Political Passions and Upcoming Elections: Does It All Really Matter?

San Diego – To me, the upcoming election for President of the United States presents the clearest contest between two very opposing views of the world, the economy, and the role of government we have witnessed in my lifetime.  As I perceive it, the core philosophies the two candidates represent differ on the following primary issues:

1. The role and ‘job’ of government,
2. The contest of freedom versus security,
3. The best economic model to follow, and
4. The role and place of the US on the world stage
5. The ethical appraisal of America itself

I said “core” philosophies because I believe one of them is a true believer, steeped to his toes in the tenets of his beliefs.  I’m not so sure about the other to be honest but to take him at his word and his claims du jour, if he is sincere, then those issues will break down pretty much as follows.

The Role of Government.  Is it constrained by the very specific requirements and limitations spelled out with absolute clarity in the Constitution or is it to be all things to all people and the source of determination as to what is fair or not and how to remedy it or not?

Freedom versus Security.  Do we as a people value our freedoms as granted in the Constitution enough to sometimes risk danger or are we so cowed by circumstances that we prefer to be protected against all danger even at the loss of essential freedoms?

Social Justice. Do we believe that those who are productive should be encouraged to be even more productive because it has a broader positive effect on society or do we believe that those who are productive should give the results of their efforts to those who are not?  Do we believe in the equality of opportunity or the equality of results?

 Economic Models.  As we look across the geopolitical stage of history and examine nation states based on the economic models they adopted, do we think those that pursued a more or less free-market system were more successful than those who adopted a government-controlled system?

The World Stage.  Do we look out at the world and see it filled with people who would gladly be our friends and supporters if we only would continue our aid to them and allow them to butcher their people and their neighbors as they wish, or do we see it populated with people whose schools and places of worship teach them to kill or convert all who disagree and most especially America?  Do we see the world as a safer place with the Soviet Union on the midden heap of history or do we see the world grown more dangerous with rogue elements holding serious weaponry and totally unconstrained by a larger power?

America Itself.  Do we see America as one of the grandest, boldest experiments in the history of mankind which, despite mistakes and failures still strives to be that beacon for freedom to the world or do we see it as a result of a flawed founding document that needs to be transformed into a different view of propriety from that of the founding fathers?

The parties in play could not possibly be farther apart philosophically in their espoused core beliefs about what America is and what it ought to be.  If ever there was a clear distinction in goals and objectives this election seems to provide it. if ever it truly mattered it is now.  Based on those opposing points of view at play, this could be the most important election in our nation’s history in terms of how it advances into the future.

But is that real or is it a giant shell game of red herrings and straw men whose purpose is to rally the true-believers on each side and keep them focused away from the real action?  There are a growing number of observers who believe the facts point toward a very different shadow power that really runs things and uses such issues as distractions to keep the passionate populace focussed away from what is really happening.

Unfortunately, that ‘conspiracy theory, normally relgated to the realm of crackpots and political loons, contains a certain logic because there is a common thread that binds the otherwise opposing parties.  Now to me it could either be the result of a benign and coincidental philanthropy, or, as the conspiracy loons suggest, revealing of an ugly oligarchy underlying it all and making our apparent choices pretty much irrelevant.  Here is the problem…

The major funding – for BOTH parties — comes from the SAME sources, mostly financial institutions including such banksters as Goldman-Sachs, Credit Suisse Group, Morgan Stanley, HIG Capital, Barclays, Bank of America, JP Morgan & Chase, USB AG, Wells Fargo, Blackstone Group, Citigroup or their proxies.  But it is Goldman-Sachs that would be the chief entity of interest in a search for a primary Oligarch pulling political strings since they not only provide more money than the others, they also have provided the manpower to populate administration officials and officers throughout the government.  A simple review of resumes will reveal this interesting common employer.

Now a financial entity so huge certainly has a huge employment base so a few dozen individuals in key governmental positions all coming from it could be coincidental.  It is also quite possible that these well heeled groups donate to both sides because they believe in allowing each a loud voice to reach the voters and are simply and patriotically doing their share, collectively and individually to facilitate that.  It is possibly a sheer and amazing coincidence that these major contributors, all capitalist pillars, included the groups bailed out because they were ‘too big to fail’ and allowed to rise above the law as it would apply to normal citizens which could not possibly be more antagonistic to capitalist principals.

Consequently there is a certain uneasy logic to the people who see this as evidence of a vast conspiracy; not of the left or right, but of the world’s oligarchs to be able to influence the policies of what was, at least, the world’s greatest power (and perhaps other powers as well).  I do not know the answer to that; I am not fully persuaded by either argument about their intents and goals in political funding.  but it does raise some interesting questions.

Unions are much more obvious: they are working in their own self interest which is what I believe they do all the time while pretending to protect but instead work to gain dependencies from the workers in their various clutches.  But big banks and financial institutions?  From a political perspective they could be either the ultimate evil or one of the more benign aides.  As usual in such cloudy areas the truth is most likely somewhere in the middle.

So until I am persuaded one way or the other about the sources and results of this major money I’ll continue to assume – or perhaps more accurately, hope – that the candidates are true to their core or avowed philosophies and vote based on that.  But that doesn’t help me much because, truth to tell, I think BOTH ideologies as they are currently finding expression, are wrong and living in some other century.

And no, I do not mean just conservatives.  I also mean the liberal/progressives because their ideology belongs to the past just as much as some of the conservative ideology does.

Both are based on thinking starting in the 17^th century and flowing forward into the late 19^th century when it solidified.  While I do believe one of them comes closer to representing accurately the underlying human nature at play in political interactions (and that is the ideology flowing from Locke and Burke) as they are being expressed in this contest in 2012, neither is truly dealing with the world as it now is.

Both are based on a world view predicated on sovereign or nearly sovereign and nearly self sufficient nation-states for whom trade was a common and handy but unnecessary thing.  Neither are, in their pristine forms, fully suitable for a world of global markets, revolutionary changes in the methods of production and the sources of revenue, nor well calculated to serve anyone, in any class, in a world of mutually capable destruction and growing competition for global but finite resources.

Conservative philosophies are based on a world that largely no longer exists while progressive philosophies are based on a world that NEVER existed.  And yet passionate partisanship has convinced us that we have a simple “either-or” set of choices and ignored the reality that the best choice is probably… “neither.”

I do believe that conservative ideals, however, are based in a far more accurate appraisal of the realities of human nature and that modern liberal approaches are based more on a marvelously Machiavellian awareness of the power that flows from dependencies but unfortunately that requires a subjugation of human nature to work.  But both now are off in fantasyland, ignoring the inconvenient truth that while they were busy focusing on fighting each other the world changed and with it, the U.S.  Our relations with that world in both an economic and a geo-political sense have not kept pace.  So though I think the best foundation for addressing this new world would come from the Locke/Burke/Jefferson flow of thinking but I see none of the current candidates attempting to apply it.  They are mostly applying it to a world that hasn’t existed for 50 years and maybe longer.

I have watched the debates hoping for someone to get beyond petty in-fighting and speak to the realities of the incredibly dangerous issues facing us both internally and externally and offer their ideas as to how to best deal with them.  I have heard nothing but platitudes and promises of results but not a single working plan. Pabalum for the true believers of all stripes but no real meat in any of them.  If they would come up with that sort of implied leadership then I think they would win, and if they do not then they may once again cede the election to King Barrack and unless the congress falls completely to the other team, we will, in my opinion, see a systematic dismantling of the Constitution; a concentration of power in the executive and his appointed czars in opposition to the legislative branch, and a transformation of this country just as he said he would.

And that scares me to death.  But, to ne honest, not all that much more than having someone from the other side, equally oblivious to the changed world realities, fomenting policies and actions in blind obediance to obsolete policies created in blind ignorance to a world that has changed while they were not looking.

But maybe, in the end, even that fear is unfounded because perhaps that same bankster-contrived and controlled oligarchy, if it actually exists and actually does understand the new world because it created it, will not allow its own golden goose to be cooked and will rein in either side as its pendulum starts to swing to far wide of a workable middle.  I do not know the answer to that nor will pretend to.  And I do not know if that potential phantom safety net would be a good thing or not een if it existed.

Orwell, who foresaw something eerily similar did not think so nor did most people who read his book when i did back in the 60s.  But those people must all be dead since there was no cry against recent announcements of domestic drone surveillance following the passage of the act allowing us to be targets of interest for domestic spying.  While on one hand you might try to argue that a world-wide oligarchy who rules from the shadows in utter self interest would not allow real war to break out, I would suggest you re-read 1984 to see a true nightmare: phony wars with real casualties all to keep the people distracted and in line but without actually destroying production centers and facilities.

Possibly Orwell’s 1984 was simply set in the wrong century. 
is there any possible clue we can look for to tell us the truth of it all?  i think there is.  First, will the outcome of the primaries seem to correspond to any sense of reality?  Remember Joe Stalin’s great observation that political power is not in the hands of the voters but in the hands of vote counters.

Then, once the final candidates are chosen, will any of them offer real leadership and some practical, workable, logical solutions to the major issues that face us to include energy costs, the debt crisis, and the middle east power keg?  These are all smart men with the ability, as president, to convene a forum of the brightest minds available to address nearly any subject.  Will they?  And if so, will they follow the recommendations.  Before you answer too quickly, think of the Simpson-Bowles bipartisan commission on the debt and whether ANY of their recommendations were followed.

Now, am I advocating that we throw in the towel and simply walk away to let the wizards behind the curtain do their thing in peace and quiet? That is what the conspiracy theorists are saying: that it does not matter at all what we do or how we vote.  Do I accept that? Absolutely Not!

