All editorials on this page were written by James E. Dustin and are protected by the copyright laws of the United States. They cannot be copied or reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

Index (scroll down. The most recent title is at the top):

Dec. 10 – What we learned in Alabama

Dec. 5 – Where Hatred is Taught

Nov. 31 – How Sick is This?

Nov. 24 – The Problem with the NFL

Nov. 19 – How deep is this swamp?

Nov. 12 – The Latest in Lawsuits

Nov. 5 – A shocking tax development

Oct. 29 – NoK on the 401(k)

Oct. 22 – The $90,000 question

Oct. 15 – Judicial watchdogs

Oct. 8 – Thanks for the memeries

Oct. 1 – The Tattoo and You

Sept. 24 – A flood of problems

Sept. 23 – vacation

Sept. 16 – vacation

Sept. 9 – vacation

Sept. 2 – vacation

Aug. 27 – The limitations on statues

Aug. 20 – The new Bill of Rights

Aug. 13 – Somebody sneeze on Kim Jong-un

Aug. 6- Go figure

July 30 – Do you care about Scarramucci?

July 23 – Living without electrons

July 16 – How helpless are we?

July 9 – Are they teaching anything?

July 2 – Death by Entitlement

June 25 – The cold truth

June 18: The 2-cent solution

June 11 – A punishment looking for a crime

June 3 – The unkindest cuts of all

May 28 – Why the rich don’t get poorer

May 21 – Grading the Department of Education

May 14 – Is this really important?

May 7 – The Offended Generation, Part II

April 30 – The Offended Generation, Part 1

April 23 – We got a D again

April 16 – We can’t stop grousing

April 9 – Putting them on ICE

April 2 – Calling a meeting … off.

March 26 – Real news

March 19 – The old ball game

March 12 – The ObamaCare debate

March 5 – Journalism today

February 26 – Going paperless

February 19 – A Tale of Two Dogs

February 12 – Irony in Washington

February 5 – Bordering on logic

January 29 – Women on the march

January 22 – The inaugural bawl.

January 15 – The state agency we all hate

January 8 – The bare essentials of survival

January 1- Wart of the Worlds

Dec. 10

Alabamans are Blue

Time magazine, that ghost of journalism past, has chosen as its person-of-the-year (singular) the women (plural) who have stood up to sexual harassment and assault, calling them the “silence breakers.”

I have no doubt that most of the sexual assault cases being disclosed recently are true. I also have no doubt that many of the revelations that seem to arise daily are not true.

For instance, the woman who tells the story about being partially disrobed by Roy Moore when he was 32 and she was 14 years old. Besides the fact that the woman tampered with “evidence,” I’m curious about the timing of the revelation.

(Just to allay any fears that I am biased here, I wouldn’t have voted for either of the candidates in the Alabama senate contest. Moore has showed no respect for the rule of law during his career and so shouldn’t be elected as a lawmaker, and Doug Jones set race relations back 20 years with his despicable campaign ads.)

The woman could have come forward during any of five statewide races in which Moore was involved, but said nothing until this one. Moreover, she said nothing until the Republican runoff was over. In this year of the “silence breakers,” I’ve no doubt she’d have found an audience before the GOP runoff. One can’t help but suspect a motivation to withhold damaging information about a Republican candidate in the hopes a Democrat would win, not the other Republican.

There’s a reason we have due process in the U.S. We shouldn’t jump to the conclusion someone is guilty just because someone else says they are.

*       *       *

I wrote the above the day before the senatorial election in Alabama. Now it is the day after and Democrat Doug Jones has won the election. There are some observations to be made.

Republicans don’t seem to have learned the lesson that the Democrats may or may not have learned in 2016: if you have a lousy candidate, you can’t rally enough of the party regulars to insure his, or in the case of 2016, her victory.

That’s because the number of party regulars is declining. The dominant political affiliation in the U.S. right now is Independent (42 percent). The percentage of people who lean Democrat is at 30 percent, and the number who lean Republican is 25 percent. Which is to say many of us have tired of the same old tired faces in Washington, D.C. Hence, the election of Donald Trump.

And speaking of the same old tired faces, another observation to be made is that when Doug Jones is sworn in, he will immediately and continually toe the party line as dictated by Sen. Charles Schumer.

I don’t know what they do to these people when they get to Washington, but who is against tax reductions? Democrats is who. You’d think vulnerable senators like Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, and Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, would have been released to vote for a tax reduction for their very-red-state constituents. But when the time to vote came along, they toed the party line.

And the last observation regarding the same old tired faces, with the emphasis on old, the way to get ahead in Congress is to stay there a long, long time. Schumer didn’t get to be minority leader through merit. At age 67, he has been in Congress since 1980. He is currently serving his fourth term as a U.S. senator.

Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, at age 75 is the longest serving senator in Kentucky history. He’s been a senator since 1985.

Nancy Pelosi, at a botox-adjusted age of 77, has been in Congress since 1987. She was selected to succeed the previous representative from that district much as several Roman emperors selected their successors.

Paul Ryan, by comparison, is fresh as a daisy. He’s 47 and has only been in Congress since 1999.

Ryan won his post because Republicans kicked out another tired old face, John Boehner, now aged 68, who had been in Congress from 1991 until he resigned in 2015 as a result of an uprising in the House generated by the Freedom Caucus.

Resignation or death seems to be the only way to get these people out of Congress, but just as a general philosophical question, what seems healthier: A divided and rambunctious Republican party, or a lock-step disciplined Democrat party?

Dec. 5

The Middle East is Enraged … Again

President Donald Trump announced this week that he would move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an announcement that caused an outpouring of rage in predominately Muslim nations.

Protests erupted in Turkey, Jordan and Gaza. Palestinian organizations called for “days of rage.” Saeb Erekat, described as a chief Palestinian negotiator, said, Trump “destroyed any possibility of peace.” Mahmoud Abbas, a Paestinian leader, said Trump’s decision was tantamount to the U.S. abdicating its peace mediator role. Some other Arab leaders called it an “act of war.”

Saudi King Salmon warned the decision is “likely to inflame the passions of Muslims around he world.” Juan Cole, a professor of history and Islamic studies, called the President’s move “the creation of a deadly and dreary reality that will get Americans blown up.”

“It incites feelings of anger among all Muslims and threatens world peace,” said Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar mosque, one of Islam’s most important institutions. “The gates of hell will be opened in the West before the East,” he added.”

I’m thinking, “Who does this hurt, moving an embassy from one city to another?” Half of Israel’s government already is located in Jerusalem. It’s where an embassy ought to be.

And if one looks back over the history of Jerusalem, one will find that the Muslims held the city for approximately 800 years and gave varying degrees of access – including at times none – to Jews and Christians. From a historical standpoint, the Muslims come in third regarding rights to the Holy City. The Jews made Jerusalem their capital for ages, then came the Christians during the height of the Roman Empire, and then came the Muslims in the Seventh Century.

As far as Trump’s move upsetting the “peace process” in the Middle East, that’s almost laughable. Saeb Erekat can count on a lifetime job as a negotiator on behalf of Palestine, and area that has never been an actual nation. The “peace process,” as far as being mediated by America, has been going on since 1948. President Jimmy Carter was the only individual who made any progress by brokering a peace between Israel and Egypt. Among other details, Israel relinquished control of the Sinai Peninsula as one of its concessions.

The big stumbling block to peace in the region is other Muslim countries in the region will not under any circumstances recognize Israel’s right to exist. Thousands upon thousands of Muslim youth in the region are taught from childhood to hate Jews. The Koran instructs them to do that.

“Allah has cursed them on account of their unbelief,” says the Koran. “Wherefore the inequity of those who are Jews did we disallow to the good things which had been made lawful for them and for their hindering many (people) from Allah’s way,” says the Koran. “Do not take the Jews and Christians for friends,” says the Koran. “Their hands shall be shackled and they shall be cursed for what they say,” says the Koran. And so on.

There are madrasses in the Middle East where students are taught nothing but verses of the Koran. Is it any wonder they grow up hating Christians and Jews?

Much of the world has moved beyond religious hatred. There was a time when Christians burned people at the stake for heretical behavior or speech. You can read the Bible to find out how the Jews behaved when they were lords of the Holy Land way back when.

You may argue that Israel acquired Jerusalem by conquering it in war, but that’s how various groups always acquired the city. Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, attacked or besieged 78 times, and conquered 44 times. The world really ought to declare it an open city, but at least the Israelis are promising free and open access to the city’s holy places to all religions.

Some of us would like to believe the world is moving toward more civilized behavior. Slavery has been outlawed in civilized nations. Massacre of innocent civilians is condemned and punished. Nations no long conquer lands and slaughter indigenous populations. Racial and religious hatred is condemned in most of the modern world.

Except the Middle East, where it is taught. It seems to be land that has persuaded itself never to emerge from the practices and mores of the Eighth Century.

Nov. 31

Who Watches the Third String?

Global strategists are saying that Kim Jung-un, North Korea’s chief nutbar, is playing a waiting game with the rest of the world. They say given enough time, Kim will turn his country into a bona-fide nuclear power.

I say given enough time, North Korea could become a nuclear power without any people. If, as Paul Harvey used to say, you read the rest of the story behind the defection of that North Korean soldier, you might be appalled at his medical condition. Yes, he was shot five times.

But he also was infested with intestinal parasites –multiple varieties of intestinal worms that were as much as ten inches in length. The soldier also had hepatitis B.

The typical methodology one learns when one attends Dictator School is to take care of the army. Most of the armies serving in the third world are not there to protect the people from invasion by a neighboring state. They are there to keep the dictator in power.

In return, the dictator makes sure the military gets high pay, clothing, good housing, good food and good medical benefits. Apparently, Kim Jung-un skipped the latter stages in Dictator School.

The health of the North Korean defector evidently is not an isolated case. Another defector told NBC News that she was stationed at a military base near the site of atomic bomb tests.

That soldier and other defectors told

 NBC News that leukemia and other diseases are widespread in the region, including another malady that the locals called “ghost disease.” Yet another defector from the region said that her neighbor gave birth to a deformed baby without genitals, and attributed the deformities to the nuclear testing. Rhee said that the baby, like many deformed children in the country, was killed.

This seems widespread.  A 2015 study of 169 defectors by a South Korean university found that out of the 17 female subjects who provided stool samples, seven had parasites. One in ten of the 169 total subjects were also discovered to have hepatitis B.

The few people who get into North Korea, and more importantly, get out, report hospitals with little electric power and frozen pipes in the winter, rusty scalpels, a shortage of almost all types of medicine and general lack of sanitation.

In he countryside, peasants were observed drinking from stagnant pools. The typical way crops are fertilized is with human waste, which is an excellent way to breed and spread parasites.

Amnesty International in 2010 made public a report titled “The Crumbling State of Health Care in North Korea.” It describes barely functioning hospitals, poor hygiene and epidemics made worse by widespread malnutrition.

Many people were also too poor to pay for treatment, the report says. It also cites WHO figures indicating Pyongyang spends less than $1 per person on healthcare a year.

Pyongyang says it provides free healthcare for its people, but witnesses told Amnesty they had had to pay for all services for the past 20 years. The World Health Organization disputed that report, but it seems one has only to look at the general health of a member of the privileged class – the military. That doesn’t look good at all.

 

Nov. 26

Who Watches the Third String?

The problem with the National Football League is not that a few of its players disrespect the flag and the National Anthem. This is America: we don’t require loyalty oaths.

The problem with the NFL is that the players are too big, too fast, and too strong. When you have the most superbly conditioned players on the planet running into one another at full speed, players are going to get hurt. And beyond that, you can add muscle and weight ’til you can tow a truck, but you can’t make your tendons and ligaments any stronger. Too much strength, and you destroy your own body’s connective tissues.

The result is too many premier players are going down because of too many premier players on the other side of the ball. The success of a team in the NFL today might well depend more on its depth chart than the quality of its first string at the start of the season.

I’m a Green Bay Packers fan. Have been since I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although I have moved far away, I remain a Packers fan because of a little known Wisconsin state law, which says that if you are born in Wisconsin, you have to remain a Packers fan for the rest of your life. How else to explain the presence of Green Bay fans throughout the nation?

But the Packers aren’t going to win this year. Arguably the second-best quarterback in the NFL – Aaron Rodgers – is out for the season with a broken collarbone. That’s the second time that has happened to Rodgers, and the third time he has missed a stretch of games due to injury. This is the most protected position player on any team, and they get injured.

The Pack started the season with a superb offensive line – one big reason for Rodgers’ success over the years. In the sixth game of the season, tackles David Bakhtiari and Bryan Bulaga, and guard Lane Taylor all went down. That’s 60 percent of the starting interior linemen. Bereft of big offensive tackles, the Packers started four guards against the Bears on Sept. 28.

On the defensive side, Chris Matthews, one of the best linebackers in the NFL, has been in and out with injuries. Two starting cornerbacks and a reserve cornerback went down in the game against Minnesota where Rodgers was injured.

To add to all that, as of Nov. 30, Aaron Jones and Ty Montgomery, the Packers’ first- and second-string running backs are both out with injuries. Nick Perry, possibly the best tackler on the team, is questionable. Ahmad Brooks, another linebacker, is questionable.

Is this because the Packers don’t train well? Are they not in good enough shape? No. The Packers are No. 1 on ESPN’s list of teams most affected by injuries, but read on:

• The Baltimore Ravens lost nine players before the regular season even began. Since then, they lost their All-Pro guard and their starting running back.
• The Seattle Seahawks have lost cornerback Richard Sherman and two starting safeties. The result: opposing quarterback performance against the team has gone from a 56.8 completion rate to 64.2 percent.
• The New York Giants have lost receivers Odell Beckham Jr., Brandon Marshall and Dwayne Harris. Scoring by this team has dropped to 14.2 points per game, the second lowest in the NFL. A fourth receiver Sterling Shepard, is out with a migraine. Can you blame him?
• Like the Packers, the Washington Redskins have lost most of their starting offensive line. Tackle Trent Willaims has either been out or playing injured. Guards Spencer Long and Shawn Lauvao, and tackle T.J. Clemmings are all on injured reserve. Besides running for his life much of the time, quarterback Kirk Cousins has lost receivers Jordan Reed and Terrelle Pryor Sr. to injuries.

The teams listed above are a combined 25 and 30 at this writing. They’re not going anywhere. And I would suggest that the fate of the remaining 28 teams will be decided not by the talent they have now, but by the talent they lose in the coming weeks. It’s a cautionary tale for all the fantasy league players who celebrated at the start of the season when they managed to get Aaron Rodgers on their fantasy league teams.

But here’s the big question: Has viewership of the NFL dropped by 14 percent because of a few players kneeling for the National Anthem, or because their promising teams and the stars we watched are out of the running due to injuries?

Nov. 19

The Slapped Hand Reprimand

When Hillary Clinton was running for President, she was confronted again and again with the issue of her “gross negligence” – former FBI Director James Comey’s words – in handling e-mails while holding the office of U.S. Secretary of State.

Her eventual reply to all these accusations was, “I’ll take responsibility for that.” Well, what does that mean? It didn’t mean she was going to drop out of the race, it didn’t mean she was going to reimburse anyone for losses resulting from her incompetence, it didn’t mean she was going to apologize … it actually didn’t mean anything.

So moving along to U.S. Sen. Al Franken, we actually have photographic evidence of his dalliance with a sleeping woman, who happened to be a former Playboy model. Sen. Franken has graciously agreed to have the matter of his dalliances referred to the Senate Committee on Ethics. So what? In the entire history of the U.S. Congress, only 15 senators and five members of the House have been expelled from office.

He might get censured. That is a formal statement of disapproval. And that’s it. I suppose at some time in the past when there was some conception of honorable behavior, censure would have been a terrible blow to an office holder. It might have led him or her to resign, or made the chance of re-election remote. It would have been a disgrace.

But now, who cares? Voters don’t seem to care if their elected representative is a pervert, or gets censured for being a pervert. Franken is risking little by subjecting himself of a committee investigation. He is an incumbent in a very blue state; he’ll get re-elected. Same with U.S. Rep. John Conyers, and a growing list of other members of Congress.

It has just been revealed that $17 million of your money – taxpayer funds – have been spent to pay off victims of sexual transgressions by members of Congress. Is that even legal? Yes, it is. That was part of a provision of the – wait for it – Congressional Accountability Act of 1995. The bill was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton, perhaps out of sympathy for those elected office holders who possessed the same weaknesses he has displayed throughout his life. And after such payments, the records have been sealed to hide the identities of the transgressors. Conyers is the first member of Congress who has been identified as one who benefited from that hush money. He will simply lie low and say little until the next election, and being from a safe district, he will be re-elected.

So the question arises: What kind of rules should Congress adopt to prevent this sort of thing? As you may have guessed, I have a suggestion. If the Ethics Committee finds Franken guilty of a rules violation, take away his right to vote in the Senate for a period of time, say three months. That’s constitutional; the document gives the House and Senate the authority to make their own rules.

Other penalties could reflect the severity of the crime. If it was a minor dalliance, take away the senator’s parking spot or the right to eat in the Senate’s dining room. They could take away Franken’s right to use the Senate gym, but it doesn’t look like he’s ever been there.

Or fine the transgressor. These people seem to thrive on money and power. Zing the individual for $100,000 per count from their personal funds, not campaign funds. And also order the individual to pay for his own hush money.

But for God’s sake, hand these people some kind of effective penalty for their misbehavior. Otherwise, this will keep happening.

Remember the House Bank scandal? Remember the House Post Office scandal? Remember former Sen. Harry Reid blatantly lying on the Senate floor and then bragging about it after he retired? Remember those members of Congress who don’t live in their own districts (Maxine Waters)? Remember multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi traveling on Air Force jets? Remember ABSCAM? Remember the congressional page scandal? Remember Tom Delay’s money laundering scandal?

It may be difficult for President Donald Trump or anyone else to drain this swamp. I don’t think they realized how deep it is. But a good start would be to make sure transgressions have consequences. And really, wouldn’t you like to see Al Franken’s voting privileges taken away for six months?

Nov. 12

Only Eat What Suits You

Due to the plethora of dumb lawsuits being filed in America, I thought it might be time to resurrect The Court of Jim, where many moons ago we used to examine the state of jurisimpudence in our nation.

Traditionally, we start with a lawyer joke, so:

How does a lawyer sleep at night?

First, he lies on one side, then he lies on the other side.

Moving on to Case No. 1: Two pastors filed suit against Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association for alleged “deceptive marketing campaigns” which, according to the complaint filed in the Washington, D.C., Superior Court, have negatively and disproportionately affected the African-American community.

Right here the allegation concedes the fact that advertising works to such an extent that whole groups of people are rendered helpless when exposed to it. That’s not true, or we’d all be be buying Popeil Chop-o-Matics.

But to proceed, the complaint alleges that Coca-Cola contains harmful ingredients such as sugar and high-fructose corn syrup which leads to type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease; information the pastors say Coca-Cola advertisements purposely omit.

The Court at this point would like to note that any advertisement leaves out a lot. A car advertisement, for instance, does not show the result of running the aforesaid car into a bridge abutment at 140 mph.

The complaint also stated that consumers are not scientifically well versed in these matters, which leaves them vulnerable to Coca-Cola’s “false, deceptive, and misleading advertising and promotion of sugar-sweetened beverages.”

Why this would adversely affect African-Americans and not everybody else in a medical mystery at this point. Are they claiming that African-Americans are dumber than everyone else? Certainly not. But the Court believes that if any individual or group thinks Coke is dangerous to consume, don’t buy it. Case dismissed

Case No. 2: A Muslim man in Michigan has filed a $100 million lawsuit against Little Caesars because, the man says, he received and consumed pizza topped with pepperoni that contained pork.

According to The Detroit Free Press, Mohamad Bazzi is the plaintiff in the mega-dollar lawsuit. Bazzi, 32, claims that he specifically ordered halal pepperoni pizza on two separate occasions from a Little Caesars in Dearborn but received pork pepperoni instead.

