Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Democrat Spokesperson Pokes Media in the Eye and Taunts Them...Again

Tonight, the Democrat National Committee Spokeperson, Brad Woodhouse, tweeted, 
POTUS asked AG to review how leak investigations are done but some in the media refuse to meet with him. Kind of forfeits your right gripe.

Oh, really?  We need an open season on pretentious dicks like him.  Please tell me why any government employee should have "off the record" meetings with anyone in the press?  Would that not defeat the entire purpose of having a press with freedom of speech?  The very nature of an "off the record" meeting is secrecy, so is it correct to say that our government is no longer transparent?

If secrecy is the preeminent goal, do attendees need security clearances, and if not, then why not?  It seems to me that if we need secrecy, then the veracity of every individual in the room ought to be questioned.  How do you know that attendees are qualified to keep secrets, but most importantly to me, why is the Department of Justice, the head of DOJ in fact, making a stipulation of his meeting that it be "off the record"?  I can only imagine that Holder believes the following, "I'm willing to talk to you, but you cannot repeat anything I say."

If Holder wants such a meeting, then a great question that ought to be asked is a simple word: Why?  What exactly can Holder hope to convey that is important enough for individuals in the press corps to know, but too secret for the American public?  Am I too immature to know what Holder wants to say?  Can I not handle it?  It is safe to say that it will be unclassified because you do not share classified information with reporters in the first place.  It appears to me that Holder wants to get reaquainted with the people he made angry.  It appears to me as an olive branch, "Hey baby, come back home, let's talk things over, I'll be good this time, I promise not to hit you again."

All of this brings me to my last question: Does this not violate some sort of public access to information law?  I cannot imagine that Holder is going to brief reporters on who shot Kennedy or that aliens have landed in Area 51 but we have no need to panic because Obama has it under control.  What right does a reporter have to withhold information from the public, and what right does a public official have to demand secrecy from the only people in American who are capable of keeping me informed of what goes on in this White House?

Democratic Spox: Media Forfeit the Right to Gripe Unless They Attend Holder Meeting

Where Has All The Ammo Gone

Here is a link to an article published by Mark Keefe IV of the NRA.  I think it points to a different trend than what we've been hearing in the news which is that the government is buying all the ammo.  According to the
ammunition manufacturers, they currently have a hard time keeping the consumer (that's you and me) ammunition in stock, and if this is the case, it is the American People who are stocking up on ammo...
Read the complete article here: Where Has All The Ammo Gone, Part Deux

Obama and His Eleventh Hour

During the election, Harry Reid cited a personal informant when he claimed that Romney paid no taxes, and Goolsbee made the same claim about the Koch brothers. They are all Obama surrogates, and they accessed confidential information. Given what we now know about the IRS targeting conservative groups, why is it not entirely plausible that the IRS also shared confidential tax information?

If so, they affected the results of a national election based upon illegal means, thereby possibly making it the crime of the century. It is big, and it ought to be irrelevant which party performed the actions. It is time for some people to be drug from their offices forcefully. It is the kind of thing of which revolutions are made.

Goolsbee's Mysterious Tweet About the Koch Brothers' Taxes | The Weekly Standard

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Tyranny and "The Hunger Games"

I've been reading the Hunger Games Trilogy, and last night, I watched the actual movie with my kids and wife.  If you have not heard about the books or the movie, the trilogy deals with a totalitarian government that punishes a rebellion, which happened 74 years go, by forcing each of its 12 districts to pony up two children each, one boy and one girl.  The government forces the 24 kids, aged 12 to 18, to fight to the death in a government crafted "Arena" full of lethal choreography and trickery, all designed by the game makers.  The government televises and glamorizes the entire event on national television and includes each death scene.

Watching the movie was an experience that I highly recommend for a variety of reasons.  First and foremost, whether or not it is a work of fiction, it gives a very real introspection of what totalitarianism can look like.  Granted, it may never happen; however, fights to the death are not undocumented, i.e. see the history of the Roman Empire for anecdotal evidence.  We also know that governments around the world are guilty of atrocities that "no civilized countries like our own" could ever experience.  Of course, it is worth noting that this past week, two Islamic extremists attempted to cut the head off a British soldier in broad daylight while hundreds of onlookers avoided the situation or filmed it at the requests of the thugs.

