Breitbart's refusion upon death

Andrew Breitbart is dead, but his legacy of multiple BIG sites has shown a capability and the way forward if the Nation is to get ahold of itself.  A group of relatively disparate sites covering Hollywood, Government, Journalism and Peace topics, and how the groups that sing from the same hymnal influence each of them attempted to go after these topics piecemeal: it was a narrative invention of the Left to try and 'March through the Institutions' and Breitbart followed them, lacking only Eduction as part of the BIG line-up.  But that societal division is as false as the idea that there are divisions amongst conservative thought, and both are fostered by Progressivism that sees its only path to power in getting its enemies to divide amongst themselves.  Progressivism wins via division and subtraction.

A fusion of conservative thought, spanning from current SoCons, TP FiCons, and MilCons is starting to happen (which I go through here) as a thematic awakening that each of these is just an aspect of conservatism and that they are inter-related is starting to take place.  The disappointment with the Republican field is that it is mired in the 20th century divisions imposed upon it by the very institutions that have been marched through.  Yet it is self-evident that each part of conservative thought must rest upon others, that morality in life must have outcomes that stretch from governance, finance and all the way to warfare.  So, too, do financial decisions lead to moral outcomes that must be owned up to, for good or ill, and that can have repercussions all the way to the Nation State level.  At the Nation State level, Law of Nations as a functioning system that is derived by ANY society (just or unjust)  reappears and is a universal phenomena that then requires that how Nations act be decided upon in all realms, and that the use of negative power to make war rests upon societal, moral and economic foundations.

After he died, Andrew Breitbart's separated sites refused his death and became a single banner with multiple sections and they now host inter-related stories that cross all their prior realms.  No longer can artificial separations be imposed as life is not led in separate parts but in a continuous stream from birth to death.  That legacy that Andrew Breitbart left behind is now showing that his skill as an entrepreneur and as a man bear fruit in that the people he had led have now coalesced to start doing things that their separated domains hand hindered them from doing before.  For his absence, Andrew Breitbart's guiding concepts of the deep duplicity of the political Left in American culture is now being examined via a multi-dimensional prism and attacked from many angles.  The deep pool of talent at Breitbart.com continued the promised work of vetting President Obama, as the MSM did no job of it, at all, in 2008.

The first piece may appear small, a small piece of video footage from 1990, during Obama's college days as the President of the Harvard Law Review.  The deep lies of the MSM who covered this part of his life up are now showing up via multiple dimensions both in real time and archival footage.  And, yes, the folks at Breitbart are looking into that aspect, quite deeply, and naming names.  Plus we learn from one of Obama's mentors that there was a conscious effort to suppress this information.

So what's of interest?

Consider, first, that Buzzfeed tried to craft the narrative once it learned of the footage by editing together a preemptive attack to show that 'there isn't anything here, move along'.  That receives criticism from Breitbart not on losing the 'scoop', which is over 20 years old, but on not trying to do any investigative reporting BEFORE it was known the footage was coming.  After that it is asked When will Buzzfeed vet the Prez?  I mean, really, Buzzfeed paid for the archival footage.  By the second.

Just at this level, alone, there is much hilarity to be found, even before you even look at the footage.  I mean, what nasty, crass outfit will charge for archival video footage by the second?  If you need stuff from CNN they typically charge by the hour, but then they probably have a decent archiving system.  So which, nasty, greedy, capitalist outfit was it that would do this to Buzzfeed?

WGBH in Boston.

PBS.

Public Broadcasting.

You know, the 'we are so poor, could you pledge just a bit for your show?' people?

By. The. Second.

For something that should be a public service, no?  Paid for in large part via viewer donations for the good of the community?  Heard of that?

So, when you start charging by the second for video footage, paid for in large part by the public, there is a minor ethical problem and one huge amount of laughter.  How can you charge for something already paid for?  And, more to the point, how does charging help the public?  Even further, isn't it a bit crass and commercial to charge for archival footage?  I mean that is what really stupid broadcasters, like CNN, do as well as those places that haven't figure out that free stuff drives traffic and, thusly, dollars.  So, even before we begin looking at Prof. Derrick Bell, we have the awesome and hilarious spectacle of the ever angelic flagship of PBS, WGBH in Boston, acting like a prostitute and that you pay up by the second for its past, archived and dated material.  And, it asks for a much higher rate and per second.

Would YOU donate to a PUBLIC station that ACTED like this?

The MSM starts to crumble as well as the overall narrative right there: anything that forces WGBH to turn prostitute has got to be interesting, to say the least.

Next, the video, and since that is at a few of the above links, I won't re-link again.  It seems pretty innocuous, right?  Young Barack Obama warmly welcoming and embracing one of the Professors on racial diversity in the faculty.  Great stuff, huh?

It's all just 'move along' from the MSM.