Both pizza boxes he received were labeled “halal,” according to the lawsuit. The Quran, the main religious text of Islam, prohibits Muslims from eating pork. (“Halal” means meat meeting Islamic dietary requirements, which oddly enough are similar to Jewish dietary restraints.)

The lawsuit says Bazzi and his wife were in their home enjoying a pizza. The couple was halfway finished with the pizza when they suddenly realized they were eating pork and beef pepperoni.

So the Court at this point wonders why it took them one and a half pizzas before they realized – on their own – that this was not halal pepperoni. And the Court also wonders how they came up with a damage figure of $100 million. People don’t get that much when they are poisoned to death at a restaurant.

The Court’s decision is the plaintiffs should get a full refund for their purchase plus a coupon for a vegetarian pizza from Little Caesars.

Case No. 3: An Alabama jury has decided that a man who broke his hip while picking out a watermelon at a Walmart store should receive $7.5 million.

According to The Ledger-Inquirer, the 59-year-old man went shopping at a Walmart in Phenix City, Alabama. As the man reached for the watermelon, his foot got stuck in the side of a wooden pallet under the display. That led him to fall and shatter his hip, according to court documents.

His attorney said the injury permanently changed his client’s life: He used to play basketball three days a week and now must use a walker to get around. The man sued Walmart for negligence and wantonness (wantonness?), arguing that the store had not kept its premises reasonably safe.

Jurors were shown security footage from the same store that showed several other customers had also caught their feet in the pallet, but did not show the other customers suing as a result.

The Court feels that jury pools maybe should be composed not of ordinary peers but well-informed, intelligent peers. The Court has felt this since a jury awarded an individual $4 billion because her GM seat didn’t protect her from being rammed from behind by a drunk driving 70 mph while the plaintiff’s car was stopped at a traffic light. Why are her injuries GM’s fault? Sue the drunk. And really, if you injure yourself picking up a watermelon at a market, is anywhere safe for you? Maybe you should stay home.

And that concludes today’s session, and be careful what you eat. Or drink. Or pick up.

Nov. 5

Current Events in the Car Business

“The tax plan proposed by House Republicans has hiding in it the repeal of a $7,500 tax credit that has arguably been one of the main drivers of electric vehicle purchases. Removing the credit would almost certainly adversely affect sales of electric cars just as they are beginning to get affordable to the general public.”

That’s the lead paragraph in an online report about the possible removal of this credit from the tax code. Allow me to deconstruct it.

• The idea to repeal the tax credit was not “hiding” in the proposal. It couldn’t have been hiding too deep because the reporter found it. It’s there in black and white, and no congressperson was trying to sneak it in the way they used to do earmarks.
• There’s no argument that the $7,500 credit increased sales of electric vehicles. That is the purpose of the tax credit. If someone is going to knock $7,500 off the price of something you want to buy, are you not going to take it?
• “Removing the credit would almost certainly adversely affect sales of electric cars.” See above. If a $7,500 credit was the reason you bought the car in the first place, absence of the credit might persuade you not to buy it next time. Duh.
• Apparently, the writer here believes that electric cars are “beginning” to get affordable to the general public, which indicates that they have not been affordable up to now. So we have learned that the general public tends to not buy things that are not affordable. Economics 101.

If electric vehicles were affordable and useful, people would buy them. They wouldn’t need a government program to push them into the showroom.

What the $7,500 represents is a government effort to pick winners and losers in a particular marketplace. If you make electric cars, the feds give you a big hug. If you make internal combustion vehicles, you are a Neanderthal and should be rendered extinct.

That’s not government’s job, or at least it’s not our government’s job. Did you feel all nice and cozy when the Obama administration squandered $6.2 billion (according to ABC) backing solar energy companies? Did you think that was a productive use of your IRS check?

Do you think the federal government should use its apparently unlimited authority to induce you, or in the case of ObamaCare, force you to buy something?

The $7,500 rebate is not only philosophically unfair, it’s practically unfair for people like me. I live in a rural area in the West, and I need a pickup truck with a range of more than 200 miles and the power to pull a trailer full of firewood down a muddy road. So I am denied a piece of the government’s moral superiority pie.

I have no objections to electric vehicles. I actually think they’re pretty cool, and if I were still commuting 27 miles twice a day in St. Louis, I might like to have one. However, out here there isn’t an electric vehicle available that will do what I need done.

Such manipulative gifts that Congress has inserted over the years into the U.S. tax code need to go. Taxes should be collected for one single purpose: to fund the government for the duties delineated in the Constitution. Taxes should not be used to influence or even mandate people’s behavior.

Congress should remove all these credits, exemptions, deductions, etc., from the tax code. Some business group is always going to scream when this happens, but they were the ones who stuck these provisions in the tax code in the first place. At that time, they celebrated. And as happens in a karmatic world, this time they weep.

 

Oct. 29

Jesus Saves and So Should You

One of the many great truths in life is that it is easier to give people something than it is to take that something away. This truth is at the root of most of the discussions surrounding a new income tax bill.

An example: At this writing on Nov, 1, 2017, some congresspeople are considering rolling back or even eliminating the 401(k) program. There was little debate when the program was created in 1978. The program allows working people to defer a portion of their income taxes by deducting a contribution to a savings account from their paychecks. Employers get a further tax credit by matching those contributions.

So in 1978, the program allowed people to put, say, $100 per month into a savings account and have that amount matched by their employer. It was like giving that person a $100 per month raise. A giveaway, if you will.

Obviously, this program cuts federal revenues by a certain amount, so congresspeople are now thinking of cutting back the program to compensate for tax reductions elsewhere. This amounts to taking back what was once given.

But the root of the problem is not the 401(k) program or revenue neutral budgeting or anything else. The 401(k) program at its root was a use of the tax code for social engineering.

In 1978, many influential people were pointing to the successful Japanese industrialists, their work ethic and their management techniques because of the inroads Japanese businesses were making in the area of cars and electronics. One of the enviable habits of the Japanese was their savings ethic. Americans didn’t seem to have much a savings ethic, so along comes the 401(k) program and the IRA program to nudge Americans into the habit of saving for their old age.

And as I have noted over and over again, there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the power to engage in the alteration of spending and savings habits by Americans. If it is absent from the Constitution, it does not fall within the delineated powers of the federal government. Read the much-ignored Tenth Amendment.

So we shouldn’t be where we are in the first place, but here we are. And here’s a solution. Ask congresspeople to look further down the road than their next election. If they want to get rid of the 401(k) program, say that no one born after the year 2010 can use it. And this should be the template for eliminating all the carve-outs, exemptions, deductions, credits, favors, compulsions, penalties, etc., in the tax code. Eliminate them as of a year zero, and reap the benefits down the road.

That way we sidestep the problems associated with the great truth enunciated at the top of this article. We are only punishing seven-year-olds and all that come after.

And the same action can be taken with other parts of the tax code that are designed to encourage what Congress had deemed to be “good” habits. The deduction for mortgage interest is designed to encourage home ownership; the deduction for charitable giving is designed to encourage support of charities; the subsidies for oil exploration are designed to, you guessed it, encourage more oil exploration; you can deduct “lifetime” learning expenses; you can deduct medical insurance premiums if your business pays those premiums. By the way, when the federal government starts allowing deductions for medical and educational expenses, guess which two categories lead the league in annual cost increases?

These few examples show why the IRS tax code is more than 70,000 pages long. I would favor repeal of the 16^th Amendment altogether because it is just an open invitation for the federal government to influence, or even force, “proper” behavior by you and I.

Absent that, start eliminating some of these regulations 30, 40, 50 or 100 years hence. And when you do that, warn the people following you into Congress not to go down that path again.

Addendum: this is one of my many suggestions that will never, ever happen.

Oct. 22

One Expense Treatment

I was involved in an intellectual discussion recently – not one of those where people yell in your face, call you names, sprinkle a few F-words in, and strut off into the sunset believing their point was made. It was an interesting discussion among reasonable people.

Here was the question: You have a terminal disease, but there is a drug now available that can extend your life six months. This actually is true. Problem is, the full treatment administration of the drug costs $90,000. Do you do it?

There was no immediate answer, but there were a lot of thoughtful faces in the room until one fellow said, “Depends on who’s paying for it.”

And there you have it: the reason medical costs skyrocket when the government or some other philanthropic agency is involved. I would do it if the government were paying the tab, but I would not if I personally had to pay the tab.

I’m not rich by any measure, but I would like to die with a tidy sum in hand. I don’t have any heirs, so I have a project in mind for which my estate could pay. It’s my legacy, if you will. Middle class people usually don’t have much of a legacy beyond family, so I came up with one that might cause people to think fondly of me for maybe a generation or two.

However, my estate needs some more time to mature. Some of my investments are not reaching their full potential quite as quickly as I thought they would. On the day of that revelation that I am going to die soon, I might need another six months. On the other hand, my investments would take quite a hit if I had to pull out $90,000.

So maybe I wouldn’t do it. And maybe if there were 100,000 other people like me, they wouldn’t do it either. Then the maker of the drug might reconsider further production of such a drug if there were little or no demand.

But if the government, with its seemingly infinitely deep pockets, were paying the tab, I would venture to say most of us would take the money and let our lives run for six more months. When 100,000 of us take money from the government, we don’t realize we just cost every American $9 billion. We only think that we saved ourselves $90,000.

And so it goes. Do I really need that test? Well sir, your insurance pays for all of it, except your $10 co-pay. Well then, let’s do it! I’m going to wait to fix my knee until I’m on Medicare. I don’t mind hobbling around for a couple of years to save $30,000. Could you take that little mole off my arm? It looks gross. Sure, I think you’re covered. The let’s do it!

What you and I and almost everyone else are doing is driving up demand for medical care, which inevitably drives up costs. Who would develop a drug that prolongs life for six months if no one could afford it? And the more we don’t have to pay for what we’re demanding, the more costs are driven up artificially.

At some point – probably not in my lifetime – we are going to realize that people die. They may die young, they may die in the prime of life, they may die when they are very old. But we can’t prevent every cause of death, and we can’t prevent every death as a result of disease even if we fully insure everyone in the country. We’ll just make those deaths that much more expensive.

I cringe every time I see a bake sale for someone with terminal cancer. I have to go a buy a cake, but I know it’s not going to make any difference. Usually, it’s not going to make any difference even if I paid $1 million for the cake.

I think we all know people who, when it was in their power, let a loved one go. And if you think about it, we are kinder to our old dogs than we are to our old people.

So stop demanding that the government pay for your health care. When the end comes, it won’t save you.

 

Oct. 15

A Worthy Donation

If you’re thinking about donating to a worthy conservative cause this year, I would suggest Judicial Watch. I am a regular donor.

I never heard of Judicial Watch until a few years ago when the organization managed to persuade a federal judge to order the Obama administration to release to Judicial Watch – and therefore the public – some papers not even Congress had been able to get.

The Obama administration, which then President Obama touted as the most transparent in history (HAHAHAHA), simply ignored congressional subpoenas. You see, Congress has no police force. That branch can’t force the executive branch to do anything.

But federal judges can, and so Judicial Watch got the documents. I can’t even remember what the issue was, but I wanted to know more about this organization. So I joined.

And I have to tell you, their newsletter reports on a lot of things you won’t see anywhere else. Remember the voter fraud question? Is there rampant voter fraud in the U.S.?

A panel convened by Judicial Watch cited a Pew Foundation study that found the following: 1.8 million deceased registrants still on the voting rolls, and 226 counties in 42 states had more actual voters than registered voters.

The Left laughed at President Trump when he said there was rampant voting fraud in the 2016 election and convened a commission to look into it. Judicial Watch was already doing that. Another conclusion from the panel: A voter fraud database was constructed by the Heritage Foundation. “All we’re putting in are cases where individuals have been convicted and cases where a judge ordered a new election. Without much effort on our part, we found 462 cases and 742 criminal convictions.”

Other updates in that edition:

• JW sues CIA in search of truth about anti-Trump Russia leaks.
• JW uncovers U.S. Army PowerPoint that depicts Hillary Clinton as insider threat.
• JW represents veteran prosecuted for ‘posting’ an American flag on a VA fence.
• U.S. gives Soros groups million to destabilize Macedonia’s conservative government.
• JW seeks repeal of rule seeking to create ‘Native Hawaiian Government.’

That was the May issue. The lead story in the September issue is: Judicial Watch Sues for Comey Memo. Did you know that practically no one has actually seen that memo, including The New York Times?

To refresh your memory, former FBI Director James Comey wrote a memo about a meeting he had with President Trump on Feb. 13 regarding (sigh) potential interference by Russia in the 2016 election.

Comey subsequently leaked the memo to a friend for purposes of leaking the memo to The Times, except The Times never saw it. Comey’s friend read the memo over the phone to reporters. The Times ran with it. Now Comey himself claims he doesn’t have it or a copy. Did you know that?

Other headlines in that issue:

• Obama spying and unmasking records sent to Presidential Library, which may make them secret for five years.
• Judicial Watch goes to court to expose Obama administration shakedowns.
• Judicial Watch sues EPA over Obama ‘clean power’ claims.
• Border Patrol ordered to ‘negotiate’ with illegal immigrants in Arizona.
• JW asks Trump administration to end congressional Obamacare exemption.
• Judicial Watch releases Trump and Obama travel numbers.

These sound like issues that Congressional oversight panels should be taking on, but instead a private non-profit turns out to be the ones ahead of the curve on government corruption and secrecy.

One cautionary note: if you donate to Judicial Watch, be prepared to get a lot of mail. But it’s interesting mail.

Oct. 8

The Memes are Coming

There are some inane memes flying around the internet, many of which reflect badly on the intelligence of the originator of the meme.

For instance: Can you name a fish without using the letter A? Bet you can’t.” To which I replied, “You have the intelligence of a jellyfish.”

There was another that asked, “Can you name a word that begins and ends with T?” That is a test?

I’ve never met a memer. I don’t think the ones that put up the stupid memes know that they are making themselves look stupid. And really, it doesn’t matter much.

What does matter is those memes that spread blatant falsehoods, and worse, get a lot of likes. Here’s a for instance: “Isn’t it strange how mental illness hardly massacres anyone in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom?” I guess the either the memer thinks mental illness is an uniquely American disease, or it’s a thinly veiled anti-gun message.

Well, Let’s go to the United Kingdom. June 3, 2017, eight killed and 48 injured by a vehicle and knife attack in London; May 22, 2017, twenty-three killed and 250 injured by a bomb attack in Manchester; March 22, 2017, six killed and 49 injured in vehicle and knife attack; July 7, 2005, fifty-two killed and 700 injured in bomb attacks in London.

Let’s go to Canada. January 29, 2017, six killed and 18 others injured by gunfire in Quebec City; Aug. 25, 2016, three killed and two injured by a man wielding a crossbow in Toronto; January 22, 2016, four killed and several wounded by a student with a gun in LaLoche, Saskatchewan.

Let’s go to Australia. January 27, 2017, six killed and 30 injured by a vehicle attack in Melbourne; December 19, 2014, eight children killed by woman armed with a knife Queensland; December 16, 2014, three people killed and four injured by a gunman in Sydney; September 9, 2014, five killed by a gunman in New South Wales.

These are not all the massacres in those countries; just the most recent of them. But here’s the thing: it’s so easy to prove those memes false. Nobody should pay any attention to them, yet that particular meme had thousands of likes, and it was being passed on by person after person.

I remember many moons ago my dad bought the complete Encyclopedia Britannica so my brother and I would have a nearby source of reference for … what’s that word that is so foreign to Americans today? … facts.

Later, when I went off to college, I couldn’t take the Encyclopedia Britannica with me like students today can take a laptop. So I had to trudge down to the library to research various papers I had to write.

I remember having an argument with a friend about what war in American history caused the most casualties. We were in the Canadian wilderness at the time with no access to books or internet. So we just argued about it.

Now, you can get facts at the touch of a button. If you think there were no massacres by deranged people in Australia, you can simply google “massacres in Australia” and find out the meme is a bunch of baloney.

It kind of makes me think that Americans today have little interest in actually knowing the facts. It’s easier to sit in the wilderness and argue.

Oct. 1

And That’s Tats

Americans have a lot of bad habits, but in my opinion, two are at the top of the list – getting too fat and getting tattoos.

Nearly 40 percent of the millennial generation have tattoos and about 35 percent of Gen Xers. So what possibly could go wrong with having a foreign oil-based substance injected into your skin?

Well, this disgusting development. Doctors in Australia were investigating lumps located on a woman’s armpits and near the roots of her lungs. Suspecting lymphoma, the doctors removed a lymph node and put it under a microscope.

What they found was not cancer but a lymph node filled with black tattoo ink. Apparently the body’s immune system – not recognizing ink as something that should be residing in the skin – had encapsulated the ink and carried it away to be digested and destroyed, except the cells couldn’t do that. So they just sat there filled with black goo. You should google this story and look at what doctors removed from this woman.

Or just consider what you are injecting into your skin: Tattoo inks may be made from titanium dioxide, lead, chromium, nickel, iron oxides, ash, carbon black, and other ingredients. Some of the pigments are industrial grade and are also used as automobile paint.

These are substances many millennials find so objectionable that they would never allow such additives to be present in their food, but it’s okay to inject into their bodies. Odd, isn’t it?

Tattoos can cause other unnecessary problems. A man from Texas died after getting a tattoo and later going swimming. The tattoo had opened a lane in the skin for a coastal bacterium to enter the man’s body and killed him.

Human skin is the first line of defense against all sorts of threats to an individual’s health and well-being. Why unnecessarily damage it for purposes of personal decoration?

I’m among the 85 percent of baby boomers who do not have a tattoo, mainly because after you get a tattoo, you can’t donate blood for a year. There’s got to be a good reason for that.

No. 2 on the subject list of the day is obesity. A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control links all kinds of cancers to excess weight. “Obese or overweight people account for 40 percent of all diagnosed cancer in the United States,” says the report.

It’s worse for women. For men, 24 percent who were diagnosed with cancer were overweight. The comparable figure for women is 55 percent.

On top of that, once someone has cancer, being overweight interferes with the treatment. To be effective, chemotherapy sometimes has to be delayed until the patient loses weight. Time being of the essence in the treatment of cancer, that’s not a good thing.

We already know that being overweight increases our risk of heart disease and diabetes. Now there’s another reason to get back on that diet.

Sept. 24

An Expensive Policy

I was wondering the other day how much these natural disasters would cost the American taxpayer if the federal government didn’t encourage people to live in harm’s way, and by “encourage,” I mean reimburse people for their errors in judgment.

Most of us don’t live in flood plains or next to the oceans or on the slopes of an active volcano or in the midst of a great, dry forest. But many of us do, and why do we do that? Because if the worst happens, the federal government will be there to help us.

Take flood plains. Very few people would be living in flood plains if national flood insurance weren’t available. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) provides homeowners insurance for those who live in flood hazard areas. Why? Because no private insurance company would do that.

If you live, say, in a 100-year flood plain, that area will statistically flood once every 100 years. But it will flood. All of the homes in that flood plain will be inundated when the rains come, so there’s no way to spread the risk. The private insurance company’s exposure would be 100 percent, so they don’t do that unless the federal government underwrites the program.

If the federal government didn’t underwrite flood insurance, private insurance companies would not insure homes in flood hazard areas, so banks wouldn’t loan money to people who wanted to build in a flood hazard area, so there wouldn’t be any homes there, no one to rescue when the flood came, and no taxpayer bailout of the victims who lost their homes, because there wouldn’t be any victims.

Consider this lady who was interviewed on national TV. She sounded intelligent and well spoken. She knew her $1 million home was in a 100-year flood plain, and she had flood insurance. But NFIP’s maximum coverage was $250,000. The lady was mad. That amount wouldn’t cover the cost of her flooded home.

Let’s go back a few years. Who builds a $1 million home in a flood plain, goes out and gets flood insurance but never checks to determine how much the NFIP will pay if the home is totally destroyed? Now, I suppose, the lady is eligible for federal and private aid to help her after her dumb decisions.

And will that subdivision in the 100-year flood plain get rebuilt? Probably. Land is cheaper there and therefore developers can build less expensive homes. It shouldn’t be that way. The NFIP was designed to pay only once for structures destroyed by flooding. After that, the owners were supposed to move or flood proof the structure, usually by raising it higher.

