So You Didn’t Think We Were Serious?

 

Back about a year ago, the Republican base went to the primaries and chose what had to be the most vulnerable, most crazy, most eccentric whack-job out of the entire list of seventeen candidates. Then the Republican base turned out in numbers sufficient to elect that very Whack-job President of the United States. Still, the establishment did not believe that perhaps the base finally was not going to take it any longer. Then, until yesterday, this same group of Republicans elected every single person that President Trump backed until the choice of Roy Moore instead of Luther Strange, and Roy Moore was the outsider in that race. The one time Trump sided with the Republican leadership and backed their candidate, he lost and the outlier, the more unusual candidate wins. Perhaps there were two messages in the Alabama election, one to President Trump demanding he stay with the story that won him the election and go for everything he promised because they have his back and the other was to the Republican leadership demanding they get with the program and start with repeal and replace Obamacare, complete Tax Reform, no easy path for DACA or any other illegal immigrants and all judges had best continue to be like Gorsuch, true conservatives who will not wilt with time. The Republican base, their mainstream, regular Joe and Jill are demanding that they be listened to and that they demand changes from business as usual. Number one is that the promise to repeal and replace Obamacare be kept. Second is complete and total Tax Reform like President Trump promised on the campaign. Lastly, no amnesty for illegal immigrants as promised, none. No more Mr. and Mrs. Nice voters, that is their promise.

 

The Republican Party has not had a real majority since Newt Gingrich and the contract with America. The Republican base is now believing that the promises made by President Trump and the claims made by Republicans over the past several years are the new contract with America and are expecting action, not infighting and main players in the Republican Party deciding that their ego means that they cannot allow Trump to succeed. The professional politicians may have decided that Trump must fail in order to teach the electorate a lesson about sending a non-political professional to Washington and expect them to accomplish what they promised. These professional lifetime political hacks are insisting on teaching the public a lesson about how the political structure works and how only those who have paid their dues and served lower offices and worked their way up the ranks are to be permitted to run for the Senate, for President. But they have miscalculated in thinking that they are going to teach the public a lesson.

 

The people know who these people are though after a few important lessons they decided to play things closer to their vests. During the first vote to repeal Obamacare there were seven Republicans who voted against the three plans including Lamar Alexander, Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and Rob Portman and a selection of others which voted against at least one of the three plans. Since then there have been two who have submarined any hopes for repealing and replacing Obamacare, John McCain and either Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski. The last two are very liberal Republicans who come from states which will reelect them so they are safe and John McCain is doing this largely because of his principles. He was against Trump from the start, in the closing of the primaries and probably secretly desired his loss in the general election and was a “Never Trump” leader through and through. He has decided to make it his life’s purpose to see to it that President Trump becomes an embarrassment in order to make sure that no outsider ever again tries to enter politics without paying their dues and working within the system. For Senator McCain it is all about the system, the system which has kept him and his cohorts on both sides of the aisle in power safely spending other people’s money until the national debt of the United States has cleared twenty-trillion dollars and is a threat to every man, woman and child in the United States.

 

The people have had enough, well, at least many Republicans. These are not the elites within the society, they are the regular people who have worked in a factory, a mill, a coal mine, or some other job which where it may not have been the most satisfying occupation, it paid the bills, put food on the table and kept a roof over that table. They have watched as the coastal elites and their corrupt functionaries from both parties have taken a once functional country and changed the face of the nation through bribery to gain votes and turning neighbor against neighbor and breaking the nation into bands of special interest groups each one pitted against the rest and used to keep the same people who caused the problems in office promising ever more government in order to fix those exact problems their last great idea caused.

 

