Deconstructing

After hearing Steve Bannon's "deconstruction of the administrative state" message at CPAC last night I put this together and sent to Customink to get printed on a long sleeve black T-shirt... I am going to be wearing that message. That is job one...

HOW THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE THREATENS OUR LIBERTY
John Hinderaker

The administrative state is the #1 threat to our freedom, a fact which no one knows better than our friend Howard Root. Howard was the founder and CEO of Vascular Solutions, Inc., a successful medical products company that was set up as a victim by Barack Obama’s hyper-politicized Department of Justice. For five years, Obama’s DOJ persecuted and harassed Howard and his company with bogus claims. Thankfully, Howard Root had both the financial resources and, more important, the courage–he was facing prison time–to stand up to the DOJ’s bullies.

Ultimately, a jury acquitted Howard and Vascular Solutions on all charges. One of the jurors wrote Howard to say that what the government tried to do to him was a disgrace. Still, Howard had to leave the medical products industry, as he knew that he could continue to be a target of vengeful prosecutors, to the detriment of the company that he had led since its founding. Last month, he sold Vascular Solutions.

Howard has written a book about his ordeal called Cardiac Arrest: Five Heart-Stopping Years as a CEO On the Feds’ Hit-List. The book is sensational: not just readable but gripping, even though it deals largely with legal proceedings. Trust me: if you read Cardiac Arrest to the end, you will be on your feet, cheering for Howard Root.

Conundrum

Conundrum
Made available by Bob Dunn

Free people are not equal.  Equal people are not free.
(Think this one over and over?) Makes sense!   
  

The definition of the word Conundrum is something that is puzzling or confusing.
Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America :

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.

3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government   

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.

5.  The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.   

6.  They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

Think  about it!  And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the USA in the 21st Century.  Makes you wonder who is doing the math.


These  three, short sentences tell you a lot about the direction of our current 
government and cultural environment:
1. We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.   
 Funny  how that works.  And here's another one worth considering?
2.  Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money. But  we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money !  What's  interesting is the first group "worked for" their money, but the second didn't.  Think  about it.....and Last but not least :   

3.  Why are we cutting benefits for our veterans, no pay raises for our military and cutting our army to a level lower than before WWII, but  we are not stopping the payments or benefits to illegal aliens. 
  
Am I the only one missing something?

"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools."............Plato

Betsy DeVos v. the Education Monopolists

Who doesn't believe that our education system needs immediate improvement.

Maybe competition would be part of a solution.

Betsy DeVos v. the Education Monopolists
Establishment critics try to pound Trump’s education secretary into submission.
Larry Sand

During her Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was attacked in every way imaginable. She was called names. Her intelligence, commitment, and religiosity were called into question. “In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America,” seethed American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. Chicago Teachers Union boss Karen Lewis referred to DeVos as a “nightmare.” Speaking a day before the confirmation vote, Minnesota senator Al Franken pointed out DeVos’s supposed lack of experience in the field, insisting that education secretary is “not a job for amateurs.”

The vitriol hasn’t abated since DeVos was confirmed on February 7, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking a 50-50 tie. Weingarten proclaimed DeVos’s confirmation “a sad day for children.” National Education Association leader Lily Eskelsen Garcia was defiant. “There will be no relationship with Betsy DeVos,” she insisted. California Teacher Association capo Eric Heins referred to the nomination as “a blow to our nation.” Filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted, “The Senate Republicans have just sent a big FU to the school children of America. Even the worst countries don’t sh*t on their own kids.” And most delirious of all, Vanity Fair film critic Richard Lawson tweeted, “Betsy DeVos’s policies will kill children. That is not an exaggeration in any sense.”

The viciousness toward DeVos is animated by several things: she is rich, a Christian, a Republican, and, worst of all, a school-choice supporter. As chairman of the American Federation of Children, she has devoted much of her adult life trying to provide children with the best possible education, whether via a private school, home school, charter, or traditional public school. This drives the public-school monopolists crazy, as it hints at an alternative to the nineteenth-century, one-size-fits-all education model they control.