Back to Totalitarianism.  Can anyone be so naive as to think that no government, the least of which might be our own, can resort to totalitarianism?  Are we so far removed from the tyranny of King George that we are absolutely certain that it can never happen again?  Might we remind ourselves that the "tyranny" of which our Founding Fathers spoke had more to do with "taxation without representation" than about government forces butchering people in the street?  If you think you are immune, or if you think the system of checks and balances within our Constitutional Republic is infallibly perfect, then I would hate to pop the bubble of complacency in which you find yourself nesting; however, it might be time to remove the sleeping cap and wake up a little.  A system of checks and balances only works in a system in which each of the branches jealously guards their own authority from encroachment by other branches.  Checks and balances mean nothing when the politics of complicity begin to play out.  Complicity and complacency create a continuous concentration of power into branches of government that become difficult if not impossible to remove.

Here is the verdict: Tyranny is bad.  Tyrannical leaders can impose any sort of unjust and merciless circumstances upon the people, and the larger the government, the harder it is to reject the rule.  Imagine a country where a large majority of your neighbors work for the government or receive their sustenance from the government.  Given the circumstance of you being unjustly accused of something, perhaps for simply speaking your mind, what happens when you need help?  Who will come to your aid or stand for you?  How many people will reject their meal or jeopardize their own safety for the sake of yours?  I dare say that not many will come to your aid unless they simultaneously feel the brunt of the tyranny themselves.  Sporadically applied, tyranny is hard to overcome especially when the observational capabilities of the government are so advanced.

John Locke is a classical liberal, political philosopher, and one of his prime tenets is the Right of Revolution.  In his tenet, he stated that when a government ceases to govern justly and exists only to benefit itself, it becomes the responsibility of the people to reject its rule, dissolve the social contract, and formulate a new government.  Our Founding Fathers implemented within our own Bill of Rights, the right to keep and bear arms, specifically stating that the federal government shall not infringe upon it.  The right to keep and bear arms is not meant to hunt and target shoot.  During British rule, colonists were not allowed to keep and bear arms without supervision.  It is that governmental supervision that defangs the resistance to the point of inability to act.  A defenseless population is much more easily contained, is it not?

What can a tyrannical government accomplish?  It can accomplish a lot if you happen to be in the government, especially of high echelon.  I suppose that if you are part of tyranny, you can guarantee yourself the nicest meals, highest pay rates, best seats in the nicest restaurants, and all the rights and privileges that you can imagine.  Of course, all of these positive advantages as shared by the top echelons is borne on the backs of the workers who pay usually inordinate amounts of taxes.  Let us not forget about other methods to punish political enemies, the likes of which might just include torture and death by any of the most painful means available.

Back to the Hunger Games movie.  Is it unrealistic to think that a tyrannical government can actually force you to donate your children to a death match?  Is it unrealistic to believe that a government can mistreat its people by whipping them, hanging them, and publicly humiliating them?  Can a government force you at gunpoint to perform acts which you do not want to complete?  It really does not matter if it might not happen.  I think if any smidgen of tyranny is possible at all, then we should do all that we can to prevent it from ever happening at all.  Decentralize the governmental powers, arm yourself for your own protection, jealously guard your freedoms from the government, resist all urges to give up rights even temporarily due to so-called "safety or national security concerns", demand accountability from the government at all levels, refuse to accept cronyism from businesses or politicians, root out corruption among politicians, and above all else, never believe anything the government tells you unless you can see if with your own eyes.

Never accept that which the government states you must take.  Reject statism in all forms.  Live free and be free.  Let freedom ring, and let us teach our children in these ways.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Demand the Truth from the IRS

We need more answers about IRS abuse of power On May 10th, America learned that the IRS – perhaps the most frightening of all government agencies – has been singling out and targeting conservative groups, including Tea Party groups.  This admission from the IRS confirms what many of us had already suspected.