Let us take healthcare as our example. Way back when the entire insanity started, they came up with Medicare for the elderly to be taken care of against rising healthcare prices. Why were the prices rising? Well, it might have had something to do with increasing regulations, restrictions, and paperwork which slowly forced the neighborhood doctor to need to hire an assistant to handle the paperwork and then another to file even more paperwork and then they made it all but illegal through regulations for a doctor to operate from their home. The doctors then would join and have a clinic which brought more regulations and paperwork. Then they went after the insurance companies forcing increases in rates and that influenced healthcare costs. The huge lawsuit monetary rewards forced hospitals and insurance companies to settle without going to court even if they were not at fault, as they could not afford to risk a trial. Then along came Medicaid and medical costs jumped even higher. During President Clinton’s first term, they attempted to pass Hillarycare but public protests prevented that from passing. President Obama got a very similar plan passed by using the Democrat supermajorities in Congress all without a single Republican vote. Everyone has seen how well that has worked out but still there are parts of that disaster which people are demanding be kept because they give something for nothing. Now, in order to repair the damage done by Obamacare they want to have the government take over healthcare completely because that has worked so well absolutely nowhere. Every nation with such plans has virtually no military and is totally dependent on the United States for their protection. What they do have is long wait lines, rationed care, and a crumbling healthcare system with moribund of any advances in medical care and treatments. Total government healthcare has been an unmitigated disaster and will drive the United States to complete and utter financial ruin where there will be no funds left for infrastructure, no military funding, almost nothing but healthcare which will still be underfunded and taxes will need to double or more. And all that the people have to do is sacrifice one of, if not the best, healthcare system in the world. It is currently mortally wounded and if Obamacare is not repealed and healthcare returned to the public realm, then that will bring the end of the United States in more ways than just healthcare.

 

The system is broken and it is going to take drastic measures to roll back the Federal Government and put the genie back into the bottle. The promises of something for nothing sound wonderful and if you are on the receiving end and in the bottom forty-five percent of the tax bracket and pay no taxes, then it really is something for nothing. If, on the other hand, you are in the top twenty-five percent of earners, you know, the super-wealthy, those making over $75,000 a year, then it is not something for nothing as you get to pay for yours and two other peoples something for nothing and often you do not even get to have your something. The sad thing is even if the people wise up and come to their senses and realize that they are being had because if only they would pay their own way, then prices would fall, taxes would fall and eventually the debt would start to be paid. The first step is to minimize the ever-increasing deficit spending which adds more than half a trillion dollars to the debt each year. Once the deficit spending has been curtailed which will require sacrificing programs, often popular programs, then work can begin on the actual debt. One of the first realizations which the people must reach is that the government cannot raise children better than parents, cannot help the needy better than charities and religious institutions, and that private will always be an improvement over public programs. Finally, the best means of addressing any problem is locally, even down to each individual neighborhood. The entire idea of the United States Constitution was for each state to be more powerful than the Federal Government with the Federal Government addressing things with restrictions placed upon it by the Constitution as stated in the Tenth Amendment which states,

Amendment X

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

 

The simplest explanation of the concept put forward by the Tenth Amendment is that primarily each person is most responsible for his or her own business. Next up is the family which is supposed to assist the individual especially with things they are not able to handle alone. Next would be the neighbors, the community, your religious institutions, the city government, county government and finally the state government would each handle those things beyond the lesser level. The system is presumed to work best which is closest to the people and the problem. The final step of having the Federal Government handle a problem is the system of last resort. The Founding Fathers believed that if each locality tried to take care of the every day activities and problems there would be literally hundreds of differing systems and the ones which worked the best would be copied and used until somebody tried and found something better but that things would be kept at the lowest governmental level such that the people could keep a close watchful eye on their governance. That went away with the onset of the progressives and their egalitarian movements which put forth that the level of government which could affect the widest good should be tasked with doing so. That turned the Tenth Amendment on its head and basically started the idea that everything was to be handled by Washington D.C. and that the States, Counties and Cities would only be required to do those items which the Federal Government would task them to do and otherwise behave and wait for the big boys to handle their problems. That led to one size fits all solutions which were not tailored to localities in any manner and often resulted in waste and the more local governments having to fix things which they should have done themselves and thus would not have been anywhere near as broken. But why mess with such a perfect way of making even more of a mess.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Death of Two Cultures

 

