Category Archives: Representation

Elective course.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2022, Religion, Representation

Constitutionally Speaking

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…A Republic if you can keep it.

Wise humans generally have tried to select their leaders from among those who think logically relative to the traditions and cultural mores of the society.  Those who would be leaders, but who tend to propose completely opposite ideas and beliefs at proximate times, are generally rejected for positions of leadership, and denied power over the “people” who have sought leaders who will protect their families and partner in achieving greater safety, comfort and wealth.  Along the way, their leaders are expected to protect and strengthen the children so that society will grow, be strong and continue.

In earlier times, especially when education was not widespread – mainly reserved to self-selected religious leaders and somewhat self-selected royal families – populations accepted their statuses as serfs and peasants for whom reverence of their “leaders” was how safety for themselves and their families was increased, including food security.  Things changed as education became “public.”  Wisdom and philosophies from the “ancient” past spread among millions of thoughtful humans, some of whom refined and expanded on the “pure” ideas of the Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Persians and many others, interpreting human interactions amidst the “new” realities of economics, civic participation and independence.

Great minds eventually proscribed the foundational ideas of the United States, and they are quite simple!

Underlying the simplicity of the Constitution are principles of preventing or avoiding the proven tendencies of the worst of human nature to gain power and wealth at the expense of others: tyranny of one form or another.  Let’s consider the simple ideas and the assumptions on which they are dependent.  Our founders designed “self-government” against the backdrop of tyrannies they had seen and fought, both religious and monarchical, as well as militaristic.  They could not include tools designed to thwart the new tyrannies defined and refined by Marxism in the middle of the 19th century. That is our job, today.

The first simple idea, upon which our survival depended then and does, now: religious freedom.  Education in the late 18th century was based largely upon religious philosophies and structures of good and evil as spread by and through churches and prelates of all kinds, mostly Christian, and by locally hired teachers.  The vast majority of Americans shared basic beliefs in right and wrong as they ratified the Constitution; they never imagined that within a few generations the vast majority of Americans – AND THEIR CHURCHES – would no longer agree upon the principles of right and wrong and self-discipline.  The functioning of Constitutional republicanism depends upon “the people” being a moral, self-disciplined body politic.  To participate in and manage a republic, requires that its members – citizens – be educated in its principles and practices.  Sadly, this is no longer the case.

The second simple idea is representation.  A people who have learned to choose their representatives such that those so chosen will guard the people from the worst excesses of executive rulers, will, if properly educated, keep a civic eye on those representatives, in our case, on members of the House of Representatives.  Our Founders believed, based on a social compact within which nearly everyone shared common rights and wrongs, that representing people in the many states, would remain a mission of honor and fealty to their constituents.  They never imagined that election to Congress would become such a lucrative opportunity for personal gain, that re-election, and the many corruptions that facilitate re-election, would replace the proper role of service and honor.  “The People’s House” is no longer a place of honor but for a few.  Americans must educate themselves about the original purpose and model for representation, and MAKE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES required to restore representation to the primary purpose – and effect – of election to “The House.”

The third simple idea is states’ rights.  That is, that the Federal government is limited to those functions that states cannot do for themselves, and that the powers not granted to the Federal Government, or prohibited to it, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.  Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the States; they are not supposed to be longer-serving, at-large representatives of the people.  They are supposed to be selected by the state legislatures to represent the STATES, guarding their rights and powers in a federal, not NATIONAL system of governance.  Because of the failures of some state legislatures during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, leaving Senate seats unfilled, Congress proposed the 17th Amendment and it was ratified with little delay.  Since then, 6-year-term Senators have been elected similarly to 2-year-term Representatives.  Thus were the constituencies of Senators changed from their state governments to the general populations of states, which changed the responsibilities of Senators.  Being elected “at large” means that Senate candidates have, ever since, been able to lie at varying levels of effectiveness, twisting truth and news, particularly for incumbents, to gain popular vote victories. 

If the Senator in question had to answer to members of his or her state’s legislature, men and women who, to some greater degree, know what is going on and what they instructed their Senator to do, then the re-election/appointment landscape would be far, far different than the amorphous, dishonest campaigning that works with popular-vote elections.  Prior to the 17th Amendment, states’ senators had to answer for what they did in Washington.  It would be very good to repeal the 17th and make Senators responsible to SOMEBODY.  The chance of senators being re-elected for 24, 30 or 36 years, would be much reduced: a good thing.

The fourth simple idea is equal application of the laws.  The fundament of individual sovereignty and freedom is equal STATUS under the laws.  Our Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would have never been ratified, or even considered for ratification by some states, codifies the assumptions that underlay the debates that developed the Constitution.  Madison and others believed that having won independence from a powerful monarchy, under which laws and persecutions were applied differently to citizens deemed by the monarch to be favored or unfavored, had cemented the concepts of equal application of law into the American people.  In fact, the ability of governments of any type: elected or hereditary, to become tyrannical, was bound to color the debates.  The likelihood that executive authority will garner power not specifically granted to it, is historically likely.  Government can NEVER be trusted to control itself on behalf of even the highest principles.  The rules limiting the power of government and protecting the unalienable rights of every person, had to be part of the proposed Constitution.  Ratification was effected by legislative agreement of three-fourths of the states; the formation of a FEDERAL government was a function of the STATES and not even of popular vote.

Let’s repeat that concept: the Federal Government is a creation of the states.  The power and rights of, now, 50 STATES, are SUPERIOR to the powers of the Federal Government.  How foreign this truth sounds.  It means that criminal laws as well as civil laws, are primarily the business of states, and that federal laws should be few in number and limited in scope to matters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other amendments, and matters of military justice and treason.  It also means that federal police powers and the so-called “F.B.I.” should be severely limited in terms of interactions with individual citizens.  Things have changed, to say the least.

The fifth simple idea is the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, which provides a mechanism of election of the Chief Executive Officer / Commander-in-Chief, free of undue influence from Congress or from direct democracy.  Our Founders understood the inherent dangers of pure democracy and that democracy, alone, would quickly yield tyranny of shifting majorities.  This is why so many mechanisms dividing power between states and the federal system, between states and pure democracy, and between citizens and their representatives, are built into the Constitution.  Lately, many on the Left have complained about the Electoral College, always touting the “popular vote” as having favored a losing Presidential ticket.  Needless to say, the popular vote is meaningless in presidential politics.  The Electoral college makes sure that presidents are elected by the States, not by popular vote.  The U. S. holds 50 state elections for 50 slates of electors who are committed to a presidential ticket.  While electors are related to representative numbers: 2 senators per state plus the number of representatives per state, presidential tickets must win the majority of presidential electors, state by state.  Both large and small states are important to the final total.  Presidents are elected by the states, not through direct democracy.

Those who want to get rid of the Electoral College are those who want government to be empowered through pure democracy, and they are not to be trusted with real power.

Another simple idea, relative to the Executive authority, is that Congress must declare war, not the President.  Under monarchies, the monarch can dictate foreign policy and declare war when he or she doesn’t get what he or she desires.  Again, to limit the concentration of power in the executive branch, our founders anticipated that Congress’ interests would be closer to the people and rarely in complete agreement with the Chief Executive.  What was never anticipated was that both the House and Senate would be so willing to avoid responsibility for much of anything, and so willing to relinquish powers to the executive bureaucracies of unelected rule-makers, as is attractive to communists.  Like all contracts and covenants, they are only as good as the quality and integrity of the parties to them.

Our founders, likewise, never anticipated that Congress would devise a means of creating perpetually growing public debt (in the form of the extra-constitutional “Federal Reserve” Check out: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/).  In 1789 people – and governments – had to pay their debts before more loans would be offered; today we raise the “debt ceiling” so that we might borrow enough to pay only the interest on previous debts, let alone pay down the principals.  This results in our “representatives” failing utterly to represent the interests of the people each is paid handsomely to represent… adding annually to the peoples’ debt burden and being re-elected despite having done so.

The SUPREME COURT is a simple idea, although modern beliefs complicate it beyond reason.  The Constitution provides federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, with lifetime appointments.  The purpose is to insulate justices from political whims and winds of change, and, presumably, allow them to hold firmly to the meaning of the Constitution’s words as ever newer, unanticipated legal problems emerge.  Politics has caused never anticipated complications to the balancing work of the Supreme Court.  Elected men and women have added to the responsibilities of the Federal government beyond anything the Founders could have imagined.  The lines between Constitutional powers and protections of individual rights, have become broader and diffuse as politicians have found political power in the invention of new “rights,” many based on falsehoods.  The Left’s penchant for changing the definitions of words has made “equal protection under the law” nearly impossible; foolish politicians have passed laws to accommodate false definitions and whimsical “realities.”  The supreme court is tested to find narrow truths amidst broadened political fantasies.

Yet, the concept of a final arbiter of our Constitutional protections is both wise and essential.  That the U. S. was founded in the presence of printing and publications, forms of mail service and book-binding, kept our founders mindful of the spread of new ideas and opinions.  Launching the new nation on a “ship” of ideals required that some mechanism of preserving and reinforcing those ideas and ideals was essential.  The Supreme Court, almost inadvertently, became that mechanism, thanks to the innovative application of its limited powers by Chief Justice John Marshall.

Finally, the NINTH and TENTH amendments are a combined, simple idea.  Hardly any of our student youth are taught about the Constitution, and few of them, or even of their parents, have knowledge or opinions about the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights.

Amendment 9 admonishes the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that the rights named and listed in the Constitution – rights of individuals – cannot be construed to “deny or disparage” others (rights) retained by the people.  This is worth contemplating every day and upon every election:  The rights that are inherent in every citizen (unalienable rights), ARE NOT LIMITED to only those “enumerated” in the text of the Constitution, NOR can the constitution be employed to limit any of them!  These few words are quite possibly the most important and far-reaching in our Constitutional system.  EVERY piece of legislation and every surreptitious new regulation that spews forth from the tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats, should be evaluated BY OUR (ostensible) REPRESENTATIVES as to its neutrality toward or protection of our inherent rights as individual citizens.  What a different “official” status we are each entitled to, than what we are now saddled with.

The 10th Amendment, in effect, reserves to the STATES, much as the 9th reserves to the people, all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.  It then goes beyond the power of states and reserves the rest to the people, again.  This remarkable Constitution is unique in world history, and exceptional.  The rights secured to the citizens of the United States are exceptional among all the nations.  How is it that we have elected so many to Congress and even to the White House, who do not agree with what the Constitution says and promises to us as citizens?

Dear readers and fellow citizens, the simplest, most Prudent idea of all is to learn, teach, discuss, and study the Constitution and the thinking that supported its ultimate design.  Our students are deprived of the ONLY knowledge that will keep us and them, free.  If you have the ability to communicate to whomever is educating your children, insist that they, and all other teachers, produce high-school graduates who understand our rights and powers as U. S. citizens.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2022, Race, Religion, Representation

All Christmas Matters

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Boston Rescue Mission

As the Christ Mass approaches we tend to – are obligated to – place our most prized results of our year of labor and multiplication upon the altar, proving our willingness to sacrifice for God and thanks to God.  It’s metaphysical… in a non-computerized sort of way.  God, of course, doesn’t need our sacrifices, he needs the act of sacrificing.  He needs that expression of love, and so do we.

There’s a lot of charity flowing at this time of year, as you surely notice.  Charity is an act of selfless, as in “non-selfish” love; acts of love with no physical benefit in return.  Of course those and their organizations whose appeals we may answer as Christmas nears, do their best to thank all who gave of our supply of time or treasure, but acts of charity don’t require such recognition.  Thanking is certainly good manners, sometimes done to ensure future charity and, truth be known, most humans resent the lack of thanks, but it’s not a true factor in the equation of love or of its charitable expression.

We humans are beings defined, or measured, by economics.  We consistently judge the values of giving and receiving, thanks for a gift… or for charity.  It’s not always a healthy calculation, nor is it part of the love equation.  Or, of the charity equation.  Love, or charity, is an aetheric substance.  What we do here on Earth is a rather crude reflection of the pure, spiritual development that happens to and for our higher selves, our non-physical selves.  Except, we can’t manifest things to and for other humans without being in the physical plane, as it were.  If we are, someday, accepted into the plane where our soul is supposed to be, love is an automatic manifestation, not a choice.  Here, amidst a thousand distractions and evil opportunities, love and charity are a decision – sometimes a difficult one.  If you find it easy to express love for others and to sacrifice for others, count your blessings.

One of the tests we must pass is how to not slip through the diaphanous membrane between love and hate.  Hatred is often expressed towards ourselves, where it is most damaging.  It may be as simple as a mistake, even just dropping something, spilling something… stupid stuff.  Immediately we chastise ourselves in words we’d never apply to another, certainly never towards someone we love.  If our spouse or child experiences something irritating, an accident, a time-consuming error that makes him or her angry, your usual reaction is to sooth and help in resolving the problem.  Yet when we do something similar, ourselves, we immediately express self-hatred for our failing to do something smarter.  Prudence can’t explain why it works this way, but “the force,” God, the Universe, or Life, cannot deliver the best, most fortunate opportunities to you if you are immersed in hatred of yourself, OR, toward others.  It’s an equation: Love fits into it but hatred never does.  Love yourself – you are a product of love and of an investment by your mother and others of love.  You never deserve to be hated.

The greatest gift we can give, whether at Christmas or on any morning, is to review and refresh the love you are giving to yourself and others.  Even in mundane, economic interactions like sales, the advice always is to imagine that you love the stranger you would like to have a sales relationship with, before you pick up the phone or walk into an office.  It seems to make the interaction far more successful.  Prudence can testify to this effect.

