Isn’t it odd that just about the time we might actually get down to brass tacks on Benghazi something else came up to distract the media? This sure happens a lot with the present administration. If only Richard Nixon had thought to have sex with an intern, or sic the IRS on some innocent citizen groups, he might have never had to resign. Going by recent history, the only thing missing from the usual set of distractions is for Joe Biden to go public with some wildly inappropriate or ignorant statement (I have faith though, I’m sure Biden is on the verge of blessing us with some more of his “wisdom”). Then again, maybe the reason we aren’t hearing from “Old Joe” is that he’s trying to distance himself from The Barack. After all, I suppose it’s possible that even Joe Biden has some kind of standards.

Actually while it may be amusing to say that if Nixon had introduced a few distracting scandals he might have gotten away with Watergate, it just isn’t true. The press either hated Nixon, or was dead set on doing its job and discovering and airing every little piece of information (unlike how they don’t do it these days). Either way, once the main stream media got wind of the events concerning Watergate, it was all over for Nixon. As a case in point, Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had to resign the office of the Vice President to avoid prosecution for tax evasion. Fast forward to today, and not only is Tim Geithner (who claimed he didn’t actually cheat on his taxes, but rather just didn’t understand what he was filing, wink, wink) not hounded by the media, he was put in charge of  the Treasury with the apparent blessing of the press. And yet even now the media categorically denies a left wing bias in the media. Just for one more modern day example of the “non-existent” media bias, and because I can’t resist, how about the way the media exhaustively reported Harry Reid’s claim that Mitt Romney had not paid his taxes? Followed of course by absolute silence concerning Mr. Reid’s wild, unfounded, and apparently made up claims after it turned out those accusations were indeed wild, unfounded, and apparently made up.

One more thing the media is trying to downplay as much as possible is the trial and conviction of the abortionist Gosnell. They haven’t been able to totally ignore the trial and what that monster did, but they have certainly limited coverage of it. With the left being generally so pro-abortion, I’m sure now that the trial is over they will let Gosnell fade into the past as quickly as they can. Then again, with Obama and his Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius being such big fans of abortion, and Obama being on record about letting living children of failed abortions die, maybe the eventual end for Gosnell is a home among the various czars and advisers hanging around the White House. According to his attorney Gosnell didn’t get the sentence he deserved. I agree with that, but probably not the same way his lawyer meant it.

I do have to wonder if maybe, finally, because some of the left wing media itself was a target of government snooping, we might actually get some real investigative reporting out of this. Probably not, but I can dream can’t I?

I have to say the thing that catches my attention the most concerning the news that, among other things, government agencies have been targeting conservative groups and “bugging” reporters is how surprised everyone seems to be. Really? In my opinion this kind of thing has been going on for years. Personally, I thought it was just common knowledge.

So let’s see if I have this right. Nearly everything we complain about concerning the federal government, other than its overspending, involves some facet of how deeply government is intertwining itself in our lives. As a case in point, just recently a national debate about the government using drones in the United States got a lot of publicity. Not only that, but it was considered a “win” when the government backed down from a stance which would (in their eyes) have allowed them to arm and use those drones against U.S. citizens if they felt the need. I don’t recall anything being said about whether or not those unarmed drones would be prevented from spying on the average citizen if the government wanted to, just that they would avoid firing on any U.S. citizens while they were doing it.

I remember being in the Middle East after 9/11 and making phone calls home. Now at that time, the governments stated post 9/11 policy was that they were going to monitor calls to and from the Middle East where one of the callers was someone with known terrorist ties. That was the stated policy. Now, I don’t know whether the “person with known terrorist ties” involved in my conversations with my wife was me, her, or one of my children, but the monitoring of those calls between my family and I was laughably obvious. There were so many clicks, pauses, and interruptions on the line that I often wondered if the people monitoring those calls were named Moe, Curly, and Larry. The only thing those calls lacked was unexplained heavy breathing.

Frankly, I’m a little bemused that people on the left are starting to notice and complain about some of the more egregious abuses of our rights by our own government. This type of thing has been going on so long, and been pointed out so many times, I just can’t quite comprehend that there are still thinking people out there who aren’t already aware of it.

For the “newly aware”, I have one question. Are you starting to understand why the rest of us have been complaining so loudly and for so long? By the way, are you absolutely sure that phone call you’re about to make is private?

Since I can’t imagine any information coming out as a result of these hearings being complementary to either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, I think it’s going to be pretty interesting to see how the press handles it. After all, as nearly as I can tell, the main stream media these days exists primarily to protect and advance the left in general and those two in particular. Can you imagine what would have happened to some conservative if they’d responded to a question about what happened at Benghazi as Hillary Clinton did, with: “What difference at this point does it make”?

Personally, I thought the events at Benghazi made a lot of “difference” to the people and families of the people who died there. Seems pretty important to me. Apparently, Hillary Clinton doesn’t see it quite the same way. And just as apparently, the media, because they didn’t call her to account for such an inane and callous statement, either agrees with her, or intends to protect her no matter how many stupid statements she makes (something along the lines of what they do for Joe Biden).

Well, hopefully in the near future we will know a lot more about the abysmal failures of our government and this administration concerning the unnecessary American deaths in Benghazi.

Getting away from the governmental disaster we are referring to as Benghazi, I wanted to spend a little time on the group the government terms “the poor”. Obviously, because of our budget woes, the amount of money the government spends in an effort to (supposedly) help the poor is important, but there is a lot more to it than that. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, the money the government is wasting in its misguided (by using the word “misguided”, I’m being charitable) efforts may be the least of the problem.

Before I go on, let me make a point. Any time someone starts talking about cutting funds for the “war on poverty”, or really any spending decreases in social programs, the left and the media (hard to tell apart because they are almost the same thing) come down on that hard. What they put out there are things like starving grandma, leaving the homeless to die in the street, stealing food out of the mouths of poor children, and etc. There are people in this, and every country, who truly, really, need help and no one I’m aware of, and certainly not I, is talking about just casting those people adrift.

