FlyDiver Philosophy
In politics there is an often stated premise that perception is reality. Political advisors spend much of their time creating perceptions. This begs the question, are the created perceptions based on reality and why do you have to spend so much time creating a perception? On its face, the only possible answer to the premise is that it is utterly false. Reality is what it is regardless of how humans are conditioned to perceive reality. Sadly, we humans are all fully capable of being deceived by the perception mongers thus the true reason for their efforts. One guide to differentiate between perception and reality that rarely fails is to examine results. For example: If a climate change computer model predicts a certain event it must be required to show verifiable data that proves the model correct. This is nothing more or less than scientific method. Sadly, data can and is fudged and even created out of whole cloth and no matter how hard one tries, it is humanly impossible to keep one's personal bias out of the data and its conclusions. The best way to minimize the bias is to use double blind studies, review by disinterested third parties and blind funding so that the scientist is unaware of who butters his bread. To figure out the bias, follow the money and then discover the ideology. With politicians, demonstrated performance is as close to reality as you can get. Far too many politicians take credit only for their intentions but if you examine their results, far too often you find little more than hot air.
Amendments Conservatism Economics Education Environment Factoids Freedom Justice Law Media
The constitution of the United States is the finest document of its kind ever produced.
The Federalist papers provide a more than thorough justification for it as well as the arguments against its ratification.
The Federalist Papers are 85 short essays written in the language of the 1700s. That language is difficult to wade through as anyone who has taken PolySci 101 can attest.
Glenn Beck and Joshua Charles: The Original Argument is a translation to 21st century English. A much easier read and very much worth the effort.
Original Intent
The Constitution is NOT a living document that is subject to whatever interpretation a judge or politician might make. That is called situational ethics and is one of the worst mistakes Harvard ever made.
There is a procedure built in to change the constitution but until the amendment process has done its thing, the constitution must be followed as it was intended by the folks who wrote it and the folks who amended it. No exceptions, ever, unless you wish to replace the constitution with tyranny by judicial fiat.
The same philosophy applies to the law. Laws should be applied as they were intended by the people who voted them into being. This is called original intent. Judges must never be allowed to change the law, they must be required to apply the law as it was intended, not as they think it should have been intended.
The same is true for the executive branch in terms of enforcement.
Only the legislative bodies are authorized by the constitution to make or change the law.
Judges and courts can and should be quick to declare a law unconstitutional if they believe that to be the case. There is a process in place to appeal those decisions until a final disposition is made.
In January of 2012 the Supreme Court may have set a precedent or at least affirmed original intent. The decision of an appellate court to change the redistricting plan for the state of Texas was thrown out. The Supreme Court declared that the lower court failed to adequately consider the intent of the legislature.
Supreme Court - The reason they have no power of enforcement is that the constitution created the court as an advisory body, not a legislative or enforcement body. The founders never intended for the Supreme Court to an equal branch of governemtn.
The founders assumed that bad decisions by the Supreme Court would simply be ignored. Chief Justice John Marshall worked long and hard (1801-1835) to establish the precedent that the court's decisions were final. Finality means that there is no check on the Supreme Court and there should be checks and balances on all branches of government.
ustice Marshall also supported an "expanded", meaning loose, interpretation of the enumerated powers making him perhaps the first to support a "living constitution".
Precedent - Whoever created this concept should have had his black robe forcibly removed and burned. It has become the basis upon which judges legislate from the bench and get other judges to back them up.
When a judge determines that the case before him is not adequately covered by existing law he should immediately refer it to the legislature or to the Congress. Sadly, the common practice, going all the way back to English common law, is for the judge to apply his personal bias by setting a precedent for other judges to follow.
Precedents should only be held valid when the Supreme Court says they are. Even then, there should be a procedure to set aside a precedent that is so egregiously wrong that the overwhelming majority do not want it.
Limited Government - At the federal level this is very simple. Article 1, sections 7 and 8 list the enumerated powers of the federal government. All other powers belong to the states or to the people unless specifically denied to the states and the 10th amendment confirms this as clearly as the English language is capable. Nowhere in the enumerated powers nor anywhere else in the constitution are mentioned or referenced anything to do with education, energy, environment, health, housing or a myriad of other agencies that have been established by the federal government. If they are to be anything other than personal responsibility, the constitution clearly says they are the responsibility of the states.
- Term Limits - If two terms are enough for the President then they should be enough for all elected officials, including the dog catcher. Entrenched politicians are the problem, not the solution and it doesn't seem to make much difference what your political persuasion is. Leave a politician in office long enough and corruption is virtually guaranteed.
- One argument against term limits is that it takes time to learn the system. Balderdash! The constitution is the system and school children should know it. What learning the system really means is that you must learn to play the game the way the entrenched politicians want it played.
- Another common complaint about term limits is that the politicians will be encouraged to use their short time in office to scam as much for themselves as possible. So what? Some of them do that anyway. Congress rarely polices itself effectively so the sooner the bad guys are term limited, the better.
