1.9% GROWTH IN GDP IS NOT AN ECONOMIC RECOVERY

 

Liberal politicians and the main stream media have been telling us for months about the accelerating economic recovery. Citing the 3.2% growth rate of GDP reported for the fourth quarter of 2013 as if it were a positive indicator. Strange how the announcement that the growth figure for the last quarter of 2013 had been revised to 2.4% failed to make the front pages or evening news lead. If a person doesn’t look past the headlines you might think that the 100,000 jobs created in January is a good thing as the news media portrayed it, the fact is however that it requires more than three times that number just to maintain the unemployment percentage in this country.

This type of propaganda is typical of the progressive ideology. They would have us believe that there is little or no inflation. Look behind the numbers and you will find that the government leaves energy and food prices out of the calculation in its quest to show things in a positive light. The last five years have seen energy prices triple and food prices soar as well. Every failed socialist state has crumbled amid grand proclamations of record production and economic success. Ask the average American if the economy is recovering and if the country is moving in the right direction and almost 70% will say no to both questions. The press cannot hide the truth from Americans that the Obama administration has failed at domestic policy. The President knows that the Clinton-Gingrich combination of entitlement reform and capital gains tax reductions created a robust economy. He understands that his domestic energy production policies are hurting the country and that the new EPA carbon regulations spell disaster for our prosperity. The administration is so happy with their achievement in the affordable care act that they refuse to acknowledge the unmitigated disaster that all of us now know that it is.

Fortunately the President and Hillary can fall back on their foreign policy successes in Iran, North Korea, Syria, Egypt, China, Libya, Russia and the Ukraine to offset the domestic policy failures. The world is becoming such a model of cooperation between nations that we can scale back our defense budgets and concentrate on reducing our carbon footprint and achieving income equality.

The lies are not even slightly believable anymore, the President can’t even tell the truth about what he discussed with the Pope for crying out loud. The illegal actions of this administration have the country confused by the sheer number of scandals and if it were not for the complicity of the left wing press we would already have thrown this bunch of anti-American frauds out of office.

At 1.9% GDP growth for the calendar year 2013 we are losing ground just as we have every year of the Obama presidency. We have put a bunch of self proclaimed intellectuals in control of the world’s only superpower and its largest economy; they decided to force their social engineering ideology on us instead of doing the job we elected them to do.  Only a socialist would view the growing number of people receiving government assistance as success yet we are told it is.

                          THE ENDANGERED CAPITALIST ACT

 

The 1973 endangered species act came to us cloaked in the most misleading terms while pretending to protect the poor unfortunate animals that have no defense against our industrial society. Since the law’s passage the Environmental Protection Agency has listed about 40% of the species on earth as threatened or endangered. This equals 800,000 species that can be used to bring law suits against businesses going about their lawful business. Various environmental groups have used the act as a lever and a listed species for a fulcrum to force businesses such as farmers and timber companies to scale back or stop using their own private property all together. A relatively new tactic that is being used is for these environmental groups to sue the EPA where like minded bureaucrats settle the suit by agreeing to impose restrictions on private property use and businesses. This tactic excludes the effected businesses from being represented in the courtroom where their rights are being infringed. The latest example, in a long list, is the settlement of a suit which has placed the lesser prairie chicken on the EPA’s threatened species list. The five states where this bird lives just happen to be where much of the new oil exploration and fracking are being done. Isn’t it just a miraculous coincidence that researchers have found that fear of tall objects, like drilling rigs, where hawks might hide is a major contributor to the reduction in numbers of this bird. The perpetual anti-everything crowd don’t care whose rights they trample or what businesses get destroyed as long as their vision of saving the planet is fulfilled. I lived through the trauma of having my industry destroyed by environmental zealots who used scientific studies, which were eventually proven to be false, to inflict their will on tens of thousands of innocent people. Logging was identified as the culprit in the decline of the Northern Spotted Owl and based on the “science” vast tracts of public and private lands were set aside for owl habitat. Too late to save the industry and the jobs it supported the truth came out that an invasive species of owl was preying on the smaller spotted owl causing its demise. The logging eventually returned but this happened long after the jobs and family livelihoods were destroyed.

I find that my first reaction to any self proclaimed environmentalist citing a scientific study is distrust. The track record of “scientific environmental studies” is so poor that if it were not for liberal bureaucrats desire to control private business the studies would be discredited for the shams that they are. One quick clue about the veracity of the prairie chicken study is the finding that oil derricks and transmission lines are bad while no negative effects were found from wind farms. The environmentalists wouldn’t want to cast their favorite alternative power source in a negative light.

I submit that the environmental zealot’s use of butterflies, owls, toads, snowy plovers, and all the rest have little or nothing to do with the animals and everything to do with opposing capitalism and the use of natural resources by industry. It is a sad commentary on our litigating society that such a fraudulent practice is being used to destroy so many livelihoods.

The protection of the environment is by law an authority granted to the individual States. More precisely it is an authority prohibited to the Federal Government by the Constitution. The decisions restricting lawful business practices in Kansas should not be made by representatives elected in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The framers of the Constitution had it right when they limited the role of the Federal Government in our lives. The mind of the progressive politician just refuses to accept the idea that other citizens have rights which are not subject to Federal Government control.  

THE AVERAGE AMERICAN NOW FEARS HIS GOVERNMENT

 

In the progressive rush to undermine the Constitution and thereby escape its limitations on government authority, the unintended consequence has been a loss of our personal security. The dramatic recent attacks by the left on the first and fourth amendments coupled with the decades long assaults on the second and tenth amendments have caused most Americans to become concerned over their own safety. The statist’s argument for many years has been centered on the benefit and in fact the need for more centralized government control. The argument is not new; it was debated at length by the Constitutional framers and rejected in favor of a representative republic with its decentralized and state centered government control. The framers recognized that every society contains people who want to gain control over the rest of their peers. The Constitution specifically denies the legal authority to the federal government to make us its subjects. The first amendment guarantees us freedom of religion, speech, press, peaceable assembly, and to petition our government for redress of grievances. The headlines contain examples of groups being denied freedom to practice their religion every day and the IRS scandal showed that the administration was willing and able to use the revenue service to eliminate citizen’s legal right to decent. The executive branch through the Department of Justice has even sought to intimidate the press with indictments and persecution of whistle blowers. Any citizen who speaks out in a critical way about the Obama administration is risking federal investigations and intimidation. We no longer live with the knowledge that our Constitution will protect us from government wrongdoing. The same public figures and liberal press that have facilitated the undermining of the Constitution are now the one’s making the most noise in protest about the NSA trampling our fourth amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.

