Representative Alcee Hastings introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill to give Attorney General Eric Holder, a man of truly dubious judgment, the sole discretion to decide if groups opposing government policy on abortion, guns, immigration, state's rights, and much more were domestic terrorist or hate groups. Another Hastings bill (HR 645) would use $360 million to set up at least 6 national emergency centers on military installations to house a large number of people in an emergency or major disaster, or for other appropriate needs. Would an appropriate need be to detain people who believed they had a Second Amendment right to keep a gun?
Alcee Hastings was named by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, but a rebellion among Democrats prevented that. You see, Hastings was an impeached Florida judge prior to being elected to the House. He was accused of accepting a bribe of $150,000 and impeached by the House. The Senate found him guilty in 1989. He was only the sixth federal judge ever to be found guilty by the Senate. His absurd judgment may not have been enough to keep the Democrats from making him Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, but it was a bit too embarrassing to put him forward given his impeachment as a judge, with subsequent loss of his judicial job.
Alcee Hastings was first elected to the House in 1992 as the representative of the 23rd district of Florida. It appears that the Americans who live in the area of Ft. Lauderdale and North Palm Beach and various places to the west of the beach area are not of sound judgment.
11 July 2009
The Villainy of Businessman T. Boone Pickens
One of the great problems with a mixed economy having a substantial private sector and an overblown government sector, is that businessmen lacking in morals can readily use the government to grant them profits through the government monopoly on the use of force that the businessman cannot gain in competition in a free market. In particular, there are many such immoral businessmen taking advantage of the many energy subsidies and mandates that Congress has been giving out for a very long time. For example, there is the egregious case of the ethanol subsidies and mandates that I have often harped about.
T. Boone Pickens has joined the Orren Boyle and James Taggart crowd of Atlas Shrugged. Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's Lobbying Editor, has written an excellent column on Pickens and "the Pickens Plan," called Congress gives your money to T. Boone Pickens. The small Washington Examiner has become a very good paper for excellent columnists, while the once very good Washington Times has lost much of its value since undergoing a change of editors.
Senators Robert Menendez (D, New Jersey), Orrin Hatch (R, Utah), and Harry Reid (D, Nevada) introduced a bill this last week to provide a $100,000 tax credit for the construction of each natural gas filling station and to double the very big subsidy for buying a natural gas car.
The methane-powered Honda Civic costs nearly $10,000 more than the regular Civic. The savings from using natural gas rather than gasoline does not begin to pay for this initial purchase cost difference. Natural gas cars are already subsidized, since the 2005 energy bill already gives tax credits for natural gas cars. The House version of the bill provides $30 million per year for research on natural gas cars.
Pickens founded and partly owns Clean Energy Fuels Corp. It builds natural gas fueling stations and it is a leader in transporting natural gas. He also has invested in V-Vehicle Company, which makes natural gas cars. Pickens is a wind generator investor as well and that industry also exists on subsidies and mandates. Since 1992, he has been lobbying Congress for natural gas subsidies.
Timothy P. Carney is a columnist worth following. Let me offer some quotes that indicate clearly how he thinks:
T. Boone Pickens has joined the Orren Boyle and James Taggart crowd of Atlas Shrugged. Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's Lobbying Editor, has written an excellent column on Pickens and "the Pickens Plan," called Congress gives your money to T. Boone Pickens. The small Washington Examiner has become a very good paper for excellent columnists, while the once very good Washington Times has lost much of its value since undergoing a change of editors.
Senators Robert Menendez (D, New Jersey), Orrin Hatch (R, Utah), and Harry Reid (D, Nevada) introduced a bill this last week to provide a $100,000 tax credit for the construction of each natural gas filling station and to double the very big subsidy for buying a natural gas car.
The methane-powered Honda Civic costs nearly $10,000 more than the regular Civic. The savings from using natural gas rather than gasoline does not begin to pay for this initial purchase cost difference. Natural gas cars are already subsidized, since the 2005 energy bill already gives tax credits for natural gas cars. The House version of the bill provides $30 million per year for research on natural gas cars.
Pickens founded and partly owns Clean Energy Fuels Corp. It builds natural gas fueling stations and it is a leader in transporting natural gas. He also has invested in V-Vehicle Company, which makes natural gas cars. Pickens is a wind generator investor as well and that industry also exists on subsidies and mandates. Since 1992, he has been lobbying Congress for natural gas subsidies.
Timothy P. Carney is a columnist worth following. Let me offer some quotes that indicate clearly how he thinks:
Perversely, his recent shift—from selling stuff (such as oil) that people want to buy, to selling stuff (like gas cars and wind power) that people buy only when it’s subsidized or mandated—has elevated Pickens’ reputation from greedy capitalist to world-saver.“Hostile takeovers” is an inaccurate term for what Pickens used to do. The management didn’t like them, sure, but the transactions in question consisted of shareholders voluntarily giving their stock to Pickens in exchange for Pickens’ money.Pickens’ new bid actually is hostile. I don’t want to fund his windmills or methane cars. But if I refuse, the IRS will come after me. But instead of“greed” it’s dubbed as “green.”
An Intelligent View of the Gov. Mark Sanford Affair
I have just read an wise discussion of the Gov. Mark Sanford affair by JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation. It is called Why the Left Looks Like a Big Hypocrite in the Sanford Affair, which title is really not a good indication of the gist of the article. It is really more about the nature of human love and sex and life.
10 July 2009
Dems Want to Screw Up Fed Ex
The House of Representatives has passed a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). A 230 word amendment directly at and only at Federal Express, would move Federal Express from working under the Railway Labor Act as all aviation-based businesses now do, to working under the requirements of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), as most other businesses do. The Teamsters Union and UPS want this change, because the Railway Labor Act provides impartial means to resolve labor disputes without strikes. Under the NLRA, however, any union local would be able to strike against Fed Ex and prevent overnight deliveries throughout the nation.