Until some new data surfaces to support that theory beyond refute then this still remains the most important election of my lifetime and maybe of the lifetime of this country.  Even though i believe the philosophies espoused are too often based on a flawed and/or obsolete world view, I do still believe one of those world views has a better chance at bringing its ideology in line with reality than the other because I believe its political aims and goals are far more moral, practical, and most importantly, far more in keeping with the realities of human nature.

Discussing these possibilities is fun but also important because it helps to focus us on context as well: how do subsequent actions correspond to pre-election rhetoric and if not, why not.  Without knowing why not, we do not know how to fix it because we are bring a hammer to drive in a screw and a wrench to pound in a nail.

 

 

It’s Not About Health Care, Stupid!

San Diego -- I thought i would have at least a week to sit back, take in the sad spectacle of presidential contenders forming their circular firing squad, and worrying perhaps more about issues of foreign polict such as actions in Iran and their proxy, Syria.  Now there is a chance for us to really get in deep doo-doo no matter what we do beause we have utterly failed to do what was called for back when we could have had some potentially positive inpact.  Now, if that explodes, we will truly be “damned if we do and damned if we don’t” no matter what.  Brilliant.  The only good side for the administration is it will be a great distraction.

But no, another flack has arisen over health care/insurance mandates that has both sides focussing on the surface and ignoring what, to me is clearly a huge issue over the power of the presidency and the government in our private and contractual lives.

What is it that makes some minds go numb when the messiah du jour speaks?  What arcane mesmerism makes them just assume that the assertions by their idols in government are accurate against all common sense and checkable facts to the contrary?  This whole flack about insurance companies being mandated to provide contraceptives is couched in the warm and fuzzy language of caring about women’s health care.

Bovine Excrement!

What it is about is a naked power grab that will set a precedence that you all will not like when a president of another party is in power that you fail to see?

We surely all know by now that the President thinks (because he has openly said so) that the Constitution is flawed and, by implication, needs to be replaced with one he would write.  His view is echoed by a Supreme Court justice just returned from the middle east, that garden of interpersonal relations and political sweetness where she offered opinions stating they should not use our Constitution as a model.  Statistics would probably show that at least 9 out of 10 dictators would agree with her… and with him.

Lets forget for the moment that Presidents and Justices swear an oath to defend, protect, and uphold that Constitution and just assume neither the President’s nor the Justice’s vocabulary permitted them to understand those words as most folks would.  After all, they are two syllables each and not words in the common TV-inspired language.  And no where are the terms “like” or “you know” or any four-letter epithets in evidence so the entire thing is rendered incomprehensible to most of the posters on that paragon of deep intellectual insight, Facebook… and apparently to the President and at least one Supreme Court Justice as well.

We almost have to assume that level of illiteracy otherwise their own statements and actions would make of them the ultimate hypocrites and surely they are not that… surely.  Or it would make some actions treasonous and surely we do not want to go there.   It does certainly give you a new respect for their writers who populate the teleprompters…

But here is the deal now as I see it: the president is usurping Constitutional limitations on his power, as well as congressional authority, by mandating all by himself that insurance companies of all types provide some service, targeted to a specific demographic, free of charge to the recipients.  So what is the problem?  I see several.

Problem One: He is proclaiming the presidential power to override personal contracts to mandate activity that is not even discussed in Congress.  There is no provision in the Constitution that grants him OR congress that power.  If it stands, then there is nothing to stop a President from the other party from declaring the opposite, or that he has the personal positional power to mandate that all insurance contracts for male employees contain clauses where they will be granted penile implants for free… or for that matter to interfere in any contractual arrangement he or she thinks should be changed for his view of the greater good.  If you support it happening now then you better be prepared to shut up when it happens in the other direction.

Problem Two: He is proclaiming the presidential power to provide special services for non-life-threatening issues to a limited demographic and not to another.  Generally in the interests of their beliefs in social fairness, the left argues that something must be done for ALL of those effected if it is done for any of them.  Well, as pointed out in the next segment, ALL policy holders or the companies that pay for them are effected whether or not they are female.  And since males generally do not have contraceptives, does this policy mandate that they must be given condoms for free? If not, then how does that equate to the equal social justice for all whined about by liberals? The answer, especially since those meds are already available for free from Planned Parenthood, is obvious.  This does not address some inequity: it is neither about social justice nor is it about health care.  It is about insinuating and asserting power.

What if instead of an evangelical Marxist you had an evangelical Christian Fundamentalist who mandated that such medications could not, as part of a government program, be given to ANYONE?  You would, if you support this mandate now, have to support that opposing president’s right to do that even if you did not agree with it.  Or are you only willing to ignore the Constitution when it goes against your personal wishes but want to see it used as a club when you agree with its provisions?

Problem Three:  He is ignoring the laws of economics by pretending that his mandate has no cost to it to anyone.  That is just economic ignorance gone to seed if you believe that.  Even New Math would let you figure this out for yourselves.  The medicines in question are not free to the providers, so who pays for it if not those for whom it is provided?   When Planned Parenthood gives the same meds out for free, the cost is borne by their contributors… but there is still a cost that is going to be borne by someone.

When a private company does it, that cost is borne by being spread across their customer base meaning, for insurance companies, the buyers of the policies are paying for something whether they want to or not and whether they have any moral objections to it or not.  And since Obamacare mandates that businesses pay all the costs of health care and provide it free to employees, the cost is borne by the business and ultimately by their customers… us.   And the slack is picked up by the taxpayers… again, us.  Free?  Not hardly.

Not enough problems for you yet?  OK, here are some more.

Problem Four:  He is talking out of both sides of his mouth when he argues that women should be in charge of their bodies (so they can abort a pregnancy if desired) but apparently now arguing that they are also so stupid or so weak they cannot take charge at the other end of the reproduction process and not get pregnant in the first place. So which is it?  Strong and intelligent or weak and stupid?  What works at one end has to work at the other or it is not true.

 I also need to have it explained to me how free contraceptions from this source is somehow better than the free contraceptives ALREADY available free from outlets such as Planned Parenthood?  This is not about women; women are being used as pawns in a power struggle and because the opening volley uses ammunition dear to them, they are following along without seeing past the immediate red herrings.

Problem Five:  It removes any pretense of allowing the free practice of any religion guaranteed in the First Amendment by demanding that anyone who is in anyway involved in paying the costs of this medicine must do as mandated whether or not they find the use of it voluntary and morally repugnant.

Remember we are not talking about pills for headaches or pain; we are not talking about antibiotics for helping to heal wounds or diseases – unless you think that pregnancy is a disease.  Obama apparently does; he already said he does not want his children to be “punished” with a child.  Punished with a child?  Really?

Is there anyone from basically grade school on up who does not now know how to make a baby and how to avoid that happening?  We are talking about dealing with the results of a voluntary act, except in the case of rape for which I would happily make an exception.

But the real issue here is the answer to a simple question: does the federal government, or the President, have, under the authority granted them by the Constitution they/he swore to uphold, the power to prohibit not just churches, but the people themselves, the citizens of this country, the free exercise of their religious beliefs unless those beliefs lead to some criminal activity?

If you do not know the answer to that then you really need to read the document this flack is all about.  And until you do that, you need to shut up and back out of the discussion until you can engage intelligently in the real issues.

Personally I do not believe the government has ANY business in this area at all.  I do not believe that abortion, except in the case of rape or incest, should even be a governmental topic.  It is not a constitutional topic.  I do not believe the government should take it upon itself to prohibit it or make it somehow illegal.  But I also do not think the government should facilitate it by making taxpayers pay for it.   I think it is entirely a private matter, a matter of choice that i think individuals have, but it is none of the government’s business one way or the other unless it is tied to some criminal act.

But this mandate is not really about that issue either.  Stripped of the obfuscatory shield of pretense at being about women’s health, it is about cold, naked power and whether or not the President, any president, has this sort of power.  It is not really even about contraception or abortion; those, along with “womens’ health care” are just the ammunition being used to rally some narrow-viewed individuals into the fray.  It is, at its core, about the power of the President and the government and how far that extends into private lives and business contracts.

And if it is allowed to stand, what it does is give any president, not just this president, the power to step into the middle of your beliefs and into the middle of your business contracts.  At least insist, even if you support the result, that it be debated in Congress and presented as a proper bill that does not do any violence to the constitution.  Then when he signs it it will be under the proper authority.

But that is not what he wants to happen.  He wants the authority to do it himself outside of congressional oversight and outside of the constitution.  This is a floodgate I do not want to see opened.  I do not want even Presidents I support having this much power because when it happens, the America of the founders will be dead.

Remember in the last post I said you had to take the complaints used as the rationals in the Declaration of independence as the foundations of the limitations to federal power protected by the Constitution and especially the Bill of Rights.  Here, direct from the Declaration itself, is one of those things that pushed the founders into a war…

Speaking about the abuses of the monarchy they wrote,

“… He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” 

Can we spell “Czars” and the incredible expansion of them in the Federal Bureacracy where without congressional oversight they crank out regulations for the most intimate details of our lives?  Those are the sorts of things we rebelled against and created a government of only 3 parts where laws could come from only that set.

Or how about this complaint in the Declaration?

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.”

That same Supreme Court Justice mentioned above once opined we should look to foreign laws; and this entire administration seems interested in allowing foreign bodies and departments such as in the U.N. to subject us to their rules.

I would suggest the transformation mentioned in previous posts is well underway.  If this latest power grab succeeds, and if Obama is re-elected and then is free to use that power as he wills without worry about future elections, we will see our country become unrecognizable in a very short period.  And if efforts are made to override the XXII Amendment all pretense will be gone.  I can live with a President Obama, I cannot accept a King Barrack I.

