“The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.”
― Russell Kirk
(Prior to the article's analysis, I want to announce to my loyal readers that I have established a new(er) for my poetry that I hope will draw just as large of a following as this blog. I have been an intermittent user of the Blogger service now for nearly nine years, having owned or as a contributor for six different blogs. I do hope you will consider reading my poetry as well as my political commentary. The blog, titled Tennessee Fried Poetry, Part Deux, can be accessed within the context of that writing.)
Introduction: A Warm Welcome to Prince George Alexander Louis into the World!
So, what have we lately from across "the fruited plain"? Well, "across the pond,' the Royal baby was delivered to the sweet, yet sultry Kate Middleton. I do have to say that if Prince George (the little cherub's name) is to become a heart breaker in life, he will do so only by virtue of his mother's good genes, as his father's is tarnished by Prince Charles' ears and his father's receding hairline.
There are a few graphics I would like to share with you in celebration of the birth of the Royal baby. Here they are below, in living color:
And his best attempt at pulling a "James Bond" at this very early stage of his life:
Yes, Prince George Alexander Louis is going to make one fine monarch living the high life. One of my co-workers could not help but make the distinction that he looks like the Planters Peanut Man. I think she is correct, and I will say that furthermore, he is going to be the prince of the peanut gallery!
Here is another picture of the new born cherub being celebrated to all of the people of the British Commonwealth of 16 nations:
The only question I have for the Royal family is why did they not name him "Simba"? Also, since the Royal family has clandestinely lived as a pack of lions -- as we all know, the male lion is the king of all animals -- will the sweet cherub grow up to have a mane around his head and neck? It seems as if William, Duke of Cambridge, is losing his mane.
All kidding aside, I want to congratulate William and Kate on the birth of the future King of England. In honor of the mother country, I will complete this sentence, and therefore "paragraph," with the line, "Britannia rules the waves.
Here is a real photograph of the young Royal family:
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Conclusion: Hillary Clinton Attempts to Liberalize the Royal Family's Parenting Skills
Of course, leave it to someone on the Left to mar the birth of the future King of England. Hillary Clinton chimed in, as only the future president of the United States can do. I say she is going to be the next president because there are enough idiots in this country who will vote for her. She has practically an entire gender-base backing her, which means more and higher taxes, less liberty, and the like.
So, what did Clinton have to say? Well, here is what one publication showed of her Twitter account and the backlash she received. You will have to view it on the actual web page since it will not transfer to this blog.(Courtesy of Twitchy)
So, it takes a Royal village to take care of one baby? Why not? It has taken an entire empire to care for the British Royal family for nearly a millennium through oppressive taxation, so why would it not take an entire country? This is Clinton at her most sly.
Since you have seen the uproar over the First Lady, I will also lampoon her in a few spoof Photoshop jobs that I am sure you will enjoy:
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Oh yes. In three and a half more years, we will have another eight years tacitly agreed upon by the sheep in the form of the American public where we will give things away to the government according to Hillary Clinton "on behalf of the common good."
(Above: George Zimmerman at his trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin.)
Introduction: My Initial Reaction on the George Zimmerman Verdict and the Real Problems with Racism in America Today
For the past week or more since the verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial was announced, I have had to read with utter disgust and contempt the opinions of virtually each and every one of my liberal friends on Facebook crying foul, claiming that the jurors were all racist. I have seen one person compare the "injustice" of Zimmerman's acquittal to a case involving a 22 year old black woman living in Jacksonville, Florida, named Marissa Alexander, who was convicted of attempted murder after firing warning shots at her abusive husband amid a severe beating and sentenced to the minimum term of 20 years in prison as she was found to be in violation of the "Stand Your Ground" law in the state. For many of my liberal friends, they cried foul because of the inconsistencies of the law and how it was applied in the two cases, often citing in a cliche I will use, "What is good for the goose is good for the gander," that Zimmerman should have received a similar sentence. While I will agree upon the principle of this concept, as the federal legal code specifies that all have equal rights protected under the law, I do find it extremely offensive for at least two reasons that every single one of them claimed it was a situation of racist manifestation, and nothing more, because Zimmerman is a white man while Alexander is black. Furthermore, the testimony by Rachel Jeantel, which was filled with holes and inconsistencies as well as racially-charged comments such as "cracker," also upset me, not so much because I was offended by them since I was keenly aware based upon her inability to read a letter she claimed to have written before the court during the trial that she is lacking in intelligence, but because it showed the lack of respect the black community has for the white population as a whole, particularly when she stated that she did not consider that word to be a racial slur.
Upon reading these comments, which literally numbered in the dozens, I became so outraged and emotionally-distraught over this form of bigotry that I could not bring myself to immediately express my opinions on this issue or any other until now, a tragedy over which I still lament because I had planned to author an article on July 14 comparing the histories of the French Revolution to that of our own, and how it appears as if most Americans today identify with the founding principles of the former that were based on pure, unadulterated atheism. As I was telling a new friend of mine I have made over Google+ who is highly intelligent and very insightful in her perspective of our society based upon the fact that she is of Puerto Rican-Hispanic heritage, our nation is experiencing what has amounted to an alarming growth in racism towards the white race, whether it be men or women, primarily from the black community. Between 1955 and 2008, America made a tremendous amount of progress towards addressing the issue of civil rights through copious methods, but upon the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, we have experienced a regression in these efforts as opposed to progression. Never before during my lifetime have I ever seen such division between the races in our country, and with the black community no longer the largest minority demographic domestically, they are louder now than ever before in their cries of institutional prejudice, injustice, and demands for government subsidies to provide for them financially while also complaining of not being able to be hired at well-paying jobs. The culture the Democrats have created over the course of the past 80 years is one of dependency rather than self-reliance. Even during the presidency of George W. Bush -- one that I considered to be a total failure despite my voting for him in both 2000 and 2004 and his serving a full two terms in office -- the economy flourished for the majority of his term until the financial market crashed in 2008. President Obama often points to the Bush record of creating only 1.2 million jobs over his tenure, but the economy never suffered prior to his last year in office, and most of the economic growth America had experienced had come over the previous 20 years in the Reagan and Clinton presidencies. It is no secret that America's economy is the worst it has been since the presidency of Jimmy Carter, for although we are not experiencing double-digit inflation in the realm of 13.5% as the nation did at the end of his term, the level of unemployment is as high, and the economy has seen a virtual retraction since he entered office rather than real growth. I have posted some of these figures in previous blog articles, so I will not go to the trouble of cutting and pasting them again: 58% of people who have found new jobs after losing their previous one during the Obama presidency earn less in wages than they did previously. Many of the jobs people managed to be hired at are only part-time jobs. A record 46 million Americans receive food stamps and various other forms of welfare subsidies. All of this is occurring, of course, as the president proudly claims victory in his fight to restore economic viability in America, and we have not even seen the impending damage to the small businesses and even large corporations that Obama Care will create yet, as one report I have also posted in another blog states that a conservative estimate of at least 800,000 American jobs will be lost due to businesses being unable to pay for the extremely high premiums the federal government will be charging. If it was change for which a plurality of the American electorate voted Obama into office to achieve, they are getting it right up the derriere. I never voted for Obama, so I can sleep at night secure in the knowledge that I did my part to avoid the further expansion of the welfare state and socialism in America.
