Category Archives: Representation

Elective course.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

The Injustice of Rights

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Feed the Pig… and his employees.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Climate, Culture, Economics, Elections, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2023, Religion, Representation

LE MAIN GAUCHE

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The laziness of Americans, as opposed to the laziness of humans in general, will prove the undoing of our culture and comforts, unless there is large-scale social change.  The pieces – or parts – of the social engine that created a series of technological revolutions that placed men on the moon in 1969, are well-known, but widely disparaged.  How can a successful society turn away from what worked for it for hundreds of years – even thousands – and turn in a generation or two towards multiple paths of destruction of those same social-civil engines that made America the most attractive, envied nation in the world?  It requires intense purpose and planning.

Not long before the Eagle landed, the United States reached its highest level of living standards for the largest number of people, of all races.  John Kennedy was president at the time and it’s been downhill for the United States since then.  Social pollution had slipped into our “main” stream of progress towards the future.  The generations of World War I and the Depression had proven their rightness and righteousness by raising up the “Greatest Generation” who sacrificed lives and property to remove large elements of evil in World War II, and then rebuilding former enemies so that they might join “America” in a future of freedom, democracy and prosperity.  Unfortunately, the evils of Communism were not destroyed at the same time, instead literally encouraged through treaty and malfeasance to grow and entrench in two of the largest countries: the U.S.S.R. and China.

Communism is unalterably antithetical to the American idea and system; it is antithetical to religion, by definition, and it is contained and promoted within a mission of ridding the world of religion and individuality… two of the key engines of American success.  How is it possible that Communism could ever gain a foothold against the beautiful system and ideals of America?  Long-term, never ending planning and step-by-step erosion of values.  “Well, I’m not a Communist,” you are saying to yourself, “and there’s no way other Americans could ever fall for that crap.”  You’re only half right… on both parts of your statement.

First, how could anyone fall for Communism in the United States?  We “know” it fails to increase freedom and inevitably descends into fascist authoritarianism, controlling every aspect of life and interaction in society.  Communist nations are organized by classism and are examples of racialism of the worst sorts.  Communists of varied virulence have followed two tracks, and one is education.  Over the past 60 years, while our “representatives” have been consumed with clinging to their elected sinecures, leftists, convinced of their being so much smarter than those who “cling to their guns and Bibles” as Obama notably observed, have taken control of educational colleges and programs.  This placed leftists (Communists) in charge of certifying teachers and controlling the curricula in education degree programs.  Bit by bit our schools, mostly public, but the majority of private schools as well, have slanted curricula toward what “educators,” especially those Phd.’s who get hired as superintendents and commissioners of education, think is most “progressive.”  No one wants to be “old fashioned” else we won’t be keeping up with competing countries.

From teens and college students who got away with drugs and free sex rebellion in the 60’s and 70’s, have sprung generations of children who have been raised in “socialist” homes by parents who perceive winning as more valuable than learning, training and personal advancement.  If that means “beating” the system and protecting their offspring from the consequences of failure, then there are no limits.  College courses, themselves, have more and more quickly responded to social change and trends, first from feminism and then anti-Christianity and sexual deviance.  Today students can “major” in relatively useless study areas that have grown out of non-individuality, non-individual responsibility, communalism.  We can hear this diversion from what made us strong and resilient when “advocates” and activists describe their deep feelings and concerns for this or that “community.”

The “gay community” or the “trans community” or the “African-American community” are terms that display an inherent rejection of Americanism.  Our fundament is individual responsibility, individual success and individual failure, if that is what it takes to learn how to improve and succeed.  The quality and character of each of us Americans, is what matters… not the false groupings proto-Communists would try to have us believe exist.  Everything, good or bad, is “class-actionable” to communists.

The most destructive laziness is to allow the present circumstances to continue.

The other part of your – our – belief that we’re not Communists also is, sadly, in question.  Leftists – Democrats – love to accuse Republicans of planning to cut Social Security and Medicare.  Republicans automatically trumpet their promise to “protect Social Security and Medicare!”  What they are really saying is: “We believe in these parts of the Communist Manifesto even MORE than those Democrats who claim to care about you!”

Federal money has purchased most Americans’ philosophies.  The line between good solid American values and corrupt socialist nanny-statism is moving with almost every “omnibus” bill in Congress and every election cycle.  We are, by and large, afraid to give up Communism, now.  How can we make the case for freedom?  And, what is that case?  If most Americans are committed socialists, who is going to rally behind rolling socialism back?

Perhaps you were an obedient mask-wearing soldier in the battle against COVID-19.  Some of your compatriots are still wearing their masks, convinced, by government wisdom, of something or other.  You have thought you were protecting others and saving lives (despite all science to the contrary) and need only for our benign governors to alert you to something else that only your sacrifice can save us from… imminent destruction of the environment and our planet, for example.  “Whatever it takes,” you think to yourself, “just tell us so that we know what to do.”  Needless to say, YOU will never be called an “anti-vaxxer” like those deplorables that are constantly skeptical of what is necessary to save us, all.  Many of them probably attended Trump’s speech on January 6th, 2021.  You don’t need to convert to Communism, the Communists are perfectly happy with you as you are: malleable and far removed from individuality. No trouble.

Now, to save the planet, we are instructed, American success must be stifled.  Americans use too much energy, eat too much food, consume too much health care, drive too many miles, invent too much.  Maybe if we legalized extra-strong marijuana, dumbed down our education, shifted our university education towards social confusion and division, spent time and money on transgenderism in the military… perhaps then we can make progress towards snuffing out that damned American energy and genius.  Individualists will never kneel down for global government so let’s force Americans to divide against one another.  Students must be encouraged to foreswear their responsibilities by pretending to be the opposite sex – it’s a good way to divorce them from their meddlesome parents, as well.  We can’t have parents inculcating their offspring with religious beliefs and hard-work ethics.  All that pro-American stuff must be watered down.

So who are the “we” making all these plans?  Why they’re our elected and appointed federal and state officials!  We, the people, put these communist-socialists into power over us!  We, the people, largely ignorant of our responsibilities as U. S. citizens, have agreed with the hateful divisions that have popped up everywhere with the appearance of COVID.  Leftists have been rubbing raw the feelings of many blacks, mainly those who have failed to excel after generations of welfare dependency, failed education and inner-city criminality.  Institutionalized failure under federal “programs” have rewarded “community activists” for agitating a restive sub-group.  Leftists have worked for years to forgive the somehow-justified hatred for “white” culture, even when it expressed in riots, murders, looting and arson.  All that has been needed is an “unjustified” death at the hands of white police personnel – and not always “white” – any police.  A few communists, a few hired-to-be-incompetent district attorneys, and almost any tragedy can be turned into a society-ripping weapon against America.  If you think the anger and destruction is justified: the “Saint George Floyd” effect, then the committed communists and globalists (same people) are perfectly happy with you.  Their plans to remove the U. S. of A. as a stumbling block to globalism, are working better than well.

There’s always the next election, of course, when we can vote in some true patriots who will correct the problems the federal government creates for us.  That might be a plan if we hadn’t acquiesced to wholesale weakening of election laws and voting regulations slowly for decades, then in a rushing flood under COVID.  Every one of us must be vigilant in our states and question every regulation for voting that has been promulgated since March of 2020.

Communists and other leftists LOVE democracy.  All that voting… all those ballots… people can be persuaded to believe they are in control and making real choices.  One can observe that the largest “democracies” have nearly universal voter participation and, interestingly, nearly universal approval of one candidate.  How wonderful.  Even not-so-large “democracies” where some hapless opponent(s) of the approved candidate(s) find that the approved candidate still manages to eke out a win after ALL votes are counted.  This means ALL ballots are counted, not actual votes, but ballots.  As the great democrat, Josef Stalin opined, the people who count the votes are more important.  Clearly that has become the byword for leftists and capital-D Democrats in the United States: the purpose of an election is power – not democracy, not strengthening our republic, not expanding citizen participation… power.  And, since that is the true purpose, whatever it takes to realize that goal is justifiable.

After all, whenever leftists slip up and a Republican gains power, he or she is merely an interloper to be tolerated until power is restored to its rightful owners.  It is time, fellow citizens, to restore honesty in government – all three branches and the elections that create them.  Maybe a candidate will run on a platform of honesty and truth-telling to his or her constituents… ummm, naah.

We could ask, though.  If you’d like to make a candidate squirm, ask if he or she will adopt honesty and truth-telling as his or her platform, promising to tell the truth about government to constituents… to people like, well, you?  You won’t be able to keep up with the semi-true and misleading replies that question elicits.  Should that person take office, Prudence predicts that the answers he or she might offer, should you ask, will become less and more tenuously connected to truth.  Finally, “our” representative become a representative of the government TO us.  That is when we ought to know that it’s time to replace him or her with someone new.  Otherwise that sickly-sweet candy shell with the intensely bitter center, known as Communism, will win.

Economics, Elections, Governance, Obama, Politics 2023, Representation

BEING A LONG SHORTLY – 3

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Progress toward exposing problems we face has been impPrudently slow… and there are so many.  They are interrelated, but it is far too complex to discuss them all at once.  Let’s move forward.

