What Is the New Deal with the New Deal? thumbnail

What Is the New Deal with the New Deal?

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By Robert E. Wright

Editors’ Note:  It is quite striking how many similarities we have today with another thuggish Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal was the template for the modern welfare/warfare state and for the abuse of the electoral process, and the court system. Looking back, it seems fantastic that so many Americans were ready to give up their liberties during the 1930s. But that was during a major economic crisis, and later a world war. Before we judge those in the past, we have to acknowledge many Americans are willing to give up their liberties today with a far lower threshold. In both cases, crises, both manufactured and natural, are the stimulant for tyranny. 

David Beito’s The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance (Oakland: Independent Institute, 2023) is one of at least four recently published and forthcoming books to pummel the four-term administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), especially its so-called New Deal policy platform.

It’s about time, as the ninetieth anniversary of FDR’s first term and the (in)famous First Hundred Days passed earlier this year with the banners of FDR hagiographers and New Deal acolytes still firmly in possession of the historiographical battlefield. Beito, though, has helped to expose a flank that a brigade of New New Deal historians could exploit.

The title of Beito’s book neatly encapsulates its thesis but hopefully without frightening away readers. It’s an eye-popping narrative political/policy history, not a comprehensive constitutional legal tome. It avoids the New Deal’s assault on the Second Amendment, for example, and arcane discussions of court decisions and constitutional doctrines are (most would say thankfully) also absent.

After a short, smart introduction, Beito in the first chapter describes the mass surveillance undertaken by then US Senator, erstwhile Ku Klux Klanner, and future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Lafayette Black. Among other civil rights atrocities, Black’s committee cajoled access to and read millions of private telegrams, the early twentieth century equivalent of social media DMs. Beito notes that the precedents set by Black were much worse than those of maverick Joseph McCarthy, the postwar communist witch hunter because Black enjoyed the full backing of the executive branch.

Black’s mass surveillance regime somehow did not make it into any of my high school or college history textbooks, and chances are it’s new information to you, too. The rest of Beito’s book reveals yet more largely forgotten and successfully suppressed instances of FDR’s destruction of democratic norms.

Chapters two and three cover the censorship shenanigans of another future Supreme Court Justice and U.S. Senator with an executive branch-sanctioned committee, Sherman Minton. From his bully pulpit on Capitol Hill, and with ample aid from Treasury tax officials, Minton sought to force anti-New Deal newspaper publishers, like Moses Annenberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer into complying with the administration’s approved narrative. 

Unable to control all the nation’s many newspapermen with such strongarm tactics, Minton tried to pass a law imposing a stiff fine and jail time for anyone who knowingly published false information. Many civil libertarians on both sides of the aisle thankfully joined forces to squelch the bill, which they rightly saw as a harbinger of totalitarianism.

Chapters four and five describe how FDR came to dominate the airwaves, not just with his famous Fireside Chats and other radio addresses but by using federal control of the broadcast spectrum to literally silence his critics, which grew legion as employment and output levels remained far below those of 1929 despite his administration’s ample economic and social engineering experiments. Herbert Hoover paved the way for FDR’s takeover during his stint as Commerce Secretary by deliberately encouraging a wavelength crisis that resulted in increased federal oversight of the nascent industry in the 1927 Radio Act. Almost the entire radio industry remained at FDR’s beck and call from 1933 until his death in 1945.

The remaining chapters cover blatant and substantial election interference in Memphis, Tennessee in 1940 (6), FDR’s large and deeply eugenicist and racist role in the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans (7), too-often-downplayed wartime speech restrictions that sought to prove that America was not a “pudgy democracy” even if that meant reducing the Constitution to a “scrap of paper” (8), and a forgotten sedition trial that ended in fiasco for the prosecution, which overstepped both its evidence and the bounds of rationality in its zeal to convict a couple dozen newspapermen of promoting American fascism (9). 

The book’s substantive conclusion, which details the ways in which the Truman administration continued the New Deal’s lamentable record on the Bill of Rights and opened the door to McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade, also paints FDR’s civil rights record in a light that is highly negative. Beito’s book, though, remains clearly nonpartisan because it always “brings the receipts,” often in triplicate (archival, printed primary, and secondary sources).

Specifically, Beito draws on classic critiques of the New Deal, like those sampled by Amity Shlaes in New Deal Rebels, as well as some of the books critical of the New Deal that began to appear around the turn of the century, including Shlaes’s The Forgotten Man and Burton Folsom’s New Deal or Raw Deal?. It also draws on the better standard secondary sources and some too-often-overlooked doctoral dissertations. It also references standard archival sources, like the papers of FDR and his wife, and lesser-known sources like the papers of John T. Flynn, Amos Pinchot, and Edward E. Rumely.

Given its dense documentation, little about the book could be criticized directly, so look for progressive liberals to ignore it, as they tend to do with all well-written and -well-researched books that threaten statist status quo narratives. The book does what it does, expose the unseemly illiberal underbelly of the New Deal behemoth, effectively and efficiently.

What the book does not do, even in passing, is to make clear that the New Deal was completely unnecessary economically. The Federal Reserve’s bumbling and Hoover’s tariffs and high wage policies explain the first phase of the Depression, while FDR’s Blue Eagle, high taxes, business bashing, and high wage policies explain the stalled recovery. Reflation of the money supply and consistent business policies would have restored employment and output by 1934. Many contemporaries understood that, but due to government censorship and propaganda false economic narratives prevailed then and remain potent progressive talking points to this day.

Ultimately, financial journalist Garet Garrett was correct when he called the New Deal a sort of quiet revolution during which “the ultimate power of initiative did pass from the hands of private enterprise to government.” Resistance proved largely futile then and the New Deal’s ill effects have compounded over time. With help from books like The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights, however, the tide of historiographical battle may finally turn, and with it many old canards about the culpability of the gold standard, stock shorting, greed, and so forth in the downturn. Government policies, including attacks on freedom of expression and due process, lengthened and deepened a regular business cycle ebb into the Great Depression and set a long string of dominoes tumbling down, leaving frighteningly few erect today.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

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Is Obama Pulling Strings on a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ Biden Administration? thumbnail

Is Obama Pulling Strings on a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ Biden Administration?

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By Jarrett Stepman

Who’s running the federal government?

That question has been asked frequently as President Joe Biden continues to demonstrate signs of severe physical and mental decline.

The president often seems barely there. It strains credulity that a man who can hardly put a sentence together at this point is fully carrying out his duties as commander in chief.

A recent Tablet magazine piece by David Samuels—in which he interviewed historian David Garrow, author of the lengthy book “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” in 2017—sheds some light on what’s happening in the White House and explains who is really directing the executive branch.

Headlines and commentary about the Tablet interview focused on the more salacious commentary by former girlfriends. America’s mostly fawning media did little to reveal who Obama really was before being elected president. He was treated as a quasi-messianic figure who emerged in American politics to bring “hope and change” alongside racial reconciliation.

Many of the details discussed in the interview should have been revealed or at least explored before Obama became president—not in 2017 or 2023.

And that gets to the more serious charge in the Tablet piece as far as what Obama is doing right now to influence our government and the country.

It’s been more than six-and-a-half years since Obama left office, and the United States is far from being unified. The notion that there are “no red states or blue states” is even more of a farce than it was in 2008. Americans are bleaker about their future than at pretty much any other time in our history.

Instead of a post-racial America, racial and gender identity are becoming the only things that matter to elite institutions.

Those are trends that began in earnest during Obama’s second term and have only accelerated under Biden. Of course, America’s institutions are mostly ideologically captured, but they are being guided along by the federal government, too.

So, who is directing this fundamental transformation of America? Obama, according to Samuels.

Samuels wrote that while the legacy media have generally portrayed Obama as somewhat aloof from the politics of today and uninterested in power, the former president and his most loyal lieutenants are heavily involved in directing the federal government and politics in general.

The Obamas never left the nation’s capital. “Instead, they bought a large brick mansion in the center of Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood—violating a norm governing the transfer of presidential power, which has been breached only once in post-Civil War American history, by Woodrow Wilson, who couldn’t physically be moved after suffering a series of debilitating strokes,” Samuels wrote.

The excuse the Obamas gave for staying in Washington was that their daughter Sasha was still in high school, and they wanted her to finish her education at the posh Sidwell Friends private school. But Sasha has since left for college, but the Obamas stayed in Washington.

Samuels wrote that it’s clear that their decision to stay was not just a “personal matter.” Instead, Obama remained to orchestrate resistance to his successor, President Donald Trump, and to continue the work he’d been doing while in office.

To an extent that has never been meaningfully reported on, the Obamas served as both the symbolic and practical heads of the Democratic Party shadow government that ‘resisted’ Trump—another phenomenon that defied prior norms.

The fact that these were not normal times could be adduced by even a passing glance at the front pages of the country’s daily newspapers, which were filled with claims that the 2016 election had been ‘stolen’ by Russia and that Trump was a Russian agent.

The Tablet piece paints a picture of a former president pulling the strings to orchestrate the federal government’s domestic and foreign policies, with Biden reduced to being a “Weekend at Bernie’s”-like puppet.

“When Obama turned up at the White House, staffers and the press crowded around him, leaving President Biden talking to the drapes—which is not a metaphor, but a real thing that happened,” Samuels wrote.

A powerful, charismatic politician with no official power but ruling from the shadows is common for countries with a long tradition of authoritarian government. For instance, that was how Vladimir Putin held onto power in Russia when he was constitutionally barred from serving a third consecutive term in office. Dmitry Medvedev became president, but Putin was the man in charge.

It was a good way to uphold the illusion of a free society without having to deal with the whole “government of the people, by the people, for the people” business.

Again, these sorts of arrangements aren’t unusual throughout the scope of history. At one time, our way of government was seen as merely an experiment. Over time, we proved that it wasn’t just an experiment, but the best way to organize a society.

Obama once dismissed the idea of American exceptionalism. Thanks to him, maybe that’s closer to being true.

Political commentator Ben Domenech wrote in The Spectator that we appear to be living through Obama’s third term, yet the D.C. press corps is entirely uninterested in digging into who is really in charge or how this historic departure from American norms is happening.

