Economics, Elections, Governance, Obama, Politics 2023, Representation

BEING A LONG SHORTLY – 3

April 8, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Progress toward exposing problems we face has been impPrudently slow… and there are so many. They are interrelated, but it is far too complex to discuss them all at once. Let’s move forward.

UNIONIZATION

There are valid reasons for otherwise independent, sovereign individuals to put their futures and ability be productive into he hands of others who may or may not share their best interests. Usually those reasons are related to bad management decisions, but unionism has devolved into monopoly labor, and it’s just as flawed as monopoly capitalism. The private sector has largely rejected unionism; monopoly labor primarily exists in the “public” sector – government financed and managed work. The reason for this phenomenon, the dirtiest possible, is the value of rewarding an army of political, re-election workers, be they in construction, policing, firefighting, plumbing, paving or bus-driving.

Most are good people. It’s never a question of individual people, it’s the power held by a relative few of them who purport to “represent” their membership in obtaining more “fairness” in pay and work rules. The process of keeping power for union leaders lies in politicians having voted for legal status for unions; it lies in “public” contracting and public employment being required to be unionized. The unions, as a result these legal requirements, also are obligated to “negotiate” with the same politicians who granted them power and for whom they work at election times. It is a game in which the politicians always lose when representing “the public” – taxpayers – in determining how much to pay the members of the unions. On the other hand, the politicians, left mostly, but also many on the right, who “fight” for “working families” usually win on the re-election side of the board. “Working families” are always union families, and the “fight” is always to pay them more.

It didn’t take long for what union members were paid became the “prevailing wage” and the rate that anyone doing business with town, state or federal governments had to pay in order to bid on “public” contracts. Unlike business and labor and expenditures in the (dreaded) private sector where all the productive surplus that pays for every public expenditure is earned, virtually no one who negotiates for the “public” represents the interests of the public… not really. Elected officials who win election and re-election by promising to “fight for working families and the ‘middle class’” only fight to keep things as they are, reliably in favor of government, always at higher pay.

If a single change could be made that was “fair” for every American, it would be for every state to be a right-to-work state with no favoritism in public contracting for unionized companies. For contractors who could show superior results from their unionized workforce, they would rightly win their share of “public” projects. Non-union contractors who could show the same, would win theirs. Until that day, the slope will remain downward, always at higher pay.

A sad example of the downside of legally sanctioned unionization is the death and destruction that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020. “Oh, come now Prudence… you’re off the rails with that one,” you might be thinking. But, you’re looking at the wrong end of the whole sequence. The man who was convicted for the manslaughter of Floyd before his body was cold, Officer Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department, was a dues-paying member of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis. That union had no role in his trial relative to George Floyd, but it had protected Chauvin multiple times relative to complaints about his use of force while an active officer, of which there were many – more than 15. Chances are that Chauvin ought to have been separated from the police department long before he restrained George Floyd. He had demonstrated a tendency to use force to restrain detainees past the point when force was needed. The Federation had argued for him in every case, saving his job. That’s what unions do and a large part of why members pay union dues.

EDUCATION

One of the worst examples of public employee unionization is teachers’ unions – not teachers… teachers’ unions. Their stranglehold on public policy and purse strings was made clear during the 3 years’ of COVID-19 fear-mongering. The damage to children and to actual education itself, is nearly immeasurable, the money wasted to appease teacher unions during COVID, is outrageous. Even the supposed scientists at the CDC were taking orders from the Federation of Teachers as to whether schools could open again or kids stop wearing masks – science be damned. Teachers pretended to “teach” remotely while students pretended to “learn” from their computer screens. But, no one learned from the “science” everyone claimed to be following, including the CDC and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases: guardians of “the science,” every one. And that’s another post.

Observers of things educational estimate that kids were set back one to two years of development and learning under the COVID regime. Despite the uselessness of face masks and the increasing understanding of the damage they do to development of the youngest school-children, including socialization and speech and comprehension skills, some school systems, largely pushed by unions, still wanted to mask children at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year! Because of fear of catching COVID? Ridiculous. These are the people we trust to impart knowledge to our children – knowledge that is supposed to prepare them to think on their own, resolve problems and conflicts and to prepare for adulthood. Yet many school teachers and school committees seem Hell-bent on denying the children with whom they are entrusted for five days a week, a fair chance at growing up intact. What are we doing? What are they doing? What in every matter of education should educators consider their mission and success to be? Confuse kids about their sexual outlook or fantasy? Convince kids that their skin color is more important than their abilities to apply themselves?

People who don’t lie to themselves and others about human nature – like socialists and Communists do – will say “No” to those last two questions.

BANKS & ECONOMICS

People whom we pay excessively to “manage” our finances, the money supply and economic growth, appear to not have as deep an understanding as we assume when justifying their exalted pay and position. They are evidently even more ignorant of the majesty of freedom and individual sovereignty; money and freedom are inextricable, after all. The foolhardy actions of the “Biden” administration, following on the heels of the largely mendacious “COVID Pandemic,” and the deadly inflation that results, illustrate all too clearly the lack of intelligence being applied to economics… and to governance, itself.

Amidst the jungle of banking, finance and investment regulations that have grown up since the Great Depression, a basic truth has been lost within government, itself – including Congress – and among the people of the United States. Now, with communistic theories being applied thither and yon, we are approaching the cliff’s edge of economic collapse while a crowd of chowderheads is enthralled with its legislative “victories” in the first two years of the Biden regime, basic truth be damned. And, what truth is this? Inflation is the result of government actions. It is not a virus that attacks without warning, or the result of too much exuberance by free people and enterprise. It refers only to the money (actually, “currency”), supply, something for which the unholy alliance between government and the Federal Reserve are entirely responsible. Rising prices are not inflation, although inflation results in prices rising. Inflation (and this is why it is often employed as a matter of policy) reduces the value of currency, both in tangible form and in electronic accounts. In the short term, it enables government to pay its debts more cheaply, but it also steals from every private person and family, savings and retirement account. Inflation is a thief unleashed upon the population by government.

Lately, the secretive, highly regulated, yet poorly regulated banking industry, has been shaken to its boots by the severe inflation ignited by the pandemic and the wild, unneeded deficit spending of the Biden administration. The Federal Reserve Board assumes as part of its role, that it must regulate the money supply, ostensibly to limit inflation. Contra-indicated is its other assumed role: controlling (limiting) unemployment. Controlling inflation comes first, always, since the health of the financial/banking system relies on stable rates of inflation and of interest. In the world of mortgages and large-asset financing and leasing, interest rates – the cost of money over time – needs to be stable or growing very slowly. Abrupt acceleration in the rate of inflation disturbs both long and short-term financing and, ironically, the availability of cash for daily economic function. Banks have failed in the past two weeks and other banks are scrambling to save weakened banks. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen has repeatedly assured the public and Congress that “the banks” are safe and that depositors will be able to obtain their money when needed. America’s Gramma Yellen looks so friendly. She expects to bring our total debt to 50,000,000,000,000 dollars. That is a difficult number to grasp – maybe FIFTY FRIGGIN’ TRILLION is easier to conceive of. Her calming words consist of the possibility that the total cost of INTEREST(!) will be a certain relatively small percentage of GROSS FRIGGIN’ DOMESTIC PRODUCT!

Yellen is a committed Keynesian economist, which is to say that she believes in deficit spending as a matter of policy and appropriate government action/response to financial OR social anomalies. This belief blends in with the socialist view that any problem brought to government’s attention, must be resolved by government action. “Deficit” spending also fits the modus operandi of the Federal Reserve, itself, since it is enabled by law to lend money to the government that it – the Fed – does not have! What could go wrong?

Deficit spending, itself, is premised on the vast majority of the population being ignorant of the possible effects of it. That is, so long as “people” (voters) don’t understand what government is doing to them (“for them” in theory), and it is primarily economic “doing,” the government can do what is good for government and keep voters occupied with a host of social issues, angers, unfairness-es, and fundamentally local grievances. With enough words in favor of this or that response to these non-federal (non-Constitutional) issues, Congressmen and women and Senators, many of whom don’t understand economics much, either, can keep getting re-elected. The permanent government and the “experts,” like Yellen, who slide into and out of powerful federal positions, can maintain the direction they want government to go, regardless of the wishes of the citizenry whose power they actually exercise. Janet Yellen has been influential or powerful in the economic direction of the federal government for three decades – first as one of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors in the mid ‘90’s, then as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors for Bill Clinton for two years. Barack Obama named her Chair of the Federal Reserve – technically a private consortium of banks, not Federal, in fact. Joe Biden chose her for Treasury Secretary, likely as he chose many of the key people from the Obama Administration: at Obama’s direction.

