Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Red Flag Warning: Popular and Mainstream

#OccupyWallStreet is mainstream (By Myrddin on 10/11/2011 03:00:00 AM )

I start this opinion with the above hot link as I hope readers will tag into the site and get a feel for the view from the other side. Occasionally it is worth while to take a recon into the left's domain to see what they are thinking (or not).

I left this thought on the US Politics site: "Popular and mainstream doesn't make it the right thing to do. So was Nazism and Fascism. What right of middle conservatives want is for the government to operate within the revenues it collects, quit wasting tax dollars on stupid stuff, and let Americans live in liberty of onerous regulations. And if #Occupy _____ is about economic fairness then they should be demanding the fair tax system where ALL citizens pay 10% of their income in taxes. Everybody should have a real stake in the nation and not expecting a free ride on the other 50% who do pay taxes." (The blank line is to fill in what ever city is now "hosting" an #Occupy event.)

I think I summarized the Tea Party position simply enough for their readers. To expand, it should be, but isn't, obvious to anyone with half a brain our country is in danger of fiscal disaster. With over $15 TRILLION in debt and growing, regardless of who caused it, we're in trouble. This level of debt is unsustainable over the long term. At some point we could pay every employed person's entire annual wages into the tax system and it won't even cover the interest. What part of NO MONEY do liberals and even some conservatives don't understand?

So position number one is to get our spending under control. As every household manager knows if family finances are tight, the FIRST thing to do is get spending under control. Families all over America have been chopping off frivolous expenses, delaying wants to cover needs. Our Congress must do the same thing. The problem is too many still covet the "wants", or as one pundit has put it "treats". These treats include expansive health care coverage for a citizenry that didn't want it, a social security system that is by anyone's definition a ponzi scheme and due to go bankrupt in 2036, and so many freebies to who ever party's in power.

Secondly, government must get control of waste, fraud, and fiscal abuse of tax payer dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted every year through inept and an illogical fiscal funding system. Each year on the 30th of September all government funds (except special funds) expire. Thus each August and September government goes wild in a spending orgy. It is as if your personal bank account was shut down at midnight each December 31 and any left over money went into an electronic black hole. Bet you'd spend like crazy for Christmas, eh?

Thirdly, conservatives want to live in liberty from an oppressive regulatory central government. Up until modern times, most American citizens went about their daily lives with little concern or thought about regulatory impacts or roadblocks. The American entrepreneur of the past, staked his claim in business and went about producing goods and services with little interference by the federal government. Today, at every turn a business must take into careful account what federal regulations govern their efforts or risk heavy penalties. Now business MUST provide health care or face fines. If they don't pay a certain wage, they face fines. So much of what business must do today has little to nothing to do with creating goods or services, and ultimately the bottom line. No wonder jobs are disappearing. Business can't afford to be in business, and the little understood fact is, jobs come from business.

Finally, many of the "treats" the left desires revolves around their view of "fairness". When my children would complain that something wasn't fair, I use to tell them much of life isn't fair, so get over it. But if fairness in the economic struggle is what is desired, then America is the fairest of all nations. We have a constitution and laws that provides a basic level playing field. Nearly all forms of discrimination are now illegal. A Black man can open a business next to a White one. A Woman can actually own property and run her own business just like a Man. A Hispanic can rise from the farm fields to own the farm. An adopted little boy can rise to a computer empire. But in each and every case, it took hard, tough, diligent work. No doubt many fail in their quest for one reason or another, but in no other nation can it be said that such equal opportunity exists. That is why much of humanity yearns to come to America, home of the brave, land of the free!

This level playing field is being subverted through a tax system where nearly 50 percent of income earning citizens pay NO tax what-so-ever. This is as dangerous as having dependence on a small percentage of wealthy to pay the bulk of tax that supports our country. For when beneficiaries of a system have no stake in the system, their loyalty wanes. This aspect is very evident in the #Occupy Wallstreet mob. Many have stated their desire to be governed by some international body (the UN?)so as to ensure "fair wealth distribution". Its been tried, and was a dismal and deadly failure, aka the Soviet Union.

Thus,if the left's demands are seen as popular and mainstream, then a red flag warning is indeed needing to be hoisted high by the our lady, the Statue of Liberty, as danger to our freedom draws nigh.

