Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

ALL AHEAD: LEFT!

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Even government has to employ the Constitution...

There’s a new economics in town.  It’s based on virus avoidance.  A majority of Americans have bought some, if not all the virus-avoidance products suddenly for sale.  Some of those are advertised as something the wise, concerned, empathetic and news-trusting person definitely should  have: things like toilet paper and sanitizing wipes, for example, or things like people-avoidance, face masks and fear.  When sales dropped a little, politicians got up on their pedestals and decreed that most of these products were now mandatory, while others, for some arcane, authoritarian reasons, were forbidden.

The latest viral threat has exposed a host of new sales experts, male and female.  Unlike the multitude of regulations these same, new sales reps have instituted to protect buyers of everything from prescriptions to orange juice and canned soup, there are provided no guidelines whereby the hoped-for… no, required  buyers of the new virus-avoidance products these abrupt sellers are peddling, can fairly judge which are good and wholesome and which are not.  Yet, purchase and swallow we do, lest we miss out on the greatest shared sacrifice of all time – the first to bring our nation to its knees.

There is no choice between bitter or sweet, it’s virtually all bitter, and since we are the tough, always successful American people, we join in the sacrifice to show just how patriotic we truly are.  There are even new badges of courage, so to speak, like face masks and oddly walking so as to avoid others, not to overlook cowering at home as one of our greatest strengths.  The only side-effect of the lately prescribed purchase we all must buy, is a new, nearly universal distrust of everyone else should we be threatened by their presence.  Since the FDA- and CDC-approved products are so new, no one knows if the side-effects are long-lasting or even permanent.  Small additional price to pay.

Those who are skeptical of our national reaction to our newly purchased fears, are perceived as barely deserving of the right to buy food, even less the right to buy toilet paper.  This is a great unifying moment.  Obviously it does make sense to wear a face mask of some sort when entering a market or hardware store, although, in a perverse way, it also seems Prudent not to do so, as wearing one indicates acquiescence to the miasma of dictates, pronouncements and unconstitutional separation from “inalienable rights” that hundreds of thousands died for prior.

Nascent socialists love a good crisis like this viral one.  Now, what they have dreamed of since entering their first poli-sci lecture or law class, and subsequent entry into “government” itself, there is presented a chance to change the world, re-order disorganized society, and to clear the path through the jungle of liberty that those sufficiently wise can follow to a brighter future.  Those who cannot share the vision of an orderly nation will need just a little coaxing to walk arm-in-arm with the wise followers… ahhmm, except walking arm-in-arm will be disallowed to prevent a “second wave” of coronavirus.  And, no hand-shaking or sharing others’ spaces, now deemed to be a 3, 4 or 5-foot circle according to the Ministry Of Social Distancing.

Exposure of the best and worst of federal regulation is one of the blatant results of dealing with COVID-19.  Evidently there was some concern among intelligence operatives back in November of 2019, that the rapidly spreading, perhaps new contagion, bore watching in the off-chance that it would spread outside of China.  Initially their concern was focused on problems for U. S. assets in South Asia.  Still, it wasn’t actionable: there was little hard information and it was wholly a Chinese problem.  It was good that our arcane intelligence caught wind of the problem, but anything further depended on the honesty of the Chinese Communists.  Well.

At some time after the problem surfaced, perhaps the beginning of December, the Chinese not only hid their unique problem, but allowed millions of people to leave Wuhan before they realized they had to lock the city and region down if there was any hope of containing the spread of this new disease.  With disinformation as its prime public function, the Chinese Communist Party argued against travel restrictions and coerced the UN’s W.H.O. to repeat their lies for 3 or 4 weeks.  First “it doesn’t spread from human to human,” as Chinese trade and technical personnel spread across the world carrying the new “smallpox” to the indigenous tribes of America, Italy, England, Spain, Germany and Iran, among many others.  No infected blankets – human-to-human works better than expected!

No one seems to want to consider that COVID-19 has damaged the world’s economies, including ours, on purpose.  “Oh, no!  No country would ever do that.  The Chinese are wonderful people.  This was an embarrassing mistake that China feels terrible about.”  Indeed, China feels SO badly that it has striven continuously to blame the United States for the disease.  The trusted professionals at the W.H.O that China controls, have done their best to reinforce Chinese proficiency at handling the virus, in the face of unending disinformation about the extent of COVID-19 in China, the brutality employed to contain it and about the tens of thousands of deaths that have happened.  While the world suffers the constant spread of this new virus, China has miraculously experienced the end of the spread to the point of virtually no new cases and business is up and running and kids are back in school.  Okaaayyy.  Ignore the western news people who have been kicked out of the country, China is the model to follow.  Can you say, “disinformation?”

Relative only to the United States, it has cost only about $10 Trillion in denied business and market wealth to fight the virus… so far.  That’s assumed to be a lot of “money,” but it’s not.  It is a Hell of a lot of obligation far into the future.  There was no money to borrow from the Federal Reserve; the FED didn’t have $2.2 Trillion.  What it does have is the right to create lendable “money” out of thin air, and charge Americans interest for it.  It’s a nice business to be in.  Having received the imaginary air-money from the consortium of private banks we like to call the Federal Reserve, the Federal government, all legislatively legal-like, deposited bits of it into millions of business and personal bank accounts to help us all “fight” the novel coronavirus that China sent us.  China’s model for supposedly containing and defeating the COVID-19 coronavirus, is the model most “Western” countries – ostensible democracies and republics – adopted, rather than the Swedish model of good sense and personal responsibility, without national business shutdowns, that is working about as well as the Chinese model of repression is working for the rest of us.

Measuring the astronomical and ongoing costs our fascist lockdowns of businesses and individuals are imposing, one could speculate that we could have posted two nurses and a personal assistant at the side of every vulnerable elderly person and otherwise medically weak person at a cost of about one-twentieth of that $10 Trillion.  A private chef could have prepared gourmet meals for each thrice daily and fluffed their pillows on demand. The rest of us could have gone about our business, using care and best practices to minimize infection.  One could observe that those who have imposed the shutdowns and stay-at-home orders – all in contravention of our Constitution – are enjoying it a little too much.

As in all matters of great moment and of life-and-death, literally, we are witness to tawdry congressional machinations.  Without hesitation certain key congressional figures have attempted to insert completely unrelated issues into “emergency” economic legislation rushed through to save the economy.  What constitutes “emergency” legislation for those on the left, includes having voters vote up to 45 days “early” and to vote by mail to “maintain social distancing.”  These are election-stealing tactics.  The left: socialists, liberals and our beloved Democrats, never relax in their battle to unseat conservatism and the strengths of tradition.  Every defeat of their radical (anti-traditional) plans is never accepted, but is a key to how to bring a different tactic to bear in the next battle to unseat a specific tradition.  The famous instruction to leftists is “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and “no” means simply, “later.”

Every aspect of traditional life – and belief – is naturally political to leftists in an environment of hateful anti-traditionalism.  COVID-19 is a political  matter on which sides must be taken and defined.  In some way the attack of this new scourge is not a common enemy all Americans should unite against.  No, it is an opportune moment to instill ever greater socialist plans and practices, virtually while people aren’t watching.  If a few dozens or hundreds of people die in the execution of socialist plans, that is a reasonable cost to install “equality” and to tear down the capitalist, unfair economics of the Constitution and of Christians.  China made the same calculation when the (perhaps) accidental release of COVID-19 presented an opportunity, as well.

As epidemiologists have grabbed the economy by the throat, the ostensible requirement of “social distancing” has extended to include everything from weddings to funerals, school classes and restaurants, most jobs and even walks in parks and on beaches, and, quite logically in the eyes of leftists and fascists, our new governors have prohibited Church services!  In a nation glued together by religious freedom and codified disestablishment, and built by believers in God, this is extraordinary.  This exposes the disdain that leftists hold for religious faith: religion is nothing more than social gathering and virtue-signaling such as the left understands all too well.  Amazingly, at the same time that Chinese Christians are risking imprisonment, if not their lives, to hold surreptitious prayer meetings, Americans, and more oddly, their pastors and priests, have acquiesced to the dictates of secular functionaries to avoid church services.  What if prayer works?

Secular leftists are laughing in their latte’s as they think they have proven the fallacy of religion.  Erstwhile Christians are congratulating themselves on being good rules-followers, not grasping the peril their meekness has placed them in.  Regardless of Constitutional guarantees, churches have shown that they will readily forego their faith and their rights when so directed by non-believers.  Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Nearly every religious tradition around the world includes some form of prayer in unison.  There is great effect from unified belief – it’s the strongest force on earth.  Are all churches agreeing that there is no one to hear their silly prayers?  Are Sunday services mere collection-plate convenience?  Good grief!  Prudence has seen prayer work in the physical world.  No pastor should fail to resist the attempt to squash this essential right – and duty.