How different might all interactions be if every human projected love toward his or her correspondents.  Unfortunately, our society and politics, even our elementary schools and teachers(!), spend much of their efforts at teaching children and grownups alike to hate others.  What a gross distortion of the life opportunities God gives us every year and day.

Children, most sadly, are taught not just hatred of their race or skin color, but hatred of their selves.  If born male, they are taught to forego the responsibilities of manhood and to pretend to be female; if born female, they are taught to forego the majesty of motherhood and to pretend to be male: two special forms of self-hatred.  Part of the self-hatred process involves separation from parents and other relatives who won’t “confirm” their new sexual outlook.  Learning to no longer trust one’s parents is a giant step toward hating them or, at least, hating their roles.

Children can be, and should be, taught to love themselves… not to hate themselves… or others.  Like Critical Gender Theory, Critical Race Theory is an agenda based on hatred. 

Questions of race and slavery generate peculiar ripples of hatred, essentially only in the United States.  Millions are caught up in them, especially politicians of various stripes, who have learned that constant aggravation of these questions can yield political influence.  Such influence is fruitful within a population of people who “enjoy” rubbing hatreds raw, including within themselves.  Foolishly, politicians have figured out that hatred can be not only powerful, but profitable.  Still, the strong feelings do not, and cannot, lead to solutions or transformation into positive feelings, outlooks and cooperation.

There are truths about slavery… and falsehoods.  There are truths about racism… and falsehoods.  Falsehoods seem to prevail, but truths about both subjects are immediately seized upon to draw false conclusions and false premises about what some true piece of history should force upon people of today.  Just the fact of slavery in the past has proven sufficient reason to never stop hating, as evidenced by the renewed, and listened-to demands for “reparations.”  Reparations justify hatred for white-skinned people: apparently whites owe an undying debt to blacks because of slavery.  Whites, it seems, are prone to guilt over having succeeded in mastering so many sciences and skills.  Not all skills, of course, but whites pioneered in many skills that not only have created comfortable standards of living and great wealth, but which have benefitted virtually all peoples on the planet.  Perfectly?  Absolutely not.

If we are waiting to stop feeling guilty until we are perfect, no less, we’ll wait forever.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t become better.  But, are the children guilty of the sins of their parents?  Only by choice and training; those who decidedly choose a better path than their ancestors, better ways to treat and interact with everyone else, skin color notwithstanding, should be respected and loved as anyone might be loved.  There’s no guilt appropriate.  Unfortunate and deceitful politics, however, casts all whites into the guilty column because some of their forbears owned slaves or mistreated blacks following slavery.  What is owed to whom, today?

One of whites’ imperfections is an expectation that money can replace sin – the monetization of guilt.  It is the fundament of perpetual welfare and the social welfare state.  Perhaps handing over money for no value will convert hatred for whites into love for whites.  That seems doubtful based on the “success” of the Great Society.  Otherwise, every welfare recipient would run into the street to hug any taxpayer who wanders by their less-than-ideal, welfare-provided home.  Nope.  Giving free stuff makes only the most temporary of friendships and quickly reverts to resentment.  The only “reparations” of any value or consequence to the quality of life for anyone, is teaching a person how to succeed in our culture, perhaps even helping that person to succeed for a limited time.  But locking that person into perpetual victim-hood and welfare-poverty is a system designed to destroy that persons humanity and worth, yet we persist at it, waiting for the miracle socialists promise.

For their part, far too many blacks believe that destroying the society and culture whites have succeeded in, is going to make their lives better and balance the cosmic scales, somehow.  That approach requires perpetual hatred and resentment – there is no love that is part of it.  One doesn’t steal, loot, destroy and burn the work of others out of love.  One doesn’t teach others to hate anyone, let alone a group, or to hate themselves… out of love.  This is why socialism is an abject, deceitful lie: it is premised on the belief of the inability of the individual to elevate him- or herself, improving skills and understandings and esteem while teaching him or her to love the good in everyone and to strive against the bad.  Under socialism, all trust is placed in others, mostly unknown.

Interestingly, America is full of blacks who have raised themselves up by working within the system and then transcending the system, leading the rest of us to better ourselves.  In almost every field, great, accomplished black-skinned Americans have excelled and led.  Why not emulate them instead of hating whites?  Crappy politics, that’s why.  Since the Clintons popped into the White House, hatred has become the overarching driver of political action: not freedom, not justice, not improvement of living standards, not wisdom in foreign policy, not budgeting on behalf of American citizens, not “America first.”  Despite constant accusations from the Democrat left, most of the hatred emanates from Democrats and their allies.  Yes, there are haters on both sides of the divide, but the distinction between left and right is gigantic, culminating in the Communist uprisings in 2020 and the Covid pandemic.  There weren’t “right-wingers” burning America in 2020. 

There weren’t right-wingers creating and pushing Covid across the planet, or creating and pushing ersatz vaccines into every body.  Those were the works of the left.  Why?

It wasn’t to increase individual freedom or to balance the budget; it wasn’t to prevent inflation of the monetary supply or to strengthen energy independence and the U. S. balance of payments with other countries; it wasn’t to solve our weak border enforcement, improve public safety, reduce the rate of drug overdoses and deaths or to strengthen the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in any way.  Why would a political movement take significant, even drastic steps that weaken the United States of America?

Well, aside from enrichening its adherents, it would be to, well… weaken the United States.

Love of country makes us stronger; hatred of it makes us weaker.  To govern and legislate in conformity with the warped ideas of the World Economic Forum and with the corrupted, communistic ideas of the United Nations, is to express hatred for the United States.  To promulgate policies, persecutions and punishments that divide Americans into two classes – favored and hated – is to DIS-unite the previously United States: hatred.

This is the time of this most important year, when love of others, of law, of nation, of selves and of God, should be foremost in all of our intentions, yet our politics has failed us, creating problems that our democratic republic can’t solve, while rewarding hatred as the means to power.  Let us pray as we see fit to return ourselves to a transcendent path, not the descendent path we’re on. 

Biden, Crime, Economics, Governance, Obama, Politics 2020, Representation, Trump

Dereliction – Derelection

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NY Times photo

It has been two years since the infamous “2020 elections,” and almost two years since the notorious “January 6th” ahh… riots, assault on democracy, insurrection, deadly attack.  Everything about November 3rd, 2020 and January 6th, 2021 must be parsed for truth, opinion and outright lying.

NOVEMBER 3RD, 2020

Books have been and will be written about the 2020 Presidential elections… plural.  There is no “popular vote” that matters in the selection of a president; there are 50 simultaneous state elections for slates of “electors” who are pledged to one “presidential ticket” or another – usually a choice between two such tickets, although third parties sometimes attempt to perfect our corrupt elections.  There are 50 “popular votes” that do matter.

Heading into election day, President Trump appeared to have extraordinary popular support despite 5 years of attacks from Democrats, including two spurious impeachments, the equally baseless “Meuller investigation/report” and a series of media-fed, illegal FBI activities and virtually daily calumny related to Covid-19 and the incipient vaccines.  None of it was sticking.  On the other hand, candidate Joe Biden spent his time safe in his home in Delaware, barely campaigning at all, making few speeches, usually drawing only a handful of people to his live appearances.  Trump, throughout the year, made numerous “rallies” drawing overflow crowds of thousands.  People in the campaign industry can state that the amount of popular support needed from which thousands will change their habits to attend a political event, is extraordinary, and reflects very broad support.

Biden, meanwhile, and Democrats in general remained absolutely confident, claiming deep support for good ol’ lunch-bucket Joe.  We know that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg had committed over $400 Million to “aiding” election departments in certain states with close balance between Republicans and Democrats.  Almost all of the money was spent increasing Democrat turnout in cities, but never described as campaign contributions.  At the same time, Google, whose management had sworn to not allow “2016” to happen again, was shifting information leftward, maximizing positive results of searches favoring Democrats and Biden, while eliminating or making difficult, results to searches that might favor Republicans.  Estimates reach into the hundreds of thousands in terms of how many votes could be shifted just by Google.

Even with major cooperative media sources helping, Democrats still had a huge populist force to overcome.  Two key strategies were needed: 1) Unconstitutional changes to voting laws and procedures; and, 2) Ways to shift, create, and generate votes regardless of how many legitimate votes were cast.  Both seemed to have the desired effects.  Before the reader clicks away from Prudence’ report, here, read a bit more and consider what is known with an open mind.

Democrat operatives and lawyers brought suit in numerous states to allow for mail-in ballots and early voting, based on supposed fears of Covid-19.  Rather than passing laws through the respective legislatures, as required under the Constitution, these teams brought suit, instead.  Time, apparently, was of the essence.  Behind the efforts to keep voters “safe” from Covid, and in the background, is the fact that every state does not maintain its voter lists according to federal law.  In fact, the Judicial Watch organization has been suing states successfully to require cleaning of voter rolls.  The County of Los Angeles, alone, had to remove about one and a half million names of deceased and moved-away citizens (one hopes).  But, in the run-up to November there remained SEVERAL MILLION invalid names on states’ voter lists, not least of which were the states targeted by these “Covid” lawsuits for mail-in ballots.  Georgia, alone, had 138,000 invalid names still on its rolls.  With the entire difference in the electoral college dependent on fewer than 45,000 votes across half a dozen states, that becomes a huge number.

“So what?” you may ask.  Well it doesn’t take that large an organization, with knowledge of the invalid names on the rolls, to mail in a few thousands of ballots based on those names, to skew an election.  To inadvertently facilitate this fraud, some states actually mailed out ballots to every name on the voter rolls, valid and invalid!  Thus, ballots returned from every one of those names were valid.  Of course, signatures on those ballot envelopes had to be “compared” to signatures on file but this step was frequently not done at all, or was done through scanning systems that were set to a level of “fuzziness” (in terms of match quality) that there was essentially no checking.  Lawsuits had further required that ballots mailed right up to voting day would be accepted and counted up to TWO WEEKS later. 

Republicans had seriously fallen down on their end to challenge these ridiculous lawsuits and force, at least, certain provisions to keep the tallies as honest as possible.  Throw in some heavy-duty ballot harvesting (illegal, also) and questionable counting procedures, connection of voting machines to the internet and a host of other weak links, and a close election could be easily swayed to the desired side.  Trump lost Georgia by fewer than 13,000 votes.

Well, that’s just Georgia, you may be thinking.  What you may not realize is that there were patterns of voting IN EVERY STATE that were related to the 2010 census.  That is, every county in all the states tested, had similar patterns of voting, a pattern that is so statistically unlikely as to be impossible.  Well, you may be thinking, that doesn’t prooove that it didn’t happen.  Technically that is true, but when you consider the earthquakes in voting procedures blamed on Covid, there ought to be wide variations in voting patterns as compared to the 2010 census.  That is, not compared to 2010 VOTING PATTERNS, but to the census, a set of statistics that has very little to do with even the prediction of voting patterns.  Although each state compared to its 2010 census by slightly different percent-rates, every county in each state followed the same rate of difference with the 2010 census!  Apparently the census was used as a reasonably reliable set of numbers ON WHICH PRE-DETERMINED VOTE TOTALS COULD BE BASED!

Stealing elections is not new, and typically it’s a matter of benefitting Democrats, particularly in cities… indeed, it has been a matter of humor for 150 years.  Urban Democrats have joked about who is going to get the votes in this or that cemetery, and to watch out for the time lost figuring out the ballot questions.  The crude efforts of the last century are so much more sophisticated, now.

Did you know that there were more than a million temporarily deceased voters still on the rolls among the many states?  Trump lost the electoral college by fewer than 45,000 votes in 5 states, TOTAL.

Did you realize that more than 300 counties in the United States show more voters on the rolls than there are people of voting age resident?  Just 500 extra votes from each of those counties (mostly urban) would be 150,000 votes; did we mention that Trump was “defeated” by fewer than 45,000 votes in 5 key states?

Maybe you’ll be a little more nervous about 2020 when you learn that there were dozens of internet connections traced from foreign countries into voting machines during and after election day, 2020, voting machines that the law says must not be connected to the internet.  Aside from the anomalies already described, 4 key states stopped their vote counting/reporting between 2 and 4 AM on November 4th, following which huge “dumps” of as many as 100,000 votes per state appeared – another most unusual event.

Some precincts in the urban areas of the 5 most crucial states voted as much as 90% and even more, for Joe Biden, having been thrilled by his rousing campaign speeches.  Any voting district that approaches 80% one way catches attention, normally.  Every percentage above that raises eyebrows.  This anomaly happened in multiple places, a statistical improbability.  Trump-haters can easily dismiss these oddities because they aren’t “proof” that anything illicit happened.  A case based on the preponderance of evidence, however, could be made.  There were a number of instances where votes recorded for Trump at one point in the evening of November 3rd, were magically shifted to Biden some time later.  “Oh, those were simple errors,” we’re told.  Maybe, but no candidate should be expected to accept that non-explanation, even Donald Trump.

As the last tens of thousands of unverified, unmatched mail-in ballots were added to the total over the following days, more anomalies appeared.  Somehow, Joe Biden, (“If you don’t know if you’re voting for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”) a racially insensitive, if not actively racist politician who was not only disliked by Barack Obama, but distrusted by him, apparently received MORE “black” votes than Obama received, himself, the first “black” president in our history!  People who really, really hated Trump are willing to believe that, as well.  Seems highly unlikely.

