One Single Change Would Wipe Out 90% Congressional Corruption

 

If you spend any time on social media you can only come to one conclusion, graft is everywhere except with the less that powerful. The wealthy get away with everything up to and even including murder, though murder is the toughest one to escape. Congress has far too many members who spend three terms, or even two, and if one is astute, one term and walk away as multimillionaires. Many people ask as to how this can be. Many understand and know why this can be and often is. Senators and Representatives are covered by laws which exempt them from insider trading. So if there is a defense bill coming to a vote and the members of Congress know that in six weeks it will pass, it will easily give company XYZ a multi-billion dollar contract which is hundreds of times more than their budget for the previous five years combined. XYZ stock is selling at $1.23 a share six weeks out, so many, but not all as they take turns according to seniority, buy a thousand shares. The bill passes and Wall Street lights up and within two days that stock now sells for $327.77 a share. The Congress members sell their stock at this point making over $325,000.00 for a six week and two day investment in a stock because they cannot be charged with insider trading. This simple trick goes for much more than defense legislation and at every level of government. In the little township, county, city or borough where you live they repair roads, bridges and build parking garages and hire companies to manage all kinds of government projects. Going into such contracts these are often small family businesses with under twenty-five employees and just initially making stock options. That places their stock initially on the volatile IPO (Initial Public Offering) market which is usually the home for high risk, high reward investors and not for the faint of heart. But when you know that a small operation is about to receive a multi-million dollar, multi-year contract that market becomes far less risky and investing becomes a sure bet. This is the sleight of hand, crooked investing which can be found throughout government at all levels. Often those who would prosecute such criminal acts are also clued in on investments when the opportunity is great enough to allow a broad group to make huge benefits without actually raising too much attention. This is why you find so much money going into governmental elections and influencing because the returns are far beyond the pittance invested. Giving a number of city electors a hundred thousand dollars into their election funding and then after they defeat their opponent who received one fifth the amount they will receive multi-million dollar contracts and the city electors investing wisely become millionaires within a few years and move to Tahiti if they are smart, or buy their own newly charted island and refuse extradition to the United States.

 

This is nothing new as it has been how the Senators in Rome maintained their wealth and how the Caesars ruled over these Senators distributing government monies to those who supported them and not the others. The first Caesar, Julius Caesar made a single mistake, he kept the money with the people and refused to feed the graft machine which was the Senate and the commanders of the legions. This resulted in his big day on the Senate steps where he was made into a pincushion using tens of knives as the pins with the final pin, some claim the fifty-first knife, plunged into Caesar’s back by Brutus, “Et tu Brutus?” Wars were fought throughout antiquity to steal the wealth and enrich the King and their closest advisors and generals who commanded the troops protecting the King and winning their wars. Eventually rulers figured out they could simply tax their subjects and by taking a small to modest amount from each subject reap great wealth. Some rulers made the fatal mistake of figuring that if a modest amount granted great wealth, then doubling the tax would double their wealth. That failed as once you cross a critical point draining from the economy the economy becomes unstable and the gravy train dries up and the people revolt. So many greedy kings found their people to be revolting right before they met the guillotine, the sword or other form of execution, some far less noble at the hands of the rabble. Governmental systems have changed, governing has not. Governing is still how to provide the people with sufficient services and comfort while stealing as much as the market will bear enriching the governing. Can this poisoning of government be rooted out and extinguished? Probably not for as Campaign Finance Reform should have taught the people of the United States is that no matter how you rig the game and what you do to take the money from the hands and supporting structures of the elected public servants, they will simply invent some way around the laws, appear not to actually control what they are forbidden, have an indirect but close knot control of these funds and will make away with the wealth in the end. What is more diabolical and evil are those high government employees who are just below the appointed position who are civil servants, thus presumably untouchable by those in power, gaining wealth through careful investing and manipulation of portfolios to take advantage of information which comes across their desks as part of enacting the particulars of legislations. This has gotten far more prevalent as the legislation leaves the entirety of the building and enacting the structures to fulfill the demands of vague legislations thus allowing much of the distribution of contracts and such to these civil servants. There is little chance that these civil servants are all so clean as to not make investments or find other means of enriching themselves. There are far too many very wealthy government employees whose salaries are less than twenty-five thousand dollars a year, how did they become wealthy? Little problem in figuring that out, is there.