- The final argument is that the good politicians will be forced out. No, if they are that good, the voters will find another office for them. If you are good enough you could be a member of the house for 2 terms, then become a senator for 2 terms and maybe even president for 2 terms. That, by the way, is 24 years in public office which ought to be enough time on the public's dime.
- We recommend doing away with pensions for elected officials. Salary and benefits should not be the reason you want to serve your country. A reasonable salary and expenses are necessary to ensure that any citizen can afford to become an elected official but people should be responsible for their own retirements and that includes elected officials.
- Elected officials, especially the Congress, along with all other government employees, should be required to follow the same rules and regulations they make for us.
- Balanced Budget - Anyone who trusts a politician with money is far more dangerous than a fool. You have to balance your budget or go hungry. There is no reason whatsoever that the government should not be forced to do the same. When they fail to balance the government's budget we all go hungry.
- Mandatory Priority Of Expenditures -- One argument against a balanced budget says that politicians will simply threaten to cut the most needed programs in an effort to intimidate us. So what, they do that anyway. The way to counter that problem is to include a provision that forces a prioritization of all expenditures along with an automatic sunset provision that forces review and reauthorization at reasonable intervals.
- 2/3 Vote to Raise Taxes -- The second argument against is that the politicians will simply raise taxes to balance the budget. Your amendment must include a 2/3 vote to raise taxes and a simple majority to lower them and you must mandate sunset provisions so that taxes are not permanently raised for a one time emergency.
- Taxes - Bottom line: Limiting time in office and the maximum amount of money the government can collect are the only ways to limit government. Politicians will always dream up excuses to spend more of someone else's money!
- We believe that there should only be one tax paid by a citizen of the United States to the government of the United States. No deductions, no exemptions and the simpler the better.
- The Constitution requires us to all be equal under the law and it does not exclude taxation.
- Graduated or progressive income tax law does not treat us all equally under the law. How is that constitutionally allowed? If we continue with the income tax, the FlyDivers vote for 10% as the maximum amount of tax each citizen must pay and every citizen must pay the same rate so that we all, to quote President Obama, "...have skin in the game." That is all the government we want and we elected ya'll to fight it out regarding how to spend the money.
- There is nothing wrong with user fees for services that only some of the people use but care must be taken to prevent Congress from renaming a tax to a fee just to get around the 2/3 vote.
- Judicial Set Aside - The justices of the Supreme Court and the federal appellate courts were given lifetime appointments in an effort to remove political intimidation from their deliberations. In practice, this has come to mean we can't get rid of them no matter how bad they are. The Ninth Circuit Court is regularly overruled by the Supreme Court but no effort is made to remove the clearly incompetent judges on the ninth circuit. One solution to this problem might be an amendment that simply tells courts, including the Supreme Court, to start over. Whenever 2/3 of the Congress and the President agree, a decision by a court, including the Supreme Court, is set aside and declared null and void. It is sort of like saying to the black robes, "The whole damn country disagrees! Start over or forget about it." The will of the people should be the final determinant, not 9 black robed justices. This should not be an easy thing to do or all judicial decisions will become politicized. Maybe 3/4 is a better ratio. Bottom line: This is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. There must be a way to ensure that 9 individuals cannot overrule the will of the people. The state legislatures should seriously consider the same amendment for state constitutions.
- Senators - Repeal the 17th amendment. The Senate was created to represent the states. Electing them by popular vote just makes them members of the House of Representatives with longer terms. The constitution very correctly and clearly says that states have rights; senators should be there to protect those rights, otherwise, there is no need for them.
- Executive Orders -- It is bad enough that the Congress makes a law that only applies to some of our citizens. It should be absolutely unconstitutional for the Executive Branch to issue exemptions to a law for any reason. Far too often, executive orders by the President have amounted to legislation by executive fiat. Either we are all equal under the law or some of the pigs are more equal than others. We prefer real equality, let the pigs wallow in their own muck.
- Conservatism
- Conservatives believe in limited government, strict adherence to the constitution, original intent in the law and above all individual liberty and the greatness of the United States because of it.
- Conservatives believe in capitalism, property rights, states rights and a strong national defense. If we cannot defend ourselves, someone else will take it all; if we do not have a healthy economy we won't be able to do much of anything at all.
- Conservatives believe that a strong moral foundation is necessary for a representative democracy to succeed. Our constitution created a government of law based on unalienable rights given us by a higher power, not a government of men who determine what those unalienable rights will be. Conservatives cherish honor, truth and personal responsibility.
- Conservatives believe in equality of opportunity and equality before the law so that all of us can be the best we are capable of.
- Conservatives evaluate themselves based upon their ability to deal with the world the way it really is, on the results that they achieve and on the number of people who are helped to succeed on their own.
- A link to the 10 Commandments of Conservatism.
- Liberals, progressives and communists are all socialist by different degrees.
