Tag Archives: impeachment

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

FREEDOM’S FUTURE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, 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.

Foreign Policy, Governance, Obama, Responsibility, Trump

BALANCING ACT

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Increasingly Mr. Donald Trump is becoming the fulcrum on which our democratic republic balances, and he has not shown, yet, that he is rigid enough to affect the balance.  This is not to say he isn’t tough.  The constant attacks, threats of impeachment since inauguration, and unusual hatred, would wilt lesser men, and often has.  Much has been made of the turnover in Trump’s administration, as if it represented “chaos” in the administration.  While it may yield a little “chaos,” it is temporary.  The problem is that Trump believes that when someone is hired, he or she owes an outward loyalty, at least, to the “boss.”

What has taken him some time to recognize is that every – as in, every single one – person in a position to execute policy or influence policy, has an agenda.  Worse, since the Obama administration, agendas in Washington are no longer matters of how to accomplish national goals, no nuanced approaches to policy.  Agendas now are only to accept or to oppose the direction desired by the elected president.  Many of those recommended for top appointments, especially on matters of international policy, held an agenda of opposition, and deserved replacement.  The president now must become very strict towards his appointees, and this mood must extend deeper and deeper into the many agencies who are happy to oppose him.  (see: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2019/11/28/due-process/ )

Is Trump up for this?  It is hard to tell.  He seems not to take very much advice, else someone would have tempered his Tweeting; on the other hand, his selections for judgeships reveal good work and recommendation by someone else.  Still, he has not been as thorough in replacing appointees as his predecessor was, and many of those in the White House, State Department, Department of Justice and the “Intelligence Community,” are actively opposed to Trump, his background, his style of work and speech, and to his America-first policies.  Their allies in the Congress and other covens of Democrat-leftists, have done their worst to hamstring the president since he first appeared to have a chance at the nomination, never mind the election.

Despite the roadblocks and mistreatment by much of the press, Trump has managed to accomplish quite a bit, and he has changed the nature of American diplomacy somewhat.  Will it all bear fruit?  It is impossible to say, but certainly no more impossible to predict than have been the results of “normal,” deep-state diplomacy over the past 50 years.  The best way to guarantee the predicted outcomes in all that time has been for the United States to give up more – including sovereignty – than we ever have asked… or received in return.  Predictions of opposing sides’ accepting all the American largesse our “negotiators” could give away, always came true.

One hopes that should we not obtain the quality of a deal we need for U. S. benefit, that our “side” will stay strong and not immediately throw more value to the other side in order to “win” some sort of a deal that politicians can crow about, knowing that after a few dust-ups, most voters will forget what was even at stake and accept that the deal we got is better than “not talking” at all.  This is national hogwash, of course, and it stems from a general attitude of American unworthiness compared to other nations’ interests.  Trump supporters want a bull-dog negotiating for our side, both domestically and internationally.

At some point, one would surmise, the mendacity of the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and even the Obama White House, and the 3-year story of failing to prove any – as in, not even one – of the amazing allegations against Donald Trump and his appointees and supporters, would begin to dissipate the hot tempers that accompanied those allegations, both personal and legal.  At some point, the charges of “racism” and “sexism” should abate; the so-far indefatigable charges of “collusion” with Russians, well-debunked at great effort and expense, should fade away as the truth penetrates haters’ consciousness.  At some point, all of the energy needed to maintain hatred of Trump, the person, could be expected to turn toward political action.

But, with the gaveling into passage of two gaseous “articles of impeachment,” not yet.

Foreign Policy, Governance, Representation, Trump

REAL GOVERNANCE

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Despite his New York crudeness and bragadocio, Donald Trump has begun a service to the foundational ideas and premises of America, and thereby to every American.  He, himself, and every one of his most loyal compatriots, is oblivious to the magnitude of that service.  What has he done?

His presidency has operated, as most have done, at a public level, variously reported in praise and condemnation, broadcast and published – the level at which modern politics are negotiated and fulfilled.  Beneath that, he operates within the secret, classified levels that are presented to each president as though to initiate him to the centers of real governance, hidden from public view for reasons of “national security,” wink.  This secrecy conveys a patine of power and influence to which he has been inaugurated, shared by very few.  It is heady stuff, becoming a member of the world’s most august and arcane fellowship.  The continuity of the secrets, of the secretive machinations, of the vital, world-controlling decisions that only he can make, of the “nuclear launch codes,” and of the distilled intelligence few others will see, is really out of his hands.  It is shared with every president as part of the fable of democratic, civilian control not only of the vast domestic bureaucracies, but of even the military-industrial complex.  But, it is a fable.

