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Biden, Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Politics 2023, Religion, Responsibility, Sex

BEING A LONG SHORTLY – 5

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The importance of being vigilant

SEXUALITY

For some weird reasons: forms of moral communism, basically, sexuality has become a major element of elementary education and the business of thousands of men and women formerly respected as educators.  One wonders why there has been a virtual explosion of sexual deviance and why America tolerates it, let alone cements it in place with illogical legal protections.  The so-called LGBTQ+ “community” has shifted from seeking safety and tolerance to rabid dominance of culture and communications, and a legally enforced “right” to convert children to deviance in schools and elsewhere.  This abrupt, new trend is a sign of sickness in a culture.

Normalization of homosexuality was the beginning to a societal tolerance of deviant sexuality, but by itself, neither virulent nor threatening to our core morality.  Gay marriage, however, provided the breech in legality such that virulent deviance could force itself upon schools, society and families.  Proto-Communists in the schools and teachers’ unions, perceived gender confusion as an excellent tool for dividing society and weakening families: a key process to create totalitarian control of society.  How diabolically clever to choose as an “enemy” the widespread grasp of truth.  What is the most damaging effect of this subversion?

To answer that we need to establish some moral – and spiritual – ground rules.  It seems Prudent to reflect on life, itself.  It is fundamentally spiritual, in the majoritarian worldwide view.  There are too many “miraculous” events, large and small, that define, save and divert the lives of too many people to attribute everything to “luck.”  Even cultures that place great emphasis on “luck” are dependent on something “spiritual” – forms of super-natural forces. 

At the same time as “spiritual” beliefs or assumptions are at work, society, itself, must function for the maximum number of people.  That means food, safety, comfort, property and advancement.  All require stability and widespread agreement on rights and wrongs: ethics, courtesies and laws.  People had to cooperate in trusted and trusting ways.  The integrity and primacy of family units are essential, as are the education and acculturation of children.  Those who would disrupt – to the point of replacing the structure and strengths of – a successful society, recognize that disrupting families is the first and most effective step.  To some significant degree, those are people who are anti-spiritual, and in the case of America, anti-Christian in virulent ways.

Human sexuality, in nearly all family units, represents the creation of children, who are the descendants of that family line.  Grandparents are as keenly interested in that process as parents are.  Whatever interferes with conception, childbirth and acculturation of children, is striking at the essence of social success and of hope… for the future, one of those “spiritual” aspects of life.  To the disrupters, sexuality, in the soup of hypersexualization of “Western” civilization, became a weapon against American culture.

“Gay” marriage was a move spurred by compassion.  Once it had legal status, aggressive sex-weaponizers had a basis for demanding equal status in school settings: homosexuality now had to be taught along with heterosexuality, and not just about marriage.  Heterosexuality is – and always has been – normalcy: mothers and fathers produce children; boys and girls are different in “normal,” predictable ways; growing up takes place in predictable, “normal” patterns with predictable responsibilities, that ought to respond to parental and societal expectations.  The boundaries of ethics and law are equally recognized and predictable.  Progress occurs as does advancement, in that individuals become more skilled, more valuable in the economies of families and communities… and nations, and more spiritual.  Those formulas of cultural success are resilient, but only to a point.  Feminism, a re-ordering of relationships between men and women, perhaps inadvertently, provided political power to legalize increasingly non-normal sexual practices.  Gay marriage had opened the door a crack while a giant wedge of divisive realignment was poised, in the form of radical feminism, to jam it open to every form of deviant irresponsibility.  Our culture has, so far, failed to recognize the danger lurking within the virulent move to get children to renounce their true selves – basically denying responsibilities inherent in their genders and roles in a healthy society.  “Affirming” mental incongruities as more true than reality, has a very, very low rate of success.  The web of lies we call “laws,” should be unraveled.

ELECTIONS

The majesty of United States’ citizenship is taught – if taught at all – through detraction and condemnation.  Rare are the public, unionized schools where a deep understanding is gained by students, of the responsibilities imparted by our Constitution, Declaration and multiple other founding and originating documents and philosophies.  Freedom is not a gift from our forefathers, except as a door to the future that we, American citizens are obligated to pass through as leaders for this world.  We have the keys to progress, advancement and personal perfection in our hands; we have failed to implant it in the hearts of our children.  For most of us, the closest we come to that responsibility is in our role as voters – authorized choosers of America’s leadership, authorized lenders of power to those we choose to hold it.  That fundamental authority and power has been so corrupted as to be taken from us BY THE VERY PEOPLE we lend our nation’s representative powers to!

Some functions of democracy should not be computerized.  The stealing of elections has become virtually part of the background humor of the United States, and it’s a part of history, most especially in large cities.  The holding of public office in cities can, if manipulated successfully, provide great wealth and power over others.  Those positions will be defended and fought-for.  The rot of urban election theft has morphed, thanks to the mysterious wonders of computerized vote recording and tallying, into the theft of statewide and federal elections.

Voter lists are computerized and the printouts of those lists are available to official campaigns.  So, too, are lists of deceased or moved-away voters, and those who are ineligible for other reasons.  Fortunately for those who are willing to defraud the voting process, most of the ineligible voters are still listed among the names on the “voter” list.  A moderately sly campaign functionary can arrange for persons to go to the polls and vote in the name of ineligible, but still listed, voters.  It works, but is time consuming and risky.  How fabulous to have a “pandemic” strike the nation during a federal election year!  Resulting fears and medical ignorance (and mendacity) overrode legal and Constitutional strictures, enabling even more sly attorneys to win court cases allowing for “mail-in” ballots to “protect” voters from the scourge of COVID-19.

These mostly illegal changes under cover of a “national medical emergency,” were quickly stretched to allow ballot drop-boxes, official and unofficial, and then vote-harvesting from infirm voters, ostensibly.  Sympathetic election officials allowed ever wider interpretations of “safety” and “every vote should count,” which included every ballot – licit and illicit.  A handful of determined election fraudsters in mail-in states could, because of fellow-democrat fellow-travelers, sway tens and hundreds of thousands of invalid, but counted, “votes.” Even signature-match verification was disregarded in the interest of safety during a national medical emergency.  Computers helped, of course, providing unmonitored curing of “erroneous” ballots with new electronic records.  Damn the whole process.

Voting is the only sacrament in democracy.  We have allowed one party, basically, to corrupt voting and vote-counting to its benefit.  In 2020 these factors may have accounted for more than 8 million illicit votes.  It changed history and the resulting President is changing history more every day… not in good ways, at all.

How can this Jin be pushed back into its cave?  How can every election be trusted again?  What are the steps?  It requires a certain amount of automation, but no actual computerization and no internet connections to aggregation points or to state elections offices or to anywhere else.

First, hand-marked ballots, only.  Fill in the ovals or squares and let a machine scan them and count them.  A total is reported for each office.  Count the handful of write-ins, and pack up the ballots with a bar-coded wrapper.  A certified police officer transports that bundle to the single aggregation point near the state capitol.  There, that bundle is unwrapped and fed through a certified machine identical to the one in East Podunk that generated the draft, on-site total.  The stack is run through the second machine and the totals compared.  If they are exactly alike, the total is reported as final.

If the totals don’t agree the ballots are inspected by hand while monitored by poll watchers.  The stack is scanned again in a free-standing, non-networked machine.  At some point there will be two identical totals and that number is reported.  The total time to complete these steps might be 2 or 3 days, but the totals will be trustworthy.  Everything else that has been interjected into this process is bogus and serves only the convenience of government – and the purposes of the leftist party.  Absentee ballots should be only that, with significant reasons to avoid personally casting one’s ballot.

There should be no “early” voting, except, perhaps, for 2 or 3 days.  That will facilitate convenience without encouraging voting in ignorance of much of what might be exposed by the campaigns.  If the Post Office is to be involved in any significant way it should be to deliver registered ballots that must be signed-for by the requestor.  Then, ON A SPECIFIC DAY prior to Election Day, and involving no mail delivery on that day – perhaps a Saturday – Postal route personnel can pick up the ballots at the addresses to which they were delivered.  No wholesale mailings to untrustworthy “voting lists” and no ballot harvesting.

If we fail to secure our elections we fail to deserve the blessings of liberty.

BUDGETS

The term, “Budget” is not used in the Constitution.  Budgeting for government spending, however, is vitally important – it’s the only way to set a standard for the key functions of the Congress: raising revenue and appropriating it for legitimate government expenditures.  There are thousands of words in the U. S. Code relating to the President’s obligations to provide dozens of kinds and titles of data about programs and expenditures included in the President’s submitted budget.  Sadly, about three-quarters of “the budget” is considered permanent or “entitlements” or both at once, and therefore unchangeable by the people’s representatives, despite having been created by those same worthies on behalf of those same people.  Technically, EVERY element in the budget may be modified or removed.  However, virtually every aspect of federal expenditure has its own advocacy group, mostly political.  With Congress’ primary purposes being re-election and not the “people’s business,” no part of the budget that could have a negative impact politically, will be touched, except to increase it.

With a $32 Trillion federal debt, a large fraction of the sub-chapters of the budget must be “touched,” cut or eliminated.  They cannot all grow in every budget cycle, including payrolls, welfare entitlements pensions and other hot-button items.  There is no reason to expect that the Congress as constituted and elected, is going to ever balance expenditures and revenues, let alone cut any one of them.  The collapse of the U. S. economically is being led and accelerated by government debt and deficit spending.  All processes of taxation and revenue accumulation have failed to enhance America’s economic strength of freedom, nor has it done very much to increase the prosperity of a majority of Americans.  We feel like we’re becoming more wealthy, higher real estate prices and so forth, perhaps larger retirement funds, but our money is worth less every year and a lot of what we think we’ve gained is “balanced” by those trillions in debt.  Most of us will not be ready when the decline becomes a rout.

