Tag Archives: government

by Barry Kelly | January 6, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-93 THE ADIVSOR

PREDICTIONS FOR 2014

For the first time in all of his years of sitting in his underground office suite, The Advisor, more out of boredom than anything else, decided to put his predictions for the new year in his Journal. He opened the Journal to a clean new page and began to write.

I am just beginning my sixth year of advising a President who only listens to his own drum. He doesn’t like my straight talk. I believe that is my job to tell him important things that no one else will. As a result he seldom comes to see me. He has had a bad year and knows if he had followed my advice ,both he and the nation would be better off.

It has taken me a while to realize that he does not share my view of the nation or the world. He is like the utopians of our past who believed human behavior could be changed to fit a society based on Karl Marx’s axiom that ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ The early utopians in their agrarian progressive compounds all failed, as have all the nation states that have tried the communist or progressive approach to governing people.

Does the President have no understanding of history? It is clear. In modern times, Russia, China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Germany, and even the United Kingdom all have tried varying degrees of wealth distribution. All the economies failed and individual freedom disappeared when power ended up in the hands of a Progressive elite that used an increasing amount of raw power to coerce people into doing what the elite decided was best for them. There is no other way that increasing centralization combined with one person or a party elite exercising all the power can end up.

So my first prediction is: (1) President Obama will continue to push for a one-party government; (2) the Democratic party will lose badly the mid-term elections and the Republicans will take over the Senate. (That will be okay for the President for he believes two years of a do-nothing Republican Congress will set the stage for a decisive victory in the 2016 National Elections and he may be right.) (3) Iran will have a nuclear weapon before the next national election. (Anyone who believes Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful uses or that weaklings can deter them by talk are very wrong.) (4) The Affordable Care Act will fail but not before it has done serious harm to the best medical system in the world. Once reconstructed the whole things will look more like Obamacare than a free market system. (5) China and Russia will increase their influence in the world. (6) Before President Obama leaves office, America will begin to feel the impact of unemployment, over-regulation, and inflation. (6) Lastly, radical Islam will show the beginnings of the organization of an Islamic Empire and the isolation of the Israeli Nation.

The Advisor put his pen away and placed the Presidential Journal back in its place. Maybe one of his successors would read it and find it helps them understand the years he was responsible for keeping the real record of every President.

This is a fictional account of an Advisor that doesn’t exist by the author of the Brandon novels. The author (pictured far right) has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan (middle left) in the 1980s as an advisor. Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

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Filed under centralization, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Israel, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions

Tagged as government, new year, Obama, one-party system, Progressive

by Barry Kelly | December 24, 2013 · 8:01 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-92 THE ADVISOR

TRUST OR NOT?

The Advisor was pacing in his small underground suite of rooms, lamenting that the President seldom came to see him anymore. It wasn’t that he was bored. He had plenty to do. But his main responsibility was to advise the President.

He wasn’t the first Advisor to have limited visits from the sitting President. Most Presidents were a bit thin skinned when it came to listening to criticism they knew was the honest opinion of the Advisor. President Obama ranked close to the top of all the Presidents, going back to President Washington, who established the Advisor institution, when it came to sensitivity to criticism. Presidential visits or not, the Advisor had to keep his journal current. The Advisor changed with Presidential changes and his successors needed an accurate record of the each President’s term. The Advisor before him had left a record of George W. Bush’s term that emphasized his war time decisions and his role in creating a much larger government than he inherited and a bigger national debt.

The Advisor sighed and opened his Journal to the next blank page and began to write.

Big Government is a danger in itself because when the capability of workers exceeds doing what is necessary and essential, honest and diligent workers don’t lobby to have the work force reduced, they invent more tasks that inevitably provide more regulations for the people they were hired to serve. When the natural drive for centralization and growth are accompanied by an Administration that uses the civil work force for their own political objectives, the freedom of all citizens is threatened. How can Americans be expected to trust their government when they have been lied to and seen the IRS be used to target conservative groups to prevent their growth and funding? Now the citizens are expected to believe the information collected by NSA is both necessary and not a threat to liberty.

The real issue is not what NSA collects, it is the use of the information collected. Most citizens will tolerate the NSA collecting what they write or say if it is stored in some secure area where only national security analysts can see the data. The danger to our liberty is that we have a current President that will use any information to benefit his power position. I don’t see how anyone can doubt that conclusion after the IRS was used to target conservative groups, the EPA to kill the coal industry, the Defense and Intelligence Agencies to cover up Ben Ghazi, the security leaks after Bin Laden and the Iranian centrifuges, the Democratic Senate blocking all legislation that doesn’t support his policies, packing the courts to protect the expansion of his executive power, concealing data from HHS that shows the true state of Obamacare … and the list could go on.