Despite supposedly favoring low unemployment over inflation control, Yellen has argued for continued “stimulus” during the pandemic, and for higher taxes and lower “retirement” spending to deal with the national debt. Republicans are routinely lied-about at any suggestion of reducing Social Security or Medicare expenditures like what Janet Yellen suggested. Doesn’t matter, so long as she is happy to enable and promote Keynesian deficits in the face of “crises,” socialists will be happy to take her advice.

We are in trouble. Stay tuned for more ways to Prudently analyze or resolve the problems we face.

Biden, Climate, Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Transportation

BEING A LONG SHORTLY – 2

April 7, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

America is mired in at least 39 or 390 serious problems, but we’ve dealt with only 4 of those we’ve Prudently identified. Time is short. We must continue.

NUCLEAR POWER

Those who have submitted, mentally and emotionally, to the “green” cult, are uniformly opposed to so-called fossil fuels on the premise that carbon-dioxide is going to ruin Earth’s climate and cause the demise of civilization and of life, itself. That CO²is the prime “green” component of the solar-driven oxygen cycle upon which all life depends, seems not to affect their thinking. Those same are virulently opposed to nuclear energy, the cleanest, least damaging source of electrical energy currently available. Something doesn’t make sense.

Green leftists always reference “Chernobyl” as the end of the argument against nuclear; if that fails, “Three-Mile Island” is expected to shut-up any pro-nuclear stragglers. Both of those supposed examples of what’s wrong with nuclear power plants, are non-sequiturs. Chernobyl, in particular, is an example, but it’s an example of how NOT to build a nuclear pile and of how NOT to run and maintain it. Rather than condemn the natural process of nuclear fission, opponents should correct their opposition to the technological stupidity the Soviet Union rewarded. Chernobyl would have been a big nothing had it been designed and built like, well, Three-Mile Island, actually.

Chernobyl was, technically, not in a containment structure as nearly all nuclear plants outside of the USSR were. That is to say, the weaknesses of the design and overall misunderstanding of the processes at various states of operation of their graphite pile reactors, make the Chernobyl-design power plants risky for mistakes and accidents under the best of circumstances. A long list of nuclear accidents at those plants was finally made public after the investigation into “Chernobyl” was completed. Some engineering traditions should not be permitted to operate or build nuclear plants.

Still, nuclear power plants have so many inherent advantages that it is foolishness to avoid making use of the continuously-improving technology that goes into their design and construction. The largest deterrent to nuclear power is fear, often fed by reference to bad technology, like that employed in Chernobyl-design plants and methods. New series III and IV plants are smaller, modular and 5 to 10 times safer than Three-Mile Island era plants, including passive safety systems. They’re also much less expensive to build and license. And, they are clean in both product and operating lifetimes up to 60 years and in eventual decommissioning costs and impacts. There is no “all-electric” future without massive, weatherproof generating capacity like what nuclear can provide.

TRANSPORTATION

Ours is a highly specialized and competitive global economy. Both commodities and finished products must move from points of origin to points of consumption; this is not going to change no matter how many “community gardens” are created, and it won’t change despite all efforts to go “carbon neutral,” either. Some tasks must be performed. Daily there are millions of them. Reducing the efficiency of completing those millions of tasks places huge burdens on society, the economy and on freedom. Forcing wholesale changes on how transport is performed… without a more efficient way to do it, is risky at best and foolish by definition.

We are in the midst of a green revolution, and we have been for over 100 years. From time to time wisdom has been applied through government regulation that has sped up the process of becoming more efficient and therefore cleaner in our consumption of energy to get materials and people moved from place to place. Increased mileage standards is one example, and automobiles are far cleaner and more efficient than ever, today. On the other hand, there are far more cars on the road than ever – in virtually every country – causing ever more gasoline, diesel and lubricating oil to be consumed while propelling substantially more “transport” per gallon or quart, and overall. For green evangelists there has been no progress at all – things are oh, so terribly worse because people insist on private, self-directed transport, and reject, for the most part, “public” transportation: too many cars, too many people driving cars.

Bad government, bending to the political pressure of “green” acolytes, responds by forcing people to pay for and to switch to public conveyance, and then fails to render it clean, comfortable or safe. Worse, public transit doesn’t go to every place where people need to go, and it never will. Government then considers how to force people to go to where public transit does go, imagining “model” communities that may never exist. There are clean, electric alternatives, but so much money and political force has been committed to “public transit” that alternatives are now less likely to be considered than if government went back to being wise, again. [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/; or https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/07/10/automotive-economics-and-freedom/.]

Battery magic seems to many, especially to “green” proselytes, to be cleaner than those awful carbon-based fuels; we should all shuck our internal combustion engines and switch to battery-powered vehicles. Bad government is listening to them and is virtually forcing car manufacturers to make more magic cars and fewer reliable ones. The ads are impressive. Batteries, themselves, are dirty products to make, both physically and politically. A person changing from gasoline or diesel to battery power has to drive upwards of 60,000 miles before the ecological cleanliness of an “electric” car starts to improve upon that of an internal combustion model. The only advantage of lithium-ion battery-powered cars is that the filth of mining and tailings, processing and effluents, unsafe mining (including child labor) and ecological disruption and pollution… well, it all happens in other places, out of sight of “green” Americans and others. Right in our neighborhoods things are pollution free! Forcing indigenous people off of their ancestral lands in South America is meaningless to us: they’re not OUR indigenous people about whom we care very deeply… very, very deeply. Improvements to Communist China’s manufacturing base and our long-term dependence on it for parts and replacement batteries, should keep China from ever damaging relations with the United States… so that’s good, too.

No matter how much cleaner internal combustion engines become, it is – and will never be – clean enough; only perfection is barely adequate in the business of planet-saving. So, in partnership with an entirely anti-American regime, the “green” (actually Red) movement has twisted our economy to the point of throwing away phenomenal manufacturing and servicing skills and technology, as well as discarding remarkably and increasingly efficient electric generation in favor of windmills and Chinese solar panels. Soon, there will be millions of used cars rusting away as planet-saviors force the end of internal-combustion cars and trucks and the adoption of battery-powered replacements, while limiting the number of “licenses” to sell gasoline… or refine it… or transport it, making continued use of gas or diesel power a little more awkward and unreliable than even severely limited-range electrics are and will continue to be.

Ultimately, (see “only perfection” in the preceding paragraph) owning and driving personal vehicles will become so troublesome that only grossly expensive “public” transportation will be able to provide a modicum of mobility. Personal freedom and sovereignty that Americans have invented the technological means to enjoy, will be lost forever. After that there will be millions of battery vehicles that no one wants or can sell, and will find difficult to recycle. Everything will be approaching perfection.

IMMIGRATION

For many nearly forgotten reasons the United States of America has for over 230 years been the most attractive nation and place for people from every nation to emigrate to. Americans, themselves, no longer understand (or are taught) why this could possibly be. Today education appears to include – is compelled to include – every tawdry mistake anyone in our history ever made. Worse, to complete a communistic circle, the effect of those mistakes is to absorb and render null and void, every great idea and action of those same people. The net effect of this twisted lens of American history is to grow up blaming your country for every problem in the world, rendering the existence and founding of it indefensible. As a result, fewer and fewer people do defend it… at least from inside the country… even as more and more people flee their home countries and sneak into, well, HERE.

Actual sovereign nations, however, have laws to govern and, basically, restrict entry to their jurisdictions. Nations are defined by their borders. The United States is defined by both borders and ideas of freedom and individuality – not by groups or identities, but by individuals, individual responsibility and equality under the law for – every – individual. For the past 65 years or so, we have turned our backs on our unique and majestic ideas, and dispersed the gold of citizenship as millions of people who don’t want to become Americans flooded to the insides of our borders.

Barack Obama was the first president who actively modified immigration practices if not policies, to try to change the demographics of the United States. Democrats had been dreaming of pushing white America into the minority category since Teddy Kennedy, an avowed socialist (and idiot). They couldn’t get it rolling any faster during the Clinton administration, but things started moving under Obama. He was probably the first president who seriously does not like the United States or its Constitution. Trump, obviously, was an unexpected speed bump in the race to change races. Biden, on the other hand, knows only two speeds in that race: “flat-out” and “stupid.” Some FIVE MILLION illegal aliens from over 100 countries have walked in to the U.S. since the 2020 votes were “certified.” About a million of those never even checked in with the Border Patrol, preferring to sneak in with various subterfuges planned, including serious drug-dealing and, for some hundreds or thousands, terrorist crimes.

Biden is hard to pigeon-hole. A patriotic observer is hard-pressed to declare him merely sloppy or foolish, when the very next day he might be presented with greater evidence of Biden’s treason toward his own nation. Breaking, or failing purposefully to enforce U. S. laws, which enables the entry of enemies to our nation, is exactly what President Biden has been doing since taking office… and it’s treasonous. That treason has come in many flavors, primarily these two: entry of those seeking to execute criminal activities including terrorist acts, and entry of those transporting deadly narcotics with intent to distribute. That fentanyl kills 10’s of thousands of Americans – mostly young men, but certainly not exclusively – one would think might wake up Americans to the crime of making its importation easier!