Our wonderful – magical – Federal Reserve Bank was given vital power by Congress in 1913: to coin money and set the value thereof.  Along with that sloughing off of Constitutional power, Congress also provided “the Fed” the magical power to loan money to the federal government, even when it doesn’t have money to actually lend.  So, it lends air and charges interest on it.  The federal government owes so much that it must borrow money to pay the interest on previous loans.  That amounts to three-quarters of a trillion dollars this year.  Only the most irresponsible presidential administration would run a greater-than-Trillion-dollar deficit in its budget in the face of this unprecedented indebtedness.

The history of the past 60 years has made the budget process of the U. S. federal government, an increasingly fraudulent exercise.  The fraud is perpetrated upon the American people, in the main, but also on every holder of dollars in the world, as the value of each dollar slips downward, year by year… sometimes week-by-week.

Prudence would dictate a different course for our ship of state, but we won’t see that happen under Democrat control of the White House.

And we’re still not done?

Biden, Economics, Governance, Politics 2023, Representation

INFLATULATION

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Currently we seem to be as concerned about inflation and the “consumer price index” as we are about any other nationwide issue.  “Inflation,” of course, refers only to the inflation of the money supply, something that is only partly affected by the actions of people in the day-to-day economy… what we call, “Main Street.”  This reference is usually juxtaposed to “Wall Street,” where the wizards of finance operate at, supposedly, an entirely different level of economics than the rest of us.  Though Wall Street money machinations are more arcane, they are not so very different from the decisions we all make regarding the presence or lack of “money” and the affordability of things we’d like to buy.

“Wall Street” is a combine of INTERNATIONAL money manipulators, and they are tied to many governments, especially that of the United States, where finance involves multi-Billions and even Trillions of dollars; financing shopping centers, small businesses and residences is not their particular concern.  They, like Federal socialists, are delighted to mess with 10’s and 100’s of thousands of mortgages, including selling “options” and “futures” contracts based on their supposed flow of billions and hundreds of billions of future mortgage payments – delighted, that is, until their phony financial instruments caused the destruction of several of their own pack, like Lehman Brothers.  At that point, thanks to their financial entanglements with “our” federal government and governors, they felt free to compel the taxpayers of America to bail them out.  Otherwise, they’re just like us.

In either case, “money” is defined as instruments of real worth or value: a dollar once was exchangeable for a dollar’s worth of silver or, in theory, of gold.  People – and banks and governments – around the world, recognize precious metals and true weights and purity thereof, as items of intrinsic value.  Right now, the “dollar” bill we are familiar with is no longer even tied to the United States directly; it is a “Federal Reserve Note” that the U. S. Federal Government declares must be accepted as “legal tender” for all debts public and private.  But, all you can get at a Federal Reserve Bank (neither federal nor a reserve) in exchange for a one-dollar Federal Reserve Note is another Federal Reserve Note.  So, our “currency” today is only “tender,” not actual money.  Others accept it in exchange for real goods and services and as long as this is true we can function economically.

Our good and trusted Representatives, however, legislating in “The People’s House” on our behalf, have decided over many decades to spend more “money” than we can actually afford to pay in taxes.  Our Federal “budgets,” such as they have been since 1960 or so, have been out of “balance,” now accumulating some $32 Trillion of DEBT, which has placed an obligation on the backs of all of us, thank them very much.  This occurred at an accelerated rate over the past two years of the Biden administration and the last year of the Trump administration, thanks, ostensibly, to a COVID-19 pandemic, and this has both distorted our employment, wages and sense of responsibility, and caused tremendous INFLATION of the money supply.  Well, actually, it’s not money that it has inflated, but our “legal tender” or “currency.”  Keep in mind that it is not “money” that gets inflated – that supply only grows by the quantities of goods and fixed assets that increase thanks to PRODUCTION of those goods, goods that have intrinsic value.  That “intrinsic value” is the closest thing to “money” that we have.

Unfortunately, as fascistic leftists shut down our economy and started paying newly locked-out workers to stay home as their jobs evaporated, PRODUCTION, oddly enough, declined!  Suddenly we had trillions of new bits of legal tender floating around with fewer goods – or SERVICES – available to buy!  This logically caused prices to rise.  That’s not “inflation,” regardless of how often we call it that, it is PRICE INCREASE derived largely from supply and demand.  In our foolishness we lowered supply while we multiplied demand.  Indeed, our decades-long transfer of production to China, where it was also restricted by COVID (including screw-ups in the supply chain, keeping what products were made out of our marketplaces) made our own inflation-generated price increases even worse.  Anyone who calls rising prices, “inflation,” is simply ignorant.  The Federal Government and the current administration are the most frequent mis-staters of what “inflation” is, but it helps to confuse – or lie to – the American people, one of which is always a Federal goal.

Consequently, President Biden and his tight tether to the truth, loves to claim that “inflation” has “come down” for the past 6 consecutive months.  How wonderful that sounds, as though his spendthrift administration were responsible for improving the economy for average folks.  But what is reality?  Do Biden’s truths have any congruence with reality?

Prices are still high and getting higher.  What does Biden’s claim of slowing “inflation” have to do with that?  Well, when we recognize what his “inflation” really is: price increases, Biden is patting himself on the back for slower price increases.  Swell.  What he hopes to obscure is the painful fact that all the price increase that has already taken place IS STILL THERE, and those prices are STILL GOING UP, just a little slower.  That is not a victory.  Factually it is a sloppy admission that the pain he has inflicted on Americans with his dumb-ass policies is as bad as ever and getting worse.  Congratulations, you old dope.

Add to the damage being done the fact that the rate of price increases (so-called inflation) is no longer honestly stated to begin with, thanks to Federal political calculations, since they no longer include ENERGY or FOOD!  What a hoax.  That lets the Department of Commerce claim that “inflation” is only 6 or 7 or 8 percent, when it’s actually 12 or 13 percent!  People might really vote against someone who presided over an economy with 13 percent inflation (whatever that is).  As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

So, Prudent readers, inflation isn’t the same as price increases, but it is a significant cause of them.  It isn’t something people cause; it is a tool of government that performs as a relatively slow devaluation of the currency.  Unfortunately, that is the same legal tender that we, all, depend upon for affording our means of living.  Don’t vote for politicians or erstwhile “leaders” who willingly devalue the money you have earned and the wealth you have accumulated over years.  Who the Hell do they think they are, to steal from every citizen?  Indeed.  Check out: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2022/08/21/the-inflation-chronicles/

Biden, Crime, Culture, Education, Health Care, Immigration, Politics 2022, Religion

FREE TRUCKIN’

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President Joe Biden speaks about his domestic agenda from the
East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021,
as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Thousands of independent truck drivers in Canada have coalesced to protest their government’s Covid-19 “vaccine” mandate.  Many are “vaccinated” (have accepted the weird injections) but are demanding freedom to choose what goes into their bloodstreams.  Their Premier, Justin Trudeau, has scurried off to hide from them, claiming exposure to Covid – what else?  He’s a heroic figure by his own account.  He looks more like an asshole, but that’s subjective.

In all likelihood truckers in the U. S. are going to form their own convoy in protest of our government’s denial of freedom, too.  Canada’s convoy was up to 45 miles long as it descended upon Ottowa.  The Americans will try to exceed that, one suspects.  Either way, the Canadians have inspired working people around the world to organize against the soft, yet hardening, tyrannies of supposed pandemic suppression; this applies mainly to the Biden Administration.

President Joe Biden has imposed an odd case study of how strange, long debunked theories of leftist governance, can screw up a large nation in a matter of months.  Still, we have to go back further than January 20, 2021 to appreciate the impact of leftism on a supposedly Constitutionally limited democratic republic, particularly in reaction to a national “health emergency.”  Covid-19 was such a perfect foil for destroying freedom and personal responsibility, that leftists have almost rejoiced in the opportunities to show how much better life can be under the firm hands of government control.  It has fit their dreams so well that the creation of Covid-19 might appear to be a gift from the great leftist in the sky… or in China – same thing to some.

All of this brings us to contemplating how many left-ward changes POTUS (Poop-head Of The United States) has made in slightly more than one year.  Among them are a host of UN-Constitutional, EXTRA-Constitutional and ANTI-Constitutional actions and policies.  A number of them will, patriots hope, lead to impeachment and conviction of Mr. Biden.  One glaring example is illegal immigration, one of the first “orders” POTUS issued on January 21st, his first full day in office.  Biden reversed every Trump administration border policy, stopping virtually all deportations and virtually all arrests of illegal entrants.  By so doing he ushered in one of the great travesties in U. S. history.

