Category Archives: Politics

by | April 26, 2014 · 9:33 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 111

THE CHANGING FACE OF RACISM

Eight decades is a long time.  Fortunately as we age, and I am very close to 83, our long-term memory remains vivid. The short-term is another story. I have seen the face of racism in the south and the north. It was very real in 1938 when I was a transplanted Yankee in the third grade in Jackson, Mississippi, an early learning experience. In case there was any doubt about how whites and blacks lived in the deep south, there were signs to help and firm comments from white residents making sure Yankees knew the rules.

My first venture into the deep south only lasted a little over a year. My family moved back to Jeannette, PA.  Jeannette was then a small tough town of mills and manufacturing, primarily glass factories set in the soft coal region. Racism was far less visible. While neighborhoods were mostly segregated, all the schools were integrated. The president of my senior class was a black student and captain of the football team. A few years later I was in a Navy boot camp. The camp was integrated but the black sailors in my company did not have the same choice of navy schools or occupations. Black recruits mostly ended up in the navy’s version of service industries. The navy was behind the army and air force in integrating. Racism was still alive but was definitely giving ground.

I took full advantage of the G.I. Bill and went to the University of Pittsburgh. While there I became a member of the NAACP. By that time a very high percentage of my peer group and fellow students knew that skin color was not linked to abilities in anything from sports to scholastic achievement. I think that single awareness, that skin color meant only skin color, contained the destruction of the elaborate trappings of racism, mostly then, held by an aging population, both white and black.

My awareness and exposure to racism had another chapter. While studying for my master’s degree in political science at Duke University, I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Martin Luther King when he came to Durham in 1960 to guide the “sit in movement.” I didn’t realize at the time how lucky I was to participate briefly in picketing, attending church to hear him preach, and to meet the black college students who were the mainline troops on the street.

Twenty odd years later after retiring from the CIA and while working in the Reagan White House, my wife got me to join with her in a church sponsored part of the “I Have A Dream” program in the inner city of Washington, DC. A wonderful experience. The sixth-grade kids we were closely involved with over the next seven years taught us all more than we able to teach them. Years later we are still in touch with some of them.

All the above is just to establish some background for what I want to say.

We have arrived at the point in America where few whites admit to being racists. It is a bad thing and none of us want to be known as racists. If you’re white there is no upside to being a racist. I think American blacks are expected to have some anti-white feelings. It’s part of the inner city culture. No black wants to be labeled an “Uncle Tom” or an “Oreo.” While there are hundreds of thousands of blacks that do not carry racist baggage, it does not help that the President and his Attorney General never miss a chance to suggest racism is alive and well in America and use it as an excuse for their failures.

The President and his AG are unpopular with a growing segment of our population not because they are black but because of their actions, non-actions, speeches delivered, and those that should have been delivered but weren’t.  Entrenched black political leadership never misses a chance to hoist the flag of racism. It is the tool they use to justify their roles and to motivate their followers. Sadly, they are the primary guarantors of the continued presence of racism. Our black citizens have done their share in the building and defending of America. Let’s bury racism and rejoice in our diversity. Racism can only exist if it has victims who search for it and find it where it doesn’t exist. Progressivism needs class warfare and racism to carry its message of transformation and destruction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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by | April 14, 2014 · 10:09 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 110

IS THIS A GAME?

Yes it is, and the Republicans have not learned the rules yet. Time is running out and our team is behind. We have no offense and the defense is out coached. Coach Obama knows what he is doing but only his inner team has the playbook. To win the title for the next several generations he has to change capitalism into socialism, reduce America’s military power, give up our technology position in space exploration, give over control of much of our communications to a world body, abandon NATO, under fund the defense contractors, control energy production, expand the number of people dependent on government assistance, turn the civil service into a force to control opposition, abandon free market concepts and abolish political opposition. How is he doing?

chess boardWe are dependent on the Russians to deliver people and supplies to the International Space Station. We no longer have the booster technology or the space vehicle to conduct space missions. We were once by far the world leader in space exploration. Now we are voluntarily taking a backseat to Russia and China.  Space dominance and military power are closely coupled. Our space capability depended on skilled teams of civilians and military personnel. That capability would take several years to reconstitute. Obama can take a victory lap.

