How do we handle this?

There is now a daily crisis of Muslim terror for the ordinary people of Europe.  This is also occurring more frequently here in the USA although the mainstream media seem to just report the headline massacres.  Obama is importing as many Somali Muslims as he can get away with before he leaves office. An historic dilemma may face us and also determine the quality of our future.

Today we publicly focus on slavery and Native American decimation. But we have forgotten, as probably a statement of healing, our history of religious intolerance. The New England Puritans hung Quakers. Everyone had to pay a tax to the Church of England whether they were Anglican or not until the Revolution. The history of anti-Catholicism is long and sad and lingered until the Kennedy presidency. Anti-Semitism only faded when the horrors of the Holocaust became known.

Since the 1960’s expansion of immigration, significant Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh communities have been established here. That has generally gone smoothly. But while there have been unfortunate incidents, they have been the work of hateful crazies. They will always exist on the fringe, that is the nature of human society. And while their crimes are inexcusable, they cannot render our values.  But having to label and separate one religion as dangerous presents an historic dilemma. As our streets, campuses, night clubs, offices, military bases, etc suffer Muslim brutality this discussion will begin. Plus there is the reality of vigilante activity and that danger to innocent Muslims.

Liberals preach tolerance. I can hardly disagree with tolerance and my personal beliefs are simple. There is one God or Great Spirit or Universal Wholeness or whatever term you want to use. There are many paths to that connection because there are many different people. Use the one that works for you. Muslims enjoy calling the Mass ritual cannibalism. While I can understand their definition, the Mass positively connects over a billion people to the divine.  By what absolute arrogance could anyone consider that wrong?

I have studied the Arabian tribes back to at least 3200 BC including their exemplary economy based on raiding caravans, plundering cities and slave trading. They had the revelation of Islam in the 600’s and used the Catholic Church as a model to integrate conquered counties into a unified empire. I’ve read as much of the Koran as I could stomach. All this information is available to anyone including their numerous frauds such as taking the zero from India and selling it to Europe as their own.  I have personally and intellectually concluded, as have many others, that Islam is a political ideology masquerading as a religion. They call it immigration jihad while the globalist establishment calls it refugee resettlement.

Some hope that Islam can reform itself as have the other faiths that modernized. I know two clergy working with Imams.  But this wishful thinking may not be reality. While I don’t know what will happen in Europe as the situation worsens, we all know that they have a history of separating people by faith. We not do have such a history, but we are approaching the point where we may. That may become a necessary decision in the near future and a difficult, precedent setting dilemma.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Nightmares Come True

Several recent news stories have appeared about Google and Facebook building housing for their employees in the high expense housing short Bay Area. We have regressed to the company housing/company town era. The freedom to live where you want is gone.  How did this nightmare come about?

Opening with Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and growing with an unavoidable awareness of industrial pollution, the contemporary environmental movement was born. In some areas of my hometown of Buffalo, NY, people don’t have dogs because they die very young of cancer from contact with the soil. But as is common in many movements, the fanatics took over. They promulgated the nihilistic notion that growth is bad. This defeatist, and Un-American, idea has taken hold. We give up rather than solve. Conundrums appear. This is so clear in the situation of Marin County. They thwarted post war growth and forced people to commute from more distant locations like Santa Rosa. Then they protested the traffic through their “preserved” environment that their prior actions created. The current answer is a high subsidy passenger rail line, adding to the existing inefficacy and social costs of their “benevolent” actions.

When I left LA, it was changing from a regional metropolis into a world class city. People fruitlessly resisted an overwhelming historic change which, again, their own endeavors had helped create. "Save My Neighborhood" became the rallying cry. Some went as far as to propose freezing in time with subsidy an older art house movie theater. They seemed blind to even considering the blatant absurdity of doing that in the theater-blanketed Hollywood area. They called themselves liberals; I call them reactionaries.

This elitist attitude, coupled with the now extremist environmental movement, was hijacked by the globalist/new world order folks. It provided them with fear mongering propaganda and boots on the ground that could be used to achieve their aims. The power mad environmentalists had failed. The end of humanity by 1990 from pesticide pollution didn’t happen, nor did the global cooling/new ice age scare work. But this new alliance did work given the participation of the multinational corporations and the media they control. The global warming hysteria took off. Some convinced themselves that they had converted Goldman, Sachs et. al. to their side. Not surprisingly, fanatics are often also dense; it seems an inherent quality of their disposition.

These dramas also play out daily here in Amador County. We all know the upheaval at our local newspaper to free us of the political filth of Eric Winslow and the bias ramblings of Bret Parsons. But a new figure has arrived overtly on the scene (and probably covertly in the past) named Steven Frisch, head of Truckee’s Sierra Business Council. A recent photo of his dinner with Supervisor Lynn Morgan and environmental community leaders surfaced on Facebook. He also has voluminously participated in discussions on Facebook.  So I posted the following: “Steven Frisch’s Sierra Business Council partners with ICLEI, an organization dedicated to destroying the American way of life and repudiating the modern concepts of freedom and individual liberty we have taken for granted since the French Enlightenment, the American Revolution, etc. I would not affiliate with ICLEI anymore than I would join the KKK or the Communist Party.”

The above prompted a few days of heated verbiage. Frisch defended himself by citing his good works. These included energy efficiency, transit, access to recreation, having housing options, etc. No one is arguing against these noble, common sense ideas. But Frisch, along with some rather effusive notions about the motives of his critics, assumes you oppose these concepts. This seems keeping with his apparent character that if you question the manner of implementation, you doubt these benign goals.  Essential to his understanding is the human caused global warming fraud, so-called smart growth, disregard for Agenda 21 and his affiliation with ICLEI. Internalizing these doctrinaire assumptions allows him to decide what is good for others. This is policy and project from a non-regulated, nonprofit NGO. The democratic decision-making of local government is inhibited or abrogated. The free market where entrepreneurs produced what we decided we wanted is minimized or replaced. Decisions that forge our economic future are made by the self appointed and un-elected few for the many. How dare of us deplorables to object.

