Tag: Politics

Posted on

Great Depression Policies

I am very tired of hearing that FDR and the New Deal helped America get out of the Great depression after Hoover put us in it. In history classes I remember being taught that the depression was Hoover’s fault and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt bravely pulled the plane out of its collision course with his New Deal. FDR and Hoover have always been set at odds with each other in my mind, but something has never seemed right with this set up.

As I started to take more of an interest in history, I learned about the period of time that saw the largest dive in U.S. price level that it had ever seen. A 24% drop in GNP was a definite sign of the painful times that were ahead. The president at the time decided that he should dismantle some government bureaucracies that had been established during WW1. This leader of the nation also had deep concern over the $25 billion in debt that had been run up on the tab and the whole time his mantra was, “less government in business”. This president was quoted as saying, “We need vastly more freedom than we do regulation.” This period of time brought about a lot of charity and soup kitchen work for those looking to help fellow citizens who had fallen on hard times. The unemployment rate reached 11.9%. As the problem seemed to worsen, the president pulled back and removed many government pieces from the puzzle. Congress wanted to come to the rescue but the president told them to hold back. Even the president’s own secretary of commerce pleaded and argued with him to get involved to rescue the economy, but he wasn’t having it. The big reveal that you may have built up in your minds is that the president was Herbert Hoover and his policies made the Great Depression happen. This is part of what has never quite felt right about the story that I have been told in history classes. I was indeed told that Hoover did not want government intervention. But I was then given a lesson about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which made things in the Depression worse after the crash in 1929. I have also read about wage freezes that were ordered during this time, which again, did not help. Those seem like government intervention to me. Now is the moment when I bring out the actual big reveal that the president I spoke about earlier was Warren G. Harding and the year was 1921. All the products in the country dropped half of their value in 1921 and Warren G. just cut taxes and waited it out. His secretary of commerce that was so antsy to intervene (prepare for another big reveal) was Herbert Hoover. The U.S. pulled out of this disaster quickly, with unemployment pulling back to 6.7% by 1922 and by 1923 the roaring twenties were well underway. When they crashed down Herbert Hoover was in charge and free to intervene all he wanted.

At this point the history classes have told us that Hoover did so much damage that it took at least 3 terms of FDR to fix it with the right kind of intervention. This is where I say bullcrap. With the 20/20 vision of hindsight Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian of UCLA looked over Great Depression policies and found that Roosevelt actually hurt more than he helped. In addition to prolonging the Great Depression FDR also trampled all over the Constitution of the United States. He was called on it a few times with the reversal of some policies. A huge unconstitutional dream of his was to have a second bill of rights (which I guess would have been constitutional if it had been amended in). The principles behind this second bill of rights are enough to make anyone who doesn’t like being forced to do anything sick to their stomachs. Included in his wishlist were the right to food, the right to a house, the right the a job, the right to medical care. As I will further demonstrate in an impending post none of these things can be claimed as rights by anyone. Claiming those as rights for people and forcing citizens to provide such things for others goes against the purpose of our established government and is a violation of any official’s oath of office.

In case you missed it I would have been very frustrated with people who kept voting for FDR as he was holding them down. To drive that point home a bit more I will leave it to the great Thomas Sowell:

To me FDR and Hoover are not at odds with each other, but rather had only slight disagreements about which ways government should overstep its bounds and make things worse. Protect rights and enforce laws. And do it in that order, that is all government should do.

Posted on

Good Decision – Smack Down on McCain-Feingold

I have had the misfortune of listening to ill informed and irrational people that are upset about the Supreme Court of the United States decision in favor of corporations being able to spread messages about candidates near election time. Many such individuals complain that the court has given corporations freedom of speech. I must ask if people who work at corporations are not ‘people’? Are they not included in ‘We the People’? Using logic anyone can see that they should be allowed to voice their opinions in politics. This court decision is one of the few ways the constitution has been upheld.

Corporations are people. They are collections of people. Just as our country is a collection of people. Last time I checked, corporations were not run by animals or furniture. As people they have all the same rights as any of the other citizens in the country. Even the right to assemble together and make a political ad that voices their opinion on any subject.