A free press worth its salt would be pressing this administration for answers. So, will that happen now? The White House is purging reporters en masse from the White House press corps who might ask uncomfortable questions, so I wouldn’t count on it.

*****

This article was published by Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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I Rented A Tesla For A Week And Am Totally Sold On Gas-Powered Cars thumbnail

I Rented A Tesla For A Week And Am Totally Sold On Gas-Powered Cars

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By Stella Morabito

After test-driving one for an entire week, we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any electric vehicle as long as we have the option of gas-powered cars or even hybrids.

While planning a week-long trip to the Seattle area recently, I wondered aloud to my husband if we should rent a Tesla. Neither of us had ever driven an electric vehicle before. The price difference between the long-range Tesla Model 3 and a standard mid-size gas-fueled vehicle was pretty negligible.

We agreed it would be an interesting learning experience despite our objections to the eco-agenda to phase out gas-powered vehicles. We also don’t believe EVs are particularly environmentally friendly since they need batteries that require the strip-mining of rare earth minerals such as lithium and cobalt. The World Economic Forum knows this very well and is likely looking for heavy limits on EV mobility after eliminating gas-powered vehicles.

But more people like us are also finding some very practical reasons to object to Teslas. There’s a glut of them on the market now despite subsidies and price reductions. After test-driving one for an entire week (instead of just 30 minutes,) we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any EV as long as we have the option of gas-powered vehicles or even hybrids. Read on for seven big reasons why. (Yes, “mileage may vary.”)

1. Battery Drainage Is Stress-Inducing

In the Tesla, stress is a given. The battery drains faster than you might think. Our Model 3 had an advertised range of about 300 miles, but that’s if you charge it to 100 percent (which no one does) and run it to 0 percent (which no one does). So the practical range is about 150-200 miles. We felt compelled to recharge after going just 150 miles versus refueling after about 450 miles in our Honda Accord. The battery even drained 10 percent just sitting in the driveway for about a day. Granted, we covered some distances in Washington state during our travels. But that confirms EVs are a poor choice for road trips unless you enjoy the risk of being stranded.

2. Few Charging Station Locations and Length of Time There

Yes, there are now more than 1,500 “supercharger” stations across the U.S. Regular chargers can be found at hotels, where guests at least have a room to stay in while charging for three to six hours. We plugged into a Tesla charger at a hotel for nearly three hours to get the battery up to 85 percent from about 30. Compare that with about 150,000 gas stations where we could fill up in less than five minutes and be on our way, ready for the next 500 miles. Even at a supercharger, we had to wait about 30 minutes to up the battery charge by 50 percent. And it’s all a matter of luck if there are amenities close by, especially if you need a charge when it’s late at night.

3. Personal Safety at Charging Locations Can Feel Dicey

It’s a good idea to plan the times at which you charge your vehicle. We had to stop on a Sunday evening at a supercharger located in an Ikea parking lot. Ikea was closed, and there were no walkable amenities around it. Ditto for our visit to another Tesla supercharger located across from a pawn shop. I got the uneasy feeling that many of these unsupervised locations — and the length of time required to be there — were crime scenes waiting to happen. Sure you can stop charging and be on your way. But on your way to where? To another supercharger.

4. Texting While Driving Is Required

Texting while driving is considered dangerous and mostly illegal. How ironic that in a Tesla, you are dependent upon the touch screen that sits between the driver and passenger seat like a big laptop. The interface is not intuitive, and autopilot is too new and unpredictable to use safely.

Luckily for us, there was always a passenger available to cope with the screen. We had to be in motion in order to check for a charging station nearby. There’s nothing intuitive about the air conditioning. Ditto for the radio, which we could only “turn off” by reducing the volume. The windshield wipers are supposed to be automatic, but when it started raining, we realized they were “turned off.” After fishing around the screen, we finally pulled over to consult YouTube to get them working again.

5. No Convenient Manual to Consult While Renting

Our Tesla rental was proudly “paperless.” It would have been worthwhile to have a hard copy manual on hand that didn’t put us at the mercy of a satellite signal. Hertz at the Seattle airport could provide no support in answering our questions about the vehicle. When I was able to flag employees down (twice), they were unable to help. We hoped to get a clue from a manual in the glove compartment, but what glove compartment?  The employee at the checkout kiosk explained that the glove compartment was permanently locked shut. There’s no spare tire either, by the way.

6. How to Lock the Car?

This was not clear, not even with the Hertz tutorials on renting a Tesla. The key card operates like a hotel-room “smart” key, but (per YouTube) we discovered we needed to find the “sweet spot” by the window on the driver’s side, apparently the only place to lock the car. There are ways to lock from the inside as well, but it all depends on your tech-savviness, and willingness to risk locking yourself in, I suppose.

7. Don’t Expect the Cost of a Battery Charge to Always Be Lower than Gasoline

There are so many variables in fuel/charging costs, it’s hard to know if you’re getting a deal. When we tapped the “lightning bolt” image on the Tesla’s touch screen, we got a list of superchargers in the region as well as the cost per kilowatt hour, which varied from about 18 cents to about 50 cents. Our cheapest total charge was around $7 and ranged up to $25. We generally didn’t put more than a 50 percent charge into the car at any one time, and given the miles driven, the $25 charge was about the same as we would have paid for gas. Since there are government subsidies both for purchasing an EV and for charging, I would expect those prices to rise if everyone gets with the program and demand is up.

But pigs will fly before I buy an EV based on my Tesla experience/experiment. This conclusion is not based on a one-hour test drive but on an entire week of driving in an EV-friendly part of the country.

Granted, there are some moments of fun when driving a Tesla. “Regenerative braking” is a system that recharges the battery. So once your foot is off the accelerator, the car slows down quickly. We rarely needed to use the brake at all, even at red lights. And once you accelerate, expect a fast pick-up! The tinted glass roof was kind of cool. The seats were comfortable enough. But all in all, it was too much hassle and too much anxiety. I’m now totally sold on gas-powered vehicles.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

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The Three-Headed Monster Giving Us Lousy Public Policy thumbnail

The Three-Headed Monster Giving Us Lousy Public Policy

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By Art Carden

We have made fantastic strides in our understanding of how the physical and social worlds work. The Great Enrichment of the last three centuries or so that happened because we adopted the Bourgeois Deal of “Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich” has lifted us to standards of living our ancestors could not have imagined. However, the prosperity we enjoy is constantly under attack by a political monster that never stops putting obstacles along the road to riches. The monster is a powerful beast with three heads: ignorance, avarice, and arrogance. Together, they help us understand why public policy is not much better.

Ignorance

First, we don’t know what to do. It is a revelation to many economics students that policies like minimum wages, rent controls, laws against “price gouging,” and tariffs on goods made in foreign countries hurt the people they are intended to help. People don’t appreciate how well markets work, they don’t know how poorly communism has fared, and they don’t understand just how much better off we are than our ancestors were. We try to correct this with education, but economics is not easy–and for the individual citizen, learning the ins and outs of supply and demand analysis is not likely to do much to change public policy.

Second, we don’t know what is being done. This isn’t because we’re lazy or failing in our civic duty; rather, it’s because public policies generate concentrated benefits but dispersed costs. Sugar tariffs, for example, are worth many millions to U.S. sugar producers, but they probably don’t cost an individual family enough for it to be worthwhile to even measure the burden. A quick glance at the Federal Register on Friday, August 4 contained a front-page link to this request for

comment on a proposal to update the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) to provide consumers with information about crashworthiness pedestrian protection of new vehicles. The proposed updates to NCAP would provide valuable safety information to consumers about the ability of vehicles to protect pedestrians and could incentivize vehicle manufacturers to produce vehicles that provide better protection for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians. In addition, this proposal addresses several mandates set forth in section 24213 of the November 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, enacted as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

How many people know Section 24213 of the November 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law? How many people had a reminder in their task manager that they needed to submit a public comment (the deadline was July 25, by the way)? Few and fewer, I suspect, because it’s exceedingly unlikely that taking the time and energy to concentrate on this is going to change the course of public policy. Of course, auto manufacturers probably have someone whose job is to know because there might be millions of dollars at stake.

Avarice

Why live at your own expense when you can live at someone else’s? This, incidentally, is precisely how Frederic Bastiat defined government, as “the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” A lot of us may not realize we’re doing this. People would recoil in horror at the idea of breaking into a neighbor’s house and stealing the cash in his wallet. They vote enthusiastically, however, for policies that take a slice out of his paycheck. Reining in avarice requires constitutional checks that oblige us to respect others’ rights. It also requires a cultural change whereby we reject the ancient notion that other people exist to serve us and recognize that they have their own prerogatives we may not know or approve of but that is literally none of our business.

Even when rules, regulations, and spending programs look like they are there to protect the innocent, they usually have support from a special interest that stands to make a lot of money from it. Consider the New Car Assessment Program mentioned above. Incumbent automakers can make it harder to compete by mandating new safety equipment that is there to protect pedestrians. We get more expensive cars and automakers get higher profits because they have fewer competitors. And due to the Peltzman effect, pedestrians might not end up being much safer.

Arrogance

Arrogance is our political beast’s third head. Arrogance comes with thinking the world is a simple place that would be easy to fix if we only had the political will to put the right people in power or make the right policies. Experts in international economic development tend toward arrogance: It is easy to see the cures for all that plagues Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America from a comfortable office at an American or European university.

Modern noblesse oblige demands that those of us who know better boss around the benighted fools who do not share our enlightened worldview. Maybe it is for their own good. Maybe it is because we among what Thomas Sowell called “The Anointed” are burdened with glorious purpose like Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Doesn’t everyone know that we are going to change the world? Historically, it might have been because someone was chosen by the local deity. Nowadays it might be because we are experts in The Science™, which is settled. Regardless, the world has not yet realized that we should be in charge, and they would gladly hand us our rightful scepters and crowns if they knew what was good for them.

Can we slay this three-headed monster? Doubtful, but there is reason to be optimistic. The last three centuries of rhetorical, institutional, and cultural change have clapped it in irons to the benefit of a world that is rapidly making poverty history. Even with these handicaps, it still does a lot of damage; however, if we can bind the monster even faster by eschewing political relations and embracing commercial relations, we can reduce its threat to our freedom and flourishing.