First of all, what exactly makes a person poor? According to the government, it’s a set amount of money per person or family size. While I would agree that having less income can make life tough, I have to say I don’t think that’s what really makes a person “poor”. I think poor is more of a state of mind and has less to do with income than most people realize.

The way the government goes on and on about the poor, and living in poverty, it’s almost as if the people they are talking about have been sentenced to poverty with no chance of improvement. Personally I think it’s a national disgrace we have people our government has isolated from society by identifying them as being poor(to be sure it’s the work of our government, be sure and check for the “poor” label). Public housing should be a place to stay while people work on improving their economic lives so they can move on to a place of their own. Instead, it seems to have become a multi-generational way of life that discourages people from trying to “escape”.

One of the things which has long been pointed out as a root cause of ongoing poverty is lack of educational opportunities. Because the government has put itself in charge of public education, I find it to be a little bit of a dichotomy when government bureaucrats complain about the poor quality of inner city schools. It’s almost as if they don’t realize those schools are controlled by the government. Not to worry though, as badly as the Department of Education is screwing up what’s left of our public education system, there’s a good chance poor inner city schools won’t be worse than the rest of our schools for much longer.

Personally, I think no matter what someone’s income level is, they aren’t “poor” until they give up, admit defeat, and decide, on their own to be poor. Our history is full of successful Americans who started life in grinding poverty and went on to do quite well. Even now, it still happens all the time. All of those people are going to have one thing in common, and that one thing is that they didn’t give up. They may or may not have thought of themselves as poor, but unquestionably they decided to do something about that facet of their lives, added effort to intent, and did it. By the way, I’ve noticed over the years that many people who are considered to be “successful” do not necessarily think of themselves that way and continue to strive to do better.

At the end of the day, what really is the difference between the “poor” and the “not poor”? I would say we’ve had enough successful people come from poor backgrounds to show that success and achievement is not predicated on how a person’s parents lived. I think one of the reasons we have failed so badly, with a correspondingly huge loss of human potential, in the “war on poverty” is because government bureaucrats, and society, spend too much time telling the poor what they can’t do. Time that would be much better spent in serious efforts to encourage them to use the free enterprise system and improve their own lot in life, rather than making them jump through bureaucratic hoops in order to maintain the status quo.

I expect (or at least hope) the coming hearings into Benghazi will reveal the huge governmental failures which cost the lives of American citizens in a foreign country. Sadly, I expect the ongoing human tragedy of the lives and potential wasted through our bungling of how we define and treat the poor right here at home to continue fundamentally unchanged for the foreseeable future.

As far as I’m concerned, both are a crime.

Before I go on, I would love to source this and give an actual name to this particular fountain of ignorance; after all, we should give credit where credit is due. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the name of this person or the name of the particular government agency she “works” for (I hope they aren’t paying her very much). The reason for this is I was listening to the news, and when this woman came on with her statement, she was there and gone before I could think to write down her info. Be that as it may, what she said certainly got my attention.

As part of what I’m getting at, I would also like to point out that the government in general, and this administration in particular, has long had it in for agribusiness. Even though publicly the government may decry the loss of the “family farm”, the legislation they enact does a lot more to do away with family farms than it does to support them. Don’t forget, just a few short years ago the EPA was seriously considering making farmers comply with some kind of dust regulations when plowing fields. Of course when that got some public attention the EPA more or less said “just kidding”. Knowing how the EPA operates that probably means they will wait a few years and then bring it up again.

The American agricultural producers have built the most dependable and safest food supply the world has ever seen. That food supply was built on the blood, sweat, and tears of American farming and ranching families and they work much harder, and are a lot smarter, than they ever get credit for.

Anyway, getting to what was actually said. The newscast I was listening to had to do with the recent heavy rains in the Midwest. As part of that they included a statement from the woman I’ve referred to. What she said was that the heavy rains and flooding was putting the drinking water supply at risk due to the fertilizers farmers were using being washed out of their fields and into reservoirs. She went on to say that farmers should stop fertilizing their fields when heavy rain was in the forecast. She also added that they should additionally quit applying fertilizers when the ground is frozen because it just lays on the ground and is not absorbed.

As far as I’m concerned, if this woman paid to study somewhere, she should go talk to that institution about a refund. If she doesn’t have a secondary education she should sue the Department of Education for the poor public school education she received (for proof of her court claim she can play a recording of the statements she made about farmers and fertilizers).

I found what she said to be pretty infuriating on several levels. First of all, she was pushing forward a stereotypical view of farmers as people too dumb to be responsible for the fertilizers and chemicals they use. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unlike government workers, farmers have to actually pay for the fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and etc. they use. Not to mention the money and time they have to invest in applying them. Tractors have long had headlights on them so farmers can plow into or through the night when they need to (when the average government bureaucrat is snug in bed). Agribusiness of any kind is generally a risky, expensive, labor-intensive, and sometimes hazardous way to make a living. Those kinds of conditions weed out the people who can’t figure out the best way to spend their fertilizer dollars pretty quickly (unlike government bureaucracies, where apparently ignorant people are promoted to the position of spokesperson).

Another implication of her statement was that government really knows what’s the best way for farmers to operate. Well, there’s certainly nothing new about a government worker trying to convince the world that government knows best. For that matter her statements going unchallenged by the media is also business as usual. However; as far as agriculture is concerned history has a nice recent example to show us what happens when government gets too involved in agricultural operations.

The former USSR (note I’m using the word “former” because the USSR no longer exists) used to have government bureaucrats who planned out long in advance when everything concerning agriculture, including fertilizer applications, would be done. For a government bureaucrat, it was the total package. No more depending on those pesky uneducated farmers to give their unsolicited opinions about when to plant, when to fertilize, what chemicals to use, what chemicals to not use, or etc. The perfect bureaucratic plan, except…, except for one teensy weensy little problem. It didn’t work.

