

SILKEN SLIPPERS AND HOBNAIL BOOTS

Surviving the Decline and Fall

by

R.E. Hannay

Copyright 2013 R.E. Hannay

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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PART I: POLITICAL ISSUES

Silken Slippers and Hobnail Boots

Endangered Species

Earmarks and Reckless Spending

1984 Finally Arrived, 1n 2012

Disabilities and the Government

Integrity vs. Advocacy in Politics and Journalism

Urban Sprawl: Is That Bad?

The Tyranny of the Majority

If It's Political and Sensitive, Speak Up

Liberals vs. Conservatives

Global Warming: A Comprehensive Scientific Report

The Barack Hussein Obama Legacy

The Sophomore Civics Class

Election Decisions, Slightly Simplified

Misleading Political Euphemisms

National Identification: More To Gain Than To Lose

Socialism, Fascism and Capitalism

States' Rights and Nullification

Real Immigration Reform

Gun Control

Racial Profiling and Prejudice

PART II: ECONOMIC ISSUES

Labor Unions

How Politicians and Bureaucrats Cause Recessions

Poverty By Federal Decree

Compound Interest

Welfare's Legal Basis

Free Enterprise

Outsourcing and Globalization

Glass Ceilings and Job Discriminating Against Women

Social Security, Simplified

U.S. Energy Independence

A Streetcar Named Undesirable

PART III: SOCIAL ISSUES

Uncivil Wars

It Takes Two Just To Make It.

Tipping 401

Masculinism and Feminism

Marriages, Non-Marriages, Virgins, Somewhats and Such

Our Fractured Families and Fractured Nation

Some Call It Sex

Up Jumped the Hippies

PART IV: INTERNATIONAL AND MILITARY ISSUES

World Peace and Our Military-Industrial Complex

The United Nations, Europe and the United States

Palestine, Zionism and Israel

Collateral Damage and Friendly Fire

Saudi Arabia: Friend Or Foe?

Ugly Americans

Wartime Internment

Japan, Land of the Whitewashed Assassins

PART V: MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

The Rule of Law

The New Inquisition of the Bad-News Media

Health Care and the Uninsured

The War On Drugs

Survival of the Unfittest

The Right of Private Association

More Math and Science, or Better Education?

Genetic Engineering of Food

PART VI: SUMMARY

About the Author

Author's note: Since some may choose to read articles selectively rather than as a book, some redundancy was necessary to support and explain the individual subjects.

PART I: POLITICAL ISSUES

SILKEN SLIPPERS AND HOBNAIL BOOTS

History is the patter of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnail boots climbing up from below – Voltaire

This pattern has been repeated consistently since ancient times. Hungry, ambitious, aggressive nation-states have grown, prospered, and faded. America has always been the land of opportunity, an ownership nation. Now it's a welfare state that pays people not to work, permits illegal aliens to remain and take jobs from blacks, Latinos and poor whites, gives preferential college admission and employment to people with colored skin, and takes money from more successful and productive people to give to the larger number of less successful people to buy their votes. This is the way career politicians destroy a prosperous nation and the opportunity for its productive citizens to succeed.

Franklin Roosevelt planted the seeds of America's future decline. Instead of letting market forces correct fairly quickly the economic problems of the Great Depression, as had happened many times before, he injected large-scale welfare programs and economic meddling, lengthening the depression by seven years. It eventually ended when the war in Europe brought military business to the U.S. and we started building up our own weak military forces.

World War II energized our country and the post-war economy prospered with pent-up consumer demand, new family formations and general hustling. Then Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Carter, aided by politicians, revived and expanded Roosevelt's social engineering and fiscal policies that hamper free-market prosperity, penalizing success and rewarding failure.

The great communicator, President Reagan, was able to bypass the politicians and convince the people that "government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." Reagan lowered top income tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent, but total tax revenues actually increased with the lower rates. Carter's stagflation was corrected in two years and the country prospered for another 25 years.

But starting with the first President Bush, each new president, aided by Congress, raised taxes and increased spending, added or expanded a large collection of new regulatory agencies and "programs" – EPA, OSHA, food stamps and a hundred other major federal bureaucracies. As Milton Friedman noted, "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." The principle is concentrated benefits for a small, organized lobby that seeks some benefit, with diffused costs paid by unorganized or unaware taxpayers who don't oppose the pork.

Occasionally our relentless progress toward a stagnant welfare state has slowed. On President Clinton's watch, congressional Republicans twice passed welfare reform legislation, requiring recipients to do public work. Clinton vetoed it twice, but faced with an election and public support for the third legislation, he signed it, vowing to repeal it later. When it became very successful, cutting welfare rolls in half, he claimed credit for the legislation and the liberal news media called it "Clinton's welfare reform." Unfortunately, since then Obama and Congress have almost destroyed that successful reform.

One disastrous social engineering effort was the promotion of more home ownership, which instead resulted in an unsustainable housing bubble. It started with Carter's Community Redevelopment Act, which forced mortgage lenders to make loans in blighted areas where lending was not good business practice. Carter punished lenders who didn't make what his regulators decreed were enough bad loans. Clinton and Bush 43 added more vote-buying programs to increase home ownership. To make that happen, FHA, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae lowered credit standards and down payments, eventually permitting some loans with no down payments, no verification of borrowers' employment and income, and without checking the borrower's credit history, encouraging people to buy houses they couldn't afford.

The Federal Reserve facilitated the politicians' housing bubble by printing large amounts of fiat money and holding interest rates artificially low. Rising housing prices attracted speculation, with speculators often buying several houses and "flipping" them even before they were completed. Wall Street bundled these mortgages for sale to investors, rating agencies (who were paid by the packagers) rated the shaky mortgage securities AAA and great quantities were sold to banks and investment firms around the world.

In 2008 the big investment bank Lehman Brothers folded and the bubble was pricked. Panicky Bush 43 and Congress, like all politicians, had to "do something", instead of just correcting bad lending practices and monetary policy, and letting market forces restore sanity to the housing market. They created $800 billion with the Fed's printing press and borrowed from China and others to save the politically connected, "too-big-to-fail" banks, securities brokers and insurance companies, starting the spending frenzy "to save the economy," which it didn't.

Then in 2009 Barack Hussein Obama, an inexperienced community rabble rouser, showed up at the carnival and we were off on the race to the bottom. He spent another $833 billion for emergency "shovel-ready" projects that still weren't ready years later. He gave that money, Chicago-style, to friends, failing projects, windmill manufacturers, unions, and to Brazil to drill for oil while not issuing pending permits that were badly needed for drilling in this country.

Five years later the country still has a stagnant economy, with revised methods of calculating official statistics concealing high unemployment and inflation. If unemployment were calculated the way it was formerly, Obama's 7.6 percent number for June, 2013 would be 23.4 percent, according to Shadow Stats. From the October, 2012 Financial Intelligence Report: "The official August, 2013 inflation rate was 1.69 percent. Using 1980 methodology, the August rate was 9.3 percent ... As the underlying reality has turned more sour, the Obama White House has gone further than any of its predecessors toward converting U.S. economic reporting into an exercise in fiction-writing."

Aided by the "news" media, the Democrats now engage in full-time, all-year, every-year political campaigning, not on issues but in convincing gullible segments of the voting public – blacks, Latinos, single women, young people, the unemployed, the "working people" - that the Republicans and the greedy, heartless businesses that are the engine that drives the economy and the only source of real jobs, are their enemies and must be punished, not encouraged. Businesses and successful people have alternatives. Hostess Bakeries is a typical case. With heavy losses and facing a second bankruptcy, the company had to reduce high labor costs. Offered an eight percent wage reduction, 92 percent of their union workers rejected it and voted to strike. Hostess simply closed their 36 U.S. plants and fired their 18,500 workers.

Obama's National Labor Relations Board puppets tried to punish Boeing for opening a plant in right-to-work South Carolina. Obama's relentless attacks on business result in businesses and individuals not hiring or making capital investments or expansions, with some of them closing, retiring or moving themselves or their businesses overseas where taxes, labor costs and government policies are more favorable and unreasonable regulations and taxes are understood to be fatal to prosperity.

The U.S. continues to borrow by selling more Treasurys, the Fed continues to print more "money" to buy most of them and also to buy bad mortgage loans, the deficits continue to accumulate at close to $1 trillion annually, the national debt now exceeds $17 trillion, and the Roman circus continues its performance.

Those ultimately responsible for America's downfall are not Obama and his toadys. It is a parasitic voting public, wanting the government to care for them at the expense of others, voters who re-elected a failed, incompetent gang of Chicago machine politicians and their limousine-liberal, elitist partners, people determined to change prosperity into a stagnant welfare state of people dependent on the career politicians. Our prosperity has been based on equal opportunity for all. Now the liberals strive for equal outcomes for all, killing incentives to produce and succeed. The majority of the voters were more interested in their bribes from the government than their own opportunities and the country's prosperity. With more people riding on the wagon than pulling it, it is likely that more pullers will just say "Nuts!" and become riders themselves, head for the golf course, the beach in Panama or move their business to Asia.

Obama and many Democrats are shouting "Compromise!" at the Republicans, but compromise to the Obama gang means, "You compromise!" And that means one more step down the slippery slope to ancient Rome and modern Greece. The something-for-nothing voters have chosen to let their opportunity nation be dismantled, following an incompetent Pied Piper toward stagnant socialism, savings-destroying inflation and national bankruptcy. It is painful to remember what happened to Rome and realize it is happening here.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

There is a great hue and cry from such passionate warriors as the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation and others when they perceive some species of animal, bird, fish or bug is diminishing in population or -- Gasp! \-- in danger of dying out. Consider the rationality of those concerns.

The supreme law of nature is Adapt or die. Survival of the fittest applies not just within each species but between species. It is the essential basis for the improvement and continuation of some species, and the decline and disappearance of others unable to adapt and compete successfully. The survival of the fittest ensures preservation of the most efficient and viable species on earth, providing the optimum use and balance of the earth's resources. More capable and aggressive individuals and groups become dominant, weaker ones accept subordinate positions in the pecking order or disappear. In extreme cases, weaker groups disappear completely. That is nature's grand scheme, competition for the planet's resources and space. It applies to individuals, groups and nations.

Pecking orders are nature's efficient way of organizing and managing all critters, including the naked apes, with a minimum of conflict. The strongest, cleverest and most aggressive individuals, groups and nations often maintain order and control simply by acting dominant, avoiding actual conflict.

It has been estimated that about ninety-nine percent of all the species that have ever lived are now extinct. Why must the environmental radicals now interfere with that process? (The term radical is used to distinguish those who ignore private property rights and legal requirements to pay the costs of appropriating them and who do not consider the estimated costs-benefits tradeoffs in proposed restrictions.) When some humans, in their infinite wisdom and compassion, interfere with natural competition, they are not doing a favor for nature or for struggling species. Often they are simply providing crutches for weak or incapable species that will probably fail anyway.

Federal biologists in Oregon announced that hunters working for the California Academy of Sciences are killing barred owls on the Klamath National Forest, saying they have invaded the habitat of their sacred northern spotted owl. The politically-incorrect barred owl has moved in from somewhere east and is described as more aggressive and adaptable, an apparently unforgivable sin. Nature's survival of the fittest is being turned upside down by bureaucrats.

Guiltiest of the parties in this fiasco are the courts, which apparently cannot read our Constitution, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with the power to dictate Endangered Species Act rules by powers delegated to them by Congress. FWS imported wolves from Canada in 1994. By 2002 the wolves had again become a nuisance killing livestock, FWS delisted the wolves, a federal court ordered that the wolves still be protected, Congress intervened and delisted the wolves, and environmental groups immediately filed another suit to protect the wolves -- another expensive imbroglio started by the tree-huggers. There is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to do what it is doing, with or without compensation to property owners. Still, if some species preservation were conducted on a rational basis, probably few people would object.

There are a few species for which some protection or attempt to restore a viable population were justified, like American bison and Chinese pandas. Now such decisions are made by a few bureaucrats or a few politicians, using taxes carelessly and often taking private property simply by restrictions on its use but without the compensation required by law. The result is an incredible number of species on the endangered species list that simply cannot be justified either rationally or legally, in addition to causing many lawsuits seeking compensation for denial of private property rights..

Almost 1,300 domestic species of plants and animals are listed, unconstitutionally protected by our great government benevolent and protective society. On a recent count only 10 species had been reclassified "recovered." The construction of schools, hospitals and all kinds of public and private developments are delayed or prohibited by the anointed elites who say there is or even might be a snail darter, sucker fish, pygmy owl or some other sacred critter either on the property or, incredibly, that might like to be on that kind of property. California alone has 308 plants and creatures on the endangered species list, including one fly and one rat.

The July 15, 2013 Wall Street Journal reported a typical example of the damages caused by President Obama in his "transform America" adventures. This spring his Bureau of Reclamation cut water allocations to one of the most important bread baskets in the United States because 300 desert smelt, a threatened species, were caught in the pumps at the south end of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Administration cut the water deliveries to between 20 and 35 percent of the contractual allocations, flushing 800,000 acre-feet of irrigation water into San Francisco Bay. That's enough water to sustain 800,000 families, irrigate 200,000 acres of land, grow 20 million tons of grapes and employ thousands of workers in an area with high unemployment. The report said more smelt are captured by biologists conducting population surveys every year than are trapped by pumps.

Such interference has often proved to be folly. Because of a supposedly endangered red squirrel, there were years of hassles and delays in building an observatory on Arizona's Mt. Graham. Years later, after the government finally located someone who could identify and count the endangered red squirrels separately from ordinary red squirrels, it was found that the endangered population on Mt. Graham had increased substantially since the offending telescopes, roads and buildings had been constructed, joining the trend to urban living.

The environmental radicals trying to kill the Alaska oil pipeline project said the caribou population would die out because they would not cross the pipeline during their seasonal migrations. As it turned out, the caribou like to stand under the nice warm pipeline, think warm thoughts and make love. Consequently, the Central Arctic Caribou herd which inhabits the Prudhoe Bay region has increased fivefold since oil operations began there, increasing from around 5,000 to 27,000 today.

This country is or should be desperate to reduce its dependence on foreign oil imports, but there is still a controversy over drilling for what is believed to be a large amount of oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), also known as the Alaska National Mosquito Refuge. It has been reported that the estimated 10 billion barrels is more than a five-year supply of our worldwide oil imports, at the present rate. Environmentalist opponents always describe the area as "a pristine wilderness" and use photos of some other gorgeous area, but photographs of the proposed drilling site show it to be a desolate, soggy moonscape. New horizontal drilling techniques allow geologists to tap the oil from a tiny surface area of 2,000 acres -- a mere 1/100 of 1 percent of the ANWR's 19,000,000 acres. The only people really affected are the Inupiat Indians who are pleading for the development of their oil, along with Alaska citizens generally, 75 percent of whom favor the drilling and development. The Alaska pipeline is down to half of its design capacity, endangering its future ability to function, and it could handle substantially increased flow from the ANWR's and other new production.

The obvious conclusion is that sophist bureaucrats, the Obama gang and the limousine liberals think critters and even non-commercial fish are more important than people. If they followed the Constitution's property-rights provisions, the list of endangered species would be short, their protection would be rational and taxpayers would pay fair compensation to private property owners now denied their property rights.

EARMARKS AND RECKLESS SPENDING

Career Politicians vs. Our Children and Grandchildren

Once upon a time voters had a fairly clear idea how to vote, depending on whether or not they favored a bigger government, more welfare spending and higher taxes. Now voters must choose between tax-and-spend Democrats and don't-tax-but-spend Republicans. In January, 2007, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner punished Republican Representative Jeff Flake for his continual, almost sole opposition to earmarks legislation. Both parties are leading us astray, buying votes today in the hope that future politicians will handle their mess some day -- while today's politicians are collecting fat congressional pensions, "consulting" and lecture fees, book royalties and high-priced lobbying.

The Democrats seek a utopian socialistic democracy, with every American and business owing their survival to a government wagon loaded with subsidies, special benefits, welfare goodies, pensions, medical care, housing, food, unemployment and other forms of taxpayer-paid and borrowed welfare. Since 1940, toward the end of the Great Depression, real GDP has increased by five times and, during those years, government "benefits" have increased by 25 times. From 1966 to 1976 alone, Democrat-controlled congresses expanded federal benefits - now called "entitlements" - six-fold in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Democrats have never met an "entitlement" they didn't like – benefits to special interests are a religion to them and a bribe to make voters political dependents. While Republicans have never met a tax cut they didn't like, under George W. Bush they also learned how to spend even more than the Democrats did when they ruled. Then unknown mountebank Obama and his Democrat puppets broke all records, spending us close to national bankruptcy. We have become a welfare state, killing the incentives to achieve, to risk capital to start or expand businesses, to save and to enjoy the satisfaction of personal responsibility and success. Now Americans look to the gummint to solve their personal and business problems, and Americans are suckered into thinking that government help is free. They have voluntarily become government vassals.

Few Americans really understand the financial disaster this country is headed for. They hear the Republicans saying that Social Security needs to be reformed and the Democrats saying that there is no problem, or that we have decades to make some little changes in Social Security. The biggest disaster is the future of Medicare and Medicaid, and now Obamacare. The public hears there are some problems with them but feel no urgency to address them, only to be sure they get theirs, and the politicians repeatedly kick the problem down the road, lest they lose a vote or contribution.

Most people don't understand or care about huge federal deficits continuing into the indefinite future, massive imbalances in our foreign-exchange payments, a weakening dollar and the threat of reduced foreign investments in the United States and reduced foreign holdings of dollar reserves, all causing our interest rates to rise, with inflation set to destroy savings. Those threats are vague, meaningless, or simply of no interest to most Americans. The truth is that those are all crucial, compelling matters that need to be understood and addressed promptly.

Jaded by years of overspending, politicians talk about billions and now trillions as if they were just numbers. Forecasts of future deficiencies in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security vary from $90 to $200 trillion, an unimaginable amount, but politicians continue to delay action. For perspective, our nation's total net worth is estimated at $40 to $60 trillion, including all real, personal and financial property owned by U.S. residents.

In his 2004 book, Running on Empty, Peter G. Peterson, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said some estimates of our unfunded benefit liabilities range from $45 trillion (American Enterprise Institute) to $74 trillion (Federal Reserve Bank of New York). His forecast concluded that if we want to balance the budget by 2014, on our current track we would either have to raise both individual and corporate income taxes by 38 percent or cut both Social Security and Medicare by 55 percent. Farther on, with the Woodstock generation retiring en masse, the trends begin to worsen quickly. To balance the budget by 2030 (assuming we do nothing until then), we would have to raise all payroll taxes by 100 percent and individual income taxes by 50 percent or we would have to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits in half and cut all non-defense discretionary spending by half. Those disastrous forecasts are low – very low. The head of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank estimates the future shortfall at $104 trillion, and others at almost twice that, an unthinkable future.

What went wrong? What is still going wrong? Every American knows that his personal and business spending and incurring debt have to be limited by his earnings. A reckless Congress and the Administration spend and borrow as if there were no need to equate income and spending, no tomorrow, no day of reckoning -- they just borrow more money. Aside from the usual problem of career politicians buying votes and campaign contributions, many of them have the national baby-boomers' disease: If you want something, just borrow the money and buy it!

Earmarks are another source of runaway spending, allowing money to be spent on projects that undergo no legislative evaluation. They are, in effect, "no questions asked" gifts to powerful and obedient legislators. In 1982, the House transportation authorization bill contained only 10 earmarks, while the 2004 bill had 2,881 earmarks plus several billion dollars more set aside for unspecified future earmarks. In that bill, average House members got about $14 million in earmarks. Representative John Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, got $150 million for his Johnstown airport that has only three flights daily, to and from Washington, D.C. Murtha said, "If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district."

Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, took $590 million for his district, including $200 million for a Ketchikan, Alaska bridge to replace a delightful seven-minute ferry ride to the airport. Even Ketchikan residents reportedly called the "bridge to nowhere" a colossal waste of taxpayers' money and the controversy eventually killed the project, but Congress immediately gave Alaska the same amount of money to spend elsewhere.

Citizens Against Government Waste ranked Alaska's Senator Ted Stevens, then Republican head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Number One Hog every year since it began calculating pork per capita in 2000. In 2005 he took $984.85 for each Alaskan. One slice of his 2005 pork was $1,500,000 for one bus stop adjacent to the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.

It seems almost hopeless to drag the entrenched politicians out of their self-serving games, but it can be done, and it must be done. For starters, we must:

1. Educate the public, particularly our young people who eventually have to suffer the consequences of spending by our prodigal politicians. Now most of the public get their understanding of politics and economics from 45-second TV sound bites from biased liberal news media.

2. De-polarize the political parties. The "I hate Republicans" rantings of Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and others show what has happened to our "leaders." When Carl Hayden and Mo Udall, Democrats, and Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes, Republicans, were congressional leaders, they differed on the legitimate role of government but worked together for the good of the country and got things done rather than making war. Voters should have no tolerance for the current divisive bickering and mud-slinging.

3. Enact term limits, twelve years and six. Send the career politicians out to pasture and elect capable legislators who do their turn in Congress and then go back to the real world. Now the careerists devote much of their time and activity to getting elected again and again, increasing their spending of taxpayers' money with time in office. In contrast, those pledged to term limits decrease their spending toward the end of their terms.

4. Stop penalizing the thrifty and successful. "Means testing" is a perverted penalty for thrift and achievement. Punitive tax policies and lavish welfare spending are a perverted deterrent to ambition, productivity, and the accumulation of the capital needed to expand the economy and create jobs and national prosperity. Government jobs and stimulus spending reduce wealth rather than create it.

5. Reform the budget process and eliminate unspecified, secret earmarks.

6. Insist on federal accrual accounting, required of all businesses, so long-term government liabilities are revealed and must be planned for.

7. Fix gerrymandering, already done by four states with bipartisan citizens' boards reviewing district boundaries every ten years. Gerrymandering is one matter opposing politicians cooperate on to protect those already in office.

8. Repeal the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance "Reform" bill, also known as the Incumbents' Protection bill.

We could fill a book with specifics on pork, but suffice it to say the current gang of irresponsible Republicrats in Congress is incapable of fiscal discipline, and with President Obama, everything is about power politics and full-time campaigning for future elections.

Wake up, America! Get involved, or your children and grandchildren will hate you for the mess you left them.

1984 FINALLY ARRIVED, IN 2012

In 1949 George Orwell wrote a wonderful satire of a government gone mad, titled Nineteen Eighty-Four. His Oceania, the government of the future, is a society tyrannized by The Party and its totalitarian ideology is a world of perpetual war, ubiquitous government surveillance with public mind control by the Inner Party elite that persecutes all independent thinking as thoughtcrimes. Big Brother, who foments a cult of personality, heads the tyranny. The Ministry of Truth is responsible for propaganda and rewriting news and historical records. The Ministry of Love oversees torture and brainwashing, the Ministry of Plenty oversees shortage and famine, and the Ministry of Peace oversees war and atrocity. The novel was a sensation and was translated into sixty-five languages.

To see the evolution of our government, follow the time-line of certain events before and after FDR cooked his alphabet soup of welfare-state legislation and controls:

* 1776-1932: In the Constitution the states gave limited, enumerated powers to the federal government, principally defense, foreign relations and protecting interstate commerce from restrictions imposed by states on free trade with other states. Taking assets from some citizens to give to others was discussed but was not authorized, and that was reaffirmed by the founders soon after the original passage.

* 1933: Roosevelt imposed the WPA, PWA, NRA, CCC and a dozen or two other "temporary" welfare programs to end the recession. Those programs failed. The programs weren't temporary and they spawned our welfare state.

* 1964: Johnson imposed his Great Society "to cure poverty forever", making permanent our welfare state. Forty-eight years and an estimated 16 trillion taxpayers' dollars later, U.S. poverty is the highest in the last 50 years, with 15.1 percent of the population in government-calculated poverty and almost 50 million are getting food-stamps welfare.

* 1971: Nixon destroyed the monetary stability of the gold standard and repudiated our Bretton Woods agreement, ensuring more government spending and deterioration of the dollar's value.

* 1977: Carter's Community Reinvestment Act punished banks and savings & loans that didn't make enough unsound loans in blighted neighborhoods to satisfy the bureaucrats.

* 1989-2008: Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 continued the regulatory expansion, overspending and social engineering that, among other mistakes, facilitated a flood of real estate loans to unqualified and speculative buyers. Finally the bubble burst and the Great Recession began in 2008.

* 2009-2011: Obama expanded Bush's useless "stimulus" of borrowed and counterfeit money, and loaded his cabinet and 30-some unelected, unconfirmed new "czar" positions with radical socialists who had no private-sector experience. Obama ran a banana- republic administration, ramming sweeping medical care, finance-industry regulation and other federal controls through an irresponsible Congress. When even Congress and the courts wouldn't bow and sign, he legislated by executive orders and by having his bureaucrats refuse to issue permits or otherwise refuse to obey laws and court orders.

* 2012: A full-blown 1984 finally arrived: Justice John Roberts' Supreme Court, in declaring Obamacare to be constitutional, incredibly opened the door for the federal government to penalize by taxation any conduct it chooses to demand or prohibit. Second, Obama is using the power of his office to intimidate and attack political opponents and their supporters. In August, Obama illegally ordered what amounts to amnesty for certain illegal aliens, an attempt to buy votes before the courts could throw it out prior to the coming election. His Internal Revenue Service failed to process application forms of certain non-profit organizations deemed to be "conservative", while promptly issuing permits to liberal organizations.

Welcome to the Unites Soviet States of America. Author Mark Steyn wrote, "To residents of the mid-20th century it would have seemed incredible that one day the president of the United States would fire the CEO of General Motors and personally call the mayor of Detroit to assure him that he had no plans to move the company's head office out of the city."

The 2001 Patriot Act has enabled Obama's version of Orwell's Thought Police to spy on and investigate anyone, with flagrant invasions and restrictions on private property and personal rights. The country's land uses, architectural innovation and real estate economics are being strangled by planning and zoning regulations and by the 679-page uniform building code that has been adopted by most municipal and county governments.

Similarly, liberty is garroted by the Gestapo-like tactics of Attorney General Holder's Justice Department and by the Homeland Security bureaucracy; by the 75,000 page tax code of the Internal Revenue Service; by the unconstitutional confiscation of private property rights by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Americans with Disabilities Act and hundreds of other bureaucracies, laws and rules; by the confiscation and sales of real estate, vehicles and bank assets on mere suspicion that those properties or people have been involved with illegal drugs – with no indictments, no arrests, no convictions; refusing to enforce federal immigration laws and then suing several states that were enforcing those laws; and so on, to a thousand similar unconstitutional government outrages. All this and much, much more has occurred during one lifetime. The Big-Government Democrats have said they "never want to waste a crisis". Each one is another opportunity to expand their power and control over private lives and assets. Each one is an opportunity to take money from productive citizens to give to less productive ones, making more voters who are dependent on the Democrats.

When anything changes slowly over a long period, the magnitude of the change is not readily apparent except to different generations, and even then not unless the previous generations are reminded of earlier patterns. One new "program" at a time, one new regulation, one new tax, one new special benefit or gift to a favored political group, one new "safety net," one new bailout for individuals or businesses that failed to save for inevitable future problems and needs, for future unemployment and retirement, one new restriction or harassment of political opponents -- all have combined to bring us to 1984.

Our arrogant Big Brother, Barack Hussein Obama, is a formerly unknown community rabble-rouser who slid into office because he is half- black, reads teleprompters well, because people were tired of Bush and leery of McCain, because Big Brother and his supporters whined about slavery that ended 149 years ago, and because Big Media and The Party promoted a cult of personality. Then Obama was re-elected by a combination of lies, voting fraud, news media that filter and distort the news to support the liberal politicians, and an indifferent public, half of whom pay no income taxes and are primarily interested in how big a piece of the pork-pie they get.

Americans are so busy with their own lives - their work and play, bringing up their children, with their struggles to make all their payments to support lifestyles they often can't afford or don't need - that getting directly involved in influencing what is going on in our Oceania is lost in their struggles. Either they don't know what's going on, or what they know is wrong, or they think they have no ability to change things, or they simply do what the unions or their sacred political party says to do. Others, like many libertarians, are so disgusted with both parties that they either refuse to vote or they vote "on principle" for someone who has no chance of winning, helping to elect the worst candidate. Other votes are handed to the worst candidate by many potential participants just not getting actively involved in trying to elect the lesser of two evils.

The Big Government crowd did everything possible to get Big Brother re-elected. They have an extremely sophisticated organization that collects large and small contributions in exchange for a host of political favors, subsidies, free lunches and government pork, as well as getting big contributions and support from favored voters like union members, trial lawyers, rich liberals and big bankers. Big Brother has Attorney General Holder fighting hard to prevent secure voter identification requirements that might reduce the number of fraudulent votes the Democrats get from illegal aliens, dead people, felons and multiple-voters.

Politically, the United States has crossed the Rubicon. On November 6, 2012 Americans decided we are to suffer the expansion of the U.S. version of 1984's Oceania. One important subject not being discussed is the effect of that election on the Supreme Court, which is teetering on the edge of the cliff. If just one more liberal justice is seated, our Constitution will be thrown in the ashcan of history. 2012 was the election of a lifetime, our opportunity to turn back the tide that is bringing us the police/welfare state, and to start the difficult task of restoring our liberty and prosperity. Now we will have as good or bad government as we deserve. That election was not about Obama vs. Romney, not Democrats vs. Republicans. It was about whether the government is there to serve the people or the people are there to serve the government.

The Obamacare fiasco - Obama's repeated lies and deception, and an increasing public realization that the Obama-Clouseau administration and Congress are incompetent - combine to open one last chance for an eventual return to normal. In the months leading to the 2014 elections, if an aroused public will give control of the Senate to younger, competent Republicans, clean the troglodyte Republican leadership out of the House and replace its control with responsible, competent Republicans, Big Brother's potential damage during his last two years of unconstitutional reign would be reduced and a return to a competent presidency in 2016 made possible. Without that, our future is Orwellian, back to 1984.

DISABILITIES AND THE GOVERNMENT

One of our many forms of welfare never thought of as welfare is the private-sector spending mandated by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This particular welfare is different in that almost all costs are paid not by the taxpayers or private philanthropies, but by businesses forced to pay by government mandate, with no constitutional authority or compensation to the businesses affected.

Reasonable efforts by businesses to accommodate customers with physical disabilities are obviously good business policy, as are reasonable efforts to employ people who have some functional limitations, but to have the government dictate unfunded business policies, practices and expenses is not only an offensive police-state action but is clearly unconstitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that allows federal interference in most business matters, such as how businesses design their buildings and facilities, whom they must and must not employ and under what conditions, or with whom they may or must do business. In this case, Congress passed vague legislation -- as usual letting bureaucrats be the devils making the details so the elected congressmen cannot be blamed for the deviltry -- dictating nationwide business environments, policies and practices to benefit the "disabled," which the bureaucrats then arbitrarily defined and liberal judges have endorsed.

To compound the felony, California passed an absurd law that says practically everyone is, or could declare themselves to be, disabled, therefore entitled to special welfare provided and paid for by private businesses. While the federal ADA requires that a legitimate disability substantially limits one's ability to work or conduct daily life, the new California law requires only that the "disability" makes life or work more difficult. The stampede you hear are the trial lawyers in battle formation.

The ADA requires that a disability keeps someone from performing a wide range of jobs, but the California law requires only that a person can't do a particular job. The new law says, without `a smirk, that people can be considered disabled even if their "disability" can be corrected, such as near-sightedness.

That kind of bureaucratic hubris is common. Recall the details-deviltry when Congress gave the EPA authority under the Clean Water Act to regulate the navigable waters of the United States. The EPA, with a straight face, defined those navigable waters as any dry wash. Liberal courts upheld that outrageous definition for years on the ludicrous basis that any surface water might eventually reach a navigable river. However, to the dismay of environmental radicals, the Supreme Court has ruled that some limits can be placed on the federal government's enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

When Congress avoids possible criticism by passing broad-brush legislation that lets bureaucrats and liberal judges write the laws, the result is inevitable. The public will have to get involved if they want to stop this kind of chicanery, but if they rely on the news media for their information, they often won't know about future problems until the legislative and judicial process is completed, and then it's usually too late.

INTEGRITY VS. ADVOCACY IN POLITICS AND JOURNALISM

Essentially, there are two kinds of people \-- those who are trying to be honest, fair, decent and considerate of the greater good, and those who are simply out for what they want regardless of how it affects others.

How would you rate politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and "civil rights" attack dogs? They often advocate or act according to their personal preferences and opinions or those of a particular group, lying and deceiving, ignoring the interests of the general public. Consider the politicians and left-wing journalists who consider every political and economic matter only as it affects ethnic minorities. What outcry would there be if Caucasians evaluated every proposed action only by its benefits to white people? Consider the businessman who reduces every political and economic question to how it benefits or harms his particular business, the church member whose measure of every proposal is whether it is consistent with his religious beliefs, the union member whose only criterion for acceptability is how it benefits unions, and so on. The pattern is also seen on boards and committees where persons appointed to establish policies or consider problems of the organization strive only to promote their own interests or preferences.

While this is a common tendency, and many politicians see it as the way their system is supposed to operate, this is another case where studying the examples of our founding fathers is useful. There were many substantial and rancorous disagreements in planning and organizing a new nation, but they were not about whether the farmers, the rich, the poor, the Episcopalians or the Roman Catholics should get more favorable treatment or more government handouts. The disagreements were over the best way to make the individual states function as a nation - for all the people. They weren't Obamas, Pelosis or Reids, playing their political games of stonewalling and preventing even consideration of proposed legislation while piously proclaiming they were "protecting the working man" or some other segment of the country.

Persons in positions of public trust, and that includes journalists because of the quasi-public nature of journalism and their influence on the public, have a great responsibility to consider all the people, not just their particular favorites. To reduce every matter to whether it is good or bad for one group or another or agrees with their personal opinions is a clear abdication of their moral and ethical responsibilities to the public.

One result of the irresponsible conduct of many news people is that the public sees exaggerated portrayals of the size and legitimacy of groups favored by the media. Objective reports of the percentage of homosexuals in the U.S. population are only four or five percent, but the continual trumpeting of the liberal news media on homosexual matters make it appear more like 40 percent. Our Jewish population is less than two percent but seems much higher, partly because of their exceptional accomplishments but probably more because of their dominance of Hollywood, their numbers in Congress and their powerful, well-funded political lobby. Aided by many liberal journalists, some Jewish groups continue to use the Holocaust in seeking special benefits for Israel and Jewish interests, while some blacks and their often self-appointed advocates continue to play the slavery card 150 years after slavery ended, promoting continuing special treatment and benefits. In both cases, the news media provide them with free advertising and support.

Once upon a time, reporters asked, and read, and dug, and talked, and asked again and then wrote about the facts they had learned. Commentators like H.L. wrote articles and essays on their opinions and what they thought we should do or not do, but reporting was reporting facts; commentating was opinion and was identifiable.

Not now, in many cases. We have the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and a hundred other papers, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and NPR all pretending, and many even honestly believing, that they are reporting objectively, but they are often stealth commentators, the propaganda division of the Democrat party, lap dogs instead of watch dogs. Recent surveys by both the Pew Research Center (a liberal organization) and the Gallup Poll confirmed what many other surveys and informal inquiries had concluded -- that today's world of U.S. news journalism is dominated by liberals. Undoubtedly some of them make a sincere effort to be objective, but when almost everyone in any group thinks left or right, it is bound to affect their view of where the middle is and thus cause them to slant their reporting one way or another.

Almost the only news people today who are more or mostly conservative or libertarian in their personal beliefs are the radio talk-show hosts, but most of them are candid about their opinions. The stealth commentators of today pretend to be reporting but consciously or unconsciously select, filter, slant, emphasize, gloss over, color and hide parts of what they call news, persuading the innocent that they are reading or hearing objective reports. When we pay for news, we deserve factual, objective news.

URBAN SPRAWL: IS THAT BAD?

The American housing dream has been to live in a single home on its own land in a suburban location with enough space for privacy, peacefulness, entertaining and outdoor recreation. By clever semantics and distortion of facts relating to suburbs and low-density housing, that dream has been sullied by "environmentalists," urban planners, zoning ordinances and pointy-headed liberals. They call it "urban sprawl," and to most people who haven't studied it, urban sprawl is evil -- a long four-letter word.

Much of the world shares the American dream, a separate house in uncrowded suburbs of cities. In most countries that is economically, geographically and politically impossible But for Americans of modest means it is a reality, but the anointed, annoying elites who would control our lives fight to deny Americans suburban home ownership, crowding them into downtown anthills.

By 1996, at least 19 states had established growth management laws, and dozens of cities and counties had adopted urban growth boundaries. Portland, Oregon is the case study usually cited to certify the wisdom of so-called "smart growth" policies, whose high priests worship at the altar of high-density urban development, mass transit and light rail, and with land use boundaries to prevent development beyond specified dense areas. Portland has been preaching and practicing "smart growth" long enough for results elsewhere to be predictable.

After Portland's urban growth boundary was established, land prices skyrocketed, as they have in other growth-boundary cities. Portland went from being one of the country's most affordable housing markets in 1990 to one of the five least affordable in 1996. Between 1986 and 2001, traffic congestion in Portland-Vancouver ranked highest of 75 cities, with peak travel time up 33.3 percent.

Metro, the multi-county regional planning authority, spends more than half of the region's surface transportation money on light rail, even though it will carry only one percent of the traffic. Metro admits to forecasting that after all their plans are in operation, auto travel will be reduced by only four percent, time wasted sitting in traffic will be four times as much in 2020 and that its plan will increase smog by 20 percent. "Congestion," says Metro, "signals positive urban development... relieving congestion would eliminate transit ridership."

The answers to freeway congestion are simple: Stop fighting suburban development, by zoning changes that make it easier for suburbs to develop their own economies and employment opportunities, and building more freeways rather than expensive mass transit that is notoriously ineffective except in a few gridlocked areas like New York City and San Francisco. In 2000, the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey said that commuting time actually fell between 1969 and 1995, in spite of a dramatic growth in vehicle miles. The reason is urban sprawl . Unfortunately, suburban planning and zoning regulators often discourage the commercial zoning that fosters suburban employment opportunities and reduces commuting to urban centers.

The world's megacities are failing, sclerotic, congested, inefficient and unhealthy places to live and work. Consider Mumbai, with a population of almost 20 million, more than 64,000 human ants per square mile. In the last 40 years, the proportion of its people living in slums has grown from about 15 percent to 50 percent. The U.S. is embracing the efficient city. The big gainers recently have been cities with 100,000 to 2.5 million residents, business-friendly Texas cities and areas like Raleigh-Durham with moderate real estate prices. Often they are also broken into more manageable and livable cities that can utilize the resources of a great city but combine those with suburban low-density living close to work, shopping and entertainment.

Urban sprawl, done properly, is good.

THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY

The liberals, the touchy-feely crowd and the often self-appointed advocates of the ethnic minorities and other "underprivileged" groups do a splendid job, aided by the predominantly liberal news media, of convincing the public that ethnic minorities are abused and are not treated fairly. "Fairly" to them means more than fairly, giving them special privileges and handouts paid by those who actually pay income taxes.

It isn't fair that more whites than blacks have college degrees. It isn't fair that the average white earns more money than the average black or Latino. It isn't fair that until 149 years ago most blacks in this country were slaves, sold by other blacks, then bought and sold by whites and Arabs.

The cold heartless truth is that life isn't fair. Life is a struggle. Nature's design involves perpetual competition. Life is an endless sequence of competing individuals, groups and sub-groups of creatures and organisms, each situation involving different dynamics and interactions. Each of us is continually in situations where we are either in the majority or the minority, and we have to do what we can to affect the group's actions in the direction we would like them to go. In most situations, the majority rules.

There are persistent attempts by and for one U.S. ethnic group, the blacks, to claim a right to monetary and other compensation for the abuse and exploitation of negro slaves in times long past. Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Welch, Italians, Irish and many other immigrants also faced poverty, distress and hardship when they emigrated to the United States and other countries, but those groups and their descendents don't demand compensation. If anyone deserved compensation, it was the slave owners, discussed later. Aside from the impossible task of identifying which blacks were involved and to whom compensation should be paid, where could it end? What about the Chinese slaving away building our railroads and doing our laundry by hand, excluded from citizenship, and all the other immigrants and citizens who were struggling to survive?

The new boy in school, the foreigner who can't speak the language, the kid from across the tracks who wants to join a game, the Catholic in a protestant neighborhood, the new college student at a fraternity rushing party – all have to prove themselves worthy of being accepted members of those groups.

Earnings differences, in the long run, reflect differences in individual productivity. What anyone can produce in saleable goods or services will usually determine what they earn themselves or what someone is willing to pay them to be an employee.

Slavery was not unique to the United States; in fact there is still some of it in the world. The slave traders were mostly Africans selling other Africans, and there were probably as many African slaves sold in Europe and the Middle East by Arab slave traders as in the United States and elsewhere. More slaves were sold in Brazil than in the U.S.

Many wonder why slavery was not abolished in the U.S. long before it was, but they don't understand the economics involved. The southern United States was an agricultural economy, much of it cotton and tobacco, labor-intensive farming. For much of the pre-Civil War period, land was available inexpensively so they opened up new land, sometimes depleted the soil with intensive farming and moved to cheap, fresh land. The largest expense and capital investment was for labor. A good slave often cost $500 or $1,000, a fortune in those days. To free the slaves by government fiat without compensation was a terrible economic and legal destruction, a confiscation of private property without the compensation required by law.

In their endless efforts to buy votes and political contributions, the career politicians are always trying to attract new groups of voters, or to benefit old groups, by providing special favors, subsidies or handouts. This means the well-organized lobbies -- the farmers, the unions, the seniors, the lawyers and the ethnic minorities -- always get special attention and treatment from the politicians. The ethnic minorities and their advocates are in danger of shooting themselves in the foot when they push demands for special favors. Eventually sympathy is lost for crybaby minority groups that continually argue for special favors and treatment. The vote-seeking career politicians who pander to "underprivileged" and other special interest groups risk losing the support of the majority of the constituents they represent.

The other side of the Tyranny of the Majority equation shows that the majority needs to act responsibly. Congress and the White House are a case in point. The last few years have shown a resurgence of public interest and participation in political and economic action. We have also seen a disconnect between Congressional legislative adventures and public sentiment as measured by surveys. Congress and the White House have in some cases acted arrogantly, bulldozing legislation when surveys showed a high percentage of the public opposed to it.

After the November 2008 election, new President Obama and the Democrats obviously decided that their five-percent presidential victory and control of Congress gave them a blank check to legislate and spend at will. The result was a series of unbelievable "emergency" legislation that even the Congressmen hadn't read before they were passed and signed. The emergency was not that the vast amounts of money had to be spent immediately "to rescue the economy and create jobs," which is what Obama and his toadys said, but it didn't work. The emergency was just to get it passed before proper consideration. The money mostly went to political favorites and the economy is still sick, five years later. The emergency was to pass the legislation before the public and even Congress learned what was in the legislation.

The Obama gang said they should never let a crisis "go to waste", so one good crisis followed another. After their stimulus, which only stimulated the growth of government jobs and spending for unions and other favored supporters, they told the public the sky would fall in if we didn't hurry and pass a Cap and Trade bill to try to lower carbon emissions, at great expense to the American economy. In considering such proposals, Congress showed a stunning disregard for our nearly inconceivable national debt and our Constitution. House Speaker Pelosi famously said, "We need to pass [Obamacare] right now so we can find out what's in it," some 2,700 pages with many hidden booby traps unrelated to medical care.

