We Can't Fight Alone Against the Monster

 It seems to that our once loved, once honored, once great nation is suffering mightily in this “winter of our discontent”.  Between questionable government mandates, social and economic disruption, and a stolen Presidential election, our nation – and we as a people – are reeling.  If one is watching, one can see our liberties, our freedoms, our God given rights being stripped away while we cower behind our useless face masks.  The forces of authoritarianism consolidate their control and we can only watch helplessly.  I am afraid for my country.

It would be easier to fight this if it were simply governments trying to enslave us, but the evil behind this has used the fear that is stalking us to divide us into warring classes.  It is no longer simply a case of standing up to THE MAN, but many of our neighbors are also on the side of the authoritarians.  It isn’t black booted, government thugs enforcing these illegal mandates, it is our neighbors willingly doing the bidding of the totalitarian Masters and taking away our freedoms and liberties.

How are we to heal as a nation and a people when the divide between us is so vast and the Left offers no position on compromise?  What is the compromise when your position is “abortion on demand” right up through birth?  Where do we come together when their only stand is open borders and unlimited immigration?  What is the balanced position when you blame an entire race for all the evils and problems in the country?  How do we compromise between standing up for America and appeasing nations that seek our demise?  What deal is there between law and order and defunding the police?

Even in our response to the so-called Pandemic, there seems to be no room for compromise, nor tolerance of differing points of view.  One group demands total compliance with an orthodoxy that has no basis in science, reality, nor recent national experience.  Their position is absolute – no give, no compromise, no yielding.  It is all or nothing – agree with the lockdowns, the masking, the total authoritarian control or be shamed and shunned.  

Somehow, we have lost the ability to analyze, to think critically, to discuss, and to reason. The “science” has become politicized to the point that even ideas that are totally inaccurate are now accepted as truths.  Cloth and paper masks cannot filter viruses, but don’t go out in public without one.  Contact tracing shows that 75% of new cases seem to come from home and social gatherings, with less than 2% from restaurants – yet restaurants are closed again. Children rarely get sick with the Covid, yet schools remain closed.  Small businesses are being crushed by rules and restrictions that do nothing to stop the spread of the Covid. Nine months into it, and if you believe the government and the news media, the “pandemic” is just getting worse. But still, the total authoritarian mindset dominates and brooks no opposition.

We were once willing to live and let live, to accept differences of opinion and different ideas.  There was a time when we could express ourselves and be ourselves if we did not interfere with another’s rights and freedoms.  There was a time when America – and Americans – were big enough for a wide range of attitudes, opinions, and thoughts.  It seems as if she – and we – are no longer big enough for men to be free.

America was once “the last best hope for mankind”.  Now,  I am afraid that She is a memory fading rapidly on the winter wind.

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

“Let not your hearts be troubled”.  

I know that many of you are saddened, disillusioned, heartsick, and maybe even angry at what is going on right now with the blatant election fraud that is going on around the country.  You turned out, you voted by the law and, you did your Duty.  You have no control – yet – over those people in government who are spitting on their Duty. It is frustrating, it is maddening, and it is pushing us to our limits.

We have no control over what others choose to do, nor over much of what happens to us in life; yet, each of us has total control over how we choose to react to others and to situations.  We each must choose how we will react.  Circumstances may force us to come together and react collectively.  Let us pray that hour does not come.

Let us take stock of our reality on this autumn afternoon.  The sun came up this morning and will set this evening.  We all woke up this morning.  We’ll be hungry, thirsty, and tired before the day is done.  We’ll talk, we’ll laugh, we’ll think about things that we like.  And most of us will go to sleep tonight with complete Faith that the sun will come up again tomorrow.  To paraphrase the marvelous classic poem, “In Flanders Fields” “we will live, feel dawn, see sunset glow, love and be loved before we lie in Flanders Fields”.  In other words, God is still on His throne and all will be well.

Don’t fret the election count right now.  It’s ok to be concerned, but don’t let your concern take over your life. Don’t let your anger, if you are angry, steal your joy.  In this moment, this time which may be a calm before the storm, hold on to your loved ones, count your blessings, thank God that you are alive in the greatest country in the history of the world.  Thank God for his mercy, grace, and redemption.  Pray for calm, pray for strength, pray for America.

“Let not your hearts be troubled”. 

 

The time may be approaching when good men are going to be forced to do hard things.  The days may get very hard and very dark, but, even if they do, God will still be on His throne and those who confess will still have salvation.  Don’t worry about the days to come.  Let’s just help one another through each today as it comes.  

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”  We’ll deal with tomorrow when it comes.

Pray for peace. Pray for America. Pray for strength and patience.

 

It Really Is That Simple

I don’t know if this essay will have any impact, if it will reach any body in time, or if anybody out there is even listening anymore.  I have never seen our great nation in such horrible condition and, for the first time in my life, I fear that my America is in its death throes.  This should not be an election about personalities, or manner of speaking, or about Tweets.  This should be an election about America, American values, American liberties, and our American future.  Whether or not you like President Trump, whether or not you like Joe Biden should be completely irrelevant.  Where we have come as a nation in the last 4 years, and where either will take us in the next 4 should be the only issue.

Th really big question you should ask yourself, or anyone who hasn’t voted yet, is, “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”  If the answer is “yes” you should vote for Trump.  If the answer is “no”, you should vote for Biden.  It really is that simple.

Forget Covid – forget the so – called “pandemic” – think where you were on the first of March.    Think of where the country was before the Covidiocy, maybe you need a reminder.

            Almost 4 million jobs created since election

More Americans were employed than ever recorded before in our history.

More than 400,000 manufacturing jobs since the 2016 election.

Manufacturing jobs grew at the fastest rate in more than THREE DECADES.

Economic growth last quarter 2019 hit 4.2 percent.

New unemployment claims a 49-year low.

Median household income has hit highest level ever recorded.

African-American unemployment has recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.

Hispanic-American unemployment is at the lowest rate ever recorded.

Asian-American unemployment recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.

Women’s unemployment recently reached the lowest rate in 65 years.

Youth unemployment has recently hit the lowest rate in nearly half a century.

Lowest unemployment rate ever recorded for Americans without a high school diploma.

Almost 3.9 million Americans had been lifted off food stamps since the election.

Signed the biggest package of tax cuts and reforms in history. After tax cuts, over $300    billion poured back in to the U.S. in the first quarter alone.

As a result of our tax bill, small businesses have the lowest top marginal tax rate in more than 80 years.

Opened ANWR and approved Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.

Record number of regulations eliminated.

Enacted regulatory relief for community banks and credit unions.

Obamacare individual mandate penalty GONE.

The FDA approved more affordable generic drugs than ever before in history, many drug companies are freezing or reversing planned price increases.

Increased our coal exports by 60 percent; U.S. oil production recently reached all-time high.

United States is a net natural gas exporter for the first time since 1957.

Withdrew the United States from the job-killing Paris Climate Accord.

Cancelled the illegal, anti-coal, so-called Clean Power Plan.

Secured record $700 billion in military funding; $716 billion next year.

NATO allies are spending $69 billion more on defense since 2016.

