NEW YORK AGONISTES

New York is dying. The Democrats are currently the ones injecting the poison, but the Republicans have a lot to answer for also. I guess the fair thing to say would be that "politics" is the venom cursing through the veins of the once mighty "Empire State".

The quality of the politics today is so bad that words can't really capture the blend of stupidity, greed and malice that infect the nexus between those who are led and those who rule. Politics is bad today because the quality of our politicians has markedly deteriorated primarily due to political correctness and the fear of the average person to venture an opinion that could be contrued as racist, sexist or homophobic. It is still safe however to criticize Jews and Catholics... proving only that Freud, Doctor Spock and Saul Alinsky have had a bigger influence on present day politics than Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson or Reagan.

From 1990 to the present over 3,000,000 New Yorkers left the state and those who partially replaced them had incomes that were 13% lower. This helped to kill our revenue base but the faux leadership in Albany just kept raising taxes and proposing bond offerings believing that even as manufacturing fled to greener pastures, the urban economic engine of FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) would just keep on burning.

Small business or that part of the private sector that creates the most jobs, got treated like yesterdays fish wrapped in a newspaper because the "Progressives" both hate and don't understand capitalism. All they understood was anybody who made money had to "divy it up" with that amorphous crowd called the "poor". So in the end the middle class, who play by the rules and pay the "freight" for those who can't or won't... became the "poor".

The knaves, varlets and bottom feeders who are elected today should for the most part live under bridges. Oh there are exceptions. A few brave souls, usually from another era when there was still a sense that being elected was an honor and a public trust, who still fight an almost impossible battle against the idealogues and the thieves. But they are tired and outnumbered and depressed from playing "Don Quixote" with no support from the voters.

And that is squarely where the problem now lies. Voters have to grow up. They have to do more than just get pissed off...they have to educate themselves as to how we arrived at this sorry state of affairs. They have to stop listening to the noxious and endless cascade of class warfare drivel that claims to explain and therefore justify everything elected officials do , and instead learn how the government they have let slip away... actually works.

Some one famous once said that "making laws was like making sausage...a truly nasty business". Today that statement is slanderous to sausage makers!

The one hope on the horizon for New York is that the "Tea Party" movement will reform one or even both of the major parties and in so doing present us with candidates who are dedicated, intelligent, have integrity and who don't see elective office as a lifetime opportunity to get rich off the peoples' dime. We have to stop electing people simply because they look like us, talk like us, invoke guilt in us or are able to con us with versions of reality that make "The Matrix" try to resemble upstate New York.

New Yorkers have a big political year ahead of us. We will be electing a Governor, an Attorney General, a Comptroller, the Assembly, the State Senate, Members of the U. S. House of Representatives and two U. S. Senators . In other words we can clean up this pile of steaming manure and actually reboot this state. It would be a cathartic moment for New York and for the nation. It is one minute to Midnight... decision time... and we have to decide as a community if we have the will and the fortitude to take our future into our own hands and cross the "Rubicon'.

Stay tuned for further posts on this topic.

ERLANDSSON

THE DELIVERANCE

It was shortly before ten in the evening, Eastern Standard Time, when the nation was delivered. It happened in the most unlikely of places...a state so blue that even after the concession was made, it still seemed implausible. It was if the ghosts of John, Abigail and Samuel Adams rose from their graves and led the people of the Commonwealth to their second insurrection, once again in the vanguard and once again saying to their countrymen and women that we will not be treated as mere "subjects". Rather we will act as free men and women who no longer will tolerate having their lives and their dreams treated like so much detritus by the ersatz "royalists" who attempt to subjugate us rather than represent us.

In Washington and other places where pundits gather over drinks and lattes to pontificate about the great events of our times, the impulse will be to ignor this latest and most dramatic act of defiance by the "rabble", just as George III did to his everlasting mortification. The people at the top however will just push us harder because they cannot and/or will not believe they are on the wrong side of history.

The White House has become a palace and not the "peoples house". The devotees who work there are, to a great degree, members of a cult ...not members of an administration. They do not toil for their countrymen, they toil for the a man who they believe transcends the bothersome barriers of the constitution and reigns instead of leads. Like virtuall every left wing regime in history, the centurions of the weak and downtrodden morph like lycanthropes into their true identity when given copious injections of power.

