Insanity in Government

Imagine you own a business.  Everything seems to be humming along fine but you start getting complaints about one of your employees.  Being a responsible business owner, you call the employee in and ask about it:

"I've been getting a lot of complaints about you.  Tell me your side of the story."

"I did nothing wrong but I'm going to invoke my 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination."

"Oh?  Well, I'm going to have to put you on administrative leave - with full pay, of course - until I get to the bottom of all these complaints."

Employee whistles a happy tune as he heads home for an extended paid vacation.

Not how you would react to an employee who essentially admitted criminal wrongdoing?  That is how the Federal government reacted to Lois Lerner of the IRS.  She declared her innocence and then pleaded the 5th.  Greg Roseman, a Deputy Director of the IRS, also invoked the 5th.

Maybe I'm missing something, but any employee who refuses to report to the boss on what is happening in his department by saying it might be self-incriminating should be fired on the spot.  The original purpose of that clause in the 5th Amendment was to disallow law enforcement from wringing confessions via torture.  There is no threat of torture by Congress, unless one considers droning self-aggrandizing speeches to be torture.  These folks either did something that may be criminal or they are protecting someone else.

 

The original story was that 'rogue agents' were being overzealous but that doesn't jibe with the deputy director invoking the 5th.  Something stinks at the IRS.  As I have long suggested, we should repeal the 16th Amendment (Income Tax) and thus rid ourselves of the IRS and starve an increasingly tyrannical government of funds.

Death of the Initiative

The recent Supreme Court ruling on California's Prop 8 (that amended the state constitution to declare that marriage was between 1 man and 1 woman) has just emasculated the initiative process.  The initiative process is a way for the People to directly legislate.  This is often at odds with what the elected legislators want.  Certainly, the majority Democrat legislature of California didn't want Prop 8 to pass.  The current governor doesn't want to enforce it.  But the people, by a statewide vote, wanted it.  Democracy, don't you know.  But, as one would expect, those who lost the vote went to court.  And won.  This in and of itself is a problem.  Do the people have the right to rule themselves or not?  But that's another issue.  What happened after that first court case is at issue.  The state government refused to defend the constitution of the state before the Supreme Court.  Yes, it is a duly passed amendment and the state government is, in theory, required to adhere to it but refused to defend it in court.  Well, it's a court case and someone must speak up.  Someone did.  And the court ruled that they didn't have standing to defend Prop 8.  Therefore, the lower court ruling stands.

What does this mean in the long run?  What if the People of California pass an initiative to limit the terms of government service?  A few 'public servants' sue and the state refuses to defend the proposition.  Voila!  It is overturned.  The vote of the People can be dismissed and the People don't have standing to appeal.  This is going to be a lesson learned by those who oppose the initiative process.  Do a bit of judge shopping to get the right ruling and then count on the government - that is never thrilled by uppity citizens trying to limit its power - to not defend citizen initiatives.

Oh, but these legislators will be voted out, right?  Unlikely.  The legislators will blame the governor, the governor will blame the judge, and the judge is untouchable.  The People are no longer citizens, they are subjects.  Government is too big to control and it is now on a permanent spiral to more and more power.  This is just the latest sign that the People have far less say than they think.

Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

Back in 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (also called the Simpson-Mazzoli Act) was passed into law and signed by President Reagan.  It granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants while also enacting measures to prevent future illegal immigrants.  Voila!  The immigration issue was solved!

Today, we are talking about a new plan to resolve the vastly worse (11 million illegal immigrants) problem with a 'Path to Citizenship' combined with stronger border enforcement.  Hmm, this is sounding familiar.  In 1986, we got the Amnesty but didn't get the enforcement to prevent a huge flood of new immigrants.  Now Congress is assuring us that this time it will work.  Trust us just one more time.  Oh, and ignore that report from the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) that says the bill will only cut illegal immigration by 25%.

I've had a lot of good will toward Marco Rubio, the putative architect of this current immigration reform but he's lost me on this.  When he first started pushing for this, he was adamant that border security would happen before any path to citizenship could kick in.  That is no longer the case.  Border security is secondary while amnesty (euphemistically call 'legal status') is instantaneous.  Sounds like a replay of 1986.

 

Why is this so urgent now?  Republicans seem to think that Hispanics hate them and that passing Amnesty will perhaps win some to the cause.  Really?  Why didn't the last Amnesty - signed into law by a Republican - give the Republicans a larger share of their vote?  The history is not favorable but they're going to try it again.  I see why Pat Caddell calls Republicans the Stupid Party.  Hispanics vote Democrat and the Republicans are trying to get millions of more voters for the other party.  Stupid.

