Yearly Archives: 2023

Economics, Elections, Governance, Representation, Taxation

AMERICA – Article I

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Our Constitution has seven Articles, or “topic sections,” in a sense. The longest and most important, is the first. It describes the bi-cameral Congress. While both Senators and Representatives are members of Congress, we have customarily called Representatives, “Congressmen or Congresswomen;” Senators are Senators. However, members of both “Houses” are members of Congress. Congress OUGHT to be the most important of the three branches of government. It represents the people of the States (Representatives) and the States, themselves (Senators), at least that is the original design. That design has been weakened variously and repeatedly by those who don’t trust small-r “republicanism.” Those are they who proclaim that the United States is a “democracy,” which is intentionally NOT the basic covenant embodied in the Preamble or in the Constitution, itself.

Before we dig deeper into Article I, we must illuminate the problems inherent in “democracy.” Like many, you have probably been convinced to revere democracy when, in fact, it must be carefully constrained in order to serve the government proposed by the Constitution, a real vessel for reverence. Prudence would instruct that democracy is only a mechanism for selecting our representatives, the most crucial of the members of Congress.

Inevitably, the more power allowed to democracy, the more likely that the government will become authoritarian and no longer a partner with its citizens in their success. Democracy gains power from majority action, only. The majority rules in “a democracy.” There are no protections for minority interests. The intended partnership role of our government of the people, by the people and for the people, will quickly degrade to protection of the government and the governors, which we see now in 2023. What has this to do with democracy or the Senate?

The Senate was originally designed to represent the interests of the STATES, whose sovereignty in our FEDERATION, was paramount for many in the Convention and many in the country (and still should be). Every State had its interests and every Senator had reason to respect the will of his or her State’s legislature. In other words, Senators had to answer to a very small set of representatives of their State’s population. Those worthies ought to have had the needs of their States uppermost in their minds, and could not be ignored at the times of choosing their Senators. Senators were supposed to be responsible to their States’ interests.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1913, a most dangerous period for our Republic and for republicanism. It changed the election of Senators to statewide popular voting – pure democracy with almost no accountability, in fact. Since then, the quality of Senators has declined significantly, on average. Democracy places more power in the hands of power and money “brokers,” as it were. Being accountable to everyone has meant being accountable to no one… no one, that is, except the leaders of the Senate and their control of their parties, and of sources of campaign funds.

Pure democracy also is subject to temporary, sometimes mob-like majority emotions. This was recognized in ancient Greece and is an even greater threat in the world of social media, 24–7 news media and widespread (planned) ignorance of reality and history. The mechanism of a Republic filters out those emotions. Citizens must choose the best among them to represent their interests TO the government; States would go through two stages of selection: first to their legislatures and Governors and then to their subsequent appointments of Senators. The Senate, with its longer terms, limited membership and fractional replacement, should be the more thoughtful and, dare we say, wise house of Congress. It’s design is intended to prevent emotional response and to be more accountable for its actions. Much of that “shock-absorber” function was thrown out with the switch to direct election in 1913. For shame.

Still, there are two houses of Congress and both must approve legislation, ostensibly a brake on foolish ideas. In the two-party fog of war, however, and the lack of limits on terms, it serves more effectively to stop good ideas. Abortion, for example can be hotly defended while balancing the budget is set aside. Worse, the Congress has, since the end of the Civil War, rushed to devolve its responsibilities and hand them to the (unelected and virtually un-fire-able) administrative state. About three-fourths of the federal “budget” is in the realm of entitlements or pensions, and “State-aid,” Federal dollars paid out to a thousand programs that States ostensibly control (or misapply). Those dollars twist the sovereignty of states and the thought processes of representatives and senators: No state should receive an unfair allotment of federal largesse. Federal dollars come as if by magic, with many of them being borrowed from the unbelievably distant future, sidestepping the responsibility of raising taxes to obtain them. Congress, both Houses, have “bought into” this sham. There is little statesmanship to point to among the whole number of them.

The most important power of the House of Representatives is to initiate any raising or, as virtually never happens, reducing of revenues. This includes raising taxes or changing tax rates. The Senate must concur, including amendments to bills, so they are nearly as involved in budgets as the House, including in terms of shucking responsibilities in favor of the administrative state.

Other powers of Congress include BORROWING against the full faith and credit of the United States; Coining money and regulating the value thereof; Set uniform rules of naturalization (for legal immigrants); to regulate commerce with other nations and among the several States; to promote the advancement of the sciences and protect invention and copyrights; to declare war including raising the Army and the Navy; to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the United States, and to suppress Insurrections and repel invasions. Among other things.

The Congress is also charged with making laws necessary to effect Execution of the laws passed for operation of the Government and any agency or Department thereof. This last has proven to be the greatest threat to the “Blessings of Liberty” ordained in the Preamble. Hence the administrative and nearly perpetual state, busy passing regulations that are enforced as if at the status of enacted Law. For shame.

The discussion of Article I has, unfortunately, been mostly a rendition of what is failing in Congress and in the operations of Congress, and how far afield from the intentions of republican governance Congress has strayed. It is intensely advised, and Prudent, that Americans study Article I and reflect on history and the events of the past 30 years or so. Congress needs reconstruction as much as the South did in 1866, for it has engaged in insurrection against the Constitution, attempting to overthrow it by divesting Congress, itself, from its responsibilities. The United States is nearly $34 Trillion in debt.

[ See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/ ]

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

ONCE UPON A TIME

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Americans are, to a greater extent than at any time since the “Great” Depression, unhappy and untrusting of others.  For all of our history as the United States of America, we have shared several senses of hope: economic, health, safety and cleanliness.  We might also add a sense of religious hope.  These hopes have slowly been… and are now quickly,  being erased from our shared beliefs.  It is unsettling.

Our origins as a people are exceptional as are our philosophies of governance and religious freedoms and numerous other rights protected by the Constitution.  The fundament of American exceptionalism is that the government(s) are formed and defined by the people.  Yet, since the beginning, those forces that believed the exact opposite: that governments are formed to control the people, their styles and means of living and their status in society, have been hard at work to undo the exceptionalism that once defined us.  Starting in 2020, the virtual Communist enemies of America have believed that success is within their grasp and, sadly, very many Americans, particularly young Americans, agree with the destruction of our culture and nation.

We are losing our hopes.

Every person has grown up with a pattern of habits and beliefs imprinted by or in reaction to our parents or guardians or lack thereof.  Other key people and childhood friends and classmates – and TEACHERS – all contributed to each of our belief structures and general outlooks and reactions to problems and opportunities.  Huge industries of psychologists, child-psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists have developed to channel our feelings, guilts or irrationalities relative to our upbringing.  In one way or another, at some level, we are, all, “screwed up” and seeking someone to blame for how we are.  How is it, then, that most of us have, throughout the history of the United States, turned out so well?

Indeed, through the times of greatest tests: The Civil War, various economic crises, World Wars One and Two and the Civil Rights movement, Americans have impressed the world with our drive to “do the right thing.”  Perfectly?  Naturally not; but, overall we used to tend toward the best response to challenges – personally and nationally.  Was it a miracle?  Was it a set of millions of coincidences?  Were children raised more perfectly then?

A qualified “yes” to the last question, but it was no accident that most of us grew up reasonably rational and morally straight despite our imperfect parents and circumstances, and the fundamental reason was culture.

We had a beautiful culture based in honesty and responsibility.  The rest of the world envied it and struggled to emigrate to our land of opportunity.  Our laws were equally applied, mostly, and our contracts were honestly enforced, mostly, and our private property – the fruit of our labor – was fairly protected by civil authorities, mostly.  We rewarded initiative and success and, mostly, forgave failure for those who strove to do better.  We honored churches and charity and respected marriage – even encouraged it in policy.  We respected learning and the learned, and the inventors who kept our economic future bright.  Parents could reasonably expect their children to have better lives than they had.  It almost sounds funny to recount these “American” qualities.