The provision's sponsor, Rep. James Oberstar, (D, Minnesota) was paid $164,000 by the Teamsters Union and UPS to insert this provision aimed at hurting Fed Ex into the FAA reauthorization bill.
Fed Ex delivers 8,000 kidney dialysis systems a day and more than 11,000 in vitro diagnostic materials a day. It delivers the critical failed component to get production lines back up and running as fast as possible in many industries, thereby saving many companies from huge losses, which also means saving many jobs. It insures that contracts can be signed and returned quickly to enable rapid starts on big contracts between companies.
It also sends the critical failure sample from a company to a laboratory such as mine, so that the cause of failure can be determined quickly. This failed part may be of very unique value, even though it is worthless, because it holds the clues to the cause of its failure and another such failure may be long in coming or come at more frightful expense. Nonetheless, it is important that it be determined if the failure was due to bad design, a failed manufacturing process, use of the part or device in an environment it could not handle, a vendor supplying different material than specified, or still some other cause. A rapid analysis to get the answer to the cause of failure might reassure a customer so he will continue buying the part, or it may allow directions to all customers that they not subject the part to some condition that will cause it to fail, or it may result in a change of vendors for a material used in the part or device. These actions may save lives in some cases and in others they may save jobs and great liability expenses. Thus, the failed part is actually much too valuable to put in the snail mail. What if the USPS lost the part?
The unique dependability and rapid delivery of Federal Express is much too valuable to lose in the interest of the Teamsters Union or to mollify UPS. This is a uniquely American institution with a rare history of success due to excellence. We cannot live without it, now that we have been shown the miracles it can deliver, but the USPS and even the pretty good UPS cannot. Perhaps a part of the reason for this attempt to single out Fed Ex for punishment is that its founder, Fred Smith, is a major supporter of the Cato Institute, which is a thorn in the foot of the pedestrian Teamsters Union and of the socialists in control of our government now generally.
The provision's sponsor, Rep. James Oberstar, (D, Minnesota) was paid $164,000 by the Teamsters Union and UPS to insert this provision aimed at hurting Fed Ex into the FAA reauthorization bill.
Fed Ex delivers 8,000 kidney dialysis systems a day and more than 11,000 in vitro diagnostic materials a day. It delivers the critical failed component to get production lines back up and running as fast as possible in many industries, thereby saving many companies from huge losses, which also means saving many jobs. It insures that contracts can be signed and returned quickly to enable rapid starts on big contracts between companies.
It also sends the critical failure sample from a company to a laboratory such as mine, so that the cause of failure can be determined quickly. This failed part may be of very unique value, even though it is worthless, because it holds the clues to the cause of its failure and another such failure may be long in coming or come at more frightful expense. Nonetheless, it is important that it be determined if the failure was due to bad design, a failed manufacturing process, use of the part or device in an environment it could not handle, a vendor supplying different material than specified, or still some other cause. A rapid analysis to get the answer to the cause of failure might reassure a customer so he will continue buying the part, or it may allow directions to all customers that they not subject the part to some condition that will cause it to fail, or it may result in a change of vendors for a material used in the part or device. These actions may save lives in some cases and in others they may save jobs and great liability expenses. Thus, the failed part is actually much too valuable to put in the snail mail. What if the USPS lost the part?
The unique dependability and rapid delivery of Federal Express is much too valuable to lose in the interest of the Teamsters Union or to mollify UPS. This is a uniquely American institution with a rare history of success due to excellence. We cannot live without it, now that we have been shown the miracles it can deliver, but the USPS and even the pretty good UPS cannot. Perhaps a part of the reason for this attempt to single out Fed Ex for punishment is that its founder, Fred Smith, is a major supporter of the Cato Institute, which is a thorn in the foot of the pedestrian Teamsters Union and of the socialists in control of our government now generally.
09 July 2009
A Modest Proposal for Congress
I have a modest and very responsible proposal for Congress. It is also very simple.
No Representative of the House and no Senator shall be allowed to vote in favor of a new law unless he signs a sworn affidavit that he has read the bill completely.
He may vote against a bill without such an affidavit, since it is reasonable not to pass a bill whose supporters say it will do something which the legislator thinks is wrong or since he may have read a portion of the bill which is so wrong that it is clear the bill should not be passed into law.
Of course, I would ideally like to require that he also make a clear statement for the record as to what power granted to the Congress allows Congress to make such law. He should be required to show that the law is not unconstitutional as well. If he claims the law is in the interest of the General Welfare, then he should also have to show what listed power of Congress allows him to act in the General Welfare by passing the law.
Now I understand that in the present climate of political unthought, it will be very unlikely that Congressmen will limit their laws to the scope of their actual Constitutional powers. But, it would be something if we could at least get them to swear that they read it. Then, at least they would not defend themselves as not responsible for some of the great foolhardiness in many of their laws by saying that they did not know what the law was doing because they did not read it.
Proposed laws should also be posted on the Internet for a week before they are voted on in Congress so the public can review them for Constitutionality, graft, and general stupidity.
No Representative of the House and no Senator shall be allowed to vote in favor of a new law unless he signs a sworn affidavit that he has read the bill completely.
He may vote against a bill without such an affidavit, since it is reasonable not to pass a bill whose supporters say it will do something which the legislator thinks is wrong or since he may have read a portion of the bill which is so wrong that it is clear the bill should not be passed into law.
Of course, I would ideally like to require that he also make a clear statement for the record as to what power granted to the Congress allows Congress to make such law. He should be required to show that the law is not unconstitutional as well. If he claims the law is in the interest of the General Welfare, then he should also have to show what listed power of Congress allows him to act in the General Welfare by passing the law.
Now I understand that in the present climate of political unthought, it will be very unlikely that Congressmen will limit their laws to the scope of their actual Constitutional powers. But, it would be something if we could at least get them to swear that they read it. Then, at least they would not defend themselves as not responsible for some of the great foolhardiness in many of their laws by saying that they did not know what the law was doing because they did not read it.
