About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

The Solution To America's Mass Shooting Problem

“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.”Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet First Secretary 1953 to 1964 & premier of the Soviet Union 1958 to 1964, while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow on November 18, 1956.  In this most famous of Khrushchev sayings he was not talking about literally burying the west with a shovel.  The first sentence shows Khrushchev’s understanding of the Death Of Democracy history in that a democracy, or constitutional Republic with strong democratic principles like America, is always temporary in nature because the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy which is always followed by a dictatorship.  In the second sentence I always thought he was referring to the erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power through inflation that required both the husband & wife to go into the workplace to meet the cost of living. This left children to be raised by others, or no one, to a large extent, which is the root cause of the continuous mass killing spree in America by mentally unstable distressed young men who had no family life or father figure @ all while growing up.
 
Khrushchev undoubtedly learned his lesson well from his communist predecessor Vladimir Lenin who was an advocate of putting an end to enemy countries by destroying that country’s families.  Lenin knew that a society could be overturned by debauching the currency so that “not one man in a million” would be aware of the subtle destruction brought by inflation – the government wealth confiscation program that secretly & unobserved steals the wealth of the citizenry.  It was the general increase in prices & the fall in the purchasing power of money that forced mothers out of their homes instead of raising their children like many of the members of this readership benefitted from. 
 
Whether it was Lenin or Khrushchev, the sentiment is certainly the same – just look @ America the past fifty to sixty years.  It takes both a husband & wife in a typical middle class family to go into the workplace to bring home two paychecks of debased currency so that ends can @ least see each other if not totally meet.  The purchasing power of the middle class has increased only infinitesimally over the last 40 plus years.  The median earnings for men working full time year round has been stagnate @ around $50,000 per year in constant 2017 dollars from 1972 to the present.  Since 1999 the median household income, in constant 2017 dollars, never surpassed the 1999 level until 2016.
 
Following the 1957 federal budget surplus the U.S. has run federal budget deficits every year since - except for 1960 & 1969.  It was the 1960s federal government spending that brought the inflation that necessitated two household earners as described above. 
 
The government spending on both fighting an unwinnable war in Indochina & LBJ’s Great Society (especially Medicare, Medicaid, & the expansions of Social Security benefits) ended the economic expansion started by JFK & was the inflation spark that required two paychecks coming in to virtually every middle class household.  Today, the Cato Institute has determined there are 126 taxpayer funded welfare programs that not just the needy are using but opportunistic cunning people who exploit the programs also.
 
Federal spending was 3% of GDP in 1928 – it continued to grow in the 1960s & has a long term average of 21% of a much greater GDP meaning that the federal government has continued to not live within its means. 
 
One source of ready cash that contributed to the inflation rise was the Social Security surplus from payroll taxes that was immediately spent on every program imaginable by a profligate Congress.  Today there is nothing but IOUs in the deceptively misnamed Social Security Trust Fund which is scheduled for book-keeping exhaustion by 2034, @ which time benefits will be reduced, as stated on the personalized Social Security statement that is mailed to everyone starting @ age 25 & is also available online.
 
The Budget Control Act of 2011, better known as the Sequester, was a feeble attempt to control a small portion of federal discretionary spending via automatic spending cuts that would go into effect unless both congressional Democrats & Republicans agreed otherwise.  The Sequester had put caps on discretionary federal spending – but in 2018 Congress raised the caps by $130 billion & just last month Congress again raised the caps $320 billion over the next two years above the Sequester limits.  In essence the Budget Control Act controlled nothing.
 
It was Sunday night August 15, 1971 that Nixon took America off what was left of the gold standard when he announced on national TV (I was watching in Ocean City Maryland) that the Treasury would no longer exchange $35 dollars for a troy ounce of gold, & vice versa.  Forty years later, to the day, the price of gold was $1,740 per troy ounce.  A 1971 dollar has lost 84.1% of its purchasing power – i.e., $1 in 1971 had the same purchasing power as $6.29 today.
 