The importation of people is also a crime. Mexican cartels, who control drugs across Mexico and across the U. S., have found a new billion-dollar industry in the trafficking of people into the U. S., especially, by a factor of 10, since the Biden administration took office. For all of the cooperative police work – DEA work – between Mexico and the past 5 administrations, the flow of drugs, now including abundant fentanyl, has not slowed. Where there once were 5 or 6 cartels there may be 15 operating in every Mexican state and every U. S. state, as well. They’ve become more violent in Mexico, causing record levels of homicides, destroyed families and widespread official corruption. At the same time, with the cooperation of Chinese chemical suppliers, they are partners in at least 100,000 deaths in the U. S. from fentanyl overdoses.

President Biden commits treason against his own country in other ways, often by providing “aid and comfort” to our enemies. It’s subtle, but definite… well, subtle except for scuttling Afghanistan. According to sworn congressional testimony, Biden demanded immediate withdrawal despite the advice of military advisors, including the abandonment of Baghram Airbase and more than $7 BILLION in weapons, ammunition, aircraft, including some high-tech personal and tactical hardware. The Taliban, of course, has never been an ally of ours or friendly toward America or Americans in any way. They’re enemies, Joe, you dope. And we armed them to the teeth, abandoned real allies to danger and death at the hands of the Taliban. We could have retained Baghram and much of our equipment, and we logically should have regardless of costs. So, militarily, why did we do things the way we did? What on Earth was the headlong, damned stupid rush?

It seems Prudent to realize that we abandoned all of our work because China wanted us to. China didn’t want us to maintain a base so close to their border. China is happy to see us shoot ourselves in the foot – it saves them the trouble. They have invested many millions into the Biden family; our retreat was a return on investment by a factor of a thousand percent. When we look at all the players and pressures involved in 20 years of U.S. actions in Afghanistan, only the U.S. acted like an idiot, against its own interests. Treason, thy name is Biden.

When China is invited to “help” the United States eliminate drug abuse, and elections are “temporarily” suspended to get a handle on “crime,” it will be too late to rid ourselves of the gaggle of assholes from the Obama and Biden regimes.

So many words and only 3 more issues discussed. Prudence says stop here, wait for the next.

Climate, Crime, Culture, Economics, Elections, Governance, Politics 2023

BEING A LONG SHORTLY – 1

April 7, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

How do we screw up? Let us count the ways. To take a clear look we need, first, to LIST all the ways the United States is, well, doing the wrong thing. It’s a little difficult to determine which errors are in reaction to the actions of others, and which are proactive attempts to change America’s direction, both domestically and internationally. It will take more than one post to cover all those we can list. Where to start?

America is not functioning the way it did when we were the strongest, most free and most prosperous nation, a beacon of freedom and opportunity. The single, most potent disrupter and destroyer of “the American way” is and has been, socialism and then Marxism. It would be useful if we could simply mount a campaign to “say no to Marxism,” and scrub it from the public mentality. Unfortunately, and criminally, its perverse pervasion amidst so many of our institutions and attitudes, politicians and civic leaders, schools, administrations and educators, and other millions of social services, workers and “charities,” makes its removal a painful, macro- and micro-scopic abrasion of every layer of society.

So, there is a list of problems in need of Americanist repair, but virtually every one of them (poor Prudence has 39, a starting number) is confused by Marxism – Communism – which is antithetical to our Constitutional Republic. “Leaders” seem to be oblivious to its infection.

FOREIGN AID

Foreign Aid is a problem, for example, to which most Americans pay little or no attention. It’s not a “big” number in “budgets” of hundreds and thousands of $Billions, but it is a honey-pot for some of the most questionable, if not reprehensible, governments in the world; and, it represents our political support for philosophies and actions that are the OPPOSITE of what “America” stands for.

So, “foreign aid,” this backwater line-item of expenditure, makes a patriot wonder about the meanings behind the actions of others. And, it should cause every American to reflect on how it is that so many elected and deep-state bureaucrat “leaders” manage to gain and retain power when they are so opposed to what America stands for. Clearly, over many years, lies are fed to American citizens and, more disturbingly, to our elected “representatives,” sufficiently to coax continued financing of those opposed to us and our way of life. This tiny corner of our “government” shows us the nature of most of our debilitating problems. (America, awake!)

If one were to pray to God to expose the lies being told – and the liars who tell them – then he or she would also need to pray for exposure of the truth and the tellers of truth… so that we would know who to follow. We’d have to exercise good, thoughtful judgment. One thing, then, that we must not overlook, is that behind or amidst every problem that we might examine: problems that threaten our Republic and the unity required under “e pluribus unum,” are lies – lies of initiation and/or lies of maintenance. The original lie of any conspiracy or fraud, must forever be reinforced with more lies, great and minor. If we can identify the lie, we may be able to identify the liar. It is a key responsibility of citizenship.

Lately, and we’re looking back to World War II as the beginning of “lately,” there has developed an apparent increased density of lies emanating from “government.” This phenomenon has been possible only thanks to a compliant – if not subservient, press. Our Constitution protects and, in effect, promotes a “free press,” but the meaning of the term and the protection, is seriously diluted, “lately.”

In keeping with the Communist Manifesto, news has, for many outlets, become mere propaganda, justified by political and racist hatreds. Very lately we’ve learned of direct involvement by federal law-enforcement agencies with various information outlets so as to alter Americans’ understanding of the truth. More than once, this illegal interaction has affected elections at the federal level. Virtual Communists within our own government of, by and for the people, seem to be converting a manifesto into actions.

Communism, socialism and other far-left movements have to lie. The truth of their ideas and beliefs is so ugly and inhuman that only a smattering of disturbed people would join or follow them if the truth of them were made clear. As might be said of “Satan,” the use of some truth about conditions that are not perfect, and lots of sympathy for people in imperfect situations, will confuse enough people to effect a shift of power toward the left. Later is soon enough for the confused to learn the truth of socialism-Communism. Those who are challenged with the murderous and economic destruction of socialism-Communism will fall back on the claim that leftist governance has failed only because those who have tried it were not as smart as those, like Hillary Clinton, who hope to try it today.

So, as we look at problem areas for America, keep at the forefront of your analysis that the far left has to dissemble, distract and deflect in order to make its claim to power. It is better to have truth as our number-one ally.

UKRAINE

Ukraine is a problem, whether you think their defense is appropriate for them to pursue, or not. For the record, it is Prudent for everyone to defend his or her family, home, property and country. It is natural and logical to ask others to help in that defense. But the Ukraine situation is not as simple as that – how they became a target of their Russian neighbor; how the United States became their main armorer; how the United States got involved with overthrowing the Ukrainian government in 2014 – the waters in Ukraine have been seriously muddied by the United States. Russia… Putin, refers to the current Ukrainian regime as “Nazis.” Sadly, he is remarkably close to truth in so describing.

The late, great Senator, John McCain became the public face of U.S. support for street-riot opposition to the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who had been duly elected, and who favored closer economic ties to Russia over connection to the European Union. The U. S. favored the opposite. The main opposition to Yanukovych came from what is called “the far right” inasmuch as national socialist oligarchs govern all that differently than Russian socialist oligarchs. But the national socialist party, Svoboda, had descended from neo-Nazis. During the Maidan protests (Maidan is the central plaza in Kyiv) an even more Nazi-like party, Right Group, gelled and became more violent than Svoboda, including firearms. Hearkening back to the Nazi occupation during WW-2, many Ukrainians still perceive Nazi collaborators as heroic in helping rid the country of Soviet Communists who, under Stalin, had starved millions of Ukrainians during collectivization. Both Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy stood shoulder to shoulder with the fascist leader of Svoboda as they promised support for the protesters.

So far, no government of Ukraine has operated without corruption and oligarchic power-brokering, keeping the rich, rich. Russia’s primary bargaining chip to pull Ukraine eastward, was gas pricing, with Ukraine highly dependent on low gas prices from Russia. They were deeply upset when Yanukovych rejected their final offer in favor of the EU. Vice-President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, managed to gain a position on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company, Bourisma, immediately following the ouster of Yanukovych. Petro Poroshenko, one of the richest men in Ukraine, became Prime Minister and merged a Neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Regiment, into the National Guard. At the time of “The Maidan Revolution” both Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. Ambassador, and Victoria Nuland, his Assistant, were actively manipulating people and events to place the government of Ukraine on the pro-Western trajectory it claims now. No wonder Putin is so angry. There ARE Nazi’s in Ukraine, whom the Russians consider the descendants of Operation Barbarrossa, that killed 20 million Russians in WW-2.