Organized the Space Force the 6th branch of the Armed Forces.

Confirmed more circuit court judges than any other new administration.

Confirmed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett

Withdrew from the Iran Deal.

Moved U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Concluded a historic U.S.-Mexico Trade Deal to replace NAFTA. And negotiations with Canada are underway as we speak.

Reached a breakthrough agreement with the E.U. to increase U.S. exports.

Imposed tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum to protect our national security.

Imposed tariffs on China in response to China’s forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and their chronically abusive trade practices.

Improved vetting and screening for refugees, and switched focus to overseas resettlement.

Do what you think is right, just remember that President Trump did all of this in 3 years.  Biden has been in Washington government for 47 years and was actively involved in passing the stupid laws and regulations that have screwed this country so badly.

Joe Biden isn’t the answer to the problems – he is the problem!

 

Still the Last Best Hope of Man on Earth

 

There are so many ways to compare President Trump and DemocRat presidential candidate “Hidin’” Joe Biden.  They are worlds apart on foreign affairs, foreign trade, economics, taxation, and on and on.  But perhaps their differing views on America itself may be the single greatest difference between them.

Watching President Trump, I believe that he genuinely loves America and Americans.  I get the sense that he holds America and Americans in high regard.  I think he believes in the American dream – of “rags to riches”, of people doing, being, and accomplishing all that they are capable of.  Mr. Trump seems to hold our history and heritage in awe and respect.  And in that regard, if no other, Mr. Trump is very much like most of us.

Watch Mr. Trump at his rallies.  Tens of thousands of people in city after city turn out to see this man.  There is a genuine outpouring of affection from the crowds – but that affection is reflected back from the President.  He wants what is best for the people – and all that he has done – up until the China virus hit (if it really did) was to make things better for us.  And by and large, things were a lot better up until the China Virus.

What really does Mr. Biden think about America and Americans?  How does his vision of our heritage and history affect what he wants to do?  Interesting question, when “Hidin’ Biden” damn near refuses to tell us what his positions are on major issues.  Maybe “Hidin’ Biden’s” latest commercial tells us all that we need to know.

Read the transcript from Biden’s latest a - “America was an idea, an idea.  ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident.’ We’ve never lived up to it, but we’ve never walked away from it before. And I just think we have to be more honest. Let our kids know, as we raise them, what actually did happen. Acknowledge our mistakes so we don’t repeat them. So, I think it’s important we teach history, not in a prescriptive way, from my perspective, but what actually the facts were without also acknowledging that there’s 400 years of racism in the United States of America. That’s what it is. And it’s able to be fixed.”

Read this again, and read it carefully.

“America was an idea.”  AMERICA WAS?  Is the candidate saying that America no longer exists?  Is he saying that the America that we built, that we sacrificed for, that many of us died for no longer exists?  Is he mocking us for loving an “idea” that “we never lived up to”?  If America WAS what are we now?

Where is your perspective if the statement “there’s 400 years of racism in the United States of America” is the focus of your presidential TV ad?  To whom is Mr. Biden speaking?  How can one think about the history of our nation and somehow come to the conclusion that “400 years of racism” is the first thing that you mention?  How can someone running for president see our country, our history, and heritage as nothing but “400 years of racism”?

I have a real problem with this.  This is not how I see America and I’m sure most of don’t either.  America IS still an idea that we honor, love, and respect. America still is the greatest country in the history of the world.  And for all of her flaws, she’s still a hope and inspiration for anyone who loves freedom and individual liberty.  There is no place in my view of America for the dark, ugly vision that “Hidin’ Biden” expresses in this ad.  This alone should be reason enough not to vote for the man – if you need one more.

Oh, yes.  And let us always remember – and remind others of what Ronald Reagan said about our American place in the world: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

It’s up to us whether we choose “an idea that we never lived up to’ or “the last best hope of man on earth.”

Was I Kicked in the Head?

 

I truly wonder sometimes how stupid the political class thinks the rest of us are.  As I listen to the political ads on TV, I can’t figure out what these dudes are talking about.  I’m wondering if maybe that last kick in the head, back in ’91, has left me comatose and living in an altered state of reality for the past 30 years.

I’d really hate to think that my sub – conscious created 2020, the Covidiocy, Wolfman and Cuomo, social isolation and the rest of it.  Honest to God, if I created this nightmare in my coma – addled brain, I genuinely apologize.  And if 2020 and the Covidiocy is just in my mind, I KNOW you all are having more fun than I am!

But I’ve digressed.

Here’s an ad on TV – “Hidin’ Biden” is saying how “he” took a failing economy in 2008 and built a roaring economy and that Trump took that great economy and ran it into the ditch with Covid mismanagement.  Now, here’s the thing – the Great Recession lasted for the entire 8 years of the Biden – Obama administration.  There were numerous articles written on how weak and tepid the “recovery” was.  Obama fans wrote that it was the “new normal”.  The jobs, the industries, the ever-growing prosperity were forever gone.  Progressives wrote about how well qualified Obama and Biden were to “manage” the decline.  In fact, in a now famous video clip, President Obama says, “What’s Trump gonna do?  He got a magic wand? Those jobs are gone forever!”

OK – I’ll grant that I might still be a coma from getting kicked in the head – but, I can research stuff and see how many new jobs were created in 2017, 2018, and 2019.  I can research the real economic growth and growth in GDP in those 3 years.  Lord have mercy!  Real incomes went up more in 3 years than they had in the preceding 16!   Somebody is in an altered reality – and I’m not entirely sure that it’s me.

The second part of the ad is even funnier – claiming Trump has mismanaged the pandemic.  Now, once again, we can all Google stuff and see for ourselves.  Trump banned travel from China on January 31. At that time, only one or two cases of “da Rona” had been diagnosed in the US.  I mean, how much sooner could the man have acted?

The political class must think we’re stupid.  We can look up the DemocRats reaction to Trump’s ban.  Every nationally known DemocRat beat up on Trump calling his ban racist, xenophobic, and alarmist.  Nancy Pelosi was on TV inviting folks to come out to San Francisco’s Chinatown to party in the Chinese New Year.  NY Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Senator Chuck Shumer did the same thing – invited folks out into the streets to celebrate in crowds.

So, like who really mismanaged the crisis?

The “Hidin’ Biden” ad goes on to say how he’s going to manage the pandemic when he’s President; and there are some familiar about what the candidate is saying.  “Hidin’ Biden” says he’ll listen to the experts.  Didn’t Trump set up a guiding committee?  Didn’t Trump let Dr. Fauci run the damn show?  Didn’t Trump shut down the economy for “15 days to flatten the curve” on the advice of Fauci and the other “experts”?  How’d that turn out?  Biden says he’ll “shut it down” again if the so-called scientists tell him to.  Or, if his Chinese and Ukrainian paymasters tell him to?

What else is in “Hidin’ Biden’s” bag of tricks to save us from “da ‘Rona”?  We’re gonna make, ventilators, and hospital beds, and PPE – all made here in American!  Didn’t the Trumpster do all of that back in March and April, or is my hoof – addled brain playing tricks on me again?