 

Shine a Light on Corruption

 

Money is the grease which oils the wheels of government. That remains true to this day and will likely remain true far into the future. The opportunities to become wealthy from being in the right place to hear the next outlay of millions of dollars by government cannot be eliminated until the government is trusted to machines, and then the question will be who monitors and runs the machines. All we can do is alter where the weakest links are placed and thus who gains from inside information. The history of mankind has in part been the history of seeking perfect governance and the failure at virtually every juncture. There was once a governance which was as close to that perfection people seek but is unwieldy as the people must have the faith to trust their safety and protection from other nations and their invasions or other entreaties to an entity they cannot know and claim daily their inability to understand their ruling entity trusting the messengers who claim to be the sole recipients of that wisdom. This was the ruling by Hashem over the initial Israelite Tribes through the prophets and judges. There was not government largess to benefit from its wealth and how it was distributed as all was in the hands of Hashem and there were no government programs. Roads were made by people traveling between locations using the same route which eventually packs the ground making a clear and obvious path, not what you would desire to drive your brand new Lexus across but perfectly fine for your donkey. Even the advances far, far back around 1100 BCE forced the Israelites to demand to have a King like the neighboring nations to lead their army and protect them from the threats emerging around them and Torah records that Hashem told the Judges and Prophets that should the Israelites demand some form of governance to provide them security, then they should be permitted such governance. This resulted in their taking a king asking the leading prophet to anoint their king leading to King Saul. Saul was not the worst of kings or the best, but his reign led directly through some odd circumstance to King David and then King Solomon which was the shining period where the tribes of Israel were united into a singular nation which conquered lands up to the Euphrates River (see maps below showing Twelve Tribes, King David and Solomon conquest and the promised lands for Israel according to treaties from World War I). Following Kings were less successful with the eventual downfall which coincided with a king who was an idolater and placed idols inside Solomon’s Temple, a low point for the Tribes of Israel. Over the next centuries the Israelites managed to throw off tyrants or be granted autonomy under the sovereignty of a greater power. The Israelites were even permitted to build the Second Temple which included Herod building what is today the Western Wall, built over six hundred years before the founding of Islam and about a century before the birth of Jesus. Herod made himself great amounts of wealth, sufficient to build himself a mountain with a castle and burial crypt in the Northern Negev and live a lavish life of opulence simply by giving the people what they demanded, the Temple Complex, and collect taxes in order to provide the people their desires while fulfilling his own. This has been the formula of effective governance for centuries both before and since, especially since. Many of the iconic public works projects, if investigated and audited meticulously would reveal that many within the government and closely tied to people in the governance and especially with the planning of public works gained great wealth. Be the works be a huge clock in the middle of London, a great dock providing thousands of new jobs in Amsterdam or almost any public work one could mention.

 

 