Such groups are obviously not an individual person, which is where many foolish individuals go awry. Many seem to think that people in corporations don’t have rights. Corporations are groups of people. Simply because there are more individuals does not mean that their rights are then removed. In fact, individuals have the right to assemble. When assembled do these individuals lose their rights? As a group they still have the ability and right to speak freely.

Some people act as if having more messages out there regarding choices in elections is going to force them to vote for someone they don’t want to.

Foreign entities cannot give money to candidates. Many people who misunderstand seem to think that more voicing of opinion equals more corruption and foreign money influencing our country. The Court’s decision did not change laws about foreign money in our elections or candidates and corporations getting together and plotting victories.

Some are concerned that corporations are too powerful and will get away with corrupt behavior when given their freedom. If they do something wrong, find the law they broke, gather evidence and charge them with the crime. If you can’t find anyone in government who will do their only job (enforce laws and protect rights) then you have a bigger problem than just evil corporations. (Which problem, I contend, we do have.)

All anyone ever does is push legislation that they want or like. Again I must question why people think that seeing a commercial put out by a corporation is going to force someone to vote a particular way.

Posted on

A Disturbing Piece of History – Update: Twisted History

In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded Martin Luther King Jr. the Margaret Sanger Award for “his courageous resistance to bigotry and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human dignity.” After reading about this I could only say, “What the ****????!?!!?” Why did Doctor King accept this award? Why would anyone accept this award, let alone one of the most popular black leaders of all time?

If you are baffled by the paragraph above then you clearly do not know anything about the history of Planned Parenthood or the personal beliefs of Margaret Sanger. When I learned about history and found out about Margaret Sanger I was shocked that anyone could think she was a great lady who should have an award named after her. Then of course, there is Planned Parenthood which Sanger helped found, that supports some of the most disgusting acts ever perpetrated by humans.

Margaret Sanger was a big fan of eugenics as a means to rid society of “undesirables”. In 1939 she started “The Negro Project” which had the goal of suppressing the black population through “family planning”. Planned Parenthood was started by Sanger with the purpose of racial purification. Sanger would often give speeches to members of the KKK. She references black people as “human weeds”, “reckless breeders” and as “human beings who never should have been born.”

All this brings me back to the original and baffling question; why would Dr. King accept an award named after Margaret Sanger from an organization started for her sick purposes? I really have no clue. I have the utmost respect for Dr. King and his accomplishments and I would just like to know about this occurrence which has bothered me for a while.

For a comprehensive history on the whole subject, I recommend the documentary “Maafa 21”.

UPDATE: I just saw this video in which Dr. Alveda King sheds more light on the lies about the history of the relationship between MLK and Planned Parenthood.

I would have liked to have seen an outright refusal of the award, but this definitely helps me to see more of the picture.

Posted on

Great Equalizer

Remember the story of David and Goliath? Goliath had pure size and brute strength and was defeated by a pebble which was hurled by a sling. In those days that was quite the accomplishment, but in modern times this kind of thing occurs a lot more. The fact that it occurs a lot more is really mucking up the gene pool. Think about it. If genes are normally passed on under the “survival of the fittest” rule, then the gene pool should improve over time. There are also the problems of the nurture method being affected by the new ease with which someone can kill someone else.

Let’s say there is a healthy, upstanding individual with a good education and enough money to survive comfortably. Now, we can introduce this individual to an all too common situation in which someone needs drug money and comes to rob their home. The crackhead individual is brandishing the great equalizer in the form of a 9mm. In the days of yore the crackhead would get beat down by the upstanding individual in the ensuing struggle. But with his new weapon he can easily eliminate any trouble that he might have had. Now instead of the upstanding individual passing on his genes and teaching others to be like him. The crackhead will go out and get high with a trashy, promiscuous woman and knock her up, thus completing the new twisted circle of life. The genes and nurture, (or lack thereof) that a person will receive from the crackhead and the trashy lady will, in most cases, produce a person of lower caliber (Pun Intended).

I am in no way for gun control, but rather believe that since they exist in the first place as many upstanding people as possible should have the great equalizer. Gun laws are one of the most stupid thing ever devised by man. Clearly such laws only prevent law-biding citizens from owning guns and give criminals peace of mind when committing crimes.

Posted on

Don’t Trust Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich is seen by many people as the guy who made that “Contract with America” right before things got nice for a while. He is thought to be a great conservative representative. Just as was the case with George W. Bush you should not fall for the act. Let’s shed a little light on Mr. Gingrich and why he should not be trusted.

