Space and Good Fences Make Good Neighbors -- Good Neighbors Make Limited Government

Once again the overcrowded cities have voted for the more authoritarian Presidential candidate, while the people of "flyover country" and the "Racist South," from the viewpoint of presumptuous Progressive Elitists, have chosen a less authoritarian candidate.  This again proves that space and good fences make good neighbors, while overcrowded conditions lead to bossy people who want ever so badly to push their values on other people and to micromanage their lives.  Somehow, these "educated" Progressive Elitists always manage to presume that they can manage the lives of people they do not know better than said people can do this themselves.  They pretend politically that they respect these people whose lives need to be micromanaged by them, but in their private discussions among one another, they actually despise the people they believe to be incapable of choosing their own values properly and managing their own lives.

In the 2016 election, it is clear that not only did a majority of Americans in Flyover Country and in the South reject the rule of the Progressive Elitists, but so too did a majority in the Rust Belt.  The Obama years of manufacturing industry suppression and of fossil fuel energy suppression took a big toll on the Rust Belt and led to an upheaval with catastrophic and surprising results for the Democrat Socialist Party.  The low percentage of Americans with jobs worth having and the long stagnant wages had finally become too much for many Americans.  The ever-increasing expense and inconveniences of ObamaCare played a significant role also in the rebellion.  Seeing more businesses go out of business than were created for many years under Obama had its consequences.  The loss of jobs due to the vendetta against coal and the threat of a loss of jobs due to the Democrat desire to suppress fracking not only hurt the immediate industries, but hurt those who transported or used the coal, oil, gas, and the products made from them.  It would hurt those in the plastics industry, for instance.  Meanwhile, many a business and resident either had energy bills higher than necessary already or was facing sharp future increases.  Many were sick of the constant stream of Democrat lies and misrepresentations.  Many white Americans, especially men, were sick of being discriminated against in hiring and in contracting work.  A rebellious upheaval was long overdue.

Donald Trump was the beneficiary of all this and the fact that Hillary Clinton was a very unappealing opponent.  Not that Trump himself was an appealing Presidential candidate.  He leaves much to be desired as well.  But as I have noted, he does have some good policy positions, which if he carries through with them with a Republican House and Senate, might make him a much less undesirable President than Hillary would have been.  Trump will now be put to the test.

The actions he badly needs to take are these:

• Repeal ObamaCare as pledged.
• Reduce Corporate and Personal Income taxes, as pledged, so American businesses can compete better in the global markets from American plants and facilities and so multinational companies can afford to return $2 trillion of earnings abroad to the states to make a huge investment in America.
• Protect the Right to Work Laws so Americans are not forced to join labor unions they do not want to join.  Also deny unions card check and rapid representation elections.
• Nominate a judge for the open Supreme Court position who has a proper understanding of the broad and many individual rights every one of us has.
• End the federal government role in promoting the false catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  Fire the many employees of the EPA, NASA, NOAA, and the National Science Foundation who have insidiously supported this false science and wasted huge sums of taxpayer money on it, while forcing up energy costs in the entire nation in its name.
• Follow through on his pledge to have a government employee hiring freeze.
• Hire good managers for the Veterans Administration and its hospitals, while allowing many more options for veterans to use private sector medical care.
• Stop the practice of government favoring some groups based on their ethnicity or sex. Everyone has equal individual rights and it is the function of legitimate government to protect everyone's equal rights.
• The purpose of a smaller Department of Education should be to end the government monopoly on K-12 education by advancing the widespread use of vouchers to allow all students school choice.  Trump is on-board to start this process, but should expand its scope.
• Reopen federal lands and offshore areas for the development of fossil fuel mines and drilling.
• Sell off much of the federal land so it can become more productive, provide more jobs, and generate more local and state tax revenue.
• Reduce the number of regulations and their expense, as he has pledged to do.
• Simplify the tax code as pledged.
• End the death tax as pledged.
• End the IRS practice of discriminating against non-profit organizations who support individual rights and limited or constitutional government.
• Limit federal grants to colleges to work with defense potential.  This will largely end taxpayer funding to faculty devoted to expanding the role and size of government.
• End requirements that government pay union level wages.
• End the Obama executive action that raised the salary level at which overtime pay had to be paid.
• Reduce the federal minimum wage so that more Americans of low productivity or in low cost of living areas may be employed.  This will be very helpful in allowing the under-educated to get their first jobs and in promoting businesses in both poor city neighborhoods and low cost of living areas of the country.
• Repeal Dodd-Frank, which was a deception to make Americans think the government had no responsibility for the Great Recession.  It made it difficult for smaller banks to operate, thereby adding to the number of banks too big to fail.
• End the government monopoly on student loans for college.
• Reduce government spending on infra-structure, which seems to be the opposite of what he wants to do.
• Produce a new immigration law which makes it easier to immigrate to the U.S., while insisting that immigrants enter and stay in the U.S. legally.
• Promote senior military officers based on their ability, not based on the political party with which they are registered to vote.  Do not discriminate on the basis of sex or ethnicity.
• Review Obama's Executive Orders and change those which are unconstitutional or wrongheaded.  Some right-headed orders may need enabling laws by Congress.  The Executive Orders of earlier Presidents may also need review.  Mind you, Executive Orders can be a proper exercise of presidential management of the Executive Branch of the government, but they should not affect people outside of the Executive Branch.
• Shut down government-run service organizations.  Their work belongs in the private sector.
• Shut down many of the government agencies which number so many that the government cannot say how many exist and which have the authority to issue regulations for which purposes.  These agencies are often performing no valid function of government, are poorly managed, have overlapping authorities, or are obsolete.