Monday, October 10, 2011

RFD - News

Occupy Atlanta The mob's rules of assembly right out of communist Russia.
Published October 10, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Lessons in business management: Netflix kills the goose that laid their golden eggs.
By Jennifer Booton, Published October 10, 2011 | FOXBusiness

Christian pastor's fate in hands of Iranian supreme leader.
By Joshua Rhett Miller, Published October 10, 2011,| FoxNews.com

Yemen Al Qaeda terrorists still a threat.
Published October 03, 2011 | Associated Press

Al Gore's inconvenient truth? Cult leader may be loosing his viewership.
Published September 23, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Sharpton to broadcast from Occupy Wall Street Protest.
By the CNN Wire Staff, updated 8:27 AM EST, Mon October 10, 2011

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Red Flag Warning: Consequences

The Watchman attended a meeting some time ago of governmental staff from a high Army headquarters element on the topic of sustainability and with the purpose of conducting a "Staff Assistance Visit" or SAV. I always welcome these kinds of activities as they enable me to exit the usual humdrum of life in the office where we actually prevent environmental disasters and work diligently to conduct operations in a sustainable manner.

As this 8 person team of high-level staffers proceeded to spew the standard propaganda of sustainability and spouted the goals of something they called a Campaign Plan, I tallied up the cost of their little trip to Colorado. The estimated total loaded labor rate (base salary + bells and whistles) would be approximate $525/hour. We generally allocate $2,500 per person for a weeks worth of travel. Thus the SAV to our installation cost taxpayers around $41,000. The team let slip the visit to our installation was one of many more yet planned over the next few months. One might guess the total price to taxpayers will ultimately be well over $200K if they conduct 5 more SAVs. (I suppose I should add in the cost of the 30+ installation staff being corralled for three days hosting the SAV team, but maybe we don't want to know the full cost of this boon-doggle.)

So what did we get for our $41,000. Little post-it-notes on butcher block paper with scribbles of our installation's sustainability goals posted under the several Campaign Plan goals. Yep, that was it. We were roundly thanked for our participation, have a nice life, good-bye. Prior to the post-it-note exercise, we were grouped into several small groups and played a sustainability game where we harvested fish from the ocean to maximize our profits. The room full of environmental sustainability minded individuals over-fished the ocean with in 3 rounds. The really sad part of the whole affair is it could have been done via teleconference using "Go-to-Meeting" on a wide-screen TV for about a tenth of the cost and saved the emission of a lot of green house gasses!

About now you wonder what is the connection between the title of this blog and the forgoing story? Following the meeting I engaged in a old "Foxism". Ron Fox was my boss in Kansas and he use to come up with Foxisms, pithy sayings that left you scratching your head, but knew there was a grain of truth in them. He use to say, "We need to learn to pre-think our afterthoughts." Meaning if we'd just shut up for a minute and consider how we'd feel after we took some sort of action we might not do it. So I was wondering to my self about the consequences of failure to achieve the installation's sustainability goals and those of the Campaign Plan. What if our installation failed to meet the air quality goal of a 16% reduction in green house gases by 2020? Would I get fired? Would I be demoted? Would I get put into a prison? Be shot? Be hauled before the peoples court and condemned to a gulag near Sparks, Nevada (Senator Harry Reid's hometown). Or, would we, as I suspect all good government collective central planners would do, press the "Easy Button" and reset the goals. Given the "Sovietization" of our senior command, I don't think I need to worry. Where's that "Easy button"?

Connected to goals and objectives should be accountability and consequences. Real ones. Not fake, make believe ones, but real honest to God negative outcome for those who are responsible. And this leads me to the observation: Our nation is in danger of loosing its moral compass and stepping off the cliff when we fail to hold those who govern to full accountability and the harsh real consequences of their failure.

Let me list just a few actions of late with zip consequences:

* No federal budget passed in the last 4 years by congress by 1 October. Easy Button Response: Congress just passes a continuing resolution and goes on vacation.

* Massive failure to run our government operations on current revenue. Easy Button Response: Congress just hikes the debt ceiling and tells the Treasury to print more money. $15 Trillion in debt, the presses continue to roll, one day in the near future we won't be able to collect enough revenue to even pay the interest on the debt.

* A nation with one of the highest education per/pupil funding and the lowest per/pupil achievement. Easy Button Response: We impose more taxes on an already over taxed middle class to pay higher teacher salaries for more failure.

* $500 million dollars loaned to a known failing green-energy company. Easy Button Response: The administration wants to put another $489 Billion dollars into green-job creation so the average per job created cost is in the millions. Obama's new signature phrase: Forward....More like Forward to Failure.

* A new future healthcare system that will still leave millions without health care and long waits for those that do. Easy Button Response: State and companies are given waviers to implement, yet the new system blunders onward to implementation right off the economic cliff.

* A Social Security and senior Medical system that all agree is doomed to bankruptcy. Easy Button Response: Our leaders play fear-mongering games and bury their heads in the sand.


There are dozens more of these situations. Each has the potential to bring the house of cards tumbling down. The consequences will be dreadful for the survivors. Red Flag Days for sure if we don't get our act together and put some new people in charge.

Keep the House - Take the Senate!