Category Archives: Economics

GULLIBLES TRAVELS

You're ***tting me, right?
You’re ***tting me, right?

Amidst the anxiety, worry, fear and complete inversion of logic that comprises “Climate Change,” a sad failure of the heart is heard as gullible men and women who might create families, declare that they are afraid to bring children into this world which is doomed by the follies of pollution and fossil fuels.  It should be a mental thing, but it’s not: it’s a function of gullibility that is divorced from clear thinking.

America cannot survive gullibility.  Americans, more than citizens of any other nation, are OBLIGATED to study and understand the words, and the meaning of the words, and the philosophies supporting them… in our Constitution and other founding documents.  The United States of America – those are words, too, and we are obligated to understand them just as clearly.  Ours is a country with a role in history unlike every other.  “United” tells us that we are OBLIGATED to share common laws and moral guidance.  “States” tells us that our States are the structure of our nation, and our strength.  Ours is not a national government, it’s a federal one, yet every scrap of legislation that Congress passes EXPANDS national power over the states and the people, when it should be doing only what the states cannot do for themselves.  Words matter.  Whoever – or whatever – attempts to change the meaning of words is announcing its willingness to confuse the polity and steal our ability to discuss, reason and understand.

What American voters have allowed, so far, is an administrative bureaucracy that makes itself appear to be so important – so vital to our ability to remain fed and comfortable – that threats to its power or existence, even of tiny slivers of it, are tantamount to Hitler’s Nazism.  Minor interruptions, like temporary shutdowns until appropriations are approved by Congress, are described as imminent defaults on U. S. obligations and threats to every aspect of life from stocking grocery stores to providing health care and life-saving operations.  Worse, a government shutdown is racist, homophobic, transphobic and misogynist… and no one wants to be any of those things, let alone the whole country!

What illogical nonsense.  Yet, that is the definition of our “democracy,” today.  The “democracy” that we must impoverish ourselves to protect around the world, yet do our best to undermine, here, despite the fact that we are a Republic… that employs democracy.

Are your children gullible?  Possibly.  Once ideological teachers have taught our kids to believe untrue things, the pathways of gullibility are established.  If a first-grader believes the United States was founded upon racism in 1619, he or she can be led to believe that gender can be changed.  Pretty soon they’ll believe that their parents are a threat that cannot be told that their son or daughter is changing to daughter or son.  So, now it’s better to hide truths from parents.  We can’t survive gullibility.

Education, essentially dominated by government schools and unionized teachers and staff, is the fundament of culture and citizenship.  Along with language, math, geography, civics, science and a second language, the success of our nation requires that our children learn about our history, our founding, the ideas behind the Constitution and how it works, and basic economics.  Turning out students who cannot read – at huge expense – puts our nation at risk; filling their heads with untruths and radical theories of race and biology is the opposite of what parents – and our nation – need teachers to do.  Yet, as schools fail to educate, teachers’ unions dictate policies to management that increase costs, compensation and staffing while reducing accountability for teachers’ lack of results.  The incredible refusals to work and teach during “COVID” can never be forgiven.

Have we the intestinal fortitude to correct the direction and OWNERSHIP of our so-called “public” education system?  Can we place the management of public schools back into the hands of those we elect to manage them?  Or will we go to our graves with leftist, virtually communist teachers’ unions operating this huge fraction of our government for their own benefit… not for the advancement of our children?  Government employees should be severely restricted in their abilities to influence elections.  As it is, politicians charged with financial management of all departments rely on unions to get themselves elected.  They (the elected) then “negotiate” with unions for pay and benefits.  Those who are charged with representing citizens wind up basically representing only the unionized, public employees.  What a debilitating economic farce.  Will we continue this?  Or are there politicians with the courage to break it up and restore fairness, balance and honesty to our republican form of government?

We are $33 Trillion in debt.  Clearly the past 6 decades of “representative” government has failed to manage the people’s business.  We are on the path to insolvency and economic ruin when that day comes that other nations will refuse payment in dollars.  This is a system our “representatives” created in our name.  Now we have a poop-head as president who has invited SEVEN MILLION or more new welfare recipients, many of whom are actual criminals and terrorist threats to our nation, to our people.  Shame on him and shame on all of us who voted for him in 2020.  We knew he was a fool from his 40 years of history in the Senate and his 8 years as Obama’s V. P.  We knew he was a public policy and foreign policy idiot, yet we dutifully followed his party’s directions.  Now, we’re the fools.

Are we patriotic enough – still – to make wiser, more sensible, economically aware choices about who will represent us American citizens and who will be our President, representing all of us and our country?  Or, are we so gullible that we will again elect a caricature of a leader and toadies who claim to be our representatives?  How many of our Senators and “Representatives” are receiving money or gifts of some sort from China?  More than one, for sure.  Why do we re-elect them and then cede them power in their respective houses?

American citizens are the most powerful people on Earth.  We can affect both domestic and foreign policies of our powerful government.  Yet we continuously give up our unique rights in exchange for not being called names, and we continuously re-elect relatively ignorant and corrupt people to both state and federal offices – people who soon give up representing we, the People, and then learn to represent their personal interests by cooperating with other corrupt “representatives” who have learned how to steal, legally.  Whenever they actually face their voters, these worthies tend to represent the government to us rather than the other way around, explaining why this or that policy position that got them elected, cannot be accomplished.

Are we awake enough in 2023 to exercise our Constitutional rights and powers to put in place a legislature that will actually force the executive swamp to do the right things?  How is it that we couldn’t even get the border closed with a threat to shut down the government?  How is it that the Biden administration thinks it is “American” to force expenses upon the States in the breaking of federal immigration laws?  We ARE gullible, but, are we crazy?

TRASH-TALKING INFLATION

Most of what we hear on TV or radio about the big enemy: INFLATION, is only partially true, at best.  Defeating that enemy, which politicians claim to be doing for their constituents, is impossible if we fail, sometimes on purpose, to understand the nature of it.  Let’s examine the primary aspect, or feature, of Inflation: it is a tool of government, by which we mean, the federal government. 

This is not to say that government intends to raise prices on commodities and goods and labor, but then, prices rising is not the definition of inflation, which is why much of what is spewed about “inflation”… is disinformation.  Inflation represents only an increase in the money supply; along with the federal government’s sneaky mechanisms, there are only a couple of ways to expand the money supply, primarily banks, and banks can do so only because of federal regulations.  Oddly, foreign banks and governments can ALSO expand the money supply, increasing inflation of the supply of dollars, not of wealth.   When prices rise there are temporary bumps in wealth due to increased receipts and, often, fixed rates of interest on loans.  So, there is a spotty increase in prosperity, but not for everyone.  Inflation increases dollars, but each represents less wealth than it did even a few months, if not weeks earlier.

Only the federal government can “create” money.  The Constitution charges the Congress to “…coin money, (and) regulate the value thereof…”  In 1913 Congress shed that Constitutional responsibility – and authority – when it created the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a consortium of private banks with federally appointed “governors.”  Legally, “The Fed” can loan money it does not have, to the government – it’s a neat trick.  Of course, the Congress must approve expenditures and, when the government has no cash, it must approve borrowing  “… on the full faith and credit of the United States …” to enable those expenditures.  To LIMIT the degree of overspending, Congress created the ”Debt Ceiling” in 1917, streamlining the emission of bonds by the Treasury as World War I expenses mounted.  With various changes and accommodations since, Congress has largely permitted the federal government to borrow whatever it can justify politically.

Since the Johnson Administration and the federalization of welfare and healthcare, the “Debt Ceiling” has proven to be not much of a ceiling, or limit, at all.  As we approach $33 Trillion in federal debt, the debt ceiling has become merely a tool of negotiation, with the ultimate “threat” of “government shutdown.”  With millions of people now dependent upon government handouts, it’s possible for those on the left to raise huge public, political outcry against a “shutdown.”  All that conservatives can garner is some compromise on unrelated policies or spending changes, but never is there a reduction in spending or overall cut to the federal budget.  It’s always an increase.  The $33 Trillion is documented inflation.  It’s not static, and it is expensive.  When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the concept of interest costs to federal borrowing was supposed to keep borrowings small and temporary – that is, “paid back” to stop the interest costs.  Today, the cost of interest on the national debt is well over $800 Billion – approaching the defense budget(!).  The concept of limitation through interest obligations is out the window with the debt ‘ceiling.’  Our “representatives” have shown over many decades that they cannot be trusted with OUR money.  How does inflating the money supply serve the interests of government?

