REPUBLICANS

 

Last week I excoriated Democrats for being a party that no longer believes in the US Constitution, individual rights and the rule of law.  Today I excoriate the Republicans for being unable or unwilling to defend, protect and preserve the same.

 

This administration is the greatest law breaker in the history of the Republic and the President both deserves and must be impeached.  The problem is that because impeachment is a political solution to political and/or criminal "high crimes and misdemeanors" you cannot successful impeach anyone unless you have 67 votes in the Senate.  That in turn would mean that you have convinced a significant number of Senators in both parties that the  acts which warrant impeachment must be exorcised and more importantly the people want this to be done.

 

The Republican Party have begun to do neither.  In fact it is doubtful that they could even muster all 45 Republican votes in the Senate if they should have to vote on Articles of Impeachment.

 

The reasons for these are political and illustrate a timidity and clueless ness  that make the party of Lincoln, TR, Eisenhower and Reagan,  political eunuchs of historical precedent.  They are so fearful of being labled  "racists" for rightfully beginning to build a case that is self evident, to impeach the worst, most dangerous and most destructive President in our history, that they are in a state of political paralysis.  Meanwhile the country and the people suffer.

 

They are fearful that a biased and ignorant Democratic/Progressive media will demonize them and they have developed no strategy or tactics to counter these accusations and neutralize them.  Worse, they behave as if the names their opponents call them are true so they either try to become "Democrat Lite" or they leave the field of battle all together.

 

In far too many states and localities they are unorganized and unable to back their candidates with either manpower or money in order to elect the people they nominate.  They do not act like a real party so often, that many citizens  have ceased to regard them as such.  In far too many instances they look to "rich" candidates who can self finance their campaigns thereby relieving the party of actually having to do what parties are supposed to do at their most basic level.  Democrats bring out their union and social justice shock troops  and the GOP pretend to mount a campaign with the eventual conclusion already preordained.

 

Republicans have allowed themselves to become defined by Democrats on almost every major issue facing the nation today.  On immigration... they are defined as being anti-Hispanic, on entitlement reform... they are anti-poor,  anti senior citizens and anti-disabled persons, on tax reform... they are pro rich, on maintaining a strong military ...they are war hawks, on   ObamaCare they are anti woman and racist, on Benghazi, the IRS, the NSA, Fast and Furious and  the VA... they are out to get the black President at any costs with phoney scandals,  Iraq is Bushes fault . Everything... the bad economy, the national security...educational failures... sky high college costs and the alleged damage to the environment are caused by Republicans who are stupid, evil, greedy and the puppets of the Koch brothers.

 

Over 40% of the country believe this BS and only the GOP itself can turn this around.  But instead of trying to begin to make this heavy lift, a large segment of the party decides to attack the Tea Party which is in reality are the shock troops that they need to counter those the Democrats seem to have in ample supply.

 

They attack their natural allies because they are threatened by them. The inbred consultant corps that feed off of losing GOP campaigns see their meal tickets in jeopardy.

 

I mean smaller accountable government living within its means and subject to the law while being able to insure the general welfare and provide for the common defense is somehow radical just like those Democrats claim!.

 

A political party is not a real party unless it has a coherent and shared set of principles with which to convince the voters that it is serious and worthy of their trust and vote. A party is not a party unless it can defend it self from scurrilous false attacks.  A party is not a real party unless it can fund and support its candidates in 21st century contests.  A party is not a real party if few or none can tell you what they stand for!  Today sadly the party has little or none of the above.  Any gains they make in 2014 will be because the Democrats have dramatically over reached in their race to socialism, progressivism and suicidal pacifism.  Any gains they make will be because they can articulate the sins of the past but not a cogent  vision of the future that addresses the real problems of real people in a real future.

 

ERLANDSSON

 

 

 

REPUBLICANS

 

Last week I excoriated Democrats for being a party that no longer believes in the US Constitution, individual rights and the rule of law.  Today I excoriate the Republicans for being unable or unwilling to defend, protect and preserve the same.

 

This administration is the greatest law breaker in the history of the Republic and the President both deserves and must be impeached.  The problem is that because impeachment is a political solution to political and/or criminal "high crimes and misdemeanors" you cannot successful impeach anyone unless you have 67 votes in the Senate.  That in turn would mean that you have convinced a significant number of Senators in both parties that the  acts which warrant impeachment must be exorcised and more importantly the people want this to be done.

