District 6 Race, Truth, Politics

Watching the NC District 6 Republican primary race has been enlightening.  With nearly a dozen hats in the ring, the Republican race was virtually destined for a runoff.  And with the runoff, the candidates are showing their true colors.

As I observe the race, to be decided on Tuesday, here's how it looks to me.  Mark Walker comes to the race as a novice politician, an outsider who simply wants to help lead the country in a better direction.  Phil Berger Jr. comes to the race as an experienced politician, from a political family.  He knows politics, down and dirty.  He knows what will work, and that all's fair in campaigning.  Berger brings his heavy artillery to the race, accusing Walker of being dishonest and desperate. 

It is chilling that one can no longer be a good politician and a good person.  Good people finish last.  As a result, we have a ruling class that plays to special interests, writes laws that don't even apply to them, while claiming the moral high road.  Politicians love to accuse their opponents of the very things they are guilty of.  Obama refuses to bend on proposed legislation, then blames the Republicans for being too hard to work with. 

In this race, it seems to me, that Berger becomes desperate, produces lies about Walker, then accuses Walker of lying.  Berger does this because in the world of politics, it works.  Walker is so naive that he doesn't know what has hit him.  Could GOP politics really be that dirty?  Welcome to the rotten world of politics, Mr. Walker.

May truth triumph.  May we boot out the ruling class, with their deceit, arrogance, and contempt for truth.  May the American people wake up and realize that both major parties are more hungry for power than truth.  May we stop believing the lies and stop voting for the same old rulers.  We need statesmen, not politicians.  We need people who tell the truth, even if it costs them political points.

It is time for good people to win.  It's time for voters to stop tolerating dishonesty in politics.  We need good people to lead us.

Ruling Class Rising

It seems like the NSA spying news opened the door for people to consider how intrusive our government is.  Today I see the news that the FCC may put observers in newsrooms across the nation.  That sounds like the first step to government control of the media.  The freedoms articulated in the First Amendment include freedom of the press.  The government has no business studying or regulating the press.

Government wants to control our children through the schools.  They want to tell us what kind of light bulb to use.  They want to keep us in debt to the government through the student loan program.  They want to manage the entire health care system, and force us to buy insurance.

Government can only do what we let them get away with.  The Ruling Class is rising.

Keep the Sequester Cuts

We may need to clean house in Washington.  The politicians, on both sides of the aisle, appear to be ready  to restore the spending eliminated in the sequester.  How can they seriously deal with our budget and think of increasing spending?

We are already on a financial time bomb.  There is no way to diffuse it.  It is only a matter of time before our financial system collapses.  The politicians only hope that it will not happen on their watch.  Thus the perpetual kicking of the can down the road.  Addressing the real issue will be messy and politically unpopular.

Our other problem is the growing government.  Weekly we hear about more government intrusion in our lives.  Government interference may seem benign now, but the power of government can easily be turned for evil.  We have to stop government growth now.  It only grows because we let it.

A whole new slate of legislators might be the answer.

History in the Making

The lawmakers in the U.S. House now have the attention of the nation and the world, as they have scaled back the government.  We call it the "shut down."  Now the government spending is bumping up on the debt ceiling, and something has to be done.

This is a Hobson's choice.  If they raise the debt ceiling, we go further into debt.  We continue to add to the future troubles.  If they don't raise the ceiling, then they set in motion the financial catastrophe that has been building since the Reagan years.  There is no good way out of this.  They tell us that this is complicated.  In the details, it is.  In principle, it is as simple as a piggy bank.

Government is a monster that needs to be fed money.  It consumes money faster than we can earn it and mail it in.  It grows every year by design.  Some have grown tired of feeding the monster, wishing that it would be satisfied.

The next step may make history.

A Long Time to Pay Off the Debt

We are fooling ourselves if we think that we are ever going to pay off the U.S. national debt.  

What is the national debt, anyway?  Think of it this way.  Imagine that you get an allowance of $10 per week.  But you end up spending $11 per week.  You have a spending deficit of $1.  That extra money has to come from somewhere, so you borrow it from your sister.  After the first week, you owe her $1.  But you keep up that spending pattern, and every week you borrow another dollar from her.  After 12 weeks, you owe her $12.  That is your total debt, not including the interest you owe her.  You add up the deficits to determine your debt.

Our national deficits have recently been over $300 billion, and according to the National Debt Clock  our national debt is over $16.7 trillion dollars.  The numbers are so big that we can’t really understand them.  