Today, less than 24 hours after the political tsunami of the Bay State, it is reported that intelligence gathering against China has been downgraded over the objections of the National Security Director and the Director of the CIA. These orders can only have come from the White House. Some one is in great haste to fulfill his agenda before the people fully retake their government. In the days ahead , there will be further comment on national security and other issues involving the Presidential Oath of Office and the Constitution but for today let all patriots place the date of January 19, 2010 in the chronicles of these United States. It is deliverance day.

ERLANDSSON

COMACTA COMMENTS BY FRANK VERNUCCIO

As you may recall, last week's COMACTA column in the Bronx Times Reporter reviewed President Obama's anti-NY defense policies. This week's column reviews the failures of Sheldon Silver, Senators Schmuer and Gillibrand, and Mayor Bloomberg's failure to protect NY from bad policies.

January may be drawing to a close and with it, many New Year’s resolutions, but COMACTA proposes a resolution for Mayor Bloomberg, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon: Remember what jobs you were elected to. Whatever one might think of the particular polices supported by these key elected officials, the fact is that they exhibit a strange forgetfulness about to whom they owe their loyalty and dedication to.

New York City is a complex metropolis, with numerous municipal challenges. A distressed public education system, aging and inadequate public transportation, decaying roads and bridges, insufficient affordable housing, high unemployment, excess taxation, and numerous other issues all combine to make the governing of this locale a difficult and certainly full-time task. Unfortunately, Mayor Bloomberg appears to spend more time on issues that, whatever their merit, have very little to do with the powers, duties and responsibilities he accepted when he took the oath of office. For example, while the MTA was proposing drastic service cuts, including the elimination of student passes and the complete withdrawal of bus service to whole portions of our city, the mayor was in Europe discussing global warming. International environmental issues may be important, but the last time COMACTA reviewed the NY City Charter, foreign policy was not listed among the Mayor’s tasks. Similarly, as vast numbers of New Yorkers continue to join the unemployment lines, the Mayor seems obsessed not with their fate, but with the average intake of salt and sugar New Yorkers consume. That issue is the responsibility of the Surgeon General, not the mayor of one city. If the mayor is bored with the arduous task of governing New York, he should consider another position.
The American Constitution is a masterpiece of governing logic, the greatest governmental blueprint ever devised. One of its most important features is its structure of federalism, allowing the individual states to elect officials to both govern the nation and protect the interests of their home states. During the ongoing health care bill debates, one wonders where Senators Schumer and Gillibrand have been. Other states, most notably Nebraska, have been provided with extraordinary incentives to support the health care measure. New York has received next to nothing in the way of special incentives. To the contrary, this state, with a greater number of more inclusive private insurance policies, stands to lose greatly by the special tax on so-called "cadillac" health plans. Despite all this, and many more anti-NY features, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand have been among the most ardent supporters of the health care bill. Why do they seem so disinterested in protecting their fellow New Yorkers?
Speaker Silver, arguably the most powerful elected official in the state, and the longest-serving of the so-called "gang of three" that make most of the governing decisions in New York State, has a long history of questionable decisions that has led many critics to levy conflict-of-interest charges against him. Examples of inappropriate deals in which Mr. Silver has fought against the interests of his own city and district are both lengthy in number and outrageous in their blatant nature. For example, NYC ‘s desperate search for revenue would not be so critical if the Speaker had not bargained away NYC’s commuter tax in return for a potential partisan political windfall. This year, he has bargained away desperately needed charter school provisions in return for political support from the powerful UFT.
While there is always room for debate on which policies are correct, the requirement that elected officials represent the interest of their constituents is absolute. Mayor Bloomber, Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and Speaker Sheldon Silver need to reassess to whom they owe their allegiance.

SAVE THIS DATE

APRIL 17, 2010

MARCH AND RALLY FOR
LIBERTY, FREEDOM
AND THE RESTORATION OF OUR CONSTITUTION

A NATION REBORN

When free men and women are ignored and abandoned by their government and their rights are threatened and even taken from them by those who purport to represent them, it is incumbent on all who treasure liberty and freedom and who abhor and reject tyranny and oppression to defy that government and make every effort to bring it back into harmony with its citizens by all appropriate and necessary means.

We are now living in such anxious and precarious times. We are ignored by those who claim to speak and act on our behalf and for our benefit despite our objections to those actions and the laws behind them. By the very decision to pay no heed to our wishes, we are reduced to the status of children by a political paternalism completely alien to our history, our rights and our traditions.