The majority Democrats in the Senate and President Barack Hussein Obama have obviously forgotten they work for the citizens. The Democrats in Congress are not a majority; they are a tiny minority of the public. Obama said his second election is a mandate to convert the country to his socialist/fascist dream, but his 2012 two percent election majority is not a mandate, and it was enabled by false government statistics on unemployment and inflation, by biased news reporting by the media, and by voting fraud.

The majority are the voters, and they are angry that the politicians in Washington continue to bully and deceive them. The November 2, 2010 elections should have been a wake-up call to Obama and his gang, but he is making the same noises as before: spend and spend, tax the "rich" who create the jobs, and add more government control of our lives, mostly done by his radical anti-business cabal who have almost no real-world, private sector experience. The geese are squawking, and their children and grandchildren are waking up to their dismal future prospects.

Sometimes the majority aren't a majority at all -- just a tyranny.

IF IT'S POLITICAL AND SENSITIVE, SPEAK UP!

Most civilized people try to avoid controversies when talking with others about such non-rational matters as religion, music, art, poetry and politics -- except in Italy and Greece, where shouting matches are the national sport. The natural tendency to avoid offending others has been magnified by the current "politically correct" mandates of liberals, including many educators and, of course, the hungry trial lawyers. According to them, nothing may be said which might possibly offend or belittle someone else, unless that person is a white male or "rich". They are sub-human and despicable, except on the 15th of April when they are permitted to deliver enough of their gold to finance the year's Roman circuses.

Political analyses are often more emotional than rational. Upon hearing political rhetoric, most people do not check the facts but instead filter new facts and ideas through their previous experiences, pre-conceived opinions and personal beliefs, often rejecting contrary facts as outright lies. People tend to believe what they want to believe -- whether or not the government should try to solve our personal and business problems, take money from more productive people to give to those who are less productive, take money from Americans to give to the less successful countries of the world, and so on.

While people have a right to their own personal beliefs, public policy issues deserve objective analysis. If people want to give all their assets to some kooky church and live in a tent in Korea, that is their right, but if they want Congress to take half of certain citizens' income or assets to give to other citizens or illegal aliens, it is time to speak up -- even shout -- in protest, to Congress and everyone else, or resist in other ways. Such "redistribution" is just political theft of private assets.

There is a shipload to shout about. The magnitude of current governmental intrusions, harassment and outright confiscation of individual, business and property rights is not generally recognized, actions usually taken in the guise of good government. Good for whom? Not the victims.

The list of political abuses is long and outrageous. For example, the so-called wetlands laws define "wetlands" as any parts of private property that hold water for something like 30 days, declaring them to be needed to propagate mosquitoes, sucker fish and other important critters, and prohibit the development and productive use of those private puddles and swamps by the owner. He must continue to pay taxes, mortgage payments and maintenance costs but he will receive no compensation for the confiscation, in violation of our Constitution's requirement for just compensation for any governmental takings. Such illegal takings, say the perpetrators, are "for the public good".

A more publicized abuse took place when Slick Willie Clinton misused the authority permitting a president to establish national monuments at archeological sites. He issued an unconstitutional executive order to prevent coal mining in a huge area of southern Utah with no discussion with the state of Utah, the communities involved or with Congress, which has the only legal authority to take such action in large areas. Those who have studied his action say the real reason was to eliminate competition in low-sulfur coal for James Riady, convicted for illegal contributions to Clinton campaigns. The Indonesian Riadys reportedly have large interests in low-sulfur coal and the Utah sources would compete with theirs. Less publicized was the equally outrageous case of a western rancher who was convicted for shooting an adult grizzly bear that threatened him in his yard.

The IRS, DEA and local police routinely abuse rights to privacy and property. They often use anti-drug laws to confiscate bank accounts, real estate, vehicles, aircraft and all sorts of private property with no due-process and no court action, based on the mere suspicion that those properties may somehow have been involved in illegal activities. It is not necessary that the property owner himself have any knowledge or involvement in the suspected activities, and in some cases no one has even been charged with a crime. Many cases simply involve the police wanting to confiscate and use the money or sell the property involved and keep the proceeds. These thefts, usually done without a court order, have become a major source of revenue for governments at all levels.

Government spending is another outrage. The principle that masks government spending and drives it up relentlessly is concentrated benefits to each lobby and spreading the costs to many taxpayers. Add those small-dollar increments together, year after year, encouraged by our career politicians maintaining a constituency of grateful voters and contributors for future elections, and it is obvious how we got to where we are. Correcting it seems easy. Most people favor lower taxes -- until someone proposes to reduce a subsidy or benefit that affects them or their business.

The time has come for all Americans who are concerned to speak up clearly, forcefully and publicly against massive, intrusive and expensive government. Individual, family and local control and responsibility are the American way -- the way to do it better for less money and without Big Brother's bloated, bureaucratic harassment, control of our lives, and confiscation of our income and assets. Last year's unbelievable Obama deficit was $1.4 trillion. That is irresponsible legislating, bordering on insanity.

On the personal level, colleges, governments, liberal courts and even some businesses are telling employees and the public what they may and may not say and write. In August 1913, municipal employees workers in Seattle were advised that the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" are potentially offensive and may no longer be used in official documents and discussions because some residents are not citizens and some ethnic minorities might be offended. In March 2012, the New York Post reported that city tests avoid words like dinosaur, birthdays, Halloween and dozens of other topics because they could possibly evoke "unpleasant emotions" for some students.

Enough of this nonsense! It is not only impossible to prevent offending someone, somehow, somewhere, many people need to be offended because their actions are so abominable or their sensitivities so puerile. But there are good and bad ways to speak up. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan knew how to smile and keep friends but still say what needed to be said. Everyone can do it if he is willing, but one way or another, if we don't, America as we have known it is doomed to be a stagnant, repressed police state. The price of not speaking up in fear of offending someone is too high.

LIBERALS vs. CONSERVATIVES

Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. - Sir Alexander Fraser

Once upon a time in America, liberals and conservatives in Congress debated proposed legislation among themselves and with the Executive branch, but most of the time they seemed to be working toward what they thought was good for the country. Barry Goldwater and Jack Kennedy were friends – friends who saw the world through very different lenses, but who seemed primarily concerned about preserving a great nation. Now it's different. Mark Steyn said, "This isn't the Democrat party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of the Woodstock hippies."

Now it's all about power, control of legislation, regulators and court decisions, about career politicians doing whatever it takes to get elected and re-elected and re-elected. We see the cancerous pork-barrel earmarks both parties legislate with the bipartisan understanding, "You get your pork, and I get mine." When honest congressmen eventually leave office, they say Washington and the Congressional Pork Club are truly different from the real world.

LIBERALS vs. "LIBERALS"

To many academics and historians, "liberal" means classical liberal, the opposite of the present meaning. Classical liberalism stresses individual freedom, individual property rights, free markets and constitutional limitations on government. Today those are the doctrines of conservatives and libertarians, not the liberals. They hate the label liberal, wanting everyone to use their euphemism progressive, implying progress.

Today's liberals generally favor more government controls and regulation, higher taxes, and welfare programs to take earnings and assets from the "rich" to give to the "poor" and to political donors, seniors, unions, farmers and other favored political groups. They also want to revise the Constitution, not by its legal amendment procedures but by judicial "interpretations", legislating from the bench. They want to replace free markets with markets regulated by politicians and bureaucrats protected by Civil Service rules. Obama legislates by executive orders and a spineless Congress doesn't challenge him. Ronald Reagan said, "One of the hardest things in a government this size... is to know that down there, underneath, is that permanent structure that is resisting everything you're doing."

THE CONSTITUTION UNDER ATTACK

For 150 years, the U.S. Constitution held firm, with Supreme Court decisions generally interpreting the wording and original intent of those who wrote it and its subsequent amendments. Starting in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt's administration and Democrat congresses began changing the Constitution illegally through legislation, much of which was later approved by liberal judges.

The Constitution is very clear about federal powers; they are very limited and very specific. All unspecified powers are reserved to the individual states and to the people. Probably 80 percent of the federal laws passed since 1933 are unconstitutional but approved by a succession of liberal courts "interpreting"-- changing the intent -- of the Constitution.

The courts have accomplished this in two principal ways. They have changed the intent of the commerce clause from commerce between states to mean all commerce. One such Supreme Court decision involved a California citizen growing marijuana in his back yard for his own, physician-prescribed medical use, which California permits. The Supreme Court used the commerce clause to convict the man, claiming in effect that any commerce or activity affects interstate commerce.

The courts have also taken the wording of Article I Section 8 of the Constitution "... to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States..." to mean "... provide federal welfare payments to the poor and to other politically favored groups with money taken by taxes from other citizens." They have done this despite the words of founding father James Madison: "I cannot undertake to lay a finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress expending, in object of benevolence, the money of their constituents." That was the general understanding and agreement of the founders.

A DANGEROUS DYNAMIC

Another disturbing aspect of our current situation is the precipice we stand on, with almost 50 percent of our citizens and millions of illegal aliens paying no income taxes. Those freeloaders have no problem with enormous spending in Washington as long as they get some of it. The history books are full of cases of prosperous nations going down the toilet when politicians remained in power by stealing the assets of the productive people to give to a larger number of favored, less-productive groups of voters.

Liberals justify such legislative theft by saying it's not fair that Peter makes twice as much money as Paul, so the government needs to "redistribute" Peter's income. To conservatives, that makes no more sense than to say Tiger Woods is unfair because he's a better golfer and earns millions playing golf. Instead of robbing Peter to pay Paul, conservatives want to encourage and assist Paul to become more productive, successful and independent. If Paul were truly unable to help himself, conservatives would have his family, community and charitable organizations provide needed assistance, not federal taxpayers' money mishandled by distant bureaucrats and self-serving politicians. While most conservatives want equal opportunities for everyone, many liberals and their allies demand equal outcomes for everyone. Unfortunately, most liberal politicians and many conservatives will say or do almost anything to accomplish the objective of the moment, and that often involves punishing success and rewarding failure.

NEO-CONSERVATISM

One group of conservatives who are anything but are the so-called "neo-conservatives." Neo-cons want American taxpayers to support a broad array of adventures around the world, acting as the world's police and welfare agencies and trying to promote democracy in undemocratic countries. Not only are many of their targets not capable of sustaining democracy, they don't want it. Many have always had a strong leader or group of leaders and they flounder when they are given freedom. Many of our neo-con artists would have us turn our sovereignty over to world courts and a gaggle of Third World, anti-American countries who would have equal votes in the United Nations on issues involving international disputes, decisions and criminal trials of our citizens.

POLITICAL REALITIES

Liberals and conservatives think differently, right-brain thinkers and left brain. Conservatives tend to reach conclusions and positions based on facts, while liberals, particularly in the news media, rely more on emotions and tend to filter out the facts that don't support their preferences: "Oh, those are all lies!" It's like the Far Side cartoon:

What we say to the dog: "OK, Ginger! I've had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!"

What the dog hears: "Blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Ginger, blah blah blah blah blah."

So what can be done? Both liberals and conservatives should recognize and respect their different philosophies, acknowledge facts rather than discredit them as lies, and accept the rule of law. When either side doesn't agree with a law or proposed legislation, our legal system, common sense and decency require that they try to gather the support for accomplishing the desired legal or policy change. Now it's often lie-cheat-steal, slander the opposition, game the system, promote voting fraud, do anything to gain and keep power. The eye-gouging, divisive political warfare is counter-productive and is poisoning our personal relations and our political system.

What is the result? Congress and the Obama Administration are an embarrassment, a scandal-ridden gaggle of power-mad distributors of pork to their favored groups. Polls show public opinion of Washington is abysmal, and they have earned it. "Public service" has become "public disgrace." Obama is more than an embarrassment; he and his administration are corrupt and incompetent. All previous presidential administrations had close to 50 percent of their cabinet and top people with at least some real world – private sector – experience. Only eight percent of Obama's top people have private sector experience, and his administration's performance shows it.

President Bush was also an embarrassment, expanding government, mismanaging wars and, among other things, arrogantly ignoring congressional mandates to enforce border control and other Federal immigration laws. For five years Obama has continually violated his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, has spent enormous amounts of borrowed money stolen from our grandchildren, has discarded the best medical-care system in the world, and apologizes to the world for the United States being such a terrible nation. All that is somewhere between malfeasance and treason.

PERSONAL DIFFERENCES

A book by Peter Schweizer, Makers and Takers, documents many facts and surveys by different organizations. A sample of the differences shows some of the surprising differences:

* Academic studies have found that those on the political left are five times more likely to use marijuana and cocaine.

* General Social Survey found that 69 percent of those who called themselves "conservative" said it was important to them to have children while only 38 percent of liberals agreed.

* World Values Survey found that most conservatives believe that preparation and the work ethic cause success while most liberals believe it is merely luck. Pew Research found that 80 percent of Republicans believe people can get ahead by working hard but only 14 percent of Democrats do. Another survey found that three times as many conservatives said they were satisfied with their financial lot, while earning the same income as the liberals. A study by General Social Survey asked, "What is more important to you, work or leisure?" Liberals, 42 percent said leisure; conservatives, 15 percent said leisure. Liberals were found to be three times more likely to say they were dissatisfied with their jobs, and somewhat more likely to be dissatisfied with their marriages. Another study found liberals two and one-half times as likely to resent the success of others.

* Professor James Lindgren of Northwestern University School of Law said data showed those who are strongly in favor of "redistribution" of wealth are more unhappy and envious, more resentful, less tolerant of others and more likely to have racist views than those who oppose redistribution. He said the liberals are "A pretty miserable lot."

* Garrison Keillor: "Liberalism often begins and ends with sympathy for the helpless. It's more about feeling than action – just fine sentiments", unless they can do it with other peoples' money.

* A study by the University of Southern California and Southern Illinois University asked, "How much would you be willing to help people facing economic difficulties?" Liberals wanted to help everyone equally, drunks and loafers alike. Conservatives wanted to treat people differently, depending on whether they were willing or able to work. Liberals rejected the notion of individual responsibility.

* Schweizer said, "Liberals are notoriously stingy with charitable gifts. Al Gore, 1997: income $197,729; $3,377 donations. John Kerry, 1995: $126,179; zero donations. Ted Kennedy $461,444; donations 1%. Robert Reich: 0.2%. Wealthy FDR in the destitute 1930s: 2-3%."

* On their 2004 IRS 990 PF form , the Jesse Jackson Foundation reported $964,000 in contributions received. Their only charitable activity was $46,000 donated to two colleges, but $84,172 was spent on a "gala celebration in honor of Jesse Jackson."

* World Values Survey found that modern liberalism creates an atmosphere where lying, cheating and dishonesty become more acceptable. Bill Clinton's lies are well reported and several pages of Schweizer's book discuss the outright lies in the personal biographies written by Joe Biden, Tom Harkin, San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, Al Gore and others.

* Another survey found conservatives three times more likely to say it would be "humiliating to receive money without having to work for it." They also found liberals were much more likely to say it was justified to keep money you found that doesn't belong to you.

Liberals and conservatives don't just vote differently. They are different.

GLOBAL WARMING - A COMPREHENSIVE SCIENTIFIC REPORT

The Oregon Institute of Science & Medicine does research on a variety of scientific and medical subjects. They made an analysis of global warming arguments and the effects of human activities on climate, and particularly the effects of burning fossil fuels and carbon dioxide. After completing their analysis, they solicited petitions in support of their conclusions and so far have received signatures from 31,487 scientists directly involved or qualified in the field of climate studies. Those signatories are screened for scientific qualifications to express their opinions. The names of the scientists and their degrees are listed on the Institute's website, grouped alphabetically and cross-referenced by their states. The website page is http://www.petitionproject.org/

The undated letter of transmittal to climate scientists who are potential signatories, written by a past president of the National Academy of Sciences, the President Emeritus of Rockefeller University, follows:

Research Review of Global Warming Evidence:

Enclosed is a twelve-page review of information on the subject of "global warming," a petition in the form of a reply card, and a return envelope. Please consider these materials carefully.

The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds.

This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.

The proposed agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries. It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice.

We urge you to sign and return the petition card. If you would like more cards for use by your colleagues, these will be sent.

(signed) Frederick Seitz, Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. President Emeritus, Rockefeller University

The following is their abstract of the aforementioned scientific review:

"A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th and early 21st centuries have produced no deleterious effects upon Earth's weather and climate. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in hydrocarbon use and minor green house gases like CO2 do not conform to current experimental knowledge. The environmental effects of rapid expansion of the nuclear and hydrocarbon energy industries are discussed.

Many have made their living from what Viscount Matt Ridley calls "The Extreme Weather Scam", not just from research grants to prove man-made global warming by burning carbon fuel. Various reports have said that Al Gore has made several hundred million dollars personally through his Church of Global Warming. Now that the canard has mostly been exposed, his liberal group has taken to calling it "climate change". Since the climate is always changing, the anti-carbon attacks are slightly different, but it's the same fake blame game.

What produced this cult and why does it still attract a large congregation? It belongs in the class of emotional, irrational thinking: Don't confuse me with facts, I've already made up my mind. Years ago the Rev. Gore's doomsday prediction was for a 19-foot rise in ocean levels in two decades, wiping out many coastal cities, but so far it is almost too small to measure, an estimated two inches. Gore is running a close second to Barry Soetero for the 2014 Pink Panther trophy. A shipload of climate scientists entering Antarctica to study the supposed meltdown there became stuck in the ice on Christmas, 2013. An Australian ice-breaker sent to rescue them could not penetrate the ice and a heavy Chinese ice-breaker became stuck in ice six miles from the scientists. In January they were rescued by helicopter. As this goes to press, a third ice-breaker is attempting to reach the two ships still embedded in the global warming ice.

The current statements that "scientists agree that the climate changes are man-caused" are also spurious, with temperature variations well within the range of the typical 1,500 year climate cycle. Recently there has been some evidence that part of the planet's natural gas is not carbon-based, produced not by decaying organic material but by chemical action of other materials.

Mostly overlooked in the frantic political maneuvering are the statements by many of the objective (not the grant-motivated) scientists that the very slight warming trend during the last century does more good than harm, opening up more food-producing land on an over-populated planet.

It appears that the cultists' hatred of carbon-based energy, our main source, is just another way for the limousine liberals to control the lives of a public who are increasingly dependent on governments. Since increasing socialism has inevitably produced a stagnant, less productive economy, the Socialist/Democrats needed a new way to maintain their credibility and control. Eureka! Man-made global warming! Now largely discredited, the Democrats refuse to give up their new invention, as is Gore while he circles the globe in his carbon-burning jet to promote his alternative-fuel businesses, then returns to jet between his two carbon-fueled, carbon-electrified mansions.

THE BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA LEGACY

A Parvenu's Developing Record

Bypassing Congress, legislating from the White House and defying statutory and court-ordered requirements. Using threats of punishment, bureaucratic delays and refusals to issue approvals and permits to legitimate applicants in order to prevent them from doing things the law permits but that he personally opposes.

With no military experience and understanding, and after being elected on a platform of getting out of foreign wars, starting and prolonging wars in defiance of the constitutional requirement for congressional authorization, the latest an unapproved providing of weapons to the Islamist rebels in Syria, part of whom are al Queda members.

In 2012, when terrorists attacked the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya for five hours, Obama ordered a hold on military flights being sent to protect the embassy. The U.S. ambassador and three others were tortured, dragged through the streets and murdered. The Obama administration lied about the nature of the incident and their failure to respond, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "What does it matter?"

Administering by selectively refusing to enforce laws he doesn't approve, while issuing executive orders to legislate matters Congress has refused to pass, in defiance of his sworn oath of office to protect, support and defend the Constitution. A typical case: his executive order not to enforce certain immigration laws on deportation of illegal aliens.

Nominating persons with little or no business experience to cabinet positions that are responsible for managing the largest business in the world, persons who are socialists dedicated to changing our free enterprise system to fascism – government control of privately owned property.

Making appointments of other radical, unqualified persons to high positions, either by illegal "recess" appointments or by hiring new "czars" without Senate approval.

Instead of being the country's full-time chief administrator, being a full time political campaigner and vacationer at taxpayers' expense, always working to remake the country into his personal utopia, not to the citizens' preferences or in their best interests. When not campaigning, he and his family go on very expensive vacations at taxpayers' expense. One report said $1.4 billion was spent on Obama family vacations for 1911 alone.

Punishing success and thrift, rewarding failure. Rewarding political donors and punishing supporters of his political enemies, among other ways by using the awesome power of the IRS – alternately called Inquisition Reborn to Slaughter.

He and his congregation call any opposition to his radical mission racist, while he and they are the ones actually guilty of racism.

Restricting Christian and Jewish religious freedom while protecting and forgiving Muslim insults, threats, misbehavior and crimes.

Always blaming others for his Administration's scandals and corruption; he "just heard about it on the news".

Changing positions frequently and lying about facts, such as changing the methodology used in calculating the official government unemployment and inflation rates to produce the desired results.

His great pride and joy, his signature "achievement", was Obamacare – the [Un]Affordable Care Act. The Socialist/Democrats rammed it through Congress without reading it and without a single Republican vote. In October, 2013, after three and a half years and an estimated $600 million to design a website for people to sign up, his incompetent administration's website crashed on opening and it still isn't working, nor is Obamacare itself. In their desire to prevent people from knowing what others were paying, they created a monster that didn't work. Obama criticized that website to conceal his real failure, that Obamacare is a monstrous, expensive and unworkable attempt to nationize our medical care.

Above all, his legacy is a continual, concerted effort to remove the United States from the rule of law under the Constitution, from a land of opportunity and ownership to an Orwellian police/welfare state, with citizens and illegal aliens dependent on the whims of Big Brother and his dream regime, aided by illegal left-wing groups like ACORN and liberal billionaires like George Soros, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.

October 2013: When the U.S. debt ceiling was reached, he refused to negotiate terms of a solution, demanding that he be permitted to continue his outrageous spending. He then shut down "non-essential" government operations, including not just all national park and monument facilities to make the public feel the pain of his being forced to slightly reduce the rate of his increased spending. He roped off access to unmanned sites such as the Vietnam Memorial wall, preventing veterans from visiting it. He blocked the viewing sites at Mt. Rushmore, declared 1,100 square miles of Florida ocean off limits to fishermen, blocked access to privately owned and operated businesses on federal land, denied access to their homes of homeowners on federal land near Lake Mead in Nevada, closed the commissaries (grocery stores) on military bases but kept the golf course open where he plays golf at Andrews Air Force Base. These are petulant acts to punish the public for opposing him, conduct to be expected of a banana republic dictator, not a U.S. president.

A graphic portrayal of the Obama legacy is in The Pink Panther, starring Inspector Barack Clouseau-Obama and his sidekick, Cato-Biden.

When a small man casts a long shadow, the sun is about to set. \- Lin Yutang.

THE SOPHOMORE CIVICS CLASS

This semester's project was to organize and operate a federal government and to formulate policies and programs to solve the country's economic, political, medical, legal and social problems. To lead the project, the class agreed that it would be nice to elect the one black student, Brak Hussein, to be president. He had recently entered the school and would not tell anyone about his background, but he is a smooth talker and is multi-cultural, an important asset in any group. Brak immediately issued an executive order requiring all advertising with people to include at least one black person, and he appointed a committee to review all advertising and punish all violations.

The class's second action was to give one trillion dollars to the class's friends, the people and unions who had supported the students who wanted a new stadium, a new student union building with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and trips to see historic sites, museums, national parks, rock concerts, Disneyland, the Mardi Gras, and the Super Bowl. These trips were deemed to be essential to a broader education and to assure Brak's reelection. Since the school was in a deep recession and the faux government didn't have any money to give to their friends, Brak got the class to order its Treasury Department to issue Treasury notes and bills to borrow the money, and to have the class's Federal Reserve system print another trillion dollars, then have the Fed buy the Treasury bonds from itself. Isn't that neat? When asked who will provide the money needed to retire the Treasury bonds when they come due, Brak read a teleprompter statement saying they are still working on that.

Another piece of early legislation is called BrakCare, changing the class's medical care system to socialized medicine controlled by the government. Seventy percent of the class opposed this proposal because it would cost the taxpayers $10 trillion more, half the employers said they would terminate their private medical plans, and 45 percent of the doctors surveyed said they would close their practice when the plan goes into effect. However, Brak and the leadership panel he appointed (also called Brak's toadies) were able to force the legislation through before the class was permitted to read the 2,600 pages. Brak said they would like it, once they learned what it does. He was able to get enough votes for passage by giving special gifts and privileges to a number of undecided classmates, the Medical Association, insurance companies, the AARP and class Senator Mary Landrieu.

As president, Brak is automatically commander-in-chief of the class's military forces (the class opposition group calls him the Teleprompter-in-Chief). Initially he promised to get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan within a few months, but later he sent in more troops and also started bombing Libya and sending military "equipment" to Syria, Lebanon and Mali. When asked how he could start the Libya war without the approval of the class, he said, "Just dropping bombs and killing other people isn't a war. None of our own troops have been killed yet."

Another part of the class's plan is to expand the membership and power of the labor unions, since they provide a lot of money for school projects and elections. Brak said our teachers belong to a union and spend a lot of time and money working with Congress for special legislation to benefit teachers, and the unions are a big help in stuffing ballot boxes during school elections. Nancy Baloni, elected class vice-president, is a strong supporter of unions. When this reporter asked her about reports that her family's many businesses are all non-union, she said, "Are you kidding? Are you kidding?" and left the room.

The country has a serious immigration problem, with an estimated 11 million mostly unskilled illegal aliens competing with our own unskilled citizens for jobs. The president and Nancy proposed a simple solution: just make the illegal aliens U.S. citizens. The class turned that down, but Brak issued an executive order guaranteeing protection of the illegals from the police and providing equal treatment and benefits for them, as well as making their children citizens. He said these new people are needed as voters in the next school election because they promised to vote for Brak and Nancy. Brak said the ballots would be printed in both Spanish and English because most of the illegals can't read English. Many members of the class are reported to be unhappy with his plans, but Brak says the problem will be solved when the foreigners are more than half the population and control the country.

When he assumed the presidency, Brak was concerned about getting the class to approve nominations he wanted to make to handle different parts of what he calls his government. He solved that by directly appointing people called "czars," who report only to him. Neat, huh? Brak's teleprompter explained that czars, who we never had before, were needed immediately. He said that having the class consider all new legislation and appointments is too time-consuming, causes dissension in the class and prevents some of his plans from being implemented. He said executive orders are a much better way to legislate, leaving those matters for him to decide. Also, he is appointing only modern judges who don't feel limited by the Constitution and who like to legislate by court action.

Brak and Nancy, both wealthy, hate other wealthy people unless they're from Hollywood or provide money for school programs. They say other rich people are greedy and Brak has made elaborate plans to take money from the people he thinks have too much money, to give to the people who support their school projects and who will vote for them at the next election and also will handle the ballot boxes. This reporter asked Brak and Nancy if the people with more money don't have it because they work harder and save more of their money, and aren't they the people who make and run the businesses that provide the jobs? They said, "It is simply unfair for some people to have more than others! We need to 'redistribute' their money to the right voters."

Brak's Toadies have continued to borrow more money to stimulate the economy, but so far the only effect has been to stimulate the size and cost of their faux government. Brak says the economy is much stronger now but critics note that the cost of living has gone up but is falsely calculated, unemployment stays very high and is falsely calculated, the frightened banks and businesses are hoarding their money and not lending, investing or hiring, and new regulations on businesses are causing many to move business to more friendly countries with lower taxes and less regulation. However, the Toadys continue to print more play money to pay for their new programs, including fighting several distant wars to promote freedom and giving foreign aid to many other countries who hate us. The class has increased the national debt $6 trillion since starting their project, and some members are predicting national bankruptcy, but Brak and Nancy say the only problem is that the greedy businesses and millionaires won't spend their money to create new jobs.

Some class members pointed out the country's dependence on foreign oil from unfriendly sources. Regardless, Brak virtually stopped offshore and some domestic drilling and blocked necessary pipelines. The class held a court proceeding and ordered him to reopen offshore drilling, but he has defied the court order by having his oil czar refuse to issue new drilling permits. Because he predicted disastrous results from global warming and rising oceans, Brak proposed taxes on all carbon-based fuels and large subsidies to encourage the development of windmills, solar power and other expensive energy sources. Some class members pointed out that 30 years ago the same people predicted disaster from global cooling, and that now climate scientists say that the long-term danger is still global cooling, Brak responded that all the present problems including global warming and global cooling were caused by George W. Bush.

The class discussed many social matters and ordered freedom for homosexuals to marry and to play with each other in the armed forces. They also voted to encourage single mothers to stay on welfare by not letting any of their children's various fathers live with the family. They said fatherless homes provide a more modern lifestyle. They also voted to provide free medical care for pregnant girls in school, day care for their children and other expensive welfare. They also voted a letter of support for this year's prom queen, Heather Getme, who is seven months pregnant, praising her controversial selection as a nice thing to do. A California subcommittee headed by Governor Moonbeam Brown passed legislation requiring that homosexuality be taught and encouraged in all schools.

A local banker and former business owner, Wanton Bleed, offered to talk to the class about their project but was told they don't want any prejudiced information from business sources affecting their governing.

We told Brak that one critic said his ideas have been tried many times before and have never worked. He said he was sorry that he didn't have time to respond because he had an important campaign speech to give and then is taking his jumbo jet, Air Force One, to St. Andrews for an important golf game and then on to Africa to meet Michelle and the girls. They took Air Force Two for the vacation in Africa. Michelle was exhausted from last month's vacation at Martha's Vineyard, and he wanted them to meet their relatives in Kenya.

He said he hasn't had time to lead the class lately because of the demands of constant campaigning and of studying the best methods for organizing more community rabble-rousers. After they return from Africa he has plans for extensive vacationing. They will be working vacations; he needs time for planning next year's campaigning. He said his cabinet and czars are running the country anyway (one wag said the word is pronounced ruining), and his new teleprompters can make speeches by themselves.

When this reporter asked him about reports that his Africa trip will cost the taxpayers $100 million, he said, "That is nonsense, it's only $95 million." It will be interesting to see how the class project works out.

ELECTION DECISIONS, SLIGHTLY SIMPLIFIED

Once upon a time, people voted mostly as Democrats, Republicans, Socialists -- or "I don't vote." Many would vote a straight party ticket -- no individual candidates. As communications and education improved, that changed to some extent. Now a substantial percentage of the public listens to some of the filtered issues and mud-slinging and makes at least some effort to choose candidates rationally rather than by political party. Ideally, voters should compare the candidates' leadership, managerial and performance records, their strengths and weaknesses, their judgment, and most important, their integrity: do they tell the truth, are they consistent in their beliefs and positions, or do they change their positions simply to woo different audiences? Most important, they consider, "Can I trust him?"

For president, anything candidates say about specific issues should be secondary in selecting the most powerful person in the world. Where they stand on the proper role of government versus personal responsibility, on gun control, abortion, welfare, immigration, medical care and everything else should be secondary. "I like his position on that issue," or "I like the way he sounds or looks, debates and so on are all subordinate to the most important question: "Can I trust this person and his judgment?" The president of the United States has his finger on the trigger of the most powerful weapons in the history of the world and he is the most important decision-maker concerning the economic health and prosperity of the world. He must have the judgment, leadership abilities and record to draw 310 million Americans (and six billion other people) together as well as possible.

Integrity itself is obviously not enough, but without it, no candidate for Congress or other high office should even be considered. An unpredictable person with a history of lies and deceit, changing positions, circumventing laws and court decrees by refusing to enforce them, legislating by executive orders, and displaying personal arrogance identifies a loose cannon. Nixon, the Clintons, Obama and McCain are good examples. When voting, everyone needs to remember the awesome responsibility and power of this most important person in the world. Candidates who pass the integrity test should then be eligible for consideration based on the other matters involved in voting decisions.

MISLEADING POLITICAL EUPHEMISMS

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name – Chinese proverb

Some Ronald Reagan comments from those who knew him remind one of the coming presidential elections. The dramatic contrast between Reagan and the mountebank Obama suggest that the most effective way to beat the gang of radical America-changers is to plant seeds of distrust in the minds of voters, both those in the center and the larger segment who are politically on autopilot and who don't study candidates and issues. For five years Obama has failed to do a long list of things he promised to do and lied about many things on many occasions. He defies the Constitution and tries to run the country like a dictator in central Africa. An open microphone caught him telling the president of Russia that after the last (2012) election he would in his final term "have more flexibility" (to do things for Russia that the U.S. public opposed).

Recent Republican presidential campaigns have been a combination of weak candidates and poor campaigning. John McCain was nominated by the insiders because of his seniority in the Republican Party, in spite of being an unimpressive, unreliable candidate with a record of promoting bad legislation jointly with liberal Democrats. His strategy was mostly moving to the left to try to win elections by out-Democratting the Democrats. Gentleman Mitt Romney brought a water pistol to his gunfight with Obama.

Some wag said the Republicans are good at snatching defeat from victory. Like Reagan, candidates should aggressively educate the public on how free enterprise brings prosperity and how socialism and a big-government welfare state produce economic stagnation and poverty. In the last election, Romney and his campaign didn't engage in Obama-style character assassination and appeals to emotions as the Demogogues do but he talked only about the issues and what he proposed to do to start a climb out of the hole the liberal big-government gang of radicals have dug us into. Big mistake. This isn't a debate to the Democrats, it's a war to change the country into a welfare state of people and businesses dependent on the Democrats and do it any way necessary to win. Lying, cheating, making impossible promises – anything to win elections and control. The Republicans need to fight a war, campaign with a continuing barrage of facts about the Democrats' lies, broken promises, corruption, growth of government and regulations, reckless spending of money borrowed from our children and grandchildren, the terrible Obamacare and Dodd-Frank legislation, the Democrats' continuing attempts to raise taxes on everyone, not just the "rich", and to raise energy costs "to be like Europe". Most important, they need to explain how the Democrats' welfare state destroys the opportunities of the citizens, that the "free" welfare state ruins their personal opportunities to achieve prosperity and liberty. There is a treasure house of facts available on all those matters but the Obama puppets in the liberal news media effectively mute, distort and fail to report damaging facts, and often just lie.

Words form the basis for human communications and understanding. Consider the difference between identifying someone as a courtesan instead of a whore; a baby as a love child rather than a bastard; political spending as an "investment"; educating people, not ranting; explaining, not carping. Republican campaigners and many conservatives and libertarians are victims of the news media's use of words, often having been suckered into using the liberals' euphemisms, deceiving words and phrases - words that distort reality in favor of the liberals.

One example is using "progressive" instead of "liberal" or "left-wing." Progressive is a positive word, denoting progress, which certainly is not what the Democrats' sclerotic policies bring. The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and other conservative organizations defend the use of progressive, saying that was the historic word for liberalism, but that was a hundred years ago – Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – not progress in the current understanding of the word. Now everyone says we have "progressive tax rates" instead of "escalating tax rates" or "penalizing tax rates", with taxes assessed at increasing percentages as income increases. That makes it a penalty tax on success rather than encouraging success and productivity with flat tax rates. The only progress of the current "progressives" has been progressive destruction of the Constitution; failing to enforce our immigration laws, encouraging illegal aliens to take jobs from our underclass of poor blacks, Latinos and whites and putting a huge burden of free medical care on our hospital emergency rooms and on our many welfare programs.

The welfare-state liberals have been able to get almost everyone to use the terms "redistribution" and "transfer payments" instead of the honest description, "political theft of private assets" - taxes destined to buy votes and pay for pet social-engineering and expensive "renewable energy" tax-paid subsidies. The Obama gang distort reality by talking endlessly about fairness - " The top wage earners don't pay their fair share." The reality is the top one percent of earners pay almost 40 percent of total income taxes and the bottom 50 percent pay less than 4 percent, Republicans do a terrible job of discrediting the fairness lie. Obama's endless promises to increase taxes only on the "rich" are another deceit. Many of his actions have resulted in changes that filter down as increased hidden taxes and other increased non-tax costs to the middle and lower classes, and his pet Obamacare disaster increases taxes and medical costs at all levels. As Obamacare implodes and millions have their good medical plans cancelled, the Democrats call the cancellations "transitions to Obamacare".

When talking about the former tax code that had been in effect for 10 years, the Democrats and the liberal news media always described any deviation from the scheduled increase in taxes January 1, 2013 as "extending the Bush tax cuts" instead of "raising taxes on January 1". After a century of Marxists and liberals attacking capitalism, that word has a negative connotation to many. It would be more accurate to talk about free enterprise, liberty and economic opportunity. The same tarring has been applied to the "rich" and the "wealthy." When appropriate, it would be more accurate to describe such people as successful, more productive, innovative or prosperous.

Some other suggestions for better and more accurate semantics:

* Democratic party: use Democrat party or Democrat candidate. Democratic has a different, misleading meaning.

* Entitlements: use government or welfare payments, as appropriate. They are legislated payments; people are not entitled to them.

* Undocumented immigrants: use illegal aliens – that's what they are. We don't call illegal drug dealers unlicensed pharmacists. Thomas Sowell said, "I'm so old I can remember when people paid their own medical bills, illegal aliens were illegal aliens, and New Yorker cartoons were funny."

* Unemployment rate: use official or government unemployment rate, which is about one-half the actual unemployment rate.

* Poverty level: use official or reputed poverty level. A family of four with two children in school is entitled to subsidized breakfasts and lunches for the children if the family income is below $84,000. Our so-called "poverty levels" are ridiculous. Almost 50 million Americans are given "food stamp" debit cards, to protect them from the public knowing they are on welfare. Much of that food welfare is spent for liquor, cigarettes, luxury food or exchanged for cash.

* Quantitative or monetary easing: use printing money, or printing counterfeit money when appropriate instead of letting the monetary destroyers conceal the truth of the inevitable inflation that will destroy savings of the frugal people.

* Safety nets: use welfare payments or programs.

* Obamacare: Don't use Affordable Care Act -- it is not. Call it (Un) Affordable Care Act.

* Gays: use homosexual. Gay means happy, but they often appear to be unhappy and spoiling for a fight.

* Some words should always have quotation marks: "Stimulus." "News" media. "Entitlements." "Official" unemployment rate. "Official" cost of living index. "Official" poverty level.

* Why call a best-selling book "a New York Times best seller," giving free advertising to the Democrats' propaganda machine?

* Ben Bernanke: "Helicopter Ben", scattering printed money out of his helicopter.

* Barack Hussein Obama: Teleprompter Obama, or our Teleprompter-In-Chief.

* Spin: Use deception, falsehood, or lie.

It's a big mistake to let the deceivers control the language.

NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION: MORE TO GAIN THAN TO LOSE

Americans have a variety of opinions on what changes, if any, should be made to our immigration policies, but most agree on one aspect. For all practical purposes, the United States borders now are almost uncontrollable revolving doors. With 1,950 miles of Mexican border and 4,000 Canadian, even large numbers of military troops on the border could not stop illegal entries, and a large flow of tourist and business traffic in both directions must be allowed to cross as painlessly as possible.

It is generally accepted that, soon after many illegal aliens who are caught trying to enter and are taken back across the border, they embark on further attempts. (Some object to calling them illegal. The U.S. Code makes the first illegal entry a misdemeanor and each subsequent one a felony.) Most determined ones eventually get in, and Obama's unconstitutional policy is clear: once in, they are permitted to stay unless they commit another major crime.

Almost everyone is mincing around the only way - the unthinkable way - to provide what is absolutely necessary if we are to restore control of who is our country. Unless every person in the United States is required to have a biometric identification with one central data base, there is no way a police officer, employer, welfare case worker, airport security person or voting official can verify a person's identity and legality. Use of national identification should be strictly limited to those purposes, with heavy penalties for any other use, and the data base should include only the person's name, citizenship status and any criminal record or outstanding arrest warrants.

Libertarians, the ACLU and other self-appointed spokesmen for ethnic minorities, illegal aliens and many others warn of a loss of privacy any secure system would cause. In fact, we lost our privacy long ago. With Social Security numbers, debit and credit cards, bank accounts, credit reporting networks, retail sales records, Internet cookies and now outrageous, unconstitutional NSA and IRS federal snooping and unmanned drones, what "privacy" do they mean to protect?

Compare the possible loss of a little more privacy with these benefits:

* Reducing substantially the number of illegal aliens in the country, including Muslim terrorists.

* Increasing job opportunities and wage levels for our permanent legal underclass.

* Stopping voting fraud, especially rampant in large cities.

* Reducing crime by enabling the police to identify instantly criminals, illegal aliens and persons on overstayed visas. Now that varies from difficult to impossible.

* Improving security at airports and national borders, including the leaky Canadian border, a favorite two-step entry for foreign terrorists and others.

No two countries have as long a border with such a huge difference in per capita income as Mexico and the United States. The only way to make a substantial and permanent reduction in the flood of illegal aliens into this country is to remove the magnet that attracts them, jobs. A national identification system would allow employers to positively identify citizenship status and enable them to comply with current laws that forbid the employment of illegal aliens.

Now the competitive costs to employers who employ only citizens and legal immigrants are severe. Matthew Reindl, a Great Neck, Long Island employer, testified before Congress September 19, 2002. He said the typical cost for a legitimate employer to provide an employee $500 net per week would be $889 – 78 percent higher than if the employee worked for a non-complying employer or worked for unreported cash from one of many organized and unorganized hiring sites in his area. His employees say they can make more money working for such employers than they make working for him at higher wages, after taxes and other deductions.

The old Immigration and Naturalization Service rewarded law breakers and the new ICE has not changed that. Foreigners who follow the legal procedures to immigrate here may wait for years to get in, and if they are white they may never get in. But if they make it illegally, the old Clinton policy is still in effect under Obama: Do not arrest and deport them unless they commit a major crime in addition to their illegal-entry crime. Although the first illegal entry is a crime, for some inexplicable reason overstaying a visa isn't even a misdemeanor. Remember 9-11; several of those butchers were here on overstayed visas, but now our government is unable to identify and evict or imprison such people without an effective national identification system.

No country can afford to permit unauthorized persons to enter and roam at will. While a national system will not stop all terrorist attacks, we can and should try to prevent terrorists from entering our country and moving about freely. One cannot cash a check, board an airliner or even buy full-strength Sudafed over the counter without ID. Why should verifying your citizenship or right to vote be different? The U.S. is one of the few democracies in the world that doesn't require photo identification. South Korean, Brazilian, Italian and Malaysian ID cards contain fingerprints and information on distinguishing marks of the holder. In 2010 India started issuing 1.2 billion biometric ID cards, containing only the person's name, age and birth date as well as fingerprint or iris scans.

Beyond the need to identify and control illegal aliens, the other major problem is voting fraud. Our elections are tainted and our government is becoming more illegitimate each election cycle. Voting fraud is not just recent – Lyndon Johnson's first election to Congress, John Kennedy's 1960 presidential votes in Chicago. Clinton's 1994 "Motor Voter Act" made voter fraud even easier than welfare fraud. States are now required by federal rules to register anyone to vote who is applying with a driver's license and to accept voter registrations by mail with no identification needed. Government workers are forbidden to challenge new voting registrants. Anyone can request an absentee ballot for a "deadwood" voter and vote by mail. Some people vote in more than one place, some vote in place of others who have said they are not going to vote or who have moved away, some vote in place of dead people, and the law makes it difficult to purge the deadwood from the voter rolls.