On any given morning the value of all the dollars in the world is whatever it is.  Let’s call it ONE (1).  “Da Gummint” comes up with some cockamami plan to save the planet or forgive student loans or flood the country with 7 Million new welfare recipients… just saying.  With the federal budget already overspent by 30% or so (financed by earlier borrowing) the president’s party dutifully files legislation to make everyone’s life better while enrichening donors to their party.  It requires a new loan to enable the new magnanimity and, since all the loaned money (and tax receipts) authorized so far has been allocated, the “debt ceiling” must be raised.  Eventually it is and a new $500 Billion or so is authorized and the loan made.  The government spends the new dollars at a value of “1,” and target recipients do as well.  Congress-people brag to their constituents about the wonderful benefits and bacon they’ve delivered.

Some of the money is used to pay current federal expenses of various kinds, including entitlements, and some goes to pay interest on this and earlier debts, now approaching THIRTY-THREE TRILLION DOLLARS, with an “F.” But, you ask, how does that cause the price of eggs to go up?  Simply put, increased “prosperity” in consumers’ / buyers’ hands and bank accounts, puts stress on the marketplace: supply and demand.  At first, sellers are happy – more people want more of what they sell, and… every seller is also a buyer.

Demand for eggs goes up as more people feel they can afford eggs, but, more significantly, large baking companies demand more eggs than a month ago because stores are selling more of their higher-priced goods.  Egg producers need to expand production but it takes a while to do so.  Large buyers bid up the price of eggs because they are determined to produce more crème-filled pastries to meet demand, and producers will accommodate their largest customers.  Eggs go up in price for domestic buyers, too.  Soon, a new equilibrium is attained and eggs stop rising in price from their new baseline, market price, but buyers of all kinds of things are spending dollars at a value of, say, .93, not 1.

Two hundred-million buying decisions, or more, are made every day based on relative values to buyer and seller.  Prices are “driven” up as if every seller wants to be a more expensive supplier, but, in fact, most don’t: most want their value to appear higher to attract the next buyers’ ‘buy’ decision.  But the seller’s “cost of eggs” has increased and he must pay the rent from his sales; he raises his prices, usually reluctantly.  Everywhere you turn some “news” outlet is decrying “rising inflation,” when what they are talking about is “rising prices,” usually the CPI or Consumer Price Index.  If there weren’t simultaneous DE-flationary forces at work, we’d be in real trouble.

Okay, then, what is a deflationary force?  First and foremost, rising prices!  It’s a sloppy, effective and painful way to absorb the extra cash created by inflation (of the money supply.)  Government-generated inflation is done so without any connection to increased production or wealth; worse, it has no mechanism for debt destruction.  Private, or economic inflation is tied to improved production, greater efficiency and, usually LOWER prices overall, another, positive, deflationary force: increased productivity and wealth.  When “The Fed” sets ever-higher interest rates to “combat inflation,” it doesn’t put any meaningful brakes on government-generated inflation, but it does screw up economic inflation.

“Real” companies borrow money from banks when they are certain that a bigger plant, new production equipment, new delivery vehicles or better computerization, for examples, will enable the company to produce more for less, or at higher quality, or with such marked improvement that it opens new markets, or with such improved efficiency that waste is reduced and costs per unit are lowered.  The loans involved come from banks that operate, by federal regulation, on the basis of fractional reserves.  This, essentially, allows banks to lend out about SIX TIMES more than what they hold in reserves.  That is, about 86% of outstanding loans are comprised of… wait for it: AIR.  Every commercial or real-estate loan is mostly air.  But!  It’s generally fine.  Why?

“Real” loans are made to people or businesses that have the credit-worthiness that predicts the “destruction” of that new debt.  Those are what banks call “performing loans.”  Depending on the nature of the loans and the financial standing of the bank, itself, “performing loans” are counted among “assets” of the bank and fractional reserve rules can apply to them, too!  Simply stated, bank loans inflate the money supply.  But it’s not like government / Federal Reserve inflation; “real” loans include mechanisms for 1)debt destruction; 2)increased WEALTH; 3)increased productivity and economic activity; 4)rewards for smart economic risk and honest, legal, work and growth.  Smart, conservative banking is essential to healthy inflation.

The federal “system” of over-spending, over-borrowing and aversion to intelligent economics, is essential to economic weakness and political mendacity.  See the difference?

It is necessary to introduce capital – and cash – into the economy.  It’s called “liquidity.”  There has to be enough money to borrow and enough to spend, but how much?  Is there some federal agency or department that would ever add new liquidity in the right amounts and the right places?  Absolutely not!  Neither now or ever.  Free enterprise capitalism pretty-much automatically introduces enough liquidity to enable growth, PROVIDED that the government isn’t competing with its citizens to do ever-larger fractions of the spending – and borrowing – in the economy, AND that conditions are not made politically acceptable for monopolies to form and distort markets, which is where we are, now.

The FED sets rules for banks, including what the fractional reserve rate is, and what the overnight interbank lending rate of interest is.  They can chill a “too active” economy almost overnight.  Income-Tax policies can interfere with even small investment decisions.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can skew the quality of the mortgage market whenever politicians decide it’s time to buy votes from certain “underserved” demographics.  That is, the government can skew normal buy-sell decision-making, hurting most while “helping” some.

Capitalism needs regulation; it’s human nature to get the most for the least if possible.  Honesty should be enforced; integrity should be enforced; quality and purity should be enforced; contracts should be clear and honest, particularly in employment, one of the areas where politicians (most of whom are economic idiots) like to meddle for votes.  Our public servants are failing to act as partners in the success, safety and comfort of citizens, which means conditions of honesty across all contracts, short and long, and across all elected and appointed offices.  Otherwise, they act as the least trustworthy manipulators of the lives of citizens for the gain of… politicians and government.

Our economy – the actions of daily life, growth and advancement – has been turned into a competition with government to survive.  We haven’t even discussed the credit-card “vig” we all must pay, now, to banking consortiums, nor the legalization of drugs.  Surely ours is a form of “Democratcy” that we should export to other countries… God forbid.

VOTE PRUDENTLY

What on Earth

Prudence wonders about whether America will resolve to solve its problems – actually stop nonsensical policies – reduce federal spending – let men be men and honor the majesty of motherhood… stuff like that.  Questions abound.  Why don’t we have a secure, tightly regulated border, all around?  That’s one to which there doesn’t seem to be a good answer.

Why have we allowed about 7 MILLION illegal entrants over the past 3 years – unexamined adults and children, with unknown backgrounds and unknown useful skills – to pour into our country IN CONCERT with criminal drug and trafficking cartels?  How do we propose to house them in a nation where housing costs are the highest in the world?  How will we educate them in schools that are becoming a black mark on our society, in how many languages, at costs per student that are the highest in the world with the lowest quality of education results?  What sort of a plan is there?  Looks like there isn’t one.

How can a country that is 33 Trillion dollars in debt invite multiple millions of illegal migrants onto our welfare rolls?  No good answer – or reason – here, either.

Americans are wondering – or should be wondering – how it is that our military is being reduced precisely when China’s military, especially their navy, is being increased at its fastest rate ever?  Why are our soldiers, airmen and sailors being weakened by critical race and gender theories as Russia, China and Iran are growing as direct threats to the United States and our allies?  For that matter, why weren’t the military leaders who engineered the stupid and dangerous abandonment of Afghanistan, fired and forced to answer for their stupidity and the preventable deaths of service members at Courts Martial?

Here’s a crucial, life-or-death question for Americans: Why did President Obama and, now, Joe Biden, fight so hard to help Iran become a nuclear power?  Keep thinking…

How can the once-best medical system in the world allow itself to be compromised by a federal government agency that is financially beholden to pharmaceutical companies, to the point of dictating treatments and even outlawing viable treatment options(!)?  How can that medical system allow licensed doctors, many who are recognized researchers, lose their licenses and positions – including having their research suppressed?  How could it?

How could so many tens… no, hundreds of thousands of needless deaths of Americans be permitted, even forced, by the rotten collusions indicated above?  How can we ignore the thousands of “sudden adult deaths” occurring among young, healthy recipients of mRNA injections?  Why are those same being pushed down to 5-year-olds?  Have we lost our minds?

We seem to have lost “America.”  To some, the “some” that wish to eliminate America from the future, there is no good in any part of the United States because of slavery, a practice our nation sacrificed horrifically to end.  The promise of freedom and individual sovereignty for which we also fought and sacrificed – a promise made to all who descended from our founding and which is enjoyed by all who wish to destroy America, now, is a promise based upon Christian sacrifice and faith in God.   There is nothing coincidental that those same wish to destroy Christianity as they tear down America.  When did we lose our courage to defend both?