So, how can the vast majority of this corruption, this theft of the public treasure be prevented? The quickest would be to subject politicians and public servants (government workers) to the same laws as the public and demand an accounting of their incomes and investments as well as careful auditing of all contracts. Make all government bids by law be the final price charged with no cost overruns, no additional surprises, and no adjustments or new demands during production that allow for fudging numbers and hiding payouts. Adding that whatever the estimated date of delivery be set such that any time overrun resulting in a percentage of the initial payments budgeted being returned to government as a means of compensating the public for these delays. This would force defense contractors to make realistic and exacting bids instead of making a lowball bid knowing they can increase the cost through delays and cost overrun demands after the initial bid is accepted. The F-35 JSF is a prime example with it coming to delivery a good part of a decade late with cost overruns and technical problems resulting in the price of each fighter costing a good deal closer to double the expected and quoted price. Had these costs been included in the initial bid it is quite possible that the bid might have gone to a competitor. The current development and bidding system used by government contractors, especially in the defense industry, is to guess at what it might cost and to make a bid at three-quarters of that estimate completely confident that the remainder and more sufficient to make the profit desired as well as cover any difficulties along the way. This is a legalized form for guaranteeing theft. If, on the other hand, contractors were made to provide what they promised for the price they bid, and not a plug nickel over, then the bids would be far more realistic and shades higher to cover the expected of the unexpected, or should we simply call it the unplanned snags and other complications. This would allow the government and the voting public, should they be interested, to understand, and know ahead of time, exactly what projects will cost. Currently the public knows that the quoted bids are a ruse and perhaps if they were guaranteed these bids would be the exact delivery price the public might take a real interest. As things are, why bother with the bidding when one really need wait as long as a decade to find out the actual delivery price because there is little or no actual oversight.

 

Government needs to become a business, not a joke, a poke in the dark where truth is a rare commodity and concealed misappropriation the rule of thumb. If a butcher ran his store as governments are run his scale would be off by 10% and he would often have his thumb on the scale as well. Nothing would be as it appears and the rule of buyer be wary would be most necessary. Governments, when designed in democratic based nations, are presumed to be open and to be overseen by the people who by being informed can make solid and reasoned votes for their representatives. Oh, if only this were true. The reality is we elect our candidates or parties, pending on whether we have a representative democracy or a parliamentary system, according to elaborate shows designed to thrill and titillate the public with elaborate deceptions designed to sell the product making it appear more responsible than the governance’s results. The entire production is very Hollywood and just as much a fantasy. This all results in a governance just as deceptive as are the campaigns and the people depicted therein. There is an easy way which we can attest from our experience in running a campaign for the United States House of Representatives where we spent at most $10,000 and received more voted per dollar than either of our high priced opponents despite not quite garnering 3% of the vote (still the record for third party candidates where we ran). Now we feel it is important to point out that this was a campaign for a job which pays $174,000 per year (current salary) for two years for a total of $348,000 total before having to run again. Our two opponents each spent very close to the same amount on their campaigns which was estimated to have been that one spent $1,200,000 and the other spent $2,200,000. These figures for our opponents do not include PAC and Party funds and advertising. Please explain how that explains spending for a job paying $348,000 which only one of us had even a dream of showing a profit unless something else was going on. And Americans complain they cannot figure out what is wrong with their governance. Of course this is not something peculiar to the United States but exists in every government across the world. Democratic nations probably suffer the least from such deception as they do kind of have to answer to the people and when the people get upset, that distress trumps all else. In dictatorial regimes the difference is far more marked as the ruling elite get the best of what is available, that is when there is a best of available to be had. In those places suffering the worst governances imaginable, such as North Korea and Venezuela, eating and having even the necessities can be considered an extravagance. Until we return to Hashem ruling the people or machines keeping humans as their pets, there will be those people using the government for self-enrichment. Always has been and always will be, or so it appears.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Foundations of Pay to Play

 