Finally, it is hopeful that so many private efforts have sprung into being to supply medical equipment and help to other individuals.  Companies have changed course in matters of days to provide masks and ventilators and hand-sanitizer.  Remarkable organic chemists and biologists are testing, creating, and improving drug therapies and even potential vaccines to defeat COVID-19.  Americans, most especially those of us who have dealt with the risks of private life and economics, are generous, charitable people.  Even while unable to work and with their incomes limited or missing, Americans are being asked to donate and they do. 

The brunt of the multiple variations of shutdowns and lock-outs has been borne by private interests: individual workers and contractors, small and large businesses, and charities and non-profits to differing extents.  The pain has in no way impacted public employees economically.  Yes, first responders are working longer shifts – on overtime.  Teachers have had to learn (where union-willing) how to teach on-line.  Big public thinkers and planners have had to think and plan more than ever, but none has lost pay, benefits or pension.  Daily there are stories of private incidents of charity and outreach, some quite widespread as people contribute thanks to social media.  What Prudence has failed to observe are news reports of large-scale public-employee  charitable efforts, whether by bureaucrats or teachers or others, and maybe the reports have just been missed, somehow.  Are “we” all in this together or is it just “you,” the private, not yet socialized sector, who are all in this together?  God forbid.

Culture, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

RESURRECTION

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"In the beginning..."

There has never occurred a crisis for civilization when capitalism failed to function.  “Capitalism” is innate, virtually instinctive among humans, and the most powerful of motivators in societies as small as one member.  An individual has the same needs for life on a personal level as a family, clan, village or nation  has: clothing, food, protection and shelter.  At whatever level or intensity of need, humans will attempt to obtain as much as possible of any of them at the lowest “cost” of effort possible.

Once acquired these needed things automatically become property – property on a spectrum of ownership, from the very personal, like clothing, weapons, tools, personal or family shelter.  Beyond the immediately personal, family property and then clan or village property, there automatically develops properties that are belief-based, like loyalty and group-safety obligation.  It is a short journey to sharing beliefs about events, conditions, weather, waters, animals and childbirth… and death, that are unexplained and ascribed to supernatural influences.  These beliefs are as crucial a private property as clothing and self-defense, and as durable a cultural quality as pottery styles or graphic and oral expressions of every sort.  And they will be passed on to children nearly infallibly.  Behavior by either children or adults that is contrary to those shared beliefs automatically produces negative sanctions.

In groups as small as two, and certainly of 3 or 4, specialties: differences in abilities, are quickly apparent.  In a group of families there will be definite skills of higher degrees of excellence in this person or that – better hunting skills, better tool-making, better making of clothing, better hut-building.  Someone – an elder – will gain enough knowledge to predict outcomes, or eclipses, or the arrival of herds.  His or her wisdom will be sought out for transfer to children.  Specialization.  Economics is part of and an outgrowth of specialization.  Wise men, chiefs, healers and others will be fed in exchange  for their unique services.  Food is an automatic medium of exchange.  Next, perhaps, are weapons and tools.  The hunter who unerringly leads the hunting party to the clan’s next moose or buffalo or elk, may be “gifted” with a blanket, better shoes or more food… or a wife.

Rules, mores, or customs guide the relationships within the group.  Inevitably there is a shared concept of us and them: people from outside the clan.  The desire to protect the clan is just as automatic.  Yet the possibility of trade with outsiders may be easily entertained because of the ease of acquisition compared to the work required to obtain the outsider’s goods on their own.  The values must be set.  How many of this kind of skins or tools or decorations or… whatever, are “worth” the higher quality flint arrowheads the stranger makes?  Before long the first group will be trapping extra beavers just to trade for arrowheads: an economy is created.

The big impact on economics, and on the establishment of capitalism as an organizing  force in society, came with the introduction of agriculture.  As people settled  around their fields, the importance of property changed forever.  Where crops “belonged” to the village, or “city,” their grains and products were not handed out to every family for free.  There were trades or barters required, leading to record-keeping, counting, weights and balances.  There appeared the recorded existence of debts to be repaid in the (near) future, between families and the granary (city) and even between cities: a collective capitalism (property rights) and individual capitalism (private property rights.)  Automatically new specialties arose: law-enforcement within the city, and border-enforcement against all outside the city – soldiers and general conscription when fields and water sources were threatened.

Treaties were needed: rules to reduce threats from “others,” and to define ownership of certain lands and resources.  There always existed nomadic peoples who refined forms of movable dwellings, like those of indigenous peoples in North America.  Conflicting interaction between “property-rights” people and nomadic tribes inevitably result in destruction of nomadic uses of lands desired by those who employ fences, borders and ownership-based economic structures.  Native Americans had no concept of fences and property lines, and this difference affected why they never developed cities, industries and massive growth.  Today, the simplicity of indigenous people’s way of life is attractive to those who wish to tear down our current, sloppy, polluting and more or less capitalist, civilization.

Capitalism and all of its moving parts: private property, profit, risk, debt/investment, accumulation of wealth and inheritance and the freedom to fail and learn, is the prime driver of the global economy and amazing invention and innovation that supports more than 7 Billion humans.  But it does all of this at great cost, not least of which is the expansion of the number of possible “sins” and multiplication of the number of temptations (frauds, scams, legal deceptions, global banking).  On the other hand, and comprising the basic defense of capitalism as an organizing principle, capitalist economics and politics  have spurred the greatest wealth and health in history.  More people are well-fed and comforted in hundreds of ways, educated and made relatively “free” thanks to capitalism than under any of the more or less tyrannical systems employed, ever.

Capitalist politics depend on democracy and, judged by the success of the United States, upon republicanism:  the democratic election of ostensibly more capable, perhaps wiser, representatives.  Evidently, as well, Constitutional republicanism is crucial to the explosive growth of wealth and a “middle class” of upwardly mobile individuals and families who could, realistically, work their way higher up the economic ladder.  It is worth analysis and reformation, both political and economic, to return the U. S. system to its successful ways.  This means reformation of economic institutions, and of political institutions, both of which, today, conspire to concentrate power – and share it – to the detriment of freedom, upward mobility and essential Constitutionalism.

The strongest voices raised against “America,” are firmly on the left, socialist and worse.  Their prescription is virtual destruction of “capitalism” and honest conservatives / constitutionalists must recognize their logic in the presence of an extremely unbalanced, oligarchy of global bankers who largely have brought the financial system to a point of dictating to even the United States, what its future will be: indebtedness to that cabal, and therefore limited as to the extent of our independent action internationally.

Capitalism requires limits and institutions that prevent its (people’s) essential tendencies toward 1) monopoly and, 2) political / governmental advantage.  We can see the damages that concentrations of wealth will cause, not least of which is empowering socialism and anti-constitutionalism.  But it also creates severe stratification in a society formed without “castes” or “classes.”  Perhaps worst of all, super wealth transcends nationhood; when profits can be earned around the globe, the need to adhere to a single country’s norms and laws, tends to evaporate.  Most particularly, the impact of market presence in the nations of our rivals / enemies, sees corporations or syndicates of corporations, bending to not offend those who mean the U. S. the most harm.

Is it possible to restore a sense of nationalism for industries key to the defense and independence of the United States?  What would such a policy look like?  What could possibly be the enforcing agency?  Can current political hatreds and ignorance permit the formation of a national-interest industrial policy that serves the country, rather than one that serves a party?

When the two – or three – political “sides” in the U. S. don’t agree on what the national interest is, or even if there IS a national interest, it appears that a national industrial policy is rather remote.  Yet it must manifest if the United States is to control its own destiny.  What forces must come together to make this happen… and within two years?

A “fusion” government.  A… what the Hell?  Never happen.

It has to.  Until Bush beat Gore, technically, the two-party system functioned as a modified “fusion” government system.  Overall, both parties were mainly interested in doing what was best for the country and managed to cooperate on major issues and trends.  Sloppy, corrupt and self-serving, and able to cooperate as much as we did thanks only to the unlimited creation of stultifying debt, both parties managed to avoid the corrosive hatreds of the past twenty years.  How we’ve operated since, say, the Kennedy administration, is NOT the model to strive for, now.

Thirty Congresses and eleven Presidents have brought America to the edge of insolvency and at risk of subservience to China and others.  The abrupt re-set due to coronavirus is an opportunity and a test.  For the faithful, a test like this is not an accident, it is a loud vibrant message from God that we are far along a wrong path.  But, those certain that they do not believe can get the message, too.  The United States cannot continue to waste its wonderful gifts bestowed at our founding and many times since.  Here are a few changes that must manifest if we are to maintain our independence:

  • New leadership.  Without trying to parse all the forces that pushed on the psyche’s of numerous political leaders, we – and they – must recognize that the Democrat party has shifted distinctly leftward… and that leftist policies – virtual socialism – are incompatible with Constitutional republicanism.  Some leaders are so committed to this relatively new political stance that they must be replaced by younger, more pragmatic and, dare it be suggested, more conservative leaders. 