He is reducing our military manpower to below World War II levels. He knows his word on the world power stage is weak and he is okay with that. NATO nations no longer trust the United States nor do the NATO leaning nations of Eastern Europe. Power comes from capability and will, not speeches. How about armored divisions to prevent Russia from over running Europe. How? The U.S. Army does not have a single battle tank in Europe. Remember Benghazi? Our once vaunted military could not rescue or even try to rescue the embattled Americans in the Benghazi Consulate. Another victory lap for the president.

Control of energy. Without the hindering regulations from the Obama administration, we would now be a dominant energy exporter. Putin would have to develop another source of funds for his reconstruction of the Soviet Empire. Obama’s work to wreck the energy industry in America can be seen in the incredible failure to approve the Canadian pipeline, the heavy funding of alternative energy technologies that are decades away, and regulations preventing additional offshore drilling or more exploration and drilling on federal lands. Fortunately, he could not prevent the energy boom in the Dakotas. But he will try. A half victory lap here.

The economy.  The recovery is very poor in job or gross national product terms. Real unemployment is above 12 percent. Money printing by the Keynesian Federal Reserve has kept the stock market sound but has increased the gap of wealth between those who can invest and those who need income from labor. Printing 75 billion or so each month does not help our workers. His first triumph, Obamacare, is not a failure. It is right on or ahead of schedule. It was never intended to improve health care in America, only to bring in socialized medicine. Obamacare is creating so much disruption in the health services that in a year or so, the single-payer system will come to the rescue. This has always been the plan. Another victory lap is awarded.

The civil service.  I always thought that the civil service was an unheralded check on either the executive or the legislature grabbing too much power. Wrong. President Obama has taken less than six years to turn the IRS, HHS, DOJ, EPA, DHS, DOE, and parts of the intelligence and military staffs into active supporters. Nothing Obama does can be investigated by the government or the media. Congress doesn’t even understand what’s happening. Yes, Speaker Boehner, it is a game and you are losing badly. Learn the rules and do what your job calls for. The president earns another victory lap here.

If you can clear your head and look at what is happening and has happened, it should be clear that President Obama’s train did not wreck. He just needs to pass on his mantle to another progressive Alinksy-ite to build on what he has done. Could that be Hillary?

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by | April 10, 2014 · 6:06 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 109

 BACK TO AMERICA

Let’s pretend it’s November 10th, 2016. Hopefully the American people elected Republican president. We do not want to hear any “them and us” rhetoric nor anything about “saving the middle class.” We want the government to get out of the way of the middle class so those people can help themselves, as they are fully capable of doing. We do not want to hear any speeches with a class warfare message. No “fair shots” or “leveling the playing field” or “income equality” or excuses for American excellence or military power. Nothing should be delegated to internationalism and no more whining about global warming nor cap and trade.

Here’s what needs and should be on his or her agenda for the first year of his or her presidency to get America back on the right track (or at least off the wrong track that Obama put us on for the past eight years):

— Focus on the economy, and part of that is dealing with Obamacare. Most of it has to be destroyed. The next president should want to make sure all Americans have access to medical care that offers things like no cancellations for pre-existing conditions and allows sons and daughters to remain on their parent’s policies until age 26. People should own their health insurance polices, so they can take them from job to job. The IRS should be removed from the health insurance field and so should HHS. Insurance companies will be allowed to trade across state lines. Tort reform will be part of the plan. States will have most of the responsibilities. Beyond a few necessary functions the national government will have no health insurance management responsibilities. The new health legislation will be series of bills passed and implemented on a step-by-step basis.

