The beautiful Palace at Versailles is a monument to failure. It was constructed at the wishes of a series of French monarchs who were so far removed from the concerns and needs of their subjects that it ultimately cost the last of those, Louis XVI, his reign and his head. At the end of World War One it was the location at which the terms of the armistice between the combatants was worked out. The terms of that armistice were so grossly unfair to Germany and her allies that it led to an even more destructive World War barely a generation later. After six years of that worldwide conflict, many of the world’s economies were in shambles. To it’s credit, the United States came to the aid of these shattered nations, giving or loaning money to virtually everyone, even our former enemies, in order to prevent the catastrophic results of the Treaty of Versailles. Through mechanisms like the Marshall Plan and others, the economies of the world were restored. This process was continued under the policies of “Foreign Aid”, which exist to the present day. We, as the last remaining “Super Power” were deemed to have an obligation to share our wealth with those less fortunate.
Monthly Archives: March 2017
Children?
The individual at left is Henry Sanchez-Milian, an 18 year old native of Guatemala. Milian, assisted by 17 year old Jose Montano from El Salvador, is accused of the brutal rape of a 14 year old girl at their high school in Rockville, Maryland. Both these young men had entered this country illegally in 2016, but were released by ICE after they had been apprehended by the Border Patrol, because of the “catch and release” policies of the Obama administration. Milian and Montano are accused of raping, sodomizing and then forcing the girl to engage in an oral sex act. Make you cringe to hear that? It should. These people, if guilty as charged, are monsters. The girl will undoubtably be mentally scarred for life. Unbelievably, Milian’s lawyer is now claiming the the acts were consensual! I’m no lawyer, but I believe a minor can’t “consent” to sex acts performed by an adult, right?
Welcome To The Swamp!
Welcome to the swamp President Trump. Your career as a businessman was based on making good financial decisions which allowed your companies to be successful and profitable. What you are learning in your new job is that politics operate under a very different set of rules and goals. The career politician’s first and foremost goal is to be re-elected. For a member of the House, that happens every two years. Their timeline is obviously very short termed. Unfortunately, the critical issues our country is facing are long term. Whether it be healthcare, national defense or secure borders, these are generational issues and must be addressed as such. However, CAN they be, under our system of government? The answer must be yes, but it isn’t going to be easy.
The cesspool which federal level politics has become is indeed going to have to be drained, cleaned and sanitized. The fact that politicians can look the public in the eye and lie without fear of retribution simply must come to an end. Unfortunately, the national media has long since given up their roll as unbiased fact checkers. With very few exceptions, they have moved far to the left, in a mirror image of the Democratic party. Gradually, this will no longer be an issue, as older Americans, who traditionally relied on newspapers, magazines and the television networks for their news, pass on. The succeeding generations rely more on talk radio, cable news networks, the internet and social networking like Twitter and Facebook for their news. This phenomena has not been lost on President Trump and his team.
The “HR” Fallacy
One of the most subtle things that the left has been able insert into our society in the last few years is the concept of “HR”. This stands, of course, for Human Resources, and the HR Departments have basically taken over the management style and even day to day operations of companies, large and small, across our nation. So where did this concept come from? Academics, of course, those individuals who live in an alternate universe populated with tenured, like minded individuals. In the 1920’s and 30’s studies in the U.S. and France formulated a “Human Relations” theory which said that factors other than salary were what made a good workplace. A sense of belonging to a corporate group, praise for a job well done, etc. Who can argue with that? However, World War Two intervened, and maximum production of war materials was the focus of corporations and workers. It was patriotic to work long hours. Pats on the back didn’t really matter. We were fighting for our very survival as a nation. When the war ended, things gradually began to change.
The change from a wartime economy to a normal one was dramatic. You could once again buy a car, home ownership skyrocketed, corporations expanded or were created, and new fields of endeavor arose. As the corporations grew, it became harder and harder to manage from the top down and so bureaucracies were created within the corporation itself. Individual departments built their own “Ivory Towers”, each with their own management chain of command and priorities. As is the case with all bureaucracies, these priorities were not necessarily in the best interests of the company as a whole. In my area of expertise, the airline industry, that led to competition, not cooperation between the various employee groups. The pilots against the flight attendants, the mechanics against both those groups and the non unionized employees against the union people. It became dog eat dog. So, the managers at the top looked for something that could relieve them of the responsibility for mediating the squabbles between these groups. Enter a new concept, based on the “Human Relations” theories, the “HR” Department. Now they would have the overall responsibility to make the workplace “work”.
