The attack on western civilization by China, performed through the agency of the Wuhan coronavirus, has, finally, presented us with reasons to try to understand foreign policy, international trade, and, key to all, international banking. To the United States, international banking means The Federal Reserve, which is neither federal nor a reserve. It is time to remove international banking’s hands from the throats of sovereign individuals.
The existence of religion since time immemorial is also a factor in our understandings of money, wealth and individual value – things that bankers have devised the financial system to control. That’s an unpleasant concept: being controlled by strangers for their own profit; being forced through economics to cede one’s future and that of his or her family to the service of financial manipulators and to perpetual indebtedness they have placed on our shoulders. But, why religion? Aren’t we talking about money here? What has religion to do with my finances?
Religion, and most particularly Christianity, forms the basis of “western” beliefs and of our basic self-governance, as well as our economic beliefs and practices. We share most of our basic beliefs, and it is Prudent to list them, however much you tend to quibble:
Honesty. We value honesty in our dealings with one another and, if we are wise, in our “dealings” with ourselves. Our contracts are enforceable; our word is our bond.
Independence. We value our personal, “civil” rights, at least as we think we understand them. That is, we have inherent value and we agree that everyone else does, too. We believe we have the right to personal liberty that does not hurt others, and that we are “sovereign” and yield to government only as much of our rights and freedoms as we deem necessary for the safety, protection and happiness of all.
Responsibility. Despite the constant corrosion of socialism we recognize that we are responsible for our actions and their consequences. The concepts of personal responsibility have been stretched and twisted, but we still expect to pay our bills, clean up after ourselves, interact with basic civility, and keep our promises both verbal and written.
Sacrifice. All sort of activities, choices and financial decisions are rooted in the belief in doing without some comfort or desire now, for a greater reward later. For the faithful this extends to an afterlife that rewards “good” behavior and choices while on Earth; and for all of us it defines civility, and civilization and even education. The very idea of earning status, wealth or recognition is founded in recognition of sacrifice for later reward. There would be no actual charity without a level of sacrifice. Even investment for future growth and reward fits this model.
Health. Virtually every religious belief structure includes a significant portion of its accumulated writings devoted to diet and food preparation or combining. There is often an “apothecary” of useful plants and methods of animal sacrifice and religious feasting. Their attendant cultures incorporate many of these rules and so do individuals and families. We grow up believing in a certain amount of responsibility for the health of our bodies – some to the point of worshipping the body instead of the spiritual “powers” that gave the instruction way back when.
Self-defense. Most religions view the corporal body as a mere vessel for the “soul” to use on Earth for the balancing of karma, for some, or for the fulfillment of one’s “divine plan” or other forms of good works, sacrifice and charity. In most traditions, suicide is sinful and cowardly, showing an unwillingness to face the tests the supreme spiritual being, God, places before us. Therefore it is inherent that the possessor of that body defend it and keep it safe. Wasting its life is the wasting of spiritual energy that has been given – literally “gifted” – to it at conception, or at “quickening” or at birth, and renewed each morning.
Procreation and sex. How to live and how to create life properly are the most vital instructions in most religions: essential fertility. How to assure the proper upbringing and acculturation of every child, how to maintain parental responsibility until children’s age of maturity – a set date – are crucial components of how to extend belief in the God or gods issuing the instructions. All of these are spiritual events more than they are social or simply cultural. Strong societies and nurturing family or village environments are the result. Breaking or flouting these rules for life yields some of the strongest sanctions in every belief structure.
Justice. Every religious tradition that recognizes spiritual beings, God, gods or saints / ascended beings of some sort, is replete with how INjustice shall be dealt with or adjudicated, or, in so many, many words, how justice is to meted out to offenders of the laws laid down by God, gods, prophets and other spokespeople who have some form of direct communication with the supreme being. In most cases these instructions (commandments) become codified law to be applied by those granted their position to specifically do so, be they “judges” or spiritual leaders. In each of our hearts is the blueprint of what is just punishment or retribution for all sorts of infractions.
