The End of an Era

My father James T. McKenna died on May 30th, 2010,  he was a 83 years old.

He will be much missed and long mourned.

But with him died something this country is sore lacking–a voice that was uncompromising and concerned with nothing but the welfare and best interests of his fellow men.

He was well-educated, funny, brilliant and humble and had perhaps the keenest political mind of his generation.

I am not nearly the writer nor the mind that my father was but in his memory and because he would have wanted some voice to continue to cry out in the wilderness,  I am going to continue his blog.

Requiem in pacem, Dad.

Principles or Solutions

 

Fix it or take a seat in the peanut gallery

  

The Republican Party is finally aware that the popular uprising really intends to make some changes in the 2010 election cycle. RNC is therefore working to mask their candidates as populists. Steele and his bunch are big on statements of principles. Remember the Contract with America.

The Tea Party guys are wasting time on statements of principle. We want concrete proposals. Concisely state what is wrong and how you propose to fix it. We are all for free speech. The Dems are already working to get around the recent Supreme Court decision endorsing political speech. No hot air statement of principle. Just go out and sabotage the law.

Just an example or two. Our guys can say they will support only a balanced budget. If that means the end of ear marks, closing government departments like the Department of Education, radically reforming Social Security and Medicare, so be it.

The people are tired of the method of collecting and levying taxes. The tax code is a disgrace to any government. We will work to simplify the tax system, even to considering a flat tax to to terminate the class warfare so dear the hearts of the Dems.

This nation pays 500 Billion dollars to a foreign cartel for oil. That puts a major crimp in our industrial capacity and damages our balance of trade. We are for total energy independence– offshore, ANWAR, tar sands, shale We are for drill here, drill now, drill quick.

 PERHAPS THE BEST PRACTICAL PROPOSAL OF ALL. IF WE DON’T MAKE A BIG DENT IN 2010, THERE IS NO CHANCE OF GETTING RID OF OBAMA AND HIS MERRY BAND OF INCOMPETENTS IN 2012.

The last one has the additional attraction of pay back for the Republicans for what they did to us over the past decade. McCain and Romney are already laughing their way to the bank—with your money and vote.

A Passing Thought

HOW BIG IS BIG ENOUGH?

 

THE GOVERNMENT IS BIGGER THAN ALL OF US

 

About fifteen years ago, a little noticed study was produced by a small demographic group. Offhandedly, it mentioned that the federal government owned outright 49% of the landmass of the entire United States. If one adds state, county and municipal ownership, the number jumps to a stunning 54% and that was more than a decade ago.

The mere facts raise the question of who is the boss and who is the peon. No one, not a government official, has access to that land without the permission of the owner. Is Lincoln so far out of date that the government is no longer ‘ of the people, by the people and for the people.”?

Is the government a trustee for our interests? If so, where is the report on the care, prudent use and profitability of the asset? I guess that the question is when the government is by law hostile to the interests of its people, like in owning most of the land, perhaps a representative form of government is no longer possible.

Just thought I’d ask.

COMPULSORY ATTENDANCE

 

YOU GOTTA PAY BUT YOU DON’T GOTTA PLAY

 

As anyone who has kids in school will tell you, you must send your progeny to the government school, but the government is not required to teach them anything. It appears in fact that the union bosses who run the show would rather they unlearn some basic stuff they might have accidently learned from you along the way as you fed them, clothed them, housed them and loved them.  

And there you have a very strange anomaly. All states have enacted over the past century statutes outlining the duties of parents to their children. Parents must feed, clothe, house and educate them. But the state co-opts only the educate part. The clothiers union does not show up to provide the kids with clothes. The Amalgamated Food Tainters Union isn’t at your doorstep every morning to feed Wilma and Cadwallader. Nor does the Toss Em Up Home Builders provide them housing.

The State has declared its monopoly over what goes into the minds and what we used to call characters of these intruders in your home until they are in at least their mid teens. You, who used to be called parents , are to take care of the KP, runny nose and supply sergeant duties. You can be fined, thrown into jail or both for not living up to the standards set for these jobs by the state.

