Too much money, Too much power

         When we stick to the issues, we find that we agree most of the time, but our emotional attachment to labels confuse the issue.  The movers and the shakers use their millions to make government bend to their wills.  Democrats are very good at demonizing Koch brothers hoping we will not notice the one- per centers who grease their palms.  

         Elon Testler spends millions of dollars on Democrat candidates.  He has already been given over half a billion in subsidies and those who can afford to buy one of his cars get $7,500 in tax rebates.  Those of us who could never dream of owning a Tesla help the rich buy them.  George Soros spends millions of dollars on Democrat candidates to insure that the Keystone pipeline project is squelched.  After all he makes millions of dollars every day shipping the oil on his railroad.   

            They saved the big banks and passed new regulations that put the small independent banks out of business. Tom Steyer, Mike Bloomberg, Amber Mostyn, Eric Schmidt, and Haim  Saban are just a few of the other excessively rich who donate millions to Democrat candidates in order to insure that their corner of the world gets a nod, gets permission to pick our pockets and line theirs.

            We have to recognize that it’s a problem on both sides of the aisle and direct our attention to solving the problem at its genesis:  There is too much money, too much power in Washington.  

The Popular Vote.

The Popular Vote.   

         State legislatures all across the country are being bombarded by proponents of the Popular Vote.  Supporters, backed by huge amounts of money, want to get rid of the electoral college.  Their strongest appeal is to the notion that the popular vote would mean that “every vote counts.” That’s their biggest lie. 

        The framers of the Constitution established the Electoral College to give smaller states a voice against larger states when selecting the nation’s leader.  Each state gets the number of electors based on population, plus 2 which means smaller states have a bit of an edge.  If the Popular Vote bill passes, candidates would have to campaign in as few as 11 states in order to win an election.  Flyover country would matter not an iota. 

        Robert Hathorne is absolutely correct when he says that the National Popular Vote initiative would fundamentally change America by shifting the national political system from a representative democracy to a pure democracy.

        Our Founding Fathers spoke eloquently at every opportunity about their fears of an unfettered democracy. They were students of history and they knew that it always led to tyranny.  They established a republic, not a democracy.  They created a system that respected the sovereignty of the states.  The popular vote would undermine that important principle.

The Bra Saga

The Bra Saga.

          I stayed at my brother’s house in Flagstaff when I attended my grandson’s graduation.  He is retired now and makes his funny money selling junk on line.  As I was packing, he warned me:   "This time, don't leave any of your junk behind.   Whatever is left I am selling on Ebay"

When I returned home, I realized I had left my bra.  I sent him an email saying that I knew that anything left at his house was fair game for Ebay, but I wanted him to know that I had spent a considerable amount of money on that bra and that he should not sell it too cheaply.

        He answered the email saying that he had already sold it for $60.   He had advertised it as an extra-large, double barreled water balloon launcher.  Pretty funny, but then he confessed that he hadn’t found it. 

        A couple of weeks later at my granddaughter’s wedding, he told me that he had indeed found the bra and had listed it on EBay. 

“I am selling my sister’s bra.  She left it here the last time she was visiting.  I eventually found it hanging off the balcony.  She said it was a $40 bra which I believe because it appears to be reinforced with titanium.  As she puts it, ‘It’s not cheap keeping my girls under control.’ I am not sure of the size, but the cannonball in the picture gives you some perspective.  By the way, I tried it out and it really does support this 10 pound cannonball.  Bidding starts at $10. ” 

        Today, I get it in a package in the mail.  My son took pity on me and successfully bid on the bra and had it sent home.  It also included the sales slip:  

      "One overtheshoulderboulderholder.

       keepsemupandkeepemfromfloppin"

         

          I love my guys.

A Marijuana Bureaucracy? No!

       I used to think the initiative process was a good thing.  We were all led to believe that democracy was the ideal form of government.  I have since come to agree with the founders, that pure democracy leads to tyranny.   How often have we been duped into voting for something because it sounded good, only to discover after the fact that the proposition was written in such a way as to mislead.  

       I remember an initiative years ago that purported to protect the rights of hunters.  It actually tried to eliminate trapping.  Granted, we are often duped by legislators, too.  However, we can point the finger of blame and oust them in the next election.    

     The marijuana initiative is a case in point. According to the ARDP, the Colorado experiment tells us that teen usage is up 40 per cent there as compared to 2 per cent country wide, that its use alters the how brain works causing memory loss, lack of focus, and interfering with problem solving skills.  Furthermore, if the drug is used regularly before the brain is fully developed at about age 21, the damage is irreversible.

   Those of us who lean libertarian might say, “Yes!  Freedom to choose!"  But what the initiative puts in place is another huge bureaucracy, a monopolistic enterprise. The act limits the number of dispensaries to 10 per cent of the number of Series 6 liquor licenses offered in any area, and those medical marijuana dispensaries already established will be grandfathered in. 