Now place a bit of context to it, which they did with a C-SPAN 2 interview of Thomas Sowell that actually features what is going on in Harvard, at the time, as part of the discussion being interviewed by Brian Lamb:

LAMB: Threatened the law school if they didn't hire a black woman, he's going, he's leaving?

SOWELL: Well, if I understand it correctly, he's taking unpaid leave until such time as they hire a woman of color, as he says. Well, he's also said that by black, he does not mean skin color, he means those who are really black, not those who think white and look black. And so what he is really saying is he wants ideological conformity in the people that are hired to fill this position. That's not uncommon either. I know a black woman, for example, who had a Ph.D. -- she's had a book published, she has another contract on another book, she's taught at a couple of very nice places, she has a devil of a time getting a job -- not a job in a prestigious institution, a job teaching at a college. And the reason is that she gets shot down, blackballed, whatever, by people who don't like her ideology. That's happening not only racially, it's also happening where race is not an issue. In a law school, I learned recently, there's a woman who was being considered for a tenured position, and all the men voted for her and all the woman voted against her, because she does not follow radical feminism, and so you're getting these ideological tests, so that at the very time that there's all this mouthing of the word diversity, there is this extremely narrow ideological conformity that is being enforced wherever people have the power to enforce it.

That is the killer context for what you see in the innocuous embrace and Barack Obama asking people to open their minds to Derrick Bell: open your minds to a stratified, racialist view of society that needs to be spread via the Harvard Law School hiring practices.  Suddenly talking up this Professor starts to sound not so sweet, not so nice, and no matter how much you smile there is a problem with wanting to actually start closing down thought and putting a rigid ideological structure in place.

This is discussed just a bit further:

LAMB: No. Basically, I mean, from the press coverage, you've seen, is he a hero to the ...?

SOWELL: Well, he's looked at as an idealist who is self-sacrificing and so on. I suppose one could, if one wanted to look at it that way, have seen Hitler that way in his early days. It's just a question of where that kind of idealism leads. He has launched a despicable attack on a young black professor at the law school who doesn't go along with this. A young man named Randall Kennedy, who has written a very thoughtful, intelligent article last June in the Harvard Law Review, questioning some of the assumptions that people are making, people like Derrick Bell and doing it in a very gentlemanly as well as very logical way, empirical way, and that's not what they want. They want the conclusion to be that -- they want him to march in lock step and he won't do it, and they're doing their best to make life impossible for him.

Rigid, uniform ideology is what Prof. Bell was pressing forward, not 'ethnic diversity'.

There is a lot of the MSM trying to downplay this, but their role in covering it up is now being exposed both in the past and the present.  What the Breitbart organization is doing, however, is also finding the lovely supplementary material that, really, no one else has ever bothered to go after.  It is the stuff that gets the point across and you really can't say anything to downplay it.  And what is that?

Well, Prof. Bell wrote a story in 1992 that was picked up by HBO and produced as one of their in-house projects in 1994, called Space Traders, and the Breitbart people are reminding us of this so that we can see just how Prof. Bell's ideology plays out.  If you think this won't be good, you're right.  You see it's a Blaxploitation film that has aliens using Reagan to persuade the US to give all of its black people to aliens who are going to hand all sorts of gold and goodies to the US to get it out of debt.  I've seen good Blaxploitation films and this isn't even close.  Mind you this comes from a much lauded story that Prof. Bell utilizes to show how his Critical Race Theory ideology actually plays itself out in a fictional setting...

Believe me, you won't believe it.  Or be able to stomach much of it as Prof. Bell also shows his anti-semitism in the production which he is acknowledge as writing the adaptation.

Betchya thought that the prostituting of WGBH couldn't be topped, huh?

This is what happens when you fuse ideas to see where they lead and how they play out across a much, much wider venue and encompass all of life.

Soon this will happen to conservatism.

And then things get very interesting, indeed.

Dissatisfied Republicans

Yup, yet another in the series of comments turned quickie blog posts.  And, yet again, from Hot Air on the 58% of Republicans dissatisfied with the current field of candidates.

I've been pointing out the mess the 2 party system has been since my first year of blogging.  It has only gotten worse.  Now I will drop a suggestion and rationale for it... and if you are a Republican and want to change things, I suggest that the top of the ticket or any running for federal office close to you are NOT the answer to the problem.  This is a symptom.

Now, on to my commentary, left intact with spelling and syntax errors for the amusement of the population.

= = =

What was that break-out I saw last night on BOR for political affiliation? D – 32, R – 27, I – 40.

Yes, Independents 40%.

Rewind to 2008 and it was something like 36/33/30, very close to being 1/3 each.

Today Independents have pulled 5% out of each of the 2 parties, pretty much equally.

What is fascinating about the trainwreck going on this year is that in four more years there will be problems having 2 parties as their affiliations in a few States where they have rigged very high registration numbers to BE on the ballot as a party will be threatened. Wherever you see I start to cross that 50% threshold and there is unequal party distribution, you will start to see 1 party States.

