We Need to Let Them Know That We Are Here

Someone asked me recently, “What is a Conservative?”

Not all Conservatives are Trump supporters. Out of the original Republican field, Trump, was, for most of us, our 17th choice. I don’t like some of the crudeness of the man but most of us felt we had no choice. Hillary said that she wanted to use, “force of law to change people’s deep-seeded religious beliefs.” Even if I were not a religious person, that frightened me to death. With that said, I do like most of what Trump has done. I didn’t like Barack Obama. I still believe that he was the worst president in my lifetime. I will admit that I voted for him in 2008. I liked his message of unity, of “can do it”-ness and of hope. I didn’t vote for him in 2012, and would have voted for Mickey Mouse, if he was running against him. He was a divider not a unifier, and race relations were much worse in 2016 than they were in 2008, or perhaps even 1965.  And worst of all, he overreached his powers, like no other president before him. For him to the federal government to ignore laws duly passed by congress because he didn’t agree with those laws, was equally as frightening as Hillary’s threat to religion. As a Vietnam Vet, I felt bad, about Obama’s apology tour. I didn’t think that we were responsible for the war in Vietnam and I don’t believe that we were the origin of the, “great evil that was done here (Hiroshima)”.

Yes, there are conservatives in the state of Connecticut. This is a fact of which you would never be aware if you just read the Hartford Courant or the Connecticut Post, or listened to NPR and the likes of Colin McEnroe. These people don’t know it, but they do not speak for much of Connecticut. McEnroe told and interviewer that conservatives are people who post comments and they are “reading at the 4th grade level in Mississippi, you can’t spell anything, your minds are full of hate”, etc. etc. I thought of what Hillary Clinton said about conservatives being “deplorable”, and “irredeemable”. I watched Michelle Wolf belittle and berate Sarah Sanders sitting ten feet away from her, calling her “fat” and a “liar” while a roomful of liberal elitists laugh as if it is the funniest thing they have ever heard, and then go home to write about how stupid, and mean and full of hate the conservatives (or just about anyone who disagrees with them) are. I hear Governor Malloy tell us that we need to give them more money because “its the right thing to do”.  In a nearby school district, boys are girls are forced to write about “White Privilege” and they ingrain in the white kids that they are “oppressors”, and the other kids that they are the “victims”. How can that help anyone? And then they call us “uninformed” voters.

Well, I am sick of it.

Colin McEnroe, Hartford Courant, Governor Malloy this is what a conservative is:

Unlike Liberal, Conservatives have an ability and a preference for “thinking for themselves”. As such, there are a lot of different types of conservatives. In general, we believe in independence and free though and freedom, in the absence of the bonds of a repressive and overreaching federal government. We believe that we have ceded far too much of our liberty to government.

Unlike the other parties, we do not have a litmus test for our participants and, as such, we have people with differing beliefs. But, here are some of the things that conservatives are not:

We are for limited government. We support the 16 or 18 roles of the federal government enumerated in the constitution and as the 9th and 10th Amendment (See graphic below) and reserves ALL other roles are reserved to the states. – That does not make us Nationalists or Populists

We believe that all men and women, “are created equal”, regardless of the race, color or creed and don’t believe that one race should be granted privileges that put them higher on a hierarchy of victimization while presenting all white men as oppressors – That does not make us Racists. Yet, you will read some elitists who would claim otherwise

We believe that a baby is a baby, 24 weeks after conception or 24 weeks after birth, but we don’t consider a woman who has had an abortion as a murderer – That does not make us Anti-Women.

We are not climate change deniers. We understand quite well that climate change has been going on for 4.6 billion years and it will continue to change regardless of what we do. We do believe that there is sufficient good science to make a level of skepticism about the most dire predictions are quite sound. This does not mean that we are anti-environment.

We believe that there are millions of fellow Americans who need and rely of help from the rest of us and we are perfectly willing to provide such assistance, but we don’t believe welfare should be a way of life, we need to provide opportunity and all the accouterments necessary to enable someone to take advantage of those opportunities rather than “making poverty more comfortable.” – This does not make us haters of the poor.