Rubbing raw the memories of slavery is a process very similar to climate fear-mongering.  The abiding purpose of both movements is never solution or even resolution of those supposedly existential threats to humanity: it is only to empower centralized, political control of humanity and its various nations and economies.  Where is the American Constitution in all of this?

Lately we have taken to defunding police departments where they are MOST needed, in cities where crime has been the worst, and where normal people and commerce are being threatened to the greatest degree.  There must be a good reason to do this in the minds and hearts of those who control those funds.  Prudence cannot discern what it might be… unless, and it’s becoming less and less of a long-shot, those who advocate and promulgate those anti-police policies, are actively trying to destroy America, too.  Evidently, they believe that the hollowing out of American cities – turning them into crime-ridden enclaves, will weaken America’s ability to defend itself when the final push to turn America communist, arrives.

The economic stress of “losing” the cities will also hasten the downfall of the nation.  Cities are the engine of growth and strength; they are always attacked in war.  George Soros and, now, his son, Alexander, have targeted American cities for collapse by financing District Attorneys who are radically opposed to bail, prosecution and incarceration of criminals.  Capitalizing on the unfortunate death (not a murder, more a suicide) of George Floyd, Soros and other anti-American types in the Democrat party, fed so-called protests that mingled with brutal, destructive riots and demanded the end of policing as we knew it in cities.  Some purpose is being served by what seems completely stupid.

The United States, Canada and Mexico sit atop the richest sources of carbon-based fuels on earth.  With the right economics and politics, North America (and South America for similar reasons) could be energy-independent and wealthy, industrialized and CLEAN.  Unfortunately, Mexico is nearly controlled by criminal cartels, Canada has slid into globalist socialism, and the U. S. has fallen sway to anti-scientific “climate-change” hogwash that leads us to sacrifice both freedom and wealth – and global influence – as well as our national sovereignty.  For unfounded reasons, we can’t use the energy we own; we must buy it from hostile countries that obtain it less cleanly than we do, and ship it by the millions of tons in dirty ships.  This dumb idea makes sense to a fringe element that benefits from battery-powered vehicles, solar panels and windmills.  As with other, numerous life-changing trends and forces at work within the federal administrative state, government falsehoods are actively diverting our nation from its history and heritage.  Why do we allow this?

Lithium-ion batteries, mostly controlled by China in terms of materials and manufacture, are being forced upon a public that doesn’t want them.  Why?  Because the government-types believe we need to want them.  They don’t work well and they are toxic and dangerously combustible.  This is all to reduce “carbon,” one of the key building-blocks of life on earth.  There is a belief – an ideology – that claims that carbon-dioxide, the major product of breathing, is capable of such a massive “greenhouse effect” that it will destroy life on this planet, including raising sea levels 20 feet or more.  People motivated by their faith in this concept are unable to consider that it is probably incorrect… and they are noisier than most of us, gaining political sway.  They are forcing the switch away from our extraordinarily efficient gasoline-fueled vehicles and from the freedoms they enable.  So, we are being forced – not encouraged, FORCED – to switch to less capable and less safe modes of transportation that cost more to operate… when they do operate.  They do have slick electronics, but they are relatively useless except in very limited applications.  Why do we, the People, permit our government to batter(y) us?

Our so-called Representatives have divested the Congress of most of its responsibilities.  Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, among other financial responsibilities of the Congress, states that “the Congress shall have the power… To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; …”  Yet the same band of worthies created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and, in stages, slipped the “Fed” into a position of financing unlimited debts on the credit of the United States.  Despite its supposed purpose of managing liquidity among banks and preventing financial crises, the Fed enables politicians to make economic promises that they generally do not understand the consequences of, knowing that there is unlimited funding available by “borrowing” from the Federal Reserve.  The Treasury issues U. S. “bonds” of various maturities and the Fed “buys” them with money it doesn’t actually have.  What could go wrong?  Socialism… socialism devolving into communism… that’s what could and is going wrong.  Why are the inheritors of the world’s greatest political and economic system allowing their nation to be stolen by socialist enemies… from inside?

The next set of presidential elections in 2024, may be our last opportunity to reverse at least SOME of the stupidity we have been borrowing for since 1963.  It will be Prudent for Americans to reaffirm their Americanism rather than their adherence to any party, and vote accordingly, and not by mail – DON’T VOTE BY MAIL!  It’s too easy to steal your vote or negate it.  Show up and vote… for America.

UNCIVIL WAR

The Democrats’ war on Donald Trump is revealing the nature of the Left.  It is not very different from how the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union treated wrong-thinkers as the “Revolution” devolved into brutality and murder.  So far, at least, the Biden administration has held off from extorting confessions from those who don’t agree with Administration thinking about virtually anything.  No one has mentioned bullets in the back of the head to solve wrong-thinking problems, but locking up political opponents is doing the job.

Sadly, a lot of stupid violence took place on January 6th, 2021.  Organized protesters went to Washington with shared, poorly conceived ideas about actually taking over the Capitol, a few of whom were armed and foolishly violent.  We still don’t know how involved federal agents were in those groups, but there were many, evidently. And the FBI and others have shown their willingness to embed themselves into conspiratorial groups in order to learn about planning for future crimes.  We’ve even seen how the FBI will practically create such a group in the case of the kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.  There are many questionable actors who were in the crowd on January 6th, but no one has identified or questioned them.

On the other hand, many of those currently incarcerated due to January 6th events, assaulted no one, smashed nothing and did no worse than enter the Capitol through open doors.  Their treatment in jail seems to be outside of legal norms; some have yet to be charged two and a half years after the fact.  Those are they who can be considered “political” prisoners.  Having watched FBI agents storm the private homes of pro-life activists while permitting illegal demonstrations at the homes of Supreme court Justices, shows that the motivations within the FBI are political in many instances and worth questioning.  Could there have been a cadre of FBI and other agents embedded in groups that went to the Capitol intending violence?  Apparently, yes.

There are other oddities about the so-called “insurrection.”  One is that President Trump wanted to reinforce the Capitol Police with thousands of National Guard troops.  Legally, only the mayor of Washington and / or the Speaker of the House could “ask” for federal troops to function in their jurisdictions.  Both refused to do so.

Information and “intelligence” existed that indicated subversive groups were planning to create troubles on January 6th.  Trump was holding a huge rally near the White House and thousands of people would be in the city and probably attempting to approach the Capitol to protest the certification of electoral votes.  If there were a way to turn such a protest to Democratic advantage, no pair of Democrat leaders would be better positioned – or likely – to take such advantage than Pelosi and Bowser.  Having the crowds storm the Capitol, particularly in conjunction with rabble-rousers whom both knew were intending to do so, could create the perfect storm of confusion and illegality with which to smear Donald Trump and conservatives in general.  It was all too well played out for the benefit of Democrats.

Within hours, Speaker Pelosi ordered fencing with razor wire and guarded gateways to surround the Capitol complex.  Added to that “security” were thousands of National Guard troops that she treated fairly poorly, causing them to sleep in parking garages among other things.  Soon the “January Sixth” committee was formed outside of Congressional traditions and yet another impeachment of Trump was attempted to no avail.  But, the January 6th Committee continued its tightly slanted “investigation” for a year and a half, yielding mostly political claims and talking points, while copious real evidence was hidden or kept secret.  Little of value derived from the committee’s “work” although lots of fearsome claims were made about conservatives and Trump supporters.  Now we’ve learned that the “Committee” destroyed much of its recorded work – a travesty, if not multiple crimes.  Another set of tactics were developed and implemented through the Department Of Justice.

Soon, three state and two separate federal charges were concocted and fed to grand juries in New York State and City, Georgia, Florida and Washington, DC. – fed by prosecutors, a District Attorney and Attorneys General who are known to hate Donald Trump or to have backed Democrat politicians financially.  Naturally, they would set aside all biases in the matters of accusations against former President, Donald Trump, who believes that the 2020 elections were rigged against him fraudulently and that his likely victory in 2020 was “stolen” from him and the 75 Million voters who voted for him. (Wink, now.)

Trump, however, is in legal jeopardy, starting with the New York City charges brought by District Attorney, Alvin Bragg.  In order that he could “gin up” charges against Trump, a “count” against him was created for every check paid to reimburse Trump’s then-attorney, Cohen, who had created a means of payment to adult dancer, Stormy Daniels, of some $150,000.  At one point she claimed the money was to keep her from talking about a sexual encounter with Trump while he was married.  In other statements, she denied such an encounter.  Trump’s counter-argument is that Ms. Daniels had tried to extort money from Trump and that he paid her “hush” money to prevent public embarrassment.  This would naturally and automatically help him as he began his campaign to become president in 2016.  So, depending on how you look at it, paying her to keep quiet made sense on several levels, not simply political.