- Socialists believe that only government can solve your problems for you; their elite leadership do not trust you to solve your own problems; their followers don't trust themselves to solve their own problems and expect government to do it for them.
- Socialists believe in government regulation, crony capitalism and income redistribution. They do not believe in individual freedom, personal responsibility or property rights.
- If government control of the economy provides the greatest good for all, why do the citizens of China, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, all of the Arab countries and the old Soviet Union and nearly all of Africa consistently have a very low standard of living? Contrast the standard of living of the afformentioned socialist and totalitarian states to the poorest citizens in the United States who own color TV sets, cars, ipads and Nike shoes. People living on the city dump in Mexico City think our poor are downright wealthy.
- Socialists believe that the constitution is an outmoded old document written by a bunch of slave owning old white men. They strive to remove God from public view, never met a perverted lifestyle they would not tolerate and steadfastly refuse to make judgments between right and wrong or good and evil except that conservatives are always wrong and evil.
- Socialists evaluate themselves based on the goodness of their intentions and their willingness to strive for utopian goals. Their intentions are their results.
- Socialists believe that their cause is so righteous that any means is justified to achieve their goals.
- Perhaps worst of all socialists believe that if they can just spend enough money, all their problems will disappear. Their efforts to prove that philosophy correct have resulted in a national debt that equals more than all the money in the world or close to it. Have you ever been able to spend your way out of debt?
- Republican Party --
- While there are many Republicans who are conservatives, the party leadership, since Ronald Reagan left office, are not limited government conservatives.
- In a single term in office George H. W. Bush very nearly succeeded in destroying everything Reagan built. Fortunately the public saw through it and rendered him a one term president. Had Ross Perot not run such a horrible campaign, we might have had a 3rd Party President. For certain, Bill Clinton never had a majority of the popular vote.
- George W. Bush added massive bureaucracies with prescription drugs and Homeland Security.
- Bob Dole sabotaged term limits
- John McCain was in bed with Teddy Kennedy on health care and Russ Feingold on the so called campaign finance reform legislation. Without Sarah Palin, Republican voters would have stayed home in droves and many of them did anyway.
- Mitt Romney is as big government oriented as were the Bushes, Dole and McCain. His Romney Care for Massachusetts is little different than Obama Care. Romney Care is bankrupting Massachusetts and Obama Care will do the same for the entire country.
- In other words, the Republican Party leadership is Republican in Name Only (RINO) and they need to be replaced.
- Bottom line: This conservative has voted for his last RINO. My nose hurts from having to hold it too hard and the stench has just gotten to be too much to bear, never mind the national debt.
- Looking at the 2012 crop of candidates it is difficult to find a genuine conservative. The closest, Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann, dropped out, beaten by the RINOs and the Democrat character assassins.
- We welcome the libertarians for their shared conservative values but their foreign policy and law enforcement beliefs can be downright scary. The trick will be to create a win-win that both libertarians and conservatives will want to be a part of.
- Independents, by and large, don't really know what they believe in and switch sides with the seasons although a growing number of conservatives are declaring themselves independent simply because they feel that the Republican leadership has ignored them entirely too long.
- The key here is for the Republican Party to establish a genuinely conservative platform and recruit candidates to run on it. Ronald Reagan did it and the blue dog democrats voted for him in large numbers. The current leadership thinks you have to move to the "center" to attract independents. How well did that work out for Dole and McCain? That policy nearly got us President AlGore. We believe that genuine conservatism will attract the independents in far greater numbers.
- The Tea Parties seem to consistently support conservative candidates and they are doing a much better job of vetting them. I suspect they are really the old silent majority who are fed up and finally doing something. They should be encouraged to stand up to the leadership of both parties. If they can get enough truly conservative candidates elected, perhaps the RINOs can be sent back to their country clubs and socialism relegated to the dung heap of history. It is also entirely possible that if the current leadership succeeds in running a RINO for President, the tea parties may bolt the Republican Party. Should that happen, the American people will see how bad it can really get when President Obama no longer has the pressure of reelection to moderate his extremely radical agenda. Then, the only good news will be that the riots are on Obama's watch.
Your money is yours, not the government's. This should be the end of the discussion. Sadly, our educational system, particularly the K12 system, either fails entirely to provide any economic knowledge at all or deliberately provides false and/or failed knowledge. Here are the key points they should be teaching:
Keynesian economics doesn't work! It is nothing more than an attempt by government to spend its way out of a recession or worse, spend your money to promote their ideology and reward their buddies. Try spending your way out of your budget problems, end of that discussion.
Macro economics should be required for a high school diploma. It requires very little math and it teaches the laws of supply and demand and why capitalism works. It also demonstrates what happens when you tax the geese who lay the golden eggs, taking from those who produce to give to those who do not. (otherwise known as committing economic suicide).
Income redistribution is the worst way to help poor people; it only makes them more dependent and diminishes the ability of producers to grow the economy. Income redistribution is how politicians buy votes. The only winners are government bureaucrats hired to redistribute your money.