For his part, Trump obtained 6 Million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, to a total of 75 Million.  He is the first President who added to his first term totals significantly who went on to lose re-election.  Somehow, due to his colorful and incisive campaign, Joe Biden received not only more black votes but more votes overall than Obama did, and, it says here, more votes than any presidential candidate in history(!): 81 Million to Trump’s huge 75 Million.  Any honest observer of elections over any length of time has to suspend disbelief to swallow that.

Imagine the likelihood of a different outcome had the Hunter Biden laptop story not been so carefully suppressed by collusion between the FBI and others, the DNC, Biden campaign, etc., and Twitter, Facebook and Google.  Polling indicates that millions of people would have voted against Biden had the crimes revealed in that laptop been publicized.

Mathematicians and statisticians who have taken the time to analyze 2020 have estimated that as many as EIGHT MILLION VOTES were fabricated in 2020.  None of this has been adjudicated and the reasons are simple: politics… not honest, good ol’ American politics, but politics.

More than 30 lawsuits were brought among several states.  Judges refused to hear them on several bases, mainly lacks of “standing.”  That is, the plaintiffs were judged, rather subjectively, as most “standing” rulings are, because they couldn’t prove a satisfactory “interest” in or “damages” resulting from, the allegations they were making.  Virtually any of the judges so approached could have declared sufficient public or other interest in the adjudication of those allegations, but they chose not to.  This neatly prevented discovery, deposition or other testimony, and sidestepped the need to bring public officials into court.

There is a lot of political pressure on courts in such matters.  Attorneys are adept at answering such rejections, but it requires time for appeals to other courts or tribunals who have multiple reasons for avoiding such cases.  There is very little time available prior to the step of state “certification” of the vote counts.  Again, Republicans were caught flat-footed.  Their time should have been spent challenging all the stupid changes to voting laws that were not Constitutional.  Sadly, and to their shame, the Roberts Court refused to consider constitutional challenges to the election on the basis of direct wording in the Constitution: Article I, Section 4 – “The Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such regulations, except as to the Places of chusing (sic) Senators.”  With every state using the same regulations to choose Electors (for the Electoral College) as they do for electing representatives and senators, changes to how they do so must, in fact, be made only by the legislatures thereof.  This was not done in many states, but, rather, by court rulings, which are prima facie unconstitutional.  With the challenges based on precise Constitutional language, the Supreme Court has primary jurisdiction over such cases and should not wait for lower courts to rule and appeal over many months.

The Court could have and should have taken up the cases made on this particular basis, but failed in its duty to do so.

After 5 years of unceasing malevolence, law-breaking and baseless accusations from many sides, it is no wonder that President Trump was rather irked following November 3rd, 2020.  His quite rational complaints about our shoddy election mess in 2020, simply became the latest reason Trump haters should hate him even more, like everything else he’s done… except for when he contributed money to democrats.

JANUARY 6th, 2021

After failing, as noted, to engage any state or federal court in ascertaining the legitimacy of the vote count, despite real questions of law and practice, President Trump could see only one opportunity to set the 2020 result right, and that was to halt the counting of electoral votes as certified by the several states, particularly those states with the most egregious anomalies in their vote patterns and practices.  It was, however, on very thin grounds that he encouraged Vice-President Pence to refuse the certified electors from those certain questionable states amongst which Trump lost their collective electoral votes by less than 1% of the totals claimed – and certified – to have been legally voted.

The Constitution doesn’t assign more than the counting of the electoral votes to the duties of the “President of the Senate” – the Vice-President – in the matters of the electoral college.  Some attorneys read into some precedent cases the possibility that the V.P. had the authority to challenge certain states’ certified results, indeed, the Twentieth Amendment uses the term, “qualified” and “…has qualified” for cases where the election of or the ability to serve of a president is in question, or if he has died before taking office.  But neither Article II of the constitution, nor Amendment XII or Amendment XX actually grants much in the way of decisive power to the vice-President when the votes are counted.  Trump was clinging to straws.

To be fair, and all of us should be fair in the judgement of such odd circumstances of the Trump presidential experience, the President perceived the 2020 elections as one of the most grotesque electoral crimes in history, and the subsequent installation of Joe Biden as having been duly elected President as a tragedy and part of the theft of his, Trump’s, rightful election.  There were, and are, so many, many questions – none adjudicated.

When John F. Kennedy was elected thanks to extensive vote fraud in Chicago in 1960, Nixon lost, on average, by about 1 vote per precinct nationwide.  He was strongly urged to demand a recount in Illinois and perhaps Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania.  But fairly quickly he chose to avoid the damage to the nation by so demanding and Kennedy was the “winner.”  This is the precedent that Democrats have hung their hats on: always accept the vote count no matter how crooked.  Otherwise, you’re an “election denier.”

There isn’t space to analyze the events of January 6th at the Capitol.  A lot of it was stupid, most of it quite innocent.  Let’s hope the truth is exposed, since it certainly hasn’t been so far.  Most of what the “January 6th committee” has reported is only partially true; even more of what the Democrat press reports is less so.  Those arrested, some on quite thin, even spurious grounds, have been maltreated worse than murderers, rapists and arsonists.  One hopes for justice in all their cases, and for justice for those guards and administrators who have been needlessly brutal and cruel towards them.

Why would Americans act this way?  Hatred.  Those arrested for any reason related to January 6th, are all perceived in two ways: 1) supporters of Donald Trump, whom we are all taught to hate; and, 2) they are hated as threats to the government – the administrative, hyper-politicized state – for whom all the arresting and jailing powers work.  The challenge to the corrupt congress is perceived as a personal threat by government workers.  Those who threaten or even murder common citizens, are of far less concern to federal employees, apparently.  For shame.

Trump grasped at straws and couldn’t have succeeded, but it’s hard to lay blame after all other avenues of legitimate questioning of the elections were closed to him.  He knew the election was rigged against him by people who have years of experience doing exactly that.  He was supposed to bow down to the leftists and he didn’t.  He was supposed to react like Nixon and he didn’t… nor should he have, although the January 6th rally was not smart.

In Prudence’ view, there are $31 Trillion reasons to storm the Capitol; two dozen Congresses and 11 administrations, at least, have lied to the American people rather steadily and saddled us with virtually permanent debt.  The 2020 “derelection” is just the last straw. There is only one “T” in Democratcy.

Biden, Crime, Culture, Education, Health Care, Politics 2022, Religion, Representation, Sex

Psychology, If You Don’t Mind

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I have the answer here in my hand…

We’re all psychologists.  Humans could not work together, form societies or even families, if we could not “size up” one another and make relatively accurate judgments as to the attitudes and outlooks of those we need to live with.  Like every other human skill, psychological survival and progress has attracted experts, often the death knell of progress in the field of interest.  Beyond studying and learning about human psychology, psychologists have moved on to defining and even inventing forms of it.  Today it is almost as though the professional in the psychology field had DISCOVERED psychology in humans and that they, psychologists, must be consulted about any and every aspect of it, lest mere humans hurt themselves and others by trying to comprehend it.

Life is animalistic without psychological abilities.  Animal brains only barely exhibit any sense of meaning to the actions they take.  Humans strive to avoid it.  Part of the magic of human psychology is the ability to worship, and to perceive a spiritual existence that is the greatest sense of meaning possible.  What does – or what will – what I’m doing, mean?

Generally, the actions of today are taken because of their meaning something in the future.  We save today for security tomorrow; we court and marry today to produce a family of children tomorrow; we live honorably, creating friends and earning respect from others, so that we’ll have friends and friendship in our old age; we try to avoid poisoning our bodies and avoid danger and injuries because it means we can live longer.  We even attempt to extend our meaning to others beyond the date of our death with inheritances and bequests and instructions.  Unfortunately, we are descending into a process of talking ourselves out of our own humanity.  Psychologists of various stripes have convinced many to deny who they are, and have convinced many others with influence over them, to help them in the process of denial.  What for?

A large element of civilization has been and remains theater.  It could be as simple as street actors and their ad-hoc creation of scenes, characters and stories, to the elaborate production of operas that remain popular over decades and centuries.  Greek and Roman theater still teach us to look at life and meaning in “better” ways; Shakespeare, Marlow, Bacon and thousands of others from every culture, employed costume, staging, music, masks and pretense to teach cultural truths and lessons for living.  Modern electronics make it possible for every individual – including children – to become a preferred pretense character, almost always on a Snap-Chat stage.  It seems, unfortunately, that the “psychology community” talked itself into treating human theater, down to the individual level, as more valuable – more essential – than reality.

As one old Greek noted, “Virtue lies in Reason and Vice in rejection of Reason.”  However, as psychologists are only too aware, or promoters of, Reason cannot be satisfactorily defined, especially from generation to generation.  There seem to be thousands of permutations of reason, and as communications have advanced, so to speak, certain biases have become widely shared, affecting modern concepts of reason, which is not to say, Truth.  Since the 1960’s and ‘70’s, feminism has become the overriding permutation of reason in the United States, and it has led to a society-bending twist of sexual roles and mores.  Psychologists haven’t tried to stem this tide.  Where “psychology” might add to understanding of various truths, instead it seems to adapt to and rationalize social trends.

Prudence can expect to be roundly chastised for the previous paragraph, and, probably, the next one.

Feminism has done more damage to American society than any other belief system besides slavery.  Bit by bit – now chunk by chunk – it has feminized men and destroyed the majesty of motherhood.  Simultaneous with the explosion in homosexuality, feminism has also led to hyper-sexualization of school-age children down to disturbing ages.  As it has torn down the old morality it has failed to replace it with a new one.  Where women used to “civilize” men, they now compete in an arena of irresponsible sexuality where everything is planned or avoidable based on the whims of women.

Women are now the drivers of the new para-psychology called transgenderism.  And, rather than eliminating confusion about maleness or femaleness, it encompasses a host of “sexualities” that mainly women teachers and gay or other “non-binary” “teachers” feel compelled to dictate to, if not guide and groom, children at very young ages.  Where are “the psychologists” on this strange twist of “education?”  Sadly, they seem able to rationalize or even justify the trans-gender fad.  If it didn’t do so much damage to the kids whose theatrical fantasies everyone is rushing to “confirm,” the psychologists might be forgiven.

MOST of transgenderism is theater.  Children, some genuinely confused about sexuality, a very small fraction, and the rest who want to play at being the opposite sex, are pounced upon by agenda-driven teachers, psychologists, doctors and even hospitals(!), who are all in a hurry to “confirm” trans-gender fantasies.  Confirmation, unfortunately, consists of largely irreversible hormone injections and blockers, and even surgeries to remove perfectly healthy organs.  The children are permanently changed and their developments confused chemically.  The greatest effect?  Sterilization.  Not many teenagers and damned few adults can conceive of what full medical transfiguration means as time goes by.  Most come to realize that they have attempted something that is impossible in the majority of cases, and that leaves them neither male or female.  There is more at stake than pronouns.

Yet, some dysphoria is real – the people who transition to another way of living are still real people who deserve as much respect as anyone else.  Heterosexual people are largely unable to accept trans-gender people at “face” value.  Reactions vary over a short spectrum, from disbelief to disgust.  Normal people have a duty to learn respect for those who have found the only way to deal with their relatively rare dysphoria is transition.  Let the rest of us count our blessings.

This doesn’t excuse the agenda-driven recruitment of children to a belief in gender-fluidity.  Parents know that childhood whims and fantasies usually fade away or are outgrown by maturity in nearly all cases.  To pounce on these susceptible kids, especially for teachers, is criminal.  For administrators and political / civic leaders to make it ILLEGAL to prevent gender-predation shall remain a stain on the conscience of the nation.  Shame on us and kudos to those leaders wise enough to resist this weird aberration in human purpose.

Those who are committed to the “trans” state of being and living also need to recognize that their own, understandably very deep biases toward “non-binary” sexuality, bends their views to find trans potential atop almost every pair of legs.  Bigots on both sides need to stifle their angers and misunderstandings.  Professional, expert psychologists and psychiatrists ought to be guiding the confused toward a path that is constructive for society and civilization.  Unfortunately, they have agreed among their professional, expert-laden Societies, to avoid moral judgement and even counsel patients to dissociate themselves from religious codes.  Indeed, such counseling tends to affirm those ideas that comfort the patient, rather than disturb him or her.

In other words, psychology can affirm one’s deepest beliefs, which is not to say truth.  Unfortunately, sometimes beliefs are just wrong and counter-productive or damaging to society.  They can interfere with forming positive bonds with others, with family members, or with others who would be good for the individual.  Psychology has drifted too close to chemical solutions for too many conditions/reactions; they also tend to counsel for far too long, with patients dependent upon their therapists to maintain a new normalcy.

As Americans ponder the decline of trust in the institutions that ought to defend successful traditions and uphold the greatest strength of U. S. culture, one of those has been medicine, including mental health medicine.  The professionals in that society have always been people of sense, ready willing and able to advise patients toward the healthiest, most sensible habits and actions.  This used to include psychologists and psychiatrists, but this has all changed.  Why?  How did industries – professions – of HONOR, become so sullied? 

Politics and money, not synonymous, but often congruent.  If politics were corrupted by only money we could survive and even thrive as the running battle against corruption played its parallel games.  But politics has been corrupted by ideology, hatred and mendacity.  The Covid pandemic exposed the degree of twist that has occurred.  One political party routinely condemns half the voters in the country, not as those who see a different way to improve and strengthen America, but as a group that can’t be permitted to hold or even share power… a group that threatens the republic, that is racist, homophobic, transphobic and every other epithet that can be used on TV to denigrate another person.  Then that same party does everything that their opponents are accused of doing, BY THEM.  It is no longer politics, but managed hatred, and it has coopted the institutions of government, justice, education and medicine, among others.  None of the professions that once held the nation together have been spared.