Every body is entitled to their own version of history, but no one is entitled to their own version of the Truth.  Trump did as much as any leader of a free people could have done to try to deal with the “pandemic”.  As we get farther along, the contradictory statements from the so-called experts should make anyone with any functioning thinking ability question the hell that these “experts” have put us through.  

I truly hope that the voters prove that they smarter than the political class thinks that we are, even if this unbelievably scary reality is just the result of a kick to my head.

Why Do They Hate Him?

The intensity and volume from the anti-Trumpers truly baffles me.  I can’t get my head around why people so despise this President.  You might think that he traveled around the world bowing to foreign kings and emperors, apologizing for America   No, wait!  That was Obama.  Or you might think that Trump paid the Iranians $150 million in cash and looked aside while the Iranians paid terrorists to attack us.  No, wait, Obama too.  Maybe you’re thinking that Mr. Trump refused to send military aid to our embassy in Libya and left 4 American diplomats and warriors to be slaughtered by the mob.  Nope, that was Obama, too.  Signed legislation making it a crime not to buy health insurance? Obama.  Passed a heath care bill that drove health insurance premium costs up by 200% or more?  Not Trump either.  Left about 40 million Americans without health insurance?  Not Trump.  Over saw the weakest economic recovery since the Depression? Presided over the worst employment situation since before the Second World War? Obama, too.  Let Moslem terrorists form their own country? Nope, wrong again. 

Looking back over the first three years of the first Trump term, I really have a problem understanding the vitriolic hatred.  The Trump bashing in the media began election night with some knucklehead on MSNBC or CNN suggesting that since Trump won the election, the only option left was impeachment.  They were still counting ballots and the fools were floating impeachment.  The anti – Trump protests began with Code Pink and the “pussy” hats before the inauguration. Think about it for a minute – before the last ballots were counted and before the man is even inaugurated there were protests and talk of impeachment.  Before he was legally the President there were protests! 

There are those anti – American, anti – Trumpers who want to blame Trump for the division and the strife and the hatred burning up America.  But I think that the previous paragraph does a good job of pointing out that it was not Trump nor Trump supporters who are fanning the flames of sectarian and racial violence in America.  The riots that continue unbated for 4 months in major American cities are organized, equipped, and paid for by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, Inc. – NEITHER OF WHICH are Trump supporting groups.  Antifa is not a devil spawn love child of Donald Trump. Modern antifa politics can be traced to the emergence of neo-Nazism in Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Ain’t got nothing to do with the Trumpster.

Similarly, Black Lives Matter, Inc. (not to be confused with the humanistic and Christian ideal that “black lives, like all lives, matter”) had its origins in 2013 following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.  BLM came to prominence during the unrest in Ferguson, MO following the police shooting of Michael Brown, by Ferguson police.  Again, BLM, Inc., like Anita, predate the Trump presidency and are leading the violence, not reacting to some other act of violence brought against them.  Let me also point out that the two murders that hatched BLM, Inc, happened during the Obama years.  Again, nothing to do with Trump.

Let’s also point out that the cities that are seeing rioting here during the Summer and Fall of Covidiocy are cities that have been run by DemocRat politicians for decades.  Chicago has been in thrall to the corrupt Cook County DemoRatic machine for nearly 100 years.  In each of the cities that have seen weeks and months of rioting, there is a DemocRat mayor and a DemocRat Governnor.  It is completely foolish to blame President Trump for either the police brutality in multi – generational Democrat cities, or for the riots in those cities.  Put the blame where it belongs.

Never in my life have I seen this type of behavior toward an elected president.

I think back to the start of Mr. Trump’s administration and I must wonder why his 2 major efforts have generated so much angst.  The first thing Trump talked about when he started running in 2015 was to build a border wall and get control of illegal – note ILLEGAL – immigration.  It was why so many people voted for him.  Why was anyone surprised?

But let us consider the desire among “Deplorables” to close the border. Leftists, liberals, progressives and other anti – American types want to claim that the desire for controlled immigration is based in our “racism” and “xenophobia” (fear of foreigners), but these have nothing to do with it.  Among the “Deplorables” and the “Great Unwashed” is a deeply held understanding that the thing that ties all Americans together is our nearly universal understanding that we all must follow the laws.  A great many “Deploreables” are deeply, deeply troubled when our governments do not follow the law.  We have watched Congress after Congress pass border controls and immigration laws; and we have watched President after President sign these laws and pledge to close the borders only to watch millions of people come pouring into our country, ignoring our laws.  It is not racism nor xenophobia – it is our deep-seated respect for the concept of a nation of laws.

Donald Trump ran on a simple economic platform; cut taxes, simplify regulations, free the entrepreneurs, and renegotiate trade deals that hurt America.  He did all these things and before the ill – advised (and stupid) shutdown, the American economy was doing better than it had ever done in peace time in the history of our nation.

More Americans were working than at any time in 70 years. For several months before the “Covidiocy” our nation was at full – employment.  Unemployment rates for blacks and “Hispanics” were lower than they have ever been. And even in the pandemic, unemployment rates are now, October 2020, back down to where they were in the Obama – Biden years. 

It’s not just good economic policy and governance, that Trump turned the economy around in 2017, and that is driving the recovery again.  There is something else, something that the “progressives” and the sophisticates can’t understand, and it is this:  Donald Trump believes in America and in Americans.  Like most of us “Deploreables, Mr. Trump believes in America, in American greatness, in the American Spirit, in American Exceptionalism.  We, like the President, believe that we can make America great again – for all Americans.  There has not been this kind of faith, belief, and trust in the American people in the White House since Ronald Reagan – that, is what lit the economy on fire and it is the only thing that will pull us out of this self – imposed recession.

I really wish you anti -Trumpers would give some serious thought to all of this before voting for Senile Joe and the Ho.

"Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue." - Joe Biden

 

Last Tuesday night’s so-called Presidential “debate” was a disgusting “shit show”, a disgrace, and an insult to America, Americans, and our national heritage.  Everyone involved with it should be ashamed of themselves and their part in the disgusting spectacle.  After an hour and a half of completely wasted time, I know nothing new about any policy position of either candidate.  I despise the cop-out that “both sides do it”, but both President Trump and ex – Vice President Biden were childish, unprofessional, rude and crude.  Neither of them looked or acted presidential.  The level of disrespect that Biden showed to Mr. Trump was unprecedented in American history.  Biden’s disrespect transcended even the worst of the past three years’ non-stop disrespect from DemocRats and their ass kissing puppets in the news media.

Chris Wallace of Fox News was a total failure as a moderator.  He either could not or would not maintain order. He was obviously and disgustingly partisan toward Biden.  It appeared at times as if Wallace was siding with Biden.  His questions were not specific and concise.  He spent entirely too much time asking the questions and not enough time keeping the candidates on message.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment was that Mr. Biden just flat ass out would not answer any of the questions.  He accidentally revealed one or two positions – but quickly swerved away from what he had just said.  The once vice president said that he intended to eliminate all of the Trump tax cuts.  This action alone will be a major tax increase for all American tax payers.  Then, in the next breath Biden said that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000.  But reversing the tax cuts will raise taxes on EVERY taxpayer.  It doesn’t matter how you spin it, eliminating the Trump tax cuts will be tax increase for the half of the Americans who pay income tax. 