Both parties have resisted purging deadwood voters from the rolls, but the Democrats have made voting fraud a major election tool. ACORN -- or whatever it calls itself now -- and other Democrat-friendly organizations are almost openly dedicated to voting fraud, with heavy political support from Democrats in Congress and from Obama, a former ACORN lawyer. A few examples of Democrat voting fraud in the November, 2012 elections: In 59 voting districts in the Philadelphia region, Obama received 100 percent of the votes, a statistical impossibility. In 21 districts in Wood County, Ohio, Obama received 100 percent of the votes where GOP inspectors were illegally removed from their polling locations, and 106,258 voted in Wood County, which had only 98,213 eligible voters. In St. Lucie County, Florida there were 175,574 registered voters but 247,713 votes were cast, and the National Seal Museum, a polling location in the county, had a 158 percent voter turnout. Obama won the 2012 election with Ohio being the swing state. According to the Columbus Dispatch, one out of every five registered voters in Ohio is ineligible to vote. Obama won in every state that did not require a photo ID and lost in every state that required one to vote.

Anyone who makes a serious attempt to identify voter fraud is denounced as racist, a standard Democrat attack. Addressing an NAACP convention in Houston June 11, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder railed against voter ID laws, and he was speaking to an audience that had to show photo ID to hear his address. He has vigorously attacked every attempt to crack down on voter fraud. Holder is Obama's point man in protecting Democrat voting fraud, suing states that require photo ID to vote, facilitating voting by criminals, hampering and preventing military voting and refusing to prosecute voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers. The 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act requires that Armed Forces personnel receive their ballots in time to vote in the upcoming federal election. Despite having several months to comply, Justice Department lawyers sat on their hands as 16 states and territories were caught in noncompliance with the MOVE Act. Called on their failure to act, Justice eventually signed a consent decree but some ballots were printed and mailed two weeks too late to be counted. Many say our country's chief law officer is a criminal.

Ironically, Mexico has a superior voting system with a central data base that makes voting fraud unlikely. Mexico requires a photo, a signature and a thumb-print to register. The voter's card has a photo, a hologram and a magnetic strip. A voter presents the card and his thumb-print is certified by a scanner. By comparison, voting in the U.S. is a Third World farce. Only 17 states require some sort of documentation to vote. A Rasmussen poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe that "people should be required to show a driver's license or some other form of photo ID before they are allowed to vote," but fraudulent photo IDs are readily available. Only a national identification system and central data base will prevent voting fraud, after careful verification of all voters and purging of the voter rolls.

The loudest objections to a secure identification system come from the people who would benefit the most, legal citizens and legal immigrants. The objectors point to our probable-cause protection from unreasonable search, but an effective national identification system protects the innocent by identifying law breakers. Aside from accuracy, the most important requirement of a national identification system is restricting its use to voting, employment and welfare eligibility verification, and police identification and airline security checks.

In addition to requiring secure IDs with one data base and cleaning up the voter rolls, suggestions on voter fraud include repealing the Clintons' Motor Voter law and outlawing absentee ballots except for invalids, military personnel and others temporarily absent from their voting district.

Honest people who have nothing to hide have nothing to lose and much to gain from a secure national identification system.

SOCIALISM, FASCISM AND CAPITALISM

In 1946 a demolished Germany was divided, West Germany remaining capitalistic and East Germany becoming part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In only one generation West Germany was rebuilt and became a prosperous First World country again, while East Germany became a poor Third World country, degenerating to stagnation and poverty. This one example should lay to rest all doubts about capitalism, but we find ourselves in continuing discussions about the virtues of failed forms of government and continuing First World progression toward socialism, recalling economist Milton Friedman's, " We seem to be saying that we know socialism fails and capitalism succeeds, therefore we need more socialism."

Words identifying different polities are bandied about frequently, often incorrectly. Socialism involves both government ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. Incentives to produce are lost. The riches go to the oligarchy in control and their bureaucrats. What is left goes to sharing misery equally, with the lack of incentives ensuring stagnation of the economy.

Fascism is usually thought of as goose-stepping Nazi troops and Mussolini in a comic-opera dictator pose. Correctly, fascism involves government control of citizens and their production but with private ownership of businesses and property. Capitalism involves private ownership and control of most of the means of production, operating in hope of profit. Individuals and groups provide the capital, management and labor to produce what they believe to be goods and services the public will buy at prices the entrepreneurs believe will provide a return on their investment and efforts.

In a capitalistic country, the legitimate role of government is just to make and enforce reasonable constitutional laws, not to control private enterprises but to provide the structure and environment in which they can thrive. That encourages innovation, the formation of enterprises to provide and improve goods and services, and increased efficiency and productivity through competition. Free markets also reward competitive, good products and services while punishing less competitive, less desirable ones and fraudulent and unethical businesses. Another term for capitalism is "free enterprise", and both terms are often used by anti-business, big-government forces to characterize capitalism as a system based on greed and exploitation rather than the way to achieve prosperity. Capitalism has made the United States prosperous, and it has even made countries such as Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore, without natural resources, paragons of prosperity.

Reasonable laws are necessary to encourage a fair playing field for supply-and-demand competition and to see that success is rewarded, not punished. But Obama and his gang seek control and add redistribution, their euphemism for political theft of private assets. Career politicians use government interference and taxpayers' money to favor certain groups of voters and contributors and to punish what Obama calls their enemies. They say their redistribution theft is fairer, with it they can control more voters, and the bigger the government, the more utopian our society will become. Wherever socialism has been imposed, it has failed, but the Democrats can't be deterred by history lessons; that thwarts their desire to control people.

Since the end of Reagan's second term, each administration and congress has imposed more fascist controls on private property and private lives. The trend has increased dramatically with Obama and Democrat control of the Senate. They have effectively taken control of the banks and other financial institutions, imposed government control of medical care on an unwilling public, spent trillions of dollars borrowed from future generations for a "stimulus" that didn't stimulate, giving it to unions and other favored groups, and obstructed efforts to develop our badly needed oil and gas resources. In doing so, he has awakened and enraged the nation.

In his first five years as president Obama orchestrated a three-ring circus of incompetent leadership. This should not be surprising, since he was elected president with no executive or leadership experience. His vague and deliberately concealed biography reveals him to have been a neighborhood machine politician whose previous associates are a gang of far-left, anti-American radicals determined to destroy the incentives that have made the U.S. prosperity the envy of the world. He has the responsibility of managing the largest business in the world but his cabinet are almost completely without private sector experience. To insulate his administration from constitutional and congressional control of his actions, he has assembled a gaggle of far-left "czars" to assist in running his fascist state – 37 of them on a recent count.

Five years after the housing bubble burst, the Obama team is doing more of the same things that caused the recession, including demanding that banks "renegotiate" loans where the bureaucrats think the collateral is worth less than the amount owed, with the lender donating the difference in the form of reducing the amount due.

Obama frequently crows about the numbers of "jobs created and jobs saved" by his gigantic "stimulus." There has been virtually no net creation of productive jobs, only many new government jobs that are merely another government expense, parasitic jobs that contribute little or nothing to the economy. "Jobs saved" is another fraud, another attempt to justify the huge spending for a stimulus that hasn't stimulated. You can't count "jobs saved" any more than you can count anything else that might have happened but didn't. How many tornadoes didn't California have last year? Instead of letting unemployed workers find some remunerative activity, Congress keeps extending unemployment benefits. Why work? Let the 50 percent of earners who pay income taxes support the unemployed. British legislator Daniel Hannan said, "You do not address the problem of poverty by giving money to the poor . Paying people to be poor has created more poor people in the U.S. and Europe."

Career politicians, always seeking votes, rush to "do something" about every problem. But the history of the stock market crash of 1987 is ignored by the liberals in Washington. The Reagan administration did not intervene, in spite of public pleas to do so. The market and economy not only recovered quickly but what followed was 20 years of economic growth and low unemployment.

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico revealed another element of Obama's fascism. With no constitutional basis for doing so, his administration did to a British company what Conn Carroll of the Heritage Foundation called "a shakedown of Godfather-like proportions .... a continuation of President Barack Obama's ongoing assault on the rule of law."

David Limbaugh wrote, "Just as Obama blamed Wall Street and exempted liberal government policies and quasi-government entities Fannie and Freddie for their complicity in the financial meltdown, just as he blamed doctors, pharmaceutical and insurance companies for soaring health care costs caused mostly by socialistic government policies... his plan is to shut down our conventional energy industry in favor of new, quixotic [and very expensive] alternative energy methods that will succeed only in propelling this nation even faster toward Third World status."

Obama, again "not letting a crisis go to waste," used the BP oil spill to declare a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf, even cancelling permits already issued. With unbelievable hubris, he pressured BP into providing $100 million to pay wages and compensation to the workers idled by Obama's moratorium. "All drilling must be stopped! It isn't safe!" The fact is there are over 30,000 wells in the Gulf alone, the BP spill is only the second one to amount to anything since 1982, and the last major drilling spill in U.S. waters was off Santa Barbara in 1969 – 44 years ago. A federal judge cancelled the moratorium but scofflaw Obama immediately announced another moratorium. There is always a natural oil seepage in the Gulf, nature takes care of it, and it is useful in identifying promising places to drill new wells. If we are ever going to reduce our dependence on oil from unfriendly foreign sources, we must develop our own resources while working toward developing economical alternative sources of energy.

The Commerce Clause of the Constitution has been turned into a fascist tool giving Congress and the Administration virtually unlimited power. By unconstitutional judge-made legislation, there is virtually no authority left to the states and the people when Washington decides to take control. Amazingly, for the most part the states do not defy or protest the unlawful federal usurpation of their authority but simply lobby to get as large a share of their own federal tax revenues as they can.

Barack Obama and his fellow liberals are determined to use every power available to them to increase government control, destroying the incentives that have made America prosperous. They are very successfully changing the country into what it was never meant to be -- a European-type welfare state, Orwellian fascism without the goose stepping.

STATES' RIGHTS AND NULLIFICATION

This is possibly the most important issue in the history of the United States. The continuing national drift toward centralized control has reached the point where the machinery provided by the Founding Fathers for maintaining a federation of independent states is broken. The Executive branch, including the permanent bureaucracy that President Reagan described as a powerful force that tries to sabotage much executive and Congressional work, combined with both Congress and the courts ignoring the Constitution, make a caricature of the federal political structure of the United States and the laws provided by the Constitution. That structure is a federation of independent states that delegated to the federal government specific limited, enumerated powers - mainly involving national security, foreign relations and interstate commerce - reserving all other powers to the states and the people. In a free society the people do not require constitutional authority to act, government does. Essential to understanding the intentions of the founders is the fact that the states voted separately to ratify the Constitution, not by a combined vote of all the people together.

As discussed earlier, the three clauses in the Constitution most frequently violated are the welfare, commerce and "necessary and proper" clauses. The welfare clause says, "... to provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." Franklin Roosevelt started the welfare-state snowball rolling in 1933 by interpreting the Constitution's word welfare to mean charitable welfare. Subsequent administrations and Congresses, seeking to buy votes and support, have greatly expanded that scam. The founders specifically ruled out that interpretation after much discussion, but now federal tyrants claim to be advancing the general welfare when they hand out welfare checks to politically favored voter groups. By appointing judges who were willing to change the original meaning and intent of the Constitution in order to approve the scam, it now has the color of law and the cancerous welfare state metastasizes.

The commerce clause says Congress will have power "to regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." The purpose of the clause was to establish a domestic free trade zone to prevent the states from restricting commerce by tariffs or otherwise. In the 18th century, commerce meant only trade or exchange, not all gainful activity; among the several states meant commerce between one state and another, not commerce that might happen to have an effect on commerce generally; regulate meant to make regular – to cause to function in an orderly manner, not to micromanage the economy. Incredible is an abused word, but some "interstate commerce violations" upheld by the courts are truly incredible, including products grown and consumed legally on the same farm.

The "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution gives Congress the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper in carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in a Department or Officer thereof." A study of the many statements of the framers and ratifiers to questions regarding that clause and their assurances of limited powers and limited government leaves no doubt that the intent was simply to enable the government to carry out its enumerated powers. James Madison and many others said that clause grants no supplementary powers.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments clarified the limited powers granted to the federal government. The Tenth Amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It is the guarantee that the federal government has only those powers granted to it and no others. During the ratification discussions in the various states there were many confirmations of that understanding because of great concern about the preservation of the rights of the states. Several states even included such confirming wording in their ratifications. Well into the Nineteenth century the same assurances were regularly repeated, including by some Federalists who were proponents of a strong central government.

Particularly since FDR, the corrosion of the Constitution has progressed with almost every president and congress. George W. Bush refused to veto obviously unconstitutional laws for fear he would lose a vote or anger someone, choosing instead to sign them and let the Supreme Court decide on their constitutionality, but that left the fox guarding the henhouse,. Several of the Supreme Court justices view the Constitution as a "living" document and believe their job is not to enforce the Constitution, as they promised under oath to do, but to "interpret" (read change) it to suit themselves. Those nine politically appointed lawyers are appointed for life and answer to no one.

Many constitutional scholars say there is a conflict of interest in a second branch of the same government acting as judge and jury considering the constitutionality of their own actions and legislation. The Constitution provides only two ways for amending it, but the Supreme Court invented and uses a third way, just ignoring what the Constitution says and was meant, changing the meaning of its words and even in a case like Roe vs. Wade, inventing a new legal principle, the "right of privacy", to justify their approval of a new law. For all practical purposes, the federal courts have ceased to police the federal government, using that power irresponsibly. President Obama has invented a fourth way to amend the Constitution. He simply refuses to enforce laws he doesn't like and illegally legislates by issuing executive orders, even after Congress has refused to pass legislation he proposed, like the Dream Act, legalizing certain illegal aliens.

The result is that some 70 or 80 percent of the laws Congress passes are unconstitutional, in spite of the Supremacy Clause that states, "The Constitution and constitutional laws in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land." Aside from the difficult and little-used procedure of legally amending the Constitution, the only method available to enforce the Constitution is by nullification – by states, municipalities and individuals refusing to recognize and obey unconstitutional laws.

Nullification is appropriate when a state defends its rights against unconstitutional federal laws and administrative rulings not authorized by the Constitution. It is based on the principle that a federal law that violates the Constitution is no law at all and is therefore void and of no effect. It is up to the states - as parties to the federal compact \- and others to declare the violation and to refuse to enforce or comply with it.

The nullification principle is almost as old as the Constitution. It grew out of protests involving the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, passed during a minor war with the French. The Sedition Act established fines and prison terms for criticizing the government. There were many violent protests, and Thomas Jefferson, then vice-president, felt nullification was a moderate way to defend states' rights. He said, "To consider the Judges of the Superior Court as the ultimate Arbiter of constitutional questions would be a dangerous doctrine which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... in office for life and not responsible to the Elective control." Jefferson's view was, "Whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no force... each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well as infractions as of the mode and measure of redress." He continued to endorse the principle of nullification throughout his life, as did John Adams and other Founders. In 1789 John Hay, the first Chief Justice of the United States said, "The jury has the right to judge both the law and the fact in controversy."

The Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 protested the Alien and Sedition Acts and urged the states to invalidate them, with Kentucky stating, "Nullification of all unauthorized acts is the rightful remedy."

Even when nullification fails, it is a useful educational tool. Too few Americans know about the limited powers of our federal government and the ability of the states and citizens to nullify laws and government actions not authorized by the Constitution. It can be used when governments overstep their lawful authority and also in jury trials. Some laws are unconstitutional, and judges are just fallible lawyers with their own opinions, loyalties and prejudices. The consensus of the founding fathers was that juries must judge the law itself as well as the facts of the case, with jury nullification an essential defense for liberty. If a juror feels the applicable law is unconstitutional or the judge's rulings and instructions are wrong, jurors can and do invoke nullification and can reach a verdict based on their own analyses and consciences.

Gradually the public and the states have come not only to accept central authority and control, but to look to Washington to solve their problems. Federal control continues to increase when the people and the states allow the president and Congress to wage unnecessary and unlawful wars, interfere in a decreasingly free economy, and seek votes by "helping" people. Now instead of the states protesting the federal usurpation of states' rights, they mainly squabble over who gets the biggest share of what is left of the loot extracted by the federal government from local taxpayers.

Several states have passed Obamacare nullification legislation. It remains to be seen what Obama tries to do to those states. It is difficult politically for the federal government to punish states that revolt, but for some reason rebellions are rare. The public and the states are not mere puppets controlled by politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, and unreasonable legislation and case law, but they often perform like puppets. When appropriate, states and citizens should object, defund, and disobey peacefully.

A September 5, 2013 Wall Street Journal editorial concluded, "Don't be surprised if millions of Americans begin to follow the President's example and conclude that they also don't have to follow laws they don't like – and not merely smoking reefer on the front porch." Freedom Works said, "It seems like a unique time for peaceful civil disobedience and non-compliance – a grassroots rejection of Washington's corrupt ways."

REAL IMMIGRATION REFORM

A coalition of powerful forces are again crying for some form of amnesty and legalization for the estimated 12 to 36 million illegal aliens in the United States, led by Barack Hussein Obama. The main advocates are:

* Democrats who want more Democrat voters any way they can get them.

* Illegal Latino immigrants who want to be legalized, and their advocates.

* Multi-culturist liberals who attack our historic assimilation of immigrants.

* Businesses and individuals who want a cheaper, more pliable labor force.

* Libertarians whose rallying cry is liberty, and who equate that with open borders.

Our country is rapidly becoming a divided welfare state, a situation deliberately planned and executed by the Democrats and their liberal allies in the news media and elsewhere to create a large dependent electorate. After only five years of Obama's drive to create a dependent nation, it is clear the result is economic stagnation, chronically high unemployment and destruction of our personal and business incentives to innovate, risk capital and labor to start and expand businesses, leading inevitably to stagflation. Part of their plan involves legalizing the millions of illegal immigrants and adding them to the Democrat voter registrations. The paradox is that most immigrants come here seeking opportunity, not to get caught in the Democrats' dependency trap, but many do.

The periodic drives for some kind of amnesty for illegal aliens masquerades under the label Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Immigration reform is clearly needed, but not in the form being proposed again. The discussion is mainly about what to do with the millions of illegal aliens here now, and their proposed solutions are to legalize the illegals and promise to control the border at some unspecified future time. Even if the illegal aliens were legalized in some present or future way, that would not solve the problem. The most important needed reforms are to reduce the numbers of future immigrants, to restore real control of immigration and immigrants, change the demographics of new immigrants and restore welfare reform to return unskilled and permanent-welfare Americans to productive work.

The genius of America has been its melting pot, but the melting pot is broken. Earlier immigration was fragmented, people coming from many different places with many different languages and cultural heritages. Immigrants came seeking an opportunity society and wanted to be Americans. They arrived in waves, with enough time between waves to absorb them. They brought what was needed then for the building of our nation, mostly manual labor. Eventually they learned English, gained employment and were absorbed into the great American melting pot: e pluribus unum – out of many, one.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the floodgates, permitting all legal permanent immigrants to bring in their families. The bill's proponents promised it would not affect the demographic mix or increase the number of new immigrants. These assertions proved to be wildly inaccurate. Current immigrants come overwhelmingly from the Third World, primarily Latin America, and the number coming annually is about seven times what it was then.

Family reunification became the rallying cry of the open-borders advocates, crowding out most skilled immigrants who would have contributed to our economic growth. Jeb Bush wrote, "By 2011, about one million immigrants were granted legal residence [annually]. Sixty-five percent were extended family members of citizens, typically many children and elderly people, crowding out all but 13 percent who were admitted for work purposes, vs. 70 percent in 1970. There are 250 applicants for every visa available under the 50,000 diversity slots. The effect of the family reunification policy is there is almost no waiting line; poor relatives and refugees get almost all the slots."

One aspect of our immigration trend is rarely discussed publicly: What has the United States been, what do we want it to be, and how do we accomplish that? What kind of immigrants have made America prosperous and special? This has always been a land of opportunity, of people who planned and strived for a better future and were rewarded for achievement. America's opportunity society is being smothered by the anti-business, hyper-regulatory Obama Administration, aggravated by the flood of poorly educated, unskilled Latino immigrants who are not being assimilated the way diverse, mostly European immigrants were in the past.

We need skilled immigrants in a post-industrial, technical, information society, not the monolithic horde of one-language, poorly educated, unskilled Latinos we get now. They are direct, hungrier competition for our own unskilled labor force during a time of chronically high unemployment. While most other immigrants are being assimilated at historic rates, Latino immigrants tend to value their Hispanic identity above being American. They cluster in Spanish-speaking enclaves and inner cities whose economies are based on drugs, gangs, crime and welfare. Meso-Americans have different cultural patterns and values from European and Asian immigrants. Writing in The New Republic, liberal Martin Peretz said, [Mexico is] "a Latin society with all of its characteristic deficiencies: congenital corruption, authoritarian government, anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores, an anarchic counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict."

First generation Latino immigrants are mostly unskilled but they usually are good workers when they can find jobs. The second generation have similar high school-dropout rates and then many just join gangs in the barrios and have no jobs. With their typically high birth rate and continuing immigration, our Latino population is expanding rapidly. They are a divisive, monolithic nation within a nation.

The reason for the Democrats' continuing drives for more Third World immigrants, legal and illegal, is that they mostly vote for Democrats. Some states permit illegal aliens to get driver licenses. A Rasmussen survey dated October 7, 2013 found that 68 percent of Americans oppose drivers' licenses for illegal aliens, who can use the Clintons' motor-voting laws to obtain licenses. In other states it is easy to enable illegal voting with readily available fake documents.

We are an increasingly divided nation, with a deliberately divisive president and administration. We are well on our way to Balkanization, a future Yugoslavia with racial warfare between blacks, browns and whites. In the 2010 U.S. census, California had an Hispanic population of 32.4 percent, Arizona 25.3 percent, New Mexico 42.1 percent and Texas 32.0 percent, while the West as a whole was 24.3 percent. Our neighbor Canada is also a seriously divided nation with an estimated French population of only 24 percent and it is confronted continually by the Quebec sovereignty movement. The Washington Times reported, "There is currently a movement among many Mexican-Americans called Reconquista that seeks to establish a sovereign Hispanic nation in the region of Northern Mexico, Baja California, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Some analysts believe the significant demographic shift in the American Southwest may result in a de facto reconquista."

A common myth says the United States stole its southwestern states from Mexico. The facts are clear. Mexico had a claim to that territory for only 24 years, from 1821 to 1845. Before that it belonged to Spain, then France, then Spain again, and in 1821 Mexico declared its independence from Spain, including our Southwest. In the 1840s a border dispute between Mexico and the Territory of Texas escalated into a war between the United States and Mexico. Eventually, during the war, an 1848 treaty was made in which the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million for most of the land of our southwestern states and also assumed the responsibility to pay large unpaid claims of Americans against Mexico for damages caused by Mexican civil strife. More land was acquired five years later in the Gadsden Purchase. Mexico offered to sell us all of Baja California and Sonora, including the deep-water port of Guaymas, for $15 million, but our Congress declined the offer. Mexico then proposed a sale of land only to the present border for $10 million and that sale was completed. Now Mexicans, their school books and advocates are calling both sales a theft and are conducting an invasion of the United States by immigrants, largely illegal ones.

Truly comprehensive immigration reform needs to concentrate on changing the numbers and demographics of immigrants, on effective enforcement of our immigration laws, control of who is in our country, and restoration of our previously successful welfare reform.

Immigration policy needs to focus on immigrants' skills rather than family relationships. Immigrants should be selected by their ability to produce needed goods and services that contribute to the economy. Our current family reunification policy takes most of the available immigration slots, many of them being children and older people, preventing immigration of educated, skilled individuals and adding welfare dependents. We are also wasting the opportunity to employ talented foreign students who have completed studies in our universities. Their education is frequently subsidized by taxpayers, endowment funds and scholarships, but we often throw away that investment by not granting them visas to stay here to work after graduation.

Canada and Australia had similar problems, getting the wrong kinds of immigrants. Salim Mansur, a University of Western Ontario political science professor said, "We are reproducing ghettos of immigrants and migrant workers and diluting Canada's traditional values to accommodate immigrants who will not integrate." That is exactly the situation with Latino immigrants in the United States. Several years ago, to get more suitable immigrants Canada instituted a merit policy, giving points for younger applicants, for a good education and needed job skills, and for English literacy. Between 1991 and 2011, U.S. visas granted for economic reasons fell from 18 percent to 11 percent, while Canada's soared from 18 percent to 67 percent. We take Latin America's uneducated poor while Canada and other countries get an ethnic mixture of the best and brightest immigrants.

Based on good results, in August 2013 Canada tightened their criteria because they had many Third World immigrants who had high rates of unemployment and low incomes. Jason Kenney, Canada's immigration minister until July 2013, said," The government worries about the deepening ethnic enclaves and Canada's immigration overhaul is taking a hardheaded approach to the multi-culturism that had been a hallmark of Canadian policy." Canada's new guide says they will not tolerate conflicting foreign cultures and practices, gives more points than before for English fluency, weighs how closely applicants' qualifications match Canada's occupational needs, and gauges so-called adaptability factors. The new guide emphasizes Canada's historic ties, such as to Great Britain. Unemployment of Pakistanis aged 15 and older is 13 percent, compared with 4.5 percent for Britons in Canada. Family reunification, which now dominates U.S. immigration policy, is not an eligibility criterion in Canada.

The European Union is famous for its open-borders policy. Now Britain and France, centuries-long opponents on everything but a love of French wine and women, are united in concern about how migration is changing the face of Europe. Francois Hollande, the French premier, says, "The social dumping of the poor from Eastern Europe poses a threat to the economic and social fabric of France." The UK's prime minster has promised to persuade his European counterparts to end the "vast migration from poor to rich countries."

Currently we have no effective federal enforcement of our immigration laws. President Obama enforces only the immigration laws he chooses, the rest only half-heartedly or not at all. J. Christian Anderson: "There's only one problem — we have a president with a demonstrated record of ignoring "get tough" immigration laws already on the books." His policy of stopping the deportation of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before they were adults is a blatant abuse of executive power, essentially enacting the primary goal of the Dream Act legislation that was defeated by Congress in 2010. He has instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not to detain immigration criminals unless they have committed a major crime. They are already criminals by being in the country illegally, and so are any persons, businesses, organizations, or local governments that assist or knowingly encourage illegal aliens. Ref. Title 8 Sec. 1324, 1325 & 1326 of the U.S. Code and Sec. 274 of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act,

Accordingly to the president of the union representing ICE personnel, enforcement is a joke. Under Obama's policies ICE agents are required to accept any claim of legal residency without proof. Morale among ICE agents is at an all-time low and many agents feel the administration is actively working against them. Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council, in testimony before the House Immigration Subcommittee in early February, 2013: "The message [to the world] is we don't enforce our laws. Come on over. And, if you get caught, just lie to us." After first legalizing the 11 million illegal aliens, Congress's Gang of Eight proposals rely heavily on border control and enforcement, building and patrolling a fence through remote, rough country the same distance as from San Diego to Chicago. But a new poll by Pulse Opinion Research found widespread skepticism about promises that the government would enforce immigration laws after an amnesty, with many broken promises since the 1986 "one-time" amnesty.

Effective enforcement and border security need to be restored but those alone will not solve the problem. We also need to reestablish control of immigrants within our country. Half of the illegal aliens now in the U.S. came in legally but abandoned their destinations or simply overstayed their visas. During last year's Supreme Court oral arguments on the federal lawsuit against Arizona for enforcing federal immigration laws that were being ignored, Chief Justice John Roberts said, "It seems to me the federal government just doesn't want to know who is here illegally." The solution isn't just closing the border, virtually an impossibility; it is closing the doors of workplaces to illegal aliens.

No nation can control what goes on within its borders, including terrorism, unless it has an effective way to know who is in the country, what their citizenship status is and, if they are not U.S. citizens, where they are. Now the government has no way to track or identify such criminals. As discussed earlier, that requires some kind of central database and a secure identification system for each person in the country, one that cannot be counterfeited. The present E-Verify system is voluntary and is used only to check on new applicants for employment. In order to establish real control, a central data base with biometric identification needs to be used to check on all employees, with employers made responsible for checking.

A popular argument among pro-amnesty supporters is that Americans won't do the jobs immigrants will. Why should they? We pay people not to work and then say we need more unskilled immigrants to do the work Americans don't want to do. Why work for low wages and pay taxes when they can live well on welfare and unreported income? In January, 2013 the Senate Budget Committee reported that in fiscal year 2011 the average U.S. household below the federal poverty line received benefits from food stamps, housing support, child care, Medicaid and other benefits at the annual rate of $61,320, tax-free. In 2012 half the births in the U.S. were paid by the taxpayers under Medicaid. Policies that discourage citizens from working and encourage illegal immigration are irrational, unfair to productive, tax-paying citizens and are an economic and social disaster.

Another argument asserts that agriculture would collapse without foreign labor, but already half of that labor force are legal Americans. There is already a guest-worker program available to farmers but they don't use it. They would have to plan ahead to obtain permits, provide housing, decent wages and working conditions, so they just hire readily available illegal aliens when they need them. When Australia stopped tolerating illegal farm labor, the result was more mechanization, less stoop labor, higher wages and skill levels of fewer farm workers, and a successful transition. Our major obstacles are our outrageous welfare and unemployment programs. Analysis has shown that even doubling the wages of our agricultural workers would increase the retail prices of most food products by a small amount. Most food costs are added after products leave the farm.

Many Republicans seek Latino votes by promoting amnesty, but surveys have shown that many legal immigrants resent the job competition and the taxpayer-funded free schooling, medical care and other benefits the illegals receive. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeff Flake and other Republicans who believe legalizing illegal aliens will buy votes are mistaken. Democrats would gain almost all the votes from another amnesty program and that is why they fight for it.

All independent surveys have shown that most Americans, including those of Hispanic origin, want reduced immigration. They recognize that the poor are the ones most likely to be hurt by more immigration, while the middle and upper classes gain from having cheaper unskilled employees available. Despite this, the white majority mostly remains silent, intimidated by special interests ready to accuse them of racism for any opposition to minority demands. There is strong resistance to effective immigration reform from members of Congress pandering to big-donor businesses employing cheap illegal labor, from the Democrats who get most of the Latino votes and from strong lobbying by immigration lawyers and advocates, multi-cultural liberals and open-borders libertarians. The public continues to express dissatisfaction with the illegal immigration situation, but powerful lobbyists and the career politicians pandering to their cheap-labor business supporters have strong clout in Washington, D.C. And so, the flood of unskilled legal and illegal immigrants continues.

Mark Steyn points out the unconstitutional burden on the states: "Big-government centrists don't mind about the costs Undocumented America imposes, because in the main it imposes them on states, cities and school districts and thus makes previously self-sufficient branches of government even more dependent on central authority. This is a recipe for civil strife, if not ultimately, civil war."

This is not a call to stop immigration. It is a plea to reduce the numbers of immigrants to historic levels, to move toward restoration of our traditional ethnic diversity, to limit the demographics of new immigrants to individuals with needed education, occupational, and language skills, and to establish and strictly enforce laws and mechanisms to stop the employment of illegal aliens, present and future. It is an alternative to the current comprehensive immigration reform proposals that are based primarily on border security, an impossible dream, and on legalizing and rewarding the illegal aliens here now, repeating in some form the mistake of the "one-time" 1986 amnesty. That did nothing but grant amnesty to almost 3,000,000 illegals and set the stage for the admission of the present 12,000,000-plus additional invaders and more in the future. Our career politicians are either slow learners or they are simply involved in their perpetual search for votes.

Every American should consider what the United States has been, the most successful and prosperous nation in history, with a mostly European work-ethic culture, and what it would require to prevent our continuing now on the path to becoming a truly divided, stagnant welfare state. Those who see the problem need to tell their legislators and the White House to stop playing politics with immigration policies and enforcement. Our country is mired in immigration mud. Tell your Congressmen to stop the pandering and restore our sovereignty. Forget telling Mr. Obama. He has a terminal hearing disease and welcomes all illegal aliens, including Muslims.

GUN CONTROL

There are three main issues in the gun control hysteria being brought up again by the anti-gun people not wanting to waste another crisis – another school shooting – to cry again for anti-gun legislation.

Their primary argument concerns protecting children, since that is a more emotional issue than self-defense, hunting and target shooting. The number of children killed in vehicles and other accidents is many times higher than gun incidents, but they usually don't occur in spectacular single incidents. The National Rifle Association has proposed armed guards in every school. Many schools are large and the ability of one armed guard in a school to learn of an incident, identify the location, get to the scene quickly enough to stop it and do so without shooting other students in the process, is doubtful. Criminals can always use silencers on their weapons. The enormous expense of one or more full-time guards in every school in the country during school hours would not solve the problem. A psychopath who knew schools had a guard could board a school bus, select a school ball game or other event held elsewhere and do his thing.

Airline pilots have the option to carry guns, and many do. The same program could be offered to schools. There are an estimated 300 million privately owned guns in the US, and many of the owners are former military personnel, hunters or target shooters who use guns safely. Those who choose to participate could be approved, briefed on procedures concerning how to handle emergencies, and serve as a citizen defensive militia in schools and elsewhere as appropriate. Within every school it is likely that more than several teachers, aides, counselors, administrators and maintenance personnel are competent gun owners who would want to participate. If a nut doesn't know who may be armed, his Rambo dream may disappear, and if it doesn't, he may disappear in an event.

Places like Chicago, Washington D.C. with prohibitions on private gun ownership have higher crime rates. Criminals will always be able to have guns, and if guns are taken away from law-abiding citizens by government fiat, guess who wins? The response time by urban police to a crime scene is said to average about fifteen minutes. The response time of an armed citizen is the time it takes to draw his weapon. The deterring effect on criminals of not knowing who is armed is much more effective than quadrupling the police force, and preventing people from being able to defend themselves is absurd as well as unconstitutional.

Another issue is the Second Amendment. In their attempts to outlaw guns, the gun control people claim the Second Amendment was meant to permit guns only for a regulated militia. Before and after the adoption of the Second Amendment, many of the founders discussed the dangers of tyranny from inside, a government taking unconstitutional control of its citizens, and of the need for citizens to be able to protect themselves from tyranny. A typical statement was made by Benjamin Franklin: "It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority". Switzerland is the most peaceful country in Europe. Its last, almost bloodless war was in 1847. Every healthy Swiss male ages 20 to 30 has had military training and keeps a government-issued gun in his home, as do many others with private weapons.

It is obvious that Barack Obama and his merry band of tax-and-spend politicians, limousine liberals and liberal news media are doing everything possible to take political control from the states and the people and vest it in a fascist control center in Washington, D.C. The greatest ultimate deterrent to their socialist/fascist effort is an informed and armed citizenry, willing and able to defend liberty.

James Jaeger:

History has demonstrated time and again that, to the degree citizens are unarmed, government suppression and tyranny are inevitable. The Founders of the United States knew these lessons well. This is why the U.S. Constitution not only grants American citizens the "right to keep and bear arms" – but the duty to be well-organized as state militias reporting to their respective governors. But this duty, as well as the militia, is often misunderstood. As a result, a "gun-control lobby" has been steadily eroding the original intent of the Founders by passing illegal gun control "laws," funding a standing global army and destroying the 300-year-old militia system established by We The People.

The true story is simple: With an estimated 300 million guns in the United States, if the government were somehow able to take all guns from the good citizens, the criminals would still have guns and know that the public was unarmed. When the UK, Australia and Canada outlawed guns, crime soared. The record is clear. Guns don't cause crime, they prevent it.

RACIAL PROFILING AND PREJUDICE

It is fashionable now in liberal circles to criticize any form of "prejudice" as naughty or despicable behavior. While the term connotes bias and closed-mindedness, some prejudice is just the inevitable result of experience and common sense.

All humans and natural creatures are guided by what could be called prejudice – just previous experience. That is nature at work. Animals learn how to hunt and survive from parental teaching, observation and experience. Humans learn which actions succeed and which do not, which experiences and human contacts are pleasant or effective and which ones to avoid.

Naturally, if people have been told repeatedly that Jews are crafty, the English are stuffy and Scots are stingy, that will influence their view of such people, unless experience proves those stereotypes to be false. If one has had repeated contacts with rude New Yorkers or with persons who announced that they were "good Christians" but who turned out to be liars and cheats, those experiences are bound to affect future opinions of New Yorkers and noisy "good Christians."

The older people get, the greater is their tendency to be closed-minded, particularly when their experiences in certain situations have been consistent over many years. Unfortunately, such adults can, and often do, brainwash spongy young minds forever with their own prejudices. If young Irish children are taught that all Ulster Irish are murderers and heretics, or if Southern white children are taught that blacks are inferior, those ideas may never change completely despite subsequent experience to the contrary. As a result, group prejudices tend to change not by years, but by generations. There are exceptions. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black was a Ku Klux Klansman as a youth but later became a judge and champion of civil rights. It was said that as a youth he dressed in white robes and frightened black people and later put on black robes and frightened white people.

As Justice Black demonstrated, one needs an open mind to learn from experience. What is needed is a sort of healthy skepticism of new situations when they seem to resemble previous ones, with good and bad experiences providing a cautionary clue to what we may encounter. Everyone who makes repetitive appraisals of individuals comes to develop and use subconscious instincts. The credit manager reviewing applications, the interviewer of job applicants, the cop on the beat -- all develop an intuition based on experience that becomes important in their decision-making. A good cop can spot potential trouble in one person out of a crowd. If a disproportionate number of crimes in an area have been committed by people of a certain age, sex, dress, general appearance or skin color, those people should get a disproportionate amount of scrutiny by police, security personnel and a cautious public.

According to Jared Taylor, U.S. government statistics show that more than ninety percent of interracial crime in this country is committed by blacks against whites. The report found blacks arrested for murder at about nine times the rate of whites. California collects statistics on Hispanic crime rates and found them arrested for murder two to three times more often than whites. When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of crime-ridden New York City, his police chief initiated a policy of stopping and frisking suspicious-looking persons, resulting in a drastically lower crime rate that has continued to today. Unfortunately their far-left new mayor has promised to cancel that practice, ensuring a return to a high crime rate. World terrorism is almost all done by Muslims. To tell the police and security personnel to ignore such patterns, not to use "profiling" in screening people and investigating crimes, is asinine and irresponsible.

Much of what the liberals now call "racism" is merely about conservatives criticizing the taking of money from the more productive and successful people to give to the less successful. Black economist Thomas Sowell asked, "What is your fair share of what someone else has worked for?" Racial demagogues like Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson and many liberals accuse the white majority of racism, but their efforts to secure preferential treatment based on race are racist themselves and are a major cause of the current racial animosity, along with the divisive race-baiting of such as Jackson, Al Sharpton and Obama's anti-white books and political actions.

Many who would criticize a physician who failed to advise more careful screening of black males for cardiovascular disease and prostate cancer will also object if young black males are checked more closely for possible criminal activities. Economist Walter Williams quotes a black Washington, D.C. taxicab commissioner's safety advisory to 6,800 cab drivers: "Refuse to pick up dangerous looking passengers," which she described as a "young black guy...with his shirttail hanging down, baggy pants, unlaced tennis shoes." Dr. Williams, also black, advises law-abiding blacks who are offended to "direct their anger at those blacks who have made black synonymous with high crime and not the taxi driver or pizza deliverer who might fear for his life or the policeman trying to do his job." He goes on to say, "Attempting to explain profiling doesn't require one to take a position for or against it any more than attempting to explain gravity requires one to be for or against gravity."

After September 11, the geniuses in Washington jumped in to protect us. They "improved" airline security by making the same, often incompetent security people federal employees, raising their wages and making them much more difficult to fire, telling them to search carefully the well-dressed white people but do not -- repeat not \-- risk criticism or lawsuits for "racism" by singling out Arabs or anyone else who looks like a terrorist! That is profiling!

The November 19, 2001 Department of Transportation's Guidance for Screeners and Other Security Personnel says, "It is illegal...to discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex or ancestry." The predictable result, with the ACLU and other legal vultures waiting outside the courthouse, is the surest way to avoid being hassled at airports is to look like an Arab or otherwise suspicious person. The federal rules do not permit an airport screener to interview two persons of the same ethnic group at one time – that would show prejudice! If ten belligerent Arabs march in, TSA can only detain two of them to question.

Eighty-six–year-old retired Marine General Joe Foss, our ranking fighter ace and former South Dakota governor, was detained for 45 minutes at the Phoenix airport because he was carrying his Congressional Medal of Honor to show the cadets at West Point, where he was speaking. The medal, inscribed on the back to Foss by the President, was a weapon, the guards said. He had to remove his cowboy boots three times as well as his belt and necktie, the razor blades were removed from his toilet kit, and he almost missed his flight.

Despite the obvious fact that terrorists now come largely from the ranks of radical Muslims, the bleeding hearts on the left are so anxious to blame the bad old United States for most of the world's problems that they leap to the defense of any Muslim who hasn't already been caught trying to kill someone. Similarly, with most crime in America committed by young black males, explain the logic in not using that fact in crime control. These defenders of everything anti-American, many of them academics, are fostering terrorism and crime by outlawing racial profiling, essentially mandating protection for possible criminals, and many timid Republicans join the Socialist/Democrats in their deadly game of protecting possible criminals.

Viva profiling!

PART II: ECONOMIC ISSUES

LABOR UNIONS

You might be a member of a public-sector union if you get paid twice as much as a private-sector person doing the same job but make up the difference by doing half as much work. - Jay Leno

There have been variations of strength between unions and management in the labor history of the United States, with the government a variable force in favor of unions or management. After decades of decline in union power, the current surge of membership and political strength of government unions is threatening America's economic vitality and prosperity.

"The concept of collective bargaining is consistent with economic freedom, but the developments of 20th century labor law have compromised economic freedom and the powers given to unions have limited the rights of workers and employers," said the Cato Institute, adding that the higher cost of union labor has eroded the United States' manufacturing sector.

Samuel Gompers, father of the American labor union movement, opposed forcing workers into unions: "No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion," but Franklin Roosevelt wanted forced unionism and in 1935 signed the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) giving unions extensive powers to facilitate forced union membership or payment of union dues on non-members. The predictable result was a huge increase in union membership that year. Before the Wagner Act, only 8 percent of Americans chose to join unions. After they had to pay dues or not work, that number increased to nearly 29 percent.

Liberal courts increased union bargaining power by prohibiting businesses from joining forces to bargain collectively the way unions do. Union leaders called strikes without members voting for it, union thugs conducted bloody strikes and riots, intimidating dissenting workers and signing new contracts without members having effective involvement. The Teamsters International grew rapidly by using their thugs to attack non-union competitors when businesses agreed to unionize, forcing the competitors also to unionize.

One of the most outrageous parts of labor law is the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act. On all federal construction projects, contractors in effect have to pay union wages (the government calls them "prevailing wages"). The purpose of setting these prevailing wages was to prevent public construction projects from destabilizing local construction industries, but the effect is often just the opposite. In April, 2010 Obama issued Executive Order #13502, further strengthening labor unions on federal construction projects. According to Michelle Malkin, "The executive order requires contractors to hand over exclusive bargaining rights, to pay inflated, above-market wages and benefits, and to fork over dues money and pension funding to corrupt, cash-starved labor organizations."

Union excesses increase labor costs and reduce productivity in many ways. One union featherbedding tactic that raises costs is "release time," with union contracts requiring employees to be paid full wages and benefits while actually working for the union. Their "release" work is lobbying, campaigning, soliciting grievances against the employer, recruiting members and negotiating for higher wages and benefits, all at employer expense. In 2011 the City of Phoenix's seven public employee contracts included 73,000 hours of "release" time.