Our culture was the best there was, in our capitalist democratic republic, and we tried to share it with others.  Americans, individually, were enormously charitable toward one another and with the rest of the world, and we supported our nation being the same toward other peoples.  American citizenship was a golden possession, yet anyone who applied to be one had to meet only the simplest tests and commitment to be welcomed into our nation as an equal possessor of our “gold.”  Our basic Judeo-Christian ethics made us tolerant.  What have we done?

In spite of obstacles, our young people used to grow up in pretty good shape, and the reason was culture.  Schools, churches, libraries, police departments, pronouncements from the work of Congress, the military branches, radio programming, music and lyrics, television programming and news reporting, and even cinema… all reinforced our shared cultural beliefs.  Today?  Today, nearly all of these institutions challenge, if not tear down, our basic cultural norms.  Parents are nearly alone in their efforts to pass our culture along to and in their children.  What have we done?

As society becomes, almost daily, less and less honest, and our institutions less and less trustworthy, young people facing difficulties tend toward immediate suicide or the long-term suicide of drugs.  Adults seem to have no valid response to this.  Indeed, we allow for policies that make drug-addiction SAFER!  We don’t even want to enforce sanctions for criminal behaviors!  What are we doing?

None of what is going wrong is inevitable or guaranteed by the Constitution.  We human beings created the mess we’re in and we can “un-create” it the minute we decide to be adults, again.  What are we going to do?  God save us.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Governance, Immigration, Obama, Politics 2023, Representation, Terrorism

BIDEN, BIDEN, Who’s got the Biden?

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Information flows take the form of “news” stories – often opinions – social media scattershot (watch the spelling, there) some print media, and then there are “Special Reports.”  Among the “Special Reports” we can include White House press briefings.  In the “Biden” White House, though, press briefings provide almost no information: Mostly they provide obfuscation.  Still, many “news” sources can manage to create “news reports” that parrot the daily obfuscation – which is what “The White House” intends, while others make news of the gross failure of “the White House” to tell much, if any, truth.  Still, as Prudence has instructed us, there ARE truths about what is happening to our nation and the rest of the world, and careful sifting will reveal kernels of it… much like an archeological dig where arti-facts are revealed from under the crap and detritus of imperturbable soil.  Digging and sifting.

More than any other people, Americans deserve to hear the truth – all of it.  Unlike most other “Westerners,” however, Americans are about the least likely to hear it.

Competing countries – and forces – have their own “truths.”  We can see this most glaringly in the stories and hatreds and imaginings of Palestinians, although we should not discount the elements of truth amidst some of their “histories.”  That’s the trouble with hatreds and competing hatreds:  each employs truth to justify the hatred and to maintain the political power that comes with it.  Hating Jews, for the worst example, did not start with the Balfour declaration, and certainly not with the German Nazi Party.  Many Christians harbored hatred of Jews for centuries, ostensibly because they “killed Jesus.”  Plus, Jews banded together, kept their own customs, helped one another to succeed financially, and did not accept Christ as the Messiah.  Jews became bankers, often perceived and in fact, unsympathetic towards inabilities to repay debts.  And, they became jewelers, purveyors of expensive things for which prices had to be paid.  Plenty of reasons to dislike them in the eyes of many… or to hate them if cajoled relentlessly.  Rather than seek understanding, refined potential haters found it more comfortable to ignore or ostracize Jews even as they lived among the majority.

Almost every “Western” society has been unwelcoming to some degree toward Jews, despite the immense contributions to science and medicine and other highly educated pursuits in which Jews tend to excel, and prosper – even the great United States.  Yet, the treatment of Jews – “Hebrews” – by political leaders in the U. S. is far from exemplary, most particularly during World War II.  Despite American sacrifice to defeat Nazi Germany, Franklin Roosevelt was heartless toward Jews attempting to escape Nazi Genocide.  Based on spurious fears that even Jewish refugees might be Nazi spies, the Roosevelt administration refused entry to thousands of Jews seeking asylum.  Many of them were forced back to Germany where a large fraction of their numbers would die in the Holocaust.

Today, the U. S. holds itself out as a great defender of minorities, especially against “hate crimes.”  This extends even to cultural/religious groups that have been frequent, even documented, threats to Americans and to our nation.  Things are different.  No longer are we governed by parties that both want to protect and defend the United States, just with different methods.  One party appears to be in thrall of globalist forces that are essentially Communist, and that same actively appeases – or cooperates with – Communists and other totalitarians.  Indeed, one party seems determined to convert American politics to a totalitarian model… in the interest of “safety.”  At the same time – in the interest of idiocy – that party has dropped all defenses of its international border with Mexico, and facilitated the illegal entry of some eight Million aliens, a million of which have not even been interviewed: the “gotaways” who specifically avoid interview.

There may be a logical value to an open-border policy (that flies in the face of all existing immigration law), but no variation thereof seems Prudent.  The President of the United States, at the direction of – probably – former President Obama, has set policies by executive fiat, that must serve some interests, albeit not those of the citizens of the United States.  Dissolving a nation’s border is tantamount to dissolving that nation, and a citizen of that nation would be advised to ask his or her President why, and on what authority, he would allow such a crime?  For, a crime it is.  Indeed it has accumulated to several million crimes, and then it has become a federal imposition of unlegislated expenses – one might say, “illegal” expenses – upon the sovereign states that are protected(?) by the federal covenant we call the Constitution.

Those on the left defend the facilitated invasion of illegal entrants as some sort of “humanitarian” sacrifice the United States is obligated to make.  It is as though we are to blame for other countries’ crappy politics and socialist-totalitarian economics.  But it has become a grandiose lie being told hourly at our southern border – a lie told to the actual citizens of our country.  Illegal entrants from over 150 countries have crossed that ephemeral border, including thousands from “hostile” countries… those who are actively working to weaken, if not destroy, the United States.  The Biden administration is solely responsible for the breeching of our border(s) and the illegal release of illegal entrants into our nation.  One has to wonder.

Over the next decade we will have to capture and deport most of the Biden illegals.  Very, very few of them are legitimate asylum candidates.  According to international law, an asylee must accept asylum from the first country that allows him or her entry.  We’ve had illegal entrants from 150 or more countries.  Many had to pay for passage by air or by water to enter Mexico and then the United States.  Their presence at the Rio Grande is ridiculous and outrageous.  Why aren’t Americans outraged?

One of these days, it is sad to contemplate, there will be a significant terrorist event inside the United States.  We have, thanks to the President’s illegal policies toward an open border, INVITED terrorists into our nation and communities.  Nineteen radical Muslims executed the September 11th attacks; we know that some much-larger number of terrorist types have snuck into America in the past 3 years.  We know that both Muslim and Chinese espionage has undermined the federal government agencies and departments, even members of Congress and major cities’ governments.  Do we think that unfettered access to “The American Way” will magically convert these professional America-haters into Boy and Girl Scouts?  Not under the Biden administration… they seem to hate America, too.

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Religion, Representation, Responsibility

IMAGINING RESCUE

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WILLING TO BE RESCUED?

Prudence has noted in the past that 2020 seemed to be the year that the globalist, anti-American far left determined that it could overthrow the American system.  The manufactured “pandemic” surrounding COVID-19 and resulting destruction of civil liberties, social structure and logic following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, seemed to be making the long-planned destruction of America possible.  The primary tool to make such a profound change in the direction of history, is managed hatred.

The largest hatreds over the millennia are spiritual, if not identifiably religious.  This is sad, in many ways, but also understandable given the nature of non-compromise at the heart of most organized religions.  The power lies in belief.  Shared belief is the strongest human force.  Rare are they who can listen to alternative beliefs and subsequently change their own.  Beliefs direct the actions of individuals, even to the point of destroying those with opposing beliefs.  When added to “mob” coherence, shared beliefs account for more deaths than any other social circumstance.