 

The Republican Party have begun to do neither.  In fact it is doubtful that they could even muster all 45 Republican votes in the Senate if they should have to vote on Articles of Impeachment.

 

The reasons for these are political and illustrate a timidity and clueless ness  that make the party of Lincoln, TR, Eisenhower and Reagan,  political eunuchs of historical precedent.  They are so fearful of being labled  "racists" for rightfully beginning to build a case that is self evident, to impeach the worst, most dangerous and most destructive President in our history, that they are in a state of political paralysis.  Meanwhile the country and the people suffer.

 

They are fearful that a biased and ignorant Democratic/Progressive media will demonize them and they have developed no strategy or tactics to counter these accusations and neutralize them.  Worse, they behave as if the names their opponents call them are true so they either try to become "Democrat Lite" or they leave the field of battle all together.

 

In far too many states and localities they are unorganized and unable to back their candidates with either manpower or money in order to elect the people they nominate.  They do not act like a real party so often, that many citizens  have ceased to regard them as such.  In far too many instances they look to "rich" candidates who can self finance their campaigns thereby relieving the party of actually having to do what parties are supposed to do at their most basic level.  Democrats bring out their union and social justice shock troops  and the GOP pretend to mount a campaign with the eventual conclusion already preordained.

 

Republicans have allowed themselves to become defined by Democrats on almost every major issue facing the nation today.  On immigration... they are defined as being anti-Hispanic, on entitlement reform... they are anti-poor,  anti senior citizens and anti-disabled persons, on tax reform... they are pro rich, on maintaining a strong military ...they are war hawks, on   ObamaCare they are anti woman and racist, on Benghazi, the IRS, the NSA, Fast and Furious and  the VA... they are out to get the black President at any costs with phoney scandals,  Iraq is Bushes fault . Everything... the bad economy, the national security...educational failures... sky high college costs and the alleged damage to the environment are caused by Republicans who are stupid, evil, greedy and the puppets of the Koch brothers.

 

Over 40% of the country believe this BS and only the GOP itself can turn this around.  But instead of trying to begin to make this heavy lift, a large segment of the party decides to attack the Tea Party which is in reality are the shock troops that they need to counter those the Democrats seem to have in ample supply.

 

They attack their natural allies because they are threatened by them. The inbred consultant corps that feed off of losing GOP campaigns see their meal tickets in jeopardy.

 

I mean smaller accountable government living within its means and subject to the law while being able to insure the general welfare and provide for the common defense is somehow radical just like those Democrats claim!.

 

A political party is not a real party unless it has a coherent and shared set of principles with which to convince the voters that it is serious and worthy of their trust and vote. A party is not a party unless it can defend it self from scurrilous false attacks.  A party is not a real party unless it can fund and support its candidates in 21st century contests.  A party is not a real party if few or none can tell you what they stand for!  Today sadly the party has little or none of the above.  Any gains they make in 2014 will be because the Democrats have dramatically over reached in their race to socialism, progressivism and suicidal pacifism.  Any gains they make will be because they can articulate the sins of the past but not a cogent  vision of the future that addresses the real problems of real people in a real future.

 

ERLANDSSON

 

 

 

 

DEMOCRATS

In the life of a democratic republic, political parties are born out of necessity and die or wither because of the lack of it.  But when democracy dies it usually is because the dominant party has become a cancer.

 

A dying democracy is where we find the United States today and the Democratic Party has become that cancer.

 

I don't know any longer, if it is even possible  for Democrats to feel shame about what their leaders say and do and in turn what they celebrate, support or simply tolerate from those same leaders.

 

I also don't know if Democrats can be separated, even for a brief time, from their collective smug and arrogant cynicism in order for them to adopt, display and embrace a sense of  honor. as it has been understood throughout the annals of Western Civilization.

 

I for one,  am done with trying to have an honest and candid debate or discussion with those who are prepared to defend this President regardless of evidence, now mountainous, as to his incompetence, his disingenuousness, his derision toward shared traditional values as well as common sense.

 

The leadership of this "woebegone" party has no collective or individual  conscience and because of this it's rank and file are rapidly losing theirs.

