Another gem from the past (2005?) but relevant today.

            My high school journalism instructor back in 1954 was adamant about making sure we understood the difference between news and opinion, and more important, the difference between opinion and propaganda.  Your article “White House defends reports,” Friday, June 10, 2005, demonstrates once again that journalism schools no longer make those distinctions.

            Propaganda, my teacher called it yellow journalism, pretends to be news but slants the content of the report so as to influence public opinion.  The Author of “White House….” would have us believe that President Bush is reluctant to sign off on the Kyoto Protocol because he is influenced by the oil industry, especially Exxon /corporation.  As an oil man himself, he may well be so influenced, but shouldn’t the article at least mention that 17,100 scientists from over 100 countries, most with advanced degrees, 72 of them Nobel Prize winners have been challenging the science upon which the protocol was based for 13 years, from the very beginning.

            The computer models that were used to predict global catastrophe were already proven to be absurdly wrong by 1998, but the media refuse to report on that fact, and if they do it’s in the form of a hint in a one inch column in the middle of page 16.  Instead they continue to treat the Kyoto Protocol as though it were sacred.

            Earth’s ecosystem is profoundly complex and the CO2 concentrations are dictated by the physical and chemical laws of nature that the best scientists don’t understand and the consequences of which are impossible to predict.  Ice cores drilled at the poles show us that the earth has been heating up and cooling off for thousands, millions of years, long before the advent of man, say nothing of the advent of the industrial age.  For homo sapien to think that he is in change of the majesty that is this planet, the universe, is the height of hubris

            Scientists cannot predict what the weather will be like this afternoon, how they can possibly pretend to predict what it will be like in 10 years.  Researchers prove themselves wrong on almost every issue year after year. The changes in dietary recommendations for babies are just one small example.   At one time we were told that we must feed our babies one egg a day, then it was, no eggs at all, then it was not the whole egg, just the yolk, then it was no, not the yolk, just the white.   First coffee causes heart problems, now we learn it can prevent heart problems if we drink at least five cups a day.  Chocolate is bad, no chocolate is good; especially for your teeth Carbohydrates are good!  Carbohydrates are bad!!

            There are those who say it is best to err on the side of caution.  But erring in face of evidence that proves we are wrong from the beginning is silly.  The results show us that there would be no benefit to following the protocol and the costs would be enormous.  Western governments tend to do the feel good thing rather than make decisions based on logical analysis. Let’s opt for the right thing rather than the feel good thing.

Immigration Bill

I have been reluctant to speak about the immigration bill because dealing justly with our rampant immigration problems is so important.  We are a land of immigrants, and how we come together to become Americans is fundamental to what the idea of America is or will become.

However, what I have seen lately is insane.  It’s over 1200 pages.  The first 155 deal with critical immigration issues.  The rest is an example of the utter contempt our political class has for the American electorate. They obviously agree with Bill Maher that we are a bunch of ignorant knuckle draggers.

Like the Affordable Care Act, the Immigration bill panders to every special interest group.  Reid and Dan Heller get 100 million to encourage tourism.  Alaska gets special exemption for seafood workers. Kickbacks and perks ad nauseum. 

It establishes huge bureaucracies that will be run by un-elected officials who answer to no one, thousands more government workers who will grant themselves huge bonuses for watching porn. 

Marco said there is a very strict work requirement, but immigrants are exempt from the requirement if they are working on a GED, caring for a child or parent, or can’t get a job for a reason they consider no fault of their own. A work requirement that doesn’t require work?

The Sanders amendment recycles the defeated jobs bill providing $1.5 billion over two years to help 400,000 people between the ages of 16 and 24 find summer and year round jobs. Can we have an immigration bill that deals with immigration?

Did you think the bill would require the government to finish the fence? I thought so.   Some 180 days after the enactment of the bill, Napolitano will identify where the fence should be deployed, but “nothing in this section requires the Secretary to install fencing.”   

The bill doesn’t strengthen immigration requirements, it weakens them.  Asylum seekers get extended deadlines and new layers of appeals and the bill gives the Attorney General’s office the right to pay for all the legal bills incurred by those who seek asylum.

The bill handcuffs border patrol agents by protecting the “civil rights” of those who cross illegally.  They cannot be punished if it is “against the best interest” of the individual attempting to cross. 

As usual, our legislators are promoting another great big joke.  I for one am not laughing. 