*****

This article was published by AIER, American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

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Weekend Read: What Does The Second Amendment Really Mean? thumbnail

Weekend Read: What Does The Second Amendment Really Mean?

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By Charles M. Strauss

Let’s take it word by word.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

What is a “Militia”? What is a “well regulated” Militia (as opposed to a poorly regulated one)? What about a well-regulated Militia makes it “necessary”? What is the “security” of a free State? What is a “State”? What is a “free” State (as opposed to an unfree State)? Who are “the People”? What does “keep” mean? What does “bear” mean? What are “Arms”? What does “infringed” mean?

Legal scholar and author Bryan Garner and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia co-wrote a textbook, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (West, 2012), in which they set forth a long list of principles (“canons”) of construction, including these two:

  • Fixed Meaning Canon: Words must be given the meaning they had when the text was adopted;
  • Absurdity Doctrine: A provision may be either disregarded or judicially corrected as an error (when the correction is textually simple) if failing to do so would result in a disposition that no reasonable person could approve.

Let’s take an easy example of the Absurdity Doctrine. The word “bear” can mean either “carry” or “large mammal of the family Ursidae that defecates in the forest.” The word “arms” can mean “weapons” or “upper limbs (human) or forelimbs (non-human animal).” If the Second Amendment were interpreted to mean that the people have the right to the forelimbs of pickanick-basket-stealing mammals, then the Second Amendment would be absurd/meaningless. If the Second Amendment means the people have the right to carry weapons, then it makes sense. A constitutional provision must always be given an interpretation that makes it mean something, not nothing – whether or not the interpreter likes the resulting meaning.

What, then, is a Militia? When the text was adopted, the term was universally understood to mean “armed populace,” the antithesis of a standing army, the antidote to tyranny.

“As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by (the Second Amendment) in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” (Tench Coxe, “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution,” Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.)

“What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.” (Eldrige Gerry, Rep. of Massachusetts, 1 Annals of Congress 750, August 17, 1789.)

Some current commentators, horrified by the very idea of an armed citizenry, propose that “militia” means the National Guard. That definition is absurd, for many reasons, including:

  • The National Guard did not come into being until the 20th Century, so it can not have been the meaning “when the text was adopted.”
  • While the National Guard may consist of “part-time soldiers” (as in a militia), their stated purpose is to do things like putting down rebellions, or warring against foreign enemies – but not resisting a tyrannical government. In Perpich v. DOD, the Supreme Court disabused him of that idea, explaining that the President, not the Governor is the Commander in Chief of National Guard troops. Thus, the National Guard cannot be the “Militia,” because the core purpose of the Militia is to protect the people against  a tyrannical President “perverting his power to the injury of his fellow citizens.” It would be absurd to suppose that a tyrannical president would order National Guard troops to stop him. Defining the Militia as anything other than an “armed populace” would make the Second Amendment an absurdity, no less than defining “bear arms” to mean the forelimbs of furry forest excretors.

What about “regulated” and “well regulated”? If regulated meant “subject to rules and regulations issued by the government,” then again that would make the Second Amendment meaningless, to wit: “The People have the right to keep and bear arms, unless the government passes rules and regulations that say no they don’t.”  In fact, at the time the Second Amendment was adopted, “well regulated” had a commonly understood meaning: “in good working order.”

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

1709: “…if a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations.”

1714: “The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world…”

1812: “The equation of time…is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial.”

1848: “…remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor.”

1862: “It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding.”

1894: “…the newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city.”

Thus, the term “well regulated” meant that something (a clock, a person’s mind) was functioning well, and properly tuned and calibrated. For example, Regulator-style clocks were developed in the early 18th Century. They were so-called not because they were subject to more government rules, but because they were more accurate than other clocks.

In DC v. Heller (2008), Scalia wrote: “Finally, the adjective ‘well-regulated’ implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.”

Because “regulated” means “trained/competent,” “well regulated” means well trained, i.e., the People know how to shoot, and they know how to maneuver and operate tactically in concert with their fellow People, to effectively resist all enemies, foreign and domestic.

In Heller, Scalia went on to explain what a State is, and why a well-trained armed citizenry is necessary to the security of a free State:

The phrase “security of a free state” meant “security of a free polity,” not security of each of the several States… Joseph Story wrote in his treatise on the Constitution that “the word ‘state’ is used in various senses [and in] its most enlarged sense, it means the people composing a particular nation or community.” … It is true that the term “State” elsewhere in the Constitution refers to individual States, but the phrase “security of a free state” and close variations seem to have been terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a “free country” or free polity.

There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” … First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary – an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia… Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.  (Italics added.)

Who are “the people” who have the rights to keep arms and bear arms acknowledged (NB: not “granted”) by the Second Amendment? The Supreme Court answered that question in a very unpleasant case, US v. Verdugo-Urquidez. Verdugo-Urquidez (hereafter, VU) was a Bad Dude, worse even than Corn Pop. He was a cruel, sadistic, violent drug dealer from Mexico, allegedly responsible for the unspeakably horrific torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar. DEA agents went to Mexico and arrested (i.e., kidnapped) VU and brought him to the United States for trial. They searched his home in Mexico and brought back records of drug shipments which they tried to use as evidence in the trial. VU’s lawyers objected that the DEA did not have a warrant to search for and seize those records. The Supreme Court noted that the Fourth Amendment says that “the people” have the right to be free from warrantless searches, but said that VU, a resident of Mexico, was not one of “the people.”

… “the people” refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.

… “the people” seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by “the people of the United States.” The Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to “the people.” (Italics added.)

In other words, all Americans (and resident aliens, presumably) have Second Amendment rights, not just those who are members of the armed services/National Guard.

The text of the Second Amendment actually contains a grammatical error (in addition to the unnecessary comma between “Arms” and “shall”). It’s not the “right” to keep and bear arms; it’s the “rights” (plural). Keeping and bearing are separate rights. To keep means to own or possess. To bear means to carry. Does the right to carry mean the right to carry openly? Concealed? Some states permit open carry but prohibit concealed carry. Other states permit concealed carry but prohibit open carry. Which is right, or are they both wrong? As the Second Amendment is silent on the question, the presumption must be that carry means to carry, whether concealed or unconcealed.

The rights prohibitionists insist that the right to carry again pertains only when the militia has been called out (by the government). That is wishful thinking. The purposes of having a well-trained armed populace include showing up to quell uprisings and oppose foreign invasion – the same as the Army. But unlike the Army, the militia has another purpose – its core purpose (according to every single contemporary commentator, including the author of the Second Amendment) – and that is to resist tyranny. There would not be much hope of resisting tyranny if the people’s guns were kept locked up until the government unlocked them and told the people to resist the government’s own tyranny. Nor could the militia/armed populace be well-trained if they were not able to practice with and maintain their own arms.

As a side note, the rights prohibitionists scornfully insist that an armed populace could not possibly resist the most powerful army in the world, which has F16s and nuclear missiles. A bunch of Vietnamese communists in pajamas, and a bunch of goatherders in Afghanistan, would laugh at that (and thanks for all the cool weapons, President Biden!) A ragtag bunch of farmers and tradesmen in 1775 were told that they had no hope of resisting the most powerful army in the world, but by golly, here we are. However, that is beside the point. At issue is not whether the Second Amendment is a good idea, but what it actually says and means.  There are people who think freedom of the press and religion are bad ideas, but their opinions do not change what the First Amendment says.

In one of the most bizarre Supreme Court cases ever, US v. Miller, the Court addressed one issue, the definition of the word “arms.” What “arms” do the people have the right to own and carry? Miller was a career criminal, a bank-robbing gangster who had been convicted of possessing (keeping) a sawed-off shotgun (barrel shorter than 18 inches), which had been made illegal by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Miller’s lawyer argued that the NFA violated the Second Amendment – and won the argument. The US appealed to the Supreme Court. By that time, Miller had gone into hiding, fearing he would be killed in retribution for testifying against other members of his gang. Neither Miller nor his lawyer appeared at the Supreme Court hearing, and indeed, Miller was murdered before the Court announced its decision.

The Court considered whether a shotgun with a barrel shorter than 18 inches was an “arm” that the people had the right to keep and bear.

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly, it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

Because the Court could not decide whether a short shotgun would be useful on the battlefield, they remanded the case to the lower court to answer that question. By that time, though, Miller was dead, and the case became moot, so the question has never been answered, and the NFA has stood unchallenged since then. Of course, the reason for the absence of evidence is that neither Miller nor his lawyer was there! Had there been somebody there to give evidence, the Court would have learned that short-barrelled shotguns have been in use as ordinary military equipment since the time of the blunderbuss, as well as in trench-clearing in The Great War of recent memory. Nevertheless, the Court did establish the principle that the arms that people have the right to keep and bear are those that would be suitable for fighting – what today are called “assault weapons” designed to be used for fighting. It is not clear whether the Second Amendment protects the right to own deer hunting rifles or duck hunting shotguns or Olympic target pistols. The only guns we know for certain are protected are those that “only belong on the battlefield,” that is, “assault weapons,” to use the language of those afflicted with enuresis ignavus (involuntary urination induced by cowardice).

“Infringed” is an interesting word. It doesn’t just mean “violated” or “denied.” Its root word is “fringe.” Fringe is something around the edge, the periphery, like the fringe on a flag. “Shall not be infringed” means “Not only don’t revoke completely but don’t even nibble around the edges, got it?”

In short, what the Second Amendment says is “Because a well-trained armed populace is necessary to the security of a free country, the people have the absolutely inviolable rights to own and carry military-type weapons suitable for resisting tyranny.”

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Arizona News: September 2, 2023 thumbnail

Arizona News: September 2, 2023

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By The Editors

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Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

The Prickly Pear will provide current, linked articles about Arizona consistent with our Mission Statement to ‘inform, educate and advocate’. We are an Arizona based website and believe this information should be available to all of our statewide readers.

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480 717 The Editors 2023-08-29 06:12:06Arizona News: September 2, 2023

Newsom Funded Chinese COVID Lab Known To Biden’s FDA thumbnail

Newsom Funded Chinese COVID Lab Known To Biden’s FDA

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By Tyler Durden

The discovery last month of a Chinese COVID biolab in California shocked the nation but likely came as no surprise to the state’s Democrat governor, Gavin Newsom.