The success of union organizing and bullying has had some unintended consequences. The frequent, effective strikes of the United Mine Workers interrupted the supply of coal and raised prices substantially, causing many individuals and businesses to switch to using oil and natural gas. Mines replaced men with machines and there were large reductions in mine employment. Similar things happened in the steel and automobile industries, where union members lost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Increased union power was accompanied by legendary corruption. During the 1950s, Congress investigated several unions for corruption and racketeering. According to Carl Horowitz of the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, "The sheer magnitude of corruption is staggering, both in the number of cases and the size of the take." Two presidents of Teamsters International were sent to prison, and that corruption continues today. During the George W. Bush administration, the Labor Department brought over 1,000 indictments for union fraud and secured 929 convictions. Melissa King embezzled $42 million from the New York City "sandhog" union.

Since the mid-1950s private-sector union membership has declined from 35 to 7 percent, for a combination of reasons. Unions are often controlled by entrenched, corrupt leaders who dictate policy, steal union funds and make the unions their own private fiefdoms, typically donating union funds to political causes without the approval of their members. Once a union is certified, it is very difficult for a competing union to take over. Decades later the members are saddled with the autocratic and often corrupt original union. Often non-union employers offer better pay, benefits and working conditions than unionized employers do, so union workers are paying union dues without benefits.

Probably the most important legislation to curb union power, the Taft-Hartley Act allowed states to pass right-to-work laws that prohibit closed and union shops. These laws are now in effect in 24 states and have a significant positive effect on manufacturing activity and employment. The Cato Institute surveyed comparative income from 1977 through 2007. Right-to-work states had a 23 percent greater rise in per capita income. The two regions that lost the most jobs in recent years, the once-industrial Northeast and Midwest, are mostly forced-union states. Demographics are changing, as taxpayers flee heavily unionized states that restrict employment opportunities and have burdensome government and high taxes, and businesses move, including offshore.

High-tax, high labor-cost cities are atrophying. Since 1950 St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Cleveland all suffered population declines greater than or equal to Detroit's current downturn. Much of Detroit is in ruins today; its median household income, once 29 percent above the national average, is now 44 percent below it. Its poverty and crime rates are more than three times the national average. The destruction of Detroit is a result of unions pressuring manufacturers to sign labor agreements that simply made the employers uncompetitive, compounded by political and union corruption.

U.S. automobile companies are no longer just that; now they are pension companies. General Motors provides one million people with health-care coverage but has fewer than 100,000 employees. The liberals cry about jobs moving overseas, but with high American labor costs and the Obama administration threatening, harassing and strangling American businesses with new regulations, restrictions and higher taxes, businesses that don't seek lower cost, friendlier business environments will suffer and possibly fail.

The unions, their political puppets and the liberal news media would have everyone believe most workers want union representation. In February 2009 the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey reported that 82 percent of non-unionized American workers did not want to join a union. But while private-sector union membership is shrinking, there is an explosive growth in government-union membership and influence.

Even FDR, the godfather of modern unionism, felt that permitting government workers to bargain collectively would be disastrous, creating an intolerable situation of workers striking against the government. In 1959 the AFL-CIO Council agreed that government workers have no right to bargain collectively with the government, beyond every citizen's right to petition Congress. Then in 1962, pro-union John Kennedy signed Executive Order No. #10,988 extending the Wagner Act's monopoly bargaining powers to permit government employees to organize and bargain collectively.

The result is disastrous. Compared with 7 percent of private workers, now 41 percent of government workers are unionized. Aside from increasing union power exponentially, the Cato Institute noted that the unionization of government employees creates a powerful, permanent constituency for bigger government. The unions spend large amounts of money to elect politicians who pass legislation favorable to unions and they punish uncooperative politicians. The process feeds on itself: union funds elect political toadys, the toadys pass more union legislation, the unions get more members and elect more toadys to pass more union legislation.

Liberals and politicians who pander to unions for votes and contributions are often hypocrites. Nancy Pelosi is a big union supporter, but the businesses she and her husband own are non-union. The liberal New York Times filters news in favor of unions and promotes them in editorials, but in 2010 they eliminated 28 Newspaper Guild jobs and moved the work to non-union jobs in Gainesville, Florida.

Before Kennedy legislated approval of government unions by executive order, ignoring the Constitution, government workers were paid about 20 percent less than for comparable private-sector jobs. Lower pay was offset by generous retirement pensions, vacations, holidays and paid sick leave. Since Kennedy's proclamation, comparative pay and benefits have reversed. Now government pay and benefits are typically about 30 percent or more higher, with vacations, holidays and sick leave totaling almost ten weeks annually for unionized government employees. In effect, those people have slightly over four-day work-weeks. In 2010 USA Today did an analysis of U.S. civil servants. Combining pay and benefits for comparable jobs, they found that government employees received an average of $108,476 per year while private-sector employees received $69,928.

On December 14, 2010 the Wall Street Journal reported, "Since January, 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments have added a half-million... Federal employees receive an average $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector... Public-sector unions have become the exploiters and working families the exploited."

The big difference in pay that is bankrupting cities and states involves retirement pensions. California policies are some of the worst and are being copied nationally, with their "3% at 50" schemes that started with the California Highway Patrol and have spread to other cities, counties and school districts. They grant pensions for life based on 3 percent of final-year compensation times the number of years of employment, later indexed for inflation. Someone hired at 20 can retire at 50 with 90 percent of his last year's pay for life. As a result, California's pension liabilities increased 2,000 percent in the 10 years ending in 2009. Unfunded pension liabilities are a national disaster waiting to be dumped on taxpayers. Unionized government workers receive pension benefits averaging 68 percent higher than non-union government workers. On June 12, 2012 the Wall Street Journal reported the average pay of San Jose, California policemen was $109,000 and that they can retire at 50 or before with an average pension of $95,336 for life.

Some union bosses are participating in several pension funds at the same time and accruing retirement benefits as high as $500,000 per year. Some union members have qualified for substantial lifetime pensions after working for one day. New York City is paying lifetime retirement to 10,000 policemen who are under 50 years old. One Illinois school superintendent's pension is valued at $26 million.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, leaving office after twelve years, told the New York Economic Club that the union-political machine has ruined many American cities. When he took office in 2001, New York City spent $1.5 billion per year on pensions. In 2013 it spends $8.2 billion, five times as much. "The future of cities is jeopardized by the explosion in the cost of pension and health-care benefits for municipal workers." Part of the scheme is pension-spiking. Many pensions are based on final-year pay, so many workers inflate that number substantially by working overtime that year and accumulating large amounts of unused vacation and sick-leave credits. That can easily increase the lifetime pension benefits of a cop or fireman by more than $1 million.

According to Mallory Factor, "Our government is no longer answering to the American people; it has new masters. We've lost control of our government, and our politicians ignore us in favor of influential union bosses." He says these unions act more like bosses of government employees than their representatives and that the labor movement is now focused on government employees for its expansion. Government employees are now the majority of all union members in the U.S. The federal government and 43 states permit unions to be the exclusive bargaining agent for some or all of their workers if the union receives half of the votes in an election. Whether they join the union or not, all future workers will be represented by the union.

The public employees' unions are now the largest political spender. Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, said in 2010, "We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama -- $60.7 million, to be exact -- and we're proud of it." Obama admits in his autobiography, "We owe those unions." The Democrat party has become a subsidiary of the labor movement, and the liberal news media are the propaganda subsidiary of the Democrats. As the government unions gain more power, the Democrats get closer to becoming the permanent party in power.

Some of the worst government unions now are the teachers' unions. Before Kennedy's executive order they were professional associations working to improve education in public schools. Now they are just militant unions dedicated to policies that raise the costs and lower the quality of education: more teachers, higher pay and benefits, protection of mediocre and incompetent teachers, shielding schools and teachers from competition through school choice and blocking improved teaching methods. In short, they use huge political funding and clout to further expensive, mediocre education and to benefit teachers at the expense of taxpayers and our children. Albert Shanker, nefarious head of the American Federation of Teachers, said, "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of schoolchildren."

Their unions continually press for smaller classrooms, with one recent study reporting the ratio of students to teachers dropping from 18 to 1 in 1960 to 8 to 1 today, with children as poorly educated as before. The U.S. spends almost $10,000 per student annually, exclusive of building costs; 68 percent more than Germany and 84 percent more than South Korea. The payoff is zero. Average test scores place the United States well down in the world's rankings, in spite of our union-generated higher costs.

School teachers are no longer poorly paid, either in pay per hours worked or in pensions and other benefits. In 2012 Chicago teachers, with teaching hours among the shortest in the nation and with their summers off, picketed for a 30 percent raise. They already averaged $76,000 per year compared with their taxpayers averaging $47,000, working all year.

Three-fourths of U.S. public school teachers are union members. There are virtually no provisions for paying excellent teachers more than poor ones or for teaching more difficult subjects. In New York City and elsewhere, firing incompetent teachers is difficult and expensive. Seven hundred or so incompetent suspended teachers show up in "rubber rooms" every school day and do nothing while receiving full pay and benefits. This usually goes on for two to five years, the time it takes to fire an incompetent teacher. Another way unions increase education costs is to force schools to hire union members to replace volunteers helping schools in various ways, like crossing guards and library assistants. Altogether, the public school monopoly imposes an enormous cost on American children and taxpayers. Inner city schools are the worst. The blacks plead for school vouchers and charter schools but the Democrat politicians vote against them, pandering to the teachers' unions, knowing the blacks will blindly continue to vote Democrat.

Private education is substantially better, with lower costs and better education than most government schools. However, the competition provided by charter schools, vouchers and private education is shaking up some government schools and forcing improvements. In Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker fought the teachers' union to a standstill, doing away with collective bargaining for teachers and unlocking the union's hold on benefit funds. The funds had been going to an insurance company owned and operated by the teachers' union, so the costs were inflated and the insurance company was making large donations to their Democrat political puppets. When a competitive insurance company took over, some school districts went from an operating deficit as high as $400,000 to a $1,500,000 surplus.

The evidence is clear. Forced unionism and the cancerous growth of government unions are harmful to America's economic vitality and prosperity. The right-to-work states show the advantages of ending forced unionism. Initiatives such as charter schools and voucher programs are needed to temper the monopoly power of public employee unions and improve the fortunes of struggling cities. The partnership between unions and politicians is bankrupting governments at all levels and debilitating our government schools. The public needs to understand the facts and get involved in solving the problems.

HOW POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS CAUSE RECESSIONS

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by an inherent instability of the private economy. – Milton Friedman

There's a new and corrosive phenomenon in the U.S. economy. The lenders, mortgage holders, politicians, bureaucrats and the news media are now collecting data and talking about "underwater" mortgages, those with remaining balances estimated to be higher than the value of the houses involved.

When loans are classified "underwater," there are several harmful results. The lender or owner of the mortgage is required by the bureaucrats to reclassify the loan as non-performing even if the borrower is making his payments. That results in the lender or mortgage holder having to debit his capital account as if the loan were actually non-performing. During this Great Recession, for the first time, the media are discussing these "underwater" mortgages, asking whether homeowners whose loan balance may be higher than the present market value of their homes should leave their homes and default on their financial commitments.

This is new. If the same rules had been in place during other economic slowdowns, many lenders would have had to be closed and their assets sold. If these rules were applied now to automobile and other types of installment loans, the lenders would be shut down completely. In a typical five-year loan on a new car, the collateral often isn't worth as much as the loan balance until two years or more after the purchase. Some credit purchases are never worth the loan balance; consider a last-year's vacation trip to the Caribbean. Ours is an economy powered by personal and business credit, and our brain-damaged politicians and bureaucrats have devised yet another way to damage the economy, comparing loan principal balances with collateral.

Their next-to-last last wrecking ball was encouraging or demanding that lenders make unsound loans to increase home ownership, even to people who couldn't afford it. That absurd practice was continued and expanded during the Clintons' reign, and then George Dubya sent Congress a proposal actually titled American Dream Down-Payment Initiative and signed it into law in 2003. Through government policies, instead of reasonable down payments, 20 or even 10 percent, verifying borrowers' credit histories, income and debt, sound lending practices were largely abandoned. Eventually many loans were made with no down payment. All this was enabled by the Federal Reserve printing large amounts of money and keeping the interest rates paid by banks on their borrowings close to zero.

In The Housing Boom and Bust, economist Thomas Sowell said, "In the wake of the housing bust, Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd, as chairmen of the House and Senate committees most involved in the housing markets – and long-time promoters of the very policies that led to the housing boom and bust – were all over the media, where they were treated as experts, able to explain the problems and provide solutions." After the bust, the Democrats repeated and expanded their mistake of encouraging unsound home loans. Not only could people again buy or refinance homes with as little as 3 percent down payment or equity, for some time Obama gave first-time buyers an additional $8,000 handout of taxpayer money to enable their purchase. Yet the Democrats, liberals and their puppets in the liberal media continue to blame the housing boom and bust on the lenders and Wall Street.

The easy money policies not only facilitated home purchases by unqualified persons for their own use, it started a wave of speculative buying of houses. Loose credit policies caused rising prices of houses and many people bought one or more houses on speculation, often "flipping" them even before they were finished. Demand and prices went up, down payments went down, the housing market boomed, and the bubble finally burst. Then the politicians and bureaucrats who caused the boom by forcing and facilitating unsound lending practices blamed the lenders and the Wall Street investment bankers who packaged and sold the unsound loans to banks and other investors around the world.

After the bubble burst, instead of letting the prices of houses settle back down to a normal supply and demand level, in jumped the politicians to solve the problem they had created. As usual, their solution merely compounded their felony. Having crippled the lenders with their underwater rules, they printed huge amounts of money to give to favored political groups to stimulate the economy. That hasn't helped except for the favored big banks but it has burdened us, our children and grandchildren with unprecedented federal debts.

Another act of our populist president was giving money to reduce monthly payments for borrowers having difficulty paying for their unsound mortgages. His goal is to do that for three million existing loans, but at this point only some 200,000 have been done, and half of those went back into default within six months. In effect, Obama is guaranteeing that these unqualified buyers' house values will not drop below a certain level. Barry, our apprentice president, cavalier spender of trillions, cannot cite his constitutional authority to do that or much of anything else he does.

Homes, like jewelry and trips to the Caribbean, are expenses. Many of our purchases go down in value or become worthless eventually, but that doesn't mean the federal government has either a legal or rational basis for interfering or subsidizing them. A home is to live in. Jewelry is to wear. A vacation is to enjoy. If the value of a home goes below the balance still due on a loan, it is still the family's home. If the borrowers are able to continue making their promised payments, they should. The property may go back up in value – historically, most do – but it is still their home, not just a speculation or security investment. In the inevitable inflation that is following the government's printing of trillions of dollars of unbacked currency, the values of real estate and commodities are likely to rise substantially.

This bureaucratic and media-driven obsession about present estimated market values vs. loan balances is causing many home owners to consider abandoning their homes and their obligations. Classifying performing loans as non-performing makes no sense. The combination is aggravating the recession problems.

What to do about it?

1. Stop unconstitutional federal borrowing to bail out unsound home loans and let the housing market settle on its natural supply-and-demand balance.

2. Restore sound lending requirements – adequate down payments to provide protection of lenders and borrowers from fluctuating markets, reduction of borrowers' income, unemployment or other unforeseen problems. Vermont's strict 1990s mortgage lending laws prevented their residents from getting unsound loans, making brokers who arranged loans responsible if their customers defaulted. The result is that Vermont has the lowest foreclosure rate in most categories.

3. Let people learn money management by paying the price of their reckless financial lifestyles. The Me/Now Generation have largely lived their lives spending and borrowing freely, keeping little or no rainy-day money. Their savings rates have been close to zero, and when their inevitable financial problems occurred, they have expected someone – the government (taxpayers), family or someone else – to rescue them. The politicians, always ready to help a voter, stepped in with yet another unconstitutional expenditure, taking money from one class of citizens, the thrifty ones, to give to the spendthrift class.

4. Stop requiring lenders to classify performing loans as non-performing, impairing their capital and frightening lenders into conserving their assets rather than making needed commercial and real estate loans. Large, strong businesses are able to get credit now, but small businesses and entrepreneurs are generally still having difficulties getting loans, with the banks afraid of what the anti-business Democrats are going to do next to impair their bank's capital. Much of the Federal Reserve's trillions of printed dollars are still sitting on banks' balance sheets, never put in circulation, while the Fed pays interest on their excess balances. The Obama gang consider businesses to be greedy and downright evil, useful only as a source of taxes to spend for favored projects and groups. No wonder the banks aren't lending, in spite of the massive amounts of money pumped into the banking system.

Except for a return to honest elections and the groundswell of distrust of politicians among our citizens, it appears there is no force capable of putting down the takeover of our government by the statist tyrants as long as they control the White House and Senate.

POVERTY BY FEDERAL DECREE

The Heritage Foundation published a January 5, 2004 report by two researchers titled "Understanding Poverty in America." It is a long, scholarly report, but their conclusion is clear and simple: What the federal government defines as living in poverty is far from it.

Poverty, in a rational world, would be people lacking nutritious food, adequate housing and clothing. The researchers concluded that relatively few of the 35 million people identified by the Census Bureau as being "in poverty" should correctly be characterized as comparatively poor, and that while material hardship does exist in the United States, it is quite restricted in scope and severity.

The researchers have taken the following facts from various government reports:

* Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. Their average home is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.

* Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. Thirty years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

* The typical poor American has more living space than the average [non-poor] individual living in Paris, London, Vienna and other cities throughout Europe.

* Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more.

* Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more.

* Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

* Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo and one-third have an automatic dishwasher.

* The typical American federally-defined poor is able to obtain medical care, has a home in good repair that is not crowded, reports that his family is not hungry, and has had sufficient funds in the last year to meet his family's essential needs.

If you earn $34,000 per year, you are in the top 1 percent of wage earners in the world. The man who has a Ford but wants a Cadillac is not poor just because some politician, bureaucrat, academic or limousine liberal says he is. The researchers report that the poverty that does exist in America can readily be reduced, particularly among children. There are two main reasons American children are poor: Their parents don't work much, and their fathers are absent from the home and family. The typical American poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work per year, the equivalent of only 16 hours per week. If that were raised to a normal 40 hours weekly, nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of "official" poverty.

Nearly two-thirds of poor children live in single-parent homes, and each year an additional 1.3 million illegitimate children are born. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, nearly three-quarters of the nation's impoverished youth would immediately be lifted out of poverty.

Although work and marriage are predictable ladders out of poverty, our welfare systems remain hostile to both. Major programs such as food stamps, public housing, Medicaid and unemployment benefits continue to reward idleness and penalize marriage. Forty-eight million Americans now get food-stamp welfare, but now they get is debit card so others in the checkout line don't know they're on welfare. Revise welfare to encourage work and marriage and the nation's remaining poverty would be quickly and substantially reduced.

Our politicians, always wanting to give the liberal media material showing that they "care," have effectively destroyed much of the traditional American sense of personal and family responsibility. Roosevelt, starting the welfare-state trend, said it should be only until the Great Depression was over. But after 79 years of increasing government "programs" to handle our personal and family wants and needs, providing government "safety nets" for everyone has become a religion not just among the liberals but among almost all politicians, bureaucrats and academics. Our seniors own most of the country's personal wealth but the AARP and American seniors have succeeded in having Congress make the next generations pay for seniors' medical care, drugs and other personal expenses, giving the wealthiest group the biggest piece of the personal welfare pie.

Programs implemented as "safety nets" have become hammocks. In his essay, "Dependency on Government," Walter Williams says, "Dependency on government also has the effect of reducing economic mobility among the poor . . . Easy access to welfare has made many individuals, who turned down opportunities, believe they were better off so far as income, leisure time and family time than they would have been by accepting a low-paying job. In terms of short-run economics, many were correct. Welfare reform during the 1990s, despite the dire predictions, moved many former welfare recipients into the world of work and upward mobility. Many who never had a job are now working and are self-sufficient. As such, the tens of thousands of former welfare recipients who moved from welfare rolls to payrolls are proof of the inhumanity of dependency. What's more important is that these former welfare recipients and their families have a greater sense of self-worth." Unfortunately our politicians and bureaucrats have eroded the welfare reform successes. The Obama administration spends millions of dollars each year to try to get more people to sign up on welfare programs – another vote-getting scheme, of course, and the successful welfare reforms that were passed over Clinton's vetos have largely been discontinued .

Historians Will and Ariel Durant spent their whole lives writing the history of civilization. In a small summation in 1958, "The Lessons of History," they described a predictable pattern of the decline of all civilizations when a majority of their citizens are not contributing to, but are taking from the government. Historian Arnold Toynbee observed in 1936 that all great nations rise and fall, and that an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.

We are at that dangerous point in America, with more people receiving from the federal government than paying income taxes. People classified as "poor" who pay no taxes are always glad to have the politicians spend more and borrow more; it costs them nothing. As Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "The best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it." Unfortunately, poverty is only getting easier.

COMPOUND INTEREST

Economics 421

The Me/Now, Woodstock generation are just starting to retire in large numbers. Instead of saving and investing for a comfortable retirement, many have already spent that money, much of it on luxuries that they consider necessities. Now many wonder, "Who is going to support us in our golden years? Why doesn't the government (taxpayers) provide what we need to maintain our current lifestyle in retirement? Social Security won't even provide enough money for the fuel, maintenance and replacement costs of our two cars!"

Here is the shocking truth: Social Security was never intended to maintain yuppie-type lifestyles. Since Lyndon Johnson changed it, Social Security has been a Ponzi scheme, an illegal practice if anyone except the government does it. The Now Generation has had a strong tendency to spend as if there were no tomorrow. If they thought about retirement finances at all, many of them appear to have hoped that, with a little luck, they'd be dead before retirement age. Now, "Whoops! That's in only ten years!" Surveys have shown that the average American family has less than $25,000 in liquid assets. At five percent interest, that would provide a lush monthly income of $104.66 -- $1,250 per lush year.

Some of the Now Generation's irresponsibility is due to Greatest Generation parents who were determined to give their children "all the things we didn't have." Still, much could have been learned from their thrift. For example, instead of paying $3,500 for a new 1970 Olds convertible, if a yuppie had followed the precedent set by his parents and paid $600 for a good used car and invested the difference? If he had invested the extra $2,900 at 6 percent interest compounded for 40 years, that would have grown to $29,829. If he had been very successful and invested the difference at the 15 percent Warren Buffett has averaged over his investing years, that single used-car-saving would have grown to $776,804. If he had simply followed a regular spending/savings/investing/ program for his first 10 or 15 working years, our now-desperate yuppie would be in Fat City.

Study those numbers again, burn them into your memory, force-feed them to your children and grandchildren, and remember Einstein's statement that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. Youth is a good time to save and invest for the future, not a time to spend beyond real needs.

Almost everything in life involves some compromises. In 1954, Waikiki Beach in Honolulu had mostly two types of people: older vacationers and younger people in service and tourism jobs, working for small wages and tips. Today almost everyone over 30 has traveled abroad and gone to beach and ski resorts. They eat in restaurants 10 or 30 times as frequently as the Greatest Generation did, they buy expensive cars that depreciate in value rapidly, and many save little or nothing. With larger purchases, it is not "How much does it cost?" but "What's the down payment, how much per month and could I get a loan approved?" At the stage of their lives when thrift and wise investing could pay rich dividends later, most of the Now and subsequent generations are spending like rich people and expecting someone else, probably the top one percent of the earners who already pay 37 percent of the income taxes, to pay for maintaining their lifestyle in retirement. Those top one-percenters, most of whom got there by hard work, saving and risking their savings in ventures that provide jobs for others, are the ones the Democrats endlessly criticize for " not paying their fair share."

What America needs now, more than ever, is self-discipline, lower taxes, more incentives to produce and save, and less government regulation and harassing. Don't hold your breath.

WELFARE'S LEGAL BASIS

It is generally believed that the United States is a capitalistic society, a free-market economy at work. The truth is that, thanks to Barack Obama and a liberal Congress as well as many years of lesser evils committed by politicians of both parties, we have become a full-scale welfare state, with the number of people who work for a living outnumbered by the people who vote for a living. Do what the majority of our lawmakers and legislating judges obviously do not do, consider the legal, ethical and rational bases of our federal welfare programs.

Among the limited powers our Constitution authorizes is in Section 1, Article 8: "... to provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare....". There is no – repeat -- no basis for the federal government of the United States to subsidize or support any of its citizens by providing food, medical care, housing, education, transportation, job training, disaster relief, or any in the endless list of welfare services that comprise most of what our massive federal bureaucracy now provides.

Could there be a legal basis for federal welfare? Yes, but only by passing a constitutional amendment. To the extent possible, individuals, families and businesses should take care of themselves, and not only just when it is convenient and painless, requiring no change in lifestyle. That responsibility may be quite painful for some, since the net savings rate in the U.S. often has been close to zero, compared with 15 percent to 30 percent of earnings in much of the world. Individuals and families need to relearn the necessity of squirreling away emergency resources, to stop expecting other taxpayers to save them or their businesses when inevitable winters come. Before Roosevelt, there was a stigma in accepting welfare. When a family could not provide for its members, local groups would help -- friends, neighbors, churches, charities, local or state governments. Now it's just a personal and political game with no social stigma attached. Those people and organizations were close enough to each situation to assist appropriately and effectively. By contrast, the federal government doles out uninformed, gratuitous help that is politically motivated and often fosters long-term dependencies.

On a rational basis, the only kind of welfare policy that makes sense is one that encourages everyone to be as productive as possible. That is a scathing indictment of our whole taxation system. Obama, Reid, Schumer and the rest of the Demagogues rant and rave about the unfairness and greed of the top one percent of wage earners, ignoring the fact that those people are already pay by far the most taxes. The high-earners' production is not taken away from someone else but is largely new money injected into the economy as a result of their efforts and risk-taking. The capital investments of our more productive, successful citizens provide most of the jobs and income for our population, and whenever income tax rates have been reduced, the economy has grown and total tax revenues have increased.

Positive incentives are the reason capitalism is a more productive and prosperous system, motivating people to produce and succeed. The best replacement for our monstrous tax code would be a simple flat tax that broadens the tax base and neither punishes success nor rewards failure. The present 77,000 page tax code, with its myriad special provisions and loopholes, has been crafted by Congress to please many voter groups and political contributors. It stifles prosperity with double and triple taxation of income at different levels, penalizes savings, discourages capital investment and unjustly confiscates substantial portions of after-tax accumulated assets upon death, to be distributed by politicians to their favorites.

Our welfare and tax structures so suppress our national productivity that it would be hard to devise a worse way to encourage people to provide for themselves and their families, to innovate, risk capital, create jobs and strive for success. That striving is precisely what is necessary for national prosperity. Think what we could do if Congress and our populist president removed the wet blanket of political disincentives that now is smothering us.

FREE ENTERPRISE

Laissez-faire, laissez-passez, la monde va de lui-meme. (Let us do, leave us alone, the world runs by itself.) -- French physiocrats of the 18th century

The United States has the natural assets and skills to be preeminent in commerce and wealth, military strength and to some extent, world politics. We have several advantages – our natural resources, seaports, navigable rivers, capital base, technical skills, work ethic, and sufficient productivity to compete with the industrious nations of the world while maintaining a high standard of living. A large percentage of world trade is done in U.S. dollars, and much global business is conducted in the English language. Americans also have the advantage of generally being likeable people, able to get along with most ethnic groups, although there is much global animosity toward the United States because of our meddling in the affairs of other countries.

Unfortunately, like most other Western people, we have seen 50 years of declining individual initiative, caused somewhat by prosperity but more by the cancerous, debilitating growth of government regulation, our welfare state and reduced incentives to produce. Average federal income taxes for American families are eight times what they were in 1950, up from three percent to twenty-four percent of income, and the Democrat gang of populists continually fights for even more. With an escalating tax rate, the successful pay a double penalty –- more taxable income plus taxation at a higher rate. Add the penalty of death taxes that steal accumulated after-tax savings of thrifty people and kill family businesses built up over a lifetime, and most of those taxes go to less ambitious, less productive, less thrifty people. The incentives to work, succeed and save inevitably decrease.

In 1980 substantial numbers of American voters expressed dissatisfaction with a stagnant economy, high inflation, ever-increasing governmental interference in their lives and theft of their earnings. With that mandate, President Reagan cut taxes and spending (except for military) and provided new incentives for personal and business saving and investment. As a result, the 1980s saw unequalled and continuing prosperity. However, Reagan spent us into more deficits to counter the Soviet military threat, then George Bush, Sr. and the Democrats raised taxes and continued deficit spending while drastically increasing regulatory harassment of businesses and individuals. Slick Willie Clinton ran for president as a moderate Democrat but then turned left to more welfare-state socialism and passed the biggest tax increase in our history, in spite of his campaign promises to reduce taxes.

In 1994 the voters again said no to big government and elected a Republican congress whose Contract with America repudiated the welfare state. Predictably, as soon as specific reductions in subsidies and free lunches were discussed –- special favors for farmers, big corporations, small businesses, retired people, ethnic minorities, the "poor" and so on –- people screamed. "We thought you meant cutting the other guy's subsidies! We depend on ours!" George W. Bush and his Republican Congress abandoned conservative principles, increasing government spending and regulations at an unprecedented rate. They expanded "entitlements" as never before with the addition of the Medicaid drug benefit estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over the first decade.

Then Obama and his anti-business gang forced through Congress staggering new welfare legislation and giveaways, frightened business with his ceaseless attacks on them and new and increased taxes, often hidden in unrelated legislation like Obamacare, mounted a continuing program of new restrictions, new regulations and harassing, all destructive of business and individual incentives to invest and expand as is necessary to revive a sick economy. As a means of achieving their socialistic goals, laws and rights were trampled on by executive orders and bureaucratic attacks.

Is America still vital? Do we still have the enterprising spirit and conditions necessary to move ahead, to enable our people with talent and ambition to succeed? Not now. That requires restoring incentives to enterprising Americans or the country will inevitably drift into the entropy and decline of Europe and its moribund nations.

Liberals call an unwillingness to take from the more productive to give to the less productive "protecting the rich." They also say removing the capital gains tax would protect the rich, but the reality is that taxing capital gains deters the ambitious from starting or expanding the enterprises that create real jobs. New government jobs are just another form of welfare paid by the taxpayers. Taxing capital gains also penalizes the frugal by assessing taxes on fictitious capital gains that result merely from monetary inflation, with no actual gain. Yet the way of democracies is for politicians to pander to the majority for votes. Take from the more successful and give to the less successful, starting the downward spiral. Kill incentives and you kill the vitality that makes great nations, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. The important question is whether the average Americans will be motivated and permitted to succeed and prosper. It is opportunity and the will to succeed on the part of all the people that cause national prosperity.

There are many examples of the failed bureaucratic methods that stifle innovation and productivity and inflate costs needlessly. That is the way of bureaucrats: make a rigid set of rules and administer them rigidly. That way, no individual bureaucrat can be criticized for deviation, poor judgment or favoritism, and every bureaucrat can exercise control and show his superiority over the greedy entrepreneurs who are forever trying to get away with something or -- the worst sin -- become wealthy. Mark Steyn: "To open a restaurant in New York City requires dealing with the conflicting demands of eleven municipal agencies and applying for 30 different permits and certificates, not including a state liquor license." Bureaucracies and regulations kill the entrepreneurial spirit and the chances of success for people willing to mortgage their homes and souls to try to create or expand a business. Carried far enough, and Obama is trying desperately to do that, we could go the way of Communist East Germany after World War II.

Important facts: All men are created unequal. Second, life is not fair and never will be; it's the survival of the fittest. The tyranny of the majority is a fact of life. Third, soaking the rich is not the way to help the poor. You will never solve the problems of the less fortunate, meaning the less successful, by penalizing the more successful; that will only take away much of the incentive to be productive and succeed. The "rich" provide the funds needed by the enterprises that are the engine of the economy. In seeking votes, Congress has largely ignored these basic economic principles, increasing government and regulations at an unprecedented rate. "The business of America is business", Calvin Coolidge said. Now the business of America is regulation. Judge-made law and bureaucrat-made regulations destroy representative government. Micro-regulation is macro-tyranny.

In general, individuals succeed or fail according to their own ambition, self-discipline and abilities. How much tax-paid help can be justified for 35-year-old failures? There are many losers in any society, and most bring it on themselves. Helping them a reasonable amount to help themselves is all the taxpayers should bear, along with trying to help educate and motivate their children toward a more productive life.

Our focus should be on helping the upperdogs, the achievers who set out to do something and the leaders who motivate others. This doesn't favor the wealthy or the educated or the skilled; it favors those with initiative, self-discipline, self-reliance, guts and determination. It is destructive to penalize those people by making them support free-loaders instead of rewarding them by letting them keep most of what they earn and helping them to reach their goals. They are the people who enable and motivate others to be productive. Their success and whether the government restores the incentives for everyone to succeed and prosper will determine how organizations and nations perform, compete and prosper -- or fail.

OUTSOURCING AND GLOBALIZATION

One of the frequent attacks by Democrats on the Bush administration, in their frantic attempts to regain power, involved the loss of U.S. jobs to lower-wage countries. Now, five years into Obama's reign of terror, the liberals heap the blame for lost American jobs on greedy businesses.

In a competitive, free-enterprise society work will be done wherever combined conditions are most favorable for a business. Local wage rates are only one of many factors, which include the supply, skill, productivity, reliability and work ethic of available labor; the availability, quality, reliability and cost of raw materials; government incentives, taxing, permitting and other regulatory policies; established infrastructure; proximity to markets; and the availability, costs, quality and reliability of transportation and other resources. Outsourcing is often indicated or necessary, whether or not the domestic labor unions, their employees and taxing jurisdictions like it.

Doomsayers forget the most fundamental reason adjusted per-capita income is many times higher in developed nations than it was one or two hundred years ago: When others can make or do something better or cheaper than you can do it yourself, it makes sense to outsource it, specialize in what you do most productively and trade for the rest of your needs and wants. Specialization creates efficiency and more wealth.

Craig Barrett, when CEO of Intel, made no apologies for outsourcing. Intel was spending $2 billion to rebuild a Chandler, Arizona plant instead of replacing it offshore, but he was forthright about the global economy as well as our mediocre, expensive educational system. "Other parts of the world, such as Asia and India, are graduating more students with stellar math and science skills. And their governments make it easy to do business, with hefty incentives and speedy permitting. The issue is not how you compare to your next-door neighbor, it's how you compare to where the action is, and the action is around the world . . . Government should do no harm, [with] fair taxes and a streamlined process."

On March 31, 2005, Paul Otellini, who became Intel's CEO, said Intel may build a $3 billion plant overseas in the next few years, although they were still considering U.S. sites. Testifying at a hearing of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, he said that over the 10-year life of the chip plant, the company would save $1 billion by placing the factory in Asia or Europe rather than the United States. He stated that the difference is almost all in taxes, not wages and capital costs. At that time 12 of Intel's 16 factories were in the United States, while 75 percent of their sales were outside the U.S.

The Boston Consulting Group, whose clients include many of the nation's largest corporations, warned that U.S. companies risk failure if they hesitate to shift facilities to countries with low costs, and the largest competitive advantage will lie with companies that move the earliest. Their report said, "Successful companies must ask themselves, 'What must I keep at home?', rather than 'What can I shift to low-cost countries?'"

We should have learned from the disastrous 1930 Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised tariffs on over 20,000 dutiable items and prolonged the Great Depression. The positive lesson it teaches is that free trade is good for everyone in the long-run, even though it disrupts some workers and industries in the short-run. Economic historian Joseph Schumpeter calls it a process of creative destruction. Free markets constantly replace products, jobs and wealth with superior products, better jobs and more wealth.

New Zealand was a typical big-government, over-regulated welfare state with a sluggish economy. In a brief period, many major changes were made and the results were dramatic. They decided that free trade was in their own interests and abolished all subsidies on agriculture. New Zealand is an agricultural economy, with something like three million people and sixty million sheep. Rather than suffering, agriculture has grown at twice the rate of any other segment of their economy. There are no tariffs on any parts of the New Zealand economy; they are in love with open markets. New laws freed people to contract their labor to others, and as a result New Zealand now has the highest rate of job growth in the OECD.

The second reason the scare-mongers are wrong is that, on balance, the U.S. is gaining more jobs with multinational companies than it is losing to foreign workers. The University of Arizona's College of Management said, "Forget about global outsourcing. It's too small to be a factor. The U.S. economy creates as many new jobs in a single month as the cumulative loss to global outsourcing of the past three years. Plus, the U.S. adds several times more jobs through "insourcing;" i.e., foreign-owned company hiring of U.S. workers at their U.S. facilities."

Mexico provides examples of both insourcing and outsourcing. Ross Perot predicted a "giant sucking sound" of jobs moving to Mexico after NAFTA. Some low-wage jobs did move, but some jobs returned when companies discovered that the challenges of doing business in Mexico, quality control, transportation costs and delays more than offset the low-wage advantage. Ironically, Mexico is now losing many jobs to even lower-wage countries, particularly China and India, and seems unable to stop it. It is the inevitable pattern.

The Organization for International Investment tracks the number of job opportunities coming from other countries to the U.S. and says the greatest beneficiary of outsourcing is the U.S. itself. We are importing many more jobs than we export, with countries from around the world attracted to our stable political environment, industrial innovation, trained labor supply and productive American workers. Foreign companies manufacturing in the U.S. also do a substantial amount of exporting, helping our balance of payments problem.

Jack Kemp says we are our own biggest problem. "The enemy of American jobs is not Japan, India or China, but rather stupid policies made in Washington, D.C. Therefore, a more apt metaphor is refugee CEOs who are fleeing punitive government policies that hurt both capital and labor."

Several factors discourage more American insourcing than exists today. Current tax rates and bureaucratic harassment discourage business. U.S. corporate tax rates are the highest of any developed country in the world. As Ronald Reagan put it, "If you want less of something, tax it; if you want something to slow down, regulate it."

Another deterrent is the high cost and regulation of medical care. The trial lawyers have a stranglehold on Congress and work against important reforms to reduce medical costs, now at 16 percent of GDP compared with 8 percent in the next-highest country. Unless Obamacare is cancelled and replaced with needed reforms, medical costs and restrictions will be much worse.

Education reform is badly needed, starting at home. It is shocking to compare high school graduation requirements today with those of 100 years ago -- back when parents demanded performance from their children and teachers and before the teachers' unions, liberals and the ACLU took control. Our higher education is badly in need of reform, but the high-cost, tenured faculties effectively resist needed changes.

American workers must have marketable skills and be competitive, all factors considered, with global competitors. The Boston Consulting Group found that 40 percent of companies surveyed expressed significant concerns about the erosion of skills in the U.S. workforce, while stating that many low-cost countries provide large pools of skilled workers who are eager to apply their talents.

The problem is not outsourcing. The problem is that we need to get our act together to attract more business, to provide government taxation and regulatory policies that encourage business rather than stifle it, enact tort reform to get the trial lawyers off the backs of the business and medical worlds, reform our education systems, and stop the unconstitutional theft by taxation that punishes success. Make those changes and the world will want to do more business here, while concerns about outsourcing would diminish.

GLASS CEILINGS AND JOB DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN

We hear and read many claims of unfair treatment and discrimination involving female employees, including many individual and class-action lawsuits for damages and management changes. There is a history of discrimination in many parts of the world. In the past, women have been denied voting rights and opportunities in most countries and treated as mere chattels in others. In many Muslim countries and elsewhere, that is still the situation.

Lions are physically stronger and lionesses get pushed around, but they counter with significant prowess of their own. Similarly, women have countered men and substantially improved their situation during the last hundred years. In this country, most discrimination against women is gone except in the opinion of the militant "feminists," their trial lawyers and the anti-business liberals and academics who brainwash our young people on the subject. Among these groups, there is a general failure or unwillingness to recognize the essential differences between male and female employees and the challenges employers face in selecting employees, assigning duties, compensating and rewarding, promoting, demoting and discharging employees. Most critics probably have never had to find and sustain the capital and shareholder support necessary to fund, operate and expand a business, to find, train and manage capable employees, work to attract and satisfy customers with useful goods and services at competitive prices, to meet a payroll, and fight the bankers, politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers and journalists who want to tell a business how it should be run -- people who don't know all the facts involved and have nothing to lose if they harm the business.

The primary assignment and responsibility of any manager in a private-enterprise economy is to provide products and services chosen by enough customers based on usefulness, quality and price to cover the costs of doing business and return adequate profits to risk-taking entrepreneurs and shareholders. That is Economics 101, a course in which most liberals, mainstream media, university professors, militant feminists, trial lawyers, bureaucrats and labor-union leaders have never received a grade higher than "D", if they ever took the course.

In making personnel decisions, managers must consider many factors. For one, male and female brains tend to work differently. An interesting study by Catalyst, a New York research organization, found that girls outperform boys from kindergarten through graduate school in grades, admissions and even extracurricular activities, but the study also found that the traits which propel girls to the head of the class -– diligence, organization, carefully following instructions –- often aren't enough to propel women up the corporate ladder, and may even hold them back. Men typically demonstrate the aggressiveness and ability to promote themselves and the firm's products that wins promotions and customers, while women tend to show good student behavior, working hard based on the assumption that they will win recognition. The study found that women tend not to ask for what they deserve.

Employers are accused of paying women less for doing the same work, but on the average, women work fewer hours, cutting back their time after having children. A study of M.B.A. graduates of Chicago's Booth School found that only half the women with children were working full time ten years after graduation compared with 95 percent of men, and it was the choice of the women, who reported they were happier with part-time work.

The study also revealed that, in 2002, women held only 15.7 percent of corporate officer positions and comprised 5.2 percent of top earners at Fortune 500 companies. Women held only 9.9 percent of corporate officer jobs, where they would be running the businesses or departments, compared with 90.1 percent for men. This may be partly due to the fact that some men, particularly older men, do not work well under a female supervisor. Consequently, a woman who is a capable supervisor of other women and younger men may not succeed as a supervisor of older men. It may not be the woman's fault, but she should not be put in that position if it doesn't work.

Personnel decisions involve many other considerations. How effective is the individual at supervising the other employees involved? How dependable a supervisor is he likely to be in the ever-changing future with its challenges, opportunities and inevitable restructuring? How wise is investment in this person for the medium and long term? Is he likely to be a dedicated, passionate long-term employee who thinks of the business as his own business, or does he work as if it is simply a job, putting in his time for a paycheck, benefits and the possibility of future promotions?

Given these criteria, women who have, or might have, at-home children pose a different problem for employers. Many are capable, dependable, effective workers or supervisors. but what if the potential exists of the woman leaving the organization once, or repeatedly, for extended periods for pregnancy, childbirth and beyond, having to leave or miss work to care for sick or troubled children? What is her likelihood of leaving the company because of a husband's transfer, or simply deciding that she wants to be a full-time mother or at most work part-time? Her employer probably has a substantial investment in her.

All these factors and more must be considered in making personnel decisions. No politician, bureaucrat, judge or jury has a constitutional or equitable right to second-guess management decisions unless they are obviously unfair and discriminatory. Major considerations include not only the "him-compared-with-her" facts, but all the medium and long-term factors involved. Pitney Bowes and other corporations have found that women outperform men in some situations and insist on hiring more women and giving them a level playing field. The results have been not only positive for women, but have created more competition among their men and raised their performance. Career-minded women should seek employment in organizations that provide the opportunity to compete on an equal basis, where the company culture has already evolved for them. In some organizations, men are reluctant to offer women certain jobs for business reasons, and some women choose not to take those jobs for personal reasons. In either case, it's nobody else's business.