Even though Ronald Reagan deservedly gets credit for finally defeating the Soviet Union and winning the cold war, it wasn’t all about the arms race. Victory would have been a lot harder for Reagan to achieve if the Soviets weren’t having to heavily depend on American and Canadian wheat to feed their country. It may be hard to realize the Soviet agency in charge of collective farms was an unwitting ally of the West, but it’s true nonetheless (wonder how many people they employed who would have been just like the woman above).

I guess the worst part of all of this is that our society has reached a point where some person can go on a national news program, say the things she said, and probably be believed by nearly everybody who heard her. I wonder how many people listened to what she said and now believe farmers just go out and indiscriminately spread fertilizer whenever it fits their schedule, no matter what the weather may be.

American agricultural producers have done such a good job of feeding us, and a large part of the rest of the world, that even now, in spite of fires, flood, drought, and increasing federal regulations, they still produce an abundance of food. In fact, they produce so much food that there is enough left over for our government to waste tax dollars subsidizing ethanol made from corn. Unlike the federal government, ag producers do all of this with their own money, and on their own time.

Because people in agriculture do know how to do things at the right time and get results, I have a suggestion. How about instead of government drone…, sorry, I mean bureaucrats criticizing farmers for something they don’t do, let’s get some farmers (if they can spare the time, these are busy people) to give government workers some advice concerning how to actually accomplish something? After all, judging by the level of government incompetence clearly on display here, one of today’s competent, hard working, educated farmers could only make things better.

Sadly, there are a lot of examples of this kind of behavior from the left and the media. Personally, I have to wonder what it says about a political group if spreading disinformation and outright propaganda is part and parcel of their operational policy. Anyway, getting back to some of the actual misinformation, rather than the policy of spreading misinformation (otherwise known as lying) as a way of life.

An important term the left has been working over for some time now is “fracking”. If you were to get all of your information solely from the network news or major newspapers, then you would be led to believe that fracking is going to destroy our country. According to stories in the media, fracking is responsible for earthquakes, destruction of groundwater, pollution in general, water shortages due to the water used in the operation, water containing enough gas to actually burn, the heartbreak of psoriasis, and so on. Okay, I have to admit, I don’t think fracking has been blamed for psoriasis, but that may just be because the media hasn’t thought of it yet.

I do think it’s safe to say the media and left (which can be really hard to tell apart sometimes) are working very hard to convince us that fracking is bad. I’ll get a little more into that later, but first I would like to talk about fracking itself.

First and foremost, at the heart of it, fracking is merely a way to recover something from a well, (it doesn’t necessarily have to be oil or natural gas) that otherwise would not be recoverable, or would only be accessible in small amounts. Poking holes in the earth to get valuable things such as water, oil, and natural gas out of the them in usable quantities is expensive. Because of that, ways to improve the amounts recovered versus the money spent, has been the holy grail of producers pretty much since day one. 

Just to give you an idea of how important it is to increase production: in the early days of the oilfield it didn’t take people long to figure out that wells with better production were desirable. With the technology available to them at that time, one of the things they came up with was to lower nitroglycerin into the wells and explode it in the area of the producing rock formations, and fracture the rock formation. Thus “fracking” was born. It was a painful birth. Because the hazardous nature of nitroglycerin naturally led to a shortage of people willing to handle it or use it in their operations (the eager ones tended to get weeded out), better ways were developed. Oilfield people are natural born problem solvers, and at some point the idea of creating cracks in formations using pressure, then keeping those cracks open with sand occurred to somebody, and the “sand frack” was born. I would point out that no matter what is injected into a formation, be it sand, acid, gas, liquid, or etc., as long as it’s done “under pressure”, that is a “hydraulic frack”.

One thing I would agree with the media on is that fresh water is valuable. What the media doesn’t let people know is that most usable fresh water is found close to the surface of the earth. When operators are drilling oil or gas wells, the practice, as far as I know enforced by law, is to run casing through any freshwater zones, cement that casing in place, and through this process permanently isolate any freshwater from the rest of the operation and the well. Granted, there are potential mistakes in this part of the operation, but this is old, very well understood technology, and this stage of drilling has absolutely nothing to do with the fracking process. Frankly, the proof that this process works is that oil producing states have oil and water wells co-existing peacefully in the same areas.

Fracking is an expensive operation with a lot of different, and critical, steps to it. It is also something that is done at depth (well below any freshwater) and completely isolated and concentrated on exactly the parts of the well the operator wants to frack. To get the results the operator wants, and is spending a ton of money for, this procedure has to be very closely monitored and done just right. The press would have you believe the fracking process involves throwing open a valve at the wellhead, pumping some unknown mishmash of hazardous chemicals  down the hole, and hoping for the best. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Think of it this way: fracking is a process operators use to get resources (usually hydrocarbons) they know are there, but are not recoverable from wells through other means. In other words, particularly in shale formations, without fracking the resources held in those formations would be unrecoverable. I would compare it to extracting the truth about the housing crash from Barney Frank or Chuck Schumer. You know it’s probably in their heads somewhere, but just exactly how would you go about getting it out of them? Okay, I know that’s not fair, producers have proven fracking works, but as far as a process to get straight answers from Schumer and Frank on the housing crash that brought down our economy…

Apparently we are floating on enough oil and natural gas (and coal, but that’s another column) to make us energy independent, but only through the use of a process which is vilified, for reasons that are untrue, by the current administration and the main stream media. Also, we are being discouraged from fracking and recovering our own oil at a time when we, through the government, are subsidizing turning corn into ethanol.  Additionally, we are still sending upwards of seven hundred billion dollars a year out of the country to import oil. Seems to me, a little fracking here and there could solve a lot of problems.