But the part they stole from you is different. Their only obligation is to make sure that the kid shows up. The mind control union, aka the National Education Association,- a fine nominal irony considering the inability of most kids in government schools to read , write or speak English – has no obligation to teach anything to their five-hour daily jailbirds. That is why they are called compulsory attendance laws.

But something has gone wrong in this garden of learning. Cadwallader and Wilma come home without basic tools like math and literacy. In the place of these anticipated skills, they are now equipped with a whole new surly attitude. They have rights which you must accord them. Dad is a boob and Mom is a caricature from the most recent hilarious TV series about illicit sex and the stupidity of their parents’ generation.

This state of affairs rumbled along, accelerating as government programs will for more than a decade. But then even the self absorbed generations x,y or z began to notice that this state of affairs was beginning to interfere with the comforts of their home life and the kids were staying around longer and pushing their credit limits.

 A drumbeat of dissatisfaction was heard in the land. Whether you call it voucher or charter school even the most uncaring of parents began to grumble a the lousy job being done by the kids’ gurus . There is even a growing segment of the population which has abandoned government “education” entirely. Rather than risk the total dumb down of their kids, these hardy souls teach them at home.

 This last group, the home schoolers, are the most dangerous to the unions running the schools. The home schoolers are harassed, bureaucratized and made to appear as invisible as the government can make them. One recent estimate put their number at fewer than 800,000. The stark reality is that there are ten times that many.

Given the state of the law why aren’t these “truants” prosecuted. The answer is twofold. First, the government not anxious for a full scale battle over who has rights to inculcate a value system into young minds.The government is winning by default. It won’t risk the whole swindle in an open fight with a still relatively small segment of the victim population.

Second, the individual states continue to count home schoolers in their population for federal grant percentages. Everybody knows they are lying, but it is only the feds and the states distributing what they stole from you in taxes, so it ok to publish the lies.

So what? The government taxes us and damages us in return. What else is new? It is what is old that is at issue here. The unseen battle here is do we own ourselves or are we possessions of the state. Several months ago, I wrote about Pierce v. The Sisters where the Supreme Court struck down an Oregon statute because it violated the parents right and duty to raise their children.That was in 1925.

But a court in California, three quarters of a century later, can say “The child is an asset of the state.” Serrano v. Priest. I would simply ask two questions. When did the Constitution change, so that kids were off-limits to the state in 1925, but are assets of the state now.

 The meatier question is, if the child between 6 years of age and 18 years belongs to the state, when and how do we stop being state property and become our own people. Or perhaps our government sees us as its permanent property. And suddenly the education fight sounds a lot like what has got the Tea Party people all upset. Do we own the government or does it own us. Have government schools completed the transformation into training schools for serfdom.

Cave docentes et dona ferentes.

A Passing thought

The Republican Party at It Again

 

The nomination of Mark Kirk as Senatorial Candidate of the Republican Party confirms what I have been shouting for months. The bums will again hand us a “What choice do you have?” campaign. It’s Kirk or the Dems.

Kirk is the candidate of Michael Steele and the oatmeal party. In the face of the most intense voter uprising in history, the Reps stuck to the formula which lost them the Congress and the Presidency. Kirk is Arlen Specter without the jowls. He is exactly what the TPers and the other outraged groups have risen against.

We will learn something about the staying power of the rebellion from Steele’s slap in the face. If they do not sink Kirk immediately and in no uncertain terms, I’ll take the summer off to watch paint dry. They should tell Steele; you forced him on us, now you and your national party elect him.

Run a third party candidate or leave the line blank, but react definitively. If they don’t, a lot of Dem candidates will relax, send a box of cigars to Steele, and breeze in November.

Just say BAAA.

 

THE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE

ONE SIZE FITS ALL VS LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE

 

Since there have been enough people around to be called a society, the base issue has been the same. You need some rules about the interaction of individuals within the group. Then you need some method of enforcing the rules. And government was invented.

