Removal of the Confederate Flag and Confederate Monuments

Is it really prudent to remove the Confederate flag and Confederate monuments from public property?

Why are we only exposed to the one-sided, emotional argument? The one that says, "these are symbols of oppression and reminders of slavery and therefore must be removed!”

I think a more reasonable argument is to leave the monuments and flags up and have civil, mature conversations about what they actually mean or what they tell us about history.

Are they really symbols of oppression or do they symbolized how far this country has come in a relatively short period of time?  We outlawed slavery! A practice that is as old as human history. Something that is still practiced in many countries around the world to this day!

Or perhaps they symbolize state sovereignty and rebellion against an oppressive federal government that preferred to send over 600,000 Americans to their deaths rather than to allow a few states to secede from the Union.

That’s a conversation and debate worth having rather than weak-kneed politicians succumbing to public pressure from a loud minority of constituents unwilling to discuss or debate the merits of the monuments.

Great conversations on this topic from The Tom Woods Show - Southern Monuments Removed, Others Under Attack  and Brion McClanahan podcast Confederate Origins of Memorial Day.

Media Malpractice

Despite no evidence (as of this writing), the lamestream media continues to pound the table endlessly with accusations that President Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election.

This is the same media that ignored:

• The Monica Lewinsky scandal and made excuses for Clinton’s impeachment
• The weaponizing of the IRS, the EPA, the Bureau of Land Management, the NLRB, etc
• The Benghazi scandal and cover-up
• The Fast and Furious scandal
• The Obamacare lies
• The dreadful economy
• The burgeoning national debt under Obama
• The corruption of Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch
• Hillary’s indictable federal offenses
• Witness tampering by Bill Clinton with his tarmac meeting with Lynch during the Hillary investigation
• Obama's ransom paid to Iran for hostages
• The illegal international donations and the quid pro quo emanating from the Clinton Foundation
• Butcher Abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell
• The swelling welfare rolls
• The influence of Valerie Jarrett
• The real unemployment rate
• The idiocy of Joe Biden
• Obama’s Executive Orders
• The first ever credit downgrade of the United States
• The high unemployment rate among African-Americans
• The thousands of business-killing regulations
• Crony capitalism
• Van Jones
• The promise that if the Stimulus Bill was passed, unemployment would never climb above 8%.
• Jeremiah Wright
• "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
• Bill Ayers
• The worst economic recovery since the Great Depression
• Kill lists
• The drop in real median income
• Backdoor amnesty for illegal immigrants
• Obama claiming to have visited 57 states during his 2008 campaign
• George Soros influence over the Democratic Party
• The Gibson Guitar raid
• General Motors bondholders getting screwed in the bailout
• The closings of GM dealerships owned by donors to the Republican Party
• The National Labor Relations Board’s treatment of Boeing
• The voter intimidation case against New Black Panthers
• The lowest labor participation rate in decades
• “Shovel ready wasn’t as shovel ready as we thought”
• Teen unemployment over 70%
• The pathetic GDP growth
• Obama’s speech advocating that we should “be our brother’s keeper” while his brother lives in a hut in Africa.
• Donna Brazile's feeding of debate questions to Clinton
• Rezko
• "After my election I have more flexibility"

How to Reform Health Care in America

How to reform health care in America - in order of importance:

#1 - Get the federal government out of the health care business!

#2 - Encourage/permit the purchase of health insurance across state lines.

#3 - Eliminate some of the regulations, licensing, and education requirements to become a medical practitioner. 

#4 - Eliminate the thousands of state mandates imposed on health insurance companies.

#5 - Encourage the purchase and issuance of guaranteed issue insurance policies.

#6 - Allow people to buy health insurance as a part of a group.

#7 - Allow individuals a tax deduction for health insurance premiums paid.

#8 - Allow doctors and/or medical corporations a tax deduction for all pro-bono work they provide. 

#9 - Encourage/permit unlimited tax deductible contributions to health savings accounts that are transferable to other family members.

#10 - Medical malpractice tort reform.