So, if there are no real reasons to not use the fracking process, why on earth would the left be so dead set against it? Would it be because an energy independent United States would soon develop a thriving economy and pull a lot of people away from government dependency? Or is it because a thriving private sector might come closer to throwing off some of the chains of overregulation the left is so fond of? Or maybe it’s because the left thinks that dependable, affordable energy would do away with the need to throw away money on “green energy”. By the way, I think private enterprise will always be looking for better and less expensive energy, but that is not the subject here.

Whatever reasons the left has for trying to convince us that “fracking” is an evil operation, I have to say: I think there is no doubt their opposition to fracking is against the long term interests of the United States. Having said that, I have to wonder exactly why it is they think standing in the way of energy independence is in the best interests of our country. What could their real goal (s) possibly be?

With our current leadership, such as it is, currently bickering back and forth about spending and taxes (when they can spare the time from the left’s attack on Second Amendment rights). I thought it would be a good time to discuss the compound problem of spending, taxes, and debt.

Okay, first of all, it’s my opinion that the amount of debt we have accumulated up to this point is more than can possibly be paid back under current conditions. Because that’s a pretty important point, let me state it again from a little different direction. I don’t believe it’s possible for us to maintain anything like our present form of government and its spending (it doesn’t matter if you think it’s bloated or not, the amount our government spends is a fact and not up for debate), and even balance the budget, much less pay down the debt, with our current economy. Simple math will, and does, show that the amount of money the federal government would have to confiscate (through taxes or direct confiscation) just to pay for current spending would put the economy into a tailspin. Despite the fact that the current administration seems to be trying to convince us that the rich are hoarding the money needed to “help” the rest of us, it’s simply not true. If The Barack could spare the time from insulting the British and Israeli governments, he could probably figure this out (just kidding he knows this already).

I could go on and on about how large our debt has become in relationship to our ability to repay it, but frankly, anybody who hasn’t pretty much figured this out for themselves by now isn’t going to be swayed by anything I have to say. So if I’m saying we can’t even balance the budget, much less pay the money we already owe back, am I implying we’re beyond redemption? After all, continually increasing unpaid debt always brings down the debtor in the end.

The answer to the question of whether or not we are beyond financial redemption is no. As I stated above, we cannot pay back the money we owe under our current conditions, so what we are going to have to do is change the conditions. As I see it there are two things we are going to have to alter in order to get our financial house in order. First, but sadly not foremost, is our economy.

If we want to have the financial wherewithal to balance our budget and start whittling (an it’s going to take a lot of whittling) away at the trillions and trillions of dollars of debt we have, we are going to need a much better, larger, and stable economy than we have at present. Or for that matter, have ever had. By the way, the issue of present day debt and deficit leaves out many trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations the government (meaning us) is responsible for in the coming future. I don’t know what the actual amount of money we are going to need to come up with to fund our debts and obligations is, but I’m sure it’s a depressingly large amount.

So what would it take to create an economy that can handle such a large amount of debt? Well, I’m sure there’s lots of ways to invigorate the economy I can’t visualize, but I do see one thing we can do now that is not only possible, but is currently within our grasp.

While the current administration seems to be concentrating on housing, by trying to make it easier for people who don’t really have the means, to buy a house, I have a better idea. After all, even though I think housing is an important part of the economy, I think we’ve all seen how making it too easy to borrow money to buy a house works out in the end (seems to be a surprising parallel between people borrowing more than they can pay back for a house and the federal government’s debt doesn’t there). By the way, if The Barack is truly determined to get as many people into their own home as he can, I will point out that increasing the size of the economy will accomplish that, but without burdening those same people with an untenable amount of personal debt.

Personally, I think making the United States energy independent would grow our economy to such a size that our financial debt would become a manageable problem. The great thing about doing this is that instead of the government “doing something”, they could merely stop inhibiting energy production and just let American ingenuity and drive take over and run its course. If The Barack were to simply cease his war on coal, and let people start building modern coal fired power plants, and get the EPA to quit harassing energy producers, that alone might be enough to allow us to reach energy independence. To me, this is a no brainer. I’ve written columns centered around how beneficial energy independence would be to our economy and culture before. I firmly believe an energy independent United States of America would be able to clean up its financial house in relatively short order.

Above I mentioned that there were two things we would have to do to straighten our financial house up. In fact, I also stated growing the economy was the lesser of the two requirements. So if something as huge as a vibrant economy is not as important as the second condition, what in the world is the “other thing”?

Simple, the other thing is government spending. When talking about reducing and eliminating government debt, the economy pales in importance to getting a handle on runaway government spending and waste. Don’t get me wrong, no government will ever be truly efficient, and getting any form of government under permanent “control” is a pie in the sky fantasy. However; be that as it may, when we have a federal government that blows through as much money as ours does, it won’t matter how well the economy does.

I do believe that we have the means at hand to double the size of our economy in just a few years. On the other hand, it’s going to do little good to double the economy if the government triples its size and spending at the same time.

We are the United States of America. We have the ability to recreate the thriving economies of the past based on  hard work, ingenuity, and stable, fairly priced energy. All the parts are in front of us and easily in our grasp. All we have to do to accomplish this and reduce our financial problems at the same time is throw off the chains wrapped around us by our own government. The question isn’t “can we do it?”. The true question is: do we have the political will to get the job done?

Say…, I have an idea. How about we identify all of the federal government workers (I bet we’d be surprised by the number of them) who have anything to do with trying to improve the quality of life or living standards of the “poor” and take a look at their (the government workers) pay scale. Maybe part of the problem is that the people assigned to “help” the poor aren’t identifying with them closely enough. Maybe if we cut the pay of all of these government workers back to poverty levels, they would have a better grasp of what needs to be improved. Additionally, we could add a clause to their contracts stipulating that until the poverty level in the United States improves dramatically, their pay level will remain at poverty rates. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to expect some results for the huge amounts of money we’re wast…, er, excuse me, investing in the war on poverty. I bet the poor would appreciate their federal overlor…, ahem, excuse me, case workers, being right there in the trenches with them in the war on poverty.