Our government has used its power to tax us beyond human endurance. It has amassed a collective debt so huge that it will rob our posterity of their birthrights. It will forcibly subjugate us to a state of denigrating dependency upon government with regard to virtually every vital aspect of our daily lives. Our state verges on bankruptcy as special interests refuse to compromise and make a shared sacrifice so that the commonwealth can survive and recover. While an empire state collapses, its political leaders look the other way, increase the budget and raise taxes on a shrinking population.

Our freedom of speech is suppressed by a culture of political correctness that threatens to destroy not only our values but also acts to distort and falsify our history. Political correctness is corrosive to the national psyche and corruptive to the national soul. When allied with apologists for militant Jihadism, it represents an existential threat to world civilization. If it is allowed to plague us without any resistance, our descendents will never know what the country conceived and promised to all Americans for all time by the founders was or is supposed to be.

Our freedom of religion is assaulted by those who in the name of preventing the establishment of a state religion have effectively established a secular state non-religion.
This tyranny of a virulent minority aided by a cynical government has made our public life devoid of tolerance and contemptuous of faith. Most importantly it has violated the rights of every person who privately practices religion but is forbidden under penalty of law to do so in the public square.

Our right to bear arms, which is an ancient and critical necessity for any free people, is increasingly denied by civil authorities who first seek to disarm us so that their control over us can be made more expedient and more complete.

Our right to assemble and petition our leaders is hindered and thwarted by rules and regulations designed to keep us from expressing a collective opposition to the misrule of government at all levels. These legal barricades exist not for the benefit of the people or for the perpetuation of public safety and public order. Rather they exist for the perpetuation of the power and privilege of elected and appointed officials who have ceased to be the servants of the people and who instead believe the people have become the servants of them.

Our educational system, which was once the envy of the world, has now descended into mediocrity. Propaganda is substituted for fact and ideology far too often trumps objective debate. From the primary level through the universities, our children are subjected to indoctrination formulated by zealots pushing radical causes and disturbing beliefs. Children in the early grades are “taught” about sexuality against the wishes of their parents and contrary to the religious beliefs that only their parents have the right to impart. We are treated to the spectacle of grade school students singing hymns to the President that are disturbingly reminiscent to totalitarian regimes of the past and present. Children graduate with diplomas they cannot read and unions and the politicians who are subservient to them block reform as generation after generation undergoes educational genocide. The pursuit of excellence is ignored amidst the clamor for “self esteem” teaching each generation how to become a victim instead of how to become educated, well rounded and self reliant. All of the above is done in the name of “tolerance” and “progress” and “fairness”. All of it leads to a bleak future of dependency.

The very nature of our governance has historically been a limited federal system of government designed to protect individuals and not groups. It has been dedicated to Jefferson’s eloquent proposition “that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. This is now under attack as a problem both internationally and domestically because it doesn’t guarantee equality of outcomes, merely equality of opportunity...

Those who strive to erase our history and expunge our constitution by fundamentally altering it are as dangerous than those who 147 years ago sought to make “one nation, indivisible” divisible and separate for reasons that were as abhorrent and contradictory to our national purpose then as they would be today. Those who seek to divide and separate us by hyphenating our status as Americans and then demand restitution in the name of victim hood and a false justice seek to destroy the American dream and end the American story.

Along with the founders, the other great contributors to the success of this story have been those immigrants who came here and still come here by the millions to escape oppression, seek religious freedom and obtain equal opportunity to be free and prosperous. They asked and still ask only to be allowed to succeed by the sweat of their labor and the creativity of their intellect. All we ask of them in return is to come here legally, assimilate into the great American melting pot, learn our common language, show fidelity to our laws, history and traditions and be loyal only to this flag and this country. We are a nation of immigrants and we can no more turn our backs on “those yearning to breathe free” then we could refuse to help the victims of war, famine, pestilence and natural disasters. We as one people, under one flag have fought more wars in faraway places not for conquest but for the freedom of human beings whom we did not know than any nation in history.

At the great moments in our history…moments that were often achieved by sacrifice that Abraham Lincoln described as “the last full measure of devotion”, Americans have rallied not just to our flag, our country, our constitution and our history. They have also rallied to the dream of America that Dr. King envisioned and spoke of with perfect clarity and absolute truth. As we gather in groups across the nation to demand our rights and to stop the erosion of our freedoms let us do so in the name of that dream so that the “elites’ who mock us and the intolerant who seek to silence us understand that we will never let them make us subservient to an omnivorous and omniscient state. They should understand without any ambiguity that the state that seeks total control over our lives will not succeed because we will fight them to the death.