We believe that the law should apply to everyone, including Hillary Clinton, Rice, Power, Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Obama, Bill Clinton, Lynch, Lerner, Strzok, and ALL elected officials  – This doesn’t make us Haters.

Michelle Wolf had a series of jokes about abortion at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, saying “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” Lisa Dunham said, I have not had an abortion but I wish I had.” Now, most of us think abortion is wrong but some say that, “Hey, I am against it but it needs to be safe, etc.” However, none of us make light, joke, or recommend such a difficult and sensitive topic –  This doesn’t make us Anti-Women.

We really have to get organized and let our local government know that we exist, that we are fed up, and that we are angry.

Yesterday, the State of Connecticut joined several other states in suing President Trump over changes in automobile emission regulations, prior to that, we sued Betsy DeVos over delaying regulation for for-profit colleges (which is actually all of them). Prior to that, we (Connecticut) joined the same states in suing President Trump over Congress’s cuts in the Affordable Care Act and for forcing Congress to codify DACA (If anyone should be angry about this it should be we Conservatives). Now, I am a citizen of the State of Connecticut, and I didn’t OK these lawsuits. They are useless, senseless, and expensive. Just more grandstanding and following the party lines.

We have given up too too much. It is time to take it back.

We are going to be focusing on the Governor’s race next week.

 

 

Debunking The Myth of Equal Pay Day (Again)

I didn’t think there were many who still believe that there is a sinister Gender Wage Gap in this country. Everyone has heard it. Most people are aware that it has been thoroughly debunked, and frankly, I find it hard to believe that there are actually some people still pitching this , but April 10 was Equal Pay Day and every April 10, we must once again debunk this myth – “For every dollar a man earns a woman earns only $0.77”.

Women have outnumbered men in college since the late 70s and the gap is still widening. However, women and men differ greatly in the choice of professions.

Even the extremely liberal Association of American University Women and the U.S. Dept of Labor (which reviewed a compilation of 50 studies) have stated that the wage can be explained by a very cursory analysis. As most are aware by now that this statistic was arrived at by taking the median earnings of all women working full-time by the median earnings of all men working full-time. If you do that the result will come out to be about 0.77. However, this stat does not take into account the position, education or hours worked per week, and doesn’t reveal any type of discrimination, preference, or bias against women of any race. Here’s why.

The gender wage gap is a lot like the continent of Atlantis. Most people know that it is a myth but there are a few die-hards that will insist otherwise. Such die-hards are usually running for public office and spreading the myth is an effective way of garners some votes from voters who are simply “not paying attention”. Oh yeah, the others who perpetuate this myth are those who make their livelihood from preaching such nonsense (the CWEALF comes to mind). To wit, there has been legislation proposed which supposedly would correct this gap. One of the most common is forcing employers to make public their wage gap. This has already been done in the U.K., and although it was not effective in closing that gap, it did have some unintended consequences that may create a bonanza for some women. I’ll come back to that later.

Most college degrees are conferred on women and this has been the case since the late 70s and has grown to over 57% and this trend is expected to continue. Women receive almost 3 million more college degrees than men. One might infer that this fact contradicts the nationwide discriminatory attitude that feminists firmly believe exists throughout the USA. So, for that reason it has been largely ignored except to incorrectly point out that if there are more college-educated women this further proves that the wage gap is a result of the prevalent cis-white-hetero-male- chauvinistic pigs who oppress women, minorities and, anyone who is not them. If there are so many more college educated women than men, then we should see the wage gap occurring in the other direction, right?

Georgetown University shed some light on this. 4 of the 5 most highly paid college degrees – Petroleum Engineer, Chemical Engineer, Aerospace Engineer, Computer Sciences are 87.5% male and 4 of the 5 lowest paying college degrees – Counseling and Psychology, Early Childhood Education, Human Services and Community Organization and Social Work – are 77.3% female. This difference makes a huge difference and explains most of the difference. The remainder of the difference is explained mostly by choices in life. In short. Women are a lot smarter in their life choices.