Recently, Gingrich has supported Dede Scozzafava as a Republican candidate for congress only because she was Republican. Dede’s views do not resemble anything conservative and Gingrich stated that in supporting her he was simply being loyal to the party so the votes don’t get split and the Democrats win. The question for Gingrich is: If the Republican supports everything the Democrats want, what is the difference between a Democrat winning on a split vote and this Republican winning? The only reason I could come up with for Newt Gingrich not wanting someone who possesses his professed ‘conservative’ beliefs is that he does not actually hold such views. Rather than be guided by principles he prefers to play political games and try for power. Personally I would rather go down in flames while still holding onto my principles than to compromise on what I believed to appease other people.

Newt Gingrich voted to form the Department of Education in 1979. Education used to be under the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, but in 1979, with Newt’s and Jimmy Carter’s seal of approval, the government expanded with new individual departments. The new Department of Education had more power over school curricula and hiring, taking some power away from state and local authorities. The department has been a huge hole for politicians to dump money into without ever seeing improvements in student performance. In fact, almost all important numbers, such as graduation rates, have either declined or remained stagnant since the formation of the Department of Education in 1979. There is no authorization in the U.S. Constitution for federal involvement in education. Supporting this department is a violation of the oath Gingrich took to uphold the Constitution. The infamous American Communist William Z. Foster, in his 1932 book “Toward Soviet America” said,

“Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are…[a] National Department of Education…the studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.”

This hardly seems like a conservative position for Gingrich to take, especially the part about how the communists called for the formation of the department as part of the way to overtake America.

In 1980 Gingrich voted to give most favored nation status to Communist China; you know the one that kills people in rice paddies. We now get all of our crap from China and they own more of U.S. debt than anyone else.

Gingrich also supported the US signing an agreement to get in on the whole, “General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization” (GATT/WTO). This took the power given to congress by the people in the Constitution, “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations”, and gave it away to the international body “The World Trade Organization”. The Constitution does not allow congress to give away the duties and powers specifically granted to it, to an unelected foreign body.

But the big glaring reason to not trust him, is that his own wife could not trust him. Once any politician has an affair, you really see how good their word is. If a promise is made to the person that they love and they break it in the most offensive way, surely they will not care about an oath they took in behalf of strangers. Gingrich had an affair while going after Bill Clinton for having an affair. Technically, he went after Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice, but he did tout family values and character as important, which makes him an untrustworthy hypocrite.

All of these and more add up to make me not trust Newt Gingrich when he says,

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Posted on

Fruit of Kaboom Mania

We have all heard by now, about the attempt on Christmas day to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to the US. There has been a lot of hullabaloo around the fact that he was already known to be a terrorist and even his own father had pointed him out as an extremist. It was another sign of government competence when the US state department revoked the would-be bombers visa well after the incident occurred. We have the extremely long period of time for any acknowledgment of the incident by the leadership of the US. There is also the story of how he got on the plane in the first place, which involves the bizarre tale of a man in a suit speaking with a manager to overlook the lack of a passport. What most people might have heard about in the aftermath of this incident is the fact that TSA screenings have ratcheted up and people are calling for the use of the dreaded strip search machines on everyone.

What I have not heard pointed out at this juncture and what seems painfully obvious to me is the fact that changing the laws in the US to make screening more R-rated and strict would have very little impact on the situation that has prompted the discussion. The flight was from Amsterdam to Detroit. To have an effect on this type of situation foreign laws would need to change. It might be a good idea to actually require passports since we have them and they are a standard to be followed already. We could even try using our terror watch lists. The ineptitude of people all along the chain in this situation does not give me any confidence in anyone. Either they are completely worthless at doing their job or someone did something on purpose.

Since people couldn’t check a passenger to see if he was a terrorist, which he plainly and clearly was known to be, now citizens of the United States of America will lose even more of their already thin right to privacy. The logic in this situation just doesn’t work out.

Posted on

Is Anyone Else Sick of the Lying?

Why do we keep electing the people that completely disregard everything they said while in the process of trying to get elected? Can anyone just do what they say they are going to do? What reasons do they have for going back on their word?