Teaching the poor how to provide for their own needs is the best way to help them; it gives them freedom from dependence and positive self esteem. Sadly, as Oprah has discovered only too well, some people will always be poor, no matter how much you give them. People who have a genuine need for charity should be helped by the innumerable charitable and religious organizations and our tax policies should enable us to support them. Government just politicizes the problem, makes it hugely more expensive and impersonal and in the end solidifies dependence on government. Never forget that every person who is freed from government dependence becomes a producer and contributor to the general welfare in precisely the manner envisioned in the preamble to the constitution.
Allowing government to administer anything is the most expensive way to do something. It is most often also a guarantee that the problem will not be resolved and that more problems will be created giving government the opportunity to claim they are the only ones capable of solving the problems they created.
We did not support the TARP bailout when George W. Bush did it on the grounds that bailing out failure is just throwing good money after bad. Failures must, no matter how big, be allowed to fail and go away and the sooner the better. We have bankruptcy laws already in place and size should make no difference. The Democrats howled when GW did TARP then doubled down on the same stupidity when they assumed the majority. All they really did was change the name to "quantitative easing". After only 3 years in office President Obama has managed to double the national debt from 8 trillion to more than 16 trillion and his annual deficits are nearly quadrupled. That is more than all presidents combined from George Washington through Bill Clinton! The Republicans could have stopped some of Obama's spending but they are still allowing the debt to grow. Sounds to us like the Republicans need an overhaul at the same time the Democrats are thrown out.
Historically, the Federal Reserve has caused as much economic chaos as they have prevented. The purpose for creating the Fed was to lessen the chaos. That experiment has failed. At minimum the Fed needs a complete and transparent audit followed by either extinction or a complete overhaul.
The FlyDivers very much believe that the cost of a good education can and should have a very positive return on investment. Sadly, in the last thirty to 40 years, government run schools have, in great numbers, failed to provide a good education or a positive return on investment. U.S. students continue to decline when compared to other developed countries. Full disclosure: The FlyDivers have both taught in government run schools and we have belonged to a teacher's union when it was a condition for employment.
Unions have a vested interest in union members, not students.
The United States needs to provide a superior education for its children but to allow a politicized government to run schools has proven a poor way to accomplish the goal.
A short story: I graduated from high school in 1964. In Montana, in 1964, there were no teacher unions. I was a poor student unless the subject interested me and most did not. English bored me to tears and you can imagine the results. But I passed the tests and got my diploma, never mind my dismal GPA. Six years later I passed exams in the Navy that gave me about a years worth of college credit. 15 years later, now motivated to finish a college degree, I had to take English 101. In high school, the C and D grades I got enabled me to ace college English 101 with a perfect 4.0. I was not smarter, only wiser but in spite of my lack of motivation in high school, the teachers got enough knowledge into me that I could do college level work. When I taught in a Community College in the 90s, the best of the high school students in my classes had trouble expressing their thoughts on paper. Did the teacher unions make it better for students or just better for union bosses and teachers? As for college GPA, I would like to think I have redeemed myself.
We believe that parents should be responsible for ensuring their children receive a good education. Allowing schools to compete in the marketplace is the best way to ensure that parents are able to choose the education their children receive. Competition ensures that the best thrive and the worst do something else. The current government monopoly offers no competition, poor quality and little, if any, choice.
There is no mention of education in the enumerated powers of the Constitution. If government is to be involved in education, the Constitution clearly says that it belongs to the states or to the people.
If we are to have school boards at all, they should be local and their standards set by the local community. One size fits all is a myth and the least qualified to set educational standards is a Washington DC bureaucrat.
With abundant choice available to parents, a voucher system should be used to ensure each child has adequate financing available.
A merit system that encourages academic competition for excellence for both students and teachers will produce the best students and the best teachers.
The constitution promotes equality and it is therefore reasonable to suggest that children in poor communities be offered the same opportunity for a high quality education that children in affluent communities would have available to them. Monitor the charter school system in New Orleans, it is looking very much like a significant success story. A taxpayer voucher combined with a merit system in which competition for excellence is encouraged will give us the highest possible return on our education investment.
We do not support equality of outcomes. While everyone should be given equal opportunity, the Declaration of Independence only guarantees the unalienable right to pursue happiness. Achievement is the responsibility of the individual.
Self esteem has no value when given, it must be earned.
Most assuredly young people should be taught how to succeed so that they are able to earn their self esteem but they will only succeed on their own when they have earned success on their own.
Depending on a village for your success is just dependency, not success.
After you have earned your self esteem all doubt that you can succeed will be removed and only your own God given limitations will limit you.
Learning how to take personal responsibility is the first step toward earning self esteem.