“[DeVos’s] concentration on charter schools and vouchers . . . raises the question of whether or not she fully appreciates that the Secretary of Education’s primary focus must be on helping states and communities, parents, teachers, school board members, and administrators strengthen our public schools,” commented Maine senator Susan Collins, one of two Republicans who voted against DeVos. Collins is wrong. The Department of Education’s mission is, simply, “to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the nation.” The department has no special brief to promote public schools. Its sole focus is on improving education outcomes.

What those who cling to the education status quo don’t understand—or won’t acknowledge—is that Secretary DeVos isn’t an absolute monarch ruling over a vast national education empire. In fact, the great majority of U.S. education policy and financing is handled at the state and local levels. Fordham Institute president Mike Petrilli points out that the education secretary’s job is to “work with members of Congress and governors, to understand how a bill becomes a law, to provide moral support to reformers as they fight it out in the states and at the local level.” Being an outsider makes DeVos an especially good pick. “The strength of Secretary DeVos’s appointment is that she brings strong independent leadership to American education,” observes National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood. “She will not be steered by organized labor or by the higher education establishment. This means that we have the opportunity for real reform.”

While the establishmentarians are choice-phobic, parents aren’t. In fact, school choice is popular. A recent EdChoice survey revealed that most American parents aren’t getting the educational options they want. When asked about their preferences, 41 percent of parents said that they prefer a private school; 28 percent, a public district school; 17 percent, a charter school; 11 percent, home school. But as things stand now, 83 percent of students attend traditional public schools.

Despite the monopolists’ panic, school choice won’t kill off public schools; they’ll just have to try harder to hold on to their customers. In fact, as EdChoice’s Greg Forster has shown, vouchers make public education better. According to Forster, out of 33 studies examining the effects on public schools where private-school options exist, 31 showed an improvement in public schools and one study showed no effect. Only one study revealed a negative effect on public-school students. I’ll take 31 to 1 any day.

Larry Sand, a retired teacher, is president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network and a contributor to City Journal’s book, The Beholden State: California’s Lost Promise and How to Recapture It.

Confirmation HP... under load!

Confirmation HP... under load!

Stuart Smalley, Smaller Than Ever

Stuart Smalley aka Al Frankin

Stuart Smalley, Smaller Than Ever 

 Bill O'Reilly

Franken complains that Betsy DeVos is inexperienced and unqualified. He insisted, 'It's not a job for amateurs who don't know the first thing about education.' That's almost as rich as Al Franken himself. 

Senator Al Franken, who once played the character Stuart Smalley in a previous career for which he was eminently more qualified, attended the absolute best and most expensive private school in Minnesota. Current tuition: About $30,000. Good for him, his parents could afford it and wanted the very best for their son.

Franken's own children attended one of the finest and most expensive schools in Manhattan. Current tuition: Well over $40,000. Good for them, their very wealthy father could afford it and wanted the very best for his kids.

But now Al Franken is standing, George Wallace-like, at the doors to private schools like those, essentially telling poor children they are not welcome. No, he isn't literally blocking the entrance, but in effect that's what Democrats tried to do when they unanimously voted against the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education.

The left despises DeVos for various reasons, not least of which because she is an extremely wealthy woman. You'll rarely see her name in the New York Times or Washington Post without the adjective 'billionaire.' Even more egregious is the fact that Secretary DeVos poses an existential threat to the teachers' unions whose cash, extracted involuntarily from the rank-and-file, is the lifeblood of the modern Democratic Party.

Franken himself has received something like $150,000 from teachers' unions and their affiliates. Put another way, that's almost enough for four years at his kids' posh school. 

My comments...

This the same guy that launched Kerry's presidential campaign in NYC's Central Park by using the microphone and leading a 10 minute "f__k George Bush, f__k George Bush f__k George Bush............." Then handed the mic to Kerry to make his presidential candidacy launch speech.... too cool for school.

Also, the guy that lost the Minnesota Senatorial election and then it was revealed that a bag of mostly Frankin ballots were found in the truck of a car several days after the election... must have taken a couple of days to forge those ballots. BH

When Normalcy Is Revolution

When Normalcy Is Revolution

Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

Trump’s often unorthodox style shouldn’t be confused with his otherwise practical and mostly centrist agenda.

By 2008, America was politically split nearly 50/50 as it had been in 2000 and 2004. The Democrats took a gamble and nominated Barack Obama, who became the first young, Northern, liberal president since John F. Kennedy narrowly won in 1960.