Should that happen, I think the people will decide it is time for another revolution as Jefferson anticipated, just later than he thought it would happen. And in the furtherance of that outcome, I will now go back to watching the presidential candidates beat each other up so the public hates them all and, int he process, do all that they can to re-elect Obama.

 

Can A Transformation Based on Hate Be A Good Thing?

San Diego – Let me give you some dots to connect…

Obama announced and is openly pursuing a program to, in his words, “… fundamentally transform our country.”  In this he has the lock-step support of followers who see him as a political messiah.  This, however, is a very different goal than the founders had.  They recognized a distinctly American character, also easily recognized by early visitors and writers such as Alexis De Touqueville, and sought via the Constitution and its amendments, to protect it, not to change it.

But following the popularity of the works of European writers such as with Rousseau, Godwin, and Marx, starting with Woodrow Wilson many in his party slowly transformed what had traditionally been the political philosophies of the so-called progressives, into something new, and something very, very different than the culture that was being protected by the Constitution or, for that matter, different than the one held by early liberals and progressives alike.

By the time we get through the years to Obama, we find a man who is openly contemptuous of that document and speaks openly about its fundamental flaws, but without the integrity (and with the hypocrisy) required to take an oath to adhere to it and defend it and actually do that instead of working diligently and brilliantly to obliterate it.

I have written before about his adherence to and support of the works of those early social writers just mentioned.  I didn’t have to make anything up, I simply used his own writing and speeches and have shown where some phrases were lifted in their entirety.

To accommodate his dream utopia as formed and informed by his father and reverend and close associates during his philosophically formative years, one must first destroy the society from within.  They all knew this and wrote about it since they all studied the works of John Maynard Keanes, the economic god of the left, who wrote that you could only do that economically and the way to do it was to “debauch the currency.”   How to do that exactly was spelled out in the economic theories of Cloward and Pliven who were the mentors of the professors under who student Obama claims to have studied.  And they are certainly the approaches that appear to be implemented and are playing out pretty much as predicted.

And so a very successful effort is being made to transform the culture, which means that before the new order can be instituted, the old order must be destroyed or at least crippled.  There is a roadmap you can check to see if I’m speaking the truth here and it is from their own side.  From these same authors, now synthesized in the writings of Saul Alinsky, another mentor for the president and his close friends, are clearly spelled out the strategies needed to make all of that happen.  And the foremost is that the country must first of all tear itself apart.  And to implement that strategy, Saul observes, the best approach is to set the people upon themselves in a great class war, just like Marx predicted and said was necessary.  And then he tells how to do it.

But class war requires something that most Americans deplore and that only existed in the fringe elements because it was seriously discouraged by the founders and their philosophies.  And that something is systemic, cultivated, institutionalized hatred.  Of course there have always been examples one can point to of evil people wrapped in their own petty hatreds, but it was never a part of the official or sanctioned social fabric of our culture nor was it the social goals as outlined in the Constitution.

When evil was applied by or in the name of the government, and there is no denying that it was, it was an aberration and in direct conflict with the ethics, outlook, and morals embodied in the Constitution itself.  If there was a flaw, it was that sometimes it was not crystal clear about how abhorrent some behaviors among its citizens were and how much violence the allowing of those behaviors to continue would someday do to the document itself because, for reasons of greed and personal power, some individuals got away with despicable acts in the name of the country.  The real flaw was in the law makers who initiated or cowardly allowed such behavior to start or continue.

(A Quick “Aside:”  if you want to argue that the great flaw was the allowance of Slavery, I would agree as would many of the founders.  But in the short term the greater question was to have a country or not?  Once established, then the provisions of the Constitution itself allowed that particular evil to be abolished.  So the real message is that the Constitution provided the internal processes by which any “flaws” could be addressed without the kind of damage to the core document typical of trying to do an end run around it does.  And since that “flaw” had been corrected 150 years prior, it could not have been the one or ones referenced by Obama.)

But it was not the Constitution that encouraged it; it was a really a violation of the Constitution that allowed it until corrected.  You need to take the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as a single piece not two separate ones.  The grievances spelled out in the Declaration form the “thou shalt not” actions that the Constitution sought to prohibit the government founded under it from doing.  To understand the Constitution you must understand the grievances that inspired the Declaration.  And then apply them to our own government since we did not want to allow a new government being created to fall into the same behaviors and patterns as the one we were about to shed.  if you want to know how to interpret Constitutional provisions, especially in the Bill of Rights, you must read it in the context of the grievances set forth in the Declaration.

So now our leader wants us not to protect that founding document and its intentions but to transform it.  And from reading all of those authors noted above, he knows how it can be accomplished.  But part of the unintended consequences, known to him, but apparently not to his disciples, is that to do it you have to get people to hate one another.  And the easiest arena in which to create that hate is the economic one where using the directives of Uncle Saul, one can easily manipulate emotions from jealousy, to envy… and ultimately to hate.

We all tend to focus our thoughts on the topic of hatred in different arenas than to look at our own government (unless talking about the bigots on the other side).  Usually such discussions are centered around small fringe groups.  Skin heads and neo-nazis, supremacists of all colors (and yes, bigotry is not limited to certain skin colors or races), all practice focused hatred but are generally not in large enough groups to have much overall effect.

We also sometimes think of hatred as the purview of religions and sometimes it is.  Islam, the “religion of peace” for example, openly tells its followers, not, by the way, only a fanatical fringe but ANY follower who believes in the sacred words of the founder, to kill or convert all who are not Muslims and establish as a goal a world wide caliphate based on Islam.  The only way you can get a normally peaceful people to engage in Jihad to exterminate others based only on their beliefs, is via carefully crafted hatred. And to do that you set up the chain: jealousy, envy… and finally hatred.

But that is anathema to all things American where our Constitution forbids us to ever establish a State Religion a la King Henry VIII or some Ayatolah.  So how do we do it?  It was remarkably simple we had to create a category of entitlements or people who were, for oner reason or another, entitled to something the others were not.  We’re not talking about the natural rights spoken of in the Declaration or spelled out in the Constitution.  We are instead talking about government created “rights” because in doing that we can create the class divisions needed to start the process.

The American character was originally based on self-sufficiency but also in concern for our neighbors.  When one of our numbers fell on hard times we were expected to help them as best we could; not because it was mandated by the government and not through some government program, but because it was our individual responsibility.

And when the system was allowed to work unfettered, the rising economic tide lifted all boats and the few blind-sided by life were helped by private or faith-based charities.    But as the social experiments of the utopians started to come into play, the rising numbers of needy, resulting from the heavy caps on the production sources, overwhelmed the natural system and, right on cue, the government stepped in to “save” the “less privileged” it had created and thereby started to create dependencies and with them the beginnings of a systemic jealousy and envy. And with dependencies comes the real currency of tyrants: power.

Greece is now showing us the natural results of this.  Totally without money and utterly dependent on the largesse of their EU neighbors who have demanded, as a price for their help that Greece clean up its economic act, the now entitled and dependent citizens have turned on themselves and are rioting in the streets.  Envy has segued into hatred. People are rioting to have a bankrupt government keep providing their entitlements even when there is no money and therefore are angry at the government and at the OTHER governments for not keeping the trough full to their liking.

Here, in the US, we are on the fringes of that (and in California may be looking over the edge).  The Occupier Movement, driven by jealousy and envy and a complete disavowal of a “clean your own room or house first” approach, has evolved, predictably into a situation where envy and hatred are starting to merge.  And who is supporting that?  How to you get from envy to hatred?  Convince the envious one that they are somehow entitled and are therefore somehow a victim.

The American character, as noted before, was initially predisposed to help one another in times of need.  But the assumption was that such help was not a lifetime achievement award for galactic level laziness and at some point it would end and the person would return to productivity, leaving only the truly needy unable physically or mentally to care for themselves, that we had to collectively support.  That lasted only until, with the government’s help and support, the numbers feeling victimized and entitled became unworkable.

The strategy is a simple one: keep the economic instability to a point where the progression of jealousy to envy to victimhood to hatred is maintained, then turn it around by skewing it so out of balance and in favor now of the entitled class that the productive people themselves now feel victimized by those clamoring to take from them the products of their own work, and now you have done it: you have everyone hating everyone else and a simple push, a simple match or spark, is all it will take to bring the system crashing down waiting for a charismatic leader to step in to “save” it.

Our world’s history is full of such saviors usually carried into power on the shoulders of academia and the various victims in an unlikely alliance.  Stalin, Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, and before them all, Robespierre followed this historical progression.

So have we again reached critical mass?  Have we reached the tipping point where a single match will set us all at each other’s throats making way for the latest messiah?  Are we so far along and desperate to get our minds off of the situation we will fall for a war as the solution because we are so ignorant of the past that we will once again accept any jingoistic call to arms because we have been sold the old tale that our problems are NOT the fault of our own government but of someone else?

Will we be pushed into war with Iran to knowingly (on the part of the government) spike the price of oil which is critical to all of us and will make nearly everything more expensive to give us some external demon to hate?

Or will we simply be given a domestic demon in the form of someone from the other political persuasion that wants, oh horrors, to cut back on the entitlement gravy trough?

Right now the debt is about $1 million for every citizen.  Can you expect to pay that back in your lifetime?  No?  Then who will get to do it?  And if we keep debauching the fiat currency making each newly minted dollar worth less then the effective debt rises accordingly.  If ever there was an arbitrarily created scenario for disaster we are staring it in the face.