The European Christian culture has been failing with so few attending to her needs that there has not even been an attempt at life support. About the only Eurocentric population which shows signs of life is the Evangelical Christians in the United States, and that culture could succumb to a numbing disease if indifference should they not continue to be led by honorable leadership. The initial signs of the disease of indifference and eventual collapse of the fold come when collecting monies for new buildings or redesign of the main chapel outweigh the spiritual which has simple needs and disdains frills. Christianity, on a brighter note, is flourishing in much of South America and southern and central Africa and there are few signs of the crippling disease afflicting these populations. Also at risk is Islam which is being overcome by violence which has largely been Muslim on Muslim violence except on the fringes where the Muslims fight or otherwise subvert any society to which they immigrate. With their increasing numbers their preaching and demands slowly evolve and change slowly advancing from immigrate to infiltrate to demands and finally to conquer and cleansing the population of the unbelievers and those deemed not pure enough in their faith. This was laid out by an entry in the CIA, “The World Fact Book, 2007.” We located this information in the below chart from a report by Edward Cline on the Family Security Matters website as part of an article titled, Jihad by the Numbers which was published on July 3, 2008. We have shortened the presentation to fit on a graph we drew adding a visual representation and the full thesis can be read at the above link. Anybody wishing a more detailed report with additional information including the actual nations at each stage from that date in 2008, most of the numbers are obviously dated but they give a starting reference point. The chart is below. The reality is the Syrian refugee policies of the Western World is a form of civilizational suicide. Importing refugees would be laudable but there should be restrictions such that the refugees the Western Nations are taking into their bosoms completely trusting that there is no possibility of anything untoward occurring is insanity. One reasonable limitation which would be justifiable would require that males between the ages of twelve to forty must be accompanied by their family, be that a wife and children or parents with siblings. People older than forty would be far less likely to be active in Jihad and thus no threat to the society as a whole. But allowing unchecked numbers of men of military age without families is not allowing refugees within the borders as much as permitting the forward advance of a military invasion to establish bases of operations.

 

 

Some of the results of allowing normal immigration have been demonstrated in Paris with the riots each summer and the practice of setting vehicles alight burning into the night. These riots filled not only the poorer suburbs of Paris but also Marseilles and other French large metropolises with large Muslim neighborhoods. These styles of events have spread further to Amsterdam, Malmo, Berlin, Frankfort and other cities in Germany, the Netherlands and throughout Scandinavia. The only places spared thus far have been Switzerland and the Eastern bloc nations who refused to allow refugees to enter unless they were proceeding on to Germany, France or anywhere but within their borders. The other nations spared thus far have been those like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and others facing economic hardships severe enough that their benefit payments to citizens have been drastically reduced or temporarily, or maybe permanently, terminated as a measure to attempt to regain some economic footing and be able to climb out of their debt traps. Another limit which should be implemented is if these plans were to permit refugees from the horrific fighting and devastation plaguing Syria, then only those who can prove they are from Syria should be permitted entry. Is it unfair to demand that refugees from a particular civil war prove they actually resided where that war is taking place. Allowing also Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Iranian and who knows where else to also take advantage of a plan to assist Syrians is only asking for trouble. Europe does not have the economic power to import an additional group of people who will begin to represent upwards from fifteen percent to as high as forty percent of the population, it simply can not and will not work. This also goes for the United States and especially Canada whose population is nowhere near that of other nations her size. What would be wrong with demanding that Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States plus Kuwait take in an equal number of refugees as has Europe? Jordan and Turkey most certainly cannot afford to take in vast numbers of new refugees despite there already being thousands in refugee camps pitched on their borders with Syria and already causing distress and other problems. Even with Israel quietly providing additional electricity and water to Jordan dedicated to assisting with housing and providing water and essentials for the growing hundreds of thousands who have fled to Jordan, the refugee camps collected near the border are overflowing and are out of room. Just what the Middle East needed was more refugees in camps, that has worked so well in the past. All this and Saudi Arabia which erected an entire tent city with airconditioned tents which has bathrooms and other amenities has simply refused to assist their Arab brethren (tent city pictured below).

 

 

There is a simple reason why Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States or Iran with its recent inflow of billions of dollars due to the Nuclear Deal are refusing to accept even a single refugee and Iran is even providing some of their own to infiltrate Europe, and that is the key word, infiltrate. This is the beginning of the end for Europe as it has been known and it may already be too late to save all of Europe, but whatever areas can be salvaged, those efforts need to be implemented immediately as time is limited. The frightening thing is the coming United States elections, for President and Congress, is vitally important and will decide whether the United States joins the bulk of Europe in diving off the high dive into an empty pool without the waters of liberty and freedom to catch their dive as these waters are going to be drained away as the civilization is sold wholesale to the barbarians coming through the gates. What makes all of this so desperately sad is the people could still prevent the complete collapse of Europe but because they have chosen hedonism and self-interest over having real families with children they have chosen the path to oblivion. Some use their work as their excuse for not having children, others are honest enough to come out and say that they do not want the “burden” of a family with children, life is so much more fun when all your money and time is spent on me. Europe and most of the United States are made up of the “me” generations. The original “me” generation was the baby-boomers but there were so many of them there were sufficient numbers still having complete families. The statistics on the Millennials are even more stark than they were for the Boomers and many claim it was the poor economic state of the world during their prime family years and now they are gone beyond that point where they could ever have sufficient children to replace their numbers, let alone grow the population. Economic indicators still are pretty much stuck at zero and that is another item which had best be on the next President’s and Congress’s urgent ‘to do’ list. The work which would be required will take fortitude and a new outlook on the job of Washington D.C. The idea they will need to wrestle with will be two-fold; first they need to reduce taxes, both capital gains and business taxes and second they need to deregulate the nation starting from the top. Once this has been accomplished they can move on to doing something which should have been part of their jobs all along, reducing the size, scope, numbers and impositions of the federal government. They need to empower the states and disempower the federal government making all but subservient to the individual states. They need to go through every inch of the federal bureaucracy and see if it passes the Tenth Amendment test. The Tenth Amendment reads;