The various forms of artifice are all masks, covering the faces of evil.  Millions of true patriots resist and believe in the majesty of the American way – most are Christians.  They – we – are the conscience of America.  A new professionalism and a new citizenship are all that can restore us… and a new / old spiritual understanding of why humanity is male and female, and how it can survive and grow stronger.  Honestly.

Biden, Economics, Elections, Family, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Politics 2022, Representation, Taxation

THE INFLATION CHRONICLES

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The Biden “administration” has done everything it could in 19 months to destroy the trajectory of the U. S. economy, and, possibly, U. S. permanence.  Above all, everyone is either helped or hurt by the big “bugaboo,” inflation.  Economists, pundits, commenters and news-readers galore, all have wise-sounding opinions, yet no one seems to know what inflation IS!

It seems Prudent to assume that some of them do, but the average person listening to any such is not going to find it out.  To a mouth, all say in so many, many words, that “inflation” is prices increasing.  Well, no it isn’t.  Inflation is inflation of the money “supply.”  And that isn’t even accurate; it’s inflation of available cash OR CAPITAL that is “liquid,” or lendable.  Capitalism and “inflation” go hand-in-hand to create prosperity for most people.

“Wait just a minute,” you’re thinking, “Inflation makes prices go up, and that’s bad, so it’s not helping MY prosperity.”  Actually, it has helped it – look at the riches and bounty we enjoy.  It’s a two-edged sword… like fire.  It can cook our food, keep us warm, run our engines or… burn the house down.  The key is keeping inflation where it runs the engine without burning down the house.  So, where does this wonderful inflation come from?

The simple answer is debt.  Our economy – even your personal economy – operates on a “futures” basis.  If you own your home you probably have a mortgage on it, which is a long-term debt, well into the future.  One of the quirks in our economy is that banks can legally loan out more “money” than they actually have on deposit.  It’s called “fractional reserve,” and it is about 14%.  In other words, among all the stored “savings” deposits and “performing loans” and temporary deposits, the “Bank” has an average number of dollars “in reserve,” at any given time.  If it amounts to a million dollars, our laws allow the bank to lend out up to $7 Million, round numbers, of which 6/7ths is, fundamentally, air.  So long as the honesty and ability to repay of most borrowers are intact, this is a safe system and the recipient of the check for the house you bought, accepts the dollars that were created to write it, as well as if he saw them peeled from a big fat roll of $100-dollar bills.

If the seller of the house also dealt with the same bank, his or her new deposit of, say, $400 thousand will, for a while, increase the average “reserve” the bank can lend seven times as much of.

Anyway, you commit to paying your mortgage for 20 or 30 years because the pain of losing your home is worse than the pain of making the payments.  Besides, you have a job, you’re productive, you’re helping to create profits somewhere – productive surplus, if you will.  It is reasonable that you will keep your promise to pay.  You have made your work valuable enough to produce some “productive surplus” for your own family.

Try to imagine where the construction industry and millions of jobs would be if there were no such thing as mortgages or construction loans.  But, if you’re worried about inflation, look at what you just did: you caused the inflation of the money supply by about $340,000!  Depending on the “velocity” of that money (through the economy), possibly even more than that.  But!  It’s OK.  You’re going to pay it down – or “back” – to the bank.  Owning that house will cause you to buy a bunch of other stuff that increases production (let’s hope, inside the U. S.), as well as future repairs and upgrades, and it will enable you to raise your children to become productive, too.

Transactions like these happen thousands of times a day, whether for homes, or cars, or work vehicles, trailer trucks and on and on.  Every loan creates some inflation, but not more than the “economy” will absorb, or, we might say, not more than the economy needs.

In the process of economic activity, wages, sales and so forth, governments collect taxes.  That is, BECAUSE THERE IS PRODUCTIVE SURPLUS in our economic activity, “we” can afford to pay taxes for those services and public works that individuals cannot provide for themselves.  Among these are public school facilities, police departments, fire departments, all the bureaucrats who are there to help US, the military, highway and roadway constructions, sewage treatment, water works and sewers, themselves.  All that stuff is paid for from productive surplus.  If kept in a rough balance, it all works together amazingly well as more people become productive and relatively financially independent, and benefiting in safety and economy from our shared public works.

How does it get out of balance?  Put most simply, if the money supply grows with no commensurate increase in production or productivity.  Take the example we’ve experienced recently where governments, based on perceived, raw, political advantage, decree that the “minimum wage” shall be $15.00 per hour.  A kid stuck at the fry station in a McDonald’s, making French fries for as many customers as desire some, gets a sudden, say, 20% pay increase.  He or she cannot fry more potatoes than before the raise, there are only so many orders for fries in a given day.  The added pay does not enable the fry-kid to encourage more people to buy fries than they used to buy before the change in pay.  Do you think the individual cost of an order of fries is going up?  Of course.  Or, is it possible that customers might wait a little longer to get their fries – and their whole orders, when it’s busier?  Perhaps the restaurant owner can’t afford to put two kids at the fry station in busy periods, now that the pay has increased arbitrarily.  The customer pays – or suffers – for this arbitrary work rule.

So, French fries go up in price, but is that “inflation?”  Well, no, obviously.  It’s an imposed change to the “CGS,” or Cost of Goods Sold.  How would inflation cause the price of French fries to go up?

Suppose that in a certain marketplace: your town, for example, there are both a lot of disposable income – free cash, as it were – and a limited supply of frozen French fries.  Potatoes are neither grown nor processed locally; they are transported some distance to the restaurants that want them in your town.  People in your town are in the habit of ordering fries with their burgers and sub sandwiches and business in fries is brisk.

Because the supply of spendable cash has been inflated (increased), people who might have held off adding fries to their sandwich orders, have started to order them more frequently, yet the total volume of fries coming from the processors can’t increase for quite a while, as the extra cash in everyone’s pocket makes it possible to afford the fries in other towns, as well, and the price of fries appears to be a bargain where they used to be a bit of a luxury.

Restaurants are finding that they’re “selling out” of fries and seeing customers go to another restaurant that still has some.  The owners get on the phone to order more fries but there aren’t any extra to be had.  Very quickly busier restaurants will offer a premium price to the distributor to get an extra case of frozen fries every day.  Realizing the nature of the increased demand, the distributor makes a deal with a potato processor who guarantees additional frozen fries, but at a higher wholesale price, too.

Pretty soon, the French fry supply problem is solved and people in your town can obtain all the fries they want, although each order costs a little more.  Lo, and Behold!  Inflation of the money supply changed demand patterns in the French fry marketplace.  This example is too simple, but also real.  During the engineered Covid crisis, the federal government wrote checks to millions of people that it/they, the federal, state and municipal governments had thrown out of work… billions and billions of dollars’ worth, but they were from accounts that had no actual – although highly hoped-for-future – money in them!  The checks were written from AIR.  Worse, they were doled out without regard to increasing productivity or other economic growth.  No new crops were planted, tended or harvested; no new mines were opened and their valuable minerals retrieved; no new inventions were spurred causing new manufacturing to commence.  But people accepted the ‘air-checks’ and spent them like money.  The money supply increased by over a Trillion Dollars while the supply of goods to be purchased actually went DOWN!

Prices started to go up until states started to re-open their businesses and let people go back to work.  The economy was roaring back when Biden was shoveled into office.  He promptly signed another Trillion-dollar “Covid Relief” bill that was no longer needed, indeed it extended payments to not work, and inflation really started shooting up.  The money supply – more air, but who’s counting – was now completely untethered from productivity, production or quantities of goods for sale.  In addition, there was an even larger incentive to not work.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) started to take off in a serious way.

Because of “petro-dollars,” a sweetheart deal we made with Saudi Arabia (and, therefore, OPEC) when Nixon closed the gold window in the early ‘70’s, our federal spenders have developed a habit of calling everything a “crisis.”  It doesn’t have to be a war, a disaster, a plague… just a problem – like getting re-elected.  And, since there is (almost always) a terrible crisis, they can justify borrowing to resolve it.  So, they spend about one-third or more, MORE than the real money tax receipts that the federal government collects each year.  That missing third or 40% or so must be borrowed, largely adding to the “national debt.”

Now, if the extra federal spending were creating real wealth, which is what real investment does, the loans would steadily be repaid by the productive surplus the investments made possible.  Another way of saying it is that the DEBT would be DESTROYED.  That’s a good cycle: ideas vetted, loans obtained, practices, processes or new resources are implemented or obtained,* and the new productive surplus can be applied, in part, to “retire” the loan while net societal – or National – wealth increases.  Living standards improve and the repaid capital (the loan) becomes available for other real investments.

This neat system collapses when non-productive or ANTI-productive effects of the loan (deficit spending, it’s called) are mandated by law.  Most commonly, it collapses because the government borrows money to PAY FOR CURRENT EXPENSES, like welfare, interest on older loans, increasing the numbers of people employed in non-productive pursuits, and so forth.  A good example of hiring more people to be non-productive is part of the recently passed “Prosperity Reduction Act,” or, as it is officially mis-labeled, “The Inflation Reduction Act.”  Inside of this dishonest legislation is a provision to hire 87,000 more IRS agents, who will harass and impoverish productive people (tax-payers they are called) with absolutely no increase in productive surplus for anyone.  Oh, there’ll be some fat paychecks, but the net wealth of our economy will decline. 

The extra payroll dollars (among others in the bill) will inflate the money supply, however, and prices will move upward again as more cash chases fewer goods.

There are $600+Billion other dollars in the “bill” that also don’t represent any new production, productivity or wealth… they just lower the value of all the dollars floating around or in your wallet and retirement accounts.  Thanks, Brandon.

*Where are new resources “obtained?”  Well, there are only so many sources of new wealth that can add to an economy and total wealth of a nation.  The first is agriculture.  The elements of a crop of wheat or corn or soybeans or potatoes, are relatively inexpensive.  We count on God to provide the soil, the rain and sunlight… even the seeds, although humans have figured out how to augment everything but sunlight, and how to till the soil and harvest the crops with automated machinery, which has reduced the cost of labor in food production, as well.  Barring weather disasters and political interference, agriculture creates new wealth with every crop-cycle.  Many inventions and new mechanizations have been developed in response to the need for better food production as population has grown.

Coincident with expanding agriculture are various forms of mining, whether for coal, metals, oil, gypsum, quartz and dozens of other riches the earth provides.  From them have come thousands… no, Millions of products and inventions and improvements to standards of living, not least of which are pharmaceuticals and computer chips.  Virtually every one of these bits of progress and improvement has required some “financing,” or, as better known, debt.  Little by little every step has also “inflated” the money supply, but in rough equivalence to the new economic activity each has spurred.  A lot of that activity has been in the form of “fixed” assets, like buildings, roads, bridges and so forth.  At their creation, “fixed” expenditures DEFLATE the money supply, while enabling long-term economic benefit for lots of other activities, comforts or safety.

Somebody is going to paint those buildings.  We’re still driving across bridges that were built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s.

Some companies, banks, agencies, treasuries and individuals are benefitted very nicely by inflation, primarily the federal government.  They get to spend the money first.  Debts and other invoices the federal government owes are paid off with “cheaper” dollars.  Increased payrolls result in increased tax receipts.  Favored industries obtain contracts and payments to carry out policies incorporated in the inflationary legislation.  Millions of votes are purchased as loans are forgiven and exorbitant expenses incurred and paid off.  So, some benefit immediately and don’t begrudge deficit spending.  Others, tax-payers, not so much.

The actual net result is a reduction in both national and individual wealth for MOST people.  The few favored in the legislation get an artificial boost of income.  It’s all very unfair and sold to the American people as a universal “good.”  But, what does it have to do with “petro-dollars?”

Petro-dollars refers to our agreement with OPEC that oil would be traded only for dollars.  Every nation, basically, would need to always have some dollars on deposit – some even made the U. S. dollar a “reserve” currency – so that when they needed to buy oil they could.  If they sold oil, they accepted having billions of U. S. dollars on deposit.  Dollars could be exchanged for any other currency an “oil” nation needed to buy products from anyone.  Still, a global acceptance of dollars gave a golden “carte blanche” to ignorant congresspeople to borrow without any practical limit.  All they need is a “crisis.”

At the same time that President Biden has ruined relations with Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC, and attacked fossil-fuels in the United States, multiple countries like Russia, China, Brazil and Iran, are making moves to eliminate the dollar as the currency of trade in oil.  When they succeed – WHEN they succeed – countries will start dumping dollars.  They won’t have the impetus to buy stuff from the U. S. in order to use up the dollars they have had to hold.  Currency markets will turn upside down.

We will experience price increases that are unimaginable.  All the goods and goodies that we import now, will have to be paid for with more valuable currencies than U. S. dollars.  Exchange rates are going to punish the dollar when that day comes.  All the dollars that have been created in other countries and banks have been inflating the same “money supply” we talked about earlier.  Every dollar BILL is, in fact, a bill that must be paid with something valuable, not merely with more “Federal Reserve Notes.”  The mendacious debt that Congresses and administrations have racked up to the tune of almost $31 TRILLION, will complete its cycle of inflation, as well, while much of the trading world rejects payments in dollars, preferring gold, rubles, rials, or, most likely, yuan.  We have no concept of and no political ability to balance our books and bring the number of dollars floating around into alignment with some form of productive output from our economy.  Prices, for everything, will shoot up.