In recent years, more women have become upper-level executives, CEOs and heads of state. The new CEO of General Motors is a woman. Generally, the ceilings are being removed, but sometimes unwisely, as in the military services where there is a history of some "politically correct" unjustfied promotions of women. Transitions are always painful, with winners and losers, but this transition is over the hump and time will sort it out.

SOCIAL SECURITY, SIMPLIFIED

Conservatives say we must reform our doomed Social Security program, now. Most Democrat congressmen and their allies in the liberal news media say there is no crisis. They say we have decades to make a few little changes, that the Republicans are trying to ruin Social Security and endanger recipients with risky private investments instead of maintaining a safe Social Security trust fund. Everyone has access to the same facts, so what is happening?

Those pleading for reform have done a poor job of explaining the facts, and the Democrats, AARP, mainstream media and others opposed to reform have done a good job of frightening the public. The facts are kindergarten-simple. Unless substantial changes are made quickly, there will have to be significant reductions in promised benefits or big increases in either Social Security "contributions" or general taxes to pay benefits as scheduled now. The data published by the Social Security Administration for the fiscal year 2012 shows a $47.8 billion deficit – cash brought in less benefits and overhead expenses paid out. In fiscal 2011 the S.S. deficit was $7.975 billion, in fiscal 2010 $36.8 billion.

Proponents of reforming Social Security focus on boring statistics and discussions on solvency, transition costs, unfunded liabilities and rates of return. Ed Crane of the Cato Institute pointed out the mistake in that approach:

The idea of an Ownership Society is brilliant... something integral to the essence of America. That essence is a respect for the dignity of the individual, which is axiomatically enhanced when one has more control over one's life. That is what personal [S.S.] accounts provide.

FACT: The Social Security "Trust Fund" the Democrats and AARP pretend to be protecting simply does not exist. Lyndon Johnson engineered the change. Now Congress spends Social Security net contributions any way they choose, then simply puts electronic I.O.U.s on the federal books, calling them a trust fund. The benefits paid now to retirees are paid by workers paying current Social Security (FICA) contributions. Social Security is run like a pyramid scheme; the first participants are paid by the second, the second by the third, and so on. Pyramid schemes are illegal, except when the government does them.

In 1960 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Fleming vs. Nestor, decided that Social Security promises are not an individual asset and that the payroll taxes paid today guarantee nothing in the future. Politicians are free to change their schedule of future benefits at any time. They have done so in the past and they will have to do it in the future or raise general taxes substantially. Already 80 percent of Americans pay more in Social Security and Medicare taxes than they do in income taxes. If present trends continue, John Goodman at the National Center for Policy Analysis estimates that workers will have to give politicians between 25 and 30 percent of their wages just to pay the Social Security and Medicare benefits now promised. Many of today's politicians want tomorrow's politicians to get the blame, instead of heading off the disaster now. The longer we wait to reform the doomed system, the more painful will be repudiating their scheduled promises.

FACT: When Social Security started, male life expectancy was 61. The average 65-year-old retiree had been dead four years and his FICA payments kept by the politicians before his benefits began. Now male life expectancy is 78 -- 17 additional years to pay S.S. benefits. In 1945, 10 years after Social Security began, there were 40 workers paying in for each retiree receiving benefits. By 1960 the ratio was 10:1. The official SSA data for fiscal 2012 show only 1.67 Americans working full time in the private sector for every person collecting SS benefits. The first baby boomers are now eligible to receive benefits and the number of retirees will rise rapidly for almost 20 years. On average, they will have many more years to live than when the present benefits were scheduled and the income/benefits deficits will be dramatic.

FACT: The annual "returns" – more electronic IOUs - given by thieving politicians on Social Security accounts are miserable, barely over one percent per year. If those funds were in private accounts and invested, the accumulation of assets would be substantially higher. R.W. Rahn, in Economic Growth for Washington Dummies: "In both Chile and the United States, employers are required to set aside a little more than 12 percent for the pension program, but in Chile, someone with the same earnings as an American will be getting $55,000 as an annual pension, while the American, working the same number of years, just gets $18,000." The difference is that in Chile the Social Security accounts belong to the workers. Each has his own passbook and their contributions are invested in the economy, not spent by politicians. The Democrats, AARP and the media fight private investments, for several wrong reasons.

Most people, particularly the spend-it-now generations, don't understand the multiplier effect of compound interest. Its impact over a working lifetime is enormous. From 1928 through 2002, Standard & Poor's broad stock index, the S & P 500, shows an average annual return of 11.9 percent. Over 40 years, $100 in the government's hands becomes only $181 at 1.5 percent, but $8,978 at 11.9 percent -- 49.5 times as much! Assuming a more conservative 7 percent average return, the difference in a worker's portfolio would still be 8 times as much, and he and his heirs would own those assets, not the big-spending career politicians. Nobel-prize economist Edward Prescott says a single male born in 2000 with average earnings would expect real annual returns on his contributions averaging only 0.86 percent, while a worker earning $80,000 would have a 0.72 percent negative annual return.

FACT: A March 23, 2005 report of the Social Security and Medicare Trustees makes clear that, in the next ten years, $2.2 trillion will be taken from beneficiaries; that is the difference between the amount of payroll taxes to be paid and the amount to be spent on retiree benefits. Unless something is done now to get those funds out of the hands of politicians and in the control of the beneficiaries of the system, the politicians will just continue to spend those receipts.

FACT: Chile's pioneering program of privatizing Social Security, influenced by Milton Friedman and University of Chicago economists, has been operating for over 30 years and shows what we should have been doing. When offered as a voluntary alternative, it was quickly approved by unions and the general public, and almost everyone chose to participate in the program, with good results. The private investment accounts belong to the workers and their heirs, not the politicians. Each participant has his own passbook, just like a bank savings account. In the U.S., the government steals all accounts on death. In Chile, the returns have averaged 10 percent per year, and pension funds have already accumulated eight trillion U.S. dollars. Their workers contribute 10 percent of their wages before taxes, but can contribute more. They know they have a stake in their economy; they watch what the government is doing and they get involved. The typical Chilean's main asset is not his house or car but the capital in his social security account. Because of that personal interest and knowledge that their savings are being invested in Chile's economy instead of spent by politicians, their economy has boomed. They have effective safeguards to protect their accounts, and Chile offers over 30 years of case history of privatization for us to study.

What is happening? How can the Republicans, Democrats and others have access to the same facts, yet be so polarized in their opinions of what to do? The reasons are simple. If Congress gives up their ability to spend Social Security income, they would be admitting they have been stealing and spending our S.S payments for decades. President Bush's proposal to offer the voluntary opportunity to put only four percent of Social Security taxes into individually-owned accounts would have taken away from the politicians' spending income an estimated $664 billion in 10 years, an unthinkable loss to politicians. They can buy a lot of votes with that. The Democrats cherish the power and vote-buying position that controlling "entitlements" gives them, and they fear the loss of another of the cherished "Great (Welfare) Society" programs, whose $16 trillion costs have largely been wasted. The Democrats' institutions of socialism wouldn't survive with informed, prosperous citizens who have more secure financial futures, the way Chile's citizens do.

The link between ownership and voting patterns is clear. In a poll conducted after the 2004 election, Public Opinion Strategies found that people who owned securities directly or through mutual funds voted for Bush over Kerry 52 to 46 percent, while non-investors voted for Kerry over Bush 54 to 45. Most significant was that the investor-Bush link was strong at all levels, but at incomes below $40,000 – the Democrats' stronghold – non-investors voted for Kerry 57 to 36 percent. There is also a strong Republican correlation to home ownership. The reason for the panic of the liberals is obvious: Dependency means votes for Democrats.

But why the AARP? They're supposed to look out for the seniors, but what they have done is to declare war on younger Americans, who don't seem to know that they're being robbed by the seniors who already own most of the personal wealth in the country. AARP leaders say conservatives are proposing to cut their benefits and "play the slots" with their "trust fund," in spite of President Bush having said repeatedly that there would have been no change in benefits or the functioning of Social Security for people over 55. Conservatives have proposed that participation in private accounts should be strictly voluntary, but that fact is lost in the hysteria. Why? The AARP has a large business income from seniors. The leadership wants to retain and increase their membership and business income by making them feel threatened.

The AARP has been turned into a big business, with 35 million members and their own zip code at their headquarters in Washington. They are selling mutual funds and investments as well as all kinds of insurance, playing travel agent and operating other businesses. Privatizing part of Social Security might hurt their business, which is not supposed to be a business, by potentially reducing their sales of insurance, mutual funds and other products. They call private Social Security accounts "a risky gamble," but their website offers their members 38 mutual funds, including "Technology Fund," "Gold and Precious Metals Fund," and "Emerging Markets and Latin America Fund." Stocks and bonds are a risky gamble if purchased with Social Security funds, but a sound investment if purchased from AARP.

President Reagan restored a sick economy to vitality and a discouraged nation to optimism. He lowered income tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent, but total tax receipts increased in the revitalized economy. He also reduced regulatory harassment, restoring to the people a feeling of being in control of their lives. But subsequent politicians of both parties raised taxes, increased regulatory harassment and returned to runaway spending. Now conservatives are trying to restore the ownership society, including actual ownership of your payroll contributions to build your own retirement assets. Like employees who feel the company they work for is "our company," citizens who are part owners in a nation's economy show improved attitudes and performance, and the economy thrives.

President Bush 43, when facing massive opposition to the needed Social Security changes and knowing that major changes in any federal program usually involve years of bickering, proposed lowering the benefits to higher-income participants. In effect, he proposed changing it from an annuity program to another welfare program -- another way to penalize success and reward failure. A poll conducted for the Associated Press found that 56 percent of respondents are not willing to give up some promised benefits, while only 40 percent said they would. Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans were opposed to reducing any benefits.

President Obama tries to avoid the issue. It is certainly not part of his big-government agenda to relinquish federal control of Social Security funds and permit America's citizens to have control of their own pension assets. We can only hope that there will be enough public pressure to revive the important Social Security debate and get the true facts to the public to counteract the misinformation broadcast by the Democrats, the media and the AARP.

Condensed, this debate is not complicated:

1. The present system is a future economic disaster. Today's workers pay the benefits of retirees, and a shrinking number of workers are supporting a growing number of retirees who are living longer.

2. The puny return the politicians arbitrarily allocate to the I.O.U.s in the non-existent "trust fund" is much lower than the historic average return payroll taxes could be earning if invested in the U.S. economy. If contributions were invested now, future benefits probably would not have to be reduced nor payroll taxes increased substantially.

3. Do workers want to continue letting career politicians spend their Social Security payments for anything they choose, or would they prefer to start putting their payroll taxes into private investment accounts that actually belong to workers and their heirs? The real argument is about the ownership of Social Security accounts. Should they be individually owned or belong to politicians?

It is urgent that we press Congress to engage in the Social Security debate, or the Ostrich Coalition will kill Social Security before the public really understands what is at stake. If we can accomplish that, our next objective as American citizens must be to consider carefully whatever reasonable proposals are made and involve ourselves in the political process. Social Security is too important to leave to career politicians to decide based on lobbying pressures and their own striving for the next election.

U.S. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

Executive Summary

Energy independence is possible. Recently, only 37 percent of our oil consumption came from unfriendly sources, and that amount could be replaced with domestic sources if President Obama and Congress would stop obstructing it. Our dependence on foreign oil is aided by the same Democrats and environmentalists who blame others for high gasoline prices while blocking proposals to maximize domestic fuel sources -- drilling for oil and gas in our continental shelves and Alaska, developing our vast oil shale resources, utilizing clean coal technology, enabling nuclear power plants, and building more pipelines and refineries.

Our biggest challenge is developing alternative fuels. The liberals and environmentalists promote so-called renewable energy sources that are still in uneconomical early stages of development, impossible to sell without large taxpayer subsidies, limited now in probable future market share, and most produce only electricity, not reducing the demand for foreign oil for liquid fuel and gas. Their favored hybrid cars are expensive, mostly suitable for urban use, and appear likely to make up less than six percent of the future market. Natural gas vehicles work well for urban fleet vehicles, have further potential and should be encouraged, along with diesel.

The Al Gore hysteria over global warming and greenhouse gases is a giant political, semi-religious canard, discussed in the article.

Obama continues Bush's and Congress's favorite mistake, pandering to the farm lobby by mandating use of corn-based ethanol for fuel. It uses large amounts of an important world food product and has already resulted in higher global prices for a variety of food products in addition to corn itself. Compounding the felony, the U.S. has continued heavy tariffs on Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol in addition to giving a federal subsidy to our own corn-ethanol producers. It is a corrosive pollutant in engines, cannot be transported by pipeline, uses large amounts of water to produce and uses almost as much energy to manufacture as it produces.

Real solutions to our energy-dependence problem are:

* Drilling for large known quantities of oil and gas in our offshore continental shelves, now blocked by Obama and Congress.

* Drilling in the ANWR and Beaufort Sea areas of Alaska.

* Developing our enormous sources of U.S. oil and gas shale.

* Developing coal-to-liquid and coal-to-gas synthetic fuels. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal.

* Unlocking the huge Utah coal deposits that Clinton declared a "national monument" as a political payoff, with no local or congressional discussions.

* Encouraging the use of diesel vehicles, which are about 30 percent more efficient than gasoline.

* Encouraging new refineries and pipelines, blocked by not-in-my-backyard lobbying. None have been built since 1976.

* Encouraging the riskier deep Gulf and Arctic drilling with tax-credit incentives on success.

* Encouraging the development of biomass fuels from non-edible plants, recycled cooking oil, waste fats, methane gas from landfills and other sources.

* Resuming after 35 years the construction of clean, competitive nuclear electricity plants to replace some of the older coal-fired plants and alleviate the shortage of generating capacity. In the past our inefficient methods, hurdles and obstructing lawsuits ballooned the costs and time involved in designing, approving and constructing new plants.

U.S. ENERGY INDEPENENCE

The most important factor in achieving energy independence is reducing the importation of foreign oil used to fuel vehicles and aircraft. Doing so would reduce the effects of the OPEC cartel's control and manipulation of global oil production and pricing.

Much of the argument about domestic fuel production involves hysteria over "global warming" and emissions of carbon dioxide. The simplified facts are these:

1. Dr. Jack Wheeler said, "The global warming hoax is the single greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity today, the Left's current and most successful rationale for massive government control over our lives since Marxism."

2. Among many other scientists who have reached the same conclusion, over 32,000 scientists have signed a petition at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, initiated by a former president of the National Academy of Sciences.

3. It is futile to attempt to alter our natural climate changes. See Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years, by Fred S. Singer and Dennis t. Avery.

There are large undeveloped reserves and potential sources of oil and gas available in the U.S. and Canada, in our coastal continental shelves and in the Gulf of Mexico. No other major country restricts and prohibits the development of its natural resources the way our politicians and bureaucrats do.

Even with all of these domestic resources available to us, George W. Bush's primary energy development thrust was a ridiculous subsidizing of corn-ethanol fuel and mandating little high-mileage biscuit-tin cars to play dodge-em in traffic with the big SUVs and trucks. In 2012, Obama changed the federal mandate for minimum permissible fuel mileage in 2025 from 20.6 mpg to 54.5. Buy your golf cart for commuting before the prices go up. Obama's merry band of global warmists and presstitutes have obstructed almost every effort to increase carbon-based fuel production, instead promoting expensive taxpayer-subsidized, non-carbon energy with a variety of uneconomic fuels.

When Americans learn that we are importing 63 percent of our oil consumption, many assume it is hopeless to reduce that amount significantly. In fact, it is not. We could do it if the liberal Democrats in the Administration and Congress would remove their roadblocks. Only 36.6 percent of our oil comes from the Middle East, Nigeria and Venezuela -- the unfriendly areas –- and we could replace that percentage with the development of domestic energy now blocked by Gore's Church of Global Warming.

Liberals reject proposed developments to utilize domestic fuel throughout the United States and Canada. They argue that it would take ten years to see an increase in domestic oil production. Oil companies say they could deliver oil in two years by drilling known deposits in our offshore continental shelves. Instead, liberals promote non-carbon energy sources still largely under development and not economically feasible. Furthermore, most non-carbon sources generate only electricity and do nothing to reduce our importation of foreign oil needed for vehicle fuel.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Liberals and radical environmentalists have a religious passion for "renewable" energy sources. Except for hydroelectric, which the liberals would like to shut down, non-carbon energy technologies will likely do little to reduce consumption of conventional fuels in the near future. The combined production of renewable sources including ethanol is currently only about four percent of U.S. energy consumption, doing almost nothing to reduce oil imports. Most other alternative energy such as solar, wind and tidal can produce only electricity and only at certain times, it cannot be stored, and they are used only when heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Several large solar manufacturers have gone bankrupt in spite of the heavy subsidies, but solar panels are becoming less expensive. Windmills are close to being competitive but require large land or shore areas, the sight is offensive to some people and they kill big birds. Other alternatives like tidal and geothermal power have some potential to be competitive eventually. The silver bullet would be to make nuclear fusion of seawater economically possible, with a small amount of seawater producing a great amount of energy, but with current technology that is impossible.

HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS

Hydrogen in any form is not practical now, either produced by the electrolysis of water or by breaking down fossil fuel. The finished product now provides only about 47 percent of the energy used to produce it. If used in an internal combustion engine to avoid those high production costs, the net efficiency in the vehicle is only about 25 percent.

HYBRID, GAS AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Hybrid gasoline-electric cars are the darling of many environmentalists, but it seems unlikely that the current designs will be a major long-term factor in reducing gasoline consumption. They are expensive, typically taking about 15 years of normal use to recover their additional purchase cost. Hybrids work reasonably well in urban use in small vehicles but not on highways; they require start-and-stop use. Most of today's hybrids have only enough battery to move the car about five miles and are estimated to achieve only a 12-15 percent fuel-efficiency gain, compared with a 30 percent gain with diesels. With shale gas discoveries up and gas prices down, alternative systems using propane or natural gas work well and economically for urban fleet automobiles, light trucks and increasingly for long-haul trucks. Given these available technologies, most industry analysts predict a future hybrid market share of only about five percent. The market share in middle 2013 is less than 4 percent, after years of development and sales.

While hybrids are increasing their tiny market share, some experts predict that they will largely be replaced by plug-in electrics, but the batteries are very expensive, very heavy, and battery life is unknown. Electric cars with lightweight bodies have some future potential to reduce oil importation slightly, but the probable reduction of fossil fuel is minimal. Plug-ins are expensive, they have limited range, charging facilities are scarce, and our grandchildren will be handed another big subsidy bill. The dirty little secret the electric car advocates ignore is that almost half of U.S. electricity is produced by burning coal, so the plug-in electrics should really be called plug-in coal/electrics. A change to carbon fiber bodies –lighter and stronger than steel and more impact-absorbent – is another interesting possibility to reduce vehicle liquid fuel consumption.

VIABLE SOLUTIONS

DRILLING FOR OIL AND GAS IN THE U.S.

The U.S. is almost the only major country that locks up natural resources. Most Americans are unaware that Democrats are largely responsible for our dependence on foreign oil. They block drilling in the huge oil and gas deposits off our coasts and in Alaska, and Obama has defied the court by refusing to approve many pending permits for Gulf of Mexico and other drilling. Congress refuses permission for our oil companies to drill within 100 miles of the Florida coast, while Cuba and China are jointly drilling within 50 miles of Florida. For years, environmentalists have prevented drilling on the outer continental shelf because of supposed environmental hazards from oil spills, but the irony is that the Chinese are a greater hazard, neither concerned about spills nor equipped to deal with them. Reports are circulating that Chinese firms are planning to slant-drill into deposits even closer to the U.S. that contain 4 to 9 billion barrels, and the Chinese have reopened an abandoned Russian oil refinery in Cuba.

Environmentalists call the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve an untouchable "pristine wilderness." In reality, it is a bleak muskeg moonscape, and the 2,000 acre proposed drilling area is only one-hundredth of one percent of ANWR's 19,000,000 acres (some call it ANMR -- the Arctic National Mosquito Refuge). The Inupiat Indians who own the land, and Alaskans generally, have been asking for years for drilling to start there. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates ANMR oil reserves at 16 billion barrels. The estimated production would make a big dent in our dependence on undependable foreign oil. Loose cannon Senator McCain is so balmy he has compared drilling in the Mosquito Refuge to drilling in the Grand Canyon.

Polls in Alaska consistently show 75 percent approval for more drilling there, but Speaker Pelosi wouldn't and Senator Reid won't permit Congress to discuss and vote on the issue. Probably 60 percent of U.S. undiscovered, recoverable oil and 40 percent of its natural gas are hostage to the drilling moratorium that dates back to Clinton and Bush, Sr.

Another undeveloped source is in the Beaufort Sea, near the Prudhoe Bay site, which does not require Congressional approval, but Obama has blocked it. The Minerals Management Service of the U.S Department of Interior estimates Beaufort reserves at 22.49 billion barrels. One company, Sohio, sank $1 billion in a dry hole there, and BP spent $750 million to drill a well now producing 60,000 barrels per day. Arctic technical limitations and bureaucratic hassles and delays are expensive and have deterred development, but the potential is substantial and its development is needed. The pipeline from Prudhoe to Valdez is operating at only one-half capacity as the Prudhoe field diminishes. For technical reasons it will eventually have to be shut down unless it gets an additional supply of oil. It could carry both ANMR and Beaufort Sea production to tankers at Valdez.

COAL

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. Along with increased drilling for oil and gas, coal and natural gas offer the greatest potential to achieve energy independence, replacing some petroleum-based gasoline and diesel with coal-based synthetic fuels and augmenting natural gas supplies through coal gasification. Coal-to-liquid fuel technology is proven, and modern scrubbers on coal-fired generating plants substantially reduce air pollution.

Synthetic fuel was a major source of fuel for Germany during World War II and it is today in South Africa and a few other places. Synthetic fuel made from coal has the potential to produce large amounts of liquid fuel for vehicles and aircraft. Unfortunately, coal now is a nasty four-letter word with radical environmentalists and their political supporters, so its further development and utilization in the U.S. is not likely now.

NATURAL GAS

Our best medium-term energy opportunity is in large-scale development of natural gas trapped in shale rock. Since 1990 "unconventional" gas has risen from 10 percent of U.S. production to almost 40 percent and is increasing rapidly. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of the shale have offered a potential bonanza of new, low-carbon U.S. gas economically. It will be used to replace substantial amounts of coal-fired electricity generation and liquid fuel in fleet vehicles.

Anti-carbon lobbyists oppose any carbon-fuel development, but their alternative solutions are neither economically competitive nor dependable. Shale gas potential reserves are large – very large. Global interest and exploration are also increasing.

Dual-fuel vehicles using natural gas are not particularly economical or satisfactory. Vehicle tanks are large and residential gas pumps are expensive, about $7,000. The engines stay clean but power is lower, and highway trips often require gasoline in a reserve tank. Fleets of urban gas vehicles – government, taxis and other corporate fleets – have worked well and economically and increased use of dual-fuel vehicles should reduce their costs and increase convenience. Some long-haul truck carriers are starting to use natural gas.

DIESEL

There is good potential in increased production and use of diesel fuel. The technology of diesel fuel and vehicles has improved substantially over 70 years, with new engines matching gasoline vehicles in emissions quality and performance. They are about 30 percent more efficient than gasoline in fuel consumption, have longer engine life, emit minimum pollution and facilitate the use of the larger, safer and more comfortable cars most Americans prefer. An Audi diesel won the Le Mans 24-hour race in 2006. Fifty percent of new vehicles in Europe burn diesel but only about three percent in the U.S., where lack of diesel refinery capacity and a history of noisy, smelly, underpowered vehicles have limited their use. Marathon Oil Company's executive vice-president, Gary Heminger: "We see a larger future demand for diesel than gasoline." The oil industry has been cleaning up the diesel fuel and the auto industry has been cleaning up the cars that burn it. Diesel is also starting to be used in general-aviation piston engines.

In addition to petroleum diesel, bio-diesel can be made from a variety of sources at competitive prices. Most is now made from corn, soybeans and recycled cooking oil, but it can be made from canola, cottonseed, mustard, peanuts, sunflowers, lard and algae, in addition to non-food grasses and shrubs like jatropha that grow in poor soil with little or no watering or fertilizing. Diesel fuel's greater power and efficiency and the potential for more production of bio-diesel offer another opportunity to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Tyson Foods has a plant in Louisiana to convert waste chicken fat into liquid fuel, and one customer is the U.S. Air Force. Properly handled, such changes could virtually eliminate our importing from undependable sources of oil. That independence, or even some improvement, would substantially strengthen our bargaining position with the world's oil sources.

TAX INCENTIVES FOR GASOLINE CONSERVATION AND NEW FACILITIES

New taxes, even those used as incentives for a good cause, are to be avoided because our career politicians simply spend additional tax revenues to buy votes. There is substantial potential for reducing oil importing by reducing the huge number of gas-hog SUVs and pickup trucks used for urban transportation, but apparently the only way to do it is with substantially higher fuel prices. Gradually increasing taxes on gasoline – not on efficient diesel – would give users time to phase out their gas hogs, but the taxes should be put in a locked-up trust fund.

A trust fund should be used only as incentives for developing supplies of fuel that replace gasoline. Possible candidates would be tax credits for the expensive opening of new fields such as the ANWR and Beaufort Sea, including the pipelines necessary to connect with existing pipelines, developing oil shale technologies and fields, coal liquefaction, and possibly for drilling in such expensive fields as the area around promising new 28,000 foot deep wells in the Gulf of Mexico. To prevent wasted political subsidies, any tax credits should be based on new oil production, given only after projects have become successful and are producing.

Another possible use of incentives is for the development of bio-fuels, including legislation to permit our military to make purchase commitments beyond their present five-year limit, not long enough to justify the large cost of developing and constructing the bio-fuel and coal liquification facilities whose production the military says they can use.

REFINERIES

In spite of a global shortage of refining capacity, the environmental radicals and not-in-my-back yard crowds have prevented any new U.S. refineries from being built for 35 years. Demand increases but no new refineries are built, while the old ones age and some are being closed, a recipe for future supply problems. New diesel refinery capacity is badly needed. Americans protest high gasoline prices, but how many actively protest the political and bureaucratic obstructions that cause rising prices at the pump? Gasoline has doubled in price during Obama's five years of obstructing oil and gas development in the U.S.

ETHANOL, METHANOL AND BIOFUELS

Only in the weird world of career politicians and bureaucrats could a plan as obviously bad as corn-ethanol be dreamed up and implemented. U.S ethanol is a monstrous political boondoggle, using a heavily subsidized food product and driving up the world price of corn, a major food source for humans and livestock. Ethanol distillers now consume 40 percent of our corn crop.

Many farmers have switched from growing wheat and soya to corn, so the prices of many other foods like grain-fed livestock and poultry have also gone up. A Wall Street Journal article headlined "Soaring Demand for Grain Roils Global Markets" reports, "Illinois corn and soybeans are up 40% and 75% from a year ago, Kansas wheat up 70% or more... A growing number of economists and agri-business executives think the run-up could last as long as a decade, raising the costs of all kinds of food... What has changed is that powerful new sources of demand are emerging... [including] the addition of U.S. Government incentives that encourage turning corn and soybeans into motor fuel."

Ethanol uses about as much energy to manufacture as it produces and is a pollutant. Researchers now say greenhouse gas emissions are actually greater than from carbon fuel when the crop-growing use is factored in. Agricultural economists are concerned about the huge amounts of water used to produce corn ethanol in the Midwest, saying that water is limited and is needed for food crops. Ethanol is corrosive in pipelines and engines. It must be transported by more expensive trucks, railway or barge rather than by pipelines. It produces one-third less energy per gallon than gasoline and its combustion is carcinogenic. A fuel station trade group estimates an average cost of $200,000 per station to install new tanks and pumps to stock the E85 (85 percent ethanol) being pushed by Obama, and vehicles have to be designed or altered to use it. Producing ethanol also uses large amounts of natural gas, and it produces only about 1:1 energy produced vs. energy consumed. However, methanol, imported sugar-cane ethanol and other bio-fuels offer substantial potential to save gasoline.

Even Saint Al Gore of Green has now come out against ethanol made from corn. We should stop subsidizing corn ethanol (51 cents/gallon) and end the heavy protective tariff (2½ percent plus 54 cents/gallon) on Brazilian sugar cane-based ethanol. We have an enormous amount of farm land whose owners are being paid by the taxpayers not to farm it -- 34 million acres. Those subsidies should be ended and the owners encouraged to grow switch-grass, miscanthus grass, jatropha or other non-food crops for bio-fuels. The potential is large, but of course Archer-Daniels-Midland, the farmers, their lobbyists and politicians will howl, as people always do, if their corn subsidies are terminated. New Zealand, an agricultural economy, ended all its heavy farm subsidies in 1984 and rather than the predicted disaster occurring, the value of farm output has increased 40 percent in constant dollar terms.

India is planting large quantities of an ugly wild green shrub called jatropha, originally from South America. It is not edible and unlike other bio-diesel crops, it will grow almost anywhere – deserts, trash dumps, rocky soil - and it thrives with little water or fertilizer. The planting is expanding to Thailand, the Philippines, Swaziland and Saudi Arabia. By some estimates, the per-barrel cost to produce jatropha biodiesel is about $43, half that of corn ethanol and one-third that of rape seed. But the cellulosic (biomass) efforts that Bush, Jr. and Obama subsidized heavily have produced almost nothing. The EPA mandated the use of 500 million gallons for 2012 but only about 12 million gallons were produced, and the subsidies roll on. The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2011: "Congress subsidized and mandated the purchase of a product that didn't exist, is punishing oil companies for not buying the product that doesn't exist, and is now doubling down on the subsidies in the hope that someday it might exist. We'd call this the march of folly, but that's unfair to fools."

Another interesting alternative being developed in western Arizona involves using animal waste from a large dairy to produce ethanol at $.80 per gallon cheaper than using corn. It uses algae to produce both ethanol and bio-diesel. The owners say they can produce as much fuel from 2,400 acres of algae as from 115,000 acres of corn.

CONCLUSION

Our independence from undependable oil sources is readily achievable if political and environmental factions will analyze the evidence, consider the seriousness of our dependence on foreign oil and encourage domestic oil drilling and oil/gas shale development, cleaner coal burning and nuclear power generation. Some renewable energy technologies, like bio-mass fuel, may provide more significant amounts of energy in the future. Renewable energy sources are not economically feasible now and would not come close to generating the amount needed to achieve energy independence, but some have potential. In the meantime we should tap into our own large supply of conventional petroleum, gas, shale, and heavy-oil and coal resources.

A STREETCAR NAMED UNDESIRABLE

It's almost impossible to keep up with the limousine-liberal self-anointed elites' new schemes to control how the hoi polloi live their lives and spend their money. "Urban sprawl" is the elites' clever way of making the American dream of owning low-density housing into something malignant. "Mass transit," which the elites would probably never use themselves unless they work in downtown New York or San Francisco, is their panacea for urban and inter-urban transportation problems, budget deficits, greenhouse gases and SUV flatulence. They just love their solution, trolley cars, which they dignify by calling light rail.

In a few cities where there are concentrations of people commuting from along a string of communities into congested city centers with inadequate streets and expensive parking facilities, rail transportation makes economic and functional sense. In most cities, where people come and go from all directions to scattered locations to work, shop, socialize, run errands and try to get in trouble, rail is hopelessly expensive and dysfunctional. Automobiles are the least expensive and the most efficient vehicles, buses next, while trolley cars are typically several times as expensive as buses per passenger mile and they don't get people to the many scattered places they want to go.

Studies of Portland, Oregon and other cities that have built urban rail systems have not only verified their extremely high cost but have found that in many cases instead of taking people out of their cars, rail took riders away from public buses but at a much higher cost to the taxpayers. If municipalities charged users the cost of light rail, there would be almost no users, so the taxpayers now have to pay most of the fares to make the elites' dream possible.

The costs and disruptions of installing rail lines are huge, involving expensive acquisitions of developed land, often expensive above or below-ground construction, often taking busy traffic lanes away from existing streets and freeways. Added problems are caused by rail lines in mixed-use rights-of-way preventing cars and buses from turning safely or at all.

The economics of urban rail transit are ridiculous. Phoenix built one 20-mile rail project for $1.4 billion and extensions are planned. The official estimates were that the average ride would be subsidized $12, about $5,000 per commuter per year. No actual figures have been released except a statement that fares provide only 25 percent of the costs, but such statistics are as unreliable as the politicians who provide them. Like unemployment and inflation data, they juggle the methodology to produce the numbers they want. The reduction of air pollution is small or nothing, considering the pollution produced in generating the electricity used, while the expected reduction of automobile traffic is in the range of only one or two percent and the reduction of highway capacity available to cars and busses is more than that.

A study published by the Independence Institute said, "To pay for cost overruns, transit agencies often must boost transit fares or cut transit service outside of rail corridors, harming most transit users". Surprisingly, they also found that light-rail transit tends to be more dangerous than other forms of urban transit, causing 3.4 times as many deaths per passenger mile as buses. Light rail is touted as saving energy and providing cleaner air, but the Independence study found the average light-rail line consumes more energy per passenger mile than passenger cars and also that rail transit is not an effective way to clean the air. Even where rail transit has attracted new transit riders out of their cars, rail transit costs roughly $1 million per ton of air pollution eliminated, while many other techniques to clean the air cost less than $10,000 per ton.

The anointed elites say if only a rail system had been planned and built before the Los Angeles area was developed and paved over, that would have solved their present traffic problems. A monograph, The Red Cars of Los Angeles, says "Los Angeles not only had its chances for a rail system, it actually had a good one in operation. Los Angeles had an extensive, well-run rail system starting in 1874. By 1920 the area had a network of rail systems connecting Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Gradually the popularity of automobiles increased, rail service to some communities was discontinued and tracks were paved over and street crossings of remaining rail lines became a problem. Lack of public support defeated plans for a subway or elevated rail system and bus lines began to replace rail cars in many areas. World War II brought a brief resurgence in their use. In 1944 the Pacific Electric had 109 million passengers, 1,150 miles of track and 900 cars." The geography of Los Angeles and most American cities, its explosive growth, the increasing use of automobiles and the purchase of the Pacific Electric by General Motors and Standard Oil of California, with the intent of closing the system and selling the rights of way to increase automobile traffic, the last closing in 1961 -- all combined to end the P.E.

Phoenix columnist Craig Cantoni reported, "Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan said the insanity of light rail should be stopped. The conclusion is obvious. In most American cities, urban rail systems are a boondoggle foisted on gullible taxpayers by a few dedicated advocates, and a gullible public often thinks it sounds like a good idea but doesn't know the facts."

The Independence Institute's report has interesting conclusions. "For many, rail transit's incredible expense is its main attraction. Auto-haters love rail because it consumes funds that otherwise could be spent reducing automobile congestion; that counters their arguments for more high-density, inner city crowding. Politicians love rail transit because the companies that profit from it are a source of campaign contributions and they can toss another bunch of pork to the low-income voters. Transit agencies love rail transit because it boosts their budgets and national prestige. But the public should not be fooled. For everyone else, rail transit is a disaster."

PART III: SOCIAL ISSUES

UNCIVIL WARS

Most courteous people try to respect the personal opinions of others on subjects such as religion, politics, economics, foreign policy, welfare, family planning, music, art -- matters involving different tastes and the different lenses through which others view the world. Recently we have seen a trend toward more venomous disagreements between civilized Americans. Poster children are President Obama and his close friends Rev. Jeremiah Wright , Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. People who do not agree with their opinions are called racist, if not greedy and stupid. But the public also seems to be more opinionated and vocal, less respectful of different opinions, probably because of Obama's divisive rhetoric and policies.

The word "hate" and its sentiment seem more common in recent years, and not just among politicians and journalists. Years ago, when Franklin Roosevelt aroused strong sentiments in most Americans, both for and against his radical changes in the role of government, the tone of the disagreements was different, for example, from the opposition to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The anti-Roosevelt people mostly opposed his policies and proposals, while the anti-Clinton people tended to attack him personally as a contemptible liar and schemer, a scofflaw who disgraced the highest office in the country, and many also were angered by the political involvement of his non-elected wife and her "I don't recall" answers in hearings questioning her financial and political actions.

Bush 43 may have incited more hatred than any politician in recent history except Obama. While Bush's policies and actions deserved extensive debate and disagreement, it is difficult to see him and his family as anything but decent, honest people. Then why was there so much passionate dislike of a man whose conduct in office was free from the Clintons' irresponsible conduct? It may have been a lingering bitterness over Bush's close victory in 2000, his involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, or perhaps it was Democrats frustrated by their inability to maintain a House majority in 2010, with their friends in the mainstream media spreading the criticism.

Now hate and divisiveness have soared to new heights, with Obama's arrogant blame-America apologies and his revolutionary attempts to change drastically our 230 years as a free-enterprise, limited-government nation. Obama's spending trillions of dollars on his quixotic schemes has produced a groundswell of animosity toward him and his gang. Our decreasing civility also relates to increased regulatory harassment, Eric Holder's increasingly arrogant Justice Department, IRS, EPA and NSA politically motivated attacks on citizens and businesses. Political disagreements are no longer occasions to reason together to seek solutions but are battles to be fought, won or lost, with no courtesy and no respect. Similarly, our criminal justice system seems less involved in seeking justice than engaging in contests to determine who has the most money to buy the cleverest lawyers.

Politics is a game of politicians extracting the most feathers with the least possible squawking from the goose, attacking personally those who object to being plucked and distributing the feathers to friends. Disagreements are not matters for civil discussion and compromise or acceptance of an agreement to disagree. Now they often result in anger and belligerence. Often the angriest political disagreements involve unconstitutional political actions, which the offending politicians and liberal courts refuse to correct.

We also see surprisingly uncivil behavior from such bigoted anti-bigot groups as the American (Un)Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), going as far as to attack Christmas. Even those who are not religious are appalled at the attacks by liberals on celebrating Christmas. It does not harm the liberals and it has great significance to Christians, but to almost everyone it is a cherished time to reunite with friends and family, to think of others, to count our blessings and remember what is really important in life. Most Christians don't realize that celebrating Christmas on December 25th mostly started in the mid-19th Century, promoted by merchants. In earlier times late December was often considered anti-Christian, a time of pagan rituals celebrating the December 21st winter solstice, with Christian celebrations more likely to be held on January 6th, the Twelfth Night.

Decisions about celebrating Christmas, or Hanukkah, Ramadan or the full moon should be made by the people involved, not Congress, not bureaucrats, not politicians or lawyers or judges. It seems that people increasingly want to start a fight if they disagree with a rule or a different opinion or belief. It is not sensible to run to a lawyer to start a fight. It is sensible for people on all sides of such arguments to grow up, and for people who see that kind of conduct to speak up. The silent majority is often jerked around by a gaggle of lawsuit-happy bigots.

When we hear our politicians and buttinskys making personal attacks instead of having civil disagreements, we should consider offering a polite "Please, be civil or shut up."

IT TAKES TWO JUST TO MAKE IT

Only a few protests are heard when the boomers chant one of their mantras, "It takes two just to make it," but economists say that is nonsense. Adjusted for inflation, real income is about three times what it was 70 years ago, and median U.S. household income has more than doubled since 1955, when few mothers of school-age children had full time jobs. So, why the complaints? Yuppies see extravagance as an entitlement. Their definition of "making it" means living a life of luxury compared with 1955. That doesn't make it wrong for both parents to work; it's just not true that they have to.

Some boomers now are examining net costs and benefits, comparing the second income with the additional costs of child care, "office" clothing and care, restaurant and take-out meal costs, additional cars and other transportation costs, expensive vacations and entertainment to reduce stress and compensate, paying others to do home maintenance and other services, and income and other taxes on the additional income and spending. As a result a few are questioning and ending the two full-time incomes game. Some parents are concerned about their children not really having a whole mother during their critical early years, and others are realizing how very brief and precious their children's close, parent-dependent years are.

The boomers probably didn't notice it when they were young, but working mothers of young children were rare then but are considered normal now. Part of the difference is the job availability and pay weren't so good then for married women and particularly for young mothers. But mostly, it was simply normal for young mothers to be homemakers and for fathers to earn the family's support. The Heritage Foundation reports that now the majority of women in the U.S. are living without a husband, taking on the roles of both father and mother when she has children.

A Wall Street Journal article reported that the proportion of working families with children under six years old, with a father working and a mother at home, has gone up from 35 percent to 39 percent in the last eight years, so the trend has reversed slightly, for the moment. The article also said, "The sacrifices involved in giving up the second income are daunting. . . .Women who work full time bring in 40 percent of household income."

To those who grew up in a world where normal families had a working father and a mother who kept the family glued together, it seems strange to agonize over the possibility of giving up a second income. Many of today's problems appear to have resulted from families coming unglued, with overloaded career mothers, children with too little supervision, not enough responsibilities, too much money, too much television and video games, not enough studying, too many cars and too little discipline and self-discipline. Those things are all worth giving up if doing it results in better individuals and families.

Humans adapt to change slowly. Changing families from having mothers at home with children to having absentee career mothers in one generation ain't slowly.

TIPPING 401

This course is open to all majors. To be eligible, students must have taken these prerequisite courses:

Tipping 101 An introductory course for freshmen. Discusses the rationale for tipping and its evolution. Originally, guests in European manor houses gave a few coins to staff members who had provided special services such as bringing up food at 11 p.m., answering a 3 a.m. call to empty a smelly waste bucket, or perhaps to warm the bed of a chilly guest of the opposite sex.

Tipping 201 Covers the evolution of tipping into more common small gifts of money for particularly good or extra services. The practice and amounts varied widely according to the nature and quality of the extra services, and the rapport of the persons involved. Prerequisite, Tipping 101.

Tipping 301 Covers the gradual transition of tipping, mostly in the United States, from random payments to standardized formulas for additional payments to a wide variety of service persons. Some consider restaurant bills to require the payment of at least a 15 percent extra payment to the waiter; 18 percent is common when a group of women is served and they often bring calculators for precise computations. Eighteen percent typically is also the minimum among men for waitresses with impressive chests and loose shirts. The practice progressed to include an array of headwaiters, doormen, coat-checkers, nail polishers, hairdressers, car parkers, bellmen, door openers, cab drivers and a slew of other hungry persons with long right arms. Discusses the causes of the transition – cheap employers who had been able to legalize and standardize paying their employees practically nothing while forcing their customers to pay their employees' wages directly. Discusses the diplomatic problems involving tourists from Europe, where employers pay adequate wages to professional waiters and bartenders; those tourists do not follow the U.S. tipping "rules." Prerequisite, Tipping 201.

Tipping 401 Discusses the ultimate rip-off by service employers, adding a "service charge" of 15 percent or so to bills "as a convenience," to make sure their customers pay their employees' wages and to extract a little more money for themselves. Most of the semester will be spent with the class divided into four groups who will compete for the best plan to eliminate tipping and force service employers to pay adequate wages to their employees. Class will develop a public relations and marketing plan, and establish a plan for a tipping boycott. Dr. Anti Ripov, who will teach the course, suggests a starting date of next January 2nd for T-Day and proposes that security personnel be instructed to watch for tipping violators and beat them severely about the head and shoulders. Field research will be arranged at the Ritz-Carlton, Daphne's Tea Room and Hooters.

MASCULINISM AND FEMINISM

For some time there has been a movement by the Wine and Cheese Cartel to make men more caring, less aggressive – in other words, more feminine – and to make women more masculine. There was even an attempt to pass what was called the Equal Rights Amendment, an unwise proposal stopped almost single-handedly by Phyllis Schlafly, who still writes passionately on the subject. Most K-12 teachers are women and most appear to want boys to be like girls, with just different clothes and plumbing.