Free men view it as a necessary evil, but nonetheless an evil. Others, especially those who see themselves as enforcers, view government as the essential framework for the advancement of society. Today those conflicting views are being fought out by Tea Partiers and others with the same goals against the rest of the established political society.

For more than a century, the government types have had free rein. No political force has worked to compel a balance point. Wars have occasionally slowed the march of the command society by requiring the rulers to appeal to the self-interest of the citizen to get him to fight their battles. Then for a decade or so, the do as I sayers mute their “society over individual” mind set.

Then along came the boy Pharaoh, King Tut Tut and speeded up the march to the gulag. His drive to take over health care awoke the individualists and the fight was on. But the Tea Party people made a terrible discovery. There was no political force in place through which to channel their battle..

The Republicans were really ruling class statist wanna bes.They are just the lesser of two evils. They lack the stench of class warfare. They can’t lie worth a damn. But they are statists. They provide a very uncomfortable home for the “Leave me the hell alone” people who are the marrow of the revolution. The Republican elite know how to co-opt popular eruptions. The art of redirecting popular resentment against statism is really the only thing that keeps the Republicans alive. Without this skill, we would long since have had a two party system. The leftist(formerly Democrat) party and a true Populist party.

If the Tea Party types want their views to continue to be heard, they will use the Republicans in 2010 and replace them for 2012 and thereafter. If they unite with the Republicans permanently, they will be just a phenomenon on the way to a permanent servile state. I lived through the rise and fall of the Conservative Party in New York. We didn’t have the fire power of the Tea Party. But we were growing. We let the Republicans in and we died. VERBUM SAPIENTIS SATIS.

Last cry before the gulag or rebirth of Self Determination

THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

 

Early in 2009, groups of people sensing the demise of our form of government in actions of King Tut Tut, the Boy Pharaoh, began to react. Town Hall meeting were turned into protest meetings. Public demonstrations were scheduled and massively attended by average people to express their objection to and contempt for our new masters. The most publicized group ran multistate bus tours to focus the energy of the people who came out in droves.

 

These people who clamored “It’s my country, not yours” came to be called tea partyers and later derisively tea baggers. But there were several groups tapping into the popular revulsion to Obama and his thugs. And in that simple fact lies the hope that the Republicans have to again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

 

The Democrats fear a tidal wave of rejection will turn out their candidates in droves, perhaps even enough to wrest control of the House from their grasp. And then the Republicans gave us Dede Scozzofava in NT’s 23rd Congressional District. They spent $900,000 on her election. The TPers in the District rebelled and put up and independent. Dede came in third and wound up campaigning for the Dem. Our guy lost by a hair.

 

The Republicans who gave us an oatmeal man as a presidential candidate and caused our descent into anarchy will want to control who gets nominated everywhere in the country. If they have their way, we will a field a slate of candidates that would shame Arlen Specter.

 

I exaggerate, you say. There are three Senate seats already open. Illinois, Delaware and Florida. In each one, Michael Steele hand picked a RINO type candidate.

 

In at least Florida, the rebels have fielded a candidate who is likely to beat the Republican. In Virginia 5, the incumbent Dem shouldn’t be there. He beat the NRCC guy by a few hundred votes.

 

But Steele and Blackwell are trying to put another of their oatmeal men in as the candidate. If the leaders of the revolt let them get away with it, what could be a 50 seat turnover will, if we are lucky, will be a twenty seat gain.

 

The Republican Party is not the party of conservatism. They have been trying to blot out the Reagan legacy for twenty years. It would be the supreme irony if this uprising of the people let them finally bury him.

 

What unites us is more important than our differences. Run our guys and gals, on the Republican line if the Reps agree, but our guys and not oatmeal cookie candidates who would hijack the hard work of patriots.

 

There will be a money difference if we go independent. But the very source of  Rep money can be made an advantage. Corporate, special interest, lobby money versus five bucks from Joe the Plumber will tell its own story.