To my way of thinking, a policy like this would have a lot of pluses. One, we could cut the amount of money we are paying (through payroll) people who don’t accomplish anything. That’s always a plus. Two, while I myself doubt it, we might actually get some good out of some of our most wasteful (and expensive) government programs. And finally, we would probably drive the few truly productive people in these programs out in to the private sector where they might actually accomplish something. See, a win all the way around. And by the way, before anybody says that treating these programs and people like this would harm the poor they are supposed to be helping, I would like to say something. The amount of harm these government workers and their policies have done and are doing to the people they are supposed to be helping far outweighs any accidental good they’ve ever done, or ever will do. As an example of my argument, I would point out the fate of the poor black family. Now the poor black family is exactly who most of these programs were started to help, and after all the “help” and “government assistance” that has been focused on this issue, the “poor black family” has been all but obliterated in America. The people who have been trying to “help” the poor don’t just deserve a pay cut, what they actually deserve is to be imprisoned (another place where they can observe the massive failure of the federal governments war on poverty first hand).

Of course any progressives who have read this far are probably thinking things such as: “what he’s saying is totally unfair”, “this isn’t how we should do things”, or, and this is a favorite of the left, “this writer is a right wing nazi racist nut-job” (that last is usually reserved for anybody who disagrees with liberals and is armed with some actual facts).  

Something I would like to point out is that the current crop of leftists, the main stream media, and their leader The Barack, have heavily stressed something they call “Their Fair Share”. Granted, Obama usually precedes the phrase “their fair share” with “They aren’t paying”. Meaning of course that some group (whoever is termed to be the “rich” this week) aren’t contributing what he deems their fair share of the federal revenue. Never mind that the top five percent of earners in this country pay the majority of what the federal government collects through income tax all by themselves. Somehow The Barack deems that to be “not their fair share”.

So if the “rich”, whoever they are at any given moment (usually someone who is deemed to make more than $200.000 per year, but It can vary from speech to speech), aren’t paying their fair share, then I would say the people in charge of losing the war on poverty aren’t kicking in their “fair share” either. After all, if they were, wouldn’t we have made some progress by now? Let’s just consider any cut in pay we penalize them with (failure should come with penalties) as a “tax” which would be reduced or eliminated when the problem lessens or goes away. In fact, we can even administrate it like that, we could keep their pay levels at the same rate, but subject them to a large “poverty tax” levied directly on the people in charge of reducing or eliminating poverty. That way they could easily track their “fair share” as it’s taken from them, for them to distribute among the needy. As a producing, taxpaying United States citizen, I have to say it all sounds pretty fair to me.

As easy as it is, because it’s true, to hold the federal government and its (I can’t honestly call them useless because not only are they not accomplishing anything, they’re actually making matters worse) bureaucratic minions responsible for the tax dollars they’ve wasted, that’s not the whole story. It’s actually worse than that. Much worse.

In my opinion, the true cost to the United States of the federal governments abysmal approach to “helping” people, is the human cost. I feel that the monetary consequences of all of this pale in comparison to the lives which have been destroyed by these programs.
Considering the astronomical amounts of money we’re talking about here, that’s saying something. The government has used our money to create a truly dependent class of people who not only don’t know any other life, but I seriously doubt the majority of them can or ever will gain control of their own lives. The federal government isn’t merely complicit in the unnecessarily large number of poor people, they have directly caused it through decades of progressive policies. 

I understand there are still people out there, even at  this late date, who think the federal government is not heavily invested in grouping people by how much money they make, or have. For those people, I challenge you to think of any company or individual who “sorts” groups according to their income level other than the federal government. Despite the fact that the federal government pretends to like “the rich” because they can tax them, in reality the current administration is merely using the people they can call rich as a stalking horse to help divide the country. Telling the poor they are poor because the rich won’t pay their fair share and help the poor works really well to draw attention away from the true causes of poverty. Causes to which the federal government contributes much more than its “fair share”.

Keeping poverty levels so that “one in five” American children lives in poverty while wasting trillions of tax dollars is at best a frank display of government and societal apathy. At worst, and I personally believe this to be the case, it’s an open demonstration of how politicians stay in power by destroying as many human lives as they consider to be necessary.

Anyway, getting back to the sequester; do you know that the military recently passed on the opportunity to not furlough large numbers of civilian employees? No? Neither do most people. How in the world did that news slip by so quietly? You remember the publicity that went with the military being forced to furlough civilian employees and contractors. I know you do because the internet, print media, television news and etc. were full of stories about it. We (meaning as many people as possible) were meant to understand that the draconian cuts forced on the government by…, insert name of boogeyman here, i.e. George Bush, conservatives, House Republicans, The Party of No, or etc., were going to be bad. How bad? Evidently military shrinking, teacher firing, White House tour ending, fireman/police cutting (but not so bad as to cut back on the cost of Presidential and Vice Presidential vacations or golf outings), bad.

Just as a side note, I hope the White House staff never mixes up the list of visible programs to be cut and blamed on the sequester with the people to be killed by drone list. Granted that would be a little out there to me and you, but the current administration seems to regard spending cuts with about the same amount of antipathy as they do a terrorist attack. In fact I would go so far as to say that if The Barack was truly as concerned about terrorism as he is increasing spending, our current war on terror would look a lot different than it does. For those of you who think I’m being unkind about his commitment (or lack of) to the war on terror, remember this is the person who will not let the military or the legal system classify the attack at Fort Hood as a terrorist event. You remember the one I’m talking about, a man named Nidal Hasan stormed into a room and started shouting “allahu akbar” while gunning down as many Americans as he could. I would submit to you if that doesn’t qualify as a terrorist act, I don’t know what does.