According to the extremely liberal Association of American University Women’s study cited above career paths and a more home/child oriented life choices explain all but 6.6% of the 22% gender wage gap. So let’s try to stick a fork and “Bust” this myth by cleaning up this last 6.6% as Jamies and Adam would do (the guys from Discovery Channel show Mythbusters).

In a Danish study. Denmark – Bernie Sander’s socialist egalitarian utopia, in a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found, the wage gap to be “poor proxy for either sexism or women’s well-being”

Even more revealing, in the Denmark study, it was found, between 1980 and 2013, that women and men were nearly parallel in their wage history up until the birth of the woman’s first child, after which, “women’s labor-force participation, work hours, and wages plummeted while men’s continued the same trajectory.” The difference – about 20%.

Kay Hymowicz the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of “Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age”, in a recent article cites a study from data supplied by Uber, the popular ride sharing service. She stated that Uber was an ideal source for such an analysis because “it Uber) uses an automatic pay formula based on the time and distance of a trip, with drivers assigned blindly to customers by an algorithm dependent entirely on their proximity. Among drivers—the corporate offices may be another matter—there is no old-boy network, no salary negotiation, and no possibility that sexual harassment affects trip assignments”, and no implicit white-hetero-cis-male-superiority-bias, or whatever class deserving of the outrage du jour.

Uber’s highly flexible scheduling attracts a high number of female workers. The study found that there was no evidence that riders preferred males drivers to females and both men and women got the same number of tip, cancellations, and ratings.

However, men still made 7% more than women, very close to the 6.6% unexplained difference by the AAUW. Well, some of those who still try desperately to tell us that there is a wage gap and that we need to hire, elect, support or employ those who will rectify this wrong would probably try to argue that men dominate technology, they write the code, design the algorithms and they have programmed an institutional- cyber-bias or if that sounds too silly then perhaps computers are inherently sexist. Notwithstanding such nonsense this is also explained by simply examining the data and perhaps this can explain the remaining 6.6%

As found in most of the studies that debunked the 77% myth, the Uber data showed that men log in more hours, and they accept more lucrative-paying assignments. The Uber algo pays a premium to drivers willing to drive in unpopular areas or at unattractive times (i.e. South Chicago on Christmas morning at 3:00 am), and men are more willing to take on these assignments. Also, men, for whatever reason, tended to drive a little (about 2%) faster. (Yup, they actually track that stuff). The seemingly small difference was sufficient to accumulate more rides and rack up more experience. In toto this explains the 7% difference.

I think we have, at this point explained all the 77% difference plus an additional 0.4%. So, I think we can say that this myth has been busted (again, I see this becoming an annual event).

What we have shown is that the Gender Wage Gap is a myth. The wage gap can be explained by difference in position, hours worked, and life and career choices. (Tuck that away for later)

I would like to conclude with a rather ironic story to place the final nail in this myth’s coffin. – In 2016 the Conservative newspaper, the Washington Free Beacon (“Beacon”) reported that “An analysis determined that Senator Elizabeth Warren pays her female staffers less than their male counterparts.” But unlike the mythical pay gap that I am arguing against here which is 77%, the Beacon said that Warren paid her female staffers even less, only 71% of what she paid her male workers. Yikes. The Beacon’s analysis was based on median salaries exactly like the mythical 77%

Warren, who has used the 77% wage gap figure to argue the oppression of the fairer sex for years, and quite loudly and passionately, angrily rebuffed the Beacon’s numbers and quoted the far-left fact-checking website, Snopes, saying that the Beacon’s 71% percent wage gap that could be easily explained away if you take into consideration, “variables such as experience and education levels, as well as staff turnover and the reality that people with different job titles earn different salaries.” And pointed out that “The methodology used in the (Beacon) analysis is flawed; they combined positions and people at different levels in the office.” (Remember the fact that I suggested you tuck away?)

Thank you, Senator Warren, for explaining and debunking the Wage Gap Myth for us. (Happy Equal Pay Day! Which is April 10, but may be better to move to April 1, to share and coincide with a more appropriate holiday).