In view of our cultural / legal understandings and beliefs, it should be incumbent upon us to rise up and replace any system or group or institution that BY CHARTER steals from us daily, while it forces us to indentured servitude, which is to say, economic slavery. Our inherent power of sovereignty should also undo the fiefdoms of any who continue or promote such servitude – most of whom we think we freely elected to begin with.
Well, fellow sovereign Americans, have you not noticed how little changes no matter who is elected or which party holds the most power? Is it not a little disconcerting how people from “Wall Street” are always holding key budget power in every administration, as well as becoming Treasury Secretaries? Aren’t you troubled a small, unsettling amount, by the fact that our “national debt” (which doesn’t begin to measure our national obligations) only grows, and now is in the realm of $26 Trillion – more than all the economic activity of the whole country in a year?
Please don’t throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t give a nickel to a politician unless he or she is willing to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. “The what?” you say. “What does the Federal Reserve have to do with all this moral stuff you listed earlier?” Aside from unknown dietary habits, the Federal Reserve has no morals, and has been stealing steadily, through good times and bad, from Americans and from the United States, since it began to operate its conspiracy in 1914. How it abuses the procreation part is outpictured in its economic handiwork.
“Conspiracy” could be a good word for their peculiar crimes: “Con” means together; “piracy” means piracy. “Piracy Together” among the 12 private reserve banks. You may think it is too complicated for your practical, day to day brain, and that is exactly why the Federal Reserve System is designed the way it is. But it is designed to commit legal THEFT, and it affects every purchase, mortgage, car loan and candy bar or quart of milk you buy. It threatens the integrity of the United States – its very independence – and each of our personal freedom and sovereignty. If recent collusions between the federal government and the “Fed” over the coronavirus bailouts haven’t exposed the rot to you, you’re not paying attention.
Please, Prudence begs you to devote a bit of time to this video:
The Federal Reserve is a diabolical, century-long fraud upon the American people… including you, your parents, your children and their grandchildren, if we do nothing. Vondir!
There’s a new economics in town. It’s based on virus avoidance. A majority of Americans have bought some, if not all the virus-avoidance products suddenly for sale. Some of those are advertised as something the wise, concerned, empathetic and news-trusting person definitely should have: things like toilet paper and sanitizing wipes, for example, or things like people-avoidance, face masks and fear. When sales dropped a little, politicians got up on their pedestals and decreed that most of these products were now mandatory, while others, for some arcane, authoritarian reasons, were forbidden.
The latest viral threat has exposed a host of new sales experts, male and female. Unlike the multitude of regulations these same, new sales reps have instituted to protect buyers of everything from prescriptions to orange juice and canned soup, there are provided no guidelines whereby the hoped-for… no, required buyers of the new virus-avoidance products these abrupt sellers are peddling, can fairly judge which are good and wholesome and which are not. Yet, purchase and swallow we do, lest we miss out on the greatest shared sacrifice of all time – the first to bring our nation to its knees.
There is no choice between bitter or sweet, it’s virtually all bitter, and since we are the tough, always successful American people, we join in the sacrifice to show just how patriotic we truly are. There are even new badges of courage, so to speak, like face masks and oddly walking so as to avoid others, not to overlook cowering at home as one of our greatest strengths. The only side-effect of the lately prescribed purchase we all must buy, is a new, nearly universal distrust of everyone else should we be threatened by their presence. Since the FDA- and CDC-approved products are so new, no one knows if the side-effects are long-lasting or even permanent. Small additional price to pay.
Those who are skeptical of our national reaction to our newly purchased fears, are perceived as barely deserving of the right to buy food, even less the right to buy toilet paper. This is a great unifying moment. Obviously it does make sense to wear a face mask of some sort when entering a market or hardware store, although, in a perverse way, it also seems Prudent not to do so, as wearing one indicates acquiescence to the miasma of dictates, pronouncements and unconstitutional separation from “inalienable rights” that hundreds of thousands died for prior.