No other minority demographic has suffered more from these horrible economic conditions than the black community, and yet they continue to vote as a block for politicians into office who maintain their status quo behind the metaphor of standing in line, waiting to be fed from the soup ladle of the federal government. Because conservative Republicans and those within the party of the libertarian mindset do not believe in propagating the welfare state further and instead wish to give "a hand up" economically by creating better conditions for these individuals to be hired by rewarding employers, they -- we -- are referred to as racists, as the party of the "good old white boys." In most of the years in U.S. history where every income level and population demographic experienced greater prosperity, a less-intrusive presidency presided over the nation and implemented similar policies with regards to the economy. Bill Clinton is often credited by some to have presided over the longest period of economic growth in our nation's history due to his liberal policies, yet these people, no doubt members of the political Left, fail to mention that this period of growth did not transpire until the "Contract with America" Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 in what was one of the greatest sweeps and transfers of political power in the history of the Legislative Branch. There were two factors that caused this to happen: 1) Clinton signed into law a massive tax hike shortly after entering the White House in 1993 amid an economic downturn, pushing the highest wage earners' tax rates up to 39.6%, which also included a certain surcharge, and 2) he signed into law, too, the Brady Crime Bill, which banned the selling of certain brands of assault rifles domestically for a 10 year period that ended in 2004. Upon the GOP taking control of Congress, they immediate began pressuring Clinton into moderating his liberal policies, and he would, as a result, sign such bills into law as the Welfare to Work Act and the Tax Reform Act of 1997. Clinton, while never a conservative as Democratic president John F. Kennedy was accused of being by members of his own party, was widely considered a moderate, and as one may read, a member of the "New Democrat" movement that came in response to the massive changes in American political and pop cultures during the Reagan Revolution of the 1980's toward conservatism. He was able to adapt to the changes in America's political climate as any slick liberal politician will do, a trait that I rarely ever see out of GOP lawmakers. He is often remembered fondly by a large portion of the America public for the economic boom of the 1990's that was, in part, because of the GOP's pressuring him to modify his liberal approach to public policy, and also due to the technology sector rising to prominence in the domestic and global economy.
Never has there been greater poverty in post-Depression era America other than perhaps the 1970's stagflation era than what we are experiencing today, and as I stated, the black community continues to suffer the most from this scourge. Any efforts to thwart the attempts at providing further socialist welfare policies to bridge the gap between the richest and poorest Americans is decried as racist and done so out of sheer greed. However, it is as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated on the final day of her premiership on November 22, 1990 while being grilled by Members of Parliament (MP) from the Labour Party: that so long as the rich were "less rich," they would rather the poor were poorer. I will provide the video below, as it is greatly demonstrative of the way any good conservative or libertarian politician should challenge the fallacious logic of the Left in a debate:
Unfortunately, most conservatives and libertarians in America and around the Western world have not the stomach to take such a stand against these fallacies and vitriol from members of the political Left. They are far too concerned with their public image as a caretaker of the public good to challenge the injustices of the Left. Furthermore, the Left, through its mouthpiece in the mass media often declaring people on the Right as uncaring, immoral, and worse still, lacking in sufficient intelligence to govern any municipality, county, state, or the nation, we see today all too often those political figures caving into the pressure. However, revolutionary leaders such as Thatcher and Ronald Reagan ventured at their own political perils down the roads less traveled, and are remembered today for their integrity, their personal strength, and moral absolutism, and as two of the key figures on Time's 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century when it was compiled and published in 1999.
Thatcher was always critical of socialism. One phrase she is noted to have stated and that is accurate is this:
"The trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money."
To continue to institute an oppressive tax system as both the U.S. and Britain have in place is wrong on many levels, as it impedes the full economic potential of both nations for all people. This is perhaps far worse in the inner cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast, where taxation is high and laws are Draconian. Perhaps no three cities in the nation are experiencing this worse than those of New York, Chicago, and Detroit. We know about the recent exploits of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was elected to the office as a Republican only to change his stripes midstream into a Democrat disguised in the clothing of an Independent. Chicago, of course, has the strictest gun laws in America, and every single year since 1982 when the city passed the ordinance banning the selling and possession of firearms within the city limits, the number of murders and instances of violent crime involving firearms increases substantially; still, they do not see the logic of their own foolishness, and instead continue to push for stricter gun laws, with one black civic leader going so far as to claim that the reason for the spike in murders among inner city blacks being because the police officers were the ones shooting them. We just learned this week that the city government of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, as it is the most economically-depressed city in America. That is a subject of a future blog that I personally look forward to addressing.
Thatcher also spoke about inner city socialism in Britain. The same is true here as in Britain, and the video below will demonstrate her views on this issue in the link provided as Blogger would not allow me to post the actual YouTube video in its physical presence:
For her efforts that returned the United Kingdom to international viability and economic prosperity following many decades of social and economic malaise due to the propagation of socialist policies, she is reviled by a sizable portion of the population, as those who are members of the Labour Party and other left-wing minority political parties gathered in Trafalgar Square during her funeral procession to celebrate her death with chants of "Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead!"
More Details on the George Zimmerman Trial and Verdict Which Led to the Jury's Verdict
The plight of the black community has been "championed" by the Democrats for the past 49 years by policies which promoted poverty and dependency on the federal government for their financial and economic welfare as opposed to creating opportunities for prosperity and the means to rise from the shackles of poverty. It is at its worst in the inner cities. Thomas Jefferson once opined about the issues plaguing the nations of Europe with large urban populations as well as expressing his hope for the destiny of America more than 200 years ago. As always, his words have proven to be profoundly wise and often times all too grim in their prophecy (Courtesy of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello):
(Above: Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, second governor of the state of Virginia, third president of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe."
Indeed, these words from the greatest sage among the Founding Fathers could be no wiser. There is no economically poorer demographic in America than the inner city black citizens, and their struggles continue to become further exacerbated by the day with the liberal politics that have largely permeated the various levels of American democracy over the past 80 years. As the trial seemed to linger for months, I lost interest in the details, and as I am attempting to find a web page discussing each and every piece of evidence provided about the case and the trial itself, I have found nothing other than news article after news article favoring the plight of Trayvon Martin and his family and championing the bigotry brought forth by Al Sharpton and scores of other protesters nationwide. Along with the strict gun laws which in some cities are in the form of outright bans on the selling and possession of them, the issue of abject poverty among the large populations of black citizens in the major urban areas are chiefly responsible for providing the conditions which have resulted in these terrible tragedies.