 

But the new law will stop the flow, right?  No.  Congress passed a law to build a border fence.  The law of the land says there is to be 700 miles of fence.  Law!  Passed by Congress and signed by the president in 2006.  Only 37 miles were built and the project abandoned.  If that law can be so readily ignored, what makes anyone think that a new law promising border enforcement will be obeyed?  Recall Simpson-Mazzoli?  We already have laws on the books that aren't enforced.  The Federal Government sued the state of Arizona for attempting to enforce some of those laws!

 

Actions speak louder than words.  Every action shows that the Feds don't want the border secure.  The only purpose of this bill is Amnesty.  Everything else will be ignored after the fact, just like Simpson-Mazzoli, just like the border fence.  And 30 years hence, we'll do it again.

Man of Steel

The movie opens with a woman in labor.  Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is the only person with his wife during the delivery of Kal-El.  As we later learn, this is the first natural birth in centuries.  Next we find Jor-El trying to convince the ruling council to make plans to abandon Krypton.  The planet's core is unstable and it will implode in weeks.  The council ignores him and, moments later, General Zod bursts into the chamber and takes over.  Jor-El escapes and manages to send Kal-El on his way to earth before the inevitable destruction of Krypton.  As luck would have it, Zod and his followers survived the destruction thanks to their imprisonment after the failure of the coup.  Moreover, the destruction released them from prison.

Fast forward 30 years or so and we find a bearded Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) on a fishing boat.  This is not the Clark Kent of the comics.  In flashbacks, we discover that Clark is a lost and confused soul.  He knows he is not of this world but that is all he knows.  He is searching for answers to his origins and an overheard conversation (love the super hearing), he eventually ends up at a military compound in the arctic where an ancient ship has been discovered beneath the ice.  The ship and an odd token that was with him as a baby lead to the answers he seeks.  However, activating the ancient ship also alerts General Zod.

Henry Cavill does a very good job with the role.  He is brawnier than any previous Superman.  At one point, he has a Hulk scene.  After having his clothes destroyed in a fire, the nearly naked Clark (reminiscent of Bill Bixby back in the day) steals some clothes.  Steals?  Superman?  What have they done!  At another point, a trucker pours a beer on his head and he meekly walks away but we learn he destroyed the trucker's truck.  Kind of petty, Superman.  Yeah, the audience loved it but it's beneath Superman.  Or it should be.

Moreover, Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is present when Clark enters the long lost Kryptonian ship beneath the ice.  To my horror, she discovers all of Clark's secrets before he first dons his Superman costume.  Wow, talk about turning things on their head.  And there is no Jimmy Olsen!  Lois takes her own pictures.  I thought Lois was a little too squishy for an ace reporter.  It might just be that Amy Adams has a girlish voice that doesn't have much of an edge to it.  She does sweet just fine (see Enchanted) but a reporter who had been embedded in Iraq she is not.

The big failing was Krypton.  How is it that this spacefaring race of 100 centuries is utterly destroyed by the loss of the home planet?  Jor-El explained how other worlds had been visited and that stations were posted.  Zod later proves to have a vessel for terraforming to make worlds more hospitable for Kryptonians.  So, with all this technology, nothing survives except Zod and his band of criminals.  And speaking of Zod, he was bred to be the leader of Krypton's military like Jor-El was bred to be the lead scientist and yet, when the two meet in combat, Jor-El stomps Zod.  Huh?  Well, it is Russell Crowe.

As is apparent, this is a reimaging of the character.  It is an effort to see how Kal-El's life might have played out in a real - rather than comic - world.  Well, mostly.  The big city is still Metropolis and Lois works for the Daily Planet.  Anyway, Clark would not just come out and start flying around in the super suit as the comic depicts.  Once he does in response to the arrival of General Zod, the military is as wary of him as of Zod.  Though initially doubtful, I was won over by this telling.

Global Warming Collapse

Here is a fascinating article that projects a coming mini-Ice Age, not unlike the one that followed the Medieval Warm Period.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-global-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/

 

I have long held that Global Warming/Climate Change is just a con to wriggle more tax dollars from the public.  Even if this article is 100% correct, it just means that the con will adjust.  In a few years time, governments in conjunction with climate scientists will declare a need for more government control to prevent Global Cooling.  Climate Change is about money and power, not science.  Al Gore has become immensely wealthy through his doom saying.  Government eagerly funds scientific endeavors that conclude more government taxation and regulation is necessary to save us from ourselves but, oddly, they don't fund those who say this is a natural process that need not be addressed.