#11- Create high risk pools at the individual state level for people with pre-existing conditions.

Jimmy Kimmel, Pre-Existing Conditions, and the Federal Government

Jimmy Kimmel did us a favor by recently bringing up preexisting conditions when discussing his new-born son's recent heart procedure. He opened the door to having a conversation. The conversation goes something like this:

We live in a constitutional republic.

We have a operations manual that explains how the republic is to be run.

That manual is called the Constitution.

The Constitution granted a very limited set of powers to the newly created federal government. All other powers were left to the states.

None of the powers granted to the federal government included health insurance or health care.

Therefore, the federal government should not be involved in health insurance or healthcare. Period! End of story!

What is the alternative?

One alternative is to amend the operations manual through the constitutional amendment process.

Another alternative is for the individual states, if they so choose, to enter the healthcare game. 

Instead we have one of the two major political parties (the Democrats) whose sole purpose appears to be the attainment of as much power and control over the electorate as possible by granting them government handouts. The handouts are then use to garner votes by claiming that the Republicans are going to take them away.

Add to this a feckless, establishment national Republican Party that makes no effort to reign in the excesses of the Dems and we have a great country governed by a dysfunctional federal government.

The result is an unending list of unconstitutional powers accumulating in D.C. and less and less liberty for 300 million people.

Back to addressing Jimmy Kimmel: what are some market-driven, non-federal government intervention solutions? How about . . . .

• Guaranteed issue insurance policies.
• Policy portability.
• Tax deductible health savings accounts.
• Medical malpractice tort reform.
• Allow people to buy health insurance as a part of a group.
• Remove the 2,100 state mandates imposed on health insurance companies which will facilitate a la carte purchasing of insurance.
• Tax deductibility at the individual level of health insurance premiums paid.
• Encourage the purchasing of low-cost catastrophic policies.
• Allow the purchase of health insurance across state lines.
• Eliminate some of the regulations, licensing, and education requirements to become a medical practitioner. 
• Create high risk pools at the individual state level for people with pre-existing conditions.
• Allow doctors to deduct from their income taxes any pro-bono work they provide during the course of each year.

Any legitimate discussion about healthcare in America must NOT include the federal government!

The Nuclear Pen and Phone Option

File this under “What-Goes-Around-Comes-Around”.

FIRST it was President Obama’s arrogant “I've got a pen and I've got a phone” comment while signing almost 300 executive orders. Much to the chagrin of the national Democrats, President Trump used the inherited pen and phone to reverse many of his predecessors unconstitutional orders.

NOW we have the Senate's "nuclear option" being employed to confirm Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch! Keep in mind that the Constitution does not mention the filibuster. It is a Senate rule! Keep in mind that the judicial filibuster was a creation of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. Yesterday the Senate was returned to its previously normal state.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell explained it this way:

I know the Democratic leader would rather not revisit the circumstances that brought us to this moment. He and his party decided to 'change the ground rules' for handling judicial nominations. He and his party pioneered the practice of filibustering lower court judicial nominees. He and his party launched the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee. He and his party deployed the nuclear option in 2013.

For those of you who require more convincing, please consider the fact that two fairly recent SCOTUS nominees by Republican presidents, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, were confirmed with less than 60 votes (58-42 and 52-48 respectively)!

In Defense of the Federal Government's 100% Failure Rate

Over the years I have chronicled the 100% failure rate of the federal government while asking the question, "why the hell should we give them more and more money and control of our lives when they have such a horrible record?" 

Back in 2009 I referenced the Postal Service, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the War on Poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, Amtrak, Cash for Clunkers, and the Obama Stimulus bill. In 2010, I referenced Social Security. In 2014, I listed a long list of more recent failures including Benghazi, Fast and Furious, Veteran's Affairs, the IRS scandal, the national debt, and ISIS. In 2015, I circled back to Amtrak, pointing out its colossal waste of tax-payers dollars.  

I recently came across a graphic that explains why the federal government has a 100% failure rate . . . .