This is a classic example of what the legal profession calls a slippery slope. In their excitement over seeing the rights of conservatives citizens, with whom they disagree, withheld the liberal’s overlooked the dangerous precedent that was being set. The tech savvy young liberals are all of a sudden realizing that they are not safe in their persons and that the government can read and record anything they say on the internet. The lawless activity of the federal government is frightening because once the constitutional protections are bridged we could very well see private citizens jailed for voicing their decent. It could even come to pass that a u-tube video posting that the government finds offensive could get a person incarcerated. Political motives could be substituted for the rule of law and our decent into third world dictatorship status would be complete. If it were not so ironic watching the low information liberal’s panic over the realization that Pandora’s Box is open, I might be tempted to cry “we told you so”. Oddly the liberal press still hasn’t caught on to what is happening as they are still protecting the administration and denouncing vocal conservatives as racists.

The disaster called Obamacare is, in my opinion, going to be tipping point back towards decentralized government. Every one of the bad projections about this law is coming to pass in very personal and public ways. I hope it is enough to wake up the population and reverse the progressive agenda.  

                       THE PRESIDENTS MISSPLACED PRIORITIES

 

In 2009 when the president took office and the economic crisis was dominating the headlines, President Obama used the crisis to promote spending almost a trillion dollars of “stimulus”. The money got spent, however in the cold light of history it is now evident that behind all the rhetoric the dollars were used not for stimulating the economy but rather to pay off campaign supporters. We as a nation then had to witness or President traveling around the world bowing to dictators on the miss-guided apology tour. The administration lectured us about a new reset in foreign relations based on being nice to despots so that they will like us. Pendulum type antics from the department of state where we supported Egypt’s president before we didn’t, and then we supported the Arab spring before we didn’t, led to confusion about foreign policy and covert arms smuggling.

The priority at home became passage of the President’s signature takeover of the healthcare industry. The entire industry comprising 1/6 of the U. S. economy had to be wrecked in order to rectify the huge injustice of some people, a small minority, not being able to buy health insurance. It turns out that all the law accomplished was driving up costs for everyone and costing more people coverage than it provided to others. The law has gotten so unpopular that it will probably cost the Democratic Party control of the Senate later this year. The administration pivoted to an all out push for amnesty for illegal aliens while the country suffered from record unemployment levels and the moved right into pushing for cap and trade legislation. The Congress refused to go along with the carbon tax lunacy so the President circumvented the legislature and used the EPA regulatory authority to crush the coal industry. Global warming or climate change took center stage with huge federal expenditures on wind and solar alternative power ventures and electric cars.

Back on foreign policy our “be nice to our enemies” plan backfired when our ambassador and three other Americans got killed in Libya. Iran kept on enriching uranium and Syria killed large numbers of its own citizens with chemical weapons while we lectured Israel about how it should treat the Palestinians.

The Presidents reelection brought with it a new set of priorities. The focus shifted from job creation, which had not worked anyway, to eliminating income inequality. The first step promoted by the administration is raising the minimum wage to $15/ hour. Mr. President less than five percent of the workforce works for minimum wage and the higher wage rate is going to be a barrier to entry for people seeking employment. We have about 90 million people in this country who want jobs and can’t find them so why is it that you think it is important to take to the airwaves to publically make your March madness bracket selections and then go play another round of golf. The press continues to tell us that the President is a brilliant man so why is it that we never seem to see out brilliant chief executive set good priorities or even recognize that his old priorities were wrong. We as country forgive miss-steps but eventually we expect to see some prudent course corrections before driving into the ditch.

                          THE PRICE OF DOING SOMETHING

 

I did a post last week in which I quoted Theodore Roosevelt a couple of times. He is a man admired not so much because he always succeeded but because he dared to try big things and keep trying until he found success. The famous speech titled “the man in the arena” that he gave years after his presidency defines a principle we need to fix what is wrong with America today. “It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…..”

The strength of our country does not come from the antagonist who gets an attorney and files suit in opposition to something. Our strength lies within the entrepreneur who risks his capital and spends his time to create an opportunity for himself and possibly some employees. The surgeon who picks up a knife and uses his skill and training to correct a problem just like the farmer who plants his crops is the man in the arena. My career, for three and a half decades, has been spent in the arena. Companies from around the world have come to our door to get production problems solved. We design and build custom production lines for manufacturers who are seeking to increase production or decrease miss-manufactured parts. Sometimes the objective is to build a new product or to upgrade an old product line utilizing new materials or techniques. The point is that our field requires that we take risks every day in the attempt to do big things for our customers. The number of folks who seek to oppose the creation of new things without ever offering viable alternatives is growing along with the supply of attorneys and regulatory agencies living off the countries productive class like parasites. Think for a moment about the risk a pharmaceutical company takes when it introduces a new drug. We all watch television networks who run adds everyday sponsored by attorney groups trolling for clients to attack the drug companies or businesses that sold asbestos insulation.

Our traditional business of building industrial production lines has not recovered from the crash of 2008. By the end of 2010 we realized that we would need to change markets to survive as a company. The recovery of our company is underway now with two new products in the market and employment coming back up. We risked our own money and time to achieve this progress while fending off foreign and domestic competitors as well as incredible piles of government red tape. You see our new product line consists of diesel powered orchard tractors. The naysayers warned us against trying to compete with the giant tractor manufacturers and how the farmers would not consider buying an unknown brand. We did not listen, we asked orchard growers what they wanted in a tractor that they could not get from the big brands and custom designed a tractor for their application. The American farmers are buying every tractor that we can produce even though the cost is higher than foreign alternatives. The tractors fit their needs better and together with the fact that we build them in America farmers are willing to buy the tractors from a company that they have never heard of.