But that provision is widely ignored.

Or how about the log home built in a forest with cedar shake shingles and a thick stand of pine trees next to the home. Should the local fire department even respond when the forest fire approaches that home? In many areas, they won’t. People should make inquiries to the local fire authority before building such a home, but they rarely do.

I know of a group of homes in my area built along a gravel road that is barely two lanes wide. The homes were threatened several years ago by a fire and shocked into at least clearing brush and trees from around their homes.

These homes were saved when the next big fire came, but at great cost to the taxpayer. It cost the federal government $1 million a day to fight a fire that lasted almost three months, and much of that effort was directed at protecting those 20 or so cabins.

I’d have no problem with first responders pulling those people out of there before he fire arrived, but should a firefighter put his life at risk to save a summer cabin?

By now, most of you have read about hurricanes and the storm surges and heavy rains they can produce. Have you seen photos of those McMansions next to the sea along many coasts? Do you know you are helping insure those? Google “mansions along the Carolina coast” and look at what you’re insuring.

Here’s another news flash – homeowners can get flood insurance for as little as $20 per month. Over 100 years, during which time statistics say you have a 100 percent chance of being flooded in a 100-year flood plain, you’ll only pay $24,000. Oh, and the National Flood Insurance Program was $24 billion in debt before Harvey, Irma and Maria.

I wrote a story many years ago about a local fire department responding to a fire in an apartment. The apartment was located in an area where the buildings were literally attached to one another, a densely populated downtown street. In that apartment firefighters found nine one-gallon containers filled with diesel fuel. Fortunately, the firefighters arrived before the fire.

So should the taxpayers pay for insurance on that apartment? And is that so different than insuring a home built five feet above the high tide mark?

Aug. 27

You Can’t Erase History

I can’t quite fathom the reasoning behind the tearing down of statues and monuments. If the people doing that think they are going to erase history, they’re wrong. That’s never worked. It’s like burning books; the knowledge is there, and it will reappear.

The ancient Egyptians tried to erase the memory of Akhenaten, a pharaoh of Egypt in about 1350 B.C. who believed in one god. After he died, successor pharaohs tried to erase the memory of him by chipping his name off all monuments. That was kind of the White Out of the Bronze Age. If you’re reading this, it’s fairly obvious that didn’t work.

Just because something offends you, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The offended Roman Catholic Church tried (and succeeded) to silence Galileo Galilei, one of the great geniuses of the Italian Renaissance. Galileo had discovered that the Earth circled the sun. The church held that the sun and all other celestial bodies circled the Earth. They just assumed that the Christian faith must be at the center of the universe.

The church patriarchs gave Galileo a choice: recant, or burn to death. Galileo, being a genius, chose to recant. Yet taking down Galileo did not change the scientific fact that the Earth does circle the sun. Even the mighty Roman Catholic Church could not stem the onset of knowledge.

Similarly, tearing down a statue of Robert E. Lee because he was a Confederate general does not change the fact that slavery was once legal in the United States. Many of the geniuses who laid down the foundations of this nation were slave owners.

Yet in laying down those foundations, chief among which was the U.S. Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams and others also recognized that their work may have to be changed in the future, the Constitution amended, new laws enacted and old laws repealed due to the steady march forward of civilization.

There has been legal slavery on this planet for far longer than there has not. No particular race was either totally at fault for the practice nor was any race totally the victims. If you were defeated in battle in the ancient world, chances are you were going to be slave no matter the color of your skin. Lily white Scandinavians made slaves out of lily white English Saxons. Slavery is sanctioned in the Muslim Koran. Blacks in Africa captured blacks from other tribes to sell to white and Arab slave traders. Americans Indians stole women and children from other tribes. Spain made slaves out of criminals to row their war galleys. Russia maintained a serf population until World War I. Slave labor contributed to the construction of many of the great wonders of the ancient and modern world. Should we tear those down?

Enslaving others was common practice until the 19^th Century when Great Britain moved to abolish it. You might condemn Thomas Jefferson for having slaves, but it was okay at the time to do that. Now it isn’t. See, owning slaves was not the only thing Thomas Jefferson did. He helped found a nation. He was a scientist, he invented things and found ways to improve agricultural techniques. He was the third president of the United States and served in that capacity for eight years. He made the Louisiana Purchase happen and sent Lewis and Clark on their way to map the American northwest.

We become more civilized over time and usually for the good of humanity, or I’d like to think that. People who seek to hide our history are missing a basic fact of the civilizing process, and that is: you cannot know what is right without also knowing what is wrong. Every major religion teaches right and wrong. If we are not aware of the great crimes of the past, we are not going to recognize and prevent a repetition of those great crimes in the future.

And by the way, Robert E. Lee was opposed to slavery. “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race,” he said in a letter he wrote in 1856, five years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

There were other issues at work in the Civil War, including states rights. President Abraham Lincoln offered Lee the command of the Union armies, but Lee chose to fight for the Confederacy because his native Virginia chose to leave the Union, not because he wanted to defend the institution of slavery.

Most Confederate soldiers owned no slaves. One of the bigger slave owners in the South was black. Anthony Johnson was a black man in the American colonies who was a former slave who went on to fight for – and win – in the colonial courts the right to own slaves. Learning history is more than a matter of memorizing dates and battlefield locations. Unlearning history is akin to shutting down sections of your brain. It’s choosing ignorance over knowledge.

The people pulling down or removing statues don’t know this. They actually seem proud of what they’ve done.

Aug. 20

And Then there were Eight

The Bill of Rights in the 21^st Century:

First Amendment

Actual: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

New: Your right to free speech is limited by Google’s opinions on gender equality; the ACLU will decide which religious ceremonies can be conducted in schools and other places and which cannot; freedom of the press is reserved primarily for the mainstream media with all other forms being repressed through ridicule; your right to assemble on a highway in order to block traffic is limited by the speed of the oncoming vehicles; your petitions for redress to the Congress and the President will be largely ignored.

Second Amendment

Actual: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

New: Your right to bear only certain arms cannot be limited, but access to ammunition can be.

Third Amendment

New: No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

New: No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law, and assuming they are our soldiers. It might be different with UN soldiers.

Fourth Amendment

Actual: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

New: Your right to privacy is limited by the number of smart phones in the room. Anything may be taken from you without trial if you are a suspect in a drug investigation, or if the IRS says you are delinquent in your tax payments, or if you unknowingly disturb the wet lands of the United States, or run afoul of the U.S. Forest Service, or if you have a large amount of cash on your person.

Fifth Amendment

Actual: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

New: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury or the local prosecutor, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb unless the underlying crime be judged by the U.S. Attorney General to be a civil rights issue or a hate crime; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, but his personal assistant or Siri can, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law unless it be an IRS beef; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. However, private property can be taken for private use if a city, county, state or federal government serves as the middle man.

Sixth Amendment

Actual: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

New: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial unless damage to reputations is involved in which cases the outcome of the judgment can be made secret forever, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and often but not always to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. The effectiveness of the counsel shall be determined by how much money the defendant has.

Seventh Amendment

Actual: In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

New: In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. There shall be no limit on the amount of court fees charged by the town, county, state or federal governments, and such court fees can be used for virtually any purpose.

Eighth Amendment

Actual: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

New: Excessive bail is okay in the cases of Colombian drug lords, and excessive fines are allowed if an individual or corporation can afford to pay such fines, and any punishment can be determined to be cruel and unusual if there are enough people carrying candles outside the penitentiary that say so.

Ninth Amendment

Actual: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

New: This amendment has been rendered null and void because the federal government or state or local governments will determine what rights you have, such as the right to a 16-ounce soda, and what rights you don’t have, such as the right to a 32-ounce soda.

Tenth Amendment:

Actual: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

New: This amendment has been rendered null and void because most members of Congress haven’t read it, and those who have read it disagree with it.

Aug. 13

North Korea might solve its own problem

Here’s what I think will happen in North Korea. One of these days, intelligence analysts will notice a continuing silence from Kim Jong-un, hereditary leader of the so-called People’s Republic of North Korea.

This prolonged silence will remind us of similar long periods of silence from the leaders of the USSR just days or weeks before a regime change.

Soviet officials would field inquiries about the silence of the premier by explaining that he had a cold.

A month or so later, we would all be informed that the premier had died from that cold. Only in the U.S.S.R. it seemed could healthy adults be killed by the common cold. It was widely thought that sometimes a gunshot wound to the head might be the natural result of a fatal head cold.

In any case, after these periods of silence, a new premier of the USSR would emerge and we would all go on our merry way.

Kim Jong-un certainly has internal enemies, and I’m not talking about the cold virus. He had his uncle taken out and shot; he had his girlfriend and members of her family taken out and shot; he is the chief suspect in the poisoning death of his half-brother. He had a member of parliament taken out and shot for a list of crimes that included not applauding enthusiastically enough when Kim entered the parliamentary chambers. I think we can assume there are people in positions of power who would like to see him dead.

And then there is this: not everyone who surrounds Kim Jong-un is a nutbar like their boss. One has to have a certain amount of street smarts to survive in an environment like that. There must be individuals who realize that provoking a war with the United States would bring further ruin to an already crippled country.

I was struck not too long ago by an image on TV of a view from space of southeast Asia at night. It was all lit up by city lights and street lights and lights from buildings and airports … except North Korea. That nation was dark, an inadvertent indicator that something is terribly wrong there.

People lack not only electricity, but they lack food. They live under the constant threat of being arrested and sent to a labor camp. They have no money to spend, and nowhere to spend it if they had it. They are forced to worship Kim Jong-un on national holidays named after him, and taught in elementary grades to hate Americans.

The governors of this sad little nation must know this. They must know that this can’t go on indefinitely. This is not the 12^th Century where kings can do what they want with impunity.

And now that China has said it will not help defend North Korea in the event Kim Jong-un provokes an actual war, how long do these leaders who are not Kim Jong-un think they will survive in the aftermath of war?

I think they will not let things go that far. I expect to hear in the next few weeks that Kim Jong-un is indisposed because of a severe head cold.

The After-math

I hate to keep dwelling on the same subject, but evidence keeps popping up that indicates the next generations may not be equipped to run this country, or even a very small business. CNBC reported recently that 70 percent of Americans can’t answer these three basic money questions. Ready?

• Suppose you have $100 in a savings account and the interest rate is two percent per year. After five years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow?A. More than $102
  B. Exactly $102
  C. Less than $102
  D. I don’t know

• Imagine that the interest rate on your savings account was one percent per year and inflation was two percent per year. After one year, how much would you be able to buy with the money in this account?                                                                                                                                            A. More than today
  B. Exactly the same as today
  C. Less than today
  D. I don’t know

• Do you think the following statement is true or false: Buying a single company stock usually provides a safer return than a stock mutual fund.

That’s it, and 70 percent of Americans can’t answer these three questions? What seems worse to me is that two of the questions are multiple choice. With the third, the respondent has a 50/50 chance of being right even with a wild guess.

Any student of American schools should be able to not only answer the first question correctly, but give the exact amount the investor would have after three years.

Apparently not. I live in Colorado and used to report on school district results on Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) tests. It is considered acceptable in Colorado if 30 percent of the test takers have a “proficient or above” rating in math. 30 percent! We should ask a follow-up question on those tests: If 30 percent of the students are proficient or above in math, how many are not? A majority or a minority?

CNBC further reported that fewer than half of the states require a high school student to take a personal finance class as a requirement for graduation.

This lack of education appears to be taking a toll, says CNBC: Half of all Americans have nothing put away for retirement; 35 percent of all adults in the U.S. have only several hundred dollars in their savings accounts; and 61 percent report that they don’t have enough in an emergency fund to cover six months’ worth of expenses.

This is not the fault of the kids. This is the fault of K-12 schools ( and the NEA) that continue to lower the requirements for advancement to the next grade and graduation. What we are doing now is tantamount to a hunter-gatherer tribe sending their kids out to hunt without telling them the difference between a leopard and an antelope.

What we’re teaching kids today is that as long as you have a phone with you, those pesky math problems can be solved with the touch of several buttons. But the smart phone won’t help them with the three questions listed above.

For No. 1, they would have to know how to set up the calculation. For No. 2, they would have to have some basic knowledge of what inflation actually is; and for No. 3 … well for No. 3, they’d have to have some money to invest, and that seems unlikely.

July 30

The Press Depresses

I get most of my news nowadays from radio. I spend a lot of time in my car, so I’ve got satellite radio for news, St. Louis Cardinal games and classic rock music. On my news dial, I’ve got Fox News, CNN, Fox Business, CNBC and PBS.

On my way to somewhere, I was listening to a news conference on July 31 when the following events were developing around the world. North Korea’s chief nutbar had launched another ICBM missile. Venezuela was dissolving into chaos as the country moved from socialism to a dictatorship. The U.S. stock market reached record highs after record highs. Vice-president Mike Pence was visiting three Eastern European nations extremely concerned about Russia’s expansionist efforts in the region. The U.S. Senate failed to repeal even a piece of ObamaCare.

So reporters are crammed into the room at the White House to ask questions of the President’s press secretary. Keep in mind that there is a limited amount of time available to these reporters, they’re going to be able to ask only one question. And what do they ask?

• First question: Is Anthony Scarramucci still in the administration? If you’re not a news hound like me, you probably don’t know that President Donald Trump hired Scarramucci as head of communications and fired him ten days later. Answer: No. Follow-up question: Is he at the Ex-Im Bank (the Export-Import Bank, an agency created to assist American companies sell products and services abroad). Answer: No.
• Next question: Did General Kelly ask him to leave? Or did the President ask him to leave? (Kelly was appointed chief of staff for Trump earlier in the day). Answer: Press Secretary Sarah Sanders declined to go into detail about why Scarramucci left, or who helped him out the door.
• Next question: Was it a chain of command issue? … Or did it have anything to do with that interview has last week? (Scarramucci unleashed a string of invectives and profanities when asked to comment about former chief of staff Reince Priebus). Sanders said the President considered the Scarramucci’s comments “inappropriate.”
• Next question: Was it about the chain of command at the White House?
• Next question: Was it about the chain of command vis a vis Steve Bannon, a presidential advisor.
• Next question: is (former press secretary) Sean Spicer still on the White House staff?
• Next question: is there not chaos at the White House?
• Next question: Does the President regret hiring Mr. Scarramucci?
• Next question: Was it the President’s decision to fire Scaraamucci?

Then one reporter asks about a real piece of news, the sanctions that will be imposed on Russia for attempting to meddle in U.S. elections.

• Next question: goes back to the chain of command at the White House.
• Next question: real news, will the President support a specific tax bill being considered in Congress?
• Next question: Can we expect any more staff shakeups?

And so it went. Three or four times, reporters asked question about real news, but they kept going back to Scarramucci and staff questions. So here’s my question: Do you people out there in Not-Washington give a rat’s butt about how Anthony Scarramucci left the White House staff? Is concern about that consuming a great part of your day?

I’ve been at high-level news conferences. I spent the good part of the day before trying to come up with one good question that might elicit a response that might be of interest to my readers. My question on July 31 would have been: Is the U.S. confident it can shoot down an ICBM headed toward this country? And if we are confident we can do that, does Kim Jong-un know that?

I believe reporters should be representing the citizens of the U.S., not the Washington, D.C. crowd. I think they should be asking the question you might ask if you were in their position. But I’m not in the business anymore, and besides, I don’t think I’d want to associate with those who are.

July 23

The EMP and Me

What worries strategists most about North Korea’s possession of an intercontinental ballistic missile probably is not that Kim Jung Un would be stupid enough to take out an American city with a nuclear weapon.

Knocking out one city would not knock out the United States, and the retribution would be terrible. What worries strategists is that such a missile would find its way into the hands of some other regime that hates us, or just some gang of extremists based where there is no law. It’s also a worry about what Iran will do with its nuclear weapons when it gets them.

You might think that even two or three nuclear weapons could not destroy the U.S., but you’d be wrong. A precisely placed nuclear weapon of sufficient strength could destroy anywhere from 5 percent to 70 percent of the nation’s electrical grid and a similar percentage of electronic devices, like your cell phone.

A lot of scientists and tacticians think this is unlikely. They note that whomever did it would have to be willing to pay the consequences, and the military increasingly has hardened its electronics against such an event. We wouldn’t be stripped of our defenses.

But there’s no doubt it could, and actually did, happen. In 1962, the U.S. tested a nuclear weapon over Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. In Hawaii, 1,500 miles away, the streetlights in Oahu went out.

This is called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. It’s a wave of electrons and gamma rays that can destroy electronic devices. We weren’t so married to electronic devices in 1962 as we are now, but can you imagine no phone, no car, no computer, no television, no radio, no microwave and possibly no electricity? Are we prepared for that?

William Forstchen, an author who has frequently corroborated with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, wrote a novel entitled “One Second After.” The book gives a grim description of what might happen after a massive EMP event.

In one chilling subplot in the book, he describes the plight of people who depend on regular doses of medicine to live. We never think about how many people would die if the chain of manufacture, distribution and delivery of such medicines broke down.

Gingrich and other politicians have tried to make this threat a political issue, but experts have argued such an attack would require very large nuclear weapons and extremely precise positioning at the points of explosion to cripple the U.S.

But an EMP can come from another source: the sun. A solar flare of sufficient magnitude could have the same effect as a large, precisely placed hydrogen bomb.

In fact, a large solar flare narrowly missed hitting the Earth in 2013. It slammed through Earth’s orbit about two weeks before the planet got there.

It’s nice and convenient and satisfying to have all these electronic devices at our disposal, but it’s kind of like wading through any new technology. The discovery of vast amounts of fossil fuels brought us great prosperity and wealth (and saved the whales), but we also had to learn, and are still learning, how to use that resource correctly, and even how not to become too dependent on it.

We could live without being able to see inside our refrigerator without opening the door. But can we live without the refrigerator?

July 16

Appliances That Hold Your Hand

Neil Young wrote and recorded a song in 1970 entitled “helpless,” which repeats the refrain over and over, “I am helpless, helpless, helpless, helpless.” The song should be an anthem for the American consumer.

Apparently, we will buy anything that can keep us on the couch longer. The consumer product world has noticed this. We are getting products that no one in my generation thought we’d ever need, such as a motorized mirror on the driver’s side of every vehicle. I never thought it was all that difficult to roll down the window and adjust the mirror with my hand.

But the list grows; motorized seat adjustment, heated seats, dual temperature controls for driver and passenger, foot operated door openers, automatic wiper activation, automatic headlights on and off, and etc. My Honda has a control on my key that allows me to roll down four windows at the same time.

A lot of us were perfectly happy to have to stick a key in the door to lock and unlock the car. Now we have a wireless remote. These things cost money, you know. I used to be able to get a duplicate key at the hardware store for a buck or so. Now I have to go to my car dealer and plunk down $75 for a programmable key. This is why a good pickup truck costs $60,000 – too many gadgets, too much electronics, too much stuff we don’t need.

It isn’t just cars. Samsung has come out with a line of appliances that seem to be designed to hold your helpless little hand. One is a window on a refrigerator that allows one to look inside the refrigerator without opening the door. I never thought opening the refrigerator door was that much of a chore, but here we are. Apparently, that window can also be used to make a shopping list that can be accessed via cell phone. This is for people who go shopping without a shopping list. They can simply call the refrigerator on their smart phone to get the list.

Samsung also has a washing machine that has an extra door so if Mom forgot to put an item of clothing in the washer after the cycles started, now they can just open that extra door and throw it in. Or, as in the case of the average American family in the commercial, three or four extra items of clothing that evidently the entire family forgot to put in the hamper.

You know, it used to be one could simply open the single door and throw or drop the item into the washer. Even now, the high security locking systems that prevent us from inadvertently sticking our heads inside of a working washing machine and getting strangled by underwear can be overridden by pushing a single button. Do we really need an extra door?

Again, these extras cost money. That washer with the extra window costs $300 more than the washer without one.