It isn’t surprising that 58% of R’s want more choices.

It is surprising that 42% are taking whatever is spoon-fed them by this horrific, archaic and biased towards the elite system.

This field was essentially set in NOV 2011 and there were very high levels of dissatisfaction then… not the majority, but that has GROWN since NOV 2011 – JAN 2012, where satisfaction was hovering much closer to the 50% mark. Another 2 months like that and the party may start to hollow-out, and while people will still want to vote Obama out, getting in will not be a mandate for anything WITHIN the party that nominated you. Thus the ‘winner’ will have a very first task of starting to address the major problems not just of the Nation (and they are massive) but of the actual party, itself. That means, yeah, those Tea Party people are still around and still dissatisfied with the R’s and if the elite don’t start to get out of the way or realize that they are on the line to extinction, one of the tottering parties will be the R party. The other will be the D party as those disgusted with Leftist/Liberal/Progressive ideas will walk from the party that only knows that and refuses to change when that ideology doesn’t work.

There is no satisfactory candidate in the wings, and a brokered convention will get you someone the SuperDelegates will be comfortable with (one of their own). So you don’t want a brokered convention because the system is catering to the elites who hold a swing block of votes if everything gets tied up… just like with the D’s last time around.

A movement by Republicans in the party at the lowest level to start petitioning their precincts and State machines to FIX THIS MESS OF A SYSTEM and neuter the RNC and other National organs will begin to address these problems and remove power from the top and start moving it down to the State bodies, thus making them important again. Do THAT and there is a REASON to start joining the party as you can make a difference once the elites can’t dictate from the top-down.

That is your choice as a Republican: keep taking the spoonfed elitist junk, or start the movement to reshape the party at the convention to something that must actually listen TO members and RESPOND TO THEM.

Stop bitching about what the process yields up.

Change the process.

ajacksonian on January 10, 2012 at 10:19 AM

= = =

I suggest you find your local Tea Party that is involved with trying to get into the State level apparatus through local precincts.

You want a better system?

Join with your fellow disaffected friends and make a better one.

That power is in your hands.

If you dare to use it.

And for those local precinct and ward leaders who can't figure this out, I suggest that you, as local members, apply the dictum: Fire Until Competence is Found.

It works, too.

What I'm looking for in the way of policy

The United States has a problem.

That problem is the size, scope and power of its government.

We have a series of on-going economic crises, yes, and those stem from the problem.

The 'Housing Crisis' starts not with 2007 but back in the late 1960's when HUD lobbied President Nixon to create an agency to allow for the packaging of home loans with government guaranteed security on the risk of those loans.  Yes one government agency was telling the President that we needed more government!  It seemed like a good idea at the time, no doubt, but what this did is allow the large commercial banks to have guaranteed risk portions in their portfolio dedicated to residential lending.  These large organizations could out-compete local S&L's who could not take on such wide and varied risk as the larger entities could.  S&L's remained tied to what made sense for lending in a local market and the intervention of GNMA created a national market that had risk tolerances above and beyond what normal lending practices for the S&L's would allow.  This meant that the S&L's had to seek to diversify their risk portfolio into areas they had never been in and, as inexperienced players, they went down in the 1980's.  To get to the S&L crisis of the 1980's you have to have GNMA created by President Nixon.

At that point a home was still just a home, however, and not an upwardly increasing value property.  Prior to the 1960's home base valuation would go up at 1% per year, if you were lucky, thus a home was not an investment that would appreciate but a roof over your head.  After the creation of GNMA came a slow but steady rise in home valuation above the rate of inflation.  This was tied to other regulations that were illiquid until certain dates, which is to say 401(k) plans and IRAs.  These were protected assets that you could carry over after a bankruptcy, while a home became subject to bankruptcy proceedings. Consumers shifted their savings patterns away from reducing mortgage debt (via pre-payments or ahead of schedule payments) to put money into safer vehicles, like those provided for in the tax code.  Those investment vehicles meant that money was tied into them for the long term, protected and could appreciate faster in value than a home could.  Thus the home now became a secondary investment vehicle because the next round of regulations loosened up the Loan To Value ratio for lending.  With less stringent loan regulations comes higher home prices as people can expect to ask more than their prior 1%/year appreciation and GET IT.

Were the banks involved?

Yes, they were, at every step of the way.

Are they the sole culprits?