But Bragg is certain that the misdemeanor “crimes” of incorrect bookkeeping entries by the Trump organization were done to cover up a larger, Federal crime, of illegal campaign contributions.  That case can be made, but has virtually never been made before.  “Getting” The Donald trumps every other consideration.

Letitia James, the New York State Attorney General, ran for her office on a promise to “get Trump.”  She’s doing everything she can.  She’s cobbled together a host of charges against Trump’s companies, going back several years, claiming that properties and assets were “overvalued” to obtain loan rates and amounts that were, therefore, obtained fraudulently.  That those institutions that loaned money to Trump entities all made money and profits from dealing with Trump, makes no difference if there’s a way to damage Trump, himself.  That poorer individuals wouldn’t have been able to obtain the same terms is simply stating the nature of finance.  If it involves Trump, however, there must be a racist, homophobic, insurrectionist crime that’s prosecutable.  “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”  Lavrenti Beria would be right at home in the Attorney General’s office.

Jack Smith, prosecutor of the “Documents Case,” is a different matter, and so is his case.  Trump had retained documents upon leaving the white House that were, evidently, still classified.  Some of his own statements seem to confirm that he knew some of them were problematic and still classified.  There are more than 32 felony counts filed against him and some may stick.  Trump has done his best to call Smith, himself, into question, but he is still the person who could get him convicted.  Many of the circumstances surrounding the case are unprecedented, and done for political reasons, but the facts on the ground are what they are.  The whole premise could have been – and heretofore, always have been – resolved through negotiation.  Virtually every President has retained records from office; Trump is the first to be charged criminally for doing so.  So, this case is eminently unfair, but it’s legal and the former President faces legal jeopardy as a result.

Georgia District Attorney for Fulton County, Fani Willis, in fairly obvious collusion with the federal DOJ, is attempting to strip away attorney-client privilege and executive privilege, while criminalizing opinions about a clearly questionable 2020 election process.  This is very bad legal country.  Will it lead to any state District Attorney now being able to hobble a President with conspiracy charges for speaking with advisors and attorneys?  What a mess Democrats are strewing across our judicial system.

What is it that makes Trump such an object of hatred and political fear?  Clearly, he threatens a lot of people in government and in the “industries” that survive on the largesse of government.  There are nearly 3 MILLION fairly permanent employees of the federal government.  Each has his or her own biases, beliefs and political leanings.  Most, unintentionally, some, intentionally, are part of the problem America faces: The rights and desires of the majority of Americans can barely be acknowledged, let alone become public policy, regardless of federal elections.  There exists a general resistance to significant change within the administrative morass called “the government.”  Trump intended and intends to restore power to the electorate; by default, this requires removing it from the bureaucracy.  The levers of power within the bureaucracy – what is called “The Deep State” – include numerous police and investigative agencies, most of which are populated by people who have their own, largely globalist, not nationalist, attitudes toward America.  If they deem it necessary, they will do what is being done to Donald Trump to protect their power, not ours.  Trump is the symbol, patriotic Americans are the target.

HATING THE HATE

HATING THE HATE

Don’t you just hate it when people (it seems more often to be young women and gays) declare that they “hate” this or that movie, or a restaurant or some celebrity or… well, whatever?  “Hate” is tossed around like a beach ball at high-school graduation in that it has nothing whatsoever to do with what’s actually going on at the moment.  This is not to say that “hatred” isn’t a powerfully destructive and corrosive reality, it’s just that most people who hate things really don’t, in fact, which means that non-hating people have to be on the lookout for real hatred so that we don’t get caught down in it when it’s being tossed about like a beach ball: never staying in one spot long enough to start an infection.  On the other hand, playing with hate can leave reasonably intelligent people open to mob – or group – hatred campaigns while not actually recognizing when “party-hate” has become consuming “hatred,” so foul that it can change people’s personalities.

One person, reasonably intelligent and reasonable, might learn of something with which he or she strongly disagrees and privately bemoan the fact of a bad political or legal turn of events, but never descend into actual hatred of anyone as a result.  In a group of equally angered partisans, however, the formerly reasonable person might break laws and demonstrate, agitate, hold signs and shout hateful slogans while comforted by the like-mindedness of other proto-haters.  The real hatred spews out when counter-protesters show up, arguing directly against what the mob “hates.”  There is no worse hatred than pops out when opponents start to poke holes in the dislikes of the originating protesters.

The worst haters also seem to be the most likely and virulent accusers of hate in others.  Why this is so can be debated by psychologists, but it has something to do with the mental neighborhood in which they live.  In many cases it is a matter of hating themselves and finding it impossible to love others.  Hate is their currency.  It should be no surprise that “members” of the LGBTQ+ “community” are among the most active haters, especially transgenderists.  One could speculate that a person who “transitions,” even if only emotionally, bears the impossible burden of hating who he or she is… so much so that emotional and mental energies can be almost wholly committed to convincing oneself and others that he or she is, in fact, someone else, an enormous weight to carry.

Another activist group that accentuates its hate for opponents is that comprised of those who are pro-abortion.  As a qualified arm-chair analyst, Prudence can see clearly why this is so: people who are “pro-choice” or, in fact, pro-abortion, have first to believe a series of lies relative to the nature and effect of various abortion procedures, which means tricking themselves or lying to themselves, something that is psychologically unsettling in the first place, and then act with or support those who will act on an utter hatred for the proto-human trying to grow and live.  Only then could the death of that unborn child be rationalized.  Prudence believes that hatred begets hatred – jumping into the shallow end of a pool will ultimately wet the jumper just as thoroughly as would happen by first entering the deep end.

Pro-lifers, on the other hand, tend to be more religious and more Christian in beliefs and actions.  For them, life is sacred and fetuses are entrusted to mothers in God’s name; they can’t be killed for any reason.  Essentially, the two sides cannot compromise.  Having reveled in 50 years of nearly unrestricted abortion rights, pro-abortion forces now feel victimized by forces directly opposed to their beliefs in a right to abort the unborn for virtually any reason, including convenience of the mother and / or the father or of any other person with influence over the mother.  To those who have reversed the ostensible “right” to abort, pro-abortionists have only hate.  Those who can actively or acquiescently cause or accept the death of entirely innocent unborn babies are already steeped in untruth and hatred.  It is a small shift to hate those who have attacked their convoluted premises of justification.

Hate readily erupts from people on the Left, and the reasons seem complex, but they’re not.  Socialism is fundamentally premised on hatred.  Many who are attracted to this or that sympathetic-sounding promise of socialism, would vehemently deny Socialism’s connection to hatred of any color. Socialism is just “helping” the (choose all that apply:) downtrodden, oppressed, poor, disadvantaged, illegal, incarcerated, undocumented, impaired, incapable, marginalized, indigent, ill-informed, illiterate, iniquitous, intemperate, impregnated, introverted or invasive.  Such “help,” however, inevitably costs the recipients freedom and sovereignty.  By definition, each type of “help” places the recipient in a group henceforth identified by their weakness or dependence.  It all becomes political, as the government grows to encompass all the help it can imagine providing, and the recipients form advocacy groups for their type of neediness.

Nowhere in the socialist corrosion is there a solution to or cure of any need… just nuance and expansion of groups.  All the needy will likely vote to increase the levels of help and the numbers of helpless previously unrecognized.  Many will be hired to administer the distribution and identification of needed help.  It has been said that Socialism denies human nature and is therefore fatally flawed as a means of organizing governance to the benefit of the majority of citizens.  In fact, Socialism functions and gains power by promulgating the WORST tendencies of human nature and is therefore fatally flawed as a means of organizing governance.

It is clear that some people, due to momentums from earlier existences or due to unfortunate nurturing, even while in the womb, will be de-motivated to work and otherwise take care of themselves.  Such will comfortably accept support from others or, worse, have few compunctions about stealing what they need from others.  They are examples of basic beliefs being the foundation of morality.  Like most – not all, but most – humans, these individuals’ beliefs may be changed with appropriately provided education and rewarded actions.  It is a task that successful societies will undertake and accomplish… failed societies will excuse it and even encourage it as some aspect of “rights.”  It is, rather, an aspect of rewarded “wrongs.”  Continuous welfare creates resentment among recipients, not gratitude.  The relative status of dependents is low; those who have gained the skills to set their own economic path – path of personal “worth” – are obviously treated better, even revered.  Those who are economic “losers” are tolerated at best and scorned at worst.  There is no pleasure in dependency.  Dependents eventually hate the providers.  Any change in status for recipients, required by providers, will increase resentment.  A relatively minor trigger event could yield widespread hateful, destructive action.

