The Patriot Post® · Democrats' True-Life Lemonade Failure
In February, when “D.C. government’s dysfunctional lemonade stand” was published in the Canada Free Press, it was intended as something written in metaphor. Today, it turns out not to be that, but a concept both factual and prescient.
As a political stunt, D.C. politicians decided to set up a lemonade stand to highlight Equal Pay Day, the annual reminder of the gender pay-gap in which women, on average, are paid less than men. Yet, this was not done to rightfully protest, as examples, Mr. Obama’s or Mrs. Clinton’s track records on the subject. Specifically, unchanged over almost two full Obama presidential terms, pay for female staffers is 13 percent less than their male counterparts. Meanwhile, “feminist icon” Hillary is no better: only 72 cents was paid to women in her Senate office. As with everything these two do — beyond law (read: Obama’s executive orders), precedent (read: Hillary’s Server-gate) or even Constitutional prohibitions (read: Obama’s pen and phone) — both, as usual, get a complete pass.
Speaking of a pass, D.C. politicians didn’t even bother to get one when they illegally set up shop at the Capitol Hill South Metro Station for their one-day lemonade venture. Like these folks incompetently run the country, there were a host of problems right out of the gate. As likely capitalism-phobic, the Democrats were completely unaware that a charity, Amateur Athletic Union, was already lawfully selling (heavenly) Kripsy Kreme donuts on the very same spot. (Game over!) Even the weather they habitually publicly renounce conspired against them: who wants lemonade on a cool, April showers rush-hour morning commute? To make matters worse, due to the lack of authorization, the station manager called transit police.
Ah, if only that contentious conversation between lawmakers and law enforcement had taken place! Given D.C.‘s generally lackadaisical response time for emergency personnel, the ten women from the DNC had already abandoned post for the standard-priced fare of the more hospitable Peet’s Coffee. While there, did they demand a discount based upon their gender? No, but that would have made their intended political statement. Yet, as the police apparently never caught up these female scalawags, I assume they gratefully paid the whole tab for their warming beverages.
The point of their badly run lemonade stand was to highlight a gender-based economic discrepancy. These politicians intended on charging a woman 79 cents (reflecting the average women’s wage) versus charging a man a dollar (his average wage), displaying a juvenile hand-colored sign: “Lemonade. Boys $1.00, Girs (scandalously misspelled with no "l”) 79 cents.“ Another glaring flaw, their business plan: no permit means no right to sell. That means only accepting a "suggested donation.” Of course, this actuality defeats the entire purpose of the exercise in the first place. As a parallel to their similarly incompetent governance, both leave a bad taste in the mouth (read: the failed Obama administration) and an empty wallet (read: the escalating $19 trillion debt).
Regardless of their stated “agenda,” what does this stunt really say about the character of those who set it up (read: the government’s bureaucratic take over of one-sixth of the economy known as Obamacare)? For starters, earning a hefty salary of $174,000, don’t these supposed adults have more productive ways to spend time representing the interests of their constituents? Second, either these lawmakers were too disorganized or, worse, completely blasé regarding the requirement to get a permit. (Apparently, for them, permits — like rules—are only for the rest of us, the “little people.”) Third, as this situation conclusively demonstrates, Democrats are not concerned with solving concrete problems, they are interested in political polarization. In this case, “serving” bogus “war on women” propaganda.
Same as Mr. Obama, his lemon-pushing compatriots “lead from behind” — assuming they lead at all. Their focus is wrongly on these non-issues rather than legitimate ones like 93 million able-bodied Americans out of the workforce. They “hawk lemonade” politically too in the form of self-serving pandering under the guise of relief (read: government dependence, multi-generational social welfare programs). Yet, this subsistence living is precisely like the sour drink they peddle on Equal Pay Day: it does not refresh (as upward mobility capitalism does), it just keeps the masses alienated and angry at their fellow citizens — and not incidentally — voting Democrat. Therefore, these elitists stay perpetually in power despite abject failures, and — same as Mr. Obama — live high on the hog while doing so.
In the same vein as Equal Pay Day is the good-sounding push for a $15 dollar minimum wage. As with these politician’s failed lemonade stand, it promises superficial “sweets” in the form of a wage increase. However, McDonald’s can only charge so much for a hamburger (the amount a typical customer will spend) and that figure directly determines how much any given employee can be paid. Therefore, for any company to remain viable, economics — not artificial government mandates — must determine wages. In other words, the “bottom line,” or costs, must be respected as well as the interests of investors. Therefore, the government purveyors who push this “lemonade” are completely obvious — and/or just don’t care — that the policy they advocate will actually have the opposite effect and price existing (and future) employees out of the marketplace.
Why should this matter to them? The establishments of both parties habitually run the federal government “red” on money borrowed from countries like China, at interest. When this gargantuan, nation-crushing bill finally comes due to future American generations, they all know they will likely be long gone. (Do-nothing Republicans versus wrongdoing Democrats: some choice!) Yet, let me be clear: as no respecters of America, Democrats are far worse. As an apt analogy to their intentionally divisive style of politics (that keep these responsibility-phobic, finger-pointing progressives in office), the “problem” is never with them, it is always to be found “elsewhere.”
In the final analysis, how is this obtuse disconnect from reality different from these progressives’ Chicken Little mindset to the hypothetical “danger” of changing weather patterns versus the real-life life and limb threat of radical Islamic terrorism (recently seen in Belgium and Paris)? What is obvious is these educated and highly-paid people can’t even run a child’s lemonade stand properly or efficiently. Is it any wonder that these insulated powerbrokers have run the country into the ground? By any mathematical measure, the Obama administration — aided greatly by a capitulating Paul Ryan-John Boehner Congress — has wrecked the joint like a monster traffic pile-up. Further, so out of touch are they from the American Way, Democrats are contemplating nominating an outspoken Socialist, Bernie Sanders, for U.S. president. Indeed, when a Maoist ornament winds up on the White House Christmas tree, these people don’t know what country they are actually living in. Beyond that, they can’t even doing the small things correctly.
Not even a single day of successfully turning lemons into lemonade. No doubt a natural consequence of years of Democrats mindlessly drinking the Obama Kool-Aid.
David L. Hunter is on Twitter and blogs at davidlhunter.blogspot.com. He is published in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Patriot Post, FrontPage Mag, and extensively in Canada Free Press and American Thinker.