To a great degree, religions are – or began as – tribal belief systems, and in the earliest periods they had few alternative ideas to resist.  This fact makes the interesting similarities among early origin stories and beliefs about gods and an afterlife, even more remarkable.  However, fairly small differences between belief systems can spark enormous conflict, like that between Protestants and Catholics or between Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.  The religious differences translate readily into political and military differences, but at their core, they tend to be conflicts between which humans are in charge of the “religions,” not the deep principles underlying the beliefs.

Sadly, some belief systems are based in hatred, such that no form of compromise will permit even suspicious co-existence: the premise of one system being the elimination of the other system.  If success appears to find the “destroyer” system, that system prepares to take on the next system it opposes.  We can see this pattern with Marxism/Communism.  Its basic opposition to private property is enabled by its fundamental opposition to religion of any form.  However, one of the most hateful systems appears to be Islam, the premise of which is that the entire world must become Muslim; there is no workable form of co-respect or co-existence with other religions.  We have become a world governed by competing hatreds.

In a Prudent view, that is not the way any God of humanity would have wanted mankind to develop.

Regardless of the scale of the groups toward whom hate is directed, the act of hating is still a very personal one.  Pressures to convince large groups to direct their hatred at certain targets – politically in purpose and effect – can be successful only if lots of individuals are personally convinced of the “legitimacy” of that hatred.  It’s not the same as “following orders” issued by authoritative leaders.  And it’s not the same as “hating” those who are simply different from oneself – different sounding, looking, acting – which is closer to fear rather than actual hate.  It is fairly easy to learn to stop fearing others, to gain understanding of those differences, to eventually become neutral toward the different and, perhaps, friendly.  Soon, we’re marrying one another and blending our differences in beautiful children who will be less fearful than we used to be.

But to become hateful of particular others is a commitment with oneself.  It’s hard to casually hate, but relatively easier if one can be convinced to do so, whereupon he or she becomes more comfortable in hatred if he or she convinces him- or her-self that hatred is part of a belief system to which he or she is committed.  Soon, the haters are not being led to it, but are pushing for increased purity of hatred, often punishing or rejecting those leaders who seek compromise.  Hatred is an awful way to guide or lead people.  But, it’s cheap and effective.

America was once described as a melting pot.  Ostensibly, people from all places could “become” Americans.  Without offering multiple forms of welfare and help – including taxpayer-financed attorneys – in multiple languages and multi-lingual public education, people came only because freedom was offered.  Everyone learned English and agreed to live within our legal system, one of the most honest… not perfect, but fairly evenly applied under the Constitution.  “Melting pot” was not the most accurate description: “salad bowl” is probably better.  America invited the best of the world to join us.  Despite our mistakes, particularly with slavery, we learned to respect everyone who was willing to make and pay his or her own way.  Things have changed.  American “representation” has, in the past 30 years or so, become the politics of competing hatreds.  From the Clintonian “politics of personal destruction,” we have devolved to the “politics of social and familial disintegration.”

There is a certain ease of slipping into hatred, for most humans, not all.  Hating some one else or millions of someones else, requires justification.  If a person can find justification for hatred, no matter how flimsy, additional scraps of justification will stick to that hate like double-sided carpet-tape, bonding it just as tightly to one’s beliefs – perhaps to one’s soul.  Add in the power of group (mob) psychology and soon a novice hater is leading the charge.  Somewhere or somewhen along the spectrum from distrust to embedded hatred, every individual must decide to continue in that direction or to take another.  Every person, regardless of justifications, is responsible for his or her actions – including hatred.

Every person can choose from evil, which hatred certainly is, whether political or something else.  Every one of us can make that choice.  In spite of decades of public indoctrination, our ability to choose to be responsible still exists.  We are Americans, still able to lead, including ourselves.

Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Governance, Politics 2023, Religion

Christianity Matters

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CHRISTIANITY MATTERS

For those who fail, intentionally or ignorantly, or intentionally ignorantly, to grasp that the peoples of Earth are engaged in a fundamental, spiritual war for which there is no mechanism of compromise, it’s time to wake up.  I am sorry for the shock to which you may shortly awaken, but it is real and unavoidable.  Hinduism and the “Law of Karma” teach that life – and Earth itself – is a test of our individual spirits.  It also teaches, like Christianity and Judaism and virtually every other religious belief system, that there is an “afterlife” where the soul, or spirit, survives in some sort of relationship with God, the Great Spirit, Brahman… even with Allah.  Religiously, this belief – or hope – is nearly universal. 

Writings about humanity’s creation, evolution and ultimate destination go back for thousands of years… like the Bible, the Vedas, and tens of thousands of prehistoric paintings, drawings, hieroglyphs, carvings and traditions.  Some are quite detailed about the technology required to get to “heaven,” others about the spiritual mechanisms for the trip.  There is a path for everyone.

Sadly, it seems Prudent to say, millions of people have convinced themselves that religion is a hoax and since they have figured that out, the conflicts within and between religions have no connection to them nor impact on their lives.  They seem to believe that the only purpose of life and lifetimes is to find as much human comfort and pleasure as possible, and that the measure of “success” is the level of toys and pleasures accumulated before death, and by how much may be “left” to their descendants.  Basically, if they cannot see, touch, taste or feel something, it must not exist.  While “pragmatic,” that belief is not Prudent.

Lately the news is consumed by kinetic actions initiated by the Hamas terror organization and the reactions, using superior force and methods, by Israel.  We should all step back and review the far larger efforts, worldwide, to unseat religion and God, Himself.  The goal of global Communism is no less than the elimination of freedom and its conjoined relationships of individuals with God.  The “World Economic Forum” is clever at reducing all of life’s concerns to financial relationships, and so is Communism and the various layers of socialism that claim to be only sympathetic to the underprivileged.  Even churches, including the Catholic Church and the current Pope, have forgotten the difference between charity, which is guided by a spiritual willingness to sacrifice for others, and socialism, that steals the resources of others by police power, in order to distribute it to certain groups whose political support may be “purchased” by “government” benefits.

Charity increases spiritual awareness and purity of thought.  It may also serve to “balance” bad karma created by negative actions for which an individual is forever responsible.  The Christian Bible teaches the same lesson as the Hindu law of Karma: “…whatsoever a man soweth, so shall he also reap.”  In simpler terms we might say that one cannot “sow” socialism and “reap” salvation.  That is, people who tell themselves that socialist dependency is some wonderfully charitable work, are lying to themselves as they lie to everyone else.  Nothing good can come from a foundation of lies.  Communists and others who promote the separation of everyone from religious faith, including liars like the World Economic Forum, are attempting to take the place of a spiritual creator-God.  At the same time they propose to replace the freedom and responsibility of truth with the imprisonment of rules, such that following the rules eliminates the sacrificial blessings of responsibility.

The battles against honesty and truth are taking place daily in our schools, our government(s) agencies, our colleges and universities and in the houses of representation in municipalities, in states and in the federal Congress… as well as in Gaza, Israel, Lebanon and Iran and Davos, Ukraine, Russia, China and North Korea.  Ultimately, the goals coalesce into one: the demise of America and the destruction of Judeo-Christianity, itself.

America, amidst great pressure to do so – including federal grants – is setting aside God, Christ and the fundamental honesty of Old and New Testament teachings… honesty that permeates our legal and commercial structures, at least in their founding and design.  The apparent trustworthy nature of America and Americans enabled the U. S. to become the heroic savior of Europe with our soldiers welcomed and trusted.  We were able to expunge Nazism and Japanese militarism at nearly the same time.  Little did we know that strategic and domestic lying had become federal policy.  Indeed, over the next 75 years the American people were among the least-informed while foreign governments and news organizations reported to their populations information about what the U. S. was actually doing internationally.  The federal Congress also transformed during this period, to one of the least trustworthy bodies in history.

Do we, Americans, comprehend what has been done to our heritage?  What is still being done at an accelerated rate during the Obama and Biden administrations?  Freedom, free speech, freedom of religion, equal application of the laws and, ostensibly, honest representation of our interests through democratic (honest) elections, comprise our culture.  So do free enterprise and ownership of private property and the ABSENCE OF LIMITS OTHER THAN WILL, INTITIATIVE, CAPABILITY AND HONESTY from attaining wealth and status.  The basis of all of it is Christianity in its purest intent.  We have turned away from our culture.  We deny our beliefs and our individual responsibility to them.  We refuse to pass our culture on to our children while we abort hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, and then wonder how it is that children grow up to kill one another. 