Children should also be taught how to deal with failure. Athletics does this but it needs to be done for all children because none of us succeed at everything and there is no need for a loss of self esteem just because we discover something we are not good at or someone who doesn't like us. The end result should be children who know how to capitalize on their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
Every teacher should be required to view the movie Stand and Deliver at least once per year. It is based on a true story about a teacher in an East LA barrio who proved conclusively that poverty and bad parenting need not be an excuse for failure. The defining quote from the movie is, "Students will rise to the level of expectation." They must know what the expectations are and what the rewards will be when they make the effort. After that all you have to do is provide the knowledge, occasional encouragement and let them succeed. Like all success, if you aim for the stars and become the first to land on the moon, your success is still great.
It is a myth that all children should receive a college education. It is also a myth that community colleges should exist to prepare students for 4 year universities. There are far more good paying jobs available in the service industry, in skilled trades and in manufacturing for people with the proper training and certifications than will ever be available in the professions, the sciences or the arts. Community Colleges should serve their communities by supplying well trained and certificated folks that the community needs.
It is probably also a myth that teachers must have a degree in education to be good teachers. For most of us, our parents were pretty darned good teachers; the results turned in by home schooled kids offer additional proof and there is probably no shortage of highly qualified retired folks who would jump at the chance to fill in almost everywhere. In fact, it is entirely possible that the teacher colleges are a big part of the reasons for the poor quality of our schools today.
Rules for Government
Bring every proven state of the art method for protecting the environment to the table and insist that if you break it, you fix it at your cost.
Do NOT come to the table trying to tell the rest of us we can't use the resources the environment provides for us. That kind of emotional foolishness will have a lot of folks freezing to death in the dark if it is allowed to prevail.
As with all expenditures of public monies, begin with a cost/benefit study. Some things just aren't worth doing no matter how good they feel.
Most importantly, before any environmental regulations are put in place demand that enough real world experiments have been done to have a reasonable assurance the unintended consequences are known. You can't do real world experiments in a computer so start the process with a realistic, peer reviewed cost/benefit study. Then go into the field and actually do the experiment and see what really works and what doesn't. If the computer simulation accurately predicts the result you actually get, then and only then is there any assurance whatsoever that you really know something. And why limit these demands to environmental regulations?
Environmental Reality
All species must compete to survive. Those that fail to compete effectively become extinct. That is nature's law and we humans will never be wise enough to improve it. Nature continuously changes; no matter how much man tries to manage it, some species survive and others do not. It is a fact of life, get used to it.Laws of Nature
Every specie affects the environment. You can look it up and while you are looking see if you can discover the number of species that have affected other species who either adapted or became extinct long before man arrived. The list is very long.
Man can affect the environment; the Indians burned large swatches of forest to allow plant growth on the forest floor for animals to eat. The forest survived, the Indians had better hunting but some of the animals were hunted to extinction. Nowadays we are told to just let the forest burn because a few of the seeds need the heat to germinate. No thought to the consequences to animal and human life. If man is capable of having a positive effect on the environment we surely can do better than just letting it burn.
Man has the ability to affect the environment in both positive and negative ways. The Australian aborigines used "fire stick" management to thin the bush and limit the damage caused by natural bush fires. Today, the greenies in Australia think that just allowing the bush to burn to extinction is a better idea. Who is more intelligent?
The vast majority of man's attempts to manage the environment have been unmitigated disasters due to the laws of unintended consequences. That doesn't mean we shouldn't set aside small parcels and conduct scientific studies to find out what works and what doesn't but please show us where that has actually happened. All we see are computer simulations and continuing damage from unintended consequences. National parks and wilderness areas are wonderful things but the truth is that they have, at times, been grossly mismanaged primarily because no one did the experiments in advance on the policies that produced colossal disasters.
We are stuck using fossil fuels because it is no longer possible to go back to the horse and buggy and wimps won't allow clean nuclear. Besides, there isn't enough nuclear material and horses fart too much. So do a lot of politicians and phony environmentalists. Fear not, however, because a free marketplace will find a replacement for fossil fuels when and if it becomes necessary and it will do so very efficiently with no government involvement whatsoever.
Human Nature
Allowing government to finance anything means politicizing it, the environment is no exception. Government grants for research create dependence on government, just like welfare and income redistribution. Some humans, scientists included, will lie their you know what's off to keep the grant money flowing. Because of the grant system, we must now all be skeptics whenever the scientists tell us anything. Oh wait, isn't a healthy skepticism a good thing anyway?
Scientific studies should be free of politics and personal bias. That is the reason for scientific method and double blind studies. To be truly free of bias, the scientists should not know the source of their funding else they will bias their findings to keep the money flowing. That is just the nature of human beings.
Non-profit organizations that are dependant on donations are stuck with dependence, just like the poor under income redistribution and the grant pimps. Some of them will exaggerate and prevaricate, just like the grant pimps. Be skeptical, folks, the BS and downright ignorance are abundant!
If you break the law, you pay the price and the price should be high enough to ensure you won't want to make the same mistake twice. Some crimes, such as violence against children, are so heinous that the offender should never be given a second chance to commit the crime, in or out of prison.