I’m not saying we should go back to taking our clothes down to the creek and beating shirts against rocks to clean them. But are we that lazy that we can’t open a refrigerator door or manually adjust a car mirror?

I lose fishing poles from time to time because I’m absent-minded. That’s such a great word. It suggests that our mind was somewhere else, like maybe Chicago, when we did something stupid. But losing a fishing pole is a consequence for being negligent or absent-minded. Consequences teach us not to do that again. But I’m not lazy, and I’m not apt to buy a fishing pole with a device that notifies me when I’m 50 feet away from the pole. It might be handy, but I don’t need it.

We as a people don’t need these things. If we grow to depend on them, what are we going to do when the power goes out? Can the power go out indefinitely? Yes. See the next column.

July 9

The Dumbing of America

The conservatives in America try to make a case that liberals have taken over the educational system and therefore we are raising a generation of socialists.

That theory assumes kids are learning anything in schools today. These so-called liberal educators seem unable to teach basic math, English or history much less the intricacies of liberal philosophy.

I hate to condemn a whole generation of students. I know there are many out there who know what a boon a good education can be for their lives. They achieve. They become researchers, inventors, leaders and visionaries. But they appear to be the exceptions.

Researchers, inventors, leaders and visionaries can’t outvote a mob of ill-informed, apathetic, we-want-$15 per-hour-and-a-bunch-of-free-stuff automatons.

I’d almost be willing to give these kids a free education if they’d promise to actually learn stuff.

It’s bad enough when you watch TV interviewers ask people on the street questions like, “Name two Founding Fathers,” and the interviewees respond with a blank stare. Or, “Who did the United States fight in the Revolutionary War?” and the response is “China?” There’s always a suspicion when you’re watching TV to believe that they edited out all the correct answers to highlight the dumb ones. But it’s real.

• I went to the grocery and checked out some stuff that cost $7.96. One of the reasons I went there was to break a $100 bill, so I handed the bill to the cashier who appeared to be 17 or 18 years old.

She looked at the bill and said with an embarrassed smile, “I don’t think I can’t count out the change for that.” I was taken aback. She didn’t have to calculate the change; the amount was right there on her register – $92.04.

I said, “Give it a try,” so she did. She gave me $94.04, Which was close. So now our high schools are sending students out into the world who can’t count money. Without further education, this girl is doomed to be dependent on everyone around her.

• After a golf game, I went to a restaurant with some friends. It was the middle of the afternoon, and it was slow, so we were chatting with the waitress. This was a college town, and I asked her if she wad going to school there. I do that because I tip more if they are in school.

Actually, she said she had just graduated from college. I said, “Can I ask you a simple question? I’m not trying to embarrass you, but I’m worried about your generation.” She said sure.

I asked, “Can you name three countries in Africa?”

Blank stare. “Syria? No that’s not right.” She couldn’t name one country in Africa.

She seemed like a very bright girl who had a degree in biological science. But how do very bright girls and boys wander through K-12 education without ever encountering any mention of, say, Egypt? How do very bright girls and boys, or even not very bright girls and boys navigate their own home towns without the ability to count money?

They are missing so much. One of the principle reasons the United States created a navy was to combat the Barbary pirates of northern Africa. “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,” refers to a city on the north coast of Africa. One of the greatest German generals in World War II was Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, who confounded the British and American forces in Africa. More recently, America was terrified that a disease called ebola might spread to the U.S. from Africa. One of the most revered freedom fighters of our time was Nelson Mandela, who led the crusade to end racial segregation and hatred in South Africa. Worldwide campaigns are being led to prevent the slaughter of elephants by poachers in Africa. Popular Documentaries record the daily lives of African lions.

It’s not so much a wonder that kids nowadays don’t know anything. It’s more a wonder that they manage to avoid knowing anything.

July 2

Where’s the Authority for All This?

You know, if the U.S. had simply followed the dictates of its own Constitution, today the nation would be out of debt, we would be paying less taxes, and we wouldn’t have much much of an immigration problem. We wouldn’t have needed Donald Trump as President; the country would never not have been great.

The relevant portion of the Constitution for this argument is the Tenth Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So, where to start. We wouldn’t have entitlements – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – the Big 3. Those three programs accounted for $2.2 trillion in spending in 2016. Take those three programs away, or better yet, go back in time and never adopt them, and voila, the federal budget has a $1.1 trillion surplus. We all get a tax break.

Because, you see, none of those programs should have been allowed under the Tenth Amendment.

The underlying idea of the founders was that the states would have considerable power to run their own affairs. Really good and workable ideas adopted by one state would soon be followed by the other states.

The founders were wary of really good and workable ideas coming out of Washington, D.C., and being forced upon the citizens at the point of a gun.

Consider ObamaCare. It tells every citizen of the U.S. that they must have medical insurance, and that medical insurance must include certain provisions. The Affordable Care Act actually includes provisions for the hiring of 15,000 additional IRS agents to enforce the provisions of ObamaCare.

Back to Social Security. First of all, the Constitution doesn’t give the federal government the authority provide financial security for people over the age of 62. It doesn’t give the federal government the authority to provide health care for people over the age of 65. It doesn’t give the federal government the authority to provide health care for poor people.

And the federal government didn’t do any of those things before 1935, and yet the United States had the ability to pull itself out a depression, defeat the two greatest military powers in the world, rebuild Europe after World War II, and put a man on the moon.

I don’t think the founders foresaw the adoption of Social Security when they wrote the Tenth Amendment, but they certainly foresaw and feared the expansion of the federal government at the expense of the states and the people.

Two problems with large, central governments:

• Once given a power, government inevitably expands that power. Social security began in 1935 as retirement program only for the family’s main wage earner. In 1939, survivors benefits were added for the retiree’s spouse and children. In 1956, disability benefits were added.
• Once government inserts itself into the private sector, costs inevitably rise and rise rapidly. Look at the cost of college tuition, which has risen faster than medical costs. Or look at medical costs. Waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid and SSDI has grown and grown and grown as the government injects more and more money into those programs. It adds demand where there was none before.

Or look at lasik eye surgery. The costs of this procedure are covered by almost no insurance policies or government programs, even in Canada. It is totally in the private sector. Costs have fallen in the last decade from about $2,500 per eye to as low as $300.

I don’t believe for one second that anyone would seriously propose the elimination or even winding down of the American entitlement programs. It is extremely difficult to take back something you have already given.

But it will be done. Nobody believes that the federal government can keep adding $500 billion in debt every year and not face a reckoning. One possibility is that the dollar will collapse. Maybe then we’ll have another look at the Constitution to see where we went wrong.

June 4

A Global Warm Feeling

I think I’m going to organize a PAC to support global warming. It’s not just because I live in a place where it was -42º for a week last winter, it’s because of the tremendous boost to the economies of the world global warming can bring.

There’s so much gloom and doom around the issue of climate change – which by the way is the worst public relations brand for what’s going on because the climate always has changed and always will change – that the real benefits of global warming have been downplayed.

Consider: the climate change alarmists are saying the seas will rise six feet, or 20 feet, or 39 feet depending on how alarming the alarmist interviewed wants to be. Well, look at the infrastructure opportunities.

I’ll use New Orleans as an example. The U.S. has spent billions protecting New Orleans from flooding and will continue to spend billions because that’s what happens when you build most of a city below sea level.

With global warming, instead of having to spend billions protecting just one badly-sited city, there will be hundreds if not thousands of cities here and abroad that will need levees, drainage canals, pumping stations and all that stuff.

Some cities will have to be moved to higher ground, and that will mean we can correct all the errors that were made when the city was first built. We can take Venice, which is slowly settling into the Adriatic Sea and rebuild it on solid ground with adequate sewer systems. I mean, Venice was built on lagoons so it would be protected from invasion by the Huns. We don’t need that any more.

And all those fancy schmancy mansions along the ritzier coasts that we have to keep rebuilding because the National Flood Insurance Program can be moved to higher ground with the caveat that the owners will never get flood insurance again, so be careful where you put that new McMansion. The taxpayers would save billions under such a program.

There will be more arable land. The frozen tundra isn’t good for much except training Green Bay Packers. If it wasn’t frozen all the time, it could be used for growing stuff we could eat, like crops. With the population of the Earth ever increasing, is that a bad thing?

The Northwest Passage will open up. Europeans shipping goods to Asia could save 2,500 miles by using that route, and vice-versa. We could charge tolls. And it would save more fuel than would be saved if all of us bought a Prius. A bit of history: if the Northwest Passage had been open in 1974, the Alaska Pipeline would not have been needed, and the pitiful angst of thousands of environmentalists could have been avoided. One might well suggest that global warming came along too late.

And what about all those glaciers retreating in Alaska? According to the 107 reality shows that originate in that state, every canyon and valley in Alaska is full of gold. The retreating glaciers are uncovering untold wealth that was previously unavailable.

It’s not all bad, folks. And don’t worry about destroying the planet. The planet doesn’t care. If all the humans die off, it will still placidly orbit the sun as it has done for 4 billion years. But if humans are smart, they will adapt to climatic changes as they have done for the last 100,000 years.

Addendum

Here are some examples of why the doom and gloomers switched their brand to climate change from global warming:

Dec. 12, 2016 – Another round of unspeakably cold air, courtesy of the Polar Vortex, is ready for an assault on much of the central and eastern U.S. by midweek. It will bring “dangerously” cold temperatures and howling winds to millions of Americans.

Dec. 17, 2016 – Light freezing rain has caused scores of traffic accidents along roads in central North Carolina, adding to the road mayhem scattered throughout the Eastern U.S.

Police and emergency workers reported more than 100 crashes overnight Saturday in Raleigh and Charlotte as the drizzle combined with temperatures below freezing for 40 hours combined to create dangerous icy patches. Charlotte police reported two people dead in separate fatal crashes early Saturday.

Dec. 18, 2016 – The Tennessee Titans played the Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City. It was 1º at game time, the coldest temperature ever recorded during a National Football League game there. Elsewhere in Chicago where the Packers were playing the Bears, the temperature was 2º with a wind chill of -18º. It was the fifth coldest temperature in Soldier Field history.

Dec. 30, 2016 – A winter storm socked New England with heavy snow and high winds, with some areas receiving more than 24 inches of snowfall, the National Weather Service said.

Much of Maine received double-digit snowfall, with Oxford County, in southern Maine, reporting 27 inches in some locations. Central Maine Power said 91,000 customers were without power as of Friday morning.

Jan. 5, 2017 – A messy mix of snow, sleet, ice and rain is expected to blanket much of the southeastern United States as a winter storm sweeps through the region late Friday and early Saturday. The heaviest snow is expected in the Carolinas, where a winter storm warning was in effect from 7 p.m. Saturday to 1 p.m. Sunday.

Raleigh is likely to face the brunt of the storm, according to the National Weather Service. The North Carolina capital could get up to a foot of snow, making it one of the top five snowstorms in the city’s history.

Jan. 9, 2017 – Millions of people from Baltic states and Poland southward to the Mediterranean Sea have endured dangerous cold and bouts of snow. Thousands of refugees have also had to endure the bitter cold.

Temperatures plummeted to the lowest level in years in Warsaw, Minsk, Budapest and Moscow. The temperature fell to minus 22 in Moscow on Saturday. The Orthodox Christmas Eve on Jan. 6 was the coldest since 1987, according to the Russian Meteorological Service.

Feb. 10, 2017 – Snow covered parts of Sicily, including Mt. Etna.

May, 2017 – A May snowstorm continued to pound the central and northern Rockies on Friday, a day after burying portions of Colorado under three feet of snow.

The storm has created headaches for travelers on highways, caused thousands of power outages and forced schools and businesses to close. The highest reported snow total so far was 42 inches near Allenspark, Colo., the National Weather Service said.

Interstate 80 and U.S. Route 30 from Laramie to Cheyenne, Wyo., closed in both directions due to the heavy snow. The weather service in Cheyenne warned against any unnecessary travel in southern Wyoming. A record 11 inches of snow fell in Cheyenne.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 18

Trump’s Two Cents Worth

President Donald Trump’s budget that was submitted to Congress recently included a section entitled, “Reduce Non-Defense Discretionary Funding each year with a 2-penny plan.”

The 1-penny or 2-penny idea arose as a way to curb federal spending. It suggests an actual 2 percent reduction in departmental budgets each year. That would save U.S. taxpayers about $385 billion over the next ten years.

Of course, this idea is not acceptable to Washington, D.C., where increased spending is equated with increased chances of being re-elected. Also, Washington doesn’t do actual cuts. A cut in our nation’s capital is defined as an increase in spending less than what was originally intended.

To propose an actual cut in spending is tantamount to proposing an actual slicing of one’s wrist. They believe that no federal agency can perform its duties without at least as much money as it had the year before.

I believe differently because I spent 40 years looking at various communications from the federal government, including this one just sent out this year:

Dear Ms. (name misspelled)

The Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Region invites you to consult in the development of a National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Programmatic Agreement (PA) for landscape restoration undertakings on National Forest System lands on three forests in Colorado. At this time, the Routt National Forest, San Juan National Forest, and Pike-San Isabel National Forest and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands intend to participate in the development of this PA. The intent of the restoration projects is to restore the landscape to one that is resilient and better able to support more national forest structures, disturbance regimes, vegetative diversity, wildlife habitat, proper functioning watersheds, and help prevent catastrophic wildfire. Restoration projects are a high priority on the participating Forests.

Landscape restoration projects often utilize an adaptive management strategy where treatments may be identified on an on-going basis for multiple years. The traditional 106 process outlined in the implementing regulations of the NHPA is not a good fit for undertakings of this scale where an adaptive management approach is used. Rather, landscape restoration undertakings require a phased approach to NHPA compliance. Deferring final identification and evaluation of historic properties, and the subsequent phased application of criteria of adverse effect, are allowed per the implementing regulations of NHPA if documented in a PA (36 CFR 800.4(b)(2)). In addition to proposing the phased process, the Forest Service intends to propose streamlined documentation and review periods for restoration undertakings. Circumstances that warrant a departure from the normal section 106 process require development of a PA. Additionally, a PA is required since phasing results in a situation where “effects on historic properties cannot be fully determined prior to approval of an undertaking” (36 CFR 800.14(b)(1)(ii)). Therefore, the Forest Service proposes the development of a PA to govern the implementation of a streamlined and phased process for landscape restoration undertakings and formally invites you to consult. 

If one can possibly deconstruct this memo, it’s an invitation to local officials to help devise a plan. It’s not intended to do anything with the forest; it’s a proposal on how to deal with regulations and procedures governing what to do with the forest.

People sit in offices in federal agencies and generate this stuff. Nobody except a bureaucrat can understand what the heck is being proposed here, or what effect it might have anyone’s life, or why forest restoration is even necessary because the forest does a pretty good job at restoring itself.

I recall a forest restoration project in my county where summer interns were planting seedlings on a bare area where there had been a forest fire. Each intern was wearing a hard hat. My co-worker, observing the 12-inch seedlings in their hands, asked, “Why are they wearing hard hats? Are they afraid a seedling might fall on them?”

They wear hard hats in this situation because it’s a federal regulation, which might not mean much in the context of planting seedlings, but ask any professional forester what it’s like when the Forest Service compliance officers show up at a logging site.

I would submit to you that the expense of producing the above memo, concomitant with a reducing superfluous regulations, might be one thing we could eliminate to comply with the 2-penny rule, and no one would know.

I would also so submit to you that no federal agency, no state or local government, no business, no farm, no family, no tribe, no non-profit, no club, and no individual could not find a way to survive with 2 percent less than they had last year.

June 11

The James Comey Gambit

The Democrats are spending a lot of time trying to find a path to impeachment, a punishment for which they have yet to find a crime. Former FBI Director James Comey, to their dismay, didn’t help them along this path.

In fact, he probably hurt it. Comey didn’t turn out to be a very good messenger, and Democrats should have expected that after his treatment of Hillary Clinton, an affair that sometimes reached the level of the absurd.

First, there was the direction from then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch to Comey to refer to the e-mail affair as a “matter,” not an “investigation.” That led to a lot of ridicule of the FBI even from within where some agents started referred to the FBI as the Federal Bureau of Matters. Comey was forced to take to TV to confirm that this was, in fact, an investigation. He could have stood up to Lynch and said, “That’s ridiculous. I’m not going to do it,” but he didn’t. He caved. Comey also apparently caved when Trump supposedly asked him to go easy on Mike Lynch. Comey didn’t say anything, he testified. You can stand up to the President, you know. This isn’t North Korea.

Then the man takes to the airways again to say although Clinton broke laws and rules and ignored policies and was “extremely careless,” she didn’t intend to break any laws. Such an argument didn’t work for me the last time I got a speeding ticket, but there you are.

Then Comey, citing new evidence, reopened the investigation, and then, two days before the election, closed it again. So he single-handedly found Clinton not guilty but … what, suspect?

So among 74 other reasons Clinton cited for her defeat, one big one was Comey. And I agree. The FBI doesn’t work like this. On the several occasions I called the FBI as a reporter, I got zip. We couldn’t even confirm that they were investigating anyone or anything. The only time we got news from the FBI was when they called a news conference to announce an arrest. Comey’s behavior certainly contributed to Hillary’s loss at the polls.

So to the Democrats at that point in time, Comey is the bad guy, until he gets fired by President Trump. Now Comey’s the good guy because to the Democrats and the Press, anything, and I do mean anything Trump does is bad, possibly criminal, certainly immoral and likely to be an impeachable offense.

So Comey is called to testify on June 8. It’s a big deal. America is watching (we’re told). Comey is going to nail Trump for obstruction of justice. Comey is going to sink Trump’s ship. Comey’s a hero. Except Comey had already testified on May 3, under oath, that Trump had not pressured him to drop any investigation … or matter.

The only person I saw being embarrassed by Comey’s testimony on June 8 was … Comey. For example: I wondered how The New York Times got ahold of that Comey memo.

You have to know this. When one meets with the President of the United States, one is not allowed to record anything, take any notes or use any other means to reproduce the conversation. However, a person can, once outside the White House, write down everything he or she can remember about the meeting.

That’s what Comey did, so the famous memo is already tainted. Unless one has an eidetic memory, any recollection is incomplete and personally biased. It’s like telling a fish story; that fish gets bigger and bigger as the years go by.

So that’s a memoir Comey wrote and put in a drawer for a future book deal. So how, I wondered, did The New York Times get it? Comey wouldn’t have leakers in his own home, would he?

As U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt managed to extricate from Comey, it was Comey himself who leaked his own memo. You know, why not write for The Times, get paid for your recollections. Comey could have produced the memo, walked out the front door, and handed copies to all the Press waiting “like sea gulls” at the end of his driveway. Instead, he did a favor for The Times, gave them a big scoop. As a former journalist, I know other news organizations were steaming about this, but they’re all in the tank for the anti-Trump narrative, so they didn’t say anything.

America waited (we’re told) with anticipation as Comey began to testify. So? After the June 8 hearing, all U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, could come up with is: Comey’s testimony “deepened the cloud” over Trump. Unfortunately for the narrative, having a cloud over your head is not an impeachable offense.

And then this happened: widely regarded as one of the finest legal minds in the nation and a known liberal, Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Hahvahd said that even if Trump had asked, or even ordered Comey to drop an investigation, Trump legally can do that.

“In his testimony, former FBI director James Comey echoed a view that I alone have been expressing for several weeks, and that has been attacked by nearly every Democrat pundit.

“In his testimony, Comey confirmed that under our Constitution, the president has the authority to direct the FBI to stop investigating any individual … The President can, in theory, decide who to investigate, who to stop investigating, who to prosecute and who not to prosecute….

“Our history shows that many presidents – from Adams, to Jefferson, to Lincoln, to Roosevelt, to Kennedy, to Bush 1, and to Obama – have directed the Justice Department with regard to ongoing investigations. The history is clear, the precedents are clear, the Constitutional structure is clear, and common sense is clear,” said Dershowitz.

Hmmmmm. So the search for “the crime” continues. Meanwhile, should voters be asking of their Democrat representatives, isn’t there other work to be done by the Congress of the United States?