He helped fund it.

The now-notorious secret facility, which contained a massive stockpile of “infectious agents,” including coronavirus, and nearly a thousand dead lab mice and vials of unidentified biological fluids, also likely came as no surprise to the Biden administration.

The FDA last year issued a recall warning for nearly 54,000 COVID rapid tests manufactured by the company that owned the lab.

Fresno County officials discovered the “unlicensed laboratory” in a warehouse owned by Prestige Biotech, which has ties to multiple Chinese pharmaceutical firms and a president who lives in China and can only be reached by email.

The company’s CCP links extend to Barry Zhang, who is listed as Prestige BioTech’s registered agent by the Nevada secretary of state. Zhang reportedly was a leader of the Chinese-American Society of CPAs and its work with China’s United Front espionage and propaganda network.

The founder of the law firm representing Prestige BioTech, Michael M Lin, is reportedly “a regular sponsor of CCP’s United Front events in Nevada.”

Prestige Biotech took over the lab from Universal Meditech after that company went bankrupt following a series of fires. Universal Meditech, a company that also has strong CCP ties, received nearly $400,000 in tax credits from Newsom’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

*****

Continue reading this article at Zero Hedge.

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Court Lets State Protect Kids From Transgender ‘Care,’ Making Key Point About Evidence thumbnail

Court Lets State Protect Kids From Transgender ‘Care,’ Making Key Point About Evidence

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By Tyler O’Neil

A Missouri trial court declined Friday to block a law preventing transgender interventions for minors, citing “conflicting and unclear” medical evidence on the effectiveness of so-called puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

“The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear,” Judge Stephen R. Ohmer ruled. “Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers.”

Three Missouri families who claim their children identify as the gender opposite their biological sex sued the state’s Republican governor, Michael Parson, challenging the constitutionality of a law he signed on June 7.

The families had asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, blocking the law from going into effect during the course of litigation. However, Ohmer ruled that the families “have not clearly shown a sufficient threat of irreparable injury absent injunctive relief,” so he declined to grant the injunction.

“Today is a day that will go down in Missouri history,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who defended the law, told The Daily Signal in a written statement Friday. “We put their ‘evidence’ under a microscope, and it spoke for itself. Missouri’s children won today. I’m beyond proud to have led the fight.”

“Missouri is the first state in the nation to successfully defend at the trial court level a law barring child mutilation,” Bailey also said in a press release. “I’ve said from Day One as attorney general that I will fight to ensure that Missouri is the safest state in the nation for children. This is a huge step in that direction.”

Judges in Alabama and Tennessee granted injunctions blocking similar laws in those states, before higher courts restored the laws. District courts have blocked such laws temporarily in at least seven states, including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Kentucky.

The Missouri law, SB 49, called the Missouri Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act, or SAFE Act, will go into effect Monday. It states: “A health care provider shall not knowingly perform a gender transition surgery on any individual under eighteen years of age,” nor “knowingly prescribe or administer cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs for the purpose of a gender transition for an individual under eighteen years of age.”

The law defines “biological sex” as “the biological indication of male or female in the context of reproductive potential or capacity, such as sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, gonads, and nonambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth, without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.”

It defines “gender transition” as “the process in which an individual transitions from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to his or her biological sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from his or her biological sex, and may involve social, legal, or physical changes.”

The law states that if a physician administers cross-sex hormones or “puberty blockers” to a minor, such an act “shall be considered unprofessional conduct” and the physician “shall have his or her license to practice revoked by the appropriate licensing entity or disciplinary review board.”

It also creates a cause of action, enabling a minor who undergoes such a procedure to sue the physician or health care provider within 15 years.

The ban doesn’t apply to patients suffering from a disorder of sex development. It also bars physicians from performing transgender surgeries on prisoners.

The law sunsets in 2027 as part of a compromise with Democrats in the Missouri Senate.

Transgender interventions, often referred to by the euphemistic term “gender-affirming care,” involve “puberty blockers”—drugs such as Lupron, which the Food and Drug Administration has not approved for gender dysphoria (the persistent condition of painfully identifying with the gender that is the opposite one’s biological sex); or “cross-sex hormones” (testosterone for girls, estrogen for boys) that introduce a hormone imbalance, a condition that endocrinologists otherwise would recognize as a disease. (Endocrinologists treat the endocrine system, which uses hormones to control metabolism, reproduction, growth, and more.)

Psychiatrists, endocrinologists, neurologists, and other doctors testified in support of a Florida health agency’s rule preventing Medicaid from funding various forms of “gender-affirming care,” such as “puberty-blockers,” cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.

“Patients suffering from gender dysphoria or related issues have a right to be protected from experimental, potentially harmful treatments lacking reliable, valid, peer-reviewed, published, long-term scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness,” Dr. Paul Hruz, an endocrinology researcher and clinician at Washington University School of Medicine, wrote in a sworn affidavit.

Hruz noted that “there are no long-term, peer-reviewed published, reliable, and valid research studies” documenting the percentage of patients helped or harmed by transgender medical interventions. He also wrote that attempts to block puberty followed by cross-sex hormones not only affect fertility but also pose risks such as low bone density, “disfiguring acne, high blood pressure, weight gain, abnormal glucose tolerance, breast cancer, liver disease, thrombosis, and cardiovascular disease.”

Hruz and other doctors argue that the medical interventions often described as “gender-affirming care” are experimental and that the organizations that present standards of care supporting them—the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society—represent more a political and advocacy effort than an objective analysis supporting these alleged treatments.

*****

This article was published by Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

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House Freedom Caucus: No Security, No Funding thumbnail

House Freedom Caucus: No Security, No Funding

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By Rob Bluey

With the clock ticking closer to the Sept. 30 government funding deadline, the conservative House Freedom Caucus this week outlined its official position on Washington’s latest spending debate.

Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., a member of the Freedom Caucus, spoke to The Daily Signal about why conservatives are insisting House Republicans honor their promise to reduce government spending while also enacting three policies:

  1. Securing the border
  2. Ending the weaponization of DOJ and FBI
  3. Stopping the Defense Department‘s woke agenda

Good, who represents Virginia’s 5th District, explains what’s at stake and why conservatives should make this their priority.

Listen to the full interview [Rep. Bob Good: No Sec…] on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read a lightly edited transcript below.

Rob Bluey: Let’s start with the big question on people’s minds, which is, will the government shut down after Sept. 30? The Freedom Caucus put out a list of principles, which to most conservatives are reasonable things they expect Washington to accomplish. Can you walk us through what those are?

Good: Yes. The Freedom Caucus put out a position essentially saying we are committed to the spending cuts that were part of Limit, Save, Grow, which, as you might know, originated as Shrink Washington, Grow America.

That was a Freedom Caucus position we put out before it was largely adopted by the House, which was a reasonable bill that had significant cuts and reforms to take a significant step toward fiscal stability that was passed with 217 votes out of the House.

It was a strong Republican coalition, but as you also know, most of that was discarded or set aside or jettisoned for the terrible, what I called the “Failed Responsibility Act” that was struck between House and Senate and White House leadership, or lack thereof, perhaps you might say.

We are committed to going back to the pre-COVID spending level for nondefense discretionary that the speaker agreed to in order to become speaker back in January.

And also, as you know, after the debt ceiling caught so much criticism from conservatives—some of us in the House and then conservatives like yourself across the country—the speaker said, well, the debt ceiling levels, or of course it was an unlimited increase of debt ceiling, but the spending levels of the debt ceiling agreement, that was a ceiling, not a floor. We can go lower in the appropriations process.

So we intend to hold him to that or to use every amount of leverage that we have to do that.

>>> House Conservatives Say Any Spending Bill Must Address Border Security, DOJ Weaponization

We’re recognizing the House failed once again to do its job, and we passed one out of 12 appropriations bills primarily because we would not go along without having a total spending cut plan. In other words, we didn’t want to pass a handful of them upfront not knowing what the spending cuts were on the back end and how the whole puzzle fits together.

So we passed one … we’ve only got, I think it’s 11 legislative days when we get back, and unless we come back early—certainly I’m ready to go back early to get our work done. But if we don’t do that, the calendar’s really challenging.

So what we were saying in response to the speaker telling the conference, “Hey, maybe we need to have to do a CR, or continuing resolution,” is that if we’re going to do that, we’ve got to get a win for the American people to do it.

We can’t just kick the can down the road 30 or 60 days. And really, we think 60 would be terrible, to kick it to Dec. 1. And then the members on both sides are, “Oh, Christmas, we got to leave because of Christmas. Let’s just do an omnibus.” We’ve seen that play before, as you know.

So we’re saying we got to get a win for the American people. No. 1 would be securing the border, implementing HR 2, the bill we passed out of the House.

We also would like to attack the weaponization of federal government against its citizens and the emasculating or the weakening, or I call the wussifying, of our military at the hands of this administration.

So we’ve got to get some wins, not for the Republican Party, not for Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy or the Freedom Caucus, but for the American people in exchange for extending the time period for us to get our work done to pass the appropriations bill.

Bluey: It all seems quite reasonable. These are issues that the American people care about. We consistently see border security as one of the top concerns on the minds of not just conservatives but Americans who see it affecting their communities all across this country.

I’m glad you began with the issue of spending. You were one of the group that held out when Speaker McCarthy was running for election in January. Take us back to that moment and why it was so important to reform to the process.

Good: Well, to clarify, I was part of the 20 that was part of the 15-vote process, but I was part of that final six who never switched our vote to yes.

So I wasn’t directly involved with the negotiations or the agreement that was made by my friends who were part of the 14, but I was involved in the discussions with them, but not direct on the speaker on that. So I just want to clarify on that…..

*****

Continue reading this interview or listening to the podcast at the Daily Signal.

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A Fashion Question about Tattoos thumbnail

A Fashion Question about Tattoos

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By Craig J. Cantoni

What’s the dividing line between fashionable and unfashionable tattoos?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So is fashion.

Being neither beautiful nor fashionable, I have a burning question:  At what point do tattoos go from being fashionably attractive to being unfashionably ugly?

I need to know in case I ever decide to join the tattoo trend.