Since the end of January, 2021, nearly 2 MILLION illegal entrants have crossed the southern border – by the hundreds and thousands – and Joe Biden has forced the Border Patrol and I.C.E. to allow them in and then to provide various articles of clothing, cell-phones, prepaid for a year, hotel rooms and rides, even flights, to wherever the illegals want to go, or wherever Biden wants them to go.  This policy requires the specific subversion of U. S. law.  It forces expenses upon the sovereign states that created the FEDERAL governing system, completely subverting the Tenth Amendment.  There is no pro-American value to it.  Indeed, beyond unfettered access to public welfare programs and illegal residence in our country, illegal entrants are afforded more rights and far fewer legal constraints than are U. S. citizens!  In fact, the federal government bends over backwards to provide Constitutional rights and protections to illegal aliens, including providing attorneys to every illegal entrant to defend their spurious claims to asylum.  Many bleeding-heart liberals consider that it is the duty of the United States to feel sorry for, and provide welfare to, every unhappy person in the world.  While that’s a sweet opinion, it has almost nothing to do with the purpose of nationhood: survival.

Every nation on Earth has a reason for being.  For some, for most, actually, it is ethnicity.  That is, nationhood typically has sprung from tribal identity, although most countries have also been fought for against neighboring tribes, and often expanded thereby. In too many examples nations have been cobbled together through domination and war.  Commonality of language and / or religious belief has proven just as nationalizing as ethnic tribalism.  Many factors combine to establish – and maintain – successful nations.  Only one nation has survived because of a set of principles, almost despite ethnicity.  It is exceptional.

To cement its unique reasons for being, the founding Fathers – and Mothers – of the United States of America, established an ageless covenant with the people of their recently fought-for states: The Constitution, the most respected and “copied” foundational document in the world.  Every President, commencing with George Washington, and virtually every other elected state and federal official since, has sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.  One might think that failing to do so would be justification for removal from office.

Every nation, however it justifies its continued existence, recognizes and passionately defends its borders… and its culture.  For a nation to be led by a person or group of people who take actions to NOT defend its borders or even its culture, would seem to honest citizens sufficient reason to remove him or them from power.  Back to Covid-19.

There is a large cohort of ostensible Americans who are charged with the vital task of conveying the culture and heritage of the United States to its children – to our future, in fact.  Unfortunately, teachers and the overarching public education industry, have, over the past fifty years, been co-opted by ultra-leftists and virtual communists.  Teachers’ unions have established themselves as the operators of schools, rather than the parents of children or the local, elected, school committees or boards who, presumably, answer to their constituents.  It all results from political – and financial – corruption, with most of the finances being tax dollars… tax dollars extracted from real property owners, primarily, under the threat of police powers.

As a consequence, anti-American ideologies are taught to students in schools of “education” and then taught to elementary school students with the knowledge of their parents.  This is changing, but decades of damage have been accomplished, reflected in a general malaise infecting 5 to 21-year-olds, noted in rates of drug use, lack of religious education, hyper-sexualization and suicide rates.  Many of our youth believe they prefer socialism to capitalism, and if it’s the form of monopolistic, oligharchic wealth concentration we have allowed to date, they are right.  Our Constitutional Republican form of governance and freedom is designed to allow for hope, imagination, joy and attainment.  Our schools and attendant politics have produced less and less capable or independent young adults, and a lack of hope so profound as to destroy institutions like marriage, motherhood and fatherhood.  If a primary purpose of nationhood is survival, America is failing.  Illegal immigration won’t fix what ails us.

Covid provided thousands of incipient fascists with a perfect opportunity to push people around.  The three most destructive effects of government “emergency” powers are the destruction of thousands of small businesses and millions of jobs, destruction of what was left of American economic freedom and budgetary strength, and destruction of the education and development of millions of K through 12 students.  “Educators,” so-called, in teachers’ unions and administrative positions in virtually every school system, learned to exercise powers they’d only dreamed of prior.  Parents, their schedules and economies and their precious offspring could be controlled in ways never imagined under our Constitution.  As the truth has been spilling out about actual Covid threats and effects, schools are the largest remaining poisoned well of fascism – including pushing these dangerous injections onto kids as young as five years.  It all constitutes a crime against humanity.  Australia, New Zealand and, now, Canada, have enjoyed practicing new-found fascistic powers, to the point of mobilizing against freedom.  Many of those same teachers are envious.

Naturally, parents have rebelled against the cloying, sticky blob of indoctrinators, and have succeeded many areas.  Covid helped to expose the rot.  But the lerftist, Democrat power structure will not relinquish its attempts to replace the American system with global socialism, readily or cleanly.  Its members are clever and cunning, albeit not wise.  The Biden deministration is happy to sic Merrick Garland and his DOJ thugs, so to speak, on parents who resist the wasting of education time on critical race or gender theories.  What the Hell are we doing with the American dream bequeathed to us over the centuries?

Americans like to believe that we can work hard to elect this or that person or set of persons, and thereby change the direction of freedom, opportunity and of government, itself.  It barely works anymore.  Elections come and go, but the direction of government is inexorably toward higher pay and benefits for government officials and employees – higher than for average citizens – toward increasing benefits and rights for non-working welfare recipients, toward increasing benefits and rights for illegal entrants, toward increasing controls over individuals’ rights and freedoms, and toward perpetual, unredeemable debt. 

Two things must happen: 1) voters must become smarter, hopefully wiser; and, 2) candidates for office must become smarter and better principled in terms of commitment to our Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. 

Are we wise enough, collectively or individually, to stop electing anti-freedom, anti-American officials and “representatives?  Do we actually believe that we can ignore the Constitution and just vote ourselves benefits from government much longer?  Please.

Culture, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility

RESURRECTION

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"In the beginning..."

There has never occurred a crisis for civilization when capitalism failed to function.  “Capitalism” is innate, virtually instinctive among humans, and the most powerful of motivators in societies as small as one member.  An individual has the same needs for life on a personal level as a family, clan, village or nation  has: clothing, food, protection and shelter.  At whatever level or intensity of need, humans will attempt to obtain as much as possible of any of them at the lowest “cost” of effort possible.

Once acquired these needed things automatically become property – property on a spectrum of ownership, from the very personal, like clothing, weapons, tools, personal or family shelter.  Beyond the immediately personal, family property and then clan or village property, there automatically develops properties that are belief-based, like loyalty and group-safety obligation.  It is a short journey to sharing beliefs about events, conditions, weather, waters, animals and childbirth… and death, that are unexplained and ascribed to supernatural influences.  These beliefs are as crucial a private property as clothing and self-defense, and as durable a cultural quality as pottery styles or graphic and oral expressions of every sort.  And they will be passed on to children nearly infallibly.  Behavior by either children or adults that is contrary to those shared beliefs automatically produces negative sanctions.

In groups as small as two, and certainly of 3 or 4, specialties: differences in abilities, are quickly apparent.  In a group of families there will be definite skills of higher degrees of excellence in this person or that – better hunting skills, better tool-making, better making of clothing, better hut-building.  Someone – an elder – will gain enough knowledge to predict outcomes, or eclipses, or the arrival of herds.  His or her wisdom will be sought out for transfer to children.  Specialization.  Economics is part of and an outgrowth of specialization.  Wise men, chiefs, healers and others will be fed in exchange  for their unique services.  Food is an automatic medium of exchange.  Next, perhaps, are weapons and tools.  The hunter who unerringly leads the hunting party to the clan’s next moose or buffalo or elk, may be “gifted” with a blanket, better shoes or more food… or a wife.

Rules, mores, or customs guide the relationships within the group.  Inevitably there is a shared concept of us and them: people from outside the clan.  The desire to protect the clan is just as automatic.  Yet the possibility of trade with outsiders may be easily entertained because of the ease of acquisition compared to the work required to obtain the outsider’s goods on their own.  The values must be set.  How many of this kind of skins or tools or decorations or… whatever, are “worth” the higher quality flint arrowheads the stranger makes?  Before long the first group will be trapping extra beavers just to trade for arrowheads: an economy is created.

The big impact on economics, and on the establishment of capitalism as an organizing  force in society, came with the introduction of agriculture.  As people settled  around their fields, the importance of property changed forever.  Where crops “belonged” to the village, or “city,” their grains and products were not handed out to every family for free.  There were trades or barters required, leading to record-keeping, counting, weights and balances.  There appeared the recorded existence of debts to be repaid in the (near) future, between families and the granary (city) and even between cities: a collective capitalism (property rights) and individual capitalism (private property rights.)  Automatically new specialties arose: law-enforcement within the city, and border-enforcement against all outside the city – soldiers and general conscription when fields and water sources were threatened.

Treaties were needed: rules to reduce threats from “others,” and to define ownership of certain lands and resources.  There always existed nomadic peoples who refined forms of movable dwellings, like those of indigenous peoples in North America.  Conflicting interaction between “property-rights” people and nomadic tribes inevitably result in destruction of nomadic uses of lands desired by those who employ fences, borders and ownership-based economic structures.  Native Americans had no concept of fences and property lines, and this difference affected why they never developed cities, industries and massive growth.  Today, the simplicity of indigenous people’s way of life is attractive to those who wish to tear down our current, sloppy, polluting and more or less capitalist, civilization.

Capitalism and all of its moving parts: private property, profit, risk, debt/investment, accumulation of wealth and inheritance and the freedom to fail and learn, is the prime driver of the global economy and amazing invention and innovation that supports more than 7 Billion humans.  But it does all of this at great cost, not least of which is the expansion of the number of possible “sins” and multiplication of the number of temptations (frauds, scams, legal deceptions, global banking).  On the other hand, and comprising the basic defense of capitalism as an organizing principle, capitalist economics and politics  have spurred the greatest wealth and health in history.  More people are well-fed and comforted in hundreds of ways, educated and made relatively “free” thanks to capitalism than under any of the more or less tyrannical systems employed, ever.