America needs to support those of us willing to get in the arena and do something and start shunning those who simply oppose for the sake of opposition or personal enrichment. When and how did it become a bad thing to be successful in this country? I think that it is about time to elect pro-growth legislators and unshackle the greatest economy on earth. If Americans don’t tolerate the voices of opposition then businesses small and large will restart the engine of prosperity. Government needs to quit looking at business profit as their own piggy bank and let companies use their profits for growth. The price of doing positive things is high but the human cost of not doing them is higher.

                              AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

 

There is no difference in the basic intelligence of the various human populations on earth. Racists will always dispute this equality, claiming superior standing for one ethnicity or another. In my traveling of the world, working with dozens of different peoples, I find what my father always said is true; one human brain works just as well as any other no matter which color container in comes in. How then do we explain the relative advancement of some cultures when compared to others? Modern American culture is starkly different than the basic agrarian economies found in parts of Africa or South America. If it is not the people that are exceptional, yet the contrast in achievement is so evident, what stimulation is it that has spurred the dynamic pace at which Americans develop technology?

America is exceptionally fertile ground for innovative minds to flourish in. It does not matter whether we are talking about immigrants such as Alexander Graham Bell and Albert Einstein or home grown inventors like the Wright brothers this country has fostered an environment perfect for innovation. The founders of our nation included in the declaration of independence from England a long list of grievances including theft by the crown of private property and limitation on commerce without legal recourse. Private property rights and the notion that a person’s ownership of their work product in pursuit of their life, liberty and happiness, and the right to have laws specifically to protect those personal property rights was fundamental to the founding of this country. Constructs in the Constitution prohibiting unreasonable search and seizures without a warrant and in the XIV amendment which guarantees citizens against Federal or state government depriving them of life, liberty or property without due process of law are keystones in the search for understanding Americas prominence.

Henry Ford created his empire and Andrew Carnegie forged the steel industry while Cornelius Vanderbuilt, William Boeing, J P Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were pioneering U. S. industry. Thomas Edison and Donald Douglas along with Glen L. Martin and the Lockheed brothers rose from humble beginnings to industrial dominance. The same drive to innovate and succeed spurred on by the right to keep what you earned encouraged the likes of Jonas Salk and George Washington Carver to invest their resources and creativity in the attempt to improve their own future. The country vaulted forward in front of other nations powered by this kind of entrepreneurship. Ownership of land and the bounty it produced in the hands of private citizens like Carnegie and Weyerheauser was not available in feudal Europe. These same industrialists invested their profit to grow their businesses and employ the youth of the nation who were trying to move off the family farms and into industrial cities. Steam power gave way to internal combustion and the explosion of oil related wealth and opportunities. Diesel engines in the hands of pioneers like John Deere’s decedents turned horse drawn agriculture into vast manufacturing empires whose tractors enabled single farmers to feed thousands of families. Capitalism’s financial rewards protected by the rule of law worked to move technology ahead at a pace never before seen on this earth. Some people today view the industrial revolution and our modern world in a negative light as if things were better before. The same people use the goods and services our technology provides and take the medicines it develops while complaining about the corporate profiteering. Our capitalistic economy is 100% merit based, the profit earned on the manufacture and sale of products provides the incentive to innovate and invest. I work with companies in third world nations because they hire us to build them manufacturing capability so that they too can modernize their societies.

It is sad that our own administration can’t see that our system has worked better than any other to elevate people out of poverty. Their view that the successful have somehow benefitted unfairly at the expense of others is a naïve position completely at odds with the history of nations. America is exceptional President Obama and we are not a colonial nation. Your anti-colonial vendetta against America is misguided and even though you don’t see it we, as a people, are the most generous nation on earth.  

 

THE POWERS NOT DELAGATED TO THE UNITED STATES …

 

Every day we see multiple examples of the Federal Government ignoring the constitutional limitations on its authority. The Constitution grants certain authorities to the Federal Government and then in the precise wording of the tenth amendment restricts it from interfering in all other matters.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Today’s example taken from the headlines concerns a private property owner in Wyoming who wanted to build a “stock pond” on his own land. States have administered water rights and protected the rights of downstream citizens for centuries in this country. Water is and has always been a key to our prosperity and disputes over access to it are common. The Wyoming property owner is just an average guy who works as a welder to earn a living for his family of five. He was aware of the need to obtain a valid permit for his stock pond before building it and he worked with his state and was granted the permit. So far so good, Andy Johnson built his pond and stocked it with brook and brown trout. The problems for Johnson started when the federal government in the form of the EPA asserted that he had violated the “clean water act” by building a dam on a stream without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. It is important to note here that stock ponds are exempt from the “clean water act”. The EPA gave Johnson 30 days to hire a consultant to plan the restoration of the site and 60 days to have the work completed or face $75,000 / day fines. I do not wish to get into a discussion about the merits of the stock pond Johnson built to attract wildlife to his property, personally I think it is wonderful but my opinion on the subject and that of the federal government do not count. States administer water rights and have been doing so for far longer than the EPA has existed.

On the one hand we see a federal government agency imposing its authority in an extra-constitutional way violating the tenth amendment. On the other hand we have an agency extending the federal law to condemn a project which is specifically exempt from the law. In what may be the single most important and enlightening part of this example of government overreach, we now learn that the EPA has proposed a whole new set of rule changes to how it can administer the “clean water act”. The proposed changes would give the EPA authority over ponds, lakes, wetlands and any stream, natural or manmade, that would have an effect on downstream navigable waters on both public and private property. For the record people, that definition includes every drop of water that falls on your property or runs over or under it. The inclusion of the words “effect on downstream navigable waters” is a key inclusion because all water eventually gets to a navigable body of water downstream. The EPA is making a monumental power grab and Johnsons case is just one of the first skirmishes. Apartment dwellers in the big cities will not likely be bothered by the changes but the farmers who grow their food will.