What bothers me more than the media twisting the story to meet its agenda, which has included such vile and illegal acts as CNN providing Mr. Zimmerman's Social Security Number and NBC altering the recording of his frantic 911 phone call after the shooting, has indeed been the mob rule brought about by what is tantamount to anarchists in the form of the black community. I have never had a problem with people speaking their minds upon issues of interest; that is a right guaranteed by the First Amendment that, unfortunately, is being breached egregiously by the Obama administration. I do mind, however, that mobs of black protesters are physically assaulting people of white and Hispanic backgrounds, and there is yet another story today I read online in which an innocent elderly white lady was attacked. The New Black Panther Party even announced that it would target police officers in the name of justice for Trayvon Martin. Such actions are disturbing and unacceptable. While I normally would embark upon the task of providing every single article I have read on these events, they are so numerous in quantity that it would literally take a day or more to locate.
(Above: Charlie Daniels, country musician and southern-rock icon, born in 1936. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
There is one opinion from one of Nashville's most well-respected country music celebrity artists I found to be most interesting which was posted by a co-worker on her Facebook account. None other than Charlie Daniels wrote on what appeared to be a rather objective account of the situation and mentioned one interesting point that has been the talk of many of co-workers and friends on Facebook who are mostly of the conservative persuasion, as it is almost impossible for a Democrat to be elected to public office in the state of Tennessee unless a politician runs in the city of Memphis, where the state's largest representation of the black community resides; those who are are largely considered of the "blue dog" variety and far less liberal than those in other parts of the country. Here is his take on the subject, and you will be horrified to learn of the case involving a young couple's murder at the hands of five black individuals in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. These young individuals, named Channon Christian and Chris Newsom who were fellow students at the University of Tennessee, were brutally raped, murdered, and mutilated by five black individuals in 2007. The story never made the headlines of national news, however, as did the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman affair. Chris Newsom was someone with whom I attended the same elementary school many years ago, but did not attend the same middle or high school as the elementary school we attended splits into two different middle schools following a student's 5th Grade year depending on where one is zoned (Courtesy of The Charlie Daniels Band on Facebook):
Aftermath - Soapbox 07/19/13
The Trayvon Martin killing was a tragedy that, as far as I'm concerned, never should have happened. It was a classic case of really bad judgment on the part of both the involved individuals, with Zimmerman following Trayvon when he shouldn't have and Martin attacking Zimmerman when he shouldn't have and both men responsible for painting themselves into one of those tight corners where somebody has to be hurt.
But the case, as tragic as it was, was made many times worse by an irresponsible media and civil rights leaders who exploited it for whatever ink and TV face time they could get out of it.
In the time that the Zimmerman trial was going on there were sixty-one murders in Chicago, forty-three of them were black males and seven of those black males were under the age of 18, most of them died from gunshot wounds, all violent, all senseless. Do Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson just not care as much about the black male population of Chicago or is it that they just can't garner as much media attention there?
Speaking of media attention, a young white couple, students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, was carjacked, raped, tortured and murdered.
The young man, Christopher Newsome, was raped and beaten, then castrated, shot, his body dumped by train tracks and set on fire while his girlfriend, Channon Christian, was forced to watch.
Channon was gang raped over a period of days, her breasts cut off while she was still alive, then had cleaning fluid sprayed in her mouth in an attempt to erase the traces of DNA and her body put into a garbage receptacle.
Maybe you're wondering why you haven't heard about this inhuman crime, perhaps you think your local paper didn’t had time to cover it yet.
I seriously doubt that, since the crime took place in August of 2006, and of your local news outlets, most probably never covered it. I live about 150 miles from where it took place and, to the everlasting shame of networks and the local news media I didn't hear about it either until somebody brought my attention to it on the internet.
How could a crime this heinous, this inhuman, this completely evil escape the notice of the mass media and the talking heads who are always screaming for equal justice under the law?
Simple, it doesn't fit their agenda, the perpetrators were all black, all five of them. If this wasn't a case of blatant racism, I truly don't know what is. Do you honestly believe there wasn't racial bias involved in the choosing of the victims and the malicious violence that was done to them, and yet this story, one of the most hideous murders of the decade, was not covered by the media and was completely ignored by the so called civil rights leaders of all colors.
A dangerous precedent has been set by Eric Holder's Justice Department and aided and abetted by the mainstream American media, selective prosecution and selective journalism all calculated to push a political agenda that drives the races in this nation farther apart every day.
No good will come from Al Sharpton calling for demonstrations around the nation, already a group of blacks have beaten a random Hispanic citizen claiming, "This is for Trayvon".
What's the difference in this and what the KKK was doing a few short decades ago. Is this what Sharpton and his ilk want to see happen, anarchy in the name of prejudice? Isn’t that very thing what he's supposed to be fighting against?
America cannot continue down this path and remain the land of the free and the home of the brave where all men are equal under the law.
America desperately needs a president who is a uniter, not a divider, a Justice Department that actually wants to enforce the law equally, regardless of color or race, a Congress and Senate who could reclaim their testicles and a media which reports the news instead of trying to make it.
Blind hate is blind hate no matter what color it comes in.
I will not be a part of it.
What do you think?
Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.
God Bless America
Charlie Daniels
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(Above: Collage of photographs of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom along with their convicted murderers.)
Why? Why can we not declare a vile crime as this committed by about five black people a hate crime and yet people on the Left continue to call for rioting over their contention of what Zimmerman did was, indeed, that, and therefore a miscarriage of justice? Let us also take into account that that because Judge Richard Baumgardner, who presided over the first series of trials of the young couple's murderers, was under the influence of narcotics and has been sentenced to prison for his crime, each and every case involving the perpetrators was retried and the sentences attempted to be decreased in severity. This is an outrage, and yet no one outside of the Greater Knoxville Metropolitan Area knows about this case, and Charlie Daniels even lives just over three hours west of my home in Nashville. Mr. Daniels is renowned for being a staunch conservative, as are many of the musicians within the country music industry. To me, this was a well-articulated, fairly objective piece. As I stated earlier, I never followed the "play-by-play" accounts of the evidence brought before the court in Florida, but I can say that what was presented before the jury must have been convincing enough to acquit him based solely on the premise that there was no unanimous decision consensus towards a conviction and therefore there existed a shadow of doubt.
Furthermore, the same enlightened lady of Puerto Rican/Hispanic ethnicity who discussed this issue in depth also made the very important observation that the media has intentionally ignored: George Zimmerman is half Hispanic. Why, then, do we discriminate against him strictly on the merits of his white roots when he is also a member of the largest minority demographic in America today? This is a cruel irony, and one hindered by the fact that the Obama administration, Democrats, as well as and moderate Republicans in Congress are attempting to exploit their plight by creating a law providing for unconditional, universal amnesty for all immigrants regardless of their legal status. In 2012, 75% of Hispanic voters voted for Obama, and while that is an unacceptable statistic for me as a Republican, it is a far cry from the severity of the black community's votes for the president that same year, where approximately 93% voted as a block for Obama. It seems, then, that the issue of civil rights has taken many steps back after nearly 60 years of steady progress. Obama is no source of national unity, but rather of division.