Biden accidentally gave viewers one very clear and concise statement on his campaign message, but Mr. Trump failed to catch it and lost a fantastic opportunity to show the American people why the Harris – Biden ticket is so incredibly dangerous.  Mr. Wallace was questioning Biden about his plans to “pack the Supreme Court” with Liberal judges to off set the conservative judges that President Trump has appointed.  Biden refused to answer, eventually saying, “Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue.”

Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue.

Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris – your positions on matters facing the country SHOULD be the issue!  It is not enough to spend the few minutes each week that you campaign telling us that Donald Trump is a failure.  You two are not offering any details about what you intend to do if you are elected.

You say that you are not going to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year.  But there is video of you saying to people “Your taxes are going to up if I’m elected.”  Even with your dodging at the debate, you said that you would roll back the Trump tax cuts.  The simple truth here is that the changes in the tax law under Trump DID cut taxes for every American that pays income taxes.  Eliminating those cuts will INCREASE taxes for the people who received the cuts in the first place!  Regardless of how your supporters might try to twist this reality – it is what it is.  Unlike my more “sophisticated” compatriots, I am not impressed with how you lawyer types try to twist truth into absurd pretzels of illogical logic – if I pay more in income tax under your plan, it is an increase.

And this is not the only uncertainty in your platform.  What is your position on defunding police?  You said you were in favor of it – now you’re not.

What is your position on disarming civilians?  Both Kammi Harris (the Indian pretending to be a black chic) and ‘Beto’ O’Rourke (the Irish guy pretending to be Hispanic) have called for actual confiscation of civilian guns.  Ms. Harris is you vice-president (who will be President within a year) and you have said that you will put O’Rourke in charge of your gun policy.  It seems to this observer that you intend to disarm the American public.

What is your plan for dealing with the Pandemic?  You trash the efforts of the current Administration and the plans that you discuss are freaking exactly what the Trump administration did in March and April.  You say that you will follow the science – but what about all the scientists who are against forced isolation and lockdowns?  It ain’t settled science no matter how loudly you shout.

Speaking of not settled science, what exactly is your position on the Climate Change hoax?  You embraced AOC’s “Green New Deal” in which she calls for the elimination of private autos and airlines and the total elimination of fossil fuels in 10 years – or some such lunacy.  In fact, you have said that AOC will be in charge of your energy and climate policies. You have emphatically said that you will immediately stop the production of gas and oil production from fracking and shut down the coal industry. Please tell us how any of this will benefit the American people.

Yes, Mr. Biden, your positions on issues is the issue in this election.  And, there is your record to consider.  You opposed desegregating schools saying that you did not want your kids in a “racial jungle.”  You supported anti-crime bills that disproportionately affected young black men, whom you called “predatory animals.” You supported Obamacare which has been horrific for working class Americans.  The individual mandate was unconstitutional.  The “one size fits all” approach, which forces young people to pay for geriatric coverage and the elderly to carry maternity coverage drove the cost of insurance sky high; with most Americans seeing more than a 200% increase in health insurance premiums.  And there are still 30 million Americans without health insurance. Your “big fucking deal” has done more harm than good.

Lastly, we can look at your history of bribery and extorsion during your years as Vice President.  You and your son, Hunter, became billionaires by strong arming foreign governments and selling influence around the world.  I cannot think of a more corrupt, self-serving person who has ever sought the White House than you – maybe Mrs. Clinton, but it would be close.

I only hope that the “Deplorables” turn out in large enough numbers to prevent you party from stealing this election.  The course that you are plotting for our nation will not end well, whether you are elected or not.  You and your Party have set a course that can only end in violence.

 

 

Only 6% - That's Something to Consider

 Quietly, with very little fanfare and absolutely no coverage in the mainstream news media, the Centers for Disease Control released “new” information on American Covid 19 deaths.  The CDC reported that of the 161, 392 deaths covered in the report, only 6%, or 9,684, had only Covid listed as a cause of death.  The other 94% had, on average 2.6 other diseases listed as “comorbidities”.  It is fair to assume that in most cases one or more of the 2.6 “comorbidities” predated the Covid, resulting in weakened immune systems, making contracting the Covid more likely.  Taking the CDC report at its face value, any thinking person must wonder why we’re still acting like this thing is the “black death”?

People who were paying attention questioned the death toll numbers after about two weeks of the constant reporting.  “Experts” warned that New York City would need 50,000 ventilators and thousands of additional hospital beds. President Trump used war time powers to force manufacturers to produce ventilators.  He sent the Army Corps of Engineers to New York to build field hospitals in Central Park and to convert the Javits Convention Center into a medical facility.  To meet the projections of the “experts”. The President also sent the US Navy hospital ship “Comfort” to NY.  All told, the Government added nearly 5,000 beds to the city’s treatment capacity.  Doctors stopped seeing non – Covid patients and stopped doing all but life essential emergency surgeries.  The entire nation’s health care system poised, primed to treat the hundreds of thousands of expected China virus victims.

All that planning and preparation and the hundreds of thousands of dying people failed to materialize.

The Comfort staff only treated 182 patients before the Navy recalled her.  By mid – April, the City and the Federal government cancelled the construction of the field hospitals.  The tsunami of deathly ill Covid patients never materialized.  Hospital beds stood empty; tens of thousands of ventilators waited – before the “Wizards of Smart” realized that ventilators killed more than they helped. Hospitals around the country were laying off nurses, technicians and doctors because there were no patients.

Thinking people couldn’t help but begin to wonder what was going on. Logic and common sense told those of us who were listening that something very odd was going on with these numbers.  Bear in mind that in March and April, while the nation waited the coming horror, the only health guidance had given us was stay away from crowds, stay home if you don’t feel good, cover your coughs and sneezes, wash your hands, and use hand sanitizer.  Somehow, the experts got it wrong and the China virus did not crush the nation’s healthcare system.

Soon, dozens of county coroners around the country went public complaining that the States were inflating the death counts.  Like this past weekend’s revision in the CDC numbers, the mainstream news media ignored the coroners’ complaints.  But thinking people couldn’t help but wonder.

Remember, if you can, back on the 13th of March when President Trump declared a national emergency and asked for our patience for “15 days” to “flatten the curve”.  Looking back 172 days now, there wasn’t ever a curve that we needed to flatten.

I am fighting the urge to let my rage and sarcasm have full sway here, but there are some valid things that I want to say.  Part of me just wants to unload the gallows humor, the harsh verbal slings, the zippy one-liners guaranteed to enrage a huge chunk of people, but I’d rather have my Faithful Readers give some serious thought to the words that I am writing.

Nothing happens in a vacuum.  People, and therefore by extension, organizations take actions for reasons, or motives, or for some expected gain.  There was a reason that the statisticians at CDC and the various state Health Departments chose to report the deaths this way.  They didn’t just flip a coin, there was a reason, motive, or expectation of gain in the decisions to report deaths “with” rather than simply report deaths “by” Covid 19.  The results of this method of reporting led to a series of bad decisions by a host of governors and others in authority.