Here and there brief windows open between the public and private presidencies and much heat is generated, politically, some of the citizenry become agitated, editorials are written, commenters supply commentary, and even Congress expresses its dudgeon, both high and low.  The portion of the public made restive by the once “secret” revelations is assuaged by palatable political lies and life goes on.  Very few lives are affected.  Elections, however, can be effected because of them.  Still, not much changes over time.

Beneath the “secret” level of (mostly military and international) governance, there is the amorphous, faceless, simultaneously unorganized yet unified, unelected and permanent, administrative state.  This vast majority of our “governors” have virtually no connection to any president or even presidency.  Each new “head” of the administration is largely uninvolved with this level.  It was in place – two millions strong – long before his election to the “most powerful office on Earth’ and it will remain in place long after he has “left his mark” upon America.

And now, Trump.  Trump got elected by defeating the penultimate deep statist, Hillary.  Hillary is a political deep statist; the permanent deep statists are, however biased, mainly interested in their individual interest areas, perhaps thanks to some college degree, and in their economic security, excellent benefits and virtual tenure.  Political  deep statists are more likely to adhere to either the socialist world view – and power – and to the eternal struggle to impose it upon the United States, or to simple, tawdry, utterly corrupt and corruptible personal financial aggrandizement.  This is where Hillary Clinton has spent nearly five decades and America has finally had enough of her.  Trump is clearly on a path quite divergent from the Clintons’.

Trump doesn’t much care about political correctness.  He doesn’t care much about whom he offends, even when he intends to offend them.  Most are offended because that is their “shtick:” finding offense everywhere and garnering immediate social media support that will bring the weak-willed to their sniveling, apologetic knees within the hour.  Otherwise decent, even productive and useful people, are made weak and malleable by the “woke” offense industry.  Soon, people like Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke are apologizing for being white.  This doesn’t work with Trump, one of the reasons his supporters stick with him.

Because he doesn’t suffer fools, Trump has engendered impressive levels of hatred here and there within the deep state.  He has a pro-America agenda, which is to say, an agenda that hews slightly more closely to the presumptions of liberty that were part and parcel of her founding.  He wants domestic policy to reflect individual responsibility and even-handed law enforcement, for example.  This is not the policy of the deep state, crafted in tens of thousands of regulations whereby virtually everyone may be persecuted or prosecuted for broken “laws” created by those unelected regulators.  Regulators hate Trump, even though he hasn’t struck all that deeply into their regulatory empire.  It is hateful enough that he undid some of the “great regulator, Obama’s” glorious flood of executive orders.

The deep, deep state, State Department department hates him because he wants America’s treaties and foreign relations, trade and otherwise, to work FOR the United States and no longer against us.  Most presidents make diplomatic noises while the State Department’s deep statists (largely globalist socialists) do what they “know” is best for the world; Trump intends to reverse much of that and make it pro-American.  They will undermine his policies wherever possible, like in Ukraine.  He has no interest in helping George Soros.

The EPA minions surely detest him because he wants land use to include humans.  It may sound silly, but many EPA regulators literally prefer squirrels and other four-or-more legged denizens of Earth over almost any two-legged ones… except for them, of course, and the other climate-change thinkers who, they dream, will wind up taking care of the planet far better than most humans have been, and in deserved comfort – few, if any, America-first conservatives included.

Interior has little use for Trump.  The careerists at Interior cannot imagine any wide-open spaces that are not restricted to bears, wolves and armadillos.  Humans don’t belong in those habitats, just lizards and beavers and so forth.  Any humans already mistakenly thinking they “own” a plot in those open lands can be eased – or forced – out of the “habitat,” and eventually housed in a 300 square foot dormitory space powered by solar panels, vegetables growing on the roof, drinking recycled water.  Only by being as uncomfortable as possible could humans – non-ruling humans – ever balance the ways we’ve despoiled all the “habitats.”  Trump isn’t into that view of the future.

It is impossible to evaluate the motivations of 2 Million federal workers.  The majority are lifers, eventually to retire from their federal jobs.  Each has his or her own motivations, personal “profits,” philosophies and biases.  No single description can apply to 5 people, let alone to a million or more, but given their similarities of employment, there are obviously some motivations, satisfactions, that they share.