Nascent socialists love a good crisis like this viral one. Now, what they have dreamed of since entering their first poli-sci lecture or law class, and subsequent entry into “government” itself, there is presented a chance to change the world, re-order disorganized society, and to clear the path through the jungle of liberty that those sufficiently wise can follow to a brighter future. Those who cannot share the vision of an orderly nation will need just a little coaxing to walk arm-in-arm with the wise followers… ahhmm, except walking arm-in-arm will be disallowed to prevent a “second wave” of coronavirus. And, no hand-shaking or sharing others’ spaces, now deemed to be a 3, 4 or 5-foot circle according to the Ministry Of Social Distancing.
Exposure of the best and worst of federal regulation is one of the blatant results of dealing with COVID-19. Evidently there was some concern among intelligence operatives back in November of 2019, that the rapidly spreading, perhaps new contagion, bore watching in the off-chance that it would spread outside of China. Initially their concern was focused on problems for U. S. assets in South Asia. Still, it wasn’t actionable: there was little hard information and it was wholly a Chinese problem. It was good that our arcane intelligence caught wind of the problem, but anything further depended on the honesty of the Chinese Communists. Well.
At some time after the problem surfaced, perhaps the beginning of December, the Chinese not only hid their unique problem, but allowed millions of people to leave Wuhan before they realized they had to lock the city and region down if there was any hope of containing the spread of this new disease. With disinformation as its prime public function, the Chinese Communist Party argued against travel restrictions and coerced the UN’s W.H.O. to repeat their lies for 3 or 4 weeks. First “it doesn’t spread from human to human,” as Chinese trade and technical personnel spread across the world carrying the new “smallpox” to the indigenous tribes of America, Italy, England, Spain, Germany and Iran, among many others. No infected blankets – human-to-human works better than expected!
No one seems to want to consider that COVID-19 has damaged the world’s economies, including ours, on purpose. “Oh, no! No country would ever do that. The Chinese are wonderful people. This was an embarrassing mistake that China feels terrible about.” Indeed, China feels SO badly that it has striven continuously to blame the United States for the disease. The trusted professionals at the W.H.O that China controls, have done their best to reinforce Chinese proficiency at handling the virus, in the face of unending disinformation about the extent of COVID-19 in China, the brutality employed to contain it and about the tens of thousands of deaths that have happened. While the world suffers the constant spread of this new virus, China has miraculously experienced the end of the spread to the point of virtually no new cases and business is up and running and kids are back in school. Okaaayyy. Ignore the western news people who have been kicked out of the country, China is the model to follow. Can you say, “disinformation?”
Relative only to the United States, it has cost only about $10 Trillion in denied business and market wealth to fight the virus… so far. That’s assumed to be a lot of “money,” but it’s not. It is a Hell of a lot of obligation far into the future. There was no money to borrow from the Federal Reserve; the FED didn’t have $2.2 Trillion. What it does have is the right to create lendable “money” out of thin air, and charge Americans interest for it. It’s a nice business to be in. Having received the imaginary air-money from the consortium of private banks we like to call the Federal Reserve, the Federal government, all legislatively legal-like, deposited bits of it into millions of business and personal bank accounts to help us all “fight” the novel coronavirus that China sent us. China’s model for supposedly containing and defeating the COVID-19 coronavirus, is the model most “Western” countries – ostensible democracies and republics – adopted, rather than the Swedish model of good sense and personal responsibility, without national business shutdowns, that is working about as well as the Chinese model of repression is working for the rest of us.
Measuring the astronomical and ongoing costs our fascist lockdowns of businesses and individuals are imposing, one could speculate that we could have posted two nurses and a personal assistant at the side of every vulnerable elderly person and otherwise medically weak person at a cost of about one-twentieth of that $10 Trillion. A private chef could have prepared gourmet meals for each thrice daily and fluffed their pillows on demand. The rest of us could have gone about our business, using care and best practices to minimize infection. One could observe that those who have imposed the shutdowns and stay-at-home orders – all in contravention of our Constitution – are enjoying it a little too much.