We are told every day that defending Ukraine “for as long as it takes” is the same as defending democracy, which doesn’t actually exist in Ukraine – Zelensky has eliminated opposition parties. Who are the liars in this mess that grows more dangerous with every Biden breath? The larger question is: why would any of us vote for people who lie about Ukraine or who are too ignorant to say something true about that benighted real estate? Helping displaced people is a totally separate question.

NORDSTREAM

The Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines should be as neutral as pipelines usually are, but these have been elevated to powder kegs by someone’s utterly stupid sabotage of them. Given that Russia has been seeking bids to repair the pipes, the initial charge by the U.S. that Russia may have destroyed its own pipelines… makes less sense than when first postulated. The apparent culprit is the United States, itself, and parts of that story are spilling out, most particularly in the deep reporting of Seymour Hersh. The U. S. has pushed hard on a key economic sore point for both Russia and Europe. Watching the gang of less-than-honest advisors and ambassadors “handle” America’s relationships with Russia, Ukraine, China, Iran and North Korea, gives a Prudent person pause and worry. It’s almost as though war weren’t coming quickly enough, and these boobs were testing ways to hasten it along. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the truth about the Nordstream operation from the federal government.

ENERGY

Pulling the plug on American energy production is one of the stupidest moves a federal government has ever made. It seems inevitable that a leftist administration would be the one to attempt it. It was known to be likely if Joe Biden became president in 2020: he campaigned on a “green” platform. So, he has made it difficult and costly to develop oil and gas fields and bring them on line. Doing so, along with the somewhat silly added regulations and restrictions on the uses of natural gas and refined products, has had an immeasurably small impact on the earth’s climate, if any, and probably won’t ever have more than that. This is not to say that his destructive policies have not had AN impact. Keeping the wealth of natural resources out of the American economy – and other economies – has lubricated the acceleration of inflation that hurts everyone while weakening the nation of the United States just as threats to the nation are the greatest they have been since the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

Controlling America’s energy production and keeping its costs low strengthen’s America strategically and domestically. Forcing more of our citizens into subsistence economics weakens the nation, and removes millions of people from the “improvement track,” where adults gain in skills and earning power – and living standards – and their expanding hope for the future encourages them to have children who can advance in skills, learning and hopefulness. Creating economic hardship is the exact opposite of what political leaders should ever do or ignore; indeed, failing to partner in the economic advancement and safety of your citizenry, is one of the clearest marks of failure by leaders.

The ”green” agenda is founded on a number of fallacies, including our ability to modify the climate of the planet. Politically, the green movement has as much of its impetus a newfound political, regulatory ability to PUNISH economically successful people. The rapidity with which President Biden reversed energy policies, ostensibly to undo anything connected to Donald Trump or any of his supporters, marks his, and his leftist, “green” voters’, intense desire not to govern as partners in success, but to damage the economies of non-leftists. It exemplifies failure. Energy is strength and security, and it defines the scope and efficiency of an economy in a world of specialization. To weaken energy is to weaken the economy and every citizen’s position in it. To reduce hope in an economy is to strike at the purpose of nationhood. For Joe Biden, it fails beyond “us versus them” in a political sense, reaching the nadir of “me versus all who question me.”

_______________________ Our problems exceed a single posting.

Crime, Family, Foreign Policy, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2023, Representation, Trump

AMERICANS FIRST

February 25, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

The accumulation of derogatory information about the origin of COVID-19 and the supposed “vaccines” rushed into production and forced upon billions of people across the world, argues for some Prudent discussion. We’ve been repeatedly told about how “COVID” caused the deaths of “a million” Americans. It’s more complicated than just that terrible number.

For some weird reason, the United States has yet to hold China responsible for the pandemic. We keep doing billions of dollars of business with China, we treat China with kid-glove diplomacy, and we drop key internal defenses against Chinese influence within our universities, elections and social media. No rational country would act this way, so why are we acting irrationally? Money? Is that it? Did you know that China actually established its own POLICE STATIONS (supposedly to monitor Chinese nationals) in New York and elsewhere?

Do you ever hear a statistic of how many people have died or been debilitated by the mRNA vaccines? No? It is Prudent to wonder why that is so. Are the deaths of young, not infirm, but healthy young children and young adults, any less tragic than deaths from COVID? There are thousands, after all. Debilitation includes permanent heart damage that has stopped sports activity in its tracks and lifelong heart weakness. Is this other epidemic simply the price that a society must pay for the greater good? What good is that? Wealth transfer?

Those who take the “side” of the so-called mRNA vaccines are convinced that they miraculously saved the lives of millions of people. That is a statistic that can’t really be quantified: we can’t prove what didn’t happen. Oddly, though, when COVID was its most virulent, in 2020, there was no “vaccine” available, yet in 2021, when people were lining up by the millions to get the injections, twice as many people died “from COVID.”

Needless to say, money skewed those deaths and statistics, too. Hospitals were compensated for treating COVID patients, more for providing Remdesivir (which also killed some victims) and more for use of ventilators on patients… then still more for every COVID death in hospital. Unlike virtually every other epidemic/pandemic, NO OTHER TREATMENT OPTIONS WERE PERMITTED! Despite widespread evidence of lives saved and mitigating effectiveness of Ivermectin in various combinations with analgesics and supplements, one of the safest drugs ever discovered, doctors who prescribed it were chastised and restricted to the point of losing hospital privileges and even licensure. AS IF COORDINATED, there erupted a monolithic defense of mRNA vaccines as the only “treatment” approved, and a virulent disapproval of all alternatives. Is that how influential big Pharma’s money is throughout our medical establishment?

To make matters ever so much worse, governments imposed vaccines on various groups, professions, industries else workers would lose their jobs – jobs deemed heroic prior to vaccine availability. Civil rights were tossed out the window in favor of vaccine mandates, while adverse effects of the vaccines themselves were suppressed. Gone was the right to “informed consent” by the coerced, since the vaccine makers had made claims of effectiveness based on poor test samples and, in crucial cases, NO TEST SAMPLES… just claims. There was no real information about the “vaccines” that could provide the “informed” part.

Throughout 2022, as “vaccinated” came to mean the first two shots and some number of booster shots, the niggling reports of adverse reactions to mRNA injections became a flood, including an abrupt spike in sudden adult deaths among the 25 to 59 year old demographic – the healthiest segment. Morticians and pathologists were reporting numerous instances of long, rubbery blood clots among deceased, vaccinated victims. Young men, even into their teens, were dropping dead during sporting events or while in training – reports from our and several other countries. Other reports involved pilots, who are monitored constantly for fitness, and even military personnel, also in the healthiest years of their lives, all vaccinated by mandate.

One doctor Prudence interacted with, upon hearing how the injections were being called “clot shots,” immediately proclaimed that COVID itself caused clots “orders of magnitude” more frequently than the miraculous mRNA injections, which, sadly, is simply not true. She, like many others “in” the medical industry, believes that the mRNA shots are a miracle that has saved millions of lives. That is what they are supposed to believe.

There are numerous instances of patients’ families going to court to force hospitals to treat their loved-ones with something besides ventilation and Remdesivir. In many cases the hospital would force them to physically take the patient somewhere else to avoid being treated in ways that institution had declared to be the “protocol,” for COVID, often in lockstep with “CDC” recommendations and “FDA” rules against Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine. Doctors who knew of the effectiveness of alternate treatments were forced out of those hospitals and even lost their licenses. Today, the CDC and FDA are trying to claim that they offered only “suggestions” and that neither ever forced anyone to choose certain treatments or deny them. What a load of crap. These are still the “authorities” in medicine. We haven’t even mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Tony Fauci is a case study in “deep statism” all by himself. He worked for the National Institutes of Health for more than 53 years, and as head of the national Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the last 38 of those years. Over that span his federal salary rose to well over $400,000 – more than the President or anyone else in federal employ is paid. He may have been worth every penny. However, in addition to salary, many of the staff within NIH agencies, including Mr. Fauci, presumably, are allowed to collect “royalties” from pharmaceuticals and treatment protocols developed directly from research and laboratory testing financed by the NIH budgets. Fauci has strongly denied any “investment” in, for example, the mRNA injections, but his declaimer about royalties paid to personnel is rather indistinct, although he tosses in that none of its royalties were “paid to (him).” That doesn’t apply to numerous other products his NIAID helped to develop.

Perhaps Fauci’s greatest impact is achieved through research grants, in the many millions, ultimately billions, of dollars. We can see this impact in the microcosm by following the money the NIAID granted to a subcontractor, “Eco-Health Alliance,” for whom there existed no compunction about financing work in the Wuhan, China, Institute of Virology. Despite the highly revered – and paid – Dr. Fauci’s denial before Congress, Eco-Health Alliance was funding so-called gain-of-function research on the SARS-2-CoV virus. There must have been some good reason to encourage and fund that work. Money, perhaps.

