Socialism

When Bernie Sanders was in the middle of his 15 minutes of fame, his critics often pointed to Venezuela as an example of a failed socialist state but there is another state that is also failing and that is the country of France. Hollande was elected in 2012 with a promise reminiscent of Obama’s pledge to Joe the Plumber saying he would redistribute the wealth. Hollande made similar promises and they didn’t work. Since President François Hollande entered the Elysée in 2012, France hasn’t managed two successive quarters of economic growth. The former Socialist Party leader’s programme of more regulation, higher spending and punitive taxation – not least his 75 per cent top rate of income tax, which has seen a flood of wealthy French professionals move to London – is being widely blamed for this dismal French growth performance. Throughout history political leaders have won office by promising to take money from the rich and give it to the poor but when the dust settles the poor are worse off and a few people walk away with the money. Hollande just made headlines when it was revealed that he pays his barber $11,000 per month. This is paid by the taxpayers and the irony is that he is half bald. Just like the members of the communist party in the Soviet Union got the best of everything and Chavez family in Venezuela became rich as the country went broke, the people of France are now feeling the effects of socialism. The greatness of America is founded on the premise that an individual can succeed with hard work and that work ethic has been lost in the flood of government programs designed to make people less dependent on their own initiative and more dependent on government largesse. The old concept of welfare as a helping hand has turned into a way life. When a young mother with a dead beat dad needs assistance that is a helping hand but when a 16 year old has a baby because her mother had her at 16 and the grandmother had the mother at 16 this has become a way of life. Are these people really being helped?A

Jobs and jobs

Polls show that the number one concern is jobs and a close second is terrorism. Clinton and Trump have both said that they will create jobs. Trump plans to use the private sector by lowering taxes on business and getting rid of the regulation that have been installed during the Obama administration. Clinton will use government money. She said in her speech today that she would offer the largest government investment in jobs in history. This likely means another stimulus program using the fed to increase the money supply. The policies that the government has used in the past 15 years have helped the rich but not the poor. The government measures income by quintile that is five groups with 20% in each group. Since 2000 the wages of the lowest quintile has increased 1% per year, the next lowest 1.4%, the next two at 2%. Meanwhile the top 1% saw their income increase 10% per year or ten times higher. Since inflation during these years averaged 2% per those not in the top 1% actually lost ground. Wages for all but the one percent have declined in real dollars. This is after politicians constantly preached that they were going to help the lower and middle income groups. When I was growing up my mother would say the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Seems like not much has changed!

CO2

When President Obama took office the democrats controlled the senate and the house and for a four month period they had a filibuster proof 60 senators. The President could have passed any bill he wanted and he chose to spend his time pushing Obamacare which was subsequently passed with no republican votes. The President could have chosen this opportune time to pass legislation regarding climate change but did not. Here are some comments Obama made about climate change. “Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change.” “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” “It is indeed one of the biggest threats facing our planet today.” If Obama had started the transition to natural gas in the transportation industry and power plants the change would be almost complete today. Since natural gas produces 25% less carbon dioxide than oil and 45% less than coal the country could have achieved a significant reduction by now. The cost of making these changes would have been less than the money that was wasted on failed solar projects. IF the President felt that climate change was an existential threat to the country might it have been more important than Obamacare?

Intent

One of the more critical parts of Obamacare is the state exchange agency. The program said that states must set up exchanges in order to receive federal subsidies for low income recipients. This was designed to encourage all states to participate and set up exchanges. Much to the surprise of the government 36 states declined to set up state exchanges. These states realized that the federal subsidies would stop in 2015 and the state would be responsible for the cost but would have no say in how the program was run. This would be the end of Obamacare so it went to the Supreme Court where Justice Roberts said that the plan did say that only states with exchanges would receive subsidies but that was not the intent. He said the plan fully intended to subsidies low income people in all states regardless of whether they had state run agencies or not. In other words what was written in the plan was overridden by what was intended. CNSNews.com first published this article on Jan. 5, 2015. Today, the Supreme Court ruled in King v. Burwell that the federal government could pay subsidies to people who did not buy their health insurance in an exchange set up by their state. In the Clinton email investigation FBI Directly Comey said that Mrs. Clinton was exceedingly careless but there was no intent to do anything illegal. In both of these cases the word “intent” was the determining factor. In the Obamacare case it involved what was intended and in the Clinton case what was not intended. In both decision the purpose was to allow the public to determine the outcome instead of some bureaucrat or some court and I have always felt that in cases that do not involve constitutional issues the public can better decide.

Better red

For many people the cold war stated in 1949 when the Soviet Union tested their first hydrogen bomb. I was 12 years old and this war continued for the next 42 years until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. During those years many people were Soviet sympathizers not that they so much admired communism but rather they disliked capitalism. They often closed their eyes to the benefits of the free market and concentrated on the downside which they viewed as greed run amok. As the years passed these people became more disillusioned with capitalism and as a result became uncomfortable with the American way of life based on the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This led to the belief that many of these people were anti-American. It all culminated with the election of Gorbachev whom these anti-American types saw as a hero especially when compared to Reagan who they viewed as a war monger. When Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire that was the last straw and they became convinced that our economic system was the cause of many of the problems in the world. Then like a bolt out of the blue the Soviet system collapsed and these people were lost and without a place to hang their hat. They quickly found a new home in the environmental area and better red than dead changed into watermelons, red on the outside and green on the inside. The move toward the greens was slow but steady and exploded with the war on fossil fuels. In the name of climate change these folks declared war on one of the foundations of capitalism call big oil. It is a natural fit for them to close down coal in the name of clean air and to do so quickly. When gasoline went over $4 they had a head of steam and pushed hard for electric cars but when fracking brought gasoline prices down their momentum was interrupted. They then started writing papers declaring the problems with fracking and that is where we are today.

Clinton email resutls

In his announcement on Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey said he could not find a previous case involving the mishandling of classified information that would support bringing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. Former CIA Director John Deutch working in the Clinton administration was just such a case. "This is a person who plugged the computer into the Internet -- the Department of Justice was going to prosecute him and then it was President Clinton that offered that person a pardon. And so this has been prosecuted, or at least attempted to be prosecuted, in the past. As the Associated Press reported on Jan. 24, 2001: "Former CIA Director John M. Deutch agreed last Friday to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets, but President Clinton pardoned him before the Justice Department could file the case against him." Another interesting point of contention in this case is the difference between “extreme carelessness”, and negligence. The law says that a person can be prosecuted for negligence and Comey says there was no negligence but there was extreme carelessness. This is reminiscent of the “depends on what the definition of is, is?

Hilary emails

There is an old adage saying that something will happen when hell freezes over meaning that it will not happen. This is appropriate for the Clinton email situation. A couple of weeks ago President Obama came out and endorsed Clinton for President. This week Attorney General Lynch said that she would follow the FBI recommendation on the case. This means that Clinton will be indicted when hell freezes over. If there is any impropriety involved the only way it will be uncovered is if some rouge FBI agents break ranks and go public with secret deals. Even then they better have more than their word. They better have tapes or documents otherwise they will be ripped to shreds by the Clintons. It will be the male version of nuts or sluts all over again. If the agents are female they will end up in the same ash heap as Paula Jones and Jennifer Flowers.