     One of the direst aspects of the initiative is that it takes away the right of the employer to fire an employee who comes to work stoned.  He can act only after the employee engages in an act resulting in negligence, often too late to protect other employees or the business itself. 

     We simply should oppose any move to create another bureaucracy.  If we’ve learned anything over the past couple of generations is that bureaucracies are as tyrannical as kings, more so.  They get so entrenched they're impossible to disrupt.  A king can be deposed.  Bureaucracies are ravenous, ineffective blobs that seep into every corner of a once free society sapping it of its strength and ingenuity.  

Marco Rubio Makes me a proud supporter.

Marco Rubio has gained my undying respect by is gutsy handling of Mike Wallace’s grilling on Fox News Sunday, May 17^.  Wallace insisted that Rubio “admit” that “based on what we know now” it was a mistake to invade Iraq.  Rubio refused to play the game.  Presidents have to make decisions based on what they know at the time, and based on what he knew then, Rubio insisted, Bush made the right decision. 

What people seem to forget is that Resolution that Congress made regarding the invasion of Iraq cited many factors that justified the use of military force.  The issue of Weapons of Mass destruction was only one.  (If memory serves me, there were 23.)   First off, Saddam refused to comply with UN Resolution 1441, the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire, and for 12 years refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors access to crucial armament facilities. Other reasons listed were the attempted assassination of President Gorge H, W. Bush, the firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone following the Gulf War, Saddam’s paying bounties to the families of suicide bombers, his using the proceeds from the “oil for food” program to purchase long range missiles.

Many people will say now that they disagreed from the get go with Bush’s decision, but that is simply not true. His approval rating hit almost 90 per during and shortly after the invasion.  Bush’s success was a political disaster for Democrats in this country. 

The real disaster for world peace was President Obama’s refusal to negotiate a post war alliance.  His political base was intent on one thing: destroying George Bush’s legacy, so they intentionally abandoned Iraq and the Middle East to chaos.

Creating a Dependent Citizenry

         Is anyone out there really duped by the claims asserted in “Ballot law idea raises concerns,” February 20?  Democrats say that they harvest votes because people can’t get to the poles.  How did that ballot get to that house in the first place?  

        Is it possible that the resident is capable of getting the mail out of the mailbox, but incapable of returning the ballot to the mailbox?  I really think that the goal of the Democrat party is to create a citizenry so dependent on the federal that they are incapable of fending for themselves in any positive way.  They want the power, and we’re marching like lemmings into the sea of oblivion.  

Climate Change, Depend on it.

       Mr. Francisco Villa must know that no one is disputing the fact of climate change.  Elementary knowledge of geology shows us that the earth has been subject to extreme variations in climate since its birth so many eons ago. The issue that Mr. Esch was addressing was the extent to which human activity influenced the phenomenon. You belittled the substance of his letter by suggesting that the ratio between those support anthropomorphic causes and the deniers is 97 to 3.  Some research suggests that there are 20 times as many scientists who question the science of man-made global warming as those who signed off on it.

               There were 52 scientist who authored the media hyped United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I have identified more than a thousand scientists from all over the globe who take issue with that report including many current and former UN IPCC scientists.

               Princeton Physicist Dr. Robert Austin: “I view Climategate as science fraud, pure and simple,”

               Geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook, Western Washington University: “The corruption within the IPCC… the doctoring of data and the refusal to admit mistakes have so severely tainted the IPCC that it is no longer a credible agency.”

               NASA Scientist Dr. Leonard Weinstein “Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic theory wrong!!” —

               Nobel Prize-Winning Stanford University Physicist Dr. Robert B. Laughlin: “Please remain calm: The Earth will heal itself — Climate is beyond our power to control…Earth doesn’t care about governments or their legislation. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on its own without asking anyone’s permission or explaining itself.”

               Brazilian Geologist Geraldo Luís Lino:  “Hundreds of billion dollars have been wasted with the attempt of imposing a Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory that is not supported by physical world evidences…AGW has been forcefully imposed by means of a barrage of scare stories and indoctrination that begins in the elementary school textbooks.”

               Atmospheric Physicist Dr. John Reid “My skepticism about AGW arises from the fact that as a physicist who has worked in closely related areas, I know how poor the underlying science is. In effect the scientific method has been abandoned in this field.”

               Dr. David Deming, University of Oklahoma: “I write to expose the ignorance exhibited by WWU geology faculty, the most egregious example of pedantic buffoonery since the Pigeon League conspired against Galileo in the seventeenth century. Skepticism is essential to science.”

               I have a list of more than a thousand scientists who question the anthropomorphic theory.    Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv mapped the path that our solar system travels through the spiral arms of the galaxy, and Canadian geologist Jan Veizer plotted 500 years of climate change. The pair of scientists discovered an exact correlation.  Apparently the inflow of cosmic rays affects variations in earth’s temperatures. 

               This little speck of cosmic dust called earth travels with its paltry star through an insignificant galaxy into a vast and glorious, endless universe of space and time.  What do we know, we who are the  “quintessence of dust" - William Shakespeare.