          The same is true for Republicans.  Republicans have been pulled leftward by the most crass and aggrandizing consideration: re-election.  Appealing to the (leftist) attractiveness of “free” advantages for voters, Republicans learned to win re-election along the same paths as more left-leaning Democrats.  Those who have built political careers (another problem) by hewing closer to Democrat principles,  should be retired so that conservative principles can again define Republicans.

          The ability of a “party” to be defined by, and to defend, an articulable philosophy of government, of legal code, of education and of help for the poor, is fundamental   for representatives of that party to deserve enough votes to gain governing authority under the Constitution.  Subsequently, the two parties should be able to agree on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution.   These essentials seem simple to some of us, but are not agreed-to by about half of the voting public.  It is time for both parties to lead America onto a stronger, Constitutionally purer path.

  • Destruction of debt.  None of our agreed Constitutional principles will protect us if we sacrifice the independence of the United States, and nothing risks that independence more, or more directly, than our ballooning debt, owed in large fraction to non-Americans, including other countries.  An industrial policy that both parties can agree to is part and parcel of controlling our national debt burden and the ultimate value of our currency and labors. 

          Total annual expenditures must reverse direction.  Contrary to the unsustainable trends of the past half-century, the federal “budget-in-name-only” must shrink by fully 25% – a prospect surely deemed impractical, if not impossible, by most in both parties, Republicans included.  While Republicans have always preached “smaller” government, since Johnson’s “Great Society,” indeed, since F.D.R.’s “New Deal,” the ostensible conservatives have succumbed to the enrichening advantages of staying in office, and have diverted their efforts to re-election rather than statesmanship.  For many now in office their personal advantages of office are shameful and distinctly off the mark.

  • Electoral honesty.  Democrats have raised the art of pandering to ephemeral, personal issue-driven groups to an art-form, even as they have learned – codified – numerous ways to expand “voter participation” so as to steal elections.  Vote-harvesting, early voting, same-day registration, automatic registration when interacting with state governments for unrelated matters, non-verification of citizenship status during such interactions, “Rank” voting and organized surrogate voting, and other schemes honest people can’t imagine, all contribute to the erosion of democracy.  Matched with these illicit garnerings of “votes,” is the opening of borders to waves of illegal entrants who, it is hoped by their advocates, will vote for Democrats and some misguided municipalities are granting illegal entrants voting privileges in “local” elections – a virtually unmanageable distinction.  To form a more unified national political structure, these tactics must be renounced and abandoned.  One voter – one vote… per citizen.

          Republicans are no purer when opportunities are present to take advantage of election management dominance.  For shame.  Both parties must commit to, and back legislation that strengthens enforcement of election laws, including “clean” voting rolls.

  • Deconstruction of the labyrinthine administrative “state.”  Both parties have colluded to slough off responsibility for the laws that are passed, by installing more and more agencies, offices, titles and programs among the 15 executive departments.  Within virtually all of them are powers to regulate citizen behaviors, each with the force of law despite no specific authorization from Congress.  This threatens personal freedom.  Both parties should be able to agree on the restoration and future preservation of freedom.

          What there is no agreement on is what constitutes that freedom.  To socialists, freedom means freedom from personal responsibility… in the dozens of forms that can take.  To originalists freedom means freedom to make as much of one’s abilities and situation as can legally be done and according to individual initiative and enterprise.  To make the opportunity to succeed manifest for the largest number of citizens and legal residents, government must be a trusted partner  in life, and not an opponent.  Repeatedly, this immense gulf separates the parties to the degree that   cooperation appears unreachable.  There must  arrive a more cooperative,   constitutional understanding of individual sovereignty and responsibility.

  • The re-establishment of honest budgeting.  Both parties must agree to annually cleanse the federal complex of agencies and programs, of wasteful overlap of purposes and missions and personnel.  The budget line-items for each should be justified or eliminated at least bi-annually.

          Beyond congressional oversight of each component of the total budget, an   agreement is needed to cut federal spending by every Congress for five Congresses (10 years) until total outlays are equal to inflows during the period of the previous budget cycle.  Can that much discipline be found among current and future   members?  And, in current and future presidents?  A president can begin the process with a half-hour address to the nation.  Bring back “Ross Perot’s charts” and ask the questions needed and issue the challenge.  Let those who are opposed to balancing the budget make their case.  There isn’t one.  On this challenge the construction of a fusion government can – and must – move forward.

Ultimately, Americans and their representatives will agree on the unifying principle that fuels the exceptional American, Constitutional experiment:  Our success as a free people and nation is measured not by how large our governments are, but by how small.

Economics, Governance, Health Care, Representation, Responsibility, Taxation

1-2-3 ALL TOGETHER NOW…

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If you live in a “progressive” state or commonwealth with an equally soft governor, you may have heard a proclamation concerning deadly coronavirus, that ended something like this: “We can get through this.  When times have been tough in the past Americans have pulled together and that is what will get us through this today… together.  We are all in this, together.”

Governor Baker, in crisis mode, looks either deeply concerned or very disappointed.

What was being meant, in fact, was everything including the next-to-the-last “together.”  The last sentence really wasn’t “we” are all in this together – it was “YOU are all in this together.”  You know what you thought you heard, but that’s because you haven’t recognized until right now, that when a state official, or even a minor state functionary, says “we,” he or she means “YOU,” the person with the target on your back.  So it is with coronavirus and the ‘stay at home’ and business-cessation directives.  There’s an “us” and “them” equation at work.  If you’re a state official, or a political hack who works for the state, or a unionized state employee, or the otherwise unemployable cousin of a judge or court clerk, “us” means yourself and every other person on the state payroll or receiving a generous state pension, and includes every welfare recipient and illegal entrant.  That’s who “us” is.

“Them” is you, me and every other tax-paying zhlub who actually, in reality, DOES work for the state, supporting every paycheck that “us” cashes.  See how it works?  Only people in the dreaded private sector are hurt – possibly destroyed financially – due to the absolutely essential shutdowns and lay-offs.  We are “them,” vis a’ vis the state.  We are not the people who don’t lose a penny of pay, benefits or pension; we are the ONLY people in all this togetherness who DO lose a lot, if not everything.  “You are all in this together, you saps.”  (Okay, okay, I added the “saps” part.)

Massachusetts is one of those squishy, “progressive” states with a soft, “progressive” Governor.  These kinds of states are typically one-party ruled, not Republican, although that line is blurry.  An observer can spot the squishiness thanks to a few shared qualities of how those states are governed.  Payroll is a big one.  State employees are comparatively highly paid compared to private-sector employees, sometimes egregiously so.  Massachusetts, an obvious example, has 930 or more employees making over $200,000 per year, a large number making $200K to $900K, and two who make over $1 Million per year.  Despite being on salary, many earn overtime which gets paid at a much higher rate, especially for state police officers, for whom total pay can easily exceed $300,000.  Of course, unlike the dreaded private sector (DPS), there are automatic raises for “public” employees.  All one need do is avoid murdering someone to see steady increases.

Recently a host of state police officers were “convicted” (admin slap on the wrist) of defrauding the state and its taxpayers, by claiming overtime hours not worked.  The amounts were in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, and the fraudulent activities extended to supervisors with higher ranks.  All of those found out were making a lot more than the average income of the citizens they are “sworn” to protect.  They lost their jobs but – and here you’ll want to hang on to the arms of your chair – they didn’t lose their pensions!  Our beneficent, democratically elected governors, and THE governor, who purports to be a Republican, and the shadowy boards and commissions they have placed between justice and state-employed criminals over many years, decided to not actually punish the criminals who have stolen from their ostensible bosses (pesky private sector taxpayers), unlike what the consequences would be if any of those civilian citizens had similarly defrauded the state or other citizens.

“You’re all in this together,” the Governor meant to say.  “You have to stay home; you can’t gather in groups, even with family; you can’t go to the movies, to a barber, or to the gym; you’ll have to stop working in most industries and occupations; you’ll have to file for unemployment.  Even though your customers will stop buying from you or mailing you checks for past work performed or products delivered, you will just have to suffer economic ruin even though you committed no crime except to be susceptible to a disease you only recently heard of.  Have a nice day.  Hunker down and we’ll (you’ll) get through this together.  We in state government will, at the same time, look very concerned while sacrificing none of our pay or benefits and enforcing the statewide shutdown on you, our beloved supporters.”

“(You’re) all in this together.”

Culture, Economics, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Politics 2020, Representation

COPING WITH THREATS

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The freedom of the United States and the stability of worldwide political intercourse, depends on the role of the Dollar.
The greatest threat to dollar stability.

Prudence will be served best by a rational analysis of how and why the COVID-19 strain of “coronavirus” so dramatically upset governance, liberty and economics, compared to other flu-like illnesses that infect huge numbers of Americans every year.  This essay is beginning at the height – or the depth – of the national economic shutdowns and of the extraordinary fears that have everyone suspicious of every other warm, breathing human.  It wasn’t going to be published until we were at the other end of this national economic threat, which will, it seems Prudent to say, going to arrive.  But it cannot wait.  What can this new virus be compared to?