The only question is, are we going to fall for it?  Are we going to fall for the tactics to get us to hate each other and so take our eyes off the larger picture?  Or are we going to stand, collectively, and say if this is the transformation desired by our leaders then NO THANK YOU!  Instead, will we, as a people, prefer to recover the American Character as exemplified in the Declaration and Constitution?

instead of transforming it, are we more interested in trying to tweak and strengthen the areas that can profit from it by using the methodology spelled out in the document itself?  Or are we interested in creating for the office of president, the precedence that allow anyone occupying it to transform the country in his own vision and as he sees fit without regard to little problems like the citizenry, the congress,… or the constitution?

This is the simple question facing you.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that ANY of those people vying for the office are likely to do the latter.  But isn’t that what we OUGHT to be searching for and supporting?  If we don’t, and don’t do it soon, it will not make any difference and we will, like the citizens of Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, China, etc. look up one day and ask how this could have happened.

And the answer will be… us.  We made it happen.  We didn’t just allow it to happen, we MADE it happen.

I’m an old guy and sincerely hope I will not live to see that day.

 

Numbers, Statistics, and Damn Lies

San Diego – Let me start with a story from the late 1950s appearing in Pravda, the Soviet state-run “news” paper whose name means “truth” in Russian.  In the midst of the propaganda wars being conducted as part of a so-called “cold” war, the USA and the USSR both put forth some extreme claims to demonstrate to the world and their own people the superiority of their own systems.

In 1953 the Americans had introduced the Corvette; a cute little sports car that, within a couple of years had evolved into a car now appearing on the worlds’ race tracks and doing quite well.  The Soviets were beside themselves since their only cars looked like a Yugo that had been hit by several tractor-trailer rigs and a large black beast that looked like a Packard after an explosion in a chrome factory.  But they had statistics on their side.  Huh??? Wait and learn, young grasshopper.

The Soviets got an American Corvette and a Soviet Zug, and held a wheel-to-wheel race around the Nurburgring, the famous sports car “road” racetrack in (then) East Germany.  Now you might think the outcome was obvious, but if so, you did not read Pravda.

According to the article in Pravda (“Truth” remember) there was in international automobile race.  (True)  Among the entrants were an American Corvette made by evil capitalist burgeoisie and a Soviet automobile made by the blessed proletariat (sort-of true minus the value judgements).  The race resulted, they went on, in the Soviet car coming in second (which is true) and the much ballyhooed American Corvette doing no better than finishing the race next to last.(which technically is also true).

With a little “selective documentation” they wrote a factual story that was completely misleading. When I was in spook school we were taught that the best way to sell a lie was to wrap it in the truth. By simply leaving out one fact – that there were only two cars in the race – the Soviets told the truth but in how they went about doing so, told a lie.

Unfortunately, given a lot of years to practice it, neither the Russians nor the spy community has ever mastered that technique to the same level as current American politicians.   A Few years ago a citizen doing ancestral research discovered they were related to a current federal politician through a common ancestor and in fact they both had an ancestor that after a well-known career as a rustler, train robber and bank robber was hung in a public hanging in Wyoming.  Thinking that was an interesting historical anecdote they passed it on to the Senator.

His spin team thought it was great too and so put it in his bio with only a slight re-wording.  In the new version that politician came from famous frontier stock.  One of his forebears was well known in the cattle industry.  At some point in his career he was able to move into the growing transportation industry so important to western expansion and finally ended up being a major force in the regional financial industry.  He died during a well-attended public ceremony when scaffolding erected in his honor collapsed out from under him.

All true… but…

Well today our crop of public officials have absolutely mastered the art of statistical spin.  They know exactly when to give objective numbers and when to give percentages so that the numbers, even though factually correct, paint the picture they want in opposition to the other side.   But sometimes, the best ploy is simply to do as the Russian paper did and leave out a number or two while telling the truth about the remaining numbers you actually do use.

Two major economic issues represent a chance to practice this time-honored game of statistical spin using the “selective documentation” approach.  Those issues are the debt and the unemployment figures.

The claim is that the debt is about $15 Trillion dollars but along with that admission comes the claim that we could actually pay that off and it is no big deal.  But if that were true, why do we need to keep raising the debt ceiling?  It makes no sense.  And the reason it makes no sense is that a few details are being left out of the claim.

Our actual total national debt is actually made up of several types of indebtedness and economic liabilities.  The first part is the obvious ‘debt’ where some entity, often another country, has loaned us money in exchange for some for of promissory note, often in the form of a redeemable bond or certificate, to get repaid over time.  And that is the form of debt that is now at about $15 Trillion.  However, it is not only not all of the indebtedness of the country, it is not even the biggest part.   There are several other types of debt for which the country’s bank account is on the hook.

One of those is called “Agency” debt which is when a legal “agent” of the country such as a minister or ambassador or congress person creates indebtedness when he or she agrees to provide funding for something or another either locally or elsewhere or where their department/agency creates a cost that is not reflected on the normal bookkeeping.

Another is intra-departmental debt when one department “borrows” allocated funds from another leaving the former short and having to have more funds allocated. Think Social Security here where to so-called “trust fund” was emptied long ago by a voracious congress with promises to repay it or to keep up paying its liabilities.  Al Gore out and out lied about some Social Security “lock box” to be kept secure; it is a box on paper only and has nothing in it to protect.

And another form of debt, the big one, is for “unfunded liabilities.”  This is where commitments are made via laws or just promises to do some project or undertake some procedure but for which no funds were specifically available or allocated for it.  This is a VERY big portion of the total indebtedness and is much loved because it is essentially hidden from public view.  It is this practice that requires the debt ceiling to be raised as politicians pass laws that will require funding that we do not have.

When you add all of those methods of debt creation together the total debt raises to nearly $120 Trillion.  The least of our problems are the paltry $15 Trillion the administration will admit to.

Unemployment figures enjoy equal time being the target of selective documentation.  It is now measured in a way that is new to the country and is done precisely to lower the numbers. it was changed to protect the administration during the Carter years. it was not very successful because people noticed the sudden change in numbers and were suspicious of them.  But we’ve had time to let that approach become a new baseline.  However, real unemployment is only to be found by looking at several measures.

The first and easiest is to see how many people are collecting unemployment checks.  It is that number that forms the basis for the current administration’s calculations that we are just below 9% unemployment.  But it does not look at the complete picture of those who fell off the rolls but still do not have a job; how many people, in essence, are out there that can work, want to work, but for whom there is no viable job available.  Now that unemployment number is different, it is hovering between 15% and 20%.

And that horrid number, bad as it is, does not account for the so-called “underemployed” who have taken a job far beneath their skill set and are looking for something better but are no longer on the rolls of the unemployed.

Since no incumbent president in history has survived re-election when the unemployment rate is over 8%, the real numbers would be devastating and I’ll bet nearly any amount of money that a statistical view will be put forth that indicates, by ignoring some data, that come election time the unemployement number is below 8%.

The problem is that would be mathematically impossible to achieve since it would mean adding ¼ to ½ million new jobs every month from now until then.  And that cannot happen since we are actually loosing jobs.  In the last three years (Bureau of Labor numbers) approximately 2.5 million jobs were lost and approximately 1.2 million positions are no longer available.  But somehow, magically, I’ll bet the numbers get ‘cooked’ to claim something below 8% towards the end of this year.

So where does that leave us?  It leaves us with a clear choice of philosophies.  Let’s take the overt value judgments out of this and simply call things as they are then let the people, both sides claim to represent, decide what they want.  And the choice has never, in our history, been so cleanly presented.

Do you, a citizen of the US want…

• A more powerful government capable of intruding anywhere into your life or do you want a less powerful one limited to simply those powers listed in the Constitution?
• Do you want to have the government provide you with all manner of goodies and safety nets that will be paid for by future generations or do you want the government to live within its means as you have to so that future generations can grow and prosper?
• Do you want the government to define for you how your faith can be practiced or do you believe that is none of their business?
• Do you think the government knows best how you should allocate the money you earn or do you believe that is your prerogative?
• Do you believe in private ownership of property or do you believe that the government actually owns all property no matter how earned or acquired and is best able to allocate it as it sees fit?

Those questions, and the answers to them, are the cornerstones of two very different views of how a nation state can be governed and how the government itself relates to the citizens.  We have never before faced such a clearly defined choice leading to those two but opposing views.

Certainly there are lots of people who honestly believe that the government’s role is to take care of its citizens and create not just a level field to play on but also a level score on the board regardless of the team’s performance.  Do you really believe this too?

if so, then when you watch the Super Bowl this weekend, think about how comfortable would you be if one team clearly outplays the other, scores more touchdowns, intercepts more passes, but in order to keep it fair, whenever one sores points, equal points are also placed on the board for the other team and in the end both are declared equal winners?

No?  Then why do you want a government and society to be run that way?

By the way, just to leave you with another bit of selective documentation to ponder.  Did you know that the Constitution recognizes and the Supreme Court has defined in interpreting relevant cases, several categories of citizen?

• A “Naturalized” citizen, for example, is one that was foreign born or a citizen of a foreign state who has entered the country legally and has then gone through the naturalization process, passed the test of citizenship, sworn an oath of allegiance, and is now granted citizenship.
• A normal, plain ol’ citizen is anyone born on U.S. territory regardless of the status of the parents’ citizenship.  This category includes the “anchor baby” issues now rippling through various discussions on immigration.
• And then there is the “Natural Born” Citizen.  This is a person born to parents, BOTH of whom are, at the time of the birth, citizens of the United States.

Only a natural born citizen is eligible, under the Constitution, to become president no matter where they were born.

 

Something Inspirational for a Change

San Diego –  While the contenders for the leadership of our country form their circular firing squads and try to outdo each other in a quest to determine the most unprincipled and sleasiest among them, lowering themselves to pusillanimous, perfidious, and one might say pecksniffian pronouncements, I had all I could stomach for a while so I was spending some time looking up an old acquaintance.