 The IRS has, in fact, been delaying our applications and harassing those of us who wanted to form local Tea Party chapter organizations.  In some extreme cases, the IRS went after Tea Party local leaders and audited their family members. President Obama said the IRS's actions are "unacceptable."

 He's right, but these actions are also un-American and un-Constitutional.   The First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech, which includes the right to political speech and the right to associate and form groups with other like-minded individuals.  The Tea Party movement, which began organically in 2010 in response to government excess, has attracted millions of regular Americans.  The Tea Party movement is, at its core, the embodiment of the American spirit.

 The Tea Party movement sprang up in response to the government's abuses of its powers, and this latest stunt from the IRS confirms for many of us why the Tea Party is so necessary.   In response to this outrageous revelation, the House Ways & Means Committee immediately held a hearing to question Steven Miller, the former acting commissioner of the IRS who resigned because of the scandal, but only one month before his term would have ended. The questions at the hearing covered a broad spectrum: When did you learn about this targeting?  What actions did you take after learning about this issue?  Why did you previously lie to the Ways & Means Committee?  Why did you mislead the American people about this problem?  But Mr. Miller is apparently suffering from temporary amnesia because the only answer he offered was: "I don't remember."  The systemic abuse of power that took place for nearly three years at the IRS is simply too far-reaching and widespread for Mr. Miller to get away with not remembering what took place.   Americans expect that our government will enforce its laws and rules – especially its tax laws – with fairness and equal application.

  Congress needs to keep asking questions and demanding more substantive answers than the evasive responses Mr. Miller provided.      

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Marine Corps Called to Task Over Facebook Pages? Good Luck with that...

This is in response to an article written on Military.com about how the Marine Corps should handle what Congresspeople deem to be inappropriate material on social websites.  Read the entire article by clicking here.

Yeah, trying to douse this fire is like trying to extinguish a house fire with a cup of water.  Does anyone condone this kind of stuff?  No, but that isn't the point.  Having been a Marine in a leadership position, you cannot dictate that someone not be bad.  Do we like the fact that our Marines act like kids?  No, but that's not the point either.  The bottom line is that unless something is done illegally, you really can't do anything at all.

With respect to freedom of speech in the Marines, or in the military for that matter, the only restrictions involve not being able to make derogatory statements about the chain of command.  Everyone else is fair game when it is on your personal time in your own personal space.  

I would like to mention that there is a biological thing called "hormones" which are extremely prevalent in young males of age 18, 19, and 20.  If I could have run my Marines' lives for them, they would have been morally, financially, and physically better off, but I learned early on that when not working, they were untouchable.  Civilians seem to think the military runs like a police state which is an utterly ridiculous concept.  It's this kind of witch hunting that makes people not want to stay in the military at all, and good Marines leave the service because they don't want to deal with the BS rules that Congress puts out.

When you cut to the chase, these politicians say they want to curb sexual abuse, and they point to these multiplying platforms of expressive freedom as the culprits.  Do you have any idea how widespread pornography actually is and how many men peruse it?  It doesn't equate to them all being sexual predators.  Again, not condoning it, but get real.  Did it ever occur to the morality police that predators may be attracted to such things but not necessarily created from such things?

As a leaders of Marines, my ultimate concern was for the welfare of my Marines which would have included prosecuting to the fullest extent of the UCMJ any sexual predator that attacked one of my female, or male, Marines.  Beyond that, I cannot and will not control every element of their private lives, but what I will do is encourage them to live right, treat people right, and conduct themselves with the professional decorum of a Marine both in and out of uniform.  That is my purpose as a leader.  Beyond that, our job is to stay alive.  

Politicians need to keep their noses in their own business.  The military is not your little social experiment, there to do what you intend to try because it is your flavor of the day.  Politicians demand accommodation and seek behavior contrary to human nature, yet they get angry when it does not work.  Here's a lesson: Let it be, you control freaks.  There's this thing called the First Amendment, and yes, contrary to your assumptions, it still applies to those in uniform.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Federal Government Creates More Low-Wage Jobs Than McDonald's, and You Pay For It!