The federal leviathan grows every day and little by little we become its serfs. I live in a state where the state government is trying to assert that it has the right to meter the water coming out of private wells and charge landowners for the water. The whole stinking concept of the metering of wells is a topic for another post but I will note here that at least it is the state government doing it and we have a chance to fight the tyranny at our state government level. Once the federal government grabs a hold of a citizens private property rights there is virtually no chance for redress of grievances.      

                    SPEAK SOFTLY AND CARRY A BIG DRIVER

 

Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote in reference to foreign policy was actually; “speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far”. His policy was to use diplomacy backed by strength to protect and sustain our national interests abroad.

A somewhat less known quote of the former president’s appeared in the Kansas City Star edition of May 7, 1918 where he commented on the presidency; “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than anyone else.”

The two pictures set beside each other on the evening news Friday were in stark contrast. Putin was pictured practicing with an automatic pistol at a shooting range while beside him President Obama wore golf attire and prepared to address a ball with his driver. The world is full of bad actors who know that the leader of this country is all words and no action. China, North Korea, Syria, Russia, Iran and Egypt not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan have provided all the proof the world needs to know that our president is asleep at the wheel. Bad things are coming America and the hopeless mess at the state department courtesy of Ms. Clinton and now John Kerry reinforce the hollowness of the administrations words every time they interact with other nations where our interests or those of our allies are at risk. It is even apparent that you can kill American citizens abroad including the Presidents own representative without fear of consequences. We have a lawless narco state to the South that shares a long and very poorly defended border with us that the department of homeland security chooses to virtually ignore and in fact when states try to protect the border our own Justice Department brings suit against the states to prevent them from protecting their citizens. I have been very critical of the administration’s foreign policy so it is only fair that I should give credit where credit is due and list their domestic policy successes. The problem is that there are no domestic policy successes either. It is time for the President to get out of the arena or be thrown out of the arena.

I will end this post with Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “The man in the arena”; “It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

We have the wrong men and women in the arena America.   

      RIGHT TO WORK AND THE AND CITIZENS UNITED VS FEC

 

I know what you must think but there is a connection. In reading some of the headlines the other day I took an interest in an article that compared campaign contribution totals from different groups over the last twenty five years. Looking further into related articles I ended up reading a lot of historical pieces related to the Taft Hartley act and the political impact of organized labor in America. Several things stood out to me as significant in their impact on the economic and political circumstances we see unfolding in the headlines. I knew that the labor union participation numbers have been declining although I didn’t realize the extent of the decline as unions still seem to wield so much political clout. In 1945 one in three American workers belonged to an organized union, by 1979 the percentage had decreased to about 24%. Last year the percent of American workers belonging to labor unions had fallen to 11.3. To be sure the overall number of workers had been climbing over the same period but the trend is clearly away from organized labor.

The Supreme Court held in Citizens United VS the Federal Elections Commission that corporations and other associations could not be restricted from making political donations and the left leaning press about melted down in their objections. Labor Unions had long been aggressive in making campaign contributions while corporations and other businesses had been excluded. The Unions ability to extort wage and benefit concessions from employers by exercising their right to picket and strike along with forced union participation for all employees on union work sites was a powerful combination. The fact that labor and not business could work to effect elections pushed many businesses offshore or out of business. Even in light of this I believe the court erred in granting corporations the right to make political donations. I think that a better way of achieving a balance that would protect voters from big money buying elections would have been to restrict union contributions.

The media are waging an all out campaign against Charles and David Koch portraying them as villains for donating millions of dollars to conservative causes and campaigns. Significantly the media are silent on the same type of practice where labor unions are donating to liberal causes. I found a Federal report that listed campaign contribution totals for the last 25 years and it was a real eye opener. There are 18 different labor unions in the top 46 contributors whose donations total 34 times as much money as the 18 million donated by Koch Industries. That is over 638 million dollars spent to influence our political system. I wonder what the sentiment is in union halls about the millions of dollars of union funds gone forever having been used in this way. It is interesting to note that in states with right to work laws and employers with opt out clauses for union fees that go toward politics most employees are now choosing not to pay unions to represent them. Job creation in “right to work” states is out pacing the states without those laws. Right to work laws do not prevent workers from unionizing but they do prevent a majority vote from forcing everyone to join a union. In Wisconsin the “opt out” clause for public employees has drastically lowered union membership.

Federal and state worker protection laws largely eliminate the need for union representation and employees with a choice are tending to keep their money and not join organized labor unions. I view the huge expenditures on political action and wonder if it is also a factor in why so many working people have become disillusioned with labor unions.

I believe that we need a very simple tax code without any ability for legislators to sell special favors to special interest groups. I believe that the big money union and corporate interests should be excluded from campaign financing and that unused campaign funds should not belong to candidates after they leave public office. It is simple really, when there is a lot of money around there tend to be very few statesmen and a whole lot of corrupt politicians.

                   THE EPA IS A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION

 

Gather any group of people together to solve a problem and the first step is to define the problem. This is followed by group interaction and debate as to possible solutions. If the problem is complex enough the group will usually decide on the most promising of the possible solutions and detail someone to research the viability. If the answer is deemed practical the group can then plan the implementation. Every business person, doctor, engineer, scientist, law enforcement and military officer knows how to use this process to solve problems. Some of us spend our working lives applying our skills, training and experience to finding solutions while others spend their time and the legal system in perpetual opposition to us. In small group dynamics you must offer credible solutions to be taken seriously in a discussion about any problem. Our complex regulatory environment and legal system have made it possible for people with no credible solutions to block farmers from getting water for their crops, loggers from cutting trees, steel mills from producing steel, power plants from burning coal or splitting atoms and many other functions necessary for today’s way of life.