In the next three years more than half of the nation’s $22 trillion outstanding debt matures.  The weighted average cost of that debt is less than 2%.  If interest rates would rise, say to the still historically low 3% level, interest payments would increase $220 billion a year.  Source Jason Trennert, CEO of Strategas, writing in the WSJ.
 
Professor Friedman taught that the villain is government spending that creates the debt & not the debt itself.  Inflation occurs when too much money chases too few goods.  Inflation follows when too much of the nation’s total available resources are unproductively used by government to produce things of no wealth creative value or as Henry Hazlitt wrote in Economics In One Lesson – “it [is] improbable that the wealth created by government spending will fully compensate for the wealth destroyed by the taxes imposed to pay for that spending.”  Accordingly, government spending provides the fuel that decreases the purchasing power of a nation’s currency that ends up with families needing more than one wage earner to make ends meet.
 
In short, Congress spends too much & that is the root cause why we have so many two income households – the government takes too much of the total resources earned by the private sector that should be available to the private sector where it would be used more productively than it would be by the government. 
 
Below is a graphic that shows the rates of both general inflation & medical care inflation that started in the 1960s & is the reason why both husband & wife work today instead of one of them staying home to raise their children.


Below is a graphic that shows the latest inflation source, college tuition loans, starting in 1990.  It has doubled the rate of inflation of medical care & has quadrupled the rate of general inflation.


And below is a graphic showing that much of a worker’s expected wage increase over the past twenty years went to paying employer-provided healthcare insurance.


The WSJ reports that in 1970, only half the women in the U.S. aged 25 to 54 were in the workforce.  That figure has now risen to 75%.  For men it has moved in the opposite direction, slipping from 96% to 89%.  Women currently make up 46.6% of the labor force, up from 45% in 2000.  In July, the breakdown of workers, 25 years old or older, in the labor force with a bachelor’s degree, was 29.23 million women & 29.07 million men.  This puts 2019 on track to be the first year women make up the majority of the college-educated labor force.  Source BLS.
 
The above statistics are not to be praised as a sign of women's rights or some politically correct equality, liberation, or superiority but rather as an indication of both men & women being forced to go into the labor force to make ends meet because of the inflation resulting from government overspending, as detailed above.  Accordingly, parents have abdicated their parenting responsibility – i.e., the way they raise their children – in order to meet the cost of living.
 
Not only do many children not have the family supervision structure they need they also find themselves separated from worthwhile programs & activities – i.e., they are left isolated online.  Several mass shooters had suffered from being bullied.  With limited family support even their homes were not safe havens when the bullying could continue online nonstop without a break or advice from their parents.  Under these circumstances it is easy to see how mental distress could reach a breaking point for some people.
 
The recent mass shootings in El Paso & Dayton, within thirteen hours of each other, has resulted in both politicians & the citizenry calling for the federal government to do something – anything.  What a sad commentary to turn to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, & Donald Trump for help for a problem that can only be solved by the parents.  And of course the two dozen Democrat presidential candidates couldn’t wait to politicize these tragedies & demonize the NRA & Trump.
 
It is bad enough that the federal government makes a pretense of trying to do something, but even then is it not asking too much that it should @ least propose something that will help?  Not any of the proposed enhanced background checks would have stopped either the El Paso or Dayton mass shootings so they would not have been any help.  Passing more anti-gun & red flag laws will not reduce the carnage.  To put it in terms a dieter can understand – the fork does not eat the cheesecake.
 
Gun violence in Chicago & Baltimore has been infamous for years – Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws but to no avail.  Juarez, Mexico has draconian gun laws but had 1,247 murders last year compared to El Paso with lax gun laws & 23 homicides.
 