 

The oaths this President and the leaders of the party took to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States have been in large measure abrogated so many times that their disdain for our founding document, can no longer be disguised.  Throughout the country, Democrats in distressing numbers have decided that abiding by it and protecting it and the rule of law are no longer  guiding principles,  sacred duties nor  political priorities.

 

When you challenge them on this... everything   becomes a Republican or Conservative plot, which means it's racist, sexist, homophobic and designed to help the rich, destroy the environment, suppress the Palestinians and screw the poor and middle class.  That's as far as the argument is allowed to go. It's the end of the discussion. The strategy instead becomes that  the constitution goes unmentioned...and the tactics become ...change the subject...go on the attack...demonize someone or demonize everyone...yell louder than your opponents...talk over them...don't let them respond...scream nonsense...run out the clock!  It's not so much what you say as how you say it. 

 

Make the enemy play by the rules while you ignore the rules...distort...lie... cheat...and whip up as much racial, gender and class division as you can.  To hell with patriotism...to hell with the flag...to hell with God and faith...to hell with our traditional culture...and to hell with any and all to dare to challenge and disagree with the almighty Barack Hussein Obama.

 

I no longer believe that a significant segment of the Democratic Party is even capable anymore of objective thought.  The party and its ancillary organs in the private and not for profit sectors, have made it abundantly clear they no longer want a real, functioning democracy.  Instead they want power with no strings attached.  If they do not get their way without force then they will get their way with it.

 

Half the country has now been made the enemy  because of the ego and duplicity of one man who wants to subjugate us instead of protecting us as his oath requires.  To Democrats, the people are no longer sovereign.  They have become the "lumpenproletariat" that  needs to be controlled.

 

The multiple serious crises that continue to embroil this country is your fault...  Democratic Party!  You frankly have never had a sterling record with your historic defenses of slavery,  secession, segregation, socialism and sedition.  Now  you want to add stupidity and soullessness  to that list.  Your dismissal of reason and embrace of political correctness and moral and cultural relativism have made you fanatics.  No one or nothing is beneath your ire and contempt.  Veterans...conservative women...conservative blacks...Christians and Jews...Israel...the Koch brothers...Walmart...school vouchers...Charter Schools...critics of Obamacare...the Tea Party...those who want to stop Sharia's war of women... the  right to life... and 33,000 scientists who don't believe in climate change to name but a few, are always on your target list.

 

The Democratic Party is now so toxic it should come with its own trigger warning! 

 

This President may have a pen and a phone to run his wannabe monarchy but I and millions of my fellow citizens have a middle finger and a vote to stop him and his Democratic Party putsch!

 

Next week Republicans! 

 

ERLANDSSON. 

 

 

 

IN THE CROSS HAIRS OF HISTORY

 

"Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim,"

 

With these words Robert Bergdahl gave the Islamic victory blessing in the White House  Rose Garden while the President looked on smiling.  This moment had been a long time coming as Hillary Clinton after first applauding this prisoner exchange and who now voices her reservation due to the uproar, has to live with the disclosure that direct negotiations were conducted with the Taliban while she was Secretary of State. 

 

This President is also rumored to have had secret and indirect negotiations with Hamas prior to their new alliance with Fatah and with Iran prior to the Russian involvement in the Iranian nuclear program.

 

In short through word and deed this President and his subordinates have kowtowed to the worst elements of political, terrorist Salafist Islam.  They continue to do it even as everything  now blows up in their face.  They have placed both serving military personnel and American civilians abroad in mortal danger.

 

 

 

This time  he may well have crossed the "Mendoza line" on the road to impeachment.  In releasing the worst of the worst of the Taliban and then lying about the conditions of the release, Obama has violated his oath of office to protect the nation and violated the law by not informing Congress 30 days in advance of his attention to do this as well as giving "aid and comfort" to an acknowledged terrorist enemy. 

 

Many believe that he was seeking something dramatic to take the unfolding and endless scandal of the VA off the front pages.  Others believe that this exchange would be applauded in the same way the killing of Bin Laden was celebrated.  And still others felt that this was so dramatic that it would neuter the predictably negative reaction to the job and economy killing regulations that the radical out of control EPA has just proposed.