Let’s put those numbers in perspective thinking of these numbers in terms of time.

There are 86,400 seconds in a day. 

A million seconds is about 11.6 days.

A billion seconds is about 31.7 years.

A trillion seconds is 31,710 years.

The earliest records of human history date back about 5000 years.  So one trillion seconds is more than 6 times as long as human history.  History itself has not experienced a trillion seconds.

So, if the U.S. never borrowed another penny and began paying off the debt at a rate of a dollar per second, we would pay off the debt in about 529,557 years.  If we paid off the debt at a rate of $1000 per second, it would still take us over 529 years.

Another War?

The US looks determined to take on another war, this time in Syria.  It was terrible for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons on its population.  But we cannot be the world's police.

We are involved in numerous conflicts all around the globe, and have been for generations.  Unfortunately, many times politicians lead our country into war for political reasons.  Presidents grow in popularity when they start wars.  Thus, it takes very little rationalizing for presidents to lead us into war.

We interpret US national interests so broadly that virtually any excuse works to take us into war.

The American public allows this war mongering, not considering the problems with world-policing.  The more we intervene, the less moral authority we have.  The flimsier our excuses for war, the less moral authority we have.

Here we go again...

Healthcare Revealed

Universal healthcare was supposed to fix so many problems. Every day we now learn more reasons why it was too good to be true.

Today Delta Airlines announced that compliance with the law will cost them $100 million.  Government interference in the marketplace always has unintended consequences.

It amazes me that anyone is surprised at the debacle.  The legislation was rushed through with contrived urgency.  No one had a chance to read the bill thoroughly, much less debate or refine it.

No one could predict the effects of such far-reaching changes in the healthcare market.  But sending the industry into chaos has one clear benefit for power-hungry politicians:  government will be called in to straighten out the mess.

So government creates the mess, then charges in to fix the mess.  Seems like we have seen this pattern before.

The Other Side of the Story

All the protests and media reports about the Republican legislature in Raleigh have led the public to believe that our state government now works against the public good.  The tipping point seemed to be the treatment of our teachers and the education system.  All over Facebook I saw posts about the evil legislature gutting the education system and giving teachers the shaft.

I kept thinking there must be another side to the story.  No one would be so cold and heartless.  While the news media should have offered to provide the other perspective, I never saw one story explaining the Republican point of view.  It was like the whole party went behind locked doors to invent ways to subvert the will of the people.  The legislators were portrayed as out of touch, stubborn and stupid.

Then today I saw a link posted offering the other side of the story.  http://www.ncgop.org/nc-house-republicans-state-education-spending-the-facts/  Now granted, this comes from the Republicans, so it is politically motivated, but no more so than the complaints of the Democrats.

The Republicans let themselves be demonized by the media without effectively getting out their side of the story.

The media are also to blame, because they fail to answer the obvious question:  What could the Republicans possibly be thinking?

And the public should be ashamed for mindlessly buying the outlandish, biased reports from the media.

Don't We Know This Trick?

I have said for years that you can't lead people where they don't want to go.  I was wrong.  You can lead people where they don't want to go if you trick them and lie to them.  This is what tyrants have been doing throughout history. 

Right now our politicians are cleverly working to create civil unrest.  Economic disaster awaits the collapse of the dollar, and current policies have guaranteed more severe fallout ahead.  Politicians use the media and government agencies to create greater divides among us, along race and economic lines.  The health care law seizes control of a huge sector of our economy.  College loans are now all handled by the federal government, making indebted students slaves to the state.

When everything falls apart, it will require more government intervention, perhaps even martial law.  The public will cry out for more government control to help settle the upheaval in society.  The government will be more than willing to use the heavy hand to control the population.

Here is the trick:  use government policies to create unrest in society, then let government swoop in to save the day with even more control.  What's the definition of tyranny?

Moral Mondays

The Moral Mondays movement in Raleigh seeks to call attention to the (apparently) immoral actions of the Republican led NC legislature. 

They object to the legislature's effort to allow taxpayers to keep more of their own money.  It must be moral for the government to seize money from citizens and fund various welfare programs.  How dare the government stop taking so much money to give to other people?

The government is the bully who can take away and give to anyone he wishes.  When the bully considers stealing less, the beneficiaries scream, and enlist others to scream for them.   It seems to be motivated by selfishness, the very characteristic the beneficiaries condemn in others. 

The real irony is the Moral Monday demand that abortions not be restricted.  How can terminating the life of unborn children be considered moral?  It seems that their standard for morality is that which makes their lives easier.  No wonder moral standards vary. 

The Priesthood of the Media

A priest is a mediator between mortals and a god. 

The priests of the Roman Catholic Church served as the mediators between God and the people of Christendom for centuries.  The Church guarded and interpreted the scriptures.  The priests  instructed them about proper worship.  Reformers of the 1500s challenged the role of priests, asserting that people needed no intermediary to communicate with God.  Many paid dearly for daring to translate the Bible into contemporary languages, providing for the masses unfiltered access to the word of God.

Today the media serve as the priests of the political progressive movement. 

Seeking to honor their deity and further the cause, the media control the flow of information.  They create news by polling the public and reporting only the “helpful” results.  Scandals are dismissed.  Hard questions are never asked.  They worship the political machine with its good intentions, as it advances the progressive political agenda.  The media dutifully report this large, growing government’s version of the truth.  Even as the government oversteps its Constitutional limits, the media believe that the honorable agenda is being served.

But the story changes.  The government is caught deceiving the media.  Journalists’ phone records are subpoenaed.  The attorney general offers to speak to the press “off the record.”  Reports show that telephone companies have been forced to provide information about all their customers’ phone calls for at least seven years.  The IRS  hinders the work of the government’s political opponents.  The overreaching government begins to impinge on the freedom of its priests. 

The god has betrayed the priests.  The priests are dumbfounded.  This good, progressive government now seems to be less than holy.  The priesthood has lost its leader, and no longer knows how to spin the news.

The media now understand the painful truth that the Founders knew all too well:  Power corrupts.  It corrupts even those with good intentions.  It corrupts progressives and conservatives alike.  Power weaves corruption into the culture of countless government agencies. 

The deeper the corruption, the more difficult it is to expose.

A system of checks and balances can help keep people honest.  Government is not divine.  It always tends toward corruption.  The media-priests only awoke when they themselves were burned.  May the media learn to hold the government accountable.  And may we the people hold one another accountable.

Finally the press wakes up

Today the press finally acknowledged that there is substance to the Benghazi story.  The authorities chased down the Boston bombers right away, but apparently ignored the siege of a U.S. consulate.

Pressure from the press would have put Benghazi on the front page right away, but the main-stream media bought the story from the White House.  But now, it sounds like there is more to the story.

The press has an important role in a free country.  They must look for and expose abuse of power.  It's about time they dug for facts and asked the hard questions.

Agree with Me

Farmers were denied entry at a screening of the documentary film, “Gasland, Part II,” recently.  Apparently the promoters did not want people in the audience who did not agree with the thesis of the film, that fracking is bad.  http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/04/23/fracknation-filmmaker-claims-group-farmers-was-barred-from-gasland-part-ii/?intcmp=features

Politicians have been stacking crowds for years.  Only those who will cheer for the candidate are allowed in the audience.  When a trickster gets through and begins shouting or heckling, it causes a stir.  Agree with me or shut up.

I understand the desire to have a sympathetic audience.  But we need to be careful not to stifle honest, open debate.  The climate of political correctness has had a chilling effect on free speech. 

Because certain beliefs are assumed to be true, and are rarely challenged, there are certain things that cannot be said. 

• Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. 
• The pro-choice movement supports the right to choose who is a person. 
• Politicians (many, if not most) are motivated by political self interest and power.
• Both major political parties work to gain and retain power more than they work to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. 
• The news media are motivated by their own self interests of ratings and revenue; big government stories produce big audiences, so the media are biased toward bigger government. 
• Printing money will ruin our monetary system; it is only a matter of time before it falls apart.
• Personal morality is essential for civilization.
• Morality cannot be defined by majority vote.
• Guns owned by citizens protect citizens from government tyranny.
• Scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution has enormous gaps.
• Religions that encourage lying to advance their religion are dangerous.
• Entertainment often distracts citizens from the important issues.

Those who agree with the politically correct party line are given the microphone.  In the media, all we hear is one perspective.  When we hear it enough, we tend to believe it.  Even if it is not true.

Gun Control

The gun control advocates sense that the time is right to make some big changes.  The emotional tide is right.  There is far too little discussion about the reason we have a Second Amendment to the Constitution. 

The Founders had lived under the tyranny of England, and knew that citizens need protection against overstepping government. 