It turns out that the University of North Carolina obtained a patent on the SARS-2-CoV virus protein. This is not possible, according to patent law referring to biological “inventions,” unless… unless the molecule or protein or cell has been engineered. That is, one cannot obtain a patent on a naturally occurring life-form. Even more interestingly, our own “CDC,” a federal agency (the Center for Disease Control) had already obtained a patent (which they petitioned to keep confidential) on the SARS-2 virus! That virus had to be engineered, also, in order to be patented, and not merely isolated. Wait a minute!

Dr. Fauci and others had determined that the SARS virus had certain useful qualities, perhaps as a biological vehicle for delivering certain biological materials into humans? Certainly there was something about that virus that made it worth engineering. And engineer they did, except the “they” got laundered through a favored sub-contractor who did business with the Wuhan Institute.

When the virus broke out of the lab – which reason and evidence make clear – it was the engineered version, made more infective in humans through “gain-of-function” engineering. “They” call it research. Who doesn’t like scientific research? Trust the science, right? The Chinese Communists, never known for telling the truth, tried to deflect on the source of COVID-19, as they distributed it across the planet, by claiming that it came from the U. S. military. There was, very unfortunately, more truth to that claim than Americans want to admit. Our own National Institutes of Health and its NIAID under the careful guidance of the renowned Anthony Fauci, began the chain of processes that resulted in the pandemic/plandemic we blame for millions of deaths and trillions of dollars of economic destruction. What a string of crimes.

But the disease enabled a huge lurch toward one-world socialist government, and our own president-regular-guy, Joe, is following along with his own trans-national delusions. He is happy to sign over American sovereignty in matters of health, American citizenship, gun-control, freedom of movement and financial manipulation. His outlook is shared by the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, particularly the W.H.O., who have lied about COVID-19 fairly steadily to protect China. No wonder today’s Democrats hate Trump and “America First” so much. The patriotic, America-loving observer would, Prudently, expect that “America First” would encompass “Americans First,” as part of the philosophy. It would seem that the HEALTH and well-being of Americans ought to be way high up in the purposes and priorities of the politicians we elect and overpay with that reasonable expectation. These so-called “vaccines” and related mandates appear to be the exact opposite of “Americans First.”

Recently the less-than-honest CDC expanded its “recommendations” for the “emergency use” injections of poorly tested mRNA gene therapies, to children as young as 2 years. No mother has been able to make an informed decision – able to provide “informed consent” – for the administration of these odd chemicals to their innocent offspring. That is because no mother has the information about what the “vaccine” does to her child’s body, heart, brain, ovaries immediately or over time. Neither Pfizer nor Moderna nor Astra-Zeneca has publicized what each does know about adverse reactions to the shots. There are, literally, well over 200,000 such events, including thousands of deaths. ANY other “vaccine” would have been pulled from the market after several hundred serious adverse effects.

ANY other epidemic/pandemic disease would have had every feasible treatment thrown at it, as well. None has ever been restricted as COVID-19 was, as to what drugs might be administered to counter the infection. Did you or someone you know lose a friend or family member to “Covid?” Was he or she “treated” with ventilation and/or Remdesivir? Estimates of how many Americans died of Covid, in fact, run to one million; estimates of how many might have been saved with banned treatments, primarily Ivermectin and key nutrients, run to HALF! 500,000 deaths that deserved more than one attempt to prevent them.

And, there is far more useful advice for prevention of harm from Covid-19, than taking more doses of mRNA shots, that for many people are a far greater risk of injury or death than Covid, itself. Put that in your 5-year-old… and hope for the best.

Climate, Culture, Environment, Foreign Policy, Governance, Politics 2023, Religion, Responsibility

THE GREAT POLAR SHIFT

February 24, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Any mention of “climate” over the past, say, 40 years, has always been fraught with the effects of “good” or “evil” thinking. No matter where one lands on the spectrum of how much humans can effect changes in Earth’s climate, it is instructive to step back from personal fears or certainties and evaluate the phenomenon of “climate change” as political force. Historically, political movements have centered on efforts that will produce changes that most adherents will experience if successful. Fighting over abortion, for example will, within 9 months at most, yield a result. The result might manifest in a few hours or days with the cessation of creation, but most certainly in about 270 days or so. People can rally around reality and changes thereto.

Climate, however, that changes over decades and centuries, is a little harder to “pin down” when it comes to fears and certainties, so the people who have concocted the worst fears into a soup of political manipulation based on events that most followers, or fellow travelers on the anthropomorphic climate train, will never experience… are to be commended for their amorphous success. Regardless of the fears that drive them, the only “changes” that their followers will enjoy, as it were, are losses of freedom and personal sovereignty. Remarkable.

What if science revealed a change humans have made that has the actual potential to completely revamp Earth’s climate and even its geography? Would it cause true international cooperation to reverse or counter it? Or, would it hasten the takeover of national identities and create the one-world socialist Hell that many climate alarmists are in favor of? Unfortunately, these are not idle questions, anymore.

Scientists – geologists and others – have noticed tiny aberrations in Earth’s rotation. Several years ago they calculated that the filling of the 3 Gorges Dam in China had changed the location of enough millions of tons of water, plus the huge volume of concrete in the dam structure, itself, to perturb the Earth’s rotation around its axis. Wow… who knew our engineering could have that large an impact? Fast forward to 2022.

The Earth is wobbling a little more. Scientists have studied the wobbles in part because the magnetic north pole has been shifting eastward much more rapidly than expected, whereas it had been slowly drifting westward for some years prior. There appears to be a little more rotational wobble connected to the shift of the poles and, knowing that human engineering is massive enough to affect the wobble, scientists have been looking at other possible hydrological effects.

It turns out that it’s human activity that is putting the stability of the PLANET(!) at risk, and it has nothing to do with our “carbon footprints.” Global warming, freezing, the melting of glaciers, will all be as nothing if the processes that have resulted in the current rotational disturbances are not reversed and replaced with something else. “Oh, come on,” you say. “How can anything be worse than climate change? What ‘processes’ are you trying to scare us with?”

Water… which is to say, moving water around – putting it into storage or taking it out of storage. We talked about the Three Gorges Dam, which changed flowing waters into stored waters. At the other end of process, we take water out of the ground – out of huge aquifers – essentially out of the largest storage systems there are. Humans need water and public health and prosperity require “clean” water, not always available from surface, recycled waters. Humans need food, too, and food requires water. The best soil is rarely where the most fresh water is, or so we believed until we figured out that the biggest fresh-water lakes were under the ground. Hi-Ho, irrigation! … and the original “green revolution” that actually does a great deal of good.

However, just like putting a small bit of weight on the side of a top, the earth is wobbling as it spins at 1,000 miles per hour due to our rearrangement of fairly large amounts of weight. When huge volumes of water come out of the ground they become surface water that either evaporates or runs off into the sea. Where they were becomes much lighter. For India, for example, the volume of lake Erie leaves their aquifers every two years. That is, 50.2 Million tons of water is pumped to the surface every year! From there it runs off ultimately to the Indian Ocean, spreading its weight across the globe. Even for Mother Earth, that starts to add up. And in 10 or 20 years it’s enough to change her balance. But, so what? We don’t even notice the wobble. Here’s where the warning comes into play.

At some point, and that point is not certain, but we are heading toward it, the wobble will, literally, and in a destructively short time – perhaps a couple of days or so – cause the earth to roll over to a new axis of rotation that is “balanced” with the changes we have made. That is, the heaviest parts of the “top” that is our planet, will shift to the equator, and that new equator will be halfway between the new poles, north and south. The lightest parts will have shifted closer to the poles. And it won’t take long for these shifts to occur. What will the surface of the earth experience?

Among other cataclysms, there will be earthquakes of immeasurable amplitude, and in lots of places that haven’t been along known faults. Unfortunately, most people will be unable to pay attention to earthquakes because of the super-hurricane-strength winds that precede the largest tsunamis ever imagined: hundreds of feet high, as the oceans slosh over most of the land. It is hard to predict any region that will be able to ride out the Great Polar Shift with only survivable damage. One set of predictions places Europe at the new North Pole. Not much of a growing season after the waters subside, there. Chicago, in that scientifically and mathematically considered postulate, would be on the new equator. God forbid it all.

These natural disasters are far more likely than any of the fears with which “climate change” acolytes have twisted so many people’s politics. Will the Great Shift happen in the next 10 years? No one can tell. What can be told is that, barring a huge change in water management, worldwide, the shift will eventually happen. What can we do?

