Trump Transition and the Usual Blame Game

 

The long knives are being unsheathed at both ends of the elitist political scene, both Democrat and Republican establishment players, all in efforts to protect their critically threatened turfs. Those who have long suspected in a means of collusions between the duly entrenched of the two parties to defend their mutual interests are about to watch as the proof will be represented by the allied and mutual attack front put forth from both camps. Their target will be every last appointee and proffered candidate to fill out the cabinet and others in the thousands of positions President Elect Trump will be needing to fill by the time he takes the oath of office. We have already seen some of the attacks coming from the political spectrum presumably from both ends. There have been assaults on the suitability of John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani where remarkably they were both accused of warmongering and of displaying poor quality in their choices in previous positions they held. The proof was their unwavering support for Israel which was translated into attacking nations solely because they threatened Israel and not due to any threat they might pose against the United States. Oddly enough the nation given as the example was not the usual Iraq War but the support for bombing the nuclear sites of Iran as such only is a threat to Israel. I guess Iranians chanting every Friday “Death to America. Death to Israel,” and their referring to the United States as the Great Satan and Israel merely the Little Satan is evidence of their not being a threat to the United States but solely a threat to Israel. The inclusion of Rudy Giuliani was due to his having attended the 2012 Paris rally of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian dissident group that was on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Well sure, that makes him a neocon warmonger if ever there was one. Anyone caring to read Rachel Marsden’s reasoning can find it in this article titled, Trump Shouldn’t Choose a Neocon as Secretary of State. Needless to point out, she would likely also be against either of these solid conservatives from holding any appointment under a President Trump.

 

A group of Democrats have already called for an investigation and possible grand jury to look into members of President Elect Trump’s transition team as having broken campaign laws for having worked towards the election of Donald Trump should now forbid their working on his transition. Who, one might ask, would these people expect to work for the President elect’s transition team. Probably Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank would pass inspection but surely not any supporters of Donald Trump. Another group had come out against Trump calling into service anybody from Wall Street or who have held high office in any of the Fortune 500 Companies because of their ties to big business. These people solely want tried and true political appointees who are simply retreads of the very people who have gotten the United States twenty-trillion-dollars in debt and have been all but totally unable to balance a budget and then stick to that budget rather than break the back of the budget at the first opportunity to spend additional funds for the worst of reasons, to stimulate the economy from Washington D.C. If there is one thing we all should have learned by now, it is that no amount of spending from Washington D.C. will ever create as many jobs as cutting taxes an equal amount will cause. Monies from Washington D.C. always seems to have caveats and cut outs which result in political allies getting wealthy and the people becoming that much the poorer. Perhaps the time has come to try and run the Federal Government in Washington D.C. as a corporate board which meets to solve problems which are impeding progress at the state and local level and otherwise simply seek ways of trimming the Federal Government back to the barest of bones as possible. We all know that should the Federal Government outside of border enforcement, military defense budget, and foreign policy be cut by sixty percent that it would still mismanage just as well as it does now but would do so with much greater efficiency on each dollar spent.

 

John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani
Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank

 

A number of honest researchers and academics, yes such people do exist as Thomas Sowell and Ben Stein both have proven repeatedly, have sought for the entire Federal Government take each and every law and legislation previously passed and still enforceable, every single regulation written, and all other forms of Lawfare or enforceable code or related orders including every standing executive order to be reviewed. These Constitutionalists propose a simple test be applied, does it pass as Constitutional and if so under what Clause or Amendment. Anything surviving such review need undergo another test, does it impinge upon the restrictions of the Tenth Amendment. Anything found wanting is to be dissolved, repealed or otherwise stricken from the record. The governance that remains would find great pleasure and support from the common man. Of course we could never count on the government to all but slit its own throat thus such will never happen as long as the people are not demanding such. Still, to dream is one of the few pleasures which has yet to be regulated and taxed, but the government is most assuredly working to repair such oversight.

 

We can expect the assaults to rise after every name is floated, leaked or, dare it occur, actually be named as intended for a position in the Cabinet, Ambassador, Under Secretary or any of the myriad of positions; there will be a cacophonic clamoring in the media with editorialists, guest columnists, political expert testimonials and general discontent from letters to the editors not to mention the full page ads in the New York Times, the paper of record for such political shenanigans, discounting these individuals character, suitability for service, previous suspected faults, previous faults somehow gone unmentioned till now, reprehensible views, complete lack of a nuanced approach and potentially a general threat to the governance as we have known it. That last one in particular would be seen as a compliment and endorsement here at BTC. We could use a few people who call into question the current modes of operation in government and hopefully mix things up in such a way that some of the less necessary parts fall away, that would be wonderful. Still, the coming negativity will be double the norm as both party machines will be working overtime to tie President elect Trump and his coming administration into knots so tight that they never manage to fill a single position, especially Cabinet posts and then demand to know why the Administration was unprepared for what will come directly due to these pointed attacks aimed at subsuming any power or functionality from the White House.