If Trump tackles the job that needs doing, he will need all the energy he has over the next four years. I hope he does take on these tasks and works effectively with Congress to get it largely done.  He will also need to communicate well with the American People about what he is doing and why.  It is critically important that the U.S. economy return to at least its longtime average growth rate of 3%.  It should not be hard to enjoy long-term real growth of 4% actually if the government would only get out of the way.  The compound growth of a healthy economy over 40 years will raise the American standard of living vastly more than will any growth restrictive government regulations, laws, or taxes. Americans badly need the hope, change, and opportunities of a reduced government sector and a rich and robust private sector.

Making America Great and Donald Trump

America is great when the American People are free to exercise their broad and sovereign rights to life, liberty, property, self-ownership, and the pursuit of their own happiness.  There is no greater value than that of enjoying these liberties.  Donald Trump is a materialist who does not seem to have any concept of this.

I do not like Donald Trump.  I do not like how he has practiced business.  He has been a crowing crony capitalist who has used subsidies and eminent domain extensively in his business dealings.  Several of his businesses went bankrupt, though this happened just after he sold them to suckers.  His business ethics has been immoral.  His success has substantially come at the expense of others, not often enough in the form of mutually beneficial trades and too often at the expense of unwilling taxpayers.  The state of New Jersey, both under Corzine and Christie, has poured subsidy monies into the gambling industry in Atlantic City, to Trump's great benefit.  That industry is failing badly and at the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of New Jersey taxpayers.  I do not like the meanness in Donald Trump.  Decent people do not make fun of other people's afflictions.  Now, I am not politically correct, but if you do not like how someone else looks, keep it to yourself.  A man who would be President ought to be a gentleman and one can easily be a gentleman while telling the truth about the many issues that government must deal with and about the tasks it should leave to the private sector.

Trump has been in favor of a universal, government-provided health care system.  That idea is a huge assertion of collective ownership of every individual by the state.  He says he will repeal ObamaCare, but there is no mention of this on his website.