 

Everything this Imperial President does is political.  He has established an administrative state which has neutered our Constitutional Republic.  He operates for himself and his increasingly self evident agenda of making the United States irrelevant in the affairs of the world.  He believes that the US is and has been the problem globally for a long, long time.  He hates all capitalism save  the crony  capitalism which bankrolls his grand design and hence does all he can to make sure the country never recovers from the doldrums that he, after five and a half years in office, has in large part caused. 

 

The case for his removal is overwhelming as he has been at the center of scandal after scandal by either sins of omission or sins of commission.  He and his people  lie to the people with reckless abandon.  He has substituted his "Social Justice" agenda for the rule of law.  He has illegally imposed massive income redistribution on the American people without their consent. 

 

The litany of official misdeeds is long and  growing.  "Fast and Furious"... refusing to enforce existing Immigration law and then making new Immigration law via Executive Orders...the NSA...the DoJ assault on the Press...ObamaCare with it's 26 illegal amendments and the lies to get it passed...the VA...a massive regulatory assault on the freedoms and property of American citizens...attempts to destroy the Bill of Rights...using the IRS to attack political opponents...giving public monies to  political supporters...attempting to impose "Cap and Trade" despite Congress being unwilling to make it law...deliberately destroying the wealth of the middle class because of ideology...refusal to save entitlements for future generations...making the nation weak and vulnerable by dismantling  our military, our national security and our energy capabilities...telling our enemies what we are going to do before we do it...stabbing our allies in the back as we attempt to woo these same mortal enemies...refusing to prosecute voter intimidation and criminality at polling sites...refusing to take step to guarantee fair elections...Benghazi...refusing to enforce laws he disagrees with...ignoring the Congress and the courts over and over again...creating meaningless red lines in Syria which in turn causes the deaths of thousands, and now exchanging the Taliban core leadership for Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who  may be a deserter and a collaborator who directly or indirectly caused the deaths of possibly eight fellow soldiers.

 

The chorus is now growing for the impeachment of this President even while his detractors understand that throwing out the first black president may cause in and of itself, a national crisis leading to civil disorder.  This is and has been up to now our unmentionable  political dilemma.

 

It is also safe to say that had any white Republican or Democrat done what this man has done they would be gone by now.  Moreover Barack Obama knows this to be true and has used it to play the country  and the fawning media like a fiddle.

 

The truth for anyone willing to listen is that it is not his color but his ideology, incompetence and blatant anti-American agendas that lie at the root of his need to be removed.  He and his disciples have broken their covenant with the nation.  They have broken their oaths of office.

 

He has openly stated that the Constitution he has sworn to uphold and protect is broken and needs to be fixed... by him!  He and others have in short, committed "high crimes and misdemeanors",  which may well include corrupt and criminal acts which call for impeachment. 

 

Impeachment is a political act designed by the founders to protect the nation from irreparable harm and the people from losing their rights and freedoms.

 

 The only question therefore that remains, is what do we the people now demand  our elected public servants do about this crisis, knowing full well that the President and all the President's men and women will take the country down if that is what is required for them to survive.

 

We are once again as a people in the cross hairs of history and we only have ourselves to blame. Americans no longer have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines as if the preservation of our freedoms is the job of others.  Obama and his people have made us unsafe, unfree and feeble.  As Edmund Burke once said "Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government." 

 

The country cannot take much more!

 

ERLANDSSON

THE HEDGEROWS

June 6th turned into June 7th as the survivors of the initial landings began to leave the beach heads and move inland.  In their wake came thousands of more allied troops discharging from their landing crafts in shoulder high water to avoid booby traps and mines close to the five landing zones.  Operation Overlord was one day old.

Once up and over the bluffs that overlooked the beaches, the men found themselves confronting miles of hedgerows stretching from Cherbourg to Alecon and Mayenne , north to south, and from Falaise and Argentan to Avaranches, east to west.  They called this advance "Operation Cobra".

The hedgerows were ancient  from  Roman times and were called "Le Bocage" by the people of Normandy.

They consisted of earthen banks 5 to 6 feet high and 12 feet wide across the bottom.  They were anchored together by trees on their top and thick dense vegetation on their sides  whose root systems combined to make them as solid as stone walls.  They had been built to delineate land boundaries and provide natural fencing for pasture and farm land.