 

TAKE THE COUNTRY BACK FROM THE THIEVES.

OK OK HURRAH BUT NOW THE FIGHT STARTS

 

STEALING THE COUNTRY BACK AINT BEANBAG

 

Let’s face it. The left had to wake up sometime. Since the returns came in from Massachusetts on Tuesday night, Obama has been out of sight and his troops have been in three different places. First, they were going to ram the entire Obamacare mess through before Brown found the way to the mens room. Then they put on the courtesy cap and said they would suspend consideration of the matter until Brown was seated. Then Friday afternoon, Obama suddenly flew to Ohio and discovered that there was a job crisis.

Essentially he said,”Why didn’t you tell me. I’ll get right on it. You know how it is. Bush left so many things in a mess, I just forgot the economy.” Obamacare is under the bus. The boy Pharoah wants to fight out this election cycle on jobs and the economy.

It’s a big gamble. His choices after Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts are severely limited. He can dump Obamacare, essentially telling his most leftward base they have to wait until he cools the boobs,-us-, down a little. Or he can run as the answer of the dems to Reagan.

Either way, he has to drop the Messiah shtick and work as the administrator of the socialist revolution. But, the guys running the tea party operation have to remember he is still stronger now than he was when he ran for President.

Back then, he was financed by George Soros and the other, mainly foreign, anti-American, money bags. Now, he has the enormous sums he prepositioned among his very efficient election machine from TARP, Stimulus, the Budget.

Then he had only the lapdog Media split between him and Hillary. Now , he has the whole federal government and the now unified media, all shouting “Obama or die”

For the 2010 election cycle, he has the ability to tell the entire financial community, “I still have two more years to bring down what is left of capitalism , so tread softly.”

And finally, he has a substantial percentage of the populace who still believe he is the Great One, the cure for the common cold, bad breathe and acne.

Add to that, in a new shot at the Constitution, there is a bill pending in Congress for universal registration of voters. If it breathes, looks older than 14 and can press a button in the voting booth, it votes. The animal rights group is arguing that the bill is not inclusive enough.

I celebrate your wins,but forgive me if I fear for decent American citizens up against the professional criminal class, politicians.

JUST A PASSING THOUGHT

 

  GET THEM ON THE RECORD

 

 

 With the entrenched political parties and the lapdog media likely to be fighting for their lives in the 2010 elections, a thought crossed my mind. Obama has built a slush fund into the stimulus bill, the bail out bill and the budget for 2010. Acorn got several million. Brokerage houses got a bundle of dough. Banks were showered with tax money.

General Motors, AIG, Chrysler some other companies were taken over and are now owned, in whole or in part, by the government. That is, by the Boy Pharaoh and his thugs. Now federal law forbids expenditure of tax money for election campaigns. Certainly some of the income from these companies belongs to the government.

An enterprising lawyer might think of a way to seek to limit the slush. He might petition the Federal Election Commission to rule that no corporation indebted to the government because of the payments mentioned, nor any executive or officer of such corporation, may contribute anything of value to a political campaign. The ground is relatively simple. Any such expenditure is the use of money owed the feds.

The cases where Obama took over the company would be even stronger. The government, by the common understanding of mankind , has put itself in the position of trustee for the interests of the citizens of the country in the management of the company.

Since the FEC has a majority of dems, such a petition is sure to be rejected. Nonetheless the voters might be interested in headlines such as “Dems defend slush funds. Dem campaigns given free access to tax money.” I might then advertise that the FEC was Dem dominated. Perhaps even publish the names and addresses of the members of the Commission.

Some other attorney might sue for a declaratory Judgment that an entity ,beneficiary of federal largesse, may not directly, or through bonuses or excessive salaries to officers or executives, use money, otherwise available to pay off its federal debt to influence a federal election. At least the working stiffs would get the message that the thieves were still at it with their money.

Just a thought.