Conclusion: Wrapping Up My Final Thoughts on the Matter and a Dire Warning for the Future of Civil Rights in America
As I stated in my introduction, I was so appalled and emotionally-distraught by the black community's and the liberals in the media as well as those who are my friends on Facebook I have known for years' public outcry of racism based upon the verdict, plus the media's role in exacerbating the issue, that I could not bear to write in my blog before today. As you know from previous articles, I suffer from both bipolar disorder and OCD, but while I will admit that this past week was one where I felt rather depressed by this news of violence by mobs of black people and the call for this type of abhorrent activity by Rev. Al Sharpton, it in no way, shape, or form a result of my medical condition. I acted as I often do when my favorite sports teams are performing poorly during a season as my University of Tennessee Volunteers have been in football since 2005 following a 16 year period where the program was considered one of the most dominant in the nation: I simply detached myself from the situation and waited for it to subside before I responded. I felt for my own mental well-being that I was obligated to do so regarding this topic because it so disturbed me emotionally. It made me realize that there are still roots of deep-seeded hatred in America left untended. I am not proud that I did this because if I ever have a hope of running for public office one day when I am more financially stable, I cannot simply turn a blind eye to these types of injustices. As I stated before, our nation made great progress towards racial harmony and equality for nearly 60 years. Unfortunately, the progress that has been made since Rosa Park's refusal to move to the back of the bus in 1955 which served as the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement has largely been undone by the Left ever since Obama was first elected president in 2008. The Orwellian prose from his famous dystopian novel Animal Farm (1945)remains as true today with regards to racial tensions and the laws which been been enacted that engender such conditions within our society that it actually appears as if the black community has greater rights guaranteed by legal statutes than those within the white or any other racial or ethnic demographic, when he wrote these words on the late page of the book:
(Above: British author and war correspondent George Orwell, who wrote Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm, and 1984. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
I often wondered even during his 2008 campaign what an America governed by Barack Obama would be like. Would he serve as a source of national racial unity, or would the result of his being elected engender the single greatest division in race relations in America in nearly 50 years? I believe we now know the answer to this query, and it is not what I had hoped it would be. I did not vote for Barack Obama for president in either election because I do not agree with his politics; it had absolutely nothing to do with the color of his skin nor my firm belief even as I write this tonight that he is a Muslim who will endeavor in assisting international Islamic terrorism. I have never voted for a Democrat, nor will I ever. Obama has taken the political philosophy of socialism to a new and very extreme level in America today, and we as a nation have suffered because of it. We are altogether much poorer than we were prior to his 2008 election, with people earning less than ever before, the price of commodities rising disproportionately to that of the average American's wages, and of course, taxes have been raised at all levels of income to further fund a government that knows nothing regarding the concept of fiscal responsibility despite the president's campaign pledge to not raise them on the middle-class or the poor. Poverty is at an all-time high in the post-Depression era. The profligacy I have seen, and I am sure many of you as my readers have as well, has been astounding and disturbing, and the corruption is beyond my usually well-capable abilities of providing a sufficient and articulate response. I do know, however, that as Ronald Reagan used to state so often, we, the United States of America, are the last best hope for mankind on Earth. It is our manifest destiny to promote liberty throughout the world, and as I say this, I am well-aware of the culpability of many lawmakers within the GOP of violating this sacred covenant we hold in hand with God Our Creator when we continue to serve the role as interventionists globally.
One common stereotype that is actually true about the Democratic Party is that it focuses almost all of its political energies on domestic policies. It cannot stand to go a day without passing into law legislation that creates greater government intrusions upon the American people's liberties. I fear the day when we all are rendered to the soup ladle of government as our great-grandparents were during the Great Depression. It was during the Great Depression that the Democrats experienced the height of their popularity, and I feel like we are headed back to the conditions that were manifested in those grim years. Democrats consistently blame President Herbert Hoover for the initiation of Black Tuesday, and they would be right, just not for the reasons they would lead you to believe. Hoover was a big government Republican who raised taxes and enforced the greatest number of regulations on our economy that had ever previously been seen. He was a Progressive during a time where this collective of political ideologues associated themselves with no particular party other than the one in the region in which they knew they could be elected.
(Above: Jesse Owens running in track-and-field during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
It should also be noted that the Democratic Party for nearly 140 years was associated as the party of racism, while the GOP was the party advocating greater civil rights for the black community. In fact, Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican elected to the presidency, and he prosecuted the bloodiest war ever fought in U.S. military history in part to preserve the Union, but also to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery once and for all. For more than 60 years, the Republican Party dominated national politics; between 1861 and 1933, the only members of the Democratic Party to serve as president were Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was notorious for being a racist, as he was a fan of the racially-charged drama, Birth of a Nation. If you ever desire to read more about the period between 1877 and 1933 known as "The Gilded Age," I recommend you read a historical narrative that was assigned to my "History of the United States, 1877-1933" class during my last semester of college by my favorite professor, called Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1922 (2009), authored by Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University by the name of Jackson Lears, where you will learn a great deal about Wilson's racism. Wilson was raised on a plantation in Virginia as a child by parents who were slaveholders, and there is no doubt that this played a crucial role in his racism while in public service. It should also be noted that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successor Harry S/ Truman, both Democrats, were also racists, and this could be made no clearer than in the account by legendary Olympian Jesse Owens, who set many track-and-field records at the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin during the totalitarian regime of Adolf Hitler. He had this to say, and it should not be taken out of context in any manner in terms of the truth revealed (Courtesy of Wikipedia):
"Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."
FDR did not invite Owens to the White House following his Olympic triumphs under the auspices of Nazi bigotry. It should also be noted, too, that in Berlin, Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as white citizens, but could not do so in many parts of the U.S. Since 1936 was a presidential-election year, Roosevelt was afraid that he would lose Southern votes if he played Kowtow to a black man. Jesse Owens also publicly endorsed GOP nominee Alf Landon during the upcoming election. Furthermore, Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself. Honors were not bestowed upon Owens by either FDR or his successor Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (himself an athlete of note) honored Owens by naming him an "Ambassador of Sports." It should be noted that Eisenhower was a member of the Republican Party, the first member of that party to serve as president in 20 years. It was not politically expedient for either FDR or Truman to congratulate a black man on his accomplishments in the Olympics as it would have ruined their chances in receiving votes in the racially-divided South, and therefore they showed no concern or moral obligation toward the plight of all Americans regardless race, ethnicity, or creed.
Unfortunately, we Republicans and Libertarians today are marked as racists by the Left due to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson was a Democrat, but there was a larger percentage of GOP congressmen and senators who voted in favor of the law than those of the Democratic Party. Johnson was by no means a true believer in civil rights for black Americans, as his congressional and senatorial voting records will clearly show. In a conversation with JFK aide Ted Sorensen regarding this legislation (Courtesy of Wikipedia):
"I know the risks are great and we might lose the South, but those sorts of states may be lost anyway."