June 3

Spending, Washington Style

They’re doing the budget dance in Washington, D.C., again. The President submits a budget, various elected officials glance at it and then declare it “dead on arrival.” Then the press gets ahold of it and declares if the budget ever become law, minorities and poor people will be hurt the worst. And then something else comes up and everyone forgets about the budget.

The House and Senate go on to pass appropriation bills, usually waiting until the last minute (Oct. 1) or beyond. The only power the President has at that point to control revenues and expenditures is to veto appropriation bills, and that’s difficult because Congress diddles around until the last second.

However, President Donald Trump’s budget is interesting from this perspective – it actually calls for real spending cuts in several departments funded by discretionary spending. And by cuts, I mean real cuts, not Washington cuts.

The swells who inhabit Washington define a cut as an increase in spending that was not, in their view, enough. Thus the secretary or department head may have requested a 5 percent increase in its budget, but only got a 3 percent increase. That’s a cut in Washington.

Out here in not-Washington, a budget cut means you get less than you got last year. That hardly ever happens in Washington. But genuine cuts are in Trump’s budget.

The Department of Education’s budget would go from $68 billion to $59 billion under that budget. Health and Human Services would go from $78 billion to $65 billion. The Department of the Interior would go from $13.2 billion to $11.7 billion.

In fact, Trump’s budget envisions $3.6 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years. That will not cause the sky to fall. Elsewhere in this blog I have catalogued a huge amount of government waste, or in one case, the actual loss of $6 billion in cash. Yes, the U.S. lost $6 billion in baled cash somewhere between here and Iraq. Clearly, our government can be more efficient, but it seems the only way to force that efficiency is to cut budgets. If departments still want to carry out their missions, they will have to stop spending money on climate change musicals.

But this what you read in the press:

• “Trump’s proposed cuts will harm vulnerable people around the world.”
• “Budget cuts would devastate outdoor recreation economy, lands and waterways.”
• “U.S. science agencies face deep cuts in Trump budget.”
• “Trump’s budget – an attack on U.S. lands.”
• “Trump budget slashes safety net programs.”
• “Trump’s budget is ruthless to disabled and poor people.”
• “Trump wants lawmakers to cut $610 billion from Medicare … over a decade.”

This last headline is simply untrue. Trump’s budget isn’t that hard to read. It calls for Medicare spending to from the current level of $378 billion to $524 billion in 2027. In not-Washington, that’s not a cut. That’s more than a 38 percent increase.

At some point the federal government is going to have to stop spending more than it takes in. The national debt is now at $20 trillion, and if that figure doesn’t scare you, consider that even if the debt grows no larger, we still have to pay interest on it. Half of that debt is held by U.S. citizens, so we can’t just default.

If interest rates rise to just 2 percent on government securities, the U.S. will be paying out $400 billion a year and getting nothing in return – no bridges, no F-18s, no dams, no Pell grants, no aid to Planned Parenthood, nothing. And half of that money – $2 trillion over ten years – will leave the country.

Trump’s proposal calls for a balanced budget ten years from now, and all the major news organizations condemned it.

An interesting example of why you need not believe that departmental budget cuts or increases have anything to do with your actual life is the Department of Education. Despite annual increases in its budget every year since its inception 37 years ago, K-12 student academic achievement has not changed at all.

There is a kind of annual rite at the end of the fiscal year. Governmental departments, to their horror, discover they have not spent all of their appropriation and therefore go on a spending spree for fear if they don’t spend it all, they will not get as much in the next fiscal year. That’s why we have built naval vessels that never go to sea.

In not more than a few years, interest on the debt will surpass defense as the largest expenditure in the non-entitlements portion of budget. Yet if someone wants to actually cut the budget, they are roundly condemned.

Trump’s budget is on the internet. I would suggest you all go read it.

May 28

Rich People Show Wisdom

There is a little box on your income tax return that allows you to pay more in taxes than you owe. The money goes directly into the U.S. Treasury to be spent on anything the feds want to spend it on. Rich people don’t use that little box.

It’s always amusing to see wealthy people, especially Hollywood wealthy people, cry and moan about any alleged budget cuts proposed at the federal level. “Children are going to die,” they cry. “The elderly are going to starve,” they moan (actual real quotes regarding President Donald Trump’s first budget) when most of the time the budget cuts are not budget cuts at all. The cuts are Washington budget cuts, which means the spending doesn’t go up as much as some people want. But spending does go up. That’s why we have a $20 trillion national debt. We spend more than we get.

But back to the subject at hand. Why doesn’t someone who is worth $250 million simply add a million per year to their tax payments as an expression of support for federal programs? It would make sense, would it not? You get 100 millionaires to do that for, say, education, we’re talking real money here.

This actually happened, by the way. Mark Zuckerberg persuaded several of his fellow billionaires to pony up $100 million to save the school system in Newark, New Jersey, one of the poorest and worst in the nation. The effort was a total failure. Read “The Prize,” by Dale Russakoff. The “educators” frittered the money away on consultants, administration, graft and corruption.

But it illustrates the point of the matter. None of us likes to give money to the federal government because we don’t know what they are going to do with it. They might spend it on an F-18, or Pell grants, or they might spend it on a musical performance with the theme of climate change.

They actually did that. The federal government spent $700,000 to produce a musical about climate change. I haven’t seen it, but I imagine songs included “Singin’ in the drought,” “Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee wasn’t dry,” and “The beaches of Cheyenne.”

$700,000 is nothing to congresspeople. After all, it’s not their money. But on average, $700,000 represents the federal income taxes paid by 100 middle class American families. You give $700,000 to any one of those families, and they probably would be set for life. We out here in not-Washington think $700,000 is a lot of money.

Or wouldn’t it be nice if there were an independent panel that reviewed all federal spending to determine if the expenditures were useful or not. If that panel didn’t think a musical on climate change was a particularly useful expenditure, $7,000 would be returned to 100 randomly chosen families that paid approximately $7,000 in income taxes the prior year. That system could replace the legalized extortion of tax withholding and refunds.

You might want to look elsewhere on this blog for “Nancy’s Pelosi’s Planet,” which is on the title page table of contents. You would not believe how the federal government spends money.

So the rich know this. A reporter sort of cornered a rich fellow one day and asked him directly why he did not overpay his taxes, and the rich fellow said he wanted to know where his largesse went, which he wouldn’t know if he gave it to the federal government.

Rich people do donate enormous sums of money to all kinds of causes. But for the most part they know better than donating money through corrupt institutions like the U.S. government or the U.N.

So the rich citizens of the U.S. do give billions to causes they deem worthy. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet – both self-made billionaires – have vowed to give away their entire fortunes. But the rich didn’t get rich by being stupid. My bet is the Gates and Buffet fortunes will not go to the U.S. Treasury.

May 21

Students Show Stupidity

Students at the historically black Bethune-Cookman University booed and turned their backs when Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos attempted to deliver the commencement speech there on May 11.

A couple of students interviewed after the event said that DeVos doesn’t know anything about their experiences, which I assume means being black. The reverse is also true. From the quotes, it appears the students who sat through the speech with their backs turned to the speaker didn’t know much about DeVos.

My latest hero is the academic world is Bethune-Cookman University president Edison Jackson, who invited DeVos to speak. “I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community,” he wrote. For this quaint view, the local NAACP chapter demanded his resignation.

DeVos’s nomination and subsequent confirmation as Secretary of Education created similar angst from a friend of mine who is a school district superintendent. If all K-12 educators were like this particular superintendent, America would be a better place.

Her fear was that DeVos would radically change the U.S. Department of Education. She should hope so. Since its inception, the performance of K-12 students in the U.S. has not changed one iota, and this despite the expenditure of about $2.5 trillion since the department was created in 1979.

Over that 37-year period, test scores from 17 year olds in math, science and reading remained unchanged. The inescapable conclusion would seem to be that the U.S. would have been $2.5 trillion richer and students no worse off had we not had a Department of Education.

Actually, if we had just followed the Constitution, there wouldn’t be a Department of Education. The Tenth Amendment states rather clearly, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution does not grant to the federal government any power related to education, and for good reason. The government shouldn’t be in a position to dictate what students should be taught.

We actually have a federal law that dictating that – ironically – any school that receives federal funds shall teach students about the Constitution every Sept. 17. The law was authored by – ironically – the late U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, who was known as the Senate’s unofficial constitutional scholar.

Well, what if Sen. Byrd had wanted all schools to teach about the history and philosophy of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization in which he was once a member? Would that be okay?

But we do have a Department of Education that by any measure has failed to improve the lot of high school students, and if you have lately received a written letter or job application from any of them, I’m sure you would agree.

So Betsy DeVos wants change. She is a proponent of voucher systems under which parents can receive vouchers to send their kids to some school other than the local public school.

It was system that was working well in Washington, D.C., until President Obama killed it. It allowed 2,000 kids from poor families to attend private schools. While it existed, the graduation rate among those students was 82 percent as compared with 50 percent in the public schools. Almost all recipients of the vouchers were minority students.

Vouchers seemed to be doing well in New York until liberal mayor Bill DeBlasio killed it. “We find that vouchers have a moderately large, positive effect on the achievement of African-American students, but no discernable effect on the performance of students of other ethnicities,” said a comprehensive study entitled Vouchers in Dayton, New York and D.C. I wonder if that study was available to the predominately black student body of Bethune-Cookman University.

Other studies suggest vouchers systems are not a magic bullet, but throwing $2.5 trillion at the education system has not proved to be a magic bullet either. That would suggest we need a new approach.

In selecting Betsy DeVos, President Trump at least chose somebody who will look at change, somebody who through her own personal history has been shown to be a high achiever.

“She’s not a teacher” scream the protestors. Neither was the one-time head of the Chicago branch of the NEA, an organization that seemed to think having a seasoned labor boss in that spot was preferable to having an educator.

By the way, Betsy DeVos, through her and her husband’s foundation, donated in 2015 alone over $2.6 million to schools, colleges and educational organizations.

One of the mantras in volunteer organizations is that when presented with a new idea on how to run a project that the organization has run for years, the organization’s leaders will reply, “We’ve never done it that way before.”

How much money will we have to waste on the Department of Education before we decide not running it the way we did before is a good idea?

And here’s another question: why do we still have historically black universities?

May 14

Time to Go Local

I read a posting on Facebook not long ago that was – I guess – some parody on reporting what President Donald Trump is doing every minute of every day.

People are getting carried away with this. What Donald Trump is doing right now is likely to have no effect on your life. If he’s colluding with the Russians at this very moment, is that going to affect your pay? Your vacation? Your love life? Your grilling skills?

Those who actually follow the news are more focused now on what former FBI director James Comey may have written down after a dinner with Trump than they are with proposed street improvement projects in their town. Yet the latter will have far more impact on their lives than the former.

My state of Colorado passed a law that requires backflow devices on all businesses. I’m a mayor, and I didn’t even know what these things were. Fortunately, I have a plumber on my town board.

Backflow devices prevent contaminated water used in a residence or business from finding its way back into the municipal water supply system. Such a thing happening would be a rare and unlikely event, but it could happen. So the state of Colorado directed all municipalities to adopt backflow device ordinances. What the state of Colorado did not do was pass any sort of financial help for those ordered to install backflow devices. This is called an unfunded mandate. Governments do this because our elected representatives often don’t care about their constituents until immediately before the next election.

These things cost an average $500 to install, and for a small business, that is not a small expense. It might require 15 treatments at a hair salon to pay for that backflow device.

So what has more impact on your life – installing a backflow device at your business with an annual inspection also required, or whether President Trump believes exercise is good for you? The latter subject made national news. I didn’t ever read about the former subject in my state newspaper even though it affected virtually every business in Colorado.

Is it really important to you how often Donald Trump plays golf? Was it important to you how many times Barack Obama played golf? Actually, President Dwight D. Eisenhower played golf more often than either of them, and nobody cared.

There are some national issues that are going to affect you. My neighbor’s monthly health insurance premium for her and her partner went from about $800 per month to about $1,400 in one year. That’s ObamaCare in this particular county from which most major insurers withdrew. I pity Democrats who want to defend ObamaCare when they knock on her door.

But I really don’t think who might take over the House Oversight Committee’s chairmanship will affect your life at all. One Republican is going to take over for another Republican. Yet that’s right up there as one of the day’s top news stories.

Or how about this: have you been whipped into a frenzy because you think Russia tried to meddle in U.S. elections in 2016? Okay, how do you feel about the U.S. meddling in elections in other foreign countries? Obama meddled quite publically in national elections in Great Britain and Israel, even spent taxpayers’ money doing that. You might want seriously to ask yourself and your friends if your vote in 2016 was influenced by Russians before you go off the deep end on this subject.

You might better ask yourself how your property is assessed. The local assessment on your property determines how much you pay in property taxes, but most people don’t know how that works or even who their local assessor is. They go and yell at a town meeting about how high their property taxes are while never knowing that their local school district probably takes 85 percent of that money. But they can quite noisily tell you how Trump’s first 100 days in office were a total disaster for America.

Many people can pontificate at length about how global warming is ruining the planet, but don’t know how to check on how their local government is preventing cryptosporidium at their local swimming pool.

Instead of yelling at your news providers – whoever they are – about being biased about national politics, you should yell at them for not covering subjects that affect you directly.

Or get used to being unpleasantly surprised.

 

May 7

Protect Them from College

The Offended Generation having succeeded to some degree in protecting themselves from free speech may, through the safe space movement, protect themselves from the rigors of actual reality.

They may not realize that by leaving home and traveling to the ivied confines of brick and mortar institutions of higher learning, they have entered a unique safe space for young people, that being a space removed from parental control.

I was watching news tapes from a protest at some college where a screeching young woman delivered a tirade at the dean, a tirade laced with f-bombs and spittle induced by a dispute over the name of a campus building. I wondered what her mom might think, seeing that on national TV.

The day is coming when very few kids will leave home to go to college; the college will be coming to the home. As most of you know, this is already happening. There are lots of online colleges operating now, and the technology is seeping down to the high school level.

In Ohio, an organization called ECOT provides online, tuition-free education for grades K-12. It is fully accredited by the North Central Association. It is touted as the “electronic classroom of tomorrow,” a kind of amalgamation of home schooling and classroom instruction. ECOT also has drawn the ire of the education establishment – unions and government.

This trend plays right into the encroaching nanny state. ObamaCare gave us the odd benefit of allowing “kids” to stay on their parents health insurance plans until they’re 26. Why not stay at home while you’re getting an education. Mom can wash your clothes and cook your meals, Dad can maintain the house and mow the lawn. It’s the ultimate safe space.

If the Bernies of the world are going to give the kids a free college education, it would be far cheaper to provide it in their homes.

It would have the added benefit of cutting down on the riots at colleges. Students don’t want to go out and riot by themselves. The news cameras don’t cover that.

Until we get to that point, parents might want to ponder the advisability of sending their kids far away to institutions that offer such valuable courses as “Wasting Time on the Internet,” (University of Pennsylvania); “How to Win a Beauty Pageant” (Oberlin College); “Tree Climbing” (Cornell University);“Tattoos, Piercings and Body Adornment”(Pitzer College); and “Abortion, Quality Care and Public Health Implications” (University of California – San Francisco).

Moving away to college might be considered a rite of passage for many kids. It’s a step between living at the parents’ home and living in your own home. But what else are they learning nowadays? I could say they’re learning how to riot; learning there are often no consequences for illegal acts; learning how to whine and complain. But this business of shutting down the free speech of people they dislike instead of just not attending the lecture is nonsensical.

Betsy DeVos, a woman of great achievement and the Secretary of Education under Donald Trump, was booed and interrupted at a recent college before she even began her speech, a case of kids not wanting to hear what they don’t know is going to be said.

So parents might weigh that when they are trying to decide about college for their little darlings. If the college experience actually will make the kids less able to make it in the real world, maybe they should stay home, or go to tech school, or the local community college.

Parents who care hold the ultimate stick over college students. They can pull the plug on tuition funds, lodging expenses, spending money or whatever. Even if the student wasn’t forced to drop out, the student might have to get an actual job.

At that job, the student might well stumble onto the realization that the real world doesn’t provide safe spaces. When one leaves the campus, one is not provided with ear muffs that filter out offensive language; one is not provided with glasses that block the messages on billboards, campaign signs T-shirts and tattoos.

Most of all, one is not protected against retaliation for perceived or actual insult, or actual violence. There was a “lady” on the Tucker Carlson show one night who was videotaped punching someone who was carrying a sign with which she disagreed. In the real world, people punch back.

Or a parent might not want to send their child to a college where he might be killed at a fraternity party, as happened at Pennsylvania State University, or sexually molested by a coach, as happened at Pennsylvania State University.

I guess the message for parents is: before you send your kid off to college, do your homework.

 

April 30

Protect Them from Free Speech

If this doesn’t disturb you, it should. Conservative writer Ann Coulter withdrew from a speaking engagement at the University of California-Berkeley because the university couldn’t guarantee her safety.

So have we reached a point in America where you might be killed for expressing an opinion?

This is the same campus where violent riots occurred when conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulus was scheduled to talk. About 1,500 people – including students – rioted, set fires, broke windows and threatened innocent bystanders.

I emphasize the participation of students because there is a simple way to deal with that segment – expel them. If the university has video of students participating in vandalism, intimidation and mayhem, those students should be expelled.

I may be stating the obvious, but rioting is not what college is for. If a student doesn’t realize that, the student shouldn’t be there.

In defense of the students, UC Berkeley claimed that about 150 “outsiders” garbed in black and wearing ski masks started the violence. Apparently unnoticed, these 150 violent instigators emerged all at once from – what? – 40 vehicles that pulled up near the campus and disgorged bunches of raving lunatics. All of that apparently went unnoticed by campus or city police. However, about 1,350 students noticed the agitators and were so enthralled by the black-clad, violent visitors that they rushed out and joined the fray.

The students are safe. The university isn’t going to do anything to discipline unruly students even if they are destroying private property and assaulting individuals. That’s why the various protest groups were gearing up to do to Ann Coulter that they did to Milo Yiannopoulus and anyone else with whom they disagree.

Yet the education of the Oh Gees, sometimes called snowflakes or cupcakes, continues. One of the best results of the 2016 election in terms of civic studies is that a great many of the OGs learned for the first time that there exists something in the U.S. called the Electoral College.

Now, the OGs are learning how to protect themselves – besides rioting – from the ravages of free speech:

• A group of Oberlin College students demanded “spaces throughout the Oberlin College campus be designated as a safe space for Africana identifying students.” Or, as we used to call it, enforced segregation, which Brown vs. Board of Education said was unconstitutional in a case celebrated by blacks throughout the U.S.
• Safe spaces might be discriminatory. Perhaps that oddest of all individuals in the U.S. (and this is why people come here) – an Iranian Jew – was horrified when she attended a Students of Color Conference to hear a great deal of anti-Semitism rhetoric. Really? Do SOCC people not see the hypocrisy in their own free speech?
• Cleveland State University offers a Mother’s Room in the Mareyjoyce Green Women’s Center, a safe and secure area that nursing mothers may utilize. My God, what did nursing mothers do before this kind of refuge was available? Well, they used to go to the woman’s room.
• The Safe Space Workshops at Loyola University in Chicago are introductory sessions that educate individuals who want to become allies of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA) community of the school. These workshops cover definitions, terms and symbols; LGBTQIA identity development; skills to interrupt heterosexist and sexist behaviors and attitudes; and resources for the LGBTQIA communities. Just a note for of you people that possess unusual proclivities: there are only 19 letters left in the alphabet for your special designation.
• At California State University-Los Angeles, faculty members actually linked arms to prevent students from entering an auditorium to hear a speech from nationally known speaker Ben Shapiro on the topic of – wait for it – freedom of speech. You know, when the teachers are off the rails, the students invariably follow.
• In a unanimous vote this year, the Undergraduate Student Government at Ohio State approved a resolution requesting various “Dialogue Spaces … meant to accommodate diverse and positive discussion within a safe space.” Apparently, there are no bars near the campus. Bars were where myself and others would discuss actual serious topics of the day, like would a draft lottery number of 212 mean you were going to Vietnam or not.
• And finally, A donkey has joined several therapy dogs to offer stress relief to students during Finals Week at Montana State University. Awwwwww.