Today we live in a nation of bailouts that achieve dubious results, stimulus bills that cannot demonstrate job creation and energy schemes that do not unleash the vast potential resources that would make us both prosperous and safe. We have economically disastrous health care plans forced upon us that intrude in life and death decisions made between Doctor and patient and which must ration health care in order to succeed. We have a foreign policy seemingly built upon the premise that America is the problem and thus we must atone for all past mythical sins. To expiate those sins we must apologize for our generosity and cease to be vigilant, resolute and strong. Our allies are either ignored or ordered to do things inimical to their national interests and even dangerous to their survival. Our enemies are courted and fawned over. We look weak to friend and foe alike because we are rapidly becoming weak and our weakness will create a void that will be filled by those who seek the total destruction of western civilization and America in particular.

Charles Dickens opened his great masterpiece “ A Tale of Two Cities” by proclaiming that …”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..“. As Dickens recognized then so should we recognize now that all ages have their great moments of peril and confusion when only moral clarity and common sense can be a true guide to overcoming danger and evil. In this modern time of moral and cultural relativism we have seen moral clarity and common sense turned on its head. When a nation or its people cannot differentiate between good and bad, how are they expected to recognize the difference between good and evil? Ultimately this abandonment of values and judgment accompanied by its “footservant” political correctness has evolved into the greatest enemy we face today. A government who worships at the shrine of relativism is a government who cannot protect your rights, wealth and safety because in their world view you either do not deserve them or it doesn’t want to offend those who wish to take them from you.


All throughout this nation, citizens are now awakening from a long slumber to discover that the country they knew and loved is in danger of ceasing to exist. They are asking each other and their government how did this happen and what must be done to restore the natural relationship between free men and women and their democratic institutions. The asking of the central questions of this present crisis is what brings Americans from all walks of life together in protest. The answer to these central questions is what will wisely and expeditiously guide the direction of our mutual struggle until we are once again in control of our government, our nation and our lives. What is undeniable however is that as free men and women we must act now before it is too late. Edmund Burke the great English parliamentarian said “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good [persons] do nothing”. This is common sense indeed!
We as a people stand at the precipice of history. If we continue down this path of ever rapacious. government, unsustainable debt, weakness in foreign affairs and political correctness, our country will cease to exist as we have known it. Most Americans do not want to travel down this road. Why is it then that we have allowed a small dysfunctional minority to undermine our freedoms and our prosperity in the false name of equality?

The world we have lived in since September 11, 2001 is both lethal and chaotic. Unrelenting vigilance is the only path to relative safety. Overwhelming strength and dogged determination are the best weapons we can bring to bear against enemies at home and abroad who fervently believe that their culture of nihilism and death is the answer to modernity and western democracy. Others have put it more succinctly…if you want peace, then prepare for war! Moral and intellectual clarity devoid of self defeating and self loathing ideology must become the pragmatic road map through the political minefield that both our political leaders and our political enemies have built to trap us.

We have become yet another American generation with a rendezvous with destiny. What we do in the here and now is critical. We are at a crossroads and time is running out. Most importantly we must act to save those who will inherit this country after we are merely dust and faded photographs. In the words of Thomas Paine “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my children may have peace”.