Red flag laws mostly act to take away a person’s right to keep & bear arms, without due process of law, based on a prediction of future bad behavior.  This is illogical & shortsighted.  If a person is that dangerous what will stop them from using a knife to kill or driving a car into a nondescript crowd that could just as easily been the target of a mass shooting?  Earlier this month a man in Southern California went on a stabbing spree when he used a machete to kill a 7-Eleven security guard, two people @ the man’s apartment complex, another person outside a Subway restaurant, & injured two others before police arrested him.
 
People who are genuinely interested in expanding red flag laws desire security & safety over liberty – these people have come to take their freedoms for granted which is another dangerous slippery slope.
 
Establishing “gun free zones” in schools or churches merely invites gun violence since a deranged person knows there is no one there to stop them.  Who would put a sign on their front lawn “there is no one home with a gun so you are not in danger to trespass?”
 
In summary, none of the politically correct proposed anti-gun & red flag laws would help solve the mass shootings problem that really has been caused by our own succumbing to the Death Of Democracy principles known by our Founders & Vladimir Lenin as well.  We have lived in a world of One Nation Under Government debauching the currency for over 50 years & the mass shootings is just one of the signs of America’s slide.  Only when we are truthful enough to address this actuality will we have a realistic chance to reduce, if not eliminate, the mass shootings that plague America. 
 

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Omar & Tlaib Look Beyond Socialist America

The last two posts have focused on the hostile anti-American socialistic activities of the four freshmen congresswomen who call themselves the Squad – AOC, Omar, Tlaib, & Pressley.
 
Top Democrat Party leaders are worried about the oversized effect & definitional face for the party the Squad, & particularly AOC & Omar, are having on a crucial group of likely general election voters that went for Trump in 2016 – whites with two years or less of college education.  The party leaders' concern was confirmed by a Democrat internal poll conducted last May that shows these swing voters, needed by Democrats to win in 2020, don't like socialism – 56% had favorable views of capitalism versus 18% favorable for the Squad's socialism.
 
The fear is that the Squad is turning off swing voters in swing House districts which could cost Democrats both the House & Presidency in 2020.
 
The poll found that 1) AOC was recognized by 74% of voters & that she had a 22% favorable rating, & 2) Omar was recognized by 53% of the voters & she had a 9% favorable rating.
 
AOC's oversized publicity is called out by one top Democrat Party leader who said AOC's "getting all the news & defining everyone else's race."
 
So it is instructive for the rest of us to see just how these four Squad members went from obscurity to such power.
 
AOC won her district primary election in June 2018 by receiving 7.4% of the total registered vote in a primary that had a 12.9% turnout.  AOC received 57.1% or 15,897 primary votes which was less than the 25,000 Amazon jobs she cost NYC.  AOC received 78% of the general election vote in 2018. 
 
Omar won her primary over five other Democrat rivals after Keith Ellison announced he would not seek reelection in 2018 in a district rated D+26.  The third place finisher in Omar's Democrat primary got more votes than all the Republican primary candidates combined.  Accordingly, Omar won her congressional seat in 2018 over her Republican opponent 78% to 22%.
 
Tlaib won her primary representing Detroit in 2018 by 887 votes in a six person field.  Tlaib won the seat held since 1965 by John Conyers who stepped down because of charges of harassment & mistreatment of staffers over the years – in fact Conyers endorsed his son who was one of Tlaib's five primary opponents.  Tlaib won the general election seat with 84% of the vote with no Republican opponent.
 
Pressley won her primary in 2018 against a ten term incumbent opponent who was out of favor with both Massachusetts senators (Warren & Markey) & thus became the first black women elected to Congress from Massachusetts in a district Hillary Clinton carried by 72 points in 2016.  Pressley was unopposed in the general election.
 
We can see from the above that the Squad members came to power in low turnout elections sometimes with no significant general election opponent meaning they did not start with a groundswell of support but have made the absolute most of their victories.
 