The Clinton Foundation, or should we call it the Clinton’s Fundnation, where donations of varying sizes were deposited often in direct correlation to the length of time they were granted with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Well, not all the visits with Secretary of State Clinton were linked to contributions to the Clinton Foundation; some were linked to very impressive payments for speeches by one former President William Jefferson Clinton. Of course we are told that there is no smoking gun or definitive proof or actual links, well, provable links. It is remarkable the degree to which far too many highly placed law enforcement agencies and individuals voluntarily develop tunnel vision. It is a miracle they can drive a car safely with such obstructed eyesight. Yet the news has been filled with reports about the horrors and downright dastardly practices and unconscionable business relations which apparently have plagued Donald Trump over the years. We can only assume that previously law enforcement and business oversight and enforcement departments have suffered an equal measure of tunnel vision when it came to policing the business deals of Donald Trump. Of course the surprising item is the lack of law suits brought against Donald Trump if so many of his business dealings were actually as fraudulent as we have been led to believe. There was one business venture though which truly could have qualified as fraudulent had it actually made the guarantees or promises claimed by the media, and that was Trump University. Fortunately for Donald Trump the only actual guarantees given by Trump University were that one might be able to benefit and enrich themselves with the lessons and they would receive a diploma and a picture of them with the facsimile of Donald Trump. The picture with the cardboard Mr. Trump was only worth slightly less than the wisdom one might have gleaned from the lessons. So, there has seemingly been loads of the blind leading the blind in law enforcement around both Presidential candidates if the media reporting on one and the claims of ignoring direct evidence on the other are to be believed. This leads to one big question, which one is the least crooked and least seriously soaked in criminal behavior and thus the lesser choice to be President.

 

I know what you’re thinking, where am I going with this and that I sure started with some twisted and tortured lack of logic. Well, why should editorial commentary here be any less confusing and in the dark than the rest of the media? If you answer is because you have come to expect better, then thank you for your confidence and read on, it will hopefully be worth your time. The problem is that far too many of the politicians are crooked as a broken and twisted ancient oak tree with the varieties of corruption, insider trading (which is actually legal for members of Congress and the members of the Administration of the President), bought and paid for political hacks, politician turned lobbyist and other crimes of unimaginable complexity and criminal behavior obvious even to the most casual of observers which reach out from the rotting central core of the political tree in the ever outward reaching branches seeking new and more imaginable ways to deceive and steal. Are there some politicians who are clean, respectable and trusted to work for their electorate? Astonishingly, yes. Unfortunately they are also the politicians shunned by the opposition party and their own party and unfortunately cannot seem to get together on issues due to their different beliefs and political orientations. If only there were some means of getting the true representatives of the people to work to clean up the rest of the political quagmire, that would be simply grand. Unfortunately most of the truly honest representatives of the people fall into one of a few categories, socialists even bordering on communist, religious conservatives often referred to as the religious right, and the true believers of causes which are as varied as often separate be the narrowest of degrees yet still chasing mutually exclusive dreams as one can paint. There are likely more than a dozen of causes which come under the ecological umbrella from save the whales or the seal cubs to save the rain forests as well as stop acid rain who sometimes protest with the save the oceans and even save the polar bears who have been taking care of themselves quite well. Then there are those who want electric cars, hydrogen cell cars, universal transports which take everyone to their destinations, public transport such as busses, light rail or subways and those who want to ban all vehicles which run on petroleum even including aircraft and the rigs without which we would soon have less choices of food and other goods, but that is not their concern. There are some who desire making the United States a Christian based nation where Christianity would become the recognized religion of their state or even the nation. And then there are our favorites, the constitutionalists who simply desire to have the United States return to the limitations intended by the Founding Fathers.

 

Founding Fathers of the United States

 

Those chasing causes, dreams some call them, are probably the least harmful as they are easily predictable and can be clearly understood. The less than honest politicians are also predictable once their motivations and those who own their pocketbook are understood. There are those who have so many positing bribes, sorry, contributions and charitable donations, which work their way back to the politicians through nefarious and twisted paths making them not so obvious. Let us say that a politician or group of politicians receive contributions to their campaigns and to supportive political action committees (PACs) as well as donations to charities or other groups who also contribute to the election campaigns where all this cash finds its way back to the politicians and they simply promote a bill which provides funding for some aid package helping the poor or the sick in impoverished nations which in turn buy drugs or food using much of the aid from the United States from those who initially arranged the funding from the varied sources for their campaigns. The twisted paths and the indirect funding leads to crossing the eyes of any investigations such as there is nothing directly untoward making these actions prosecutable. There are thousands of scams which have been operating for more years than any care to admit. Ask historians or political studies professors and one can learn that these problems assisted in the fall of empires past and have predated writing. There are theories about what is the oldest profession and it very well may turn out it was politician and the first politician was the individual who convinced the leader of their clan that they needed a religion and they should be the priest or medicine man or any position which did not require brawn as much as brains. That politicians got to eat without having to hunt as hunting was dangerous and too often the hunting parties came back minus one or more members while priests or medicine men stayed at the camp near the fires and out of the rain.