We can see the World Economic Forum, a group of self-selected control freaks by which real governments – including our own – are being influenced, is spreading the organic fertilizer of “nitrogen pollution,” since carbon-dioxide hasn’t scared enough people.  To limit “nitrogen” requires, in their view, reducing crop yields (by refraining from using chemical fertilizers) and going “organic.”  There is an agenda that is far removed from “climate” at work here.  What will we do when hyper-inflation is chasing reduced supplies of food around the world?  Or, when Chinese- and Bill Gates-owned land is held out from cultivation in our own country?  We need miss only ONE growing season to be faced with famine, which is very unpleasant, even here.

Looking at the effects of the “green” movement and the recent pandemic-inspired tyranny, and the so-called vaccines that resulted, the main effects, cumulatively, have been death and sterilization.  Sounds like population reduction, if one were being Prudent.  Lo, and behold!  Bill Gates and the people he hob-nobs with agree that there are too many people on Earth, by a factor of two-thirds or more!  Let’s “vaccinate” every person on the planet.  Inflation won’t be a problem, then.

Crime, Culture, Education, Elections, Governance, Guns, Right?, Politics 2022, Race, Religion, Representation, Responsibility

THE CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA

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When tyranny threatens, elections are months away.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA

The evolution of American constitutionalism responded no more to the several theories of rights and representation of the late 18th Century, as much as to the necessity of freeing ourselves from the shackles imposed by the British Crown and a non-representative Parliament.  That freedom would not have been won without “Militias” – home-grown assemblages of armed citizens, by definition, non-governmental organizations.  Our Constitution references these quasi-military, self-selected groups of passionate defenders of farm, family and business, in the Second Amendment.

The potency of the Second Amendment is rarely mentioned.  Everyone argues over the “… right to keep and bear Arms…”  Opponents of gun ownership point to the first phrase, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, …” as if it referenced what we now call the State Police, or even “State Militia” which are controlled and limited by our friendly and benign state governments.  Some liken the term to the National Guard, which is even further off the mark.  “Militia,” in the Second Amendment, refers to self-declared and assembled, armed, private-citizen organizations.  It is not clear that such organizations are legally tolerated today.

In fact, there are a number of such groups around the country: legal gun bearers who come together like clubs, perhaps including some militaristic training.  They tend strongly toward white-guys, exclusively, sometimes religious, generally anti-federal government.  Unfortunately, there is a parallel tendency toward racism, but the number of incidents in which members of such “clubs” attack blacks or others is very, very small… no way comparable to the numbers of blacks who attack everyone else, although never being charged with “racism.”

Militias have a bad name.  Still, they are a part of the patriotic front that challenged and stopped the British in the 1770’s, and which became part of the “official” Continental Army under general George Washington.  They were tough people, supported by equally tough wives and relatives, both farmers and merchants.  How would they fit in to today’s social fabric and political landscape?  They are referenced and promoted in our Constitution, but universally denigrated as, mainly, racist crackpots playing with guns.

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State…”  What “state” were the framers talking about?

At the time of the fight for independence, the “states” were colonies: 13 separate entities with separate civil authorities appointed by the King or by his governors.  To become sovereign states they had to both rid themselves of British governors and soldiers, who were the “police,” as it were, and then establish their own authorities with elections, appointments, codified laws and relatively independent courts.  They had, also, to defend themselves.  Automatically it became obvious that the colonies had to stand against the British together, else they’d be militarily quashed separately.  Without much debate, they formed the Continental Congress and a sense of “nation” was established across fairly diverse colonies.  A common enemy will do that.

Militias, essentially, were folded in to the individual colonies’ “Minutemen” forces and ultimately into the Continental Army, but not all of them.  Many Militia fighters served key roles in interfering with British supplies and cavalry, harassing them like guerilla fighters, sometimes providing a flanking force when standing ranks faced off on battlefields.  However, by the time of the war of 1812, militias were relatively unheard of.  Citizens were still armed, but the U. S. Army and Navy then formed the military wherewithal of the new nation, calling up fighters from the states, each of whom represented their states as much as they did the United States.

The Constitution acknowledged and stipulated the importance of “militias,” and stipulated the right to keep and bear arms, but militias, themselves, faded from prominence.

By the end of the Civil War there was no question that the military forces were U. S. forces, and the federal government took on the costs and administration of veterans’ disabilities and welfare.  States had police forces, but no longer raised their own “regulars” or trained or equipped them.  Militias, if such can be identified at all, devolved into chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, constantly ginning up anger against negroes – a most despicable era of American history.  Roughly speaking, the “Union” army and victorious states were “Republicans;” the former confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan itself, were “Democrats.”  Democrats supported gun control laws, among other segregationist restrictions, to keep guns out of the hands of blacks.  To maintain power and influence, the Klan, like revolutionary militias, had to constantly exaggerate the presence of a common enemy: free negroes.

“Militias,” now, are perceived as kooks.  Any concept of forming armed forces to overthrow “the government,” is inherently illegal, and only a tiny fraction of Americans in either party think it’s either practical or legitimate.  Yet the concept of non-governmental militias is Constitutional!  Where could “militias” fit in?  First, they’d have to meet standards.  Their fellow citizens would have to trust them in terms of public safety and support of the Constitution, itself.  Then what?

Somehow, some way, militias would have to coexist with police forces, both municipal and state.  Participation in “Guardian” training and functions is a good place to start.

The Guardian Program, yet to be adopted anywhere, is designed to “legitimize” concealed carry, in a sense.  The Constitution already protects the right to keep and bear arms – carry them around, in other words: to be individually armed.  As a Guardian, the person who is willing to carry a firearm would also be trained in handling, safety and safe reaction in the presence of a crime or imminent criminal act.  That person would also wear a “9-1-1” transponder that would identify and locate the individual and alert police forces to a possible active-shooter situation.  Meanwhile, the guardian would take such action as practical to defuse a conflict or stop criminal action until police arrived.

Finally, the guardian would be shielded by special indemnification for legitimate and proper actions taken to stop criminal actions, whether on his or her own property or in public.  “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”  The truth of that observation is timeless.  Establishing “Guardian” legislation enables the multiplication of police power and effectiveness at very low cost.  It also provides vectors for evaluating gun owners and their family environments.  If such gun owners formed the core of “militias,” governments and citizens could have confidence in their judgment and rationality.

Militias could also be held to ethical standards.  Non-guardians who “joined up” would have to swear to certain behaviors and practices concerning gun ownership, handling and safety inside and outside of their homes.  Militia organizations would be subject to fines for failing to adhere to ethical standards or for failing to reject or eject members who fail to do so.  Such information would have to be shared with law-enforcement and become part of the unacceptable persons’ records.  Most Militias would form through “Rod and Gun” clubs or hunting clubs  or “Sportsmens’ Clubs.”  Whether they could remain associated with those clubs would be a decision of the club, not of any government.  How would a Militia function politically?  How would the majority opinions of a Militia or dozens of Militias, enter into public policy or political power?  Who would their “common enemy” be?

By definition, the “common enemy” would be our own federal, central government at the moment it is perceived as tyrannical.  We have major political forces who are enthralled with government by experts – the bureaucratic state.  Decision-making by and for individuals is anathema to these leftist “Progressives.”  They are also anti-religious, increasingly opposed to free speech, virulently opposed to the second Amendment as written, and socialist in economics and social organization.  Many members of a militia organized to monitor and resist – if not remove – tyranny in our central government, would count “Progressives” among the tyrants.  A militia formed by progressives, for such there could be, though unlikely, would see themselves as saviors and conservatives as the common enemy.

Obviously, those most attracted to “militias” would be vilified and hated to greater degrees as members than they are, if at all, as relatively quiet, unobtrusive neighbors and co-workers.

Militias would tend to be somewhat secretive in their meetings and deliberations.  Using common social media communications would leave them open to attack and interference.  They will want to network – and perhaps coordinate – with other militias through a modern version of “Committees of Correspondence” as was done in Revolutionary times, when their discovery would have resulted in arrest and torture.  If not actual secrecy, strict confidentiality would be essential to operation and growth of militias.  But, how, short of taking up arms in fact, would constitutional militias influence political, governmental actions and direction?

Clearly they would have to be financially independent of government support or tax abatement or tax-free status on any places of meeting or practice / training.  They would be subject to continuous hate from leftists and racists, for they would not be able to control militias from the inside.  They would have to be scrupulous about opening membership to anyone who met their standards of behavior and ethics, which standards would include legal gun ownership, by definition.  But, again, how would a militia influence political power?  Could a militia sway the votes of others?

Communications, communications, communications.  As with the Committees of Correspondence, militias would have to present factual and documented positions on the actions of government(s) and of elected or appointed officials.  They would have to lay bare the nature of tyrannies large and small that made clear the un-representative nature of those in power including, most specifically, the expenditures of public monies.  To do so would mean operating publishing businesses in both print and digital formats.  Since a militia would not be a political “party” or be attempting to run candidates of its own, its publications would have to be both historical and current, and easily comprehensible as to how an issue/ topic either resisted tyranny of the state (or municipality) or fit into a tyrannical or potentially tyrannical action that threatened Constitutionally guaranteed rights or the freedoms of individuals.

Would anyone care if they did this work?  Would citizens listen?  Militias, like those that deposed tyranny at the inception of our country, have an obligation to pursue wisdom and to act upon it.  The first militias had the wisdom of recognizing tyranny and of how to multiply their effectiveness in fighting it.  It led them to wonderous courage and sacrifice.  To fulfill that legacy, Constitutional militias must form with that same sort of commitment.  Membership would not be a sport or part-time interest.  Just as “the Left” maintains decades, if not centuries, of commitment to upending Biblical truths and models of behavior and governance based on individual freedom and responsibility, Militias must maintain a singular purpose to inform other Americans of the lies and evil of Socialism and Communism, backed up by the ability to risk everything to overthrow tyranny in defense of the American Way.

The creation of one militia, independent and uncorrupted, will bring forth many others, and their creation still more.  We have learned after dozens of congresses and hundreds of representatives and senators, that the election of readily corruptible men and women who enter office with pathways of personal wealth and influence providing them all too many comforts and excuses for failure, has not – and will not – bring about the change needed to save and preserve our nation, our Constitution and our integrity.  A well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State.

Crime, Culture, Education, Family, Religion, Representation, Responsibility, Sex

FROM ISSUES TO CRISES

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Despite Prudence’ writings over the past 8 years, the nation has not adjusted to the models of governance and behavior she has carefully laid out.  Upon the election of the odd Joe Biden and his basically anti-American administration, irritating, family and society-weakening tendencies have become policies, however illegitimately.  Now, they’re crises – crises that threaten the survival of our nation and of Freedom, itself.  Like the heart of Socialism in every sense, it derives from the avoidance of responsibility.

People say things like, “it’s a new day,” or “Times have changed.”  Except “times” haven’t changed, people have.  They’ve – we’ve – been taught new ideas to believe, habits to adopt, pleasures to revel in.  We can look to a sudden change upon the murder of President John Kennedy.  Most likely, the purpose of that assassination was political, not cultural.  Kennedy had created powerful personal and political enemies.  The abrupt change in culture and morals was an inadvertent one.  Lyndon Johnson became president, federal civil rights legislation moved to center stage, for right reasons, but its adoption was made possible by the crassest political calculations.  Inadvertently, for some but not all, the Civil Rights bill shifted morality into the metastasizing businesses of the federal administrative state and the court, where it has become enforced amorality. 

Prior to the ‘60s, change in living standards and integration was happening due to improvements in individual beliefs in better moral codes… not fast enough, by a long shot, but improvement and progress were being made.  The Civil Rights Act and the movement that brought it to fruition, inadvertently changed the nature of federal moral enforcement, even as it made long-overdue corrections to discrimination and segregation.  Part of the federal “corrections” included elements of the “Great Society,” which federalized welfare and began the application of laws differently for different groups.  This process, in all of its corrupt and socialist pieces, has rendered the federal government a soft tyrant which is hardening daily, while providing $Trillions of support for sub-tyrannies throughout the administrative state, particularly in Education.

Under the Constitution, the only moral adjustments can and should be made through equal justice: Equal protection under the law / equal application of the law.  That canary escaped with the passage of the Great Society.  Otherwise, our system works only if the vast majority of our citizens and residents share basic morals and mores, a claim that can no longer be made.  Every institution that could reinforce the moral strength of our people, including schools and churches, are either hell-bent in the opposite direction, or bending a knee to popular immorality.  For shame.

Freedom isn’t freedom without responsibility, it’s mere licentiousness.  As responsibility began evaporating in the 1960’s, leftists accelerated, as part of civil rights and the Great society, their domination of public education and colleges of education, themselves.  Like Mao’s “Long March,” it has taken decades – well-paid decades – to convert the role of education from conveyance of language, culture, skills, morals and history to our youth, to one of separation by race, class and, incredibly, gender.  Everything happening fulfills the Communist Manifesto: separation from God and from Responsibility.

Churches and liturgies have proven to be much weaker than the years of bygone sacrifices to hold to and establish those faith communities would indicate.  Just count the rainbow flags that some churches think override the teachings that brought them this far.  They are proving every day that it is nearly impossible to convince others of ideas you, yourself, don’t believe.  Simple economics can’t take the place of shared moral goodness.