IT SPENDS OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY FOR SOMEONE ELSE!

http://i.imgur.com/jKxtWxN.jpg

Democratic Party Resume Enhancement

If you are a national Democrat looking to enhance your resume, apparently the best avenue is to get caught lying to the American people.

Consider:

• President Clinton
• President Obama
• Hillary Clinton
• Ted Kennedy
• Donna Brazile
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz
• Senator Richard Blumenthal
• Charlie Rangel
• Senator Elizabeth Warren
• Senator Bob Menendez
• Attorney General Eric Holder
• Attorney General Loretta Lynch
• Al Sharpton
• Harry Reid
• Nancy Pelosi
• Susan Rice
• Elijah Cummings

The list goes on and on and on and on!!!!!

It's Time to Get the Government Out of the Environmental Protection Business

If you want to protect the environment, you should be a strong advocate for getting the government out of the environmental protection business.

Recently I have found myself in Facebook conversations defending my belief that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be abolished. My argument is simple -- environmental protection is not one of the powers granted to the federal government in the Constitution. I tell my friends, if you want a federal agency to perform this function, pass and ratify an constitutional amendment.

Those who challenge my logic always come back to the same irrelevant argument -- the states cannot be trusted to protect the environment.

Advocates for broader, unconstitutional federal powers, such as the EPA, almost always have three fatal flaws in their arguments:

#1 - They ignore the Constitution

#2 - They never look at the evidence

#3 - They refuse to consider alternative solutions as viable

Regarding the Constitution - The Founding Fathers limited the federal government's power for a reason. If we were to revert back to the powers articulated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, most of the monetary, fiscal and social problems that we spend so much time arguing about would disappear.

Regarding the evidence: For those who are advocates for the EPA (and other governmental regulatory agencies), I have a simple question: What happens to government officials and their agencies when they royally screw up? 

Consider Flint Michigan's water contamination incident where a "former Michigan health official was recently sentenced to a year of probation and forced to apologize to Flint residents for failing to tell the public about an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease during the city's water crisis." Keep in mind, twelve deaths have been attributed to this incident!

A private company in the same situation would have been sued for damages!

Or consider the EPA's Colorado River toxic spill.

A private company in the same situation would have been sued for damages!

Or consider the failed levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. They were managed by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers.

A private company in the same situation would have been sued for damages!

Or consider the thousands of sick Americans who die each year because the EPA has not approved a drug that might help them. Private pharmaceutical companies already have burdensome governmentally imposed standards to meet and often get dragged into court for the damage their drugs do to patients!

The point is the government is very rarely held accountable for its incompetence while the private sector is rightfully held accountable and pays damages to injured parties. 

If you want to protect the environment and make sure people pay for any damage done to it, you should be a strong advocate for getting the government out of the environmental protection business.

In Response to Foul-Mouthed Ignorant Canadian

Dear Canadian Natalie-Ann,

Down here in the United States we have this document called "The United States Constitution" which helped a group of backwoods farmers create the most powerful country on the planet in less than 200 years. This document is based on maximum freedom, maximum liberty, and minimal government interference in the lives of its citizens.

For over a 100 years progressives have worked tirelessly to minimize our freedom and liberty and to increase the power of the government. Unfortunately for them, a slight majority of Americans know that the government is the problem not the solution.

See the thirteen colonies got together and created our federal government. In so doing, they granted said government with a few (what we call "enumerated") powers. Most of them had to do with foreign affairs and the military. Beyond those few powers, the states were free to do whatever the hell they wanted including offer healthcare to their citizens.

The beauty of this is, if your state is taken over by a bunch of whack-jobs who are hell-bent on bankrupting the state by buying votes through wealth transfers schemes (see California, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts) you could move to another state. However, if the federal government starts messing around in areas of the economy or in social issues in which they have no power, most Americans cannot afford to leave the country.