 

We have come a far way since then and now we have entire echelons of politicians in layers upon layers doing all sorts of functions. But in modern society the politician is not the greatest menace, just the most efficient ones where the greatest concentration of money can be found. The menace are those faceless individuals who sit in offices and cubicles making up rules and regulations and even law in some instances when directed to flesh out legislation which is all too often loosely written and paints broad swipes leaving room for interpretations and that leads to mischief. There was a temporary position a number of years back which was referred to as the Regulations Czar whose lead individual was Cass Sunstein known officially as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget. The position was directed to review laws and legislation from the last fifty years or so and define or formulate new regulations which could be enacted with a special emphasis to use these reviews to enact and formulate regulations supporting policies the Administration was having difficulty passing through Congress. How many thousands of additional regulations were discovered hiding in laws recent or ancient we probably will never discern. Things have gotten to a choking point with the numbers of regulations, requirements and other rules holding an equivalence of laws that the average citizen cannot be expected to even have knowledge of the extents and depth of what is considered illegal and can place one on the wrong side of the law in court. The sad truth is difficult to put one’s arms around but be it the United Statesor be it Briton or any nation in Europe or potentially the entire world, the reality is we all break laws as part of our normal everyday lives and the criminality of living increases by thousands of new laws and regulations annually. This is the real criminal output of politicians who are paid to pass laws which outright or through inferred regulations give those who can pay an advantage over the rest of the population. This is the crooked legacy which is almost as criminal as the money stolen from our pockets through taxes, fees or higher prices so that others can benefit from corrupt politicians. This is why elections matter and primary elections this year proved to be the surprising ones which mattered. In the United States the choice is between two political forces either of which will provide the media, and especially us if we choose, more to cover than they will know what to do with. One will have half the media screaming about the illegalities with the other half excusing it while the other will have half most of the media claiming they are completely lost as to what are the motivations of the actions from the White House and others will play the game of guess what’s up next. Either way we will have plenty of news we just as soon would rather tune out, but it will affect our lives and the effects will be anywhere from minor inconveniences to drastic enough to threaten the entire planet. The real problem is none of the candidates, including third party, have even an inkling about the state of the world and what needs be done to repair the most egregious of the difficulties or threats, and it will be some of the threat which will offer the greatest danger if not mitigated and mitigated right out of the gate. Many will claim that will simply cause more difficulty but indifference to the world of problems has worked so well that we’ll gladly risk actually addressing threats and problems over leading from so far behind you may as well not be there at all, which too often was the case, Benghazi anyone? Please America, choose well.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Brexit Passes and Cameron Plans to Resign and Jo Cox Memorialized

 

All of the votes have been counted and it is official as 52% voted yes to Brexit and 48% voted to remain in the European Union (E. U.). Along with the Brexit yes vote comes news that Prime Minister Cameron will resign, as he stated, “But the British people made a very clear decision to take a different path and as such I think the country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction. I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months. But I do not think it would be right for me to try and be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.” Well, he said the if vote went against his preference that he would pass the torch, and the good news is we will have another national vote for new leaders to give us a break from the Hillary and Donald catastrophe across the pond. Below is his entire talk from in front of 10 Downing Street to the media. He stated that he would like to see new leadership by October when the Conservative Party is holding their national conference. I can only assume he expects his Conservative Party to continue to lead the nation such that the new Prime Minister will also lead the party; and if they fail, then he can step forward to lead the nation in repealing the Brexit as I doubt he would change his stated view on E. U. membership.