It wasn’t an important question a long time ago during my boyhood, when tattoos in my working-class neighborhood were small and confined to a bicep.  Popular ones were an American flag, or a heart with a girlfriend’s name inside, the word “Army,” or an anchor signifying service in the United States Navy.

The question grew in importance at the dawn of the twenty-first century, when tattoos became larger, spread to other parts of the body, began to be displayed by women, and migrated from the working class to the middle class and beyond.

Sleeve tattoos completely covering forearms became popular.  So did tattoos on calves.  From there they spread to hands, to thighs, to ankles, to backs, to chests, and now to necks and even faces.

At about the same time that tattoos began spreading, other bodily accouterments became popular, such as ear saucers, rings in noses, and studs in lips, noses, and cheeks.  Blue and green hair also became popular.

I’m not going to ask if nose rings are fashionable and beautiful, because even if they are, I’m not going to wear one, for two reasons:  one, I don’t want to call attention to my large Roman nose; and two, I wouldn’t know how to blow my nose with a nose ring dangling in front.  Granted, my dog might like me to wear one, because he could fantasize about hooking a leash to it and taking me for a walk.

Neck tattoos must be attractive.  What else would explain celebrities and athletes who make a hundred million dollars or more a year having them?  Clearly, they are not a turnoff to their fans.

Take the host of “My Lottery Dream House,” a popular show on HGTV.  He epitomizes the trend of tattoos propagating like kudzu.  His began small and then spread across his arms and torso.  Now, having run out of space, they have climbed like a vine to his neck.

Are people like him still deemed attractive and hip?  If not, where did his tattoos cross the line and go from stylish to unstylish?

Then there is a health question:  Is it healthy to inject ink into your skin?  I ask that as someone who used to work for a company that made ink in addition to other chemical products.  Concerned that ink was carcinogenic, the company took precautions to protect workers.

Given that many patrons of Whole Foods are tattooed, tattoos must be completely safe. After all, people shop at Whole Foods because they don’t want chemicals in their food. They certainly wouldn’t inject a chemical into their skin if it were harmful.

It sure seems as if the U.S. went into a nose dive culturally, politically, economically, and morally about the same time that tattoos began their ascent. No doubt, that’s just a coincidence and not evidence of cause and effect. Nothing for me to worry about.

I do worry, however, about not being fashionable and hip, so I’m asking you for fashion advice.  Should I get tattoos, and if so, at what point in terms of numbers, size, and location on my body would they become unfashionable and unhip?  Is there any limit?

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Powell Smacks Down Calls to Raise 2% Inflation Target: “2% Is and Will Remain our Inflation Target” thumbnail

Powell Smacks Down Calls to Raise 2% Inflation Target: “2% Is and Will Remain our Inflation Target”

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By Wolf Richter

He fretted about the re-accelerating economy flying above the “below-trend” growth required to get to 2%. “We will keep at it until the job is done.”

The most important aspect of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s speech today [8/25/23] at the Jackson Hole Symposium was his total and repeated smackdown of the folks that had either been clamoring for the Fed to raise its 2% inflation target, or had been predicting that it would raise it.

At the beginning of his longer and more nuanced speech today – and referring to his brief hammer speech last year – Powell said, “the message is the same: It is the Fed’s job to bring inflation down to our 2% goal, and we will do so.”

Amid discussing various inflation dynamics, the progress made so far, the lack of progress in some corners, and the uncertainties around it all, he showed this chart where Fed staff is forecasting that core PCE for July, to be announced on Aug 31, will re-accelerate:

And then he said: “2% is and will remain our inflation target. We are committed to achieving and sustaining a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation down to that level over time.”

“We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective,” he said. And that objective is 2%, as tracked by the core PCE price index.

He said, “12-month core inflation is still elevated, and there is substantial further ground to cover to get back to price stability,” and this “price stability” he confirmed today is 2% inflation, as tracked by the core PCE price index.

“Getting inflation sustainably back down to 2% is expected to require a period of below-trend economic growth as well as some softening in labor market conditions,” he said.

But that “below-trend economic growth” isn’t happening right now, on the contrary, the economy has re-accelerated, and he said the Fed is “attentive to signs that the economy may not be cooling as expected.” And right now it isn’t:

“So far this year, GDP growth has come in above expectations and above its longer-run trend [Q1 GDP: +2.0%, Q2 GDP +2.4%, and Q3 has started out even stronger], and recent readings on consumer spending have been especially robust. In addition, after decelerating sharply over the past 18 months, the housing sector is showing signs of picking back up.”

“Additional evidence of persistently above-trend growth could put further progress on inflation at risk and could warrant further tightening of monetary policy,” he said…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

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The Lie That Started The Covid Panic and Culpability Of Media thumbnail

The Lie That Started The Covid Panic and Culpability Of Media

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By Neland Nobel and John Ammon

Editors’ Note: After watching this disturbing but very informative video, consider if you will ever trust any information coming from the media representing (as in ‘foot soldiers’) the Democrat party and its political and corporate elites. Your questioning of any news presented from the sources included in the video below should apply to every topic that is now being heaped on American citizens every day, disrupting, ruining and setting back their lives – climate change and climate emergency, EVs, gender ideology, fair and secure elections, sex education of children, Covid variants and vaccines, DOJ and FBI, DEI, ESG, and on and on. The media has largely departed from reality and its fundamental roles of reporting facts and acting as a watchdog on government. With rare exception the media today is the 21st Century Democrat version of the 19th and 20th Century Democrat KKK, delivering equivalent doses of hate, discrimination and damage to our Republic. 

The COVID lie that started it all! pic.twitter.com/8xojEzchV5

— Matt Orfalea (@0rf) August 23, 2023

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Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid thumbnail

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

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By Bruce Bialosky

While packing for our recent trip to London, I went to our unread bookshelf – the place where we track acquired but not yet read books. I spotted The Intimidation Game written by Kimberly Strassel. Since we will be seeing Ms. Strassel in September as she releases a new book, I thought it a suitable time to read this one.

Given that it is a public policy book from 2016, I thought it might be dated.  It is completely relevant to today. The concept of the book is that the Left is using various means to suppress free speech and using the government as the means to do so.

A substantial portion of the book deals with the three-plus-year attack on the formation of perfectly legal entities that would be used to organize people to express their rights of free speech against their government and its elected representatives. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of our country and our freedoms.

I am sure you remember the sordid Tea Party affair from 2010 to 2013.  Ms. Strassel meticulously details what occurred and the lies that were told.  Yes, there was a unit in the Cincinnati IRS center responsible for processing nonprofit applications.  At the time they handled about 52,000 applications a year.  These entities fall into various categories under the IRS code 501 (c). We usually think of operations like The Salvation Army or the American Red Cross where you can make donations and they are tax deductible.  These are known as 501 (c)(3) for the subsection of the code allowing these entities to operate.  There is a myriad of other subsections for different purposes.

Entities targeted in a broad-based campaign coordinated with the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission applied under code section 501 (c) (4). One may make a contribution that is not tax-deductible, but neither is the income taxable to the entity.

The IRS (headed by the infamous Lois Lerner) created a special list where she centralized approval of certain groups (between 150 to 300) where she did not care for their politics.  Lerner is a hardcore Leftist and did not hide it in communications.  She organized the harassment of these applicants with unprecedented procedures including multiple requests for information containing hundreds of questions. Many of the questions were illegal.  Since most of the applicants were what we call “ordinary citizens” they had no clue that what was being done was unique.

Why is this so instructive? This behavior is being repeated again and again. Lerner lied to Congress. IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman lied to Congress. Obama may not have outright lied to the American people, but he certainly intentionally misled them and organized the entire scheme.  Then there were the various Democrat senators who demanded action by the IRS against these entities, then ran to microphones once the scandal broke and told of their disgust of the entire affair, led by Chuckie Schumer.  Yet no one paid a price for these illegalities.

Does this sound familiar?  The exact same thing happened with the actions of the FBI in the Russian hoax case. At least some of those FBI people have been moved out, but none went to jail. Some like Andrew McCabe are commentators on CNN and MSNBC.

When professional reporters were brought in to evaluate the government’s suppression of free speech on Twitter (as well as other social media sites), government coercion was disavowed. They were simply “suggesting.”  And again no one was fired.

Why does this continue to occur?  First and foremost, our federal government is way too large and impossible to control.  When 2024 Republican candidates speak of cutting down the government, they are attacked as hysterics by the Democrats and the legacy media.  Second, most governmental employees centered in Washington are of one political persuasion – Democrat. That is evidenced by DC suburban voting and every study of where their political money goes. They want a bigger government no matter what it accomplishes.

There could be a break here. The whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden investigation — Gary Stapley, Joseph Ziegler, and the others who are providing information — have made clear there was a cover-up at higher levels.  David Weiss, the US Attorney in charge of the case and now Special Prosecutor, is clearly lying because once the whistleblowers came forward, he gave murky answers to easy questions. At least someone has come forward to tell the truth even at the risk of their career.

These illegalities will continue unless we demand changes. People displaying improper, if not illegal, actions are paying no price.  They believe the government is more important than the people of America. Unless we make changes, you could be the next one intimidated.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

*****

This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

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Arizona News: August 30, 2023 thumbnail

Arizona News: August 30, 2023

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By The Editors

The Prickly Pear will provide current, linked articles about Arizona consistent with our Mission Statement to ‘inform, educate and advocate’. We are an Arizona based website and believe this information should be available to all of our statewide readers.

Adrian Fontes Is Attempting To Illegally Rewrite State Law Through The Elections Procedures Manual

AZ House Committee on Oversight, Accountability, and Big Tech Will Hold Hearing to Examine Katie Hobbs’  Election Interference Through Twitter

“HUGE Victory for Election Transparency,” Says Kari Lake – Lawsuit to Obtain Mail-in Ballot Signatures Is Going to Trial!

Trial Date Set In Lake’s Public Records Claim Against Richer And Maricopa County

Maricopa County Democrats’ Executive Director Resigns Amid Nepotism Controversy

Arizona Supreme Court To Hear Abortion Case

University Of Arizona Law School Dean Admits Race Remains A Factor In Admissions

The Border Report: Nearly 1.6 million ‘gotaways’ in U.S. since January 2021

Arizona House Calls On Hobbs To Recognize Responsibility For Border Security

Homeschooling Changed Our Lives For The Better – Here Are Answers To 7 Questions We Commonly Receive

Over 60 Arizona Educators Face Discipline For Sexual Behavior With Minors

Feds bust human smugglers using Snapchat to recruit juvenile drivers in Arizona

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‘Climate Crisis’ Lies Are Killing People

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By Catherine Salgado

The thoroughly mendacious “climate crisis” narrative, which has been consistently and wildly wrong for 50 years and continues to be wrong now, has turned deadly. People are dying as a result of terrible policies based off climate change hysteria.