There are three major goals in Prudence’ view: 1) Cease draining aquifers, everywhere, and allow them to refill – takes a century or more – this will require a global shift to ocean desalinization, the production from which will have negligible effects on weight distribution. 2) Gradually eliminate giant dams everywhere, replacing them with simpler, smaller, flood-control dams and intentional flood plains. 3) Engineer and re-engineer nuclear power-plant designs so that hydro-power can be replaced and exceeded, facilitating economic advancement for all nations… cleanly.

There may be a fourth goal, as well: thanking our lucky stars – and God – that we paid attention to warning signs in time to avoid our own extinction.

Economics, Environment, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2023

DEFENDING PALESTINIANS

February 18, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter 4 Comments

Supporting Palestinians

One need not look very hard or long to discover immense government mendacity and incompetence. Yet, when found, both qualities of questionable federal actions serve to confirm excellence and veracity for those whose intentions are fulfilled thereby. In other words, almost everything federal departments do is subject to the ideologies of long-term employee-perpetrators, and very little to do with the intentions of Presidents or Cabinet Secretaries. Elected officers are relatively temporary, especially Presidents and their appointees – ostensibly the most powerful people in government. All of this potential failure is exposed sharply in a little town named East Palestine, Ohio.

Norfolk-Southern operates a two-track main through the town of East Palestine. Across those rails travel a thousand products every week, mostly in bulk – products like cement, flour, gypsum, wheat, oil, and a host of manufactured volatiles like vinyl chloride, methyl ethyl ketone, butyl acrylate, benzene residue and dozens of other toxic fluids and materials. People whose lives place them along the tracks of Norfolk-Southern, are usually ignorant of, if not oblivious to, all of these potential hazards flying by at 50 and 60 miles an hour on trains that weigh so much that their cumulative momentum require up to a mile of normal braking to come to a halt. On February 3^rd, 2023, a train of 150 cars and tankers of various types was routed to pass through East Palestine around 9 o’clock in the morning, but it never made it through… most of it.

A bearing on a bulk dry-materials car was overheating. That car and bearing may have traveled 300 miles or more since the train was “made up,” and the imminent failure of that bearing and axle was visible in Salem, at least 20 miles ahead of East Palestine, as sparks and eventually flames spewed from the doomed journal. It lasted another 20 minutes until it failed catastrophically in East Palestine. By raw luck no one was killed as 38 of the cars crumpled together and started burning, including 10 cars with truly hazardous chemicals. Further luck allowed for only fire and not an explosion, which might have thrown metal a mile or more from the site.

One of the risk factors for the residents of East Palestine appears to have been that many of them voted for Donald Trump and, worse, that most are white-skinned. Otherwise it is difficult to assess why the federal government was so slow to respond to the plight of the little town of 5,000 souls who were so rudely alerted to the unsafe nature of America’s rail transportation, and its ruinous costs for innocent victims of its accidents.

Of course, the huge costs of “breaking” a train somewhere along the main line, in order to remove one defective car, is very, very high. We must recognize the difficulties of running a railroad. Still, had they stopped the train to remove the car with the burning axle, they’d have had to bring another engine up to the rear section and pull it back away from the damaged car. the front section could be pulled away from the other end of that car. But then what? Bring in a crane to pick it off the rails? Probably just pushing the car off the tracks with a piece of construction equipment would have been the cheapest temporary solution. The rest of the train could be coupled together and complete it’s risky journey. Definitely it would have been a more elegant solution than the one they tried. Even the relatively insensitive thermal detectors that all railroads use to alert them to overheated bearings, must have detected a journal with sparks and flames spraying from it

Pulling that mess through East Palestine must have been an economic decision.

Despite Ohio and Federal EPA assurances, no one in East Palestine trusts either the water or the air. Local anecdotes about headaches, sick pets and farm animals, rashes, burns and inability to tolerate the air in their homes and businesses, are discounted automatically. “Everything is safe to breath and drink,” they are told, but after the conversion of vinyl chloride into phosgene gas and hydrochloric acid thanks to “burning off” the remaining vinyl chloride that hadn’t burned on its own, no one is taking the word of anyone in authority. That and the mixed messages of safety and advice to drink bottled water, has everyone who can smell the chemicals on edge. The Secretary of Transportation, one Peter Buttigieg, reassured the aggrieved residents with the information that there are as many as 1,000 train derailments every year in the United States and, despite the excessive attention being paid to East Palestine currently, they shouldn’t feel especially victimized, apparently. Oddly, his wisdom provided no comfort, whatsoever. Who hired that dope, anyway?

Eventually the EPA began serious cleanup, and the black cloud with which “they” had blessed this beautiful little spot of earth, dissipated, which is not to say that the poisonous gasses released “went away.” They are now part of our environment… and everyone’s else, but “the solution to pollution is dilution.” Closer to ground zero, however, the black ash fallout is a worry for those on whose property it fell. No one really knows what the long-term health effects may be for those most impacted. On February 3^rd, their homes plummeted in value as did their land. Norfolk-Southern is not likely to make them whole, probably no one can. A thousand derailments per year… hmmmnnh, maybe there is something important for the Secretary of Transportation to do.

Biden, Economics, Governance, Politics 2023, Representation

INFLATULATION

February 4, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Currently we seem to be as concerned about inflation and the “consumer price index” as we are about any other nationwide issue. “Inflation,” of course, refers only to the inflation of the money supply, something that is only partly affected by the actions of people in the day-to-day economy… what we call, “Main Street.” This reference is usually juxtaposed to “Wall Street,” where the wizards of finance operate at, supposedly, an entirely different level of economics than the rest of us. Though Wall Street money machinations are more arcane, they are not so very different from the decisions we all make regarding the presence or lack of “money” and the affordability of things we’d like to buy.

“Wall Street” is a combine of INTERNATIONAL money manipulators, and they are tied to many governments, especially that of the United States, where finance involves multi-Billions and even Trillions of dollars; financing shopping centers, small businesses and residences is not their particular concern. They, like Federal socialists, are delighted to mess with 10’s and 100’s of thousands of mortgages, including selling “options” and “futures” contracts based on their supposed flow of billions and hundreds of billions of future mortgage payments – delighted, that is, until their phony financial instruments caused the destruction of several of their own pack, like Lehman Brothers. At that point, thanks to their financial entanglements with “our” federal government and governors, they felt free to compel the taxpayers of America to bail them out. Otherwise, they’re just like us.

In either case, “money” is defined as instruments of real worth or value: a dollar once was exchangeable for a dollar’s worth of silver or, in theory, of gold. People – and banks and governments – around the world, recognize precious metals and true weights and purity thereof, as items of intrinsic value. Right now, the “dollar” bill we are familiar with is no longer even tied to the United States directly; it is a “Federal Reserve Note” that the U. S. Federal Government declares must be accepted as “legal tender” for all debts public and private. But, all you can get at a Federal Reserve Bank (neither federal nor a reserve) in exchange for a one-dollar Federal Reserve Note is another Federal Reserve Note. So, our “currency” today is only “tender,” not actual money. Others accept it in exchange for real goods and services and as long as this is true we can function economically.

Our good and trusted Representatives, however, legislating in “The People’s House” on our behalf, have decided over many decades to spend more “money” than we can actually afford to pay in taxes. Our Federal “budgets,” such as they have been since 1960 or so, have been out of “balance,” now accumulating some $32 Trillion of DEBT, which has placed an obligation on the backs of all of us, thank them very much. This occurred at an accelerated rate over the past two years of the Biden administration and the last year of the Trump administration, thanks, ostensibly, to a COVID-19 pandemic, and this has both distorted our employment, wages and sense of responsibility, and caused tremendous INFLATION of the money supply. Well, actually, it’s not money that it has inflated, but our “legal tender” or “currency.” Keep in mind that it is not “money” that gets inflated – that supply only grows by the quantities of goods and fixed assets that increase thanks to PRODUCTION of those goods, goods that have intrinsic value. That “intrinsic value” is the closest thing to “money” that we have.

Unfortunately, as fascistic leftists shut down our economy and started paying newly locked-out workers to stay home as their jobs evaporated, PRODUCTION, oddly enough, declined! Suddenly we had trillions of new bits of legal tender floating around with fewer goods – or SERVICES – available to buy! This logically caused prices to rise. That’s not “inflation,” regardless of how often we call it that, it is PRICE INCREASE derived largely from supply and demand. In our foolishness we lowered supply while we multiplied demand. Indeed, our decades-long transfer of production to China, where it was also restricted by COVID (including screw-ups in the supply chain, keeping what products were made out of our marketplaces) made our own inflation-generated price increases even worse. Anyone who calls rising prices, “inflation,” is simply ignorant. The Federal Government and the current administration are the most frequent mis-staters of what “inflation” is, but it helps to confuse – or lie to – the American people, one of which is always a Federal goal.