Proposed laws should also be posted on the Internet for a week before they are voted on in Congress so the public can review them for Constitutionality, graft, and general stupidity.
IMF Says Global Economy Shrinks in 2009
According to the International Monetary Fund, the global economy is expected to shrink by 1.4% in 2009 and will grow at a 2.5% rate in 2010. IMF says the U.S. GDP will contract by 2.6% in 2009, while it will grow at an anemic rate of 0.8% in 2010. The very low growth rate of 2010 will cause even more jobs to be lost. In June, the unemployment rate in the U.S. passed 9.5% and the Obama administration now admits that it will soon exceed 10%! When they passed the Stimulus Bill, which produced on de-stimulus, they swore it would keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8%. Obama and crew are clueless about the economy and business. Nothing could be more clear.
Now they want a second stimulus bill, because the first stimulus bill was not big enough! Of course, the only thing the first stimulus bill was designed to stimulate was Democrat supporters who are to be given a huge influx of money just before the 2010 elections. The Stimulus Bill was simply designed to be a vote bribery bill, not a means to rapidly kick-start the economy as the public was told it was to do. No, the insiders with political pull understood it to be pure pork and good old-fashioned patronage. We can be sure that a Democrat Second Stimulus Bill will be more of the same patronage and also too late in being distributed to actual producers to help lift the recession economy out of the doldrums.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is predicting that the average U.S. unemployment rate in the four quarters of 2010 will be 10.1%. Generally speaking, this should be high enough to insure that many Democrats now in Congress will be thrown out in the 2010 elections. This is part of the reason why the socialists are in such a hurry to blow through carbon cap and trade energy taxes, to socialize medicine further, to get union card check, and to add to the many social engineering programs they started with the First Stimulus Package by enacting a Second Stimulus Package.
I wonder: Are the Democrats planning to provide employment to the unemployed masses by having everyone erect a printing press in their home (ala the Great Leap Forward in China) to print enough money that we can cart it in wheelbarrows to the grocery store for a loaf of bread?
As we all know, Obama wants the U. S. to be more like wonderful Europe, as do most people in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast. The much admired Euro area will have a loss of 4.8% in their economies in 2009, or a loss 2.2% greater than the U.S. While the U.S. is to have a paltry 0.8% growth in 2010, Europe is expected to have a loss of 0.3% according to the IMF. So, why wouldn't we want to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Europe? After all, the United States of America is not Exceptionally Good. But Europe is, according to all of our best American socialists.
Now they want a second stimulus bill, because the first stimulus bill was not big enough! Of course, the only thing the first stimulus bill was designed to stimulate was Democrat supporters who are to be given a huge influx of money just before the 2010 elections. The Stimulus Bill was simply designed to be a vote bribery bill, not a means to rapidly kick-start the economy as the public was told it was to do. No, the insiders with political pull understood it to be pure pork and good old-fashioned patronage. We can be sure that a Democrat Second Stimulus Bill will be more of the same patronage and also too late in being distributed to actual producers to help lift the recession economy out of the doldrums.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is predicting that the average U.S. unemployment rate in the four quarters of 2010 will be 10.1%. Generally speaking, this should be high enough to insure that many Democrats now in Congress will be thrown out in the 2010 elections. This is part of the reason why the socialists are in such a hurry to blow through carbon cap and trade energy taxes, to socialize medicine further, to get union card check, and to add to the many social engineering programs they started with the First Stimulus Package by enacting a Second Stimulus Package.
I wonder: Are the Democrats planning to provide employment to the unemployed masses by having everyone erect a printing press in their home (ala the Great Leap Forward in China) to print enough money that we can cart it in wheelbarrows to the grocery store for a loaf of bread?
As we all know, Obama wants the U. S. to be more like wonderful Europe, as do most people in the Northeast and on the Pacific Coast. The much admired Euro area will have a loss of 4.8% in their economies in 2009, or a loss 2.2% greater than the U.S. While the U.S. is to have a paltry 0.8% growth in 2010, Europe is expected to have a loss of 0.3% according to the IMF. So, why wouldn't we want to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Europe? After all, the United States of America is not Exceptionally Good. But Europe is, according to all of our best American socialists.
G8 Nations Leaders Make Insane Agreement on CO2 Emissions
The G-8 nations, consisting of the United States, Russia, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Canada met and agreed upon drastic reductions in the emission of CO2. They set a goal for developed nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. They called upon the rest of the world to cut their emissions by 50% by then. This is primarily about reductions in CO2, which is more of benefit to the world as plant food than it is any harm. In fact, compared to the long term of world history the CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere at the start of the Industrial Age were very low and much too low to be optimal for plant growth. This extremely low CO2 concentration has served as the very poorly chosen reference point for CO2 concentrations minus the effect of man. Yet without man, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have almost always been higher than they were in 1850 and than they are now. Declaring a cut in energy use so drastic that the 80% reduction goal for CO2 emissions can be met in order to reduce plant growth and to prevent a possible, but not assured, increase of temperature of 0.5 C, is insane.
A big deal is being made of the fact that the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which includes the G8 nations and Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico, and South Africa is going to agree that global warming should not be allowed to exceed 2 C. Of course natural forces have often made the world more than 2 C warmer than it is now, though this has not happened in recent human history terms. But, it is totally implausible that the next 100 years will see a rise in temperature of more than 0.5 C due to man-made CO2 emissions, so this declaration by the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate is meaningless.
The G8 also made pledges to assist developing countries to adapt to global warming. There will be many false claims of global warming effects to get such aid, but any damage done here will be small potatoes compared to that done by stunting the G8 nations economies with the massive energy taxation and the foolhardy redirection of money, employment, and skills into many forms of alternative energy which have never been able to compete in the free market with fossil fuels, despite much effort in the past to help them to do so. The lesson has been clear. When and if, fossil fuels become expensive enough, other forms of fuel will be developed, but this has never happened despite constant predictions that it would. As with corn-derived ethanol, the politicians will refuse to recognize the inefficiencies of wind generators, solar power, and biomass energy, with the consequence that huge resources will be wasted on them at the expense of everyone not working in those specific industries.