Sometimes fortunately, the world reacts to or reflects the attitudes and actions of the United States.  We have a dominant ability to communicate, and we are open enough to broadcast, literally, the evils we practice or allow, the foolishness we practice or allow, and the foul ideas we teach, encourage and vote into law.  The world can watch Americans and their government lie about everything from COVID infections, so-called vaccines, climate change, “fossil” fuels, genders, elections, history and economics, wars and foreign policies.  Then other nations are amazed as emissaries from the U. S. attempt to lie to them while encouraging others to govern themselves like Americans!  At the same time, Americans are rejecting their own form of government (two exclamation points!!)

Many U. S. citizens try to find comfort in the diaphanous idea that underneath it all there are people in the federal administrative structure that are managing things and keeping us safe.  Yet, little by little, we keep finding out that the bureaucracy has been lying to the citizenry, too… while scraping away our freedoms regulation by regulation, un-legislated rule by un-legislated rule.  Is this our “culture?”  Is this what brave and courageous Americans have fought and died for since Lexington Green?

We can track the socialist, even Communist assault on the principles of America’s founding, but we don’t spend much effort to expose the simultaneous assault on religion, especially Christianity.  The decline of “Americanism” has paralleled the decline of Christianity and Christian education.  The adoption of multiple evils as sources of revenue for governments out-pictures our cultural decline with sad clarity, as does the maintenance of addictions and homelessness.

Few recognize the threat to our independence and sovereignty that is resulting from these trends.  With politics and elections trusted less and less and less, and crime left unpunished by those elected, Americans are more and more accepting of the election – or presence by other means – of a strong leader who will “clean things up.”  The dangers of imposing the states of emergency or martial law are not always recognized as things start to get “cleaned up,” but sidestepping the Constitution for whatever supposed benefit is the ultimate danger.  Ours is a Constitutional Culture, as it were, and that is best described as a society where people make the rules limiting their government(s).  It is dependent upon a level of integrity and statesmanship in our elected representatives at every level.  That system has broken down.

We are challenged, now, to restore the principles upon which we were founded and, just as crucially, to restore our moral practices and beliefs.  What forces can be applied to shift so many directions?  Individually, we can improve ourselves and there are hundreds of self-help programs that might assist.  But, what about the “sins” we have codified as “rights?”  Is there a role for government in undoing the rush to replaces rights with licentiousness?  Or, can our “governors” be made to shift commercial activity away from our Communist enemies?  More simply, can tax laws be redirected to encourage marriage and families?

Somehow, probably including amendment to our Constitution, we have to establish a cleaner, less-drugged, less-addicted, less-debauched society that stands not for the victimization of every practitioner of destructive behaviors, but for the very best humans can be and for a future of greatness, growth, innovation… and hope.

We cannot make it if we continue to allow our people to weaken themselves and our purpose.

Biden, Crime, Culture, Economics, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2023, Representation

GULLIBLES TRAVELS

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You're ***tting me, right?
You’re ***tting me, right?

Amidst the anxiety, worry, fear and complete inversion of logic that comprises “Climate Change,” a sad failure of the heart is heard as gullible men and women who might create families, declare that they are afraid to bring children into this world which is doomed by the follies of pollution and fossil fuels.  It should be a mental thing, but it’s not: it’s a function of gullibility that is divorced from clear thinking.

America cannot survive gullibility.  Americans, more than citizens of any other nation, are OBLIGATED to study and understand the words, and the meaning of the words, and the philosophies supporting them… in our Constitution and other founding documents.  The United States of America – those are words, too, and we are obligated to understand them just as clearly.  Ours is a country with a role in history unlike every other.  “United” tells us that we are OBLIGATED to share common laws and moral guidance.  “States” tells us that our States are the structure of our nation, and our strength.  Ours is not a national government, it’s a federal one, yet every scrap of legislation that Congress passes EXPANDS national power over the states and the people, when it should be doing only what the states cannot do for themselves.  Words matter.  Whoever – or whatever – attempts to change the meaning of words is announcing its willingness to confuse the polity and steal our ability to discuss, reason and understand.

What American voters have allowed, so far, is an administrative bureaucracy that makes itself appear to be so important – so vital to our ability to remain fed and comfortable – that threats to its power or existence, even of tiny slivers of it, are tantamount to Hitler’s Nazism.  Minor interruptions, like temporary shutdowns until appropriations are approved by Congress, are described as imminent defaults on U. S. obligations and threats to every aspect of life from stocking grocery stores to providing health care and life-saving operations.  Worse, a government shutdown is racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist… and no one wants to be any of those things, let alone the whole country!

What illogical nonsense.  Yet, that is the definition of our “democracy,” today.  The “democracy” that we must impoverish ourselves to protect around the world, yet do our best to undermine, here, despite the fact that we are a Republic… that employs democracy.

Are your children gullible?  Possibly.  Once ideological teachers have taught our kids to believe untrue things, the pathways of gullibility are established.  If a first-grader believes the United States was founded upon racism in 1619, he or she can be led to believe that gender can be changed.  Pretty soon they’ll believe that their parents are a threat that cannot be told that their son or daughter is changing to daughter or son.  So, now it’s better to hide truths from parents.  We can’t survive gullibility.

Education, essentially dominated by government schools and unionized teachers and staff, is the fundament of culture and citizenship.  Along with language, math, geography, civics, science and a second language, the success of our nation requires that our children learn about our history, our founding, the ideas behind the Constitution and how it works, and basic economics.  Turning out students who cannot read – at huge expense – puts our nation at risk; filling their heads with untruths and radical theories of race and biology is the opposite of what parents – and our nation – need teachers to do.  Yet, as schools fail to educate, teachers’ unions dictate policies to management that increase costs, compensation and staffing while reducing accountability for teachers’ lack of results.  The incredible refusals to work and teach during “COVID” can never be forgiven.

Have we the intestinal fortitude to correct the direction and OWNERSHIP of our so-called “public” education system?  Can we place the management of public schools back into the hands of those we elect to manage them?  Or will we go to our graves with leftist, virtually communist teachers’ unions operating this huge fraction of our government for their own benefit… not for the advancement of our children?  Government employees should be severely restricted in their abilities to influence elections.  As it is, politicians charged with financial management of all departments rely on unions to get themselves elected.  They (the elected) then “negotiate” with unions for pay and benefits.  Those who are charged with representing citizens wind up basically representing only the unionized, public employees.  What a debilitating economic farce.  Will we continue this?  Or are there politicians with the courage to break it up and restore fairness, balance and honesty to our republican form of government?

We are $33 Trillion in debt.  Clearly the past 6 decades of “representative” government has failed to manage the people’s business.  We are on the path to insolvency and economic ruin when that day comes that other nations will refuse payment in dollars.  This is a system our “representatives” created in our name.  Now we have a poop-head as president who has invited SEVEN MILLION or more new welfare recipients, many of whom are actual criminals and terrorist threats to our nation, to our people.  Shame on him and shame on all of us who voted for him in 2020.  We knew he was a fool from his 40 years of history in the Senate and his 8 years as Obama’s V. P.  We knew he was a public policy and foreign policy idiot, yet we dutifully followed his party’s directions.  Now, we’re the fools.

Are we patriotic enough – still – to make wiser, more sensible, economically aware choices about who will represent us American citizens and who will be our President, representing all of us and our country?  Or, are we so gullible that we will again elect a caricature of a leader and toadies who claim to be our representatives?  How many of our Senators and “Representatives” are receiving money or gifts of some sort from China?  More than one, for sure.  Why do we re-elect them and then cede them power in their respective houses?