 

WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

BEAT THE BUMS AT THEIR OWN GAME

  

A large number of people, including talking heads and political pundits believe that the American people will decimate the Democrat Party in the by-election this November. The actions of Obama and the Congress have been resisted and rejected by what may be a majority of the voters. Their unprecedented angry reaction to the hubris of the ruling party on health care, climate change, response to Muslim attacks and the staggering waste of money is anticipated as leading to a House cleaning by the voters.

Outraged voters should be aware that there are forces to be brought to bear to confuse. dissipate and misdirect their outrage. A hundred years of apathy is not likely to be peacefully cured in one election. Except in the socialist states, Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon and California, every candidate, including incumbents, will run on tax relief, resolution of the war, repeal of Obamacare, downsizing government. In short, they will try to con the voters.

Obscuring voters’ accurate assessment of who is friend and who is foe are four formidable barriers.

1. The Democrat Party
2. The mainstream media
3. The Republican
4. Obama’s Chicago style politics. 

Most politicians are not suicidal, so the Dems will say that the Republicans denied them adequate health care. They will claim they are the only friend the poor and disenfranchised minority have. Smaller government is , they will say.code for no more welfare. Dems will also have a major head start. The unions will be mobilized in every Congressional district. The Dems will also have a dollar advantage. Think of all the money Obama’s stimulus poured into large corporations.

Those recipients will use that money to be sure the gravy train keeps chugging.

Were we dealing with any one other than the Dems, legal questions would abound. Will partially or wholly owned government corporations be able , through their PACs, to contribute to Dem candidates. Will Acorn, convicted or under indictment in at least 17 states for various voter frauds, be judicially restrained from tampering with results all across the nation.

Then we have the most potent Dem weapon, character assassination. Most of the real populist candidates will be ill-equipped to deal with baseless charges. Unless they just emerged from a monastery or nunnery, they will be assailed for minor adolescent acts. They also will be hit with irrelevancies, which the media will magnify. He supported Sarah Palin. She is pro-life. They have no experience, etc.

The media, the true villains in the saga of foisting an ill prepared candidate with both questionable credentials and a drive to destroy the nation upon the electorate, will be in there slugging. For the sake of their own tarnished reputations, they will defend the targets of the voters’ wrath. Replacement candidates will be buried and smeared. The bums who did this to us will be explained and praised. Their bias will be worth millions of dollars in free publicity.

 The Republican Party, which for two decades has been running away from its conservative roots, will run its melange of oatmeal candidates and attack the voting stiffs who want better than “me too “ as divisive cranks. They will adopt the Pelosi approach to smear the voter revolt.

They have already shown their tactic in three states . The RNC has all but endorsed Senatorial candidates in three states-Delaware, Florida and Illinois –all of whom will be more comfortable caucusing with Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter than protecting the nations or its citizens.

 The final hurdle, perhaps the highest, is the cadre of Obama Chicago style thugs. Acorn units have been under indictment in at least 17 states for registration and voter fraud.

They recently received several million dollars in taxpayer money in Obama’s 2010 federal budget. The black panthers who recently got off because of Eric Holder’s malfeasance. They had been charged and convicted of voter intimidation. Several labor unions, principally SEIU are ready to do their number on voters as they did to tea party people.

Granting all this, the bums will still take a beating in 2010. We have to remember just a few rules.

Don’t give money to the RNC. Contribute only to the candidate you support.

Be sure you are registered to vote. This ain’t bean bag and a lot of people got hosed so we could have the pornographic comedian Franken from Minnesota in the Senate.

Start now to protect the absentee votes of the military in your state. In Dem states they will try to delay sending out the ballots so they are too late to be counted They did it in 2008 when we were not aware of their resolve to win at all costs.

Keep up the pressure. Write. Demonstrate. Let as many of the enemy as possible know that if they get out of line, we will pressure for indictments.

Above all, STAY TOGETHER. DON’T LET OBAMA OR MICHAEL STEELE OR THE LAPDOG MEDIA BREAK US UP. WE DO NOT AGREE ON EVERYTHING BUT WHAT UNITES US IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN OUR DISAGREEMENTS.