Annually, more than 30 MILLION U. S. residents make hospital visits due to the 4 common flu viruses.  And hospitals are busier because of them: there are some 200,000 hospitalizations.  This happens with no enforced shutdowns of business and trade, or restrictions on movement of legal residents.  If someone tells you they may have the “flu,” you back away, say “don’t give it to me,” smile and recommend your favorite home remedy: “Hot water with lemon.  Make sure it’s fresh lemon, squeeze it so you get all the juice.”  Then you carry on your daily activity, sure that you have cured someone.

Television advertising reminds everyone of the wonderful “flu” medications for sale that, in fact, suppress symptoms, enabling customers to feel good enough to go to work!  But, did you know that in the 2017 – 2018 “flu season” that there were 900,000 hospitalizations?  You didn’t hear about that then?  Weren’t the media keeping us up to the second with every new case, and in which county and city it appeared?  You weren’t afraid to leave the house?  Why not?  EIGHTY THOUSAND people died from flu that year, and in just a few months!  Ye Gods!  We should have been cowering, waiting for the federal government to rescue the entire country and we failed – we failed – to pay attention.  Thank God we survived that crisis.

The 2017 – 2018 season was 4 TIMES worse than the year before and our virtuous political leaders were asleep at the switch.  How was it that they didn’t whip us into a frenzy of prevention, segregation and economic dependency?

Is it Prudent to offer a couple of predictions?  One is that a relative handful of economic powers, some or all at least partially financial powers, will emerge with MORE economic power than they had prior to COVID-19.  Why does this seem likely?  Because those are they who know how to profit from crises, whether military or medical.

Want another?  The crisis we believe coronavirus has created, will be extended in many aspects, into the Fall, possibly through the beginning of November.  It’s possible that enough economic damage will have been done by mid-April for this to happen regardless of politics, but if not, political considerations will make it last for two valid reasons: 1) Democrats believe they can damage Trump into non-re-electability if things get “bad enough;”  2) Republicans believe that managing a terrible crisis with signs of steady improvement, will keep the nation from “changing horses in mid-stream.”  It would be more Prudent to put the whole thing to bed, so to speak, before the middle of April.  Let’s hope this prediction doesn’t pan out.

Based on the tawdry quibbling over how many non-virus-related hands will get greased by the, perhaps, $2 Trillion dollar rescue, bailout, support, small-business/ big-business load the Congress is “debating,” many socialist dreams could get realized thanks to the Chinese coronavirus.  Rational residents of our once-great nation should be shaking their heads at the crude nature of most of those august men and women, but we’re afraid to spread the virus ourselves.  Evidently, the House under Speaker Pelosi, has tried to include a dozen or more components of the leftist agenda in the “emergency” legislation.  One has to wonder.

Another prediction involves the health-care industry/system.  They are moving public policy at every level of government while struggling to meet the sudden pressures of a contagious disease.  It’s a disease that needs lots of products for just protection of care-givers – more than anyone had in stock.  It also requires lots of specialized equipment for treating those infected – more than anyone had in stock.  COVID-19 also requires lots of decisions about how to both remove the shortages of stuff, and to “prevent” the continued spread of infection – there is an oversupply of those: politician-provided.  And, unlike gloves, masks and ventilators, the proper operation of decisions is very difficult to measure or evaluate.

By definition decisions are made in advance.  Decisions made about the past are notoriously ineffective.  Real decisions lay courses of action, often without knowing which of the potential consequences will actually manifest.  There is always a hope that the one consequence a decision-maker prefers will be the one that happens, but once a decision is made, it’s a bit of a crap-shoot.  There are too many moving parts to control which consequence will be true tomorrow, or the next day, or a week or so from decision time.  In this current matter, the decision was to keep people from congregating, even down to groups as small as, well… two!  This has a corollary that says most businesses must close, especially those that operate with congregations of people – like restaurants, churches, schools, public transportation, planes and on… and on… and on.  It means no weddings or funerals, no court sessions, no legislative gatherings, no business meetings, book clubs or sales leads groups.  Very few business activities will be “allowed” to happen.  Meanwhile, millions of people are not paid, millions of transactions are unconsummated, billions of dollars of commerce are unrealized, and trillions of dollars of wealth are vaporized in a few days.

Was this damage a decision or an unfortunate consequence?  Who could possibly benefit from this consequence?  Some will, unfortunately.  As this shakes out – hopefully with the United States still an independent nation (this is relative) – the new economic patterns will emerge and we’ll see the beneficiaries.  China will have something to do with them.

Odd, it seems, that the paralysis of the West has coincided with the miraculous cessation of reported cases in China.  Clearly China has manipulated its stories about coronavirus, its reports about coronavirus, its claims about who started the virus’ infections (the U. S.), its denials of anything wrong having ever been done by China regarding coronavirus or regarding the punishment of doctors attempting to warn the government of China about its uncontrollable spread, and now, about the incredible end of new infections.  Is there any reason to believe that this disease was not released to have precisely the effect it has had on America and Europe?  Or, to believe that the West has reacted in the only ways most favorable to China?

Keep an open mind.  Question EVERYthing.

Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

THE BIG ENVELOPE

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North Carolina Senator Richard Burr coincidentally sold most of his stock portfolio after a closed hearing on COVID-19.

The big envelope arrived the other day, from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is not a committee that tries to solve problems for the Prudent and concerned citizenry, but a campaign committee that tries to solve problems for politicians.  And, while it certainly has that right, Prudence dictates that recipients are just as permitted to scoff at it and withhold requested funding… or send in the funding to the degree that the needs of politicians may, momentarily, coincide with one’s own.

The questions were off-putting.  Did the carefully chosen recipient think that the Democrats would work with President Trump to improve things for the American people?  The options were Yes, No, and Not Sure.  At the very end of the over-sized questionnaire the committee provided a space for “Comments.”  Except, they didn’t really want very many of those.  Prudence tried to compose two sentences that could impart the folly of the questions and the implied policies they hinted at, to no avail.  It could fill a whole blog post.

Unfortunately, in this recipient’s view, even President Trump, ostensible leader of the organization that spawned the aforementioned Committee, is barely trying – or able – to shift the course of Socialism that has infected our Constitutional system of individual liberty.  None of the questions even hinted at the underlying, fundamental corrosion of our potential and promise, so it didn’t seem Prudent to answer any of them.  Most Americans are inured to the essential Socialism we live with, even as it washes out our national foundations, nor do we recognize the socialist nature of hundreds of federal and state programs.  The Left has dragged the debate firmly onto its spongy, swampy, turf, yet we still appear befuddled in the few debates there actually are.  Where is all this socialism?

The federal and state budgets are replete with it.  “How can that be?” you ask.  “We don’t like socialism in this country!”  That’s what WE think.

Since 1946 the federal government has provided subsidized free and reduced-cost lunches to school-age children… millions of them.  Most recent statistics indicate that some 30 Million children receive breakfast AND lunch in public schools.  Here and there late-afternoon meals are also served.  Where are the parents?  Obviously so tied up with important tasks that they are unable to feed their own children. 

Obviously, no one can bear the thought of hungry children trying to learn on empty stomachs; we must feed them.  At the risk of sounding cruel, one is prompted to ask what the SNAP program is accomplishing if it fails to make sure that children receive nutrition from its benefits?  Are there no sanctions on parents who fail the test of the most basic parental responsibilities?  Feeding your own child?  Apparently not, and not needed.  The federal government has provided much of that function so that parents need not be bothered.  Everyone is happy.  Socialism:  identity linked to a certain group spurs unique attentions from a central governing body, frequently economic attentions – positive or negative.

What about the most basic socialist program: Social Security?  Begun as a simple, partial support for those too old to work, Social Security has become an ostensible retirement program as well as a source of “off-budget” revenues for our erstwhile budget-masters in the Congress.  Indeed, there they were: some dollars they couldn’t obtain cheaply enough on the open bond markets, and they didn’t actually steal  them.  They placed bona fide I. O. U.’s in the form of United States bonds in the imaginary “lock box” of which existence taxpayers were repeatedly assured.  In a way, the moneys collected on behalf of future retirees WERE stolen, another of the inevitable actions of socialists for whom ANY source of revenue may be justified for the good of all.

Social Security, long in surplus, was too sweet a piggy-bank when the “need” to provide for the mentally “disabled,” especially children, and for a host of others deemed disabled under the ADA, including alcoholics and other addicts.  Now, in answer to another prayer to who knows who, for more revenue for the common weal, we have THC emporiums springing up from coast to coast, often enriching former socialist office-holders, and which can allay the disabling anxiety of the developmentally coddled.  There will be less crime, now, and happier sheeple, ahhmmn… voters.  Gambling wasn’t expanding its contributions to the common good quite rapidly enough.  Prostitution is always waiting in the sheets, as it were, with added revenues needed for “education” and “infrastructure.”