In Denver, one of my favorite assistants was a man named Tom.  A HUGE, powerful guy he was the ultimate assistant as he could virtually carry the whole grip vehicle instead of lugging case after case.  He was also an orderly at Denver’s famous Craig Rehabilitation Hospital. (He now has become a nurse.)  He was friends with and introduced me to a man named W Mitchell who was a patient of his at the hospital and the Mayor of Crested Butte, CO.

Mitchell had suffered as few humans in the history of humanity have ever suffered and survived.  In a horrific motorcycle accident his face was turned into an inspiration for a sequal to Mary Shelley’s monster and his hands were melted and burned off.  Then, deciding that he would become a pilot, a few years later his plane crashed leaving him paralyzed and back in the hospital.

But through it all he sought to help others, and ultimately became one of the most incredibly motivating speakers on the curcuit.  Many times some handsome dude gets up there to inspire us and some in the audience with real problems and some with, as Mitchell calls them, “mental wheelchairs,” look at them and ignore the message by hiding behind the feeling that the finely dressed, well paid presenter, “just doesn’t know what it is like…”  Well you can’t look at Mitchell and ever, ever think that.  Oh yes he does, and the scars shout it out over the pitch of his quiet voice.

I was remembering about him while thinking about how to motivate some folks with an “oh-poor-me” attitude so I looked him up to see if he was still alive and kicking and what might have happened to him.  To my delight he is still around and still speaking all over the world.  i found on of the promotional videos of him and wanted to share it with you.  It is about 14 minutes long but I promise you it is very, very much worth it.

http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/what_matters_w_mitchell

Enjoy.  And thank you Mitchell, if you ever catch wind of this, for being an incredible inspiration to me and thousands who have seen you in person.  I wish I could bring you here to speak to our students.  Now if only i could take some of that to inspire and motivate my own students I’d be a happy camper.

 

The State of the Union Address

San Diego – I love my friends, especially the ones who can engage in serious discussions even when we disagree.  So of course, the sounds from the State of the Union Speech last night as well as the response had not died away before I got messages asking what I thought.  I am blessed with acquaintances and friends, some of whom agree with me and some of whom don’t but all of whom can join in a spirited, even passionate discussion and yet never once devolve into the sad state i see on Facebook where bumper sticker/cartoon humor is passed off as intelligent comment and where labeling, disingenuous assertions and illustrations, and outright historically inaccurate quotes or events are passed off as anything other than the petty and often vile propoganda that it really is.

I made the mistake with one person that I other wise like but who insists on posting the silliest, most misleading and often openly inaccurate things he has found somewhere else in the pages of his own side’s choir book as if they were valid and insightful comments or “gotcha” comments.  i researched and responded with the facts that countered the ridiculous assertions.  THe result?  Nothing.  He first tried to use the old debating ploy of diverting the subject to some ancillary point or when that failed, excusing one wrong with another wrong as if that made it all right.  So i gave up and decided the general tone of the material there is so consummately infantile that all it did was raise my blood pressure for nothing.  So i quit and now just skim on by such things. In all fairness i have to tell you i do get the same level of claptrap from those on a side much closer to my own beliefs and the same technique as above was just as ineffectual.

So I’ll stick to my more seriously disposed and far less intellectually challenged friends and here try to answer the questions as well as possible given the short amount of time to try to digest it.  I downloaded a copy but have not had the time to really go over it carefully so please be aware that i am here speaking from memory and notes taken during the speech.

First of all, I am sure Obama’s speech will leave most of his disciples in a state of abject euphoria; God knows the man can give a speech. if I were grading his presentation skills in a speech class he would certainly be given an “A.”  But content is often a completely different matter.  Among the rhetorical flourishes designed so that everyone seemed to have gotten a little of what they wanted there were some ”tells” that let slip what he really thinks as well as some items that I believe research will reveal took a most cavalier approach to the truth.

First I must tell you, I do believe the man is sincere in his beliefs and that those beliefs are set forth clearly in his book.  They just do not coincide with mine at least vis-a-vis what is good for the country.

He avoided, in the speech, some of the really hot issues like health care except tangentially and served up more platitude than policy… but overall I think he did it really well.  And in fact there were a few things i agreed with such as a bill to prohibit insider trading by congress (or, i would add, any governmental official). I wanted him to go further and request a bill to make sure no laws from congress could be made to apply to everyone BUT congress.  That would have been a great line and a great position and an absolutely safe one since congress would never agree to it.  it would give him a major point in debates and publicity without having the slightest chance of actually happening.  I think he missed a chance at a safe line that would have been so powerful that even his opponents would have been taken off guard and perhaps overlooked the rest of it.  Everyone in congress would probably have applauded knowing they could then ignore it.  And with that no one could question that he really did want to change the way the government did business in a good way.  I think he want to do that too but not in a way that for me is a good one.

For example he said a couple of scary things that brought my red flags to full attention.  He made it clear that the Constitutional division of powers was a constraint he no longer felt it necessary to observe.  We had  a previous “tell” of that when the Chinese Premier (or Prime minister, i forget his title) was here during a wrangle over some policy or another and Obama said that his (meaning the Chinese official’s) system was so much easier for getting things done.  Whoa…

Well last night he has obviously decided to adopt that approach to simply bypass congress.  Of course with his cadre of Czars he has already done that to a very large extent.  I would be opposing it no matter who was in office because it flatly tosses out checks and balances as set forth in the constitution and sets incredibly dangerous precedents for those who follow.  But it clearly tells how he thinks government should operate: and that is certainly not like a republic

He also made it clear he believes in equality of outcome AS WELL AS equality of opportunity; and that is something I also oppose.  He spoke of immigration reform, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. I agree with a person being able to earn their citizenship but we already have the rules for that laid out on the books. THe first step to citizenship needs to be obeying the laws not breaking them as a first act.  For those here legally already then i would certainly entertain discussions on means for them to earn their citizenship.  But i have several friends here who were foreign nationals that while here as a student earned their citizenship the prescribed way.  I do not see a reason to change that until i hear something better… he did not provide that in the speech but I am open to hearing it.  What i do know is that the so-called “DREAM ACT” contains so much in it that I vehemently oppose that the few areas i could accept are so utterly corrupted by the other that I do not support it in its present form.  But I am willing to talk about how to make it work.

He spoke several times about “investments for the future” as if he, BHO, knew the future better than those who make a living doing investments and studying such things.  I actually believe he thinks he does.  And in someways he actually does: he has a future ideal, the same one as his father and his former pastor.  He sees it clearly and wants to make it come true.  He sees it somewhat uniquely because it is alien to most people who are willing to take him at his word; it leads to a state very different than where we are now, but more importantly, very different than the one put in place by the Constitution.  Therefore i am opposed to it.

He outright lied about some of the energy things but that is old news. His platitude about doing EVERYTHING to increase domestic energy was a great line, but i do not believe that he believes it and his actions thus far make that clear.

And finally he had a throw away line that got scant applause because i think it took the audience by surprise and they were not quite sure what to make of it.  I asked congress to send him a bill to give him — HIM — the power to “root our corruption in the judiciary branch.”  WHAT???!!!  He already has basically described a path to circumvent the congress and now wants the power to basically control the judiciary.

Wow!  Does no one else see the dangers in that?  Even the people who would like to see his policies made law are ignoring the dangers of what then happens when power changes to the other team.  And what about that nagging little thing called the Constitution?  Will those of you in favor of that do this simple bit of research?  Check on the nations and societies that presently or historically have a system in which the leader (whatever he or she may be called) has the power to control the other branches of government and tell me if those are what you want?  It is what our president wants.  How do i know that?  He has said so.

Taken together those philosophical positions overrode any of the more specific policy claims or proposals, even the good ones, since they are directly contradictory and I believe in the power of his philosophical beliefs in which which he has never wavered before can I believe in his policy assertions which he has already backed off or modified.

The Response?  I thought the response was a nice essay; I agreed with many of its points.  At a spot or two I thought it rose to being a rallying call behind a position and philosophy I liked and wished the candidates were openly supporting them or saying the same things.  But in total, it was, to my ears, more a speech in a vacuum and not really a response to the State of the Union.  it did not address point by point what was contained in the SOTU speech, showing what could and should be supported and what could and should be opposed and, in both cases, why.  So i think it generally fell on deaf ears already calloused by the endless so-called debates.

So, there are my responses so far.  I reserve the right to alter some of them after I’ve had a chance to read the transcript of the speech and do some research and fact checking on its various points.

 

The State of the State’s Educational System

San Diego – Tomorrow the Spring Semester starts, and with it comes the onslaught of the issues and problems created for teachers and especially for students by the State’s budget crisis.  So this is perhaps a reasonable time to offer a somewhat jaundiced view of it all.

The underlying official California educational philosophy holds that education up to and including college/university ought to be free to all state citizens.  The concept is based on a truly benign and well intentioned perspective that holds, true enough, that it is through education and perhaps education alone that a society’s real future can be found and therefore, it is in that society’s interest to provide their citizens with a good education.

Most states agree that should include K-12 but California believes it really ought to include secondary education through undergraduate levels at least.   Unfortunately, within that desire lies a lot of places to go very much off the rails, not the least of which is in the definition de jour as to what constitutes a good education.  Whenever the propriety of a course of action – or course of study – can be determined by a political entity then the conclusion rapidly retreats from one based on practicality and even reality and becomes one based on political whims of the day.