Politically, disgruntled, economically dependent populations are fertile ground for opposition groups and philosophies.  A little guidance as to whom to hate, and how, can bring mobs to the streets and actions into riots, scaring the bejeebers out of decent citizens and civil authorities.  It can also guide volumes of votes at election time.  “Defund the Police” can actually gain political relevance.  There are politicians who are so craven as to capitalize on the political will and hatreds of the forces of social failure.  For shame.

One political party has shifted its basis to one of hatred, and it’s not the Conservatives, who tend toward belief in the potential and value of every person.  Rather than support and profit from their self-destruction, conservatives, more than likely Christian in outlook, believe in the possibility of rehabilitation and conversion of welfare recipients into productive, successful members of the greater society.  Welfare must be temporary, in our view; self-support is constructive and self-enhancing; work is its own reward as well as the means of self-support.  Everyone is valuable.  Unfortunately, for 60 years we have avoided fighting for our beliefs, attempting only to temper the failed and failing beliefs of leftists.  For another shame.  It is the politics of conservatism that has failed, not that of the left. 

There is a fundamental hatred expressed by leftists to keep people in the welfare morass.  The waste of their lives and their children’s lives, whether by imposed helplessness, victimhood or crappy education managed by other leftists, is an expression of hatred for those so trapped.  What a cruel outlook on politics and power.

Ultimately, as we are witnessing in 2023, there is a general hatred of American Constitutionalism and its “negative rights,” as Barack Obama calls them.  Theirs is a hatred of free speech, legal protections of religious expression, unreasonable search and seizure, Fifth Amendment protections and all the rest.  This readily becomes hatred of those Americans who believe in and defend the majesty of our Constitutional Republic.  As those same leftists cement into place the ability to control the outcomes of elections, their hatred for honesty, truth and fairness is clear.  Shame on them.  Conservatives are still whistling past the graveyard of failed civilizations, hoping against hope for fair treatment in elections.  I hate that.

Sus… Stain

Old and new technologies stand in contrast as a farm windmill is surrounded by wind turbines.

“Sustainability” is the great leftist byword in the summer of 2023.  Democrats and other Communists are determined to force Americans to give up much of what we have invented and worked for, in order to transform our economy and society to states of “sustainability.”  This also means that the work, inventiveness, science and engineering of the most “successful” peoples (in terms of wealth and standards of living) may have to be thrown away due to the color of their skin or the dominant religion(s) in their traditions.

White-skinned people, especially Christians and Jews, must renounce their successes and civic structures because they were “stolen” over the course of history, whether 200, 500 or 1,000 years ago and even more.  Nothing those groups ever accomplished can remain in their possession.  To do so would be “unsustainable.”  As would be most of their “racist” and “supremacist” ideas… things like private property, Constitutional limits on government, and free speech, religious freedom and equal application of the laws.

Sustainability appears to require conformity.  That is, the jumbled non-regulation of independent liberty is “unsustainable” in the views of leftists; conformity is more permanent and “sustainable.”  First, everyone has to think the same thoughts, of course.  Religious thoughts don’t conform.

The whole world, now, must conform to “sustainability” as if some activities – and politics – are sustainable and some not.  America is not sustainable, we’re told, because we use too much clean water, too much electricity, too much oil and natural gas and way, way too much coal… as in, any.  China, on the other hand, is the model of conformity and therefore sustainability.  They use millions of tons of coal to bring modern electrification to their industries and to people who would otherwise be oppressed by white people.  Plans to begin figuring out how to reduce coal-fired electricity 20 or 30 years from now in China, are examples of excellence in sustainability; actually reducing coal-fired electricity, today and for the past 30 years or so, in the United States, are examples of failure to conform to the planet-saving zero-carbon-emissions model.  Whose “model” is that, actually?

Mostly, it seems to be a political model rather than a scientific one, and one that even ignorant children and older persons can become agitated about.  All that are needed are a few chemical terms and scientific-sounding phrases and a whole political movement can be created and, better, sustained.  The zero-carbon-emissions model of “sustainability” is, itself, sustainable!  How cool is that?  Despite the fact of lots of private-jet travel and ritzy accommodations, (high-carbon emissions activities, all) sustaining the zero-carbon political movement is vastly more important and sustainable than all other methods of improving living standards and sustainable economies across the developing world as both it and the developed world invent ways to operate and grow economies and social well-being.  Suddenly the only “sustainable” model for humans appears to be allowing for far, far FEWER humans, altogether.  Humans are not sustainable.

To maintain and sustain the numerous articles of faith that underlie the carbon-free climate-control model, many untruths must be sustained as well.  One of these is that CO2 is causing global warming which would be, needless to say, unsustainable if true.  That premise is not provable but it certainly has its adherents.  The earth, the oceans, weather and plant-life have efficient means of removing carbon-dioxide (one of those important chemical terms) from the atmosphere.  Over geologic time there have existed both higher concentrations of CO2 and lower than we have right now.  During cold periods, ice periods, warm periods and very warm periods, the atmosphere has held more and less CO2.  Sometimes the CO2 increases before a warming period; sometimes it increases afterwards.  It is definitely an indicator of global changes, but the case for its being a cause of those changes is merely sophisticated speculation and, sadly, some of even that is disingenuous.                                                                                                    [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/]

Given its 3 to 4 Billion-year age, the Earth-Moon binary system has proven highly sustainable.  Even giant collisions involving the formation of the moon couldn’t knock the system off track.  Additional materials, including comets with trillions of tons of water, added to the Earth while the Moon sort-of protected the new planet from other impacts and collisions, resulting in a remarkably stable binary planet system in a remarkably stable Solar System orbiting a remarkably stable star.  But, “stable” doesn’t mean “static.”  Our Sun is a nuclear engine, constantly accumulating Hydrogen and constantly fusing it into Helium, while, bit-by-bit, accumulating heavier elements including carbon and metals as the deep inner core of the Sun ages and “dies.”  Sometimes the Sun puts out more energy, sometimes less.  Eventually, some billions of years into the future, the Sun will become UNSUSTAINABLE and blow itself to bits like every star eventually will.  Not even the entire Democrat Party and its Antifa troopers will be able to prevent it.  OMG!

There should emerge a certain perspective on the likelihood that about 7/10ths of a billion tons of humans, including the few hundred thousand pounds of bureaucrats and committed Communists, can change the tax system enough to significantly modify the future of the Earth.  Oh, they might force people to breath less, procreate less and mow their lawns less… they might even get more of them to eat bugs instead of beef (the ones with “Love is Love” signs), but they won’t – and can’t – shift the processes of Earth-sustainability in any significant way.  They do, however, manage to change the meanings of perfectly good words… words like “freedom,” “rights” and “racism,” for examples… along with “climate,” “family” and “education.”  Oh, yes: “peaceful,” too.

It used to be that hydro-power was “green” and sustainable, but no longer.  Now it’s only “solar” and “wind” power that’s green enough.  Collateral damage to animals, birds and humans along the way, is easily ignored for the “greater good.”  That sounds wicked nice: “greater good.”   Who wouldn’t sacrifice a few dozen whales or 62 million pre-born babies for the “greater good?”  Put another way, “The end justifies the means.” 

The other day, speaking at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Vice-President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, a brilliant economist and historian, she, stated, “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.” (Emphasis added)

The official White House transcript shows Harris misspoke. She had intended to say “reduce pollution,” not “reduce population.” The transcript provides this correction in brackets alongside the original wording, which is crossed out.  This is a process in which  the Biden White House is well-practiced: modifying official statements.  Back in 2020, while Joe Biden was “campaigning” from his basement, he stated that the Democrat Party had the most sophisticated voter-fraud operation ever.  Of course, we were told that what he meant to say was “voter-fraud prevention,” but he needed modification.  Recognizing how frequently Mr. Biden says the opposite of what he has been told to say, Prudence is not so sure that he hadn’t told the truth the first time he described the DNC’s voter-fraud operation.  This is bolstered by the evidence of a very sophisticated voter-fraud operation employed in the 2020 elections.