Another clue to our socialist underpinnings is the $23 Trillion-dollar debt hanging over us, all.  The centuries-old result of socialism is running out of other people’s money.  Socialism is based on collectivist action, governing by group identity rather than having power derived from individual rights and actions… and responsibilities, the source of business-generated productive surplus and innovation.  Socialism is a system of diffusing responsibility, and once in that mindset it is a small step to borrow today’s comforts, ahh… crucial needs, from future taxpayers.  Politicians are especially comforted by the prospect of buying votes with the greatest “other people’s money” ever conceived: “borrowing” from 3 generations in the future.  Talk about diffusing responsibility.

Into this dishonest mess has dropped Covid-19, facilitating the wet dreams of socialists everywhere: “universal” health… ahh, well, not care, exactly, but universal RULES that are backed not by law but by police – best of all.  And these aren’t rules for hygiene; these rules are destroying the economy, individual businesses of every size, jobs, household economies, availability of goods, including food, paper goods and all the cleaning and disinfecting products that are needed to render every body antiseptically pristine.  All it costs are hundreds of billions of lost business and tax revenue, plus a few inalienable rights, like the entire Bill of Rights.  In one swell foop our governments have rendered virtually EVERYONE dependent on government, and otherwise rational and independent men and women are willing to argue angrily for following every new restriction on rights and commerce, out of fear.

Meanwhile, the largest bailout/stimulus/stock-buyback program in the world is being polished up by the 535 people on Capitol Hill who can benefit the most from it.  Don’t you sometimes wonder how Representatives and Senators become multi-millionaires while sacrificing for us in “public service?”  Insider trading is a good way.  Let’s hope that what they finally shove down Pennsylvania Avenue is actually the right prescription for our suddenly sick economy.  Could happen.

The third person in line of succession to the presidency, Nancy Pelosi, doing her level best to help Americans in this time of shared stress and fear, tried to slip a loophole into the emergency “stimulus” legislation that would have enabled federal funds to pay for abortions, which is currently illegal.  She has her priorities; most of the rest of the people in the United States have theirs.  One could look back to 1973 when a shadowy “law” was discovered in the fog and abortion became “constitutionally” protected, and wonder if the termination of 61,000,000 Americans was simply not enough to have prevented COVID-19.  Maybe speeding up and expanding the death of our future will have a net positive effect.

Fortunately, every college graduate over the past 40 years has NOT been a communications, marketing or art major, and the latest iteration of “coronavirus” will be solved and resolved by very smart and accomplished people.  The problems of the hog-tied economy will not be so readily set aright.  It was shaky prior to the flood of unprecedented federal and state dictates, becoming, both because of and in spite of the booming financial markets, more and more unbalanced.  The ultra-rich were becoming ultra RICHER; a smaller middle-class of small and medium businesses were doing better; the vast majority of small businesses were struggling against the globalization of contracts and ownerships that remove thousands of previously independent enterprises from the competitive, free-enterprise marketplace.  A large fraction of the population were simply watching the growth of the rest of the economy, while experiencing little of the new wealth.  This model is common as socialism matures in the societies that have suffered under it.  A small group becomes very much more comfortable – and powerful – than everyone else, the middle class is reduced to homogeneity, the helpless low-producers are eventually eliminated or relegated.

Right now we are required, under stronger and stronger sanctions, to place our trust in a pyramid of government strata, populated by smiling politicians who have made careers out of deceiving Americans.  Let’s hope this crisis has shocked them into utter veracity, now.  That could happen, too; we’ll ignore the deceptive insider trading.  It’s nothing new.

Culture, Economics, Family, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2020

WOO, WOO, WUHAN

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We have enough to worry about... I'm not going to worry about toilet paper on top of everything else.

You may have heard of this new virus, COVID-19?  Many have.  It’s not as widespread as “the flu” or hemorrhoids, but it’s becoming a popular meme.  The Chinese provided the best possible environment for the rapid spread of “Coronavirus,” but they are quite reluctant to take full credit for their successes with this new flu virus.  Funny, that, for the progressive and benign inventors of virtually everything, starting with justice for all.

People and governments, businesses and schools and other institutions, have reacted in some ways foolishly.  Again, the Chinese were world leaders, although they have started to forcibly push that honor onto the United States, displaying their progressive generosity, to the point of claiming the highest honor of all: being the victims of COVID-19, rather than the originators.  How friendly is that?

There are numerous “corona” viruses, 7 at least.  Some of them haven’t “sold” as well due, possibly, from their not having been granted cool, mysterious names.  Right now, COVID-19 is hot, and everyone seems to want it… or, at least, wants to worry about it.  229E (alpha coronavirus), NL63 (alpha coronavirus), OC43 (beta coronavirus), and HKU1 (beta coronavirus), all gain customers every year but are never celebrated as much as SARS, MERS or the king, COVID-19.  I mean, who the Hell would want people to know he or she were suffering from “NL63?”  No one, that’s who.

“Coronavirus,” however, or COVID-19, clearly carries a certain élan, some people are so excited about it they are posting their symptoms and difficulties for all to envy and, perhaps, copy, if they’re lucky.

Admittedly, your correspondent, who has never caught SARS, MERS, 229E, NL63, OC43, or HKU1, and not even the 2009 Swine Flu, and whose ability to get within 6 feet of COVID-19 is equally in doubt, still shares your desire for victimhood and all the benefits that go with it.  President Trump and Congress have cooperated to pump air into our virus-deflating economy.  They call the air, “money,” so-called “billions” of dollars’ worth.  It, and many regulatory changes may prove valuable in the limiting of COVID-19’s popularity, so those of you who have gotten hold of some will be even more famous as the weeks and years go by.

Popular and social media, along with other “influencers,” have managed to whip up a pretty good frenzy over “coronavirus.”  In response, every business that typically attracts crowds of people to its products, from Wal-Mart to the NBA, major league baseball, the NHL and various marathons and fun-raisers, have cancelled or postponed their events, at great economic loss.  Individual star-players have stepped forward to financially support the hundreds of ancillary employees and businesses that function to operate sporting events and to serve their attendees.  Real generosity, as compared to the “federal” type.  A lot of the lost or displaced economic activity will never be restored or replaced.

Some businesses, naturally, will benefit mightily… paper-goods manufacturers, for example and any store or supermarket that sells them.  Bottled-water purveyors and those same stores, again.  Company’s that make hand sanitizer, antiseptic surface wipes and face-masks, among other goods, are doing nicely as sheeple attack their supplies to obtain extra quantities of those items that no one and no family, certainly, could bear to do without.

Toilet paper is a big item as the perceived threat of worldwide pestilence rears its empty head.  Dozens of rolls.  If the supply chain for toilet paper gets severed, people are calculating, their family is not going to suffer the absence of toilet paper until the very last possible minute.  This is perfectly logical, possibly even Prudent, although neither quality can be judged on real merits.  Faced with a frightening disease, the natural reaction is to stock up on toilet paper.  Clearly adherents of this philosophy have not thought things through: if conditions deteriorate to the complete cessation of toilet-paper production, there likely won’t be any food to eat, either, and wiping one’s butt will mean less and less in the grand scheme of things, until we are all smothered by the final, rapid descent of what’s left of the sky, bonking us all on our heads, rendering us senseless.  No shit?

Basically, coronavirus, COVID-19, is a new strain of an old friend, causing a variant of the seasonal flu.  AS WITH ALL “FLU” VIRUSES, elderly, especially elderly nursing-home residents are at the greatest risk, as are those with other respiratory diseases or weaknesses, smokers and those otherwise immune-compromised.  Without strong immune systems, infected victims will find it hard to conquer the virus, and in those, the virus will replicate at its fastest, causing fluid build-up in the lungs and death from pneumonia or, in effect, drowning.  No one wishes such an end on anyone.

The “flu,” we have observed, tends to decline in the spring and virtually disappear in the summer.  Why would that be so, if it’s so virulent?  Why are some people able to fend it off easily in its “high” season, mid to late winter?  Why are carefully-tended nursing home residents so susceptible?  It’s all dependent upon individuals.  It is our habits, our practices, our health and nutrition and our good sense that enables a virus like COVID-19 to succeed or fail.

Why do flu viruses infect more people in the winter?  In large part it is because humans tend to have more bronchial and rhinopharyngial inflammations in cold weather.  We cough, our sinuses produce more fluids and mucus, we blow our nose, and our bronchial tubes collect mucus and fluids.  We work hard to get rid of these intruders and enflame these sensitive linings.  Both bacteria and viruses find welcoming environments and it’s off to the races.  Over the period of a couple of weeks to a month our bodies fight off the infections and our immune systems are invigorated.  Fairly soon there are fewer and fewer people who are contagious and the season passes into spring and summer, and another factor kicks in: sunshine.