No.  The influence of Congress in its role to allow the creation of new regulations that allowed greater risk to flow into the system, while urged on by the banks, was something that was taken up by those Congresses.  No one forced them to do it and no President was forced to sign on to these bills.  To change the playing field you needed Congress and multiple Congresses obliged through vehicles like the Community Reinvestment Act in the 1980's, and then the loosening of requirements on how much had to be put down to get a loan in the 1990's.  By the early 2000's the NINJA loan (No Income, No Job or Assets) along with highly leveraged ballooning loans were the vehicle pushed by the regulatory atmosphere that was enabled by the regulators via the Congressional bills to do that.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played large roles in this, as well, since they could use their money to lobby Congress directly.  This is an instance of a quasi-governmental agency getting a direct line into Congress, which means that the regulators and facilitators could now spend their money on politics to woo legislators.  Today these two entities continue to bleed the US treasury in ill founded loans that are guaranteed for risk by Ginnie Mae.

Thus we now have as culprits: Congress, large commercial banks, quasi-governmental agencies, government agencies, Presidents and those doing the asking for so much money on their homes.

These are the pre-conditions for a bubble and the agencies, quasi-governmental agencies and regulations (along with regulators) are still around unchanged since the housing bubble popped in 2007-08.  Not a single one of them has even been 'adjusted' by two Presidents.  No Congressional majority or minority in either party has even SUGGESTED killing off the source of the rot and returning to basic and fundamental local economic institutions assessing local risk for local lending.

Mind you this isn't the FIRST TIME that the government has sought to reshape the physical landscape via housing policy.  That goes back to Harry Truman and the Housing Act with its repercussions seen via a retrospective of those blacks who lived in areas deemed to be 'ghettos'.

 

Next up is the EPA started by... President Nixon.

Do not ever try to tell me that Nixon was in any way, shape or form a 'conservative'.  These agencies he created are Progressive monuments to governmental power.

Throw in the Dept of Energy with the EPA and you have a nasty pot just needing the right legislation (like the Endangered Species Act) plus activist regulators (seeking to 'expand' their Congressional mandate), plus an overly regulated mining and oil industry (via the Interior Dept.) and what you get is a strategic attack on the energy infrastructure of the United States dedicated to stopping industrial production and impoverishing American citizens.  Strangely enough the EPA didn't need to exist at all as States were already implementing their own regulations to stop pollution, clean up air and water, and didn't need federal help to do that.  Burning rivers stopped before the EPA even existed due to those regulations.  Simple observation shows that you cannot apply the same environmental regulations from sub-arctic tundra to sub-tropical swamp land.  It doesn't work.  And if you need to change it via local environmental needs the place to do that is the most local of areas, the State or local government, not at the highest end which is the federal government.

Indeed the federal charter we call the US Constitution allows for States to get together and ask the federal government for help in setting up a multi-State organization to deal with cross-border issues.  So long as it does not tread on federal powers, such organizations are the way for States to deal with common problems across their borders.  The federal government doesn't run such organizations, the member States do.  This concept was also brought up under the recent health care debates to allow multiple States to pool their requirements, de-conflict them and create their own multi-State based insurance requirement system for those wanting to get health insurance.  What these sorts of agencies do is cut the federal government out of the regulatory loop because it has no power to start that loop in the first place.

 

Not to harp too much on Republicans but the next place of rampant graft, corruption and federal policy going where it shouldn't is in the Dept. of Agriculture started by... President Lincoln.

Hey!  He couldn't be right all the time.

The Dept. of Agriculture was a key government instrument for helping to expand farming into the Soutwest of the US.  It encouraged the type of straight furrow, high water farming that was the norm in the Mississippi direct drainage basin in place that had a bit less rainfall.  A bit less when we got to them, at least.  What this did is encourage the expansion of farms with government help so that these techniques were used when the local natives didn't use nor want them at all.  Why didn't they want them?  Dry spells lasting years to a decade or more which cyclically go through the region due to Pacific wind currents.  The result is known as the 'Dust Bowl' and it was miraculously 'ended' by USDA people wanting tree wind breaks planted and examining the idea of contour farming.  Oh, the rains returned, too.  The plus side of all this was knocking down the western locust so we don't get swarms of them going over the  great plains every couple of years.  That was due to farming in Colorado and Wyoming... of course those farms are now becoming uneconomical so they are dying out and you can expect the locust to come back as their population was only cut down to wild areas, not eliminated.

Isn't that great?

Along with 'modern' farming policy comes the draining of the Oglalala Aquifer which sits under a number of western States and is utilized for dry, upland farming via irrigation.  Note this is not native dry, upland farming which used little irrigation, but the reduction of a deep aquifer that has a re-charge time that no one has measured but an inch a year for a few hundred feet of it begins to tell you of the time frames involved.  Sounds like a good, multi-State organization is needed here instead of the corrupt blunderbuss of the USDA.  No scalpel needed, just ignore the problem until it becomes a 'crisis' and expand government to 'solve' it!  Gotta love how that works, huh?