Other Presidents from either Party may do the same. If we cannot trust our civil servants to protect the data in their domain, how can we authorize the collectors? Maybe there is a way that a sincere bipartisan effort could find. The defense of liberty and freedom requires eternal vigilance. Without a willingness on the part of government to allow maximum transparency there can be no real vigilance. That is the problem.

This is a fictional account of an Advisor that doesn’t exist by the author of the Brandon novels. The author (pictured far right) has 27

Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan (middle left) in the 1980s as an advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this blog and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.

Gallup Poll Shows 72% Believe Big Government Greatest Threat To USA (fggam.org)
White House Group Calls For Limits On NSA Surveillance (swampland.time.com)
White House Panel to NSA: Chill (swampland.time.com)

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Filed under centralization, Conservative views, Intelligence & Politics, management theory, NSA, Obama

Tagged as government, nsa, Obama, privacy, trust

by Barry Kelly | November 4, 2013 · 3:51 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-85 THE ADVISOR

IS ANYONE OUT THERE?

Fighting loneliness in his subterranean office suite was the Advisor’s hardest problem. When he was approached a few years ago by the Keepers of the Book to become the next Advisor, he had had no idea how hard it would be to maintain perspective without face-to-face human contact. After his wife died, the Advisor had moved to an isolated cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he could write and think in peace and quiet. When the Keepers of the Book approached him, he had thought How hard could it be to go from my ridge-line cabin to an underground existence? Turns out it was very hard. He even looked forward to the twice a month delivery of food and supplies even though no conversation was permitted.

In reading of the Advisor Journals from long ago times, he could sense the isolation and loneliness that plagued his predecessors. He searched the journals for ways to cope but found none, only just to endure day by day. If only the President would allow him to get more involved it would help. Sometimes he thought, I may be the only person in America who enjoys talking to the man. He continued his musing.

Obviously, the President is tangled in the mess of the Affordable Care Act‘s rollout of its website. Another example of a hands-off management style. The President is a superb campaigner as long as the opposition cannot figure out what he wants. After five years, thousands of people have figured out Obamacare is primarily a giant step to a socialist government. Health care is not the prime issue. The real issue is capturing seven or eight percent of the nation’s economy. The cost doesn’t matter. Patient care doesn’t matter. Destroying the best medical system in the world doesn’t matter. The history of socialized medicine is ignored.

Every progressive/socialist is comfortable that the government knows better than the people what medical plan is good for them. The Progressives fervently believe that anyone who doesn’t like Obamacare is either a racist or a selfish-right-wing-tea drinking Republican. Why don’t they recognized health care can be fixed without destroying what works now? Tort reform, competition across state boundaries, concentrating on those who don’t have insurance coverage and want it would fix most of the health care system. Obamacare or any health care system cannot work without bi-partisan support and a full debate and discussion of each proposal.

If the people and states don’t fight it now, they will have little or no chance of fending off the imposition of a full socialist society. By the time the real Democrats wake up they will find their party gone. Big government bureaucrats will control all aspects of their lives. The people have to wake up and pay attention or the greatest democracy in the history of the world will be gone.

Overcome by his musing and in an effort to fight the quiet loneliness, the Advisor became to speak his thoughts out loud. “Elites don’t need to worry. They always get special treatment in totalitarian, socialist governments. After all, they make the rules and they know what the people need. Just ask any Russian senior citizen. All Progressive movements start with hope and change and end up with camps and no economic, religious , or political freedom. If you’re not in the elite Progressive hierarchy, prepare yourself for a quick slide to poverty and government medicine. Don’t worry, the issue won’t be you can’t keep your own doctor. The challenge will be you don’t have and can’t see any doctor when you want or need to. Fight now or pay later!” The Advisor hoped he was wrong, but was afraid he wasn’t, and there was no one to tell.

Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-79 THE ADVISOR

THE ISSUE IS THE ISSUE

It was time for the sun to come up. The Advisor had to turn on his big-screen TV to see it. Every day the world is renewed with this life-giving force. If only everyone could see the sunrise as another chance to do good things. Maybe spending so much time underground has made me more sensitive to the eternal promise of the light pushing away the dark. I’m worried about my mission to advise the President. He seems to have a hard core of anger and missionary zeal to mold America into a nation of equality, fairness, and centralized control. I don’t think he recognizes that universal fairness and equality are good, if unattainable goals, that are possible only with the excesses of centralized control.

The conflicts he has with his political opposition are rooted in the centralized control issue that cannot tolerate individual freedom or the compromises required to govern this nation. He doesn’t see it like that. To him individual freedom where each person strives to do the best they can destroys the building of socialism by an elite group. His dream is to bring about the birth of unqualified equality, not only to America but to the entire world. He believes individual freedom and nationalism must be sacrificed in the journey to a better world.