America has been under moral attack for 60 years at a higher intensity than during its first 170 years.  As the lessons of Genesis make clear, God’s Word (or, if you find that term more offensive than child abuse) moral truths, are always under attack here on Earth.  Christianity has long been the primary target of such opposition, both from within and without.

For centuries those attacks tended to fail because the engine of responsibility kept working.  People still, for the most part, paid the price for their own follies and failures.  That is, until socialism replaced monarchy.  Evil men – almost always men – grasped socialist ideas as a better way to control nations, economies and armies, but they ultimately fell: their bases were evil and so counter to human nature that they became insane.  There has never been a government that created for itself political defenses that not only protected amorality and immorality, but learned to erode morality and, specifically, responsibility by individuals.  Not until the U. S. federal (and state) administrative states.  They’ve made a lot of “progress,” but they are “Progressives” by their own description.  It has taken 60 years of “re-education” to bring us to an America facing the corrosive issues we do today.

What are the parameters of responsibility in matters of conception, pregnancy, abortion and birth?

Since the ‘60s we have replaced marriage as the cultural norm, with contraception, abortion, “hooking up,” and fatherless children.  Responsibility has shifted to federal and state welfare programs.  Women have become convinced that they need not choose a decent, committed and loving man who will provide for his family and children, and who will be in their lives through puberty and into adulthood – and this all before having sex!  All they need is the sperm… and other men when they feel like it.  It is the destruction of the American family and of children – especially boys: our vote-buying tax dollars of destruction, at work.

Along with hyper-sexualization of grade school children, lewd “Pride” parades and filth in school libraries, the left appears to be obsessed with fornication for “all genders.”  To Democrats and other anti-Christian groups, fornication is a “right” as important to freedom as the First Amendment and all the rest.  Except, without responsibility, it’s not a freedom at all.  Enter abortion “rights.”  Except abortion never was a “right,” per se; democratic decisioning at the state level is the “right” our Constitution guarantees.

What are the parameters of responsibility in matters of guns, ownership, self-defense and crime?

Gun owners quote the phrase, “… the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  It is part of the Second Amendment.  Some like to ignore the stuff about the “A well regulated Militia…”  But, as they may also choose to ignore, the amendment goes on to qualify the concept of a “militia,” as follows: “… being necessary to the security of a free State, …”  Above all, the Bill of Rights amendments and their wordings are intensely Prudent in their purposes of preventing a tyrannical central government.  Guaranteeing individual armament is crucial to that purpose.  Clearly, by simple inference, mindful of why the Constitution was drafted and mindful of the horrendous sacrifices needed to permit its creation, is it not obvious that arming the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT had nothing whatsoever to do with the second amendment?

The only “militias” in the new nation’s experience were those formed by local communities and others to fight off the central government, perceived to be tyrannical toward the colonies.  This aspect is never, ever acknowledged by that same federal government.  Yes, gun ownership is crucial to individual self-defense, which that same federal – and some states’ – governments appear to discourage, if not deny, to its citizens, even as those governments purposely abdicate their contracted role of public safety.  Had the British monarch established today’s same failed public policies, the justification for overturning his authority would have been far more popular.

There is a high expectation of responsibility for Constitutionally legal gun owners.  As a definable demographic, legal gun owners are the least source of crime and, by far, the least source of crimes involving firearms.  Yet this same group is always the target for restriction whenever a mentally or criminally defective person commits a “mass” shooting.  Individual shootings and murders by gang members and drug dealers are of no particular concern to those who attack the rights of legal gun owners.

Maybe the concept of “militia” for legal gun owners is one that should be developed – not by any government, but by gun owners, themselves.  “Whoa,” you might be saying.  “That sounds like a mechanism for insurrection.”

Well, it’s not, but that threat should ALWAYS be on the mind of the Executive departments, and on the minds of voters.  Sadly, and our own faults, the Congress should have it at top of mind, as well.  Americans have the RIGHT to replace a tyrannical government with a representative one.  One bright light – President Biden – during a press conference on gun control, uttered these non-sequiturs:

 
“Those who say the blood of lib- — ‘the blood of patriots,’ you know, and all the stuff about how we’re going to have to move against the government. Well, the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots. What’s happened is that there have never been — if you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

If these words had been uttered by someone who knew what he were talking about, they’d be chilling to Americans…  perhaps, upon reflection, they are.  That bozo is President.  But the concept of “militia” is not far-fetched.  Certainly it is not a federal force, nor should it be funded federally.  “Militias” should be local, and the more local the better.  In the most Prudent view, those gun owners who choose to carry concealed could be part of an anonymous police-trained force that has been earlier referenced as “Guardians.”  (See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/05/30/the-guardian-program/) These same would be the nucleus of local militias.  Leadership of each jurisdiction’s militia would be chosen by election within the membership, and thereby granted officers’ titles.

The nature of “Militia,” Constitutionally, is inherently anti-federal.  No wonder this aspect of the Second Amendment is never discussed.  “Nuclear weapons,” indeed.  At the time of its adoption, the concept of “Militia” was understood as the forerunners of the Continental Army ultimately led by George Washington, named a General by the Continental Congress.  To make the revolution work required the establishment of a governing body separate from the King and his governors and troops.  It was all extra-legal and deemed illegal by the Crown.  Militias were already fighting the Redcoats by the time the Continental Congress got down to the business of revolutionary government.

Americans are so reliant upon a steady and dependable government in Washington, that we find it hard to conceive of an autonomous civilian militia, yet that is precisely what the framers were talking about.  The colonies had just fought off a tyrant and the framers were determined that we be just as prepared to fight off another, should the tyranny arise.  There existed very little affinity for a central government because of the tendency toward tyranny by virtually all such entities.  The ability of citizens to check the power of government provided all the justification needed for a Second Amendment.  Armed crime in the streets was practically non-existent in 1789, so that wasn’t the reason for it; hunting was so crucial to provisioning of food and even clothing, that no one had to “allow” for it in the Constitution.  What was crucial was preventing another tyranny from replacing the British Crown.  The twenty-seven words of the Second Amendment guaranteed the ability of citizens to replace a tyrannical central government, and Ratification was impossible without it.

Today, unfortunately, discussion of the true reason for the 2nd Amendment brings forth accusations of sedition and insurrection, “fringe” white-supremacist grouping, and religious fundamentalism.  Yet, it is the Constitution we have and that forms us, even now.

To the “left,” constitutionalism is suspect in all iterations.  It challenges and exposes the sanctity of the STATE for the hollow proto-tyranny towards which it constantly slithers.  The “establishment,” nearly as tyrannical as it could be – economically, morally, politically – is directly threatened by the Constitution, as are all tyrants, everywhere.  Our own proto-tyrants fight to make the U. S. as much like every other nation as they can, while patriots recognize and try to enhance the exceptional nature of our constitutional Republic.  “America first” sends chills down the spines of the permanently re-elected swine that wallow for decades at a time in the halls of Congress. 

Americans have unique responsibilities, including defense and preservation of the Constitution; it is not the task of elected people, specifically, but of THE PEOPLE.  The Constitution came not from government, but from “We, the People…”  WE ordained it, which is that we gave it life.  WE ratified it, but only when the Bill of Rights was appended to it, which is that we entered into a covenant  with all who forever after held office upon swearing to Preserve and Defend it – the Presidents merely a handful of those.  The ultimate defense and execution of the Constitution is our business: the People’s.  We are obligated to preserve it, defend it and live according to its rights and responsibilities on behalf of every American citizen, now and forever after, as well as on behalf of every nation and people, who depend upon the United States to stand firmly against globalism, socialism and communism… and dishonesty.  Let’s get busy.

Biden, Family, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Politics 2022, Representation, Trump

WHY IN HELL?

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Buds.

Prudence, in her most Prudent way, is always trying to keep up with events, trends, purposes and consequences.  And, never one to stir up trouble, Prudence must admit to being fully puzzled as to why in Hell Russia invaded Ukraine?  Perhaps you are wondering the same thing.

History has shown almost every way and purpose humans can imagine for attacking, invading, occupying, destroying, annexing, blockading, burning, looting, bombing or decimating both neighboring and far-off nations or tribes or even continents.  Ghengis Khan and Alexander the Great had what seemed to them and their followers, valuable reasons for dominating as many states, cities and regions as they could.  Hitler had his own “good” reasons for doing the same, and most Germans and like-minded – or like-confused – neighbors went along with him.  The Romans could justify what they did, so did Japan so did Lenin and Stalin in Soviet days.

One expects that Vladimir Putin has a sufficient reason to attack Ukraine, but it certainly isn’t very clear or explicable.  What is going on? 

Given that Mr. Putin hasn’t conferred with Prudence and is not expected to anytime soon, most evidence to which we might allude will be circumstantial at best and inferential, otherwise.  Many wise people have tried to evaluate what he is trying to accomplish, including experienced military leaders.  But they are making military judgements of tactics and short-term strategies and, no matter how accurate, such musings won’t explain the overall purpose of employing war to “solve” some nebulous threat from Ukraine.

Perhaps the non-existent threat from Ukraine was never the impetus for invasion.

Putin is not someone most people would want to chum around with, but he’s not stupid, nor does it seem Prudent to assume that he is mentally addled.  He has managed and manipulated Russia for more than 20 years, gained power and influence geopolitically in that time, and become one of the wealthiest men in the world by cleverly holding and exercising power over the oligarchs that own or control most of Russia’s large industries and banks.  A significant “vig” is paid to Putin for every significant domestic and international trade deal: he is a billionaire.

However, Mr. Putin is also messianic in terms of restoring what he perceives as the once-great Russian empire.  As a loyal KGB agent, once assigned to East Germany, arguably the empire’s furthest outpost, Putin was probably less concerned about Communism than he was about the territorial and political extent of the Soviet Union.  The end of the Soviet system was a severe setback in his view, and something he wishes to set aright.  He had what appeared, at first, to be two audiences to satisfy as to his intent and purpose: Ukraine… and Russia.  It doesn’t appear that he gave a damn about what other countries thought of his threat to return Ukraine to the Russian fold.  It was strictly a local matter for Ukraine to resolve by folding in the face of his threats.

Like it or not, however, Putin’s Russia is a big puzzle piece in geopolitics.  As local as he may have wished to keep his piecemeal dissection of Ukraine, Putin needed to shore up his flanks while going to war on his western border.  Russia’s overall military significance is tied to its huge nuclear stockpile, at least half of which is modern enough to be reliable, which is to say, 2,000 or more warheads and hundreds of missile systems that can deliver them.  Its economic significance is mainly tied to oil and natural gas and extensive mineral resources.  Russia’s longest border is with China, slightly longer than that with Mongolia.  There have been shooting skirmishes along the border with China and the relationship between the two countries has been likened to two praying mantises in a bottle, neither trusting the other.

Lately, however – 6 to 7 years, cooperation between the two socialist/communist giants has been more active.  China’s economy, despite its problems, is 6 to 7 times that of Russia’s.  Russia’s huge land area sits atop enormous natural resources, particularly in oil, gas and relatively untapped shale-oil and gas.  Its population, however, is shrinking.  Programs have been tried to give stipends to parents for having children, but they have not worked to bring births up to even “replacement” rates.  Ultimately, along with politics, economics and industrial base, population size is the key determinant in national strength, depending on how it is achieved.  Massive immigration is not, generally, the solution.

China has 5 times the population of Russia, but lacks sufficient energy resources and, because of an unintended consequence of the “one-child” policies pursued in the late 1960’s through 2010 and beyond, the bias toward boys remains.  This pattern skewed the balance of boys and girls significantly, as parents aborted female fetuses.  During that same period, many thousands of girl babies were “adopted out” so that families could have another baby, hopefully a boy.  China’s ratio of female-to-male is 100 to 118: there are not enough marriage partners to civilize the males, essentially, or to produce enough children to replace aging workers.  China well understands the importance of population quality, rather than mere quantity, and it plays a multi-decade game in its quest to be the dominant country and culture.  So what, you may be asking?

The issue behind almost everything is the U. S. A.  China’s “problem” is not Russia, although the CCP is perfectly happy to buy oil from Russia while it stirs up problems for the “West.”  It is the United States that is the main impediment to Chinese hegemony, even in its own side of Asia and Southeast Asia.  After decades of buying off the elites, Wall Street, the universities, the banks and major industries in the U. S., China has finally secured a compromised President, who it has also “bought off,” and, praise the ancient dragon-gods, is also mentally incompetent!  Things seem to be aligning for China’s big move to unseat the U. S., globally.

Wait a minute, you’re saying, I thought the worst problem is the brutal destruction and wanton murder of Ukraine.  Sadly, Prudence thinks not, although the brutality is the worst the world has seen – paid attention to – in 30 years, except for the murder, rape and slavery promulgated in Africa, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, Angola, Namibia… and on and on.  Of course those countries and tribes didn’t have such good communications or beautiful buildings to be bombed as Ukraine has / had.  Besides, we like Ukraine and our President’s family scammed a lot of money there.  But the dead, starving, uprooted people in Africa are just as dead or more in pain than Ukrainians, who have modern neighbors to flee to and billions of dollars of aid pouring in.  Prudence hates all of it, but Americans are rather selective in our outrage.

What else has been going on in Africa these past 30 or more years?  Why, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.  The same long-term strategy reaches into European countries, Arab /Muslim countries, South Asia, South America and Oceania.  China lends money and expertise to countries that need major infrastructure in order to compete economically, but many cannot afford to pay off the loans.  China is happy to trade ownership for the notes, or lifetime access to ports, natural resources, communications systems and so forth, resulting in a densifying web of influence and military advantage that is, bit by bit, surrounding Russia as effectively as it does the United States in their Western Hemisphere efforts.  Hard to tell which of us is more blind.