Frisch seems to ignore that housing shortages and/or too high prices were brought about by the land development policies of people of his ilk. He forgets that the “horrible sprawl” of the post-war period was the first time in all of human history that the average person was this well-housed. It must be scary for reality to intrude upon ideology.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Democratic Behavior?

I saw the following on the walkbikeamador.com website: “ACTC Transportation Planner and Upcountry Representative will present information related to the plan to the Pine Grove Civic Improvements Club. 11/2/16” I do not recall seeing that public meeting notice on any other local media and if my memory is incorrect then please let me know. Since this organization has a clear history of excluding certain Pine Grove residents from their email list who don’t completely share their vision, this exclusive behavior is not surprising.

Yet their website states: “The Pine Grove Civic Improvement Club is a nonprofit organization, incorporated in 1954. We strive to: Unite the inspiration and enterprises of the people of this district to promote education, moral, social, and civic measures and community improvement and betterment of the Community know as Pine Grove (and) Unite the members in the bonds of friendship, good fellowship and mutual understanding”.

Their behavior is, according to some, in violation of their lease agreement with Amador County.  I therefore ask the District Attorney, the County Council, the Board of Supervisors or whomever is appropriate to investigate this situation and respond accordingly. And while I do not want to finger certain individuals, anyone can go to their website and read their list of officers.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

            

Our Cowfart Future

With 30% of California’s dairies having closed and about an additional 600 slated to close, the yoke of our state government continues to threaten our rural economies and food supply. Of course, this is for our own good to protect us from imagined global warming. The self-serving California Air Resources Board has declared that 59% of our suddenly dangerous methane gas comes primarily from cattle. Of this, 31% comes from the enteric fermentation of their ruminate digestion with 28% from manure.

Their inspired calculations only include human-controlled sources. But methane is produced from rotting organic matter, including our cherished compost piles. Given the vast forests and other wildlands of California, natural methane production must dwarf that of human activity. A Dutch friend told me that as a boy, he and his buddies would place coffee cans on their boggy soil. After a brief spell they would carefully lift up a side and light it, the can taking off like a rocket. And if the Central Valley hadn’t been settled, I’m sure the elkfarts and marshes would probably produce as much methane as the current cattle.

This hysteria that the elites are engendering has caused the Canadians to add zeolite to cattle feed to reduce their flatulence. While this is a safe mineral and also used as a human health food, no one knows the long term effect of its consumption by cattle or by those consuming dairy products or beef. (Maybe this will be the basis of some juicy class action lawsuits in future decades?) The methane phobia has gone so far that one fearful global warming warrior has even suggested transporting our leaves to factories for controlled methane reuse with us buying the end product back as fertilizer. Self sufficiency certainly threatens the globalist agenda and impedes the global warming scare being used to frighten us into submission.

California human inducted methane production is 25% from waste with 21% from landfills and the remaining 4% from wastewater (sewage treatment plants). This methane can be, and sometimes is, captured and fed into the natural gas system. Using this gas, from an existing stationary source, reduces the need of the drilling into the earth that alarms some people. But capturing this gas is a lesser priority that "cowfart" regulation. Why use almost free energy when you can cripple an entire industry, throw people out of work and make us dependent upon imported food from countries that then may want concessions from us?

This reasoning of California’s ruling elite reminds me of decision to build the first section of high speed rail in the area least likely to produce revenue rather than the area most likely to produce revenue. Sometimes I don’t feel like I live in a state anymore, it’s more like an insane asylum. Go outside, take a deep breath and fill your lungs with methane. Live dangerously.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Health Care: A Simple Suggestion

I heard of a man who had a stroke and as a result he and his wife lost their home. Many will scream foul, they should have had healthcare. However, the family in question needed just major medical/catastrophe insurance. But he was between jobs, and had neither. This was the known problem that Obamacare, despite its many flaws and sinister intentions to hijack existing healthcare, was an attempt to solve. But with high deductibles and high premiums, it has devastated family budgets and appears to be in self destruction mode. Given trying to be one size fits all for about 320 million people, I’m not surprised.

They completely ignored understanding risk, the basis of liability insurance. I suggest separating risks and propose near universal major medical insurance. Such policies are fairly commonplace. I had one during years of self employment in my 30’s and 40’s. But as I aged, the premiums became excessive and I dropped the policy. My experience was typical. However, if I and others had a life insurance policy purchased at the same time and with the same payments, we would have been vested in the policy and received a permanent policy with reduced benefits. Granting vesting and ending unfair cancellations can be corrected legislatively. Insurance companies would still make ample profits.   

But it would be done in the private sector and be actuarially sound, unlike Social Security and Medicare. Starting in your twenties or so at a few hundred dollars annually, almost everyone would be covered. The monies paid in would easily cover those unfortunate younger few who needed it. By the time most people needed major medical they would be prepaid, much like a life insurance policy. Many employers would pay their employee’s premiums. But the policy is yours and stays with you, employed, self employed or just hanging out. And undoubtedly for some others, the welfare system would pay the premium. The amount hospitals overcharge their paying customers to cover their losses for non payers could be significantly reduced.