So if the news of the “coming sequester” (or is it             “SEQUESTER”: coming soon to a federal program you depend on?) and its anticipated effects was distributed far and wide, what has happened with news pointing out it’s not as bad as represented? The reason I know the military considered reducing the number of furloughs (would that be furloughing the number of furloughs?), was because I was looking over some AP stories with a magnifying glass the other day. Stories about the coming disastrous effects of the sequester habitually made the front page above the fold section of the large papers. On the other hand, I found an AP story about how the military considered not furloughing civilian employees, and it was about six paragraphs in two columns, on page 8C of the paper. Hardly a trumpeting front page announcement.

The general gist of the story was that the military had found they did not have to use the furlough process in all branches of the services. In short, looking at the different parts of the budget, they had enough funds in some of the arms of the military to forgo the furloughs. Certainly, while that news didn’t surprise me, it did get my attention. However, the most attention grabbing part of the story wasn’t that the sequester wasn’t as bad as predicted. After all, since the world didn’t come to an end the day after the big bad sequester went into effect, I think most people have figured out by now the media coverage was a “little” overblown. No, for me the most surprising, and disappointing thing in the story was the decision our military leaders reportedly reached.

 Granted, I got this info. from an AP story, but going by how small they made it, and the apparent attempt to report it in as hidden of a manner as possible,  I think it’s probably true. By the way, do you realize what it says about our modern print media when I have to qualify my statements about an AP story with the phrase “I think it’s probably true”?

According to AP, the military decided to continue with furloughs in all branches of the armed services. Why would they do that when evidently the money exists to not furlough the civilian employees in some branches? This is the disappointing thing I referred to. As reported, the decision to implement the full list of scheduled furloughs was because the money didn’t exist to totally eliminate the furloughs in all branches so it would be “unfair”, or “uneven” to those which still had to furlough employees while others didn’t. Are they kidding? Has our military fallen this far?

I know it isn’t “politically correct” to put it this way, but frankly the American military exists for three reasons. The first two are to kill people and break things, and the third is to make people and  other countries aware they are willing to kill people and break things anywhere in the world. While the concept of evenhanded fairness may belong in the boxing ring, or at the local school, it doesn’t belong in the military. Our military leaders should be doing everything they can to make sure our military personnel are the best trained, best equipped, toughest, baddest people in  the world. Not fully supporting the Air Force because it would seem to be “unfair” to the army isn’t what our military leaders are supposed to be doing. What those leaders are supposed to do is support all of the branches of the American military to the peak of their ability.

Cutting support to the military across the board just to avoid the perception of “favoritism” of one branch over another cuts into the effectiveness of the military and harms the nation. This kind of behavior is explicitly not what our uniformed military leaders are supposed to be dabbling in.

What we are supposed to have is civilian and military leadership of the American armed forces which concentrates on giving us the best military they can for the money they spend. Instead, it appears we have a civilian administration which wants to magnify the effects of non-existent budget cuts, and a military administration with so little backbone they don’t want anybody to be able to accuse them of being “unfair”.

All of that may work in well with a liberal agenda, but I have to say, I don’t think it bodes well for the defense of our country. If I were any part of this process, I’d want it buried on page 8C too.

While reports on why the “Beast” broke down differ, the general consensus seems to be that the limo runs on diesel, but the driver filled it with gasoline. Frankly, I ‘m shocked. The Barack’s personal limo runs on filthy hydrocarbons? You’ve got to be kidding me. Isn’t this the same person who has thrown awa…, ahem, I mean “invested” billions of dollars of our tax money championing electric cars and “green” energy? Are you trying to tell me that with all of the billions of dollars that went to GM (and despite what the main stream media tries to make you believe, they have not paid all that money back) nobody at GM has found the time to build The Barack an electric limo? Man, a gift of a few billion dollars just doesn’t seem to go as far as it used to does it? As taxpayers, we should demand better return on our political largesse.

Of course, it could be the reason we don’t have an electrical Presidential limo is because electric cars are itty bitty underpowered, short ranged, problematic vehicles. Additionally, the Secret Service may view the tendency of electric cars to catch on fire in wrecks as a drawback. Or then again, looking at recent history with the Secret Service, it may be it’s just harder to attract babes when you’re taking the Presidential hybrid out for a test run than it is if the car you’re driving is so big it needs its own name. You know, come to think of it, there sure are a lot of SUV type vehicles in Presidential motorcades. Those Suburbans, Escalades, or whatever they are, are electric, aren’t they?

Getting back to a driver putting the wrong kind of fuel in the Presidential limo, this is neither the first or last time this kind of thing has happened. As long as there are different types of fuel for different kinds of motors, this problem will never totally go away. In fact, here in the United States, different fuels come out of different colored and sized dispensers. I have no idea if this is something distributors and car companies have come up with or it’s some kind of federal regulation meant to protect us from our own stupidity (good luck with that, as humans, we are never going to stop making “stupid” mistakes). Regardless of how all of this came about, getting the wrong kind of fuel in a fuel tank is a recognized problem. By the way, of all of the different ways to screw up when filling up a car’s tank, putting gas into a diesel is the worst one. Gasoline in a diesel engine causes a lot of damage. If that is what happened, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find out that it would be more expensive to repair the engine in The Beast than to just replace it (and diesel engines aren’t cheap).

So if getting the wrong fuel into a vehicle (keeping in mind this should be an electric vehicle which doesn’t require any hydrocarbons, except at the generation plant of course, but we aren’t supposed to think about that) happens to other people, why am I making such a big deal out of it? By the way, the mainstream media didn’t spend a lot of time on this, basically reporting on it and moving on. The reason I want to give this so much attention isn’t because The Beast got the wrong kind of fuel, but rather because Obama is such a fan of the minimum wage and raising the minimum wage to nine dollars an hour. While The Barack’s personal vehicle being damaged by the wrong kind of fuel at an embarrassing time, and his belief in the minimum wage law don’t seem to be related, I beg to differ.