Primary of these is a general approval of government, defined as interlocking bureaucracies within which, and among which, are performed the “real” work of government.  Federal government personnel are generally in favor of federal government: perfectly logical.  Next, each long-time employee is generally favorable toward his or her own agency or office.  Each perceives his or her work as valuable, if not vital.  Each, then, is likely to be resistant to any diminution of his or her agency or mission.  The managers in each agency are, more than just stability, desirous of growth – growth of mission and growth of personnel numbers.  Growth equals importance, promotion, better pay.  Built into the 15 executive departments of the Cabinet, are so many agencies that no firm count of them exists!

There are 200 at least, but there may be over 400.  These, alone, provide a substantial force for permanence and growth – a force that politicians cannot find the courage to temper.  Four hundred or so would seem to be a manageable, or at least a take-controllable number.  But it is merely the blueprint.  Within them all are PROGRAMS, programs and more programs.  Congress creates them.  For every one there is an advocacy group that at some time identified a problem that a federal agency/program was not addressing specifically.  The good intention of every advocate is probably real.  Problems exist.  Solutions are often obvious, but rarely easy to effect.  So, politicians are scratched at their most itchy spot: re-election.  Soon a bill is filed to great publicity, that will finally, after years of Republican inaction, solve this or that terrible problem.

Mainly out of ignorance for some, and out of innate anti-liberty socialist beliefs for the rest, problems, no matter how small or how caused, are federalized.  That the federal administrative state is possibly the least effective way on earth to solve problems, only describes the cynicism of politicians who put every problem in the federal lap or on the federal breast.  That they do so while the federal budget is $22 Trillion in debt – and more – only describes their utter mendacity and failure, over many terms, to uphold one of the most basic covenants the federal government makes with its citizens.  For shame.

Trump, unfortunately, has yet to express a willingness to change federal budgeting.

Still, whether it is because of, or in spite of himself, Trump has caused to be exposed the infidelities of globalists and socialists who prefer a continuing, costly, international policeman role for the U. S.  Several have been ejected and more soon will be.   But even if all of the untrustworthy DOJ, DOD, CIA and NSA apparatchiks were cleaned out… all of them… the liberty-corroding machinations of the molasses-heads just a bit deeper entrenched in the hundreds of agencies and thousands of programs (did you know there are over 1,000 federal programs “addressing” poverty?), will plod along, inflicting regulations with the force of law, able to strip citizens of their constitutional rights, among other things.  It is insidious, yet not corrupt, actually – it’s a way of stultifying, nightmarish administrative life.  Blame for it rests on 50 Congresses and a dozen presidents.  And on us.

Conservatives like to think that they are upholding the Constitution when they oppose communists, socialists, liberals and other Democrats.  They tout principles and vote to increase the debt ceiling like lemmings.  They are hated roundly for this, by the “woke” socialists who are not only not awake, but are barely aware of either the Sun or the Son.  God help anyone who threatens to cut the budget; only enemies of the Republic would conspire to allow the “government” to “shut down.”  It never does.

Governance, Representation, Trump

IMPEACHY

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Impeachment.  An ugly term, certainly, but one so frivolously cast that it’s meaning and impact are widely misunderstood.  To impeach  means to indict.  “Well, like, ‘Duhh’ man.  What am I supposed to think, now?”

In simple terms, an indictment is just a charge levied against an individual, that is agreed to by a selected panel of citizens sworn to listen without bias to evidence supporting the charge, and to vote their consciences according to the applicable laws pertaining to the crime that the charge alleges.  How’s that?  Still a little unclear?  Perhaps an example will help.

A small business owner is awakened at night by a call from police informing him that there was a “break-in” at his building.  He throws on some clothes and rushes to his business to observe that, in fact, (real, or “solid” evidence) a windows was jimmied somehow, and other damage done to the window frame and to objects and materials inside the building.  There are no clear fingerprints or blood drops or other identifying foreign matter that could immediately identify  who did the observed damage.  A search is performed to see if something were stolen, and a police report filled out.

Eventually a person is arrested during a similar break-in, and the state, through the District Attorney’s office, brings him before a Grand Jury composed of that select panel of sworn citizens, and the charges are presented, including such evidence as has been gathered.  That evidence may be circumstantial or it may be direct evidence such as eye-witness accounts of the commission of the crime, or of the sale of items stolen from break-in victims, or even testimony from people who heard the accused talking about committing the crimes.  That panel, the Grand Jury, “hands up” an indictment  to the District Attorney, who will become the prosecutor  in the trial of the accused, and he or she files the case with the appropriate court.  The accused will be represented by his defense attorney, whom he has hired or whom the court (the state) has provided to him at taxpayer expense.  This is called “Due Process” in the United States.