Those ideas, darlings of the liberal academics, effete Northeast liberals (is that redundant?) and some hairy-chested females, ignore the natural realities. It isn't just their plumbing; males and females are different. Lions and lionesses think differently, act differently, have different roles and instincts wired into them by thousands of years of evolution, in the grand scheme that used to govern our lives, the survival of the fittest. Now it's the survival of those favored by the politicians and those with the most successful PR staff, lobbyists, and trial lawyers.

Boys are given depressant drugs to suppress their aggression. Girls are told they can play football, box, fly fighter planes from carriers in combat and do guerilla warfare with the commandos. Men's wrestling and other sports in colleges are eliminated because that money must be spent on women's sports or it just isn't fair. Colleges have coed dormitories and bathrooms but lay down specific rules on how the boys must get specific permission from girls before any intimacy. Gwendolyn, I was thinking of putting my arm around your waist. Would you sign this release form?

Playgrounds are stripped of slides, swings and other equipment because there must be no injuries, lawsuits or fun. Competitive sports are banned, only pansy games are permitted and all players in must be given a trophy because the losers might suffer a reduction in self-esteem. Regulation F was signed by all 37 of Obama's unconstitutional czars, Psychiatrists Without Borders, the U.S. Federation of Trial-Lawyer Ambulance Chasers, the National Sociologists Society, the Socialist/Democrat National Committee and the New England Liberal Pantywaists Association.

All this is more sophistry of the limousine liberals and their co-conspirators in the liberal news media, but do not consider opposing the new rules. You might find yourself on another Obama-IRS hit list.

MARRIAGES, NON-MARRIAGES, VIRGINS, SOMEWHATS AND SUCH

Put in the language of the home of adultery, 'le shack-up' has become ordinaire. Once upon a time in the West, it was largely confined to the Bohemian set and to some extent, the poor. When average people lived together without the right paperwork, it was done with as little public notice as possible and was subject to extensive tsk-tsking. White wedding gowns were (supposedly) a symbol of virginity, bastard children were lifelong disgraces for parents, children and extended family and most unlicensed intercourse was here and there, now and then. Now it's "Let's move in together, share the expenses, maybe have some children and we might get married some day, but who knows? It's not important."

Like olive oil, this attitude has led to many types of girls: virgins, extra virgins, extra-extra virgins, part-time virgins, real virgins, sort-of virgins, and the most common type, Oh, that! All this got a slow start after World War I, when a lot of our boys saw Paree. The Twenties roared a little, and World War II exposed 14,000,000 Americans to the carnal offerings of romantic urgency, seedy military towns and hungry foreign women, but the real revolution came with the flower children and the Pill. Communes, free love, joblessness, drugs, generous welfare for the lazy -- the '60s and '70s finished the job of tearing down social norms and mores. Tune in, turn on and drop out.

What followed was a wholesale move to anything goes: If it feels good, do it. Coed college dorms and bathrooms became a civil right fiercely promoted by our splendid ACLU trial lawyers and militant feminists. Seniors often decided to simplify their finances and family relationships by just living together. In one generation, what had been a furtive, socially unacceptable lifestyle became common.

The difference compared with a generation or two ago is incredible to those who grew up then. "Hooking up" – casual, unpaid sex without even friendship – is common now. In a study by Michigan State University of 125 college students, nine out of ten "hookups" didn't even lead to dating relationships, and 60 percent said they had had sexual "friends with benefits" relationships. Oh boy. But some who have studied these patterns say many girls are looking for romance, not sex.

The obvious question is, so what? Is it better, worse, or just different? The answers are not clear. It's too soon to tell, there are too many aspects to consider and data are hard to find and unreliable. The true story has to be based on long-term results for all those involved.

The immediate problems are obvious, particularly for the children involved. The other big unanswered question is whether living together without the traditional glue of a marriage -- a public commitment of 'til death do us part', combining assets, liabilities and finances, parents and children with the same names -- will result in substantial differences compared with traditional families. The limited information available to us now already presents some surprises. For one, it seems as if a trial marriage, giving a couple the opportunity really to know each other rather than marrying after an olden-days, best-behavior period of dating would make for a higher percentage of long-term marriages, but the evidence so far is the opposite.

A report by Barbara Whitehead and David Popenoe in the 2004 Rutgers annual, "State of Our Unions" report found 94 percent of the young married men surveyed said they were happier married than being single. Only one in five of the young single men surveyed said they do not intend to marry. The authors also concluded that the freely-offered alternatives like cohabitation damage men's attitudes toward women as well as their understanding of marriage. They also said the evidence suggests that couples who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce.

Another element is the increasing independence of women, now that a much higher percentage have good job opportunities and careers. When the inevitable times of stress come in a marriage, it is much easier than a generation or two ago for women to split the sheets and make it on their own, one way or another.

Another weakening of the marriage glue involves religious restraints that are dissolving. Compared with almost all Christian countries, a surprisingly high percentage of Americans say they practice or believe some kind of religion, but the ability of most Christian religions to prevent unmarried coupling and divorces has lessened considerably. Like typical answers of Roman Catholics when asked about the Vatican's mandates on family planning -- "Oh, we don't pay any attention to that!" -- most church dictates on hanky-panky and divorce seem generally to be ignored.

OUR FRACTURED FAMILIES AND FRACTURED NATION

Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family. -- Anthony Brandt

Self-responsibility is one of life's most precious qualities. It is the motivating factor essential to personal development. -- Leonard Reed

Families have always been the foundation of thriving nations, and a common culture has always been the great strength and unifying force of nations. Now both unifying forces are collapsing, attacked from within by changing social, cultural and lifestyle patterns, by legal and political attacks by left-wing groups, and from outside by Muslim groups determined to impose Islam on the world, by force and by out-populating the non-Muslims.

FAMILIES

Census Bureau data for 2005 said 51 percent of American women were living without spouses. (Their data are only slightly misleading, including females 15 and older and such spouses as military personnel on deployment.) While 51 percent is shocking, the real shock is to the children involved and to the stability of the populace. There are many causes of the recent drastic changes in family structures and lifestyles: The "feminist" movement; dependable, readily available birth control options, better-educated women with more earning power and many desirous of having their own careers and independence; easier divorce laws; and the loss of most social and religious restraints on unmarried cohabitation and illegitimate children.

The percentages of illegitimate births of American citizens in 2003 were 24 percent for whites, 50 percent for Hispanics and 73 percent for blacks. That's a lot of bastards, many of whom will grow up without the positive influences of a two-parent, cohesive family environment. Great harm often results from great changes, and the sudden loss of traditional family structures, relationships and mores is causing great harm.

The effects on the children of more than half of American women living without spouses are dramatic and scary. Some statistics on fatherless children from U.S government data (more complete data are addenda):

Children from fatherless homes are:

• 5 times more likely to commit suicide;

• 32 times more likely to run away from home;

• 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders;

• 14 times more likely to commit rape;

• 9 times more likely to drop out of high school;

• 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances;

• 9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution; and

• 20 times more likely to end up in prison.

In a shocking book on girl gangs in the U.S. by Gini Sikes, 8-Ball Chicks, the author concluded that the problem of gangs in this country is caused by overcrowded classrooms, and too few rehabilitation programs, special education or jobs for "troubled" youths. Her solution, like those of all liberals, involves more government "programs," meaning more welfare. Instead of solving problems, government welfare programs provide crutches to perpetuate dependence on government welfare.

As long as 70 percent of the mothers of school-age children feel they must have careers to feel fulfilled or to be able to afford the luxuries they now consider to be necessities, leaving much of their children's care and upbringing to others or simply letting their children flounder, their children are likely to become floundering adults.

No government bureaucracy or taxpayer spending will glue American families back together. As long as government welfare programs continue to pay the poorly educated, unskilled and undisciplined more than they can earn at a job, why work, particularly when they can earn more in a short day dealing drugs than in a month working at the unskilled jobs they are qualified to perform. Hang out with the gang, steal, deal drugs, fight other gangs over turf, and draw welfare paid by productive taxpayers. That's where it's at, man. Lyndon Johnson started it with his War on Poverty. The battle cry of the parasitic flower children was Tune in, turn on, drop out. Forty-eight years and sixteen trillion taxpayer dollars later, the bureaucrat-described poverty level is as high as it was then.

If people haven't regularly got up and gone to work whether they felt like it or not, they are unlikely to be able to keep a job for long. Self-discipline is not a word in the dictionaries of the inner cities and barrios. When a cousin, aunt or friend needs a little help or offers a more interesting activity, forget work today or this year -- Friday is welfare-check day.

What is the solution to repairing dysfunctional families? First, change government welfare programs that pay people more not to work than they could earn, and curtail welfare to fatherless homes. Second, encourage mothers of school-age children to be at home when their children are not in school. Employers can help by permitting more flexible work schedules and alternatives. Most important, everyone must be made aware of the effects on children of growing up without the discipline, guidance, love, security and togetherness of a traditional family. Without the commitments of a conventional marriage, the pooling of resources and talents, everyone having the same family name, doing things together, and the balancing of complementary roles of a committed mother and a committed father, do not expect improvement in the present predicament.

Mike Pence has it right: "I say you would not be able to print enough money in a thousand years to pay for the government you would need if the traditional family collapses."

POLITICS

Once upon a time, in the olden days of a generation or two ago, people like Sam Nunn, Barry Goldwater and most of the members of Congress who disagreed on the proper size and role of government still worked together for the good of the country. Now the Socialist/Democrats, the Religious Right, the ACLU, AARP, abortion and anti-abortion factions and many other groups have one interest: ramming their single-issue legislation through Congress with no concern about the overall good of the country. Their goals involve their limited area of interest.

The Democrats in particular do their best to foster ethnic, economic, social and religious strife. It's "the rich" vs. "the working people;" the minorities vs. the whites; the feminists vs. their male oppressors; the atheists vs. the Christians; socialized medicine vs. free markets; big government vs. personal responsibility. Power and control are everything, and the devil with how they are achieved. Anything goes, and criminal investigations of politicians and bureaucrats are answered by, "We'll look into that," "I don't recall," or other stonewalling in a game of Congressional or Executive privilege.

HIGHER EDUCATION

Our fractured, Balkanized country is being further divided by the left-wing university faculties, sheltered from market forces and public control by tenure, by left-wing administrators and by puppet governing boards selected by the administration. Outside board members bathe in the honor and glory but don't rock the boat by trying to restore real university educations.

Traditional core curricula in the humanities – Western Civilization, the classics, history – have largely been replaced by garbage courses in multi-culturism, black studies, women's studies, radical environmentalism, homosexuality, sex in Shakespeare and such. Instead of a real education, with all facts and opinions open for critical analysis, left-wing professors often teach one view – their own – and grade according to how well students parrot the teacher's opinions. Instead of teaching students how to think, it's what to think. That is indoctrination, not education. One predictable result of the changed curricula and the indoctrination is many uneducated, semi-literate, expensive college graduates working in lower level jobs, if they work at all. A result of the universities' left-wing bias is to turn the country more into a socialist welfare state, although when many students escape from the ivory towers they find satisfaction and prosperity in the opportunities and incentives available in the real world and fight the liberals' sclerotic welfare-state policies.

For some reason there is very little publicity about what is really going on in the closed, terribly expensive and inefficient world of the academy. Floodlights are badly needed.

We are a fractured nation of fractured families.

* * *

The facts are on the effects of fatherlessness households are shocking (U.S. Data):

1) BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS/ RUNAWAYS/ HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS/ CHEMICAL ABUSERS/ SUICIDES

* 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (Source: Center for Disease Control)

* 90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)

* 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)

* 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes (Source: Rainbows for all God's Children.)

* 63% of youth are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)

2) JUVENILE DELINQUENCY/ CRIME/ GANGS

* 80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol. 14, p. 403-26, 1978)

* 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)

* 85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia Jail Populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)

* California has the nation's highest juvenile incarceration rate and the highest juvenile unemployment rate. Vincent Schiraldi, Executive Director, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, "What Hallinan's Victory Means," San Francisco Chronicle (12/28/95).

These statistics translate to mean that children from a fatherless home are:

* 5 times more likely to commit suicide;

* 32 times more likely to run away;

* 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders;

* 14 times more likely to commit rape;

* 9 times more likely to drop out of high school;

* 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances;

* 9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution; and

* 20 times more likely to end up in prison.

* Juveniles have become the driving force behind the nation's alarming increases in violent crime, with juvenile arrests for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault growing sharply in the past decade as pistols and drugs became more available, and expected to continue at the same alarming rate during the next decade. "Justice Dept. Issues Scary Report on Juvenile Crime," San Francisco Chronicle (9/8/95). "Crime Wave Forecast With Teenager Boom," San Francisco Chronicle (2/15/95).

* Criminal behavior experts and social scientists are finding intriguing evidence that the epidemic of youth violence and gangs is related to the breakdown of the two-parent family. "New Evidence That Quayle Was Right: Young Offenders Tell What Went Wrong at Home," San Francisco Chronicle (12/9/94).

3) TEENAGE PREGNANCY

* "Daughters of single parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All these inter-generational consequences of single motherhood increase the likelihood of chronic welfare dependency." Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Atlantic Monthly (April 1993).

* Daughters of single parents are 2.1 times more likely to have children during their teenage years than are daughters from intact families. The Good Family Man, David Blankenhorn.

* 71% of teenage pregnancies are to children of single parents. U.S. Dept. of Health and Hu-man Services.

4) CHILD ABUSE

* The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that there were more than 1,000,000 documented child abuse cases in 1990. In 1983, it found that 60% of perpetrators were women with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress associated with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress associated with sole custody, and reduce the isolation of children in abusive situations by allowing both parents to monitor the children's health and welfare and to protect them.

SOME CALL IT SEX

Americans, supposedly the world's free and enlightened people, are inconsistent in many ways. One inconsistency is our uninhibited display of sex in movies, various art forms, in advertising and dress, while underneath the public sexual freedom there are obviously some repressed feelings, in spite of all the sex noise. In many ways, our sexual revolution was only skin deep. When liberated Americans see women on a foreign beach who left their swimsuit-tops in their bags, or naked people in a park in Munich on a warm day, most are surprised or shocked. Such women look more or less like three thousand million other women, but their appearance is a big deal to many enlightened, retarded Americans. They can see nudity in movies rated OK for Children, listen to foul language there and everywhere else, or watch a bloody television slaughter with no point in the story except violence, all that is a ho-hum. The liberals fight to protect coed college dorms, but to go to the beach and see girls without shirts or a naked couple strolling down the beach? Eek! Hide the children!

The same sort of repressed view of many adults regarding sexuality and sex education for our young people is obvious, depending on their personal beliefs and religious dogma on sex education and sexual activities. Human sexuality is one form of hunger, a vital subject like nutrition, but neither seems to be taught, even in medical schools, in their whole, wholesome forms. There is a major argument between one school that wants abstinence-only sex education, and the other wants to teach all the medical, physical and psychological aspects of sex. The abstinence people fear that teaching the details will result in more experimentation and unmarried intercourse, while the sex-education people say promoting abstinence without detailed sex education is useless. However, the sex-education people do a poor job of getting across all the psychological and medical hazards of sex and the fact that condoms don't really provide safe sex, particularly from viral diseases like HPV, which is linked to cervical cancer. The sex-education group also takes the full-story discussion and pictures down to the kindergarten level, which is not a bright idea.

Teens in the more sexually open countries of northern Europe and Scandinavia abstain from sex longer, are virgins at an older age, have lower rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion and have fewer sexually transmitted diseases than American teens. Researchers in Chicago interviewed many thousands of people in Great Britain and the U.S. on their sexual attitudes and practices. More Americans than British have rigid opinions against extramarital sex, unmarried sex and homosexuality. Nearly twenty-five percent of Americans think premarital sex is "always or almost always wrong," compared with only eight percent of Brits, but the percentage of Americans who reported having had five or more sex partners in the previous year was twice as high as in Britain.

Much of the silliest thinking about sexuality and the human body is church-borne, but occasionally there is hope for some sanity or at least a little fun. The Old Testament is full of both approved and disapproved sex, but later Christianity was often so repressive that bathing, which involved touching and seeing the naked body, was discouraged. Orientals in contact with Europeans were shocked at how filthy they were. Some Oriental religions celebrate sexuality. Hindu temples often display dozens of statues of erotic bodies and celebrate sex in their temples and rituals. Some Hindu, Buddhist and Shinto sects display and handle models of penises and what they often call lotus blossoms. In earlier times the Judeo-Christian official lines were repressive and the Vatican still opposes sexual activities for pleasure, but the pill, the Woodstock generation and the very low birth rates in Christian countries show that most people don't follow those instructions. They are playing in a new ball game.

This quotation is from a conservative Protestant magazine, responding to someone who wrote in to blame American sex hang-ups on the Puritans:

True sensuality is a celebration of two people in a committed relationship.... What more divine gift of celebration do we have than lovemaking? Even those married couples who can't afford to splurge on grand meals and fine wines can feast on each other....Yet notice how non-sexual we are in our living. We run from the cold, impersonal sex of our surrounding culture only to act as if lovemaking were some shameful secret. The joy of sexuality doesn't permeate our lives like it did in earlier eras.... Modernity has not only turned us into shameful animals copulating with strangers, but Christians - who should be the best lovers, the most sexual - are quite stiff and on feverish guard lest anyone actually commit a holy kiss.... This is a sign of our spiritual immaturity. A more mature, Christian culture could honor public etiquette knowing that lovemaking is a private, but not a secret thing, while still leading lives blossoming with celebration of the amazing gifts of sexuality.

In America, we tend to glory in sex, to flaunt it, and on another level to avoid the realities of it. We are good at warning of its dangers but not of its virtues and its joys. Our discussions of sex with our children tend to be awkward, labored and often ineffective. The change from intercourse mostly involving a romantic interest to often being an impersonal recreational activity is causing some problems. Among young people, casual sex - "hooking up" and "friends with benefits" – are causing problems with girls who prefer a romantic, more permanent relationship and with boys whose attitude toward girls tends to worsen.

One vital aspect of successful sex should be obvious, the need to keep it interesting, not just in performance but the whole matter of relations between couples. Part of it, of course, is pleasing the other person, but it goes far beyond that. It goes into what caused one person to see another across a room and get interested: a man to straighten his tie, to look again and plan how he can meet her, the woman to flick her hair and look again, over and down.

Here is Fred Reed's delicate analysis of romance: "While men are far uglier than women, they age better. It is useful to reflect in moments of unguided passion that, beneath the skin, we are all wet bags of unpleasant organs. Soon you will be a balding sofa ornament and she will look like a fireplug with cellulite. Once the packaging deteriorates, there had better be something to get you through the next thirty years."

What has happened later to a couple, when years of contact have brought long familiarity? Is it a feeling of mutual affection and respect and closeness, a little excitement when one suddenly sees the other person driving on the same street, or is there boredom, annoyance at this or that little thing and a secret wish to be somewhere else or with someone else? What makes the difference? That varies with different people, but one way or another people have to keep things interesting. Sometimes it can be done simply by staying attractive physically or in personality, with others it can happen when faded physical attractions are offset by achievements, status, money, activities, wit, or sometimes simply by being considerate and loyal, by always being there. But one way or another, something has to be there to maintain the original interest or things are certain to get dull.

What about the sexual revolution? Today the average child of 14 knows, sees, hears and talks more about the human body and its functions than many adults did at 21 two generations ago. Unmarried sex was furtive, a tee-hee among the young and either an unmentionable or a matter for gossip among adults, except in the artists' and Bohemian colonies and among some lower socio-economic groups. Now articles about dating protocol suggest that if a man hasn't tried to bed a girl by the second or third date, he is out of it and not to be tolerated. All kinds of "nice" people live together openly, pregnant girls are voted prom queens, high schools provide baby sitters for students' children, couples getting married have their bastard children acting as ring bearers and flower girls and few pay much attention. Almost 40 percent of all babies born in the U.S. last year were illegitimate, and close to 75 percent of the blacks'.

One big difference, of course, is birth control. Or rather, more dependable birth control is what started it, and the hippie generation wrote the script and acted it out. However, there has been one big problem: children, wanted and unwanted. The sexual revolution, the bastards without their fathers at home and functioning as fathers, the high divorce rate and the mixed-up families with his children, her children, their children or a whose-is-it? have created a social structure undreamed of two generations ago when divorce and shacking up were comparatively rare in polite society.

The problem has been compounded by the change from having almost no working mothers with children still at home to a society where most mothers with school children now work outside the home. The result is that many children are adrift and there has been a great increase in the parents' problems -- financial, status, and simply time -- time for each other, time for the children, time to eat, talk and do things together -time to be a real family.

What is the solution? Abortion is often the answer, but not a good answer. It can create physical, emotional, religious and legal problems, even when done early in pregnancy, and it is a no-win political nightmare. With the post-intercourse drug now approved, , some practical and legal changes may help, but that jury is still out. Our overly-generous welfare system that encourages inner-city illegitimate births and often a why-work? mentality and prohibits welfare payments with a father in the house, has to be changed. Making both parents responsible for the financial support and general welfare of all their children until adulthood is only right.

Cheryl Wetzstein: "The reality of U.S. cohabiting is more fully witnessed in America's black and Hispanic neighborhoods, where cohabiting has almost fully replaced marriage. Anyone who says cohabiting is not playing a major role in the repeated cycles of poverty, anti-social behavior and family heartache just isn't living in the real world."

This country spends an incredible amount of time, effort and money studying and treating matters of human health, both physical and mental, and in the polarized, closed-minded arguments about abortions, but efforts to educate our children about human sexuality are pitiful. Mexico, ninety-some percent of which is Roman Catholic, has a much more open and healthy attitude toward human sexuality than typically is found in the U.S. The girls are natural flirts, the boys are bird-dogs and sexuality is celebrated. Even their celibate priests are often more realistic and helpful on matters of human sexuality and family planning than are typical American parents, educators and religions.

With Japan and most of Europe moribund as a result of low birth rates, perhaps a generation or two of promiscuous sex is needed. Major changes in human behavior and relationships, such as family structures changing from wives being homemakers to working elsewhere while children are still at home, take more than one generation to be worked out. In some primitive cultures like Polynesia, the historic pattern was that when the hormones started surging, the young people engaged freely in sexual activities, grandparents took care of any children that were born, and generally the eventual marriages were at least partly monogamous.

Older generations always assume that different behavior patterns of the next generation are bad. Perhaps this one isn't, now that birth control is readily available. It would be useful for extensive studies to be made of the later effects of the uninhibited sexual activities of today's young people on success patterns in eventual marriages, divorce rates, adultery, and most important, of what happens to children born and brought up in the changed environment.

UP JUMPED THE HIPPIES

Sweeping generalizations are often both right and wrong. Saying that all the baby boomers were true hippies just because they had long hair, wore different clothes and liked loud music isn't fair. There was a big difference between some of them and the freeloading, smelly druggies who preached free love, ignored laws, violated the rights and property of others and, above all, did nothing productive -- just existed, getting laid and stoned, looking dirty, tired and unhappy.

The really curious thing is how hippies just appeared out of nowhere. There have always been rebellious young people who protest existing social, political, economic and cultural patterns. Part of growing up is to protest the competitive and therefore unfair world -- until they need to compete to earn a living. Winston Churchill is said to have been suspicious of anyone age 20 who isn't a socialist and anyone 25 who is. That was before many young people were still in school and living with their parents at 25 or 30. Still, the hippie revolution that started about 1967 was like nothing seen in this country in the last 300 years.

The hippie/Woodstock phenomenon was a big puzzle to normal people. The typical one came from a normal middle-class family. His parents had struggled through the Great Depression and World War II and said, "We want our children to have the things we didn't have." Instead of appreciating their parents' struggles and efforts to do better by their kids, many boomers chose simply to do nothing useful. They sponged off their parents and taxpayers while trying to find meaning by protesting everything they thought was wrong, while doing nothing to improve matters. Tune in, turn on, drop out.

Instead of cutting the bums' cords, many parents and politicians helped them "find themselves." That often meant finding themselves in public hospitals with burned-out brains, venereal disease and screwed-up bastard children starting life with two-and-a-half strikes against them. All this in the name of love, peace and socialism -- hate the establishment but demand that it support you.

The hippies focused on protesting the Vietnam War. Admittedly, we were stupid to be involved in it, but hippie protesting seemed derived simply from a desire not to get drafted. The anti-Vietnam student protests almost stopped in 1970 after Nixon ended the draft, even though the most ferocious bombing continued for three more years.

It appeared that the hippies' perception of a society obsessed with materialism may have been a partial cause of the movement, or perhaps it was just a combination of indulgent parents and politicians, the pill, abundant drugs and newly available student loans and grants based not on merit, as previously, but on "need." Many hippies were bright enough, but just slouched aimlessly through college and life at someone else's expense.

Aside from a lack of ambition, the biggest difference between hippies and the youth of our past was that hippies seemed to lack a moral compass, a distinction between right and wrong. Their attitude was, if it feels good, do it. If the law or convention says it's wrong, do it anyway. If someone else's property rights or feelings get in the way, who cares? As much as you can, as long as you can, be a parasite and take what you want.

Bill Clinton was their first president, and they cheered the scoundrel and his conduct, his lying under oath and his corrupt administration. Many of the grown-up hippies still believe that lying, cheating and stealing are good, you just have to avoid getting caught. Their favorite career politicians tend to follow that pattern.

Congress always has a big complement of inherited-wealth socialists like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, who never had a real job. They call it "a lifetime of public service," but in reality it is a lifetime of feeding at the public trough, providing pork to their districts to collect votes and contributions for the next election. They may not wave banners, chant slogans, smoke dope and push flowers down gun barrels now, but they still don't have a clue what it takes to make the country prosperous – free enterprise, opportunity and productivity. They're just grown-up hippies.

Jobs aren't created by politicians; government jobs and government-created jobs are mostly unproductive welfare. Jobs are created by new entrepreneurs and by existing companies gathering the capital and human resources to start or expand businesses, providing products or services that people want at prices they are willing and able to pay. The hippies, including the respectable middle-aged ones, seem to have no understanding that the force that drives the economic engine of the country is innovation and risk-taking by businesses, and that the government often impedes growth.

Napoleon said to understand a man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was 20. The counter-culture of the '60s and 70s has evolved into a political movement, not just promoting a socialistic welfare state, but seeking more and more control of our lives. We must have laws for everything, with or without a constitutional basis. HUD regulates what property owners may say in advertising their property for sale or rent. It is illegal to advertise a property named "Roselawn Catholic Home," and no tenant preferences may be stated. Speech and advertising codes are so outrageous they are laughable, yet they are enforced by liberal courts.

In defense of the majority of the boomer generation, Marilyn Quayle said at the 1992 Republican convention, "We believed in hard work and personal discipline, in our nation's essential goodness, and in the opportunity it promised those willing to work for it. Though we knew some changes needed to be made, we did not believe in destroying America to save it."

There is still hope. Recent public opinion surveys show some increasing skepticism of depending on a huge, expensive and intrusive government to solve personal and business problems. Career politicians try, and fail, to solve citizens' problems at a high price in taxes and lost freedom. We need a wholesale return to personal responsibility and liberty. In Congress, we need to throw out the hippies in both parties.

It seems that many Woodstockers have not made it past adolescence. Anything that offends them must be made taboo. Their wants have become needs and the "government" must provide them. Either they have not saved for retirement or they have not saved enough to continue to supply their heavy load of wants. Diana West in her book, The Death of the Grown-Up, says trouble began when children started aspiring to adolescence rather than adulthood. Presumably they will be increasingly active and noisy in their support of politicians who promise to play Obama's game. Orwell, here we come. Or are. Curtsy to Big Brother.

PART IV: INTERNATIONAL AND MILITARY ISSUES

WORLD PEACE AND OUR MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

War is the health of the state. – Randolph Bourne

The United States hasn't tried to seize any new territory for 114 years, but during that time it has fought many more wars than any other country. World War I, The war to end all wars, was to rescue Europe from the Germans; World War II, the largest war in history, was fought after being attacked and war declared on us; four lesser but major "preventive" wars were supposedly necessary to protect us from "evil governments" that didn't attack us; and many other minor engagements that were just to settle local arguments that had nothing to do with us. Since 1945 none of the wars has been fought with the declaration of war by Congress required by the Constitution.

Civil war in Vietnam caused John Kennedy to sell his domino theory -- the Communists would take over Asia and attack us -- as the reason he had to send military "advisors" there. Then it became an episode of The Pink Panther, with Lyndon Johnson playing Inspector Clouseau and McNamara as Cato, two clowns micro-managing the war from the White House, issuing can't-win rules of engagement, killing 57,000 Americans and after 10 years pulling out with our tail between our legs.

Why all these wars? Do we just like to meddle? Do we believe it's somehow our responsibility to manage the world, to pick winners and losers in the world's endless political, territorial, economic, religious and ethnic arguments? Or is it just politicians and bureaucrats who hunger to broaden their influence, and in the process cause us to spend roughly as much on our military machine as the combined military spending of the rest of the world?

With many foreign squabbles, our intrepid leaders call them a threat to world peace that requires us either to get involved directly, often with little or no foreign help, or to increase our military capability in preparation for possible future involvement. Frequently they say new military technology requires that it replace "obsolete" equipment and systems. Newer is better and it creates jobs in their districts. New foreign technology or expansion by "aggressor" nations requires that we counter them with newer and more. Almost everything happening in the world gives our powerful military-industrial complex an excuse to call for more military spending. It also gives the State Department and Pentagon another chance to call for intervention. People with hammers in their hand tend to find nails to hit. Our career soldiers yearn for a chance to use the trades for which they have been trained, to enlarge their organization and improve their promotion opportunities.

There are many crosscurrents in this sea. Our incompetent sophomore president would unilaterally discard our nuclear arsenal and then "through diplomacy" convince the rest of the world to do the same and disarm. The Pentagon says their arsenal is obsolete, starved for maintenance, training and practice funds, and desperately needs billions for new space-age arms, ammunition and technology. They are strongly supported by many congressmen with personal or political interests.

More accurately, our military-industrial complex is a military-industrial-political complex. Congressmen are always desperate for pork to take home, and spending for "defense" (read "offense" – no soldier has defended the U.S. for 68 years -- since 1945) because defense pork is easier to justify than more Harry Reid and John Boehner courthouses, bridges to nowhere and research grants to study the sex life of Belgian rats. New jobs in local factories and shipyards, keeping or adding more unnecessary military bases – that pork is easier for voters to swallow. In short, there are many powerful forces pushing for direct and indirect military spending and only a few relatively impotent tax-cutters in opposition, so we have a perpetually bloated military budget.

We are drowning in unnecessary military bases. California alone has 33 major bases and many smaller facilities. In response to pressure, since 1989 there have been five rounds of "base closures," but smoke and mirrors cover the true results. The president periodically appoints the nine-man Base Realignment and Closure Commission. They recommend closures to the president. If he approves them, Congress has 45 days for an up or down vote – no changes – and if it doesn't act, as in 2005, the list is approved. The details of the results are obscure. Many closures are simply mergers, with the activities of two or more bases expensively combined rather than being eliminated. Other bases were obsolete facilities that had not been active for years, such as Fort Douglas in Utah and Fort Sheridan in Illinois. The next round is scheduled for 2015. Obama has $2.5 billion in his 2014 budget to pay for "closure" costs, presumably to move the same operations to favored political friends.

War is the climate in which we exist, and the disastrous stupidity of continual wars is inevitable. Historian Will Durant calculated in 1968 that there had been only 268 years in all of human history during which there was not a war in progress someplace. Man is combative and acquisitive and nations are competitive and acquisitive when strong enough. The U.S. has no potent military enemies, so the politicians create them to justify our military colossus. Al Qaeda might take over Afghanistan or Pakistan with its nuclear weapons, Iran or North Korea might lob one of their two or three nuclear missiles at us or someone else, or shoot down an airliner or fly into another building, and so on. The (George W.) Bush Doctrine called for preventive military strikes on countries that might possibly, conceivably, maybe, unpredictably do us some harm -- we should strike them first.

We are fond of supporting or attacking tyrants and would-be tyrants, selecting good ones and bad ones, but our record of choosing whom to support is poor. As in Africa, white hats eventually slaughter the black hats and eventually become the new black hats, and the corruption and slaughter goes on and on. Once involved in foreign meddling, we stay. Think South Korea – we are still there 63 years after we ended their civil war. Columnist Fred Reed said, "Winning a war isn't all it's cracked up to be. The promotions and contracts stop. When you are paid to do something, it is in your interest not to finish doing it."

The U.S. has no enemy to be feared and has no reason to invade other countries or tell them how to manage their affairs, but our meddling leaders always know best and want to control the external and even some internal activities of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and the internal activities of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, and Egypt -- and that is just today's partial list. Without a declaration of war, our leaders have had American soldiers and airmen fighting in the wasteland some call Trashcanistan for more than eleven years, and for what? To kill some Taliban or al Qaeda leader who, like Hydra, is replaced by two more? We should get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of our meddling places, stay out of Syria and Egypt and the next fifteen trouble sites that appear.

The human and monetary costs of our perpetual military meddling are enormous. In 2012 the Air Force Times reported a forty percent increase from the previous year in suicides by American airmen, undoubtedly aggravated by repeated deployments, and few Americans consider the costs to foreigners affected by our global meddling. In Iraq the lowest estimates of dead Iraqi civilians is 200,000. We didn't kill them all, but we started the war and they died in the aftermath.

According to U.S. GovernmentSpending.com, actual spending for "defense" in 2012 was $849.6 billion. That figure is questionable because the government hides some war and military expenditures off the budget reports and some transfers of funds are made between departments. To fight the guerilla wars, in 2012 our big spenders had 1,477,896 front-line personnel, 1,458,500 reserve personnel, 8,325 tanks, 18,539 armored fighting vehicles, 290 ships, 10 aircraft carriers and 71 submarines – among many other large and small toys.

In 2008 Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote The $3 Trillion War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. While the White House had promised a cost not over $50 billion, Stiglitz estimated the cost of the war including replacing military equipment, caring for thousands of wounded veterans, and rebuilding Afghanistan would actually total $7 trillion. In 2010 the U.S. spent more on "defense" than at the height of the Cold War in 1986 when we were building a large nuclear arsenal in an arms race with the Soviet Union, but in 2010 we were involved only with impotent Iraq and Afghanistan and our endless non-war "war on terror."

Modern offensive warfare is essentially guerilla warfare against shadowy hit-and-run warriors -- daytime civilians and nighttime guerillas. One Muslim game is to embed soldiers in schools, hospitals and churches, daring us to attack them and inflict civilian casualties.

We have a gigantic, improperly designed military monster. We need a major reduction of forces by a wholesale mothballing and scrapping of last-war equipment, ships and aircraft carriers, cancellation or reduction of many last-war contracts -- F-35 aircraft, Bradley armored vehicles and others – and major restructuring of our fighting forces. We could replace many manned aircraft with drones, mothball tanks and artillery, mothball part of our expensive, vulnerable carrier fleet, expand our missile and anti-missile capability and replace much of our huge foot-soldier army with small, mobile amphibious and defensive special forces units. One great part of our forces are our stealthy, mobile nuclear submarines. One Ohio-class nuclear sub carries 24 missiles with a 4,600-mile range and 192 nuclear warheads that can be individually targeted. We have 18 Ohio-class subs and they are only one-fourth of our submarine fleet.

The F-35, billed as the next generation fighter, was planned to cost $400 billion. Critics say it is badly designed and will already be outdated before most of the deliveries are made. The boondoggle has strong political support because 46 of the 50 states have been handed part of the F-35 business. Bradley armored vehicles cost $3.1 million each and are already out of favor because tougher alternatives have appeared, but they will continue in production "to maintain a robust and healthy combat vehicle industrial base." The Dayton (Ohio) Daily News reported, "New cargo planes are being delivered for the U.S. Air Force straight into storage in the Arizona desert because the military has no use for them... The Air Force almost had to buy more of the planes against its will." The government picks winners and losers and prints more money to pay the bills.

We still have 70,000 U.S. troops in wealthy Germany, 30,000 in South Korea and almost 1,000 military bases around the world. We should close most of those and close half of the pork-barrel bases in the U.S, many of them on choice real estate that should be sold for productive use and put on the tax rolls. Camp Pendleton alone has locked up 200 square miles of choice Southern California oceanfront.

In 1961 President (General) Eisenhower said, "We must guard against the acquisition of unwanted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." We didn't guard against it. Thomas Duncan, an economist at George Mason University: "Once the U.S. entered into a state of permanent war, resources were continuously drawn for the nonmilitary sector to support and advance military-related activities in what has become a permanent war economy. The result is a bloated corporate state, a less dynamic private economy. The permanent war economy ultimately stifles the process of wealth creation... In 2008, the Defense and Homeland Security departments made up nearly 49 percent of civilian employment in the federal government... The permanent war economy is not simply resistant to correction. It is self-extending. One profit opportunity creates several new opportunities."

On December 10,2013, John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy, said, "While the fighting forces have steadily shrunk by more than half since the early 1990s, the civilian and uniformed [military] bureaucracy has more than doubled... currently more than 1,500,000 full time civilian employees in the Defense Department... Today more than half of our active-duty servicemen serve in the office on staff." He also said the average time from a draft requirement for a new weapons system has gone from four years in the late 1950s for the complex Polaris missiles to twenty-two years average time now for all weapons. He also criticized a lack of competition for production contracts.

One of the consequences of our endless involvement in other peoples' wars and arguments is how that fuels the cancerous growth of our government. U.S. wars have helped create many permanent spending programs and bureaucracies, including public housing, third-party medical payments, government interference in labor relations, "progressive" taxation, death taxes, gasoline taxes and permanently increased income taxes.

Military personnel succeed or stagnate according to the size and growth of our military forces. The suppliers of military equipment and technology prosper or wither on government spending. Cities and states are always lobbying to keep or expand the military bases that bolster their economies. There are thousands of well-paid, well-connected lobbyists pressuring 535 cooperative career politicians to spend more money on the military, and 150 million mostly impotent taxpayers who sit on their hands and wait for their next tax bill. It will be large, but small compared with the bills being passed to our children and grandchildren, who are not paying attention, and a large part of it comes from the cost of an unnecessary military establishment capable of conquering the world.

THE UNITED NATIONS, EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

During the 19th Century, many European countries had colonies scattered around the world -- economic orchards to be plundered. To protect their interests, they kept the colonies under control. The sun never set on the British Empire, and the British East India Company had a large private army to protect their orchards. As the colonies were able to break away, that stabilizing effect disappeared. The post-WWI League of Nations was impotent, but after WWII the United Nations was formed to be the stabilizing force, but it has degenerated into a huge, expensive bureaucracy and an impotent military stabilizer.

The United States emerged from WWII a mighty military power. Because it has continually meddled in global politics and wars, it has evolved into the world's police force and the U.N. does little except talk and do some inefficient humanitarian work.

Years ago, we learned that Saddam Hussein had skimmed an estimated $21 billion from the $80 billion or so the United Nation's Oil-for-Food program appropriated for food, medicine and other humanitarian purposes in Iraq. With U.N. compliance or connivance, the program became an Oil-for-Palaces program for Hussein. From the New York Post: "After Hussein and his cronies, the main beneficiary of the Oil-for-Food program was the U.N. payroll . . . allowing the United Nations to walk away with $1.9 billion of Iraqi oil money. U.N. staff employed by the Oil-for-Food program ballooned to 3,000, the largest single U.N. program in the world."

A few months later, it was reported that Secretary-General Kofi Anann's son had been working for a Swiss company contracted by the Oil-for-Palaces program. Anann first said the U.N. would conduct an internal investigation, but in response to strong protests later announced an independent investigation. The U.N.'s version of "independent" was to appoint the investigator themselves. The U.S. and U.K. news media made a big fuss over the situation, but it was scarcely reported in the rest of Europe, most of which considers the U.N. not to be a political assembly but a kind of religion. As in matters such as supposed global warming and the failed Kyoto treaty, European minds are essentially closed on the U.N. subject; they neither hear nor want to hear the true facts, alternatives or any criticism.

Meanwhile, the Bush, Jr. administration and the neo-conservatives in the U.S. used "pre-emptive strikes" and "nation-building" in other parts of the world, if permitted. President Bush frequently talked about "changing the world," while the neo-con artists saw our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as necessary holy wars.

The terrorists and would-be terrorists, mostly fundamentalist Muslims, are scattered around the world, not as one organization. In many cases their main connection is simply a passionate hatred of Americans, the West, Christianity, Israel, Western interference in Muslim countries, and the fact that the West is successful and prosperous while many Muslim countries are not. Most important, for many years the U.S. and Britain have aided Israel in controlling the Palestinian Arabs.

There are major differences between American and European views of our involvement in the Middle East and a host of other issues including environmental matters, welfare and the rights of labor unions. Americans need to put aside domestic political bickering and have a civil discussion about America's preemptive strikes, nation-building, change-the-world jihad, and foreign policies involving the United Nations, NATO, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Syria, and other present and future problem countries and organizations, matters now being dictated by Obama. By the time our troops occupied Iraq, Saddam Hussein obviously had destroyed, disassembled, hidden or sold most of the nasty weapons the world knew he had previously and had not accounted for to the U.N. His throwing out the U.N. inspectors made almost everyone believe he had many dangerous needles hidden in a vast haystack that would be very difficult to search. Many Europeans and Democrats now ignore that fact, even though they believed it and said so before we invaded Iraq. Hussein's Air Force Chief revealed in detail how and when their weapons of mass destruction were removed to Syria before our invasion.

The world preaches globalism and practices nationalism, the U.S. included. Bush called for free trade but, imposed tariffs on foreign steel and Canadian lumber. There is growing international resentment over our unwillingness to turn over substantial control of our country to the rest of the world. Clinton agreed to the Kyoto global-warming treaty without congressional approval. It called for the United States to garrote its economy by large, expensive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions while exempting the countries that are the worst polluters. Kyoto never made it to the floor of the Senate, but the environmentally radical Europeans and Japanese still resent our refusal to ratify it. They also want to subject American citizens to rulings of their International Court of Justice and to let the United Nations, under mob rule, decide what the U.S. may and may not do in other ways. Be it ever thus, the jackals wanting the lions to lie down and play nice pussycat.

Another source of anti-American feeling is the difference between the international and American view of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the slaughter of Americans in Beirut, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere. We feel strongly about attacks on us. If the world shouts "Foul!" when we retaliate, let them shout.

For attacking Hussein at a great cost in money and lives, we got little thanks, nor does the world thank us for our twelve years of war and rebuilding in Afghanistan. It is not clear that we were justified in waging either war. Now there is majority agreement with Obama's plan to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is no agreement on when and what the results will be. What both of those countries would prefer is for us to get completely out and just continue to send money to them indefinitely. President Karzai is calling for us to get out now, while Obama's State Department is pleading for us to stay in Trashcanistan for years and spend many, many billions to rebuild the country.

We should police America and let most of the world solve their own disputes and power struggles. The world is always awash in tribal, religious and political warfare. We are not going to change that and we shouldn't try unless they harm the U.S. Why do we, only one of 192 members of the U.N., pay 22 percent of the total contributions, while Third World jackal countries continually harass us, vote against us while accepting our foreign aid and asking for more? Jordan votes against the United States 71 percent of the time and receives about $192 million annually from us. India votes against us 81 percent of the time and receives about $14 3million and Egypt votes against us 79 percent of the time and receives about $2 billion annually.