The real motivation behind gun control is not safer schools, but tighter government control of every aspect of life.  It is one thing to fear a rogue criminal with a gun.  It is another to fear the authorities who can systematically limit your freedoms, and ultimately put you in prison--or worse.

Hello again

It's been over three years since I have posted anything on this blog.  Even so, people have occasionally found my blog, and apparently read something.

I had even forgotten how I logged on to the blog.  I had my daughter, who was home from college for the weekend, help me break the code.  Now, I'm back in business. 

Ah, yes...where shall I start?

How about a quote?  I heard Ravi Zacharias say on a video blog:  "Any stigma can beat a good dogma."  You may speak the truth, but if people can malign you or your ideas, then your message won't be heard.  Well said, Ravi.

More on Toyota

Looks like there is more to the story on Toyota. A few days ago I learned that Toyota has "black boxes" in its cars, recording devices that note the state of systems just before and after air bag deployments.

These recordings can only be read with software created for (by?) Toyota, and only one computer in all the United States has this reading software. Seems like the company is not interested in making these crash data widely accessible.

If there is any willful withholding of information essential to public safety, then Toyota is clearly begging for investigation.

Unfortunately, the congress seems particularly ill-suited for leading a pursuit of the truth.

The Right Thing To Do

I heard the president say today that the congress should pass his health care reform bill because it is the right thing to do. How I wish that our governmental representatives were motivated by doing what is right.

Some politicians probably really have persuaded themselves that they are doing right when they vote for bigger and bigger government. But somewhere deep down, they have to know that something is wrong.

Spending is more than out of control. It is on auto-pilot, set to ratchet up every day and every year. While we owe so much money that we'll never pay it off, we are borrowing more. This week we are extending unemployment benefits, for only $10 billion. Chump change.

Everywhere I turn, I see more government spending. On the radio I hear commercial after commercial about some federal government info website. These commercials cost money and we are broke. I heard one yesterday directing me to a .gov website that will tell me how to be a better father. I'm all for good parenting, but the government has no business telling me how to raise my children.

Maybe there is a website that gives budgeting tips.

What are we exporting?

Toyota has been in hot water since all their recalls hit the news. The problems are a big deal. They are safety issues.

But the strange thing about this story is that the U.S. congress wants to grill the president of Toyota. When have they ever called-on-the-carpet the CEO of a foreign company? Maybe the imported vehicles have had such a stellar track record that we never had a reason to interrogate them.

But it looks to me like Toyota is being treated like an American company. We have so thoroughly tutored the Japanese in manufacturing that they have learned how to make colossal mistakes and (maybe) how to cover them up.

They are exporting cars to us, but we are exporting flawed manufacturing systems to them. That's one way of leveling the playing field.

Meanwhile, I have to say, it looks like Ford is doing something right.

At least it's not terrorism

Reports of the plane crash in Austin today have been interesting. A man burns down his house, leaves suicide notes and then flies a plane into a federal building. The top cop there assures us that this was not terrorism.

Well that makes me feel so much better. He was mad at the IRS, the Catholic Church, his accountant and his wife. I guess if he was a Muslim they would call it terrorism. But since he is just mad at the world, it is merely a plane crash.

Seems to me that someone is a terrorist if he attacks innocent people. Maybe it's not terrorism if you are not trying to advance some political/religious agenda. In any event, it's sad and scary when people begin flying planes into buildings.

Questions worth asking

Sometimes the most obvious questions never get asked. Though many people are wondering about something, they never get up the nerve to ask. After all, look at all the competent, knowledgeable people who are just going along with it -- whatever it is.

Few of us are willing to be the child who notes that the emperor is naked. Today, it seems that the emperor has a huge walk-in closet full of thousands of outfits made of the same special material. I'm sure I've got plenty of blind spots, but I want to ask the penetrating questions, especially about our culture and government.

One might naively ask, for example, How are we going to pay the U.S. national debt? I think we are pushing $14 trillion now. It seems to increase about a trillion every month. Maybe a better question is, Do we ever intend to pay our national debt?

If we are ever going to begin to pay the debt, we will eventually have to stop spending more than we take in. Even if we never ran another deficit, we would have a crushing burden in interest payments alone. But eliminating deficits must come before we can start paying off the debt. I can only think of one year when the government had a budget surplus. Wonder where that money went...

Another question is, What will happen if we decide not to pay our debt? That's a scary thought, but something we have to consider. Would it be easier to default on the debt or pay it? What are the consequences of these choices?

Meanwhile, we are funding studies of drunken mice. Really.