We have shown the world how to make most of the things in a modern society. We became the world’s leading economy by converting natural resources into finished goods and exporting them to the rest of the globe.  Something happened a few years back that gave the power to control our industrial might over to those who oppose all industry. The federal government created a department of environmental quality and gave it sweeping regulatory authority. If the goal of the agency is “protecting the environment” there is virtually no argument that can be made against any of their regulations without the media branding one as wanting to destroy the planet. Today we can see the battles raging in the headlines about hydraulic fracking in the oil industry. Ask any person on the street and you are likely to hear how terrible fracking is for the environment, Hollywood makes movies about it and vilifies the companies it portrays as greed driven monsters destroying the world. Pick your favorite Hollywood celebrity they all seem to speak out on some issue without being required to offer either a shred of proof or a credible alternative. These same people live large lives full of multiple giant air-conditioned homes with heated chlorine filled pools and zip around the world on private jets. Setting their hypocrisy aside we need as a country to come together like a small group and demand that they propose workable solutions or get out of the way of those of us who are. It is a fact that we are, as a country,  unwilling to give up our personal transportation, let any legislative body outlaw cars and see what happens in the next election. The engineer in me says that given the number of miles Americans drive their cars we need to find the best way to power them. The shallow answer from the left is to promote clean electric cars as if they were a viable answer. The environmental zealots act as if the electricity just magically appears and that no fossil fuel was burned to make it. The reality is that over 80% of our electric power comes from coal or natural gas burning power plants. The environmentalists don’t like the hydroelectric or nuclear generating options either as they promote wind and solar. Vast amounts of public tax dollars have been wasted on wind and solar projects that today supply less that 2% of our needs and any engineer in the field who does not rely on government grants will tell you there is no viable answer there.

 It is difficult enough to find real solutions for today’s problems and fund their development without also fighting an endless battle against the perpetual opposition and their army of attorneys. I’m in one of the professions that require viable solutions if you are going to be successful however transportation is not one of my areas of experience. I ask friends in the auto industry where the answer lies and without hesitation they say hydrogen. My question is then why are we not funding more development in that direction and again the answer is invariably because some idiots blew up an airship and poisoned the public’s attitude about hydrogen power and safety.

This country is littered with the dead carcasses of industries left behind in the wake of irresponsible actions by those wielding the environmental protection act as a weapon. It is time that America demands more from activists than just opposition and law suits. Propose something that is really better or shut up and let us do it.

WHY DO LIBERALS PUSH THE FALSE MANMADE GLOBAL TEMP CRISIS

 

In my earlier post titled “GLOBAL WARMING, IS CO2 THE VILLIAN?” I detailed the scientific facts illustrating absurdity of claiming humans are causing climate change. To save you from having to go look it up here are the highlights.

1)      96.8% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere was there before mankind existed.

2)      CO2 only contributes 3.62% of the greenhouse gas effect

3)      Taken together the first two points show that only 1/10 of 1% of the greenhouse gas effect can fairly be blamed on man burning fossil fuels.

4)      Virtually all of the rest, 96%, of the greenhouse gas effect comes from water vapor.

5)      The earth heats up based on the fossil record about every 100,000 years because of orbital dynamics keeping us closer to the sun.

I learn all that I need to know about a celebrity or other public figure as soon as they make their first claim about mankind causing global warming. They either don’t know the truth or don’t care. So why is it that the liberals keep going back to a narrative that is demonstrably false? I fear that the reason is no more complicated than the ease with which the liberal voter can be swayed using “save the planet” rhetoric. If the goal of progressives is to control all means of production then it is necessary for them to control and or tax energy companies and a carbon tax would work to that end. Most voters believe what they hear repeated often enough in the media so the chant goes on even in the face of real scientific counter arguments. To see U.S. Senators take to the floor of the Senate in a made for TV stunt proclaiming the gravity of the global warming crisis and all about how evil the “deniers” are in our greed as we destroy the planet is just sad. Not one of them has the will to get the truth before they take to the podium. The coal industry and all of the jobs it supports is in their sights. I remember well how futile it was to argue with tree huggers about the real reason for the decline in numbers of the Northern spotted owl. A larger invasive species of owl was feasting on their little cousins as they took over the habitat. We all knew the truth but logging got the bad rap and a whole industry was virtually wiped out. If we raised the issue of the private property rights of the timber companies and their shareholders we were all vilified for our evil profit motive. It is hard to accept being labeled as evil for collecting a paycheck for ones time and effort. I believe that we have lost all sense of perspective on these topics. The very same people who want to save the planet by destroying our industry refuse to give up any of the goods produced by industry. The net result is that off shore companies make our products and we pay foreign people’s labor costs instead of making jobs here at home. If a company gives up and moves its jobs off shore to keep from going under the same liberal hacks that regulated the corporations until they had no choice will speak out against the practice.

When a politician gives government benefits to someone they must first have stolen the money from the taxpayer who earned it. Think about that for a moment and then think about how much money the government gives away every day. The government cannot make wealth it can only shift it from person to person. Do it long enough and you create a revolutionary atmosphere. The tyrants in Washington fear that they are getting close to the tipping point and they know that they cannot win if we as a population are armed.

                  THE OBAMACARE DISASTER IS PERSONAL FOR ME 

 