Until the Squad, the best example of oversized influence from low turnout races was NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio defeating his general election opponent in 2013 by a 72% to 28% margin with a turnout of 26% of registered voters meaning de Blasio received 18.72% of the votes of registered voters.  The majority of the other registered voters either didn't care or could not be bothered to vote after de Blasio clearly campaigned on anti-police priorities such as reining in the "stop & frisk" police technique that had been so successful in cleaning up NYC crime.  In addition de Blasio had campaigned on raising taxes on high income earners, stopping the practice of closing low performing schools, & slowing the growth of charter schools.  The new mayor was sworn in by Bill Clinton with Hillary on stage nodding & clapping approvingly in a sign of things she hoped to see nationally. 
 
Now the above Party leader's observation is not only true in defining Democrat House candidates' races but also virtually all the Democrat presidential candidates' races as well, as they all march to one degree or another to AOC's socialist Squad – some just a little more incrementally than others.
 
The entire Democrat party presidential primary field, with few or small exceptions, favors 1) open, or no, borders & sanctuary cities & states as a first step before any of them seek to totally repeal our immigration laws in favor of millions of people who violated our national sovereignty by coming to America when they knew it was wrong, 2) Medicare for All, a universal single payer healthcare system totally controlled by the federal government that makes employer provided healthcare insurance illegal for over 150 million American workers thereby bringing the country another giant step closer to the statists' ideal of total dependence on the federal government – both financially through taxes & physically though universal healthcare, 3) a federal jobs guarantee, 4) a proposed Green New Deal that calls for the end of the use of fossils fuels by 2030 thereby eliminating all the jobs of people employed in coal & fracking, 5) abolishing ICE, 6) eliminating the electoral college, 7) free public college & trade school, 8) raising the top income tax rate to a minimum of 70%, 9) instituting a wealth tax, 10) bashing police forces instead of supporting these people who risk their lives every day when they leave their homes in uniform, 11) strict new gun control laws like they have in Democrat controlled Chicago – to no avail, 12) pursuing slavery reparations for descendants of people who were slaves more than 150 years ago, & 13) a no-first-use nuclear policy that means the United States under a Democrat president would be willing to see major cities on either coast wiped out by a nuclear strike before responding in kind.
 
So far, following AOC's socialist policies is paying off as witnessed by the following recent FNC poll, the results of which are supported by a separate July 7 to 9, WSJ/NBC News poll that showed Biden, Sanders, & Warren leading Trump & Harris tied with him.
 
click on image to enlarge
 
The above poll is believable because there are more Democrats than Republicans, voters do not yet have the benefit of watching the one on one presidential debates that are over a year away, & the Democrats currently have a 14 point advantage being the preferred party to control healthcare.
 
Bernie's six point popular vote lead is the most disturbing because he already has recent electoral college victories in the Wisconsin, Michigan, & Pennsylvania primaries over Hillary in 2016 – the three states that propelled Trump into the presidency in 2016.  Six points could be hard for Trump to overcome in the electoral college as these votes are distributed in the states – Hillary led by 2.5 points in the popular vote while losing the electoral college vote.
 
Right after FNC presented the above poll results Trump tweeted ". . .there can be NO WAY, with the greatest Economy in U.S. history, that I can be losing to the Sleepy One" –referring to being 10 points behind Biden in the poll. 
 
The difference is that the youthful voters are not focusing on Trump's economic accomplishments & neither are the older generations to some degree.  Generation Z is interested in mass shootings, racial equality, & immigration policy & treatment of illegal immigrants.  Millennials are interested in healthcare, global warming/climate change, & mass shootings.  Generation X & older generations are interested in healthcare, terrorism/national security, & the national debt. 
 