His website says he is interested in the following reforms and provides some information on what he plans to do:

• U.S. - China Trade Reform
• Veterans Administration Reforms
• Tax Reform
• Second Amendment Rights
• Immigration Reform

On U.S. - China trade reforms, what is written is not as bad as the overt trade protectionism Trump advocates on the campaign trail, but it also fails to note that the primary reason the opening of new trade markets around the world has not led to the growth of the American economy is because the American government does not allow American businesses to be competitive.  He notes the importance of corporate tax reductions, but only after implying that bad trade negotiations caused job loses in America.  The job losses in America are due to excessive taxes, paperwork, and regulations that American businesses are hobbled with, thanks to Washington.  Business expenses are very high in America compared to many other countries in the world.  To compete, we need to be free to take full advantage of our design and innovation capabilities, while shedding governmental burdens that provide no or insufficient benefits.  We should be taking advantage of our abundance of inexpensive and reliable energy, not trying to make it more expensive as Obama has done.  We should be taking advantage of our great banking and financial companies, not smothering most of them in disabling requirements under Dodd-Frank so-called reform.  We should not be raising the cost of business with governmental dictates of minimum wages, paid leave benefits, the highest corporate and personal taxes in most of the developed nations, ObamaCare, NLRB rulings favoring forced unionization, and EPA regulations based on exaggerated claims of mercury or catastrophic man-made global warming. 

The Veterans Administration certainly needs reform.  Trump would make a key correction by allowing veterans more treatment in non-Veterans Administration hospitals and doctor offices.  He does not actually note that the many ills of the VA are endemic in government operations and would be propagated to other government attempts to control medical care.

Tax Reform is horribly overdue and the Trump plan is a pretty good one, with the exception that he would exempt single people from paying any income tax if they make less than $25,000 a year and married couples if they make $50,000 or less.  This gives them no skin in the cost of government and I do not think this is a good idea.  They should pay something.  It seemed he was going to outlaw corporation inversions overseas, but upon further reading he is really saying he will make them unnecessary.  He will continue to tax corporation earnings abroad, which I think is bad, but he will give them the credit to paying taxes abroad, so the U.S. tax of 15% will actually only be paid as the difference of the foreign tax and the US 15% should the foreign tax be less than 15%.  That is not bad at all.  His tax reform would allow a great leap of growth in the American economy.

On the Second Amendment:

The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away. Our Founding Fathers knew, and our Supreme Court has upheld, that the Second Amendment’s purpose is to guarantee our right to defend ourselves and our families. This is about self-defense, plain and simple.

It’s been said that the Second Amendment is America’s first freedom. That’s because the Right to Keep and Bear Arms protects all our other rights. We are the only country in the world that has a Second Amendment. Protecting that freedom is imperative.

That is excellent and is the only place I know of in which Trump has spoken of individual rights and the need to maintain constitutional law.

On Immigration Reform, he is apparently not going to send the Army into Mexico to make them pay for the wall at the southern border.

Mexico must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards – of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options].  We will not be taken advantage of anymore.  

But he is going to try to control immigrants seeking jobs that he claims Americans need.  Companies will have less say in who they hire under his plan. Fewer highly skilled foreign workers will be allowed to immigrate.  This is a short-sighted example of populism.

There are too many other issues he has not given a plan to treat.  I do not have great certitude in his keeping his word either, especially given his history of many changes of mind.  He comes out of a primarily Democrat Socialist New York/New Jersey background and he played those Democrat politicians to the hilt.  Perhaps he was just using them.  He does pride himself as a manipulator.  Is he also manipulating those who vote for him?  Will he turn on those who vote for him now as he has turned on the Democrat Socialists he supported a short while ago, perhaps because they were then useful to his businesses?  Perhaps his voters now are only a useful means for him acquiring great power?  Donald Trump is a vapor.  He has no consistency.  He has no substance that one can perceive in his speeches.  Will his website policy statements also become vapor when he has the power he wants?

But these few plans that are given some substance are better than I had expected.  This is good, because it is looking more and more as though this man may be the next President of the United States of America.  I still have concerns that his temperament is much more suited to that of a dictator than to the presidency of a constitutionally limited government in the U.S.A.  I also suspect that these policy positions are written by advisers who understand much more than Trump does and they may be shoved aside once he is in power. After all, he thinks he is better than anyone else, just as Obama does.  We can expect much more arrogance in the extensive use of power should Trump become President.  And how many months will it take for him as President to subject each and every one of us to is childish name-calling?