Ms. Harris may have heard about the sophisticated population-reduction efforts and intentions of forces like the World Economic Forum, Planned Parenthood, Bill Gates and his ilk, and others, and inadvertently let slip a truth bomb.  “Population / Pollution…” they are mildly alliterative, as is she, as is “Planned Parenthood.”  Maybe she hadn’t proof-read or practiced her talk.  The more one learns about mRNA shots pushed so diligently around the world, the words, “reduce population” may very well have been heard among the circles in which she unravels… err, travels… travels, I meant to say.  The World would be a great place to live in if it weren’t for all the relatively useless people over-populating it, now.  We are simply unsustainable.

The global Communist philosophy… ideology, is based on the end justifying the means, even if the means include the deaths of a hundred-Million people, or so.  They had to go for the greater good because they did not think or believe correctly.

Humans have done and still do many foolish, if not stupid things.  We dirty our own homes, neighborhoods, cities and lands, air and waters.  We could avoid these errors and clean up what we’ve done and Prudence believes we will, in fact.  Economics has distorted our values but, we can change our thinking about what is most important.  Current economics is not sustainable – $32 Trillion in debt, indeed!  Operating industry, living, transporting, modernizing can all be done cleanly; those who do so should be rewarded economically.  Only then will we actually do something good for the environment.  Only then will things become “sustainable.”

The Injustice of Rights

Feed the Pig… and his employees.

We are obsessed with “RIGHTS” in the United States.  This isn’t to deny God-given, or “natural” rights, like Life, Liberty, self-defense, or Independence… or the right to one’s beliefs – about anything.  But it should raise questions in wise people’s minds about so-called “rights” that amount to immorality and other licenses to destroy.  It should make a person, especially a citizen of the United States, demand that TRUTH be part of every law and, therefore, every right that is protected by the Constitution of the United States of America.  This, of course, must mean TRUTH that is empirical and based on a structure of reality that is, itself, based on evidence.  Rights should never be based on popularity or “fad.”

To maintain a culture and a country based on empirical truths requires that the basis of truth, itself, must be controlled by the citizenry, not the government, and this requires several components and LIMITS, which we call, responsibility.  The system relies upon clear-thinking by each citizen and the ability to obtain knowledge, not just opinion, from available heritage-media, as Prudence defines it.  Heritage media is written history of both success and failure, and a wide gamut of opinion and philosophy about historic TRUTH or that serves to illuminate the shadows of historic truth.  Honesty, therefore, is essential in that culture’s economics, law and governance, and in ALL contracts, public and private.

In the imperfect processes of human civilization, society and family, mechanisms must be provided and defended that allow for correction of dishonest trends and tendencies.  The failure of course-correction in society, governance and education must, itself, be corrected as frequently as necessary in order to return to a path built on TRUTH and HONESTY.  The human tendency to take advantage of power, whether political or economic, must be correctable and, as automatically as possible, removable, so that the vast majority of citizens retain its opportunities for advancement, comfort and safety.

That is, any legitimate form of government, must deal with citizens as individuals, and, where possible, partner with each to assure individual “success” as a free and honest individual.  Both government and citizens must be acting honestly for this effect to be in balance and to manifest.  Language, therefore, must be rigidly defined as to meaning and understanding, a function of honesty that educational methods and content must be based upon.

The greatest opportunity for tyranny exists in government, no matter how benignly formed and constituted.  Police power resides in government and its only limits are a judicial system and politics.  We like to think that written law protects us as individuals, but the judicial system must agree with those writings, which requires purity of honesty.  Citizens attempt, through politics, to limit judicial power to honest jurists, but the system is imperfect.  The means to correct the course of judicial dishonesty are few and awkward to employ and, in fact, arcane on purpose.  Under the Constitution we hope that imperfect, if not dishonest, politicians will magically elevate the most honest individuals to our “Supreme” court.  It is a hope that, historically, has proven only partially fulfilled, but to a somewhat better degree than all judicial positions as a whole.  Still, the placing of power in the hands of a small number of jurists to decide Constitutional matters for thousands of others and for millions of individual citizens, is imperfect, at best, and mechanisms for correcting course even there, should be in place.

The natural limitations of foresight, to which all the crafters of the Constitution were subject, prevented planning for today’s advanced communications and democratized pollution of thought, and of honesty.  Those who took the risks of responsibility to found this nation against nearly all odds, could not conceive of an America where unskilled, unmotivated and unproductive individuals could claim the “right” to be supported by not just “the government,” but by the dishonest power of government to borrow from generations into the future for the comfort of the relatively useless today.

Nor could they have imagined a political engine that runs not on the honesty that the competition built into a democratic republic ought to ensure, but on the ability to manipulate truth and re-election bribery schemes to limit the number of citizens that might ever hold elected power.  There are serious weaknesses in our Constitutional system – not because it can’t work, but because it relies too heavily upon honesty and integrity of those to whom we relinquish power.  In other words, it fails to protect the citizens from the worst tendencies of human nature.  We can correct for these weaknesses of our Constitutional republic.

Clearly there is too great a concentration of power, political and financial, in the administrative state.  This is pleasing to leftists/Communists.  Their basic approach to life is that “experts” should be making decisions for, well, everyone who is not an oligarch.  For the wealthy, decisions are made that favor and protect them, much as we have observed during the COVID years.  Unfortunately, the political “class” is also happy with most responsibility being held by the deep state.  It removes that responsibility – and accountability – from the political personas they need to gain re-election.  Relying on elected “representatives” to reform the decades-long shift to un-representative administration of power, is a fool’s errand.  Things are too comfortable for too many of our “public servants.”

We need a Constitutional amendment that sets term limits for virtually all federal employees – elected and appointed/hired.  The “people’s business” has been subverted by an essentially communist administrative behemoth that no longer answers to the will of voters.  The American system was created to place and keep power in the hearts, heads and hands of American citizens.  To that purpose it is a failure.  Much heat is generated trying to find people to blame for this epic slippage of mission. 

Naturally, everyone is practiced at denying his or her role in the change.  It’s societal, starting with a lack of education of the average voter.  Coincidentally, the education establishment is firmly controlled by leftists.  States have played a role in the shift, as they sought out innovative ways to shift financial and other responsibilities to the federal government.  Leftists have led the efforts to shift welfare and other financial loads onto Washington, but, to their shame, conservatives have found it handy to duck those responsibilities, as well.  Nor will any state deny largesse that others are receiving… it would be unfair to their citizens, and so it has proceeded: shifting freedom, power and financial responsibility to the federal government.  Over 150 years increasingly socialist forces have transformed the basic relationships of the federal government to its citizens.  As often as it has been interpreted to protect citizens’ rights, the Constitution is as likely to defend socialist shifts of rights and responsibilities to government.  It’s obscene.

The money controlled by bureaucrats, more than three quarters of whom are leftists, easily sways corporate policies, creating a nearly irresistible force of control over 330 million citizens.  It doesn’t seem to matter who they are convinced to elect.  The direction of government tends to continue toward the left, which is globalist, now.  The independence of individuals and even of the entire nation, is no longer a national goal, nor is it likely, although possible, that citizens can reverse the course away from liberty and free enterprise, and even Constitutionalism.  The only option to reverse the course of global Communism is to amend the Constitution by adding tools and limits that the administrative (and elective) states would never permit, if that amending were in their hands.  Our Founders anticipated this.

Article Five of our Constitution provides for adding Amendments via two different processes.  The only one that has been employed to date is what may be called the Congressional process.  A two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate can propose an Amendment that may – or may not – be approved by the legislatures or popular votes of three-fourths of the States.  This has been done, starting with the Bill of Rights, 27 times.  It is not a perfect process, having included some glaring errors like the eighteenth and twenty-fifth amendments.  The process is totally political and responds to democratic whims. [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2021/06/27/boneheaded-25th/ ]

The alternate process is referred to as “Convention of the States” and requires that two-thirds of the States’ legislatures approve of an application to hold a convention for the purpose of proposing Amendments.  It states that “the Congress” … “shall call a Convention for proposing amendments…”  It is not clear that that “call” would require a two-thirds vote in both houses as the first process does.   But it definitely says, “…shall call…” and there is no stipulation that a “law” must be passed, so, it seems Prudent to say, a majority of the two houses should call the convention.  There are risks.

One is that the Left, Fascists and Communists, NEVER retreat from their mission: the destruction of individual sovereignty, liberty and responsibility.  We have seen that laws are meaningless in their view of history – RULES are the coin of their realm.  LAWS imply shared values of morality like, well, the Ten Commandments and their ilk.  Rules are made by rulers… and they will tell everyone what is right, wrong and moral when necessary.  Rules evolve, in their view, as do morals, including the number one, most-moral Rule of all: evolution must serve the State (which often means, One Party) and if it does then that is what is moral.