Government devours wealth

               To get us to vote a certain way government pretends to do what it does to help the little guy, promote jobs, and increase opportunities.  In reality, government destroys job opportunities for the little guy.  Take California where blue collar industries like Chevron get taxed at a 44 per cent rate.  White collar industries like Apple and Google get taxed at a 10 per cent rate.  Blue color industries are heavily regulated.  White collar industries get the green light.

               The bigger the government, the more vulnerable it is to outside influence and manipulation, and who are the expert manipulators?  The guys at the top.  George Soros has devoted his life to working the system.  He may not be the richest man in the world yet, but he’s close.      

               When gas prices spiked from 25 cents to 75 cents a gallon in 1977, President Carter felt our pain at the pump, so  he created the Department of Energy to ensure energy independence and availability. The department employs 116,000 employees including contract employees and spends nearly 30 billion a year.  Is that close to 1.5 trillion we’ve spent on solving our energy problems only to pay close to $5.00 a gallon today? 

               I have no idea how many people work at the department of labor, but I was astounded by the size of the building when I visited Washington a year ago.  I’m guessing it employs well over a hundred thousand of white collar people hard at work trying to make rules and regulations that likely depress the blue collar market.

               And big government impulses are not party specific.   Jim Talent (R-MO) just sponsored the Skilled Work--force Enhancement Act (H.R. 1824), a bill that purports to help blue collar workers.  My prediction is that the bill will increase the white collar work force in D.C. and in government centers across the country, but it will do little to promote blue collar jobs.

               The one thing that creates jobs for the little guy is free enterprise. What big government is good at is devouring wealth, creating poverty, and keeping the underclasses dependent.

Recapping the GM Scandal

We, you and me baby, gave GM 50 billion, 10 in the bailout plus billions more in tax shelters and paying off pension commitments. GM used $540 million of our hard earned money to build a plant in Mexico.  Remember the grand speech at Janesville, Wisconsin? Obama promised that if we gave GM the money, the plant there would stay open for the next 100 years. Instead of keeping that open, GM opened another plant - in China and will spend another 691 million to build another plant – in Mexico. 

What’s really creepy is that the Cadillac division of GM made a propaganda film, celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of the Chinese Communist party, paid for by, you guessed it, the American Taxpayer, you and me babe.

We spend over 50 billion to save a company worth 28 and they ship thousands of US jobs out of the country with the support of the unions, who sold out their members for an 18 per cent share of the company stock.  

Thomas Paine was right: Government is at its best a necessary evil; at its worst an intolerable one.

Obama's "Investments"

  Obama invested another $5 billion of our money to achieve his goal of having 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. It makes me feel so good, warm and fuzzy all over to think that he cares so much about our environment. The first requirement of a good leader is that he shows us that he cares.

        Do you think he might know where we get the electricity to run the cars?   From burning coal!  From burning petroleum! From nuclear power plants!  I expect he does, but his friends like Al Gore have invested their fortunes in alternative energy industry, so he’s obliged to pay them off by throwing our tax dollars at them, indenturing our grandchildren to his grand legacy.

       He destroys the jobs of the coal miners, puts the kibosh on pipe lines and oil drilling, adds 1.5 trillion in new debt every year of his presidency, and we, we exult him, “our Lord and Savior, Obama.” We are such idiots to fall for such schmaltzy, emotionally driven policy.

           But, you’ve gotta praise him for stopping the military from waterboarding terrorists.  That was so inhumane.  It’s so much more humane to kill them with drones, and if a few non-militants of the population happen to be taken out as well, well, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.

          He’s ratcheting up the attacks in Pakistan, six already this year.  I wonder.  What is the psychological impact of the terrifying American death machines flying into your neighborhood and taking out your neighbors? Would the general population be more easily co-opted into anti-Western extremist groups? Do you think the Nobel committee might regret their hasty decision to give him the Peace Prize so early into his presidency?  Nope.  Norwegians have mush for brains, too.

Gerrymandering Gone Giddy

Had President Obama really been interested in immigration reform, he would have pushed it through during the first two years of his administration when he had control of both houses.  The Democratic Party owes way too much to the unions to threaten their financial support.  They cannot afford real immigration reform.    