April 23

A Stop on the Interstates

I would like just once to see the mainstream press use the word “infrastructure” without putting the word “crumbling” in front of it.

I just drove from Colorado to Missouri and was stopped or delayed ten times because of construction on state or interstate highways. That’s ten times in less than 1,000 miles one way; 20 times if you count my return trip.

But to read about the nation’s transportation systems, one would think nothing’s being done. In fact, Congress keeps talking about increasing the highway users tax on gasoline to generate more money for the transportation system … or museums.

Highway user tax revenue goes to some strange places – beach promenades, ferries that never get used, a privately-owned lighthouse that isn’t actually used as a lighthouse, a community center and so on.

I think if Americans could be convinced that the feds would use their gas tax money strictly for transportation repairs and upgrades, they might support a tax increase.

But back to the main point: if you have enough gas and a large bladder, you can drive from New York to San Francisco without ever encountering a traffic signal. The U.S. highway system is a marvel.

Yet every year, the American Society of Civil Engineers comes up with what they call “America’s Infrastructure Report Card.” This year, we got a D+. It’s the same grade the ASCE gave the U.S. four years ago. It was a D four years before that, and a D+ four years before that, and a D four years before that.

Well, the ASCE is not a disinterested observer. They would like us, as they recommend, to spend $4.59 trillion to bring our rating up to a B because these are the people who design and oversee infrastructure projects. So naturally they would like to see more funds available for these projects.

So I would like to point out that even though we’ve raised the gas tax under presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush, we always get low grades from the ASCE. And still, we drivers who like to take road trips know this: there are two seasons in the U.S. – winter and road construction season.

But I do have an idea to use highway improvement funds more effectively – stop extending the interstate highway system.

Interstates now go everywhere they need to go. There’s no pressing need to extend huge highways across any more pristine farmland. Extending the interstates helps feed urban sprawl. It contributes to global warming, if certain environmentalists are to be believed. It forms barriers to animal migration.

Take the highway users tax money and spend it all on maintenance and, where necessary, added lanes. If the states want to pay the whole cost of extending interstates, let them, but don’t use federal money to help.

At some point just short of paving every square inch of the U.S., we should be able to say the job is done.

April 16

Birds of a Feather

Dance Together

It’s springtime in North Park, Colorado. North Park is actually Jackson County, Colorado. The original incorporators of the county wanted to call it North Park County, but the state wouldn’t let them because there were bureaucrats involved.

So they chose Jackson County, supposedly in memory of Andrew Jackson, who many look upon as the founder of the Democrat Party. That’s pretty funny because there are so few Democrats here that they can all meet in a small office, which actually is where the Jackson County Democrat Central Committee meets every two years.

The county is sparsely populated. Although 1 million acres in size, we have no traffic signals. And don’t want any. Wildlife abounds. It’s not unusual to see a moose or three wandering through town destroying ornamental trees. Usually once a year we are warned by local wildlife officials that a mountain lion has been spotted in or near town.

You can’t drive through the county without seeing antelope. Elk are more reclusive, but about 8,000 of them live here.

But springtime is the season of the greater sage grouse. This is the one time of year they all get together to produce little sage grouse, and one might think that this annual gathering would be a good time for all sage grouse to be slaughtered.

The grouse gather at the same time and the same place every year. While these gathering places bear an eerie resemblance to a roadhouse, they are called leks. There are around 30 of them in Jackson County. At the right time, one can observe about 40 or 50 males trying to mate with about 25 females. Understand the roadhouse analogy?

So if I were a coyote or a golden eagle, that’s where I’d be in late March. There’s nothing particularly safe about a lek. It’s just a piece of ground out on the sagebrush prairie. Sage grouse aren’t particularly good flyers and certainly can’t outrun a coyote. Yet predation doesn’t happen, even though the grouse seem oblivious to what’s going on around them. I drove a pickup truck into the middle of the lek, and none of the birds seemed to notice.

They were preoccupied, you see. The male grouse wanders on to the lek and begins displaying. The display turns your ordinary grouse from a bland, grey and brown bird into an entirely different animal. It’s as if Barney Google entered the disco and transformed himself into John Travolta. For you millennials, it’s as if Jack Galifianakis walked onto the floor and transformed himself into Chris Pine.

Their tail feathers fan out into something looking like a circular display of daggers. Their chests turn downy white and expand to three or four times their normal size, almost engulfing the head. A couple large pectoral muscles appear as if out of nowhere. They make strange noises.

And one guy ends up in the middle of the dance floor surrounded by females. The big guy struts around, puffs out his chest, and the females coo and pose and primp. Does this all seem familiar?

Once in a while, another male will make a run at center stage. The big guy takes a break from profiling himself and chases the interloper off. This happens repeatedly. The other males circle center stage probably hoping the alpha male has a stroke or something. If I had to suck in my gut and flex and strut for over two hours, I’m fairly certain I’d have a stroke.

Around the periphery, there can be 30 or more males waiting for a shot at 15 females. There are fights in the corners. Two birds will get side by side. You actually can see them talking to one another.

“Your sister’s ugly,” one says.

“Oh come on, they all look exactly alike, you idiot,” and then they start whacking each other with their wings until one runs off.

I spent several mornings last week watching sage grouse dance. I would rather have spent at least one morning watching the latest Star Wars episode Rogue One – which at this writing I still haven’t seen – but we don’t have a movie theater in Walden. So we’re left to more real-life pursuits.

The sage grouse “dancing” goes on for a couple of weeks. Then they all go back to their regular jobs for the rest of the year. The problem for their employers is that they all want vacation at the same time.

“Where you going?”

“To the lek.”

“You went there last year.”

“I got reservations. What can I say.”

Besides being preyed upon by everything with teeth or talons, sage grouse don’t seem to be particularly bright. I stumbled upon a blue grouse – near relative of the sage grouse – in the woods. Instead of flying away or hiding, the bird started displaying, which meant if I hadn’t seen him before, I certainly saw him now. He was about ten feet away. That apparently is not all that unusual.

My friend Kent Crowder, who grew up in Jackson County, said he once witnessed a male sage grouse displaying in front of a golden eagle. These great raptors eat sage grouse. It’s one of their favorite meals. Kent said he disturbed the eagle when he came upon the scene or that would have been the grouse’s last dance.

Regardless, these birds have survived on the high plains for millennia. How, one can only wonder. But it’s good for us. We can actually sell tickets to take people to the leks in the spring. Really.

April 9

Why These People Are Being Picked Up

Illegal immigrants arrested in recent ICE sweeps:

• A Dominican national accused of murder.
• A citizen of El Salvador convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon. This individual admitted to being a member of the violent MS-13 gang.
• A Jamaican convicted of first degree sexual assault of a victim under the age of 11.
• A Mexican with a conviction of first degree sexual assault of a victim under the age of 11.
• Two people from the Los Angeles area convicted of cruelty toward a child.
• 17 from the Los Angeles area convicted of identity theft.
• 42 from the Los Angeles area convicted of domestic abuse.
• One from Phoenix convicted of using a fake Social Security number.
• 20 from the Chicago area who were previously deported and returned to this country, a felony.
• An Iraqi citizen with convictions for sexual abuse of a minor, attempted criminal sexual abuse and solicitation for sex.
• 58 people in the New York area with felony convictions, a history of gang activity or multiple misdemeanor convictions, those who re-entered the country after being deported, and those ordered deported by immigration judges.
• A Salvadoran wanted in his home country for aggravated extortion.
• A Brazilian wanted in his home country for cocaine trafficking.
• An Australian in West Hollywood convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child.
• 22 in the Kentucky area who had been convicted of crimes such as DUI, burglary, drug possession, wanton endangerment, theft and illegal re-entry.
• Ten of 13 members of the MS-13 gang rounded up in connection with the murder – by machete and baseball bat – of three teenagers in the New York area.
• Two 19-year-old Mexican citizens in the U.S. illegally who are charged with the murder of a man waiting for RTD train in Denver.
• A 45-year-old Ecuadorian man with a prior conviction of the crime of sexual abuse in the first degree. The victim of the crime was a female who was 22 years old.
• A 38-year-old Dominican man with a prior conviction of the crime of attempted rape in the 3rd degree. The victim of the crime was a female who was 15 years old.
• A 48-year-old Mexican man with prior convictions of the crime of promoting a sexual performance by a child.
• A 32-year-old citizen and national of the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a prior conviction of the crime of sexual abuse 3rd degree. The victim of the crime was a sixteen-year-old female.
• A 39-year-old Honduran man with a prior removal from the United States and a prior conviction of the crime of attempted forcible touching.
• A 24-year-old Guatemalan man with a prior conviction of the crime of attempted rape and larceny.
• A 36-year-old Salvadoran man with prior convictions of the crime of forcible touching and larceny.
• A 25-year-old Ecuadorian man with prior convictions of the crime of criminal sex act, second degree.
• A 22-year-old citizen of Mexico convicted in 2016 of felony sexual abuse of a child.
• A 23-year-old citizen of Mexico who was convicted of stalking and harassment by phone, reckless driving and overstaying his visa.
• A 42-year-old citizen of Mexico with three DUI convictions and entering the U.S. after being deported.
• A 42-year-old convicted Russian spy.
• 52 persons arrested in north Texas and Oklahoma, all of whom had prior criminal convictions for aggravated assault, assault, burglary of a vehicle, child abuse by injury, dangerous drugs, delivery of cocaine, fraud, driving under the influence (DUI), drug trafficking, felony marijuana possession, illegal entry, larceny, possession of a controlled substance, and reckless conduct with a firearm. Of the 52 picked up, 24 had DUI convictions.
• A Mexican national charged in a San Diego car crash that badly injured a 6-year-old boy was in the country illegally and had been deported at least 15 times. He has been charged with hit-and-run causing great bodily injury, driving under the influence of alcohol and driving without a license.

And so on.

These details were compiled from news reports from throughout the nation. What was surprising during this research it was possible to read long, detailed newspaper and TV reports of the sweeps without reading one instance of why people were taken into custody. So now you know.

April 2

Rudeness Rewarded

I ran across a couple of stories – I hesitate to call them news stories – of this nature: “GOP offers a fix for disruptive town halls: Avoid them.” And another in which a group was excoriating U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for not holding a town hall meeting.

So why aren’t Republicans holding open town hall meetings? Because they can’t. There are groups out there that have specific plans to disrupt such meetings by being loud, rude, and sometimes violent.

They scream in people’s faces, spit, toss out f-bombs, carry signs with such messages as “Grow a Spine” and “Impeech Trump,” have bull horns, surround the cars of visitors they don’t like, wear obscene T-shirts and generally are not at all interested in what the elected official has to say.

It doesn’t take a lot of screamers to completely destroy a meeting. They spread out in the room so it looks like there are a lot of them, they shout down any answers the elected official might have to say, interrupt people asking legitimate questions, provoke supporters of that official, and are loudly confrontational.

Just exactly what are the organizers of the meeting, or the elected officials staff supposed to do? They can’t escort the disruptors out of the meeting because then the Left says that’s a violation of the protestors’ rights. Plus, the candidate holding the meeting gets roundly criticized for doing that. The GOP is accused of brutality and infringement of free speech when in fact it is the disruptors who refuse to hear any kind of speech opposed to their own personal views.

These are not spontaneous demonstrations by disappointed constituents. These are organized, scheduled missions that have no other purpose than to prevent a Republican from saying anything in a public forum. And ironies of ironies, these same organizations complain when Republicans refrain from holding town meetings to disseminate their message.

That’s kind of why I referred to the stories about this phenomenon as not exactly news. The “Avoid Them” story was from The Washington Post, which literally every day finds something bad to write about Donald Trump and, by extension, Republicans. This particular story was based on a news release from the GOP that said Indivisible Utah – which is apparently associated with the Resistance – prevented supporters of U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz from even leaving their car.

The Resistance, if you haven’t heard of them, are anti-Trump people who have been officially recognized by Yahoo News (God, I love that name) as a reputable source of legitimate news. Thus we have Senior Political Editor Garance Franke-Ruta (actual real name) writing in the “Resistance Report” that Sen. Cruz made the “Missing List.” That, Ms. Franke-Ruta tells us, is part of an ongoing national campaign against members of Congress who are not holding town hall meetings.

So, when GOP elected officials hold public meetings, the meetings are virtually shut down by rude, crude and socially unacceptable disrupters. But if GOP elected officials don’t hold meetings, the disrupters protest because they can’t shut down the meeting.

Well, what would happen if Sen. Cruz held a town hall meeting? I will leave it to my few but knowledgeable readers to imagine what would happen, especially after Ms. Franke-Ruta announced all over the internet when and where that meeting would be held. And because they didn’t have anything else to do on Saturday night.

Here’s an example: A group one presumes to be hostile to Sen. Cruz has hung up posters around Houston headlined “Missing Senator.” They are assuming Sen. Cruz will not respond to an invitation to attend a meeting the disrupters have scheduled.

“I think it works because people don’t really hang up posters unless it’s a missing cat or something,” said Nisha Randle as she and others hung posters around Houston under cover of darkness. “They’re like, ‘Wait. That’s not a cat. That’s Ted Cruz.’ And then they start to read the poster, and they’re like, ‘Oh, snap. Yeah, Ted Cruz is missing.’”

Okay, I don’t follow that. But I’m not sure the “Resistance” movement quite measures up to what the French were doing during the Nazi occupation. Some examples from Yahoo News:

“The Cambridge City Council voted Monday night to call upon the U.S. House of Representatives to approve an investigation into whether sufficient grounds exist to impeach President Trump … Seven city councilors voted in favor of a proposal that asks the House to authorize its Committee on the Judiciary to investigate possible violations Trump may have made in the foreign emoluments clause, domestic emoluments clause, or other constitutional clauses.”

There must not be a whole lot going on in Cambridge.

Another item was that one good reason for impeachment was that President Trump declined to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opening day baseball game. Really. “Pro-impeachment sentiment was also visible on the opening day of baseball season in Washington, D.C., where Trump broke with presidential tradition and declined to throw out the first pitch, likely avoiding being booed by the region’s heavily Democratic residents — and baseball fans — in the process,” wrote Franke-Ruta.

Six people held up a big banner at the game saying “Impeach Trump,” and it became part of the “Resistance Report.”

Also: “The Insight Meditation Center of Washington, D.C., has announced that it will be holding Wednesday noon sit-ins outside the Longworth House Office Building as a form of protest against the current political chaos.” So I guess anyone else sitting quietly in the area will be counted as among the Resistance.

I tried to resist this temptation, but I couldn’t. I would just like to point out that if Ms. Franke-Ruta marries again, possibly to a guy named Frank Rota, she would become Ms. Franke-Rota-Ruta.

Well, it’s just as relevant as these “Resistance” tidbits.

March 26, 2017

News We Can Use

For those of you who follow the news (and if you don’t follow the news, these editorials are not for you), what was the most interesting story of last week or so? Something Donald Trump did or didn’t do? Something Hillary Clinton said? Something the Russians did or didn’t do?

I get my news mainly from aggregator sites – I sometimes call them aggravator sites – because I cancelled my mainstream newspaper due to extreme bias. I’m looking at two of those on-line sites now. The lead story on the first is Susan Rice denying that she illegally “unmasked” certain people. The other site reports that the EPA administrator “admits” climate change is real.

That’s pretty much what you get every day, but in my humble opinion the biggest news story recently was that a group of scientists in the United Kingdom has produced a filter that can separate salt from salt water. Right now, desalinization of sea water is a complicated and expensive process. It could get considerably cheaper.

The inventors made the filter out of a material called graphene, which was invented in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester in Britain. Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms that can now be produced with pores that allow only certain substances through. And the material is scalable so that the material can be produced to filter out almost anything. It’s scalable down to the atomic level.

That means anyone living near a sea or an ocean will soon be able to get unlimited amounts of fresh water at a low cost. That will have an impact on the world somewhat beyond what Paul Ryan opined about the health care bill today.

Another invention I stumbled across in my electronic wanderings was something called a Waterotor. This is a machine about the size of a sea chest that can be submerged in slow-moving water to generate electricity. According to the company, Waterotor can work in currents moving as slow as 2 mph. An estimated 1.4 billion people in the world live without electricity. They could drop this device in the nearest canal and start getting free electricity while they were down there purifying their water. A Waterotor also could have a far larger impact on a far larger number of people than those who hang on Chuck Schumer’s every word.

These stories got a mention somewhere, or I wouldn’t know about them, but I don’t see much on the news about these discoveries or what the impact might be in the mainstream press. I also stumbled across a story about a fellow who has developed a Lego-like toy that can conduct electricity. Soon you will not only be able to build a Lego Christmas tree, you can light it up. These things are called Brixos, and you can literally build electric circuits with them.

The point is that there is a lot going on in the world besides the peccadillos of our favorite politicians. There are people out there thinking and imagining and inventing, and not wasting their time crying about what someone somewhere said about something.

Hooray for those people. Invent on, and when Brixo goes public, call me. I’m all in.

March 19, 2017

On the Field of Dreams

Well, the Republican team is 1-1 in the young season. The team, the ones with the charging elephant on their jerseys, won a game at the Double-A level when they passed a repeal of some of the more onerous coal industry regulations instituted by the Obama administration.

But they lost the opener at the Major League level when they failed to repeal ObamaCare. “We just couldn’t get our big hitters to the plate,” said Manager Paul Ryan. He was referring to the Freedom squad, many of whom were on the DL (disapproval list) on game day.

Ryan’s team needed to run up a score of 216, but fell short. As a comic sidelight in the contest, Nancy Pelosi, manager of the Democrat team that wasn’t even involved in the game, claimed credit for the Republican defeat. “We accumulated our players on the one table, but that’s a different table, which they weren’t looking at, so we had to defeat them to find out what was in it for us to oppose it,” she said in her usually unintelligible way.

Many thought Pelosi would be fired after losing seasons in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016, but the old players continue to support her as long as she keeps putting them in the game, although it is odd to see in the last big game that the Democrat’s two main position players were 69-year-old female center fielder out there who among her other faults has difficulty running, and a 75-year-old shortstop whose best play was taking a dive for the team.

The season is young. The Republicans have two years to establish a record that may allow them to keep the team together by the time the mid-term contests roll around in 2018. But they have some big games coming up.

Next on the schedule is tax reform, a game that hasn’t been on the Congressional League schedule since 1986. Which is unusual because 82 percent of the fans have wanted that done for decades. “It’s kind of like getting the NCAA to allow football playoffs. It just takes a lot of constant pressure,” said one fan whose comments were found on an NSA wiretapped conversation with a Cuban prospect.

Team owner Donald Trump said he had no doubt that tax reform could be passed by August, but he had also promised that ObamaCare would be repealed. “We didn’t need that win,” he said after the game. “ObamaCare will eventually defeat itself. The salaries are too high, there’s no incentive to perform, and many of the players were drafted into the program. It’s gonna implode.”

Asked about the coal regulation repeal, The Donald shrugged. “It wasn’t a big game. Nobody was paying attention. They were all focused on what the Russian team was doing. A lot of sports sheets didn’t even report the results,” he said.

“But tax reform’s gonna be huge,” he added.

A member of the Freedom Squad whose comments were recorded and leaked by an Obama administration holdover in the FBI said, “Ryan’s going to have to have the same problem here as he did with repeal. The old game plan isn’t going to work. The fans want change.”

Asked what was “old” about the repeal bill, and Freedom Squad member said, “We didn’t promise to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with another ObamaCare. We promised to repeal ObamaCare. Period. And we also promised to post game plans for three days so the fans could read them, and we didn’t do that either.”

“You know, we weren’t as dumb as the Democrat team. We fired our last manager. The new one’s going to have to step up to the plate if he wants to win. He can’t just sit in the dugout and chat with the old guys,” he added.

Meanwhile, after losing approximately 1,000 playing slots after 2016, the Democrat bench is kind of thin. Many of the Democrat players, fearful of their careers ending in 2018, are still trying to decide from which side of the plate they will bat. Another big upcoming game is the Supreme Court nomination. Will they bat from the right side, as many did in 2006, or will they remain on the left side no matter what?