Next on modern farming is turning food into fuel.  What an asinine idea!  You can't eat ethanol... well you can but its not a great foodstuff, unlike beer... and the conversion rate of corn to ethanol is excellent but ignores the fact that such policies are hitting the third world, and soon the first world, hard.  Mexico has a problem in that their old, rural agricultural system that helped to sustain their population went north in search of jobs.  First to the cities and then, when those manufacturing jobs from the US went overseas to places like Thailand and Vietnam, those migrants decided that the US was a great place to get illegal jobs.  This was great while corn was cheap via the US, but corn has gotten very expensive because human food corn is now being replaced by corn to make ethanol, which I go over in this article.  Now with jobs running scarce in Mexico along with food where is the money at?  Why criminal organizations, of course!  Jobs disappearing due to globalization is one thing, but food disappearing due to asinine farming policy of a neighboring nation is another.

Then there are the subsidies to agriculture beyond just paying people not to farm.  Those are about 12-15% of the USDA budget and go far beyond corn to such things as setting price floors for some crops (like sugar beets) and guarantee payments.... plus payments to those farmers owning a farm in one State and not farming there to get their payment in another State. 

Isn't that great? 

The US government 'protects' certain crops NOT through long-term storage of a small percentage each year in case of famine but by paying people who can't compete in the world market and paying others NOT to compete in the world market, both on the taxpayer dime.  Thankfully the current generation of farmers is in their late '50s and early '60s and as we aren't encouraging the next generation to take up agriculture as a business...

What problems could we POSSIBLY get from that?

Why I haven't even hit on the 'entitlements' yet, and I have already covered all of the energy and food production for the Nation under the lovely control of the federal government via regulations that only suit the feel-good Congresscritters and the petty tyrants in the bureaucracy wanting to control the Nation.

Who needs Islamo-Fascists when you can get the home grown regular sort at home?

Of course we also have the other sort to deal with overseas, too... not that we will have any energy or food to deal with them.

Mind you the rest of the planet depends on our food supply and the fact that China has not had a good harvest and even some dustbowls recently points out that they are on the brink of a catastrophe.  There are already food shortages in the kleptocracies in Africa, but that is normal and cyclical... having governments that were relatively stable dictatorships go under to such things is a different matter...

 

The next President?

Name the one that will aim to take out, not manage 'better' or 'reform' but REMOVE any or all of the following: USDA, EPA, FHA, Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie, select parts of the Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Energy.

I can add to that list: Dept. of Education, DoJ (did you know when we had a small government that each agency had to enforce its own little jurisdiction and there was NO DoJ?), BATFE, Dept. of Labor (can't people figure this out on their own), SBA, anything involving the arts & humanities... and the UN and its dues and various hangers-on.

When you are facing insolvency it is time to do away with luxuries and that time is now here.  These places can be closed down, their funding removed, and those that are part of the federal government have their property and equipment sold off to generate some final revenue.

 

Yes, the entitlements have to take a hit.  I have a standard prescription for those.

Close off SSA to new entrants.  End the retirement age. Turn SSA into a regular spending program and get rid of FICA.  Give everyone an account they can spend from that is federal tax free where any investments can accumulate without any hit to them, and then allow spending after holding them for 20 years or 20 years after the date of issuance of the SSA card.  In other words find good savings that appreciate even minimally and you are set.  Anyone in SSA who wants to get out can, and have such an account in their name immediately with the thanks of the US government to becoming a self-sufficient citizen once again.  Once the last person getting payments dies or quits the program, it is ended.

Add Medicare and Medicaid together.  Divide by 2.  Apportion via Block Grants to the States to spend on health care for their people.  Stage this down to zero over 5 years.  That is the end of the federal take-over of your medical care, and you are on your own.  Lobby your State and local governments or help with charitable institutions to get something to cover those without the ability to get good medical care.  The US government sucks at it.

Put together a flat tax for corporations and individuals, remove all other taxes.  For those earning under the poverty line the tax can be graduated down, but everyone MUST pay into the US government as it serves ALL OF US without exception.  If you can figure out how to live without having a job, then our blessings should be upon those people as they have figured out how to carry their load without burdening the rest of us.

These give a firm and stable position that if you want to 'retire' you must DIY with NO help from the government and if you can't figure out you need health care then charitable institutions are your answer.

Do taxes go up?  Yes for those currently paying no federal income tax, but they may find that their new 'tax rate' is actually lower as there is NO FICA around to bite you.

No new taxes are necessary for this: no consumption tax or sales tax.  Those are left up to the States as we don't TRUST the US federal government to have such income capability.  Look how it has squandered the Progressive Income Tax by jerking everyone around with it.

 

Defense policy?

It starts at the borders.

Not Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Timbuktu.  We have a massive criminal insurgency threatening to spill over into the US and we have zip, zilch, nada in the way of preparations for it spilling over.  Sorry, that doesn't fly and neither do 'open borders' or 'path to citizenship' that doesn't start with an Embassy in a foreign country.