Following a “just” trial according to the rules of jurisprudence, the accused, if convicted, may still appeal his conviction on various technicalities, including poor legal representation.

What has any of this to do with the impeachment show we are anticipating, now?

“Impeach” was a cry hurled toward Trump and toward anyone who would broadcast it, even before the brash, vulgar, non-Washington-molded President-elect was inaugurated.  “For what?” would be the response from his supporters.  “For “collusion” with Russians!”

That the charges  hurled against Trump were mirror images of the actions of the Clinton Campaign, the Clinton-dominated Democratic National Committee, AND of the nefarious elements of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. and of the Obama administration, itself, in no way mitigated the inflammatory calls for impeachment  that were hurled by politicians and elected office-holders throughout, so far, his first term as President.  Barely had the dust settled from the utter collapse of the collusion with Russians  construct, but new, nebulous charges have been leveled that are purported to justify… wait for it, impeachment!

The new charges stem from a phone call President Trump made to the new President of Ukraine in July of 2019.  Ostensibly, and it is strictly subjective, Trump threatened to withhold already approved military assistance unless President Zelenskey investigated apparent influence peddling by Joe Biden while Vice-President in the Obama administration.  So far, at least, there is no proof that a so-called, “quid pro quo” was actually required, but that is the crux of the impeachment  cries.  Mr. Trump deserves some recognition for not folding before the onslaught.

But, it may be instructive to consider the alleged “crime” of demanding something from the government of Ukraine in some sort of exchange for American largesse.

Ukraine has long been considered corrupt, inasmuch that numerous officials enrich themselves at the expense of the citizenry, including bribery to get anything actually done, including, amazingly, defending the integrity of the nation against Russian incursion and encouragement of civil war on behalf of the supposedly ethnic Russian minority.  The U. S. stood still while Russia separated Crimea from Ukraine, and virtually still as irregular Russian insurgents created a nearly autonomous region around Donetsk.  President Trump has finally begun to send armaments to Kiev for defensive purposes against the restive Russians.

Ukraine has last been independent for fewer than 30 years.  Upon the breakup of the Soviet Union, the new Republic of Ukraine inherited a bureaucracy of corrupt officials and apparatchiks  whose prior graft was tiny compared to the opportunities under a more open-market, open-for-business environment.  But Ukraine is also an example of the most unholy alliances our own government has made with international socialist organizations who, for 30 years have been undermining governments to install socialists.  George Soros is at the center of those efforts and our own tax monies have been funneled to his groups in multiple countries (Egypt, Macedonia, Ukraine, Chile, Somalia, Libya, and… wait for it, the United States!)

Bit by bit, President Trump and the relative handful of honest patriots who serve with him, have exposed the wholly un-American efforts of those who agree with international socialism and who actively support it with every form of subterfuge and disingenuousness true Americans can only imagine.  Mr. Obama was the most blatant socialist, ne’ communist, we have ever elected… and Mr. Trump is the antidote to his two terms of American decline.  Joe Biden thoroughly agrees with Obama’s work and his missions to Ukraine as Vice President, where Soros and U. S. efforts had taught young socialists how to topple a government in 2014, are perfectly legitimate areas of inquiry for an America-first president to follow.

The shady-looking insertion of Hunter Biden, a sketchy individual in his own right, into a corrupt gas company spawned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarchy, in a country into which the U. S. was poised to pour several hundred millions of taxpayer monies, made the need to obtain some sort of clarity that the money wasn’t an example of good money after bad, a virtual duty.  The parallel issues of “Crowdstrike” actions to interfere with the 2016 elections simply accentuated the need to encourage the eradication of corruption before more money were turned over.  If Trump had NOT asked for a “quid pro quo” he should be judged a fool.

Now there is a form of “grand jury” attempting to , quite unfairly it appears, assess “evidence” against the accused President.  There isn’t much to the process so far that adheres to what we enjoy as “due process” in the matters of indictment and prosecution.  To date there has not been described a crime for the “grand jury” to evaluate the nature of any evidence for, yet they struggle onward, certain that the unpleasant America-firster, Donald Trump, is guilty of something – if not everything.