The medical system would be simplified with some likely reduction in overhead costs. In 2011, I wrote on this blog: “A recent visit to my dermatologist cost $240. My health insurer paid $73 and I paid $166. What I paid was what the service was worth. What my health insurer paid did not share the actual expense, but rather represented the cost of the insurer’s bureaucracy and the doctor’s billing staff.” The last time anyone visited a health practitioner, the ratio of actual providers to support staff is rather apparent. With spiraling medical costs grabbing headlines, the experts not surprisingly hire more experts and usually on the government dole.  Of course, their existence adds to medical costs but they see it as worthwhile it because they claim to wring costs from the medical system.

They pay doctors less. Half of our doctors are over 50 and just hanging in there with retirement on the horizon. While increasing in number, the new medical students fall significantly short of future demand. So we import doctors from foreign countries that often don’t respect us or our culture. Squeezing doctors is a no-win proposition. But it does provide an incentive to master the medical billing codes and return the squeeze. Another method used to reduce costs is to deny benefits. The insurer often gets the accounting benefit of delaying expenses even when the persistent patient wins in these situations. But they structure the experience to get you to give up. An office assistant of a health care provider I use was once on hold for 30 minutes to get approval for a necessary procedure. What percent of the final price of the service I received was simply the cost of gaining approval?

Obviously, increasing the demand for doctors at the same time as decreasing the supply is a prescription for disaster. We have seen a partial solution in the VA and elsewhere with medication substituted for treatment.  For these reasons of expanded sales, the pharmaceutical companies signed on in the backroom deals that created Obamacare. Since then, some firms have exploited this situation into public outrage and headline news. But most Rx drugs are purchased at different prices by various organizations such as Medicare and groups of hospitals through third party buying syndicates. Their dealings are beyond the public eye and often quite murky. They are opportunities for corruption. So aside from some retail consumer trade, most Rx prices are not free market prices.

How much would an unfettered free market lower health care costs for everyday expenses if almost everyone had major medical insurance? Would it be as much as a third, a half or even three quarters? What if all those paper pushers were producing goods we now import from China? Certainly the Liberals would cite the dangers of the irresponsible deplorable masses who would skip annual physicals, etc. But beyond their prejudicial attitudes, real proof is sketchy. The number of people driving around on bald tires remained unchanged after annual auto inspection laws were enacted.  Responsible people had an additional hassle and expense while the auto shop lobbyists were richly rewarded. No law makes irresponsible people responsible. But some argue, and rightly so, that responsible people often put off necessary doctor’s visits due to temporary financial hardships. With the public tab at stake in these situations, many argue that coercion is necessary. Indiana Medicaid recipients have compulsory preventive care visits.

Even with qualifications, my vision of everyone having major medical/catastrophe insurance along with vastly reduced free market prices for day to day care just ain’t gonna happen. The change is too abrupt, and too many people are used to some version of the existing arrangements. And while I have no idea what changes will come from a Trump Administration, I am pleased to see the major medical vs. regular care dichotomy enter their discussions along with editorials urging them to recognize this distinction. I perceive Trump as a person guided by what works more so than ideology, and I am hopeful for some sanity to unfold. 

Trump will probably govern with a center/right coalition that includes the blue dog or moderate Democrats. Politics is the art of the possible. This will isolate the progressives, the closet socialists or worse. (Leaving the leadership of the Democrat Party to Keith Ellison, Elizabeth Warren and a behind the scenes Obama should be an ominous warming to anyone concerned about the survival of the Democrats.) We will always be split, arguing and compromising, but it is the progressives that prevent workable solutions.

An excellent example of this occurred in the UK recently. A system of government run 401(k) type retirement plans was proposed, similar to a recent program in California, but with the plan participants required to buy an annuity upon retirement to protect them from market swings. The progressives were infuriated that the government didn’t control the whole process and conjured fears of bankrupt annuity companies. They believe that the government should take on a massive unfunded liability that can only be met by, at the very least, higher taxes or inflation or both. But the solution is simple. Have everyone buy the annuity at retirement age and insure the annuities with a self funding mechanism like the FDIC for banks. If an annuity company goes under, the stockholders - not the taxpayers - lose out. That’s how a free market works. In a worst case scenario, if the annuity insurance fund went under, the government could make up the difference. But it would be the equivalent of pennies on the dollar and not a crisis. No retiree would ever lose their retirement income. While this may not meet the ideological requirements of some, it is workable and doable. The moral of this story is simple: Get the government must control everything progressives out of the way and we can compromise and solve.

Endnote: Health saving accounts (HSA’s) are likely to remain in some form. They are another addition to the alphanumeric soup that includes IRA’s (Individual Retirement Accounts), 529 plans (an education saving plan) and many others. The goals of all these schemes are all beneficial, but they all miss the salient point. Once upon a time in America, earnings and savings weren’t taxed away. Today, they are so high that even prudent people don’t have money available for savings. But forgetting the cause doesn’t help the financial firms providing, for a fee, these accounts. And, as I have noted many times in these posts, we have more and more people counting beans and less and less people producing them. We borrow money we can’t feasibly repay to buy manufactured goods made elsewhere. If Trump doesn’t reverse this we will eventually fall off an economic precipice.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Where Are We Headed?

The link below is an important story, not because of the pipeline, but because it shows the disorder we are declining into. My nephew’s wedding could easily have been on a violent night of that constant demonstration and we would all have endured teargas or something upon leaving as our second dessert.  There is much discussion whether or not Hillary Clinton should be charged and tried for her alleged crimes. To many it is a simple question of right or wrong. But those in leadership face a different issue. To arrest and bring to trial a leader from the prior regime seems more like a banana republic than the USA. Perhaps to do that acknowledges, in fact, that we have become a banana republic.