I'm willing to cut down on the illegal immigrant magnets by doing a 'Three Strikes and You're Out' policy for employers:

- First instance, fine and a couple of weeks in the pokey for all involved in the hiring chain from CEO to local approval office in a company.

- Second time is a massive fine (say 10% of the gross income of a business) and a year in Club Fed for all in that hiring chain.

- Third time the company is broken up at auction, never to be reformed and all in the hiring chain go away for 10 years in Club Fed.

There, that is a sane immigration policy in support of our defense policy and should get some of the corporate scofflaws out of the way in no time at all.  See how that goes?

I'm sure that would deflate the OWS people in no time and taking the support for the big banks away would collapse their fun little support for tyrannical socialism/communism/progressivism/anarchism.  They will hate not having Big Daddy Government to hit up for support, but them's the breaks.

 

In other words a policy that looks like:

1) A vastly smaller federal government getting back to basics and leaving the States and the people alone, which means ending entire agencies and their regulations all at one go.

2) Ending the entitlements as they cost too much, keeping promises to those on SSA and letting the States figure out if they want something better on their own for medical care.

3) Flat tax, no exceptions, everyone sends a check to the IRS.

4) Defense must start at home at the borders.  COIN isn't just for overseas any more.

5) Letting the legal system handle the collapsing banks and corporations either via their own hand in tinkering with regulations that will not sustain them or in hiring those they shouldn't hire.  Good companies go unmolested.  The bad ones downsize or disappear via normal legal means.  Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, is 'too big to fail'.

 

Yes, Rome wasn't built in a day.

It was, however, looted in 3.

We are closer to the latter than the former.

 

For the life of me I can't seem to find a politician who has a clue on what policy is.

Plans come from policy.

Methodology is utilized to enact plans.

If no one has a policy, then their plans are based on nothing, anchored to nothing and entirely too flexible for my taste.  I can tell a Presidential Candidate who has no policy in minutes.  I am not voting for any who can't articulate what it is as they are, by default, a Progressive.  No matter how nice the 'plans' sound, they are words spoken in the winds of opportunism.

Just a few quick thoughts on the GOP 'debate' last night

First I didn't watch it all the way through.  I had some things needing to be done and got through some of the first half-hour and then the last half-hour and have done a bit of reviewing of the 'talking points' put up at other sites.

It wasn't pretty, that's for sure.

My basic complaint about the 'debates' is that they are not helping to educate voters but get out talking points by candidates.  Some of that does help to illuminate what a candidate believes, but there is often a stark contrast between their record, their prior works and what they are now running on so as to leave the viewer a bit at sea about exactly what a candidate stands for.  This TV format is dated, decrepit and essentially worthless in the modern age as no single question can illuminate a candidate while a single one can sink them.  That is not fair to the audience, the electorate and the body politic as a whole.  A single bad utterance, a single 'gotchya' and that could be the doom of a candidate who has worthy ideas in other realms but is out on a far limb on one or two topics.  Without a more in-depth discussions (not a debate, but a discussion) the electorate is ill-served and the media is well served to become power brokers.  That is how they see their function up until 2010: being that decisive 5 point swing for or against a candidate.

At the early stages a different form of discussion would provide a lot more interest, some illumination of individuals and offer a setting whereby the candidates are not about talking points but explaining their points of view.

The best format for this sort of thing I have ever seen on media are the Fred W. Friendly seminars or programs, hosted by the late Mr. Friendly.  He was able to bring a diverse group of people in on a subject (be it on the economy, foreign affairs, or social programs) and lead an actual discussion amongst a group of individuals that ranged from politicians and policy wonks to industry analysts and corporate heads, plus a smattering of 'experts' to help keep things going.  The questioning by Mr. Friendly was challenging, at times, but served as a basis to help examine differences between perceived political policy and actual effects and outcome.  Even on those topics that were non-political, he always served as the intermediary for a discussion so that the audience was served by having a wide array of ideas and idea-makers present to create an understanding of what it was they were saying.

There are very few trusted figures with as good a staff and knowledge as Mr. Friendly today, and fewer still that are trusted as being open and transparent about what they believe and yet to challenge themselves and their own beliefs in front of the public.  No hollywood star or even most of the modern news presenters can do that, today.  Perhaps Chris Wallace, Britt Hume or Juan Williams (I've seen him put bias aside to be fair on programs, so think he could do this and well) from FNC, but he would need a lot of help getting trusted individuals into a Presidential mix to help move discussions along.  Most of the weekend shows and roundtables are too media oriented to do much of any good, and the idea is to find someone who is unbiased and doesn't care about THEIR media image but in leading a discussion.

A major point of such discussions, say in a 2 hour format, would be to have the candidates interact with policy and industry specialists on a topic or set of topics, and keep track of what the candidates can come to agreement upon.  The last half-hour would be to let the candidates work out a party platform plank that they can ALL agree to run on.  It would be made in PUBLIC, not behind closed doors, and while an audience may be present as observers, they are not participants unless the experts would like to bin some questions on topics so that a few might serve as discussion points.