 

 

Now we will see the rush for the door. Already France and the Netherlands have had public pressure for their own exit vote on their E. U. As we had stated earlier, with Brexit passing, and not by what should be considered anything but a fairly definitive vote, all right, landslide it wasn’t; but any politician would be very happy to have a 4% margin of victory which the media in any election would report that the people had made their decision known as if it was a really definitive vote. One has to further note that initially the “remain” vote was comfortably leading after the early vote count from London and other metropolitan cities where the population is younger and considered more erudite, but the rest of the country was definitively of a different mind. This was sort of reminiscent of the Dewey Defeats Truman headline which proved erroneous as the rural votes came in and Truman won the day. The vote was expected to be close with the older population favoring leaving while the youth desired to remain in the E. U.; so once again it fell to that favorite item of pollsters, the ever unpredictable middle. This time the middle was not the middle between conservatives and liberals but the middle aged people, those who may not have lived or only their childhood witnessed Britain before the E. U. but were raised by people who lived through both before E. U. membership and after joining E. U. From appearances this middle aged voting public really did not want to remain in the E. U. or they really wanted to remove Cameron, whichever, the vote is done and the British are free of the Brussels Bureaucracy and their dictatorial ultimatums.

 

Dewey Defeats Truman

 

It will be interesting to see which nations now have similar demands for being allowed to see whether their people desires remaining in the E. U. or demanding their government be empowered and freed from the restrictions and economic directives from Brussels. As noted, France and the Netherlands may already be heading for a vote and if there has been sufficient public outcry, we can expect they too will vote favorably for leaving the E. U. and in many ways the E. U. has brought this upon themselves with their slow but steady suffocation of individual sovereignty. The E. U. was supposedly a mostly economic and trade union and not supposed to replace the individual government’s dominion. But as time went the E. U. grew and assumed more and more power taking these decisions from the individual governments and supplanting them with the dictations and ultimatums from Brussels. They took control over immigration erasing borders between the separate nations. Further they began taking from the wealthier nations and giving to those faltering nations which are where the idea of central planning began to fail. There we are again with central planning being the difficulty, the causational problem. This had a dual effect which simply furthered the problems. The wealthier nations were put out for being made to cover these other nations which they regarded as slacker nations where the people did not have the same work ethic of say Germany or Britain and at the other end these faltering nations were being dictated on decisions which they refused to obey which caused further friction. Both the sides found the demands placed upon them by an unelected set of faceless bureaucrats to be onerous and distasteful. The E. U. will press the predictions that leaving their overseeing guidance as resulting in confusion, trade wars, and every problem conceivable as should the E. U. be disbanded these bureaucrats and the governing central planners will all be out of a job and with no prospects for future employment. What will these poor central planners do without the power of the E. U. charter, a document they have stretch beyond all recognition, to empower them and grant them powers, well, some of the powers they wield as some might be beyond the original intents the member nations originally agreed upon. Overreach can really be a downer that can lead to resentment followed by people actually doing something about being so dictated to.

 

Perhaps the lesson here is that when the representatives that the people elect are slowly but ever so steadily disempowered by an unelected group of central planners who have been overreaching and taking more and more power to themselves, well, you eventually get blowback. The decision to also allow thousands of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and beyond into the E. U. may have been the final straw. Then there were the terror attacks which many blamed on the E. U. and their immigration policies. This was possibly brought to the fore last week with the horrible event where a Labor Party Minister of Parliament, Jo Cox, was murdered by a reportedly mentally unstable fanatic who was anti-refugee and believed to have been a white supremacist. We can only hope he gets treatment and remains incarcerated in a mental health institution or prison for the mentally unstable such that he never again has the opportunity to harm anyone. This crime did bring an end to the discussion a full week before the vote and was thought would suppress the voters favoring Brexit. If that was true then the Brexit was even more favored than the vote may have indicated though it is more likely that this crime had little if any effect.