In a nutshell, most Americans do NOT want to end up like you Canadians or like the western European quasi-socialistic nations that attempt to pander to every malcontent demanding free shit from the government. Nope! Most Americans (or at least the 60 million that voted for that dastardly man named Trump) believe in self-reliance, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, ending government interference in every aspect of our economy (i.e. healthcare) and allowing the free markets go to work. Then when a little boy in Albuquerque needs open heart surgery or an elderly man in Nebraska needs heart medication, their respective health insurance policies - one that they or their family purchased in the free market, across states lines; one that meets their individual needs; one that they owned and paid on for many years; one that was not tied to an employer - might actually cover some or all of those expenses.

Legislating Morality

"I know healthcare is not in the Constitution but it is a moral issue."

The above quote is from a left-leaning friend of mine during a discussion of the repeal of Obamacare.

Question: Given the list below, is the federal government the best purveyor of morals?

• The federal government once endorsed and enforced slavery.
• It once required the return of fugitive slaves.
• It once invaded a part of the country that wanted to secede from the union.
• It once suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
• It once prohibited women and blacks from voting.
• It once forced Japanese-Americans into internment camps.
• It once confiscated the private gold of American citizens.
• It once ordered the slaughter of millions of pigs and the plowing under of millions of acres of cotton.
• It once endorsed and enforced segregation of public schools.
• It has sent hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to die in other countries.
• It has racked up over $20 trillion in debt.
• It claims that the killing of a baby in the womb is not murder but a "privacy" issue.
• It confiscates a portion of one citizen's earnings and gives it to another.
• It collects electronic communications of Americans without a warrant.
• It was maintaining kill lists of American citizens living abroad that are subject to targeted drone assassinations.

I, for one, do not want the federal government legislating morality.

The Obama Legacy - Part II

Today's departure of Obama, which provided many with a tremendous sense of relief, provided an opportunity to reflect further on the damage his policies have done to the country. I previously posted some of Obama's greatest hits in this blog post. This post serves as a supplement.

The Economy:

• In reality the economy has remained in a perpetual recession throughout Obama's eight-year reign. At best we have just lived through the weakest recovery in the post-World War II era.
• The number of young Americans living at home reached a 75-year high under the Obama economy.

Foreign Policy:
President Obama became the first American President to spend his entire two terms in office at war.

• Iraq - he promised to end the Iraq War; "the stupid war". He did not!
• Afghanistan - he promised to win the Afghanistan War; "the necessary war". He did not!
• The Arab Spring
• Syria
• Benghazi
• Picking fights with Russia leading to Putin's moves against the Crimea and Ukraine.

Race Relations:

The first black President in American history had an incredible opportunity to improve race relations in this country. Instead, the commander-in-chief became the divider-in-chief using every possible opportunity to drive a wedge between the races.

• According to a recent CNN/ORC poll, a majority of Americans (54%) say that race relations deteriorated under Obama. 

Social Issues:

• He was forced to all but defend the barbaric practice of selling aborted baby parts by the federally-funded abortion machine, Prevent Parenthood.
• He forced gay marriage down the throats of Americans.
• Obamacare's mandate forcing pro-life companies to offer insurance to their employees that covered abortions.

Presidential Election of 2016:

If Obama was a popular as he thought he was, his chosen successor should have run the table in the election. Instead . . .

• Hillary received a lower percentage of the Hispanic vote than he did in 2012 (65% and 71% respectively).
• Hillary received a lower percentage of the black vote than he did in 2012 (88% and 93% respectively).

The Democratic Party:

• Democrats lost over 1,000 seats at the state and national level. Democrats control 3,129 state legislative seats (an all-time low) while Republicans control 4,170 seats.
• During Obama's two terms Democrats lost 12 governorships, 13 Senate seats, and 69 seats in the House of Representatives.

Political Correctness Killed the Circus

Over the weekend Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced they are shutting down. The primary reason given for the closure is the decision to remove elephants from the show, which was the result of decades of criticism by animal rights groups and the paying of a $270,000 fine for violation of the Animal Welfare Act.

The business that survived 132 years, 24 Presidents, 15-20 recessions, 6 generations of evolving entertainment tastes and options, two depressions, and two World Wars is doomed by one short-sighted, politically correct decision.