And if I may conclude with an appeal to Senator Warren, the AAUW, the CWEALF and all those who still attempt to perpetuate this nonsense. If you are sincere about helping women overcome sexism (and yes, it does exist), address the issue with the facts not BS, and this Conservative will be there with you. However, if you simply want good sound bite to help you get elected, or get hired, then we are going to be going through this every year. Proposing ineffective legislation like H.B. 5387 or S.B. 15 will accomplish nothing, and the problem remains. (See addendum)

Addendum

I promised to come back to a possible hidden bonanza for a select few as a result of legislation proposed to combat the Wage Gap craze. In a small UK airline, only 4% of its pilots are women, which is the highest paid job classification except for the exec staff. The UK law which forces companies to publish their “wage gap” currently does not mandate anything else, for now, its objective is to embarrass companies to narrow the mythical gap.

So this airline has a few options, they can greatly increase the salaries of their cabin crew and ground personnel, or they can reduce the salaries of their pilots. Since pilots are in shorter supply, the latter probably is not an option since to totally eliminate the wage gap, the pilots salaries would have to reduced to a level well under the median salary of the cabin crew and counter personnel. The former may also be impractical to implement. Since there are an average of 15 cabin crew, desk, and customer service personnel for each pilot the cost to eliminate  the wage gap would be prohibitively expensive.

In fact, since the population of the non-pilot employees are 38% male the salary increases would have to be increased 272% placing the bag handler’s new salary (about €123,000) within a couple thousand euros below the pilot’s salary (about €125,000). It would also result in a 210% increase in total salary expenses, which would certainly throw any airline, and most businesses, into bankruptcy.

The optimal, albeit equally unattractive, solution would be to increase the annual salaries of the 4 female pilots from €125,000 to €1,458,333, which demonstrates the  bonanza I referred to above. Like so many well-intentioned, but poorly thought-out, initiatives meant to help women or minorities, they usually wind up helping only an extremely small number of the subject group, and these benefits almost always go to those who need it least.

Conservative Party of CT Platform

Abstract word cloud for Party platform with related tags and terms

Pulling It Out of The Ditch

We have relinquished too much control to our elected officials. They have become arrogant and many look down upon us as the riff raff, the hoi polloi. It is time to rein them in. Initially, this can be done by providing more citizen oversight. The elected officials are public servants, employees.

As their bosses we need to start demanding more, and holding them accountability.

Connecticut, as a business would be an entity of about the size of Nordstrom. The Company called Connecticut is somewhat smaller that the Hartford Financial Group which has about 17,000 employees. Connecticut has well over 60,000, but there is another important distinction. The Hartford Financial group and Nordstrom need to produce their revenue. The great majority of the employees of The Hartford and Nordstrom need to produce something of value to sell to people to make money, they also need to spend money and hire people to sell whatever they have produced.

Connecticut does not even have to do that. The government of the state of Connecticut produces nothing, all the revenue that come into the state are taken from the earners. All the state must do is redistribute the money. And, for the most part, it has the capability to do this simple task pretty good. The problem is, the state does not limit its role to that of a redistributor of money. It is when the state gets into the process of providing the services that the system breaks down.

Consider this. Food stamps and housing assistance. Many people need help, from time to time. Most reasonable people will say, I would like to help and do so. So, the taxpayers, give the state some money. The state figures out who needs assistance and it gives them food stamps. The people take the stamps to the store buy stuff and for the most part. The system works fine.

But, what if the state of Connecticut decided to set up stores and not only be limited to just redistributing the money, but also providing the services. What happens then? Well, the DMV for one. It turns out your get one big fat megillah, complete with long lines, snail’s pace service, cost overruns, maximum errors and closed on Columbus Day, MLK Day, Washington’s B’Day and some other days on which the rest of us are at work.

So, the DMV is bad enough, but, in the worst case, people wait a few extra days or weeks for a driver’s license on which their picture looks more like their thumbprint. What about the Department of Children and Families? Here is a critical function which the state is neither qualified nor structured to fulfill. In these cases, kids die.