One can never make good decisions if all the information one has is flawed.  Consider, if you will, the route that information about the Covid infection took to get to CDC and the governors of our sovereign states.  The outbreak began deep in the heartland of China.  The Chinese government controls the news media with an iron fist.  China also refused to let foreign medical people travel to Wuhan to see conditions for themselves.  We truly do not know how serious the Covid was in Wuhan or in other parts of China.  We have no way of knowing just how accurate the information coming out of China was.

We must not forget that the Chinese government was not pleased with President Trump and the United States during the last half of 2019.  Trump had come down hard on the Chinese during trade negotiations, taking back significant giveaways that previous US administrations had awarded to China.  At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, is it possible that China hyped the severity of the epidemic, hoping to disrupt the American economy?  Stranger things have happened.

Nor can we know with any certitude if the World Heath Organization truthfully and accurately analyzed and reported their data to the rest of the world. Remember, there is always a reason why an organization chooses to do something.  I am sure that many of us want to believe that the UN and the WHO are only interested in what is best for all of us, but the reality is that the people who make up the UN and the World Health Organization are PEOPLE and can be driven by less than honorable motives.  We cannot assume, considering the long-standing anti-American attitudes in the United Nations, how well-intentioned guidelines coming out of the WHO might not have been.

It is possible, more possible than not, that China brought pressure on the leaders of the WHO to do their bidding with regards to hyping the virus.  It is very possible, that China “bought” the Director – General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to help in their disinformation campaign against the United States.  “Honorable” men have been bought throughout the history of the world.  There are a very, very few men who cannot be bought.

I write these paragraphs to suggest that our own CDC MAY have been working with very inaccurate data in the beginning.  It is very likely that the Chinese and the WHO had supplied bad data, and the CDC accepted it as being valid. It is likely, that CDC over estimated both the transmissibility and severity of the virus.  It is almost a certainty that the information that our CDC had was faulty, at best, fraudulent at the worst.

One of the most difficult things for anyone – and therefore by extension, any organization to do – is to admit they are wrong.  Once the President asked for the 15 day “quarantine”, CDC could not, or would not, admit that they were wrong.  Perhaps they took the “in for a penny, in for a pound” approach.  

There is, also, the very real possibility that some of the decision makers within the CDC willingly went along with the disinformation campaign to hurt the President’s chances of re-election. The “Deep State” is real and reaches into all levels of the Governments.  It doesn’t really matter, though, what caused China, WHO, and CDC to do what they did.  The result, considering that less than 10,000 people in America have died from Covid 19 alone, has been catastrophic.  

Perhaps it needs an essay of its own, but the complicity of the main stream news media to question and investigate the death counts is the saddest part of this whole ordeal.  Real journalists, real news hounds, would have started digging around back in April when New York City was not hit as hard as the experts projected.  Real journalists would have tried to find the truth.  Our current news stooges are content to parrot the Democrat Party talking points trying to destroy the president.  the vaunted “4th Estate” has fallen so far from the days of Watergate.  Back then, they brought down a president – now they are political lapdogs for the Democrats.

It has become one of my fondest hopes that the whole Covid-19 hoax will someday be exposed.  I’m not counting on it.

That Mask Ain't No Hero's Cape

I think that the virulent militancy of the pro – mask people might concern me almost as much as the blatant attack on our human and civil liberties by certain Democratic governors.  Voters in the affected states will eventually remedy the actions of the governors, but I am afraid that the damage that the “mask, no – mask” controversy has done to our society may never heal.  The level of anger that the pro – mask people are expressing is frightening.

Almost as troubling, and assuredly more annoying, are the self – righteous, sanctimonious, arrogant posts that some of the pro – mask folks are posting on social media.  To their view, they are so much more intelligent, sophisticated, caring, and socially conscious than the rest of us. Frankly, I find myself disagreeing.

Pro – mask folks, you are not more intelligent than we are.  Intelligent people do not accept what the so-called “experts” tell them without applying critical thinking, knowledge guided by experience, their own research, and in the case of anything that comes from any government through any news organization – a hearty dose of skepticism.  For every “scientific” statement supporting masks there is one suggesting they don’t work.  Often, these conflicting statements come from the same “scientific” entity on different days.  You can pick and choose whether the WHO or CDC is in favor of masks or against them.  Both have put out conflicting statements.

An intelligent person will consider the question and apply some common sense and real information to the question.  A virus is tiny. Some are as small as 0.001 microns. A micron, or micrometer, is equivalent to 1/1000 of a millimeter (0.000039 inch).  In real life, an American dime coin is just a little bit thicker than a millimeter.  I’m not sure I can do the math, but a virus is 1/000000 the width of a dime.  Or, stated another way, 100,000 Covid viruses in a pile would only be as tall as a dime is thick.

Most of us can’t even conceive of something that small. It is microscopic, it is tiny.

In comparison, the filter on the N95 mask is 0.3 microns.  The pore size on a surgical mask is 100 microns. Bandanas and other cloth masks have even much larger pore sizes – simply truth, viruses are small enough to penetrate all generally available masks. Your mask isn’t protecting anyone.

Pro – mask folks, you are not more “progressive” or “sophisticated than we are.  You are neither “progressive” nor “sophisticated” because you are wearing a rag across your face when common sense, logic, and about ½ of the published science says you ought not to.  To put it plainly, it’s stupid.  Telling each other that you are both “progressive” and “sophisticated” is simply feeding your delusions.

You all love to tell us how caring and compassionate you are because you’re wearing a mask, you are going to “make a difference”, you are going to “save the planet”.  No, you aren’t.  You are running around with a rag across your face, breathing in all kinds of bacteria and pathogens that are busily growing in that rag over your mouth and nose.  The moisture in your breath and the dark in the fabric make a great incubator for all kinds of organisms in your breath and in the air around you.  You aren’t protecting anyone, you are a freaking, walking, mumbling “typhoid Mary”, spreading God only knows what infectious crap in your wake.  No, you’re not caring and compassionate.  You are annoying and sanctimonious.  You are not making a difference, you are not saving the planet, you are wearing a rag on your face and starting fights with people who disagree with you and who might just know more than you do.

The sun will come up in the east tomorrow morning and will set tomorrow in the west whether you wear a Covid mask or not.  Regardless of what you try to do to stop it, spring time is going to follow winter every year world without end, Amen.  Nothing that you nor I can do will in any impact the natural, physical world around us.  “All we are, is dust in the wind.”

You ain’t no hero and that mask ain’t no cape. 

From where I see it, just having state governors “order” us to wear masks is a far greater risk to our lives than the Covid – 19 virus.  You stand a greater chance of dying in a car accident than you do of contracting, getting sick from, and dying from the Covid – 19 (or, “da Rona” as some of my friends down South call it.).  With each passing day, the news reports x number more cases – but they are counting asymptomatic and fraudulent positive antibody tests as “new” cases.  Almost every day, there is a new report of grotesque mistakes in reporting test results, or a report of unused tests returning with “positive” results.  Even one such report should make an intelligent, “progressive”, sophisticated person question EVERYTHING that the media and governments have reported. 