Many people interpret today’s events, our political struggles and divisions, through the lenses of past experience. Consequently they plan strategies that way which often backfire. What’s going on is something new. I don’t know what final arrangements will emerge, but it seems apparent that we are in the first innings of a likely redefined future.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-23/hundreds-veterans-heading-standing-rock-defend-dapl-protesters-police

Being an American and Elizabeth Warren Chicanery

Our current complex devices are difficult to recycle, yet contain gold, silver and other reusable materials. Most of them are shipped to Guiyu, China where improvised people with primitive techniques earning about $8 a day take them apart. Of these workers 88% suffer from neurological, respiratory or digestive disorders. Miscarriage rates are six times greater than normal. But if the infant survives, they face stunted brain and nervous system development. Greenpeace found over ten heavy and poisonous metals in the air and water. Rice grown in local waters is labeled with a different origin to protect producers while freely poisoning consumers. Yet the originators and trans shippers of this e-waste sometimes receive tax breaks from Obama as green recycling enterprises. This answer to e-waste reuse is the globalist solution.

But only by acting like Americans can we solve America’s problems. Traditionally, we don’t have problems, just challenges. Itonics, Inc of nearby Reno has developed a furnace process of freeing valuable metals from circuit boards while utilizing the waste heat as the furnace’s energy source making the entire process energy neutral. That is an American solution. A similar furnace technology was developed in the UK by Veena Sahajwalla.  Reflecting on her name, I couldn’t help but think of The Kinks hit song “Living on a Thin Line (There is no England now)” as a metaphor for where we were headed under Obama.

It may seem contradictory or ironic that environmental groups are alarmed by Guiyu pollution and also promoting globalism/the new world order which includes deindustrialization.  That also includes losing our industrial mojo. But I find having problems with our historic solution mechanisms being simultaneously threatened to be the muddled mindset desired by the globalists and their environmental follow travelers. That is their objective: to destroy grit/self reliance, initiative and freedom and return us to serfdom. When you are convinced that the problem and the solution are the same bad thing you are ready to believe anything.

I have warned readers of this blog several times about evil Elizabeth Warren. Her Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was recently ruled by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia as unconstitutionally structured. The court also said that the CFPB violated due process and the statute of limitations and used its own unique interpretation of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.  Apparently it’s progressive to take the law into your own hands.

My recent trip to Chicago reminded me of the powerful vote with our dollar concept along with the free enterprise system.  Most of you have probably also seen this, but I observed an apex being reached this trip. Once upon a time the clever airlines decided to charge, usually about $25, for checked luggage. Flyers responded with more carry-on bags and the luggage manufactures created a max suitcase for the overhead bins. These sold until almost every passenger had one. The airlines now have more carry-ons than fit overhead, so they are forced to check it for free. This trip almost all luggage avoided the fee. Freedom works!

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Soros Wedding

I just returned from my nephew’s wedding in Chicago. It was at a hotel across the street from a Trump hotel. Police, in the hundreds, were all around the area. Many of the streets were blocked off. Fortunately, I got there on time because I walked. Pedestrians were allowed passage through the blocked streets, but certainly we were all checked out visually. There were one to two hundred in the demonstration, with the crowd size varying during the evening. Replacements appeared to come and go, the protest having gone on for many days. Thousands must have participated in this endeavor. Every time the demonstrators tried to enter the Trump hotel, they were prevented by a double line of officers. I saw no violence, the police were very professional. Many people had trouble getting to the wedding, but we all managed to assemble. However, the rabbi hadn’t arrived. Undoubtedly, the kitchen staff for the dinner that was to follow were in a state of consternation over this delay. Finally, she arrived with her tale of travel woe.

It was wonderful to see my nephew get married, and to visit with family and friends. But the additional, probable George Soros-financed event made it an even more special occasion. Perhaps I should send him a thank you note.

The police overtime bill must have been enormous. I’m sure those in City Hall appreciated this addition to their financial woes. And if the officers weren’t on overtime and were pulled from other patrols, there are probably bodies and blood on certain neighborhood streets as testimony to their absence. I wonder if the recently-on-strike radical teachers who demanded raises from nonexistent revenues also supported the demonstrators? Perhaps if Hillary had won the election, she would have made George Soros’s birthday a national holiday in honor of these social justice warriors for the new world order.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Bad Deal

“Born in … China's Sichuan Province to parents who served in Mao's Red Army, Wang (had a) 16-year career in the People's Liberation Army …rose to the rank of colonel.” Does this sound like someone we would like to control our movie industry? While the article about him (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/wanda-chairman-wang-jianlin-plans-invest-billions-hollywood-942854) said he hated Maoist China - and he clearly is a free market capitalist - he is not an American or an immigrant assimilating American sentiments. He is a global citizen within the globalist new world order. Not surprisingly, helping him buy Hollywood are former Microsoft and News Corp executive Jack Gao, and a Goldman Sachs alum, Jonathan Garrison.

We may keep our name, the United States of America, but our culture will be distorted and our sovereignty diminished. Congress repealed the law, demanded by us so-called citizens, requiring County of Origin labels on meat due to threats from the World Trade Organization. Donald Trump calls these "bad deals". For this, he and his deplorable supporters are called nativists, xenophobes, etc. While many of these critics are shills for the world government/new world order, many ignorantly (including some in recent local Facebook discussions) confuse globalism with normal world trade and the wired world we are all a part of now.

Canada welcomes investment from everywhere, but also has strict laws about keeping their media and cultural institutions Canadian-owned. This is a good deal. We can participate in global trade and benefit from it without being sold out with bad deals that threaten our American identity.