The President’s devotion to socialism and the teaching of Saul Alinsky that the issue is never the issue prevent him from devoting his talent to the solving of important national and international issues. President Obama can only see issues as opportunities to be used to destroy opposition. The destruction of the opposition clears the way for the building of an equal opportunity society where wealth is distributed by a centralized government. Just like Mr. Alinsky taught in his “Rules for Radicals.” Mr. Alinsky is a brilliant revolutionary but he was never president. His teaching may have guided Mr. Obama to the presidency but it surely does not help him to govern where issues are real. If you don’t solve them, you are held accountable. Cute messaging and flip flopping on nearly every issue, such as the raising of the debt, are hurting the president’s ability to govern. Recall his vote against raising the debt as being unpatriotic during President Bush’s tenure. Inconsistency and the loss of respect for your word damages any leader. This president just doesn’t seem to understand that lesson of history.

I believe he really doesn’t care about how the Affordable Care Act affects the people as long as it puts seven percent of the economy under government control. Nor does he worry about the number of people out of work, or the insecure national borders, foreign affairs, or the increasing cost of welfare. All these issues bring more people under the care of the central government. To maintain the momentum of people coming under government care he must keep spending beyond the nation’s income. An economic crisis will enable him to nationalize more of the economy and destroy the flow of money to the opposition for a competing political agenda.

His plan won’t work in the long run and it will cause great damage to the nation and the American safe harbor for individual freedom which is the bedrock of a free people. I’m the Advisor and I don’t know what to do. I’ll give him the best advice I can but I must also protect the nation. Maybe he will see a better path.

By the author of the Brandon novels. The author has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s as an advisor. Considering today’s volatile political situation, you are encouraged to share this on Facebook and to click the “like” button below. Comments and dialogue are welcome.

Saul Alinsky’s: Rules For Republicans (gopthedailydose.com)
Eight Decades of Insights-78 the Advisor (factsandfictions.com)
Ten Ways Republicans Are Giving President Obama A Taste Of His Own Alinsky (forbes.com)
Saul Alinsky-Affiliated Nonprofit Lands $56M Fed Loan (theblaze.com)

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Filed under Alinsky, centralization, class warfare, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, Intelligence & Politics, Obama, political solutions, Progressives, Utopian

Tagged as Alinsky, Barack Obama, government, Obama, Radicals, Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky, United States

by Barry Kelly | May 17, 2013 · 10:25 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 51

King George III, by Sir William Beechey (died 1839). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

FREEDOM

Stop where you are and look around. If you are anywhere in America, everyone you see who has grown up here has never known anything except freedom. Even those who have had the misfortune to be temporarily in prison know what freedom is and believe it is the natural state of being. It isn’t.

Freedom as we know it is an anomaly in the course of history. Where, except here in America, has it ever been the normal condition? Where else do people grow up with individual freedom, which is the only freedom? If individuals are not free to act out their lives, including making mistakes and bad choices, there is no freedom.

Why have we been so blessed? We are a nation of immigrants who all had first-hand experience with tyranny, either from governments, religious organizations, or from their employers or owners. Only black Americans who spent decades as slaves, and a few others, did not escape tyranny by living in America. And, they too, knew what freedom was. They also knew they didn’t have it. Our founders also knew that they did not have the freedom they believed should be theirs as long as King George III made the laws that governed in America.

They knew only under a limited government elected by the people was freedom possible. A reading of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, The Federalist Papers, and the Articles of Confederation clearly shows a strong push to limit the powers of government. They knew intuitively that government could not grant freedom but it could diminish or abolish freedom. The stronger and larger the government becomes the greater danger it becomes to curtailing individual freedom.

Big government, bigger than it could be and still provide necessary services, is the only threat to freedom in America. Governments are not inherently evil. They, if allowed, just slowly and inexorably absorb functions and rights reserved to the states and individuals in the name of dealing with some issue. There is no other threat to our freedom, beyond foreign military invasions. We must keep government to its necessary functions and size commensurate with its responsibilities.

The dual process of centralization and distribution of wealth, under the well meaning intentions of elitist political groups, to make a better life for allis always a threat to freedom. The current mayor of New York and the nanny state he wants is a perfect example of well meaning intentions limiting individual freedoms. Give a government of progressives ten or fifteen years of uninterrupted growth in size and power and the freedom so many of us have fought for will be gone.

Freedom is won quickly and slowly lost. Freedom demands eternal vigilance for it is vulnerable to citizen demands for goods and services and the human drive to continue the growth and centralizing of government.The dual watchdogs of the free press and dedicated citizens are needed to keep us free from the abuses of Government.