Americans Are Losing Hope in the American Dream

The “American dream” has long been a cornerstone of our national identity—the idea that any citizen of the United States, regardless of upbringing or background, can work his or her way to prosperity. It is why nearly 1 in 5 businesses in the country are owned by first-generation Americans. It is borne out in the sharp increase over the past 20 years in college students from economically distressed households. It is also reflected in the “income advancements” we have seen among American families over the past 30 years.

Despite the upward mobility experienced by millions, the American people are losing hope. In newly released polling data published by our organization, the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, 66% of Americans polled believe the concept of the American dream has become “less attainable” over the last 10 years. Only 9% of Americans think the dream has become more attainable.

About 40% of American voters say the American dream is out of reach for them, with young people most likely to agree. It is also a pessimistic sentiment more pronounced for black Americans, who were the least likely to say they have achieved it.

Overall, only 1 in 5 of voters believe they have reached the American dream.

While it is disappointing to see Americans lose hope, it is also an expected outcome after the surging inflation of the past several years. Prices of goods are up an average of 20% since President Joe Biden took office. An analysis published by the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee late last year estimated that, due to inflation, the average household would need to spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain their same standard of living they had prior to January 2021.

The situation has become so dire for some that it was recently reported that more Americans are being forced to choose between paying for food and paying their energy bills. One mother admitted to CBS News, “Sometimes I have to choose whether I’m going to pay the light bill, or do I pay all the rent or buy food or not let my son do a sport?” This is the crushing reality for far too many families as they have tried to stay afloat while coping with the 40-year-high inflation that has gripped prices nationwide.

Homeownership—long considered a staple of the American dream—has also become more difficult for families to achieve. Soaring interest rates, needed to curb runaway inflation, have increased mortgage rates, creating an affordability crisis. A CNN poll found that the overwhelming majority of Americans currently renting “would like to buy a home but can’t afford one.” More than 50% of those asked feel they’ll never be able to own their own home.

It is estimated that due to the rising mortgage interest rates and property costs, “home buyers now need to earn $47,000 more than they did in 2020”—an increase of 80%—to be able to comfortably buy a home, according to a report by Zillow. This is demoralizing for those simply trying to purchase a family home.

All these factors are making Americans less optimistic about their future and their children’s future. Our polling found that more than 50% of Americans believe the United States will be worse off down the road. This national pessimism is toxic for the future of America. If we are going to course correct and deliver a tomorrow that inspires today’s workforce, we need smart policies that will help families climb out of the financial hardships they have had to face over the past several years.

To restore faith in the American dream, we must re-imagine it for today’s world. At the Rainey Center, we have focused our commitment on advancing innovative and actionable solutions that demonstrate a capacity to address some of the nation’s most complex challenges, from advocating for economic empowerment to boosting domestic energy production.

One of the crucial policies we have advocated for is permitting reform, which includes commonsense measures that will lower energy costs for families, lead to more infrastructure development, and reduce bureaucratic red tape. It is also a policy that has broad bipartisan support from the American people—and voters want to see reform, so it is easier to build infrastructure in America. The next administration should immediately move to deregulate energy production and invest in energy innovation to reverse the current economic trend.

The path forward requires policies that both preserve the integrity of the American dream and make it accessible once again. By encouraging fresh ideas, institutions like the Rainey Center—in their collaboration with policymakers at every level of government—can lay the foundation for a new era of opportunity—one where all Americans, regardless of background, can share in the promise of prosperity. Only by embracing bold, inclusive solutions can we ensure the dream remains a tangible goal for future generations.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/13/americans-are-losing-hope-american-dream/

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Kamala Harris, Pro-Crime Candidate for President

The negative effects of California’s Proposition 47 are well known—a surge in theft, chaos, and lawlessness. Prop 47, a ballot measure approved by voters in 2014, reclassified nonviolent larceny as a misdemeanor so long as the value of the goods stolen is less than $950.

This results are seen in horrifying videos of criminals brazenly riding bikes into drugstores and plundering shelves, stealing bags full of merchandise while impotent clerks and security guards haplessly watch the crime unfold.

What’s less known is that Vice President Kamala Harris was a key champion of getting Prop 47 approved.

Progressives like Harris often bemoan what they describe as “food deserts,” a lack of grocery stores offering more healthy foods in poorer areas.

The truth is, politicians such as Harris who encouraged the very lawlessness that drove out the drugstores and grocery stores don’t advise constituents to stop looting. They punish business owners instead.

The good thing is that California voters have a chance to repeal Proposition 47 through a countermeasure this fall called Prop 36. If voters approve the ballot question, Prop 47 will die.

Harris, however, wants to impose her terrible California worldview nationwide. Harris, the state’s former attorney general, supports ending cash bail for violent criminals.

Democrats’ presidential nominee even helped raise bail money for violent rioters in 2020, including murderers and serial domestic abusers in Minnesota during the George Floyd riots. Sadly, one of those criminals Harris helped free from jail went on to kill someone.

Harris claims to be a candidate of law and order, yet she proposed allowing dealers to sell drugs without fear of criminal prosecution. She prefers that drug dealers face charges only after the third time they are arrested.