So, is it really Prudent to connect the “Rape of Ukraine” to China?  Really?  “Absolutely,” seems to be the answer.

Keep in mind that China’s actions are ALWAYS in favor of China.  That kind of nationalism deserves respect, and it’s fully understandable.  This is why we were safer when Trump was president: “America First.”  The United States is the only country that has always tried to do things, internationally, that are better for other countries, including shedding jobs and production in order to “buy” cooperation, first, to resist the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism, but later to try to buy friendship from China, of all countries!  While our largesse wasn’t restricted to only China, the shift to our insidious pro-China tilt, in academia, in industry, and in our “grass-roots” politics, believe it or not, has weakened our will to defend America.  The Biden regime has stopped enforcing requirements to reveal foreign sources of funds flowing to colleges and universities, most of it Chinese.  Why would they do that?

It is safe to say that the timing of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was based on China’s “granting” permission to Putin.  There may have been, it seems likely, some sort of permission from the W. E. F., as well.  Russia had its forces gathered east of the Ukrainian border for more than a year; they could have invaded at any time.  What made the winter of 2022 the “right” time?  Prudence indicates that it is the presence of the Biden administration and a number of steps Biden has taken to soften U. S. policy towards China, both for responsibility for the Covid pandemic and with regards to China’s multiple efforts in other countries that have begun to compromise even southern Europe.  An “America First” foreign policy would have the U. S. countering the Chinese “Belt and Road” initiatives around the world.  What we must aggressively, diplomatically do is attempt to keep poorer countries from succumbing to China’s bait-and-switch.  Instead, the Biden regime has ignored China’s encirclement.  China has observed the shift in U. S. policy since Trump and, it seems, has decided that this period is when invading Taiwan might be most successful.  It is unclear how much more encouragement China needs.

The final test has been observing how “the West,” most particularly the United States, deals with Russia’s aggression.  At the same time, Russia’s abilities are also being evaluated.  China is perfectly happy to fight to the last Russian, even as the West seems to be happy to fight to the last Ukrainian.  Gaining such knowledge will be put to China’s advantage – everything is.  China cares very little what happens to Ukraine or to Ukrainians; just as little about what happens to Russians and Russia, itself.  Russia has been a rival of China’s almost since Mao Tse Tung took over.  China is playing a century-long game with respect to Russia, too.  Helping Russia, now, buying its oil and gas, for example, may, in China’s view result in the acquisition of far eastern Russia, enabling the encirclement of Korea and Japan and control of key parts of the Pacific.  If you’re thinking that , “… oh, China would never try to do that…” then you haven’t been watching its creation of artificial islands and their militarization and disturbing encroachment upon the Phillipines, and Taiwan.  Indeed, the entire arc of Southeast and South Asia is waiting to see how the U. S. responds to China’s expansionism.  No other country in the world can oppose China and the globalization of Communism.

Interestingly, the World Economic Forum is pushing capitalist countries toward global unification, obviously under the benign management of bankers and oligarchs.  This is diametrically opposed to China’s plan for world hegemony, under the benign management of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP.  Where the W. E. F. says that in the future we won’t “own” anything and therefore we’ll be happy,  the CCP believes we’ll be happier under their form of Communism and total social control that our ephemeral “freedom” fails to afford us: not that different in net.  Neither option will be “Constitutional,” and no one but the United States will be a defender of the principles of our nation.  This part of our exceptionalism is being constantly eroded BY AMERICANS!  Even people we have elected to our own Congress are actively attempting to destroy our Constitutional culture, now reinforced by a Biden administration that is compromised by BOTH China and Russia!  Interestingly, Biden’s family is even compromised by Ukraine!  What a mess.  Just be certain, in your heart of hearts, that NEITHER THE W.E.F. OR THE C.C.P OPTION IS IN THE UNITED STATE’S INTEREST!

Prudence is deeply concerned about the ascendancy of the oligarchy in the U. S. and elsewhere in the West.  Multi-billionaires do not respect Main Street, U. S. A., nor do they respect the basic family values that drive American culture.  Moms, Dads, marriage, Christianity and children raised by parents, are not the path to power that oligarchs crave.  The general morality of the ultra-rich is quite different from that of most moms and dads – by some reports, rather depraved.  When one’s fortune reaches a certain size, the impetus to make governments protect that fortune becomes paramount.  Politicians, unfortunately, are unusually attracted to power and money much like true oligarchs, although they are not smart enough to earn the billions to gain economic entry to the oligarchs’ club.  So, sadly, many are willing to sell-out to the real power brokers, because re-election is equally sought-after.  There is a relative handful of true patriots or statesmen and women in office who will sacrifice to protect the last best hope of mankind.

Wow!  All of this from the “Ukraine” problem?  May God protect that nation and its people.

Economics, Education, Family, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Politics 2022, Representation

Cons-piracy, n. : Piracy Together

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Although it seems imprudent, Prudence is going all conspiracy theory in this post.  Needless to say, there are numerous such theories on a myriad of matters.  Did Oswald act alone?  Or did Hinckley?  Was Barack Obama born in Hawaii?  Did he ever regain citizenship after living in Indonesia?  Why did he claim to be a foreign student?  Maybe Roosevelt knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, but he wanted to be forced into war.  Were Armstrong and Aldrin acting on a soundstage?  Did Eisenhower meet with UFO aliens?  Do Freemasons know secrets from the Knights Templar?

So, there is no end of possibilities, but we’re going to examine one of the very latest:  Are the mRNA “vaccines” part of a globalist population control scheme?  If so, was the creation of the SARS-Cov-2 virus part of this plan?  Was the coverup of the Wuhan Laboratory gain-of-function research, engineered by Dr. Anthony Fauci and others in the U. S. NIH, also part of the plan?

Those aren’t all the questions.  What role do Bill Gates – and others – play in the worldwide promotion of these rather dangerous injections and the drumbeat for “booster” injections?  What about the U. N. and the W.H.O. and the World Economic Forum?  Why has the W.H.O. lied about the virus and its pandemic and the role of the Chinese?  And, how did Moderna know about the novel coronavirus research taking place in Wuhan but the United States remained ignorant of its nature and potential infectiousness?  How were the mRNA injections developed and distributed in such a short timeframe but that timeframe allowed for approval only after the 2020 elections?  Why have so many standard medical practices been subverted in response to Covid-19?  And, why have safe drugs that have shown effectiveness in slowing down Covid infection been suppressed and made illegal in the U. S.?

Those aren’t all the questions, either, but they’re enough to make us go “Hmmnnhh.”

The human fertility / maternity questions are vehemently answered, “Absolutely no effect,” by the CDC, NIH, WHO and major hospitals and universities around the western world.  There are, literally, hundreds of articles stating no measurable effect of the mRNA injections on either male or female fertility: lots of studies, charts and statistics.  Interestingly, all refer to the shots as “vaccines,” and all claim that there is no effect on DNA from the shots.  To refer to the Moderna and Pfizer chemicals as “vaccines” is to comply with a widespread fraud since they do not meet any definitions of “vaccine,” legally, nor do their patents make any claims of being vaccines or list any effects of defined vaccines as their effects.

The potential effect on DNA has been shown in a laboratory setting by Swedish researchers. 

Technically, then, both companies’ concoctions are correctly described as experimental chemical gene therapies, not “vaccines.”  Most people would refuse such shots since they don’t treat or prevent any known disease.  Most people, however, trust vaccines.  What is going on?

In the simplest sense, a conspiracy to create the Covid-19 novel coronavirus and the expensive “vaccines” to fight it under pandemic conditions, can be reduced to a hunger for money.  Not only did the U. S. federal government spot Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson/Janssen many billions of dollars to develop vaccines as quickly as possible, but that same government set aside many regulations to speed the process.  Then it guaranteed more and more billions to those companies to purchase millions and millions of doses.  People were so fearful of dying from Covid-19 by the end of 2020 that there was no question that all the doses that could be produced and distributed would be used, and paid-for.  Financially, it was a gold mine, so to speak.  But Covid and the pandemic and resulting states of emergency, in the U. S. and many other nations, was far more complex than just an obscene transfer of fortunes in public funds.

The earliest stage of complexity hearkens back to 2003 and the outbreak of SARS in Asia.  SARS is caused by the SARS-CoV virus (or SARS-CoV-1, now that were counting), a novel coronavirus.  Those in the coronavirus fascination business: people like Tony Fauci, key people in the CDC and a couple of researchers at UNC–Chapel Hill, recognized as early as 2002, before the outbreak, interestingly, that coronaviruses that cause things like colds and some forms of pneumonia, are wonderfully manipulable.  They busied themselves in engineering changes to the original SARS-CoV virus so that it could be PATENTED.  There are legal issues around patenting life-forms.  Naturally occurring life-forms cannot be patented.  Only a modified, or “engineered” iteration of a life-form can be patented, and the SARS-CoV virus is defined by patent number 7776521, held by our own, very trustworthy CDC agency of the National Institutes of Health.  Later, the CDC petitioned to have this patent made “confidential.”

UNC at Chapel Hill also holds a patent, number 7279327, which protects their methods of making “recombinant” coronaviruses, which is to say, coronaviruses that contain protein elements from more than one source.  This is, however IM-Prudent, a valuable skill to have, for some reason.  You never know when the market for recombinant coronaviruses might open up.

In any case, the work being done at UNC, financed by Fauci’s NIAID agency, was skirting the law as it was close to bio-weapons research.  Subsequently, the newly modified SARS-CoV coronavirus, the patented property of the CDC, and the patented skills of engineering same, were transferred to the Wuhan Institute of Virology under a contract placed through an U. S. “NGO” headed by Dr. Peter Daszak.  It has taken many months but Americans and the rest of the world have finally learned that the NIAID financed gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute.  The functions gained were designed to take a bat-origin coronavirus, supposedly the source of the SARS outbreak in 2003, although that may have had help, too, and make it able to readily infect humans.  There wouldn’t seem to be any economic value to creating a more infectious coronavirus, although there may have been some scientific value.  Certainly no one would want to sell a new disease and, in fact, the CDC / NIAID / EcoHealth cabal didn’t sell it, they gave it away – to China.

Still, there’s no market for the disease, but, if by the rarest of circumstances, we are told repeatedly by eminent scientists, at the direction of Anthony Fauci (the Great), this engineered-to-be-infectious virus were to escape the lab, there would be a Hell of a market for a vaccine to fight it!  “Oh, c’mon, Prudence,” you’re crying, “that sounds like some huge conspiracy theory!”

Prudence doesn’t want to spread a conspiracy theory… just sayin’.

Still, if the impetus were simple enrichment, Covid has worked out very, very well.  However, if the larger purpose is something else… something more in the line of shifting free peoples away from freedom, as leftists are always – unfailingly – attempting to do, then the political, dictatorial “emergency orders” have had a far greater impact than Covid-19, the disease, has had.  What if the purpose was to prepare millions… no, billions of people to accept heavy-handed, un-Constitutional restrictions on movement, freedoms, employment, private properties, personal hegemony and education?  What if weakening the fabric of free societies were the main act?

The heavy-handed, largely UN-scientific reactions by various government entities, to the “threat” (read: fear) of Covid-19, has had, as its GREATEST effect, the division of populations against one another.  Masks and mask-mandates are a perfect example of this.  Despite the utter lack of scientific/medical value of popular masking products against the spread or infection-rates of Covid, Americans become angry toward anyone who questions them.  Schools have been allowed to open, for example (by teachers’ unions), only if children as young as pre-schoolers are forced to wear masks.  There’s plenty of data and evidence for the negative effects of masks on children, yet teachers have gone so far as to tape masks onto special-needs children – as if somebody were made the tiniest bit safer because of its forced placement.  Anger results, and great defensiveness that cites “CDC Guidance” as justification, yet the CDC’s mission is research, not public policy.  Who gave the CDC, of all people, this enormous power?

The Congress, supposedly the most potent locus of power under our Constitution, is left begging for information.  This is upside down, is it not?  The W.H.O., a corrupt agency within the corrupt United Nations, is just as often cited by our administrative state as justification for recommendations that have effectively militarized medicine in the United States.  W.H.O., we should not forget, began its advice about Covid by lying, for weeks, about the role of China in developing and spreading Covid-19 around the world.  It is completely IM-Prudent to take their advice on much of anything.  Now there is building the idea that any NATION that opposes W.H.O.’s directives on health and future (and current) pandemics, should be punished!  This can only be effected by reducing the sovereignty of member nations. 

Almost 90 nations have adopted or are considering some form of “vaccine passport,” including our formerly quite free neighbor to the north, Canada.  Here we have a set of injections – called vaccines – that the latest evidence and releases of information from Pfizer and the FDA show are greater risks than the supposed disease they are supposed to prevent.  Governments and major employers – even the Department of Defense – are using threats against continued employment should individuals refuse to receive those questionable shots.  We seem to be trading our freedom for… well, for risky medication about which mostly lies have been told.  Yet W.H.O. and the U. N. are pushing global requirements to accept the injections.

Clearly the overriding purpose of this pandemic and the vaccines, lockdowns and damage to independent businesses, increased drug overdose deaths, increases in multiple cancers and other diseases and deaths caused by the mRNA vaccines, is not public health.  Nor is it improvement to the standards of living for a majority of the residents of this planet.  No, it’s something else.  You can see this, Prudence hopes.