What this would do is two-fold:

1) It would identify and illuminate commonalities of what needs to be done not just by the President of the US but by political parties.  Having a party committee or set of small voting blocks run the platform process is incestuous in nature and needs to be out in the open.  Also it would REMOVE those areas from any future 'debates' and winnow things down to the major DIFFERENCES between the candidates.  It creates 'common ground' based on the best ideas that every candidate can agree to.

Last night the only good thing to come out of the 'debates' was the essential feeling that there needs to be a major reduction in the size, scope and power of the federal government starting with the EPA, Dept. of Education, and then Dept. of Energy and those parts of Interior dealing with energy.  Can we get that as a common platform plank for all the candidates so that the only differences are those candidates who JUST want to do that and those who want to get rid of MORE government?

2) You may or may not like a candidate in all areas, and this would help to show why you agree/disagree with a candidate as they would have time on an essential topic to outline their ideas.  What it also does, however, is let those candidates with some very good ideas present them and talk about them which may preserve their good ideas even if they drop out as a candidate.  Frankly I like a few things Ron Paul says and agrees with, as I do Rick Santorum and even John Huntsman who I generally disagree with, has some valid ideas on taxation and the economy that need to be explored.  You can't do that in a 'debate' setting and, frankly, even the so-called 'top tier' candidates are not shining in areas  that are making them lose votes and possibly voters.

I disagree with Rick Perry's stance on illegals, and the general good feelings Mitt Romney has towards just tinkering with a fundamentally broken system of government (where is Chainsaw Al Dunlap when you need him?), as well as Herman Cain's idea of a 'National Sales Tax' which is something that if it could have been done it WOULD have been done by Progressives decades ago as they love new ways to tax people which means it is constitutionally suspect to PROGRESSIVES.  That says a lot, right there.  Those are just ready examples, mind you, but they are indicative of the entire field in which a candidate can bring some valid ideas to the table and then, as they are forced to get a whole array of answers down pat, are put on a spotlight and expected to answer any question on anything.  Yet where there is common ground, there should be no more questions: the answers are known and when they are common to ALL the candidates, then they become something KNOWN to the population as a whole.

 

As a citizen I am ill-served by the current 'debate' format and venue as it places too much emphasis on the media, gotchya questions, and some cat fighting verbal by-play that raises vitriol and distrust of any candidate taking part in such and the media asking such questions.  In these long months long before a Primary, the candidates could serve themselves, each other and the general public by driving out their major points and coming to agreement about major policy needs that they will all agree to go forward with no matter WHO wins the election.  Indeed they are expected to help, advise and move these points forward even if one or ALL of them lose.  That would help the Congressional delegates to also understand that if they don't run on THIS platform, then they really don't belong in the party and that when they take office they are not only expected to push the platform forward but they can ask for HELP in doing that. 

Yes some 'popular' politicians might be forced to leave by having their party credentials pulled, and flee to 'the other party': but do you really want a spineless blob Upon the Hill as YOUR Representative or Senator?  Because your vote for a candidate from a party should MEAN something beyond the individuals involved.  Even if you generally didn't LIKE a candidate but they AGREE to push these major items forward, you might just reconsider voting on one or two issues and see if the entire platform is a better fit for you even if it DOESN'T contain your one or two issues you care about.

The 'debate'?  Some up, some down, lots of smoke, little illumination and no real help for the Nation or its citizens to understand the future that we will build together as citizens.  And, strangely, if we can't find candidates individuals who can begin to understand their role as our representatives in government, now, then we will be ill-served in that future and even lose out on a major portion of it because political parties with campaigns and their drift towards being glib and not offering insights into our future well being are an awful way to run a Nation or express the will of the people.

This 20th century format and set of ideas must go in the 21st as the new century is presenting us with the tools to empower the individual to build a future unlike any dreamt of even 30 years ago.  It is not the government that is of the horse and buggy era, but our political parties and their foundations, and it is showing badly in this modern age.  And if they don't start to adapt NOW then in 50 years they will not be here as the people will find a better way to do things that makes the idea of 'gatekeepers', 'debates' and even 'campaigns' meaningless.  And as my predictions on the out years seem to come true much, much, much faster than I ever expect them to, I am having to prepare to see that future within my life time and not too far down the road.  That 50 years is a PESSEMISTIC OUTLOOK but the roads all lead away from our current media and party system and nothing they do will hold it together much longer.

We are entering a Dawn of a  New Era and it will whipsaw you if you don't prepare for it NOW because it is happening NOW.

Our Duty

As citizens we do have a duty to each other and our society.

In belief of having a representative form of government via democratic means, that requires that each citizen recognizes their duty to that means we agree to.

Duty is not pleasant at all times, that is why it is not called 'pleasure' or 'indulgence'.