On the surface, one might take into consideration Johnson having a sense of moral obligation to the causes of civil rights, but let there be no doubt that Johnson pushed for this legislation to pass so that he could sign it into law for no other reason than for the purposes of political expediency. It is my contention that the Democrats were intent on gaining ground among voters in the more populated North, and with the great migration of black citizens from the South to the North during the 1920's and 1930's, this made it all the more crucial. He was one in the long line of great Democratic politicians who understood how to attain greater political capital by compromising his core beliefs regardless of their merits or moral virtues. Johnson continued the FBI's wiretapping of Martin Luther King, Jr., that had been previously authorized by the Kennedy administration under Attorney General Robert Kennedy. As a result of listening to the FBI's tapes, remarks on King's personal lifestyle were made by several prominent officials, including Johnson, who once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher." Johnson also authorized the tapping of phone conversations of others, including the Vietnamese friends of a Richard Nixon associate.
Partisan politics aside, we are in up to our necks as a nation with regards to this increase in racial division. Unfortunately, it appears as if it is a manifestation more perhaps of the black community towards the whites than the other way around as it has existed for centuries. This is not to state that there are no longer white citizens who are not racist; there are, in fact. Most of the members of my grandmother's generation can be classified as such, as they were raised during an era where racism and segregation in the South was the social norm that virtually everyone, including the black community, accepted as life. She never switched her political affiliations, though, to the Republican Party, as she can be accurately described as a New Deal Democrat since she was three months shy of her fifth birthday upon the inauguration of FDR in 1933. I discussed the issue of racism and the phenomena we are seeing today of the Obama administration favoring Islamic fundamentalist organizations tied to funneling money to terrorist organizations in the Middle East in its institution of policies through the politically-corrupt Justice Department under Eric Holder last month with my best friend, who is a nuclear engineer and registered Republican voter, though not as conservative nor libertarian in his beliefs as myself about my fears that we are on the cusp of a potential Americanized version of Apartheid, where the rule of a minority sector of the population outweighs the legitimacy of the majority. America was founded upon what John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson as, "the general Principle of Christianity, and the general Principles of English and American liberty." We have forgotten these important concepts that lent credence to the legitimacy necessary to the rule of law in America now for 224 years, or on June 12, 1789, when New Hampshire became the ninth and final state necessary to ratify the Constitution.
In closing, then, I will posit the position that we may legislate all we will in order to provide for greater racial harmony in America, but such a practice will ultimately prove fruitless unless all segments of our society tacitly agree upon the virtues behind tolerance to all and malice towards none in principle. I told the lady previously mentioned in this article that racism will always exist, and therefore will never completely die. We can only mitigate the factors necessary towards the end of lessening the severity of its impact on our society today. Rather than working to engender better conditions for the black community in the inner cities who are more often than not in the majority of those who are victims of violent crime so that they may rise above the threshold of poverty, the Democratic Party continues to exacerbate the problem by creating greater dependency and propagating the practice of class-warfare consistent with the philosophies of those who prosecuted the French Revolution as well as the authors of The Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels. Both of the French Revolution and the philosophies espoused by Marx and Engels led to political and civil unrest in nations throughout the world over the past two centuries, resulting in the deaths of untold thousands of French citizens during the Revolution, some 30 million in the Soviet Union under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, and at least 70 million deaths in the People's Republic of China under the rule of Mao Zedong from 1949 until his death in 1976. Pol Pot ordered the slaughter of some 2 million Cambodians in the "Killing Fields" during his reign from 1956 until the Vietnamese army invaded and overthrew his government in 1976. All of these political figures and movements were individual initiatives predicated upon political ideologies as the polity of the most extreme forms of left-wing politics the world has ever known, and yet Adolf Hitler is considered to be more evil than the three Communist dictators I just mentioned who were culpable for far more deaths than Der Fuhrer. My believe that is this the case is because National Socialism (aka. "Nazi") is the most extreme form right-wing political belief, as was Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy.
But hey, as long as the Left has an ample and unlimited numbers of opportunities to tarnish those of us of the conservative and/or libertarian persuasion, they will continue to do so, as well as sway the pendulum of public opinion in their favor.
Introduction: Ronald Reagan Saw Every Major War and Political Movement During the 20th Century
Ronald Reagan, a man who once was a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party as recently as the early 1960's, converted to the GOP in the early 1960's because of his belief -- and correctly so -- that government was growing too large, too intrusive, too tyrannical. Not surprisingly, included within these beliefs was his thoughts on socialized medicine. You see, Reagan was born in 1911, lived through both world wars, the Korean War, and was at the beginning of the Vietnam conflict. He also saw the birth of Communism with Red October in 1917 and its final fall at the end of 1991; the rise of Fascism following World War I, followed by its descent into the sunset in 1945. But he also saw a rise of yet another international phenomena that begat economic ruin in the nations which manifested it and would propagate the practice of its principles for decades: European socialism.
The first nation where this took hold was none other than our mother country, the United Kingdom, and its origins lie largely within the hands of the Labour Party. Founded in 1900, the Labour Party overtook the Liberal Party in general elections in 1920. But perhaps its greatest impact on the British government and the people of Great Britain was after a White Paper in 1944 it fell to Clement Attlee's Labour government to create the NHS as part of the "cradle to grave" welfare-state reforms in the aftermath of World War II. Aneurin Bevan, the newly appointed Minister of Health, was given the task of introducing the National Health Service. Doctors were initially opposed to Bevan's plan, primarily on the stated grounds that it reduced their level of independence. Bevan had to get them onside, as, without doctors, there would be no health service. Being a shrewd political operator, Bevan managed to push through the radical health care reform measure by dividing and cajoling the opposition, as well as by offering lucrative payment structures for consultants. On this subject he stated, "I stuffed their mouths with gold". On July 5, 1948, at the Park Hospital (now known as Trafford General Hospital) in Manchester, Bevan unveiled the National Health Service and stated, "We now have the moral leadership of the world."
The cost of the new NHS soon took its toll on government finances. On 21 April 1951 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, proposed that there should be a one shilling (5p) prescription charge and new charges for half the cost of dentures and spectacles. Bevan resigned from the Cabinet in protest. This led to a split in the party that contributed to the electoral defeat of the Labour government in 1951. The one shilling prescription charge was introduced in 1952 together with a £1 flat rate fee for ordinary dental treatment. Prescription charges were abolished in 1965, but re-introduced in June 1968.
The criticisms of the NHS are as follows:
Some extremely expensive treatments may be available in some areas but not in others, the so-called postcode lottery.
The National Programme for IT which was designed to provide the infrastructure for electronic prescribing, booking appointments and elective surgery, and a national care records service. The program ran into delays and overspends before it was finally abandoned.
There has been a decreasing availability of NHS dentistry following the new government contract and a trend towards dentists accepting private patients only, with 1 in 10 dentists having left the NHS totally.