Sentencing should be established to first make the victims whole, just as civil law attempts to do. Prisoners should work until the profits of their labor have repaid the victims and the taxpayers. There is no reason that a prison cannot be self sustaining other than the fear of competition from members of the local community. That fear is only valid when the prison is subsidized. We also hear that there are jobs Americans won't do. If that isn't pure BS then assign those jobs to the prisoners who have forfeited their rights to anything other than cruel and inhuman punishment during their incarceration. Hard work is NOT cruel or inhuman.
Three strike laws are very effective. Lets expand them to include the licenses of incompetent professionals. A lawyer's license should be revoked, under a 3 strikes rule, after he files the 3rd frivolous lawsuit. The same 3 strikes should apply to the licenses of shrinks who release uncured criminals who reoffend or doctors who are convicted of the 3rd malpractice, etc. What about those 9th Circuit Court justices who are overruled by the Supreme Court the 3rd time?
The dead never commit crimes but lifers in prison do. Why is a crime in prison any different than a crime on the streets? Some crimes are so horrific that the 3rd or even the first strike must guarantee humanity that the criminal will never again commit the crime in or out of prison. Death is an absolute guarantee.
To judges and bleeding hearts:
When evidence has been illegally obtained, punish the criminal who obtained it illegally. Turning a guilty person free to create more victims is as much a crime against society as was the illegal evidence. Even children know that two wrongs do not make a right.
Stop justifying bad behavior just because the accused had a bad or impoverished childhood. Catch the bad behavior early and use whatever is needed, short of cruel and unusual punishment, to get the attention of the offender. Then use whatever is needed to convince the offender that bad behavior is not going to be tolerated, ever, period, end of discussion. Once again, turning a guilty criminal loose for any reason is as much a crime as that which the guilty committed.
If the offender is a juvenile and there is a possibility of correcting the bad behavior, demand the parents take responsibility for correcting the bad behavior or risk losing custody of the children. It is a valid question to ask how much parents should be punished for the acts of their children. We suggest that the determinant should be the amount of reasonable effort the parents have taken to ensure good behavior. Working for a living should not be a valid excuse. Should bad parents have their own 3 strikes rule?
If you sue someone and it is determined that your suit has no basis it is only right and just that you pay the expenses that you and your lawsuit have created. Conversely, if you commit a tort and lose the lawsuit, it should be your responsibility to pay the expenses since you caused the need for the lawsuit. This is called winner take all and its purpose is to limit frivolous lawsuits and lawsuits filed solely to intimidate defendants into making a settlement to keep costs down.
The legislative branches are there to codify bad behavior based on the will of the people. If ever the majority are no longer allowed to determine what they believe is bad behavior, we will no longer have a representative democracy. The constitution makes very clear the things we are not allowed to discriminate against.
Never forget that the basis for law is our moral foundation. If we lose that moral foundation, our experiment in representative democracy is over for we will have only the law of man to govern us, not the law of God.
As the old saying goes, your rights end at my nose. For that reason, there is no such thing as unlimited freedom and freedom must be exercised responsibly.
You cannot be the best that you can be if you are not left free to pursue happiness in your own way. But...
For every freedom you have there is an equal responsibility to exercise that freedom responsibly. For example, it is your land to do with as you see fit but if what you do affects your neighbor's land, it will be your responsibility to either fix the problem or negotiate an agreement you both can live with. Getting the government involved is guaranteed to escalate the cost and their solution is likely to please no one, never mind actually solving the problem. The courts may not be much better and for certain the lawyers will be much more expensive.
The constitution does not promise you happiness, only that it will honor your God given right to pursue it. Getting there is the responsibility of the individual, not the village.
Your primary responsibility must be to keep yourself informed and ready to fight for your freedoms at all times. There will never be a time when the forces of evil will not be trying to take freedom away from you.
It is in the interest of most politicians to take freedom away from you so that they can remain in power. Thugs, dictators and criminals have the same self interest.
To our knowledge, no government in the history of the planet has ever been able to throw enough money nor point enough guns at its people to get socialism or communism to work better than capitalism. Progressive and liberal are just different names for socialist.
Capitalism and individual freedom have consistently provided the highest standard of living for the greatest number of people. Nothing else is even close; even the communist Chinese have had to install capitalism to get their economy to grow. Sadly, the Chinese are doing capitalism better than the Obama administration. Remember that in November, 2012. Also ask yourself whether you want to live like the average Chinese. Allowing our national debt to continue to grow has a very realistic potential to severely lower our standard of living.
Taking from those who produce to give to those who do not is theft and serves only to keep politicians in power. The rest of us are brought down to the lowest common denominator.
Our constitution grants us freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. It is the establishment clause, not the separation clause. Sorry, atheists, you are entirely free to not believe, but you have no right whatsoever to tell the rest of us when, where or what we are to believe. Congress may not establish or promote a religion but prayer on public property is not prohibited and saying a prayer does not violate the constitution. A cross or the 10 commandments on public property would only constitute promotion if the symbols of other religions were prohibited. Again, to the atheists, atheism is not a religion; at the end, according to the atheists, it is just... nothing.