It seems that the powers that be contained additional inflation and a declining standard of living with cheap foreign goods. We all bought them, felt good and sent our money overseas. It’s now coming back to buy up what’s left after de-industrialization. Let’s hope we didn’t trade away our national soul.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett 

Environmental Faux Pas

Through both the environmental push to replace coal and free enterprise fracking slashing the price, natural gas has increasingly replaced coal as the preferred fuel to generate electricity.  But this transition has its quirks. Half of the final consumer cost of gas is transportation. Pipelines are increasingly controversial and costly. Coal comes via our often underutilized freight rail system. It can be stored like a pile of rocks. Natural gas requires new storage facilities, mostly underground. These usually encounter environmental objection. While I won’t even broach the technical arguments, we have all seen the dire consequences of inadequate maintenance of gas infrastructure. The bottom line is simple: we are becoming more dependent upon natural gas without building sufficient supply guarantees.

Given the right set of circumstances, we could briefly close our factories and lose the warmth of our homes. Many will simply blame the demonization of coal, the global warming hoax and environmental extremism. While many environmentalists are sincere people and some objections have validity, the movement is being had and funded by those seeking greater social control and increased dependency.  If you’re not sure who I’m referring to, they are all on Hillary Clinton’s email server.

Often criticized by the socialist left as misappropriation of resources or market failure, the law of supply and demand along with the action of entrepreneurs will always produce a surplus. That is the human spirit unleashed with freedom that made America the model for the world. Given a few organizational twists, Vladimir Lenin thought it the way to go and called it democratic mass production. We are a nation primarily of the descendants of European peasants and the formerly enslaved who enshrined a culture of abundance. But now we build to a precipice of possible restricted supply and diminished possibilities. We need look no further than our recently adopted General Plan to see the power opposing us deplorables that care to remember when America meant exuberance.

Daily and personally we experience this decline (which includes the dumbing down of education) as environmental extremism becomes the norm.  Officially, there has been a change. Institutional and government science has replaced corporate science, but the end product is just as questionable. “Near-infrared is important as it primes cells in your retina for repair and regeneration, which explains why LEDs—which is devoid of infrared—are so harmful for your eyes and health. One-third of the energy your body consumes comes from the food you eat. The vast majority of the energy your body needs to maintain the systemic equilibrium comes from environmental infrared light exposure. LEDs "sabotage health and promote blindness,” according to Mercola.com. I guess that if we are blind, then we won’t have to see a heated up world of forests and fields turned into deserts.

Donald Trump is not our savior. We are. But his presidency could spark a renewal and an awakening. History, and our adversaries, won’t give us a second chance.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett      

Far Out Eric Attacks Again

Eric “Soros” Winslow has reached a new level of verbal depravity in Friday’s  Amador People’s Daily aka the Ledger Dispatch in his letter to the editor entitled “Boitano’s High Flyers”. Apparently, he thinks that out doing the National Enquirer will give the Ledger a competitive edge in our unfolding newspaper war. Little of what Winslow wrote discusses the issues; it is primarily character assassination based solely on Winslow’s imagination and distorted perceptions. While I could easily pick his letter apart word by word, including his frequent caustic and dishonest word choice, I am not verbose or pedantic like he is, and will therefore concentrate on a few points.

Winslow describes a campaign flyer with a photo of our sheriff and district attorney as containing “two…good-looking Caucasian gentleman.”  If I wrote about attractive Michelle Bachman vs. homely Janet Napolitano, I would be accused of sexism - and rightly so, since I would be viewing women as commodities and not people. You discuss a person’s ideas and track record, not their appearance. Look at all the flack Donald Trump got for calling Carly Fiorina unattractive. But it’s OK for double standard Winslow to talk that way. He further illustrates this in his statement “…those who the incumbent apparently considers subordinate to him, particularly women.” Aside from being an absolutely fanciful accusation on Winslow’s part, it further shows his belief in the far left notion that sexism is discrimination only against women.  There is a vast men’s movement literature, almost entirely from liberal and left wing sources, about discrimination against men.  I believe that we are all equal in God’s eyes, and that the simplest and most effective way to reflect that in human society is for us to speak and act that way.

He continues his ideological tack by calling a Boitano campaign flyer “…an example of how some of the great white fathers in our county’s leadership lord it over those whom they take to be their inferiors…” He believes in the discriminatory notion that all white people must be the same. There is apparently no difference between slave owners, those who committed genocide against Native Americans and poor immigrants. Prejudice against Catholics has been a tragic part of American history from Colonial times until the Kennedy presidency. Italian immigrants dug the cut and cover New York subways for the white, Protestant upper class. Conditions were unsafe, and the shoring collapsed one day crushing 900 men to death. The superintendent told the foreman: “Go to the docks and hire some more.” Is this the concept of great white father privilege that Winslow alludes to?   

He further makes the statement “…some of the other Caucasian gentlemen who serve with him on the county board.” There is one woman on the board presently and there have been others in the past. There have also been Hispanic county supervisors. But only a DNA test will tell if they had sufficient Native American blood to satisfy those interested in the discrimination of faux diversity such as Winslow. Personally, I believe in voting for the best people irrespective of their genetic heritage and consider that the most democratic perspective.