Scandal Smorgasbord

Hardly even into his second term and Obama has been beset by a bumper crop of scandals, any one of which would topple a Republican president.

 

Benghazi: Oh, look, it turns out that there wasn't a demonstration that got out of hand and that stupid video played no role in the attack.  Susan Rice's talking points had undergone a dozen revisions before she was sent to parrot the nonsense on 5 Sunday talk shows.  The White House knew that it was a terrorist attack while it was still in progress.  Moreover, they knew it was an Al Qaeda affiliate.  Gosh, lucky none of that came out during the campaign.

 

IRS: The IRS harassed conservative groups from 2010 through the 2012 election and the former acting commissioner brushed it off as 'bad customer service.'  Funny how only Tea Party groups suffered this bad service.  Back in 2009, people laughed when Obama playfully joked about auditing them for not giving him an honorary degree.  Well, it seems he wasn't joking.  Many will say that Obama never gave the order so he isn't to blame.  Hmm, I remember the Bush White House saying something like that with regard to Abu Graib but the press asserted that Bush had baked such into the culture of his administration.  Let's see, who said you should reward your friends and punish your enemies?  Obama.  Who attacked the Supreme Court for the Citizens United decision (the one that made these tax-exempt groups possible)?  Obama.  Sounds like the president gave some guidelines in his speeches.

 

AP Phone Records: The DOJ scooped up the phone records of a wide swath of AP reporters for two months to catch a leaker.  Hey, why not just get the phone records of every reporter so you don't miss something?

 

Fox News: AG Holder approved naming James Rosen as a co-conspirator in a leak investigation.  So, a reporter who gets a scoop is now to be a criminal.  Must not allow information to be released that the government doesn't want the people to know.  What Freedom of the Press?

 

Obamacare Donations: The Congress has not allocated sufficient funds to get all of the state exchanges up and running so HHS Secretary Sebelius has been making the rounds asking for 'donations.'  Sure, she is going to be regulating these companies once Obamacare is fully in force but don't think that a failure to offer a 'donation' will affect how stringently the rules are enforced.

 

Government Bullying: A couple in Texas sought to get tax-exempt status for a Tea Party related group and soon thereafter were interviewed by the FBI (multiple times), audited by the IRS, audited by ATF (twice), and had a visit from OSHA.  Somehow, that doesn't seem like a coincidence.

One Republican said that impeachment wasn't off the table; that Republican is a fool.  Short of being captured on camera killing someone (who is not a Republican), there is no way a Democrat Senate is going to convict a Democrat President in an impeachment trial.  It is an utter waste of time to go down that path, or even suggest that path is a possibility.  It didn't work out too well last time.

 

David Axelrod made a cogent point (accidentally, I suspect): he said that the government is too big for one man to control.  I am in complete agreement.  We need to shrink the government to a more manageable size.  When it gets down to a size where Obama isn't still claiming to be out of the loop, we will know we have reached the appropriate amount of government.  Oh happy day!

Immigration Reform

The Boston Bombers were on welfare last year.  Really?  In an earlier post about immigration, I suggested that we should not import costs.  You don't let an 80 year-old immigrate so you can pay the end of life expenses.  You don't import the homeless so they can be a drag on our economy rather than a foreign economy.  You don't let criminals come here.  Can we have a rule that if you are an immigrant, you are ineligible for public assistance for life?  I am all for immigration but I want immigrants to support themselves.  If they can't, let their home country deal with them.

 

Here we are spending three and a half TRILLION dollars a year for this government and it can't keep an eye on a guy it has already identified as a potential threat?  Here is a Muslim who traveled to the war-ravaged Caucus region for months but the government seemed not to notice.  Secretary Napolitano said the system 'pinged' when he left but the alert had expired before he returned so he slipped through.  What?!  Maybe we could give extra scrutiny to all persons coming to the US from places like Afghanistan, Dagestan, Pakistan, etc.  Having experience as a database programmer, I can tell you that this should be painfully easy with even outdated computers but our massively funded Homeland Security Department has failed to do so.  Heck, they posted Jihadi stuff online and had already been interviewed by the FBI.

 

The government let them come here, paid for them with public assistance, knew Tamerlan had gone to Dagestan, and let him back in unmolested.  So, the system worked.