Wednesday, March 30, 2011
The Birther Syndrome--Real or False?
Mr. Obama is our 44th President. He will remain so until at least January, 2013, if not until, January 2017. The resurgent "Birther" syndrome has at its base, the provisions in our Constitution that the President must be a natural born citizen. Obama's Certificate of Live Birth from Hawaii is set forth to answer this requirement.
No one in any capacity has been able to prove otherwise, despite all manner of lawsuits or requests for information. Whether the truth lies in Hawaii or Kenya, we will still have Obama as President until his terms run out. This is what we must deal with today.
Should the truth lie in Kenya, it would undoubtedly take years and years of litigation to reach some kind of conclusion and corrective actions. Meanwhile, there is a fine opportunity to make the issue moot by simply not reelecting him to office in 2012.
Labels: Birthers
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The UN on steroids? Hell no!
Do I think that conservatives would object to the formation of a strong international government with its own military force?
Yes, indeed, many conservatives would rise in opposition to this idea for a number of reasons:
1) Few if any safeguards or “limited powers” can ultimately prevent such an international army from violating the sovereignty of any nation that has reaped the displeasure of the UN or any other international body. Of the 190-odd nations in the UN, a considerable majority are not favorable to the US, and any security committee composed of many hostile nations , such as could arise in the UN Security Council, can and do block actions the US would favor, or initiate actions the US would consider to be immoral.
2) There would be no disinterested higher authority a violated nation could appeal to for timely justice.
3) This amounts to relinquishing considerable sovereignty of the US to an international body that we neither can control nor be assured of decisions favorable to the US, or to the moral standards of free and democratic nations.
4) Many of the nations of the world today, and for the foreseeable future, are immoral or amoral to begin with (communist, totalitarian, etc.), have a government that has no common ethical basis with the free world, or else have an economic or vengeful interest in a certain outcome, and their judgement or vote to use force would be highly suspect, if not immoral in itself.
5) We have seen the problems of the UN and its SC up front and personal. To give such a collection of rascals the power to declare and execute war or “policing actions” on anyone using their own forces is an abomination. Korea was dubbed a “policing action”, for instance, by the UN.
6) This One World kind of scheme will continue to have the fatal flaw of some or even a majority of foxes guarding the hen house, and the fatal flaw of irreconcilable moral convictions, until democracy and ethics are normalized sufficiently in the governments and the peoples of just about all nations. That will take forever to realize, which explodes the Utopian concept of One World-ism. In my opinion, federations of nations are possible, but a single, all powerful world government is either a chimera or a nightmare.
7) The idea that participation in the UN or similar organization aids the introduction of that nation into greater democracy and freedom is simply not proven.
Meanwhile, we should do our very best together with the free and democratic nations that are our friends and allies to keep things going in a constructive direction towards more freedom and liberty worldwide.
Labels: Government, UN, Worldview
Thursday, March 17, 2011
FDR Opinion on Government Unions
FDR Quote
“The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in 1937 to the National Federation of Federal Employees. Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt. But, he wrote, “I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place” in the public sector. “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government.”
Labels: Comments on the day, Unions
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Government Corruption
Does the size of government increase corruption?
While the size of government does not necessarily correlate with the size of the corruption problem, the bigger the government the greater the tax load on the citizenry. The question is then are we getting real value for our tax dollars in a fair manner across the board, or are we being conned into a significant redistribution of wealth by the government, which I believe is outright theft.
This is one of the stated goals of the current administration; to tax the rich heavily and redistribute the proceeds, and not tax perhaps 40-60% of the citizens. In my opinion, all of us should pay taxes at some rate, perhaps by one of the so-called flat or fair tax proposals that tax consumption and not earnings. (Yes, this would require an amendment to the Constitution to rid ourselves of the income tax.)
Paying a share of the tax burden is the act of a stakeholder in the nation, as opposed to a freeloader on the system, and far from reducing freedoms, it strengthens our collective freedoms immeasurably. The old dictum still holds: “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” which this and other administrations seem to have ignored deliberately, while increasing the indebtedness of the nation by trillions.
There does exist massive corruption in the government today in Medicare, a situation that I can attest to personally by the billing and review systems between Medicare, hospitals, the insurance companies and the individual–me and family members– now in seven different cases in four different hospitals. I doubt that ObamaC will correct these problems.
To my knowledge, no one has proposed to undertake a deep and thorough non-partisan review of all government agencies, bureaus, commissions, committees, boards, and the like, of which there are at least 1700 or more, in order to reduce functional duplications, reduce staff and budgets, or eliminate a significant number of these perennial hobby-horse dollar holes, perhaps with savings in the billions of dollars. (Go to LSU.com to see the official listing of government entities.)
Many of these organizations follow the “grow or die rule” that says they must increase their role, mission, staff and budget each year (or try to!).There should be a commission established along the lines of the BRAC commission that takes a multi-year look at this drag on the budget, and forces non-political reductions of much of the nonsense, and perhaps not a little bit of corruption as well.
Labels: Government