As in all matters of great moment and of life-and-death, literally, we are witness to tawdry congressional machinations. Without hesitation certain key congressional figures have attempted to insert completely unrelated issues into “emergency” economic legislation rushed through to save the economy. What constitutes “emergency” legislation for those on the left, includes having voters vote up to 45 days “early” and to vote by mail to “maintain social distancing.” These are election-stealing tactics. The left: socialists, liberals and our beloved Democrats, never relax in their battle to unseat conservatism and the strengths of tradition. Every defeat of their radical (anti-traditional) plans is never accepted, but is a key to how to bring a different tactic to bear in the next battle to unseat a specific tradition. The famous instruction to leftists is “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” and “no” means simply, “later.”
Every aspect of traditional life – and belief – is naturally political to leftists in an environment of hateful anti-traditionalism. COVID-19 is a political matter on which sides must be taken and defined. In some way the attack of this new scourge is not a common enemy all Americans should unite against. No, it is an opportune moment to instill ever greater socialist plans and practices, virtually while people aren’t watching. If a few dozens or hundreds of people die in the execution of socialist plans, that is a reasonable cost to install “equality” and to tear down the capitalist, unfair economics of the Constitution and of Christians. China made the same calculation when the (perhaps) accidental release of COVID-19 presented an opportunity, as well.
As epidemiologists have grabbed the economy by the throat, the ostensible requirement of “social distancing” has extended to include everything from weddings to funerals, school classes and restaurants, most jobs and even walks in parks and on beaches, and, quite logically in the eyes of leftists and fascists, our new governors have prohibited Church services! In a nation glued together by religious freedom and codified disestablishment, and built by believers in God, this is extraordinary. This exposes the disdain that leftists hold for religious faith: religion is nothing more than social gathering and virtue-signaling such as the left understands all too well. Amazingly, at the same time that Chinese Christians are risking imprisonment, if not their lives, to hold surreptitious prayer meetings, Americans, and more oddly, their pastors and priests, have acquiesced to the dictates of secular functionaries to avoid church services. What if prayer works?
Secular leftists are laughing in their latte’s as they think they have proven the fallacy of religion. Erstwhile Christians are congratulating themselves on being good rules-followers, not grasping the peril their meekness has placed them in. Regardless of Constitutional guarantees, churches have shown that they will readily forego their faith and their rights when so directed by non-believers. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Nearly every religious tradition around the world includes some form of prayer in unison. There is great effect from unified belief – it’s the strongest force on earth. Are all churches agreeing that there is no one to hear their silly prayers? Are Sunday services mere collection-plate convenience? Good grief! Prudence has seen prayer work in the physical world. No pastor should fail to resist the attempt to squash this essential right – and duty.
Finally, it is hopeful that so many private efforts have sprung into being to supply medical equipment and help to other individuals. Companies have changed course in matters of days to provide masks and ventilators and hand-sanitizer. Remarkable organic chemists and biologists are testing, creating, and improving drug therapies and even potential vaccines to defeat COVID-19. Americans, most especially those of us who have dealt with the risks of private life and economics, are generous, charitable people. Even while unable to work and with their incomes limited or missing, Americans are being asked to donate and they do.
The brunt of the multiple variations of shutdowns and lock-outs has been borne by private interests: individual workers and contractors, small and large businesses, and charities and non-profits to differing extents. The pain has in no way impacted public employees economically. Yes, first responders are working longer shifts – on overtime. Teachers have had to learn (where union-willing) how to teach on-line. Big public thinkers and planners have had to think and plan more than ever, but none has lost pay, benefits or pension. Daily there are stories of private incidents of charity and outreach, some quite widespread as people contribute thanks to social media. What Prudence has failed to observe are news reports of large-scale public-employee charitable efforts, whether by bureaucrats or teachers or others, and maybe the reports have just been missed, somehow. Are “we” all in this together or is it just “you,” the private, not yet socialized sector, who are all in this together? God forbid.