Eventually, and probably just as interest in the “historic” impeachment inquiry begins to fall off, the House of Representatives, that august and impartial grand jury, will vote to “impeach,” as in, they will “hand up” an indictment.  But the hand-up goes not to a prosecutor but to the Senate.  There a “trial” will be held, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.  The once and future “grand jury” will take the responsibility of “prosecutor,” having filled the role of persecutor for three years to no avail.  They will employ various attorneys to make the House’s case in the Senate.  Should be a great show.

Culture, Race, Terrorism

Racial Fascism

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There is an extraordinary dichotomy playing out amidst a mix of misunderstandings, hatreds and pure ignorance across the United States.  It is fueled by the ignorance and connivance of a predatory press as well as the instantaneous sharing of ignorance and hate over the internet.  It is instructive to diagnose how America became so stupid as to threaten its own existence with so much energy.  There are people and institutions worthy of being blamed for their role in the descent to our current condition.

The highest profile is held by president Trump, of course.  He has drawn fire, as it were, from several stripes of Democrats and other leftists of varied antagonisms, toward himself, individually, and toward the United States collectively… and comprehensively.  America- haters love the current circumstance.  Trump is ultra-sensitive to criticism and literally hurts himself to get even.  It is sad that that kind of give-and-take hurts his agenda – which Prudence indicates the nation needs to see enacted.

In his defense, Trump has been attacked with largely meaningless, deliberately misconstrued charges, along with the handful of real criticisms.  The whole process started out making lots of supporters angry, but now the attacks have devolved into calls for impeachment on amorphous, hate-based charges.  These are dangerous to the president and to the country, but the hatred – not political opposition, but hatred – actively encourages more virulent enemies like George Soros and his forces – like Antifa and Black Lives Matter.  They think they’re winning.  What they are winning is ill-defined.

The conflict in Charlottesville, Virginia is widely – and wildly – misunderstood, even after weeks of angst and anguish.  We are supposed to believe that it’s about the offensiveness of statues, as though the history represented by those statues were about to repeat itself with chains and slave auctions, given the pudding-like mentality of white people.  The lessons of history are best to be learned, Prudence instructs, not buried.

But there are certain elements of anti-white fervor who must have fresh targets on a regular basis.  A pudding-like press and equally useless politicians latch on to that pious hatred and feed the demands for removal of “symbols of slavery” as if removing the statue of military genius and anti-slavery southerner, Robert E. Lee, would place a strong brick in the wall against slavery’s breaking out again!  Where are the adults?  Where was education?

The new jack-booted thugs, “Antifa,” really care not a whit about Robert E. Lee, or Stonewall Jackson or even Jefferson Davis.  They are paid, literally, to break heads.  Screaming about anti-fascism while executing fascism better than anyone since 1945 may fire up the pudding-heads in the left-wing media – print and broadcast – but it doesn’t make anything “Antifa” says or does true or honest.  “Black Lives Matter” is nearly as debauched.  They, too, have seized upon a flaming hot button that delivers money and power into their hands – police killings of blacks, some of whom are innocent and whose badged killers deserve jail time.  The deaths of thousands of other blacks in inner cities, mostly drug and gang-related, has no commensurate value.  Making themselves enemies of local police is not helpful, but, sadly, rational to “BLM.”  What is the end-game?

One would think that there might be different judgments directed toward people who are paid to hate, as many of the “Antifa” are – paid, that is, by George Soros-connected “organizations.”  Soros, when not cooperating with real Nazi’s during WW II, has made his disdain for the American experiment quite clear.  He hates the ideas of America.  He hates individual sovereignty.  He pays his thugs not to defend ANY of the purported causes they shout about, but to generate discord.  Even in Charlottesville, slowly being revealed as “staged” in large part, the result that was sought by Soros and other enemies of freedom, has manifested:  widespread belief that many Whites are racists with KKK and, illogically, Neo-Nazi beliefs.

This media-touted “meme” of widespread racism is the ideal “lever” by which anti-freedomists  can and have manipulated public policy (such as removing statues – not out of understanding but out of fear) to change the culture of a nation.  Combined with left-dominated public education that is sympathetic to everything being “wrong” with America, purpose-driven forces opposed to our sovereignty, nationality and freedom are dividing us from our heritage, our history and our future as a free people.

Photos show that fighters for both sides in Charlottsville arrived on the same buses.