“Kamala Harris was the most liberal and progressive district attorney I worked with in over 30 years in the SFPD,” said Kevin Cashman, former deputy chief of the San Francisco Police Department.

Now that’s a difficult title to claim in a liberal city like San Francisco.

But this title makes sense when you know that Harris released a violent MS-13 gang member, Edwin Ramos. Ramos was convicted of murdering a father and his two sons after being released.

Harris shielded illegal immigrant drug dealers from prison. She wiped clean their criminal records and coddled them with job training, even as millions of U.S. citizens are unemployed. Unfortunately, one of these illegal aliens violently assaulted a woman, fracturing her skull.

Harris refused to seek the death penalty against cop killer David Hill. Even the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., disagreed with Harris’ blatant disregard for the law. She criticized Harris for it.

Harris allowed criminals who punched and spit on cops to avoid jail time.

As district attorney of San Francisco, Harris was weak on gun-carrying criminals. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2006: “Police have also challenged Harris over whether she is living up to her promises to get tougher on gun crimes.”

Harris also failed in the courtroom as a prosecutor. San Francisco Weekly reported in 2010: “In the first quarter of 2010, things got worse. During that time, Harris’ office secured guilty verdicts in just 53 percent of its felony trials —a remarkable figure, revealing that defendants accused of serious crimes who took their case to trial had an even one-in-two shot at winning an acquittal.”

Harris’ record as San Francisco district attorney, The Washington Free Beacon reports, includes “lenient plea deals and probation for a string of career criminals—a serial domestic abuser who later murdered his girlfriend, a repeat felon who gunned down a newspaper editor in Harris’ hometown of Oakland, and others.”

Harris was such a crime-friendly district attorney, SF Gate reported, that San Francisco police were forced to do an “end run around Harris’ office by taking several gang-related homicide cases to federal prosecutors.”

For the first time in the history of California, which was founded in 1850, the state is losing a congressional district. That means California is losing people big time.

Residents are fleeing California’s crime for places such as Florida and Texas because of Harris’ failed policies and governance, in San Francisco and statewide.

If Harris becomes president, Americans will have nowhere else to flee because she’ll be running the entire country. We deserve better.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/09/14/kamala-harris-pro-crime-candidate-for-president/

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Cracking The ‘Semantic Games’ Media Use To Make Kamala Look Good

A couple of months ago, everyone agreed Kamala Harris was the worst VP in American history. Now, she’s heralded as the Savior of the Republic.

At first glance, that’s seemingly all it took. After a couple of months of media praise, Harris is up in the polls as the American people seem to have forgotten her long history of radicalism and failure. But is it really that simple?

The Daily Caller’s new documentary, “Cleaning Up Kamala,” shows that the media didn’t simply will this new, “joyful” Kamala into existence. They followed a carefully planned formula to deceive the American people.

Democrats and the media love to talk about The Big Lie: the idea that you can simply repeat a lie over and over again until people believe it. Yet like most things with the Democrat-media complex, this is bait and switch.

Don’t fall for it. Their own lying is far more subtle. As the Daily Caller’s investigative team shows, their lies use “semantic games” to spin half-truths into larger, false narratives. Often, the broad takeaway inverts reality entirely.

Take the lie that Kamala Harris never had anything to do with the Defund the Police movement.

We all know she spent the violent Summer of 2020 cagily tip-toeing around left-wing radicalism. We know she supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed rioters out of jail. Yet PolitiFact, one of the nation’s most prominent mainstream fact-checkers, called Donald Trump a liar when he said she supported the Defund the Police movement.

How’d they pull this one off?

Here’s Trump’s full quote:

“They want to defund, she [Harris] wants to defund the police, now she’s pulled back on it,” Trump said at a rally. Note that he uses the past tense.

Now, compare that to was Harris’ said in interviews during the Summer of Love:

“This whole [Defund the Police] movement is about rightly saying we need to take a look at these budgets and figure out whether it reflects the right priorities. For too long, the status quo thinking has been you get more safety by putting more cops on the street. Well, that’s wrong,” Harris said on CNN.

This seems to jive with what Trump’s saying. So how does PolitiFact explain rating Trump’s quote as “mostly false?” It all comes down to tenses. They called him a liar for using the present tense, saying Harris “wants” to Defund the Police, even though he clarified that she’s since changed her mind, apparently. Yet they ignore the immediate contextualization in order to call him a liar.

“They know what they’re doing, and unfortunately, a lot of these fact checking websites are getting away with it,” explains Amber Athey, Washington Editor of The Spectator.

This obscures the whole debate about how Harris’ policies evolved, or what they even are. What we should be talking about is how Harris flip-flopped; was she lying then, or if she’s lying now? Instead, the onus falls on Trump. Countless people see this “fact check” and rest assured that Trump is the liar. Harris’ lies aren’t just irrelevant, they all but cease to exist.

As always with Democratic lies, a half-truth inverts the broader reality. The liar gets off scot-free and the truth teller is branded a liar.

This is just one of the many tricks the media re-brand used to re-brand Kamala Harris as a modern day messiah. Watch “Cleaning Up Kamala” today to discover all the dirty tricks they have up their sleeves.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/16/media-kamala-harris-daily-caller-documentary/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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