There have been a number of high-profile scandals within the NHS. Most recently there have been scandals at acute hospitals such as at Alder Hey and at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. Stafford Hospital is currently under investigation for poor conditions and inadequacies that statistical analysis has shown caused excess deaths.
A 14 October 2008 article in The Daily Telegraph stated, "An NHS trust has spent more than £12,000 on private treatment for hospital staff because its own waiting times are too long."
In January 2010, the NHS was accused of allocating £4 million annually on homeopathic medicines, which are unsupported by scientific research.
The absence of identity/residence checks on patients at clinics and hospitals allows people who ordinarily reside overseas to travel to the UK for the purpose of obtaining free treatment, at the expense of the UK taxpayer. A report published in 2007 estimates that the NHS bill for treatment of so-called ‘health tourists’ was £30m, 0.03% of the total cost.
The contribution of the NHS to the national deficit in Britain is astounding. As of Q1 2013 the national debt amounted to £1,377.4 billion, or 90.7% of total GDP. The annual cost of servicing the public debt amounts to around £43bn, or roughly 3% of GDP. This is roughly the same size as the British defense budget. It is forecast to rise to 95.6% of total GDP in 2013, further rising to 98.7% of GDP in 2014. Due to the Government's significant budget deficit, which must be financed by borrowing, the national debt is increasing by approximately £121 billion per year, or around £2.3 billion each week.
According to UK Public Spending's figures, the following is known about the contribution of public funding to health to the national debt since about 1900:
The Steady Growth of Health Expenditures
Public spending for health services increased steadily through most of the 20th century, from 0.3 percent of GDP to six percent of GDP by 1980. Followin a mild decline in the 1980s and 1990s, health spending increased rapidly in the 2000s past eight percent of GDP.
Chart 4: Health Spending 1900-2011
Click image for numbers or to customize chart
At the beginning of the 20th century, government spent about 0.5 percent of GDP on health. But spending began to increase in 1909 after passage of the National Insurance Act, reaching 1.14 percent of GDP in 1921.
Health spending increased steadily in the 1920s and 1930s reaching 1.91 percent of GDP at the start of World War II. Spending kept steady during the war and then increased briskly after the war, reaching 3.07 percent just before the National Health Service was set up in 1948.
Costs rose sharply in the early years of the NHS, reaching 3.6 percent of GDP by 1950 and then dropping to 3.0 percent of GDP by 1955. Spending increased steadily after the mid 1950s, running at about 3.5 percent of GDP in the early 1960s and increasing to 4.0 percent of GDP by 1970 and peaking at 4.98 percent of GDP in 1975.
Health spending declined in the late 1970s, down to 4.7 percent of GDP in 1979 and increased thereafter, reaching 5.64 percent of GDP in 1983 before beginning a decline to 5.16 percent in 1988. Then spending jolted upwards, reaching 6.31 percent of GDP by 1993 before a steep decline to 4.91 percent of GDP in 1998.
Spending began increasing sharply after 1999, and is expected to reach a planned expenditures of 8.43 percent of GDP in 2010.
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Thus, perhaps the greatest source of British public spending profligacy rests on the shoulders of socialized health care. And, ironically, it was also around the time of the 1940's that Britain, for more than 350 years having assumed the mantle as the world's most powerful nation, lost its empire upon India gaining independence in 1947. It now is no longer a great nation, but the latest footnote in history of past great empires such as that of Rome falling by the wayside. No nation who has ever operated under the economic and financial burdens of socialism, whatever the form, has ever existed successfully for a period of more than a few decades without at the very least fading into obscurity.
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Ronald Reagan Knew in 1961 What Socialized Medicine Would Amount to in America Today
So often, Republican Party members refer to the wit and wisdom of the party's co-founding philosopher. Reagan, as stated above as well as many other times in previous articles on this blog, was once a Democrat, a New Deal Democrat from the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereupon no other previous president before and perhaps none since has engaged in the sheer magnitude of public spending on federal programs. It is true that FDR introduced America to the welfare state and socialism, that he was the most profligate spending of taxpayer dollars in U.S. history in his implementation and maintenance of those public expenditure programs, and furthermore, increasing the size of government at the highest percentage in a single term in office of any of his predecessors or those who would succeed in U.S. history. Overtime, however, Reagan saw this phenomena occurring, the expansion of government into the people's private lives, and he grew to detest this practice. Wikipedia claims upon my reading of its article on Reagan that he officially joined the GOP in 1962, but it appears as if his beliefs of more popular self-autonomy over its well-being was being nurtured and fostered into philosophical wisdom that would see the greatest period of U.S. economic and foreign strength during the years of the Reagan Revolution from 1981-1991 than at any other time in the nation's history. The Left argues that Reagan oversaw what at the time of his presidency was the largest increase in federal deficit spending in our nation's history, and it was, but what they forget to tell the American people are two things: 1) Reagan would not have had to embark on such a policy of deficit spending had he not had to rescue the military from the type of malaise our economy had been rendered to under the presidency of Jimmy Carter, and 2) Had Congress had agreed to the massive public expenditure cuts Reagan had outlined in his budget proposals, it would certainly not have occurred to the extreme that it did. Let us not forget, either, that throughout his presidency, Reagan called for a constitutional amendment to create a balanced budget, yet Congress failed in acting upon this initiative. As a result of the Democrats' superior politicizing of the issue of Reagan's increasing the deficit despite their lack of initiative to act upon his proposals for budget cuts and a balanced budget constitutional amendment, "The Gipper" gets the blame while they were ironically viewed as the party of fiscal righteousness.
In 1961, Reagan, then still in show business, had already begun becoming politically-active in promoting conservative initiatives. It was at about this time that talk had begun in Washington during John F. Kennedy's first year in office of creating a form of socialized health care. Those horrified conservative Republicans, as well as Reagan. That same year, Reagan made a public service announcement over the radio decrying the issue and stating his reasons for panning the proposal:
Unfortunately, his voice would not be heard. In 1965, Medicare was established, and shortly thereafter was Medicaid under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and enormous amounts of public debt were incurred based largely on those programs. Even President Obama, a member of the party who created socialized health care in America, stated the following according to the "independent" webpage PolitiFact.org, run by The Tampa Bay Times:
"Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin."
Barack Obama on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 in a town hall meeting
Obama says Medicare and Medicaid are largest deficit drivers. Yes, over the long term.
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During a town hall on health care, an audience member asked President Barack Obama about the cost of health care reform, and whether the government could afford to do it.
Obama's answer was a variation on the sales pitch, Can you afford not to?
"I think it's a very legitimate question," Obama began. "I guess that the first point I'd make is, if we don't do anything, costs are going to go out of control. Nobody disputes this. Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin."
If we don't do something soon to rein in health care costs, Obama said, Medicare and Medicaid "will consume all of the federal budget."
We decided to check his statement that "Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin."
We consulted a number of experts, both left-leaning and right-leaning, and they agreed that over the long term, Medicare and Medicaid, along with Social Security — the programs popularly known as "entitlements" — will indeed overwhelm the federal budget and are the main drivers of the deficit. (Of the three programs, Medicare is the largest by a significant margin.)