Last year late in the Spring it became apparent that I was going to need something major done to my knee. My wife and I had been paying for private health insurance for decades without any large claims or health problems. We carried a plan that fit us pretty well, designed to cover only major events while keeping our monthly costs down. We had in fact selected a plan that the President and HHS now term as sub-standard. We were in the first round of cancellations and lost our policy during the months leading up to the ACA web site roll out. I believe that the whole Obamacare law is unconstitutional and would choose to walk away from the Socialist mess if I were not 59 and in need of a new knee. Our private insurance carrier offered us a new plan at double the old monthly premium chock full of “benefits” that we could not possibly need such as prenatal care and the like. Seeing no option and feeling as if the government had just colluded with the insurance company to defraud me out of thousands of dollars we reluctantly bought the new policy. The political backlash against the unaffordable care act grew so rapidly and the web site worked so poorly that the President whisked out his famous pen and delayed the individual mandate. The administration then labeled plans like our old one as sub-standard as said that the insurance companies had been abusing us consumers with the low premiums and insufficient coverage. The delay of the individual mandate was accompanied by the states insurance commissioners being granted the right to reinstate the old sub-standard policies for a year. The genie was out of the bottle though and it was not practical to put it back. The administration new that the policies could not be reinstated and made what was in effect just a political move to shift the responsibility for the unpopular law away from themselves. I still needed the new knee and started into the process of getting the care. The doctor, a surgical specialist I had known for years and used before on the same knee, examined my knee and said “I do not know how you are walking on it now.” He informed me next that the insurance company would authorize only a special kind of rigid brace and not a knee replacement. Keep in mind that the insurance company reached this conclusion without any type of examination of my knee. I got fitted for the thousand dollar brace and used it faithfully for a few months but was unable to stay effective long enough each day to get my job done. I am self employed so this became a real problem for me and we decided to use our savings and have the surgery done without the insurance companies approval. My doctor said that the insurance might be willing to cover the procedure now that their choice of treatment had failed and he reapplied. Without any explanation or examination the procedure was approved and the only down side was the six months of pain I had had to endure. Oh and of course the higher premiums, co-pays and deductable. I had the knee replacement a week ago and went back to work fulltime five days later. I am not 100% yet but I can get more done than before the surgery.

The government has inserted itself into our healthcare decisions between the doctor and the patient. It has done so with no medical training and no track record of effective cost management or qualifications. The availability of healthcare got worse for me and the cost went up by double. It is time for the American people to rise up against all progressive politicians and put them out of office. The next step should then be to confiscate the golden parachutes they have set up for themselves and all the wealth they have acquired by selling their influence. The trials they deserve for corruption will probably not happen but it would sure be nice to see them pay personally for the mess they have made while we all struggle to pay off the national debt.

                     STARTING IN 2008 I WAS JOHN GAULT

 

We had been in business building industrial machinery for twenty five years when the political idiots tipped the economy over in 2008. Our projects had been successful because we had made them so. The result of all the hard work and personal investment was that I had enough stuff and financial security. I was so furious about the governments waste and regulatory interference that I just pulled a John Gault and ran my little side business for fun at a break even pace. For two years I paid essentially no taxes and watched the progressives drive the country farther and farther away from the representative republic it was meant to be. It was during a conversation with my father, a member of the WWII generation, that he said something that energized me to fight the bastards destroying this country. I had been studying history, my favorite subject, seeking to understand for myself the path that our government had chosen which had so damaged the world’s economy. Dad implored me to get back in the game and to do what I was trained for and experienced at. I needed to help fix the economy. His contention was that the government could not fix the mess they’d made and that only private businesses could create the jobs America needed. We had let about 100 employees go when the sub-prime mortgage disaster wrecked our manufacturing business. Most of our recent projects have been geared towards creating manufacturing facilities for building products. The collapse of building around the world eliminated our current projects and also the pending ones.

I worked with four other members of our creative team and designed a couple of products aimed at the petroleum and farming industries. Our modest success in the two new markets grows out of our designs having a free market competitive advantage and our willingness to spend our own capital on research and development. We have built our company back up until we now employ 38 people. In the middle of all the stress of starting over in the down economy I hear the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue say that I had not built my business and that the roads and government infrastructure were what made it happen. Mr. President the American tax payer built the roads not the government, the roads and infrastructure were here when we started our company three decades ago and they were there when the crash happened in 2008. Ask yourself for a moment how could so many businesses have failed when they still had the roads running right to their doors. If the road makes the business and not the entrepreneur with private capital then what happened? The people who read my blog know that I believe government interference in the free market causes our greatest peril as a nation. Our strength grows out of the firm belief that if we work hard and become successful that we will own the fruit of our labor and can achieve the American dream. You, Mr. President, and the rest of the progressives are stealing the American dream from those who are earning it and giving it to those who are not. Why is the notions of equal opportunity for all and private property rights so hated by you. I feel like getting sick every time I hear you proclaim “income inequality” as our greatest shame as a nation. You don’t seem to understand that income equality has never been the goal, the goal is and always has been to guarantee life liberty and the Pursuit of happiness. Read a history book now and then or get a real job and learn about the country before you lecture those of us who work for a living about America.

                        WHY DO WE FEEL COLD OR HUNGRY

 

There are many interesting things about evolution and the way a species adapts to its environment. We have developed senses that constantly give us input about our surroundings and we adjust to conform to conditions around us. Our bodies unconsciously change to maintain our temperature and breathing rate etc. so that we can survive. Fear, hunger, and feeling cold or over heated are all powerful motivators without which we would not have survived as a species. The civilized world we live in now insulates us from many of the conditions that would have controlled our every thought in earlier times. We no longer need to spend 95% of our time feeding, clothing and housing ourselves as our species used to. The majority of us work productively to earn the necessities of life and also put something away for retirement and the pursuit of happiness. The plurality of citizens that work for a living is growing smaller as government assistance programs get ever more attractive. The United States gives more to the impoverished people of the world than any other nation by far every year and we are always the first to send disaster aid. Our culture is one of generosity born of our own hard work and success.

There are those among us who are by nature lazy and favor government handouts over doing productive work. I am not speaking of those citizens who are unable to work because of mental or physical incapacity. The growing minority of those receiving state and federal subsidies are more than willing to support liberal candidates that promise to keep the money flowing. We have, through our own largess and the complicity of politicians willing to steal the fruits of our labor to exchange for votes, created a large minority who vote for a living instead of working. The taxpayer revolt is a real and growing trend that the left fear. The story of the little red hen is playing out as more and more taxpayers are joining conservative groups supporting political action aimed at reforming the welfare state. The left wing media are always quick to label members of such conservative groups with their favorite ugly terminology giving cover to the politicians behind the scam.