 

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

 

It is a remarkably short and concise statement which basically states that the Federal Government is restricted in all things and if at all possible for the individual states or the people themselves are capable of addressing things, then it should be left to their discretions and Washington should steer clear. We call it the mind your own business and stay out of ours amendment. Should the federal government actually restrain itself and remain within the constraints of the Constitution, and especially Amendment X, the nation would prosper and the people would rejoice in their new found freedoms and also have the control over their lives returned to their neighborhood and not way off in Washington, which in reality is far, far away from anywhere which has even a modicum of reality. Until Washington leaves much if not almost all of ruling and running the domestic life in the United States and instead works to settle differences between the states when necessary and otherwise allows them to rule themselves and the people can choose which state best meets their dreams, demands and choices there will be dissatisfaction with Washington and distrust of politicians and feel their lives are beyond their control. Ask the average American what they desire from Washington in particular and government in general and they will likely respond be left alone to run their own lives as they choose. Once the Federal Government takes its responsibility for protecting the people from the evils the world may send their way, their assigned duties are complete. That is presumably the first and foremost job for the Federal Government and is its most sacred Constitutional responsibility. Other than this it is to settle differences between the individual states and aid each in learning from the more successful states but not to interfere or force any state into changing their means of expediting their affairs as long as they harm no other state. Instead the United States Federal Government had joined the Europeans who have decided that suicide is their best means of survival.

 

They watch as their numbers of citizens drop and drop while their schools and churches lie empty as if disowned by their populace and believe they can fill the void with refugees from the Middle East and North Africa and they are making a dreadful mistake. Their belief that they can replace their population with Islamics who refuse to assimilate and instead seek to replace their society with their Sharia is worse than misplaced, it is suicidal and they will be the most likely to suffer the greatest fall. It is a shame that their people will also lose all they have and possibly their freedom and then their lives unless they surrender their lives and souls to Allah, the very souls they know not that they have. That the current President of the United states has been importing “Syrian refugees” by the tens of thousands very likely without the approval of Congress, but then this President has had little use for the Congress. One of the candidates for President has promised those who back this importing of “refugees” that they will bring them in at a rate of at least five times the rate should they be elected. Many of the American people know not of this promise and almost as many probably know little or care about the consequences which will result. They do not spend their time worrying about such things; their lives take sufficient amounts of their time as they care for their families as they should. They have faith that their government, their Federal Government, takes care to protect their shores and thus their families. If only they know, if only they knew.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Some Truths About the Government Shutdown

The main truth about the Federal Government shutdown is that what the holier than thou politicians claim is being destroyed, aggravated, or other wording describing deleterious effects are mostly false representations. Perhaps the most pernicious lie is that the furloughed government workers will not be paid. Where they are not currently receiving their paychecks, once the budgetary crisis is over the Congress will quietly pass and the President will sign without the usual fanfare of a press presence a bill which will pay the furloughed government employees all of their missed back pay to cover the entirety of the shutdown. Are some of these employees facing difficulties because of the shutdown? Yes, there are likely some who may be having some problems needing to use credit cards to buy groceries or should the shutdown last into the next month there will be those who may need to make arrangements to pay mortgages or rents late, which entails making a phone call as most lenders and landlords will work with these few government workers and wait until they receive the inevitable pay for the days not worked. Another lie is that the vast majority of Federal Government employees have been furloughed. The truth is well over half, some have figured it to be as many as three-fourths of Federal Government employees are still on the job. One thing you can be assured of is that any furloughed government employee who normally would have had direct contact with the public will have the services they provide all of a sudden becoming front page news to emphasize the horrible repercussions of the budget battle.