Taken as a whole they formed a crazy patchwork maze with sunken roads caused by the buildup of earth to form the hedges. These roads were the only means to travel through the maze by wagon or motor vehicle.  Each field rimmed by these hedgerows had one entrance and the Allies had no maps. 

Some riflemen believed that their higher ups had  imagined manicured hedges on level ground such as would be found back home when they had made their plans.  Instead they found themselves in terrain that contained the worst elements of the trench warfare of the WWI and the jungle fighting of the war in the Pacific.

Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt and his subordinate Field Marshall Erwin Rommel were of opposite minds as to how to stop and contain the Allied advance.  Rommel wanted to keep them on the beaches at all costs  and prevent them from taking Cherbourg with its port facilities and St. Lo on the river Vire which was 200 feet above sea level on a plateau.

Von Rundstedt wanted a more mobile defense.  Hitler needed to decide but did not so there was no coherent strategy at first.  Hitler was obsessed with the nightmare of an Allied break through to the plains of Western Europe and the low countries where the Blitzkrieg he and his Wehrmacht  had invented would be turned against him.

So almost by chance the hedgerows of Normandy became the new "Atlantic Wall" of "Festung Europa".

The Allied troops soon discovered that the enemy they faced was an international army with slave troops consisting of Russians, Cossacks, Poles, Chinese, Georgians, Mongolians, Koreans and Muslims.  These less than ardent defenders however were soon reinforced by 16,000 battle hardened, elite paratroopers from the 3rd FJ Division in Brittany.

Each hedgerow now became a redoubt with dug in and camouflaged riflemen, heavy machine guns, mortar teams and forward artillery spotters.  Snipers seemed to be in every tree.  As soon as troops entered the fields surrounded by the hedgerows that farmland would become a killing ground.

The tactics of the battle required that  the infantry and the tank crews work in tandem.  That in turn required getting the tanks off the sunken roads and into the fields where they could tear up the hedgerows with cannon fire and 50 mm machine guns and  destroy the enemy.

The Allies first began to blow holes in the hedgerows so their M4 Sherman Tanks could get into the fight.  They had learned the hard way that going up and over exposed their lightly armored under carriage to anti tank weapons.  Sgt. Curtis B. Culin of the 2nd Armored Division came up with the idea of retrofitting the tanks with "tusks" or "prongs" made from captured German steel to cut through the banks of the hedgerows, roots and all.  These became famous as the "Rhino" tanks due to their resemblance to a Rhinoceros.

Other tanks were fitted with bull dozer blades and they became "Dozer" tanks.  Soon the British retrofitted their Churchill tanks also.

The ingenuity of this adaptation also thwarted the German strategy of holding the intersections and junctions  of the sunken road network where they could wait to kill the Allied Armour they believed were constrained to the roads and not the fields.  By taking the tanks off the sunken roads the Allies were able to flank the hundreds of German traps and keep from being pushed back into the sea.

In Normandy in 1944, there were 14 hedgerows to the Kilometer.  The Allies were able to clear two a day.

By July, Cherbourg had been taken along with St. Lo by Omar Bradley's 1st Army.  The British under Field Marshall Sir Bernard Law Montgomery had taken Caen.  The Normandy Beachheads  were finally and forever secure.

The savage war in Le Bocage would continue for another month.  75% of Allied casualties were from mortars as the ancient fields and farms of Normandy were torn asunder and watered with the blood of two fierce armies.

In the end, Hitler's worst fears came true.  Once through the hedgerows all of western Europe lie ripe for the taking.  The Reich that was to last a thousand years had less than 8 months to live.

ERLANDSSON

COMMENCEMENT 2014

 

Many people ask me " Why are you so angry?"   I usually reply "Why aren't you?"  For starters I am not built to surrender.  I take my rights and responsibilities seriously.  I take my obligation seriously to try and leave my country and the world better than they were when I found it.   I cannot roll over and become a slave to those who once they have stripped me of my rights would then attempt to eradicate my humanity.  So I'm angry!

The country is in the throes of an American version of the cultural revolution.  Too many of our allegedly educated youth are all too ready, willing and eager to silence anyone who disagrees with them on whatever issue du jour  they have taken a pious and ignorant stand.

We were warned  that this day would come when the missionaries of Marx took over Academia and systematically proceeded to turn our children into witless disciples of numerous phony Messiahs.