One of the things a minimum wage does is to set a zero level for employee output. Basically, right now the federal government, by setting the minimum wage at $7.25 per hour seems to hold the position that there is no employee out there whose labor output, no matter how bad it is, is worth less than $7.25 an hour. While the government and Barack Obama may feel everybody’s labor has that kind of value, I disagree. I think if we take a look at whoever is responsible for filling the gas tank on the Presidential limo, we can see not everybody is worth what they are getting paid.

Granted, I’m sure the person responsible for hanging the beast up on sharply angled drives, and putting the wrong kind of fuel in it is probably getting more than minimum wage, but personally, I think whatever their salary is, it’s too much. After all, I’m sure we could get that level of dysfunction for much less money. In fact, if it weren’t for the federal government making it illegal, I bet we could find someone who could put the wrong kind of fuel in the gas tank for five dollars an hour or less. No need to pay a skilled employee for that.

So as nearly as I can tell, somebody who is employed by the federal government has as part of their responsibility putting fuel (nasty old hydrocarbons) in the tank of the Presidential limo. Also as far as I can tell, they’ve failed to do it properly. Now, here’s my point: looking at how the federal government has legislated a zero value for employee output, or care of duties, it would appear that The Barack and the federal government would still argue that no matter the damage caused by this person, their value to any employer who might hire them is at least $7.25 an hour. This is despite the fact that if they did put gasoline into a diesel engine, they likely did thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage, not to mention the embarrassment and potential security problems.

For those who might think this is “much ado about nothing”, I would like to make a couple of points. First, I’m not picking on the federal government because they have an idiot employee. I’m picking on them because they have legislated the cost of low-value employees up to $7.25 per hour for all employers and The Barack wants to further increase that inflated amount to $9.00. An employee that does their job so poorly they cause thousands of dollars worth of damage is not worth $7.25 an hour, except according to law, that’s what they have to be paid.

Secondly, for the people who think getting the wrong kind of fuel in a vehicle is an “honest mistake”, or not that big of a deal, hold that thought until next time you’re about to board a jet at the airport. Sure hope any ex-limo driver who might be in charge of fueling that baby got the right kind and amount of those nasty old hydrocarbons in the tank. But if they didn’t and it works out poorly for you, just remember that according to The Barack, that person’s labor is worth at least nine dollars an hour.

Anyway, because I’m a fan of newly elected Senator Ted Cruz from Texas (and yes I did vote for him, thank you very much) I was watching a clip of him arguing with Senator Dianne Feinstein (senior Senator from California) at some kind of Senate committee meeting or hearing. Actually it wasn’t as much of an argument as it was Cruz asking Feinstein some questions designed to point out how unconstitutional her proposed “assault” weapon ban is. Naturally, when asked a point blank question Feinstein would go off on a rant that didn’t answer the question, with some of the other Senators chiming in to help “jump on” Ted Cruz. It’s a shame Barbara Boxer (junior Senator from California) wasn’t there, then the idiocy could have reached even more ludicrous levels. Then again, since I only watched one clip of the meeting, maybe Senator Boxer was there but somebody was keeping her muffled. Maybe they told her not to speak unless she had something intelligent to say and that kept her quiet. On the other hand, they were letting Feinstein talk, so that’s probably not it.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t expecting to hear anything new, after listening to Feinstein in video clips and on audio clips over the radio, I did come across something. In fact after listening to her, I had a thought that surprised me quite a bit.

Before I get a little further into discussing Feinstein, I want to make a couple of statements concerning gun control. I mean other than good gun control is a firm grip and a steady eye.

Gun control, at least as the current administration is pursuing it is not about safety, but is about people control. Barack Obama may get on the national stage and talk about “the children”, but he comes from Chicago. Chicago is a town where so many children are killed by guns that the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel (used to be Obama’s chief of staff), has publicly begged gang members to stop shooting children (if only he had say, a police force, to stop that kind of behavior). If The Barack were really serious about protecting children from gun violence, rather than using them to pose with him for political theater, I think he or one of his cronies could have done something realistic about “gun violence” in Chicago before now. I would also point out that Obama now lives in Washington D.C., which is another place well known for excessive gun violence. In fact, I think I’m safe in saying that Obama sleeps with an armed guard outside his bedroom door to prevent any gun violence from disturbing his slumber. A luxury I might add, he doesn’t extend to non-politically important denizens of the same area, although clearly some of them need it. So basically Barack  Obama and the people who think like him concentrate on gun control solely because an armed citizenry makes them nervous.

Now, I will freely admit that a lot of the people who are so adamant about gun control really, truly, believe that it would be better for the general population and the United States. More or less, these are the people who either believe guns are inherently evil, just because they are guns, or possibly that without guns evil people won’t be able to exercise their homicidal tendencies. Granted these people are wrong, but I don’t doubt their sincerity.

Previous to listening to Feinstein the other day, I had more or less lumped her in with Barack Obama. In  other words, because she certainly (I was about to say being able to become a U.S. Senator proves you have some intelligence, but then I would have had to try to explain Boxer, Schumer, Biden and a few others) has access to plenty of information concerning guns and how limiting or allowing them does and doesn’t affect the safety of the average citizen. Because I assumed she was smart enough to figure out for herself that armed citizens are safer overall, yet continued to vehemently stump for gun control, I just figured she was after people control. That was a natural assumption, after all, she is a well known progressive.

As I listened to Mrs. Feinstein the other day describe things she had seen and done which made her think the average law abiding U.S. citizen shouldn’t be allowed certain types of weapons, she became pretty graphic. One of the things I heard her say (and I’m not sure which clip this was in) was that she had actually stuck her fingers in the bullet holes on a dead body. Pretty chilling stuff. My immediate first thought when I heard that was “what a ghoul”. It would never occur to me to “stick my fingers” in the bullet holes on a dead body, and if I did I sure wouldn’t spout off about it with pride.