I believe that all government support for people capable of working for a living should sunset over time and be means tested. Further I feel that any citizen who lives his or her life at the expense of other taxpayers should be required to surrender the right to vote until they are again self sufficient. We must break the cycle of generational dependence along with the crime and substance abuse that it promotes. Idle hands are the devils playground so to speak and our inner cities show the results of generations of social programs aimed at eliminating poverty. Government welfare benefits now provide more money per month than minimum wage jobs in 24 states. How can we look in the mirror and ask ourselves why the workforce participation rate is low and falling. We have eliminated the need to work and are funding the subsistence life style so well that it is comfortable. Nature gave us feelings of hunger and cold for a reason and we have ignorantly upset the balance. When Presidents Kennedy and Johnson created welfare it was billed as “a hand up not a handout” aimed at eliminating poverty. We need to change the failed welfare programs so that they work as planned and we need to do it now. Welfare reform is not racist or mean spirited, it does not have to be done in ways that prove catastrophic to those who actually require the help. Reform is necessary so that economic growth can boom in this country again.  

           WORK FOUR MONTHS EVERY YEAR FOR NO PAY?

 

When the Internal Revenue Code was sold to the people of the United States the government declared that the income tax could never exceed 7% of a person’s income. It is interesting that the language of the sixteenth amendment does not contain the limitation and of course we all know that the Washington politicians never intended to, or indeed have, limited their theft of our earnings to 7%. If they did the average American tax payer would fulfill his tax obligation in about twenty five days each year. In contrast taxpayers work on average four and a half months of every year to fulfill their tax obligation. The country abolished slavery with the thirteenth amendment and then granted the government the unrestricted right to subject us to indentured servitude three amendments later. To make the whole stinking mess even more corrupt the tax code has been perverted into 16,000 pages of favoritism and crony capitalism. The progressives got a hold of the tax code writing apparatus and have used taxation for social engineering and a vast vote buying mechanism. Every attempt to simplify the tax code to date using either a flat or fair tax system has been blocked by legislators seeking to preserve their power and control. The ability to write favorable tax rules for special interest groups draws huge sums of lobbying dollars into Washington D.C. to fill campaign fund coffers for incumbents every year. The system has gotten so corrupt that over 40% of the population pay no taxes at all and yet these same zero liability voters consume the majority of welfare expenditures.

The left would have us believe that the TEA Party is a bunch of racists and greedy white people that hate the poor and disadvantaged. The same left wing liberals that vote to confiscate the money earned by hard working Americans and then give it to free loaders that choose not to work. Stealing is stealing whether it is with a gun or the tax code. Taxed Enough Already is the whole point and the reason that the left work so hard to discredit the movement is because tax reform would take away their ability to keep the citizens as subjects of the ruling class in D.C.

It would seem that the whole tax system is so corrupt that it couldn’t get much worse. That however, would not be giving the politicians of both parties the credit that they deserve. The IRS is by design one of the most powerful and dangerous branches of government. The opportunity exists for unscrupulous members of the executive branch to use such power to punish political opponents and stifle anyone or group trying to form an organized political opposition. The current bunch of thugs in the executive branch did just that before the last presidential election. This assertion is not conjecture, the inspector general’s office found evidence of political targeting by the IRS and the head of the department involved later said it had happened. She, Lois Lerner, then used her “fifth amendment” right to not testify before congress to avoid incriminating herself twice. The offense of using the IRS to silence or punish political opponents is grounds for impeachment. President Nixon found that out the hard way. The administration is not frightened of the congress or Eric Holder’s Department of Justice knowing that the liberal press will persecute and ridicule anyone into silence who dares to question the legality of the first black president’s methods.

EQUALITY IS THE LAW BUT OFTEN NOT THE GOAL FOR LIBERALS

 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…. But equal is a prickly concept and one that is at complete odds with the progressive agenda of social justice. I was just reading about a dispute between Muslim barbers and some lesbians who wished to have their hair cut. It seems that the barbers did not wish to cut the hair and refused to do so. My first thought when I read this was of how well it defined the old “caught between a rock and a hard place” conundrum for our liberal progressive friends. The left have undermined the concept of equal rights for all citizens continuously for years. Groups seek to have themselves branded as disadvantaged minorities in hopes of receiving special (unequal) treatment and the left willingly promote the practice. The whole concept of affirmative action runs counter to personal advancement through hard work and the merits of your work product. Quotas placed on hiring and job placement required opportunities to be given to less qualified individuals over others to redress a perceived injustice suffered by some group. If we allow ourselves to be pulled into this political swamp, some groups will inevitably become more influential and important than other groups or individuals. Take my earlier example; If we see only the minority rights of the lesbians and do not see them as individual citizens with civil rights then we must also see the Muslims as a minority with special rights. Here in lies the conundrum, the right’s of which group should outweigh the other. The law should be blind and we should all fiercely defend the rights of all individuals independent of their ethnicity or skin pigment. Groups should never be granted rights or special treatment denied to other citizens. If we do this one thing America, just demand of our justice system equal treatment for all citizens we could eliminate all of the social engineering crap dividing us. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton along with every other race hustler should be shunned by their own race as the parasites they are.  

America used to be the “great melting pot” where immigrants came to simply be Americans. Speaking English and becoming a citizen was more important to them than the culture they had left behind. Italian Americans or Japanese Americans retained their cultural pride without trying to set themselves off as separate from other citizens. It was more important than anything else to these people who left foreign lands for our shores to become American citizens. My family arrived in this country as indentured servants. It was the price of coming to this country and sharing in the opportunity for a new life where the product of their labor belonged to them. Our family members have fought in every war since the Spanish American including both sides of the civil war. My grandfather turned hard work and an eighth grade education in a successful business and university teaching career that saw him rise to become the assistant secretary of agriculture and president of the American cattlemen’s association. The family history all the way up to the current generation is filled with farmers, doctors, attorneys, and engineers. The point is we earned our success without any of the special privileges young Mr. Obama received. Yet he claims disadvantaged minority status.

The progressive tactic of pitting one group against another in an effort to secure blocks of loyal liberal voters is destructive to our nation. The progressive income tax code penalizes success and steals the hard work and earnings of some citizens to subsidize, all too often, those who refuse to work. Americans of all shades and ethnicity need to reject any adjective placed in front of the word American when they are described. I supported Herman Cain from the minute I heard him interrupt a commentator who called him an African American candidate and stated clearly that he was not African, black or any other than just plain American. You see he did not want people to vote for him because of the pigment of his skin, just the correctness of his ideas and his history of successful management.

