truth. Unless they do know and their naïveté is part of the game?

The huge influx of illegals into all the western countries was part of this degrowth — a way of crashing the economies of the western countries, leaving them un-sovereign and at the mercy of the globalists. (The one thing I didn’t realize until recently was that this gutting of the middle class by off-shoring manufacturing, energy dependency, and an acceptance of anti-white racism was aimed at European countries too. How else to explain the British allowing a quarter of a million girls to be groomed and trafficked and murderers set free because people in positions of power class didn’t want to be called racist.)

Because of what previous administrations in the USA allowed, without any real objection from voters until recently, we came very close to what those globalists envisioned — a chaotic USA that could be grabbed up by those who have been aiming for that very thing since before the Civil War. And no, it’s not the same people — the originators of the scheme are long dead, unless, as some people claim, those originators have cracked the code of longevity — but the system and its aims are the same.

Weirdly, in an age of overwhelming information, most of this information isn’t easily found anymore. I did my early studying with real paper books, and paper books are a lot harder to destroy than information on the internet. I went looking online for information about a couple of people — one I know is helping fund the “mostly peaceful” demonstrations in this country, and another I know was part of a grooming industry that involved all sorts of celebrities and powerful people, and almost no negative information about these “benevolent” folks exists. Apparently, they have whole swarms of internet drones who do nothing but scrub the internet, and if they can’t erase the information, they bury it under thousands of new posts that are liked and shared by their bots until it all but disappears. I don’t know why they bother — much of the information available on the internet is leftist leaning, anyway, and AI seems to downplay any mention of conservative values (such as more autonomy and less government).

I used to get upset with people for wearing blinders, but I’ve come to see it’s not them so much as the algorithms. They are never shown a point of view they might disagree with, and so one’s world view is constantly reinforced. Nothing that might challenge that view is ever shown, unless, of course, their outrage needs stoking.

I know this firsthand. I have two separate internet accounts, each using a different browser, and each feed is totally different. Apparently, one browser thinks I am a demonic democrat and the other a rabid republican, when in fact, I am neither. I am a student. A watcher. A pattern recognizer. Nothing more.

Oops. I guess I got on my soapbox anyway. Oh, well.