The solution is to utilize the state government for the function they were designed to provide, the redistribution of wealth. I have some libertarian ideas, but I don’t buy the radical objectivism a la Ayn Rand. There is a place for pure altruism and there is a place, with the consent of the governed, for limited, forced altruism.

And if there is someone who is well-off, fat, happy and comfortable and if another one is hurting, or hungry, or homeless, or sick it is ok to take some fruits of the labor of the former to relieve the latter. However, I am talking about food, and shelter and life-saving surgeries – not Obamaphones, or errand-running services.

I don’t agree with the Democrats who are saying that they are helping to poor by, making poverty more comfortable

Set the government up more like a corporation. The CEO is the governor, but the citizen oversight committee is the board or directors. We elect the directors and the director appoint the governor. The governor service at the pleasure of this board

  • Privatize everything that can be privatized. The government should do nothing except oversee the redistribution of wealth.
    • Example thousands of people are helped with food stamps, because the state determines the need and the private sector provides the service. What would you get if the state decided to own and operate their own supermarkets? The result would be the DMV or the DCF
  • Eliminate funding of political races but make it easier for people not connected to one of the two major parties to seek office (i.e. less signatures needed, less paperwork, submissions)
  • Scrap SEBAC even if we need to try to declare bankruptcy to do it (although states are prohibited from going bankrupt, there may be a workaround), and enter into fair contracts with the remaining employees (after extensive privatization) that emulate employees in the private sector. Enter into PPP for most assets that the state owns that are reasonably applicable (XL Center, municipal parking and buildings).
  • This should shrink government by a two-thirds.
  • Establish some accountability for elected employees and eliminate their pensions and perks if they don’t meet certain established goals and objectives.
  • Encourage third, fourth and fifth major parties to break the monopoly of the Dems/Reps (Dems and Reps only have loyalty to the party not to us, it is the party that gets them elected, and it is the party to whom they are loyal)
  • Establish a Citizen’s Review Panel for contracts and bills in which there would be an inherent conflict of interest, as well as travel (Malloy went to Afghanistan, Paris, Kuwait, Virginia, LA, DC, China, and Zurich) with nothing to show, useless expenditures.
  • Segregate all expenses related to State Employee’s Unions including unfunded pension liabilities and establish a separate tax apart from income tax for these expenses so that taxpayers can see directly how much this cost. Esp. effective if SALT is eliminated from fed income tax.
  • All finstats in accordance with GAAP (or as close as possible)
  • Outside accounting firm to maintain all financial books and records. It is just ridiculous that there is no consensus on the actual amount of the deficit. Every single CEO can tell you what the company earned or lost during the last period.
  • Review all non-constitutional departments (non-constitutional NOT unconstitutional), agencies, boards, councils and commissions for ROI, duplication, and necessity.
  • Eliminate Office of Policy and Management (OPM, otherwise known as Other People’s Money). No more hiding expenses. Real transparency. Just like the SEC requires for publicly traded companies.
  • Bring back CT-N, and a summary of expenditures and bills passed along with costs (privatized, of course).
  • Legalize marijuana and tax it.
  • Introduce and Pass the No-Sanctuary Bill

Hartford Courant – Do You Really Expect Us to Believe This?

In today’s Hartford Courant, there are a couple stories (at least a couple) that fly in the face of all reason, and should prompt most of us to say, Are You Serious?

According to the Courant, over the next 13 years, the cities especially Hartford and Bridgeport are going to experience a boom while the smaller municipalities, especially the wealthier ones, like Greenwich and Wilton, are going to see their populations diminish.

The Courant reported that, “Patrick Flaherty, an economist at the state Department of Labor, analyzed the data from the Connecticut State Data Center and found numbers that surprised him.”

Most of the data and projections come from state sources, which are remarkable unreliable, biased, and politically motivated. In this case, both the data and the analysis is derived from state data. They can’t even figure out the size of the deficit which is based on current data let alone perform complex, multivariate, economic projections.