I recently read an article from NBC news that reports on a study done by Demos about low-wage jobs created by federal funds as a by-product of federal contracting.  The findings show that the federal government produces more low-wage jobs that the private sector, and Demos finds it hard to fathom.  Demos uncovered great findings, but their analysis is pathetic.  They want to blame federal contractors for somehow bypassing a so-called "federal standard" to pay the prevailing wage for a specific skill in an area, and they accuse the federal contractors of returning millions in profits while creating tons of low wage jobs.  In the analysis, Demos overlooked several factors.

First and foremost, the federal government awards contracts based on lowest bid, and they don't audit the bids for parity.  In other words, the federal government wants to spend the least amount possible without regard for how the contractor achieves the lowest cost, so is it surprising that the contractor might actually cut costs by reducing labor expense?  In business, the biggest cost factor is personnel, so come on, let us not be ridiculously naive in our understanding of that in which we willfully engage.

Second, who created this system anyway?  Did the federal government not generate the system in all its minute details?  My question would be whether or not anybody in their right mind had a legitimate expectation that a bureaucracy with hundreds of layers ever had a real hope of supervising anything it created in the first place.  Do we really expect efficiency from an entity that must have an actual hotline for whistle blowers to call and report "Fraud, Waste, and Abuse"?  In spite of this, someone actually feigns shock when an entrepreneurial private enterprise, tasked with efficiency, actually produces savings, albeit in the form of lower wages, which is "against federal guidance".  It is worth mentioning that people actually willingly take the so-called low-wage jobs.

Bureaucracy requires people to run it, and the people running the bureaucracy require wages to do their own jobs.  Taxation produces the funds to pay the bureaucracy as well as to engage in contracts to perform federal functions.  If taxes dilute themselves through many different layers, what is left by the time the tax dollars make it into the federal contracts?  In other words, what starts out as a dollar from a taxpayer does not equal a dollar in a federal contract, so does it not stand to reason that the federal government, in requiring several different people to engage in functions ordinarily done by one or two people, would be inherently inefficient.  More to the point, the federal government consumes the portion of the wage that would normally be added to the low-wage portion thereby making it high wage.  It takes more money to complete a federal task because of the bureaucracy, but does anyone want to try to understand it?

In short, if you want to point a finger at the low-wage jobs created by the federal government, one need look no further than the federal government itself.  Privatizing industries produces efficiency when competition thrives.  It is really quite basic.

To read the full article, click here.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Who is Bill Ayers?

I guess I'm not understanding who exactly Bill Ayers is and what exactly he did.  I've heard he was part of some bombings, but I really chalked it up to hearsay in that he's not in jail.  I presumed that someone who bombed anything would be sitting in jail.  The Unabomber is in jail.  Timothy McVeigh is in jail.  Charles Manson is in jail. I've read about people who tried to blow up a district attorney's car because they were in trial and the prosecutor was trying to send them to jail.  They were caught, prosecuted, and sent to jail for attempting to cause the prosecutor harm.  It actually sounds a lot like what Ayers tried to do to a judge.

In this speech (click here), Ayers states that he was part of the bombings that the Weather Underground tried to perpetrate.  I guess I'm having a hard time understanding how someone who bombed anything is able to become a professor at all.   Was he not convicted?  Is he not a felon?  If he was found not guilty, is this his way of flaunting double jeopardy?  If he was guilty, how does a college recruit a felon to teach at a college?  Are there not enough non-felons applying for jobs that you need to hire a felon because he has some sort of philosophy to which you ascribe?  If it is philosophy that one is after, is it not true that even Charles Manson probably has a philosophy as well?  I imagine that in some way, even Manson may have a contribution to make if a former terrorist can rise to the level of professor.

I cannot comprehend how Democrats knew that Ayers, a terrorist, had documented ties to a presidential candidate, and knew that Ayers was and is a terrorist in the same mold as Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber, yet they still elected the candidate to high position.  