TWA 800 – The Morning After
On the morning of July 18, 1996 I woke up after a near sleepless night to what I knew was going to be a very long day. The night before, in my home in Albuquerque, NM, I had watched with horror as a breaking story emerged on the nightly news about the crash of TWA 800, which had departed New York for Paris. All souls aboard had perished. As Council Chairman for ALPA Council 024, I was the union representative for all the pilots who had died the previous evening. I showered, put on my uniform, and left for the airport on the way to JFK International, where I arrived in the early afternoon.
My first task was to talk to the chief pilot for the domicile, and then to have a meeting with TWA airport security. That first day, it was generally accepted that a bomb must have brought down the plane, similar to what had occurred 8 years earlier to Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. I wanted the head of security to brief me, as well as view the baggage inspection procedures at our JFK terminal. Although I was generally familiar with our baggage security system, which included matching bags with boarded passengers, I still was impressed with how things actually worked in practice. Bomb sniffing dogs walked on the bags as they slowly moved along the conveyer belts on the way to be loaded into baggage containers to be loaded onto the aircraft. Even if the bag passed the “sniff check” by these wonderfully sensitive and trained animals, it could not be loaded into a container until the bar code on the bag matched the boarding pass of the passenger as they checked in. The system occasionally resulted in so-called “bag pull” delays if the passenger missed the boarding call and didn’t board the flight on time. Since we were confident that our bag system was pretty much fool proof, that led to the conclusion that the suspected bomb might have been in a cargo consignment or placed there by a person allowed in the secure area of the ramp. Unfortunately, as it turned out, there were too many of those. They included commissary personnel, fuelers, baggage handlers from other airlines delivering interline transfer bags to our terminal, etc. Was the bomber among them?
After a very long day, I made it a point to proceed to the departure gate of our flight 800 that evening. I wanted to talk to the crew and assure them that everything possible was being done to insure the safety and security of them, the cabin team, and the passengers. It was a somber moment as I shook hands all around and left the aircraft. Thankfully, I sensed concern, but not fear. The entire crew, cockpit and cabin, were performing as the professionals they were trained to be. While at the airport I had an opportunity to talk to several representatives of the FBI. Although they were courteous and professional in their manner, I couldn’t help feeling that they were dismissive in their attitude towards my questions about the possible cause of this disastrous event. It was disquieting, but only a hint of what was to come in the days ahead. My world, and the future of the company for which I had worked the previous thirty-two years, was soon to be thrown into turmoil by forces almost beyond my comprehension.
Them and Us?
Remember the PATCO Strike? If not, look it up. Lesson: Everybody is replaceable. If you are a government employee or retiree, whether local, state or federal, you’re probably not going to like what I’m going to say, but here goes. There is extensive data available which proves beyond doubt that government employees earn considerably more in salary and benefits than their contemporaries in the private sector. Once they pass their probationary period, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fire them. So, over the years, we have allowed a situation to develop where the civil service employee makes (but not necessarily earns) more than the taxpayer, their employer. Can this be allowed to continue?
The only exception to this situation appears to be the military and much of law enforcement and fire protection. Those are the people we rely upon to protect and defend us. If anything, they should be at the top of the compensation list, not at or near the bottom. No member of the military earns what they should be paid for doing what is a very rigorous and frequently dangerous job on our behalf. They and their families live, in the best of circumstances, under conditions which can only be described as marginal. The “refugees” now streaming into America are given far more federal housing assistance, for instance, than military families. During multiple “deployments” military fathers and mothers are stationed overseas in dangerous areas while their families are left at home to cope as best they can. Except in our larger cities, police and fire department personnel earn less than clerical staff in our nation’s capital. This is just wrong. But the worst is yet to come.
Truth or Lies?
The only time in recent memory that I can recall Americans really coming together as a nation, with political differences put aside, was on September 12, 2001. We had been suddenly and viciously attacked by persons of unknown origin. Icons of our country, including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been either totally destroyed or seriously damaged. Thousands of Americans were dead. It is no exaggeration to say that our population was afraid. Afraid because of what had occurred, and fearful of what was to come. Even though there had just been a very divisive and contested presidential election, Republicans, Democrats and Independents all closed ranks and supported President George W. Bush. Nothing like this had occurred in this country since the days following December 7, 1941 and the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sadly, this new found unity quickly unravelled under the influences of the politicians on the left. They didn’t want a unified country unless it was unified under the banner of the Democratic Party.