 

Late Minister Jo Cox
Refugee Advocate
Killed by Anti-Refugee Fanatic

 

This crime also deserves some investigation. Jo Cox was both shot and stabbed as was a 77-year-old man, who intervened to help Cox and sustained a serious injury to his abdomen and remains in stable condition in the hospital. Britain had gun laws which are amongst the strictest in the world and yet this unstable individual somehow came to possess and use a firearm in this criminal act of murder. This goes a long way in proving that if a person is determined to murder, there are no laws which will prevent them from attaining a firearm with which to commit their heinous crimes. As long as there are firearms, and that means as long as nations have armies, then people will find a way of attaining weapons. We don’t want to get into a gun control vs. gun rights argument beyond the understanding that anyone willing to commit a violent criminal act will never be deterred by laws about weapon possession or any other law as they are already committed to violating far more serious laws than possession laws or crossing the street outside a crosswalk or stalking or anything else on the books, period.

 

As far as we have been capable of determining, Jo Cox was a refugee advocate and had been quite vocal about the responsibility of the wealthier and peaceful nations of Europe to offer open doors and open arms to the refugees from the war torn areas of the Middle East and Africa. The man who murdered her in cold blood was an adamant and vehement opponent to immigration of those people he saw as from an inferior society and likely incapable of acting and interacting with Europeans and would be a disaster waiting to happen. He had a history of prescribing to white supremacist and apartheid organizations as well as other, according to police and media reports were “right-wing” and “extremist” groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning United States ‘human rights and minority rights’ organization, has published what it says are documents showing that the suspected murderer, Mr. Mair, had a history of purchasing material from the National Alliance white supremacist organization based in the United States. They released copies of receipts and a 2013 subscription to the National Alliance’s publication, National Vanguard, as well as receipts from 1999 showing purchases for neo-Nazi book “Ich Kampfe,” the “Improvised Munitions Handbook” and other books and traced his activities back to his having also subscribed to a pro-apartheid group’s magazine in the 1980s. Thank you Southern Poverty Law Center for your timely research into this person’s history.

 

This person, Mr. Mair, had definite problems and if law enforcement or public health had known of his problems, it raises questions as to why he was still permitted to be outside of observation and managed care. There was a movement back in the late 1960s and through the 1970s and continuing to this day which operates under the misconception that people with mental difficulties benefit from living in the real world even if this means their missing taking necessary medications. The numbers of homeless living on the streets rose precipitously coinciding with the decisions that mental institutions were harming the people they cared for and that the monies wasted on such institution could be better used in outpatient services for these people. There were studies done subsequently which varied and conflicted with some reporting that many of the former institutionalized individuals were not receiving their medications and has missed appointments with counselors and had been removed from rolls and left on the street without getting the medical attentions they had received previous to being placed out in the world without any real assistance in adjusting. Others reported how many had obviously found a better life as living in the real world had filled them with and through interactions such that they were no longer in need of medication or counseling. One side of these results has to be horrifically missing the mark as they are opposites though their percentages are remarkably similar. So we have to believe that either there are a number of formerly institutionalized individuals who remarkably recovered or that an equal number of these people have fallen through the cracks and nobody really cares. How many of these people will end up on the wrong side of the law or are being abused by others also on the streets as many are likely easy marks. Either way, if there are even half of these people not receiving the medication and help they need, that is a calamity of tragic proportions. One of the victims of this experiment is now Minister of the British Parliament Jo Cox, and that too is a tragic price that British society has paid.

 

Our final note on Brexit, this is just the beginning and this story is about to take on a whole new and serious proportion as the rest of Europeans force their governments to allow them the same choice and we may soon have a free and independent new Europe free of the dictatorship in Brussels. This might be the start of a healthier Europe when each nation will determine their own trade and future and economically they will now be able to have a free and independent currency as each return to their own currency which then adjusts with their economic strength and needs. The ones who would benefit most from being independent from the E. U. would be Greece, Spain and other areas which have found the Euro to be inhibitive of their economic needs. Time will tell and we can hope that the people will get the freedom to decide for themselves and each nation does what is the best for their economies and people.

 

Beyond the Cusp