In my years in the military, I served as an officer, a leader of Marines.  In one position, I needed a Top Secret security clearance that required me to submit any and all information pertaining to the smallest details of my life, yet my position actually exposed me to no truly sensitive information.  If I gave the name of an associate who was a known terrorist, I would never have received a security clearance even though I may not have ascribed to his viewpoints and may never have come in contact with information that may have had the potential to have been compromised.  Conversely, the President had this association with a known terrorist, and now has access to the highest level of secret information known in our country, and every bit of information has the potential of being compromised.  

Our thought processes as Americans are inherently flawed, but I will qualify my statement.  I am to the point that I no longer think that these ignorant people, those who refuse to think, the ones who reject accountability in the smallest and most minute form, are American at all.  I refuse to accept that my country harbors such derelicts that they will elect the most degenerate people, those of highest risk, those of questionable backgrounds, if for no other reason than for what the electable individual promises during a stump speech.

At the end of the day, after our elections are decided by cowards and vagrants, what will be left for the brave and knowledgeable and for those of us with principles who love freedom and cherish the foundation of a free society?  I do not accept a life determined by those who refuse to think about consequences or by those who demand service as if service is deserved or somehow required of those we elect.  It is time to reject these people as parts of our society.  They do not earn it as they suck the very life from our bodies.  They take away that which we rightfully received in an effort to hijack it for their own personal pleasure as if it were a joy ride to last the entirety of their natural lives that when ended will leave nothing for those left behind.  As for me, I will stand on my principles no matter how ridiculed they may be by this subclass of degenerates.  I will stand for freedom.  I will stand for my country.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Right to Revolution


A poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University shows that almost one third (29%) of registered voters believe that an armed revolution may be necessary within a few years.  Is 29% anything less than mainstream, and if armed revolution is a mainstream thought, how reasonable is it to attribute revolutionary ideals only  to crackpot extremists?

Is it worthy to consider that perhaps the government, as it exists today, not in form, but in fashion and representation, does not serve the public well?  We learn in school that our government is of the people, by the people, for the people, but is that still the case?  John Locke wrote that once government ceases to serve the interest of the governed, the government outlives its purpose, and the people have a right, a responsibility, to revolt.

John Locke
According to the article, many Americans, fearing restrictive laws and future unrest at the hands of the government, are stockpiling weapons and ammunition.  A good point to be made is that fringe elements perhaps would only account for less than 10%.  Does it not stand to reason that if a movement is truly fringe, then one should not expect to encounter anyone taking part in that movement except by slight chance?  When one out of three people begin to believe in that movement though, does it not change the dynamic or at the very least present a paradigm shift?

The Founding Fathers knew that no government would last forever, and they also knew that there would always be a chance for a government, no matter how great it was in the beginning, to overstep its governing authority.  In such a case, as
the Founding Fathers were in the process of revolting from an oppressive regime as well, they included the Second Amendment in order to provide the tools necessary to future generations to do that which they were presently engaged, fighting for freedom.

To read the article, click here.
I wrote this opinion in response to some threads on Google+ that immediately followed the shutdown of Boston while the various law enforcement agencies conducted house to house searches for the Boston bombers.  Finding the bomber in someone's back yard, the question arose about whether or not the Bostonians would have wanted to own a firearm while the terrorist ran amuck.

Whether or not a Bostonian wanted an assault rifle during their siege is irrelevant.  What is completely relevant however is the fact that it is not any of Dianne Feinstein's business.  If she is comfortable without one in the same situation, then it would be her choice not to buy one and have it on hand.  To deny another the opportunity to feel secure is to deny that which is rightfully theirs: Life, Liberty, and Property.

You may call me heartless, but.....

You may call me heartless, but it needs to be said.  I feel the pain of the parents of Newtown; however, they are pointless in their actions.  You know what I did after Sandy Hook?  I joined our School Board's Security Task Force.  That's right, I took an affirmative action to CREATEsecurity for my children's  school.

You can cry and commiserate all you want.  You can pass all the rules and laws that you want.  At the end of the day, the only people standing in line to return confiscated weapons are those with reverence to the law in the first place.  If you wanted to disarm a country, the only way to disarm criminals would be to seek them out in their own element, waive the rule of law, blast in their doors, and remove their weapons by force.  The left wing ACLU will not allow it.  Even then, how long before nefarious people, criminals and druglords, would create a black market for weapons by stealing from police departments and military depots.  Do you think that they cannot or will not accomplish that which they set out to do?