–Immigration will be dealt with in the same way. There are enough bipartisan votes to deal with immigration one piece at a time. First the border is fixed so thousands of people crossing the border illegally is stopped without being killed. Better leadership at the top level of border enforcement is a must and a new justice department is part of the fix. We will not deport millions of people who have been here for years nor are we going to break up families. However, those who break our laws, commit crimes, or belong to a violent gang are out of here.

–A new bipartisan tax structure should be ongoing in the first hundred days. The speaker and the majority leader should select a bipartisan committee of senators and representatives who are not from the no-compromise ideologue wings of either party. Spending needs to be put under control and a growth-friendly tax policy is a way to start. The tax policy will include everyone. It is not a healthy economy that has less than half of its citizens paying all the federal income tax load. Cutting out loopholes, phasing out subsidies, allowing U.S. companies to bring wealth home without penalty, abolishing death taxes, and a tax code the average citizen can understand must all be part of tax reform.

–The energy policy will get rid of the regulatory baggage that is killing the energy industry. Some oversight is required, but minimal. At the end of the president’s first term, America can be a significant energy exporter and thousands of well-paying jobs can be created.

–A bill should be introduced that prohibits bailouts of private industries. There is a process for that already and it is called bankruptcy. The Federal Reserve is one area that may need more regulation. It is essentially a system of private banks that function without sufficient oversight.

–Social welfare programs gradually need to be brought into a solid financial status. A number of incremental small changes will have enough bipartisan support to pass without a inter-party battle.

–The education system is broken but it is not the job of the federal government to manage education. That function is left to the states and localities. Charter schools or vouchers to parents will be encouraged.

–The military force needs emergency funding to build up the force level, provide new weaponry, take better care of veterans, and improve the ability now to move and support military power. Strength and peace are linked.The G.I. Bill that provides college tuition linked to years served should be reinstated. Many nations, like Putin’s Russia, respect only strength. No more wimpy rhetoric coming off teleprompters. There is a real war with terrorism going on, so we should call it that.

–Foreign policy should be a function of the people assigned to the Cabinet. It should support democracy everywhere and resist totalitarian governments of all kinds, including those run by extremist clerics. It should be clear that unless Muslim nations accept Israel as a nation, they can not count America as an ally.

–Environmental policies should be based on strong scientific evidence, not on the ideology of bureaucrats.

–A bipartisan group of politicians, industry people, and academics should be called upon to validate or cancel current regulations.

–Judges should be nominated to our national courts who have demonstrated they adhere to Constitutional and existing laws when making decisions.

What do you think?

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by | April 6, 2014 · 10:10 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 108

NUMBERSnumbers

Numbers. A seven-letter word that is more of a concept than a word. I believe numbers have been one of the first parts of human cognitive development for thousands of years. Numbers may have been one of the earliest record-keeping concepts of human or pre-human thought. We tend to  count everything. An accurate count is the prerequisite to evaluation and analysis. Take the sports world: everything is counted and recorded accurately. We have come to accept that numbers are the first level of truth. Numbers have to be trusted. Without nearly total trust, numbers are useless.

Politicians, business executives, sports managers, scientists, educators, government officials, all cannot perform their functions without good numbers. Yet numbers have long been used by managers of all kinds to make their work appear more successful than it actually is. This works only in the short-term, as we humans from our up close and personal relationship with numbers, just  know when numbers don’t add up. We have had a president who has been manipulating, abusing, and plain lying about numbers to make himself and his progressive policies appear to be far better than reality for the last five years.

You would think that even the most devoted progressive Obama supporter would wonder about the gap between the numbers the administration feeds the people and their own observations of ground truth. A few instances. Does anyone really believe the ‘real’ unemployment rate is 6.1 or 6.2 percent? Only if you failed to count the people who have tried for months to find a job without success, or the people who want full-time employment but can only find part-time work. If we count all the unemployed the number is over 12%. The president has lied about nearly every number he uses for a victory dance. The latest is the 7.1 million people who signed up for Obamacare. He knows that is a lie but will use it to shift the political dialogue away from Obamacare to the jobs issue. Many of his 7.1 million haven’t yet paid the required premium. Millions of others were forced off their policies by Obamacare requirements and needed insurance. New Medicaid covered people are most likely also included in the magical 7.1 million.