UNIONIZATION

There are valid reasons for otherwise independent, sovereign individuals to put their futures and ability be productive into he hands of others who may or may not share their best interests.  Usually those reasons are related to bad management decisions, but unionism has devolved into monopoly labor, and it’s just as flawed as monopoly capitalism.  The private sector has largely rejected unionism; monopoly labor primarily exists in the “public” sector – government financed and managed work.  The reason for this phenomenon, the dirtiest possible, is the value of rewarding an army of political, re-election workers, be they in construction, policing, firefighting, plumbing, paving or bus-driving.

Most are good people.  It’s never a question of individual people, it’s the power held by a relative few of them who purport to “represent” their membership in obtaining more “fairness” in pay and work rules.  The process of keeping power for union leaders lies in politicians having voted for legal status for unions; it lies in “public” contracting and public employment being required to be unionized.  The unions, as a result these legal requirements, also are obligated to “negotiate” with the same politicians who granted them power and for whom they work at election times.  It is a game in which the politicians always lose when representing “the public” – taxpayers – in determining how much to pay the members of the unions.  On the other hand, the politicians, left mostly, but also many on the right, who “fight” for “working families” usually win on the re-election side of the board.  “Working families” are always union families, and the “fight” is always to pay them more.

It didn’t take long for what union members were paid became the “prevailing wage” and the rate that anyone doing business with town, state or federal governments had to pay in order to bid on “public” contracts.  Unlike business and labor and expenditures in the (dreaded) private sector where all the productive surplus that pays for every public expenditure is earned, virtually no one who negotiates for the “public” represents the interests of the public… not really.  Elected officials who win election and re-election by promising to “fight for working families and the ‘middle class’” only fight to keep things as they are, reliably in favor of government, always at higher pay.

If a single change could be made that was “fair” for every American, it would be for every state to be a right-to-work state with no favoritism in public contracting for unionized companies.  For contractors who could show superior results from their unionized workforce, they would rightly win their share of “public” projects.  Non-union contractors who could show the same, would win theirs.  Until that day, the slope will remain downward, always at higher pay.

 A sad example of the downside of legally sanctioned unionization is the death and destruction that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020.  “Oh, come now Prudence… you’re off the rails with that one,” you might be thinking.  But, you’re looking at the wrong end of the whole sequence.  The man who was convicted for the manslaughter of Floyd before his body was cold, Officer Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department, was a dues-paying member of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis.  That union had no role in his trial relative to George Floyd, but it had protected Chauvin multiple times relative to complaints about his use of force while an active officer, of which there were many – more than 15.  Chances are that Chauvin ought to have been separated from the police department long before he restrained George Floyd.  He had demonstrated a tendency to use force to restrain detainees past the point when force was needed.  The Federation had argued for him in every case, saving his job.  That’s what unions do and a large part of why members pay union dues.

EDUCATION

One of the worst examples of public employee unionization is teachers’ unions – not teachers… teachers’ unions.  Their stranglehold on public policy and purse strings was made clear during the 3 years’ of COVID-19 fear-mongering.  The damage to children and to actual education itself, is nearly immeasurable, the money wasted to appease teacher unions during COVID, is outrageous.  Even the supposed scientists at the CDC were taking orders from the Federation of Teachers as to whether schools could open again or kids stop wearing masks – science be damned.  Teachers pretended to “teach” remotely while students pretended to “learn” from their computer screens.  But, no one learned from the “science” everyone claimed to be following, including the CDC and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases: guardians of “the science,” every one.  And that’s another post.

Observers of things educational estimate that kids were set back one to two years of development and learning under the COVID regime.  Despite the uselessness of face masks and the increasing understanding of the damage they do to development of the youngest school-children, including socialization and speech and comprehension skills, some school systems, largely pushed by unions, still wanted to mask children at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year!  Because of fear of catching COVID?  Ridiculous.  These are the people we trust to impart knowledge to our children – knowledge that is supposed to prepare them to think on their own, resolve problems and conflicts and to prepare for adulthood.  Yet many school teachers and school committees seem Hell-bent on denying the children with whom they are entrusted for five days a week, a fair chance at growing up intact.  What are we doing?  What are they doing?  What in every matter of education should educators consider their mission and success to be?  Confuse kids about their sexual outlook or fantasy?  Convince kids that their skin color is more important than their abilities to apply themselves?

People who don’t lie to themselves and others about human nature – like socialists and Communists do – will say “No” to those last two questions.

BANKS & ECONOMICS

People whom we pay excessively to “manage” our finances, the money supply and economic growth, appear to not have as deep an understanding as we assume when justifying their exalted pay and position.  They are evidently even more ignorant of the majesty of freedom and individual sovereignty; money and freedom are inextricable, after all.  The foolhardy actions of the “Biden” administration, following on the heels of the largely mendacious “COVID Pandemic,” and the deadly inflation that results, illustrate all too clearly the lack of intelligence being applied to economics… and to governance, itself.

Amidst the jungle of banking, finance and investment regulations that have grown up since the Great Depression, a basic truth has been lost within government, itself – including Congress – and among the people of the United States.  Now, with communistic theories being applied thither and yon, we are approaching the cliff’s edge of economic collapse while a crowd of chowderheads is enthralled with its legislative “victories” in the first two years of the Biden regime, basic truth be damned.  And, what truth is this?  Inflation is the result of government actions.  It is not a virus that attacks without warning, or the result of too much exuberance by free people and enterprise.  It refers only to the money (actually, “currency”), supply, something for which the unholy alliance between government and the Federal Reserve are entirely responsible.  Rising prices are not inflation, although inflation results in prices rising.  Inflation (and this is why it is often employed as a matter of policy) reduces the value of currency, both in tangible form and in electronic accounts.  In the short term, it enables government to pay its debts more cheaply, but it also steals from every private person and family, savings and retirement account.  Inflation is a thief unleashed upon the population by government.

Lately, the secretive, highly regulated, yet poorly regulated banking industry, has been shaken to its boots by the severe inflation ignited by the pandemic and the wild, unneeded deficit spending of the Biden administration.  The Federal Reserve Board assumes as part of its role, that it must regulate the money supply, ostensibly to limit inflation.  Contra-indicated is its other assumed role: controlling (limiting) unemployment.  Controlling inflation comes first, always, since the health of the financial/banking system relies on stable rates of inflation and of interest.  In the world of mortgages and large-asset financing and leasing, interest rates – the cost of money over time – needs to be stable or growing very slowly.  Abrupt acceleration in the rate of inflation disturbs both long and short-term financing and, ironically, the availability of cash for daily economic function.  Banks have failed in the past two weeks and other banks are scrambling to save weakened banks.  Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen has repeatedly assured the public and Congress that “the banks” are safe and that depositors will be able to obtain their money when needed.  America’s Gramma Yellen looks so friendly.  She expects to bring our total debt to 50,000,000,000,000 dollars.  That is a difficult number to grasp – maybe FIFTY FRIGGIN’ TRILLION is easier to conceive of.  Her calming words consist of the possibility that the total cost of INTEREST(!) will be a certain relatively small percentage of GROSS FRIGGIN’ DOMESTIC PRODUCT!

Yellen is a committed Keynesian economist, which is to say that she believes in deficit spending as a matter of policy and appropriate government action/response to financial OR social anomalies.  This belief blends in with the socialist view that any problem brought to government’s attention, must be resolved by government action.  “Deficit” spending also fits the modus operandi of the Federal Reserve, itself, since it is enabled by law to lend money to the government that it – the Fed – does not have!  What could go wrong?

Deficit spending, itself, is premised on the vast majority of the population being ignorant of the possible effects of it.  That is, so long as “people” (voters) don’t understand what government is doing to them (“for them” in theory), and it is primarily economic “doing,” the government can do what is good for government and keep voters occupied with a host of social issues, angers, unfairness-es, and fundamentally local grievances.  With enough words in favor of this or that response to these non-federal (non-Constitutional) issues, Congressmen and women and Senators, many of whom don’t understand economics much, either, can keep getting re-elected.  The permanent government and the “experts,” like Yellen, who slide into and out of powerful federal positions, can maintain the direction they want government to go, regardless of the wishes of the citizenry whose power they actually exercise.  Janet Yellen has been influential or powerful in the economic direction of the federal government for three decades – first as one of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors in the mid ‘90’s, then as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors for Bill Clinton for two years.  Barack Obama named her Chair of the Federal Reserve – technically a private consortium of banks, not Federal, in fact.  Joe Biden chose her for Treasury Secretary, likely as he chose many of the key people from the Obama Administration: at Obama’s direction.

Despite supposedly favoring low unemployment over inflation control, Yellen has argued for continued “stimulus” during the pandemic, and for higher taxes and lower “retirement” spending to deal with the national debt.  Republicans are routinely lied-about at any suggestion of reducing Social Security or Medicare expenditures like what Janet Yellen suggested.  Doesn’t matter, so long as she is happy to enable and promote Keynesian deficits in the face of “crises,” socialists will be happy to take her advice.

We are in trouble.  Stay tuned for more ways to Prudently analyze or resolve the problems we face.

Crime, Family, Foreign Policy, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2023, Representation, Trump

AMERICANS FIRST

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Illicit drugs you will enjoy….