Consequently, President Biden and his tight tether to the truth, loves to claim that “inflation” has “come down” for the past 6 consecutive months. How wonderful that sounds, as though his spendthrift administration were responsible for improving the economy for average folks. But what is reality? Do Biden’s truths have any congruence with reality?

Prices are still high and getting higher. What does Biden’s claim of slowing “inflation” have to do with that? Well, when we recognize what his “inflation” really is: price increases, Biden is patting himself on the back for slower price increases. Swell. What he hopes to obscure is the painful fact that all the price increase that has already taken place IS STILL THERE, and those prices are STILL GOING UP, just a little slower. That is not a victory. Factually it is a sloppy admission that the pain he has inflicted on Americans with his dumb-ass policies is as bad as ever and getting worse. Congratulations, you old dope.

Add to the damage being done the fact that the rate of price increases (so-called inflation) is no longer honestly stated to begin with, thanks to Federal political calculations, since they no longer include ENERGY or FOOD! What a hoax. That lets the Department of Commerce claim that “inflation” is only 6 or 7 or 8 percent, when it’s actually 12 or 13 percent! People might really vote against someone who presided over an economy with 13 percent inflation (whatever that is). As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

So, Prudent readers, inflation isn’t the same as price increases, but it is a significant cause of them. It isn’t something people cause; it is a tool of government that performs as a relatively slow devaluation of the currency. Unfortunately, that is the same legal tender that we, all, depend upon for affording our means of living. Don’t vote for politicians or erstwhile “leaders” who willingly devalue the money you have earned and the wealth you have accumulated over years. Who the Hell do they think they are, to steal from every citizen? Indeed. Check out: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2022/08/21/the-inflation-chronicles/

Biden, Economics, Education, Environment, Foreign Policy, Politics 2023

CHINA SECOND

February 4, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

“Beijing, China – December 27, 2011. Young soldiers marching in the Forbidden City.”

Forty years ago a local newspaper asked its readers about the coming millennium and what each thought would be the great progress, or major changes, that might be made in the next century. Prudence wrote back – long before she realized how Prudent she was – that the next 100 years would be based on China and everyone’s reaction to or accommodation of, China. In the mid-‘80’s the United States was feeling pretty good about itself: strong, prosperous, winning against the Soviet Union and mostly at peace. People were proud of being American.

Starting with the Carter administration, followed by a period of clear thinking in the Reagan administration, and then under full steam in the Clinton administration, the United States has followed policies that have enriched and built-up Communist China. Carter changed our policy regarding Taiwan’s independence. Clinton accepted millions of “campaign” funds from Chinese sources and weakened restrictions on technology transfers. It was a transfer from the “Loral Space” corporation that enabled China to accurately launch and control missiles. Supercomputer technology was allowed to transfer in the late ‘90’s, after overriding Defense Department objections and rules. A lot of money moved toward the Clintons during the two presidential campaigns; dozens of Chinese operators accepted plea deals or fled the country to avoid prosecution. Almost singlehandedly, Bill Clinton – with unknown levels of action by Hillary Clinton in the background – relinquished U. S. superiority in missile and space technologies, perhaps 20 years or more of advantage over the Chinese. Everybody has a price… well, not everyone, but definitely that couple does. It is beyond the scope of Prudence’ recollections to plumb the extent of influence selling through the Clinton Global Initiative: Hillary’s bribery laundering mechanism.

For more than a century the “West” treated China as a football, kicked around and taken advantage-of by multiple European countries and by the U. S. Communism, starting with the Soviets and spreading aggressively, finally began to focus American attention on the most populous country. Japan went to war in China long before it attacked Pearl Harbor. Their presence and brutality solidified the division of China into Nationalists and Communists China suffered as many as 20 million deaths and multiple millions of other casualties. The uneasy alliance of the Nationalists and the Communists against Japan held until Japan was forced by the U. S. to retreat. The corrupt Nationalists, saddled with terrible, deadly decisions they had made during the war with Japan, wound up with their only “friends” being the U. S., who protected them as they fled to Formosa Island, later called Taiwan, a de-facto independent nation, but only because the U. S. maintains its “defense” of Taiwan.

China has matured under communism, but, thankfully, large fractions of the population still understand when they’re being tyrannized, as recent demonstrations have shown. Unlike Americans, Chinese citizens are acutely aware of their government’s lies and how dangerous acquiescence to Communist dictates actually is. Americans seem to be divided over whether one recognizes government lies or accepts them as true. The latter are largely Biden voters and, earlier, Obama voters. They also become very angry when events like the 2020 elections are questioned, probably out of fear that the questioners may be right. Fortunately, every “good work” President Biden has done has reinforced their belief that he really did earn the highest presidential vote total in history. China is actively and fairly successfully taking advantage of this American gullibility: enough trade and McDonald’s restaurants can convert anyone into an honest ally.

America has a bad habit of absorbing the first blow… even telling its adversaries where to land it and then, how to obtain American financing for their expenses. It’s not clear that we will rise up and demand victory over our enemies in the absence of a Pearl-Harbor-like attack. Such it is with so-called climate change and the Paris Accords that are a guilt-laden means of extracting reparations from us while we hurt ourselves economically to save the planet. We are not alone in the west in cutting our energy use, raising its costs and reducing our productivity and prosperity, all to reduce CO₂emissions.

But, did you know, China, in the Paris “accords,” agreed only to top out its estimated peak CO₂ emissions by 2030? Did you know China will still be building coal-fired generating plants until then… or that it will bring on line more coal-fired plants in 2023 than the U.S. has altogether? All the Western industrialized nations COMBINED don’t emit as much CO₂ as China does, now – by about HALF – yet we are flagellating ourselves with ideological restrictions on energy use, restrictions that won’t change the temperature of the Earth by one whit, 80 or 100 years from now. What in God’s name are we agreeing to? And, why? Is it just to make it easier for China and its Communist tyranny to de-construct the U. S. while they become the dominant economy and military power?

We, Americans, the conscientious ones, at least, tend to look for good in everyone. It is a weakness that could, one day, leave us under tyranny. China has brought to bear numerous weapons of “war” that are daily undercutting America’s strength, alliances, economics, education – right down to kindergarten and throughout higher education – Chinese millions and billions of dollars are buying our philosophies. Surely we don’t expect education establishments that bend to woke demands from young, unaccomplished students, with speech codes and lists of allowable pronouns, to stand up for America against China, do we? We must wonder why the Biden administration cancelled enforcement of reporting requirements for universities to reveal how much in foreign grants and investments they accept. We know that the University of Pennsylvania, for example, created the “Penn-Biden” center – sort of a think-tank – with tens of millions of Chinese dollars. Following his vice-presidency, Joe Biden was paid nearly $1 Million for a single speech / seminar in at least one year. That’s a nice gig… makes one wonder how they chose Joe Biden to pay that high fee to for little work. Perhaps they were paying for the opportunity to review classified documents that Biden stored there.

Without American technology, China would be a much smaller economy and far less militarily developed. Yet our own tax policies made it profitable to move manufacturing to China and then ship the products back to the U. S. Unfortunately, China doesn’t allow manufacturers to operate unless they share their technology with the Chinese. This form of unfair trade practice soon produced planes and weapons that look a lot like the latest developments inside the U. S. We are not smart about our relationship with China. Sadly, many, many people in permanent government are satisfied to get paid off by China no matter what the cost is to our security. Chinese spies make certain to get close to a number of House and Senate members to keep legislation dormant that might put a stop to Chinese intrigues.

Whew!

When one reads or hears enough bad news about the international stupidity the White House, Intelligence agencies and our State, Defense, Commerce, Homeland Security and even Transportation departments put forth for policy in the name of the American people, it’s enough to depress even the sunniest of optimists. Then we look at our solid-looking cities, highways, airports and shopping centers and we try to imagine that no one could ever defeat us or ever force us into subjugation. After all, this is such a nice country and such nice people, nobody would even try to take us over… we’re the United States of America for Heaven’s sake! Still…..

Still, China is a serious, uncompromising threat to the nature and value of the United States. What can the individual American do? First, learn the truth of The Biden administration’s relations and relationships with China and its dozens of tentacles that are reaching directly into our government, business and financial institutions, for indeed they are. Then prepare yourself and as many as you can influence, to vote against those who ignore or accept or even encourage greater business connection to China. If you get to speak to an elected official, locally, state-level or federal, ask what he or she is doing about disassociating our nation and economy from China and from the Communist Party of China. Ask about the crucial products that we depend upon that are sourced only from China. What is she or he going to do to change that? We still have enough power and freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Our historic weakness toward China is a genuine grievance.

Then, publicize what you have learned about that official’s position and encourage all you can to VOTE for America First policies. What? There’s some better policy than America First? Are you nuts?