AMERICA SLOUCHING TOWARDS JONESTOWN
As America commences its sleepwalk through history in the era that is ironically striving to become known as the Pax Obamus, it is critical for any and all of us who have no desire to follow a very strange man with very strange ideas over the cliff, to be as defiant as our forefathers were at Lexington and Concord. We must individually and collectively do all that is humanly possible to stop this act of mass national suicide before there is no one left who can even leave behind a true and objective chronicle of how American drank the “kool-aid’. Posterity demands at least this much of us.
This country has come to a fork in the road and there are no maps in existence to guide us to a final destination or even a vision of a final destination. We are like the ancient mariners left with cartography that simply says “Beyond this point there be dragons”.
America like the “Jonestown” of the seventies has turned its back upon itself and retreated into the wholesale devotion of a cult of personality that demands only that one suspend rational thought and simply follow the lofty dictates of the messianic leader. As with all such cults no deviation is tolerated by the acolytes who have been appointed to key positions to actualize the will of the leader.
Something is very wrong with Barack Obama. It is more than his preternatural abilities to be Svengali to most of the mainstream press and media. It is more than the still unfathomable decision of a majority of our fellow citizens, to bestow almost unlimited power to a man with almost no public record and a very disturbing private one.
What does this say about us as a people? What does this say about us as a culture? Have we begun the descent that history tells us every great civilization inevitably goes through? Or are we simply being tested by a divine providence who is distressed that the “shining city on a hill” envisioned by the founders and the framers has become corrupted and now like the Augean Stables, needs to be cleansed.
The President of the United States who has sworn an oath to protect and defend this country wants instead to fundamentally change this country. He wants the American Public to abandon the basic principals that act as the bedrock of the nation and instead adopt something so foreign and alien to our history and our psyche that it may as well be something from another dimension. He wants to perform this metamorphosis without debate or discussion and he wants to complete it before the nation hardly even knows it has begun. In effect he wants to enact a “Putsch”.
This “Putsch” will affect every aspect of our society. It will cause our energy costs to skyrocket based on a dubious theory of climate change that is debunked by thousands of scientists even as it is embraced by thousands who celebrate emotion over science. It will ration health care so that the healthy will have checkups free of charge but the sick will face a death sentence if the “system” decrees that the operation, or the drug or the therapy is not warranted or cost effective due to age or income. It will abandon traditional allies an instead adopt policies of reconciliation with regimes run by the fanatical and the insane and in so doing, it will become the enabler of evil. It will lower the standard of living for almost every citizen of the country in the name of finally achieving the goal of equal outcomes for all instead of equal opportunity for all. It will create group rights that will supplant individual rights. It will dismantle our military and our defense capability to the point that we will be vulnerable to those who hate us. This will be done in the name of “fairness” to those nations we “oppressed” throughout history regardless of whether or not we brought peace, prosperity, food, medicine or freedom to them.
Under this President we will turn our backs upon ourselves and everything that is unique to us being “Americans” will become something to be shunned and be ashamed of.
We stand today on the edge of the precipice with POTUS playing the role of the Pied Piper and telling us in his unique beguiling way to jump over the cliff for that is where a better future lies.
If the nation decides to travel this wretched road to “Obamanetics”, many casualties will strew the wayside. Gone will be the “separation of powers” and with it the “division of powers”. Using a media ignorant of history and spilling over with slavish devotion to celebrity for celebrity’s sake, the work of Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, Jay and Hamilton will be consigned to a musty corner of a dark and dusty mausoleum. This president has made it abundantly clear that “Democracy” is not one of his priorities. He feels that what we all need and want, whether we know it or not, is security and predictability. None of these objectives, he argues opaquely, is possible with democracy. Democracy is too unpredictable…too volatile…too hard to manage. It is the secular argument against Democracy that mirrors the religious one exhorted by political Islam.
So the nation deceived by the fourth estate it once trusted and fearful of an economic tsunami caused in large part by the direct interference of the partisans of the party of Obama with the free market and capitalism, stands stunned and numb as to what to do as the bottom falls out beneath their feet. They are fed all manner of lies and distracted by meaningless media circuses as brave people in a land run by men from Hell itself, are butchered in the streets, The President of the United States says little …he does not want to interfere…he does not want to become the issue…he wants to preserve his precious dialogue with leaders so bereft of humanity that only the application of brute force can get their attention.
But the American Messiah is oblivious. He revels in his powers of persuasion. Has he not seduced an entire country with platitudes and generalities always careful to mention that this job or that will be long and difficult so that the details are always hidden away? Has he not toured foreign capitols and been received like the greatest star of the age? Dictators who bared their fangs at his predecessor now dazzle the camera with huge toothy grins for him. He gives speeches with a backdrop of smiling faces, carefully orchestrated so that the viewer will associate their giddy applause at strategic moments with instant vindication of what ever has just come out of his mouth.
For the students of history however there is something wrong with these otherwise magic moments. The stagecraft associated with his performances is all too reminiscent of people, places and times decidedly dangerous and decidedly deceptive. It is Bayreuth bathed in torchlights or Pyongyang suffocating in darkness or Jonestown with bodies contorted in rigor mortis as the jungle begins to claim them as its own, that begins to be conjured up in the darkest recesses of the mind. We are being had one begins to think. We are being had by a very great hustler at the pinnacle of his powers.
So we stand on the cusp of history. What we do depends entirely on us and depends on whether or not this generation has any of the vision of Washington and Lincoln left in their political DNA. The choices before us all demand sacrifice and hard work. One path however leads to a better and stronger nation reborn under the Constitution as it has been by every generation, to meet the great challenges of the time and overcome them. The other leads to a new country which will run from these challenges and thereby lose the essence of whom we are and who we have been and who we can be in the future. One is the road to freedom and the other is the road to Jonestown.
ERLANDSSON