But all this drastic and unnecessary destruction of the greatest economies in the world is not enough for Oxfam, an international aid charity. That group is calling for CO2 emissions decreases of 40% by 2020 and wants the G8 to pledge much more money to help the poorest countries deal with "climate chaos." Some people are clearly of other worlds!
Of course, I would say the same of Obama and the other leaders of the G8 nations. They are all disconnected from this world. All of them have enough access to information and are supposed to be intelligent enough that they should easily be able to make the judgment that man's emissions of CO2 are not going to cause catastrophic global warming. If it is not going to be catastrophic, then there is simply no rationale for interfering with the private sector's use of energy to produce goods and services as efficiently as possible. There is no reason to impose government will upon the people in how they use energy either. It is a very valid concern for many that they and their family should be safer on the roads in a heavier vehicle. For Obama to put many thousands of Americans to death in road accidents in the name of a false global warming hysteria is simply an evil act. [It is a curious fact that everyday I see Obama stickers on SUVs. Apparently, his supporters rarely note where his policies would interfere with their own personal choices.]
It is incumbent upon a President of the United States of America to have a great deal more wisdom than Obama is showing himself to have on this issue. This is not a surprise, however, since he has shown himself to be wrongheaded on issue after issue. This man is clearly not an observer of the facts of this world. Perhaps we really do need to see his birth certificate. No, not so much to find out if he was born in Kenya or in Hawaii, as to see if he was born on a planet of another solar system. Admittedly, there is a more plausible explanation for Obama's and the other leaders of the G8 nations actions: they lust for power over the private sector of their economies and energy taxes, use restrictions, and subsidies are a very powerful way for them to attain more tyrannical powers.
A big deal is being made of the fact that the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, which includes the G8 nations and Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico, and South Africa is going to agree that global warming should not be allowed to exceed 2 C. Of course natural forces have often made the world more than 2 C warmer than it is now, though this has not happened in recent human history terms. But, it is totally implausible that the next 100 years will see a rise in temperature of more than 0.5 C due to man-made CO2 emissions, so this declaration by the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate is meaningless.
The G8 also made pledges to assist developing countries to adapt to global warming. There will be many false claims of global warming effects to get such aid, but any damage done here will be small potatoes compared to that done by stunting the G8 nations economies with the massive energy taxation and the foolhardy redirection of money, employment, and skills into many forms of alternative energy which have never been able to compete in the free market with fossil fuels, despite much effort in the past to help them to do so. The lesson has been clear. When and if, fossil fuels become expensive enough, other forms of fuel will be developed, but this has never happened despite constant predictions that it would. As with corn-derived ethanol, the politicians will refuse to recognize the inefficiencies of wind generators, solar power, and biomass energy, with the consequence that huge resources will be wasted on them at the expense of everyone not working in those specific industries.
But all this drastic and unnecessary destruction of the greatest economies in the world is not enough for Oxfam, an international aid charity. That group is calling for CO2 emissions decreases of 40% by 2020 and wants the G8 to pledge much more money to help the poorest countries deal with "climate chaos." Some people are clearly of other worlds!
Of course, I would say the same of Obama and the other leaders of the G8 nations. They are all disconnected from this world. All of them have enough access to information and are supposed to be intelligent enough that they should easily be able to make the judgment that man's emissions of CO2 are not going to cause catastrophic global warming. If it is not going to be catastrophic, then there is simply no rationale for interfering with the private sector's use of energy to produce goods and services as efficiently as possible. There is no reason to impose government will upon the people in how they use energy either. It is a very valid concern for many that they and their family should be safer on the roads in a heavier vehicle. For Obama to put many thousands of Americans to death in road accidents in the name of a false global warming hysteria is simply an evil act. [It is a curious fact that everyday I see Obama stickers on SUVs. Apparently, his supporters rarely note where his policies would interfere with their own personal choices.]
It is incumbent upon a President of the United States of America to have a great deal more wisdom than Obama is showing himself to have on this issue. This is not a surprise, however, since he has shown himself to be wrongheaded on issue after issue. This man is clearly not an observer of the facts of this world. Perhaps we really do need to see his birth certificate. No, not so much to find out if he was born in Kenya or in Hawaii, as to see if he was born on a planet of another solar system. Admittedly, there is a more plausible explanation for Obama's and the other leaders of the G8 nations actions: they lust for power over the private sector of their economies and energy taxes, use restrictions, and subsidies are a very powerful way for them to attain more tyrannical powers.
05 July 2009
The Government Problem
We have a massive problem with government ignoring the best interests of the people in these United States of America. Both the people and their elected representatives clearly have come to hold each other in disdain. One would think that in a democracy, the people could use the power of their vote to elect representatives who respected them and cared strongly for their welfare, which translates into believing that the principal requirement of the people is their freedom to choose their own values and to be able to act on them to manage their own lives. But, many of the people themselves are elitists who believe that many other people are incapable of choosing their own values and incapable of managing their own lives. Almost all of our politicians arise from this elitist group of the people and they are also of a group that lusts for personal power and influence.
Throughout history, democracies have been short-lived. They always have transitioned into tyranny. They fail because most of the people have their hands full managing their own lives and do not make the effort to understand what is going on in government. Even when some understand what is going on, they rarely take the necessary time to oppose it. Those who lust for power always have more incentive than those who wish to prevent its use. The Framers of the Constitution were fully aware of this lesson of history and they greatly feared democracy. They were confident that the people could manage their own lives, but they understood that the people were not very good managers of government. So, the Framers worked very hard to produce a government whose powers were limited to the minimum needed to protect the rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness from anarchy and from a transition into a tyranny.