Crime, Culture, Economics, Environment, Health Care, Politics 2023, Religion, Responsibility

Street PEOPLE

January 21, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Homelessness, despite its explosive increase in the past 30 years, still feels like an exception, an anomaly in the grand, prosperous and self-righteous tableau that is America. How can so many be living “on the street,” basically, in a country with so many resources and so comprehensive a political infrastructure? Liberalism causes otherwise rational people to defend the RIGHTS of the mentally ill, weird or addicted and largely uncivilized people to sleep in public places. Eventually, their rights to urinate and defecate in public places are also “recognized.” Due to some dislocation in the logical thinking of other liberals who consider themselves civilized (living in houses, indoor plumbing, decent ‘human’ activities and some form of productive wealth), residents of the same jurisdiction are permitted by virtue of the existence of other “rights,” to make their ways around the city, including eating in restaurants and entering various other businesses, in the nude. Once good sense is breeched, the uncrossable lines of civilized decency become harder and harder to discern.

To varying degrees, many municipalities have descended into some form of what San Francisco has become a leader of. Prior to the last 20 to 30 years western civilization, largely founded according to Judeo-Christian beliefs and ethics, was endeavoring to advance in terms of human civilization, habits and public, interactive, practices. That direction has reversed. That reversal seems to be centered in and controlled by liberals, leftists and socialists. Conservatives are distinctly unimpressed by these trends, if not disgusted – as seems Prudent.

This accelerating retreat from good sense makes almost every “civilized” resident very uncomfortable. It has seeped out into criminal justice to the point that criminals are coddled while ultra-liberal prosecutors expand the list of crimes for which punishment and retribution are no longer very important. But the trend started with rampant and financially-encouraged homelessness – all of which programs have failed despite the millions of explanations of success by those same liberal politicians. Liberal “government” has foresworn any moral judgment to the point that anywhere it can insert some “public” monies must also eliminate morality as a shared ethic.

The Prudent approach is to recognize that life is better, safer, cleaner, more productive and successful when the vast majority of the population – and its “governors” – share a basic morality. In such a civilized environment certain behaviors and practices are not allowed for sensible reasons of health, public safety, compassion and cleanliness. We can begin the return to civilization by ending the “root causes” of homelessness. This will require the enforcing of laws despite the chagrin of some who are incorrigible – both homeless and “normal.”

Block by block, street-sleepers have to be rounded up and held in temporary – emphasis on temporary – facilities for evaluation. Which of them are addicted? Which truly mentally ill? There won’t be any free needles or free drugs… only compassionate detox, physical clean-up and healthy food. Every person will be required to adhere to rules in order to eat, hunger being the universal motivator. Those who are clinically determined to be mentally ill will be treated, possibly medicated if it will help, and housed separately… depending on the nature of supportive bonds with others, mentally ill or not. Instead of spending tens of millions of dollars on better tents or other free stuff that facilitates living on the streets, every person will be rehabilitated to the best degree possible. Vocational training will be offered within controlled circumstances. For many this will be a refresher for skills that used to support them before addiction took over. Each will have to work in some way to earn his or her room and board. Each should also be offered contact with religious people, ministers, or others. There is always hope.

In a sense it is a program of second chances, but not a second chance to live on the street. For those whose mental illness can’t be controlled, proper institutionalization is needed – not “warehousing” of humans, modified assisted living. Nearly every state has a history of terrible handling of the mentally ill. It always offended Prudence to hear about bad treatment and terrible conditions that seemed to go on and on… for years and decades. Were those the only solutions human beings could come up with? Was there someone else who could be blamed for the cruelty and stupidity that marked so many mental hospitals?

No, it was us, the same people who threw up their hands and closed the awful facilities and “mainstreamed” mentally ill people. Every person living “homeless,” can be helped, rehabilitated made more healthy and given / offered new direction and opportunity to take good care of themselves. If your politicians don’t agree, get some new ones. Politicians who are willing to run on a platform of honesty would be the best place to start.

Take a look at: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2019/12/26/new-life-town/

Biden, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

FREEDOM’S FUTURE

January 8, 2023 Prudence Leadbetter Leave a comment

Predictions are generally not very Prudent uses of mental energy. Every new year period yields predictions from financial experts, various historians, and, practicing their strong abilities to follow trends, politicians. Politicians are no more intelligent than 99% of the polity they claim to lead. Their skills are no greater than roughly that same percentage. They DO have unusual experiences, having agreed with their own ethics and advisors of various sources, to get involved with politics, campaigning and the miasma of half-truths and virtual untruths that “politics” seems to require in order to gain majority support.

Prudence is very close to a man who ran for office in the 1980’s. One of the most common questions directed to him was, “Why do you want to get mixed up in this stuff?” His strong beliefs about where his state government was off kilter didn’t really answer that question. In its simplest terms, it was almost, “Why would you want to become a cesspool adjuster?” Hard to answer.

One must multiply the paltry and rotten problems of one state by ten times or twenty, to appreciate the corruption of the U. S. Congress and the “swamp” it finances. Where does that leave us in the matter of predictions?

One of the most prescient observations, which sadly became a clear prediction, was from Scotsman, Alexander Fraser Tytler: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. …” It would be difficult to fashion a more succinct description – warning – of the political history of the United States. Having just watched the querulous assignation of the Speakership of the House of Representatives to Kevin McCarthy of California, and appreciating the truth of Tytler’s observation-prediction, some fresh predictions are now become Prudent.

Much of the battle for the speakership involved demands from actual conservatives to cut federal spending, even holding it to 2022 levels (a very low bar for measuring success), which would be a departure from the profligacy of recent decades of lies and spending. In other words, what those 20 or so conservatives promised to win elections is a departure from the direction of the past 7 or 8 administrations. Based on his history of “working across the aisle,” as though that were a mark of wisdom to be celebrated, McCarthy’s instincts would not have led him to run the house, its committees or the budgeting process, such as it is, along those lines. His history in the house, and some of his comments on hot issues, indicate that McCarthy acted as much in service to his party position as to hard principles. He supported Trump and criticized him. He voted for and against what might be considered “liberal” legislation. He has been more steadfast in opposing Biden-supported spending plans.

This all leads to both speculation and prediction. Not even Prudence can discern the innermost motivations of a politician, so trying to predict what the McCarthy-led House will actually do on specific issues is not likely to be useful. However, it seems Prudent to predict that some of the 6 holdouts who led the opposition to McCarthy, will face retribution, regardless of any promises from the new Speaker. The Speakership brings a lot of power, both administrative and political… plus a fatter paycheck; threats to that power will be punished.

Further, any motion to “vacate the chair,” now makeable by a single member, will never result in a change in speakership. Accepting this new rule seems like a major concession by McCarthy, but it will prove hollow.

A lot of heat will be generated from “oversight” investigations by several committees. Will any dishonest Biden administrator, of which there are several, actually be impeached or forced to resign? This is unlikely, despite the substantial law-breaking and lying to Congress that has transpired. Will anything substantive come from an investigation into Hunter Biden’s and presidential brother, Jim Biden’s, nefarious foreign influence-peddling over the years Joe Biden was Vice President? This appears to be a slam-dunk, but is also likely to be mostly heat, not light. There may be some sort of resolution passed by a slim majority in the house, but no impeachments.

Can the House, alone, force Biden to close the southern border? Theoretically… and according to the Constitution, Congress’ control of the “purse strings” can be used to propose “revenue”-raising legislation, taxation and borrowing and the like. All such must arise in the House. In addition, the ability for the Executive branch to draw moneys from the Treasury is dependent upon Congress’ passing of appropriating legislation to that effect. Amidst all the horse-trading and dealing done between the House and Senate, let alone in each House, the likelihood of targeted restrictions on expenditures in order to control or punish any executive department or agency for bad behavior, lying to Congress or various malfeasances, is quite small. It would be a watershed event, in practice, and seems doubtful in Prudence’ view.

It is more likely that specific appropriations might be voted for the purpose of closing the border and other needful actions, but, barring the willingness to perform quick impeachments, those directions given via appropriations can be “slow-walked” by the “swamp” for the duration of an administration.

Ultimately, in order to impose its will in any meaningful way, the “Republican” House will have to endure a government “shutdown.” In our lifetimes there has been very little political stomach for accepting the slings and arrows that are always directed at Republicans for such a “crisis.”

The pressure in Washington, within the deep state, certainly on Capitol Hill and, to our detriment, within the so-called Biden administration, is to send money from the Treasury out to thousands of programs that reach millions of Americans, buying their votes in the process. Along the way we may adequately defend the country, but that is becoming more questionable as “woke” nonsense infects the military establishment.

Can a couple dozen conservatives in the House actually change the direction of our decline? May God make it so… otherwise, let’s all be prepared to defend our nation, economy and border.

The Civil Right

Yearly Archives: 2023