So, how can inordinate fear of a disease be maintained?  Well, as any government afficianado can tell you, by widespread, even mandatory testing… and more testing, weekly testing, daily testing, testing if you have a friend who knows somebody who was in the same suite of offices as a person who tested positive, him- or her-self, for the dreaded Covid-19.  With enough testing – especially with “PCR” testing – the numbers of “cases” can be kept artificially high.

There’s nothing wrong with Polymerase Chain Reaction testing; such tests can be very accurate in proper laboratory settings.  The only value to a PCR test for Covid-19 is to expose infectiousness.  Finding out that there may have been exposure to Covid-19 outside of the period of perhaps a week or less of actual infectiousness, is fairly useless… at least in terms of preventing disease.  It is useful, however, for inflating the number of “cases.”  Higher case rates justify the imposition of restrictions, mask mandates and, ultimately, injection mandates.  Higher case rates can keep schools closed, businesses shut down, and can empower civil authorities to criminalize normal commercial and religious activities.  God forbid one would be part of a “super-spreader” event.  Constant testing provides justification for all sorts of government reactions, legal or extra-legal, constitutional or UN-Constitutional.

So, if PCR testing is so accurate, how can it be abused?  It doesn’t require malicious intent, necessarily, for testing “data” to be abused by politicians, for they must be portrayed as “doing something.”  The process involves, first, detection of an RNA string unique to Covid-19.  This might involve only a few copies of the RNA “snippet.”  The chain reaction step then replicates the small number of strings in repeated steps until there are enough strings to confirm and display by concentration assay.  Bingo: a positive!  Keep ‘em coming, boys and girls, and we can lockdown those pesky right-wingers for months.

The only real counter to fear of covid is early, safe treatment of symptoms and inhibition of viral replication in the body.  Given a little help, natural immunity will figure out how to stop the virus and create an immune response that can last for years.  Unfortunately, mRNA injections start out lasting only a few months and, by the 2nd “booster” shot, only about 4 WEEKS.  In the process, since they defend against only one protein in the virus, they augment the ability of the virus to mutate, creating “variants” that may or, often may not be deterred by the “vaccines.”  Aha!  More fear, more restrictions, more dependence on government, more formerly self-sufficient individuals on welfare, more billions to develop still other mRNA shots: a lifetime of “boosters.”  If this is a plan, it’s a damned good one.

Treatments for Covid-19, however, have been suppressed.  Typically, facing a new disease, the best medical reaction is to try everything that might help from the pharmacopeia of known drugs.  Obviously, EVERYTHING, in the beginning, will be “off-label!”  Duh!  Every potential anti-viral should be tested, AND THEY HAVE BEEN, and in various combinations with nutrients and complementary drugs.  Protocols have been assembled that are VERY effective at certain stages of infection and progression.  Medical science is a remarkable engine of innovation.

Why do you suppose these treatments have been made, essentially, illegal?  Such a reaction is unique to covid-19!  Patients who exhibit symptoms were told to go home and come back to the hospital if they became really ill.  No treatment offered.  Once in the hospital, again, no treatments, just maintenance.  Some recovered on their own, many were intubated as lung function declined, many of those died, apart from loved-ones.  Eventually, Remdesivir was approved and pushed onto patients, but it is a treatment that’s worse than the disease, with severe, organ-damaging side effects.  None of the inexpensive treatments are ever offered, and even if prescribed by a physician, hospitals will not ALLOW them to be administered.  In many cases – most – pharmacies will not fill those prescriptions because of “CDC guidance.”

The only answer offered to the question of SARS-CoV-2 fears are the weird mRNA shots, shots that don’t promise to immunize, or stop infections or even prevent future infections – only to mitigate infections, but then, only if you happen to contract Covid-19 during the small window of “vaccine” effectiveness.  Unfortunately, it has become clear, these injections tend to disrupt your natural immune system, leaving it able to respond only to the one protein the mRNA shots react to.  “Vaccinated” people become increasingly defenseless against many other diseases, including childhood diseases and cancers that natural immunity typically fights off unnoticed.  Yet, these are the shots governments are FORCING people to take, all around the world.  Why in Hell, one wonders?  And our freedoms will be stripped from us unless we accept them? Populations could decline if this is allowed to continue.

Are we sovereign human beings with unalienable rights?  Or laboratory rats?  How about WE conspire to remove the people who have reduced us to this status?  America, Awake!

Economics, Elections, Governance, Politics 2022, Representation, Taxation

“with Liberty and Corruption for all.”

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There are always consequences to corruption in government agencies… and officials… and it’s not always mere dollars.  Simple graft is bad enough for it demonstrates the willingness to lie more or less directly to the people an official or “representative” has sworn to serve while in office.  Typically, we, the foolish voters in either party, see our “humble” servants gain ever more comfortable styles of living, but those gaining the increased comforts are usually careful to hide the actual scale of thefts from which they benefit, and we re-elect them.  We tell ourselves that the problems facing government are the fault of other or previous representatives or senators, mayors, city councilors, governors or, ultimately, presidents, not the ones for whom WE voted.  Our civil society is breaking down, it seems, in every way we contemplate, and yet we only shake our heads when trying to explain what is happening.  The scale of American civil failure disturbs us and we try our best to isolate the one thing we would change if we ran the zoo, but it’s not really clear that our ideas would really cause the change we think we want.  Besides, we’re busy and, fortunately, there’s an election on the horizon and we’ll be able to change the party holding power – or most of it – and “things” will get straightened out.

Except they rarely do get straightened out, or even “change” very much.  Over the past, say 70 years, America’s direction has not been toward strength or toward moral purity, but toward weakness and moral decline.  Still, there appears to be a majority in the country that prefers moral straightness and traditional American honesty and trustworthiness.  Why have “things” declined – lately quite dramatically, in the past 30 years in particular – when most people want the direction to be otherwise?  It’s a damned good question.

The Prudent thing to do, as our erstwhile Vice-President, Kamala Harris, likes to say, is look for a “root cause.”

Prudence offers a theory of the root cause based on extensive evidence: official corruption.  We are in decline not because “the times” are changing.  In fact, we have purposefully caused our own decline by electing corrupt people, and then re-electing them over and over.  The effects of this simple process are very complex – for good, purposeful reasons – and far-reaching to, now, threatening the survival of our nation.  While this sounds like there’s a single “thing” we could change to correct our decline, if this theory is true, we are so far gone that no election or piece of legislation can do it.  But Prudence is committed to never leaving her readers without a solution, or a host of them, so fasten your seatbelts.

Fifty thinkers studying the problem would have 150 opinions about what should be our FIRST move, and in truth, it is the largest conundrum.  So, we have to look for some of those root causes so that beloved corrupt politicians can’t make things worse.  Although its strictures are being eroded as quickly as the left (it’s always “the left”) can chip away at them, our remarkable Constitution is still the fundament of our laws and means of governance.  However, it cannot speak to our modern, sophisticated ways and means of subversion and corruption.  It needs some upgrading via amendment, and via an amendment process that cannot be corrupted by our “deep state” or current elected officials and representatives.  It won’t be easy, but Article V. of the constitution provides the mechanisms for proposing and adopting Amendments.  One such mechanism is for 34 states to apply to Congress for the calling of a Convention for the purpose of proposing amendments.  The Congress must issue the call for such a convention, and then step aside, as the Constitution allows for no further role for the Congress in this mode of proposing amendments.  Ratification is performed by the states, too: three quarters, or 38 of them.

The key to saving our nation, then, is the nature of those who actually attend the Convention, and there is the crux of the matter.  It seems obvious to Prudence that “the left” should have no role in such a Convention.  How can this be ascertained?  Could there be a test of philosophies to select each state’s delegates, like Supreme Court nominees?  State legislatures are going to control who represents their states.  One can hope that the 34 states that ultimately make Application to the Congress to call the Convention, will be the more conservative states, but there is no certainty to that.  Many resolutions over the decades have been passed by one state legislature only to be rescinded by a later legislature.  Most had specified one or two purposes for the Convention to form into amendments.  In many cases, the nature of those reasons to call for the Convention were the reasons for recission, later.

The likelihood of actually convening an “Article V. Convention of the States” appears remote.  A more likely possibility is that during Republican control of both houses of congress, an amendment could be proposed and submitted to the states for ratification.  Such an action requires a two-thirds vote in both houses, but no approval from a President.  Still, there will be a problem obtaining even that much cooperation when one of the key elements of an amendment is to impose term limits on Senators and Representatives.  Could the case be made that the time had come for courage and sacrifice?  It all depends on how corrupt the Congress is at the time.  But let’s assume that a clean, traditionalist, pro-American delegate body could be filtered out and assembled.  What are the “TOP 12” fixes the amendment should include?

Term limits for federal offices keeps coming up as of prime importance.  With our longer lifespans, instant communications and unbridled budgeting with perpetual debt, the opportunities for becoming wealthy in Congressional “service,” are legion.  All that is required is a tingle of corrupt aggrandizement.  One need only pick apart any budget legislation or any “emergency” spending bill – often an “omnibus” bill – that is more than 20 or 30 pages long, and numerous “earmarks” can be found.  These happy “gifts” to Rep’s and Senator’s districts and, often, key supporters, are the price we pay to keep our elected “representatives in office for 20, 40 or more years.  During those decades the motivation to represent the constituents who elect a 2-year or 6-year representative, is twisted into the overarching motivation to keep a cushy, well-paid job in which lots of people treat the lucky “seat-holder” as if he or she were very important.  News media seek out the elected and ask for their unique and oh-so-important thoughts about whatever is “hot” at the moment.  Before too many months have passed since taking office, the elected begin to think that they are wise, not just smart.  After the first re-election, they also begin to accept that they occupy their “seat” because they are one of the uniquely capable humans who can understand the positions to which they have been elected, and understand, at the same time, the incredibly complex and arcane workings of government and legislation.  How fortunate are the ordinary people who are represented by any one of these august creatures.

We have a “system” of election and “representation” that corrupts men and women, alike.  Their jobs are too comfortable and too permanent.  We pay them too well no matter how poor or sloppy a job they do, and no matter how poorly the country and their constituents are doing.  There are too many “perks” and advantages built into their job descriptions and, with the exquisite tools available for twisting news and social media, there is virtually no oversight of their performance.  We re-elect them so that they might “fight for us” in Washington, or, at least, so that they can keep the scurrilous bastards and bitches in the other party from taking away our Medicare, 401k’s or Social Security, or from raising taxes and fees and imposing onerous regulations.

Helping to grease the skids toward illicit wealth are an army of lobbyists – more than we can imagine.  Many of them represent not only business and hand-out interests, but also foreign countries who all, it turns out, have their hands out, too.

The whole corrupted enterprise depends in large part on long-term relationships with those lobbyists and the abiding motivation to be re-elected.  What makes it work is repetitive re-election.  The first article of the new Amendment should be Term Limits on consecutive terms of service.  It doesn’t seem proper to create a group of people who cannot run for certain offices.  Forcing them to remain out of particular offices for a period of 4, 6, 8 or 12 years will open up representation to people who are NOT compromised by lobbyists and re-election corruption.

The second article should pertain to the budget, but not simply that it be balanced.  It should force Congress to manage budget legislation while forcing oversight of the administrative state and the flood of regulations that emanates from it.  So, the “A” paragraph will force the congress to budget no more revenue than that collected in the previous 12 months, and that it shall have 4 budgetary cycles to accomplish this goal.  The “B” paragraph will require that every Cabinet Department’s budget and planned regulatory effort for the next budget year, shall be analyzed and approved or modified separately from other departments.  A sub-committee shall also be charged to review existing regulations and to recommend changes to or “sunsetting of” regulatory regimes.  Finally, the “C” paragraph shall require a date-certain for completion of budgeting and oversight that is prior to the beginning of the next fiscal 1-year or 2-year period.

A third article would simply state that the Congress may, by law, change federal budgeting to be bi-annual rather than annual, should the work of review described in Article 2 take longer than will allow for annual budgeting.

The fourth article will require that: A. No legislation may include items of appropriation or law that are not listed in the title of the bill; B. No bill that raises or lowers taxes may be more than 40 pages long, printed in 8 point or larger type; C. Any bill that appropriates funds for projects or support for any cause or construction that impacts a single District or two or more Districts in a single state must be presented as a single bill to be voted upon separately from any other matter; and, D. Any “continuing resolution” deemed necessary for continued operation of any agency or department of the Federal Government shall include spending at a rate equal to that of the budget cycle preceding that which is just ending, whether a 1-year or 2-year budget cycle.

Finally, the fifth article will replace Social Security with a mandated private investment plan at the same rate of payroll contributions as currently required, with restrictions on dates of retirement similar to those now enforced.  A period of years would be required to completely phase out the current federal “piggy-bank” structure of Social Security so that once privatized – carefully overseen and regulated – the funds will build wealth for taxpayers and cease being a drain on the Federal budget.

There are a hundred other ideas for cleansing our federal spending and taxation and limiting opportunities for self-enrichment while in office.  With more frequent turnover of elected personnel the expectation will be that more Congress-people will employ statesmanship more often, and not fear fighting the bad habits of others.  The same will limit the amount of damage a bad-apple can do in his or her limited period in office.

Meanwhile, let us stop electing career politicians.  Let’s impose our own term limits, particularly at the caucus and primary levels.  The office-holders who have participated in expanding the debt to, now, more than $30 TRILLION, do not deserve re-election.  Remain Prudent.