Vitamin D is essential in all sorts of organic functions, including strengthening our immune systems.  We are likely to be a little healthier in warm weather because we get more sunlight and our skin creates more vitamin D.  It’s not just that simple, but it’s not a lot more complicated, either.  Nursing-home residents don’t get as much sunshine, for one thing, rarely consume really good meals, don’t get to take supplements, and are kept away from viruses to a great extent, thus rarely exercising their immunities, leaving them more vulnerable than just age alone would make them.

With flu warnings hammering us every “flu season,” we also modify our habits, cover our coughs and sneezes more diligently, stay away from others when we’re feeling ill, take our vitamins more diligently, wash our hands more often, things like that.  And, we survive the flu, kind-of like the way we are surviving the new “coronavirus” this year, too.  There aren’t many MORE ways to have reacted badly to COVID-19 than the ones we have and are trying, starting with the Chinese in particular.  If we had simply described this virus as an especially aggressive flu bug and blasted the airwaves with how to protect ourselves and what to do if our symptoms are one way or another, we’d be acting extra carefully and still going about our daily and business activities.  There’d be more absenteeism, but no mania, the cost of which we can hardly estimate.

COVID-19s is a nasty bug.  It has a more severe effect on lungs than other coronaviruses, making breathing difficult and stressing hearts.  The death rate is higher, too, and, like other coronaviruses, mainly for senior citizens, rates spike with age and certain pre-existing conditions.  Number-one is heart disease.  Another big one is diabetes, which is its own epidemic in overweight America.  If your health is already under attack, please protect yourself.  For age groups over 60 the risks are higher.  Compared to other well-known flu’s – the ones that come back every winter – the death rates spike higher with this new one for these at-risk, older groups.  Use good sense: don’t snuggle with anyone exhibiting ANY flu symptoms.

In the United States, hyper-politicized and divided into sets of enemies, we have allowed the entry of the latest coronavirus to modify our governance and our economic relationships, citizens and federal government, and states and federal government.  It’s dangerous.

COVID-19 is a serious disease, mainly because it is more easily transferred than other flu’s.  It doesn’t mean we’re all doomed to catch it, nor that every senior citizen is going to die if he or she is infected.  The speed of its spread has tripped up health systems, but now that it is better understood, the natural anxiety caused by the rate of infection can be set aside and replaced with best practices to help people recover, AS MOST OF THE INFECTED ARE GOING TO DO.  Reactive mania, while politically irresistible, is not particularly helpful beyond the shortest of terms.  The concerns about testing rates have more to do with getting the infection statistics right than with specific treatments for those infected.  One of the reasons South Korea has relatively low infection and death rates is its widespread testing.  That data keeps panic at bay.  With cleaner air nationwide, and lower smoking rates than Asian nations, Americans are in some ways healthier and somewhat less at risk.

Americans have learned, on a sudden, how quickly their freedoms may be curtailed by a handful of press conferences and an executive declaration of a “state of emergency.”  Families can be disrupted with school closings and by “woke” corporations changing job descriptions without notice.  Whole businesses may be shut down by arbitrary event-attendee limitations, mostly by state authorities.  It seems unreal, yet the expansion of economic, social and religious displacements is evident with every hourly newscast.  It seems imPrudent.

Take your vitamins, extra C, as much as 3,000 IU’s of vitamin D, eat fresh fruits and veggies, and an orange every day.  It makes a lot more sense to stock up on oranges, lemons and limes than toilet paper.  Don’t smoke… anything.  Get plenty of sleep.  Don’t frequent venues where people are packed tightly together; stay away from others if you feel sick, have a tough cough or are sneezy.  Pray – praying for those who are sick is always recommended.  While you’re at it, ask God to protect our hapless United States of America.

Economics, Education, Governance, Representation, Taxation, Terrorism

TO CATCH A THIEF

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If only it were only our money being stolen…

Coronavirus, Covid-19, strain S or strain L – or both – is the unannounced candidate in the 2020 presidential race.  Democrats have already been calculating how to use the epidemic to make Trump look bad; they haven’t been calculating, much, as to how to protect citizens and residents from the disease, or to restore the pharmaceutical industry to the United States.  Hatred will do that: blind the carrier to its contagion, making him, or her, feverish and seeking a point of blame.  Trump will do.

Theft is very similar.  Where the blind virus can steal a person’s health, mobility, outlook and good nature, so can hatred, equally blind, make off with decorum, civility, kindness, compassion and good sense.  Both patients are… sick.

But theft, as any victim of a thief can testify, destroys belief as it reduces one’s economy.  A break-in to one’s home, for example, leaves residents distrustful, vulnerable and suspicious.  New information coming to those people is filtered through a different set of beliefs than prior to the act of thievery.  Eventually, assuming no repetition of the crime, distrust fades, safe feelings return and life goes on.  Love for others replaces fear.  But what if the nature of the theft is not precisely known… and what if the feeling of one’s safety and privacy having been breeched, one’s familial or even personal integrity being threatened by unrecognized thieves, almost continuously… what does a person believe then?

A person would certainly be angry at the violation, the assault on privacy, safety and personhood.  And that feeling would lead a person to be mad at, well… someone – whoever is stealing from him or her.  What is being stolen?  Who is it that should be punished for the constant thievery?

We live, today, right now, in a world of constant thievery, and among those things being stolen are the traditions of America’s founding.  One could posit that history, itself, is being stolen from us as “we” dis-educate our youth and restrict and belittle the beliefs that made the American experiment work and the American Dream real.  It’s unsettling.  What other thefts are being perpetrated?

Pick a state, any state.  How many of its agencies are staffed beyond need and paid beyond reason?  How many departments or programs are suspected of malfeasance, misfeasance and corruption, often political?  Surely some.  Honesty is being stolen every hour of every day.  How many have died from opioids?  How many from in-hospital errors?  How many children in state care were neglected so badly that their health or lives were threatened, perhaps lost?  How are such questions answered to the public on whose behalf all such actions are taken?  Almost never in full truth, often in blatant deception and cover-up.

We are forced by police power to sacrifice our private properties – the gains from our labors – to PAY for governments that lie to us as normal operating process.  It is unsettling.  A little anger is justified.  If one is not angry, he or she isn’t paying attention.

What about our past 3 years nationally, when one political party conspired with federal agencies and officers to attempt to unseat a president?  So many lies were told to us by so many official and “news” organs that the count is without total.  The political divisions exposed over the past 20 years have been sharpened so fiercely that the next 20 years are in grave doubt.  Taxpayers pay for everyone who works in the federal government and they have been lying to us, all, and never more grotesquely than in the years 2016 through 2019 and through the impeachment of president Trump.  They, including many in congress, have lied and stolen from our present and future the innate trust we ought to be able to enjoy with regards to our representatives, so called.

That our heritage has been stolen, tossed away when we weren’t looking, can be realized by noting the groundswell of support for an old communist/socialist as he claims to be the “leader” America needs.  Young people, college students, even many adults seem enthralled by attacks on capitalism and free enterprise, the unfairness of success, the inequality of unequal results for unequal efforts.  It’s all a matter of “fortune” and “unfortune.”  The fortunate ones, regardless of their path to wealth and regardless of the millions of jobs they create and the trillions of tax dollars their enterprises and employees pay to support common goods, should not have any more than they need to live on… the rest to be divided amongst the “unfortunate.”

Truth and reason have been stolen, as have history and fact.  And, it is unsettling.  Even those espousing socialist nonsense feel stolen-from, although they refuse to recognize what their losses truly are.  It makes them hazily angry at the fortunate thieves, for they have no mirrors.

Inheritance far greater than one’s grandmother’s silver has been, is being stolen right from our dining-room buffet, and we have not only left the back door open, we’ve marked the shortest path to the buffet with bright orange duct tape.  How can we tell all these thefts have gone on?  Check the books, the ledgers of our balance sheets.  We’re out of balance.  “What happened?” we ask one another.  “How did we get $23 Trillion in debt?”  “When did it become illegal to separate boys’ and girls’ bathrooms?”

“When did people start to hate others so much that teams of thugs would be allowed to beat them up while police watched?”  “Is this what Socialism has done?  Made us hate each other?”  “They” are stealing our nation.  It’s unsettling.

Culture, Education, Family, Health Care, Politics 2020, Sex

THE PRINCESS AND THE P

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Lyon Hospital, Department of urology. Sex reassignment surgery, transgender Female to Male, hystero-ovariectomy under laparoscopy. Operation which precedes the phalloplasty, hysterectomy, ovariectomy, vaginectomy, (Photo By BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

“Male and female created He them.”  For hundreds, thousands, millions of years, this truth was not a burden on humanity.  Many would rather ignore the whole statement because they don’t – or don’t want to – accept the “He” portion.  Somehow, and religious teachers must bear some blame, “we” have, over just a couple of decades, tried to undo the essential facts of biology: male and female.  Being called a female or male, amazingly, collides with thousands of people’s beliefs.  Why has this phenomenon crept out of counselors’ offices and parents’ concern?  Who are they who work so tirelessly to force the sexual variant of Jonestown on the rest of society?