When one of Boitano’s flyers conscientiously asks what the SEIU expects in return for its contributions to Frank Axe’s campaign, Winslow goes ballistic. His vitriolic response’s attempt at satire backfires as Winslow ends up accurately describing the SEIU by saying “…that most diabolical and heinous of worldwide hegemonic organizations…” They are thugs who use violence and the threat of violence. Just put "SEIU" + "thugs" into your search engine. One item that comes up is a denouncement of their tactics by Dolores Huerta, president of the United Farm Workers. Another video describes them physically intimidating single women, often immigrants with a limited command of English, who are home health care workers. These women dress wounds that won’t heal or change diapers for the incontinent. These are the people the SEIU claims to represent, yet they are just fodder to pay dues to further their radical socialist agenda. I would not take their money. But Winslow thinks they are great folks, probably because he shares their agenda and somehow has rationalized away their style or endorses it.

He charges “possible wrongdoing and/corruption” by the Board of Supervisors regarding the Health and Human Services Building that will never be properly investigated because Louis Boitano, the other supervisors and the DA are all “such great pals”. This is slander, if not libel, especially against the DA. This avenue could be perused. The political machine that Winslow is a part of has no scruples and will stop at nothing. Unless we fight fire with fire, freedom will die in Amador County.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

   

Steel or Steal?

When the Civil War began, we imported all of our steel rails. But by 1900, we were producing ten million tons of steel. This was the work of Andrew Carnegie who said: “The old nations of the earth creep at a snail’s pace. The Republic thunders past with the rush of an express” in his Triumphant Democracy of 1885. He cultivated talent and promoted only by merit while vastly improving the chemistry of steel making. His Homestead (Pittsburgh area) works employed 4,000 that made three times as much steel as the 15,000 at Krupps’ Essen, Germany mill.  The price of steel rails fell from $160 a ton in 1875 to $17 a ton in 1898 with other steel prices dropping in sync. Everything went down in price, the standard of living rose and we celebrated with the first steel skyscrapers.

U.S. Steel, the successor company to Carnegie, was de-listed from the Standard and Poor’s index of America’s 500 largest companies in 2014. Today, China makes 50% of the world’s steel, increased from a 13% share in 1996. But about 40% of their production is over production to provide employment and prevent social unrest. They dump this overproduction on world markets at very low prices. The US Commerce Department responded with tariffs. The Chinese answer was to change the labels and export to us from Viet Nam. But, in Carnegie American fashion, U.S. Steel developed a real - not government involved - competitive response with a new super steel. The Chinese hacked the research and are probably developing it now. Is it ironic that we cede our jobs to the Chinese, then borrow from them to feed our unemployed? Or is this part of how the insidious globalists achieve power over us? 

When speaking about these factual matters, Donald Trump is vilified in the media as a nationalist with the ring of a Hitler. The globalists will say anything. They are afraid. But we need not be, if we can win in November and Make America Great Again.

End notes: Ten people died in a bloody labor strike in 1892 at Carnegie’s Homestead works. The history books teach this as a story of evil capitalism and a turning point in developing the labor movement. But others say that there was never a valid strike vote, and that radical union leaders intimidated the steel workers into this confrontational situation. I don’t know the truth, but I’m confident that any scholar looking for grant money will have difficulty finding it. And if they did, it would probably destroy their career.

As in everything in life, it’s a two-edged sword.  I recall the jokes popular during the 1890’s about two Irish immigrants named Pat and Mike. While walking home from work one day, Mike asks Pat: “Have you seen the new free library Carnegie built here?” Pat answers: “No, I haven’t had time. I work 12 hours a day at the steel mill.”

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

The Pressure Is On

We are all aware of the big issues like trade, questionable foreign wars, intelligence hacking and many more than I sadly care to recount. But the little issues that harass our daily lives as globalist control moves forward are what is annoying most people. This response, often described in the liberal media as ignorant fear by deplorable people, seems a natural and perceptive awareness. I have experienced this many times.

I was recently barred from Facebook because of alleged malware unless I downloaded Trend Micro Home Call. So I ran several malware programs that found nothing. Several chat rooms informed me that many others had the exact experience, and that it’s a scam to revive a second rate software. Informed sources told me that my AVG would be deactivated and my vulnerability increased. So I could download Trend Micro and then ease that and reload AVG. Or I could open a new Facebook account under an assumed identity. With either option I could get flagged again and be back to square one. Facebook’s scam is wrong and possibly illegal. But like the forced downloads of Windows 10 for future monthly fees, and Obama’s surrender of internet control, our major communications channels are narrowing for the globalist few. Free movement and transportation are also affected.

With family in Chicago I often travel there.  A few years ago I easily pre-purchased a bus/rail pass over the Internet. For my next visit I found myself having to open up a whole new account with MasterCard Ventra to buy a transit pass (incidentally, that account recorded every bus and train trip I made). This account's opening cost was $5, refundable with the following month’s pass purchase. But for visitors, it was a steep 25% surcharge on a $20 pass. It was like the Dark Ages or early Middle Ages fees paid to the nobility when the few controlled the many. With an upcoming visit, I may have to pay a $5 dormant account fee before buying another pass. So we ordinary people are now subsidizing the globalist goal of eliminating cash that they can’t control. In addition to this, it discourages transit ridership requiring more subsidies, thus adding to the tax burden of an already functionally bankrupt city and state.

This upcoming trip also required accommodations. One hotel refused to take my reservations because I couldn’t supply a cell phone number. So it has begun, and will probably grow in adoption, that you must buy a tracking device for the National Security Agency to always know your whereabouts. iPhones vary in price from $400 to almost $800, plus the considerable monthly fees.  It also represents the iron law of wages formulated by British economist David Ricardo. He said that incomes will always remain a bit above subsistence. So we have cell phones, cable or satellite TV, etc just to be ordinary people. We may live well, but the seemingly necessary accoutrements preclude tuning our historically high incomes into wealth, and therefore, power. Ricardo was reminding us that it’s all a façade.  Many endeavors are like that, including inquiry for the public good that is only available to a select few.