The first amendment gives us freedom of speech, if we use it responsibly, but nothing in the Constitution protects you from being offended. Lets face it, some people go around looking for excuses to be offended. So what? Of course, there is little to be gained by going around deliberately insulting people but insults are not prohibited nor is being offended protected.
The second amendment includes the phrase, "shall not be abridged." That language is extraordinarily clear and unambiguous. The Federalist Papers and other historical documents make clear that owning firearms is an individual right and the Supreme Court agrees. To the anti-gun crowd I would say, "Go after those who abuse their second amendment rights with my blessing. But when you go after honest citizens and when you attempt to abridge our rights, do not be surprised when we fight you to the death." If ever honest, law abiding citizens have their guns taken away, our experiment in representative government will not long be with us for the means to defend our freedoms will be in the hands of the tyrants who are taking them away from us. That is precisely the reason the founders gave us the second amendment.
Links for pro second amendment organizations: NRA Second Amendment Foundation Gun Owners of America
- This is only here because the vast majority of the media produces pure crap and probably always have done so. Journalists who tell you they are unbiased are liars. It is not humanly possible to keep one's personal beliefs out of one's news reports. A journalist who admits his bias up front is far more trustworthy than the one who claims no bias. Journalists who believe that their journalism should advocate a belief are not journalists, they are advocates or activists or editorialists. They have a place, it is just not as journalists.
- The Internet contains everything good and bad; true and false. The trick is to find sources for news that tell you all of what happened and leave the editorials to someone else.
- The Drudge Report is probably the most neutral news web site that exists. Matt Drudge simply provides links to other sources and he is pretty good at providing links to both sides of an issue. Occasionally he will post his own stories with his own bias. It is easy enough to find a source elsewhere to get a different slant.
- Bottom line: If you rely on any single source for news or information, you will never know what the truth really is. We all like to feel good but sometimes the truth hurts and the wise know how to deal with that. Just because it feels good doesn't mean it is right or true.
The power to tax is the power to subjugate. Therefore taxes should be easy to reduce and very difficult to raise. There are legitimate needs for taxes just as there are legitimate needs for government but eternal vigilance is required whenever politicians or any other humans are in charge of other people's money. But especially politicians.
Taxes should always be paid the day before election day. No withholding, no quarterly payments, just a check from you to the government the day before you vote for the person who will control how much tax you pay and what your taxes will be used for.
The constitution declares that we are all equal under the law. If we take that literally, then the cost of the government would be divided equally amongst all the taxpayers or at least paid for equally by the people who receive the services. In practice, that would mean that the minimum wage earner paid the same number of dollars that Bill Gates would pay resulting in insufficient funds for even reasonable law enforcement, never mind national defense. Clearly a fair method must be devised to raise the funds the majority agree are needed to fund a limited government. It is the meaning of "fair" that creates all the rhetoric and heated debate.
The meaning of fair should include:
Something from every able bodied income earner. To quote President Obama, we should all have some skin in the game. It is as unfair for some to pay nothing as it is for some to pay all.
A tax source that minimizes the impact to the economy while providing adequate revenue. The concept is that the healthier the economy, the greater the available revenue for all, thus the fairest method.
Simplicity. All of the current deductions, loopholes and multiple brackets in our current tax laws completely deny fairness, logic or reason. We have great disagreements about which parts are unfair but nearly all of us agree that the current system has great inequities in it.
Socialism argues from each according to his ability; to each according to his need. Carried to its logical end, everyone ends up being needy because the incentive to produce is confiscated and given to the needy. Creating a progressive income tax does exactly the same thing: Those with superior ability either curtail their production and become more needy, go someplace else to produce, find ways around the tax man or just buy favors (loopholes) from the tax man. The only possible good is that the politicians can buy votes from the needy with funds confiscated from the producers.
Why is it that nearly half our income earners pay no income tax at all? Should not every able bodied citizen who benefits from government services be required to contribute something? Should not all citizens who earn an income have some skin in the game? Here are the numbers:
86% of all income taxes are paid by the top 25% of earners.
The top 50% pay 97% of all income taxes.
The top 1% pay 39% of all income taxes.
We think that means the occupy wall street crowd mostly pay nothing, far exceeded by what they cost the taxpayers.
You don't have to believe us. Here is the IRS source: *Source Link: Data from the Latest Tax Year Released by the IRS.
Since we are a consumer society, would it not be much better to dump the income tax and go to a sales tax? Each would contribute according to his ability and willingness to pay; those who buy the yachts would pay a lot more dollars than us ordinary working folks and we could all determine to some extent how much we paid by limiting our purchases when times got tough. If nothing else, the politicians would have less power over us and the cost of collecting the taxes would be vastly lower.