Because lives are definitely lost amongst this new belief structure.

Transgender-ism  is a belief structure.  It is not supported by biological fact in any but the rarest of anomalies.  It is a belief, usually quite temporary, that one’s body is the “wrong” one.  This is a strange thing to believe… strange only if other humans were interested in discovering the source of the belief, itself.  But, strange becomes “normal” and deserving of societal respect if – and only if – the individual’s feelings  have been elevated to the level of truth: truth in the absence of evidence, a new faith.

Non-evidenced “truths” are now receiving legal  status as craven legislators bend over as far as possible to pander to the new faith.  Sadly, there are craven doctors, too.

And craven educators.

Public schools are not merely tolerating and preventing overt discrimination or bullying against children pretending to be their opposite gender, but they are encouraging  transgenderism among those children who are, for the moment, envious  of the opposite sex.  Parents, and professionals, ought to be helping children to be comfortable with their bodies, not to be revolting against them.  At the same time, adults should all be trying to find the source of childrens’ “gender dysphoria.”

The resolution of this heretofor rare condition, is something adults should pursue, even if it means a full social transition.  Few people will need to know that an individual was not born as he or she appears.  Whether full surgical mutilation is called for, is quite another question.

In the past decade the number of dysphoric youth has grown 1,500% to 5,000% and even more in some countries, with the ratio of girls to boys flipping dramatically.  Why?  Transgenderism “advocates” would say that only now are trans youth enjoying the freedom to express their “true” identities, thus accounting for the explosive growth.  Critics of the trend might see a frightening desire, like a virus from the bowels of China, that infects female and male alike, however disproportionately, with the desire to escape the responsibilities of their sex. 

There are unnumbered ways to achieve sexual release, alone, in pairs or even groups, and none require total denial of self, or bodily mutilation, so there is something else at work, beyond the sexual.  Perhaps it is more Prudent to consider a virus that infects not those who reflect its torment but their parents, schools, and social institutions, like unbalanced feminism, which, with other failures of freedom, convince late-term, newborn, toddlers and pre-schoolers (which age socialists and fascists would have include all of the earlier mentioned) to distrust, if not hate, the prospects of womanhood and manhood.  Despite our access to Instagram and Twitter, Panera, Chick Fil-A, Starbucks and weed, our twisted norms create a society in which children don’t want to be, well… who they are.

The result is not true gender dysphoria for most of its claimants, but a hatred for life, itself.  Prior to actual suicide (the end-game for many who attempt to change their sex) these, now, tens of thousands try to kill their personal realities.

For those who are dysphoric, one’s heart must fill with sympathy, and great care should be shown them, and tolerance and kindness.  For most of the new residents of Jonestown, however, new beliefs, alone, can save them however that counseling can be accomplished.  Doctors and clinics that press them with chemical and surgical confirmation of unreality, are but licensed charlatans.  Their parents, worse.

Shame on religious institutions.  From old, old texts, replete with truths eternal, they have made difficult lessons and philosophies not more clear, but softer and “more inclusive,” practically rejecting realities in order to fill pews.  The elegance and majesty of womanhood should be the easiest clay to work into gracefulness and motherhood, but they’ve largely failed to enhance those values.  The responsibilities and required wisdom that men are obligated to accept and to achieve, are trivialized and even derogated, as boys are drugged into submission and global communications portray men not as leaders but as fools.

The institutions of our culture and nationhood, almost as though coordinated by some evil puppeteer, are all reinforcing the concepts of unreality and hyper-sexualization.  Websites produce and provide pornography 24/7 for free, perhaps the most insidious attack on men, marriage and mental health.  Congress after congress ignore this corrosion without even discussing ways to restrict and limit global pornographics.  Why?  Money?  Is this addiction different from opioids, gambling or tobacco?  Or does it simply expose the flaws within males that all “woke” geniuses knew were there all along?

In a thousand ways we have made life, itself, unattractive.  Why would thousands of young people, even youngsters, refuse to the point of embarrassment and mutilation, to be who each actually is?  Is it because so many are born with the “wrong” body?  All of a sudden?  Doubtful.   Birth is not the issue, Prudence believes, but influences, even before birth.  We are teaching boys that being male is a sort of disease; and teaching girls that life is a system of oppressions, including motherhood.

The destruction of social roles and values is reaping its foul rewards with great efficiency.  The end-game is social dissolution, loss of nation-hood, economic stratification and, worse, institutionalized unreality.  What shall we teach our children when lies have gained legal status?

Culture, Economics, Education, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility, Taxation

BACK TO THE FUTURE

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It seems Prudent to pray.  Humans have an urge to worship, whether unto a deity of the personal perception of each supplicant, or to a set of deities connected to important natural phenomena like trees, rains, sunlight, moonlight, stars, winds, lightning, high and low temperatures… and more. 

If not truly worshipped, natural aspects of locales are generally respected with some attribution of supernatural importance, power or influence.  Caves, mountains, bodies of water, great forests and vital rivers are considered more than just natural by populations on whose lives they have life-giving or life-threatening influence.  Whether the Holy Spirit or the Great Spirit of native tribes, life’s continuous foibles, phenomena, fertility, feelings, fears and finality cause humans in every kind of society to come to terms with what can’t be controlled through forms of spirituality or religious faith.

What does it mean to all of those who claim to have no attachment to any church, religion or spiritual belief structure?  There are many and the number grows as government schools and liberal-leftist guided private schools divest themselves of morality and other quasi-biblical philosophies.  Only “science” can satisfy agnostics and atheists, those so declared tell anyone who’ll listen.  Religions are “mumbo-jumbo.”  So certain of their cold, scientific facts are many atheists, that they feel compelled to prevent any expression of religion or faith or spirituality.  The Prudent observer might think that they protest too much.  Their innate need to worship something is simply satisfied in a different way.

An argument can be made that Socialism is the secular faith, as it were.  Those who believe in this “ism,” must take its tenets on faith, since there is no empirical evidence that Socialism has worked anywhere.  Yet they work tirelessly to impose socialism so that individuality and human nature are replaced with the collectivist ethos, and innate capitalism is replaced with Utopian premises of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  A lot of faith is required to believe such ideas in the face of utter failure in every example.

Inevitably, Socialism devolves into tyranny.  In place of “guided honesty” of free individuals, Socialism is required to impose rules for correct behavior, and they inevitably become very granular.  The logical concerns we have about the American administrative state are genuine fears about a Socialist bureaucracy that is charged with imposing a statist conformity on large populations.  Although a modern socialist state might refrain from police-state status, today’s technology empowers social engineers to gather voluminous data that help identify non-conforming citizens, whose lack of adherence to rules threatens, or are perceived to threaten, the health and safety of the group/collective for whom the state exists and is dedicated.

Power, ultimately, and before very long, concentrates in the hands of the higher echelons of bureaucracies.

Also logically, politics within socialist systems can’t be allowed to offer significant opposition to the functioning bureaucracy.  There is a certain necessity to promoting, educating about, proving and re-proving a high level of infallibility of the state.  The benign nature of the system that all benefit from and must support, has no room for serious opposition to its own quality.  Calling socialist leadership into question is simply anathema to the established rules of conformity.  Freedom and socialism are essentially antithetical.  There is no need for freedom when “everybody” already benefits from the state.

The reactions to freedom and independent sovereignty can be seen in the United States today.  Wherever the premises of socialism/atheism are challenged by Christians, in particular, the socialist response is most often anger: the public face of hatred.  If any question of this set of observations remains, just consider the nature of angry reaction to Trump and to any of his supporters.  Hatred.

For every form of governance and social cohesion, there is a beginning and some sort of end-game.  Given the ubiquitous factor of human nature, which is fundamentally, personally, independent and capitalistic, in the sense of retaining the products of one’s labor – the whole “private property” thing – the founding of the United States did the best job yet in history, to craft a Constitution and the original institutions that, in the hands of both faithful and honest officials, judges and democratically elected representatives, might survive the tyrannical tendencies it was designed to oppose.

From the beginning, the desires of some for power over others, for self aggrandizement and for monopoly economic advantage, have been trying to erode the bases of liberty.  As the philosophies of tyranny also matured, the description of socialism as the utopian supplantation of capitalism, and thereby of individual freedom, caught the interest of those who already hated the chaos of freedom as much as they distrusted the unity of thought that resulted from religious faith.  Any system of human organization that did not need the guidance of the state, was/is to be discredited and destroyed.  And so it has gone since at least the (second) Civil War.  Never let a crisis go to waste.

The blind faith in socialism is not so dissimilar to religious faith: life-changing belief in something that can’t be seen, and acceptance of various scriptures.  On the other hand, but in the same way, erstwhile conservatives show blind faith in unregulated capitalism, as if human nature were fulfilled by monopoly, government-protected wealth concentration, and as if the super-rich billionaire class were going to become benign rich uncles to us, all.  There is foolishness aplenty to go around… the world.