Had President Obama really wanted to do something about gun control, he would have moved decisively right after the Newtown massacre when 60 per cent of the American public was enraged and sympathetic.  He didn’t do it because it would be politically imprudent, threatening Democratic control of the senate.
So why is he wasting hot air on the issues now?  Perhaps there was something going on behind the scenes that he preferred we not notice.  On the Thursday before Easter weekend, he signed an executive order establishing a commission to crack down on electoral problems across the country. The commission would, among other things, establish the number of polling places, manage the training a recruitment of poll workers, the voter machine technology, and the distribution of provisional and absentee ballots.
This executive order is a preposterous violation of the decentralized electoral process established by the constitution.  The framers did not want to give the central government the power to manipulate elections to insure they stay in power.  
What is telling is that the president did not appoint anyone to the commission who had actual experience in the electoral process.  He appointed two campaign finance lawyers. What is even more telling is that this administration has shown no interest in preventing or prosecuting voter fraud.  Think Black Panther intimidation, no problem,  Melouise Richardson who bragged about voting six times and insisted that it was her duty, not problem.   This administration actually sued states for trying to remove non-citizens from the voter rolls and states who passed voter identification laws.  It’s interesting to note that not one state with voter identification laws went for President Obama. 
The real irony of the situation is that the party of the president, the party famous for systematic voter fraud, is crying wolf.  No one denies that the JFK election was rife with fraud in both Illinois and Texas.  LBJ’s shenanigans are famous. Dead people voting has for years insured Chicago’s Democratic majorities.  Anomalies in the last election are glaring, precincts voting unanimously for President Obama, precincts where more people voted than were registered, a 116 per cent voter turnout rate when most precincts are lucky to get 32.
Election gerrymandering is a serious threat to our freedoms, and this is gerrymandering gone giddy.  Can it be stopped?

       My husband was 11 when Germany surrendered and American Soldiers occupied his home town, Hoff, Germany.  He loved the American occupation, first because it meant food.  He could wait outside the gate of the compound and, after breakfast, salvage piles and piles of pancakes to take home to his mother and sisters.  It also offered enterprise.  He followed the soldiers, picked up their cigarette butts, and when he had collected enough tobacco, took it to a farmer and traded it for eggs or milk. 
     But more important than anything else he was struck by the American soldiers themselves.  They walked tall.  Even the lowliest privates strode like Gods, full of a sense of self-worth, fully alive to themselves. 
     He recognized, even at that young age, the difference between and subject and a citizen.  Americans see themselves the equal of anyone, beholden to no one.  We have, over the last 40 years, allowed a group of politicians to entrench themselves into a kind of ruling class, and their rhetoric reflects that they have forgotten that truth, that citizens are beholden to no one.  So John McCain dismisses the Tea Party as Hobbits.  I campaigned for you Mr. McCain, twice, but the next time I see you I’m going to put my little hairy foot someplace where the sun don’t shine. 
     Diane Feinstein oozed disdain, huge purple globules of disdain, to think that Ted Cruz could question her knowledge of the constitution.  “I’m not a sixth grader. I’ve been on this committee for 20 years.” (As though her working for 20 to ban firearms were some kind of recommendation. As Cromwell told a member of Parliament:  "You have sat too long for any good that you have been doing lately. ... In the name of God, go!")
     Feinstein ended her tirade with, “I respect your views, Mr. Cruz.  I wish you could respect mine.”  She obviously does not respect Ted Cruz’s views.  She oozed contempt the entire hearing.  I wanted Cruz to school her once again on the meaning of “shall not be infringed,” but I’m afraid she might have come unhinged.
     President Obama stepped into that elite ruling class with ease. “I am not a dictator.  I cannot force the Republicans to do the right thing.” Do you sense the subtext?  “I, of course, know what is right.  Those stupid, unwashed masses who cling to their guns and their religion have no idea.” 
     This move from citizen to subject did not happen over night, but somewhere over the last 50 years we have lost what it means to be a citizen, fully independent, in no need of state largess.  There was a time when we felt no difference in the inherent virtue or value of the individual whether rich or poor, lawmaker or candlestick maker.   We have our Ivy League colleges to thank for that seismic cultural shift.   Progressives have worked tirelessly to increase the individual’s dependence on the government, hoping to make us forever grateful for whatever largess they might bequeath us. 
      My prayer is that we can shuffle off this coil of bondage and servitude and stand once again like my father stood, tall and straight, striding boldly into the storms that awaited him, knowing that he walked with God and needed nothing else.