With regard to the economy, the June Jobs Openings & Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on August 6 showed there were 7.348 million job openings in America, a figure exceeding the number of unemployed people who are actively looking for a job by over 1.3 million.  There have been more job openings than unemployed people looking for work since March 2018 so there certainly are quite a number of people not concerned about where they fit into the jobs economy – much to President Trump's consternation.  See graphic below that shows even more clearly that the number of people with skills qualified for employment has lagged the number of job openings even more than the job openings – unemployed ratio indicates.
 
click on graphic to enlarge
 
But any of the twenty plus Democrat candidates running for president will reliably start with 232 electoral votes they can count on (CA – 55, CO –9, CT – 7, DE – 3, DC – 3, HI – 4, IL – 20, ME – 3, MD – 10, MA – 11, MN – 10, NV – 6, NH – 4, NJ – 14, NM – 5, NY – 29, OR – 7, RI – 4, VA – 13, VT – 3, & WA – 12).
 
AZ (11), GA (16) & even TX (38) had a purple tinge to them in 2016 & of course Trump won WI (10), PA (20), & MI (16) by a combined total of less than 80,000 votes – these were the three key states that threw Trump over the top in 2016.
 
So a lot has to happen between now & November 2020 or the socialist policies of AOC will go into place. 
 
But even AOC's socialist policies are just a stepping stone for Omar's & Tlaib's true intentions as they use their working relationship with AOC & Pressley as useful unsuspecting idiots.  Omar & Tlaib are looking for an America ruled by Sharia Law – not merely a socialist utopia that has the greatest possible income inequality between the rich elites & the remaining masses.
 
As an example, last month, the House overwhelmingly approved 398 to 17 a nonbinding bipartisan resolution (Roll Call #497) opposing an international effort to boycott Israel.  The resolution puts the House on record opposing the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS) movement & its efforts to target companies that do business with Israel.  The BDS movement is not only a threat to delegitimize the Jewish state but to economically annihilate Israel.  Omar, Tlaib, & AOC voted to support the BDS movement.  In an apparent break from the Squad ranks Pressley voted to oppose the House BDS resolution, in deference to her Jewish voters, but said that if a binding Senate bill came to the House floor she would vote with the other Squad members.
 

I present below some of the tenets of Sharia law – they show exactly why the concept of the separation of church & state is a founding principle of America in that the governing body should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit(ing) the free exercise thereof" & why everyone who applies for American citizenship should prove they want to assimilate into our society – not change it.

 

• Theft is punishable by amputation of the right hand.
• Criticizing or denying any part of the Quran is punishable by death.
• Criticizing or denying Muhammad is a prophet is punishable by death.
• Criticizing or denying Allah, the moon god of Islam is punishable by death.
• A Muslim who becomes a non-Muslim is punishable by death.
• A non-Muslim who leads a Muslim away from Islam is punishable by death.
• A non-Muslim man who marries a Muslim woman is punishable by death.
• A man can marry an infant girl and consummate the marriage when she is 9 years old.
• Girls' clitoris should be cut (per Muhammad's words in Book 41, Kitab Al-Adab, Hadith 5251).
• A woman can have 1 husband, but a man can have up to 4 wives; Muhammad can have more.
• A man can unilaterally divorce his wife but a woman needs her husband's consent to divorce.
• A man can beat his wife for insubordination.
• Testimonies of four male witnesses are required to prove rape against a woman.
• A woman who has been raped cannot testify in court against her rapist(s).
• A woman's testimony in court, allowed only in property cases, carries half the weight of a man's.
• A female heir inherits half of what a male heir inherits.
• A woman cannot drive a car, as it leads to fitnah (upheaval).
• A woman cannot speak alone to a man who is not her husband or relative.
• Meat to be eaten must come from animals that have been sacrificed to Allah – i.e., be Halal.
• Muslims should engage in Taqiyya and lie to non-Muslims to advance Islam.

To hear the clearest commentary of what is going on with Members of Congress, like Omar & Tlaib, attacking Israel with anti-Semitic rhetoric & why Jewish Democrats don't call them out click here for Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's riveting explanation.
 

Reference: Statement by Judge Jeanine Pirro – January 9, 2016