I just reported for PJ Media on a media call where several climate experts agreed that government negligence and obsession with “climate change,” driven and justified by the media’s anti-science fearmongering on the topic, were at least partly responsible for the devastating and deadly fire in Lahaina, Maui. That fire left likely 1000 or more casualties (including an unknown number of children).

The experts said Maui was warned of the risk of wildfires, Hawaii’s governor spent millions on fighting “climate change,” and Hawaii Electric gave the Hawaiian government a $190 million plan to prevent wildfires (which the government “sat on”)…and yet there was no water to fight the fire, no preventative measures were taken ahead of time, and people were blocked from escaping. The whole thing was a disaster waiting to happen and then exacerbated either by deliberate malice or gross incompetence. In Lahaina, the climate lies drove policy-making and negligence that cost lives.

Then there is the reality of arson. The Yosemite fire last year was started by a radical climate activist and arsonist. There’s rumors of arson in the Maui fires and 79 arsonists were just arrested in Greece, which is experiencing fires that killed 20 people this week. It is unclear why these people committed arson, but one wonders if radical environmentalism was a motivation. After all, the Greek and Maui fires are being used to further the climate crisis narrative…

Fires like that put tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet there are no measures taken to prevent them. Why?

Some of the people pushing this insanity have been brainwashed into really believing that the world is about to become a burning ball of fire. Others are in it for the fame and fortune—they can make money or gain media attention by pushing climate doom (Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, for instance). Finally, there are evil people at the top, who know perfectly well it’s all a lie, but they want to weaponize climate alarmism for their own purposes. The World Economic Forum (WEF) told us to be poor for the planet and organizations and governments such as WEF, the United Nations, and the Biden regime aim to use the fake climate crisis to initiate their dystopian one world tyranny.

The globe is cooling and has been for at least eight years. CO2 from fossil fuels is too low to cause global warming. This has not been the hottest summer on record. The climate alarmists have been wrong for more than 50 years. And yet these lies continue to be used to justify destructive policy-making and active terrorism. They are deadly lies, and they have to be stopped.

*****

This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

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The Border Report: Nearly 1.6 Million ‘gotaways’ in U.S. Since January 2021

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By Bethany Blankley

Among the more than 8.6 million people who’ve illegally entered the U.S., at least nearly 1.6 million are “gotaways.”

Gotaways is the official term used by Border Patrol agents to describe foreign nationals who illegally enter the U.S. between ports of entry and don’t return to Mexico or Canada.

They don’t file asylum or other immigration-related claims – they intentionally illegally enter to avoid being caught. Many have criminal records. They often run when they are pursued by Border Patrol agents or others in law enforcement, authorities tell The Center Square. They do not want to be caught.

The majority of gotaways are single, military age men. However, they also include women and children, many who are smuggled, law enforcement officers say.

Gotaway data represents the best guess of agents who report the number of people they believe to be gotaways, agents have explained to The Center Square. Agents report gotaways based on images of people caught on cameras set up by Border Patrol, ranchers or private property owners. Agents also report gotaways after they “cut sign,” a term agents use to track people in the brush. They look for shoe or boot marks or areas wiped clean to hide them, broken limbs of trees or bushes, garbage and clothes left on the ground, among other signs to determine how many people might have come through. Based on this and other factors, agents report who and how many they believe are “known, reported gotaways.”

The data is considered a “best estimate,” agents have explained to The Center Square. It doesn’t adequately portray how many foreign nationals illegally enter because they simply don’t know how many there are. The data excludes the unknown number coming through who are undetected, and therefore, aren’t reported.

The Center Square has been reporting preliminary gotaway data every month received from a Border Patrol agent who accesses an internal U.S. Border Patrol database. The preliminary data excludes Office of Field Operation data. The agent provides the data on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Because the data doesn’t include OFO [Office of Field Operations] data, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection releases its official apprehension data, usually two weeks after The Center Square reports preliminary data, the total is always higher because it includes the OFO data. CBP does not publicly report gotaway data.

Even the preliminary data, though, is an estimate because it goes through a “reconciliation” process, meaning it’s changed by a sector chief, a Border Patrol agent told The Center Square. After agents report their findings, for a range of reasons, sector chiefs change them, and in some Texas sectors, the agent said, gotaway numbers don’t make sense. Some sectors are reporting significantly lower gotaway data than they did previously but they still have a high volume of foot traffic.

Former Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz acknowledged the discrepancy with how gotaway data is reported when he testified before Congress, saying gotaway data is underreported by between 10% to 20%.

When adding 6,547,514 official CBP total national apprehensions and confirmed 1,454,805 gotaways from January 2021 through April 2023, previously reported by The Center Square, with additional three months of data the numbers are the highest they’ve been in U.S. history.

In May, more than 240,000 illegal border crossers were reported, including at least 60,327 gotaways. In June, at least 175,000 illegal border crossers were reported, including 50,000 gotaways. In July, at least 200,500 illegal border crossers were reported including 27,000 gotaways.

Combined, illegal border crossers reported since January 2021 total at least 8,617,819, greater than the estimated individual populations of 38 U.S. states. They total more than all U.S. cities with the exception of New York City, all U.S. counties with the exception of Los Angeles County, and the populations of over 120 countries.

In fiscal 2021, there were at least 308,655 known, reported gotaways. In fiscal 2022, 606,150; in fiscal 2023 at least 540,000 as of April, The Center Square has previously reported. Adding May, June, and July numbers, they total at least 677,327.

Combined, known, reported gotaways total at least 1,592,132, greater than the individual populations of 11 states.

Below is a glimpse into what gotaways look like who were caught on camera primarily in Terrell County in the Big Bend Sector of Texas.

Border Patrol agents, law enforcement officers, Homeland Security – the agency tasked with defending the homeland – have no idea who or where these gotaways are. They also have no idea how many came through who weren’t captured on camera.

*****

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Racism in America Today

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By Thomas D. Klingenstein

The woke lie that racism has gotten worse needs to be called out.

For many years, racism in America has been, to a very significant degree, a manufactured problem. When we speak about race, whether we admit it or not—and we usually don’t—we mean blacks. Black grievance largely ginned up, provides the fuel for the woke regime.

The woke Leftists, who lead the Democrats around by a nose ring, want to destroy America. We love America; the woke hate America.

The woke accusation that “America is systemically racist” is manifest nonsense. Wokeism is anti-white.

We owe individual black citizens—as we owe all citizens—fellowship and help when deserving. But to blacks as a group we owe nothing, just as no group is owed anything, nor is any individual owed anything simply by being part of a group.

The woke Left only incidentally wants to give blacks a hand up; their main goal is power. Outcome differences between blacks and others are not due to racism but to bad decisions on the part of black individuals.

As I just said, racism in America today is, to a very significant degree, a manufactured problem, crafted by woke leftists in order to overthrow the American way of life. They claim there exists an intolerable, all-pervasive system of white oppression. They call this “systemic racism,” by which they mean that racism is embedded into every nook and cranny of America life: its institutions, values, customs, and language. If you disagree, they cancel you. They may even inflict violence.

The woke tell us that racism has gotten worse, but this is drivel. As everyone can plainly see, the less actual racism there is in America, the more of it the woke Left insists it sees.

The charge of systemic racism is a propaganda trick intended to: Exploit our white guilt, demoralize us, and give moral cover to an anti-American, immoral revolution. This is no longer the well-intended effort of old-school liberals to improve America, but the evil scheme of woke revolutionaries to destroy it.

The woke Left accuses America of being “systemically racist” not because it’s true, nor even because they think it’s true, but because it is the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. After all, if they can convince us that the American way of life really is systemically racist—that is, evil—then we should throw it out.

Of course, America has sinned. Show me a country that hasn’t. The fact is, America is as good as it gets.

To the woke Left I say, “If you want to destroy America, then we will fight you and defeat you. America is not yours to destroy.”

The primary goal of the woke regime is group outcome equality. Most Americans, on the other hand, believe society’s goal should be merit. These two goals are utterly irreconcilable. You can’t offer admission to college, medical school, law school, flight training, or anything else according to race and other quotas and, at the same time, offer admission according to merit. It’s one or the other: merit or group quotas.

These irreconcilable goals make this struggle a war. It is, thankfully, a cold war, and we should hope it remains cold. But we should also not lose sight of the fact that the woke Left seeks total victory. Most Americans, and virtually all politicians, fail to notice. You cannot win a war if you don’t know you are in one.

Blacks commit more than 50 percent of the violent crime in America; yet are only about 13 percent of the population. The woke tell us this is due to racism, but Americans know better. We know that racism does not cause more crime, or out-of-wedlock births, or lower academic achievement. We know that patriotism, hard work, personal responsibility, secure borders, and moral virtue are not, as the woke Left contends, racist ideals. Rather, they are the means to a happy, free, and prosperous nation.

We know that by and large, it is not racism but culture that causes outcome differences. But the woke make it very difficult for the rest of us to say it, because if it’s culture that explains outcome differences then the blame rests not on whites but on blacks.

If differences in outcome persist, as they will if we remain on the present course, it is near certain the woke leftists will ban the measurement of the relevant statistics—crime rates for example. Naturally, these differences will not disappear just because we stop measuring them. It’s like a young child who puts her hands over eyes, believing the reality in front of her disappears.

The woke say they want to liberate black Americans; the truth is mostly they want to keep blacks on their knees. Why? To justify their ongoing revolution. If blacks are on their knees, then the need for radical reform never ends. The effect of this on actual black communities is disastrous. The woke Left wants to destroy the traditional mother-father family; yet such families are just what struggling black Americans need most. The woke openly discourage black Americans from joining the American way of life, teaching them that “white” values are all designed to oppress blacks.