Capitalist politics depend on democracy and, judged by the success of the United States, upon republicanism:  the democratic election of ostensibly more capable, perhaps wiser, representatives.  Evidently, as well, Constitutional republicanism is crucial to the explosive growth of wealth and a “middle class” of upwardly mobile individuals and families who could, realistically, work their way higher up the economic ladder.  It is worth analysis and reformation, both political and economic, to return the U. S. system to its successful ways.  This means reformation of economic institutions, and of political institutions, both of which, today, conspire to concentrate power – and share it – to the detriment of freedom, upward mobility and essential Constitutionalism.

The strongest voices raised against “America,” are firmly on the left, socialist and worse.  Their prescription is virtual destruction of “capitalism” and honest conservatives / constitutionalists must recognize their logic in the presence of an extremely unbalanced, oligarchy of global bankers who largely have brought the financial system to a point of dictating to even the United States, what its future will be: indebtedness to that cabal, and therefore limited as to the extent of our independent action internationally.

Capitalism requires limits and institutions that prevent its (people’s) essential tendencies toward 1) monopoly and, 2) political / governmental advantage.  We can see the damages that concentrations of wealth will cause, not least of which is empowering socialism and anti-constitutionalism.  But it also creates severe stratification in a society formed without “castes” or “classes.”  Perhaps worst of all, super wealth transcends nationhood; when profits can be earned around the globe, the need to adhere to a single country’s norms and laws, tends to evaporate.  Most particularly, the impact of market presence in the nations of our rivals / enemies, sees corporations or syndicates of corporations, bending to not offend those who mean the U. S. the most harm.

Is it possible to restore a sense of nationalism for industries key to the defense and independence of the United States?  What would such a policy look like?  What could possibly be the enforcing agency?  Can current political hatreds and ignorance permit the formation of a national-interest industrial policy that serves the country, rather than one that serves a party?

When the two – or three – political “sides” in the U. S. don’t agree on what the national interest is, or even if there IS a national interest, it appears that a national industrial policy is rather remote.  Yet it must manifest if the United States is to control its own destiny.  What forces must come together to make this happen… and within two years?

A “fusion” government.  A… what the Hell?  Never happen.

It has to.  Until Bush beat Gore, technically, the two-party system functioned as a modified “fusion” government system.  Overall, both parties were mainly interested in doing what was best for the country and managed to cooperate on major issues and trends.  Sloppy, corrupt and self-serving, and able to cooperate as much as we did thanks only to the unlimited creation of stultifying debt, both parties managed to avoid the corrosive hatreds of the past twenty years.  How we’ve operated since, say, the Kennedy administration, is NOT the model to strive for, now.

Thirty Congresses and eleven Presidents have brought America to the edge of insolvency and at risk of subservience to China and others.  The abrupt re-set due to coronavirus is an opportunity and a test.  For the faithful, a test like this is not an accident, it is a loud vibrant message from God that we are far along a wrong path.  But, those certain that they do not believe can get the message, too.  The United States cannot continue to waste its wonderful gifts bestowed at our founding and many times since.  Here are a few changes that must manifest if we are to maintain our independence:

  • New leadership.  Without trying to parse all the forces that pushed on the psyche’s of numerous political leaders, we – and they – must recognize that the Democrat party has shifted distinctly leftward… and that leftist policies – virtual socialism – are incompatible with Constitutional republicanism.  Some leaders are so committed to this relatively new political stance that they must be replaced by younger, more pragmatic and, dare it be suggested, more conservative leaders. 

          The same is true for Republicans.  Republicans have been pulled leftward by the most crass and aggrandizing consideration: re-election.  Appealing to the (leftist) attractiveness of “free” advantages for voters, Republicans learned to win re-election along the same paths as more left-leaning Democrats.  Those who have built political careers (another problem) by hewing closer to Democrat principles,  should be retired so that conservative principles can again define Republicans.

          The ability of a “party” to be defined by, and to defend, an articulable philosophy of government, of legal code, of education and of help for the poor, is fundamental   for representatives of that party to deserve enough votes to gain governing authority under the Constitution.  Subsequently, the two parties should be able to agree on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution.   These essentials seem simple to some of us, but are not agreed-to by about half of the voting public.  It is time for both parties to lead America onto a stronger, Constitutionally purer path.

  • Destruction of debt.  None of our agreed Constitutional principles will protect us if we sacrifice the independence of the United States, and nothing risks that independence more, or more directly, than our ballooning debt, owed in large fraction to non-Americans, including other countries.  An industrial policy that both parties can agree to is part and parcel of controlling our national debt burden and the ultimate value of our currency and labors. 

          Total annual expenditures must reverse direction.  Contrary to the unsustainable trends of the past half-century, the federal “budget-in-name-only” must shrink by fully 25% – a prospect surely deemed impractical, if not impossible, by most in both parties, Republicans included.  While Republicans have always preached “smaller” government, since Johnson’s “Great Society,” indeed, since F.D.R.’s “New Deal,” the ostensible conservatives have succumbed to the enrichening advantages of staying in office, and have diverted their efforts to re-election rather than statesmanship.  For many now in office their personal advantages of office are shameful and distinctly off the mark.

  • Electoral honesty.  Democrats have raised the art of pandering to ephemeral, personal issue-driven groups to an art-form, even as they have learned – codified – numerous ways to expand “voter participation” so as to steal elections.  Vote-harvesting, early voting, same-day registration, automatic registration when interacting with state governments for unrelated matters, non-verification of citizenship status during such interactions, “Rank” voting and organized surrogate voting, and other schemes honest people can’t imagine, all contribute to the erosion of democracy.  Matched with these illicit garnerings of “votes,” is the opening of borders to waves of illegal entrants who, it is hoped by their advocates, will vote for Democrats and some misguided municipalities are granting illegal entrants voting privileges in “local” elections – a virtually unmanageable distinction.  To form a more unified national political structure, these tactics must be renounced and abandoned.  One voter – one vote… per citizen.

          Republicans are no purer when opportunities are present to take advantage of election management dominance.  For shame.  Both parties must commit to, and back legislation that strengthens enforcement of election laws, including “clean” voting rolls.

  • Deconstruction of the labyrinthine administrative “state.”  Both parties have colluded to slough off responsibility for the laws that are passed, by installing more and more agencies, offices, titles and programs among the 15 executive departments.  Within virtually all of them are powers to regulate citizen behaviors, each with the force of law despite no specific authorization from Congress.  This threatens personal freedom.  Both parties should be able to agree on the restoration and future preservation of freedom.

          What there is no agreement on is what constitutes that freedom.  To socialists, freedom means freedom from personal responsibility… in the dozens of forms that can take.  To originalists freedom means freedom to make as much of one’s abilities and situation as can legally be done and according to individual initiative and enterprise.  To make the opportunity to succeed manifest for the largest number of citizens and legal residents, government must be a trusted partner  in life, and not an opponent.  Repeatedly, this immense gulf separates the parties to the degree that   cooperation appears unreachable.  There must  arrive a more cooperative,   constitutional understanding of individual sovereignty and responsibility.

  • The re-establishment of honest budgeting.  Both parties must agree to annually cleanse the federal complex of agencies and programs, of wasteful overlap of purposes and missions and personnel.  The budget line-items for each should be justified or eliminated at least bi-annually.

          Beyond congressional oversight of each component of the total budget, an   agreement is needed to cut federal spending by every Congress for five Congresses (10 years) until total outlays are equal to inflows during the period of the previous budget cycle.  Can that much discipline be found among current and future   members?  And, in current and future presidents?  A president can begin the process with a half-hour address to the nation.  Bring back “Ross Perot’s charts” and ask the questions needed and issue the challenge.  Let those who are opposed to balancing the budget make their case.  There isn’t one.  On this challenge the construction of a fusion government can – and must – move forward.

Ultimately, Americans and their representatives will agree on the unifying principle that fuels the exceptional American, Constitutional experiment:  Our success as a free people and nation is measured not by how large our governments are, but by how small.

Economics, Education, Governance, Immigration, Responsibility

The Eve of Destruction

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It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get. – Confucius

History has shown that political power gained through the marshaling of hate is usually hard to maintain, and always destructive – never constructive.  The only path toward maintaining hate-based power is to identify a very large set of enemies whom hate-leaders can paint as hate-worthy, and more: threats to the peace and prosperity of the “oppressed” in-group said leaders wish to control.  It is Prudent to recognize the “hate-ees” in order to defend against the hat-ers.

Despite being consistently accused by the leftist hate leaders, of employing hate themselves, most of the hated are best described as traditionalists.  Let’s consider how the process has developed.  One large group that is cast as hateful are those of us who believe strictly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution it spawned.  By nearly direct implication that group is nearly congruent with Christian, or Judeo-Christian belief structures.  In other words, Biblical morality is at least professed by most of those who also believe in the founding principles of the United States.  It’s no surprise, but tangent to our point.

Since Roe v. Wade the power of litigation and crafty parsing of words and phrases whose usage has obviously changed since the Federalist Papers were written – a special aspect of redefining words and meanings to control the argument – has well-served those who don’t believe in the moral structure and personal responsibility imposed by “free will,” also called “individual sovereignty.”  Socialism fills their wants, not a constitutional republic.  Unfortunately the defense of tradition now has two, new, giant weapons arrayed against it: 1) Social media; and, 2) Ignorance.