Consequently I must openly disclaim that I oppose that idea on at least three grounds:

1. People, including students understand that in this mercantile society you get what you pay for and when something is offered for free the price honestly tells you what it is likely worth.
2. Education is not cheap to provide when done well and when the state is running low on money and education suffers, then the really good teachers are likely to go to the better paying schools resulting, sooner or later in the state schools being the poorer ones in terms of educational delivery by anyone’s definition of good.
3. Since the goals are politically defined then the requirements tend to favor courses that help perpetuate the sponsoring political philosophies over any real world needs and the results are incredibly well educated people who have not a single real world skill and have no chance at employment except to re-enter the education system to perpetuate that which thy have been taught.

I cannot change those goals, they are what they are.  I can only try to reveal them and their results and do the best I can to prepare my own students for success in a real world even if it is not the world my academic colleagues wished existed.  You however, must understand that much of the current budget impasse flows directly from attempts to reach that goal and in the process, bankrupting the system.  This same sort of scenario where one group decides another group needs to carry them based on some idea of social good or justice is part and parcel of the problem.  But for now I want to concentrate on education since it is not only typical but it is the one I have to deal with daily.

A common mantra when viewing and trying to understand political theses and their results is to “follow the money.”  So let’s do that here and see where it goes.  At my school, part of one of the largest community college districts in the state, the actual average cost to the school to provide its educational services is a little north of $150.00 per credit.  But for years, the actual student fees were limited to $20.00 per credit with the rest subsidized by the state in a manner we will address in a moment.  The budget crisis has resulted in a couple of fee increases that, in Fall of 2012 will rise to $46.00 per credit.  You residents of other states can stop laughing or swearing any moment when you compare your own fees averaging nearly $100.00 per credit and often well over that amount.  Remember the state and most academics here really want it to be free.

The immediate problem is that even this new fee hike leaves a shortfall of about $100.00 per credit.  We have about 20,000 students for whom a full load is 12 credits.  To be conservative lets say that the average student load is only 8 credits.  That means the district and state is face with a real deficit of  $16,000,000 each semester.  That is not chump change and all of it must be made up from the state coffers.  So where does it come from?  States do not do anything to earn money, they get it by taking it from someone else… you.

Well most education money comes from property taxes.  The state also promised the taxpayers that if they allowed a lottery the money would be devoted to education to supplement property taxes… unless there was an emergency.  So, dutifully, every year at the opening of the state assembly, one of the very first orders of business by the state legislature is to declare an emergency that allows them to convert the lottery revenues into the general fund.  So with that account now raped, that just leaves the property taxes.

And who pays property taxes?  Well there is a portion that comes from business properties owned by large corporations.  But business regulation has become so restrictive, since Californians see corporations as per se evil, that they are, when possible, leaving the state.  Last year roughly 700 businesses left California for states like Texas and Florida or even Idaho to avoid the onerous restrictions and escalating taxes.  So the property taxes for them went away but with them went something perhaps even more important.

The major source of property taxes comes from homeowners.  And who are homeowners?  Well most of them are employees of corporations or businesses that are stable enough and have the income to get a mortgage.  Or they used to be…

Of course when the companies leave employees either go with them or remain and try to find some new employment somewhere, which today, is nearly always a lost cause because the State is true to its values, and make this a most business-hostile environment.  Those less productive individuals the state sees as vulnerable and to be supported and deserving of help on some level are certain to tug at the heart strings of most.  But by and large they contribute little or nothing to society and certainly do not create a demographic likely to hire people that can buy homes and pay taxes based on their employment.

Of course the CRA (Community Redevelopment Act) passed under Carter mandated that home ownership was a right and so forced lending institutions into accepting mortgage applications whether or not the lender believed them capable of repaying.  So in order to get out from under those toxic loans that were sure to fail they bundled and sold many of them to those fictional private lending entities that are really an arm of the government, Fannie and Freddie.  And now a huge proportion of those unqualified loans have done as predicted even in a stable economy, and failed, leaving the government holding the bag as house after house sits empty (meaning NO tax revenue) or under water and re-assessed for lower values meaning less tax revenue.

And into that revenue void comes a world where inflation, due to the increasing fiat money supply, is making every dollar worth less, able to buy less, and along with it, creating a perfect storm for education: dwindling tax revenues and increasing costs.

Our re-treaded governor is now floating a plan to increase tax revenues by increasing marginal rates… on whom?  Businesses and people making as pre-tax income over a magic number that changes with the telling but lies somewhere between $200,000 and $1 million.  And who does that hit the hardest?  The answer is small and medium companies that are sole proprietorships and LLCs.  I had years as a photographer/industrial training videographer where my pre-tax income approached that amount but my business costs brought my actual take home down, often, to well under $100,000.00

To make matters worse the governor wants to increase the marginal tax rate.  Even though my gross tax rate might have been, let’s say, somewhere near 25-30 percent, once I had taken my deductions, my actual tax rate figured on adjusted income as compared to my gross made my tax rate closer to 12-13 percent of my gross.  The governor wants to increase those rates 2-3% according to his State of the Union address.  But going from 12% to 14% is, in actuality, over a 20% increase in my taxes.  That adds up to a big hit.

I don’t want to get off topic and into issues of what is fair or not here, although I am quite willing to debate the issue in another post.  All I am saying here is that the reality of what the governor is proposing is quite likely going to create a replay of what happened already in Maryland.  There, the state did a study that suggested if they do the same as is being proposed here, the tax revenues would increase by a rather huge amount.  But the year after the new law went into effect and the smoke cleared after tax time, it was revealed that the tax base itself dropped significantly and the actual revenues were down more from the previous base than the projections had shown an increase.

Why?  Because the targeted taxpayers simply left for less hostile territory and took their businesses and often their employees with them.

If that same result were to happen here the results for education would be catastrophic.  At my school we are already operating at a vastly reduced level after cutting classes every semester over a two-year period.  We have eliminated summer sessions and so many classes the few remaining are cutting seriously into our ability to offer our program towards either a degree or certificate.

Yes, tax revenues need to increase but they need to increase through growth in productivity not in growth of tax rates.  Yes schools need to get real with their student fees at least to the extent other states do.  And academia needs to do some housekeeping of its own.

If the avowed reason for education, that is to prepare students to enter the workforce and increase the tax base, is true then state schools need to re-appraise what classes are designed to do that and concentrate their efforts (and money) there and not in feel good “soft” topics that lead nowhere in terms of employment or in developing entrepreneurship.

And they need to get realistic about their faculty vis-à-vis who is providing quality education meeting those goals and who is not.

The rejoinder is that education should be about more than getting a job and therefore many of those feel good classes are important.  I would say that many soft subjects do indeed help prepare students for the real world but many do not and some that could are not taught from that perspective.  Learning to think critically, a very important skill, is not taught by historical revisionism or teaching students how to sing with the existing choir of the instructor and demeaning other perspectives.  I have no trouble with soft classes as electives, but when they become requirements then I think they need to be re-evaluated.

The solution to the budget crisis vis-à-vis the educational success in California schools has now gone way past the point of where it could be done easily and with minimal pain.  If – and I think it is obviously a HUGE IF – the politicians and the people truly believe that education is important even if only to help improve the tax base, then we are all going to have to deal with some pain.

The government needs to get serious about trimming waste and prioritizing its allocation of funds.  Surely education ought to be at the top or very near the top instead of being a poor stepchild to such things as prison guards and Delta Smelt. The governor promised to cut back on the size of government to demonstrate his commitment to dealing with that side of the problem.  The result, according to the State’s own figures, State Employees earning over $100,000 have been cut by 8-tenths of one percent.  Wow…

In addition to the government, the people need to understand that in the short term they too are going to have to give a little.  Perhaps the taxes may need a mild increase but the government needs to make sure that any taxes thus raised are absolutely and irrevocably dedicated to education, the law contains a sunset clause, and, while they are at it, give the lottery money back to education as well and pass laws to draw major companies that hire lots of people back into the state.  The political parties are worse than useless here, the people will have to do something I am normally opposed to and go around them to force the issues against both sides of the aisle.

And the schools have a part to play as well.  When sharpening the axe for cuts they need to look at priorities, a sort of ‘triage’ based on results, rather than trying to spread cuts evenly in the interests of “fairness.”  They need to prioritize costs toward classes and programs designed to prepare students to go out and earn a living and become productive in society and, until things turn around, be willing to axe some of the soft, feel good, politically correct programs that do not well serve those goals.  And they need to look seriously at quantitatively evaluating faculty along the same rules that courses are evaluated.

None of that is easy or painless.  But no less than a continuation of the terminal slide of the California education system is what is at stake.  It is, in my opinion, for each party to the problem and solution, the government, the citizenry, and academia itself to get real about solutions.

 

Who Is To Blame?

Once again I received a marvelous email from a friend asking why I thought the current generation was, as it seemed to them, less capable of serious reflective thought beyond accepting then parroting the sound bites and one-liners from TV or the internet. The implication was that our generation had been better at it.

I had to think about it since mine was the generation the brought us Timothy Leary and Bell Bottoms, not the best indicators of brilliance.  But I do remember some of the exchanges, debates, and discussions I had back then and can contrast them with what passes for intellectual commentary now on Facebook or in the halls on campus and perhaps this friend was on to something.

While my/our generation certainly was not monolithic in its conclusions, on giving the question some serious thought, I do believe we put more of our own thinking and reflection into our conclusions than does the current generation, at least the college-age ones of my acquaintance.  We did not use the verbal equivalent of clip art to illustrate and inform our discussions except for punctuation.  We did not, all that often, simply accept the conclusion of those verbatim, even if we agreed with them and used their pronouncements, if at all, as a jumping off point for our own conclusions.

The email asked if i blamed TV for it.  In the 1950s Marshal Mcluhan wrote that unlike every news and entertainment technology to precede it, TV was the first to have the potential of not just being an adjunct to reality, it had the potential of replacing it.  I think to a large and unfortunate degree his fear has come true.  any advanced technology has the capacity of becoming a double edged sword and used for good or ill.  TV has done both with wonderful educational content and pitiful drivel next to each other on the channel selector. By itself I think it is neutral, but I admit it is perhaps more easily missued than not.