The woke leftists call for more political programs, including reparations, to reduce outcome differences, even though we know after 60 years and trillions of dollars that such programs only make things worse.

When the woke are pressuring us to continue to adopt such programs we must say: “We will not surrender to your extortion.” Woke mayors in big cities rope off violent neighborhoods, make the police back off, and let criminal blacks shoot each other. Predictably, innocent blacks suffer the most. This is callous indifference of a high order.

The woke leftists assault our history: they make it a story of nonstop, hateful racist oppression to fan the flames of resentment. At the same time, their revisionist so-called “history” overstates black accomplishments to give self-esteem to black students. But no one, least of all blacks, is fooled. We all know genuine self-esteem can only be earned.

When we teach about America to our children of any race, we must keep in mind that one day we may need them to cross a foreign beach while exposed to enemy bullets raining down on them from above. For that, our children must learn to love and cherish their country.

The woke tell young black Americans they cannot succeed in America because there is so much racism. This is perhaps the cruelest part of the woke Left’s agenda: to actively discourage children from pursuing a life of moral, spiritual, and cultural excellence.

If we cannot say these things, then we’re abandoning the civilization that we have a duty to carry forward, a duty imposed by our glorious past, which includes the story of the many men who died under that hail of bullets from above while crossing exposed beaches at Normandy.

In order to stay in power, the woke leftists must continually remind white Americans how racist they are. So, every year or so there is a big racial incident—some invented, some not. The case of Jussie Smollett is an example of the invented kind. An actual incident was that of George Floyd. What supposedly justified the Floyd riots was based on three lies piled on top of each other: Floyd’s death was the work of a racist cop, white police looking to kill blacks, and America is racist.

In this case, as with all others, most of us confessed our sins of racism and announced in the most earnest of tones that at long last we need an honest reckoning with our racist past. And this time we really mean it. Enough already.

To my fellow Americans, I say, “I cannot prove to you that America is not racist. But perhaps you can prove it to me. Are you racist? Your friends, neighbors, churches, and police forces? Is the traditional mother/father family racist? A country with borders? How about patriotism, hard work, colorblindness, punctuality, and responsibility?” Are these racist? The answers to these questions, even by most Democrats, will almost always be “no.”

We must not buckle when they call us “racist.” If they call you “racist” tell them that is “horse manure.” Don’t debate them. They don’t want to debate; they want to criminalize debate.

Part of convincing us that we are racist requires that we swallow one of the Biden Administration’s biggest lies: America is about to be run over by white supremacists. Now, do you know a single white supremacist in a position of power in America? Indeed, do you know a single white supremacist anywhere? I don’t, and I bet neither do you. But beware: the woke Left will take every opportunity to bait Americans into acts the wokes can characterize as the work of white supremacists. And then crush them.

But the woke leftists are playing with fire. It’s clear to all who have eyes to see that wokeism is an attack on white males. But white males are sick and tired of the trillions being spent on civil rights to negative effect. Sick and tired as well of shakedown artists like Al Sharpton and Ibram Kendi. Of having their values mocked, and of being endlessly accused of “racism” and “white privilege,” as they see their children being taught that they are white oppressors and America is evil. This is an explosive combination.

Over our history we have vanquished many enemies, most notably the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. But we are losing the peace. We have allowed totalitarianism to be imposed from within.

Our republic was formally birthed in 1776, but it was thousands of years in the making. Our founders stood on the shoulders of many who had preceded them. Colorblindness; freedom of speech, conscience, and association; a government of laws, not of men; separation of church and state; a military subject to civil authority; the nation-state to name just a handful—these are monuments to moral and political wisdom that took centuries to be achieved.

But they are being ripped apart by fanatics who believe that the mere accusation of “systemic racism” will bring us to our knees. If we don’t fight back, we will be brought to our knees. Thousands of years of building, possibly gone in a single generation.

Fortunately, there are many patriotic Americans, Democrats as well as Republicans, who know that America is a gift to the world. There are many who know that America was built not on racism, but in spite of it. There are many who cherish America’s traditions and are grateful to have inherited them.

There are many who understand that our challenge today was Lincoln’s challenge: increased devotion to the principles of the founding. They know that these principles are the best antidote to racism. And they know as well that America fights for these principles on behalf of people everywhere.

Who will support the many? I will. And I am confident you will. We rightly love America; the woke leftists hate it, but they have the upper hand. It’s that simple and that dangerous. Thank you very much.

*****

This article was published by American Mind and is reproduced with permission.  This originally was a speech given by the author to the National Republican Women’s Club.

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Chris Wallace Performs Election Interference

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By Neland Nobel

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Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

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1080 1920 Neland Nobel 2023-08-27 07:41:10Chris Wallace Performs Election Interference

The Conservative Dilemma Over UkraineRacism in America Today

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The Conservative Dilemma Over Ukraine

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By Neland Nobel

It is pretty clear that the Conservative Movement is splintering over the policies currently espoused over the support of Ukraine.  The most recent Republican Presidential Primary Debate made this even more clear and the differences starker.

Mainstream Conservatives like the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal love Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence, while the more populist wing of Trump and Ramaswamy seems opposed to further and continued intervention in Ukraine.  The American Conservative takes a different point of view than that of the WSJ.

More “conservative-populist” publications question what we are doing in Ukraine and complain there seems no coherent policy that could lead to victory and really no help from Europe.  Instead, we seem bogged down in almost World War I trench warfare, while the US pays almost all the expense and Ukrainians are dying at a rate clearly that is unsustainable.  The US is running down vital military stocks without the industrial capacity to replace them, leaving us even more vulnerable to China and its aggressive expansion in Asia.

Many suggest China is the greater threat and that Russia, which has a GDP smaller than Texas, is not.  Further, it is felt our very policy is pushing China and Russia together.  Russia has massive resources; China has the advanced technology and wealth to make a formidable adversary that we really don’t want to fight.

Cynics fear our ineffective efforts will hand the US another staggering defeat and Putin and Xi a major victory.  Biden and the Democrats want to resist but really don’t want to wage a war for victory.  As Barry Goldwater once wrote, “Why Not Victory?”  Or, “Why Get Involved” if you have no plan for victory?  But then again, what would victory look like? Occupy Russia or remake the Russian government?

Our current policy seems to be: exhaust Russia and they will stop. But how exhausted are the Ukrainians?  Will Russia be a better player on the international stage if Putin can be overthrown? It is certainly true they are paying a high price, but so are the Ukrainians. If it comes down to a war of attrition, Russia has the advantage.

Exhausting Russia has always proven problematic. Both Hitler and Napoleon can tell us. Her unfortunate citizens have often borne burdens that would never be tolerated in the West.  Simply the logistical lines for conflict in Russia are monumental. Yet endless arms support seems to be the essence of the current policy with no plan to really disrupt the Russian effort.  Instead, it is to attempt to grind them down once their forces are in the Ukraine itself.

In that regard, we recommend the recent article Have We Forgotten he Russian Way of War by the military historian Victor Davis Hanson.

Regime change, as we have learned in the past, can be hazardous.  We might regret what we wish for. There are significant limitations to what we can do in Russia.

Just in terms of the correlation of forces, how can Ukraine prevail against such a much larger country, despite their admirable bravery?  They have no capacity to really go into Russia and disrupt both the production and transportation of war material. Token drone strikes on Moscow suburbs grab headlines but the vaunted “spring offensive” has not gone anywhere let alone deep into Russia. Reports are the Ukrainians have suffered terrible losses. With China supporting Russia, it would appear they can grind Ukraine down in an extended war of attrition.

Russia is a dying power, demographically speaking but dying empires like toothless bears become quite dangerous.  We are dealing with a nuclear power.  Are we willing to risk nuclear war? Conservatives fear that we don’t have the money, and are too dependent on China for our basic production to fight a massive conventional war, and Progressives will not let us mine the minerals or extract the energy necessary to fight a major conventional war. Does that make a nuclear war more likely as both sides are limited in their stamina?

NATO is proving as feckless as ever.  NATO members fail even to meet their percentage of GDP commitments to defense, the US has poured in about $130 billion or so with maybe another $40 billion on the way.  The NATO member other than the US that has contributed the most is the UK at $4 billion.  The rich Germans have decided on $3 billion of additional aid, but complaints are they have been very slow in delivery.  Still, these amounts are a tiny fraction of what US aid has been.

This war was supposed to stop the threat of Russian expansion into Europe. If that is truly the threat, why are the Germans spending most of their money at sidewalk cafes and spa visits?  And if that were truly the case, why did the Germans make themselves so dependent on Russian gas and adopt such unrealistic energy policies?

In addition, the aid is not always integrated.  It is hard to cross-train crews and mechanics on US Abrams tanks, and German Leopard Tanks.  We have seen a steady escalation (perhaps too slow and hesitant) of updated US 155mm artillery, the rocket artillery MARS, Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles, cluster bombs, drones, and now the supposed delivery of F-16. If this conflict is a threat to all of Europe, why the slow ramp-up? Because we don’t really want to fight the Russians in a massive land war. If so, what do we think is the end game?

Conservatives should support the territorial integrity of other nations that have been invaded by an aggressor. Aggression that is allowed to stand usually leads to additional aggression.  That is even more problematic when we have Putin attempting to reconstitute the old Soviet Empire.

Russia does have strategic interests in Ukraine, and so does Poland, which used to rule much of western Ukraine.

However, the nature of the support is always the issue. Clearly, the nation is weary of wars of intervention that lead nowhere and it is not in our national interests to go abroad seeking monsters to destroy, to paraphrase John Quincy Adams.  Intervention has to be in the vital national interests of this country and there has to be a high probability of victory.

Are we the international policeman to protect all those that are invaded by others? Is military intervention the next step beyond military aid?

Conservatives have understood this limitation and thus have pursued “peace through strength”. That means a strong military, and a strong military ethic, are the best deterrent to aggressors because they should know we have both the will and the means to stop them.

Progressives on the other hand, generally despise the military and its unique warrior ethic and would prefer to put domestic social welfare policies and sex role experimentation in front of the nation’s defense. They want a smaller military, a military devoted to promoting social experiments rather than maximum combat effectiveness, yet they want constant intervention, especially if it is not in our interest but rather that of the beloved “international community.”