Social media allow for near-instant sharing, or spreading, of ideas… not to be confused with truth, reality and intelligence.  It spreads the last three, too, but those are not dangerous to honest people.  But ideas – “memes” in the current parlance – can be shared very quickly without filters of contemplation, research or understanding, a perfect condition for hatreds.  One person offended can rapidly become thousands and tens of thousands: a political force for the elected dishonest to take advantage of.  Social media and the handiness of cell-phones and their video cameras do great and instant damage to public discourse and the once great “free press.”  Further, it has provided for the concentration of information into the hands and biases of fewer than 100 people, of whom traditionalists – conservatives – are both suspicious and skeptical.  No system of individual liberty can stand for long without the free flow, and publication, of ideas.  An algorithm here, an algorithm there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real mind control.  The thought-police are standing by.  What will happen when governors are elected (thereby) who agree with defining conservative ideas and tradition, itself, as hate speech?

Ignorance is mostly of history and of the lessons of history, although ignorance of, say, climate science is also a large part of how socialism has gained fresh currency among young people in the United States, of all places.  We the people, who shucked off monarchy to establish freedom as a founding principle, are the last people on earth who should find socialism attractive; socialism is the same as monarchy, except that the party is the monarch, of which the chairman is the King.  What do children growing up in the United States have to do with socialism?  Ignorance: the only soil  in which socialism can grow.

Socialists, inherent enemies of individualism, not only purvey ignorance of history, they live on it like parasites.  They play a long game, beginning with dominance of education – their barely employable graduates are the result, and they all seem to prefer socialism over free enterprise and private property.  Bereft of ways to earn enough to live like people on TV… or down the street, they find it easy to blame traditionalists for their ill fortunes and to demand recompense for attempting to follow fortunate people’s rules.  “Forgive my debt,” they say, and leading (following) politicians proclaim that ‘meme’ from the rooftops.  If, as tradition and (un)common sense dictate, one disagrees with that demand, one is transformed into a hater and, probably, a racist… whatever “racist” even means, any longer.

Sexual traditionalists are also accused of bigotry, hatred, homophobia and theocracy.  Simply declaring support for “traditional” marriage can cause boycotts of one’s business and disavowal by political leaders and even by municipal governments, such that one’s business may not locate a branch within a jurisdiction because of “hate speech” by the owner.  The facts and truths associated with said “hate speech” have no bearing, as is often the case with marshaled hatreds.  It is not the truth that stirs crowds and gangs – hatred motivates in the vacuum of ignorance.  By increasing ignorance, certain people fertilize the soil where hatred grows.

All in all, the Prudent observer can conclude that those on the left end of the political spectrum are more involved than are rightists, with hate and accusations of hate.  Inevitably, of late, attempts to engage leftists in substantive discussions of (pick one) immigration, education, health care, energy, climate, gender, religion, any of the Bill of Rights, trade, economics, the Constitution, America, Mexico, South America, colonialism, Democrats, Republicans, Trump, Obama, housing or farming, and a few other topics, results in accusations of (pick one) White Supremacy, Nazism, Fascism, racism, homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia, or hatred.

Those on the right, it appears, tend to laugh at much of the above, or shake their heads and lament the poor state of education that enables other Americans to believe the things professed.  Conservatives and “traditionalists” are always on the defensive; leftist haters are always the attackers, and have the advantage.  To what end?

And, finally, will traditionalists, defenders of the Constitution, propriety and reason, manage to hold back leftist destruction?  Will we return to secure borders, for example?  Will reality regain sway on college campuses?  Will the federal budget ever be cut?  Will “public” education be made to include appropriate American history content, reading of books, basic math and writing skills, possibly cursive writing (so that older documents may be read), and the Constitution?  Will the subject and science of gender return to reality?  Will honor, duty, commitment and personal responsibility return to primacy in interpersonal relationships?  Will the administrative, largely hidden and secretive state apparatus be made more open and honest?  Will the three branches of the federal government return to their Constitutional bounds and purviews?  Will honesty be restored as the operating public and private philosophy?  Will e pluribus unum regain its primacy as the true “American Dream?

Economics

A Degree of Economics

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Everything so new and fresh

Prudence has successfully resisted the temptation to counter the many ignorant statements uttered by the impressively ignorant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of late an elected representative in the U. S. House of Representatives.  She has a college degree… in economics.

One recent evening she purported to explain – obviously only to those more ignorant than herself – what “capitalism” is.  In the process she confused it with “free-market economy,” and then jumped to explaining how one might have a “mixed” economy where the “state” doesn’t own the means of production but “workers’ cooperatives” do.  Neither the origins of the means of production that workers’ cooperatives will “own,” nor the means of managing their cooperative labor, were revealed during her explanation.

To the likes of Ms. Cortez the Marxist concept of capitalism is not a solution to the human condition, but the cause of suffering and injustice.  Unfortunately, modern capitalists are proving many of Marx’s theories.  Thanks to the vapid connivance of ostensibly democratically elected governments (crony-capitalism), international banks virtually direct public policy and national economic decision-making.  Most “workers” – wage-earners, are relatively comfortable and not about to revolt against anonymous masters, but not all.  The obscene concentrations of economic and productive power run the risk of collapsing the edifices of international capitalism.  There’s plenty for social justice warriors to despise.

On the other hand… socialism cannot destroy debt – only productive surplus does and can do that.  It is not possible, at least human nature will not allow, a financially complex society to grow without practical amounts of debt.  Not to be pejorative, “debt” is merely paying for a product or “good” over time.  No, that sounds too simple.  “Debt” is only true and practical when a financing agent has judged a borrower likely to pay back the loaned cash with interest, oftentimes with the financier holding a chattel interest in the good for which it has loaned the purchase price, because of two factors: 1) The financed “good,” or product or house or car or medical procedure has sufficient desirability, utility or comfort value for the borrower as to make its value or worth obvious (and its potential loss undesirable enough) and valued by the borrower; and 2) The borrower or beneficiary of the good’s utility or comfort is, by test of available income over time, able to make periodic payments on a timely, contracted (promised) basis.

In the ideal case, then, debt is simply a tool that is “rented,” as it were, the value of which is clear enough to cause timely, interest-bearing, repayment.  The manufacturer of the good (debt properly employed should always, as in every single time, be employed to facilitate the transfer of a “hard, or manufactured, good” and not a temporary expense) obtains immediate payment, enabling additional future manufacture, while the customer of the good obtains the use and facility of the good immediately upon need when it may be too costly to afford a single cash exchange for it.

Much is misunderstood about “productive surplus.”  It’s “margin,” which is to say, revenue that exceeds the cost of manufacture.  “Oh, well, that’s profit for a capitalist,” some will say, “and you shouldn’t “overcharge” poorer customers or else you should share it with your exploited workers.”  But margin isn’t simply “profit,” and the “exploited” workers are paid according to their productive capacity and value to the production of the goods the manufacturer makes and sells.  Margin provides “working capital;” what does it actually do?

Working capital means cash in the bank, and it serves to improve efficiency within the manufacturer’s operations by enabling investment in better manufacturing equipment, often by being committed to pay off equipment acquisition debt, which shifts that portion of margin to cost-of-goods but which can reduce the costs elsewhere with more productive equipment (which is also a good result for the people who make that new equipment).  Working capital enables the company to train its workers to higher skill levels and greater productivity, yielding higher pay.  It also enables the company to hire more employees as production increases and, let’s hope, quality and sales also increase.

Productive surplus destroys debt; it’s the only engine that can.  In the presence of productive surplus, debt is a useful and valuable tool for growth and for improving overall living standards.  But what happens to “profits?”

Profits belong to shareholders, who are, in fact, the owners of the company.  Socialists feel as though no one person or small group should “own” a means of production, but that it should automatically “belong to” or be controlled by, the workers, to whom all the profits should be distributed.  History, the bane of socialists’ existence, teaches that humans are good at some things, bad at others, and one of those “others” is collective decision-making or, the corollary, collective self-leadership, an oxymoron that socialists insist on believing in.  Let’s start at the beginning.

A person has an idea for a widget/product/thingy that other people will want to have because it makes, ummm… it makes baking cakes, breads and muffins easier and more efficient with fewer bad results.  The person has no factory but he (let’s say it’s a he) learned in trade school (paid for from taxes that derive from profits) how to work with metal as well as how to apply himself to a problem and how to concentrate and to research the things he doesn’t know.  First he figures that being able to have a baking oven that has even, steady heat would lead to uniformly baked goods, so he tries various kinds of pipes and shapes and pressures to provide even gas flames that won’t make hot spots within the oven.  Aha!  He gets it and finds a way to generate even heat, cobbles together a metal stove and burns his first cake to a crisp, as the whole oven became a hot-spot.  Hmmmnn.

Our inventor/entrepreneur realizes he must regulate the heat to achieve one temperature and hold it there within very narrow limits…   The process goes on for weeks and months, absorbing every spare hour and weekend until he has a metal box of a specific shape with special gas burners, elaborate temperature sensors and controls, insulation and directions for installation, use and cleaning.  But he has just the one.  If he sells it for more than it costs to make he’ll have a brief profit but it takes so long for him to make just one that he’ll go hungry before he can get the next pulse of “profits” from selling the second one, assuming that he quits his 9 to 5 job and works on the oven business full time.