But there's also some explaining to do about Obama's statement.
When he talks about Medicare and Medicaid driving the deficit, he's not talking about 2009. The 2009 deficit will be powered primarily by the economic downturn, both spending on stimulus and bailouts, and lost tax revenues from the lack of economic activity. The Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the recent Medicare prescription drug benefit have also created gaps between spending and revenues in recent years.
But Obama's singling out of Medicare and Medicaid is true over a much longer window of time, say, over the next 50 to 75 years.
Now, that may strike you — as it did us — as too far in the future to worry about. But the economists we spoke to are definitely worried about it right now.
A coalition of diverse think tanks — the Concord Coalition, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation — teamed up several years ago for a "Fiscal Wake Up Tour" to alert people across the political spectrum about the poor outlook for the budget over the long term.
"Unless lawmakers promptly reform Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, America faces a future of soaring taxes and government spending that will cause poor economic performance," wrote Brian Riedl, an economist with the conservative Heritage Foundation, who participated in the tour.
"Americans will pay onerous taxes, and future generations will have lower living standards than Americans enjoy today," he said. "The longer lawmakers wait to enact the necessary reforms, the more painful those reforms will be."
How bad could things get? The nonpartisan Concord Coalition, citing data models from the Government Accountability Office, found that by 2027, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and net interest would consume all revenues collected by the federal government. By 2047, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone would consume all revenues. By 2052, the model is untenable, because the economy is in ruins. Gulp!
So if Obama is right that Medicare and Medicaid are driving the deficit, then health care reform can fix the long-term deficit, right?
Wrong.
"We have to do everything we can on the health care side, and then certainly there's going to be even more that we have to do," said James Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. "Don't assume we can wave the wand on health care reform and that will take care of everything."
Obama has said many times that he wants health care reform to slow the growth of health care spending. But note the words slow the growth — that doesn't mean a reduction in overall health care spending.
"Even if we significantly cut back the growth in health spending every year for the next 75 years, we still need more revenues to pay for our current obligations," said Ben Harris, a senior research associate at Brookings and the Tax Policy Center. "There's a need for a dramatic cut in spending or some way to raise more revenue, whether it's a new tax or raising an existing tax."
That's where the economists disagree: Whether to cut spending or raise taxes. But we found little disagreement over the underlying problem.
So going back to Obama's statement, Obama said, "Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin." But we do need to add the caveat that Medicare and Medicaid growth is a long-term problem, not what's driving the deficits of this year or the next few years. We rate his statement Mostly True.
Harris speaks about the necessity of cutting back the growth in health spending, followed by the phrase, "...some way to raise more revenue, whether it's a new tax or raising an existing tax." That last phrase reminds me of another Reaganism which has been true throughout the history of the United States over the past century:
"No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
Hence, we have today's drudgery with Obama Care. The consequences it will have on society are ominous, as one report I read no more than two months ago claimed that it is conservatively estimated that approximately 800,000 American jobs will be laid-off as a result of this program. Apparently, the Obama administration has grown aware of its own folly by signing this bill into law that it moved to postpone the employer. The article I choose to post to discuss this issue is courtesy of Time Magazine:
Obama Administration Delays Health Care Law Employer Penalty Until 2015
Republican former CBO director calls decision "deviously brilliant"
The Obama Administration announced on Tuesday that it is delaying implementing a key component of the Affordable Care Act for a year following complaints from the private sector about reporting requirements.
The so-called employer mandate, which penalizes employers with more than 50 employees if they fail to provide a minimum standard of affordable health insurance, was set to kick in in 2014, but now will take effect in 2015, the Treasury Department announced in a blog post first reported by Bloomberg News. The delay not only allows the Administration time to alleviate concerns among business owners, but also takes a controversial component of the law off the table before the midterm elections.
The vast majority of employers that already provide coverage to their employees raised concerns about burdensome reporting requirements under the law, a complaint the Administration is particularly sensitive to. Companies that don’t meet the law’s requirements now have an extra year to alter their policies.
“We have been in a dialogue with businesses and we think we can simplify the new reporting — we want to give businesses who want to provide health insurance the time to get this right,” a senior Administration official said, explaining the delay. “Just like our effort to turn the 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application, we are working hard to adapt and to be flexible in employer and insurer reporting as we implement the law.”
The delay deprives the federal government of a year of penalties that would have been paid by companies that do not meet the law’s requirements, with as yet unknown budgetary effects. Republicans had warned of a downturn in hiring as a result of the mandate.
The so-called individual mandate is unaffected by the rule change. That provision requires the vast majority of Americans to purchase insurance or pay a penalty, with tax credits provided to those who can’t afford coverage.
Republican former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin called the move “deviously brilliant,” by removing a potential electoral impediment from in front of congressional Democrats before the midterms.
“Democrats no longer face the immediate specter of running against the fallout from a heavy regulatory imposition on employers across the land,” Holtz-Eakin wrote. “Explaining away the mandate was going to be a big political lift; having the White House airbrush it from the landscape is way better.”
The Administration will publish formal guidance on the rule change within the next week.
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Moves like this should show Republicans just why the Democrats are far superior politicians than they. In fact, I believe that despite the slew of political scandals plaguing the White House, and with this, of course, mitigating these factors, they will probably regain the House and extend their majority in 2014 because somehow the Democrats will manage to shift the blame of all of these issues toward their GOP brethren in Congress. It is a "deviously brilliant" political act on their part, one for which they have for the past 80 years been most noted for undertaking even when they should, by all rights, be dead in the water.
Still, what does this mean for 2015? Well, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, looks to become what I like to refer to as one of the ruling elites in the Federal Politburo. Already we have seen Eric Holder become more powerful recently despite the public's outcry over his profligacy and corruption that has left dozens dead in the wake of his involvement in Operation Fast and Furious, not to mention his persecuting the idiots within the media who instead of publicly ostracizing him, simply ignore the things he has done since it is so committed to the liberal cause. There are other Cabinet departments that achieved greater power than at any other point in the history of their existence, but Sebelius stands to become perhaps the most powerful of them all. Unfortunately, she is so concerned with ascertaining great power that she does not care for the economic and financial well-being of the American people. The following article from United Liberty, dated July 1, 2013, confirms this in her exact words:
Sebelius to Dems: Don’t worry about job losses caused by ObamaCare
Facing steady opposition against ObamaCare and a long, steady string of news reports documenting reduce hours for employees and/or job losses, many Democrats in Congress have realized that they are losing the message battle over the law.
Congressional Democrats told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday that Americans are still very confused about the health care law — including older people who worry that Obamacare will change their Medicare.
Sebelius went to the Hill for another update with Democrats on Obamacare rollout. HHS this week overhauled its website, focusing more on the exchange enrollment, which starts Oct. 1.
[…]
[L]awmakers said that Sebelius’s main message was the importance of countering false notions about the law that are prevailing around the country — and doing it at a grass-roots level.She told lawmakers not to worry when they read media accounts about people losing their health coverage, said Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.).