Why are we the largest single contributor to NATO, 22 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and 68 years after we stopped Germany and Italy from conquering Europe? The Europeans are the most prosperous group of countries in the world and should pay for their own defense. Why do we still have troops in the Balkans years later, when many Europeans say, "The Balkans don't matter -– they have never mattered." If they don't matter to European nations, why do they matter to us?

Logic says we should review all such military involvements, make an orderly withdrawal of most of our troops in foreign countries, reduce our contributions to the U.N. to an amount consistent with our fair share and our ability to influence its actions, and recognize the almost complete failure of the United Nations to do anything well or efficiently in recent years. The U.N. is mostly an effective way for the parasitic countries of the Third World to get some control of the United States. Unless there is a drastic change in the U.N. functioning, that bloated bureaucracy should be reduced to a small forum for international discussions and our contributions and participation reduced accordingly. Unless NATO is to be used beyond Europe for activities with which we agree, we should get out of it completely. Why should we provide military aid to prosperous, developed countries? They never aid the Americas.

As a nation, we need to take a long, critical look at who we are, what we have any legitimate reason to do in the world, what we have the ability to do, what we want to do and why. Having the United States police the world is folly. If the rest of the world doesn't want to get involved, why should we? We should do business with the world primarily on a mutually beneficial basis, not through trying to buy friendships and allies, and leave humanitarian efforts mostly to the United Nations and other non-government humanitarian organizations supported by voluntary contributions, not involuntary taxation of U.S. citizens.

PALESTINE, ZIONISM AND ISRAEL

Few Americans know the history of Palestine and Israel. It's a long and complicated story, but a typical short version is that Israel became politically extinct in 721 B.C. when the Assyrians took Samaria. Some biblical scholars say the end of the Jewish nation came with the destruction of Jerusalem about 36 years after the Crucifixion by the Roman Emperor Titus, when about 1,000,000 Jews died and 100,000 were taken prisoners. The present Jerusalem is supposed to have been built by Emperor Hadrian for the Romans, who expelled all remaining Jews. On the site of the old temple is a grand Turkish Mosque.

History is a collection of very imprecise tales, varying with the narrators, clouded by time, prejudiced reporters and erroneous translations of words with multiple meanings, but clearly the claim that Palestine/Israel has always belonged to the Jews is not correct.

More recently, from an 1882 article Palestine by George Pitt: "Palestine is now, and has been for 864 years, under the rule of the Turks, who seem too poor and too indolent to do much – if anything – for the welfare of their subjects... The name Palestine is Roman, meaning Land of the Philistines... In possessing this promised land, they were never dislodged." He traveled Palestine by horseback and reported it to be "desolate, barren and accursed. You may travel for days [on horseback] and not be able to find a square yard of ground that is not choked with stones... The inhabitants [of Jerusalem] live in misery and squalor chiefly, their food being coarse or black bread, olives and water.... The Turks, as owners, occupy Mount Zion, as the best quarter, while the poor Jews occupy the lowest and most wretched ones. The interior of the city is irregular and miserable."

During the late 19th century, a few Jews immigrated and formed agricultural communities in Palestine, notably Russian Jews in 1882. The number of Jewish colonies, mostly subsidized by a leading British Jew, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, rose from 22 in 1900 to 47 in 1918. However, in 1919 the Jews were still only 8 percent of the 700,000 population. Muslim Arabs comprised 81 percent and Christian Arabs 11 percent.

During the First World War, Great Britain took Palestine from Turkey, and after the war the League of Nations made it a British Mandate. In 1917 Arthur Balfour, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, wrote to Lord Rothschild promising British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine on the understanding that "...nothing shall be done which will prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." That letter came to be referred to as the Balfour Declaration, was eventually endorsed by Woodrow Wilson and others, and as a result of a continuing Zionist effort, there was a gradual increase in the Jewish population in Palestine, particularly during the 1930s. From 1922 to 1939 the Jewish population increased from 83,790 to 445,457, but still was only 30 percent of the total in 1939.

After World War II, President Harry Truman pressured the British repeatedly for immediate admission of 100,000 more Jews to Palestine. The Arabs fought and bombed the British, and the British, afraid to fight Truman, the Jews and the Arab countries, turned the matter over to the United Nations in February, 1947. In November of that year, the U.N. adopted a General Assembly resolution to partition the country, despite the objections of 64 percent of its inhabitants, the Arabs. Thirty-five percent of the population, the Jews, welcomed the resolution because it expanded their landholdings from only 8 percent of Palestine to 55 percent, including the Negev desert. The Arabs were violently opposed, fighting broke out, the U.N. said it was unable to implement partition and the United States told the U.N. to back off and reconsider. The Zionists took over by military force, declared Palestine to be "Israel," and President Truman immediately recognized the country.

The recent history is better known. Through continual military and quasi-military police actions and activities, notably the Seven Days War in 1967, the Israelis have established effective control of most of Israel, interrupted by random terrorist activities by Palestinian groups and individuals. The Israelis have continued to occupy and develop land in the West Bank and have fortified the hilltops overlooking many Palestinian communities. They have established many checkpoints through which Palestinians must receive permission to pass, and Israel built a fence which further limits the ability of the Palestinians to live, work and move about in Israel. Palestinians are generally at the mercy of Israelis, except for the terrorist activities of Hamas and other militant Muslim organizations.

Apparently because of fear that Gaza was not an area they could control and defend, the population being predominantly Arab, Israel chose to abandon it to the Palestinians, but it continues to be an area of strife, with the Arabs periodically lobbing shells into the Jewish parts of Israel. Most Europeans are more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to the Jews. Americans, on the other hand, are influenced by strong and consistent U.S. government and private support of Israel, with a substantial Jewish membership in Congress and a powerful Jewish lobby in Washington. Since its formation, the largest portion of our world-wide foreign aid money has gone to Israel.

While much of the current Muslim terrorism is tribal and sectarian warfare -- Muslims against Muslims -- our mostly one-sided support of Israel is a significant source of anti-American sentiment among Arabs and to some extent among other Muslims around the world. While changing our policies to a neutral position on the Israeli-Palestinian strife would not by itself stop terrorism by radical Muslims, there is little hope of much decrease in Muslim hatred and terrorism against the U.S. without a substantial change in our policies involving Palestine and Israel.

The whole Middle East is a snake pit, the most dangerous parts now being Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some progress is being made in Iraq, but the Afghanistan situation is no better than it was 11 years ago, Syria is in flames, Iran continues to poke a stick in our eye, and Pakistan is a nuclear tinder box. Any escalation of Middle East conflicts is likely to draw support for both sides, Arab countries and Europeans supporting Arabs and the United States supporting Israel. It could get ugly.

Obama announced a withdrawal of all our troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, then 2012 but keeping "advisors" there, and lately his teleprompters aren't telling him when to leave. Like Afghanistan, Iraq is not our problem and we should get out regardless of whether we like the eventual outcome. Recently fighting has erupted again, but that is not our problem.

In Syria, 100,000 have died already in their revolution. Muslim-loving, anti-war Barack Hussein Obama entered the war in Syria, providing munitions to the rebels. With Obama choosing sides in another conflict that is none of our business, his choice was between supporting the present harsh dictator or the rebels who would make Syria into another Islamist theocracy with an al Queda faction. Without Congressional approval, he chose the latter.

There are four principal obstacles to a peaceful, effective end of the strife in Israel. The Israelis have deliberately fragmented the country into scattered developments, a long fence and other control barriers and high control points, making separation into two side-by-side countries virtually impossible. Second, the Palestinian leaders continue refusing to to accept Israel's right to exist. Third, in the years following World War II when many Jews were moving into Israel, an estimated 711,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced, uprooted or moved in desperation to nearby Arab countries that have refused to absorb them, treating them as outsiders. With their high birth rate, that number has ballooned to over 3 million Palestinian refugees. Sixty years later, many are still prevented from taking any but menial jobs. The Wall Street Journal August 28, 2010: "The dirty little secret of the Arab world is that it has consistently treated Palestinians living in its midst with contempt and often violence." Fourth, there are three Arabic words for "peace". In making international political agreements, the Arabs always refuse to use " suih", the only one that makes it a binding contract.

It is virtually impossible for two such passionate enemies to share peaceably one small parcel of land when they are so different in so many ways and when many of their people and allies question the other's right to exist as a nation on that land. To settle the turmoil, they must either find a way to separate themselves or one will try to take over the whole land by force and subjugate or expel the other, and that could only be Israel subjugating or expelling the Palestinians.

This tribal war can be solved only by the two principals, if and when they get so sick of the conflict that they negotiate a workable geographic, political and functional division which effectively separates them -- an unlikely occurrence. Anything is possible; consider the Irish vendetta, quiet now for some time. The Palestinian Gaza enclave has no economy, only international welfare, so it is likely to atrophy and eventually the Palestinians just become residents in Israel, or leave it. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal June 26, 2006 predicted the still-likely outcome, with simply some Arabs – not as Palestinians -- living in Israel: "Palestine, as we know it today, will revert to what it was – shadowland between Israel and its neighbors – and Palestinians, as we know them today, will revert to who they were: Arabs."

COLLATERAL DAMAGE AND FRIENDLY FIRE

The Wall Street Journal had a front-page feature article, with a full-page continuation, titled "A Marine's Death Haunts Outpost," about a Marine sniper accidentally killed by a U.S. tank crew.

Now that our instantaneous graphic communications bring the gory facts and tragedies of war into our TV sets and other electronic devices, the sensation-seeking news people show graphically what goes on in wars, pogroms and squabbles. In earlier wars, thousands of our military personnel were accidentally killed by our own activities and fire. In earlier wars, thousands of civilians were killed when they were merely in the wrong place at the right time. That always happens in wars, but formerly it wasn't featured in front-page headlines, in living color, with interviews of the victims' families and friends.

Now the news media and the anti-war crowd pounce on every known incident of such deaths or injuries to our own troops and to civilians said to be innocent. The cowardly Muslims hide soldiers with civilians, daring us to attack them there. When civilians are injured or killed, the anti-war people call it an inexcusable event and demand identification and punishment of those responsible. They would require rules of engagement requiring that we attack or defend ourselves only against uniformed enemy personnel and only when there is no chance that anyone else could be injured.

The soldier has to make a quick – often instant – decision: is he or she a friend or an enemy? Shoot or be shot? The Monday-morning quarterbacks in the media have unlimited time to gather all the facts, study the scene and circumstances, separate lies from truth and decide what they think the warrior should have done. If they disagree with the action, or if a civilian or another American was hurt or killed, the guilty warrior must pay! Honey, this isn't your Wednesday bridge game. This is war.

In modern guerilla warfare, who are the enemies? What is collateral damage? During our foolish interference in Vietnam, a large segment of their population were ordinary civilians moonlighting as warriors, and that goes on in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. That is modern warfare. How can anyone issue fixed rules of engagement for street fighting and guerrilla warfare with soldier-civilians?

The tragedy is not the occasional unintended killing of Americans or of enemy civilians who later have been determined not to have been fighters. The tragedy is that we get involved where it is not our problem. The tragedy is that we, a bankrupt nation, have an enormous, unnecessary military budget. They always call it defense spending, but it isn't. It's military spending, designed for offensive warfare.

The real question is why are we fighting such wars? We are simply unpaid, largely unappreciated global meddlers and suckers. The terrible tragedy is not the death of one Marine. It is the terrible cost of thousands of lives and trillions of borrowed American dollars spent by our politicians in fighting wars where we don't belong.

SAUDI ARABIA: ALLY OR FOE?

The United States needs to review its relationships, policies and activities in the Middle East. We should worry less about pleasing our historic allies, more about obliterating terrorists and their supporters, and most about protecting our citizens from Muslim terrorism.

In spite of frequent statements by the Bush and Obama Administrations that Muslims are peaceful people and that Saudi Arabia is our ally, Muslims in general and Saudi Arabia in particular are not arresting their terrorists nor cooperating with us in fighting terrorism. They haven't for years.

In the past, we've had good reason to cooperate with Saudi Arabia. We buy about 15 percent of our imported oil from them, Americans do substantial amounts of business with them, and the U.S. built and used military bases in Saudi Arabia during the Cold War. In April, 2003, Secretary Rumsfeld announced that nearly all American troops would leave the country; only 400 would remain "to train Saudis," the withdrawal resulting from pressure from Saudi Arabia. However, there are more reasons we may want to distance ourselves from Saudi Arabia. There is internal unrest in Saudi Arabia, due in part to the succession struggle of the Saud family. They have stifled even mild opposition to their power, leaving radical Muslims as their principal opposition. A takeover by radicals and dissatisfied citizens is a possibility, particularly since the country's shrinking welfare handouts and high unemployment rate have increased dissension.

There are many al Qaedas in Saudi Arabia, and its rulers refuse to cooperate in an international consortium of over 80 nations agreeing to block the assets of terrorist groups. The Saudis also refused to cooperate with the U.S. investigation of their 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in which 19 American servicemen were killed. Fifteen of the 19 9/11 murderers were Saudi Arabians.

In late 2013, Saudis at the top are severely criticizing Obama for having secret negotiations with Iran that resulted in lifting sanctions and releasing $8 billion in frozen assets in return for promises by Iran to slow their nuclear development program, and further criticizing him for backing off from sending more military aid to the Syrian rebels. U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia are definitely deteriorating. The Saudis are sending military aid to the Syrian rebels and Lebanon because Obama isn't, another move away from cooperation with the United States.

On December 15, 2013 Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institution Fellow, revealed that a 7,200 word section of the report by the congressional 9/11 commission had been redacted and the contents never released. Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) read the redacted report and were "absolutely shocked" at the level of foreign-state involvement. Some information already leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, points to Saudi Arabia. One CIA memo found "incontrovertible evidence" that Saudi officials -- high-level diplomats and intelligence officers -- helped the 9/11 hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and their consulate in Los Angeles, and Saudi VIPs from coast to coast -- San Diego, Falls Church and Herndon, Virginia, and Sarasota, Florida. Our ally?

Saudi Arabia is an anomaly, a rich Third World country. There are 7,000 Saudi princes who share an estimated one-fourth of the country's oil revenue, estimated recently at $326 billion annually. Lesser princes receive a stipend of several thousand dollars each month plus other perquisites. Some have their own jet airports and terminals and one prince has his own Airbus 380 airliner complete with a two-car garage, camel stalls and a prayer room that automatically faces toward Mecca, its cost estimated at $500 million.

Saudi royalty are reluctant to risk giving up the good life. Ground-breaking local elections were held in February, 2005, but Prince Mansur, appointed by the royal family to run the experiment, had said, "The will of the people is not the final say for public policy in this country." As expected, the "elections" were a burlesque. Only males could vote, no political parties were permitted and only the medieval Wahhabi Muslim establishment was permitted to organize. Saudi newspapers are increasingly critical of social and economic conditions, but direct attacks are not permitted. In early 2004, thirteen Saudis signed a petition proposing a constitutional monarchy. Rather than being bought off, as is common, the organizers were thrown in jail.

Carmen bin Laden, ex-wife of one of Osama's 24 brothers, wrote a book called Inside the Kingdom, a rare glimpse into the gulag world of Saudi Arabian wives. Her mother was Swiss and she grew up in Geneva. She followed her husband to business school in California, but once in Saudi Arabia she became a sub-human pet in a home prison, which she says is typical. Even Saudi men have seemed to live in the seventh century since the primitive Wahhabi sect took over Saudi Islam and spread it around the world.

After the Iranian revolution in 1979, Saudi rulers crushed all liberalizing trends. All citizens must be Muslims and conversion to another religion is a crime punishable by death if the accused does not recant. An eighth-grade textbook teaches that Jews and Christians were cursed by Allah and turned into apes and pigs; the ninth graders learn that on the Day of Judgment, "a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree, and the rock or tree will call upon the Muslim: 'O Muslim, O slave of Allah! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'"

In 2004, our State Department finally added Saudi Arabia to its list of the world's most religiously intolerant nations. Colin Powell, unwilling to let the long-overdue action speak for itself, hastened to apologize to Al Arabiya, the Arab satellite channel: "One should not see this as anything but two friends talking to one another about a problem of mutual concern." This about the country in which the Mutawwa'in, the state morality police, forced a group of teen-age girls to stay inside a burning school building because they were not wearing the head scarves and black tents that female Saudis must wear in public. Fifteen of the girls died; 52 were injured. (An interesting book on Saudi Arabia, Muslims and the Middle East is by a former CIA Middle East hand: Sleeping with the Devil, by Robert Baer.)

The Saudi leaders are faced with increasing protests, particularly from the 10-percent Shia minority. Political parties are banned and campaigning for political freedom is outlawed. There are about 30,000 political prisoners in mid-2013, with the Saudi family taking a hard line with all dissent, contrasting with their current support of the rebels in Syria.

In sharp contrast, tiny Bahrain, adjacent to Saudi Arabia, demonstrates an effective method for managing opposition. In 1999, Emir Sheikh Hamad al Khaufa replaced his late father who had failed to suppress violence in Bahrain. Launching an innovative strategy, the emir emptied the jails of political prisoners, abolished the harsh security laws and promised free municipal and parliament elections in 2002 and 2003. He gave every Bahraini, male and female, the right to vote. Bahrain is not a democracy and the constitutional monarchy retains much control of the legislature and courts, but they have shown the Islamic world a better way to keep peace and respect human rights. Recently there has been some civil unrest, with the Saudi government offering the Bahrain government help.

Bahrain is different in other ways from some of the backward, radical Islamic countries. Its 675,000 people are well-educated, prosperous, moderate Muslims. The streets are full of partyers in air conditioned cars, many with Saudi licenses. The city's bars are well-stocked with alcohol and their customers are served by mini-skirted hostesses and entertained by belly dancers. Some local Christians openly wear crucifix necklaces, prohibited in Saudi Arabia, where bibles are confiscated by customs officials. Unlike Saudi Arabia, the Internet is not censored and space in the two newspapers is offered to the opposition.

Bahrain is also home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, the logistics center for two carrier groups and the center of U.S. military strength in the Middle East. Previously, the Bahraini opposition would have brought mass protests against the U.S. presence and personnel would have been afraid to leave the base. Today, anti-U.S. demonstrations like one that occurred in Manama may attract a few hundred people but dissipate quietly without damage. By offering all Bahrainis a constructive role in their government, radical Muslim groups have been moderated. However, recently divisions between the king and an Islamist branch of the royal family have threatened political peace in Bahrain and our military position there.

Turkey is another Islamic country that made some progress, but now there is an internal struggle for control between the Islamists and the secular Muslims. The U.S. needs to work more closely with the Turks and encourage them to come out of their bunker. Until recently they had assumed a fairly cautious posture, standing up to people like Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. For some time Turkey was our most dependable Muslim ally in the Middle East and the world's most successful Muslim democracy. After 9/11, they were among the first to offer the U.S. everything from bases to soldiers, and they could be a great help, militarily and culturally.

Mustafa Kemal, also called Ataturk, was the 1920s George Washington of modern Turkey. Turkey's Kemalist Islam system can furnish other Muslim countries with a moderate alternative to the Wahhabi sect and its cultural influence. Turkey could be to Islam what Hong Kong is to communist China, with the Kemalist system liberating women to work, travel, dress and study like free people, not slaves. Like Bahrain, Istanbul was until recently a contrast to most grim Islamic capitals, but recent elections have strengthened the Islamist factions. The future is uncertain.

Even Iran offers possibilities of moderation. It is not a monolithic culture but a mixture of several ethnic groups and religious sects. Some young Muslims are rattling the cages of the Shiite theocracy in every major Iranian city, a fact not generally recognized by our State Department and news media. Contrary to the desires of our policy makers, the U.S. should abandon the usual American practice of trying to appease antagonists and buy allies. We need to fight terrorism every way possible and let the world choose sides. Muslim-lover Barack Hussein Obama, chief apologist for everything American, also is an apologist for Muslim felonies and refuses to fight their terrorism effectively.

The Saudis have apparently convinced our State Department that we need them, but Saudi Arabia also needs us, and we are developing new domestic oil and gas resources and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Without enough oil income to bribe its own people and neighbors, the Saud regime might collapse. In developing new oil resources, reducing our oil consumption and confronting Saudi Arabia's tolerance of Muslim terrorists, we should be prepared and willing to give up their oil if they continue to harbor and finance terrorists and promote their medieval holy-war religion around the world.

Another black swan circling above involves the petrodollar. In 1973 Saudi Arabia agreed that all sales of their oil would be made in U.S. dollars and the money invested in U.S. Treasurys, and the U.S. agreed to protect Saudi oil fields from Russia, Iran, Iraq and others. By 1975 all OPEC countries had agreed to use only USDs for all oil transactions. It has been great for the U.S., strengthening the dollar and lowering the prices of imported goods. With relations deteriorating, the Saudis are abrogating the petrodollar agreement and the results could be dire for the U.S., starting a move away from the USD as the world's reserve currency to other currencies, a partially gold-backed yuan or other alternatives. China and Russia are known to want to weaken the USD, as are other countries. Some problems could be a major reduction in global purchases of U.S. Treasury debt and other investments, increased costs of our imports, higher interest rates, and larger deficits. A major depression could result.

There is a glimmer of hope now in the Saudis' deteriorating relationship to Iran, with two Muslim sects that hate each other almost as much as they hate Christians. The Saudis are Sunni Muslims and are nervous about Shiite Iran developing nuclear-weapons capability. An Iranian plot to murder the Saudi Ambassador to the United States put a new chill on that relationship. The enemy of my enemy is my friend When all three are enemies, who are friends?

UGLY AMERICANS

Among the strange ideas most Americans have concerning our relations with other countries, two are most apparent:

1. Our economic, political and social systems are the best and should be used by all people.

2. We are a very generous and friendly people; the world knows that, appreciates our financial and military aid and they like the United States and Americans.

On the first point, similar systems work satisfactorily in some countries but not all. Replace a well-run colonial government of a black African country with a democracy and it probably will sink into chaos and economic disaster. Or, consider Singapore. After WWII, the Malay States formed Malaysia and excluded Singapore because it had no resources or economic base. In a few decades it became one of the most free and prosperous economies in the world. It also has very low taxes. Politically Singapore is a benevolent police state, but it is very successful and now they are a major financial center.

On the second point, it should be obvious to Americans that the U.S. is not loved by all the world. Current events make it clear that most populations in Muslim countries hate the U.S. For centuries much of the Muslim world led the West in almost everything -- wealth, science, mathematics, language, the arts. Now, except for those with oil wealth, most are backward Third World countries, and their leaders blame the West. There are many reasons why much of the Muslim world is comparatively poor and none of them have to do with us. Aside from their hatred of non-Muslims, another source of their hatred is the fallacious zero-sum theorem, assuming that our prosperity has been taken from them. America's presence in Muslim countries, support of Israel and our Hollywood and television garbage annoy them further, which they should.

Canada, our good neighbor, is an example of the ambivalent feelings around the world toward the United States. Most Americans have cordial relations with the Canadians they meet, including French Canadians, and assume that Canada feels cordial toward the United States. In fact, in Canada there is some quiet resentment of the U.S. It is partly envy of our success and predominance in so many fields, resentment of the American productivity and innovation that make competition difficult. An examination of one U.S. financial services company found that the productivity per employee of their Canadian branches measured just one-half that of U.S. branches doing similar work.

Canadians also dislike buying so many products and services from America and having to endure the importation of our uncultured culture. For the most part, Canadian resentment, and that of the rest of the world, is simply the result of the United States wielding more global influence than anyone else. Our way of life reaches more corners of the world, including many places where it is strongly resented and resisted. Our language has become the international language in spite of its complexity and irregularity, which infuriates the French, whose language was once the international language and who think everything French is superior. Probably 80 percent of the world's business now is done in English as well as in U.S. dollars, and in non-business communications around the world, English is often the common language used by people who speak different languages.

Americans abroad typically know only English and assume that all things foreign should be like ours -- architecture, food, hotels, laws, tipping, traffic laws and signs, banking, and most of all, language. "Those people are so stupid they couldn't even speak English!"

Recognizing the inevitable resentment of our success and our often unwelcome influence and meddling around the world, what should we do? We should never try to buy friendships and alliances. Other countries probably appreciate some of the money, military aid and other gifts from us, at least to the extent the gifts get past the rulers and to their people, and when the people actually learn that it came from the U.S. But, like welfare, aid is often resented even while being received, and its eventual termination always causes animosity. We should continually remind ourselves that American ways are not best for everyone. We should think Noblesse oblige, and Never be haughty to the humble. When one is dominant, humility goes a long way.

We need to learn what is successful elsewhere in the world and why, and consider trying it. We really aren't all that smart, good, and important. Consider the miasma called Hollywood and the garbage on our television, and particularly our incompetent political leadership in both the Demagogue Party and the Stupid Party. All that is much of what the world knows about the United States.

WARTIME INTERNMENT

In recent years there has been much criticism of the relocation of West Coast Japanese during World War II, ordered by super-Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. Most of the criticism has been by people who were not there, do not understand the magnitude of world-wide threats and suffering during World War II, and are ignorant of, or choose to ignore some facts.

Much of the hysteria concerning Japanese internment resulted from textbooks and museum exhibits that reflect the biased 1983 report of the federal Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Even before the commission commenced their fact-finding hearings, three of the panelists went on record condemning the evacuation, and Chairman Joan Bernstein said it was "a blot upon the history of the United States" and her duty was to determine "how [not whether] it occurred for no reason other than their ancestry." Commission member Father Robert Drinan, a former congressman, began the first fact-finding hearing with the question, "How much are we going to give them?" It was no surprise, then, when the report concluded that "the evacuation and relocation were based on "racial prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."

Understanding the reasons behind the evacuation and relocation requires placing it in accurate historical context. At that time, most Japanese on the West Coast were loyal citizens of Japan, in part because they were denied U.S. citizenship by laws then in place. Furthermore, there were thousands of Japanese living in the United States who had served in the Japanese military, then entered the U.S. before the war, and were regarded as a grave threat to U.S. security. By mid-1941 the Japanese had recruited ethnic Japanese living in the U.S. to set up an espionage network in Hawaii and along the West Coast. Some were also indoctrinated in school. As a teenager in 1938, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye attended a Japanese language school in Hawaii that taught propaganda urging young Japanese Americans to remain loyal to Japan, in peace or in war. He objected to the brainwashing and was expelled from the school. During World War II he lost an arm while in combat as a U.S. soldier. After Pearl Harbor it was not possible to identify those Japanese who were loyal to Japan and were potential spies or saboteurs. Understanding these facts, it is clear why Americans generally felt it was necessary to intern the Japanese and citizens of other enemy nations where similar threats existed. Many of the internees were German, Italian and other Axis aliens and their family members who were identified as threats, a fact not generally known.

The attack on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field in the Philippines occurred while Japanese diplomats were meeting with State Department officials in Washington, attempting to negotiate the lifting of a trade embargo imposed on Japan after they violated the Kellogg-Briand Pact by invading China, torturing and killing an estimated 10 million Chinese. After the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, both U.S. coasts remained on high alert for most of the war, particularly the West Coast. Japanese espionage in Hawaii prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor caused concern about similar attacks on West Coast Navy bases, aircraft factories and shipyards. Anti-bombing protection required all-night blacking of all windows, 24/7 Coast Guard Auxiliary patrols, a network of volunteer aircraft spotters, camouflaged aircraft factories and full wartime precautions. Cars driving on coastal roads were required to have blue or slit headlight covers, making night driving dangerous. There was much speculation about a Japanese attack on the West Coast.

In 1942, the war reached the U.S. mainland for the first time since 1812. Japanese submarines shelled the Oregon coast and California's Goleta oil fields. More than 4,000 balloon-bombs were launched from Japan and some landed as far as the southeastern U.S. Some Japanese submarines carried dismantled aircraft and launched a few bombing raids on the West Coast. In May, 1942 the Japanese bombed Kodiak, Alaska and occupied Kiska and Attu islands in the Aleutians for more than a year. In September, 1942 a submarine-based seaplane dropped incendiary bombs on the national forest in Oregon in an attempt to start large forest fires.

Fear of the Japanese was real and justified, not the hysterical ethnic-bashing many now claim. Michelle Malkin's book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror, cites many reasons for Americans' general fear of Japanese spies and collaborators living among the general population.

One incident that raised public fears involved a Japanese fighter pilot, Shigenori Nischikaichi, who crash-landed his Zero on an island 100 miles northwest of Oahu after American fighters crippled his plane during the Pearl Harbor attack. Two hundred Hawaiians and three people of Japanese descent called the small island home. There were no telephones on the island and word of that morning's attack on Pearl Harbor had not yet reached them. A burly Hawaiian, Hawila Kaleohano, who had been following world affairs in newspapers brought weekly from Kauai, wisely confiscated the pilot's gun and papers and took him to his home. The pilot said he was not Japanese and demanded that his gun and papers be returned, which included maps, radio codes and Pearl Harbor attack plans. Kaleohano refused and summoned two of the island's three Japanese residents, Yoshio Harada and his wife, for assistance. They were U.S. citizens who had moved from California two years earlier. A guard was posted on the pilot.

The pilot, aided by Harada and his wife, overpowered the guard on duty. The three then searched Kaleohano's house and found the pilot's gun but not his papers. They set the plane and Kaleohano's house on fire, fired their guns wildly and threatened to kill every man, woman and child in the village.

On December 13, the pilot and the two Japanese Americans captured islander Ben Kanahele and his wife and ordered them to find Kaleohano. They refused to cooperate, and the pilot shot Kanahele three times in the chest, hip and groin. Mrs. Kanahele pounced on the pilot and Harada, her once-peaceful neighbor, tore her away. The wounded man hurled the pilot against a stone wall, his wife bashed the pilot's head with a rock and Kanahele slit his throat with a hunting knife. The harrowing battle was over.

For ten years prior to Pearl Harbor there had been continual reports from China of Japanese terror -- the Rape of Nanking and other Japanese slaughter, torture, starvation and medical experimentation on Chinese civilians and military. The sneak attack on Hawaii by Japan caused general fear of further espionage and sabotage by Japanese civilians, as did broader reports of Japanese beatings, torture, starvation and slaughter of allied military personnel and civilians during the Bataan Death March, in Japanese prison camps and elsewhere,.

All through the war the politest name for them was "the Japs." More common was "the dirty Japs" or unprintable terms. The war put Americans' lives on hold, or much worse, for four years. Most of the country was engaged in an all-out civilian and military effort, with 14 million men and women on active military duty and most civilians making substantial sacrifices. Animosity toward the Japanese and fear of espionage, sabotage and military attacks were severe and widespread, a fact not generally understood now. One of the drawings in a Dr. Suess children's book published during the war shows a long line of Japanese with buck teeth and eyeglasses coming from Washington, Oregon and California passing by a building marked Honorable Fifth Column, each being handed a small package marked TNT. A man on the roof has a telescope pointed over the ocean. The drawing is captioned, Waiting for the Signal From Home.

Part of the war effort involved adequately housing internees. As much as relocation camps are maligned and now are called "concentration camps'" by liberals, their operations and accommodations were nothing like the concentration camps of Europe or the terrible Japanese prison camps. The relocation camp at the Santa Anita racetrack is widely criticized, but immediately after the internees left in 1942 it was used to house American GIs. More important, most Japanese were not prisoners but were free to leave the camps and move away from the West Coast military zone, which thousands did. Those who stayed in the camps were able to go to school or work outside the West Coast exclusion zones if they chose to, and 4,300 left them to attend college.

In part because of the fair treatment they received, many loyal Japanese joined our armed forces and served with distinction. Most served in Europe because they would have been in danger from friendly fire if in combat zones in the Pacific. Patriotism also emerged from the often-forgotten Japanese American Citizens League. They understood and embraced the wartime need to put national security first.

The common understanding is that the evacuees received nothing until President Reagan signed the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, from which a total of $1.65 billion was given to ethnic Japanese internees. In fact, in 1948 legislation authorized payments to evacuees on the basis of individual damages and granted a total of 26,568 settlements. Between 1951 and 1978, Congress passed eight more compensation laws granting a variety of benefits. The 1988 act was unique only because, contrary to previous compensations granted, it gave money based solely on Japanese ethnicity. Evacuees who had refused to take a loyalty oath, renounced U.S. citizenship, resisted the draft, terrorized other camp residents, or returned to Japan were all handed the same amount of U.S. taxpayers' money as were the loyal evacuees. The losses were more personal property than real estate. Many of the Japanese were farmers, but most were tenant farmers because of some laws prohibiting aliens from owning land. Although repeated compensations have been given to Japanese internees, no compensation was given to Axis internees. As with our graduated income-tax assessments, the section of our Constitution ensuring equal treatment for everyone is frequently violated by our revisionist courts.

As we reflect on our history, the Bush and Obama administration's policies of refusing to permit "racial profiling" as part of their War on Terror would have made no sense in World War II and they make no sense now. Police, security personnel and others routinely identify patterns in determining who and what need to be investigated.

In retrospect, it is always easy to consider what might have been done differently. In this case, instead of the way it was done, with very limited resources available to determine which aliens were more likely to pose a threat, more time should have been given to them to settle their affairs, then finding creative ways to remove them from designated military zones and find productive work for them elsewhere, encouraging eligible men to volunteer for military service outside the Pacific war zone and permitting their families to return home. As the war progressed and public fears of an impending attack and war-plant sabotage eased, we could have started a program of releasing U.S. citizens and other internees whose background did not suggest a danger, instead of waiting until almost the end of the war.

JAPAN, LAND OF THE WHITEWASHED ASSASSINS

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has just repeated their 1941 attack on the United States, this time verbally. For decades Japan has tried to rewrite history, concealing and denying their barbaric, bloody treatment of China for fourteen years and the U.S. and its allies for four years.

On April 23, 2013 Abe told the Japanese Diet, "The definition of what constitutes an invasion has yet to be established in academia or in the international community." During the same week, the prime minister's cabinet and 168 Japanese lawmakers paid homage at the Yasukuni Shrine of Japanese war heroes, including those convicted of war crimes against China. Its history museum justifies their invasions and annexations of Manchuria and Korea by citing mistreatment of those lands during the imperial era in China.

Jennifer Lind, a consultant for RAND and the Defense Department, explains the situation in her book, Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. "More than 60 years after the end of World War II, chilly relations in East Asia stand in stark contrast to the thaw in Western Europe. Germans have spent decades confronting and atoning for the crimes of the Nazi era, but in 2005, Japan's Education Ministry approved textbooks widely perceived as whitewashing Japan's past atrocities. Violent protests erupted in China."

In the past, when Japanese leaders have tried to make apologies in a Diet resolution, prominent conservatives have not only denied approval, but also glorified Japan's past violence. In 1988, cabinet member Seisuke Okuno defended Japanese imperialism and said Caucasians had been the real aggressors in Asia. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, prominent members of his Diet and senior academicians forced school textbooks to be censored to delete all references to Japanese war guilt and atrocities, to instill national pride. This is part of a continuing and increasing trend, with new disputes between Japan and China over islands, offshore petroleum rights and international sea lanes increasing animosity between Japan and China.

The Japanese denials and deception at the highest levels concerning who started the 1941 war are insulting and are outright lies. The week before their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese diplomatic envoys to Washington discussing disagreements while their large attack fleet was steaming to Hawaii to destroy our Pacific fleet, with other forces en route to attack our Clark Field in the Philippines on December 7th. The Tokyo museum and other Japanese sources say Roosevelt started the war.

Japan had invaded resource-rich, strategically important Manchuria in 1931 and Jehol province in 1933. In 1937 they escalated their war to conquer all of China, taking Peking and its provinces in the north and Shanghai in the south, then moving up the Yangtze River to capture the national capital, Nanking. Infuriated by the strength of the Chinese resistance, Japan adopted a policy of deliberate savagery, expecting to break the Chinese will to resist. The Japanese troops were encouraged by their officers to invent terrible ways to torture and slaughter the Chinese. In December, 1937, after taking Nanking, they immediately slaughtered thousands of Chinese troops who had surrendered and then rounded up about 20,000 young Chinese men, transported them in trucks outside the city walls and murdered them. At least 20,000 Chinese women were raped during the first four weeks of the Nanking occupation and many were mutilated and killed after being raped.

Iris Chang's 1997 book, The Rape of Nanking, contains many photographs smuggled out of Nanking – troops using live Chinese for bayonet practice, bands of drunken Japanese soldiers roaming the city, murdering, raping, looting and burning. Extensive lethal and fatal medical experiments were conducted on live Chinese. Historians have estimated that several million Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were murdered between 1937 and 1945. The Yasukuni history museum's only description of their invasion of Nanking is a copy of a document hand written by a Japanese officer commanding his troops not to attack civilians, and a statement that the reason for the Nanking attacks was that some Chinese civilians shot at the invaders.

The other, equally unbelievable war activities by Japan, which considered its people superior to all others, involved their treatment of Allied prisoners of war. The brutality and deaths on the Bataan Death March have been publicized, but the Japanese treatment of military prisoners was worse.

Gavan Daws' 1994 book, Prisoners of the Japanese, was the result of ten years of documentary research and interviews of surviving prisoners. In the first months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines and elsewhere, the Japanese Army took over 140,000 Allied prisoners. Daws said 27 percent of them died at the hands of their captors, compared to about 3 percent of Americans and their allies in German prison camps. They were denied medical treatment, beaten, tortured, systematically starved and murdered. Typical rations totaled about 600 calories of junk food per day, while doing hard slave labor from dawn to dusk. Those who survived were slated to be worked to death. According to Daws, if the war had lasted another twelve months, there would hardly have been a surviving prisoner of the Japanese.

Another chapter in the Japanese book of horrors involves ships they used to transport prisoners. In 2001 Gregory F. Michno published a book titled Death On The Hellships, giving the facts. He said it was far worse than the Bataan Death March, with more than 126,000 prisoners transported and more than 21,000 dying aboard the ships. Survivors described it as the worst part of their captivity. The details and photos from these and other sources are hard to believe, coming from a "superior" First World country. Their denying and whitewashing the facts to promote "national pride" is unconscionable.

World War II isn't just a history book to Americans who were there. Our country put their normal activities on hold for four years and worked overtime to defeat the Japanese and German aggressors who intended to take over the world, in the largest and most devastating war in the history of the world. Aside from the enormous financial costs, estimates of the total military and civilian deaths vary from 50 to 70 million persons. Countless others survived with broken bodies and minds. It's one thing for a nation to go on a years-long program of torturing and slaughtering other people, and quite another 68 years later to say it never happened or to take pride in their warriors who did the foul deeds. For many years, when given a choice, some Americans have avoided buying Japanese products in retaliation.

The Japanese now are ensuring national atrophy by preventing immigration. Their low birth rate guarantees a shrinking working population to support an increasing number of retired persons. At the same time, their new solution to two decades of economic doldrums is to print large amounts of fiat money, incurring unsustainable debt with Depression-era fiscal policies and devaluing their currencies in a mercantilist move. It all amounts to financial and demographic self-destruction. Some wish them god speed in their seppuku.

PART V: MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

THE RULE OF LAW

In this country, we assume the rule of law prevails. In reality, we do not have the rule of law, but the rule of lawyers. Our carefully crafted system of government checks and balances has been drastically changed by lawyers dominating both the judicial and legislative branches of our government as well as the upper-level executive branch.

Why not? Lawyers are often bright, capable people. Aside from the obvious mistake of letting any one type or group of persons dominate our government, consider the ways many lawyers think and function. Lawyers tend to think and deal in form, not substance, good at picking the fly specks out of pepper. They deal in the minutiae of traps and loopholes in agreements and contracts, previous court decisions, vague or ambiguous rules, laws, ordinances and meanings, and selective, devious and faulty human memories. What is right or fair or intended is often buried in details, complexity, clever maneuvering by lawyers, and erroneous or prejudiced juries and judges. Pepper loses; fly specks win.

With trial lawyers, there is really no right or wrong. It is a game, a contest to be fought. Lawyers represent the clients who hire them, but most could represent the opposition just as convincingly. Our legal system has been crafted by time and evolution not as a way to assure that truth and justice prevail as quickly and inexpensively as possible, but as a drawn-out, expensive, nit-picking combat. It has evolved into medieval jousting, following elaborate rules and procedures that only the anointed are privileged to know and practice. Cleverness often wins; justice often loses.

The rule of law does not exist; the law is what some lawyer or lawyers say it is, sitting as a judge or one of a panel of judges; he is just another lawyer, but one with a big hammer. Incredibly, many judges have great authority but no accountability, appointed for life. The lawyer may be acting as an "attorney general," issuing a proclamation from on high, or he may be working as a common lawyer, clever enough to threaten or file what may be a baseless lawsuit, and win because it is too expensive or time-consuming and unpredictable a battle for the defendant to contest it. The only certain winners of lawsuits are the lawyers.

What about juries -- don't they do the deciding in jury trials? In theory, yes; in practice, no. By controlling and limiting the introduction of witnesses, testimony and evidence, by instructing the jury in what they may and may not consider and do based on his own interpretations of the law and his personal opinions and prejudices, any judge has substantial influence or outright control of the outcome of a jury trial. In addition, prejudiced juries can be just as wrong as incompetent or prejudiced judges; as in the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson. Juries don't have to follow the law or the instructions of the judge, but most do. Clever lawyers make statements that the judge says must be stricken from the record and that the jury is told not to consider, but they have heard the statement and by nullification they can vote any way they choose.

The excessive number and influence of lawyers is not limited to our government. Lawyers are brought into many business discussions and negotiations simply because the legal minefields that have been sowed in this country are ubiquitous, dangerous and potentially very expensive. The incredible maze of often conflicting laws, bureaucratic rules and previous court decisions often demand expensive legal research and advice, even on simple matters. Lawyers, like bankers, tend to look for potential problems, not opportunities. They are criticized only if there are future problems, not success, and they are not rewarded for a successful venture. Their interest is not in making things happen but in avoiding possible trouble later, and often also in piling up as much billable time as possible. Relying on them to make business \-- not legal -- decisions is usually a mistake.

Japan has one-tenth the number of lawyers per capita, compared with the United States. Businessmen there make decisions and often write the agreements, using lawyers only to check the agreements for form, technical compliance, and translation into legal Pig Latin. It has been reported that bringing a lawyer into a Japanese business meeting may cause the rest of the participants to walk out.

In much of the world, contingent legal fees are not permitted, and a losing plaintiff pays all the legal and court costs of a winning defendant. The predictable result is that those countries have a much smaller incidence of lawsuits than the U.S. We have an outrageous, expensive, slow, self-serving legal system that is bleeding the country of vitality, productivity, innovation and enterprise. We also have an irresponsible public who want to blame someone else for every real or imagined harm and problem, and of course to have someone else pay dearly for whatever allegedly happened or did not happen. People no longer slip and fall because of their own carelessness or clumsiness. Someone else must be found responsible and pay all costs involved, plus often large amounts for "pain and suffering" and punitive damages, both of which are badly in need of constraints.

One solution to the proliferation of expensive lawsuits would be to have the opposing lawyers fight a duel.

Now a new contaminant has been injected into the legal can of worms by a Chicago community rabble-rouser who talked himself into the White House. Obama frequently refuses to enforce laws he doesn't like. He and his bureaucrats legislate by executive orders and regulations, including laws that Congress has refused to pass, like his Dream Act to benefit illegal aliens. Then, prior to the sequester reduction in the planned increase of spending, Obama started releasing jailed illegal immigrants and blamed it on sequestration, saying he didn't have enough money to keep them in jail. He even illegally repealed laws, such as the work or training for work requirement of the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families law. He has picked out parts of the 2010 Obamacare law for political reasons and set them aside or exempted from provisions of the law unions, congressional members and staffs, and other favored groups. The Obama administration's flaunting the law extends to the top law enforcer in the country, Attorney General Eric Holder, who refused to prosecute Black Panther thugs who threatened voters at a 2008 polling location in Philadelphia.