It is sad to me that one’s life can be so meaningless that one can become fulfilled and driven by wearing a useless facemask.  I am sad that so many people are willing to fight over something that doesn’t matter one wit in the final analysis.

Every one of us is going to die.  That is about the only thing that is certain in life.  Diseases caused by viruses have always been with and always will be.  Various types of the Corona virus cause the common cold.  Over 2 million years of human evolution and there is no “vaccine” to prevent the common cold.  There so – called vaccines for the flu but whether they help is hardly settled science.  I received a flu vaccine one time and as far as I can remember, that was the only winter that I ever got the flu.  I won’t take the pneumonia shot either.  There are countless causes for pneumonia, and the vaccine protects against 5 pathogens.  I’m not a mathematical wizard, but even I can figure out that I am far more likely to get pneumonia from one of the countless other causes and not one of the 5 that the vaccine protects against.  Putting alien material into your body without a huge guarantee of success seems rather stupid to me.

But I have been wrong before.

One of the great hall marks of our American character has always been a healthy “live and let live” attitude.  Until very recently, Americans have been mostly willing to let other Americans be themselves and express themselves with little interference.  Public America was pretty much a complete “free marketplace of ideas”.  A Libertarian heritage of “do what you want to do as long as you don’t hurt anyone else” was a hallmark of our People.  It is no longer.

Over the past 50 years, we have seen in our nation a disturbing trend of intolerance for the expression of many legitimate ideas, social, and political opinions.  I think it began with the anti – American, anti – Vietnam War protesters.  When confronted with opposing ideas, they would shout down and out scream their opposition.  During the last quarter of the 20^th century, the “progressive” left added “political correctness” to their arsenal of censorship tools.  The political left has determined what things can be said in public discourse.  Should you present an unapproved opinion – you will be labeled as a racist, bigot, homophobe, or some other negative label.  And, once labeled as such, your opinion is no longer valid because you are whatever they have labeled you.  And no one wants to be labeled as an “enemy of decency”.

The “mask – no mask” conflict has moved thought control and censorship into new and dangerous territory.  The “progressive left” is now “virtue – signaling”, virtue – shaming”, and “team identifying” with their assault on those who won’t mask up.  Now, this is not entirely new – they have been using similar tactics with “climate change deniers” for half a generation.  Your value as a person – to the left – is not what you contribute, not what you create, not the help that you provide, but rather whether or not you hold the “opinions”.  One can be a disgusting, reprehensible, vile person, but if one expresses the correct opinions he remains with the “right” group.  Holding (or expressing those opinions) out weighs whatever short comings a person may have.  Identifying the compliant and the non- compliant will make it easier the next time a government wises to impose its will on the people.  They will know who will surrender and who will resist.

It does not matter to me which side of the “mask – no mask” controversy that you are on.  All that I care about is that you be decent, kind, and tolerant of others.  Please accept, as I do of mine, that your opinion may not be right.  Treat those who disagree with you with tolerance, forbearance, patience, and forgiveness.  As the Good Book says, “judge not, lest you be judged” and “do unto others as you would have done to you”. 

And if the masked folk are right, those of us who are “unmasked” are going to be dead before long anyways, so be kind to one another.

The Price They Paid

On this day two hundred and 44 years ago, 56 leaders from the 13 American colonies signed and published a simple document declaring the colonies to no longer be British possessions, but rather, independent sovereign states.  These were not radical, wild eyed revolutionaries; they were lawyers, farmers, merchants – men of stature in their communities.  They had worked within the system for years to redress grievances, to no avail.  Breaking away from the Crown was their last option.

We can most assuredly know that these men had thoughtfully, prayerfully weighed their options and considered all the risks that they were taking.  Signing that declaration brought them up against the single most powerful man in the world at that time.  Each one of the signers knew that with their signature they had crossed the line and become “out lawed” in the original sense of the word – no longer protected by any of the King’s laws.  They risked everything for their belief that men should be free to govern themselves.

I am taking the liberty of sharing this with you, Faithful Readers.  It comes from michealwsmith.com web site.  I have heard both Paul Harvey and Rush Limbaugh read this on their radio shows.

This is the Price They Paid

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?

Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the revolutionary war.

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.

Thomas McKean was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.

Vandals or soldiers or both, looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. The owner quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.

Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

*********

Many of them lost their lives and their fortunes – none of them lost their honor.  This declaration was the first step in forming the most amazing nation that the world has ever seen; a nation founded to protect God given liberties.  Enjoy the sun, the cookouts, the fireworks, but sometime over this holiday weekend give some thought to sacrifice and honor and what it should mean to Americans.

I'm Tired of It All

I’m tired.

I’m tired of Covid -19.  I’m tired of the lock downs and house arrests and freaking “social distancing”.  I’m tired of listening to our idiotic governor every day on the TV.  I’m tired of hearing a make – believe “woman” lecture me, spouting non – sense numbers of “new” cases (tested, probably, OR likely – say what?), knowing damned well the numbers are wholly fabricated.  I’m tired of the useless scum in Washington DC playing politics with our lives and livelihoods while blow-viating about how much they care about every precious life!

Except those thousands of lives destroyed daily in baby murdering abortions, don’t you know?

I’m tired.

I’m tired of people glaring at me when I am out in public without a mask. I’m tired of everybody thinking they know everything about this virus when no one knows squat about it.  I’m tired of supercilious, sanctimonious doctors demanding masks in their offices when they know damn well that any mask is ineffective.  Or, they should know that masks won’t stop a virus – but then again, maybe doctors are not the wizards of smart that we want them to be.

I’m tired of the damn wizards of smart that want to tell the rest of us how we must live our lives.  I’m tired of political hacks saying who can work and who can not work.  I’m tired of not being with friends and neighbors at our local gathering spots.  I’m tired of being told that we can’t stand together, or hug, or shake hands.  These aren’t just cultural norms; these are deeply ingrained parts of our humanity.  We are herd animals; we crave proximity and contact; part and parcel of being human.  We can no more survive without proximity, gathering, and touching than we can without air or water.  I’m tired of reading about increasing suicides every day as people begin to die from this government-imposed isolation.

I’m tired of hearing “the new normal”, “safer at home”, and “we’re all in this together.”  I’m tired of politicians pretending that they are “saving the country” when all they are doing is destroying lives and families, jobs, businesses and careers.  I’m tired of the talking heads on TV gleefully reporting fraudulent death counts and unemployment numbers convinced that America will blame President Trump. I’m tired of hearing that people are reporting opened businesses and gatherings to the cops like they did in the old Soviet Union and East Germany.

I’m tired.

I don’t want to think about the lock-down, house arrest, masks and crap anymore. I don’t want to think about closed churches, silent schools and empty factories.  I don’t want to think about old folks alone in their places being kept from their loved ones. I don’t want to think about people losing their businesses. I don’t want to think about Americans fighting Americans in the streets. I don't want to think about civil disobedience and armed insurrection. I don’t want to think about these things at all.

I want to think about spring crops, calves running through the grass, and building fence.  I want to think about road trips and morning sunlight on dewy grass.  I want to think about little spotted fawns taking their first, tentative steps into the morning of their worlds.