Abandoned Veterans Await Their G.I. Bill Payments

The federal government never tires of giving us illustrations that its reach into all aspects of our lives has left it with insufficient managerial focus to perform any of the tasks it has abrogated to itself with competence. It insists on using force to take charge of task after task, usually after it declares the task too important to leave to the private sector with its insidious profit motive. Then it does the job without adequate motivation and with complete apathy and inattention. This leaves those who are wise or at least with heads a few feet above the sand, rather than in it, wishing the function could be returned to the private sector or was one of such a few government functions that the government actually would pay suitable attention to doing the task.

Many of our excellent volunteer military citizens take on the arduous and risky military life in part in order to later attend college and get a degree. We promise them this benefit. This academic semester, 277,000 veterans applied for college tuition benefits. More than 200,000 of the applications have been approved to date. However, even though college classes have been in session for weeks, only about 11% of those approved to date have received their tuition payment checks, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The Veterans Administration says it has issued 61,000 payments totaling $50 million to students. Perhaps many of those checks are in the mail or have been processed, but not yet mailed!

Back in March, the VA testified before the House Appropriations subcommittee on military construction, veterans affairs, and related agencies, that the agency did not have enough manpower to launch the new GI Bill that went into affect on 1 August. Apparently Congress was so busy giving money to ACORN, auto company-wrecking labor unions, passing a giant energy-use tax, and plotting the final take-over of medical care, that it could not be bothered to address this function so closely tied to recruiting a volunteer, intelligent, and professional military. Never mind the fact that defending the country is at least an actual Constitutional power given to the federal government.

This is only one failure of the VA which has come to light recently. In 2008, it was found that the VA had not followed procedures properly to tell veterans about the tests and medical experiments they were involved in. Earlier this year, it was discovered that 3 VA hospitals had improperly sterilized endoscopes, which exposed about 10,000 patients to infections, including the HIV virus. Just last month, the VA sent 600 veterans letters telling them that they had Lou Gehrig's disease, though they did not.

The federal government should be forced to downsize drastically. The reasons are:

• Its function is to preserve, protect, and defend the sovereign rights of the individual, while most of its actions are actually restricting those rights and even predicated on the submersion of the individual within classes defined by income, race, gender, and a few other characteristics which are grossly inadequate to deal with the individuality of Americans.
• Two-thirds to three-quarters of current federal government spending is to perform tasks beyond the government's enumerated constitutional powers.
• No organization can hope to have adequate managerial focus on all of the functions the government has abrogated onto itself, especially given that so many of them are radically unrelated.
• Few of our politicians are sufficiently intelligent, reality-oriented, and excellent problem-solvers to do even the constitutional tasks of the federal government. Almost none of them are wise enough to understand the need to live by the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
  

Obama Backs Off Screwing Protesting Veterans

The key to taxation is said by big government types to be the equivalent of plucking as many feathers from the chicken as possible without the chicken squawking too much. Obama, after pledging to treat veterans better than the deficient Republicans did during the campaign, proved once again how fast change you can believe in changes. He very seriously proposed, and defended for some time, that veterans should have to buy private insurance to cover their medical costs. This was supposed to save the government $540 billion, which happens to be the amount of additional funding by which his administration is to increase the funding of the Veterans Administration. During the campaign he did not tell veterans that he was going to specifically have them targeted as the source of the money to pay for the VA spending increase!

Well, American veterans proved they were no chickens and immediately rose against the idea. Not only that, but most other Americans realized that this showed a breach of contract with our veterans. It was a clear failure to accept the responsibility for the care of wounded and diseased veterans as a result of their service and as partial payment for their service which Americans have long generally assumed was their responsibility. There was genuine moral outrage on this issue and everyone is wondering why Obama just does not get it.

Obama is fundamentally anti-military, anti-American use of force abroad almost no matter what the provocation, and he is all about posing as one who feels for his fellow Americans, but clearly does not. Examine his cavalier, disdainful manner of returning the salutes of the military. His generalized idiocentricity was very apparent in this callous episode.