Intolerance in the university is now the norm as witnessed by the procession of graduation speakers who have become objectionable for moronic reasons held by brainwashed bigots with caps and gowns.

If I were to be a commencement speaker (which is about as likely as playing shortstop for the Yankees after Jeter retires), I would say this to the graduates of 2014:

" The world is in terrible shape.  The country is virtually in free fall because the rule of law has been abandoned.  The Constitution ...the greatest secular document of freedom ever written is in tatters...and many of you, but not all of you are oblivious to all of the above because your education has not included an accurate history of this country, warts and all.  Instead if you got anything it was The History of the United States...warts...that's all.    

Nor were you instructed in how this country is supposed to work  so you could be the watchmen in the night when the nation veers off course.  Had you been so instructed, most of you would be on the barricades today.   

You also do not understand that you live in an "exceptional" nation unlike any other in the history of the world.  Whether it remains that way will now be up to you.  Whether it remains that way means  you will have abandoned an innocence that no longer justifies your arrogant, self righteous pathology of never offending anyone in order to justify in turn your knee jerk reflex to censor anyone who disagrees with you.

Your obsession with grievance based conformity of word and deed must be put away with your toys.  Your thirst for punishing your mythical enemies while aligning yourself with some of the most vile political movements in history has become in the minds of many the  signature achievement of your academic careers...unless of course you count the appalling fact that far too many of you know more about Ben Affleck than you do about Benghazi.

You might be surprised that many in the real world see you first and foremost as Fascists.   If you  don't know what that means than Google it.  They wonder how Liberal Arts became so illiberal.

You worship "diversity" but were not educated in an environment that practiced it and most of you said and did nothing about it and now the bill  for that avoidance will be coming due.

You will now be entering a world more dangerous and complex than any before it.  It is also a world which is more competitive on a global scale than ever before.  Those who know how to seek and acquire knowledge and truth will survive, thrive and prosper and the rest will not.  Those who have wallowed in the popular culture while ignoring the humanities, science and western civilization, now must radically change their ways or be relegated to a life of diminishing returns.

Mine is a call not just to your hearts and minds but to your souls as well.  The wisdom of the past is the only road map to the future. But it will only be as good a road map as you make it... as you chart your course in an unsettled world.

My plea to you is simple.  Do not wake up 10...20...30 years from now as a cog in a machine made by politicians selling you what passes as political manure.  Do not wake up as subjects of the state and not the ultimate rulers of that state. Do not wake up as serfs to a progressive elite.

I close with the following thoughts;

Shun the cult of celebrity and the curse of political correctness...both will devour  you...

Embrace the classics and the lessons of history...they can save you

Embrace the sermon on the mount...it can save your soul

Be faithful to the vision of the founders or risk losing your freedoms forever...

Keep learning until you die...

Learn a trade to get you through the lean times...

Practice courage,bravery and honesty...they are virtues that define you in good times and bad...

Do not let the nation, your nation, wither on the vine until it becomes a cruel parody of the last days of the Holy Roman Empire...

And if you don't know what The Holy Roman Empire was ...don't Google it...instead pick up a  book and learn!"

ERLANDSSON

INCOME INEQUALITY

Nobody capable of useful work need today lack food and shelter in the advanced countries, and for those incapable of themselves earning enough these necessities are generally provided outside the market. Poverty in the relative sense must of course continue to exist outside of any completely egalitarian society: so long as there exists inequality, somebody must be at the bottom of the scale. But the abolition of absolute poverty is not helped by the endeavor to achieve 'social justice'; in fact, in many of the countries in which absolute poverty is still an acute problem, the concern for 'social justice' has become one of the greatest obstacles in the elimination of poverty. In the West the rise of the great masses to tolerable comfort has been the effect of the general growth of wealth and has been merely slowed down by measures interfering with the market mechanism. It has been this market mechanism which has created the increase of aggregate income, which also has made it possible to provide outside the market for the support of those unable to earn enough. But the attempts to 'correct' the results of the market in the direction of 'social justice' have probably produced more injustice in the form of new privileges, obstacles to mobility and frustration of efforts than they have contributed to the alleviation of the lot of the poor.