 

Then there are the falsehoods over who is to blame for the shutdown. It is a normal response for people to want to find somebody to blame for every perceived evil or even simple difficulty. The Federal Government shutdown is no exception and the media will gladly point you to those whose lack of flexibility forced the shutdown and those responsible according to media are the Republicans. There is some truth to this claim as the House of Representatives passed legislation that would have allowed for the continued operation of the government provided that the Presidents healthcare program was not funded. The Democrat controlled Senate also passed the Continuing Resolution to keep the government operating but struck the wording which would have prevented funding Obama Care, or the Affordable Care Act if you prefer. The President also promised that even should the Senate agree or find a compromise with the House of Representatives to continue the funding with some delay or reduction in funding for the healthcare act then he would veto it until he received a budget bill which fully financed Obama Care. It is obvious that the Republicans in the House of Representatives are being inflexible in their demand to defund the Affordable Care Act but the President and Democrat controlled Senate are equally adamant to totally fund the Affordable Care Act. There is a secondary story behind the shutdown which revolves around funding for Food Stamps. The media spin is that the Republicans want to dramatically cut funding for Food Stamps. This is the old standard lie which the media has employed for decades if not centuries where since the Democrats are proposing an increase in Food Stamp funding by seventy-five-percent and the Republicans merely want to allow the increase to be approximately fifty-percent then obviously the Republican increasing Food Stamp funding by just two-thirds as much as the Democrats wish then obviously that funding increase is a massive cut.

 

Meanwhile, while the Federal Government is working under only essential personnel we also have the rollout of Obama Care. The “Market Place” web site where one can research and maybe even purchase health coverage is supposedly running and those employees required to run Obama Care are on the job as essential workers. Where some of them will be toiling away trying to make the web presence for the Affordable Care Act actually function and serve the public, the rest of the support employees may be finding something to do difficult as it appears that most of the government functions for this service are not quite ready for prime time. Other considered essential employees are those who bring us PBS radio and television. You have no idea what a load off my mind that little fact has relieved as how could we ever make it through the day without PBS. There will be some severe ramifications of the shutdown. The members of Congress will no longer have elevator assistance as the employees who had the position to press the buttons on the elevators for the Congressional employees have been furloughed. The White House staff will be operating with what has been deemed to be a skeleton level of staffing but we have been assured that there will continue to be full levels of staffing of the Secret Service guarding the President and all others who normally are kept safe by the Secret Service.

 

The real problem which could result from a prolonged Federal Government shutdown would be the public coming to the realization that the vast majority of nonessential services really are exactly that, nonessential. The shutdown may lead the people to discover that former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi might have been slightly exaggerating when she complained last week that there was not one single dollar which could be cut as government had already been cut to the bone. Dear, dear Nancy, if the government was cut so bare how is it there were nonessential personnel to furlough because of the shutdown. There is a suggestion which would help the Federal Government to reduce the federal budget, what many might call drastically and other would claim it merely a good start, which would be to strictly enforce the limitations placed on the Federal Government and the functions it is permitted to perform by the Constitution. Particular attention should be placed on the application of the Tenth Amendment. By enforcing the Constitution and its limitations on the purview of the Federal Government, the states would be empowered to perform numerous functions without having to meet or be constrained by Federal Government oversight and regulations. This would allow each of the fifty states (fifty-seven if you agree with President Obama) to independently decide on how to address and tailor each of these programs such as education, welfare, unemployment and almost uncountable other programs. In time the methods utilized by the more successful states would be proven as advantageous and thus some form of them would spread to the other states. There would also be different variations in what programs would be considered vital and how the different programs would be funded allowing for the people to reside in whatever state best matched their personal politics. This relegating much of the day-to-day operations of governance to the individual states allows for a form of governmental evolution as each state becomes its own experiment in how to address governance which would eventually lead to greater efficiency in governance, something much needed as the Federal Government has mutated into a leviathan which feeds upon the people while telling them it is all for their own good. The time has come to bring government back to the local arena such that it is more accessible to the people it is supposed to serve, not to lord over as the dictator of all you do. If once the states receive these additional responsibilities it would be a good idea for them to pass as much as feasible down further to the county and city governments where the people have a real and potent voice should they choose to use it. It is time to return government to where it is for the people, by the people, and, most important, of the people.

 

Beyond the Cusp