I try to use it, along with papers and internet as resources to let me see what the spokesmouths for all sides are saying.  From the personal experience of being interviewed a number of times and then reading the article, and from watching a speech and then hearing the commentary, I no longer trust a third party’s reportage of either side including the sides they are openly and sometimes shamefully supporting since they will spin it for or against their champion.  I also place little faith anymore in what the actual participants assert and much more in what they have actually done… or not.

I am a stickler for trying as best as i can to fact check those assertions of quantifiable items that allow them to spin one direction or the other. I recently got into a pointless exchange on Facebook calling to account an assertion that was factually in error.  Instead of ever addressing the error as it impacted the argument, they simply talked around it by trying to bring up ancillary issues.  Thomas Sowell wrote that if, as a politician, you want to help the country then you will tell the truth, but if you want to help yourself, you will tell people what you know they want to hear.  it is clear to me that virtually no politician now yammering from either side is doing other than telling their disciples what they want to hear… and I find that frightening.  But I do not try to excuse one side by pointing to the errors of the other.

It is especially frightening to me at this precise juncture in time because I see it as a time of great danger for this country and this society.  Internally we are taking a trend started way back with Wilson to vear off of the course set by the founding fathers and bring it to a critical tipping point.  I wrote in the early 90s that my sense of that trend line was that by the 2016 campaign the U.S. would either be irrevocably on the road to European style national socialism (or worse) or would have turned the corner to try to head back to its beginning philosophies.  I see nothing happening to change that opinion at this point except i think the chances of the latter option being more and more remote.

My students see themselves increasingly as entitled and victimized.  They believe the government owes them something apparently just for being alive.  They do not believe there should be consequences for choices or behaviors; there is no right or wrong for them except for what they wish to have done for them.  They wish only to feed at the government trough and receive the same portions as those who are productive and, even so, they do not want to have to wash the dishes. They are more than willing to buy a sense of security (not REAL security as any summary read of history would reveal) by paying for it with freedom.  I fear that is a trend that may be unstoppable since it is supported by the entertainment industry that is, to them, the royalty of our country, and is reinforced by a government that seeks more to gain votes by dependency creation than a strong country by supporting independence and self reliance.

History is pretty clear on the outcome since we are far from the first to try this experiment; nor are we the first to weaken ourselves from within.  Meantime, as we make our citizens increasingly dependent on the government, encourage them to think the government should control the means of production, and allow our nation to become increasongly dependent on other nations that do not especially like us and cultures whose sacred texts demand int he clearest of terms that they kill us, the danger of our collapse from within is exacerbated by the dangers from without with a decreasing ability to deal with either of them.

So I am pretty much fearful for our future and in some ways a little thankful that at my age I may not live to see us fall apart as I think we will do if we continue on this trend line.  I lived to see America at its greatest and that is cool but it makes me sad to see us in decline and heading for what, to me, is an obvious cliff.

I’m not sure, however, that it can all be put at the feet of TV, though that certainly is a part.  A lot of it must be laid at the feet of academia.  Peopled as it is by folks who have never had to interact in the real world and can live vicariously not on their own actions but on the reading of other people’s ideas (not actions), and who, as Arthur C. Clarke wrote, suffered from having their education surpass their intellect. They preach a warm and fuzzy view of economic and historical pabalum designed precisely to keep the slop in that government trough flowing because, for them, it has to.

Every great autocrat in the last two centuries was helped if not outright ushered into power by the denizens of academia — the intelligentsia, who wished for a savior to protect them from the real world and then were stunned at the results which were quickly and inexplicably ignored by their academic progeny.  I have never understood that failure to learn from the past except tp accept that they had left their students in no better position to accurately review the current and historical situation, much less to fend for themselves in the real world, than they were.  Yet I see it in action almost every day on campus where, if it were not for the blessings of tenure, more than a few would find themselves out on the street where their level of competence would have consequences they most likely would not enjoy.  They have, therefore, a vested interest in maintaining and accelerating this trend to entitlement.

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, government has come to the point where it enhances elections by the incompetent many with the appointments by the corrupt few.  Churchill once opined that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter.  And even Plato characterized democracy as the rule of fools.  Benjamin Franklin said he and his companions had given us a Republic… if we could hold on to it.  But I think it is slipping through our grasp.  And we have allowed that by allowing our so-called representatives to end up representing only themselves and their own interestes and therefore, to bring this back to the early part, telling us not the truth but what we want to hear.  The first clue was when they first exempted themselves from some law passed on us. Why that was not a major red flag in the face of the electorate can only be explained by the comments of Churchill and Plato above.

My impact on the situation is limited.  I can give my one vote.  Since i am not dead and do not live in Chicago,  I cannot continue to vote for the democratic candidate a few more times (regardless of who my live personage voted for) so one vote is all I get.  Therefore I can only now and then vent and rant about it such as I do here.

But we dying few who would prefer a state of self reliance where Maslow’s idea of Self Actualization was still the highest of our psychological goals, are a shrinking democraphic, happily so in the eyes of most of my students.  They will never know the freedoms I knew, the joy of successful productivity I was allowed and even encouraged to experience, or the  ”rush” of attaining, now and then, that state of self actualization.  But not experiencing it they will probably not miss it either.  The founders wrote that our system would not survive the point where the citizens realized they could vote themselves goodies from the national treasury, forgetting it was theirs in the first place.  We are at that point, our toes are, in my opinion already over that line.  A few months will tell us if we will walk totally over it or draw back from it.

I know which I prefer but that is, alas, not what I expect to happen.  I am not sure enough of us who are old enough to remember those freedoms and joys are still around to vote, or even care anymore. or if in our antique dottage now we also simply want to play out our days with the youngsters at that same government trough.  And we don’t want to do the dishes either.

 

Labels Are Not Issues!

San Diego – There is a sorry screed from the Daily Kos that is making the rounds on Facebook that basically tries to argue that people opposed to Obama have put their hatreds ahead of their love of country and that those on the right are only motivated by hatred as an inherent component of their philosophies.  I honestly would expect no deeper thinking from writers for that group, but I confess I did expect better from some of my friends and students participating in that vast display of philosophical brilliance masquerading as a social network.

Setting aside for the moment that writers and readers of the Kos Kool-Aid (with apologies to Kool Aid for the association) are so blinded by their partisan biases that it is impossible for them to even conceive of the idea that someone could have analyzed the policies of the administration, compared those to historical ones and the results of them, and decided that it was THOSE POLICIES that were not good for the country, what is really at play is a purposeful substitution of labels for issues.

Calling someone a “Hater” or “Bigot” or any other ad hominem negative is the fall-back debating device of someone who has too poor an understanding of the issues or of the facts surrounding them to discuss them straight up.  And what it does, to avoid a meaningful, educational, serious debate on critical issues — skills with which they have, by engaging in these label-slinging approaches, admitted to being completely unburdened — is to take the focus immediately off of their failure to support their own side and tends, unfortunately, to immediately place it on the person defamed to see how they will defend themselves.  The approach appeals on an emotional level to others equally ignorant of the full story and, better yet, allows them to self-righteously and vicariously join in the fray as if they had some basic clue as to what was at stake and how all the parties and all of the competing philosophies fit into the mix.  They know nothing other than primitive “us and them” verbiage and, in fact, are no less narrow minded, short sighted, small time thinkers, than would be the individuals they accuse of being haters and bigots if they had been correct.

In this day and age of sound-bites and quotes taken completely out of context, the media provides ample fodder for such mental midgets on all sides of the fray… and they do inhabit all sides.  That they would attempt to devolve the discussion to their own inept levels is not surprising; it is a revelation, like swearing, of the extent of their knowledge and vocabulary, and to be expected.  What is surprising is the ease with which individuals I would have thought more intelligent than that, not only fall for it, but, apparently only because it is coming from someone they perceive as a political ally, parrot it as if it had any substantive value or accuracy at all.  That pathetic state of affairs is both surprising and massively disappointing.

All sides seem to agree that this is a critical turning point in our country though they disagree on which direction is good for us.  I agree that this may be one of the most important elections in our history and that the stakes are as serious as any faced in my lifetime.  So we are apparently agreed on something.  Then can we not agree on something else?  Can we not also agree that such a serious situation deserves, perhaps demands from all of us, better thinking than this fatuous labeling?  It demands that we do our deep research into core philosophies and their derivations, into the historical record to see what has worked and what has not and question why things worked or not, and that we apply the results of that inquiry to our discussions?

Serious and even brilliant thinkers over history have disagreed with one another and come to competing conclusions which they have supported vigorously but often without resorting to this sort of intellectual immaturity.

So here is the question that will only be answered by behavior:  have we so completely lost our intellects and ethics that we can only attack each other on such scurrilous grounds?  Have we so devolved from the days of the founders, who also argued passionately for varying approaches to this bold new experiment, that we cannot  take our discussions as seriously as they did?  Has our educational system left us so intellectually impoverished that all we are left capable of doing is shouting ugly names at each other because we truly have no idea what informs the other side or to what conclusions they may have legitimately arrived?

If the participants of this churlish, childish discourse on Facebook are truly examplars of the greater voting populace, then it will not matter who wins: we and our country will all be doomed anyway.

 

Machiavelli Is Alive and Well

San Diego – It is clear the democrats have boned up on their basic Machiavelli.  Writing for his prince, Lorenzo the Magnificent, he was among the first to note that in the arena of political authority over a people, “power” was not the result of money; in fact money was a by-product of power.  True power came, instead, from dependency.