Rather than thinking with our human-nature selfishness, a little statesmanship is the better prescription.  We need, first, to recognize that these, again, are the times that try men’s souls.  At the founding of the independence struggle, those who signed the Declaration of Independence were placing their support for what was a civil war, not truly a revolution, out in the public eye, making themselves primary targets for the British military fighting to hold the American part of the British Kingdom tightly to England.  It took phenomenal courage, as they pledged their “… lives, fortunes and sacred honor.”

Where is sacred honor, today, as we face the United States’ greatest enemy: the failure of belief in the American Dream?  Where are the statesmen and women who will risk everything to restore America’s path?  There is no question that stepping back from the brink of tyranny – from the brink of unfathomable debt – will be quite unpleasant, uncomfortable, unpredictable and will require a continuity of leadership we have not seen since Lincoln and Washington.  It will not be possible for Americans to work 30 and 35-hour weeks, take multiple vacations each year, and waste as much income on frivolous, games, goodies or fattening foods.  Everyone will have to sacrifice.

Especially governments.

The federal budget must be rendered $1 Trillion smaller.  Sounds easy when the number is so even and simply stated.  A trillion… a thousand billion dollars.  In none of our lifetimes have we seen a congress cut – as in spend less money this year than was spent last fiscal year – ANY federal office or program, without spending much more elsewhere.

Local governments would have to assume the absolutely essential social services, and forego multiple other demands… demands like raises, fancy equipment, landscaping that isn’t done voluntarily, new school buildings and numerous non-essential municipal jobs.  States will find cutting even more difficult, since all those unionized state employees are the same people whose families donate to and work for campaigns.  Plus, there’s all that graft on enormous public works.  No more $750,000 state university presidents in those days, either.

None of these politically unlikely changes will happen, of course, until a far greater hurdle is crossed: making everyone, both parties, and everyone else, public and private, believe that eliminating debt-based government is more important than all of everyone’s private concerns.  More than during any war-time mobilization, Americans will have to agree to the importance of national sacrifice… to the importance of living within our means, Constitutionally, and with added sacrifice to pay off all of our loans.

There is no other path to financial freedom and strength.  Every dollar of debt is a loss of independence; every dollar in taxes is a loss of freedom.  Can we strike the correct balance going forward?  – the balance between independence, freedom and responsibility?  – the balance envisioned in our founding that relied upon morality and personal responsibility?

Or shall we succumb to the blandishments of socialist, identity politics, and hollow promises of greater freedom through national controls?  Shall we continue down a path that promises the slow loss of all we hold dear in America… slow, until one day we lose everything that’s left, abruptly, cataclysmically, destructively, unrecoverably?  We hope we know when that will be, but we don’t.  We hope we can pull back from the brink before all is lost, based on some arcane calculations that, literally, no one knows how to make.

Will the path to sanity commence before the next election?  Not bloody likely.  What about after the next election?  Well, not until all the other spending promises are fulfilled, and by then it will be mid-term elections and there’s no way in Hell those congressional giants are going to bear the brunt of mismanagement long before THEY were first elected.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Obama, Politics 2020, Responsibility

Corona, corona

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Corona beer comes from yeast, not a virus.
there is no connection whatsoever…

There are people who believe that the latest health threat to emanate from China is caused or somehow made contagious by Corona Beer, a well-known health threat from Mexico.  It is on this canvas that the gloppy acrylics of impeachment, economics, presidential politics, petro-dollar monetary policy, Antifa, Hezbollah, North Korea, opioid deaths and suicides, and the real threat of coronavirus must create a picture that is both truthful and meaningful to majorities in dozens of countries including our own.  Whew!  There are 15 national leaders whose views and beliefs about these and other issues, will define the next ten years and beyond: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ali Khamenei, Kim Jung Un, Xi Jinping, Ram Nath Kovind, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Volodymyr Zelensky (who at least has a sense of humor), Arif Alvi (who doesn’t), and both last and least, Nicolás Maduro, who is an idiot.

Mixed up in all of their opinions is the existence of American constitutionalism, our ostensible structure of rights and freedoms, and our unbalanced, imperial economy.  Our primary concern must be the survival of the United States and freedom itself.  What presidential politics does every four years is stir us enough to reflect on our beliefs about our nation and our country, not the same things.

Democrat hotheads, committed to control of… well, everything, have impeached Trump to no good end, although his acquittal was never in real doubt.  No good end, certainly, but the disinformation value of, first Mueller, and then impeachment itself, must appear to elected Democrat leaders as a worthy end nevertheless.  Those who now shy away from bottled Corona most assuredly cling to bottled hatreds, known and unknown, but felt viscerally.  So there is the worthiness of relentless hatred of the aforementioned Mr. Trump.

There should be little disagreement with the proposition that hatred is the worst basis for political competition, yet hatred is everywhere employed in the United States, of all places.  Hatred doesn’t develop automatically.  Fear does: it’s pure ethnocentrism, even “racism,” per se.  But racism and fear of difference are not hatred.  Hatred is a visceral desire to kill or destroy the “other.”  To fear or to mistrust a stranger – or a strange “culture” – is instinctive and need not be taught.  To HATE  that person or group requires coaching, teaching, explanation and mythology.  It’s a long-term, methodical process to convert fear to hatred.  Who does crap like that?

Here and there are parents who were, themselves, taught to hate certain others and to varying degrees manage to convince their children to also hate them.  But it’s not as easy to do in the modern era, as public schools, ostensibly, fight the urge to bully or to gang-up on the unusual or most defenseless kids.  To some degree, children receiving messages of hatred at home are going to hear enough lessons countering that prejudice, that fewer and fewer reach early adulthood with firm hatreds.

Yet, now we have a split electorate, fueled by the sweet lies of socialists (people complain about Trump’s looseness with the truth but never a peep about the absolute and historical bullshit spread in the name of socialism).  A virtual communist is at or near the front of the pack in the ostensible “Democrat” party’s campaign for nomination to the presidency, and giddy polls regularly trumpet the acceptance of “socialism” by millenials.  There are reasons to fear Bernie Sanders’ cry for “transformation” of the United States, just as there were for the stated intentions of Barack Obama to “fundamentally transform” the United States.

Consider just the “ACA,” Affordable Care Act, which was not “affordable,” whatever that was hoped to mean, and it wasn’t about “care,” particularly: it was about coverage, the perpetual stumbling bloc to health care.  The nature of every “coverage” entity, whether “insurance” companies and HMO’s or governmental agencies that both regulate and directly pay actual care providers, is to reduce costs.  The main difficulties inherent in the ACA-expanded coverage industry were made worse and more expensive, nearly removing people from decision-making while nearly removing physicians and others from caring about their customers.

These sorts of change ought to be anathema to citizens of a nation with the heritage of the United States.  Our mythos is founded in individualism, self-made success, pioneering advancement into unexplored territories, and homesteads created even where the only building material was prairie turf.  Somehow the steady erosion of socialist promises of “free” safety and comfort have weakened the resolve of Americans to take control of their lives and circumstances, and to do so responsibly.

(See:
http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/01/16/health-care-fairness-and-free-enterprise/

Obama also made substantial changes to our foreign relations and to our ability to control events to our benefit, rather to enhance the influence and strength of Muslim regimes.  Fundamental transformation.  Here in 2020 these same intentions are voiced repeatedly by Bernie Sanders and others whose vision is not to improve or “perfect” our union, but to replace our form of government by altering Constitutional institutions and original rights.  The “new” goals are not comprised of strengthening liberty, but to “set” everyone’s standard of living so that no one is “above” his fellow residents: ultimate “fairness,” a new form of political organization that removes the interference in individual beliefs by churches, and in which every sort of human pleasure-seeking will be permitted… by benign elites, and, perhaps, taught in public schools.

The struggle of socialism is never-ending.  While “we” in the American, Judeo-Christian traditions of individual liberty and responsibility tend to assume our battle for freedom is won… and done, globalist socialism never rests on its continuum of undermining and destroying liberty and faithfulness.  It is a continuum that extends back to the “Garden of Eden.” 

“What?” you say, “nothing Prudent about that silly claim.”

Well, a few terms we don’t think about enough: Thesis – The Word of God, or the first premise; Antithesis – Direct opposition to the Word of God; Synthesis – Human-generated, pretended, compromise position with the Word of God.  The synthesis becomes the new Premise, no longer the Word of God, something less.  Is this not exactly what the “Serpent” offered to Eve, assuring her that God’s threat to not eat of the tree in the midst (center) of the Garden, or touch it “…,lest thou die.” would not come true.  “thou shalt not surely die.” the serpent told her.  God issued the thesis to Not eat of the tree; Serpent offered the antithesis  that the punishment would not be death (at least not right away) and the rewards of knowledge were worth the chance.  Is this process any more or less than the Hegelian dialectic?  Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis.  Abortion is no longer murder; socialism will create a better America than God did.