“There are articles here and there in newspapers talking about people who lost their coverage, … but the assurance she’s been giving us is a lot of those are probably pre-anticipations, and a lot of those are going to be unfounded if they just take a deep breath,” he said.
Just last week two Pennsylvania school districts — East Penn and Southern Lehigh — cut employees’ hours to avoid the employer mandate, a part of the law that requires a business to offer health insurance to any employee working at least 30 hours per week. School districts across Indiana and North Carolina are facing similar quandaries. The State of Virginia has also cut hours for non-salaried workers.
Things are just as bad in the private sector. Restaurant franchisees are scaling back hours and expansion because of the ObamaCare. Universal Orlando, a major theme park, and Regal Cinemas have take similar steps. These are just the most well known examples, but there’s an seemingly endless list of businesses that have taken dramatic steps to avoid the burdensome costs of ObamaCare.
These concerns are not “unfounded,” as Sebelius would have us believe. Employers have real concerns which have real world consequences for their employees, as the law has already started to drive up the cost of health insurance coverage. They’re hurting, but the message from the Obama Administration is dismissive. That “trust us” line may work with some in Congress. But these Democrats should ask a small business owner how they feel about ObamaCare and its effect their employees and their bottom line.
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Conclusion: A Stark Warning for the American People
The article I posted yesterday, Per Mr. Conservative: "15 Signs Jobs in America are Losing Their Value,"displayed a photograph from the Great Depression era of a long soup line. This, of course, is what the Obama administration wants for America. He wants the American people to rely upon him, to worship him, no matter the cost.
Here is the photograph from the Great Depression, sure to happen again should we fail not to tell our employers -- our elected congressmen and senators, and our president -- to end the practice of oppressively regulating and growing the size of government in our lives, which includes taxation. Finally, we must make our voices heard to our elected leaders to end Obama Care now, not tomorrow.
I am often reminded of a story about Joseph Stalin. There are several versions of this tale, some stating that it transpired in the 1930's. One, however, took place while upon his death bed in 1953. The title of the webpage is Russia Channel.com. In a sad irony, the title of the message board thread is "Joseph Stalin was the best country leader ever."
(Above: Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953.)
The first story will be the one from 1935:
One day in 1935 Josef Vissariionovitch Djugashvili, known as Josef Stalin ("Man of Steel") (who in his early life studied to be a priest and robbed banks for entertainment), lined up his senior KGB and General Staff officers on the parade ground. There was no junior officers or enlisted men in the vicinity.
The senior officers were intrigued to notice Stalin had a live chicken under his left arm. As he dictated, his policies of cutting the peoples food rations, and ordering another 2,000,000, Kulaks (middle class) to be entrained for the Siberian Gulags, he slowly but methodically with his right hand plucked the live chicken. He just pulled hand fulls of feathers out and let them fall near his feet, he ignored the chicken completely. It squawked and fluttered a lot, but Joesf did not desist from his tirade on his generals and his task of plucking the live chicken.
When Stalin had finished, dressing down the senior officers for not being severe enough on the Russian people, when the chicken was completely bald, without moving or taking his fixed gaze off the eyes of the Generals he just dropped the chicken. Immediately he reached into his large Greatcoat pocket and pulled out some seed, he let some of it filter through his fingers on to the parade ground. The bald, plucked chicken immediately ran back to his feet and next to the pile of its own feathers began pecking contentedly, eating the seeds as he dropped them.
Joe Stalin bellowed at his officers. "This is a lesson I learned many years ago when I grew up in Georgia, on the farm, with my mother's people, who are peasants on the land, the same sort of people you are dealing with. People are the same as Chickens, treat them nice and they will be revolting at every opportunity, give them an inch and they will want a mile. Treat them tough, real tough. Pull all their feathers out, take everything off them, leave them naked in the snow, and like this grazing chicken, they will love you, love you forever, they will never forsake you. Just feed them a little, every now and then, with the words. It is a necessity for sacrifices today for the sake of a better tomorrow, that's enough."
Then, there's the one from his death bed:
When Josef Stalin was on his deathbed, he called in two likely successors, to test which one of the two had a better knack for ruling the country.
He ordered two birds to be brought in and presented one bird to each of the two candidates.
The first one grabbed the bird, but was so afraid that the bird could free himself from his grip and fly away that he squeezed his hand very hard, and when he opened his palm, the bird was dead.
Seeing the disapproving look on Stalin's face and being afraid to repeat his rival's mistake, the second candidate loosened his grip so much that the bird freed himself and flew away.
Stalin looked at both of them scornfully. "Bring me a bird!" he ordered.
They did.
Stalin took the bird by its legs and slowly, one by one, he plucked all the feathers from the bird's little body.
Then he opened his palm. The bird was laying there naked, shivering, helpless.
Stalin looked at him, smiled gently and said, "You see... and he is even thankful for the human warmth coming out of my palm."
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Regardless of which one, if either story, is correct or accurate, it seems characteristic of the man who was known as "Man of Steel" in the Soviet Union, who enjoyed such a cult of personality and leadership that despite being responsible for as many as 20 million deaths within the Soviet Union during his reign as dictator, that he would probably endeavor to make his point to his subordinates or successors in such a brutal fashion. But it is emblematic of what America is experiencing today, only not to such an extreme... yet. With the IRS, Justice Department, EPA, NSA, FBI, CIA, and finally Homeland Security watching every move those who are opposed to President Obama make, this type of phenomena is not totally out of the question. The fact that people can no longer even so much as criticize or decry Muslims and the religion of Islam for the global atrocities for which they and the religion have responsible leads me to believe further that the government is far more elitist today than ever before in U.S. history. The fact these organizations, along now with Sebelius' rise to power within the Obama Cabinet, are going to have complete control over the people's lives is startling in and of itself. But like in Russia, where the government is installing into their public schools' curricula that Stalin's policies which resulted in the deaths of a conservative estimate 20 million Soviet citizens and the youth in that embattled nation look to him for inspiration and as a national hero, many Americans today are showing the same veneration and reverence for Obama.
(Above: Journalist Edward R. Murrow, 1908-1965. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
To close, I will first post a famous trio by Edward R. Murrow which I hope will serve as a reminder of what our nation is facing as well speak (Courtesy of CBS News):
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."
He also declared that politicians blame the media for misrepresenting the government, which we have seen in with several officials within the current administration, including Obama:
"When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained."
America has returned to its ignominious pre-Reagan position as a nation of wolves. He also stated that is incumbent upon a free society that if it wishes to remain so, it must voice its displeasure at the injustices being wrought upon it by the government:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."
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Finally, I will turn to art and literature, to the famous Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' poem, Do Not Go Gently Into that Good Night, written in honor of his father, who was dying and thus prompted Thomas to encourage him not to die without fighting:
(Above: Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953. Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
___
Do not go gently into that good night, America. And, as Murrow used to say, "Good night, and good luck."