He has some savings that he has been slowly accumulating to provide for his family if something happened to him, and he’s been careful to leave them intact.  His idea is good and he’s proven that it’s the best oven design potentially on the market.  How to get it there?  He needs capital, of which he has only a little.  He and his wife decide to take the risk, pledging their savings and their house(!) to secure a loan that will allow for several key things needed for producing 10 ovens per week, and selling them, at a margin that will allow for repaying the loan with interest (which employs people at the bank), insuring against the risks and liabilities manufacturers face, making payroll (and benefits!) for the 5 people they must hire to make and market the ovens (including payroll for himself, the owner/inventor, and to invest in an inventory of parts and gizmos needed to assemble ovens such that orders for ovens can be filled promptly.  And, oh, yes, they have to lease some suitable – or nearly suitable – space for manufacturing and testing, on which there is a large deposit.  Everything is at stake.

With much struggle and worried nights things get done.  The first 10 ovens are produced, tested and packaged for shipping.  The sales “department” of one former kitchenware sales rep, has secured an order for 4 of them, one of which is to a small mom-and-pop bakery not far away.  The owner/inventor goes to their small shop, attached to their house, to oversee installation by the plumber/gas-fitter, and personally teaches the operation to the new owners, who took a risk of buying an expensive new oven based on its description and manufacturer’s test results.  They agree to let the inventor/capitalist advertise their success with it – for a fee.  It performs as advertised and they start to do more business thanks to the creative new pastries their new oven bakes to perfection (damn those wood-fired stone ovens).

Well, the advertising kicks in and the sales department manages to sell the rest of the first ten and the next ten and things start humming at the “Great Perfection Oven Company.”  Soon, a major catalog sales company makes an offer to carry the oven at a discount to them which, if they can prepay for a certain number and sell at least 10 a month, the harried owner/inventor agrees to provide, even though he’ll make less margin per oven.  The advantage is that with that new revenue he can afford two more production employees and more leased space and increased advertising.  And on it goes…

Within a couple of years he and his wife celebrate the pay-off of the first loan that had put their house and savings at risk.  The business has grown to employ 40 employees and a large commercial bakery has approached them with a request for a production-size version of the “Perfection Oven” with its now-patented gas burners (patenting cost over $30,000) and the inventor/owner commences to design just such an oven which will require more manufacturing equipment and changes to one of their production lines… and so on.

Ms. Ocasio-Socialist, do you think he doesn’t “own” this business?  He and his wife are the only share-holders.  Do you know what else “margin” dollars must do?  They have to provide long-term benefits like pension contributions to trusted, valued employees: the ones who help the company succeed and be profitable.  They have to create a reserve fund in case other threats to the company materialize, cutting into profits, challenging its patents, creating knock-offs and look-alike ovens that sap Perfection Oven sales and margins, as well as changes in tax laws or state-mandated benefits, paid leave laws and new health-care coverages… not to mention changes in OSHA and EPA regulations that could hamper production or require costly new changes to production facilities, unionization, higher fuel costs for delivery of both raw materials and finished goods (ovens).  Lots of future risks that must be insured against, sometimes with simple cash reserves.  THEN there are profits.

Ms. Cortez, do you, with your costly economics degree, understand any of this?

Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Representation

The Fibers of failure

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Things just aren’t the same, anymore… have you noticed?  On the other hand, it’s not Prudent to say they ever were – the same I mean.  Strong societies like the United States, remain strong because some things are the same, in fact; to protect ourselves, our grandchildren and their grandchildren, the strong fibers in our culture must be defended and inculcated in our children as well as in ourselves.  There are too many who should understand their presence and purpose but appear ignorant of them.

One such fiber is our Constitution.  Conservatives revere it; leftists unceasingly circumvent it.  Since its adoption the Constitution has held strong, but has no effect on national direction when governance simply steps into the shadows and ignores it.  Most of that determined ignorance includes big tax-funded payoffs to politically significant segments of the citizenry, cementing the synthesis, into the new thesis  that the Constitutional limitation on this or that governing act actually could be interpreted in a different (socialistic) way.  Later there is always the new antithesis  that, couched in terms of “equal protection under the law” and “non-discrimination,” must, “constitutionally” be applied to still more segments until there’s a permanent acceptance of that much socialism by the very conservatives who believe they are defending the Constitution!  It’s a strong, inelastic fiber that’s been stretched, nevertheless, over the past 150 years.

Conservatives believe that pulling back from the severe strains on the Constitutional fiber, is the only long-term solution to the survival of the American idea.

Religion, churches (church-communities) and religious education form a fiber that is perceived as “quaint” by the leftist elements on the East and West coasts and urban pockets in between.  Anti-religion is strong on college campuses, as it is in public grade and high schools.  Being at least agnostic, if not atheistic, is worn as a badge of intellectual status, certainly since the 1960’s;  those still attending are being taught that the Bible and the words of Jesus somehow fit socialism.  In response, churches are failing to define the difference between worldly comforts and holy purposes of life.  Government, under a Constitutional guarantee of non-interference in and by religion itself, has proven feckless and works harder to divest itself of moral responsibility at every level.  This “fiber” is threadbare and undependable.

Family cohesiveness is the core strength of any society.  In no culture has the strength and identity of mores and traditions been separated from widespread, if not complete, adherence to the family “pattern,” until the degradation of “Western,” culture, now entering its seventh decade.  It is quickly becoming America’s greatest weakness and we have repeatedly elected representatives who facilitate it with misguided welfare programs.  Without succeeding generations of “America”-acculturated citizens, there will be no “nation” and worse, there will be no one to defend it.  Electronics and computerized health-care are not substitutes for strong, morally straight families, for only they form the “fiber” of freedom and self-government enabled through the Constitution.

Public education is the second greatest acculturation mechanism and process we have.  By default public schools and teachers are charged with the responsibility to educate succeeding members of our society and culture: new “Americans,” in truth.  Since the 1970’s, certainly, teachers and their unions have cemented themselves into codified bailiwicks where they can teach almost anything without fear of being fired, while rewarding those elected “representatives” who protect their “bailiwicks,” with solid political support.  Unthinking – or lightly thinking – citizens vote for said “representatives” and vote further to “support” public education with tax increases and overrides to prove their great morality in defense of an American tradition.  Meanwhile, “teachers” are increasingly producing less-literate graduates who distrust, if not hate, the United States and the true traditions of sacrifice, thrift, personal responsibility and Judeo-Christianity, while embracing socialism, of all things the most antithetical to American success and strength.  As a culture we are failing miserably to make the fabric of our nation stronger, and we grin as we reward those who facilitate our internal weakness.  This “fiber” is now almost invisible, maintained mostly in private, church-connected schools, and not all of those.

Finance and wealth creation have been, and should be, strong fibers in the fabric of industrialized societies, of which the United States is one, like it or not.  Both are tightly connected to honesty in our legal structures, honesty in our contracts, honesty in our “money,” fair debt creation and destruction, and private property.  In short, the economics of the Bible, both old and new testaments, like it or not.  Proto-socialists rail against “unfair” wealth “distribution.”  They are simultaneously right and wrong.  Wealth is not “distributable,” per se, and “fairness” is irrelevant, but the accumulation and possession of “wealth,” is certainly uneven, leading to strong feelings of envy and raw hatred of the “greedy.”  These feelings are political minefields and rich fodder for politicians whose beliefs are fundamentally anti-American… or anti-family: same thing.  But back to “money”:

  • Financially, the federal government is a failure, unable to maintain its own household within a budget and even to create an honest budget through anything close to honest legislation.  Because the Congress can, and the U. S. is in a global position to enable it, the federal government borrows more than it can (ever) repay, every fiscal year.  Despite these well-known facts of financial incompetence, American voters continue to elect “representatives” who believe – and require by legislation – that more and more of every American’s personal financial security should depend upon or be in the hands of, the federal government.  This “fiber” is a misconstrual of the “strings” that federal intrusion always includes – strings that could strangle us.
  • Debt is a tool of growth, investment, liquidity, defense, achievement, construction, infrastructure, public health and more, much more.  Yet it is also a weapon, threatening and weakening whole nations, indeed, every nation.  Instead of leading the world economically, proving the superiority of free enterprise and freedom itself, the United States has succumbed to banking globalism and to the blandishments of socialism, under which “investments” are made in daily necessities for large fractions of our population.  Economically there is no “R.O.I” – return on investment – where debt is incurred in the furthering of dependency.  The U. S. carries a “current” debt liability that is approaching annual G.D.P.  Our productivity cannot generate sufficient surplus to even “service” that debt (pay the interest on it) without borrowing other debt to do so, given the nature of our entitlement budget and bloated pension commitments.  Weapon-wise, debt allows international banking to FORCE the U. S. to borrow to meet its commitments for interest payments.  Every dollar of debt is a dollar of weakness, not strength; of obligation, not freedom.  Our “representatives” are doing this type of budgeting “for” us since it’s too complicated for us to understand.
  • Money is real.  That is, “money” has intrinsic value: gold, silver, platinum or other “hard” currencies, or the notes that stand for a set value of real money so long as those notes may be traded for real money on demand.  We don’t have “money” any longer, although we have currency that we are still willing to work for, sell for, buy with and “save up” for those rainy days.  Written on the notes in our pockets are official dictates that this or that piece of paper shall be accepted as “legal tender” in all transactions, public or private.  Someone famous and/or important has his or her name printed nearby affirming the quality of the banknotes we hold.  They are no longer U. S. Notes, they are Federal Reserve Notes, a private bank with a public name.  Instead of having the U. S. Mint simply print U. S. Notes when we need more liquidity in the economy, we incur a debt to the Federal Reserve bank, and others, including foreign countries – debts we have no hope of repaying in principal, while our obligation to “service” those debts is unending.  The government prints U. S. Bonds, however, which are accepted as good instruments for the loans their purchasers are making to the United States.  The question, is, therefore, if the bonds are good, why not skip the growing interest cost and just print our own money?  Hmmmnnnhh.
  • So, our money is not honest.  It is, instead, merely confidence notes that we and most of the world, accept.  Federal Reserve Notes may be exchanged at any so-called bank only for other Federal Reserve Notes… not for gold or silver or anything of intrinsic value except, if inclined, for modern pennies, the content of which cost more than 1 cent.  Melting them down for the intrinsic metal value is a crime, of course.  More and more we exchange our “cash” for magnetic bubbles on a hard drive, trusting the federally regulated “bank” to protect the record so that we may access it at gasoline pumps, hardware stores and websites that will trade books and electronic gizmos for a share of those magnetic records.  We are now a couple of layers of separation from real-value-money and yet fully confident that “our” money is both safe and safely “ours.”
  • Our entire economy is based on, and priced on, debts and interest.  Think about it.  Our rush to “cashless” commerce carries a very high price, whether one makes use of credit cards or not.  First, the merchant/ restaurateur who accepts your card, must pay the transfer or remitting agent a fee for that privilege – a fee based on a percentage of the transaction amount, including taxes.  This may be 1.5%, 2%, 3% and occasionally more depending on total flow of “credit” transactions for that single location or for the total transactions for a chain of locations.  Many card-holders use “Rewards” cards to obtain fractional cash-back or “miles” or other goodies marketed as though free, simply as a thank-you for using the card.  In reality those “rewards” raise the fees to the vendor/merchant for the privilege of accepting the card.  Those costs are recouped entirely from the cost of goods sold – there is no free lunch.  Later, the card-holder receives a bill from the “credit-card company” (bank) for all the stupid latte’s, Big Macs and smoothies he or she has enjoyed during the month preceding.  Smart card-holders pay that bill in total the minute they receive it, but a large and growing percentage do not, allowing some of the balance to carry over to the next billing cycle, incurring upwards of 20% or more interest!  Some even pay only the minimum suggested to keep the collection process at bay – this figure leads to maximization of the total interest the cardholder will eventually pay to the bank that has, in effect, loaned  him or her enough money to buy lunch… or gas… or movie tickets… or even subway rides.  As above, so below, when it comes to debt-consciousness.  In effect then, our entire retail economy and large segments of wholesale purchases carries a “vig” of 2% or more on average; that is, 2%, say, on about $6 Trillion in retail sales and 25% or more than that in wholesale/raw-materials sales.  The interest cost on costs of goods, is approaching $200 Billion.  Where does that money go, one wonders? We’re all paying for it.

The once-strong thread of thrift and sacrifice has disappeared, leaving all of us – and our supposedly “rich” nation, indebted for life, our children’s lives, their children’s lives and the lives of further generations than they.  What an inheritance.

Suffice to say that our nation is adrift.  One political party/movement: liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat, is prostrating itself before the twin altars of unrestricted abortion and legalizing drugs and other crimes, and the altar of outsiders: non-citizens unwilling to provide for themselves or to follow our most basic national laws.  The other is tripping over its shoelaces trying to remain relevant to media that share the liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat viewpoints – and philosophies – while trying to overcome 60 years of feckless education (also liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat-leaning) that has separated 3 generations of Americans from their history, heritage and founding majesty.

Politicizing, even codifying, every feeling and hatred, has not rendered ours a happier or more cohesive society.  Indeed, it is not even “fairer.”  Politics that channels hatreds requires the aggravation of envy and jealousy; it requires the accentuation of differences between groups rather than between individuals.  So-called “identity politics” leads to identifying each group’s enemies and resisting, if not attacking them.  Civility as a tool for nation-building is not simply unemployed, it is mocked.

When differences between individuals is dealt with – usually in small, civil steps – what usually develops is an understanding of how much more similar  they/we are, than different.  Individuals don’t usually hurl epithets at unrelated, unconnected individuals, it takes a mob mentality to do so, and then it is done in order to or because of some perceived membership in a mob-hated group.  Civility, and civilization itself, takes work, commonality, leadership, both individual and social.  A Constitutional Republic like the United States is based on individual, not group responsibility; it is based on self-control and individual responsibility, not group control or group responsibility.  Keep this distinction in mind.  One need not be Christian to appreciate that the New Testament was a covenant with individuals and not with tribes or peoples.  Ours is a “Christian” nation in that our Constitution enables individual success and failure, and individual responsibility to one’s community, family and self for the consequences of one’s actions… and, perhaps, to God.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Immigration

America on the High Wire

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Constitutionalists and other conservatives, along with the rest of the world, are watching the American high-wire act being performed without practice and without nets. Having had top billing in the center ring since WW-II, The U. S. has also had unique control of the world’s money supply and, in the pleasant swaddling clothes of the so-called “Federal” Reserve Bank, has enjoyed unlimited debt creation for more than a century, financing sticky, anti-Constitutional socialism, sold so softly that once-conservatives defend its pillars, now.

Along the way the innate goodness of American ideals enabled the U. S. to also liberate and rejuvenate millions of people and dozens of countries, imperfectly, but with the best of efforts. On balance, the United States has done sufficient good in the century of its financial dominance that people living under much crappier politics still risk everything to get here. Unfortunately, unlike the struggle to get to “America” during the first 130 years of our existence, immigrants come less and less often for the opportunity to perfect themselves and their families, and more and more to grasp the socialist welfare for which we have indebted several generations to come, to provide for the “less fortunate,” who, in the minds of virulent anti-American socialists, comprise the rest of the world.

Therein is the outline of one of the strands of the high wire we, through our virtually inept governments, are attempting to navigate across a chasm so dark that most of the citizenry will not look into it… or acknowledge it, believing that nothing so threatening could possibly exist nor could our Senators and Representatives have allowed it to manifest. Yet here we are, gingerly sliding one fat foot before the other, hoping to cross to a better century to come.

In that better century we won’t be in debt up to our annual eyebrows, or obligated socialistically for many multiples of our entire annual economic output. We love our Social Security, our Medicare and a thousand other benefits. We love being able to shove the irresponsible in under the umbrella of Medicaid, lest we worry ourselves sick over them. But we aren’t loving the loss of independence that ungodly debt represents, nor the loss of freedom that taxes represent – at least we shouldn’t be. You do understand these concepts, don’t you?

Taxes are a loss of freedom? It should be obvious: freedom and economic freedom are symbionts. Debt, on the other hand, threatens freedom of the nation in terms of independence – economic independence. We owe a year’s economic output to someone, many some-ones, and a lot of that we owe to people who wish to destroy us.

Independence. It’s another strand in that taut, high wire on which America balances.
Most of those who would weaken, dominate or destroy the United States, removing us from our global economic chairmanship, and from our military empire, do not have the internal dissent that freedom allows. They do not have debilitating, enervating victim-based political mine-field governance. Nor are they constricted by waves of illegal and criminal aliens and hired armies of “antifa” street thugs who use violent force to make points that duplicitous media endorse. They aren’t required, politically, to attempt to coexist with a dozen opposing cultures within their borders, schools and core cities. They aren’t burdened by thousands of laws that are never enforced, or enforced differently for citizens and non-citizens.

And, like badgers, or jackals, they probe and push and nibble at our strength, waiting… waiting for the moment we are so distracted, or weary, or confused about our existence, that we can be toppled. Such an occurrence will mark a new dark age.

The high wire is not unable to hold our weight, or our debt or our dissension. Our confusion is more worrisome, but right now, it’s holding. There is no net. We have succumbed to debauchery, as it were, with governments decriminalizing activities and products they can tax… or gain votes from. It’s tawdry. What sort of government can profit from the temporary or permanent mental incoherence of its citizens? Our individuality no longer breeds responsibility or cohesiveness, rather division and wasted potential. As a people we are becoming more clever and less intelligent. Instead of rewarding success and improvement, we are rewarding failure, deviance… and incoherence.

Immigration, once a strength, we are now rushing – indeed fighting – to make a weakness and a threat. It’s not the stuff of socialism, but it is a weapon to prevent resistance to socialism. Socialism, a virtual denial of the spirit, is threatened by freedom – not by licentiousness, for that weakens freedom – because freedom, described by God in a million religious texts and well-distilled into our Declaration and Constitution, empowers individuals, not groups or classes. The majesty of individual sovereignty, barely recognized or remembered, today, is at the foundation of the American idea. For those blinded by the allure of socialism: the ability to get something for nothing – American independence of the individual is the enemy. The high wire is not yet severed, but the blowtorches of the original lie, now emboldened as “socialism,” are trying to soften its tensile strength.

Still we proceed, one foot before the other, carefully sliding and balancing, while the burdens of debt cower us and the rending of our muscles by a million jackals weakens us. The ideas of America – not her mistakes – are so strong that we are able to find new ways to rejuvenate her body, albeit more temporarily each cycle.

Belatedly, Trump is trying to “clean up” international problems that have encroached on our peace and prosperity for decades. Politically we have botched many circumstances, treaties, agreements and relationships around the world – too many to list. Currently we worry about North Korea, Iran, Russia and China, along with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Libya, Zimbabwe, Sudan and South Africa… oh, and Venzuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, Haiti, and even Canada. Ooops, forgot Philipines, Indonesia, Somalia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Other than that, things are pretty calm… unless we want to not overlook the entire EU and Britain in particular and the Balkans, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. And Georgia. Never mind the DNC.