Herman Cain proposed a flat tax he called 999. For his trouble, he was accused of sexual harassment without a single shred of proof ever offered. The instant Mr. Cain ceased his run for the Presidency, the accusers disappeared. It is called character assassination and the socialists are masters of it. We hope Herman will keep his plan alive if, for no other reason, it forces the RINOs to either present their own plans or risk being exposed for the big government advocates they truly are.
Here is a link to the "Fair Tax". It would certainly be better than the massive collection of loopholes we call the Internal Revenue Code. Most anything short of confiscation of all wealth would be better than what we have now.
From a purely economic point of view, taxing businesses is economic suicide. Businesses create profits which make the economy grow because profit is the creation of wealth that did not previously exist and that is why capitalism provides the higher standard of living. Every dollar that is confiscated from a business in the form of tax lessens profit, potentially lessens the number of jobs and the net result is less growth and a lower standard of living. Only businesses create wealth. Wage earners only create wealth if they invest part of their wage in a business that produces a profit. Government never produces a profit unless it invests in a business that makes a profit but the constitution says we are all equal under the law so technically if government invests in one business they must invest equally in all business. Government does, legitimately, buy goods and services so never forget that every dollar that goes to government is reduced by the extraordinarily wasteful cost of running the government. Government investments and purchases are like spending a dollar to be able to invest 20 cents, not a very profitable use for the dollar if profit and economic growth is the motive.
Unions
There has been a lot of talk about unions and probably always will be. The flydivers have belonged to a teacher's union, owned our own companies and been managers for someone else's company. Here is what we have observed:
There will never be a shortage of bad managers, thus the need for employees to come together to protect themselves from stupidity and genuine exploitation. The question is how to do so in such a way that everyone wins.
Traditionally unions are socialist. They are terrified of competition so everyone is a journeyman at the same rate of pay and merit pay is blasphemy. But the fact is that in a capitalistic economy labor is a commodity like any other. Union labor must be allowed to compete with other sources of labor on both price and productivity. If they cannot compete, they like any unprofitable company, should become extinct.
The other fact is that unions regularly buy favors from politicians by recycling dues money into campaign contributions. The result is that the laws of supply and demand are artificially altered resulting in a loss to the economy as a whole. This is not to say that companies and all sorts of other special interests do not do exactly the same thing. That the voters allow politicians who pander to these groups to remain in office is perhaps the worst behavior.
Unions will often go after all the other companies similar to the business they are striking along with all its suppliers and customers. Lawyers use the same technique. The result is that organizations who have done nothing wrong are penalized along with the bad managers. Not a level playing field but absolutely legal because of the purchased political favors during Franklin Roosevelt's administration.
What is illegal is for a company to form its own employee organization. That can only happen if the organization is a bona fide labor union.
Suppose that you started a small business? Your business grew and you found yourself with more employees than you could effectively manage by yourself. You could, of course hire a manager to supervise the employees but suppose that you asked the employees to elect one of their own to occupy an office near yours? The purpose would be for that employee to act as go between yourself and the rest of your employees. You could add compensation for the extra responsibility and any time you needed to make a change or do anything that affected your employees, you could consult your employee rep and find a solution that created that win, win situation. Sorry mate, the unions got that made illegal. Again, an example of the socialist mentality being unwilling to engage in honest competition.
FlyDivers do not object to unions per se but we do think the playing field is not level and we very much object to socialism as the means for organizing a union because in socialism, nobody is allowed to win except, as George Orwell's Animal Farm pointed out, some pigs (think union bosses and politicians) are more equal than others.
Socialist unions do not allow merit pay which lowers the standard to the common denominator. Lower productivity means lower profit and fewer employees, lose, lose. Merit pay improves productivity, the more productive employee wins a raise and the company wins more profit, win, win. By the way, more profit and higher salaries nearly always translates to more revenue for the government. So why would they pander to the unions? Think $$$$$$ and personal power for the politician who obviously cares not the least for the country.
One of the things we know as managers is that companies need to be able to change quickly if they are to remain competitive. Locking them into a fixed set of work rules, which most unions mandate, makes change extremely difficult. Companies that fail, for whatever reason, put everybody out on the street looking for work. (The big lose.)
Strikes are lose, lose. Rare is the union member that recovers his losses from a prolonged strike, never mind the lost revenue to the company and the government, lose, lose and lose. Public employee strikes add a 4th loser, the taxpayers. The additional animosity that inevitably results from a strike creates a permanent adversarial relationship that is a big loss for the entire economy.
Some final questions to stimulate thought: If a union has to go on strike is it not because both the union leadership and the company management have utterly failed? Who pays the price for that failure? Are union bosses and company managers fired for those failures? Who won at the end of a strike? Did what you won pay for the cost of the strike? If you are on strike pay, is your union boss also on strike pay? Do politicians ever get fired because of strikes that cost the entire economy huge amounts of money? Why should a union be allowed to strike an organization that serves all the people? Are all the people ever the cause of the union's disagreement? What change(s) to the law do you think would level the playing field, minimize loss of revenue for all concerned and maximize the opportunity to achieve a win, win solution when unions and employers disagree?