The accumulation of derogatory information about the origin of COVID-19 and the supposed “vaccines” rushed into production and forced upon billions of people across the world, argues for some Prudent discussion.  We’ve been repeatedly told about how “COVID” caused the deaths of “a million” Americans.  It’s more complicated than just that terrible number.

For some weird reason, the United States has yet to hold China responsible for the pandemic.  We keep doing billions of dollars of business with China, we treat China with kid-glove diplomacy, and we drop key internal defenses against Chinese influence within our universities, elections and social media.  No rational country would act this way, so why are we acting irrationally?  Money?  Is that it?  Did you know that China actually established its own POLICE STATIONS (supposedly to monitor Chinese nationals) in New York and elsewhere?

Do you ever hear a statistic of how many people have died or been debilitated by the mRNA vaccines?  No?  It is Prudent to wonder why that is so.  Are the deaths of young, not infirm, but healthy young children and young adults, any less tragic than deaths from COVID?  There are thousands, after all.  Debilitation includes permanent heart damage that has stopped sports activity in its tracks and lifelong heart weakness.  Is this other epidemic simply the price that a society must pay for the greater good?  What good is that?  Wealth transfer?

Those who take the “side” of the so-called mRNA vaccines are convinced that they miraculously saved the lives of millions of people.  That is a statistic that can’t really be quantified: we can’t prove what didn’t happen.  Oddly, though, when COVID was its most virulent, in 2020, there was no “vaccine” available, yet in 2021, when people were lining up by the millions to get the injections, twice as many people died “from COVID.”

Needless to say, money skewed those deaths and statistics, too.  Hospitals were compensated for treating COVID patients, more for providing Remdesivir (which also killed some victims) and more for use of ventilators on patients… then still more for every COVID death in hospital.  Unlike virtually every other epidemic/pandemic, NO OTHER TREATMENT OPTIONS WERE PERMITTED!  Despite widespread evidence of lives saved and mitigating effectiveness of Ivermectin in various combinations with analgesics and supplements, one of the safest drugs ever discovered, doctors who prescribed it were chastised and restricted to the point of losing hospital privileges and even licensure.  AS IF COORDINATED, there erupted a monolithic defense of mRNA vaccines as the only “treatment” approved, and a virulent disapproval of all alternatives.  Is that how influential big Pharma’s money is throughout our medical establishment?

To make matters ever so much worse, governments imposed vaccines on various groups, professions, industries else workers would lose their jobs – jobs deemed heroic prior to vaccine availability.  Civil rights were tossed out the window in favor of vaccine mandates, while adverse effects of the vaccines themselves were suppressed.  Gone was the right to “informed consent” by the coerced, since the vaccine makers had made claims of effectiveness based on poor test samples and, in crucial cases, NO TEST SAMPLES… just claims.  There was no real information about the “vaccines” that could provide the “informed” part.

Throughout 2022, as “vaccinated” came to mean the first two shots and some number of booster shots, the niggling reports of adverse reactions to mRNA injections became a flood, including an abrupt spike in sudden adult deaths among the 25 to 59 year old demographic – the healthiest segment.  Morticians and pathologists were reporting numerous instances of long, rubbery blood clots among deceased, vaccinated victims.  Young men, even into their teens, were dropping dead during sporting events or while in training – reports from our and several other countries.  Other reports involved pilots, who are monitored constantly for fitness, and even military personnel, also in the healthiest years of their lives, all vaccinated by mandate.

One doctor Prudence interacted with, upon hearing how the injections were being called “clot shots,” immediately proclaimed that COVID itself caused clots “orders of magnitude” more frequently than the miraculous mRNA injections, which, sadly, is simply not true.  She, like many others “in” the medical industry, believes that the mRNA shots are a miracle that has saved millions of lives.  That is what they are supposed to believe.

There are numerous instances of patients’ families going to court to force hospitals to treat their loved-ones with something besides ventilation and Remdesivir.  In many cases the hospital would force them to physically take the patient somewhere else to avoid being treated in ways that institution had declared to be the “protocol,” for COVID, often in lockstep with “CDC” recommendations and “FDA” rules against Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.  Doctors who knew of the effectiveness of alternate treatments were forced out of those hospitals and even lost their licenses.  Today, the CDC and FDA are trying to claim that they offered only “suggestions” and that neither ever forced anyone to choose certain treatments or deny them.  What a load of crap.  These are still the “authorities” in medicine.  We haven’t even mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Tony Fauci is a case study in “deep statism” all by himself.  He worked for the National Institutes of Health for more than 53 years, and as head of the national Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the last 38 of those years.  Over that span his federal salary rose to well over $400,000 – more than the President or anyone else in federal employ is paid.  He may have been worth every penny.  However, in addition to salary, many of the staff within NIH agencies, including Mr. Fauci, presumably, are allowed to collect “royalties” from pharmaceuticals and treatment protocols developed directly from research and laboratory testing financed by the NIH budgets.  Fauci has strongly denied any “investment” in, for example, the mRNA injections, but his declaimer about royalties paid to personnel is rather indistinct, although he tosses in that none of its royalties were “paid to (him).”  That doesn’t apply to numerous other products his NIAID helped to develop.

Perhaps Fauci’s greatest impact is achieved through research grants, in the many millions, ultimately billions, of dollars.  We can see this impact in the microcosm by following the money the NIAID granted to a subcontractor, “Eco-Health Alliance,” for whom there existed no compunction about financing work in the Wuhan, China, Institute of Virology.  Despite the highly revered – and paid – Dr. Fauci’s denial before Congress, Eco-Health Alliance was funding so-called gain-of-function research on the SARS-2-CoV virus.  There must have been some good reason to encourage and fund that work.  Money, perhaps.

It turns out that the University of North Carolina obtained a patent on the SARS-2-CoV virus protein.  This is not possible, according to patent law referring to biological “inventions,” unless… unless the molecule or protein or cell has been engineered.  That is, one cannot obtain a patent on a naturally occurring life-form.  Even more interestingly, our own “CDC,” a federal agency (the Center for Disease Control) had already obtained a patent (which they petitioned to keep confidential) on the SARS-2 virus!  That virus had to be engineered, also, in order to be patented, and not merely isolated.  Wait a minute!

Dr. Fauci and others had determined that the SARS virus had certain useful qualities, perhaps as a biological vehicle for delivering certain biological materials into humans?  Certainly there was something about that virus that made it worth engineering.  And engineer they did, except the “they” got laundered through a favored sub-contractor who did business with the Wuhan Institute.

When the virus broke out of the lab – which reason and evidence make clear – it was the engineered version, made more infective in humans through “gain-of-function” engineering.  “They” call it research.  Who doesn’t like scientific research?  Trust the science, right?  The Chinese Communists, never known for telling the truth, tried to deflect on the source of COVID-19, as they distributed it across the planet, by claiming that it came from the U. S. military.  There was, very unfortunately, more truth to that claim than Americans want to admit.  Our own National Institutes of Health and its NIAID under the careful guidance of the renowned Anthony Fauci, began the chain of processes that resulted in the pandemic/plandemic we blame for millions of deaths and trillions of dollars of economic destruction.  What a string of crimes.

But the disease enabled a huge lurch toward one-world socialist government, and our own president-regular-guy, Joe, is following along with his own trans-national delusions.  He is happy to sign over American sovereignty in matters of health, American citizenship, gun-control, freedom of movement and financial manipulation.  His outlook is shared by the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, particularly the W.H.O., who have lied about COVID-19 fairly steadily to protect China.  No wonder today’s Democrats hate Trump and “America First” so much.  The patriotic, America-loving observer would, Prudently, expect that “America First” would encompass “Americans First,” as part of the philosophy.  It would seem that the HEALTH and well-being of Americans ought to be way high up in the purposes and priorities of the politicians we elect and overpay with that reasonable expectation.  These so-called “vaccines” and related mandates appear to be the exact opposite of “Americans First.”

Recently the less-than-honest CDC expanded its “recommendations” for the “emergency use” injections of poorly tested mRNA gene therapies, to children as young as 2 years.  No mother has been able to make an informed decision – able to provide “informed consent” – for the administration of these odd chemicals to their innocent offspring.  That is because no mother has the information about what the “vaccine” does to her child’s body, heart, brain, ovaries immediately or over time.  Neither Pfizer nor Moderna nor Astra-Zeneca has publicized what each does know about adverse reactions to the shots.  There are, literally, well over 200,000 such events, including thousands of deaths.  ANY other “vaccine” would have been pulled from the market after several hundred serious adverse effects. 

ANY other epidemic/pandemic disease would have had every feasible treatment thrown at it, as well.  None has ever been restricted as COVID-19 was, as to what drugs might be administered to counter the infection.  Did you or someone you know lose a friend or family member to “Covid?”  Was he or she “treated” with ventilation and/or Remdesivir?  Estimates of how many Americans died of Covid, in fact, run to one million; estimates of how many might have been saved with banned treatments, primarily Ivermectin and key nutrients, run to HALF!  500,000 deaths that deserved more than one attempt to prevent them.

And, there is far more useful advice for prevention of harm from Covid-19, than taking more doses of mRNA shots, that for many people are a far greater risk of injury or death than Covid, itself.  Put that in your 5-year-old… and hope for the best.