The point is, it is a consummate balancing act the U. S. performs to keep its dominance through both economics and diplomacy, while shoveling huge volumes of “foreign aid” in the form of military aid, if not intervention, into over 150 countries. This doesn’t begin to quantify activities of the C. I. A. No wonder everybody loves us. All this while our enemies – every one socialist, communist or fascist (socialist) – watch for weakness, indecision, or introversion, or, for “leading from behind.”

If at some point the U. S. stumbles, fails to defend itself or, worse, fails to stand up for its majestic founding principles, the jackals will pounce to bring down – as in destroy the greatest affront to socialism and tyranny the world has ever seen: our great, lumbering hodge-podge of cultures and beliefs which had not the good sense to teach its own children the ideas of its founding and its exceptional place amongst humankind.

Our greatest balance pole has always been freedom, outlined in the Bill of Rights and elsewhere. We will do best to preserve ourselves and our countering role by cleaning our own house and by returning to our long climb toward honesty and perfection based on the sovereignty and individual responsibility of our people. We’ve drifted away from our ideals as we’ve carefully stepped far out above the abyss. Every reader knows the cleansing that must be done. There is no amount of political Febreeze that will correct for the rot it covers up.

We must regain our balance, and in fairly short order, Prudence indicates.

Economics, Governance, Representation

Strange Times, Unbridgeable Gulfs

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These are unusual times in Washington, DC, and in the whole country.  The popular press and the Democrat party, which is to say, on one side, there are many voices trying to convince the unconvinced that President Trump is surely guilty of terrible acts involving Russian operators who “colluded” with the Trump campaign to put the electoral kibosh on the Hillary Clinton campaign.  “Collude” means “conspire” generally and we know that Trump is guilty of that and much more because there is, after all, an investigation  ongoing and going and going and “they” wouldn’t be investigating a PRESIDENT, for Heaven’s sake, if he were not guilty of something.

The investigation is under the aegis, which means an obscuring cloak, like a sheep- or goat-skin, of a person named as “Special Counsel” by someone high up in the Department of Justice, usually the Attorney General of the United States.  There have been damned few of these.  Democrats and the Press can think of only one other, when asked: Archibald Cox, who was the first “Special Prosecutor” (same thing as a special counsel if there actually is a crime to investigate) of the so-called “Watergate Scandal” and whose removal as such by President Nixon caused the resignations of then Attorney General, Elliott Richardson and of his Deputy, William Ruckelshaus over their refusals to fire Cox.  Robert Bork, then Solicitor General, automatically became acting Attorney General and it was he who carried out the Presidents LEGAL order to remove Cox.

For Bork his legal exercise of authority, both his and the president’s, partly sealed his fate when he was nominated for the Supreme Court in the Summer of 1987 by President Reagan.  Bork had become an enemy of Democrat justice and there are no resentments, there is no umbrage greater or longer-lasting than that of a liberal.  Bork fired Cox.  Even though Nixon’s brutal ending of the Cox investigations was a time of great Democratic rejoicing – Nixon having sealed his disgrace by that action, what could be more joyous – Bork was the one who provided the means and that was never, ever forgotten.  Ted Kennedy, so-called Lion of the Senate, drunken murderer, he, prepared the most outrageous attacks and vilifications to sink Bork before he could even grasp what in Hell was being done to him.  It had taken 14 years but justice was finally served… against Bork.

This is an example of one of the forces that mould and shape history: hatred.  It is hatred of non-liberals, non-socialists, and it stems from the abiding leftist desire… need… to change humans.  Human nature, designed, conservatives tend to believe, by God, is an affront to leftists who believe, essentially, that left-leaning humans can create not just a better world than God could and did, but even better humans than His.  Heady stuff, and the fuel of giant resentments, perhaps explaining why liberals are always angry about something and why they are convinced in their hearts that people who disagree with them are in need of regulation and re-education, which require more government and LESS freedom.  Freedom, itself, is resented by leftists, socialists, liberals, Democrats.  Hence, anyone who defends freedom and less government, is an automatic enemy of the left.  With so many enemies all around, it is no surprise that liberals aren’t  happy very often.

Because liberals and other leftists are so convinced of their mission to separate people from human nature, they never accept a loss when they do, in fact, lose.  What they do is immediately calculate how to win a slightly different fight on the exact same principle  that they just lost.  First they’ll need to devise a venue upon which the original battle can be recreated, whereupon some modified tactics might bring a victory that was simply not accomplished the first, second or third time.  Of course, once the liberal victory is achieved, the result may never, ever be challenged since it is clearly on the correct path of history.  None of that reactionary constitutionalism, freedom, independence or individual sovereignty and personal responsibility can be allowed to “weaken” the strength of the liberal welfare state.

After all, the reason socialism hasn’t worked before is because earlier practitioners were not as smart as the current crop.  Actually what has always happened was that socialists ran out of money, and not their own.  Today’s stripe of leftist, controlling types, have grown up in a world where virtually unbridled debt is somehow “normal.”  Maybe we… they, can now afford to give up freedom for the opportunity to be coddled by socialists NOT because we won’t run out of money – that train, with its overpaid unionized crew, left the station long ago.  No, it’s because we won’t run out of debt!  So far, at least, the cliff’s edge is still out of sight.  So long as there is unlimited borrowing from the future, there’s no crying need for wisdom, intelligence, historical reference or basic economics.

It’s sad to think that there are capable people who have made whole careers out of bringing us to this point.

How can we conduct rational discussions of public policy with a group that thinks non-liberal people are less than human and living in a past that they, liberals, hate.  Not that liberals want to discuss policy with virtual Neanderthals who cling to guns and religion – what could they possibly add? – but there is a case to be made that what liberals would discuss is how to get conservatives to give up American traditions and historical truths… silly things like mother-father families and working for a living.  It is a nearly unbridgeable gulf.

If individuals whose daily life is barely affected by these issues can’t discuss them, how can we expect congress-people to work out conflicts over the same ideas when their entire beings are consumed by re-election?  Prudence tells us that there are honest liberals, as we know several just in the Merrimack Valley.  And it seems still worthwhile to change their minds, bit by bit.

Economics, Governance

A Few Words on Capitalism – Part 2

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Free-enterprise productive surplus is the antithesis… no, the ANTIDOTE, to tyranny. That is, if it shares across all populations. Capitalism without reason is merely a new tyranny; capitalism wisely checked against excessive accumulation of productive power, is the greatest elevator of the human condition yet devised. To do such wise checking, however, wise governors are required.

The foundation of the American experiment has been that of a democratic REPUBLIC wherein representatives of numbers of citizens and of the several states (House and Senate, respectively) ought to be those most trusted by the citizenry to REPRESENT their interests, among which are national security; defense and sanctity of borders, coasts and harbors; honest and unbiased court officers; equal application of the laws – civil and criminal; honest and careful expenditure of tax and other revenues; fair and honest taxation such that all citizens share a portion of the cost of government, courts and defense; domestic safety (“tranquility”) and sound money. All of these reasons for creating government are at varying levels of failure.

Unlike capitalism, itself, governments quickly devolve into somewhat self-serving entities, enriching those who work in government at the expense of citizen-tax-payers, generally rewarding and celebrating degrees of failure. Capitalism quickly roots out failure and assigns its productive capital to enterprise that is more likely to succeed (in terms of generating profit) and as a result, be able to destroy debt. If only government could do the same.

One of the overarching themes of the Federalist papers was avoidance of the concentration of power. Legislative power was to be granted democratically, and kept separate from Executive power and from Judicial power. Judicial power, itself, was to be carefully delineated and separate: “independent of” either Executive or Legislative power. The executive was designed to be subordinate to the Legislative, although with unique powers and authorities, and democratically selected by voters in the several states wholly separately from election of the Legislative representatives.

Another Federalist theme – caveat – is that governments cannot be trusted to reform themselves, leaving that burden to an educated CITIZENRY, by ballot, presumably, but also, as clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence, by the inherent right to throw off government whose failures render it tyrannical, and replace it with one better suited to the general welfare of the citizens FROM WHOM IT DERIVES ITS POWERS.

So citizens, educated about the Constitution and all founding documents, are, like capitalist CUSTOMERS, important to the success of both government and capitalism. Capitalist customers seeking to purchase a new, larger flat-screen TV will seek information and reviews, compare specifications and read the guarantees before looking for the best price offered by a half-dozen sources.

If only we would exercise our roles as citizens holding ultimate power over our governors, with the same diligence. Indeed, we know more about our next auto purchase than we do about our next medical procedure, and more about the auto dealer than about the hospital, clinic or medical group that will provide it. Now we think entrusting a government that fails to operate EVEN ITSELF honestly and fairly, with ultimate decisions over our health and life-span, will somehow make sense, albeit in an alternate universe.

It is high time we stop denigrating our innate capitalist sense and teach our children to apply it to every aspect of life in the United States – not least of which is which governor or government we should “buy.” Capitalism, as a means of analysis and judgment, holds the key to not only wise use of resources, but also to the wise recruitment of competent managers and governors of our largest enterprise of all.

That government has become nearly an opponent of free-enterprise and the fundamental right to private property and the fruits of one’s labors, is demonstrated by the existence of rapidly growing current deficits approaching $20 Trillion. That debt has accumulated, supposedly, by our “representatives,” on our behalf. So has the dramatic loss of value of our “dollar,” now a mere instrument of confidence. For shame. Capitalists arise!