I urge all my fellow citizens of the Republic to vote their choices, even if that means standing up to just be counted as a citizen participating in our common duty.

We have had 40 years of believing otherwise and the cost of that is now upon us.

The right to vote has cost us dearly.

Ignoring that duty has and will cost us beyond any price.

Vote today as if your life depends upon it.

It does.

And always has.

How to steal an election

The question about ACORN registering not only dead people, but fictional characters and collections of letters as voters has come up as a question as to why this matters.  I responded to this at the Hot Air site and will then add a few thoughts at the end.  As always all problems of spelling, syntax and logic are left for the amusement of the reading public.

* * *

How to turn these phony registratants into votes?

As the ‘activist organizations’ flood the system close to or at the deadline for registration, they swamp the internal controls to verify applications. Those then get put on the rolls as voters. Someone shows up with some form of ID that will pass muster and votes.

As mentioned many of the voter rolls are out and names crossed off as people show up. If you have a database of individuals you have registered or a block of addresses from which phony voters applications were put in, you can then have either a real voter or an ‘observer’ contact someone on the outside to then do a database look-up. If there is not a strict accounting of the actual photo ID, such as taking the driver’s license number or other identifier off of the ID, then you can have someone show up with an ID that looks valid. The cost of cardstock and laminating equipment is low in such a large operation and we have already seen fake ‘press passes’ derived from original source ones via this methodology.

This allows a small number of individuals to then do this Chicago phenomenon of ‘vote early, vote often’.

By the time the actual verification gets to an individual on the rolls, it may be weeks or months after the election, with the latter more likely due to the approaching holiday season.

This could be negated by a requirment for a valid State ID, such as driver’s license or other ID in which the polling station has a read-out for that block of individuals who live in that district. Enter the number, get the name, hand verify the name on the paper rolls, initial and time stamp it. But then you get ‘civil libertarians’ crying about how such databases can be abused, and that cross-checking is, somehow, a nefarious activity. And yet the public’s need for clean elections should have massive criminal penalties in place when such databases are compromised to undermine local democracy…. unfortunately that is not the case.

Thus criminal activity gets a slap on the wrist, civil libertarians decry cross-checking databases, organizations push in a mass of late registrations that can’t be checked and small numbers of individuals ‘vote early, vote often’ because they do not show up at the same polling places but drive from place to place. “Small” being anywhere from a handful to a few tens of people… and if the election doesn’t come out as wanted, then those individuals are sacrificed to call the election into question and claim it was ’stolen’. How many individuals in a given area would it take to convince *you* that this would represent a larger number doing this activity? Two? Three? Ten? Twenty State-wide? Fifty? And just how will you be able to discriminate between just a few individuals doing this and a larger push of which these would be a ‘representative sample’?

There is also, of course, taking a large number of blank ballots, and filling them in and crossing the names off of the rolls after the election, but that ham-handed way usually shows up due to the block of ballots involved. That is if you have a paper-trail ballot.

Really, one can be inventive with this to get to a desired result… which is undermining representative democracy.

* * *

The problem is not just the registration and a few 'bad votes' getting through: it is creating an atmosphere of suspect elections that then seek to disenfranchise the voting public by creating the appearance of fraud in the election process.  The tactic of 'flooding' voting administration offices in the last day or two of the registration cycle is one that is well known, and documented:  it is done to over-tax the registration system and get unaccountable names on the voting rolls and to get absentee ballots for those that would not normally deserve them.

Beyond that, this can be used in an area where a favored politician such organizations like ACORN are *losing* so as to create turmoil, call the ballot process into question and attempt to eliminate strong opposition districts from the vote count via appearances of impropriety.

In strong districts this is used to push up the 'win' so as to get a larger tally so that people can point to: well this candidate got the most votes, why wasn't he elected?  That was in the year 2000, in case anyone has forgotten, and it is an attempt to undermine the system of representative democracy and fairness to all citizens so that they have representative say by region and area.  Thus 'winning big' can be used as a bludgeon to try and overturn a result that is one that expresses the diverse will of the people, not just the majority.

Even if the actual votes that are fraudulent are slight, the number to turn public opinion against the process is paper thin.  Eroding that crumbles the faith in the election system, representative democracy and our respect for each other as citizens as some try to impose results via ideology and ill-means.  By undermining the system of voting and call it into question via such means, we see a direct authoritarian attempt to delegitimize representative democracy and force the will of a minority by disenfranchising voters by calling legitimate votes into question by those activities.

When politicians move money to such organizations from the public treasury, as seen with ACORN and other such groups, the entire process becomes corrosive to the freedom of the ballot and the franchise right.  That is an established right that is protected by the US Constitution and those seeking to undermine it are not only breaking the civil rights of citizens but eroding societal trust in the election process in an attempt to impose ends from unelected organizations supporting non-democratic means to impose their will on the whole of society.