Great vitriol will spew forth if the magic number of 34 is reached.  Congress and the rest of the power establishment has no intention of relinquishing any of what they hold dear.  A Convention of the States could, if carefully managed, redress many imbalances in what should be a federal system of governance.  Most people don’t know what that term means.  The alternative is a “national” government – not what the Constitution created… and LIMITED.

One of the worst consequences of the national administrative, unelected “state,” is our astronomical debt.  Congresses since the Johnson Administration and the nationalization of welfare, have buried the American nation and people in, now, over 32 Trillions of dollars of debt.  Over this period of decline, every problem leftists could give a name to became a “crisis” or a “war” on this or that social ill.  Where is the honesty?  One wonders.

Arguments over “raising the debt ceiling” are annually fruitless.  Those who live their best lives amidst the swamp of Washington are always so deeply concerned about “defaulting on the debt,” something the United States of America, for Heaven’s sake, would never allow!  Oh, the horror!  Of course, there is interest to be paid for the privilege of never repaying the debt, itself, now in the range of $500 BILLION every year, which is a lot of Meals on Wheels.  It’s a lot of drug and other mental health treatment; it’s a lot of policing and incarceration of rabid criminals; it’s a lot of a lot of things.  Janet Yellen now wants to rate the INTEREST on the debt in terms of its fraction of Gross Domestic Product.  She had to go some to find a comparator that makes the interest bomb look small.  Where’s the honesty?

A Convention of the States could bring about amendments that would limit spending to actual revenues of the previous year.  What a concept.  Any revenue – and that means every penny – in excess of that figure would pay down the debt: another concept, hard for Washington to grasp.  How does YOUR Congressman or woman propose to pay down the debt?  Eliminate “wasteful” spending and “fraud?”  When the Defense Department fails to account for multiple billions of dollars, is that wasteful or fraudulent?  When Medicare is defrauded of billions every year, is that wasteful?  When States use Medicaid funds to pay other expenses, is that wasteful?  Or fraudulent?  If everyone from Congress on up is in on the game, it can’t be fraud, can it?

How about everything from health care to the National Institutes of Health, the CDC and Fauci’s NIAID be returned to the States, free from federal politics?  Do you think the pharmaceutical industry would have more or less influence over actual health… as opposed to lifetime drug consumption?  Maybe land-use policies could be returned to the States, as well.  Is federal binding-up of nearly 30% of the country, disallowing joint use for profit, national security and recreation… is that wasteful?  Maybe the “work” of the energy Department could return to the States.  Who would miss that agency except those who garner money in their pockets by dealing with a handful of bureaucrats instead of elected officials?

Maybe an amendment could remove politics from the FBI and restore it to investigating and fighting federal-law offenses while coordinating States’ cooperation for additional crime-fighting.  Policing should be a State matter, anyway.  It’s none of Congress’ business how States control crime and incarceration unless Constitutional rights are abused.

Fully HALF of Federal Agencies, Departments, offices could be eliminated, gone, kaput.  Few would miss them, again except for those who line their pockets by interacting with them.  If they are actually partnering in the success of American citizens, then keep them.  Otherwise, put every one on a separate line-item to be voted up or down every other year.  Perhaps the Congress could actually serve citizens instead of itself.  It might mean some hard work, though.

And let’s put limits on consecutive terms for every elected official who is paid more than an expense stipend, universally, but let States decide what they should be in their State.  These might include how many terms a previously elected office-holder must stay out of the process of running again.  But EVERY elected official should have to prosper in the private sector and live under the laws he or she helped pass.  Being in Congress or States’ legislatures or elected executive office is NOT a profession – it’s a sacrifice of service to neighbors, communities and country.  I guarantee we’d have different kinds of people in office – and different offices bound by different laws – which are the points.

“Charlie” McCarthy

Mr. Kevin McCarthy, ostensible Speaker of the House of Representatives of the People of the United States of America, in Congress, assembled, sans acclaim, is either confused or a compromised fool.  In his one opportunity to negotiate anything with the ostensible President of those same United States, sans acclaim, McCarthy managed to scrape the crumbs from the dinner trencher of the Big Guy, nearly dislocating his RIGHT shoulder from patting his own back in triumph.

Not a word was said about the defense of America and her people, or about the open border that threatens us, all.  Across the table from a documented criminal-President, McCarthy’s deep, deep concerns floated to the surface… of the Swamp – they were mostly air, after all… air-time, most accurately.  His leadership was on brilliant display, however, as he led his party to, ummnnh… well, nowhere.

Where does the Constitution permit the FEDERAL government to impose costs – illegal costs – upon the States of the Union?  Where does the Congress get the right to finance – BORROW to finance – the failure to follow U. S. law?  How can the Congress be a party to FAVORING illegal aliens over U. S. citizens?  Who, after all and in fact, does every sworn Member of the Congress of the United States of America work for and get paid by?  By LAW?

The weakest President in Prudence’ lifetime has bested one of the weakest Speakers – excepting Paul Ryan, perhaps.  Any Patriot must wonder why he or she still supports the Republican Party?  Here is a President of very questionable electoral authority and ethics, whose only means of communication other than scripts on teleprompters, is to spin fables: outright falsehoods that spill from his untethered brain and mouth like han ds-full of nuts, too bulky to allow for chewing… or mulling slightly.  Yet, not a word about the defense of our borders, our cities, our states, our citizens… or our very economy.  Most tragically, there was nothing about reducing our debt.

One must wonder why McCarthy agreed to this charade.  Is it simply, corruptly, to retain powerful “issues” with which to campaign?  To retain power for these lowly appendages of the deep-state Swamp?  Couldn’t get rid of Majorkas?  Or Wray?  Or, Milley or Austin?

When people from “both” sides are touting Victory, you know the “compromise” is a stinking pile of crap.

THE NEW COLONIALISTS

The world cannot continue as it is.  We Americans, like most people around the world who work for their livings, every day, quickly – automatically – adjust to, and begin to ignore, whatever significant news we’ve been pummeled with.  For us, the electricity and clean water stay “on” and we can take a shower whenever it pleases us.  Things can’t be very bad, can they?  Night comes and our homes or neighborhoods seem safe… and the electricity is still on, after all.  We wake up the next morning, the kids go to “school” and hubby goes off to work and no bombs have fallen.  Life is still good and the worries that crept in about inflation, drug abuse, China, Taiwan, Fentanyl and Ukraine… drift away.  Anyone that wants to discuss any one of those “issues” more than an hour or two later, must be a conspiracist or a radical, and quite boring.

Yet, off in the fuzzy distance, major forces are changing how the world “works.”

Once upon a time, independent countries could deal with one another on a wide spectrum from complete ignorance to invasive war.  What happened in Africa or Southeast Asia didn’t matter much to the enlightened few who lived mere cannon-shots apart.  As America took form, way, way across the daunting sea, things changed in ways unforeseen, and unplanned… or not – depends on your spiritual view.  Still, moving Judeo-Christian morals and urge to sacrifice, and the newly-developing economics and technologies to the “new” world, changed virtually every other nation’s future, for both good and bad.  The “old” world could not continue as it was.

Exploration and economics: old-worlders believed in ownership of the natural world, things like stockades, forts, fences, stone walls and armed defense of them all.  Homes and farms became permanent – at least compared to nomadic ways of life – and concentrated cities, stone fixtures defining streets, brick buildings and wheels, horses, oxen and the “tack” to harness their strength.  There shortly became a new “in” group and all others were in the “out” group and deemed “savages,” for their lack of Christian godliness… and technology.  The world could not continue as it was.

The colonial period lasted for 500 years, both good and bad… largely bad.  There are vestiges still, even as a new colonialism is preparing to take the place of nationalism and of freedom.  Communications have brought us together, but also into conflict.  It is not simply the conflict of nations, but conflict of individuals.  Powerful propaganda, as one form of colonialism, seeks and succeeds to take over our most valuable possessions: belief and morals.  Indeed, we can be led to reject even our personal selves in favor of a gender fantasy of becoming someone else.  Like the failed process of turning indigenous peoples into Europeans, attempting to change genders will create lifetimes of failure as people attempt to believe two diametrically opposed ideas simultaneously.  As belief structures, moral structures, religious structures weaken and fade, we find our governors changing laws to ENFORCE this false dichotomy onto everyone else with the vile tools of hatred for those who disagree.

Mind-addling drugs have been a tool for individual colonization for many decades, but rare until the Viet-Nam war.  Now, with fentanyl and other created chemicals, there is not only colonization of brains, but high volumes of death.  Whether live addiction is better is hard to discern.