A while ago I was confronted with one of the stupidest statements I have ever heard. someone said to me that Abraham Lincoln was, “The lyin’est president we ever done had.” My reply was, “Honest Abe, really, why do you say so?” At which point I was told that he told the country that he would not seek to end slavery if elected president. Apparently the person telling me this at the time is completely unaware of a little thing called history. It must be hard to find information on a small occurrence called the Civil War. Lincoln did not force the southern states to secede starting with South Carolina. He only responded to it. He did not break any campaign promise, but rather reacted to a national crisis and came out on the other side with slavery ended.

This national crisis model has been tried again and again since that time and while I believe honest Abe’s intentions, I am unsure of others. For example, George W. Bush said:

He came up with an excuse to go nation build in Iraq because of a crisis. I still need answers to a few questions. What connection did Saddam Hussein have to Al Qaida? WMDs? What was the picture that Colin Powell showed to the UN that was supposed to be WMDs?

The Obama administration is either lazy or they just don’t care about the myriad promises that have been completely disregarded. Here is a video of one broken promise (repeated several times):

Check out the chuckle that all these politicians have when asked about something promised on the campaign trail:

So it’s funny to lie to the people who elect you now. What a hootin’ hollerin’ good time.

Posted on

Misattributed to Washington

One thing that really drives me up the wall quicker than other things is when people use false quotes and continue to pass them on. I will begin acquiring as many of these as I can and dispelling them here. My major problem with false quotes is that I very much enjoy the truth and obviously if it is a false quote it is a lie. I may hear a quote and be inclined to use it myself. A person propagating such quotes often makes a fool of themselves. Many times if one wishes to be responsible and check the verity of a quote and its source they will run into multiple examples of people misusing the quote and think they have verified it but really have just seen multiple versions of the lie. Quotes have been given a strange place in our culture and at times can seem to have been canonized by some users of them even if false. Most misquoted people are either founding fathers of the United States or are Albert Einstein.

The first quote I will do, has been attributed to George Washington and in fact he did not say this:

“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion”

However, the fact that he did not say this does not mean it was not said. In fact, it appears that it is very much an actual historical statement from the 1796-97 Treaty with Tripoli (current Libya). Some of the Muslims in the area had concerns about a new crusade being launched, and the treaty informs them to not worry about holy war, since the government of the United States is not founded on any particular religion.

Many Christians might get upset that this was actually said and if they do then they are idiots. If the United States was founded on the Christian religion then why do we not have state run confessionals or baptisms? Jesus, the founder of Christianity, said that the first great commandment was to love God and the second was to love thy neighbor. These most important laws were somehow excluded from the constitution and are not required. Strange thing to exclude when basing the government on the Christian religion. We also have another problem when trying to base the government on the Christian religion; which flavor among all the different versions is it based on? Many Christians argue bitterly over their view of what is true Christianity. I am happy to keep that kind of contention out of the body that creates and enforces laws that I will abide by. Although contention finds its way in anyway.

Christians can take solace in the fact that this line from the treaty does not mean that the founders hated Christianity or religion in general. In fact I have documented, and will document in the future, statements quite to the contrary by founders that show the necessity for religious beliefs, morals, faith and the providence of God in maintaining a free society. But with regard to government, it is always best to not jump in with certain religions.

Posted on

Need of Masters

The great Ben Franklin once said, “As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” During the founding of the United States of America there was a great debate as to whether the people could maintain their liberty or whether they would become corrupt and ruin the whole thing. Many references to “Public Virtue” were made when discussing the topic. After the Constitution was written George Washington said that it would remain intact only “…so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.”

I have mentioned before that trying to spread freedom to different parts of the world can only be done when the people want it enough and when they have the “Public Virtue” to maintain it. Seeing many stories on the progress of Afghan and Iraqi troops I do not believe they possess the will or the virtue necessary to keep themselves free of dictators and tyrants. Have I also mentioned that each generation of Americans seems to creep closer to the “non-virtue” or rather “vice” that is apparent from the Afghan soldiers in this video?: (language warning)

I feel for any Afghan people who are doing the right things and living responsibly, because it appears they will not be able to be free because of the lack of “Public Virtue”. I also appreciate even more the Armed forces of the United States who have higher education levels than the general population of the US and have much better discipline than armies around the world. It is always like banging your head against a wall to try to get people to do what is right for themselves and their communities and countries.