They seem to want a weak military that nevertheless is always at war somewhere, with someone over some international cause that may or may not be in the nation’s strategic interests.

Wilsonian foreign policy has gotten the nation into a lot of wars, some of which made matters worse, some did some good, and many ended in stalemates with fundamental issues unresolved to this day.  That plus wild social spending has got the nation dangerously deep in debt.  Their policies of managed trade and regulation, have also hollowed out the industrial capacity of the nation to pursue war.

Often recent wars do not call for national sacrifice.  Poor boys from rural areas do the fighting, our “allies” largely sit on the sidelines, and the wars do not pursue the policy of victory.  Taxes are not raised to pay for the war but financed through debt issuance and currency debasement. Consumers are not to be disturbed by national sacrifice.  The nation has been at war of some kind, or administering occupation, since Gulf War I.

That’s almost 30 years of intermittent war, with no national mobilization that disturbs our materialistic tranquility.  This seems to have reduced the negative impact of war on the greater polity. We have learned to tolerate almost a constant state of war.

Usually, recent wars are fought to force negotiations, which result in agreements that are not honored, and the US is forced eventually to pull out after great sacrifice of blood and treasure without a victory that will stand. Victory is not the goal; international conferences are the goal. Likely our adversaries have taken note.

A great example was the war in Vietnam.  Most recent scholarship now agrees that militarily, even with all the restrictions, the US was winning.  The war was lost at home, largely due to the efforts of Liberals and Progressives.  The bombing was turned on and off as a carrot and stick to encourage negotiations, only to have those treaties violated and the Democrat Congress walking away from the commitments we had made to bring about the peace.

In Afghanistan, we didn’t even bother with a treaty, we just pulled out, leaving billions of equipment and thousands of allies behind.

We have also engaged in “nation-building”, largely in the Middle East, under the false assumption that all cultures can and should support our notions of liberty.  In recent cases, this was encouraged by our military and intelligence agencies based on bogus data about “weapons of mass destruction.”

You can certainly understand why Conservatives are wary of another war, especially a land war in Eastern Europe, pitting the US against Russia and China.  Not only could it be a massive war, we are talking about war with two nuclear powers.  Yet our involvement seems to be getting deeper and deeper.

However, we should not oppose the policies of Democrats simply because we disagree with them on so many other matters.

The argument that we should put troops on the Southern Border before further commitment to Ukraine is a bogus argument.  We can secure the border by enforcing existing laws and still oppose foreign aggressors. President Eisenhower kept a secure border while ramping up the military to fight the Cold War.  We can too, but it requires the Democrats to cease their open-border policies, which they refuse to do.

The question really is, are we willing to go to war, maybe nuclear war, over the eastern part of Ukraine?  If the answer is yes, we better get on a war footing pronto.  If not, what the heck are we doing there?

Making the commitment to Ukraine is made even more difficult because of two further issues. Ukraine has long been corrupt and undemocratic, not really worthy of support on those terms.  Better than Putin to be sure, but not exactly like helping the Czech Republic or Denmark either. The corrupt ties between their government and our own President don’t help. 

The Biden’s are deeply involved in shaking down the Ukrainians, the Romanians, Russian oligarchs, and the Chinese. The corruption and depravity of this Administration make supporting Ukraine even more difficult. Their corruption is beyond a scale ever seen before, even beyond the Clinton Foundation.

With our own government so corrupt, why should a young man risk his life in the military today, especially since as an organization it has been turned into an experiment in transgenderism? It is almost as if retiring generals should now have their second career going to Disney rather than General Dynamics.

The other problem is from what legal structure did our commitment to Ukraine spring?  It is supposedly from the Budapest Memorandum, wherein Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal for the commitment of the West to protect Ukrainian territorial interests. Below is the memorandum:

Ukraine: The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 – The following is the text of the Memorandum on Security Assurances, known as the Budapest Memorandum, in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed Dec. 5, 1994. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Welcoming the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a nonnuclear-weapon State, Taking into account the commitment of Ukraine to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time, Noting the changes in the world-wide security situation, including the end of the Cold War, which have brought about conditions for deep reductions in nuclear forces. Confirm the following: 1. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE [Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe] Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine. 2. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. 3. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind. 4. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used. 5. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland reaffirm, in the case of the Ukraine, their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state. 6. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will consult in the event a situation arises which raises a question concerning these commitments. This Memorandum will become applicable upon signature. Signed in four copies having equal validity in the English, Russian, and Ukrainian languages.

Note that the UK, Northern Ireland (glad to have them aboard), the US, and Russia were the signatories.  Special attention should be given the subsection 4, which states what happens if the territorial integrity of Ukraine is violated.

The memorandum as such binds parties to seek UN help if there is a violation. It was not a treaty ratified by the Senate. But the hammer in this document is to take the problem to the UN, which is dominated by Russia and China, and their Third World supporters.

This is a pretty thin reed to support our intervention in the dispute. That appears to be our legal commitment.  What about our moral commitment? Can we right every foreign injustice with arms?

The only real justification is it must be in the vital national security interests of the US and backed up by a strategy that has a high probability of success.

In the movie Jerry Maguire, the punch line was “Show Me The Money!”  We need someone to clearly “show us the national interest” here.  After all, it was Biden himself who said publicly he would not oppose Russia if they did not take more than a bit off the Eastern part of Ukraine.

“Russia will be held accountable if it invades – and it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and what to not do, et cetera. But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing … it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine.”

Do you get the feeling there is not a very strong legal or strategic case being made here?

What did the President mean about a “minor incursion?  If he was drawing a line where was it?  It sounded at the time more like an invitation.

Likely Biden does not know where “the line” is, nor did Putin.

Biden did not make a strong case for our initial intervention.  Now we seem to keep intervening because we intervened.

Indeed, there may be a strong and consistent case to be made but we are not hearing it. Not only does the case have to be made for our intervention, but we need a clear strategy with achievable goals. And we should not continue to bear this cost so the Europeans can maintain their welfare state and energy fantasies.

Fighting a war with our last dollar with the last lives of Ukrainians with no end in sight just to “wear down the Russians” does not seem like like a viable strategy.

If you can’t define victory, then it will be hard to achieve.

By all means, let us continue the debate.

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As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

Offshore Wind Is Neither Clean, Nor Green And Doesn’t Cut CO2 Emissions thumbnail

Offshore Wind Is Neither Clean, Nor Green And Doesn’t Cut CO2 Emissions

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By Craig Rucker

America is preparing to spend trillions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars to install thousands of offshore wind turbines – for illusory benefits.

Advocates claim offshore wind energy is clean and sustainable. Wind itself certainly is, but that doesn’t mean getting energy from wind is.

Relying on the wind just to provide electricity to power New York state on a hot summer day would require 30,000 megawatts. That means 2,500 Haliade-X 12 MW offshore turbines and all the materials that go into them. Powering the entire U.S. would require a-100 times more than that.

These numbers are huge, but the situation is actually much worse.

This is because offshore turbines generate less than 40% of their “rated capacity.” Why? Because often there’s no wind at all for hours or days at a time. This requires a lot of extra capacity, which means many more windmills will have to be erected to charge millions of huge batteries, to ensure stable, reliable electricity supplies.

Once constructed, those turbines would hardly be earth-or human-friendly, either. They would severely impact aviation, shipping, fishing, submarines, and whales. They’re hardly benign power sources.

“But,” say, wind proponents, “wind energy is our salvation because it will cut down on CO2 emissions and protect us from the greatest threat to Mother Earth – global warming!”

Sounds reasonable … at least to those who suffer from climate anxiety. But not so fast.

A new study by energy analyst David Wojick devastates this repeatedly invoked justification for offshore wind. His report, “How Offshore Wind Drives Up Global Carbon Emissions,” explains why adding offshore wind to our energy mix “will likely increase global CO2 emissions.”

First, notes Wojick, any local CO2 reduction from offshore wind turbines will be small, because intermittent winds force gas-fired backup power plants we rely on now into up-and-down generation mode, hour after hour, day after day, and remain in standby mode otherwise. That highly inefficient arrangement burns excess fuel and emits excess CO2.

Second, building huge offshore wind facilities requires mining, processing, smelting, fabrication, installation, repair, replacement, decommissioning, landfilling – and transportation every step of the way. Almost everything up to installation is increasingly done overseas, nearly 100% with fossil fuels and few emission controls.

That’s because the U.S. sets much higher standards than in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for mining permits, coal and gas use, environmental protection, workplace safety, wages, and human rights.

Dr. Wojick reviews New Jersey’s plan for 11,000 MW of offshore wind power. That’s if the electricity turbines could generate if the wind blows 24/7, instead of the more likely one-third of the time annually. But that “nameplate capacity” would require 917 Haliade-X or 1,834 6 MW turbines, assuming coastal residents don’t veto them.

Suppose the 6 MW behemoths utilize monopile towers some 30 feet in diameter and 300 feet long, fixed to the seafloor and used to support the rotor and three 300-foot blades. Each tower would weigh around 2,500 tons before being filled with almost 15,000 tons of concrete.

Making steel and cement for such monstrosities, Wojick notes would require enormous amounts of energy, resulting in extensive CO2 emissions. Just producing those materials would cause about 14,000 tons of CO2 per monopile.

That means every 1,000 monopiles would result in 14,000,000 tons of CO2 just for the steel and concrete – not including the other wind turbine and electricity transmission components.

None of that includes materials for the gas-fired generators or millions of battery modules that would be needed to stabilize New Jersey’s electrical grid and back up turbines every time the wind dies down or gets so strong during storms that turbines must be idled.

In addition, a no-fossil fuels economy would require electricity generation, electric vehicles, home heating, water heating, and cooking – all dependent on wind (and solar) power – and batteries that must be charged constantly by those same sources.

That means today’s electricity requirements – and raw materials demands – would have to be doubled or tripled to run a Net Zero society.

Those clamoring about a “climate crisis” maintain it’s a global problem. Therefore, any proposed solution should thoroughly and carefully examine raw material requirements, mining needs, costs, and global benefits, all through landfilling turbine blades and other non-recyclable components.

Dr. Wojick’s study exposes the frightening fact that an honest, complete analysis of offshore wind costs and benefits, including purported atmospheric CO2 reductions, has never even been attempted.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and is reproduced with permission.

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