American citizens are the most powerful people on Earth.  We can affect both domestic and foreign policies of our powerful government.  Yet we continuously give up our unique rights in exchange for not being called names, and we continuously re-elect relatively ignorant and corrupt people to both state and federal offices – people who soon give up representing we, the People, and then learn to represent their personal interests by cooperating with other corrupt “representatives” who have learned how to steal, legally.  Whenever they actually face their voters, these worthies tend to represent the government to us rather than the other way around, explaining why this or that policy position that got them elected, cannot be accomplished.

Are we awake enough in 2023 to exercise our Constitutional rights and powers to put in place a legislature that will actually force the executive swamp to do the right things?  How is it that we couldn’t even get the border closed with a threat to shut down the government?  How is it that the Biden administration thinks it is “American” to force expenses upon the States in the breaking of federal immigration laws?  We ARE gullible, but, are we crazy?

Biden, Economics, Elections, Representation, Responsibility, Taxation

TRASH-TALKING INFLATION

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Most of what we hear on TV or radio about the big enemy: INFLATION, is only partially true, at best.  Defeating that enemy, which politicians claim to be doing for their constituents, is impossible if we fail, sometimes on purpose, to understand the nature of it.  Let’s examine the primary aspect, or feature, of Inflation: it is a tool of government, by which we mean, the federal government. 

This is not to say that government intends to raise prices on commodities and goods and labor, but then, prices rising is not the definition of inflation, which is why much of what is spewed about “inflation”… is disinformation.  Inflation represents only an increase in the money supply; along with the federal government’s sneaky mechanisms, there are only a couple of ways to expand the money supply, primarily banks, and banks can do so only because of federal regulations.  Oddly, foreign banks and governments can ALSO expand the money supply, increasing inflation of the supply of dollars, not of wealth.   When prices rise there are temporary bumps in wealth due to increased receipts and, often, fixed rates of interest on loans.  So, there is a spotty increase in prosperity, but not for everyone.  Inflation increases dollars, but each represents less wealth than it did even a few months, if not weeks earlier.

Only the federal government can “create” money.  The Constitution charges the Congress to “…coin money, (and) regulate the value thereof…”  In 1913 Congress shed that Constitutional responsibility – and authority – when it created the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a consortium of private banks with federally appointed “governors.”  Legally, “The Fed” can loan money it does not have, to the government – it’s a neat trick.  Of course, the Congress must approve expenditures and, when the government has no cash, it must approve borrowing  “… on the full faith and credit of the United States …” to enable those expenditures.  To LIMIT the degree of overspending, Congress created the ”Debt Ceiling” in 1917, streamlining the emission of bonds by the Treasury as World War I expenses mounted.  With various changes and accommodations since, Congress has largely permitted the federal government to borrow whatever it can justify politically.

Since the Johnson Administration and the federalization of welfare and healthcare, the “Debt Ceiling” has proven to be not much of a ceiling, or limit, at all.  As we approach $33 Trillion in federal debt, the debt ceiling has become merely a tool of negotiation, with the ultimate “threat” of “government shutdown.”  With millions of people now dependent upon government handouts, it’s possible for those on the left to raise huge public, political outcry against a “shutdown.”  All that conservatives can garner is some compromise on unrelated policies or spending changes, but never is there a reduction in spending or overall cut to the federal budget.  It’s always an increase.  The $33 Trillion is documented inflation.  It’s not static, and it is expensive.  When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the concept of interest costs to federal borrowing was supposed to keep borrowings small and temporary – that is, “paid back” to stop the interest costs.  Today, the cost of interest on the national debt is well over $800 Billion – approaching the defense budget(!).  The concept of limitation through interest obligations is out the window with the debt ‘ceiling.’  Our “representatives” have shown over many decades that they cannot be trusted with OUR money.  How does inflating the money supply serve the interests of government?

On any given morning the value of all the dollars in the world is whatever it is.  Let’s call it ONE (1).  “Da Gummint” comes up with some cockamami plan to save the planet or forgive student loans or flood the country with 7 Million new welfare recipients… just saying.  With the federal budget already overspent by 30% or so (financed by earlier borrowing) the president’s party dutifully files legislation to make everyone’s life better while enrichening donors to their party.  It requires a new loan to enable the new magnanimity and, since all the loaned money (and tax receipts) authorized so far has been allocated, the “debt ceiling” must be raised.  Eventually it is and a new $500 Billion or so is authorized and the loan made.  The government spends the new dollars at a value of “1,” and target recipients do as well.  Congress-people brag to their constituents about the wonderful benefits and bacon they’ve delivered.

Some of the money is used to pay current federal expenses of various kinds, including entitlements, and some goes to pay interest on this and earlier debts, now approaching THIRTY-THREE TRILLION DOLLARS, with an “F.” But, you ask, how does that cause the price of eggs to go up?  Simply put, increased “prosperity” in consumers’ / buyers’ hands and bank accounts, puts stress on the marketplace: supply and demand.  At first, sellers are happy – more people want more of what they sell, and… every seller is also a buyer.

Demand for eggs goes up as more people feel they can afford eggs, but, more significantly, large baking companies demand more eggs than a month ago because stores are selling more of their higher-priced goods.  Egg producers need to expand production but it takes a while to do so.  Large buyers bid up the price of eggs because they are determined to produce more crème-filled pastries to meet demand, and producers will accommodate their largest customers.  Eggs go up in price for domestic buyers, too.  Soon, a new equilibrium is attained and eggs stop rising in price from their new baseline, market price, but buyers of all kinds of things are spending dollars at a value of, say, .93, not 1.

Two hundred-million buying decisions, or more, are made every day based on relative values to buyer and seller.  Prices are “driven” up as if every seller wants to be a more expensive supplier, but, in fact, most don’t: most want their value to appear higher to attract the next buyers’ ‘buy’ decision.  But the seller’s “cost of eggs” has increased and he must pay the rent from his sales; he raises his prices, usually reluctantly.  Everywhere you turn some “news” outlet is decrying “rising inflation,” when what they are talking about is “rising prices,” usually the CPI or Consumer Price Index.  If there weren’t simultaneous DE-flationary forces at work, we’d be in real trouble.

Okay, then, what is a deflationary force?  First and foremost, rising prices!  It’s a sloppy, effective and painful way to absorb the extra cash created by inflation (of the money supply.)  Government-generated inflation is done so without any connection to increased production or wealth; worse, it has no mechanism for debt destruction.  Private, or economic inflation is tied to improved production, greater efficiency and, usually LOWER prices overall, another, positive, deflationary force: increased productivity and wealth.  When “The Fed” sets ever-higher interest rates to “combat inflation,” it doesn’t put any meaningful brakes on government-generated inflation, but it does screw up economic inflation.

“Real” companies borrow money from banks when they are certain that a bigger plant, new production equipment, new delivery vehicles or better computerization, for examples, will enable the company to produce more for less, or at higher quality, or with such marked improvement that it opens new markets, or with such improved efficiency that waste is reduced and costs per unit are lowered.  The loans involved come from banks that operate, by federal regulation, on the basis of fractional reserves.  This, essentially, allows banks to lend out about SIX TIMES more than what they hold in reserves.  That is, about 86% of outstanding loans are comprised of… wait for it: AIR.  Every commercial or real-estate loan is mostly air.  But!  It’s generally fine.  Why?

“Real” loans are made to people or businesses that have the credit-worthiness that predicts the “destruction” of that new debt.  Those are what banks call “performing loans.”  Depending on the nature of the loans and the financial standing of the bank, itself, “performing loans” are counted among “assets” of the bank and fractional reserve rules can apply to them, too!  Simply stated, bank loans inflate the money supply.  But it’s not like government / Federal Reserve inflation; “real” loans include mechanisms for 1)debt destruction; 2)increased WEALTH; 3)increased productivity and economic activity; 4)rewards for smart economic risk and honest, legal, work and growth.  Smart, conservative banking is essential to healthy inflation.

The federal “system” of over-spending, over-borrowing and aversion to intelligent economics, is essential to economic weakness and political mendacity.  See the difference?