Democrats had believed that the unique racial heritage, youth, and rhetorical skills of Obama would help him avoid the fate of previous failed Northern liberal candidates Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry. Given 21st-century demography, Democrats rejected the conventional wisdom that only a conservative Democrat with a Southern accent could win the popular vote (e.g., Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore).

Moreover, Obama mostly ran on pretty normal Democratic policies rather than a hard-left agenda. His platform included opposition to gay marriage, promises to balance the budget, and a bipartisan foreign policy.

Instead, what followed was a veritable “hope and change” revolution not seen since the 1930s. Obama pursued a staunchly progressive agenda — one that went well beyond the relatively centrist policies upon which he had campaigned. The media cheered and signed on. 

Soon, the border effectively was left open. Pen-and-phone executive orders offered immigrant amnesties. The Senate was bypassed on a treaty with Iran and an intervention in Libya.

Political correctness under the Obama administration led to euphemisms that no longer reflected reality. 

Poorly conceived reset policy with Russia and a pivot to Asia both failed. The Middle East was aflame.

The Iran deal was sold through an echo chamber of deliberate misrepresentations.

The national debt nearly doubled during Obama’s two terms. Overregulation, higher taxes, near-zero interest rates, and the scapegoating of big businesses slowed economic recovery. Economic growth never reached 3 percent in any year of the Obama presidency — the first time that had happened since Herbert Hoover’s presidency.

A revolutionary federal absorption of health care failed to fulfill Obama’s promises and soon proved unviable.

Culturally, the iconic symbols of the Obama revolution were the “you didn’t build that” approach to businesses and an assumption that race/class/gender would forever drive American politics, favorably so for the Democrats.

Then, Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat and the election of outsider Donald Trump sealed the fate of the Obama Revolution.

For all the hysteria over the bluntness of the mercurial Trump, his agenda marks a return to what used to be seen as fairly normal, as the U.S. goes from hard left back to the populist center.

Trump promises not just to reverse almost immediately all of Obama’s policies, but to do so in a pragmatic fashion that does not seem to be guided by any orthodox or consistently conservative ideology.

Trade deals and jobs are Trump’s obsessions — mostly for the benefit of blue-collar America. In normal times, Trumpism — again, the agenda as opposed to Trump the person — might be old hat.

He calls for full-bore gas and oil development, a common culture in lieu of identity politics, secure borders, deregulation, tax reform, a Jacksonian foreign policy, nationalist trade deals in places of globalization, and traditionalist values.

In normal times, Trumpism — again, the agenda as opposed to Trump the person — might be old hat. But after the last eight years, his correction has enraged millions.

Yet securing national borders seems pretty orthodox. In an age of anti-Western terrorism, placing temporary holds on would-be immigrants from war-torn zones until they can be vetted is hardly radical. Expecting “sanctuary cities” to follow federal laws rather than embrace the nullification strategies of the secessionist Old Confederacy is a return to the laws of the Constitution.

Using the term “radical Islamic terror” in place of “workplace violence” or “man-caused disasters” is sensible, not subversive.

Insisting that NATO members meet their long-ignored defense-spending obligations is not provocative but overdue. Assuming that both the European Union and the United Nations are imploding is empirical, not unhinged.

Questioning the secret side agreements of the Iran deal or failed Russian reset is facing reality. Making the Environmental Protection Agency follow laws rather than make laws is the way it always was supposed to be.

Unapologetically siding with Israel, the only free and democratic country in the Middle East, used to be standard U.S. policy until Obama was elected.

Issuing executive orders has not been seen as revolutionary for the past few years — until now.

Expecting the media to report the news rather than massage it to fit progressive agendas makes sense. In the past, proclaiming Obama a “sort of god” or the smartest man ever to enter the presidency was not normal journalistic practice.

Freezing federal hiring, clamping down on lobbyists, and auditing big bureaucracies — after the Obama-era IRS, VA, GSA, EPA, State Department, and Secret Service scandals — are overdue.

Half the country is having a hard time adjusting to Trumpism, confusing Trump’s often unorthodox and grating style with his otherwise practical and mostly centrist agenda.

In sum, Trump seems a revolutionary, but that is only because he is loudly undoing a revolution.

 — Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2017 Tribune Media Services, Inc.