They allowed the people to elect the members of the House of Representatives who had the sole power to originate bills to tax the people and had a short term of office of two years. They balanced this democratic arm of the legislature with a Senate, whose members were chosen by the legislatures of the states. This balanced the perceptions of the people with those of a group of people who were more select in abilities and who might be more likely to bear the interests of the states and local regions in mind. Democracy was not absent here, but it was a level removed. The six year term of office of the Senators was also a means to give them a longer range viewpoint of the needs of the people, which would be less subject to the fads and fashion that swept through the people from time to time. The President was not to be chosen by direct vote of the people, but was to be chosen by the Electoral College. The Electors in the Electoral College were in the position very briefly and would not have time to accrue interests contrary to those of the people common to those who hold power for some time. They were also to be selected by a process that included state interests and kept them removed somewhat from the whims and inattention of the people. Of course, they were expected to be intelligent and interested citizens.
Over time, we have removed many of the republican features of our government as designed by the Framers of the Constitution. We have replaced them with democratic features. We have put the government very directly in the hands of the people. Despite this, recent events and a long history have made it clear that the people do not really control the government. This result is just what the Framers of the Constitution understood would happen. For a very long time, polls of the people show that they have very little respect for Congress members. Meanwhile, contrary to the Framers belief that the people could manage their own lives, our democratically elected Congress members believe that they must micromanage the lives of the people, because the people are not capable of managing their own lives. So, we now have a system of government in which the people, who are thought to be incapable of managing their own lives, are given the responsibility to manage government by democratically selecting their rulers, who will really rule them with massive volumes of laws to regulate their every behavior and action.
On the face of it, this inversion of the wisdom of the Framers of the Constitution makes no sense. One simply would never turn over the management of the household to the children. Yet, we have a government that regards the people as children and yet all of whose officials, save the Supreme Court, are selected directly by the people, those very same children. Why would this be desired by the elitists? Because this was the cost of power and as the system evolved, it became very clear that the people were easily manipulated.
What would have prevented this even with the trend toward democracy? The only hope would have been that the people had a strong concept of the need for highly limited government so that the people, who were capable of managing their own lives, would be free to do so. Once upon a time, most Americans did understand this. However, the elitists who hungered for power found the means to prevent this principle from continuing to be strongly held by the people. In the 1800s they worked very hard to build up public school systems designed explicitly for the purpose of controlling the information that would inform our youth about America and its principles. They found that they could use a fear of immigrants and their different cultures and religions as a means to sell this idea of public schools to the American public, but the elitists who ran the school boards, ran the colleges of education, and wrote in the teaching journals, never lost sight of their real goal to use public schools to broadly indoctrinate our youth in the need for stronger and more controlling government. In addition, the public schools are very adamant that our society is full of victims and people who are incapable of managing their own lives. It is biased against industry and employers and belittles their accomplishments. To this day, men such as Weatherman Bill Ayers, are working tirelessly to further the cause of public school discrimination against all things of the private sector and all things pertaining to individual competance and rights.
One of the principal reasons that education is valuable to an individual is precisely because a knowledge of history and a study of government will cause many to understand the need for limited government and for a republican, not a democratic, government. It will also teach youth that they are capable of managing their own lives and to help them find moral principles by which they can manage their lives. Modern public schools are a creature of government and the teachers and curriculum are chosen to further the needs and interests of a power-seeking government, not the needs of the students and the people generally. There is an obvious conflict-of-interest here. Furthermore, public schools must at least pretend to respect religious freedom, so they long since abrogated the moral guidance that would conflict with religious freedoms very overtly. They do offer much moral guidance nonetheless, but it is carefully chosen to support a belief that people are commonly incapable of managing their own lives and need the extensive help of government in doing so.
Of course, the people are not in school anymore for most of their lives, so it is necessary to carefully control the information they get after they have left school. This is done by a very careful control and manipulation of the media. Of course, people who can write and who feel comfortable speaking for hours to the public, are generally elitists educated and indoctrinated in the public schools and universities. Even most of the private colleges and universities are now run by elitist socialists. They ignore the stories of how government power has abused the interests of the people and pretend that all problems are caused by the private sector. They favor the idea that any identifiable problem requires a solution by government, even if it was government that first caused the problem. Since the news is so dominated by stories of government, the reporters need to keep close to government officials to have early access to stories, so this is a further means of control. In addition, big government releases all stories with a spin favorable to big government, which takes in many reporters over time, even if they begin with some skepticism.
Americans are problem-solvers. They like the idea of identifying problems and solving them. This is done all the time in the private sector and it is generally done well, but we seldom hear about these problems being solved. Since we like the idea that we Americans are problem-solvers, it gives most Americans something of a thrill when the government announces that it has identified and solved a problem. We like it when action is taken to solve a problem, so government takes advantage of this and "solves" problems better left to the private sector all the time. The private sector too seldom toots its own horn to tell the public about the many problems it solves and solves well. Besides, the schools and the media are biased only to telling the people about government "solutions."
Back to where this has left us. The elected officials of the federal government have their own agenda, which interestingly enough, most of the people do not approve of. Polls of the people clearly show them to have a very low regard for Congress. Despite this, Congressmen are re-elected over and over. Apparently, the very vast majority of Congressmen are masters of the re-election game. Perhaps most voters are happy with their Congressman and only unhappy with all the other Congressmen. More likely, I think this unhappiness with Congressmen commonly does visit their own representative. But, the alternative choices on the ballot usually offer only slightly different principles of government, the media backs the government activists more often than not, and as the voter thinks about who to vote for his mis-education recall kicks in and he makes the wrong choice. Besides, as often as he is disgruntled by government actions that inconvenience him, he has only the most muddled sense of history and or moral principles, so how is he going to make a rational choice?