It is necessary to introduce capital – and cash – into the economy.  It’s called “liquidity.”  There has to be enough money to borrow and enough to spend, but how much?  Is there some federal agency or department that would ever add new liquidity in the right amounts and the right places?  Absolutely not!  Neither now or ever.  Free enterprise capitalism pretty-much automatically introduces enough liquidity to enable growth, PROVIDED that the government isn’t competing with its citizens to do ever-larger fractions of the spending – and borrowing – in the economy, AND that conditions are not made politically acceptable for monopolies to form and distort markets, which is where we are, now.

The FED sets rules for banks, including what the fractional reserve rate is, and what the overnight interbank lending rate of interest is.  They can chill a “too active” economy almost overnight.  Income-Tax policies can interfere with even small investment decisions.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can skew the quality of the mortgage market whenever politicians decide it’s time to buy votes from certain “underserved” demographics.  That is, the government can skew normal buy-sell decision-making, hurting most while “helping” some.

Capitalism needs regulation; it’s human nature to get the most for the least if possible.  Honesty should be enforced; integrity should be enforced; quality and purity should be enforced; contracts should be clear and honest, particularly in employment, one of the areas where politicians (most of whom are economic idiots) like to meddle for votes.  Our public servants are failing to act as partners in the success, safety and comfort of citizens, which means conditions of honesty across all contracts, short and long, and across all elected and appointed offices.  Otherwise, they act as the least trustworthy manipulators of the lives of citizens for the gain of… politicians and government.

Our economy – the actions of daily life, growth and advancement – has been turned into a competition with government to survive.  We haven’t even discussed the credit-card “vig” we all must pay, now, to banking consortiums, nor the legalization of drugs.  Surely ours is a form of “Democratcy” that we should export to other countries… God forbid.

Biden, Climate, Crime, Culture, Economics, Elections, Family, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Immigration, Obama, Politics 2023, Religion, Taxation

VOTE PRUDENTLY

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What on Earth

Prudence wonders about whether America will resolve to solve its problems – actually stop nonsensical policies – reduce federal spending – let men be men and honor the majesty of motherhood… stuff like that.  Questions abound.  Why don’t we have a secure, tightly regulated border, all around?  That’s one to which there doesn’t seem to be a good answer.

Why have we allowed about 7 MILLION illegal entrants over the past 3 years – unexamined adults and children, with unknown backgrounds and unknown useful skills – to pour into our country IN CONCERT with criminal drug and trafficking cartels?  How do we propose to house them in a nation where housing costs are the highest in the world?  How will we educate them in schools that are becoming a black mark on our society, in how many languages, at costs per student that are the highest in the world with the lowest quality of education results?  What sort of a plan is there?  Looks like there isn’t one.

How can a country that is 33 Trillion dollars in debt invite multiple millions of illegal migrants onto our welfare rolls?  No good answer – or reason – here, either.

Americans are wondering – or should be wondering – how it is that our military is being reduced precisely when China’s military, especially their navy, is being increased at its fastest rate ever?  Why are our soldiers, airmen and sailors being weakened by critical race and gender theories as Russia, China and Iran are growing as direct threats to the United States and our allies?  For that matter, why weren’t the military leaders who engineered the stupid and dangerous abandonment of Afghanistan, fired and forced to answer for their stupidity and the preventable deaths of service members at Courts Martial?

Here’s a crucial, life-or-death question for Americans: Why did President Obama and, now, Joe Biden, fight so hard to help Iran become a nuclear power?  Keep thinking…

How can the once-best medical system in the world allow itself to be compromised by a federal government agency that is financially beholden to pharmaceutical companies, to the point of dictating treatments and even outlawing viable treatment options(!)?  How can that medical system allow licensed doctors, many who are recognized researchers, lose their licenses and positions – including having their research suppressed?  How could it?

How could so many tens… no, hundreds of thousands of needless deaths of Americans be permitted, even forced, by the rotten collusions indicated above?  How can we ignore the thousands of “sudden adult deaths” occurring among young, healthy recipients of mRNA injections?  Why are those same being pushed down to 5-year-olds?  Have we lost our minds?

We seem to have lost “America.”  To some, the “some” that wish to eliminate America from the future, there is no good in any part of the United States because of slavery, a practice our nation sacrificed horrifically to end.  The promise of freedom and individual sovereignty for which we also fought and sacrificed – a promise made to all who descended from our founding and which is enjoyed by all who wish to destroy America, now, is a promise based upon Christian sacrifice and faith in God.   There is nothing coincidental that those same wish to destroy Christianity as they tear down America.  When did we lose our courage to defend both?

Rubbing raw the memories of slavery is a process very similar to climate fear-mongering.  The abiding purpose of both movements is never solution or even resolution of those supposedly existential threats to humanity: it is only to empower centralized, political control of humanity and its various nations and economies.  Where is the American Constitution in all of this?

Lately we have taken to defunding police departments where they are MOST needed, in cities where crime has been the worst, and where normal people and commerce are being threatened to the greatest degree.  There must be a good reason to do this in the minds and hearts of those who control those funds.  Prudence cannot discern what it might be… unless, and it’s becoming less and less of a long-shot, those who advocate and promulgate those anti-police policies, are actively trying to destroy America, too.  Evidently, they believe that the hollowing out of American cities – turning them into crime-ridden enclaves, will weaken America’s ability to defend itself when the final push to turn America communist, arrives.

The economic stress of “losing” the cities will also hasten the downfall of the nation.  Cities are the engine of growth and strength; they are always attacked in war.  George Soros and, now, his son, Alexander, have targeted American cities for collapse by financing District Attorneys who are radically opposed to bail, prosecution and incarceration of criminals.  Capitalizing on the unfortunate death (not a murder, more a suicide) of George Floyd, Soros and other anti-American types in the Democrat party, fed so-called protests that mingled with brutal, destructive riots and demanded the end of policing as we knew it in cities.  Some purpose is being served by what seems completely stupid.

The United States, Canada and Mexico sit atop the richest sources of carbon-based fuels on earth.  With the right economics and politics, North America (and South America for similar reasons) could be energy-independent and wealthy, industrialized and CLEAN.  Unfortunately, Mexico is nearly controlled by criminal cartels, Canada has slid into globalist socialism, and the U. S. has fallen sway to anti-scientific “climate-change” hogwash that leads us to sacrifice both freedom and wealth – and global influence – as well as our national sovereignty.  For unfounded reasons, we can’t use the energy we own; we must buy it from hostile countries that obtain it less cleanly than we do, and ship it by the millions of tons in dirty ships.  This dumb idea makes sense to a fringe element that benefits from battery-powered vehicles, solar panels and windmills.  As with other, numerous life-changing trends and forces at work within the federal administrative state, government falsehoods are actively diverting our nation from its history and heritage.  Why do we allow this?

Lithium-ion batteries, mostly controlled by China in terms of materials and manufacture, are being forced upon a public that doesn’t want them.  Why?  Because the government-types believe we need to want them.  They don’t work well and they are toxic and dangerously combustible.  This is all to reduce “carbon,” one of the key building-blocks of life on earth.  There is a belief – an ideology – that claims that carbon-dioxide, the major product of breathing, is capable of such a massive “greenhouse effect” that it will destroy life on this planet, including raising sea levels 20 feet or more.  People motivated by their faith in this concept are unable to consider that it is probably incorrect… and they are noisier than most of us, gaining political sway.  They are forcing the switch away from our extraordinarily efficient gasoline-fueled vehicles and from the freedoms they enable.  So, we are being forced – not encouraged, FORCED – to switch to less capable and less safe modes of transportation that cost more to operate… when they do operate.  They do have slick electronics, but they are relatively useless except in very limited applications.  Why do we, the People, permit our government to batter(y) us?