The law of the land is no longer the Constitution, its words and intent. It has become the law of lawyers, the politicians and their bureaucrats, and liberal judges who legislate without constitutional authority, in spite of all of them taking a sacred oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

THE NEW INQUISITION OF THE BAD-NEWS MEDIA

During the Gulf War -- Kuwait -- the media were not privy to every move the U.S. made and they created a big fuss over it, as if it were their birthright to know everything. So, during the Iraq invasion reporters were "embedded" with our military and soon became intrusive, demanding briefings and interviews with high administration and military officials, as well as full explanations of the details of actions, scares, threats, rumors, reports of friendly fire, "suspicious" illnesses and injuries, and damage to civilians.

Military activities were openly questioned and probed. Troop deployments, strikes and plans was scrutinized. Often injuries and deaths involving our troops had to be documented and justified. Any damage to non-Baathist property or persons was discussed in detail, and apologies were given for the "accident". Collateral damage and injury by friendly fire, inevitably part of all military combat, was not acceptable to the Monday-morning quarterbacks. Our relations with every other country involved had to be explained, actions or failure to act justified and our plans to correct perceived errors revealed. The Bush administration should have put the inquisitors where they belong, as we should in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- waiting for results.

The intentions of the news people are understandable. They want to fill their endless hours of scheduled news broadcasts and program interruptions with exciting, informative stuff –- good news doesn't sell -- to acquire more viewers and listeners to gain higher ratings and advertising income. One memorable bit of hysteria was the hours-long discussion of an unsubstantiated threat announced by California's then-Governor Gray Davis of a possible bombing of the San Francisco-Oakland bridge, including interviews of people frightened into taking the ferry to avoid the bridge.

The liberal television newsmongers are constantly devising new ways to intensify their endless "expert" commentaries on threats, death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. PBS concluded every Lehrer News Hour by naming each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq -- a clever way of dramatizing what the liberals saw as our folly in invading Iraq. It may have been folly, but we were there and they should report results wherever we are involved in combat and terrorist suppression, not broadcast a serial soap opera.

The bad-news media portrayed the more than 3,000 Americans killed in Iraq as huge losses, but they failed to report that those casualties are nothing compared with pre-television conflicts. Most reports of the number of British soldiers killed in the 1920 Iraqi revolt varied from 3,000 to 10,000. In one month in 1945, when Russia finally declared war on Japan two days after Hiroshima, 8,000 Russians and 100,000 Japanese were killed, half of them after Japan's final surrender.

The unfortunate result of the Inquisition's efforts is to keep the public constantly stirred up and apprehensive, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Imagine what the effect would have been if our 1942 invasion of Guadalcanal, New Guinea or other bloody Pacific battles had been brought hourly into every American home in living color and naming names of our dead.. With parents, wives and sweethearts clamoring to stop the slaughter, would we have given up the fight and sued the Pearl-Harbor Japanese and Hitler for peace, handing them Asia, the Pacific and Europe? American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan are few compared with U.S. automobile, bicycle and bathtub deaths on any given day, but those are not news sensational enough to be reported.

The media turned the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and terrorism into a vehicle to parade their left-wing ideologies. West Virginia politicians nominated PFC Jessica Lynch to receive a Medal of Honor, our nation's highest combat award. When her nomination was reviewed by Lt. General Michael DeLong he found that rather than being a hero, "emptying her weapon in heroic action" as was claimed, she was simply a passenger in a maintenance convoy that got lost, came under fire and crashed. She was hurt, was suffering from shock and loss of memory, and our troops later rescued her. General DeLong said overzealous politicians and a frenzied press corps distorted the facts. Private Lynch admitted she closed her eyes and hid her head when she found herself in a firefight, but the military dare not question whether women perform well in combat. Instead, she was celebrated as a "hero." Lt. Colonel Allen West, who intimidated but did not harm an Iraqi while attempting to secure information to protect his troops, was considered for a court-martial, possible dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pensions and a prison sentence, and finally resigned his commission and ended his career under pressure.

Napoleon Bonaparte said it: "If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna." If we are so afraid to suffer casualties or to be criticized for causing collateral damage, friendly-fire casualties, or political disturbance that we impair our ability to take Vienna, we are foolish. Right or wrong, we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bad-news media undermine our efforts. If they want us out of there, they should get out of the way and make their case. They should spare us, and the military, the TV blood bath with names of soldiers and interviews with their grieving families back home, and report results, not endless speculation and sob stories.

War is graphic stuff. Unfortunately, children see it on television, people watch it during dinner and victims' families witness their worst nightmares, replayed again and again. Reporters with cameramen, hungry for stories, knock on doors and shove microphones in people's faces and ask, "How do you feel about your son being killed in Afghanistan?' They should be asked how they would feel about a fist in their face. Should responsible journalism include pictures of Nick Berg's head being cut off while we listen to his screams?

HEALTH CARE AND THE "UNINSURED"

Not long ago, everyone paid for their own medical care the same way they pay for everything else. Then came "temporary" wartime wage and price controls in 1942. Employers couldn't raise wages to get and keep good employees, so many started paying for employees' medical coverage as a deductible business expense. Now anyone who doesn't have a medical-care plan is called "uninsured" and declared to be "in need of health insurance." Insurance is always the wrong way to pay for repetitive smaller expenses. The cost of processing any claim is high. Its proper use is for catastrophe protection, with comparatively high deductibles.

It makes no more sense for taxpayers to underwrite everyone's medical expenses than it does for them to pay everyone's mortgage, car payments or other personal expenses. The fundamental reason our medical costs are almost twice as high as the rest of the world's developed countries – 16 percent of our economy – is that most individuals don't pay a substantial part of their own medical costs. Someone else – the government, an insurance company, a group plan or an employer – pays the bills, so patients accept all the tests, treatments and expensive extras their doctors can get approved, and the doctors tend to order more tests and treatments than people would authorize if they were paying the bills directly or through a health savings account.

Our tax laws encourage this situation by making medical-plan costs tax-deductible business expenses if an employer pays, but not tax-deductible if the individual pays. The predictable result is that most medical coverage is paid by employers, and employees' wages are that much less. The employee thus feels detached from his own medical costs, makes little effort to monitor and control them and most physicians do not encourage hard discussions of costs and alternatives. They tend to tell patients what should be done and, desperate for tort reform, often order expensive tests and treatments primarily to protect the doctor from possible future malpractice lawsuits.

Using the term uninsured is one of the ways the government-controlled-medicine advocates promote their religion, effectively saying that such people have no medical care. Formerly everyone paid for his medical care, as many still choose to do. Government-controlled and administered health care was rammed through Congress by the Obama gang in 2010, unworkable, impossibly complicated and restrictive legislation that is even worse than the abortive attempt by the Clintons. In 1994 when self-appointed co-president Hillary Clinton and Slick Willie made a major effort to get a socialized medicine bill passed before the November election. Hillary attempted to rouse support by explaining that "it takes a village [the government] to raise our children, and [by the way] they should have the right to sue their parents at government expense." Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert said about Comrade Hillary, "She felt if money goes to individuals and they have control over it, then that is money the government doesn't have. People wouldn't spend their money as wisely as the federal government would."

Public skepticism and the Clintons' other mistakes led to a sweeping Republican election victory that silenced the debate over the Democrats' health care proposals. Proponents of government-controlled medical care blamed the greedy insurance companies, greedy drug companies, greedy doctors and greedy employers, but didn't mention the greedy trial lawyers and the greedy make-someone-else-pay voters. Always anxious to appease and pander to voters, Republicans soon joined the outcry to solve "the problem of 37 million 'uninsured' Americans" and began drafting populist something-for-nothing proposals of their own. Now the Obama gang has seized control of our medical care, and their legislation was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court with a weird kind of legal fabrication. Chief Justice Roberts called the specified fines (for failure to do as Obama's legislation demands) a "tax", even though Obama repeatedly said the fines are not a tax. Now it's up to Congress to disable or repeal Obamacare, as is desired by some 70 percent of Americans, and to consider other badly needed medical reforms to replace the Democrats' unworkable legislation, but they still control the Senate and White House so lawsuits, failure to cooperate, nullification, civil unrest and future elections will determine the fate of Obamacare. There is a strong Don't sign and don't pay the fine" movement under way. Gestapo chief Eric Holder and the IRS can't fine or imprison 50 million people who refuse to dine on the Democrats' medical can of worms. An Impeach Obama movement is also under way and many people are thinking that since he chooses to disobey laws he doesn't like, so can they.

By delaying action or refusing to comply with the impossible requirements and complexities of Obamacare, insurance companies, HMOs, employers, states, and various groups like the Obama-loving unions are finally waking up to the disastrous provisions hidden in the 2,600 page legislation that Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the Democrats passed without studying and without a single Republican vote. Obamacare, his "great achievement", could implode and die a death by a thousand cuts. The program is unconstitutional, it is unworkable, it is causing medical-plan costs to rise sharply and it leaves control of how and whether people receive medical treatment in the hands of a few unelected bureaucrats who are not even medical professionals. In spite of Obama's many, many promises that costs would be lower and that people could keep their doctors and their medical plans, it appears obvious that the Administration knew that costs would rise sharply and that millions would lose their medical plans and doctors. Most of the people signing up for Obamacare are not signing up for private insurance but for Medicaid, so the medical-welfare rolls are ballooning. That may actually have been the intention of the Democrats, to expand welfare medicine and make more voters dependent on the government.

Aside from the obvious fact that people could always obtain medical plans for themselves or pay their medical bills directly, everyone without a plan can currently get free medical care simply by going to a hospital emergency room. Congress and liberal judges have ruled that hospitals must treat anyone who comes to their emergency rooms. Not surprisingly, illegal aliens and others without medical plans routinely use and abuse this free care, paid for by other patients and the taxpayers. In some cases, the policy has forced many hospitals into bankruptcy. Between 1993 and 2003, 60 California hospitals closed because about half of their services were unpaid, with another 24 verging on closure.

Medical costs have become very high for various reasons: new technology such as MRI's, organ transplants, kidney dialysis, and expensive new surgical procedures; people living longer and requiring more treatment for more years; hospitals and medical groups buying or leasing expensive, under-utilized equipment and wanting to get more revenue from them \-- all combine to increase treatments and costs, but now Obama is decreasing payments for Medicare and Medicaid services.

The medical community's focus is almost completely on curing disease and prolonging life, rather than preventing illness and not recognizing that often the expense and misery of prolonging life are not justified. With medical plans or taxpayers paying for heroic end-of-life measures, there is often little incentive to consider conservative measures. Ultimately, individuals and families need to take a substantial amount of the responsibility for their own medical decisions and bills, including expensive heroic efforts. If someone, or his family, chooses to extend his life with expensive surgery, treatments or an organ transplant and to use much or all of his accumulated assets or medical savings account, he should be free to do so, but he should not expect others to pay the costs.

The Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2013: "This disconnect [third parties paying] has ruinous economic costs. About a quarter of Medicare's $550 billion annual budget pays for medical treatment in the last year of life. Almost a third of Medicare patients have surgery in their last year of life, and nearly one in five in their last month of life. In their last year of life, one-third to one-half of Medicare patients spend time in an intensive care unit, where ten days of futile flailing can cost as much as $323,000. Medical overtreatment costs the U.S. health care system an estimated $158 billion to $226 billion a year."

Health Savings Accounts (HSA), are a valuable tool in reducing and paying for medical costs, and typically work this way: An individual, his employer or both pay a certain amount monthly into an individual HSA, which he owns. The individual pays small medical expenses directly. His major medical expenses for treatments that the individual and his doctor deem justified are charged to the HSA. If the individual incurs expenses greater than his HSA account balance, he pays that directly. Any unused funds in the account are eventually returned to the individual or his estate. Reports from companies with HSAs have been very favorable and average medical costs have been substantially lower. When the decision involves a patient's own money, he is much more careful and willing to question doctors about proposed tests, treatments, surgeries and their costs, discussions that many doctors and medical providers try to avoid.

Singapore has a healthier population than the U.S. and U.K., with medical expenses 3.5 percent of GDP vs. 16 percent in the U.S. Why? Health savings accounts. Opponents of HSAs call for "universal coverage," meaning government-controlled medicine, usually proposing the same rates for everyone no matter what their medical history or risk profile. Why should a 25-year-old non-smoker pay the same rate as an 85-year-old with a history of smoking, heart problems and diabetes? Who would underwrite automobile, fire or life insurance that way? The record of universal coverage in Canada is awful: long waiting lists for tests and surgeries, 10,000 doctors leaving Canada during the 1990s, falling numbers of medical school graduates, and now it is against the law to bypass the system and pay for your own surgery , so many Canadians come to the U.S. for medical diagnosis and treatment and pay cash. A report in The Economist: "Health spending is administered by the provinces...In Ontario, the most populous province, it is set to reach 80 percent of their budget by 2030, leaving pennies for everything else."

Another aspect of the medical mess that deters people from paying for their own medical care and is crying for reform: unfair billing practices, charging different amounts for the same services, depending on who is paying. In a September 21, 2004 Wall Street Journal story, a 43-year-old Virginia man without medical coverage was charged $29,500 for a 21-hour hospital stay. The charge to Medicare would have been $15,000 and the charge to Medicaid, $6,000. In another typical case in Phoenix last January, a neurosurgeon billed $12,700 and Medicare paid him $1,613. The patient tried to pay him more, but by law, he could not. The hospital's billing was similarly high and then heavily discounted by Medicare. Congress should stop the games by requiring consistent billing by each medical provider for similar services. People paying for their own care are paying a big penalty, subsidizing patients with no medical plan and illegal aliens who get free hospital care and childbirths by federal government fiat. The solution would be to require that cash customers be charged no more than 10 percent above the rate paid by Medicare for similar medical services.

To avoid a Canadian fate there are several major factors in the medical care debate and each needs to be studied carefully, not driven through Congress in secret sessions for political reasons, as happened with Commissar Obama's legislation. The major considerations are these:

* How much responsibility should each individual or family have, and how can HSAs, tax incentives and other provisions help them save and pay for desired care?

* How should we standardize insurance policies and HMO coverage, claims procedures and provide portability of coverage when people change employers? How to make insurance saleable across state lines, to increase competition? How to level the field so premiums are either tax-deductible or are not, regardless of who pays them?

* Establish the right of plans to charge rates that reflect the individual risks involved. Healthy young people should not be paying for the high medical expenses of old people. HSAs should accumulate funds for the young people to own and use when needed. Separate insurance pools should be established for high-risk persons and premiums paid by them, not by healthy persons or the taxpayers.

* How should we address the fact that an estimated one-third of lifetime medical costs now are spent for the last year or so of life, which is often of poor quality? HSAs leave those decisions to the people involved.

* End the federal requirement that hospitals provide free care for illegal aliens and others. That is unconstitutional fascist governing and unconstitutional appropriation of private assets.

* How should we reform the tort legal system to reduce frivolous, unfair and punitive litigation and the resulting high costs of malpractice insurance and medical care?

* End the penalties on cash payment for medical services.

These are not matters to be bargained away by career politicians trading political favors for support. They involve billions of dollars and the health and well-being of 310 million people. Reforms need to come from the public studying all aspects of health care, including preventive health care, ignored in most discussions, and then telling their Congressmen what they want done. Careful study of the experience of different HSAs, attempts to reach a non-political public consensus, and unhurried action are in order. There is no reason why the various aspects of health care can't be considered carefully and acted on separately rather than in monstrous political proposals, hastily considered without public participation and without the congressmen and medical community studying in detail what they are voting on.

Government medicine is a demonstrated failure in the rest of the world and it is imploding here. We need to disable the disastrous Obamacare legislation and improve the system we have, not destroy it. One of the deliberate consequences of Obamacare is changing our outstanding private medical system into another inefficient socialized government bureaucracy. Many physicians are leaving medicine or selling their practices and themselves to hospitals, in effect becoming just another group of government employees.

It doesn't take a village, but it does take a direct personal interest and control of our medical care, which the politicians and bureaucrats have stolen from us with absolutely no constitutional authority.

THE WAR ON DRUGS

The "War on Drugs", started by President Nixon in 1971, was lost long ago. Its futility and enormous costs in money and ruined lives should be apparent to everyone by now -- especially to the many insiders who see the failure but whose jobs depend on it, and who continually ask for more taxpayer funding for their failed programs. Current spending is estimated at over $40 billion per year, with a total cost since 1971 estimated at over $1 trillion. Approximately 45 million arrests have been made, with 1.6 million persons now in federal and state prisons on drug convictions.

John Stossel: "Myth: Drugs cause crime. Truth: The drug war causes the crime... Banning drugs certainly hasn't kept young people from getting them. We can't even keep these drugs out of prisons. How do we expect to keep them out of America?"

Many substances, if used unwisely, are harmful. Some require special permission to use. In many cases there appears to be no logic in the distinction. Consider the effects of alcohol, caffeine, cocaine, Big Macs, heroin, Hagen Daas ice cream, marijuana and thousands of other substances. Obviously, some are potentially more harmful than others, but all are capable of harming or even killing people.

Given the obvious failure of the war on drugs, except for a few rational appeals like Nancy Reagan's "Just say no," continuing our present policies is irrational. Something like sixty percent of the inmates of our federal prisons are there on non-violent drug convictions and we can't build new courts and prisons fast enough to keep up with new violations. That problem doesn't exist in the Czech Republic, where adults can legally use, possess and grow small quantities of marijuana. Their overall drug arrest rate is 1 per 100,000 population, versus 585 per 100,000 in the United States. The Czech robbery rate is 2 per 100,000 population; the FBI says our robbery rate is 145.9 per 100,000. It appears that marijuana legalization may create a roadblock rather than a gateway to hard drug use. As with prohibition of alcohol, our drug-related crime wave appears to result largely from our prohibition of marijuana use.

Eleven years ago Portugal, with one of Europe's worst drug epidemics, decriminalized illicit substances. Going beyond previous liberalization in places like the Netherlands, Portugal changed drug possession from a matter for the courts to one of community and public health, doing away with arrests, courts and jail time for people carrying a personal supply of anything from marijuana to heroin. It established a commission to encourage casual users to quit and backed 78 treatment centers where addicts could seek help. Before decriminalization, Portugal was estimated to have 100,000 problem heroin users. Eight years later, chronic users of all substances had dropped to about 55,000.

Netherlands has a history of open drug sales to study, and Mexico's federal government has said, "This war is not winnable." The New York Times reported August 21, 2009 that Mexico's federal government decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, meth and LSD, effective the next day.

In Mexico, the drug war is a real war. The slaughtering of police, mayors, judges, journalists and thousands of citizens is spilling across our southern border. As long as prohibitionist policies in the United States continue, the violence will continue. Ending prohibition would take most of the profits that fund the Mexican drug cartels and their wars. In 2009, the Pentagon estimated 100,000 Mexican drug warriors, and the State Department declared, "Corruption throughout Mexico's public institutions remains a key impediment to curtailing the power of the drug cartels." Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state – with a 2,000 mile border with the United States. An estimated 75,000 people have died since Mexico's anti-drug campaign began in 2006. In 2009, it was estimated that 450,000 Mexicans were involved in drug trafficking in Mexico alone.

In February, 2009, former presidents of Brazil, Columbia and Mexico reported in Rio de Janeiro on the conclusions of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy: "Today we are farther than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs... We propose the possibility of decriminalizing the possession of Cannabis for personal use... treating consumption as a matter of public health – not repression."

We apparently learned little from alcohol prohibition. If people want to use or misuse potentially harmful substances, they will find a way to do it. The only sensible alternative is to eliminate the profits of drug trafficking by decriminalizing some or all of these substances, control their quality and distribution, and inflict heavy penalties on crimes committed by individuals under their influence. At the same time, it is imperative to initiate and maintain an effective public education program to show people the results of using and abusing controlled and some uncontrolled substances.

There are principally two kinds of uses of marijuana. The "recreational" users describe the typical effects as "happy, hungry and horny." Medicinal uses vary widely. There are more than eighty chemical components in different varieties of the plant. Some kinds are used for pain and others for eye, skin and other medical and health problems.

The U.S. Supreme Court is continuing to consider the federal efforts to usurp the constitutional authority of the states. By October, 2009, 14 states had passed medical marijuana laws and the Justice Department decided not to prosecute individuals who possess or distribute marijuana in such states. In 2013 Colorado and Washington legalized its use without a doctor's prescription and several other states have proposed changes pending. Again Obama has chosen not to enforce the federal law prohibiting its use -- more legislating by the executive branch.

Unfortunately, an ever-growing army of drug-war soldiers have a big stake in continuing our failed war strategy. If all the police, lawyers, judicial and prison employees, rehabilitation experts, therapists, counselors, social workers and bureaucrats involved in the fight were to lose their enemy and their jobs, much money would be saved and crime substantially reduced.

Two other inevitable results of ending the drug war require consideration. Both involve problems that could have been solved long ago, but the votes of too many drug warriors and promoters are at stake. The economies of many inner-city areas and barrios are largely based on illegal drugs, crime and government welfare. From the Cato Institute: "In poor and working-class black America, a man and woman raising their children together is an unusual sight. The War on Drugs plays a large part in this. It must stop... Spending time in prison is a badge of honor... The hideous drop-out rate among ghetto teens – watch it fall as soon as there's no way to put money in your pocket without a diploma. If we truly want to get past race in this country, we must be aware that it will never happen until the futile war on drugs is a memory."

The second issue, long overdue for reform, is immigration. A large percentage of people involved in the illegal drug business are unskilled immigrants and illegal aliens. Los Angeles police report that there are several thousand known gangs in that area alone, which has an estimated 4,000,000 Latinos. If the business of illegal drug trafficking were eliminated, many illegal Latinos currently involved in the drug business would return home.

The following are proposed changes in our policies on prohibited drugs:

1. Decriminalize most or all "street" drugs, monitor their quality and distribution as necessary, and organize a comprehensive public education and treatment program.

2. Reform welfare, making certain it is less attractive to live off the many taxpayer-paid unemployment, welfare and useless "retraining" programs than it is to work.

The drug war cannot be stopped suddenly; mistakes would be made and it would be too disruptive. These changes should be implemented gradually, and only after thorough research and experimenting. Studies are needed to determine what has been successful and what has not in areas that have decriminalized various kinds of controlled substances, and the results should be publicized and debated. Public education and discussion are vital to understanding both the failed war on drugs and new strategies, and for achieving adequate public support of proposed changes.

SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST

Forever and ever, our world has developed, improved and prospered under the first law of nature, The survival of the fittest. But during the last century, in much of the world, mankind, with the best intentions, has virtually repealed that law.

Modern medicine has developed miraculous products and techniques to combat disease, correct deformities and repair injuries, helping the less fit to survive and reproduce. Even the least healthy and talented are now able to overcome problems and, in many cases, reproduce at higher rates than the healthy population, effectively downgrading our breeding stock.

Finally, there is a general attitude that staying alive is better, no matter what, and mostly at someone else's expense. What heartless, uncaring solutions do we propose? We could never return to people paying their medical costs directly. Once people have become accustomed to someone else paying their bills, that is seen as another entitlement and reform is politically impossible. However, we could return to individuals and families having control of their own medical expenses through medical savings accounts, incorrectly called health savings accounts (HSA).

Obviously, a return to a pure survival of the fittest is neither possible nor rational, but now cost-benefits analysis is often absent. Medical ethics and major medical measures always involve tough decisions and tradeoffs. Some years back eugenics was popular and some serious moves to limit reproduction of inferior people considered, but aside from Nazi Germany's slaughtering Jews and Gypsies and recruiting young blue-eyed, blond youths to go to breeding camps and do their thing, eugenics has almost disappeared. It's an interesting medical-philosophy subject, given modern medicine and birth rates among the Muslims and sub-Sahara Africans.

THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE ASSOCIATION

Among the so-called natural rights in our Constitution, one very important right is not mentioned -- the right of everyone to associate with the people they choose.

It is a right ignored by U.S. courts, our legislators and unelected bureaucrats, and Obama's unelected, unconfirmed, radical, soviet-style "czars". They tell us whom we must employ, how we must deal with other people, and that we are unable to choose whom we want to do business with.

If these Orwellian restrictions on our freedom had been proposed in 1932, people would have sneered at the suggestion. Now people have been so brainwashed by lawyers, the courts, legislators, bureaucrats, the pointy-headed "intellectuals", the liberal news media, the race and gender demagogues that now most people accept all these decrees and commandments as legal and proper.

They are not. They are just another unconstitutional police-state destruction of our rights.

MORE MATH AND SCIENCE, OR BETTER EDUCATION?

U.S. education observers preach that our schools don't stuff our children with enough math and science, and they mean everyone. A working knowledge of mathematics is certainly needed by everyone, but why spend a huge amount of time and effort teaching everyone how to do laboriously what a computer can do in nanoseconds, to replicate software available for little or nothing, to reduce reality to abstractions or do arcane mathematical equations, unless they are likely to be needing those in the future?

In our technical/scientific world we need many capable engineers, math whizzes, chemists, physicists, IT engineers and such. For all students, some math and science knowledge is needed as part of a broad education and for brain development and improving analytical skills. However, we don't need is to spend large amounts of school time and money teaching disinterested students how to do differential equations, memorize atomic tables and other arcane tools of occupations they are not likely to remember or use, information they can look up easily if and when they need it.

Everyone needs to know enough about math and science to understand where to find scientific information and how that information may be used, and basic math and science are useful in teaching people how to think. But most important, we need people who can quickly assimilate large amounts of information, draw intelligent conclusions and communicate them clearly and concisely. We need many kinds of capable, motivated people but we don't need to try to make everyone into an engineer, mathematician or scientist unless that is their goal. The time and money spent in education needs to be directed for optimum useful, productive results.

Some knowledge of statistics is an aid to identifying lies. Benjamin Disraeli cautioned, "There are three kinds of lies – plain lies, damned lies and statistics." What is most needed in mathematics by everyone is an understanding of basic principles and the eventual outcomes of proposals and facts involving numbers. The old parable of the emperor of China and the inventor of chess applies here. The emperor was so grateful for the gift of chess that he asked the inventor to name any price. The inventor said all he wanted was one grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two grains for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth and so on through the 64 squares. The emperor readily consented, not realizing he was giving away his empire. Two to the 64th totals 18 million trillion grains of rice, which it is said would cover the entire world two times over.

Understanding the significance of numbers is tricky, particularly the way big ones are tossed out. One billion dollars is just a rounding number to our magnificent political leaders; they have increased our national debt six trillion dollars just during Commissar Obama's five-year reign of terror. Calculating their tiny one billion number in hours, it is 114,155 years! Calculating one trillion in hours would launch the computer into earth orbit.

We need to abandon the college-for-everyone dream of Obama and others, for several reasons. One is the big oversupply of young college graduates, many unemployed and many others working as bartenders, laborers or cooking fries at Burger King. A December, 2013 Gallup poll reported 41 percent of U.S. college graduates saying their jobs don't require a college education. The alternative of cooperation between high schools, community colleges and other post-secondary schools in offering courses in the trades and technician fields offers great opportunities. Skilled trades like welding and medical technicians, for example, often involve some calculating, so specific math courses need to be included in their curricula but spending time and money to teach such people a lot of higher math that they will never use, just to be able to show higher math scores in group testing, is not sensible. The same applies to many science and other subjects -- how useful are they likely to be? A few generations ago many schools required students to learn Latin and Greek so they could read that literature in their original languages. Would it have been better to have read ancient literature in English, while learning a useful modern language?

If our mediocre K-12 government schools did the job they once did, by mid-high school they could transition from purely academic curricula toward preparing students for future vocations, including the professions. Many community colleges are doing a good job of vocational education in expanding fields and also continuing education in many occupational and academic fields. Continuing, life-long education makes more sense than spending many early years in expensive schooling. Free and inexpensive high quality on-line education is available for continuing education, needed to keep up with rapidly expanding knowledge and advances in all fields as well as to round out and expand minds and abilities as people develop as adults.

One common mistake made in managing schools and raising children is believing everyone should be good in all subjects. One person may make a good rocket scientist, another a good auto mechanic and another a good high-rise window washer, but there is no reason to believe that each person should be competent in all three occupations.

Human memories are leaky buckets. There are many sources of information available and there are computers and other marvelous tools to do much of the drudgery involved in developing ideas and applications. Most children in this country have ample time and opportunities to learn enough math and science but many spend endless hours watching junk television, playing computer games, texting phone messages or chewing the fat at McDonald's rather than doing or learning something useful and productive for their future. Parents, "social promotions" (failures) and poor curricula deserve most of the credit for that problem. Unfortunately, much time is ill-spent in our expensive and poorly managed government schools, increasing costs and choking off progress and efficiency.

For an example of the deterioration of education in this country, here is a sampling of the 50 questions on the eighth grade final exam in Salina, Kansas, 1895:

• (Grammar) Define case. Illustrate each case.

• (Arithmetic) What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 40 rods?

• (U.S. History) Show the territorial growth of the United States, and describe three of the most prominent battles of the rebellion.

• (Orthography) Define the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, dipthong, cognate letters, linguals.

• (Geography) Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each. Describe the mountains of North America.

Try those questions on your nearest college graduate.

Good computer materials and audio-visuals can do wonders in improving the quality of teaching as well as in reducing school costs, but the teachers' unions are very strong, very busy and very successful at thwarting progress in educational methods. As Peter Drucker and others have noted, with the technology and facilities now available, the role of the teacher in many cases should change from being the principal teacher to a kind of coordinator-facilitator in the learning process, with students learning more from available Internet and audio-visual resources rather than being taught primarily by the teacher. Thank the Luddite Teachers Unions for blocking that progress. Each student receives outstanding, three-dimensional teaching and can proceed at his own pace rather than at that of the slowest students in the class, as is typical with the indefensible "mainstreaming" policies of many government schools. The federal No Child Left Behind program has been called No Child Allowed Ahead.

Another example of Obama' impediments to learning is protecting undisciplined classroom behavior by minority students. His Justice Chief Eric Holder has implied a threat of lawsuits against schools whose discipline policies result in a higher proportion of minority students being punished than white students. Thomas Sowell asks if sane people can believe there is no difference between the behavior of black boys and white girls.

The most important thing we need to teach our floundering graduates is, "There are no free lunches. Get out in the world and produce something that is needed and useful." Liberal dogma permeates our educational systems. Our liberal schools and counselors encourage students to prepare to work in government jobs, in ever-expanding "social programs", the environment and other unproductive -- in the economic sense -- jobs. Until the educators, politicians and bureaucrats learn that economic prosperity and the general welfare depend on most people having the abilities and incentives to produce needed and wanted economic goods and services at competitive and affordable prices, much of our national and individual potential will not be realized. Increased productivity does not come from government interference and "management" -- it comes from providing maximum incentives for individuals and businesses to produce, with a minimum of government interference. The most important subjects missing from our school curricula, and from whatever home learning is done, are not Math and Science. They are Productivity and Enterprise, and we suffer for lacking them.

Another major failure of many of our education systems, including our great universities, is that they often provide not an education but indoctrination, with ivory-tower liberal humanities teachers grading their students on parroting the teacher's opinions, perspectives and filtered versions of facts. Often two or more views are not discussed except to criticize opinions that differ from the teacher's. Instead of teaching students how to think, many teach them what to think. Many schoolteachers, administrators and college professors worship at the altars of radical environmentalism, multi-cultural ethnic diversity, women's studies, black studies, homosexuality, equality not of opportunity but of outcome, self-esteem, global socialism and government planning and control of everything. In many colleges and universities, traditional humanities study -- history, geography, literature, languages, philosophy etc. -- has largely been replaced with these liberal junk courses.

Traditional learning, the open study and discussion of conflicting ideas and opinions, is often discarded in favor of developing liberal attitudes in students. These changes have occurred under every president since Eisenhower through the ever-expanding U.S. Department of Education, which has no constitutional basis for existence. This political meddling with public-school and university education has been a toxic, expensive mistake. A return to local control of education is needed.

Why do parents, students and taxpayers tolerate this? Most are not aware of the problem, are too preoccupied to bother or assume they are powerless to correct it. Unless they get involved, nothing significant will change. Our teaching of math and science should be based on real need for it, not just to compete with Chinese test scores, and the garbage courses put where they belong.

GENETIC ENGINEERING OF FOOD

Many people are convinced that genetic improvement of food is bad – unnatural, immoral and perhaps even fattening. Some see it as tantamount to playing God, while others fear harmful side effects -- global warming, global cooling, unlimited abortions or another election.

Genetic engineering is nothing but a speeded up, more controlled method of selectively breeding plants, our historic method of producing more and better food and using fewer and better human and natural resources to do it. A century ago about 50 percent of American workers farmed, producing about enough to feed the United States. Now fewer than 3 percent are farmers, and yet we produce enough to feed our huge population and export large amounts to help feed the world.

Originally, corn was a short grass with a tuft containing a few seeds. Over thousands of years of selective breeding it was developed into modern corn and maize and, with the help of genetic engineering, is now resistant to pests and diseases.

The foods now called organic – those grown without chemical fertilizers and pesticides – are said by their advocates to be healthier. A spokesperson for the organic food industry, when questioned about whether organic foods are actually healthier, repeatedly answered, "They are as nutritious as traditional foods;" she refused to say they are better. They probably are better in some ways but often contain bacteria that are not present in ordinary food because of the use of manure for fertilizer in growing organic foods.

The Frankenfood Myth, a book by Henry I. Miller of Stanford's Hoover Institution and Gregory Conko of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, makes the case that foods modified by recombinant DNA splicing present no new or special dangers, but improve the lives of millions worldwide. The book examines the anti-scientific alliance that seeks to thwart agricultural progress, and counters with this message that should be driven home to all agriculture policymakers: Gene modification is not new. New technologies are simply an advancement of centuries-old techniques including interspecies hybridization and mutation breeding. While these older, cruder techniques often cross over or change a wide number of genes in the hope of achieving a beneficial result, new technologies allow for targeted modifications with more predictable outcomes. Few people are aware that already an estimated 70 percent of the food sold now in U.S. markets is from genetically engineered plants.

So why is Greenpeace International so angry and many Europeans so afraid of genetic engineering? Even the cautious European Commission has said that these new types of modified crops are "probably safer than conventional plants and foods," while the Paris-based Office for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded in 1995 that recombinant DNA techniques create no unique risks over traditional modification methods.

Groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have made draconian demands and resorted to militant activism, including seizing shipments of genetically modified seeds and damaging research facilities. Strangely, the largest agribusinesses have sometimes joined the opposition. They see more regulation as a way to raise barriers to entry and reduce competition, but they admit they have no scientific justification. The cost of securing U.S. Department of Agriculture approvals is ten to twenty times more for organisms modified with the new techniques than for conventional products, and the EPA and FDA insist on adding their oversight. The result is that only the largest agri-businesses can afford to play the game of developing new products, and they like that protection from competition.

One example of mindless agricultural restrictions comes from . . . France. Their strict government control of wine production prohibits approved vineyards from using irrigation, fertilizer or pesticides. The grapes must grow "naturally". The predictable results are good, bad and mediocre years in both the quality and production of wine grapes. That was a useful way for the growers to limit competition when the French produced much of the world's wine, but it hardly makes sense now, even for the exclusive club of "controlled" growers.

Still, there may be hope even in France. When our hot air balloon ran low on fuel over a vineyard in the Montrechet region of Burgundy, we landed next to a winery with the owner's home upstairs. He gave us a tour of his facility, told us the lofty prices of his choice wine and how the production of his eleven acres is pre-sold two or three years in advance. We asked him where he got the technical help for his ultra-modern winery and vineyard. He replied, "Davis!" -- the University of California at Davis. The rumbling noise we heard was de Gaulle turning over in his grave.

The same don't-play-God people who object to genetically engineered food also object strongly to using human embryos in stem cell research. It is one thing to clone animals and humans artificially, but to use surplus in-vitro eggs, discarded embryos and umbilical cords, which otherwise would be thrown in the garbage, to research possible cures for such terrible diseases as Alzheimer's is reasonable and desirable. Genetic engineering used rationally and conservatively is a valuable tool in improving the quality of human life.

Humans are often very – terribly is a better word – nervous about change, particularly when it redefines what is acceptable, but change is the way our world progresses.

PART VI: SUMMARY

The United States is the oldest democratic republic in history, a mature, deteriorating nation, losing out to hungrier, more aggressive, business-friendly countries. In 1933 Franklin Roosevelt started us on the path to the stagnant, big-government welfare state we have become, with some prior help from Herbert Hoover, saying it was just a temporary walk in the park. Instead of letting market forces take the economy out of the Great Depression, Roosevelt started unprecedented programs, spending taxpayers' money for business and personal welfare, buying and destroying agricultural products to force prices higher, choosing winners (labor unions and other large political donors, Marxists and other welfare-state liberals) and losers (businesses and successful individuals). He prolonged the depression for years and started the big-government trend that has been promoted ever since by politicians of both political parties.

No longer do most individuals and businesses store nuts for the inevitable winters. Now solving personal and business problems is up to "the government." Roosevelt started it, Lyndon Johnson bloated it and cast it in concrete, the baby boomers have lived it and now they manage the government, the military-industrial complex and the other big-corporation allies of big government. Labor unions and politicians have driven our labor costs up and our prosperity is being lost to hungrier, hustling, lower-wage countries, the typical pattern of mature nations that are past the top of the watershed.

Some of the convictions in the articles are:

* That the proper and constitutional role of government is not to control our lives but to enable our people to be as productive and prosperous as possible, to provide for the common defense and to support the rule of law as specified in the Constitution, as legally amended.

* That the proper and constitutional role of government is not to steal assets from one group to give to another – to penalize success and reward failure, to reward political friends and punish enemies. Obama and the liberals work to create a dependent, submissive electorate to increase their political power and to force the public to live the way the liberals want them to.

* That personal and direct responsibility is the appropriate way for personal and business decisions and problems to be anticipated and handled, when possible, not by big government and high taxes. When other aid is needed, it should be local or state -- as close as possible to the situation and facts.

* That the appropriate role of government in foreign relations should be merely to encourage free trade and harmonious relations between peoples, not to be the world's unpaid and unappreciated police agency, and not to try to replicate the United States around the world. Our current systems, methods, practices and mores are neither admirable nor sustainable.

* That domestic and world charity should be mostly voluntary through charitable giving, not taken from taxpayers without their permission and given to others favored by the politicians.

* That the United States has a military-industrial-political complex that promotes an enormous offensive military force and mission. It should be changed to a small, effective defensive force and mission, eliminating most foreign and many domestic military bases, and mothballing large numbers of. ships, tanks, artillery and manned aircraft and reducing personnel accordingly, but maintaining a strong nuclear submarine fleet.

* That our taxation system is an unfair, counter-productive and incomprehensible mess produced by 10,000 special-interest lobbyists extracting favors from politicians seeking votes and contributions. It penalizes savings, promotes borrowing, taxes the same income repeatedly and is a disincentive to businesses and individuals to invest, expand, innovate, produce and succeed. Our corporate tax rate is the highest in the developed world and we are one of the few countries that taxes income earned outside the country.

* The college-for-everyone mantra is nonsense; many young graduates are unemployed or are in menial jobs. On-line higher education and expanded vocational education are needed. Much higher education is teaching students what to think, not how to think, with normal curricula often replaced by liberal junk courses.

* That in the Constitution, the states granted to the federal government limited, enumerated powers, principally authority and responsibility involving defense, foreign relations and interstate commerce, all other powers being reserved to the states and to the people. Since 1933, Congress and legislating courts have allowed the federal government to steal many other powers, making a mockery of the Constitution. It is not only the Supreme Court's responsibility to uphold the Constitution, it is the responsibility of all three branches of government and they need to be dragged back to the intent, form and substance of the Constitution, particularly restoring the original meaning of the interstate commerce and welfare clauses and enforcing that meaning.

* That a series of spendthrift and power-hungry politicians have almost spent the nation into bankruptcy and drastic changes need to be made in federal spending, government regulations, harassing and exploiting business and successful individuals. We should end federal deficits financed by foreign nations, investors and by our own Federal Reserve printing money to lend to our own Treasury Department. That is a game that would put anyone else who did it in prison.

* That environmental radicals and the Obama administration have prevented the needed development of our natural resources, particularly energy. We can and must end our dependence on foreign oil, much of it coming from unfriendly, undependable sources.

* That many of our problems have resulted from Congress having changed from citizen legislators who took their turn in government and then returned to the real world. Now Congress is controlled by politicians whose careers are dependent on bringing pork and benefits to their districts, to the powerful military-industrial complex and to the big banks and Wall Street. Term limits are appropriate, twelve and six -- two terms for senators and three for representatives.

* Serious tort reform is needed. The proliferation of lawyers, lawsuits and outrageous judgments needs to be curtailed by legislation mandating loser-pays and prohibiting contingent-fee lawsuits, and by limits on "pain and suffering" and punitive-damage awards.

* That our limited-government, maximum freedom nation has been turned into an Orwellian police state with a gigantic government prying into and micro-managing our formerly free citizens and businesses. The Constitution specifies only three federal crimes: treason, counterfeiting money, and piracy, but Congress and the courts have fabricated more than 5,000 other federal crimes. Everyone needs to be willing to disobey peacefully and nullify laws and rules that are unreasonable or unconstitutional, and when serving on juries, to be willing to nullify improper laws and instructions by judges.

* That presidents and officials who plead ignorance of corruption and illegal activities are committing a crime. "I Don't Recall" is Hillary Clinton's maiden name. Presidents can set the wrong tone, as Obama and the Clintons have done, and their toadys do their dirty work, often without specific instructions.

* That the so-called "entitlements" – mainly Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Obamacare – as now scheduled to be paid are impossible dreams that will bankrupt the country, but irresponsible politicians fail to act to avoid the coming disaster.

* That the country is flooded by illegal aliens, mostly unskilled, unemployed Latinos driven out of their own countries and now competing for jobs with our own blacks, Latinos and poor whites. Instead of enforcing existing laws to cause self-deportation of the illegals, Democrats keep trying to legislate a second amnesty bill to buy Latino votes and to add more Democrat voters to the rolls. The family reunification policy of the Democrats has mostly unskilled children and old people getting all the immigration slots, making a divisive Latino nation within a nation and preventing the restoration of our mostly European ethnic mix and ability to bring in young, educated, English-literate, productive immigrants.

* That forced unionism, government and teachers' unions in partnership with Democrat politicians are imposing enormous costs on business competitiveness, workers' freedom and opportunities, bankrupting states and municipalities with unfunded pension liabilities, and resulting in expensive, obsolete, mediocre education in our government schools.

* That journalism has been corrupted. Many of the news media are merely the propaganda division of the Democrat party, filtering and distorting the news and disguising editorial commentary as news.

* That the monstrous Obamacare medical legislation crammed through Congress without study and adequate analysis is failing before it begins, is hopelessly unworkable, unfair, medical costs will rise and the quality of care deteriorate, and it is clearly unconstitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution to give that authority to the federal government. It needs to be disabled and much-needed reforms made.

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### **T he author** is an Arizona entrepreneur who has been involved in a variety of businesses and civic activities, M.B.A., served in the military during two wars, traveled extensively, an aviator for 60 years and a dedicated inquisitor for at least twice that.

He welcomes comments and criticism at robert.hannay@q.com