But there is a world of colonization proceeding, also.  It’s called globalization.  If the United States allows it to happen, the concepts of individual liberty, sovereignty and free-enterprise – and of responsibility – will be as dead as doornails.  At the very time that citizens of the United States of America are most needed to defend our Constitutional way of government and of life, the purposeful lack of education about our unique role in the world, is bearing its most bitter fruits.

Our “Democrat” co-Americans, the cats’ paws of global leftism, are engineering a gross, illegal colonization of the United States, itself.  Attempting to justify an open border on “humanitarian” grounds has allowed, so far, over 6 MILLION illegal entrants to claim asylum status with virtually no limitation or follow-up by federal Border Patrol or Immigration authorities – the very “authorities” charged by law to prevent exactly what they are now forced to ignore.  Everyone in the chain of command from the President on up to the Border Patrol agent required to “process” invading hordes, is party to crimes and treason.  This is the new colonialism in the 21st century: displacement of rightful citizens as a public, global policy.

There is a legitimate, Constitutional question as to whether the federal government can impose costs upon any, let alone all, of the states and their ability to tax their citizens, including diverting STATE resources that were acquired for completely other reasons?  What legal thread allows the federal government or any President, by extra-legal executive order, to degrade the ability of a state to support and serve its own citizens?  What extra-legal authority allows the federal government to divert federal funds placed in the hands of states to administer and fulfill LAWFUL obligations, based on a Presidential executive order?

An even greater question is whether anyone except a United States Citizen is entitled to Constitutional rights and privileges?

Make no mistake, the “Free World” is being colonized by leftists with distinctly anti-American philosophies – Communists, for all intents and purposes.  We rarely hear of the “Free World” these days – it’s almost gone.  Not even the United States of America is number one in freedom any longer.  We, who used to defend freedom and exemplify it, can no longer define it except in terms of license.

In the “old days,” colonizers would appear with different tools, weapons, clothing, languages and religions.  Today?  Today they come with the very same differences… they just don’t have to travel as far, perhaps across the street or the down the halls of a school.  Do we rid ourselves of them?  Or, surrender?  So far, it’s surrender – the world cannot go on as it is.

The globalist colonizers approve of the amoral colonization of America.  Only America – the U. S. of A. – stands in the way of global Communism, yet we barely remember that to be our role in history.  The world cannot go on this way… not for long, anyway.  Of course, it will go on somehow.  But HOW is the business of all Americans – favoring Patriots, Prudence hopes.

There have always been economics, even when families were managing their own food, construction and defenses.  Aside from more elaborate ways to steal, the purposes of economic metrics are still the same, although the scale has exploded.  The United States, alone, squanders enough money to put the world economy at imminent risk.  Here we stand, on a sliver of eroding support for the Dollar, borrowing and spending faster than accounting can measure.  We should be ashamed.  We claim to represent a form of freedom and classless economics with which anyone can succeed with competence, work and integrity.  We elect our representatives democratically and send our best and bravest overseas to defend or create our model virtues while, back home, we don’t want or defend that system for ourselves!

Why would anyone take our advice?

The world cannot go on the way it is.

IDENTIFYING ENMITY

Secretary-General António Guterres (left) speaks with Volkan Bozkir, (Russia)
President of the UN General Assembly.

The position of the United States of America, once the beacon of hope, justice and honesty, relative to the rest of the world’s nations, has changed.  It’s not a change most Americans have hoped for or, cruelly, even anticipated – certainly not one that our erstwhile “leaders” have anticipated.  In a nutshell: our enemies have identified themselves.  None of the bribes or blandishments by which we have executed “foreign policy” are sufficient any longer.  The outright gifts to those who will be just as happy to watch our demise as grand influencers, have proven to be a waste… unappreciated largesse from our grandchildren’s grandchildren that bought, evidently, only tolerance.

Now that the Bidens have destroyed faith in our money, in our courts and in our foreign services, Americans have what might be perceived as an opportunity to stop lying to ourselves the way we’ve been lying to other nations.  Honesty is not a commodity that is banked in any quantity by our federal administrative state or by the elected trolls it maintains for our imagined benefit.  We vote and vote, hoping and praying that the latest lines spewed in campaigns are, at last, the true ones, but nothing changes very much.  The only change agent in the past 9 administrations has been hounded and vilified, attacked and threatened by the administrative state’s agents, since before he won election in 2016.

The internal and external destruction of the United States of America, has been engineered by the Communist Party of China – CCP.  The majesty and Christianity, tolerance and charity of America has been given away, diluted and stolen by even our trusted friends, neighbors and “public servants” as we’ve barely watched, so consumed are we by technology and hyper-sexuality and self-hate.  “They” have divided us against ourselves – the only way America and Americanism could have ever been defeated.  We’re still standing by the Grace of God, but our own determined effort will put an end to that.  Still, while we yet stand, we have an opportunity to make some radical decisions.

A quick and painless one, an obvious one, is to get rid of the United Nations and renounce every connection or treaty that we’ve ever honored with that den of thieves.  Kick them out of New York, out of our State Department and out of any influence in our curricula (aside from history) or our medical establishment.  We are Americans – we own this country and we can clean out this fetid closet of worms if we wake up in time.  Let China build a new set of club-houses for the International Liars’ Club to meet in.

Next, recognize who our enemies actually are and stop treating them like imminent friends whose undying friendship may be cemented by only a few billion more debt-dollars from our grandchildren’s grandchildren.  If they wish to trade with us or even enter our country, they will have to be at least courteous towards our national sovereignty and honor.  Let those who are proven friends to our nation, have advantage over other nations in terms of trade, commerce and intercourse.  Let us make mutual defense agreements with those who will commit as much to those treaties as our nation does – who will risk their citizens’ lives in our defense as we have and will in theirs.

Our international agreements should be mutually beneficial while not draining our treasury.  We’ll need some honest financial managers to replace the band of liars who operate the mis-named Federal Reserve, FDIC, Treasury Department and the IRS.  They operate as controllers of or enemies of American citizens.  Naturally, our federal budgets must be in surplus all-the-friggin’-time.  Inflation of the money supply has only limited value to AMERICAN CITIZENS, and then only in times of war or national disaster.  These do not include local hunger or personal failures or homelessness or drug addiction or unhappiness.  We’re talking only the business of the federal government, personal matters notwithstanding.

It is not the business of the federal government to house people, feed or clothe them, educate them or wipe their bottoms.  At least half of the federal departments and sub-agencies can be eliminated along with half of the work-force… to start.

It IS the business of the federal government to defend and control our borders, ports of entry and the presence of non-citizens.   Illegally residing non-citizens should be humanely rounded up and deported to their home countries, from where they can apply for visas.  Our country has allowed its past half-century of federal administrations to over-promise and over-spend to the amount of some $32 Trillion of current debt, and over $100 Trillion of future socialist obligations.  This is the same as pointing out that we have exceeded our productive surplus* over the past 60 years in order to transform other countries, provide comforts to non-productive citizens/residents of our own country, act like we are the most wealthy nation in the world, and to add numerous socialist programs for political reasons (vote-buying).  We cannot afford to live the way we have been.  We must stop borrowing and pay our loans off.  We must teach/force our citizenry to take responsibility for themselves and take that same off the back of the federal government.  The future can be one of freedom or of socialism/Communism; it can’t be both.

We need more tax-PAYERS, not more tax-TAKERS.  Currently, and since the outbreak of COVID-19 in particular, the long, slow creation of federal dependents has been operating at hyper-velocity – the dream of the Communists among us.  Sadly, we have been electing Communists to positions of influence and power in our states and in the federal government.  Part of how this could be is our hasty acceptance of people from widely diverse cultures, making them citizens and allowing them to create pockets of cultural distinction rather than assimilating them into our unique American culture.  We can identify the Communists among us by observing their disdain for that American culture.  We allow many of these weird people into our education establishment and then marvel at how differently our children treat American values.  In too many cases, our children have never learned what those values are.

Recently, 700 professors on the staff of the University of North Carolina signed a letter opposing a new requirement to include instruction in America’s founding documents and Constitution.  They feel that “academic freedom” is threatened by teaching American history.  A great university is represented by faculty who, evidently, fear the inculcation of AMERICAN values.  Perhaps their best efforts are perceived as the separation of their students from American values, should the primary and secondary schools not done an adequate job.  Maybe this explains why teachers see parents as the enemies of “education:” they might be teaching their own children the American values that teachers are committed to destroying.  America Awake!

*Productive surplus is what is available to be taxed out of payrolls and profits.