As a little bit of time went on and I thought more and more about what Mrs. Feinstein said and her seemingly (to me) unreasoning pursuit of gun control, something occurred to me. Maybe I’ve been looking at Dianne Feinstein and the people like her all wrong. Instead of being nonplussed by her seeming belief that without restraint people will simply pick up the nearest rifle, stick a high capacity magazine in it and “go postal” (except now I guess that wouldn’t apply on Saturdays), I should instead ask myself why she thinks that way.

Keeping in mind that Dianne Feinstein used to carry a concealed weapon (meaning gun), and now not only won’t carry one, but also wants to restrict everybody else’s access to weapons; is she trying to tell us something? Does the reason she believes people can’t be trusted with guns is that she herself is having a hard time resisting the urge to start shooting people? Did carrying a weapon close to hand cause her to start looking at everybody around her as a potential target? As humans we tend to think that other people see things the way we do. Is that how it is for Feinstein? Does she have homicidal urges she can barely control and assume it’s that way for you and me too? Can she hardly sleep at night for thinking of which individuals have crossed her and she should target for death? Is this why there are so many people who believe guns should be kept away from all citizens? Are these people struggling on a daily basis with the urge to start gunning down the nearest person? If they are it would be only natural for them to think the rest of us feel the same way.

Does Senator Feinstein feel she’s one “ease of access” level away from jumping up on a desk shouting “Allah Akbar!” and gunning as many people down as she can (I guess that’s not fair I doubt she’d shout Allah Akbar, since she’s from California, she would probably go for the SUV owners first)? If she does feel that way, does she ascribe these same urges to the rest of us? If so, that would certainly explain her stand on the Second Amendment.

Maybe a good way to settle this whole thing would be with some psychological testing for some of the people who seem just a little too emotionally invested in gun control.

P.S. Don’t forward this to Senator Feinstein, if she has a mental hit list, I don’t want to be on it. After all, she knows a guy who controls a lot of drones.

I don’t know exactly what problem allowing people to tour the White House was causing, but doesn’t it seem a little odd that White House tours were one of the first things cut? As far as federal programs go, that’s probably the smallest one. Personally, while I can see where having groups of strangers wander through your house on a daily basis could be a bit of a hassle, I have to wonder about the logic of ending those tours and blaming it on sequestration. After all, the tours were cancelled about the same time the federal government turned loose a bunch of illegal immigrant criminals, or as we on the right like to refer to them, criminals. Since White House tours and keeping criminals in prison were both cut at about the same time, are we to draw the conclusion that the left regards the citizens who come to see the White House about the same as they do criminals?

Of course the news is full of how the sequester is affecting the military. It would be hard for any sentient being in the U.S. to miss the news about civilian workers being furloughed, and how tuition assistance to active duty military personnel has been cut or curtailed. There’s no surprise there, while they try (not very hard) to hide it, the left has long disdained the American military. Say, I have to wonder, does the White House now have signs in the yard saying “Tours cancelled. Soldiers and dogs keep off the grass”? I know, that’s not fair; as far as I know, Obama likes dogs.

You know, it’s too bad a fiscal conservative wasn’t put in charge of cutting back a federal program here and there. I know a few that could be cut back or eliminated that would just make my day. Imagine the satisfaction of sending a memo to the people at the Department of Education saying, for your future financial security, you need to memorize the following phrase: “Would you like fries with that”? Hey, how about a similar note to the people at the Department of Energy asking them to learn “Would you like me to check the air in the tires and wash the windshield”? Sorry, that last one tells people how old I am, but personally I have always missed the full service gas stations. Department of Energy personnel may not turn out to be good at pumping gas, but it would be a chance for them to finally do something productive with their lives.

Anyway, even though at this time the federal reduction of increases in spending (the sequestration isn’t really a cut) hasn’t turned into the world ending disaster we were told, the left is winning the propaganda battle. How are they going to pull this one out when pretty much the whole world can see that the sequestration had little, if any, real effect on life as we know it (keep in mind what’s happening to the military and Department of Defense civilian employees is being done on purpose)? The left and their allies in the main stream media have always been much better at propaganda than the right. Not being constrained by facts or logic allows them to frame their policies in the most favorable light.

What the left, with the cooperation of the media, is doing to snatch sequestration victory from the jaws of defeat is to change the perception of a single word. What difference could one single word make? Well, when that word is “furlough”, it seems that right now it makes a big difference.

Basically, as far as work is concerned, furlough means to be given some forced days off. In the current circumstances, those days off are without pay, meaning that any federal employees who are forced to take extra days off, will also suffer a commensurate reduction in pay. Personally, since we’re talking about government workers, other than the ones the left doesn’t like (refer to my earlier remarks regarding the left and the military) I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there isn’t some plan to pay the “furloughed” employees their full wages at a later date. Of course if that happens, and I think it’s quite possible, then those furloughed days, will simply become bonus vacation days. I wonder if the press would cover that?

When an employee, federal or otherwise, is furloughed for a specific number of days, or a percentage of their work schedule, they don’t lose their job. Nobody gets fired, benefits probably stay the same, and at some point in the future, they will probably go back to their old work schedule. I can understand this kind of thing making the workers nervous, but frankly, those of us in the private sector have had to endure a lot more than being furloughed for the last few years (odd how the hard economic times seem to be mostly during The Barack’s time in office).

Anyway, here’s where the left is using the term furlough to win the propaganda battle. They are shouting the word “FURLOUGH” at every possible chance, and making it seem to mean “laid off”. Because of the bad economy that just won’t go away (and never will until we get government overspending under control), we have become very sensitive in the U.S. about anything that costs people their jobs. By we, I mean other than the administration which doesn’t seem to care about that issue.

“Hundreds of thousands of federal workers being furloughed because of sequestration!!” sounds a lot different than “Federal workers will not lose their jobs due to budget cuts”, doesn’t it? Since both headlines are technically correct, you can tell which side the media is on by how they present the furlough issue.