Let us examine a couple of specific issues that illustrate some of the problems. Let us start with the ethanol mandate passed more than a year ago. This bill mandated the expanded use of ethanol in gasoline mixtures because it was a means to increase energy independence and to decrease air pollution. Of course, it was also a means to add considerable income for corn farmers. Corn was already a heavily subsidized crop. It also produced income for ethanol refiners such as ADM. Of course, what was most important for our political Congressmen was that they could buy many corn state votes and the rest of the country would not complain too much because of the energy independence and pollution control rationales. About the time of passage, it was a bit inconvenient that a number of studies discovered that ethanol from corn took as much energy to produce as it provided when it was combusted. Also, it was found that it probably increased, rather than decreased, pollution. It also soon became apparent that food prices for grains went up, the value of farmland increased, and those meats produced by feeding livestock corn went up drastically. Rising food prices hurt our large food export market.
Did Congress revoke the bad law mandating the use of ethanol? Of course not. The special interests making more money had to be kept happy and the general public did not much seem to care that they were being bilked. If the states still had any power over the federal government, they might have brought pressure to bear, but the many states with minor corn production no longer have such power to watch over the interests of their citizens in our no longer representative government scheme. We are a democracy now!
How about the Waxman-Markey energy tax being called a cap and trade bill? Its rationale is that it will prevent the pollution of the globe by American CO2 emissions. More Americans now know this rationale makes no sense than those who believe it. This does not matter. The Congress hides morally behind their claim that man-made CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic global warming, even though the globe has been cooling for 11 years despite CO2 emissions increasing and despite the growing scientific evidence that sunspot inactivity is going to result in cooling for several more years. They are buying the votes and campaign contributions of all those many Americans who are opposed to business and industry and of those who are religious-type environmentalists who hate all things in man's best interest. They are also buying the campaign contributions of all the wind generator, solar power, biomass conversion, and electric smart-grid companies.
It bothers them little that they will cause large-scale unemployment in the coal industry, the oil refinery business, the oil pipeline business, for those railroads that haul large amounts of coal, and the coal-fired electric generator plants. They will badly hurt energy-intensive industry, including aluminum, steel, coke, bakery, paper, brewery, oil refinery, trucking, busing, and cab companies. Some industries have been bought off in the short term by free coupons for CO2 emissions, but these will not exist in a few years. Meanwhile many other companies will see their electric bills rise greatly. My $880 per month laboratory energy bill may well double. This is not a trivial expense item for us. This increased cost of energy use will hurt American exports. It is also going to hit all of us at home. Of course, in the early years the pain will be less and it will then be ratchetted up all the while the Earth will continue to cool! But our democratically elected Democrat Congress will not care. A huge phone call volume that overwhelmed the phone system in the House for three days did not prevent the Waxman-Markey bill from passing. To be sure, it was diluted in the early years to make it less of a pill to the coal-using states and plenty of earmarks were added to gain other votes, which changes required that 300 additional pages be added at 3 AM to a bill that was already 932 pages long. The House passed it that same day. No one read the bill before voting for it.
It will be very hard to get this reversed, once it passes the Senate. The Senate might once have been a stronger bastion of state interests and the coal-rich, coal-using states and the oil-refinery rich states might have brought this massively destructive bill to a stop. It is now likely to be a closely run affair, especially now that a selective recounting of votes in Minnesota has put Al Franken in the Senate producing the Democrat Party's 60-vote control against filabuster.
Let us consider the massive bailouts. Most of the people opposed these. The Congress did not listen. Now that companies receiving bailout money are finally being allowed to return it in some cases, the government wants to spend it elsewhere rather than to reduce the debt. The debt burden is huge and now there will have to be general tax increases. There have already been increased taxes on businesses, which will have to pass on the costs to consumers. There will be increased taxes on the sort-of-rich, but much of that will have to be passed on to the customers who made those people rich by buying their services. There will be increased energy taxes, even if Waxman-Markey does not pass the Senate, since they will simply go back to the drawing boards and come up with an energy tax that will pass.
Finally, the people have long thought that there are problems in the health care industry. There are. Most of those problems are caused by the government and some of the complaining people understand this. Some do not. But, most people are happy with their own health insurance plan. Obama said we could keep the plan we were happy with. But now, Congress is talking about taxing many people's company's contributions to their plan. Obama's administration is also saying that they will establish criteria for acceptable health insurance plans. You may not be a candidate for drug addiction, but you will have to have a plan that covers care for such people. This will raise your costs. You may not have any need for menal disability care, but you will have to pay for a plan to cover those who do. So, you may very well not be allowed to keep your present plan. If the company you work for does not offer a plan, in many cases it will have to. To do this, some companies will have to fire some employees. Some will also opt to pay the penalty fee and no longer offer a more expensive government-qualifying health insurance plan. One can only imagine how the government will spend that income. You will wind up buying the government health insurance plan then and it will come to be subsidized, thereby eliminating all private sector health insurance plans. The people are very clear in rejecting a government run health care industry, but this is exactly what Congress wants to force upon us. We are a democracy, but Congress does not listen to us. They do not have to, since they are masters at fooling us into re-electing them.
What is the bottom line? Our republic became a democracy. The people do not have a sufficient grasp of history, of the principles of good government, and they do not follow the shenanigans of our government well enough to actually control it. Our democracy has become exactly what the Framers of the Constitution knew democracies will always become. It has become a tyranny! To correct this situation, we must at least create a strong education competition by private schools with the public schools. In time we should eliminate the public schools. This is critical. Only when the people have a firm grasp of history, the critical need to greatly limit the scope of government, an understanding of our Constitution, and the conviction that most people are capable of managing their own lives, will they have the means to wrest back control of our out-of-control government. Only then can we end the tyranny which is now single-mindedly squashing the right of the sovereign individual American to choose his own values and to pursue them in the management of his own life!
Throughout history, democracies have been short-lived. They always have transitioned into tyranny. They fail because most of the people have their hands full managing their own lives and do not make the effort to understand what is going on in government. Even when some understand what is going on, they rarely take the necessary time to oppose it. Those who lust for power always have more incentive than those who wish to prevent its use. The Framers of the Constitution were fully aware of this lesson of history and they greatly feared democracy. They were confident that the people could manage their own lives, but they understood that the people were not very good managers of government. So, the Framers worked very hard to produce a government whose powers were limited to the minimum needed to protect the rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness from anarchy and from a transition into a tyranny.