WE HAVE A LEADERSHIP VACUUM AND THE WORLD KNOWS IT

 

Read any political analysis written in the last five years and one thing stands out. This administration does not lead or even have a defined path or set of goals. It is evident from the aimless international policies as well as domestic failures of the Obama presidency. He does not present budgets to congress and lets the “do nothing” House and Senate drift without any clear direction from the executive branch. Our foreign policy defies any logical description. First we support the Arab Spring before we don’t, then we take a firm stand on Syrian human rights violations before we back down. North Korea and Iran are becoming very dangerous nuclear powers while the rest of the world looks to us for leadership and finds none.

I understand that the president grew up listening to and learning from mentors with very strong anti-colonial beliefs. There are some who believe that reducing the influence of the United States in the world is one of the Presidents goals because he views America as a colonial power and as such an unjust and arrogant bully in world affairs. I personally have no knowledge of the president’s thoughts on the subject but I will admit that his actions have diminished America both in the world’s perception as well as in reality. The profligate deficit spending of money borrowed from other nations coupled with reductions in our defense budget send a clear message to the worlds bad actors that we are not going to be able to intervene on behalf of other nations even if we want to. It is clear that Mr. Putin has no concern about what our reaction will be when he invades a neighboring country and if China decides to take Taiwan or North Korea invades to the South what could we do about it. When we are weak and appear leaderless it emboldens the tyrants of the world to commit aggressions against other nations, some of whom we have traditionally been allies.

If one speaks up and raises concern about border security the liberals inside the government and in the press brand you as callous and uncaring about the plight of the undocumented immigrants. You are said to show possible racist tendencies toward Hispanics. I listen to the braying and want to ask if those condemning me remember that during the fall of the USSR a few hundred suitcase nuclear weapons went missing. Weapons that are smaller and easier to transport than the tons of drugs moved North across the Mexican border every month. The world is a dangerous place filled with people intent on doing harm to America. They cannot be appeased or reasoned with and the only safety comes from strength of arms and the will to use it. Better to have a powerful military and not need it than wish you had one in the middle of a crisis.

The leadership vacuum in this county is real and it is putting us in danger. It does not matter if it is because the administration is inept or purposeful in their actions the result is the same. Our state department and CIA arm revolutionaries without knowing who they really are and we end up supporting the wrong side in civil wars like Egypt. When an arms smuggling operation blows up in our face in Benghazi everyone knows what happened but the administration lies to the American people and the world about it. Not one thing this bunch of amateur’s has done in international diplomacy has worked, at least not if the object was to promote stability in the world. I am no fan of Hillary or John Kerry but think of how impossible their job has been as the mouth piece of this paper tiger administration. The world does not believe that Obama will back up any threat and why should they his actions demonstrate that he won’t. He is too busy playing golf and campaigning to actually run a country even if he knew how.

               ANTI-CONSTITUTIONALIST RANT AND MY TAKE

 

I read a very thoughtful blog post the other day concerning the unconstitutional actions of our federal government. The item that gave me the most cause for thought was not in the post itself, but in a long rebuttal comment following the article. The main thrust of the comment was centered on the writer’s perception that right wing conservatives are trying to take away his “rights” by forcing him to live by some two hundred year old laws and that he was determined to make his own decisions. He went on to say he would not be silenced by a bunch of fanatics and a piece of moldy paper. The condemnation of constitutional conservatives was so uninformed that it was almost humorous. Here was a citizen, I presume, declaring his rights to free speech, free press, and the right to live his own life without interference from anyone while condemning the constitution.

First, he is correct, the constitution is an old document. It is also a unique document that changed the world and his life for the better even though he doesn’t realize it. His assertion that the language and concepts of the constitution are so dated that they should have no bearing on modern issues demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of history. At the risk of being incredibly redundant I think it is important to note that every one of the “rights”, he was demanding we acknowledge as belonging to him, are in fact codified in the constitution. The very document that he claims is so outdated that we should relegate it to history is the one guaranteeing his rights. Our American English is somewhat different than the language used in the constitution but certainly not hard to understand. I also find it ironic that our uninformed commentator would use Germany and Japan as examples of modern governments we should use to update our constitution. The delegates to the constitutional convention took their responsibility very seriously. They had just thrown off the shackles of the oppressive English monarchy. The cost in lives and wealth of such a struggle against tyranny was fresh in their minds. The constitution was written in the hope of preventing any future government of the United States from becoming such a tyranny. The reason that the moldy old piece of paper is still so relevant is precisely because they were successful at crafting the constraints in the constitution against governmental oppression. The delegates studied the history of nations that had attempted citizen government and considered why every single one had failed. The constitution was written to create checks and balances designed to prevent the country from becoming a mobocracy. Democratic governments typically had subjugated minorities to the will of the majority without any recourse. Our constitutional framers declared that some rights belonged to every citizen and that they could not be voted away by any democratic majority. The enduring, in fact perpetual, nature of these rights is why the constitution is still so relevant. Citizens and states have authority set down in the constitution with the companion exclusion from interference by the federal government. When a constitutional conservative says the EPA or Roe vs Wade is unconstitutional he is not debating the need to protect the environment or trying to restrict the woman’s right to choose. The argument being made is that the issue is reserved to the state governments by the constitution and prohibited from the authorities granted to the federal government. The framers knew well from personal experience the dangers of too much centralized government authority and sought to reserve as much local (state) control over our lives as possible.

I will argue against the constitutional legality of the Department of Energy, the EPA and the Department of Education all day long not because of what they do but because the constitution guarantees that the citizens of the states get to make their own decisions in all such matters. The constitution sets down certain enumerated powers for the federal government and excludes it from all others. So to the writer of the anti-constitutional rant, know first that the document you are railing against is the very one protecting your right to do so.