Category Archives: Politics 2023

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

THE GREAT POLAR SHIFT

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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

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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 3rd, 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 3rd, 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

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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

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“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 CO2 emissions.

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

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Quality of life…

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

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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.