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October 29, 2022

We grew up being told that the Democrats were the party of the working man.  

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Right or wrong, generations were raised with that belief.  The white collar and gray collar might be either Republican or Democrat – there were always professions that skewed either way – but blue collar?  That was Democrat to the core.

Looking at today’s America, however, it’s hard to see how the American worker – no matter what color collar he or she wears – can see today’s Democratic Party as anything but an enemy.

The Biden-Harris regime began – Day One – with a flurry of executive orders, cancelling the contracts in place for ongoing work on the Keystone XL pipeline.  Most were union construction jobs.  Thousands of workers were thrown out of work on the spot – no notice, no severance – just because the incoming regime’s green agenda didn’t square with the idea of a pipeline moving Canadian fuel southward.  In state after state along the route, materials were left sitting where they were, work unfinished, people fired and forced to move elsewhere to find new jobs.

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And speaking of moving elsewhere… also among that flurry of executive orders were cancellations of existing permits for drilling on federal lands. And even more so, the hiring of federal bureaucrats – the top tier in every agency are always political hires – with the orders to slow-walk future permit applications.  Drilling, exploration, R&D, everything in the critical oil and gas sector that requires any federal permit, from drilling on federal lands, to drilling on private lands that require government access or government authorization of any kind, slowed to a crawl instantly. For all intents and purposes, this development just isn’t happening anymore. And that’s why gasoline has more than doubled in price (Illinoisans were paying under $2/gallon in the weeks before the last election and we’re paying over $4.00/gallon in the weeks before this upcoming one).

If you commute to work or school, this crowd has more than doubled your transportation cost.

On the U.S. West Coast, there’s been a growing problem for years; our coastal seaport complexes are too small to handle current volume, and our rail network’s inland hubs are much too small as well.  This isn’t a federal problem; counties and states just need to buy land, and expand to meet the needs.  But the Biden-Harris regime muscled in anyway, trying to force the ports to alleviate congestion by the imposition of late fees – as if the cargo were sitting still, clogging up the place, on purpose!

The biggest problem in the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is that California’s overwhelmingly Democrat state keeps passing laws that are pushing about half of California’s truckers out of the state for good.  If the Biden-Harris regime wanted to help, it could pressure Sacramento and Los Angeles to cancel their idiotic green rules that ban half the trucks from the ports, and to cancel AB5, the state law designed to make owner-operators give up their businesses and work for somebody else.  

But when given a choice between siding with truck drivers or siding with government bureaucrats, you know who the Biden-Harris crowd chose.

The ILWU is one of the most powerful unions in the world, controlling every port on the West Coast.  Their longshoremen, clerks, and crane operators had their contract up for renewal in June.  The regime made it clear… no strike, no slowdown, nothing, until after the election.  They’ve stayed at the table dutifully; there’s been no strike. Yet.  But in an economy like this, was meddling with their contract negotiation fair to the workers? Again, the Democratic Party had its eyes on November 8, not on the good of the working man.