No thinking person should accept any of Obama’s numbers without verification. He uses numbers like issues to bash the opposition and not for accurately reporting facts. He uses numbers to paint the world he wants rather than reporting verified facts of the real world. His intention in the health field is to create a  situation so bad and so chaotic that he can send the ‘single payer’ riding to the rescue on a white horse. Those numbers will also be lies. Do the math.

 

By the author of the Jack Brandon novels. Agree? Disagree? Share your thoughts below and share with your friends to see what they think.

 

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by | March 9, 2014 · 9:21 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 105

LAW AND ORDER

Law and order is a wonderful concept. Our way of life depends on the police and courts of the cities, states, and nation to meet their responsibilities of keeping us safe and our republic functioning smoothly. Throughout our history there has been no or little conflict between the forces of law and order and those of our war fighting forces. Other nations have had to learn to manage the conflict. The British forces in Ireland had to augment their colonial struggle against the Irish and the guerrilla fighters in Malaya. The French in Algiers. The Germans against the underground opposition in occupied Europe. The list goes on.

In America, we had no such experience. Until the Twin Towers came down we had no need to change our ways of keeping our population safe and our property secure. Years before, during my tenure in the White House as a special assistant to President Reagan, we were getting close to the limits of using law and order tactics against terrorism. In one meeting in the Oval Office, I remember briefing President Reagan on our plans to combat terrorism. In that period, airplane hijackings, urban bombing, kidnapping were the tools of terrorism. My briefing explained how we were focusing the forces of law and order on identified individual terrorists with the intent of capturing them, no matter where they were hiding, and bringing them back to America for trial.

Now that seems like a very conservative approach. But it was pushing the envelope then and there was serious resistance to violating international law from high level officials. Had I been wiser about looking into the future, I would have included in my briefing that we needed to start working on a more aggressive approach to the growing threat of terrorism. We were already past the comfort zone of using traditional tools of law enforcement.

Instead of focusing on a few dozen active terrorists, we now are threatened by thousands. Instead of a handful of terrorists awaiting trial in our system of justice, there have been hundred of terrorists captured. Most of them are captured on the battlefield; there is seldom evidence that can pass our rules of acceptance for use in our justice system. There is even a problem of where to hold them. The Obama administration has made it a cornerstone of their ideology to close Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold terrorists and provide them with a trial by military tribunals. Our attorney general and the president do not recognize that we are fighting a war against terrorism and the capabilities and rules of evidence required by our courts are not suited for trials of terrorists who are not American citizens and who were captured on the battlefield, fighting for no nation state and wearing no national uniform. I don’t even believe that the rules of the Geneva Convention were meant to apply in these cases.

So now we have the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden being tried in a New York court. Why? Is Eric Holder a control king? Do he and the president want to cut the military justice system out? Do they want to control the information that comes out in trials? It certainly cannot  be on moral grounds. These are the same people who brag about killing terrorists with drone strikes. Being an American citizen doesn’t provide protection from drone strikes. Where is the due process and trial procedures there?  The American people deserve an explanation from the president re his policy of pretending there is no war on terrorism and his practice of giving foreign terrorists who have been caught trying to kill us access to a justice system that until now has been part of our constitutional rights reserved for citizens and legal residents. I suspect the motivation for such madness  is part of the extreme left progressive ideology followed by our civilian leaders. The core of this ideology is that if we show kindness and compassion to our enemies they will cease attacking us.

Not in this world.

By the author of the Jack Brandon novels. http://www.facebook.com/factsandfictions | @factsfictions80

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