 

Hopefully President elect Trump has researched how previous Presidents facing such universal opposition courted the necessary coalition of politicians in order to carry out the responsibilities of the Presidency. One of the earlier Presidents facing opposition unlike any President previous or since was President Lincoln but his resolute and severe actions would not be tolerated in today’s political climate. A President just as forceful but who played within the boundaries was President Truman. His down home charm, though many who opposed him might witness otherwise, and force of will came through and he has only gained in stature over time. President Lyndon Baines Johnson played hardball as well as having collected a lot of credits with members of Congress and was not above using brutish dirty politics when necessary and will not win you many friends, and Trump needs friends almost as badly as he needs allies. Then there was President Reagan who knew the art of a deal and also realized the most powerful weapon in any politician’s armory, the people. As long as a President can reach the people, something a President need not even rely on the mainstream media to accomplish today, and explain in simple, understandable terms what they desire to accomplish, the means by which they can reach those goals and how such will benefit the average man, then that President has his secret weapon, the will of the people supporting his programs. Yes, the media can play just as hard at that game and even attempt to twist, spindle and mutilate the President’s message sixteen ways come Sunday, but the President can reach the people in a manner even the media will find difficult to blunt. The President can even use the media fighting his proposals as a selling point with the electorate as divided as it appears to be today. Still, all a President needs is a decent start and some positive results. Nothing sells like success and we bet Donald Trump is as aware of that adage as we happen to be.

 

So, where can a President Trump turn for such victories which will help the average man and family across the nation even including the left and right coasts, or should we say the left and the other left coasts? The first and most obvious and the one place President Trump already has the support of the people, repealing and replacing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare. The best ideas in this case are the most simple and direct measures. Simply propose that the few and best measures such as insurance companies cannot refuse coverage for preexisting or chronic conditions and set the increased percentage allowable for certain widespread conditions such as spinal injury, diabetes, HIV and maybe as many as a dozen such conditions. Further allow full portability of one’s health insurance and a deductibility of all healthcare costs including insurance premiums up to a set figure, perhaps five-thousand dollars. There could even be a set price for a simple plan which cover only major medical such as emergency room treatment provided further in hospital treatment is required such as being admitted or setting a broken bone or other trauma or injury treatment but not to allow use of an emergency room as your physician to treat colds, flu and other minor medical needs, cover surgical procedure, cancer treatments and other major medical needs. This once was exactly what medical insurance was for coverage and everything else was one’s personal responsibility but government and work provided insurance pushed such cost effective measures off the road and replaced such with expensive regulations, paperwork, government mandates and soon medical costs were beyond reason. Finally, allow insurers to sell their insurance in any state once they offer plans across any state lines. Provide coverage in two states your plans are available to any state you wish to offer coverage while insurers wishing to take advantage of situation is one state or a few choice states can restrict their own areas of coverage but the states will no longer control who may offer insurance and as long as an insurer meets federally set minimal coverage, they will be able to be licensed in any state. Increasing competition should control prices bringing to an end the spiraling health insurance and hospital fees. Another ready to roll would be a tax simplification and reduction proposal. Such would also stimulate the economy and show results within a few months. If presented in a proper format then taxes on industry, corporations, companies and a rollback on regulations which stifle business coordinated with a simplification and reduction in taxation of the regular tax payer might get an entire package through Congress. Such easier to press through accomplishments could be used as their advantages begin to be evidenced to gain popular support for other needful legislation. One of the main items from day one must be the liberation of the energy industry from the oppressive regulations often pressed through by fiat of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) or by Executive Order. Both forms of restrictions can be removed just as easily as they were imposed and completing the Keystone Pipeline would be a jobs program in and of itself. Drilling permits should also be issued as should fracking and allowing BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and limited Park Service lands for grazing would also give farmers and ranchers greater freedom to expand and better serve the people. Environmental restrictions which have unfairly favored solely the electric car for the benefit largely of General Electric and a few heavy political donors and have all but destroyed the development of the hydrogen powered vehicle should be repealed and the playing field leveled allowing all alternative fuels and sources for power to gain share of market equal to the quality and desirability of their product. These are but a few of the areas where government does not belong and time has long been coming where the entrepreneur is released from the shackles placed on too many industries by government.

 

The environment will be damaged will be the cry of the leftists. They will decry the sins of the United States ignoring the transgressions of many scales of magnitude more damaging by China, Brazil and much of the developing world. If they truly desire that the United States improve the carbon footprint of the world, they should be calling for programs where obsolete environmentally cleansing technologies are replaced in the coal, oil, gas and other power generation plants and taken by the government to be provided and installed on power plants in nations who have no such pollution treatment and mitigation technologies. Having lived long enough to remember chokingly bad air days in Los Angeles, seeing the brown inverted bowl over Denver coming down from Ft. Collins and roasting hotdogs and marshmallows over the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland as it burned in August of 1969 and reading that year of the death of all fish in Lake Erie. All the above mentioned problems are ancient history and there are fish in Lake Erie, the Cuyahoga River has been cleaned and air quality across the United States is excellent by comparison. China had to all but close down the entire area for more than three weeks when they hosted the Olympics so as to provide breathable air for the games and the athletes; otherwise, the air quality would have affected their performances and their general health. That is a reality which need be repaired. There were similar restrictions for the Rio de Janeiro games held recently. There is much which can be accomplished with simple, ready to install technological upgrades which Western companies, especially those of the United States, could be provided using older technologies which are obsolete in Western nations but would benefit developing nations. The same can be done for potable water supplies and virtually every area of environmental technology. As such technology proceeds making older technology obsolete and it is being replaced, the old technology should be made available to developing nations and could be a central part of assistance to these nations bringing them into the developed world and improving their standard of living. Innovative thinking and planning are friends and the means to making friends, and who doesn’t need more friends?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The State Versus Religion and Family

 

In the most recent times there has seemingly been a war waged over who is responsible for raising children. This battle was best epitomized when Hillary Clinton came out and stated at the 1996 Democrat National Convention as if it were established fact, “It takes a village to raise a child,” (Full Speech Below). The entire speech may have been her best presentation despite her almost Al Gore like metered cadence throughout the entire speech though once in a while she appeared almost attached to or excited by what she was proposing and her meter increased briefly. But the advice that the village, a euphemism for the government, is vitally interested in the raising of the child is a direct threat to the stability and autonomy of the family. This has become the watchword for the school teachers who receive additional training through approved courses which instruct that the teachers and school nurse or other medical officer and the principal are the first line of defense against improper ideas and concepts from being introduced to children because parents have been known to introduce archaic religious “indoctrination,” their phrasing, not ours, which must be instead replaced with the new age socialized concepts where the whole society teaches that which is beneficial to the society instead and above that which is beneficial to the family. The society is known by another name, another reference and that is government. But before we can even address the war against parents and government as the first parent of every child, we must first look back at an earlier conflict between science and religion which morphed into a battle between government and religion and has brought us to the world we have today.

 

 

The first concept required is to realize that all relationships whether private, public, familiar, governmental, religious and whatever; can be studied as living entities where the healthy and most adaptable grows in scope, influence and power and the lesser entities wither and eventually die. The earliest times in human existence, even before Homo Sapiens appeared, the basic unit was the family. This was because most of the groupings were clan based and one could tell your stature, standing, history and almost everything else about you by your name as it was an indicator of to what clan from which you arose. Different clans would have cooperative agreements often sealed with the exchange of women to show good faith and create and actual binding between the two families. This also served genetic diversity thus avoiding to some extent the genetic failings such as hemophilia and other disorders. With time clans merged to forge stronger and more capable collections which would supersede the family or clan unit. These groups were the first tribes which granted greater genetic diversity. All of this arose before the first modern man but was instrumental to development of complex society. The tribes grew to include numerous clans with some better at hunting and others at gathering knowing what was and was not edible while still others showed aptitude for healing and tending the young. In these more primitive conditions there were those whose task was the care of the youngest children but as they grew they would be trained in the skill they showed the best attributes by others such as a huntsman would train the young hunters, the gatherers would train the next generation of gatherers and so on. Tribes also began the concept of history, then simply known as the story. The story was one which was uplifting and always made the hunters as great warriors defending the tribe and the gatherer who risked life regularly trying new untested fruits and vegetables and if they survived and approved the tribe would add another plant to their diet which could have allowed the tribe to use previously unexplored lands. Such a person who would live to old age was likely rare but one who had along with the oldest hunters who reached an age where their use became telling of the stories. These positions evolved to become the job of an entire group who were to be the first priests who would eventually weave a set of codes which made the first religions.

 

With the onset of herding and farming, the time of city-states appeared and by now the tribal leaders were chosen by some method of testing or perhaps a single family’s eldest surviving son at the time of their father’s demise became the next ruler and the age of government had begun. It is important to note that the family was the initial and earliest defined obligation followed by clan and then tribe. With tribe we had the loosest governmental forms but religion grew into an actual class with priests who may have also been a warrior class which led the defense or assaults taken on by the tribe. Finally, about the time of the first cities, which would soon become city-states, did actual government take root amongst mankind. This was the first time that there would be actual laws enforced with proscribed punishment or at least delegating the one who proscribed the punishment for a particular crime. There came formalizations with religion already having led the way in this and they were followed by government. There came positions assigned with likely the first being the close guards who protected the ruling figure, then the ranking members of an enforcement group, the forerunners of modern police and judicial system. Often times the judicial system was also run by the clerical priest class as they were also the most learned class. This started the initial conflict between religion and government, even when a wise leader tied religion and government, blurring the difference and thus granting themselves the highest position in governance and religion. This was exactly what the Pharaohs of Egypt did when they proscribed for themselves a godly aura and was closely imitated by the Caesars of Rome.

 

There were a few exceptions to the basic complete authority of the governing leader or even the governing and clerical leaders which we have discussed a few times before, and that was the Torah which was the founding document for the Israelites who became over time today’s Jews. The rules given approximately three-thousand to three-thousand-five-hundred years ago were the framing of some of the ideas used by the Founding Fathers when drafting the United States Constitution leading to the proposed tight restraints on the Presidency. Such restrictions such as a President being withheld from granting themselves property or wealth derived from their knowledge of government workings nor could they simply invent and apply laws without the consent of Congress and were made answerable to both the Congress or the Supreme Court should they stray from the defined limitations of their office. These concepts along with the right of a state to leave the Union if they would so choose and do so in a prescribed manner and other limitations on a President were badly damaged or destroyed by Abraham Lincoln who basically became the government during the Civil War as he all but declared formally a State of Emergency permitting the President all but unopposable powers. Still, the limitations which were first set in Torah, the laws given at Mount Sinai in the book of Deuteronomy 17:14-17 which found their way even presumably to the present day in limits on the President of the United States and were placed as the very first laws limiting the powers and impositions of Kings where it read:

14  When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,”
15  you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. One of your own communities you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who are not of your own community.
16  Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You must never return that way again.”
17  And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself.

 

Meanwhile, somewhere between the gathering at Mount Sinai where the Israelites responded to the coming giving of “The Law” said, according to many translations, “We will obey and we will listen,” and today in much of Europe and the developed world where the people would not even listen to the religious codes and laws, let alone obey them as religion has been supplanted by government and the new priests are the lawyers who believe themselves the ultimate interpreters and applicators of the law twisting it to their will and whim. At some point around the rise of Persia and the rise of Rome religion and government became permanently separated in what would become Europe and much of the rest which came under either Greek or Roman rule. This began the contest between the two main centers of power outside the family unit. At that time the two still crossed boundaries with government infringing on religion for their advantage and religion infringing on government very much to their advantage. A sign of both comes as part of the Inquisition. Where it was an obvious usurpation of prosecutorial powers taken into the hand of the Church striping that power for the priest class who acted as judge, jury and often executioner, their prosecutions were also abused by government to destroy adversaries or other challenges to the throne or regional power structures. At the same time King Philip II of Spain used the purification edicts from the Church in Spain to raise and launch the famous invasion fleet of the Spanish Armada against England and Queen Elizabeth I which ran afoul of vicious storms and the fleet of English gunboats which were smaller, faster and more maneuverable capable of passing between the huge troop carrying Armada frigates who when firing at the English fleet had their shot pass over the top of the low slung English ships and simply blasted the other Armada ships in their own fleet. Almost all of the Spanish ships sunk and the remainder limped home and that ended this threat to England and its Church of England, a Protestant Church closely tied to the Tudors after being created by Henry VIII. The creation of the Church of England was another perfect example of religion out of the needs of the ruling monarch. Henry VIII needed a divorce which the Pope refused him; so he made his own Church after he went home.

 

Spanish Armada of Giant Frigates Holding Hundreds of Troops
and Cannon Ports Only capable of Shooting Over the English
Fleets Comprised of Sleeker and Low Slung Ships with
Deck Cannons and by the Hand of G0d Seen as the Weather

 

Over the ensuing years as science explains more and more of the unknowns and all appears to be explainable, the place of religion has diminished in the developed world. The need for religion to explain those things we did not understand had been greatly diminished but the final understanding is just as far out of the grasp of science now as it has ever been. The question surrounding the why, what and who caused the explosion which science has named the Big Bang is unknown and seemingly will remain unknown for the foreseeable future. Using Einstein’s equation of E=MC2 where ‘C’ is the speed of light which is times itself and multiplied just by the weight of the objects in our own little solar system and one gets a very large number and should that computation be done for all of the presumed objects just in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and that number almost becomes unimaginable and finally, if we add the viewable estimated number of Galaxies which the Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope took of a postage stamp piece of the sky thought to be virtually empty by all previous observations and that number is unimaginable by the average physicist, let alone the rest of us (see image below).

 

Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope Picture
Each Smudge and Pinprick of Light is an Entire Galaxy

 

Using science as a weapon of ultimate destruction, government in the developed world has assailed religion attempting to make any religious belief or system presumably archaic, its practices the equivalence of a rain dance, the prayers comparable to a voice at a séance, and its commandments, covenants, decrees or other rulings as the equivalence to Ouija board revelations. Concurrently government has replaced religion as the determiner of right and wrong, the provider of charity, the reason for a Sabbath renamed weekend, collector of alms as an integral portion of taxes and slowly rendered any expression of religious observance unacceptable in public. About the only suppressive action government has yet to take concerning religion has been to make religion illegal. The reason is likely because should they actually make religion illegal, religion would likely make a comeback just because it was outlawed. Especially any reference to Judaeo-Christian ethics,codes, holidays, prayer, deity, prophet or Bible passage, the government put the final clasp subduing even the slightest religious thought from the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, ignoring the dangers, those in governments are permitting Islamic religious teachings claiming that it is study of culture and comparison of governance and civics. This plus an extra-judicial importance placed on a statistically insignificant threat posed by anti-Islamic acts which have remained relatively constant since 2002 after a noticeable rise in the second half of 2001 while anti-Semitism acts are rising in some locations many folds but these acts are minimized or completely ignored. There have been those who have theorized the governments’ in the developed world preferences for Islam stem from the Islamic anti-Semitic and anti-Christian ethos and actions. This may also be behind the initial rush for European and developed nations taking in of “Syrian refugees” while not considering taking in Christian refugees facing persecutions in the Sudan and other nations in the Middle East and North Africa.

 

Finally we get to the family and the initial start of governmental infringements on the family unit. One of the initial assaults on the family used the equality for women fight to weaken any male claim of being better suited at any particular field of employment due to the differences which were previously thought to differentiate men and women. The most ridiculous of the denied differentiations was the strength requirement as it was agreed that strength requirements for men had to be restructured for women such that they required a similar percentile for women to be passed. One of the first to be altered was the strength testing to be a firefighter. The requirement for men to carry a full body double along with his fire suppression and breathing gear including wearing the mask down two flights of stairs and out of a building under fire simulated conditions had to be scalable. They had to take the weight of the dummy and scale it to meet the same percentile as women as it took for men to pass as well as scaled gear weight and so forth. This required new sized dummies and smaller breathing apparatus and other expenses just to train and test women applicants. The argument made by one Fire and Rescue company in court that in an actual fire the size of the person who may need be carried would not be scalable was rejected when they had a number of fire squad captains admit that they often set an order of people entering a building or if inside chose the largest and strongest to be tasked with such carries and thus the test really was not about actually carrying a real person from the building but actually a strength test and thus would meet those requirements for scalable testing. This argument was also the initial scaling of military combat arms testing including for Ranger, Green Beret, Seal and other special forces testing and training. The real aim was just as much blurring differences between men and women and removing any male dominated jobs from having such as their label. This blurring has continued that there exist work environments where the surname for all employees has been simplified to the unisex denotation using the letter ‘M’ for both genders. Then came the real punch to the gut, when some schools began to use a new picture book titled “Heather Has Two Mommies,” to depict that a family was not the conventional one of a Mom and one Dad. Such attacks were later continued with any combination which desired the status of a ‘family’ to be so denoted.

 

The gender wars and war on conventional definitions continued and we even saw women enter the military training at all levels until today women have been cleared to serve in any combat role even in actual combat condition, though this has not been tested to the best of our knowledge, not even in Europe where such equanimous ideas go to be tested. There was the court challenge against the classical definition of the family in a number of states establishing the right for other than heterosexual couples to adopt children. Eventually, we suspect, that multi-coupled relations will also seek equal rights in adoption as well as tax codes dealing with deductions for married couples where communal communities will be permitted treatment as what will likely be referred to as a ‘greater family’ or a ‘communal family’ and demand they receive treatment equal to a traditionally defined family. Eventually, through whatever means are required, the definition of what constitutes a family will be so weakened such that a person suffering from having multiple personalities will be able to be granted status as a family. Then, as with religion, the government will claim that they are the ultimate family and thus children will be raised by a licensed individual who will soon become a government employee much in the manner that teachers are now government employees. In an age gone-by, some name it the frontier age but really was anywhere a town was small enough and in an unpopulated area where there is no overseeing governance, when the citizens, particularly parents, desired a teacher who was knowledgeable in what was called the three ‘R’s (Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic, they were very adaptable) the wealthy peoples or person would hire a teacher and the one-room schoolhouse would be erected by the townsfolk and that was how early schooling was accomplished. Eventually the town would grow where grades by age groups, usually the young, middle and advanced groups, and multiple teachers were required, where in some fortunate places the wealthy people still provided the salary for the required teachers but eventually the entire community would jointly provide the teachers’ salaries with each parent paying their share according to the number of children they placed in school. This would eventually become some form of taxation collected by the governing body who also hired teachers and this will eventually become the department of child-rearing with the law eventually requiring all children to be raised from birth by the government.

 

Caring, educating and making every individual dependent on the state for everything from birth to death, cradle to grave care, thus makes everyone completely comfortable with doing exactly what the governing bodies demand. Just pray that by that time some overseeing the governing has been taken over by a self-repairing computer system and not by very fallible human politicians such as the wonderful and kind imbeciles who are elected or appointed in far too many societies for such to become all-powerful. Still, it is the nature of any organism, be it an individual organism, a collection of similar organisms, a collection of differing mutually beneficial organisms, a collection of balanced organisms, a collection of prey and hunter organisms, an organism composed of a collection of organ or any other imaginable system of organisms as such as today’s political class where they are dependent on others on which they prey (we are somewhat unsure which class they fall into to be honest) which exist in the many strata which we find defined in our modern society. The government grows by replacing existing and often very functional systems by meddling and regulating until they have subsumed the entire system and then they start to lower the expectations such that they are able to claim by the lowered standards how government run programs are superior. They will always point to the area where by their own defined criteria they prove to be superior. Often the criteria they point to first is inclusion as they will find groups which was at the margins or preferably outside the margins of the private run systems were capable of including and claim superiority due to the sheer numbers served. This has been evident most often with schooling where minorities of students are able to afford private school and the public education system serves all including those who would be unable to afford private school at the current cost. What they hide is that should they give parents a voucher which can only be used for attending private schools, that the very students they point to would easily be able to afford private school education. The truth is that there would be an entire market of schools which would educate children for less. The same would very likely be true in other government run institutions, but government has two basic advantages; first is they accomplish the assigned tasks with the minimal amount of effort from the people served and, even more importantly, they can make their providing of the assigned services required to be provided by government trained and licensed individuals thus making only government the sole provider by law/regulation.

 

The last thing which is an evil by which government grows and makes the government the beginning and the end in all places government desires to control is the power of laws made by fiat and without review by elected officials. The Federal Government is the most guilty of this intrusion and dictation over the people without review by the people’s elected representatives. This mechanism is known as regulations. The House of Representatives and the Senate will all too often pass legislation which sets goals and not mechanisms and then assign the flushing out of the how to accomplish these goals to a cabinet or department within the government to figure out who, what, where, when and how these goals will be defined and met. They do this without any input beyond the vague and often amorphous set of goals even leaving the final definitions of the goals and then formulate regulations. http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10871/Sunstein/ target=blank>Cass Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to be his Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Regulatory Affairs and assigned to review existing Federal Laws and find those laws which would allow for new and varied regulations to be fashioned in order to complete desired acts, actions, positions and requirements desired by President Obama and his team of Czars so that they could accomplish policy goals without involving Congress. Many of the regulations which Cass Sunstein wrote will lay waiting for complimenting laws and regulations to be passed or written and then they will also be applied. Very few if anyone other than the President and his former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs actually know all of what was found, written and sitting waiting for the appropriate time that these regulations will be required for government to accomplish another expansion of its powers. The regulatory route is what is most vital for government to grow and expand into new and various areas.

 

Sometimes one is required to look back centuries and research deeply into cultures and societies in order to see that which has changed. One area where this is particularly true is printing. There have been some radical advances in printing made because of computers but that is more in preparation as when printing mass numbers of items such as newspapers and books, the methods used have remained very constant since the invention of moveable type which was where each letter of the alphabet and each number from 0 to 9 along with spacers and punctuation were made on individual pieces as blocks and thus could be arranged in any order. With enough of each particular block one could print many pages of the same letters very quickly. Before that invention printing was done by a specialist carving out a master copy reversed often in wood and it would be used but had a limit on how long they lasted. Additionally, the letters carved into the master were permanently in place and could not be used in another page. A whole new master would need to be made. Before this method, things were even slower as the only people making books were a few crafts-people known as calligraphers and specialist Monks trained in calligraphy. Books in these times as well as anything else we would print today and requiring more than one copy were all made each copy by hand individually. The Monks trained in calligraphy would spend their entire lives on one book if many, many copies were required and those who had the finest styling and abilities would be permitted to make copies of the Bible. Making a Bible was the highest form of calligraphy. There are still some who are studied in this art who are hired to make such books and these books are rare, often one of a kind, and are extremely expensive, some priceless. There are still books and scrolls made today by hand. Torah scrolls are one such example and are written by trained Rabbis who often spend years making a special Torah scroll and months making normal Torahs. Just for the record, the government used to hire private companies to make their respective printed material such as pamphlets, maps, tourist informational material, records of Congressional actions and other necessary items. Today most of these are printed by the government with a vast number done at their Pueblo, Colorado printing facility. Of course all money is printed by the government at the mint. Thus far, schoolbooks are written and printed by private companies often following set guidelines set by, you guessed it, regulations. These regulations are changed at intervals as the government, the Department of Education, change their requirements or decide to emphasize different concepts. From some of the most recent textbooks we have read, it appears that much of what we were required to learn in school has changed drastically and not necessarily for the better. Concepts such as whole word recognition which replaced phonics and sounding out worlds, new math or newer new math, and history as well as civics texts have changed drastically. There is a reason so many college educated students know so little about history and government which may make for great fun on the Lettermen Show but is less funny when these same people vote. The lack of making informed choices was made, if one follows the news, obvious to many ‘informed experts’ by the two choices made as the candidates for President by the two major parties. We believe it could have been worse, but it might have been better. Our closing remark is a quote from Thomas Jefferson. It may be a reference to Jefferson’s comment to his nephew Peter Carr, “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” As noted in Jefferson to Peter Carr, Paris, August 10, 1787, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 12:15.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Israel Elections are Upon Us Tomorrow

 

Now it is weeks, though it seems like years, since the government was dissolved and it is March 16, 2015, the day before elections. When these elections were called by then Prime Minister Netanyahu and the right wing Likud and Jewish Home voting with the opposition to dissolve the Knesset, the going media commentary reported the coming floodgates being opened and the guarantee that Likud and a coalition of purely right wing parties would win well over the necessary sixty-one mandates and not need to include what had proved to be the troublesome egoistic parties of Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua (The Party) or Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (There is a Future) in the coalition. This was presumed to permit the formed right wing, nationalist and Zionist coalition free of the attempts to form a coalition cutting out Likud, Jewish Home and including Labor and other parties finding a coalition to assume power without any elections, an unprecedented virtual coup by Lapid and possibly Livni. The tenor of the campaigns has revealed the designs on power and the Prime Minister’s seat by Livni and Lapid have been thoroughly revealed beyond any doubt. Tzipi Livni forged a coalition with Labor in order to guarantee her Hatnua Party inclusion in the next government despite it polling beneath threshold and has even finagled to share the Prime Ministership with Yitzhak Hertzog despite not having the backing from the public warranting her attaining such an importance while Lapid made some commentary that should he garner the support he dreams his Yesh Atid Party will garner then he had already figured how he could form a coalition as well placing him in the Prime Minister’s chair. The biggest change since the new elections were called has been the media’s slanted coverage and misrepresenting positions and using questionable polling have potentially drawn the results of the election into question and currently the leftist media have placed the Labor Hatnua misnamed “Zionist Camp” as having a comfortable lead and claiming that Likud and Netanyahu are sinking and soon to be thrown from power. The truth be told, the future of Israel will rest on the next government coalition’s ability to hold the line and resist the growing pressures and demands from United States President Obama and his administration’s attempts to require Israel to return to the pre-Six Day War lines leaving half of Jerusalem and all of Gaza, Judea and Samaria presumably under the rule of the unity Fatah-Hamas-Islamic Jihad governance. Such would place virtually all Jewish holy sites beyond Israeli borders and thus not only beyond the reach of any Jew to visit but also likely to be just as destroyed and razed as if these holy sites were surrendered to ISIS. But the real question is what exactly are the Israeli elections being held tomorrow actually addressing beyond who becomes Prime Minister and who would make the best Prime Minister from those who actually might have sufficient mandates to form a coalition, Tzipi Livni/Yitzhak Hertzog power sharing of two years each, Benyamin Netanyahu, Yair Lapid, the leaders of what is referred to as the Arab Block or Naftali Bennett?

 

Before anything can be considered, we need to define the greatest challenge which the new incoming Prime Minister will face once a coalition has been formed. Oddly enough the greatest challenges the next Prime Minister will face will not come out of Europe, from the Unity Government of Fatah/Hamas/Islamic Jihad, from the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, nor from the United Nations. The challenge will come from what many, including many who desire to be the next Prime Minister, believe to be the closest of Israeli allies, the United States. The good news is that the threat coming from the United States does not have universal acceptance as the Congress remains strongly allied and friendly and supportive of Israel though a few too many actually still believe in the two state solution and the Oslo Accords, nor does the threat come from the majority of Americans where Israel still received support by over a ratio of two to one and still approaching three to one. The menacing threats against Israel are formidable and very adept at arousing support from thousands who will be available to man the parapets and be bussed all the way across the country when called upon. These forces came out from coast to coast and north to south to protest presumably racist police presumably having targeted and murdered a gentle giant in Ferguson, Missouri and then in another confrontation in New York City and these demonstrations have been sustained for months even despite the murder of two police sitting in their cruiser in New York and the shooting and severely injured two police standing in front of the Ferguson police station monitoring the protest taking place across the street. The grand juries in both cases found the police not to be at fault and to have acted within the guidelines of their departments and not to have committed any criminal acts. So, we have already witnessed the ability of President Obama and the assistance by Attorney General Holder generating protests despite the innocence of the police even after the evidence being combed through with a very fine toothed comb and still not establishing any culpability of the police. The only accusation they were able to uncover was what was referred to as “Disparate Impact” of arrests and traffic stops, a statistical fact which would very probably be true in virtually every police department with more than twelve officers. Read the article on >a href=http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell031015.php3 target=blank>“Disparate Impact” by Thomas Sowell>/a> for some depth and truths as only he is able to explain and so far better than my modest attempts.

 

The ability of the Community Organizer in Chief and his Attorney Instigator along with such supporting advisors such as Samantha Power, Susan Rice, new Middle East National Security Council appointment, Robert Malley, are all known for their antipathy towards Israel and have other fellow travelers with some of them even being Jews who are more close with their progressive politics than they are to supporting Israel will present a formidable assault team just waiting for the new Israeli government before they launch their broadsides. The appointment of new Middle East National Security Council Advisor Robert Malley was the final straw which removed all doubt of where President Obama was intending to head concerning all things Israel. Looking back all the way to 2008 and Senator Obama’s initial run for the Presidency and we find his appointing Robert Malley to his foreign advisory team and then firing him shortly thereafter due to protestations from numerous Jewish organizations. When Robert Malley was appointed subsequently to head the foreign relations with Iraq and Iran President Obama made assurances to numerous progressive but still pro-Israel organizations and groups that Malley would be restrained from and never deal with anything concerning Israel. Now that the Jewish vote cannot affect President Obama as all elections are gone and he is in the home stretch so is free to do as he pleases and no longer care whose toes he treads or even stomps on while he finally can act to take out those he wishes to destroy but was unable before to act too overtly. Israel is at the head of that list and is also partially behind the leniency being shown the Iranian nuclear program as President Obama has been supportive the leader of the Shiite world and plans on crowning Iran as the new hegemonic power in the Middle East supplanting both Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as allowing Iran to be the nuclear balance against Israel. This is behind his plans to make any agreement with Iran as an executive agreement which will be considered a guideline which will be considered to be advisory and not binding thus not a treaty as much as an understanding such that President Obama will claim he can bypass Senate ratification as this is not a treaty or any other binding agreement covered by the Constitution of the United States. This was the advisory out of Iran in response to Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton’s open letter to Iran’s leaders signed by forty-six Senate Republicans where they basically echoed exactly the points made by President Obama about why the Congress, even the Senate or especially the Senate, will have absolutely no say in what is agreed upon in the P5+1 and Iran talks. President Obama has now not only gone to the extreme in his desire to remove Congress from any actions he desires to take but has dived into the deep end in challenging the Constitutional restraints presumably limiting President Obama in his final two years. This bodes poorly for Israel as no matter whom Israel elects and President Reuven Rivlin chooses to form a coalition and succeeds in doing so.

 

President Obama announced his intentions almost as soon as he took office when he stated that the solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict would be the forming of an Arab State using the Green Line, the 1949 Armistice line, as the border. President Obama then forced a building freeze on Prime Minister Netanyahu which officially lasted for ten months but has unofficially continued ever since with announcements for tenders to build but somehow the required documents or authorizations always manage to get hung-up and the structures never get built. There has been little if any delay in the destruction of Jewish buildings ordered by the Supreme Court though Arab buildings with similar orders seldom have the demolitions carried out. During the war in Gaza against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which was brought on by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli youths followed soon thereafter by daily increased rocket and mortar attacks on the Israeli southern towns and kibbutzim closest to Gaza with the range of attacks growing daily as well until they struck Tel Aviv, then began the war as such attacks had to be halted, President Obama decided that a single ground-to-ground rocket which landed approximately half a mile south of Ben Gurion International Airport was sufficient a threat to cancel all flights by United States carriers from entering Israeli airspace thus closing the airport. A number of European nations also forbid their airlines from using Ben Gurion International Airport. These shuttering of Israeli airspace was despite the knowledge that there was an Iron Dome placed south of the airport plus two other Iron Dome units in the proximity guarding Tel Aviv and Jerusalem which made it next to impossible for anything launched from Gaza of threatening any airliners. There was also the additional requirement inserted between the United States and Israeli militaries which under war conditions are by treaty allowed to resupply Israeli needs straight military to military without need of further validation then being required to receive State Department approval which prevented any resupply of Israel during the conflict in Gaza. This was a breach of treaty and an illegal act which President Obama simply ignored the law of the land as treaties take on once ratified. This exhibits that President Obama has no regard for treaties, agreements, requirements of the United States Constitution or the need to include Congress in any action where such is required by that same Constitution and thus is ruling as if he were Emperor Imperialist of the United States and placing himself above the law. These acts by President Obama are setting precedents should he be permitted such and allowed to trample the Constitution and its limitations on Presidential power that will in the future allow for the destruction of the rule of law and replace it with an imperial presidency which will further take the United States into being under the rule of man, a very dangerous place. This is exactly how President Obama plans on acting, with complete contempt for Congress and with impunity when it comes to empowering Iran and destroying Israel in every way possible and simply daring the Congress to stop his actions.

 

President Obama will also make it known to Arab leadership that should they desire to take Israel before the Security Council that the United States is prepared to abstain from and vote and will withhold its veto whenever able and that they may count on such being the default position of the United States for the remainder of his term in office. This leads Israel to a very dangerous place where if those who have made it their campaign promise and predicated their every statement to promising to repair any supposed damage which Prime Minister Netanyahu may have caused between the Israeli government and the administration of President Barack Obama and by working with President Obama in establishing the two state solution by whatever means are required. These statements have been issued by many who are referred to most often as centrists or center left but not any referred to as far right wing or nationalist backers of the settlements causing an impediment of peace. One must wonder as to what those supporting the two state solution plan on doing should Mahmoud Abbas refuse to make peace unless a complete return to the Green Line with no swaps and a total right of return as well, will they grant the whole set of demands when President Obama advises that they accept these terms as it will be worth doing so as it will finally bring peace. There have been a few statements from Yitzhak Hertzog where he parroted the answers given by Benyamin Netanyahu when they appeared to a debate between them just this weekend, but I have doubts that Hertzog would really stick to such a position if President Obama demanded he surrender all of East Jerusalem as well as Judea and Samaria while accepting five or more million refugees from all the refugee camps and probably beyond as any Syrian refugee who might find an opening to claim refugee status not from Syria but from the Palestinian refugee centers which were in Syria before the civil war. Such an opening if permitted could add near countless refugees being foist upon Israel drowning Israel with Arab refugees who would vote Israel out of being a Jewish state at the very next elections. Probably the best Prime Minister Israel might elect would be a brick wall or whoever comes closest to resembling a brick wall when it comes to surrender to the whims and wiles of President Obama. The unfortunate truth is that the President of the United States would allow Israel’s complete and utter destruction as to it being the homeland of the Jews, and as such, a Jewish State. As to who might be such a person, well, that will be left to the Israeli voters tomorrow and the one promise is that, whoever is chosen to form a coalition will be forming the fate of Israel and the Jewish people in their hands, may they be capable hands guided by G0d and may they be girded with the truth, that by International Law and treaty the lands from the west bank of the Jordan River to the beaches on the Mediterranean Sea, every square millimeter of lands belong to Israel and though all other rights are granted to the inhabitants, the Israeli government is empowered to decide who is granted political power and thus may vote in Israeli elections. This was decided by the fifty-two nations unanimously, the entirety of the League of Nations, in 1921 with the ratification of the San Remo Conference which was further validated by the United Nations Charter Article 80 which recognized the Mandates and all other standing treaties and conferences from the League of Nations remained valid and fully applicable and backed by the United Nations as if enacted by that body as well. Perhaps whoever becomes the next Prime Minister of Israel when standing before the United Nations General Assembly next fall, assuming the next government makes it that far, can read to the assembled the contents of the San Remo Conference and remind them of Article 80 of the United Nations Charter and thus put an end to this futile debate which is invalid simply due to International Law which so many claim to desire. Perhaps it is time to give them the truths about International Law and how it may not be the friend they think it be.

 

Beyond the Cusp