Well folks, we don’t know, because both the polls and the press were proved so wrong in 2016. And that’s why they play the game.

March 12, 2017

The Right Health Care,

or the Health Care right

I am getting confused by what’s happening in Washington as I am sure many of you are. So I called in an old friend from my newspaper days, Abdullah Oblongata. He was The Jackson County Star’s resident expert. Welcome back Ab.

Abdullah: Glad to be here. The surroundings are a little different, but I see your confusion is unchanged. What troubles you?

DustinBooks: Well, this ObamaCare thing. Congress repealed ObamaCare in 2015 without much discussion or debate. Now, they can’t seem to figure out how to do it. What gives?

Abdullah: You are right. Congress approved a bill to repeal ObamaCare. But they knew it would be vetoed because Barack Obama was still President. So they didn’t put a lot of work into it. The action was just for show in an election year.

DB: So why don’t they just repeal it again now that they’ve got a Republican President?

Abdullah: Because they weren’t prepared to have a Republican President. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton would win, and Republicans could just sit back and watch ObamaCare destroy itself. Now they have find themselves lacking an excuse for not dealing with ObamaCare as they promised to do. If they don’t, and ObamaCare crashes and burns (as it surely will), people will blame the Republicans. Now they have to deal with the repercussions of repealing ObamaCare, which is to say, with what are they going to replace it. It appears they plan to replace it with AmaboCare.

DB: AmaboCare?

Abudullah: Right, it’s almost the same as ObamaCare, but different.

DB: Do they have to replace ObamaCare with something?

Abdullah: Of course not. If they were smart, they’d just let it crash and burn. Not a single Republican voted for the law in the first place, and now with premiums and deductibles skyrocketing, it’s only a matter of a year or so before even Democrats would be demanding ObamaCare be repealed.

DB: But what about all the people who are insured under ObamaCare?

Abdullah: Well firstly, there aren’t that many, 9 million or so. Most people got coverage through expansion of Medicaid. But secondly, ObamaCare is a good example of why the government should stay out of businesses it doesn’t understand. They might want to take over everybody’s lives, but they’re not good at it. This country would work really well if the federal government would just stick to the powers enumerated for it by the Constitution, and providing health care is not one of those powers.

DB: But Bernie Sanders said health care is a human right.

Abdullah: And who decides that, Bernie Sanders? Can he declare that humans have a right to cell phones? Smart TVs? Cars? And once he’s decided that, is the government required to provide those things? Listen: Mankind got along without health insurance from about 4,000 B.C. to 1940. The United States got along without guaranteed health insurance for most of its history, until Lyndon Johnson came along. And think about this: health care costs didn’t start skyrocketing until the government got involved. Same thing with college tuition. When you get people involved in paying bills for any industry, and those people aren’t playing with their own money, costs immediately rise and keep rising. There’s no incentive to stop rising costs.

DB: I hadn’t thought of that. We became the most powerful and rich country on the planet without guaranteed health insurance of any kind. But what about this: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said because of the debate over ObamaCare repeal, Congress might have to put off tax reform until next year.

Abdullah: So what Mitch McConnell is saying is that he and his colleagues can’t handle two bills at the same time. That’s laughable. Congresspeople have million-dollar office budgets, large staffs, numerous committees, endless advice from lobbyists, and Republicans have majorities in both Houses of Congress. Maybe they should not take an entire month off in August if they can’t do they were elected to do.

DB: So what do you think is going to happen?

Abdullah: What always happens. Congress will establish a new entitlement – AmaboCare. It’ll cost billions, and the national debt will continue to grow until it’s unmanageable.

DB: That sounds rather gloomy.

Abdullah: I think we’ve moved from government for the people and by the people into government by catastrophe. When the collapse comes, we’ll find a way out and try not to repeat our mistakes of the past. But more people will suffer when that happens than will suffer now if some lose government mandated health insurance.

 

March 5, 2017

Back to the 19th Century

A lot of regular newspaper readers don’t know this, but the concept of journalism ethics didn’t really come into common use in the U.S. until around 1950. I think we can safely say that journalism ethics had a lifetime of about 70 years. We are now nearly back to where we were in the 19^th Century.

Most newspapers back then made no pretense about producing an unbiased product. They were unabashedly partisan, so partisan in fact that the Republican (at the time) Los Angeles Times declined to report the 1884 presidential election results for several days because the newspaper’s owners didn’t like the way the election turned out.

In the days before radio, television or the internet, newspapers were the kings of information, and they disseminated that information the way they wanted. “Fair and balanced” wasn’t in their reporting manuals.

Neither was strict adherence to the facts. In 1835, The New York Sun published a series of stories about an astronomer who had discovered the presence of trees and rivers on the moon. The paper knew these stories were not true, but the series gave a profound boost to circulation. It was an early example of fake news.

The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported in a study, “Editors unabashedly shaped the news and their editorial comment to partisan purposes. They sought to convert the doubters, recover the wavering, and hold the committed. ‘The power of the press,’ one journalist candidly explained, ‘consists not in its logic or eloquence, but in its ability to manufacture facts, or to give coloring to facts that have occurred.’”

Readers were used to this. It wasn’t unusual for a town, no matter how small, to have at least two newspapers. One paper espoused one political side, and the other, the other political side. In 1850, The Chicago Times was Democrat, and The Chicago Tribune was Republican. It just depended on what the owner wanted. Or as sometimes was the case, what the political party that financed the newspaper wanted.

People accepted this. They knew Paper A was going to support one guy, and Newspaper B the other guy.

And in supporting one guy or the other, there seemed to be no limits. Andrew Jackson’s mother was labeled, “A common prostitute that the sailors brought over for the benefit of the English Navy,” and Jackson himself was called “a murderer, a traitor and mentally unstable.”

When Abraham Lincoln first ran for President in 1860, he was labeled as “looking like an ape,” while his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, was described “as wide as he is tall.”

I went to journalism school in the late 1960s, and there I was taught that if you described someone who was “as wide as he was tall,” you had better have the measurements to prove it.

I graduated from the University of Missouri Journalism School, one of the claimants to the title of “first journalism school” in the U.S. It was founded in 1908, so clearly it took a long time for journalism ethics to take hold.

Now it looks like we’re going back to the way we were. I think I can readily say that one of the foremost newspapers in the U.S. is blatantly liberal and anti-Trump no matter what. That paper is The Washington Post.

We in the journalism community can plainly see this. Newspapers now would like you to believe they are fair and unbiased, and I’m sure this will go to the wayside before long. It’s not worth the effort. Why deny what you so obviously are?

But now, you have to look for the bias by what stories are covered, what stories are not covered, and to what bias the newspaper’s resources are committed.

Let’s look at college records. The Washington Post obtained Al Gore’s college transcripts and test scores from St. Albans high school, Vanderbilt University’s divinity and law schools and Harvard University. George W. Bush never allowed his college records to be disclosed (for the same reason I’d like my college records never to be disclosed), but The New York Times got ahold of them.

Recently, The Washington Post actually found a record of one of Trump’s aides being booed off the stage during a speech when the aide was in high school. What a scoop.

But as to the collegiate records of one President Barack Obama, the press found nothing. I’m not sure they even tried to find anything.

This is how it works nowadays, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. A successful democracy almost requires a free press, yet it doesn’t require a fair press. Most intelligent people can discern bias when they see it. And readership study after readership study shows that most people will read or watch or listen to interpretations of the news with which they agree.

It’s like some liberal trying to force Rush Limbaugh off the air while some conservative is trying to force Bill Maher off the air. It’s a waste of time. People who do not like Bill Maher are not going to listen to Bill Maher, and if there are enough of them, Bill Maher will leave the air on his own.

That’s how it worked back in the 19^th Century, and to the 19^th Century it looks like we will return. So vote with your feet, as they say. Don’t like your newspaper? Drop it and subscribe to another, or none at all.

But don’t condemn the industry. We need news reporters. They are the original sources of information. Google News, 118 percent of Facebook and most of social media posts cherry pick information from those original reports from the professional press.

And those reporters should learn one thing I didn’t learn in journalism school, but from being a journalist: it takes a long time to establish credibility, and no time at all to lose it.

Feb. 26, 2017

After 40 Years, Dropped the Paper

It really disappoints me that I have come to this point, but for the first time in my adult life I do not subscribe to a major metropolitan newspaper. For those of you who don’t know me, that’s a major statement because I was a newspaper journalist for 40 years.

Were it not for the Internet, I probably wouldn’t have let my subscription to The Denver Post lapse, but I can get my news elsewhere. Were it not for cable and satellite TV, I probably would not have stopped watching the nightly news on the three major television networks. But I did; I can now get my news elsewhere.

I may subscribe again, but I felt like I had to do my small part to object to the way the major newspapers, often referred to as the mainstream press, are slanting the news nowadays.

I ran a little test before I made my decision. I was annoyed that The Denver Post endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. But I understand major newspapers feel compelled to endorse. I never did that when I owned a newspaper because I felt that given enough information, people could make up their own minds without my advice.

However, if I had endorsed candidates, I would not have endorsed a corrupt politician for the highest office in the land. (Don’t think she and Bill are corrupt? What happened to the Clinton Global Initiative when neither one of them, for the first time since 1992, were holding or running for federal office? It collapsed, laid off 22 staffers. That coincided with a moment when neither one of them were in a position to extort donations. Pure coincidence, probably).

It might be some indicator of how the rest of the country feels about newspaper endorsements to know that 500 newspapers here and abroad endorsed Hillary Clinton; 27 endorsed Donald Trump.

But I didn’t cancel my subscription because of an endorsement. Then one day I picked up the Sunday edition of The Denver Post and read four lengthy stories in the A Section from The Washington Post. Four. I thought, “If I wanted to read The Washington Post, I’d subscribe to The Washington Post.”

I rely on my print news now from amalgamators, like Google News. Such organizations don’t originate news. They scan all the news from numerous sources and post them on the Internet. Do like I do, and every – and I do mean every – story sourced from The Washington Post is anti President Donald Trump.

This doesn’t happen by chance. I don’t know, but I believe that the assignment board at The Washington Post has a daily “Anti-Trump” category. I’ve worked at a large metropolitan newspaper, and I even ran it for one night. I know how you slant your news coverage. It’s how you select the stories you cover and what you will put in print. It’s not how you write the articles; it’s which ones you allow in your newspaper. It’s far more subtle to do it that way than to write your stories with obvious bias.

So I ran a little test. In three successive editions of The Denver Post – Saturday through Monday – there were 12 articles devoted to something Trump had done. There were 12 more articles, letters, columns and cartoons, decidedly in opposition to Trump, including one headlined, “Is Donald Trump Sane? The Evidence Suggests he is Not.” In those three editions, there was one article complimentary of the President.

So what, you ask. Here’s what. One of the things Trump did in that time period was to relax certain federal rules on coal production. Colorado is a coal producing state. It has several coal-fired electric plants. Large parts of the state’s Western Slope depends on coal mining and electric generation. Colorado is also a state with a large population of environmentalists and conservationists. We have a state law requiring a certain percentage of electricity generation must come from “clean” energy sources.

So you would think that would be news worthy of coverage in The Denver Post. The only coverage I could find was a Feb. 2 Associated Press article that mentioned the issue along with several others in a legislative wrap-up. This wasn’t an executive order. Congress passed a bill to accomplish this change, and President Trump signed it on Feb. 16. No matter what you might think of the action, you would expect that it would be covered as fairly important local news in this state.

Yet over three days after the bill was signed into law, The Denver Post found enough space to carry 25 articles devoted entirely to what Donald Trump did or did not do during those three days, and not a single article that I could find devoted to the coal decision.

I’ve heard similar complaints from other newspaper subscribers from around the country. It’s too bad, because democracy needs the Fourth Estate. But are we doomed? No we are not, and I’ll explain next week.

Feb. 19, 2017

A Doggone Good Outcome

I don’t believe there is a special place in Hell for those people who mistreat dogs, but there should be. I do believe that one the worst things people can do to a dog is to abandon it. It would be kinder to just shoot the animal.

Dogs have capabilities we humans don’t yet comprehend. We don’t fully understand why a dog would bind itself to a human, but they do to the point that they would give their lives for that human. And they stay bound even if the human turns out to an insensitive, unfeeling jerk.

So this is a dog story, or actually a two-dog story. If you’ve read my book, “Dog Tales,” you know that my dog stories happily. You can read on without fears or tears.

Case No. 1 involves two fellows who had a dog. The two jerks had to leave town, so they did, leaving the dog behind. Of course, the dog had no clue as to why he was left behind. Perhaps he had done something wrong. Or worse, in the dog’s mind, something bad had happened to his two humans. Hoping for the best, the dog faithfully stayed by the home waiting for his humans to return, which they did not.

The caretaker of the property where the two lived rescued the dog and brought it to a kind lady in town. The kind lady did what the two fellows should have done – took it to the vet for shots and spaying, and the local vet provided those services at a reduced cost ‘cause he also is a nice guy. At last report, the dog is staying with the nice lady until a permanent home can be found.

Case No. 2 involves what city people do through total ignorance, and that is to bring a dog out into the country and dump it. Their thinking, if one can call it that, is the dog will be picked up by some rancher or farmer and find a good home. As if ranchers and farmers already don’t have all the dogs they need.

Up where I live, the chances are much better that the dog will be torn apart by coyotes and eaten. Or by a mountain lion. Or a bear. Or a badger. This is not kind country for an inexperienced dog. Or perhaps the dog will simply freeze to death. Temperatures can reach -50º in the winter where I live. My current dog was dumped along a remote county road in Wyoming in February.

So this dog, who got the name “Buddy,” was dropped off in my county in the middle of winter. He trotted up to a local resort where the owners already had one dog and didn’t really need another.

But Buddy could do what dogs do – look really cute and forlorn. He was a black and white mutt. One side of his face was black, and the other side was white. It was as if his Designer had drawn a line right down the middle of his face. And on the black side, he had white eyelashes, and on the white side, black eyelashes. And of course, floppy ears.

And so the couple with the resort took him in. However, Buddy was just a pup and totally untrained (and unfixed). Although the nearest neighbors were about three miles away, Buddy would run over there and be a nuisance. And he was just generally disobedient. “He’s just not fitting in,” the resort owner concluded.

Then, when it looked like Buddy might be shipped off to the nearest rescue shelter, a man who owned a farm and his young son came to the resort to fish. It was as if Buddy knew that the boy needed a dog – him – as much as Buddy needed a boy. They bonded immediately. The ten-year-old boy and his father walked into the bait shop, and Buddy meets boy. After a little while, the father and son go out ice fishing. About two hours later, the resort owners let Buddy out, and the dog runs out the door, shoots across the lake, passes several other groups and runs over a mile, straight to the boy.

So now, the ten-year-old is talking to his father about keeping the dog, calls his mother about keeping the dog (“He’s going to be your responsibility, young man!”), and they talk it over with the resort owners, and that same day Buddy ends up going down to a big farm on the Front Range with the boy and his father. At last report, they are best friends and living a joyful life together.

I mentioned earlier that dogs have capabilities we don’t understand, and here’s a case where the dog knew exactly which human to select. And shame on the humans who dumped him along the road in the middle of winter. They might have hoped things would turn out this way, but they could not have known.

I think dogs have another purpose. They can show us with what humans we should associate, and those with whom we should not.

Feb. 12, 2017

The Democratica: A Greek Tragedy

Democrats mulling the immediate future of their party might want to examine the use of dramatic irony in Greek tragedy. In the classic Greek plays, the consequences of what the main character was doing gradually became clear to the audience, but never to the main character until the tragic end.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi never understood this. Pelosi probably thinks irony is a shop where clothes are pressed. Not to demean her unnecessarily, but she seems completely out of touch with what is going on around her.

She once said she had never used the term ObamaCare for the Affordable Care Act when she repeatedly had used that term. It was as if she was unaware that recording devices had been invented some time ago.

An ancient Greek audience would chortle at this, but the Pelosi character on stage would be oblivious to the reason for the audience’s amusement until the end of the play.

Harry Reid could be the main character in the next season’s play. In November of 2013, Democrats used a parliamentary maneuver to change Senate rules so federal judicial nominees and presidential appointments could advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators rather than the 60-vote supermajority that had been the standard for nearly 40 years.

The immediate effect of the rule change was to allow President Barack Obama to make three appointments to U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia without having to worry about a Republican filibuster. Reid, who really served as no more than a tool of Obama’s, must have felt pretty proud of himself. But it set a dangerous precedent.

It was as if he believed that Republicans would never take control of the Senate, or that a Republican would never again be elected President, because what would happen then? Answer: what is happening now.

Reid’s control would last one year. In the elections of 2014, Republicans won a majority of the seats in the Senate, and held on to that majority in the elections of 2016.

And horror of horrors, a Republican won the presidency in that same election. So now we have a situation – created by the Democrats – where none of Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointments can be blocked by a Democrat filibuster. And on Feb. 7, 2017, the one Cabinet appointment Democrats hoped to block – that of Department of Education Secretary Barbara DeVos – was confirmed by the Senate with a 1-vote margin, the deciding vote being cast by Vice President Mike Pence.

And not only that. Republicans now have a clear path to using the same parliamentary maneuver used by Reid to confirm a Supreme Court justice if Democrats threaten a filibuster to block an appointment – for life – to the next vacancy. Or the next vacancy after that.

One can envision the Athenians gathered for a play in the Theater of Dionysus gasping at the exquisite irony of Harry Reid’s machinations resulting in a conclusion absolutely contrary to what he had wanted or even expected.

If our imaginary modern playwright had the skill of Aeschylus, he would have woven into the series of plays depicting another Democrat scheme gone awry.

That would be then-Senator Joe Biden arguing on the Senate floor in 1992 that should a vacancy occur on the Supreme Court, the Senate should take no action on a nominee until after the election in November. The president at that time was George H.W. Bush, a Republican. The Senate was controlled by Democrats.

So when the reverse became true – a Democrat president and a Republican Senate – Obama’s nominee to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court in the last year of his tenure got no action from the Senate. Republican leaders cited the “Biden Rule” for their intransigence. The post remained vacant until after the presidential election of 2016.

OMG cries the Greek Chorus. That scheme hatched in years gone by now hath come to roost in the time of today!

And to this a Democrat columnist in 2017 exclaims: “The GOP ruined Supreme Court nominations.” Isn’t that a little like Nancy Pelosi exclaiming that she had never used the term ObamaCare?

The next play in the series might well examine what may happen in 2018. Republicans only have to defend eight Senate seats while Democrats have to defend 25. Ten of those Democrat senators are up for reelection in states won by Donald Trump in 2016.

Again, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Hillary Clinton was supposed to bring a Senate majority along with her win in 2016, except that the toga tails ended up belonging to Donald Trump.

Part III in this tragic saga of Democrat fortunes comes to an agora near you in 2018. But the gods are fickle, as Achilles learned. Arrogance was Hillary Clinton in 2016. Arrogance could well be Mitch McConnell in 2018.

Get your tickets now.

Feb. 5, 2017

Agreements on Immigration Issues

Let’s look at the immigration debate from a different perspective. Let’s create what I call a hierarchy of the indisputable. Of course, we can’t get 100 percent agreement on any point, but I consider anything above 90 percent as a given.

No. 1: The United States cannot absorb all of the people in the world who want to come here and stay here. That should be obvious. There are more than 6 billion people on the planet, and most of them live in countries far poorer and far less free than the U.S. Of course they want to come here. But we can’t afford to take them all. The welfare system would collapse. The education system would collapse. The economic system would collapse. The Republic would collapse. Imagine 300 million people pouring into the U.S. over a ten-year period. That’s only 0.0005 percent of the world’s population. What if twice that many wanted to come here?

No. 2: A citizen of a foreign country has no legal right under U.S. law to come here. It’s interesting to see how quickly some illegal immigrants get lawyered up. Also, it’s somewhat disturbing to see demonstrators carrying signs that say, “Freedom of movement is a human right.” No it isn’t. That might have been true is 300 A.D. when Attila’s horde could go wherever they wanted to, but not now. Every successful nation has curbs on immigration, like Mexico. That’s so they don’t become an unsuccessful nation, like Libya. And who exactly determines what is and isn’t a “human right?” If you think we should have totally open borders, see No. 1.

No. 3: There are bad people outside our borders who want to come here to kill and maim as many U.S. citizens as possible. Watch an ISIS video if you don’t believe that, or watch an Iranian mob shouting “Death to America,” or read the rants of some of the more radical Imams, or the musings of several of the murderers who did come here and caused mayhem and death. The San Bernardino “husband and wife” got into the U.S. by simply lying to immigration officials. Do we not want to keep those people away?

No. 4: We can force most nations to take back their citizens who are here illegally. The U.S. gives some sort of foreign aid to 96 percent of the countries on Earth. That amounts to $35 billion per year. I would just go to Dictator A and say take these fellows back or your aid goes down $100,000 per year for each one you don’t take back. And there are other levers the U.S. can use.

No. 5: Anyone who commits a violent criminal act in the U.S. that results in death or serious injury should be either deported or be in prison. I mean, really, that’s what we do with our own citizens. Do illegal immigrants have special rights that American citizens don’t have? The Obama administration released 87,000 illegal criminal aliens, including about 100 convicted of homicides, according to ICE. Is that okay with you? Not to me. That’s even unfair to American criminals who are doing time.

No. 6: There are nuclear weapons possessed by unstable nations. See No. 3. If there was only one single reason for enhanced border security, this would it. Pakistan, a nation that doesn’t know who is going to be running its government tomorrow, has nuclear weapons. North Korea, a nation run by a megalomaniacal nutbar, has nuclear weapons. Iran, a nation run by religious fanatics, will soon have nuclear weapons. They are not going to shoot a missile at us; they’re going to put a bomb in a cargo container and ship it to Long Beach, or put it in the back of a truck and drive it over the border. That’s another reason we cannot open our borders.

No. 7: A visa is a privilege, not a right. It’s just like a driver’s license. Getting into the U.S. with a visa and then not leaving or not reporting when your visa has expired is one step above sneaking into the U.S. and not leaving. It’s illegal, it’s dishonest, and it’s disrespectful of the laws of the U.S.

No. 8: Most of us are not opposed to legal immigration. We know how our ancestors got here. Heck, several polls show that a majority of Americans support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. So stop calling us bigots; there’s a difference between legal and illegal immigration.

No. 9: We are not going to deport the 11 million or so illegal immigrants who are already here. Again, a large majority of Americans are opposed to that. And again, it would be hugely expensive. I’m not talking about airfare. I’m talking about the legal steps that have to be followed to do that. The U.S. simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to accomplish a mass deportation.

Most Americans would agree on those nine points, I believe. And if I’m right, it seems to me we have an obvious path to immigration reform. So write the bill.

Jan. 29, 2017

Taking the Misses out of Mrs.

I was trying to figure out what tens of thousands of women wanted when they marched on Washington, D.C. I had the same problem as when I was trying to figure out what my wife wanted when she walked out the door.

So of course I went to Google to look at the speeches, and this is one example of what I got: “Yes, I’m angry, yes, I’m outraged, yes I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, but I know that this won’t change anything.” This from Madonna.

Me being a guy, I have to assume what Madonna wants is to kill the President, his family, and everyone in the White House even though that won’t change anything. I suspect that’s not what tens of thousands of women actually want, so I moved on.

“No hate, no bigotry, no Muslim registry!” said Alicia Keys. This is kind of like an answer a Miss America candidate might give. “What do you wish for, Miss Nevada?” She replies with a soft smile, “I want peace on Earth for all people.” How can you argue with that? It’s never happened, but it’s sweet that someone wishes for that. It’s better than wishing aloud for a $50,000 college scholarship, which is what they really want or they wouldn’t be in the contest, ‘cause that’s what the winner gets.

By the way, there is no Muslim registry in the U.S. being proposed by Trump, so Keys already got that wish. But I still don’t know what the rest of them want.

Michael Moore, who I believe is not a woman, was a speaker at the march. He wants people to run for elective office, although I suspect he only wants Democrats to run for public office. He seemed a little disappointed that Republicans have taken 1,000 elective seats from Democrats in the last eight years. Probably has nothing to do with Obama’s policies.

I think maybe that’s what all of the speakers wanted, but it’s hard to be sure because in all the great quotes from that weekend, I can’t find the word “Democrat.”

America Ferrera said, “The president is not America. His cabinet is not America. Congress is not America. We are America. And we are here to stay.” Well, fine. I think I speak for all the guys when I say that we are glad that all the women – the possible exception of Rosie O’Donnell – aren’t leaving. But what do they want?

Actress Mary McCormack, who starred in such movie classics as “1408” and “Private Parts” was sort of specific: “This time last year, it felt like we were on the brink of achieving gender equality. People were talking openly about campus safety for women, the wage gap, sexual harassment. We were all excited that the crescendo of this movement was going to be the election of the first female president.”

Okay, at this time last year President Barack Obama had been in office seven years and apparently failed to adequately address any of those issues, or why are these women so angry? And Hillary Clinton was the female candidate who never closed the gender pay gap in her own Secretary of State organization. So why blame us now?

But I’m trying to learn. “A movement is much more than a march. A movement is that different space between our reality and our vision. Our liberation depends on all of us,” said Janet Mock. I recall having a teacher who chided me for blathering what she called “glittering generalities” instead of answering an actual question. So Ms. Mock is seeking liberation of some sort, but what is it exactly in America that women cannot do? My initial response to the U.S. not yet having a woman as president is get a better candidate. Democrats could hardly have chosen a worse one in the last election. Maybe Ms. Mock should go to Saudi Arabia or Iran or the Roman Catholic hierarchy to discover a whole host of things women cannot do in those venues.

I persevere. “We recognize that we are collective agents of history and that history cannot be deleted like web pages,” said Angela Davis. Have you seen those Geico commercials where a guy delivers some inane statement and the voice over says, “Now that was a really bad quote.” Incidentally, history can be deleted. Next time you see Angela Davis, ask her how many Cathars are left in the world. Or better yet, ask a millennial any question about American history. Or the Electoral College.

And Jonelle Monae (I have to admit, I don’t know who a lot of these people are) said: “Women will be hidden no more. We will not remain hidden figures. We have names.” Okay. I was pretty sure you all had names, but this just confirms it.

I wasn’t getting a lot from the speeches about what women want, so I checked the signs: “Impeech” said one, to which I reply, “Spell.”

Another said, “Stand up for Science.” Good one. It’s kind of gender neutral, and it’s a good message.

And another: “These boobs were made for marching.” Not sure how to interpret that.

There were a bunch of others I wouldn’t put up on a family website, and none of them were very helpful. I did glean from the speeches and signs and reports that they all want the government to continue spending $500 million a year to support Planned Parenthood, a private organization that evidently offers services not available anywhere else. They should read the biography of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Very disturbing, this woman.

Outside of being in favor of unfettered abortion, I can’t say I got a lot out of the women’s march other that the latest fashion trend is a really ugly hat. I mean, it makes the wearer look like she’s hiding horns. That couldn’t be true, could it?

Jan. 22, 2017

A Great Foundational Principle

There was quite a bit of news prior to President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration about people who weren’t going to attend. I didn’t plan to attend. I kind of expected someone to interview me about my non-plans to travel to Washington, D.C., but no one called. I imagine most of the 330 million other people in the U.S. who didn’t plan to attend the inauguration also didn’t get called.

Now a lot of entertainers got some free press for announcing they were not going to attend, whether they were invited or not. I found it interesting that entertainers were declining to show up for a pretty big gig. Their choice, of course, but it seems like a bad business model. It’s kind of like a house painter refusing to paint.

However, 60 or so members of Congress refusing to attend reflects badly on those office holders. For you public school graduates, attendance at the inauguration is not compulsory for federal elected officials. But we have certain traditions for certain reasons. The peaceful transition of power from those in power to those who were the day before out of power represents a fundamental principle of our system. It should be honored and revered, not diminished by a bunch of petulant children.

What happened on January 20 of this year again tested our system, and again we passed. Donald Trump sharply disagreed with the governmental philosophy of Barack Obama. Practically all the political pundits in America – including Obama – expected Hillary Clinton to win the election and carry on Obama’s policies. But it didn’t happen. And because this is a nation of laws rather than of men, Obama and the Clintons must step aside, and step aside peacefully.

This amazes much of the world. Among the non-Trump news last week was the story of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who first refused to step down after losing his re-election bid, but then was forced to cede power by troops from neighboring countries. The Iranians had an election several years ago in which all of the incumbents got re-elected. This was announced about three hours after the polls closed. Iran uses paper ballots. Somehow, the election commissioners managed to count millions of ballots in just three hours. Russia’s constitution has term limits for its leaders, but somehow Vladimir Putin remains the top dog year after year after year. You think there were irregularities in our election?

This American foundational principle was tested early in the history of our nation. George Washington served two terms, from 1789 to 1797. Washington’s vice-president was John Adams, who served from 1797 to 1801. They were both Federalists, or those who believed in a strong central government. The Federalists were opposed by the Republicans – not the same party as today, but that’s what they were called.

John Adams ran for re-election, but was defeated by both Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both of whom got the same number of electoral votes. Under the 12-year-old Constitution, the decision on who was to be the next President was sent to the House of Representatives, which after 36 ballots, selected Jefferson.

It was a peaceful, bloodless coup that changed world history. The world was agog. Most rulers at the time were kings and queens, emperors and empresses, dictators and chieftains. They couldn’t imagine being replaced by a vote of the people. They couldn’t imagine going quietly even if such an event were to happen. Some had to be quieted through beheading.

John Adams didn’t take his defeat very well. He not only did not attend Jefferson’s inauguration, he left New York (where he inauguration was held) “like a shot” and never returned to the nation’s capital.

Jefferson’s victory took the Federalists out of power forever. This kind of thing would happen again and again, and Americans generally accepted the results. They didn’t go running into the bush and starting armed rebellions as a result of not getting their way.

That’s what makes the rioting and violent demonstrations so disappointing. The U.S. Constitution is the foundation upon which the nation rose from a third-rate coastal collection of rambunctious states to the richest and most powerful nation on the planet in just 200 years. Millions of people risk their lives on the chance to get here and stay here. None of those rioters would appreciate being deported to some other country; they’ve got it too good here. Who among those who announced they would leave the country if Trump were elected actually left?

Possibly the hardest thing Hillary Clinton has ever done was to attend the inauguration, but she was there. Kudos to her. The 60 or so Democrat members of the House who boycotted the inauguration should learn a lesson from that.

Jan. 15, 2017

The DMV and Me

One day, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper came to town for a small group meeting. He asked for two things he could do for my town. I suggested one hard task, and one easy task.

The easy task was to provide my county with a Department of Motor Vehicles officer or officers one or two days a month, maybe for just a half day each time, so our elderly folks wouldn’t have to drive a minimum of 140 miles to get their drivers’ licenses renewed.

Hickenlooper turned to his aide and said, “One or two days a month? That shouldn’t be so hard, should it?”

“Nossir,” said the aide, writing busily in his notebook. Needless to say, it never happened (and neither did the hard task. I have evidence that no one in the governor’s office even attempted to follow up on that one).

I understand that. I live in a county of 1,600 square miles with a population of about 1,350. Most of the county is Republican; the governor is a Democrat. So I didn’t really expect him to do anything, but why come here and ask? Why bother? Why not leave the people thinking you actually might do something for them rather than prove that you won’t?

But then again, even the people in charge of any DMV operation in the United States can’t seem to make that agency user friendly in any way, shape, or form. I have another friend who lost his license but can now apply for a new one. He called he DMV to get an appointment. He was on hold for 52 minutes before a human answered.

And another story. Our county used to have a part time DMV office. The state took it away. When I asked why, the response was that the state was eliminating all one-person offices because they were most open to fraud. Apparently, no one was looking over the shoulders of those one-person operations. Except that all cases of fraud in the Colorado DMV’s recent history occurred in large offices, not small ones. Ask any of your friends about their experiences at the DMV offices. Such stories are almost routinely and unanimously bad.

So what’s going on? Why can’t a DMV office anywhere in the United States operate efficiently in the best interests of he customers?

Part of the reason is that DMV offices are run by the government. DMV operations can be a vast repository of jobs for friends and relatives. Marge Simpson’s two sisters come to mind. You cannot expect competent and efficient performance from employees who cannot be fired.

Actually, they can be fired, but it’s difficult. A federal employee must be notified that he or she – let’s say she – is not performing certain duties. Then she must be given 90 days to improve her performance. If she doesn’t, her supervisor must write a report stating the reason for proposed removal. That gives the employee an additional 30 days during which she can file an oral or written notice disputing the reasons for her proposed termination. Then if actually terminated, the employee can appeal to an administrative law judge. And so on. Most states have procedures that mimic federal employment policies.

That’s why they have “rubber rooms” in the New York school district. It is so difficult to fire a teacher that administrators would like to just get them out of the way. They put the bad teachers in rooms where they sit and chat while still getting paid.

I think a good idea might be for a state to take a certain region and privatize the DMV as an experimental program. It shouldn’t be that hard. The office space already is there; the computer systems are already there; the records are already there. All a private company would have to do is train up employees for what is essentially a clerk’s job, and pay the state a fee for office rental and records services.

I also think that if I were running for president, part of my platform would be a federal requirement for states to deal with DMV customers within 15 minutes or lose their federal highway funds.

I’d get elected.

Jan. 8, 2017

Naked and Afraid

I’ve been watching this show called “Naked and Afraid” in which a man and a woman are dropped in some wilderness area with only three chosen pieces of equipment to survive. But no clothes.

This show has been on for seven seasons and miraculously, none of the contestants has been killed, although one producer was bitten by a fer-de-lance, one of the most poisonous snakes on Earth. Yet the contestants still agreed to go through with the show at that same location.

Another contestant contracted dengue fever and was hospitalized for a time. Another was burned by boiling water. Another drank tainted water and had to be airlifted out with the temperature of 104º. But the producers keep putting these people in caiman-infested swamps and lakes, freezing cold mountains, shark habitat, snake infested marshes and African savannas with all manner of creatures that kill people.

And they’re naked, except you don’t see private parts on the show. Those are blurred out by technicians before the broadcast, so the producers probably enjoy the show more than we do.

The show works like this. Two people, and man and a woman (although next season there is going to be a LBGTQPNY contestant) with usually a pot, a flint and some sort of knife, are dropped into a wilderness. They have to spend 21 days wherever they are plunked down, but can tap out anytime.

This is designed to reflect a real-life situation. Say you were flying over the Amazon Basin and your plane comes apart. You and one other person are thrown into the air so violently that all your clothes are ripped away. Through some miracle of wind currents, you are deposited unharmed in the jungle next to a pot, a flint and some sort of knife. Happens all the time, I’m told.

What usually occurs next is the two people build a hut of some sort and basically sit on their naked asses for 20 days and then stagger out of the jungle. It isn’t a good lesson in wilderness survival.

The show’s producers give the contestants a “survival rating.” This one gal went into the wilderness, did nothing, let her partner do all the work, but still tapped out after four days. They lowered her survival rating from 7 to 4.2. I was wondering what do you have to do to get a 0. Die?

Then there was another lady who went into the jungle despite the fact that she was a vegan. And she didn’t know beans about how to find fruits and vegetables in the jungle. Her partner went out and killed a snake, but she wouldn’t eat it. After 19 days of self-induced starvation, she had to eat something. All that was available was a grilled rat. Vegan justice, I say.

Then there was a guy who became despondent after having killed a lizard about half the size of my pinkie finger (which he cooked and split with his partner). He tapped out after four days because he missed his family. Didn’t he anticipate this when he applied for the show?

And then there was a whole group that ate some African fruit. Many of them became violently ill because the fruit was contaminated by parasites and bat feces. The viewer might not get to see women’s boobs, but the show’s producers don’t mind showing them throwing up.

I like survival shows. I live in a part of the country where some of those skills might come in handy some day. But “Naked and Afraid” is a little too out there. I can’t see myself getting stuck in that situation under any circumstances. But my guess is the show will run until the inevitable happens – it becomes a weight-loss program.

Jan. 1, 2017

Why not to go to Mars

Mars is trending today.

Seemingly hordes of people have acquired a sudden interest in the Red Planet and also have acquired a desire to go there. President Obama set a goal of sending a human to Mars in the 2030s. Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk wants to sent a mission there ten years earlier. There is a TV series about the first colonization of Mars. Everybody wants to go.

My question is why.

In my opinion, the most incredible scientific feat of the 21^st Century was the United States gently setting down two robotic rovers onto the surface of Mars in 2004. They were named Spirit and Opportunity.

Just doing this represented a stunning accomplishment. The Europeans tried it last year and failed. The U.S. did it twice. Jan. 3 is the anniversary of Spirit’s landing on Mars. It had a design life of three months operational time on the Red Planet, yet it operated until 2009 when it got stuck.

Opportunity landed on Mars three weeks after Spirit. It also had a design life of three months. Opportunity is still operating. And here is a list of the biggest discoveries the pair of rovers sent back to Earth:

• Evidence of ancient volcanic activity on Mars.
• Evidence of wind erosion.
• A temperature profile on the surface of Mars.
• Iron-rich spherules about the size of a blueberry; origin unknown.
• Evidence of water on the planet eons ago.
• Evidence of ancient hydrothermal systems.
• Proof of Earth-like cloud formations.

Although “Knowledge is Good” as we learned from the movie Animal House, return on investment is better. What those eight discoveries have in common is none would induce a treasure hunter to leave his home and TV.

We can certainly go there … at enormous expense. The Spirit and Opportunity missions cost $1 billion. NASA estimates a manned mission would cost $100 billion over 30 to 40 years. And all the evidence says there would be no return on investment, nothing that Mars could produce that would do much more than sustain life there. So it might make a good prison planet.

However, if NASA and Musk or someone else wanted to go into space for a useful purpose, they should go to the asteroids. There is a fascinating website called “Asterank” that assesses the value of asteroids. There’s a list of 300 of them. Ian Webster created the site, which uses information from the best scientific research available. Look at this:

• Asteroid 1998 KU2 is composed of nickel, iron and cobalt. It is worth $80.32 trillion, and the estimated profit margin for mining it and bringing the material to Earth is $12 trillion.
• Asteroid 2000 BM19 is worth $18.5 trillion and its owner could net $3.55 trillion. BM19 has the added advantage of numerous close approaches to Earth. Not all asteroids dwell solely in the Asteroid Belt.
• Poseidon has an estimated value of $33.2 trillion and a profit margin of 3 trillion. Poseidon is composed of platinum and nickel iron.
• Tiflis has an estimated value in excess of $100 trillion. It is composed of magnesium silicate, aluminum and iron silicate.

Many of these asteroids not only contain valuable minerals, they also contain the elements necessary to provide fuel, habitation and even oxygen for visiting space craft.

Asteroid mining is not science fiction. We have sent space craft to every planet in the Solar System and many planetary moons. Energy is space is free. Mining in space does not pollute the Earth. In fact, if humans seriously started mining asteroids, we wouldn’t have to mine on Earth at all.

You might say that there probably are valuable minerals on Mars too, but to get those minerals back to Earth, you have to lift them off Mars. In space, you don’t have to do that. Theoretically, you could move the entire asteroid to Earth orbit and mine it here.

There already is a company seriously trying to do asteroid mining. Deep Space Industries (with the help of the government of Luxembourg) has put up a satellite to test its technologies. Its next step will be to send a prospector robot to an asteroid, possibly within the next three years.

I’m mildly disappointed that Luxembourg is supporting the next logical advance of mankind into space, but somebody is going to do it. What company wouldn’t want a $3 trillion profit on its balance sheet?

As a footnote, Moon Express, a company that wants to mine the moon, has managed to secure permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to land on the surface of the moon. Excuse me, but who gave the American FAA jurisdiction on the moon?