I’m tired of every time I try to write the damn virus takes over my thinking.  I don’t want to write about government stupidity. I don’t want to write about our liberties being taken. I don’t want to write about civil disobedience and armed insurrection.  I want to write about the bear I saw running through the hay field this morning. I want to write about hummingbirds and memories of the shady lawn of a hilltop childhood.

Depression builds on sadness.  There is no joy in words now.  They are dark, lonely, sad, and tinged with rage.  A faded echo of Joan Baez’s spectral voice haunting me down over the years, “Heartache and sorrow and sadness unendingly find, Wings on a memory and with them she flies to my mind . . .”  “Wings on a memory” of a time when we were much freer; a time when the words flowed easy and there was joy in sharing them.

Someday, maybe, sanity will return and there will be joy in sharing the words again.

I Will Make My Stand

I am not doing well with the mandated “quarantine” and other restrictions in our forced closed economy.  With my years of experience and observation, I can unequivocally state that I neither trust nor believe the governments, the news media, scientists and doctors who cooperate with governments.  I don’t believe anything that they are telling us about the Covid-19 “dam-pendic”.  I am totally confident that the virus has been around longer than since December, that many more people have contracted it than reported, and that the survival rate is much higher than we are being told.  There is no doubt in my mind that the authorities over diagnose, over count, and over report the number of infections and deaths.

The knee jerk over reactions by federal and state governments are unprecedent in the history of our country.  Even presuming that the driving intentions were good (and that is not an assumption that I can accept), these restrictions are an amazing attack on our liberties and our economy.  The damage that the closing of our economy has done may take years to overcome – and we may never get back our fundamental liberties.  Most damning, is the reality that all of this suffering may have been based on inaccurate, grossly inflated numbers.

The question facing each of us as sovereign individuals, created in the image of God, and blessed with God given rights and liberties is, “Where do I make my stand?”  If you are not asking yourself this question, then you have already surrendered your sovereignty to the evil power of the State and you have accepted being a slave to your Masters.  May God have Mercy on your soul.

For those of us who are still sovereign, when will you take your stand?

Tomorrow, every business in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is supposed to deny entry to unmasked people.  The Governor’s order includes the provision that those with medical conditions, do not need to and merchants cannot deny if so claimed.

After prayerful thought, I will not comply.

It is not that I am thoughtlessly endangering the lives of my neighbors.  From all that I can read and find, this thing isn’t a tenth of what they want us to think that it is. As more studies are being done, researchers are finding that many more people have had it than thought and that the mortality rate is a whole lot less than projected.  The government, the news media, and the so-called “scientific community” have lied to us right from the start.

When I am diagnosed with a contagious illness I will accept being quarantined, but not until.  This is no longer a question of quarantine, but rather an issue of being held on house arrest without being charged, tried, and convicted.

The resistance to this must begin with each of us deciding when and where to make a stand. I will not comply with the mask order. If I am refused entry after saying that I have a medical condition that prevents me from wearing one – I will simply sit down right in the doorway and remain there until I am allowed in – or removed by force.  Following the examples of Ghandi and Dr King, I will protest peacefully.  For now.

We each, as sovereign individuals must make the choice. I have made mine.  May God lead each of you to the choice that is right for you.

Are We Going to Learn Anything?

Well into our forced, semi-voluntary house arrest, one wonders if we are taking advantage of the many “teachable moments” that the Pandemic is offering to us.  It would seem that many of us needed to learn to wash our hands and not to sneeze or cough on other folks.  I’m pretty sure that my parents taught me these things, but I could be wrong.  We should be learning that personal space is not merely a “social construct”, but may be rooted in a natural, self-defense instinct.  Some of us might be learning that not working isn’t as much fun as we used to think.

There are some other things here that I genuinely hope that we are learning.  One of the first take aways for me is that “we” are not living in one big, global village.  There are natural and cultural differences around the world that can, in the wrong circumstances, become deadly.  Natural selection is based upon the environment in which we develop.  Our unique and particular environments provide us with some immunities to diseases common in our environment.  Being 10 and more generations in temperate North America, I have no natural immunity to environmental threats that exist in environments on other continents.  I have no immunity to diseases that thrive in the rain forests, the subarctic, or the vast semi-arid regions of Asia.  We, here in the United States, have a natural immunity to local diseases that might devastate populations on other continents.  Different places and different populations have different immunities and different diseases.  It is what it is.

There are also cultural differences in populations around the world that can have powerful impacts on our health.  There are many places in the world where there is no sanitation.  Some people in the world simply are not clean, by our – or any other – standard.  Many people in the world live in squalor that would kill the typical, modern American.  And, some people in faraway places eat things that would kill most of us.  (Think about the whole bats boiled in those Chinese soups.)  Nor is food preparation equally sanitary around the world.  Many people buy their meats at markets where the food animal is alive and butchered right on site with little or no water, soap, sanitizers, or refrigeration.  Very few of us would ever consider cooking and eating a chicken, dog, cat, or a goat from a Chinese “wet market”.  Hell, a lot of Americans won’t eat home butchered venison!  Our culture demands that our food stuffs be grown, processed, stored, and marketed with the utmost sanitary controls.  These are cultural differences that can, and obviously have, caused health issues around the world.

I hope that we will learn that it is imperative to have strict control over our borders.  This is not a statement rooted in any form of racism or xenophobia; but rather one born from the acceptance of realities as they are.  There are diseases out there in the world that can raise hell with our American family.  We need to know who is coming here and from where.

We should also learn that not every other nation has the best interest of the American people at heart.  China could and should have been more open and honest about this virus way back last fall.  Had China been more open, perhaps we could have prevented the half – million Chinese nationals who came to the US for the Chinese New Year celebration from coming.  That one action alone may have prevented Covid-19 from getting a foothold in America.


It might also be time to learn that the “Wizards of Smart” don’t have all the answers and that we can be “experted” to death.  Every Covid-19 model has been wrong.  Every “expert” forecast about the severity of the Pandemic has been wrong.  The “Wizards of Smart” first projected more than 2 million Americans would die from the virus.  They have down graded this projection to somewhere between 20 and 60,000 casualties.  The difference in these projections make me wonder if there was any actual scientific basis to any of these guesses.  Or, how smart really are the “Wizards of Smart”?

And, just how ventilators and hospital beds did the “Wizards of Smart” say that we needed?  Just how many patients have been treated on the Navy hospital ships in California and New York?  How many empty beds are there in the fields hospitals that the Army Corps of Engineers built almost overnight?
It might be too much to hope for, but I am hoping that we will learn that the leadership of the Democratic Party has no real concern for the future of our country and our people.  One can argue about the rightness of government infusing 2 trillion dollars into the economy – since government edict destroyed the economy – but the Democrats stuffed billions and billions of dollars of stupid spending into the stimulus.  The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Public Broadcasting, and Planned Parenthood baby killers don’t need billions, while more than half of Americans are not being allowed to work.

We might also learn that “Trump Derangement Syndrome” should be classified as an actual mental illness.  Listening to the main stream media “report” and pontificate about the President’s handling of the Pandemic is sickening.  If you didn’t know better, you might think that Mr. Trump doesn’t care how many of us die and that any Democrat could have done a better job.  Does anyone remember how many Americans died of the swine flu when the vaunted, Indonesian Barry Soetoro was President?