Sell California?
If 2016 was “The Year of the Unthinkable” for the left, perhaps we should consider doubling down on that concept. How about 2017 being “The Year We Give Them Some Of What They Want”? First step: Pay for the wall. How could we do that? Sell California to Mexico! Yes, it would require extending the wall to include the current eastern and northern California state line, but that just means more construction jobs for “E-verified” American workers. Former Mexican President Vincente Fox will be ecstatic! He won’t have to pay for that “Fu***** Wall”! For long suffering California Conservatives (no they haven’t gone they way of the Dodo Bird) perhaps there could be a new state called North California in the mold of West Virginia. If it’s boundaries included everything east of Palm Springs and north of Marin County, which is much of the productive part of the state, there would be a haven for these conservative displaced persons.
A “Slippery Slope”?
In 1980 a woman named Candace Lightner formed an organization in California called “Mothers Against Drunk Drivers” or simply “MADD”. That organization now has chapters in all fifty states and is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization. As of 2013, it’s total revenues were over $33,400,000 and it had 426 full time employees.
Shortly after it’s inception, MADD members began pushing their various state governments to institute stricter regulations against driving under the influence of alcohol ( aka: DUI). How could they not be supported? These were MOTHERS after all, who had lost children in a senseless manner, taken from them by drunkards who had used their vehicles as weapons! So, arbitrary legal maximum blood alcohol levels were established, .08 becoming the norm in most states. I say again, these are arbitrary numbers. Some individuals have proven to be able to operate complex machinery (military jet fighters, for example) with considerably higher BAC than .08.
With all that said, there are established standards for DWI. The problem comes with how they are applied. The 4th Amendment to our Constitution prohibits “Unreasonable search and seizure”, and the 5th Amendment protects an individual against “Self incrimination” Most of us have heard of the “Miranda” ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1966. This ruling overturned the conviction of Arizona resident Ernesto Miranda on charges of assault and rape due to the fact that he was unaware that he needn’t make statements to the arresting officers until he had a lawyer present to represent him. So, his signed confession was ruled inadmissible, and he was set free. That event led to the standard procedures in use today. You know: “You have the right to remain silent…………” Etc, etc, etc.
In the case of the DWI situation, the “seriousness” of the offense apparently allowed the 4th and 5th Amendments to be basically ignored. Police could set up random roadblocks, where they could ask such questions as “Have you consumed any alcohol this evening?” Should you be so foolish as to answer in the affirmative, you were then given roadside sobriety tests which might include a “breathalyzer” to determine if you were guilty of DUI. Remember, you hadn’t been seen weaving or driving erratically, you were just scooped up in a “BAT” roadblock. The notoriously touchy ACLU was silent about this. Again, it was for the “Greater Good”.
In the years since, there have been ever increasing numbers of incidents where our 4th Amendment rights have been abrogated in order to “protect” the citizenry. The latest example of this is the possible surveillance of American citizens by various federal intelligence agencies without bothering to get required court permission to do so. To those who value our Constitution, this is a very dangerous “Slippery Slope” indeed.
“Please Tell Vladimir……………..”
After the 2016 Presidential election results were announced, I had hopes that there was a shred of dignity and patriotism left in the Democratic Party and the national media. The events which have transpired since President Trumps’s inauguration have disabused me of that foolish notion. The Democrats, led by the tried and true political hacks Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, didn’t even break stride as they went from their “He will NEVER be President” statements into their “IMPEACH HIM!” mode.
The same group of people were willing to excuse Barak Obama and his band of “Merry Socialists” every assault on our Constitution, no matter how egregious his actions might be. This was also true for the presidency of Bill Clinton and the future campaign of his wife Hillary. From the “White Water” investigation, to the semen stains on the blue dress belonging to Monica Lewinsky, and everything between, nothing mattered. Couldn’t we just “move on”? In 1998, international progressive meddler George Soros founded a PAC called MoveOn.org which urged Americans to forget (read ignore) all the negative information about the Clintons and just accept the narrative being put forth by the left. In a few years a young mixed race individual from Chicago named Barack Obama would become the newest darling of Soros and the radical left, and his rise from political obscurity would be meteoric.