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, Governance, Immigration, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

FREEDOM’S FUTURE

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Predictions are generally not very Prudent uses of mental energy.  Every new year period yields predictions from financial experts, various historians, and, practicing their strong abilities to follow trends, politicians.  Politicians are no more intelligent than 99% of the polity they claim to lead.  Their skills are no greater than roughly that same percentage.  They DO have unusual experiences, having agreed with their own ethics and advisors of various sources, to get involved with politics, campaigning and the miasma of half-truths and virtual untruths that “politics” seems to require in order to gain majority support.

Prudence is very close to a man who ran for office in the 1980’s.  One of the most common questions directed to him was, “Why do you want to get mixed up in this stuff?”  His strong beliefs about where his state government was off kilter didn’t really answer that question.  In its simplest terms, it was almost, “Why would you want to become a cesspool adjuster?”  Hard to answer.

One must multiply the paltry and rotten problems of one state by ten times or twenty, to appreciate the corruption of the U. S. Congress and the “swamp” it finances.  Where does that leave us in the matter of predictions?

One of the most prescient observations, which sadly became a clear prediction, was from Scotsman, Alexander Fraser Tytler: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. …”  It would be difficult to fashion a more succinct description – warning – of the political history of the United States.  Having just watched the querulous assignation of the Speakership of the House of Representatives to Kevin McCarthy of California, and appreciating the truth of Tytler’s observation-prediction, some fresh predictions are now become Prudent.

Much of the battle for the speakership involved demands from actual conservatives to cut federal spending, even holding it to 2022 levels (a very low bar for measuring success), which would be a departure from the profligacy of recent decades of lies and spending.  In other words, what those 20 or so conservatives promised to win elections is a departure from the direction of the past 7 or 8 administrations.  Based on his history of “working across the aisle,” as though that were a mark of wisdom to be celebrated, McCarthy’s instincts would not have led him to run the house, its committees or the budgeting process, such as it is, along those lines.  His history in the house, and some of his comments on hot issues, indicate that McCarthy acted as much in service to his party position as to hard principles.  He supported Trump and criticized him.  He voted for and against what might be considered “liberal” legislation.  He has been more steadfast in opposing Biden-supported spending plans.

This all leads to both speculation and prediction.  Not even Prudence can discern the innermost motivations of a politician, so trying to predict what the McCarthy-led House will actually do on specific issues is not likely to be useful.  However, it seems Prudent to predict that some of the 6 holdouts who led the opposition to McCarthy, will face retribution, regardless of any promises from the new Speaker.  The Speakership brings a lot of power, both administrative and political… plus a fatter paycheck; threats to that power will be punished.

Further, any motion to “vacate the chair,” now makeable by a single member, will never result in a change in speakership.  Accepting this new rule seems like a major concession by McCarthy, but it will prove hollow.

A lot of heat will be generated from “oversight” investigations by several committees.  Will any dishonest Biden administrator, of which there are several, actually be impeached or forced to resign?  This is unlikely, despite the substantial law-breaking and lying to Congress that has transpired.  Will anything substantive come from an investigation into Hunter Biden’s and presidential brother, Jim Biden’s, nefarious foreign influence-peddling over the years Joe Biden was Vice President?  This appears to be a slam-dunk, but is also likely to be mostly heat, not light.  There may be some sort of resolution passed by a slim majority in the house, but no impeachments.

Can the House, alone, force Biden to close the southern border?  Theoretically… and according to the Constitution, Congress’ control of the “purse strings” can be used to propose “revenue”-raising legislation, taxation and borrowing and the like.  All such must arise in the House.  In addition, the ability for the Executive branch to draw moneys from the Treasury is dependent upon Congress’ passing of appropriating legislation to that effect.  Amidst all the horse-trading and dealing done between the House and Senate, let alone in each House, the likelihood of targeted restrictions on expenditures in order to control or punish any executive department or agency for bad behavior, lying to Congress or various malfeasances, is quite small.  It would be a watershed event, in practice, and seems doubtful in Prudence’ view.

It is more likely that specific appropriations might be voted for the purpose of closing the border and other needful actions, but, barring the willingness to perform quick impeachments, those directions given via appropriations can be “slow-walked” by the “swamp” for the duration of an administration.

Ultimately, in order to impose its will in any meaningful way, the “Republican” House will have to endure a government “shutdown.” In our lifetimes there has been very little political stomach for accepting the slings and arrows that are always directed at Republicans for such a “crisis.”

The pressure in Washington, within the deep state, certainly on Capitol Hill and, to our detriment, within the so-called Biden administration, is to send money from the Treasury out to thousands of programs that reach millions of Americans, buying their votes in the process.  Along the way we may adequately defend the country, but that is becoming more questionable as “woke” nonsense infects the military establishment.

Can a couple dozen conservatives in the House actually change the direction of our decline? May God make it so… otherwise, let’s all be prepared to defend our nation, economy and border.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2022, Religion, Representation

Constitutionally Speaking

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…A Republic if you can keep it.

Wise humans generally have tried to select their leaders from among those who think logically relative to the traditions and cultural mores of the society.  Those who would be leaders, but who tend to propose completely opposite ideas and beliefs at proximate times, are generally rejected for positions of leadership, and denied power over the “people” who have sought leaders who will protect their families and partner in achieving greater safety, comfort and wealth.  Along the way, their leaders are expected to protect and strengthen the children so that society will grow, be strong and continue.

In earlier times, especially when education was not widespread – mainly reserved to self-selected religious leaders and somewhat self-selected royal families – populations accepted their statuses as serfs and peasants for whom reverence of their “leaders” was how safety for themselves and their families was increased, including food security.  Things changed as education became “public.”  Wisdom and philosophies from the “ancient” past spread among millions of thoughtful humans, some of whom refined and expanded on the “pure” ideas of the Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Persians and many others, interpreting human interactions amidst the “new” realities of economics, civic participation and independence.

Great minds eventually proscribed the foundational ideas of the United States, and they are quite simple!

Underlying the simplicity of the Constitution are principles of preventing or avoiding the proven tendencies of the worst of human nature to gain power and wealth at the expense of others: tyranny of one form or another.  Let’s consider the simple ideas and the assumptions on which they are dependent.  Our founders designed “self-government” against the backdrop of tyrannies they had seen and fought, both religious and monarchical, as well as militaristic.  They could not include tools designed to thwart the new tyrannies defined and refined by Marxism in the middle of the 19th century. That is our job, today.

The first simple idea, upon which our survival depended then and does, now: religious freedom.  Education in the late 18th century was based largely upon religious philosophies and structures of good and evil as spread by and through churches and prelates of all kinds, mostly Christian, and by locally hired teachers.  The vast majority of Americans shared basic beliefs in right and wrong as they ratified the Constitution; they never imagined that within a few generations the vast majority of Americans – AND THEIR CHURCHES – would no longer agree upon the principles of right and wrong and self-discipline.  The functioning of Constitutional republicanism depends upon “the people” being a moral, self-disciplined body politic.  To participate in and manage a republic, requires that its members – citizens – be educated in its principles and practices.  Sadly, this is no longer the case.

The second simple idea is representation.  A people who have learned to choose their representatives such that those so chosen will guard the people from the worst excesses of executive rulers, will, if properly educated, keep a civic eye on those representatives, in our case, on members of the House of Representatives.  Our Founders believed, based on a social compact within which nearly everyone shared common rights and wrongs, that representing people in the many states, would remain a mission of honor and fealty to their constituents.  They never imagined that election to Congress would become such a lucrative opportunity for personal gain, that re-election, and the many corruptions that facilitate re-election, would replace the proper role of service and honor.  “The People’s House” is no longer a place of honor but for a few.  Americans must educate themselves about the original purpose and model for representation, and MAKE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES required to restore representation to the primary purpose – and effect – of election to “The House.”

The third simple idea is states’ rights.  That is, that the Federal government is limited to those functions that states cannot do for themselves, and that the powers not granted to the Federal Government, or prohibited to it, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.  Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the States; they are not supposed to be longer-serving, at-large representatives of the people.  They are supposed to be selected by the state legislatures to represent the STATES, guarding their rights and powers in a federal, not NATIONAL system of governance.  Because of the failures of some state legislatures during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, leaving Senate seats unfilled, Congress proposed the 17th Amendment and it was ratified with little delay.  Since then, 6-year-term Senators have been elected similarly to 2-year-term Representatives.  Thus were the constituencies of Senators changed from their state governments to the general populations of states, which changed the responsibilities of Senators.  Being elected “at large” means that Senate candidates have, ever since, been able to lie at varying levels of effectiveness, twisting truth and news, particularly for incumbents, to gain popular vote victories. 

If the Senator in question had to answer to members of his or her state’s legislature, men and women who, to some greater degree, know what is going on and what they instructed their Senator to do, then the re-election/appointment landscape would be far, far different than the amorphous, dishonest campaigning that works with popular-vote elections.  Prior to the 17th Amendment, states’ senators had to answer for what they did in Washington.  It would be very good to repeal the 17th and make Senators responsible to SOMEBODY.  The chance of senators being re-elected for 24, 30 or 36 years, would be much reduced: a good thing.

The fourth simple idea is equal application of the laws.  The fundament of individual sovereignty and freedom is equal STATUS under the laws.  Our Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would have never been ratified, or even considered for ratification by some states, codifies the assumptions that underlay the debates that developed the Constitution.  Madison and others believed that having won independence from a powerful monarchy, under which laws and persecutions were applied differently to citizens deemed by the monarch to be favored or unfavored, had cemented the concepts of equal application of law into the American people.  In fact, the ability of governments of any type: elected or hereditary, to become tyrannical, was bound to color the debates.  The likelihood that executive authority will garner power not specifically granted to it, is historically likely.  Government can NEVER be trusted to control itself on behalf of even the highest principles.  The rules limiting the power of government and protecting the unalienable rights of every person, had to be part of the proposed Constitution.  Ratification was effected by legislative agreement of three-fourths of the states; the formation of a FEDERAL government was a function of the STATES and not even of popular vote.

Let’s repeat that concept: the Federal Government is a creation of the states.  The power and rights of, now, 50 STATES, are SUPERIOR to the powers of the Federal Government.  How foreign this truth sounds.  It means that criminal laws as well as civil laws, are primarily the business of states, and that federal laws should be few in number and limited in scope to matters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other amendments, and matters of military justice and treason.  It also means that federal police powers and the so-called “F.B.I.” should be severely limited in terms of interactions with individual citizens.  Things have changed, to say the least.

The fifth simple idea is the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, which provides a mechanism of election of the Chief Executive Officer / Commander-in-Chief, free of undue influence from Congress or from direct democracy.  Our Founders understood the inherent dangers of pure democracy and that democracy, alone, would quickly yield tyranny of shifting majorities.  This is why so many mechanisms dividing power between states and the federal system, between states and pure democracy, and between citizens and their representatives, are built into the Constitution.  Lately, many on the Left have complained about the Electoral College, always touting the “popular vote” as having favored a losing Presidential ticket.  Needless to say, the popular vote is meaningless in presidential politics.  The Electoral college makes sure that presidents are elected by the States, not by popular vote.  The U. S. holds 50 state elections for 50 slates of electors who are committed to a presidential ticket.  While electors are related to representative numbers: 2 senators per state plus the number of representatives per state, presidential tickets must win the majority of presidential electors, state by state.  Both large and small states are important to the final total.  Presidents are elected by the states, not through direct democracy.

Those who want to get rid of the Electoral College are those who want government to be empowered through pure democracy, and they are not to be trusted with real power.

Another simple idea, relative to the Executive authority, is that Congress must declare war, not the President.  Under monarchies, the monarch can dictate foreign policy and declare war when he or she doesn’t get what he or she desires.  Again, to limit the concentration of power in the executive branch, our founders anticipated that Congress’ interests would be closer to the people and rarely in complete agreement with the Chief Executive.  What was never anticipated was that both the House and Senate would be so willing to avoid responsibility for much of anything, and so willing to relinquish powers to the executive bureaucracies of unelected rule-makers, as is attractive to communists.  Like all contracts and covenants, they are only as good as the quality and integrity of the parties to them.

Our founders, likewise, never anticipated that Congress would devise a means of creating perpetually growing public debt (in the form of the extra-constitutional “Federal Reserve” Check out: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/).  In 1789 people – and governments – had to pay their debts before more loans would be offered; today we raise the “debt ceiling” so that we might borrow enough to pay only the interest on previous debts, let alone pay down the principals.  This results in our “representatives” failing utterly to represent the interests of the people each is paid handsomely to represent… adding annually to the peoples’ debt burden and being re-elected despite having done so.

The SUPREME COURT is a simple idea, although modern beliefs complicate it beyond reason.  The Constitution provides federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, with lifetime appointments.  The purpose is to insulate justices from political whims and winds of change, and, presumably, allow them to hold firmly to the meaning of the Constitution’s words as ever newer, unanticipated legal problems emerge.  Politics has caused never anticipated complications to the balancing work of the Supreme Court.  Elected men and women have added to the responsibilities of the Federal government beyond anything the Founders could have imagined.  The lines between Constitutional powers and protections of individual rights, have become broader and diffuse as politicians have found political power in the invention of new “rights,” many based on falsehoods.  The Left’s penchant for changing the definitions of words has made “equal protection under the law” nearly impossible; foolish politicians have passed laws to accommodate false definitions and whimsical “realities.”  The supreme court is tested to find narrow truths amidst broadened political fantasies.

Yet, the concept of a final arbiter of our Constitutional protections is both wise and essential.  That the U. S. was founded in the presence of printing and publications, forms of mail service and book-binding, kept our founders mindful of the spread of new ideas and opinions.  Launching the new nation on a “ship” of ideals required that some mechanism of preserving and reinforcing those ideas and ideals was essential.  The Supreme Court, almost inadvertently, became that mechanism, thanks to the innovative application of its limited powers by Chief Justice John Marshall.

Finally, the NINTH and TENTH amendments are a combined, simple idea.  Hardly any of our student youth are taught about the Constitution, and few of them, or even of their parents, have knowledge or opinions about the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights.

Amendment 9 admonishes the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that the rights named and listed in the Constitution – rights of individuals – cannot be construed to “deny or disparage” others (rights) retained by the people.  This is worth contemplating every day and upon every election:  The rights that are inherent in every citizen (unalienable rights), ARE NOT LIMITED to only those “enumerated” in the text of the Constitution, NOR can the constitution be employed to limit any of them!  These few words are quite possibly the most important and far-reaching in our Constitutional system.  EVERY piece of legislation and every surreptitious new regulation that spews forth from the tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats, should be evaluated BY OUR (ostensible) REPRESENTATIVES as to its neutrality toward or protection of our inherent rights as individual citizens.  What a different “official” status we are each entitled to, than what we are now saddled with.

The 10th Amendment, in effect, reserves to the STATES, much as the 9th reserves to the people, all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.  It then goes beyond the power of states and reserves the rest to the people, again.  This remarkable Constitution is unique in world history, and exceptional.  The rights secured to the citizens of the United States are exceptional among all the nations.  How is it that we have elected so many to Congress and even to the White House, who do not agree with what the Constitution says and promises to us as citizens?

Dear readers and fellow citizens, the simplest, most Prudent idea of all is to learn, teach, discuss, and study the Constitution and the thinking that supported its ultimate design.  Our students are deprived of the ONLY knowledge that will keep us and them, free.  If you have the ability to communicate to whomever is educating your children, insist that they, and all other teachers, produce high-school graduates who understand our rights and powers as U. S. citizens.

Culture, Economics, Education, Governance, Politics 2022, Race, Religion, Representation

All Christmas Matters

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Boston Rescue Mission

As the Christ Mass approaches we tend to – are obligated to – place our most prized results of our year of labor and multiplication upon the altar, proving our willingness to sacrifice for God and thanks to God.  It’s metaphysical… in a non-computerized sort of way.  God, of course, doesn’t need our sacrifices, he needs the act of sacrificing.  He needs that expression of love, and so do we.

There’s a lot of charity flowing at this time of year, as you surely notice.  Charity is an act of selfless, as in “non-selfish” love; acts of love with no physical benefit in return.  Of course those and their organizations whose appeals we may answer as Christmas nears, do their best to thank all who gave of our supply of time or treasure, but acts of charity don’t require such recognition.  Thanking is certainly good manners, sometimes done to ensure future charity and, truth be known, most humans resent the lack of thanks, but it’s not a true factor in the equation of love or of its charitable expression.

We humans are beings defined, or measured, by economics.  We consistently judge the values of giving and receiving, thanks for a gift… or for charity.  It’s not always a healthy calculation, nor is it part of the love equation.  Or, of the charity equation.  Love, or charity, is an aetheric substance.  What we do here on Earth is a rather crude reflection of the pure, spiritual development that happens to and for our higher selves, our non-physical selves.  Except, we can’t manifest things to and for other humans without being in the physical plane, as it were.  If we are, someday, accepted into the plane where our soul is supposed to be, love is an automatic manifestation, not a choice.  Here, amidst a thousand distractions and evil opportunities, love and charity are a decision – sometimes a difficult one.  If you find it easy to express love for others and to sacrifice for others, count your blessings.

One of the tests we must pass is how to not slip through the diaphanous membrane between love and hate.  Hatred is often expressed towards ourselves, where it is most damaging.  It may be as simple as a mistake, even just dropping something, spilling something… stupid stuff.  Immediately we chastise ourselves in words we’d never apply to another, certainly never towards someone we love.  If our spouse or child experiences something irritating, an accident, a time-consuming error that makes him or her angry, your usual reaction is to sooth and help in resolving the problem.  Yet when we do something similar, ourselves, we immediately express self-hatred for our failing to do something smarter.  Prudence can’t explain why it works this way, but “the force,” God, the Universe, or Life, cannot deliver the best, most fortunate opportunities to you if you are immersed in hatred of yourself, OR, toward others.  It’s an equation: Love fits into it but hatred never does.  Love yourself – you are a product of love and of an investment by your mother and others of love.  You never deserve to be hated.

The greatest gift we can give, whether at Christmas or on any morning, is to review and refresh the love you are giving to yourself and others.  Even in mundane, economic interactions like sales, the advice always is to imagine that you love the stranger you would like to have a sales relationship with, before you pick up the phone or walk into an office.  It seems to make the interaction far more successful.  Prudence can testify to this effect.

How different might all interactions be if every human projected love toward his or her correspondents.  Unfortunately, our society and politics, even our elementary schools and teachers(!), spend much of their efforts at teaching children and grownups alike to hate others.  What a gross distortion of the life opportunities God gives us every year and day.

Children, most sadly, are taught not just hatred of their race or skin color, but hatred of their selves.  If born male, they are taught to forego the responsibilities of manhood and to pretend to be female; if born female, they are taught to forego the majesty of motherhood and to pretend to be male: two special forms of self-hatred.  Part of the self-hatred process involves separation from parents and other relatives who won’t “confirm” their new sexual outlook.  Learning to no longer trust one’s parents is a giant step toward hating them or, at least, hating their roles.

Children can be, and should be, taught to love themselves… not to hate themselves… or others.  Like Critical Gender Theory, Critical Race Theory is an agenda based on hatred. 

Questions of race and slavery generate peculiar ripples of hatred, essentially only in the United States.  Millions are caught up in them, especially politicians of various stripes, who have learned that constant aggravation of these questions can yield political influence.  Such influence is fruitful within a population of people who “enjoy” rubbing hatreds raw, including within themselves.  Foolishly, politicians have figured out that hatred can be not only powerful, but profitable.  Still, the strong feelings do not, and cannot, lead to solutions or transformation into positive feelings, outlooks and cooperation.

There are truths about slavery… and falsehoods.  There are truths about racism… and falsehoods.  Falsehoods seem to prevail, but truths about both subjects are immediately seized upon to draw false conclusions and false premises about what some true piece of history should force upon people of today.  Just the fact of slavery in the past has proven sufficient reason to never stop hating, as evidenced by the renewed, and listened-to demands for “reparations.”  Reparations justify hatred for white-skinned people: apparently whites owe an undying debt to blacks because of slavery.  Whites, it seems, are prone to guilt over having succeeded in mastering so many sciences and skills.  Not all skills, of course, but whites pioneered in many skills that not only have created comfortable standards of living and great wealth, but which have benefitted virtually all peoples on the planet.  Perfectly?  Absolutely not.

If we are waiting to stop feeling guilty until we are perfect, no less, we’ll wait forever.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t become better.  But, are the children guilty of the sins of their parents?  Only by choice and training; those who decidedly choose a better path than their ancestors, better ways to treat and interact with everyone else, skin color notwithstanding, should be respected and loved as anyone might be loved.  There’s no guilt appropriate.  Unfortunate and deceitful politics, however, casts all whites into the guilty column because some of their forbears owned slaves or mistreated blacks following slavery.  What is owed to whom, today?

One of whites’ imperfections is an expectation that money can replace sin – the monetization of guilt.  It is the fundament of perpetual welfare and the social welfare state.  Perhaps handing over money for no value will convert hatred for whites into love for whites.  That seems doubtful based on the “success” of the Great Society.  Otherwise, every welfare recipient would run into the street to hug any taxpayer who wanders by their less-than-ideal, welfare-provided home.  Nope.  Giving free stuff makes only the most temporary of friendships and quickly reverts to resentment.  The only “reparations” of any value or consequence to the quality of life for anyone, is teaching a person how to succeed in our culture, perhaps even helping that person to succeed for a limited time.  But locking that person into perpetual victim-hood and welfare-poverty is a system designed to destroy that persons humanity and worth, yet we persist at it, waiting for the miracle socialists promise.

For their part, far too many blacks believe that destroying the society and culture whites have succeeded in, is going to make their lives better and balance the cosmic scales, somehow.  That approach requires perpetual hatred and resentment – there is no love that is part of it.  One doesn’t steal, loot, destroy and burn the work of others out of love.  One doesn’t teach others to hate anyone, let alone a group, or to hate themselves… out of love.  This is why socialism is an abject, deceitful lie: it is premised on the belief of the inability of the individual to elevate him- or herself, improving skills and understandings and esteem while teaching him or her to love the good in everyone and to strive against the bad.  Under socialism, all trust is placed in others, mostly unknown.

Interestingly, America is full of blacks who have raised themselves up by working within the system and then transcending the system, leading the rest of us to better ourselves.  In almost every field, great, accomplished black-skinned Americans have excelled and led.  Why not emulate them instead of hating whites?  Crappy politics, that’s why.  Since the Clintons popped into the White House, hatred has become the overarching driver of political action: not freedom, not justice, not improvement of living standards, not wisdom in foreign policy, not budgeting on behalf of American citizens, not “America first.”  Despite constant accusations from the Democrat left, most of the hatred emanates from Democrats and their allies.  Yes, there are haters on both sides of the divide, but the distinction between left and right is gigantic, culminating in the Communist uprisings in 2020 and the Covid pandemic.  There weren’t “right-wingers” burning America in 2020. 

There weren’t right-wingers creating and pushing Covid across the planet, or creating and pushing ersatz vaccines into every body.  Those were the works of the left.  Why?

It wasn’t to increase individual freedom or to balance the budget; it wasn’t to prevent inflation of the monetary supply or to strengthen energy independence and the U. S. balance of payments with other countries; it wasn’t to solve our weak border enforcement, improve public safety, reduce the rate of drug overdoses and deaths or to strengthen the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in any way.  Why would a political movement take significant, even drastic steps that weaken the United States of America?

Well, aside from enrichening its adherents, it would be to, well… weaken the United States.

Love of country makes us stronger; hatred of it makes us weaker.  To govern and legislate in conformity with the warped ideas of the World Economic Forum and with the corrupted, communistic ideas of the United Nations, is to express hatred for the United States.  To promulgate policies, persecutions and punishments that divide Americans into two classes – favored and hated – is to DIS-unite the previously United States: hatred.

This is the time of this most important year, when love of others, of law, of nation, of selves and of God, should be foremost in all of our intentions, yet our politics has failed us, creating problems that our democratic republic can’t solve, while rewarding hatred as the means to power.  Let us pray as we see fit to return ourselves to a transcendent path, not the descendent path we’re on. 

Biden, Crime, Economics, Governance, Obama, Politics 2020, Representation, Trump

Dereliction – Derelection

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NY Times photo

It has been two years since the infamous “2020 elections,” and almost two years since the notorious “January 6th” ahh… riots, assault on democracy, insurrection, deadly attack.  Everything about November 3rd, 2020 and January 6th, 2021 must be parsed for truth, opinion and outright lying.

NOVEMBER 3RD, 2020

Books have been and will be written about the 2020 Presidential elections… plural.  There is no “popular vote” that matters in the selection of a president; there are 50 simultaneous state elections for slates of “electors” who are pledged to one “presidential ticket” or another – usually a choice between two such tickets, although third parties sometimes attempt to perfect our corrupt elections.  There are 50 “popular votes” that do matter.

Heading into election day, President Trump appeared to have extraordinary popular support despite 5 years of attacks from Democrats, including two spurious impeachments, the equally baseless “Meuller investigation/report” and a series of media-fed, illegal FBI activities and virtually daily calumny related to Covid-19 and the incipient vaccines.  None of it was sticking.  On the other hand, candidate Joe Biden spent his time safe in his home in Delaware, barely campaigning at all, making few speeches, usually drawing only a handful of people to his live appearances.  Trump, throughout the year, made numerous “rallies” drawing overflow crowds of thousands.  People in the campaign industry can state that the amount of popular support needed from which thousands will change their habits to attend a political event, is extraordinary, and reflects very broad support.

Biden, meanwhile, and Democrats in general remained absolutely confident, claiming deep support for good ol’ lunch-bucket Joe.  We know that Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg had committed over $400 Million to “aiding” election departments in certain states with close balance between Republicans and Democrats.  Almost all of the money was spent increasing Democrat turnout in cities, but never described as campaign contributions.  At the same time, Google, whose management had sworn to not allow “2016” to happen again, was shifting information leftward, maximizing positive results of searches favoring Democrats and Biden, while eliminating or making difficult, results to searches that might favor Republicans.  Estimates reach into the hundreds of thousands in terms of how many votes could be shifted just by Google.

Even with major cooperative media sources helping, Democrats still had a huge populist force to overcome.  Two key strategies were needed: 1) Unconstitutional changes to voting laws and procedures; and, 2) Ways to shift, create, and generate votes regardless of how many legitimate votes were cast.  Both seemed to have the desired effects.  Before the reader clicks away from Prudence’ report, here, read a bit more and consider what is known with an open mind.

Democrat operatives and lawyers brought suit in numerous states to allow for mail-in ballots and early voting, based on supposed fears of Covid-19.  Rather than passing laws through the respective legislatures, as required under the Constitution, these teams brought suit, instead.  Time, apparently, was of the essence.  Behind the efforts to keep voters “safe” from Covid, and in the background, is the fact that every state does not maintain its voter lists according to federal law.  In fact, the Judicial Watch organization has been suing states successfully to require cleaning of voter rolls.  The County of Los Angeles, alone, had to remove about one and a half million names of deceased and moved-away citizens (one hopes).  But, in the run-up to November there remained SEVERAL MILLION invalid names on states’ voter lists, not least of which were the states targeted by these “Covid” lawsuits for mail-in ballots.  Georgia, alone, had 138,000 invalid names still on its rolls.  With the entire difference in the electoral college dependent on fewer than 45,000 votes across half a dozen states, that becomes a huge number.

“So what?” you may ask.  Well it doesn’t take that large an organization, with knowledge of the invalid names on the rolls, to mail in a few thousands of ballots based on those names, to skew an election.  To inadvertently facilitate this fraud, some states actually mailed out ballots to every name on the voter rolls, valid and invalid!  Thus, ballots returned from every one of those names were valid.  Of course, signatures on those ballot envelopes had to be “compared” to signatures on file but this step was frequently not done at all, or was done through scanning systems that were set to a level of “fuzziness” (in terms of match quality) that there was essentially no checking.  Lawsuits had further required that ballots mailed right up to voting day would be accepted and counted up to TWO WEEKS later. 

Republicans had seriously fallen down on their end to challenge these ridiculous lawsuits and force, at least, certain provisions to keep the tallies as honest as possible.  Throw in some heavy-duty ballot harvesting (illegal, also) and questionable counting procedures, connection of voting machines to the internet and a host of other weak links, and a close election could be easily swayed to the desired side.  Trump lost Georgia by fewer than 13,000 votes.

Well, that’s just Georgia, you may be thinking.  What you may not realize is that there were patterns of voting IN EVERY STATE that were related to the 2010 census.  That is, every county in all the states tested, had similar patterns of voting, a pattern that is so statistically unlikely as to be impossible.  Well, you may be thinking, that doesn’t prooove that it didn’t happen.  Technically that is true, but when you consider the earthquakes in voting procedures blamed on Covid, there ought to be wide variations in voting patterns as compared to the 2010 census.  That is, not compared to 2010 VOTING PATTERNS, but to the census, a set of statistics that has very little to do with even the prediction of voting patterns.  Although each state compared to its 2010 census by slightly different percent-rates, every county in each state followed the same rate of difference with the 2010 census!  Apparently the census was used as a reasonably reliable set of numbers ON WHICH PRE-DETERMINED VOTE TOTALS COULD BE BASED!

Stealing elections is not new, and typically it’s a matter of benefitting Democrats, particularly in cities… indeed, it has been a matter of humor for 150 years.  Urban Democrats have joked about who is going to get the votes in this or that cemetery, and to watch out for the time lost figuring out the ballot questions.  The crude efforts of the last century are so much more sophisticated, now.

Did you know that there were more than a million temporarily deceased voters still on the rolls among the many states?  Trump lost the electoral college by fewer than 45,000 votes in 5 states, TOTAL.

Did you realize that more than 300 counties in the United States show more voters on the rolls than there are people of voting age resident?  Just 500 extra votes from each of those counties (mostly urban) would be 150,000 votes; did we mention that Trump was “defeated” by fewer than 45,000 votes in 5 key states?

Maybe you’ll be a little more nervous about 2020 when you learn that there were dozens of internet connections traced from foreign countries into voting machines during and after election day, 2020, voting machines that the law says must not be connected to the internet.  Aside from the anomalies already described, 4 key states stopped their vote counting/reporting between 2 and 4 AM on November 4th, following which huge “dumps” of as many as 100,000 votes per state appeared – another most unusual event.

Some precincts in the urban areas of the 5 most crucial states voted as much as 90% and even more, for Joe Biden, having been thrilled by his rousing campaign speeches.  Any voting district that approaches 80% one way catches attention, normally.  Every percentage above that raises eyebrows.  This anomaly happened in multiple places, a statistical improbability.  Trump-haters can easily dismiss these oddities because they aren’t “proof” that anything illicit happened.  A case based on the preponderance of evidence, however, could be made.  There were a number of instances where votes recorded for Trump at one point in the evening of November 3rd, were magically shifted to Biden some time later.  “Oh, those were simple errors,” we’re told.  Maybe, but no candidate should be expected to accept that non-explanation, even Donald Trump.

As the last tens of thousands of unverified, unmatched mail-in ballots were added to the total over the following days, more anomalies appeared.  Somehow, Joe Biden, (“If you don’t know if you’re voting for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”) a racially insensitive, if not actively racist politician who was not only disliked by Barack Obama, but distrusted by him, apparently received MORE “black” votes than Obama received, himself, the first “black” president in our history!  People who really, really hated Trump are willing to believe that, as well.  Seems highly unlikely.

For his part, Trump obtained 6 Million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, to a total of 75 Million.  He is the first President who added to his first term totals significantly who went on to lose re-election.  Somehow, due to his colorful and incisive campaign, Joe Biden received not only more black votes but more votes overall than Obama did, and, it says here, more votes than any presidential candidate in history(!): 81 Million to Trump’s huge 75 Million.  Any honest observer of elections over any length of time has to suspend disbelief to swallow that.

Imagine the likelihood of a different outcome had the Hunter Biden laptop story not been so carefully suppressed by collusion between the FBI and others, the DNC, Biden campaign, etc., and Twitter, Facebook and Google.  Polling indicates that millions of people would have voted against Biden had the crimes revealed in that laptop been publicized.

Mathematicians and statisticians who have taken the time to analyze 2020 have estimated that as many as EIGHT MILLION VOTES were fabricated in 2020.  None of this has been adjudicated and the reasons are simple: politics… not honest, good ol’ American politics, but politics.

More than 30 lawsuits were brought among several states.  Judges refused to hear them on several bases, mainly lacks of “standing.”  That is, the plaintiffs were judged, rather subjectively, as most “standing” rulings are, because they couldn’t prove a satisfactory “interest” in or “damages” resulting from, the allegations they were making.  Virtually any of the judges so approached could have declared sufficient public or other interest in the adjudication of those allegations, but they chose not to.  This neatly prevented discovery, deposition or other testimony, and sidestepped the need to bring public officials into court.

There is a lot of political pressure on courts in such matters.  Attorneys are adept at answering such rejections, but it requires time for appeals to other courts or tribunals who have multiple reasons for avoiding such cases.  There is very little time available prior to the step of state “certification” of the vote counts.  Again, Republicans were caught flat-footed.  Their time should have been spent challenging all the stupid changes to voting laws that were not Constitutional.  Sadly, and to their shame, the Roberts Court refused to consider constitutional challenges to the election on the basis of direct wording in the Constitution: Article I, Section 4 – “The Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such regulations, except as to the Places of chusing (sic) Senators.”  With every state using the same regulations to choose Electors (for the Electoral College) as they do for electing representatives and senators, changes to how they do so must, in fact, be made only by the legislatures thereof.  This was not done in many states, but, rather, by court rulings, which are prima facie unconstitutional.  With the challenges based on precise Constitutional language, the Supreme Court has primary jurisdiction over such cases and should not wait for lower courts to rule and appeal over many months.

The Court could have and should have taken up the cases made on this particular basis, but failed in its duty to do so.

After 5 years of unceasing malevolence, law-breaking and baseless accusations from many sides, it is no wonder that President Trump was rather irked following November 3rd, 2020.  His quite rational complaints about our shoddy election mess in 2020, simply became the latest reason Trump haters should hate him even more, like everything else he’s done… except for when he contributed money to democrats.

JANUARY 6th, 2021

After failing, as noted, to engage any state or federal court in ascertaining the legitimacy of the vote count, despite real questions of law and practice, President Trump could see only one opportunity to set the 2020 result right, and that was to halt the counting of electoral votes as certified by the several states, particularly those states with the most egregious anomalies in their vote patterns and practices.  It was, however, on very thin grounds that he encouraged Vice-President Pence to refuse the certified electors from those certain questionable states amongst which Trump lost their collective electoral votes by less than 1% of the totals claimed – and certified – to have been legally voted.

The Constitution doesn’t assign more than the counting of the electoral votes to the duties of the “President of the Senate” – the Vice-President – in the matters of the electoral college.  Some attorneys read into some precedent cases the possibility that the V.P. had the authority to challenge certain states’ certified results, indeed, the Twentieth Amendment uses the term, “qualified” and “…has qualified” for cases where the election of or the ability to serve of a president is in question, or if he has died before taking office.  But neither Article II of the constitution, nor Amendment XII or Amendment XX actually grants much in the way of decisive power to the vice-President when the votes are counted.  Trump was clinging to straws.

To be fair, and all of us should be fair in the judgement of such odd circumstances of the Trump presidential experience, the President perceived the 2020 elections as one of the most grotesque electoral crimes in history, and the subsequent installation of Joe Biden as having been duly elected President as a tragedy and part of the theft of his, Trump’s, rightful election.  There were, and are, so many, many questions – none adjudicated.

When John F. Kennedy was elected thanks to extensive vote fraud in Chicago in 1960, Nixon lost, on average, by about 1 vote per precinct nationwide.  He was strongly urged to demand a recount in Illinois and perhaps Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania.  But fairly quickly he chose to avoid the damage to the nation by so demanding and Kennedy was the “winner.”  This is the precedent that Democrats have hung their hats on: always accept the vote count no matter how crooked.  Otherwise, you’re an “election denier.”

There isn’t space to analyze the events of January 6th at the Capitol.  A lot of it was stupid, most of it quite innocent.  Let’s hope the truth is exposed, since it certainly hasn’t been so far.  Most of what the “January 6th committee” has reported is only partially true; even more of what the Democrat press reports is less so.  Those arrested, some on quite thin, even spurious grounds, have been maltreated worse than murderers, rapists and arsonists.  One hopes for justice in all their cases, and for justice for those guards and administrators who have been needlessly brutal and cruel towards them.

Why would Americans act this way?  Hatred.  Those arrested for any reason related to January 6th, are all perceived in two ways: 1) supporters of Donald Trump, whom we are all taught to hate; and, 2) they are hated as threats to the government – the administrative, hyper-politicized state – for whom all the arresting and jailing powers work.  The challenge to the corrupt congress is perceived as a personal threat by government workers.  Those who threaten or even murder common citizens, are of far less concern to federal employees, apparently.  For shame.

Trump grasped at straws and couldn’t have succeeded, but it’s hard to lay blame after all other avenues of legitimate questioning of the elections were closed to him.  He knew the election was rigged against him by people who have years of experience doing exactly that.  He was supposed to bow down to the leftists and he didn’t.  He was supposed to react like Nixon and he didn’t… nor should he have, although the January 6th rally was not smart.

In Prudence’ view, there are $31 Trillion reasons to storm the Capitol; two dozen Congresses and 11 administrations, at least, have lied to the American people rather steadily and saddled us with virtually permanent debt.  The 2020 “derelection” is just the last straw. There is only one “T” in Democratcy.

Biden, Crime, Culture, Education, Health Care, Politics 2022, Religion, Representation, Sex

Psychology, If You Don’t Mind

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I have the answer here in my hand…

We’re all psychologists.  Humans could not work together, form societies or even families, if we could not “size up” one another and make relatively accurate judgments as to the attitudes and outlooks of those we need to live with.  Like every other human skill, psychological survival and progress has attracted experts, often the death knell of progress in the field of interest.  Beyond studying and learning about human psychology, psychologists have moved on to defining and even inventing forms of it.  Today it is almost as though the professional in the psychology field had DISCOVERED psychology in humans and that they, psychologists, must be consulted about any and every aspect of it, lest mere humans hurt themselves and others by trying to comprehend it.

Life is animalistic without psychological abilities.  Animal brains only barely exhibit any sense of meaning to the actions they take.  Humans strive to avoid it.  Part of the magic of human psychology is the ability to worship, and to perceive a spiritual existence that is the greatest sense of meaning possible.  What does – or what will – what I’m doing, mean?

Generally, the actions of today are taken because of their meaning something in the future.  We save today for security tomorrow; we court and marry today to produce a family of children tomorrow; we live honorably, creating friends and earning respect from others, so that we’ll have friends and friendship in our old age; we try to avoid poisoning our bodies and avoid danger and injuries because it means we can live longer.  We even attempt to extend our meaning to others beyond the date of our death with inheritances and bequests and instructions.  Unfortunately, we are descending into a process of talking ourselves out of our own humanity.  Psychologists of various stripes have convinced many to deny who they are, and have convinced many others with influence over them, to help them in the process of denial.  What for?

A large element of civilization has been and remains theater.  It could be as simple as street actors and their ad-hoc creation of scenes, characters and stories, to the elaborate production of operas that remain popular over decades and centuries.  Greek and Roman theater still teach us to look at life and meaning in “better” ways; Shakespeare, Marlow, Bacon and thousands of others from every culture, employed costume, staging, music, masks and pretense to teach cultural truths and lessons for living.  Modern electronics make it possible for every individual – including children – to become a preferred pretense character, almost always on a Snap-Chat stage.  It seems, unfortunately, that the “psychology community” talked itself into treating human theater, down to the individual level, as more valuable – more essential – than reality.

As one old Greek noted, “Virtue lies in Reason and Vice in rejection of Reason.”  However, as psychologists are only too aware, or promoters of, Reason cannot be satisfactorily defined, especially from generation to generation.  There seem to be thousands of permutations of reason, and as communications have advanced, so to speak, certain biases have become widely shared, affecting modern concepts of reason, which is not to say, Truth.  Since the 1960’s and ‘70’s, feminism has become the overriding permutation of reason in the United States, and it has led to a society-bending twist of sexual roles and mores.  Psychologists haven’t tried to stem this tide.  Where “psychology” might add to understanding of various truths, instead it seems to adapt to and rationalize social trends.

Prudence can expect to be roundly chastised for the previous paragraph, and, probably, the next one.

Feminism has done more damage to American society than any other belief system besides slavery.  Bit by bit – now chunk by chunk – it has feminized men and destroyed the majesty of motherhood.  Simultaneous with the explosion in homosexuality, feminism has also led to hyper-sexualization of school-age children down to disturbing ages.  As it has torn down the old morality it has failed to replace it with a new one.  Where women used to “civilize” men, they now compete in an arena of irresponsible sexuality where everything is planned or avoidable based on the whims of women.

Women are now the drivers of the new para-psychology called transgenderism.  And, rather than eliminating confusion about maleness or femaleness, it encompasses a host of “sexualities” that mainly women teachers and gay or other “non-binary” “teachers” feel compelled to dictate to, if not guide and groom, children at very young ages.  Where are “the psychologists” on this strange twist of “education?”  Sadly, they seem able to rationalize or even justify the trans-gender fad.  If it didn’t do so much damage to the kids whose theatrical fantasies everyone is rushing to “confirm,” the psychologists might be forgiven.

MOST of transgenderism is theater.  Children, some genuinely confused about sexuality, a very small fraction, and the rest who want to play at being the opposite sex, are pounced upon by agenda-driven teachers, psychologists, doctors and even hospitals(!), who are all in a hurry to “confirm” trans-gender fantasies.  Confirmation, unfortunately, consists of largely irreversible hormone injections and blockers, and even surgeries to remove perfectly healthy organs.  The children are permanently changed and their developments confused chemically.  The greatest effect?  Sterilization.  Not many teenagers and damned few adults can conceive of what full medical transfiguration means as time goes by.  Most come to realize that they have attempted something that is impossible in the majority of cases, and that leaves them neither male or female.  There is more at stake than pronouns.

Yet, some dysphoria is real – the people who transition to another way of living are still real people who deserve as much respect as anyone else.  Heterosexual people are largely unable to accept trans-gender people at “face” value.  Reactions vary over a short spectrum, from disbelief to disgust.  Normal people have a duty to learn respect for those who have found the only way to deal with their relatively rare dysphoria is transition.  Let the rest of us count our blessings.

This doesn’t excuse the agenda-driven recruitment of children to a belief in gender-fluidity.  Parents know that childhood whims and fantasies usually fade away or are outgrown by maturity in nearly all cases.  To pounce on these susceptible kids, especially for teachers, is criminal.  For administrators and political / civic leaders to make it ILLEGAL to prevent gender-predation shall remain a stain on the conscience of the nation.  Shame on us and kudos to those leaders wise enough to resist this weird aberration in human purpose.

Those who are committed to the “trans” state of being and living also need to recognize that their own, understandably very deep biases toward “non-binary” sexuality, bends their views to find trans potential atop almost every pair of legs.  Bigots on both sides need to stifle their angers and misunderstandings.  Professional, expert psychologists and psychiatrists ought to be guiding the confused toward a path that is constructive for society and civilization.  Unfortunately, they have agreed among their professional, expert-laden Societies, to avoid moral judgement and even counsel patients to dissociate themselves from religious codes.  Indeed, such counseling tends to affirm those ideas that comfort the patient, rather than disturb him or her.

In other words, psychology can affirm one’s deepest beliefs, which is not to say truth.  Unfortunately, sometimes beliefs are just wrong and counter-productive or damaging to society.  They can interfere with forming positive bonds with others, with family members, or with others who would be good for the individual.  Psychology has drifted too close to chemical solutions for too many conditions/reactions; they also tend to counsel for far too long, with patients dependent upon their therapists to maintain a new normalcy.

As Americans ponder the decline of trust in the institutions that ought to defend successful traditions and uphold the greatest strength of U. S. culture, one of those has been medicine, including mental health medicine.  The professionals in that society have always been people of sense, ready willing and able to advise patients toward the healthiest, most sensible habits and actions.  This used to include psychologists and psychiatrists, but this has all changed.  Why?  How did industries – professions – of HONOR, become so sullied? 

Politics and money, not synonymous, but often congruent.  If politics were corrupted by only money we could survive and even thrive as the running battle against corruption played its parallel games.  But politics has been corrupted by ideology, hatred and mendacity.  The Covid pandemic exposed the degree of twist that has occurred.  One political party routinely condemns half the voters in the country, not as those who see a different way to improve and strengthen America, but as a group that can’t be permitted to hold or even share power… a group that threatens the republic, that is racist, homophobic, transphobic and every other epithet that can be used on TV to denigrate another person.  Then that same party does everything that their opponents are accused of doing, BY THEM.  It is no longer politics, but managed hatred, and it has coopted the institutions of government, justice, education and medicine, among others.  None of the professions that once held the nation together have been spared.

The various forms of artifice are all masks, covering the faces of evil.  Millions of true patriots resist and believe in the majesty of the American way – most are Christians.  They – we – are the conscience of America.  A new professionalism and a new citizenship are all that can restore us… and a new / old spiritual understanding of why humanity is male and female, and how it can survive and grow stronger.  Honestly.