If this is about magazine size only, how reasonable is it to believe that limiting a magazine to ten rounds is really going to limit death?  Since there is no limit to the numbers of magazines that a criminal might carry, why can't he carry more magazines?  You do realize that 100 rounds spread over 10 magainzes is approximately the same weight as 100 magazines spread over 7 magazines and that if one is prepared to change magazines 7 times, is changing magazines another 3 times really going to cause much more issues for him?

The issue in our society is not one of disarmament as much as it is one of soft targeting.  Before September 11, it was possible for anyone on an aircraft to enter the cockpit of an airliner, but was it smart?  In retrospect, barricaded doors would have saved thousands of lives, billions of dollars in destruction, and ten years of involvement in two land wars.  We could easily say that had airlines spent a couple of thousand dollars per aircraft to barricade their doors, then the ensuing devastation and chaos could have been prevented.  Using it as a starting point, why should we wait until Aurora, CO and Newtown, CT to examine every inch of our lives?

As long as we perpetuate the creation of areas of unprotected targets, such as schools, churches, playgrounds, and the like, then we will give opportunity to crazy people to attach that which we hold most dear, and no amount of legislating or protesting will stop it from happening.  I tell you this now, the next mass shooting is only a heartbeat away, but where it will be no one knows, and the legislation on the Senate floor will not stop it.  I will tell you why.  Whether or not the next crazy person uses an AR15 or a Colt .45, if he things about his attack as much as the shooters in Aurora and Newtown did, he will carefully choose his weapons to achieve the largest impact.  If he has to reload, then he will do so, and if he has to create a bomb like Timothy McVeigh, then he will do that too.  After all, the Aurora shooter rigged his apartment to blow the whole building sky high, and it was only because of the events that occurred that tipped off the police to be careful upon entering.

We know that it takes good people to counteract the actions of bad people which is why we have numerous different police departments: city police, sheriffs, highway patrol, State Departments of Law Enforcement, DEA, FBI, ATF, etc.  If you doubled the amount of officers, you would still not reduce your crime rate to zero.  In fact, you would raise the ferocity of the criminal element to mafia level proportion.  Look at criminals in Communist countries.  They cannot eliminate it in places where they rule their people with iron fists, yet do you really believe we can do it in America without giving up your civil liberties?

In all the debate and discourse, the easy way out is to pass a law to placate the tears and sorrow of the parents of the lost, but will it really prevent the next shooting?  The answer is no.  What will prevent the next shooting?  Proactive people concerned about their own welfare.  In our local Security Task Force, we discussed local preventive measures that schools can enact on their own to make themselves harder targets.  Communities around the country have tackled legislation to allow teachers or key personnel to carry concealed weapons, so why is the only answer being pushed by one side to limit the ability of those willing to follow the law in the first place to buy and keep items which they want to own?  In the country's time of need, why does the President create a politically charged task force to create the findings which he wants instead of creating a non-politically charged task force to create the findings which will work?  The answer is that legislation is quick and easy, but real changed occur at the community level, yet a President is limited in his ability to effect change at that level.

The reality of any society is that individuals hold the best key to their own safety by examining their surroundings and ensuring that their police force operates efficiently and effectively.  We have the ability to elect Sheriffs whose job it is to properly prevent crimes, and mass shootings, by working with the public to properly inform them of ways to eliminate crime in their neighborhoods and places of business.

If you want to change society, start with yourself.  Elect leaders who do not usurp your ability to protect yourself, and do what you can inside your community to ensure that funds and personnel effectively protect that which is typically left unprotected.  In my case, our schools began to immediately change their operating procedures after Newtown which will give law enforcement the time needed to neutralize potential attackers.  Do not presume that you are safe by essence of your own existence.  Be safe in the everyday activities of your life and make safe choices.  Ultimately, your government can only punish those who do wrong because they cannot be everywhere that you choose to be, and even if they could, would you want to be watched every step of the way?