From economist Friedrich Hayek's "Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2: The Mirage of Social Justice" (1976):

 

  

It seems as if everyone today is  talking about income inequality.  Obama is using it as a bogus political crusade to divert our attention from Benghazi, the IRS and ObamaCare; Pope Francis is denouncing it as an ethical and moral challenge.  Bill DeBlasio ran with it as his signature issue to become Mayor of NYC. 

 

Thomas Piketty,a neo-Marxist French political scientist believes that income inequality is cause by capitalism.  He has written a book called  "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" which the left is having schoolgirl swoons over.  In it Piketty, says only taxation can correct this problem, so he  advocates a world wide tax of 80% for anyone making over $500,000 a year.  For those making less, levies of 40% and 60% are proposed.  This is all social justice masquerading as a path to income equality which history has shown will not work when the market mechanisms of capitalism have been thwarted by ideology.

 

 

Yet no one can really dispute that the gap between the "uber" rich and some of the rest of us is growing.  The real question is why?

Since 2008 the economy has been stagnant.  In the first quarter of 2014 it  grew by a measly .1%.  This was blamed on the severe winter which in turn was blamed on "climate change" thereby turning an economic and political disaster into a cause for further manipulation of the economy, one more time. 

This administration, in point of fact has addressed all things economic, via a comprehensive "progressive" ideology that defies both common sense and the modern marketplace.  In doing this it has conducted a not so secret and not so subtle war on capitalism itself and thereby created income inequality. 

The true cure for income inequality is economic growth coupled with prudent and common sense policies and  regulations which prevent or curtail among other things ..."crony capitalism"...excessive regulation ( 4000 new regulation a year on top of the 200,000 "regs" that exist already)...massive Federal debt and deficits...government growth which causes the private sector to remain in stasis or contract...excessive taxation...waste and corruption in government spending...an educational system that rewards you for showing up in K through 12 and then brainwashes you in the university...and failure to end programs that don't work or need re-imagining in order to work in the 21st century.

The "Fed" has kept the lid on interest rates by "Quantitative Easing" but in so doing has forced those with capital to invest until very recently in the market which is still the only game in town if you want to make a buck.  These investments create wealth but do not create jobs.  The Fed has also increased anxiety about the inevitability of the inflation they seek to forestall.  This in turn adds to the overarching uncertainty which hovers over the economy  like a dark cloud.

The President doubles down on this uncertainty with a war on fossil fuels that raise energy prices for the average person to record levels, stifles job creation  and reduces the wealth of the middle class. This is done in a nation which has longer term sources of energy than any other nation on earth. 

 

EPA regulations in the name of climate change in particular, regularly kill jobs  and shrink the GDP.   But the ideologues who  practice a form of "Green terrorism", don't care if people end  out of work and dependent on government instead of being independent, employed and contributing to a vibrant economy.  Today the levels of unemployment, under employment and people leaving the workforce have reached "great depression" levels with certain demographics within the population.  

ObamaCare also kills growth by driving the cost of health care through the roof while delivering substandard care in a system designed by bureaucrats and not Physicians.  Job growth is thwarted  by artificial requirements placed on the size of private  businesses disguised as reasonable regulatory limitations linked to healthcare  without ever once recognizing that from town to town...state to state...and region to region there is no such thing as one size fits all.

Globalism has moved manufacturing off shore and turned us into a service economy with a technical IT elite who increasingly make what they do and how they do it, unintelligible to the average person.  As it turns out it also makes us dependent on a omnipresent, omnivorous technology which has taken over our lives  to the point of also making us strategically vulnerable from a national security standpoint.

Our politics seem about where they were before the Civil War.  Harry Reid has turned the Senate into a joke where solutions die in childbirth.  It has rocked the Republic to the core and begs the question of can a Republic work without democracy.  Nothing can grow in such a climate.

All of the above and more, create "manmade" income inequality.  All of the above involve deliberate policy decisions that this administration has made which fly in the face of common sense and the lessons of history.

Capitalism today is sick, but not for the reasons the left would have us believe.  Capitalism is sick because of ideologues who say it is  and have proceeded to wreck it in order to prove their point.  Capitalism is sick because this President has infected it with socialism.  The end result is the creation of a society where being reduced to poverty,  joblessness and loss of both economic and political freedom and opportunity  has perversely created a brave new world of income equality where poverty will make us all equal.

ERLANDSSON