Scholars receive government grants to conduct research. The results are generally published in academic journals. But this information, created with our tax dollars, belongs to an organization named JSTOR. Unless you pay them money, or are privileged university faculty, access is denied. That’s prevented me from reading articles academic friends have recommended, and has also dead ended many research projects. Curious individuals and citizen journalists be dammed.  Naming my blog, "Outside the Ivory Tower", is neither a coincidence, nor a metaphor.

The young genius who had invented the RSS feed, Aaron Swartz, hacked JSTOR. He committed civil disobedience in the tradition of Rosa Parks as articulated in his 2008 “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto”. This was his “‘moral imperative’ to share scholarship locked behind exorbitant subscription walls…(and) viewed in some quarters as a greedy gatekeeper, constricting the pursuit of knowledge”, reported the Boston Globe. But challenging those who seek to control knowledge and seemingly want to return us to the serfdom of the Middle Ages has consequences. Attorney General Eric Holder threatened Aaron Swartz with 50 years in prison. Angered by an online petition questioning his judgment, Holder kept the pressure on. Aaron Swartz committed suicide. His case was never heard, the legal issues he (and we) could have won on where never given the light of day. Many were outraged, from the left wing Huffington Post to conservative Congressional members such as Darrell Issa and John Cornyn. This was another clear we the people versus the globalists issue.

These policies and programs, and many more like them, negatively impact our daily lives. While not as important as war vs. peace or depression vs. prosperity these situations and the awareness they engender inform us of transformations consuming us. These are changes we never asked for. Who benefits the most from this? It’s neither you, nor I.

I often wonder if anything ever really changes. In a previous post, I mentioned my participation in the Sacramento Valley (Amtrak) Depot Stakeholders group in reference to the decision of not allowing Greyhound into their bus terminal to not mix their passengers with the new green commuters. In contrast to 50 or more years ago, there were many black people in the stakeholders group. But it was okay for everyone, black and white, to make fun of the Sikh cab drivers. To even mention bringing in the casino buses that catered to Chinese people was a forbidden topic.

For many years in modern Israel the largest crime was illegal foreign currency transactions. Men would crowd the streets and engage visitors. How is this different than Matthew 21:12 “…Jesus went into the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers…”?  So while the story hasn’t changed, the cast has. We win some and we lose some.

Locally, we now have a restrictive globalist General Plan. You can now choose your town center, but you can’t choose to build your home elsewhere. The freedoms most of us thought were our birthright have slipped away.  A well-financed contingent seized the planning process from the beginning and assigned us, in the name of saving the environment, our limited role in the new world order. Despite the years of pain ahead, some still complaint that the General Plan isn’t restrictive enough. Only total victory will satisfy them.

In 1828, the opposition press called Andrew Jackson’s wife a whore. While that maybe a tame accusation in our current election, none of the media banter should fog over a clear choice. The noose is tightening, and Hillary Clinton is one of those pulling the rope the hardest.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

If It Works, Kill It

Much advocacy has gone into an Amador future of agri-tourism and wine tasting. Promotion has included public money being spent via the Amador Council of Tourism. The success of this part of our economy has pleased most everyone. But the Shenandoah Valley and related area's boom has turned into a bust with nighttime noise and too much traffic for the quaint roadways. The Planning Commission has grabbled with expansion plans on a case by case basis to minimize impacts without a seemingly overall conception or direction.

This diffuse approach has led to the inevitable. An application for a small winery tasting room on Ostrom Road was turned down cold. Was door was slammed shut? Other ventures probably felt the chill. I certainly did, because it felt like the restrictive circumstances that led the ancestors of many of us from Europe to America. If we kill our entrepreneurial spirit, we have turned our future into something other than the existing and self-sustaining America.

The applicant’s presentation to the Planning Commission contained a 32-page Environmental Negative Declaration from our Planning Department. US Fish & Wildlife contributed an additional nine pages. Another 32 pages contained staff reports from other related agencies, public comment and other documents. Every move is under review. As I read these 73 pages, all I could think of was how many bureaucrats (or tax dollars) it takes to screw in a light bulb.

Along with this stifling process, those who most wanted agri-tourism prosperity are now among those preventing this new wine tasting venture. What did they think would happen?  Aside from the obvious possibility of failure, did they think that some sort of fantasy perfect would result? Success breeds success until the market becomes over-saturated. The cure for high prices is high prices say the commodity traders, just as they say the cure for low prices is low prices (production is either reduced or expanded).  How long will this wine boom continue? Are the wine tasters' twenty-somethings beginning a life time habit or middle aged people about to fade away?

But presently, supply is being denied due to external factors. Presumably road improvements could be made without sacrificing the area’s charming qualities. Assuming no new taxes and uneconomic increases in traffic mitigation fees (which the proposed facility did pay), there appears to be three sources of road funding. The first would be cleaning up the corruption and waste at CalTrans. But we lack the courage and leadership to de-fang that imperial behemoth. The second, getting rid of the bicycle/pedestrian set aside, would yield a very small but useful amount of funding. However, that is politically impossible in green California. The third possibility would be increased County tax revenue, but the project denial is the opposite of this.  How much revenue has the County lost due to the delays of the Newman Ridge project? How much public money has AWA wasted fighting lawsuits?

While the three road funding suggestions above are all feasible, none are likely. Katherine Evatt of the Foothill Conservancy has suggested doing a specific plan for this area. While that is procedurally correct, why is more government always the answer? Aren’t the noise problems sufficiently abated through the existing regulation? Does the Planning Department have the staff for a specific plan or do we hire a consultant? Who pays for that? And how long will the process take including hearings, reviews and possible law suits in relationship to the problem just dissipating? But a plan’s worst outcome could be picking and choosing winners or losers rather than have the proprietor’s drive and hard work determine their success.