The article assigns the anticipated success of our large cities to our Governor, who, in the eyes of this publication is a combination of Mother Theresa, for his enlightened selflessness and Pope Francis, for his infallibility, because of his tireless, attack on the “ joblessness, blight and crime”, that plague those cities, as well as, “looking for ways to improve cities”, and “spending money to clean up unused and dilapidated industrial sites to promote business growth, funding so-called innovation places to create urban districts promoting high-tech business and upgrading inter-city transportation that attracts downtown retail and residential development around rail and bus stations”.

However, before we start appealing to Rome for Dannel’s immediate canonization, it is necessary to think about this for a moment.

All of the projections fly in the face of common sense, which not only confuses the situation but also lends further doubt as to the credibility of the data,  the analytics, or both.

To predict the unlikely rise of Hartford and Bridgeport and the demise of the ‘burbs, especially in lower Fairfield County, where I live reminds me of the old Groucho Marx saying, – “Who are you going to believe, me? or your own eyes?”

We need to enlist outside sources to not only provide the projections but to aggregate and maintain the data. This will lessen our dependence on the ever-growing bureaucracy, and reduce costs dramatically, as well as, provide greater assurance that the data is not tainted with political bias.

Connecticut’s constitution calls for the establishment of 6 offices, like the Office of the Governor, Office of the Secretary of State etc. However, we currently have over 106 offices, departments, agencies, boards, councils, and commissions. This does not include the quasi-public agencies like the Capital Region Development Authority or the Connecticut Airport Authority, nor does it include the 20+ agencies overseeing the state-provided higher education system.

I have argued that the private sector can perform nearly all government services with greater competence and efficiency than the public sector. There are numerous examples that demonstrate this over the last 240 year history of our country, as well as the basic laws of economics.

I have a saying that, “nothing is permanent, except a temporary government program”.

I am a conservative and the prime directive of the Conservative Party is to limit the interference of the federal government, and to scale back the involvement of the federal government to those powers enumerated in the Constitution, which are very few. However, even those who believe otherwise, those who believe that the government should be involved in governing the Internet and our healthcare, it doesn’t mean that they government must manage these systems.

If you believe that the feds should tell us, how fast our Internet should be, or what medical insurance we must buy, or what treatments and procedures, each of us should be entitled to it doesn’t mean that the government necessarily has to provide those services.

Stand or Take a Knee?

I haven’t watched any football games this season or last. Not because of protests, but for two purely non-political reasons. Both the Giants and the Jets suck. And, I have a 6-year old and a 12-year old, and I don’t get much TV control. I would rather watch Sponge Bob with them than Eli Manning by myself.

 

The protest started a little over a year ago when Colin Kaepernick refused to stand during the national anthem, his explanation was, “I refuse to honor the flag of a country that oppresses it blacks and minorities.”

OK, that’s pretty straightforward. His belief is that the USA is a nation of racists. I can understand that. If I sincerely believed that I were living in a country comprised of 300 million racists I would refuse to honor that flag also. Although I would probably stand, but do so with hand raised and middle finger extended. That is a horrible country. However, I don’t agree with Mr. Kaepernick or his opinion of my country.

Kaepernick walked back his statements over the next few weeks and decided that he was really protesting against police brutality against blacks. He claimed that he loved his country, although he made that claim while wearing a Fidel Castro tee. Fidel was the oppressor-in-chief for 50 years in Cuba, so this certainly confused the message. He also wore socks depicting police as pigs, which, I guess, was to emphasize how he was refocusing his protest.

Over the past week, hundreds of NFL players, “took a knee” during the playing of the anthem, coaches of Peewee Football teams are forcing their 8-year-old players to kneel and turn their backs on the flag when the anthem is played, and the entire faculty and many students of the Georgetown University School of Law posed for a photo-op “taking a knee” to protest Jeff Sessions speech promoting free speech, so the protest has grown from protecting rights of some while eliminating the rights of others.

The left immediately applauded the heroics of not only the players, coaches, students and faculty, but also the owners, for standing against something or other. The only message that I received was that one side is protesting against the flag and the national anthem although the purpose is still not clear. What is the protest against?