It is an incredibly simple and inescapable concept: if you are dependent on someone, then that someone exerts a degree of power over you.  And the more you are dependent, the more critical to your needs and wants that dependency is, then the more power that someone will have.  I personally think that exemplifies true evil, but have to admit that even a cursory review of history shows that it works… every time.

Machiavelli also wrote that although one could rule based on love or fear, fear was better because it was far more predictable and controllable.  Ruling from love was a good way to start and get the people on your side but if you wanted to keep your throne, at some point you had to turn that love to fear.  And once you have established dependencies through goodies or the promise of goodies, then the ultimate fear is that you will take back those things.  He wrote that periodically the ruler should “turn loose his dogs on the people” so they will be so grateful when he calls them off.”

The goal was to not let the fear become unbridled hatred because that often led to rebellion and revolt.  Only fear and dependency was the proper mix.  And his advice has well served authoritarian-minded rulers from Lorenzo d’Medici to Stalin, Mao, Nixon, and now Obama.  But it works better in a demographic that has never known better than the servitude in a system in which the people are required to give their all for the government and to then be happy with what the government is willing to dole back out to them.

It almost always starts with the government largesse that creates the “love” part and then when the dependencies are established and locked into place, the largesse is inexorably removed a bit at a time with fear replacing it.  Freedom is among the first on the chopping block but that is OK for a populace besotted with entitlements; real freedom means you are responsible for yourself and that is something to be avoided at all costs.

it is also important that the goodies must not be removed too quickly or hatred will result.  Instead, the goodies must be reduced at just the right pace to keep key dependencies in place and the fear that even those will be taken away if one gets out of line.

Thus far, in our century and in this country, the fear applied and promoted is not of being sent to the rack, to the acid showers of Saddam, being flayed to the bone by the lash, or dragged to the stoning pit.  We modern Americans are so soft of spirit that such grim effort is not necessary; all that is needed is to threaten us with having to accept the responsibility of taking care of ourselves and, worse, live or die with the consequences should those efforts and those decisions fail.

Whether a Caesar, a Duke in Florence, a medieval King, a Tsar, a so-called President for Life, or as is supposed to happen in our country, a more or less honestly elected president runs it, a government is not a business that produces money.  I suppose one could argue that way back a government produced money by looting and pillaging the neighbors.  But even then the bottom line was that the only way a government makes money is by taking it away from the people who have actually produced and earned it.

Therefore the only money available to give out in “entitlements” or other dependency-generating bribes is money extracted from those who were able to actually earn some by their own skills and/or labor.  Whether it is directly pillaged loot, indirect loot in the form of ‘tribute’ to forestall further pillaging, or taxes, every cent of the government’s money comes from someone else who has delivered it over to the government at the point of a threat of some sort of consequence that seems worse than the loss of the money.

Those old time, “divine-right” kings held and enforced the idea that ALL means of production belonged to them in the first place so obviously what was produced belonged to them but, out of their kindness, they would allow the serfs to keep enough to stay alive so they could continue to work and produce for the monarch.  That was fairly easy when only the monarch (or local Lord who then had to pay the monarch) had a standing army that was as adept at terrorizing its own citizens as it was at toppling neighbors to enforce the concept.

When anything that seemed, on the face of it, to express the politically heretical idea that the King did not, in fact, deserve all of the fruits of your labor was seen as treason and punishable by death in such festive manners as drawing and quartering, it was pretty easy to understand how toeing the royal line and handing over your produce or earnings was a better choice.  But in our enlightened modern world where we engage in the pretense of honestly electing our rulers for a finite period (in theory at least) and, at least in America, enough members of our culture are not that far removed in time from the mind-set that does have some ‘line in the sand’ past which the imperious ruler dare not go lest we rise up in a body and help him or her to remove themselves from the seat of power, the want-to-be prince must be a little more devious.

Thus far at least, turning the armed forces loose on the civilian population is almost guaranteed to create that revolt.  The Constitution does allow for the militia to be used to quell any seditious insurrection but it would take some fast talking to sell the public on peaceable dissent as insurrection.  But even if the ruler did not care, at best it would be an incredibly messy and risky undertaking until the populace can be so domesticated as to offer no more risk of rebellion.

That may take at least another presidential term though I see us, especially after reading the pure idiocy and political naïveté of many of my acquaintances on that infamous social network, right at a tipping point.  So today and maybe for a few years more, our ruler has to be smarter than to simply apply blunt force trauma to the body politic.

The answer?  Create a large enough segment of the voting population that is, or thinks it is, dependent on the government for the slop in its favorite trough then you can rule not through fear of torture but through fear of an even greater horror: having the trough removed.  And some of us have grown so dependent on even the concept of the government trough that we are terrorized by the thought of having future troughs not be created.  They are so stupefied by the poison swill in that trough they refuse to accept the comment by Jefferson that a government powerful enough to give you everything is also powerful enough to take it all away.

This coming election cycle will, I believe, see the most horrific vitriol spewing forth that we have seen in a long time.  Counting on us being a population whose collective brain is numbed by TV sound bites and an overwhelming desire to not have to actually think for ourselves, the demonizing attack ads will just come pouring out and be completely unburdened by any connection with reality.  The makers of those horrid bits of offal do it because they know their partisan followers will accept it all at face value if it comes from a source they recognize as being philosophically incestuous with their own primary issues.

Despite protestations that negative campaigning is repugnant, we have already seen that they will probably be successful.  For a party with only a smoke and mirrors ‘record’ to run on, the only workable approach will be to convince the viewers that those other guys are going to remove the troughs and stop the flow of swill on which their followers have become dependent and addicted. So we will see a demonization of candidates the likes of which have not crossed the public’s eyes for a very long time.

Already the lock-step pabulum is being repeated on Facebook without a shred of fact checking or, worse, without a shred of real debate on issues that effect the future of this country.  The polarizing emotional issues will be blasted at us to garner all of our attention while the issues that may effect the financial stability of the country are avoided.  This group who cries sad tears about how we do not recognize our place in the global society do not, themselves, recognize that the global society is a dangerous place that wishes us ill and is getting themselves geared up to act on those wishes.

They will vote based on a candidate’s personal beliefs on narrow issues related usually to the important emotional troughs in the voter’s life.  Hearing a candidate is personally opposed to that trough is all it takes, whether or not that assertion is true.  And even if true, when that candidate has categorically asserted that they will abide by the law if it is contrary, it does not matter.  The issues facing the country be damned so long as the personal issues are rightly expressed.  Never mind that if the country falls those issues will be the least of one’s worries…

And at the same time they will ignore that another candidate who shares their narrow view and has promised to keep the swill flowing, even when the promises were broken and that candidate has proven themselves to be ideologically inflexible as well as unconscionably unqualified in the economic arena and in the foreign policy arena — the two most critical arenas we as a country can face – may take us further into ruin and vote for them.

I normally just throw away the trash from the union that constantly assaults my mailbox and email, but this last month an article caught my eye.  The core of it was about how, due to the pervasive technology that confuses ease of communication with depth of communication, we are losing our ability to enjoy true solitude.  So what?  Well that author suggests, and I agree, that it was only from solitude that we can honestly reflect and analyze ideas and propositions.  Without engaging in the reflective thought that only comes during solitude, all we have left to inform us and our conclusions is the constant drum beat from others.  And in this partisan, polarized world, we seem more and more addicted to the drum beat coming only from our own camp.

But one cannot engage in a meaningful debate unless they understand the truth of the other side.  Knowing only what a propaganda spinner from your side tells you about the other side is unlikely to reveal the truth.  You can only get the truth of what someone believes directly from that person since both their friends and enemies will spin it to suit themselves.

So I predict this election will turn not on issues that impact the future success of this country on the world stage geo-politically, or on the local stage economically, but on whether or not a candidate promises to keep the swill flowing, promises to feed the addicted dependency or force others to get on board and help support the self described victims and entitled pet causes.

And they will not think about what happens to the country when ALL of the citizens become entitled and feed at the trough; they wil not think to ask where will the tribute come from then?  Whose treasury or granary will be left to pillage and bring home for the trough?  What happens when they run out of other people’s money?

Their answer, based on their actions and posts is, “Who Cares?”  Who cares, as long as for the expected life of the voter clamoring for their place at the trough, the swill keeps flowing.  After that?  Who cares? if the system is doomed to collapse under its own weight but only the kids or grandkids will have to deal with it and not them, then who cares?

We were founded by people who did care.  They cared about the future and the lives of future generations.  They were people willing to sacrifice everything up to and including their lives for the bigger picture of a country.  They had their own petty squabbles by and between each other on smaller point but when the country was at stake, those got set aside, if only temporarily, for a bigger picture.

What my idiot (yes, “student,” I said it again) – what my idiot friends and students on Facebook who have swallowed the moveon.org Kool-Aid, have proven to me, is that people such as those who founded this country… are dead.  Maybe all of them.

What I read, sadly, is a narrow take, viewed from a kneeling position in preparation for the public troughs, some of which have yet to be built, that is pounding nails in the coffin of this country.  But it may well be that the coffin was already filled and you are simply and happily, even purposefully, sealing the lid so we can get on to that great social utopia you think will follow.

Good luck with that.  And to keep your spirits high, do not ever risk engaging in the type of solitude away from texting and tweeting and face-booking where you can discover that such a plan has never worked in the history of mankind’s attempts at government. Thus far ignorance has been bliss for you.  If I were you I would hang on to that ignorance and advise further that you keep your eyes closed in blissful song with others singing from the same choir book.

So keep on singing.  As one of the belwethers among the sheeple you just keep leading them up the loading ramp.  But don’t complain when you realize, too late, what that strange hammer is for.