They allowed the people to elect the members of the House of Representatives who had the sole power to originate bills to tax the people and had a short term of office of two years. They balanced this democratic arm of the legislature with a Senate, whose members were chosen by the legislatures of the states. This balanced the perceptions of the people with those of a group of people who were more select in abilities and who might be more likely to bear the interests of the states and local regions in mind. Democracy was not absent here, but it was a level removed. The six year term of office of the Senators was also a means to give them a longer range viewpoint of the needs of the people, which would be less subject to the fads and fashion that swept through the people from time to time. The President was not to be chosen by direct vote of the people, but was to be chosen by the Electoral College. The Electors in the Electoral College were in the position very briefly and would not have time to accrue interests contrary to those of the people common to those who hold power for some time. They were also to be selected by a process that included state interests and kept them removed somewhat from the whims and inattention of the people. Of course, they were expected to be intelligent and interested citizens.
Over time, we have removed many of the republican features of our government as designed by the Framers of the Constitution. We have replaced them with democratic features. We have put the government very directly in the hands of the people. Despite this, recent events and a long history have made it clear that the people do not really control the government. This result is just what the Framers of the Constitution understood would happen. For a very long time, polls of the people show that they have very little respect for Congress members. Meanwhile, contrary to the Framers belief that the people could manage their own lives, our democratically elected Congress members believe that they must micromanage the lives of the people, because the people are not capable of managing their own lives. So, we now have a system of government in which the people, who are thought to be incapable of managing their own lives, are given the responsibility to manage government by democratically selecting their rulers, who will really rule them with massive volumes of laws to regulate their every behavior and action.
On the face of it, this inversion of the wisdom of the Framers of the Constitution makes no sense. One simply would never turn over the management of the household to the children. Yet, we have a government that regards the people as children and yet all of whose officials, save the Supreme Court, are selected directly by the people, those very same children. Why would this be desired by the elitists? Because this was the cost of power and as the system evolved, it became very clear that the people were easily manipulated.
What would have prevented this even with the trend toward democracy? The only hope would have been that the people had a strong concept of the need for highly limited government so that the people, who were capable of managing their own lives, would be free to do so. Once upon a time, most Americans did understand this. However, the elitists who hungered for power found the means to prevent this principle from continuing to be strongly held by the people. In the 1800s they worked very hard to build up public school systems designed explicitly for the purpose of controlling the information that would inform our youth about America and its principles. They found that they could use a fear of immigrants and their different cultures and religions as a means to sell this idea of public schools to the American public, but the elitists who ran the school boards, ran the colleges of education, and wrote in the teaching journals, never lost sight of their real goal to use public schools to broadly indoctrinate our youth in the need for stronger and more controlling government. In addition, the public schools are very adamant that our society is full of victims and people who are incapable of managing their own lives. It is biased against industry and employers and belittles their accomplishments. To this day, men such as Weatherman Bill Ayers, are working tirelessly to further the cause of public school discrimination against all things of the private sector and all things pertaining to individual competance and rights.
One of the principal reasons that education is valuable to an individual is precisely because a knowledge of history and a study of government will cause many to understand the need for limited government and for a republican, not a democratic, government. It will also teach youth that they are capable of managing their own lives and to help them find moral principles by which they can manage their lives. Modern public schools are a creature of government and the teachers and curriculum are chosen to further the needs and interests of a power-seeking government, not the needs of the students and the people generally. There is an obvious conflict-of-interest here. Furthermore, public schools must at least pretend to respect religious freedom, so they long since abrogated the moral guidance that would conflict with religious freedoms very overtly. They do offer much moral guidance nonetheless, but it is carefully chosen to support a belief that people are commonly incapable of managing their own lives and need the extensive help of government in doing so.
Of course, the people are not in school anymore for most of their lives, so it is necessary to carefully control the information they get after they have left school. This is done by a very careful control and manipulation of the media. Of course, people who can write and who feel comfortable speaking for hours to the public, are generally elitists educated and indoctrinated in the public schools and universities. Even most of the private colleges and universities are now run by elitist socialists. They ignore the stories of how government power has abused the interests of the people and pretend that all problems are caused by the private sector. They favor the idea that any identifiable problem requires a solution by government, even if it was government that first caused the problem. Since the news is so dominated by stories of government, the reporters need to keep close to government officials to have early access to stories, so this is a further means of control. In addition, big government releases all stories with a spin favorable to big government, which takes in many reporters over time, even if they begin with some skepticism.
Americans are problem-solvers. They like the idea of identifying problems and solving them. This is done all the time in the private sector and it is generally done well, but we seldom hear about these problems being solved. Since we like the idea that we Americans are problem-solvers, it gives most Americans something of a thrill when the government announces that it has identified and solved a problem. We like it when action is taken to solve a problem, so government takes advantage of this and "solves" problems better left to the private sector all the time. The private sector too seldom toots its own horn to tell the public about the many problems it solves and solves well. Besides, the schools and the media are biased only to telling the people about government "solutions."
Back to where this has left us. The elected officials of the federal government have their own agenda, which interestingly enough, most of the people do not approve of. Polls of the people clearly show them to have a very low regard for Congress. Despite this, Congressmen are re-elected over and over. Apparently, the very vast majority of Congressmen are masters of the re-election game. Perhaps most voters are happy with their Congressman and only unhappy with all the other Congressmen. More likely, I think this unhappiness with Congressmen commonly does visit their own representative. But, the alternative choices on the ballot usually offer only slightly different principles of government, the media backs the government activists more often than not, and as the voter thinks about who to vote for his mis-education recall kicks in and he makes the wrong choice. Besides, as often as he is disgruntled by government actions that inconvenience him, he has only the most muddled sense of history and or moral principles, so how is he going to make a rational choice?