The other side, the right, sees this protest as disrespectful of the flag, the country, the military, the veterans, motherhood and everything that is good and holy.  Clearly there is not a meeting of the minds.

Stop reading this and do a Google search of, “Why are the NFL players protesting the national anthem?”

There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of opinion journalists who offer “The Real Reason that the NFL Players are Protesting the National Anthem.” Each one has their opinion of why this is taking place, why they are doing it and what it means and doesn’t mean? Actually, they are all wrong and, in my opinion, rather pompous and arrogant, as no one really knows the “Real Reason” because perhaps there are many, and perhaps there are none.

Those on the left, attribute it as a protest against nearly every liberal point and the perceived bigotry, racism, homophobia, LGBTQ2DR-phobia etc., etc., and of course, fascism.

Some on the right, such as myself, admit that they don’t understand it. To me, if this is actually about police brutality why then is no one talking about police brutality? Add to that that nobody is out there supporting police brutality. Bizarre.

And why the flag and the national anthem, symbols of America and all Americans?  Seems like some form of referred anger. It is like a guy punching his wife in the nose because he is mad at his boss.

Does anyone on the left have any comments? This is really one of those issues that I sincerely don’t understand.

Why is the protest taking place? Are we a nation of racists as Kaepernick believes? And, why is refusing to stand for the national anthem an appropriate form of protest against (_______________) fill in the blank?

 

They are Really Going to Let It Happen

I had stated several times in posts, only partially jokingly, that the Democratic governor and legislature of our state would rather let the bridges fall down and the roads become impassible and the quality of our schools to fall down to Mississippi’s level before they would consider imposing any realistic concessions on the public employee’s unions of the state (a.k.a. The Aristocracy of Labor). Well, it appears that that is already taking place.

According to a 24/7 Wall Street research analysis, our state comes in a #4 in states whose roads, bridges and dams are crumbling, or as they put it, “States That Are Falling Apart”. To make matters worse, only one (Rhode Island) of the three states that is in worse condition than Connecticut spends less than the Nutmeg State to correct their problems. So, it appears that we are in a position to challenge Little Rhody to become the state with the worst municipal infrastructure in the country. To add to the embarrassment all the states that are considered worse than us have lower per capita incomes including one of the lowest – West Virginny.

Now that our leaders have committed all that money to appease Malloy’s union cronies, and to fulfill Speaker Aresimowicz’s obligations to his full-time job, and considering that that has been accomplished in a fashion which will shackle the hands of any incoming, more fiscally-responsible, administrations for the next 10 years, we can be pretty certain to be sitting atop this infamous list before the next decade is completed, unless; of course, Dannel Malloy becomes governor of Rhode Island and the citizens of RI are insane enough to elect a union bigwig to control that state’s purse strings.

We Work For Them Now

As of a couple days ago, Connecticut taxpayers now have two welfare classes to pay for, for the next ten years and there is nothing we can do about it

This is nothing new, these two welfare classes that have existed for decades and have been perpetuated and nurtured by governors and legislatures of both parties, but now there is nothing we can do about it.

I am talking about first, the nonproductive welfare class, that in many cases, really need our help because of unfortunate circumstances or lack of abilities. To Democrats this means that we must focus on redistribution of wealth and income inequality. This has had the result of moving the poverty rate from 14.5 to a little below 14% over the last 50 years. The Dems seem to be satisfied with making poverty more tolerable (ObamaPhones, yeah). To Conservative Republicans (and there are a few left) and the “now extinct” moderate Democrat, this means providing more opportunity. After fifty years it might be time to try that.

The second welfare class is the bureaucracy. The now-protected species of employees who go about performing the government’s work of redistributing the fruits of the labor of those who are not fortunate to be in either of these classes – A.K.A. the Producers.

The fact that we have a union boss of the second welfare class as Speaker of the House should be evidence enough that we have become subjects to the tyranny of these protected classes – the nonproducers and the bureaucrats.

The Women’s March – Model for the “Classless” Society

Watching the protesters at the Women’s March on Washington we witnessed a microcosm of the Progressive utopia. The marchers were mainly young and mainly white. If this were a protest of working class people each clutching a copy of Atlas Shrugged there would certainly be an accusation of racism, divisiveness etc. But that aside, in most respects it was a typical Progressive affair.

Like most Progressive affairs, the one of the principal mantra was diversity but the practice was exclusion. Pro-life groups of women were not welcome. As usual, equality, fairness and rights was demanded for others but not practiced. I am sure that very few of these ladies would allow Clarence Thomas or Ben Carson move in next door or marry their daughters .

Asking what they were marching for elicited a variety of responses mostly in the form of clichés and slogans. They were there to protest Fascism. To unite behind all immigrants and for all women worldwide. etc. Not very much that was actionable.

There were however two exceptions. The mob was united by two things. First – they love abortion and I mean they really love it, and second, they hate Donald Trump.

So, despite all of the signs saying, Love Trumps Hate. The one thing that united this mob was hatred. Eric Hoffer once remarked that hatred is the force that binds mass movements. A common love drives people apart. Two people who love the same person are enemies. One looking at the other as a trespasser. But hatred binds. Two people who hate the same person, whether it is one the National Mall or around the office water cooler, will form a cohesive powerful vehicle of hatred. They will gossip and contemplate sinister outcomes and fantasize about all kinds of horrible ills falling upon the head of the object of their disdain. Even to the extent of welcoming the destruction of the White House. Perhaps with the president, his cabinet and all 65 million supporters huddled within.

And who can be a better partner to channel this venom that the leading merchant of human destruction than Planned Parenthood.

Finally, this march gave new meaning to the Soros globalist vision of the classless society. Although maybe with a distinctly new meaning. Perhaps it was the uterus with the fallopian tubes fashioned into fists with the middle finger sticking up, or perhaps it was the “Fuck Trump” chants, the “Abortion Rules!” signs, or Madonna’s call for destruction, the 10-year old lad boasting of setting fires and proclaiming, “Screw the President” while his proud parents look on, or it may have been Ashley Judd accusing the President of the United States of contemplating sexual relations with his daughter. Overall, it gave new meaning to the demand of the classless society, not a society without classes but one without class.

(1)Loosely based on Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Free No. 10. https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-i-shall-be-free-no-10-lyrics

MLK – The Great Peacemaker

Disgracing Dr. King’s Message

John Lewis IS the Problem.

And so is Maxine Waters, and Elizabeth Warren and many others, both Republican and Democrat, who have a distorted sense of what their jobs are.

An elected official’s responsibility is to his or her constituents not to his or her party.

How is Lewis’s constituency served by trying to delegitimize the president? How is it served by Lewis, Waters and Warren stating that they will do everything in their power to cause the President of the United States to fail. In that regard, I think that they stand more with President Vlad Putin or Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei than with their constituents.

What is their problem?

They state that the President-Elect is not the President Elect because the Russians hacked the DNC and John Podesta’s email which revealed that the Dem’s candidate had one position that she presented to the public while she actually held a different position. The hacked emails also revealed that John Podesta harbored a deep dislike for Catholics. They revealed widespread collusion between the mainstream media and the DNC. They revealed that the President of the United States lied about not knowing that his Secretary of State was using an unsecured email server. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.

So, what exactly affected the election? Was it the content of the emails and the secrets that they revealed or was it the fact that it was the Russians that did so? If the hypothetical 400-pound guy in his parent’s basement was the hacker instead of the Russians, would it have made any difference?

If a murderer was found guilty of murder would it make any difference if the eyewitness was a bad guy or a good guy? A Russian or a fat guy? Remember that no one is disputing the accuracy of the hacked emails. Should the murderer be declared innocent because the evidence, although accurate, was supplied by a bad guy?

Mr. Lewis, in a time when our nation faces so many problems. The increase in crime, in poverty, in joblessness which occurred over the last decade. The decline in race relations. The exacerbated problems in the Middle East which threaten the safety of our homeland. Is it really time to continue the divisiveness and hatred?