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.
If you live in a “progressive” state or commonwealth with an equally soft governor, you may have heard a proclamation concerning deadly coronavirus, that ended something like this: “We can get through this. When times have been tough in the past Americans have pulled together and that is what will get us through this today… together. We are all in this, together.”
What was being meant, in fact, was everything including the next-to-the-last “together.” The last sentence really wasn’t “we” are all in this together – it was “YOU are all in this together.” You know what you thought you heard, but that’s because you haven’t recognized until right now, that when a state official, or even a minor state functionary, says “we,” he or she means “YOU,” the person with the target on your back. So it is with coronavirus and the ‘stay at home’ and business-cessation directives. There’s an “us” and “them” equation at work. If you’re a state official, or a political hack who works for the state, or a unionized state employee, or the otherwise unemployable cousin of a judge or court clerk, “us” means yourself and every other person on the state payroll or receiving a generous state pension, and includes every welfare recipient and illegal entrant. That’s who “us” is.
“Them” is you, me and every other tax-paying zhlub who actually, in reality, DOES work for the state, supporting every paycheck that “us” cashes. See how it works? Only people in the dreaded private sector are hurt – possibly destroyed financially – due to the absolutely essential shutdowns and lay-offs. We are “them,” vis a’ vis the state. We are not the people who don’t lose a penny of pay, benefits or pension; we are the ONLY people in all this togetherness who DO lose a lot, if not everything. “You are all in this together, you saps.” (Okay, okay, I added the “saps” part.)
Massachusetts is one of those squishy, “progressive” states with a soft, “progressive” Governor. These kinds of states are typically one-party ruled, not Republican, although that line is blurry. An observer can spot the squishiness thanks to a few shared qualities of how those states are governed. Payroll is a big one. State employees are comparatively highly paid compared to private-sector employees, sometimes egregiously so. Massachusetts, an obvious example, has 930 or more employees making over $200,000 per year, a large number making $200K to $900K, and two who make over $1 Million per year. Despite being on salary, many earn overtime which gets paid at a much higher rate, especially for state police officers, for whom total pay can easily exceed $300,000. Of course, unlike the dreaded private sector (DPS), there are automatic raises for “public” employees. All one need do is avoid murdering someone to see steady increases.
Recently a host of state police officers were “convicted” (admin slap on the wrist) of defrauding the state and its taxpayers, by claiming overtime hours not worked. The amounts were in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, and the fraudulent activities extended to supervisors with higher ranks. All of those found out were making a lot more than the average income of the citizens they are “sworn” to protect. They lost their jobs but – and here you’ll want to hang on to the arms of your chair – they didn’t lose their pensions! Our beneficent, democratically elected governors, and THE governor, who purports to be a Republican, and the shadowy boards and commissions they have placed between justice and state-employed criminals over many years, decided to not actually punish the criminals who have stolen from their ostensible bosses (pesky private sector taxpayers), unlike what the consequences would be if any of those civilian citizens had similarly defrauded the state or other citizens.
“You’re all in this together,” the Governor meant to say. “You have to stay home; you can’t gather in groups, even with family; you can’t go to the movies, to a barber, or to the gym; you’ll have to stop working in most industries and occupations; you’ll have to file for unemployment. Even though your customers will stop buying from you or mailing you checks for past work performed or products delivered, you will just have to suffer economic ruin even though you committed no crime except to be susceptible to a disease you only recently heard of. Have a nice day. Hunker down and we’ll (you’ll) get through this together. We in state government will, at the same time, look very concerned while sacrificing none of our pay or benefits and enforcing the statewide shutdown on you, our beloved supporters.”