Let us examine a couple of specific issues that illustrate some of the problems. Let us start with the ethanol mandate passed more than a year ago. This bill mandated the expanded use of ethanol in gasoline mixtures because it was a means to increase energy independence and to decrease air pollution. Of course, it was also a means to add considerable income for corn farmers. Corn was already a heavily subsidized crop. It also produced income for ethanol refiners such as ADM. Of course, what was most important for our political Congressmen was that they could buy many corn state votes and the rest of the country would not complain too much because of the energy independence and pollution control rationales. About the time of passage, it was a bit inconvenient that a number of studies discovered that ethanol from corn took as much energy to produce as it provided when it was combusted. Also, it was found that it probably increased, rather than decreased, pollution. It also soon became apparent that food prices for grains went up, the value of farmland increased, and those meats produced by feeding livestock corn went up drastically. Rising food prices hurt our large food export market.
Did Congress revoke the bad law mandating the use of ethanol? Of course not. The special interests making more money had to be kept happy and the general public did not much seem to care that they were being bilked. If the states still had any power over the federal government, they might have brought pressure to bear, but the many states with minor corn production no longer have such power to watch over the interests of their citizens in our no longer representative government scheme. We are a democracy now!
How about the Waxman-Markey energy tax being called a cap and trade bill? Its rationale is that it will prevent the pollution of the globe by American CO2 emissions. More Americans now know this rationale makes no sense than those who believe it. This does not matter. The Congress hides morally behind their claim that man-made CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic global warming, even though the globe has been cooling for 11 years despite CO2 emissions increasing and despite the growing scientific evidence that sunspot inactivity is going to result in cooling for several more years. They are buying the votes and campaign contributions of all those many Americans who are opposed to business and industry and of those who are religious-type environmentalists who hate all things in man's best interest. They are also buying the campaign contributions of all the wind generator, solar power, biomass conversion, and electric smart-grid companies.
It bothers them little that they will cause large-scale unemployment in the coal industry, the oil refinery business, the oil pipeline business, for those railroads that haul large amounts of coal, and the coal-fired electric generator plants. They will badly hurt energy-intensive industry, including aluminum, steel, coke, bakery, paper, brewery, oil refinery, trucking, busing, and cab companies. Some industries have been bought off in the short term by free coupons for CO2 emissions, but these will not exist in a few years. Meanwhile many other companies will see their electric bills rise greatly. My $880 per month laboratory energy bill may well double. This is not a trivial expense item for us. This increased cost of energy use will hurt American exports. It is also going to hit all of us at home. Of course, in the early years the pain will be less and it will then be ratchetted up all the while the Earth will continue to cool! But our democratically elected Democrat Congress will not care. A huge phone call volume that overwhelmed the phone system in the House for three days did not prevent the Waxman-Markey bill from passing. To be sure, it was diluted in the early years to make it less of a pill to the coal-using states and plenty of earmarks were added to gain other votes, which changes required that 300 additional pages be added at 3 AM to a bill that was already 932 pages long. The House passed it that same day. No one read the bill before voting for it.
It will be very hard to get this reversed, once it passes the Senate. The Senate might once have been a stronger bastion of state interests and the coal-rich, coal-using states and the oil-refinery rich states might have brought this massively destructive bill to a stop. It is now likely to be a closely run affair, especially now that a selective recounting of votes in Minnesota has put Al Franken in the Senate producing the Democrat Party's 60-vote control against filabuster.
Let us consider the massive bailouts. Most of the people opposed these. The Congress did not listen. Now that companies receiving bailout money are finally being allowed to return it in some cases, the government wants to spend it elsewhere rather than to reduce the debt. The debt burden is huge and now there will have to be general tax increases. There have already been increased taxes on businesses, which will have to pass on the costs to consumers. There will be increased taxes on the sort-of-rich, but much of that will have to be passed on to the customers who made those people rich by buying their services. There will be increased energy taxes, even if Waxman-Markey does not pass the Senate, since they will simply go back to the drawing boards and come up with an energy tax that will pass.
Finally, the people have long thought that there are problems in the health care industry. There are. Most of those problems are caused by the government and some of the complaining people understand this. Some do not. But, most people are happy with their own health insurance plan. Obama said we could keep the plan we were happy with. But now, Congress is talking about taxing many people's company's contributions to their plan. Obama's administration is also saying that they will establish criteria for acceptable health insurance plans. You may not be a candidate for drug addiction, but you will have to have a plan that covers care for such people. This will raise your costs. You may not have any need for menal disability care, but you will have to pay for a plan to cover those who do. So, you may very well not be allowed to keep your present plan. If the company you work for does not offer a plan, in many cases it will have to. To do this, some companies will have to fire some employees. Some will also opt to pay the penalty fee and no longer offer a more expensive government-qualifying health insurance plan. One can only imagine how the government will spend that income. You will wind up buying the government health insurance plan then and it will come to be subsidized, thereby eliminating all private sector health insurance plans. The people are very clear in rejecting a government run health care industry, but this is exactly what Congress wants to force upon us. We are a democracy, but Congress does not listen to us. They do not have to, since they are masters at fooling us into re-electing them.
What is the bottom line? Our republic became a democracy. The people do not have a sufficient grasp of history, of the principles of good government, and they do not follow the shenanigans of our government well enough to actually control it. Our democracy has become exactly what the Framers of the Constitution knew democracies will always become. It has become a tyranny! To correct this situation, we must at least create a strong education competition by private schools with the public schools. In time we should eliminate the public schools. This is critical. Only when the people have a firm grasp of history, the critical need to greatly limit the scope of government, an understanding of our Constitution, and the conviction that most people are capable of managing their own lives, will they have the means to wrest back control of our out-of-control government. Only then can we end the tyranny which is now single-mindedly squashing the right of the sovereign individual American to choose his own values and to pursue them in the management of his own life!
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