There might be some questions that you should not ask; however.  Like, how many games of solitaire can one play in a day? How many free Kindle books are there to download?  How many robins can you count from your easy chair? How many Bigfoot podcasts are there out there? Just askin’.

I Must Vote Against the Referendum

I have not entered the public discussion about the impending school tax referendum until now.  I have tried to write my RedbankValley.org news articles with as much objectivity as I can muster.  As a news writer, my role is to deliver facts, not to try to sway opinions.  When writing news, I am just the story teller. As an essayist, my role is to entertain, share my point of view, and help to shape opinions.  These are different roles and different functions within the community.

Let us be completely open before I go on – the opinions and ideas expressed in this essay are mine and mine alone.  Neither RedbankValley.Org nor TechReady Professionals has any connection to this essay.  Mayor Barrows has not read this and has no knowledge of what I intend to write.  This NearCommonSense essay is mine and mine alone.

I have a lot of respect for many of the men and women on the Redbank Valley School Board.  There are several that I consider to be friends.  Similarly, I like many of the teachers and administrators that I have met over the years as my daughters and grand kids “did their time”.  There are some marvelous teachers, good role models, and fine people within the staff and faculty.  My thoughts about schools, taxes, referendums, and such are not intended to harm or hurt anyone.  But, “tempus fugit”, “so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

First, I simply don’t like government monopoly schools.  I do not think that having given control of curricula and outcomes to State and Federal bureaucrats has worked well.  I know that I was not as well prepared to go out into the world after finishing high school as my father was.  And my grandfather was better educated after 8th grade than I was after 12th.  I don’t see very many of today’s 18-year-olds being at all ready to be fully functioning adult citizens.  This is not a criticism of Redbank Valley, but rather an indictment of the entire public-school model.

But it does bring the conversation around to the upcoming referendum on raising school taxes.  As much as it pains me to have to say, I simply cannot support raising taxes for the schools.  It is not that I don’t want kids to get an education – I don’t think that they are now through no fault of our school district itself – but rather, in 25 years of being part of this community, I never seen the Redbank Valley School Board be fiscally responsible and there is nothing in the referendum or proposed budget to suggest that they are going to start being so now.

Over the years, we have seen school board after school board ignore their budgets and spend money on virtually every request made of them.  I cannot recall a time when any Board has refused to fund anything brought to them. And never once have I heard any director ask if this spending request is within this year’s budget.  The Board approves every teacher’s meeting, conference, and travel request with no discussion regarding the budget allotment for such items.  And while these individual items may be only a few hundred or a thousand dollars each, the cavalier disregard for fiscal accountability is staggering.  Or to paraphrase the late Senator Everett Dirksen, “a billion here and a billion there; pretty soon you are talking real money.”

And there have also been some big expenses that the Board has approved with no consideration for financial responsibility.  We really didn’t need a new gym at the high school.  We really didn’t need an off budget renovation of the track for a cool half a million.  Following the Parkland school shooting in find year, the Board jumped into a $100,000 per year over budget ongoing commitment for security personnel. It is fortuitous that Principal Amy Rupp has covered most of this with grants, but again, this is indicative of reactionary spending that speaks of a lack of responsibility.

As I wrote in a recent news analysis for RedbankValley.org, the state and federal bureaucracies mandate so much of the district spending.  PDE doesn’t always adequately fund these mandates, shifting the burden to districts.  But, PDE does not control the cost of labor in individual school districts.  The Redbank Valley School District has created an extraordinarily voracious feeder in its labor practices.

The Board touts their efforts to “cut spending” by citing how many fewer teachers there are now than there were in the past.  However, when you drill down into the numbers, a different story emerges.

Student and Staff numbers

                                         2002-03     2007-08 2012-13 2016-17 2017-18
Student Enrollment                       1450          1207   1146   1083     1116
Elementary Faculty                           55             57       49       46       45.5
Secondary Faculty                           52             49       46       42       38.5
Student: Faculty Ratio             13.6 to 1        11.4 to 1     12.1 to 1   12.3 to 1   13.3 to 1
Support Staff                                  67             66       58       59         57
Administration                            8.5       8.5         7.5         7           7
Student: Administration Ratio   170 to 1 142 to 1 153 to 1 155 to 1 159 to 1

*Chart taken from Redbank Valley School District Press Release #6 September 2017.

This chart clearly shows that in school year 2002 – 2003 there were 107 teachers in the district.  In 2017 – 2018 there were 84 teachers.  Superficially, this is a decrease of 23 teachers; however, the student to teacher ratio decreased from 13.6 students per teacher to 13.3, in effect meaning there were actually more teachers in 2017 – 2018 than there were in 2002 – 2003.  Similarly, the student per administration dropped from 170 to 1 to 159 to 1.  Again, meaning more administrators per students than previously due to a decrease of 334 students over these 15 years.

It is all well and good to talk about paying enough to attract and retain good teachers.  This goal must be tempered with the reality of monies available.  Redbank Valley School District simply cannot afford to pay teachers as much as we currently are.  The money simply is not there.  This tax increase that voters will be voting on does nothing to address the current or future cost of labor in the district. According to “THE REDBANK REFERENDUM FACTUAL INFORMATION” published on the District’s website, ” If a majority of voters vote in favor of a referendum tax increase, the district budget will be balanced without the need for educational program cuts or staff furloughs. The total from the referendum increase plus the Act 1 Index plus the referendum exceptions and PDE adjustment will be enough to balance the 2020-21 budget.” 

“Will be enough to balance the 2020-21 budget.”   There isn’t much here to inspire hope.

At the present time, teachers are working without a contract.  If past performance is the indicator of future actions, we can safely assume that the Union wants 2 – 3% guaranteed raises annually.  Where will that money come from?  The state increases in funding have amounted to less than 1% annually in the past few years with no promise of improvement.  The proposed 2020 – 2021 district budget projects that labor will be about 65% of the district’s spending next year (without a new contract).  A 1% increase in 100% of your spending will be more than consumed by even a 2% increase in 65% of your spending.  (If you don’t understand the math, email me and I will explain it to you.)

The district simply must get control over salaries, wages, and benefits.  The Board must demand that the Union present an immediate 5% decrease in salaries and benefits.  This drawdown must be coupled with a contractual guarantee that all future changes in salaries and benefits will match (plus or minus) annual changes in state funding.  The District must also lower starting salaries to be more in line with incomes within the district. It is unconscionable that a starting teacher should be paid more than the median household income in the area. It is even more egregious that the top salaried teachers can make 50% than that median household income.  There can be no solution to the district’s finances with anything less.

If we lose teachers because of lower pay, then, so be it.  At this point in time in our district we need teachers who have the calling, who love the area, and who want to help rebuild the community.  Those teachers who would leave for a handful of dollars, may not be the best fit in our current situation.  This may seem harsh, but the onus for saving the Redbank Valley School District is completely in the hands of the teacher’s union.

Without an ironclad guarantee of draw downs and raises tied to increases in state revenue, I cannot support the tax increase referendum.