Our so-called Representatives have divested the Congress of most of its responsibilities.  Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, among other financial responsibilities of the Congress, states that “the Congress shall have the power… To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; …”  Yet the same band of worthies created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and, in stages, slipped the “Fed” into a position of financing unlimited debts on the credit of the United States.  Despite its supposed purpose of managing liquidity among banks and preventing financial crises, the Fed enables politicians to make economic promises that they generally do not understand the consequences of, knowing that there is unlimited funding available by “borrowing” from the Federal Reserve.  The Treasury issues U. S. “bonds” of various maturities and the Fed “buys” them with money it doesn’t actually have.  What could go wrong?  Socialism… socialism devolving into communism… that’s what could and is going wrong.  Why are the inheritors of the world’s greatest political and economic system allowing their nation to be stolen by socialist enemies… from inside?

The next set of presidential elections in 2024, may be our last opportunity to reverse at least SOME of the stupidity we have been borrowing for since 1963.  It will be Prudent for Americans to reaffirm their Americanism rather than their adherence to any party, and vote accordingly, and not by mail – DON’T VOTE BY MAIL!  It’s too easy to steal your vote or negate it.  Show up and vote… for America.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Elections, Politics 2023

UNCIVIL WAR

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The Democrats’ war on Donald Trump is revealing the nature of the Left.  It is not very different from how the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union treated wrong-thinkers as the “Revolution” devolved into brutality and murder.  So far, at least, the Biden administration has held off from extorting confessions from those who don’t agree with Administration thinking about virtually anything.  No one has mentioned bullets in the back of the head to solve wrong-thinking problems, but locking up political opponents is doing the job.

Sadly, a lot of stupid violence took place on January 6th, 2021.  Organized protesters went to Washington with shared, poorly conceived ideas about actually taking over the Capitol, a few of whom were armed and foolishly violent.  We still don’t know how involved federal agents were in those groups, but there were many, evidently. And the FBI and others have shown their willingness to embed themselves into conspiratorial groups in order to learn about planning for future crimes.  We’ve even seen how the FBI will practically create such a group in the case of the kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.  There are many questionable actors who were in the crowd on January 6th, but no one has identified or questioned them.

On the other hand, many of those currently incarcerated due to January 6th events, assaulted no one, smashed nothing and did no worse than enter the Capitol through open doors.  Their treatment in jail seems to be outside of legal norms; some have yet to be charged two and a half years after the fact.  Those are they who can be considered “political” prisoners.  Having watched FBI agents storm the private homes of pro-life activists while permitting illegal demonstrations at the homes of Supreme court Justices, shows that the motivations within the FBI are political in many instances and worth questioning.  Could there have been a cadre of FBI and other agents embedded in groups that went to the Capitol intending violence?  Apparently, yes.

There are other oddities about the so-called “insurrection.”  One is that President Trump wanted to reinforce the Capitol Police with thousands of National Guard troops.  Legally, only the mayor of Washington and / or the Speaker of the House could “ask” for federal troops to function in their jurisdictions.  Both refused to do so.

Information and “intelligence” existed that indicated subversive groups were planning to create troubles on January 6th.  Trump was holding a huge rally near the White House and thousands of people would be in the city and probably attempting to approach the Capitol to protest the certification of electoral votes.  If there were a way to turn such a protest to Democratic advantage, no pair of Democrat leaders would be better positioned – or likely – to take such advantage than Pelosi and Bowser.  Having the crowds storm the Capitol, particularly in conjunction with rabble-rousers whom both knew were intending to do so, could create the perfect storm of confusion and illegality with which to smear Donald Trump and conservatives in general.  It was all too well played out for the benefit of Democrats.

Within hours, Speaker Pelosi ordered fencing with razor wire and guarded gateways to surround the Capitol complex.  Added to that “security” were thousands of National Guard troops that she treated fairly poorly, causing them to sleep in parking garages among other things.  Soon the “January Sixth” committee was formed outside of Congressional traditions and yet another impeachment of Trump was attempted to no avail.  But, the January 6th Committee continued its tightly slanted “investigation” for a year and a half, yielding mostly political claims and talking points, while copious real evidence was hidden or kept secret.  Little of value derived from the committee’s “work” although lots of fearsome claims were made about conservatives and Trump supporters.  Now we’ve learned that the “Committee” destroyed much of its recorded work – a travesty, if not multiple crimes.  Another set of tactics were developed and implemented through the Department Of Justice.

Soon, three state and two separate federal charges were concocted and fed to grand juries in New York State and City, Georgia, Florida and Washington, DC. – fed by prosecutors, a District Attorney and Attorneys General who are known to hate Donald Trump or to have backed Democrat politicians financially.  Naturally, they would set aside all biases in the matters of accusations against former President, Donald Trump, who believes that the 2020 elections were rigged against him fraudulently and that his likely victory in 2020 was “stolen” from him and the 75 Million voters who voted for him. (Wink, now.)

Trump, however, is in legal jeopardy, starting with the New York City charges brought by District Attorney, Alvin Bragg.  In order that he could “gin up” charges against Trump, a “count” against him was created for every check paid to reimburse Trump’s then-attorney, Cohen, who had created a means of payment to adult dancer, Stormy Daniels, of some $150,000.  At one point she claimed the money was to keep her from talking about a sexual encounter with Trump while he was married.  In other statements, she denied such an encounter.  Trump’s counter-argument is that Ms. Daniels had tried to extort money from Trump and that he paid her “hush” money to prevent public embarrassment.  This would naturally and automatically help him as he began his campaign to become president in 2016.  So, depending on how you look at it, paying her to keep quiet made sense on several levels, not simply political.

But Bragg is certain that the misdemeanor “crimes” of incorrect bookkeeping entries by the Trump organization were done to cover up a larger, Federal crime, of illegal campaign contributions.  That case can be made, but has virtually never been made before.  “Getting” The Donald trumps every other consideration.

Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General, ran for her office on a promise to “get Trump.”  She’s doing everything she can.  She’s cobbled together a host of charges against Trump’s companies, going back several years, claiming that properties and assets were “overvalued” to obtain loan rates and amounts that were, therefore, obtained fraudulently.  That those institutions that loaned money to Trump entities all made money and profits from dealing with Trump, makes no difference if there’s a way to damage Trump, himself.  That poorer individuals wouldn’t have been able to obtain the same terms is simply stating the nature of finance.  If it involves Trump, however, there must be a racist, homophobic, insurrectionist crime that’s prosecutable.  “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”  Lavrenti Beria would be right at home in the Attorney General’s office.

Jack Smith, prosecutor of the “Documents Case,” is a different matter, and so is his case.  Trump had retained documents upon leaving the white House that were, evidently, still classified.  Some of his own statements seem to confirm that he knew some of them were problematic and still classified.  There are more than 32 felony counts filed against him and some may stick.  Trump has done his best to call Smith, himself, into question, but he is still the person who could get him convicted.  Many of the circumstances surrounding the case are unprecedented, and done for political reasons, but the facts on the ground are what they are.  The whole premise could have been – and heretofore, always have been – resolved through negotiation.  Virtually every President has retained records from office; Trump is the first to be charged criminally for doing so.  So, this case is eminently unfair, but it’s legal and the former President faces legal jeopardy as a result.

Georgia District Attorney for Fulton County, Fani Willis, in fairly obvious collusion with the federal DOJ, is attempting to strip away attorney-client privilege and executive privilege, while criminalizing opinions about a clearly questionable 2020 election process.  This is very bad legal country.  Will it lead to any state District Attorney now being able to hobble a President with conspiracy charges for speaking with advisors and attorneys?  What a mess Democrats are strewing across our judicial system.

What is it that makes Trump such an object of hatred and political fear?  Clearly, he threatens a lot of people in government and in the “industries” that survive on the largesse of government.  There are nearly 3 MILLION fairly permanent employees of the federal government.  Each has his or her own biases, beliefs and political leanings.  Most, unintentionally, some, intentionally, are part of the problem America faces: The rights and desires of the majority of Americans can barely be acknowledged, let alone become public policy, regardless of federal elections.  There exists a general resistance to significant change within the administrative morass called “the government.”  Trump intended and intends to restore power to the electorate; by default, this requires removing it from the bureaucracy.  The levers of power within the bureaucracy – what is called “The Deep State” – include numerous police and investigative agencies, most of which are populated by people who have their own, largely globalist, not nationalist, attitudes toward America.  If they deem it necessary, they will do what is being done to Donald Trump to protect their power, not ours.  Trump is the symbol, patriotic Americans are the target.

Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Politics 2023, Religion

HATING THE HATE

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HATING THE HATE

Don’t you just hate it when people (it seems more often to be young women and gays) declare that they “hate” this or that movie, or a restaurant or some celebrity or… well, whatever?  “Hate” is tossed around like a beach ball at high-school graduation in that it has nothing whatsoever to do with what’s actually going on at the moment.  This is not to say that “hatred” isn’t a powerfully destructive and corrosive reality, it’s just that most people who hate things really don’t, in fact, which means that non-hating people have to be on the lookout for real hatred so that we don’t get caught down in it when it’s being tossed about like a beach ball: never staying in one spot long enough to start an infection.  On the other hand, playing with hate can leave reasonably intelligent people open to mob – or group – hatred campaigns while not actually recognizing when “party-hate” has become consuming “hatred,” so foul that it can change people’s personalities.

One person, reasonably intelligent and reasonable, might learn of something with which he or she strongly disagrees and privately bemoan the fact of a bad political or legal turn of events, but never descend into actual hatred of anyone as a result.  In a group of equally angered partisans, however, the formerly reasonable person might break laws and demonstrate, agitate, hold signs and shout hateful slogans while comforted by the like-mindedness of other proto-haters.  The real hatred spews out when counter-protesters show up, arguing directly against what the mob “hates.”  There is no worse hatred than pops out when opponents start to poke holes in the dislikes of the originating protesters.

The worst haters also seem to be the most likely and virulent accusers of hate in others.  Why this is so can be debated by psychologists, but it has something to do with the mental neighborhood in which they live.  In many cases it is a matter of hating themselves and finding it impossible to love others.  Hate is their currency.  It should be no surprise that “members” of the LGBTQ+ “community” are among the most active haters, especially transgenderists.  One could speculate that a person who “transitions,” even if only emotionally, bears the impossible burden of hating who he or she is… so much so that emotional and mental energies can be almost wholly committed to convincing oneself and others that he or she is, in fact, someone else, an enormous weight to carry.

Another activist group that accentuates its hate for opponents is that comprised of those who are pro-abortion.  As a qualified arm-chair analyst, Prudence can see clearly why this is so: people who are “pro-choice” or, in fact, pro-abortion, have first to believe a series of lies relative to the nature and effect of various abortion procedures, which means tricking themselves or lying to themselves, something that is psychologically unsettling in the first place, and then act with or support those who will act on an utter hatred for the proto-human trying to grow and live.  Only then could the death of that unborn child be rationalized.  Prudence believes that hatred begets hatred – jumping into the shallow end of a pool will ultimately wet the jumper just as thoroughly as would happen by first entering the deep end.

Pro-lifers, on the other hand, tend to be more religious and more Christian in beliefs and actions.  For them, life is sacred and fetuses are entrusted to mothers in God’s name; they can’t be killed for any reason.  Essentially, the two sides cannot compromise.  Having reveled in 50 years of nearly unrestricted abortion rights, pro-abortion forces now feel victimized by forces directly opposed to their beliefs in a right to abort the unborn for virtually any reason, including convenience of the mother and / or the father or of any other person with influence over the mother.  To those who have reversed the ostensible “right” to abort, pro-abortionists have only hate.  Those who can actively or acquiescently cause or accept the death of entirely innocent unborn babies are already steeped in untruth and hatred.  It is a small shift to hate those who have attacked their convoluted premises of justification.

Hate readily erupts from people on the Left, and the reasons seem complex, but they’re not.  Socialism is fundamentally premised on hatred.  Many who are attracted to this or that sympathetic-sounding promise of socialism, would vehemently deny Socialism’s connection to hatred of any color. Socialism is just “helping” the (choose all that apply:) downtrodden, oppressed, poor, disadvantaged, illegal, incarcerated, undocumented, impaired, incapable, marginalized, indigent, ill-informed, illiterate, iniquitous, intemperate, impregnated, introverted or invasive.  Such “help,” however, inevitably costs the recipients freedom and sovereignty.  By definition, each type of “help” places the recipient in a group henceforth identified by their weakness or dependence.  It all becomes political, as the government grows to encompass all the help it can imagine providing, and the recipients form advocacy groups for their type of neediness.

Nowhere in the socialist corrosion is there a solution to or cure of any need… just nuance and expansion of groups.  All the needy will likely vote to increase the levels of help and the numbers of helpless previously unrecognized.  Many will be hired to administer the distribution and identification of needed help.  It has been said that Socialism denies human nature and is therefore fatally flawed as a means of organizing governance to the benefit of the majority of citizens.  In fact, Socialism functions and gains power by promulgating the WORST tendencies of human nature and is therefore fatally flawed as a means of organizing governance.

It is clear that some people, due to momentums from earlier existences or due to unfortunate nurturing, even while in the womb, will be de-motivated to work and otherwise take care of themselves.  Such will comfortably accept support from others or, worse, have few compunctions about stealing what they need from others.  They are examples of basic beliefs being the foundation of morality.  Like most – not all, but most – humans, these individuals’ beliefs may be changed with appropriately provided education and rewarded actions.  It is a task that successful societies will undertake and accomplish… failed societies will excuse it and even encourage it as some aspect of “rights.”  It is, rather, an aspect of rewarded “wrongs.”  Continuous welfare creates resentment among recipients, not gratitude.  The relative status of dependents is low; those who have gained the skills to set their own economic path – path of personal “worth” – are obviously treated better, even revered.  Those who are economic “losers” are tolerated at best and scorned at worst.  There is no pleasure in dependency.  Dependents eventually hate the providers.  Any change in status for recipients, required by providers, will increase resentment.  A relatively minor trigger event could yield widespread hateful, destructive action.

Politically, disgruntled, economically dependent populations are fertile ground for opposition groups and philosophies.  A little guidance as to whom to hate, and how, can bring mobs to the streets and actions into riots, scaring the bejeebers out of decent citizens and civil authorities.  It can also guide volumes of votes at election time.  “Defund the Police” can actually gain political relevance.  There are politicians who are so craven as to capitalize on the political will and hatreds of the forces of social failure.  For shame.

One political party has shifted its basis to one of hatred, and it’s not the Conservatives, who tend toward belief in the potential and value of every person.  Rather than support and profit from their self-destruction, conservatives, more than likely Christian in outlook, believe in the possibility of rehabilitation and conversion of welfare recipients into productive, successful members of the greater society.  Welfare must be temporary, in our view; self-support is constructive and self-enhancing; work is its own reward as well as the means of self-support.  Everyone is valuable.  Unfortunately, for 60 years we have avoided fighting for our beliefs, attempting only to temper the failed and failing beliefs of leftists.  For another shame.  It is the politics of conservatism that has failed, not that of the left. 

There is a fundamental hatred expressed by leftists to keep people in the welfare morass.  The waste of their lives and their children’s lives, whether by imposed helplessness, victimhood or crappy education managed by other leftists, is an expression of hatred for those so trapped.  What a cruel outlook on politics and power.

Ultimately, as we are witnessing in 2023, there is a general hatred of American Constitutionalism and its “negative rights,” as Barack Obama calls them.  Theirs is a hatred of free speech, legal protections of religious expression, unreasonable search and seizure, Fifth Amendment protections and all the rest.  This readily becomes hatred of those Americans who believe in and defend the majesty of our Constitutional Republic.  As those same leftists cement into place the ability to control the outcomes of elections, their hatred for honesty, truth and fairness is clear.  Shame on them.  Conservatives are still whistling past the graveyard of failed civilizations, hoping against hope for fair treatment in elections.  I hate that.