While I have no magic answers to all the valid complaints of area residents, denying this new facility and the dreams of its instigators is far worse than the alleged problems this tasting room winery could create. The denial will be appealed to the Board of Supervisors this coming Tuesday morning, 9/13. Be there and voice your support for entrepreneurship, freedom and prosperity.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Grand Jury or Grand Inquisition?

Given testimony at the last Board of Supervisors meeting by a nurse that said refund or rebate was re-translated by the grand jury inquisitors into kickback, it appears that the underway Amador coup d’état strategy is becoming more apparent as it sinks to new lows. But you would never know this by reading Eric Winslow’s yellow journalism in last Friday’s Ledger.  He fancies himself a muckraker. While he certainly has the rake, the muck is his own invention. Perhaps he has missed his calling. His more appropriate role maybe at the supermarket checkout stand with stories like: “Alien disguised as bigfoot delivered my pizza” or “Hillary Clinton and her alien lover”.

Simultaneously, we have the witch hunt against Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti. Given a planning commissioner and a school board member refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, this all seems like more than a coincidence. Minus the violence, this feels like living in Germany during the 1930’s. Is something happening behind the backs of Amadorians? Certainly many in our community will implicate the Foothill Conservancy. Their earlier leadership was almost sued, but they are now more subtle. But whatever their behind-the-scenes plotting, I can easily imagine their Soros related funding sources breathing down their necks.

Another local influence is undoubtedly the SEIU. Just put SEIU + thugs into your search engine and the United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta’s denouncement of their tactics and other similar videos appear. They have no compunction about exploiting the very people they claim to help. They are financing Frank Axe’s campaign as he goes door to door, telling potential voters that the present supervisors are a reincarnation of Tammany Hall. They also financed Lynn Morgan, who only won because several hundred complacent Republicans didn’t vote.

We cannot sit idle as the very soul of our county is endangered. When there is a victory against vexatious litigants and no growth nihilists, such as the Amador Water Agency’s development of hydroelectric power at Tanner Reservoir, the story is buried on the last page of the Ledger. Will this become typical of the “new” Ledger? Many people say the new Dollar General store is ugly. Saying that a venue that helps people of modest means save money seems like the real ugliness.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Rhetoric or Reality?

This past Friday’s Ledger Dispatch contained statements from our incumbent Congressional Representative Tom McClintock and challenger Bob Derlet. Derlet’s statements conjured images of Huey Long’s demagoguery. He said that McClintock and others wanted to gut the Social Security system. While this may be effective fear mongering offering unspoken images of old people starving, it has no truth. Tom McClintock has said that Social Security needs to be phased out. He, along with more official, bipartisan reports than one can count, have stated that Social Security is actuarially (and demographically) unsound. It was a depression era quick fix based on a 66 year life span. Many counties, especially in Europe, have similar problems. The situation is best defined as how to create a system to provide retirement income, not as continually tweaking and extending something that will ultimately fail. Conservatives, moderates and liberals in the British Parliament, the California state legislature and throughout the world are discussing and implementing workable solutions. The literature regarding retirement financing ideas is vast.  If he’s not aware of these efforts as he spouts off it doesn’t speak very well of him.

Derlet further fears that McClintock, Trump and others want to turn the system over to Wall Street. If it was in their hands, they would have captured the overall return on invested capital over the past 50 or so years of about 8%. But Social Security has instead returned about 1.6% over the same time period. Derlet believes that this is: “…one of America’s greatest success stories…” Since the entire Social Security Trust Fund is invested in US Treasury debt  (no real money there, just IOU’s), the only success I can see is a scam to keep afloat an over extended deficit ridden government.  He says that “The hedge fund managers can’t wait to get their hands on your money…” While pensions sometimes use hedge funds, they are irrelevant for individual retirement programs or accounts, and not about to be approved under Labor Department rules. Also, hedge funds are doing poorly and falling out of favor as endowments and other investors are pulling their money out. The free market system is self correcting, something he doesn’t seem to grasp. This is not surprising, since he has spent his entire life working for governments or non-profits.

But he not only wants to preserve a doomed retirement income system, he want to increase benefits by closing so-called tax loopholes. This sounds like Obama’s mantra about billionaires and millionaires that don’t pay their fair share. But the IRS data tells a different story. Many people make a million dollars in a certain year; they sell a business, take capital gains on appreciated real estate or stocks, or write a hit song or novel. But they aren’t millionaires, and that million dollar year rarely reoccurs. Derlet doesn’t let reality doesn’t interfere with his rhetoric. We must all be too stupid to see what’s real.

In a stark contrast to Derlet’s factless fear mongering, incumbent Tom McClintock’s companion statement was a practical, feet on the ground exposition of his efforts to remove dead and dying trees. This includes a bipartisan effort in Congress, and the realistic awareness that overcrowded, unlogged forests bred disease. With or without the drought, the pine bark beetle would have arisen to thin our forests. The same phenomenon occurs in Japan, when rice farmers attempt to push their patties with over-planting. The rice blast disease appears and attacks the crop. This is well-documented in Masanobu Fukuoka’s “The Natural Way of Farming, The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy”. The book’s introduction states: “My greatest fear today is that of nature being made the plaything of the human intellect.” He discusses real ecology, not the pseudo science of environmentalism prevalent today.  Nature will always seek a balance just as the free market is self correcting. There is an inherent order to life that escapes the experts given their over educated ability to rationalize away common sense.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett