My campaign platform …

No one’s asked me to run. And if asked, I would decline. 

Plus, I wouldn’t stand a chance of a snowball in Hell. Especially with this campaign platform:

Eliminate all personal and business tax credits, subsidies, deductions, and exemptions. It’s time to stop letting politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and special interest groups decide winners and losers. There’s also no reason to incent people or businesses to do what they would do anyway without the credits and subsidies; if these are the only reason they do something, it probably doesn’t make sense anyway.

NOTE: This would also affect all the high-tax states and localities – their residents would no longer be allowed to deduct any state or local taxes (including property taxes) from their income to lower their Federal tax burden. There’s no reason why the rest of the country should be subsidizing state and local governments who cannot keep their spending under control. Expect people who can to vote with their feet and move to lower-tax areas; those who can’t pick up and move will pressure their politicians to restrain spending and cut taxes.       

Tax everybody on whatever they earn at the same rate, but just once.  I suggest a flat 10% income tax on everybody. That means a 10% tax on interest, capital gains, dividends, salaries, bonuses – in short, every form of income, whether that’s cash or in the form of allowances and perks, regardless of where it comes from. That means eliminating the corporate income tax entirely because we’ll still get the taxes when profits are distributed in the form of dividends, when stock is cashed out, or in salaries and bonuses. 

Decertify government employee unions. There’s no rational reason for these to exist. The government doesn’t take advantage of them making a union necessary to protect their rights and safety.  Quite the contrary – the government works for them and their unions work to amass political power to exact more from the taxpayers and elect politicians who keep enlarging government. If we can’t legally decertify, pass a law in Congress to make it illegal for any government-funded entity to collect union dues from any of its employees’ paychecks without that employee’s express consent which must be granted every year. Same effect. 

Reduce the size and scope of government. Not sometime in the future, but right now.  Among others, eliminate the following Departments and agencies:

Department of Education – Let the states decide how to run and fund their schools; reallocate budget – and the savings from closing this department and firing all its employees – to block grants to the states to use however they see fit to raise education standards locally.  

HUD – Another waste of taxpayer money; fire all the employees and redistribute its budget in block grants to the states.  State and local officials have a better understanding of what needs to be done on the ground where they are than bureaucrats in DC in their ivory towers. 

HHS – The home of political and social agendas without end.  This is really where the poverty-industrial complex thrives.  Split out the FDA and the CDC – which are useful and necessary, and send the rest packing. Medicare belongs somewhere else where it’s not a never-ending political football.   

Department of Agriculture – Believe it or not, this is where the SNAP (food stamps) program resides. It’s also where a handful of huge agribusinesses have most of the control over price supports, protection from imports, and other things that – contrary to what they’d like you to believe – do little to help consumers, but do a lot to enrich themselves. The agribusinesses that control the Ag Department keep prices artificially high and use taxpayer dollars to market their food products abroad. Food safety from here really belongs in the FDA; the rest of what the DOA does – like issuing guidelines on what to eat -- is inconsequential. 

Department of Energy – This is a department that only exists for political, not practical, reasons. Until the 1970s it didn’t even exist. It shouldn’t now. Cancel all the “green” energy contracts and loan guarantees – if something makes economic sense as a viable alternative energy source someone or some business will use their own money to make it a reality. Until then, stop the corporate welfare to agribusiness conglomerates turning food into low-quality fuel, to foreign wind-turbine manufacturers, and to non-competitive solar-panel makers.

Export-Import Bank -- True corporate welfare in its purest and most crass form. Why are we giving low-interest loans to countries like China to help Boeing and GE sell more of their stuff there?  

FNMA and FHLMC (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) – Because a bad investment is still a bad investment regardless of how politically correct it might be. If private investors aren’t willing to underwrite something without government guarantees then it’s likely a bad investment. Dumping these two won’t be easy, but it’s likely parts of each can be sold off piecemeal before the government takes a huge haircut on what’s left.

Reduce the size of the IRS.  Because everyone will be paying a flat 10% of whatever income they receive from wherever it comes, and there are no longer any tax credits, subsidies, deductions or exemptions, there will be a lot less for IRS to manage and supervise. We can probably lose about 65-70% of the current staff. 

Replace the entire welfare system of entitlements, grants, and conditional handouts.  Give the poor cash to equalize what they earn to bring a family of four up to 2X the poverty level.  Then let them decide how to use it to feed their families, pay their bills, afford housing, get phone and broadband service, and lift themselves out of poverty. Stop making all their decisions for them.  The smart ones will use the cash to get ahead; the stupid ones will be content to stay right where they are, which means nothing will change anyway, except we won’t be paying for a lot of expensive middlemen to micromanage what’s a fairly simple proposition.  And yes, the cash they receive would be taxable. 

Make a national identity card with biometrics mandatory. Every citizen must have a national identity card with biometrics to conclusively identify them.  It will be free to get one, but impossible to board a plane, buy liquor or cigarettes, or vote, without one. It will be the ultimate ID, issued only to people who can prove they are U.S. citizens by producing either a birth certificate or U.S. passport. There will be no exceptions – no acceptance of any other forms of identification to get one. The penalty for counterfeiting or altering a national identity card will be automatic deportation at the perpetrator’s expense. 

Secure our borders.  Anyone caught crossing our borders illegally should be deported immediately, regardless of age, race, or country of origin.  Anyone who facilitates someone crossing our border illegally, or harbors someone who has, should be subject to arrest.  Visitors who intentionally overstay their visas should be subject to arrest and immediate deportation at their expense to their country of origin. The money we save by closing useless government departments and agencies should be redirected in part to increasing the number and quality of border and customs agents.

Illegal immigrants already here.  There are only two options:  Round them all up and deport up to 12 million people, which isn’t possible; or accept they are here and make them either become citizens or get out, which is what we will end up doing anyway. So let’s just get it over with.  If they want to become citizens they have to speak English and have a minimum 5-year history of paying taxes and no criminal record when they apply.  If they haven’t been here 5 years, or are children, they have a conditional permit to stay that expires for adults in 5 years, or if they are children when they are 21. That’s it.  Get with the program or get out.  Forget about the fines and penalties; those aren’t going to happen. Ever. 

Reform the Social Security Administration.  For entirely too long politicians have been robbing it blind to pay for pet programs that have absolutely nothing to do with the program’s original purpose. Now the only way to keep Social Security solvent for those who really need it in years to come is to remove employee contribution caps, institute means testing for benefits, and eliminate fraud such as bogus disability claims, benefits to non-citizens, and benefits still being sent to dead people. None of that will be popular but all will be necessary. 

Enact serious campaign finance reform. First, eliminate any government financing of political campaigns, candidates, conventions, etc.  Next, curtail the power of PACs and 501c organizations by stripping them of nonprofit status and any tax exemptions and requiring anyone who contributes to any campaign, political party or advocacy group to be immediately fully and publicly disclosed as to the name of the donor and the amount contributed. Tax all political contributions over $2000 at the rate of 100%; and since there would no longer be any tax credits, deductions, or exemptions for anything (see above) this would be real money. 

Enact the California Plan nationwide for Presidential primaries. All primaries across the nation on one day with no party affiliations required of registered voters, who could then vote for one candidate from any party at that time. If no candidate gets more than 45% of the total, there’s a run off between the top four vote getters. Top two vote-getters from that face off in the general election, regardless of party. Done.       

Think I have a chance? 

Didn’t think so.   

The poverty-industrial complex …

If you had budget authority in the billions, and the power to spend it however you wished, would you willingly give up all that power?  And would you be willing to throw hundreds of thousands of employees with no other marketable job skills out of their jobs? 

And if you were one of those employees, would you work hard at eliminating your own job?

After spending trillions of dollars over more than 50 years, what is defined as poverty in America is about where it was all those years ago. The percentage of the population deemed “poor” hasn’t really changed.

Part of the reason is that politicians, bureaucrats, and special interest groups keep expanding the definition of “poor” to keep the numbers up on who needs government assistance. As much money as we spend, as many programs we create and staff with community organizers, counselors, case workers, and “outreach” specialists, we’re no closer to ending poverty than we were 50 years ago.   

That’s because there’s no incentive to do so. In fact, there’s an entire industry that’s grown up – and keeps expanding – based on perpetuating poverty and “serving the needs” of the poor. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are employed in that industry on the Federal, state, and local level. They are busy administering handouts like SNAP (food stamps) and TANF types of programs, providing job skills training, tutoring ex-cons, counseling drug addicts, setting up after-school basketball programs, teaching the poor what to eat, how to breast feed, and more.  

There’s no end to the “worthy causes” we fund.

Money streams out in grants to community-service organizations, church groups and activists, and of course in salaries and benefits to countless Federal, state and local bureaucrats. It’s in the hundreds of billions of dollars each year with nothing to show for it.  

By design.  And that’s the dirty little secret about “poverty in America.”    

There really is a poverty-industrial complex in America. It is not rewarded based on how many people are no longer dependent on its assistance, but on how many people remain dependent. That’s why activists keep redefining what’s “poor” to make it more inclusive and apparently growing; if they didn’t keep showing a growing need, they might get their funding cut.

The poverty-industrial complex is pro illegal immigrant because that means more mouths to feed, more programs to provide, and more people it can employ to serve illegal immigrants’ needs. It embraces growth in what most of us would consider bad things:  unemployment, teen pregnancy, spousal abuse, drug addiction, homelessness, clinical depression, suicidal thoughts, and mental illness in general – the more poor people in need, the more money coming its way. 

And the more job security for its employees.    

If you doubt that, consider how many people here are now on food stamps – 47-million?  Really?  There are 47-million people in America that wouldn’t have enough food otherwise – roughly 13.5% of the population?  Seriously, who do you think keeps inventing new terms like “food insecure” to describe a household that isn’t absolutely certain it has enough food on hand to satisfy everyone?  Or throws out a phrase like “children go to bed hungry every night” to imply that there isn’t enough food to feed kids? Or constantly expands programs to feed school-age kids even on the weekends and holidays – whose parents have enough money to buy the kid the latest $300 sneakers, but not enough to pay for a peanut butter sandwich? 

It’s the poverty-industrial complex. It’s the salaried welfare-rights activists, public assistance agencies, grant writers, halfway house and homeless shelter operators, mural-arts administrators, and others who, while doing some good, are also making a pretty good living at it, too.   

There are people in this country who need help.  No one, especially me, is denying that; I’ve worked with patients just released from mental institutions, and with families devastated by floods. But in doing so, I’ve also worked alongside salaried and well-paid administrators managing those assistance programs. Are they providing a service? Sure. However, they aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts; they are getting paid well for something people used to volunteer to do for free. 

There’s still selfless, charitable work people do for their neighbors, their church, or their schools, or simply because they want to help, such as working in a food bank or a soup kitchen. Yet increasingly the less charitable have found a way to cash in as organizers, administrators and “program leads” who promote themselves as experts to “guide” a program. 

I am all in favor of volunteers. I’m all in favor of charities like The Salvation Army that rely almost exclusively on volunteers and spend virtually nothing on fund raising or paying their executives. They have my enduring admiration – and financial support. They are trying to do good because they’re on a mission to make a difference. They’re not in it for the money or job security.  

Contrast that with the lifers at most public assistance agencies.

They may start out with the best of intentions but after a couple of years that enthusiasm wanes and most become drones simply going through the motions until they retire. In time they learn that what they do doesn’t make much of a difference after all; work is all about filling out forms, keeping your supervisor off your back, playing office politics, and killing time until your next paid holiday or vacation.

That doesn’t make them much different than some private sector employees, except for their unjustified arrogance toward the poor people they are supposed to serve as well as the people paying their salaries. Don’t buy the “public service” BS: they hold both groups in contempt.         

Then there are those who engage in grantsmanship to engineer a job for themselves financed by public money. They dream up ridiculous make-work programs – with them in charge, of course – and look to government to fund their program, and their job.   

Many of these are designed to get unemployed poor people into paying jobs where they’re supposed to help other poor people. The problem is that the people who get hired don’t gain any skills except how to look busy in a make-work job until the funding runs out.  Then they are back where they started: in need of another make-work program. This is a favorite of community activists everywhere.

By now, we’ve gotten used to it.  Which is a shame. We allow thousands of people who are over compensated for what they do and have no skills anyone in the private sector wants, to continue in a bloated, self-perpetuating, self-serving enterprise that accomplishes little of value.  Except to provide them with continued employment. 

Look, there’s a need for programs to help the poor. But these need to show real results or be eliminated. The money we’re spending could be put to much better use to help the poor directly than be consumed in large part by the poverty industry.     

But that’s what we’re stuck with. It would be cheaper and more effective to just pay the poor a minimum guaranteed salary at, say, 2X the poverty level, and let them take responsibility for their own lives and pulling themselves out of poverty.

If we cut out the middlemen, we could easily afford it.

Net Neutrality – the second shoe drops …

Remember all the whoopla about net neutrality – and how the supporters said it was really about “protecting” Internet users from the capricious whims of big, bad broadband providers? 

You remember that, right?

I said then that net neutrality was a ruse. I said it was a backdoor way for government to turn broadband service into a “utility” so politicians and bureaucrats could decide who gets what and for how much, based entirely on politics. 

I also said it wouldn’t be long before the government used that power. 

In yesterday’s local paper I saw where the Obama Administration has decided that hundreds of thousands of low-income households in Camden and Philadelphia and elsewhere will get free or heavily discounted broadband service. Under this ConnectHome program, so will low-income residents of Newark, NJ; Baltimore and D.C.

This proof-of-concept phase could be extended to over 200,000 homes, and benefit up to 275,000 low-income kids, according to Obama spokespuppets.     

One minority-owned provider of discounted cable services to public housing residents in Philly sees big things ahead. I’m sure they’re expecting a windfall. They’re probably hoping for a repeat of the Obama-phone bubble when fly-by-night operators got paid for signing up people for free phones and service whether or not they qualified, and sometimes for multiple accounts for the same person. Dangle free Internet and people will be trampling over each other to get in.   

“The Internet has been reclassified as a utility," said Brigitte Daniels, vice president of Wilco Communications.  "The principle of Net neutrality has been firmly established, as it must be," she said. "All kinds of content, including TV, is or will be coming to the Web.” 

So expect the next phase to include not only Internet access, but also subscriptions to NetFlix and premium cable channels.  And since these households need a way to get to all this, I’m guessing that we’ll soon be subsidizing new and faster computers for all of them.  Those will be followed by large flat-screen TVs because, after all, you simply can’t expect them to watch Game of Thrones, the NBA All-Star Game, or Orange is the New Black on anything smaller than 46”. 

Of course nobody is talking about who will pay for this down the road. There’s the usual BS that the initial tab will be picked up by a combination of donations by private industry, foundations, and other sources, but not the government.  My guess is that in the end it’s you and me. Just like those mysterious charges on your cable and phone bill that seem to have nothing to do with your service, I expect we’ll see new charges on our bills to subsidize their bills. 

And it’s all because the FCC's ruling on net neutrality turned Internet access into a utility. 

Before you dismiss that as irrelevant, think of how other utilities operate. Think about how some people get subsidized gas service, phone service, electricity and water, but not you. Think of how you’re getting hit with monthly fees to provide electric and landline telephone service to people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere, and to help pay the public utility bills of people who don’t. Do you honestly believe Internet access as a utility won’t end up the same? 

Sure, theoretically, through this program some kids will now be able to access the Internet at home for school projects. But I’ll bet the biggest benefit to them will be that they no longer have to risk getting caught downloading porn on the computers in the school library.   

For others, like people already gaming the system, this is a dream come true.   

Understand that besides the kids who might benefit, you’ll also be picking up part of the tab for dedicated lowlifes who’ll use that discounted or free broadband almost exclusively to watch porn, engage in identity theft, and launch viruses.  All from the comfort of their couch.

Because, count on it, if this program operates in any way, shape, or form like the free phones and cell-service giveaway, or the cash-for-clunkers program, the scumbags of the earth will come out in droves for this deal. Given the Obama Administration’s stellar track record on preventing fraud in entitlements in general, and ObamaCare in particular, expect anywhere from 10-15% of all recipients to be bogus. And that’s probably a low-side estimate. 

The whole net neutrality debate was a hoax from the start. People got sucked in by the propaganda into believing that they had more to fear from big, bad providers than government bureaucrats.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. When will the public ever learn?    

Hamsters on a wheel …

The reason socialist utopian systems – such as proposed by Bernie Sanders and now the Pope – ultimately fail isn’t solely because they run out of other people’s money. 

Socialist systems fail because of a profoundly flawed premise.

That premise is that everyone wants to work. Like hamsters running furiously on wheels, people work – not just to make money to buy things – but because work itself fulfills some inner need. 

So socialists presume earning money is not the most important motivation for working, and working harder to earn even more money isn’t either. 

If they give people everything – like free healthcare, free food, affordable housing, and a generous cradle-to-grave safety net – they believe everybody physically able to work will still work hard as long as they can. Like hamsters on a wheel. And those compelled by their nature to work and earn more won’t mind paying much higher taxes to provide those same benefits to all.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need, as the saying goes.  

Of course, humans don’t actually function that way. The will to survive may be genetically hard-wired, but a work ethic isn’t. A work ethic is an acquired trait; it’s not part of our DNA.  

If people can make as much money and have as many things by working less – or not at all – than they do from working hard, a pretty large segment will opt not to work at all. Many will use the safety net as a comfortable hammock as long as they can; forever if possible.

That’s also human nature. 

If you want proof of that, think of all the young adults out of school now yet still living at home mooching off their parents. They have no motivation to get a job as long as they can live rent-free, stay on their parents’ insurance, and have someone else feed them and do their laundry. There are also those who have decent-paying jobs but still live with their parents “to save money for a house” or some other fantasy reason. They aren’t leaving any time soon.

I know because I’ve employed young people in their mid-20s making a good salary but still sponging off mom and dad.  It frees up their paycheck for vacations, nights out on the town, and expensive car payments – in short, luxuries their parents couldn’t afford at their age. 

Not surprisingly, these domestic parasites are big supporters of Obama, Bernie and Hillary.    

So no one should be surprised when so many people here and abroad take advantage of government assistance programs instead of finding a full-time job, or working harder to earn more. If all their basic needs are met, what’s the point of getting up every day, trudging to work, spending hours doing something they don’t really enjoy, when they don’t really have to? 

I think if most of us were completely honesty about it, we wouldn’t work either if we didn’t have to, as long as we could maintain our current lifestyle. We might pursue our hobbies more, maybe travel more, and maybe spend more time with friends and family. 

Oh sure, there are some of us that like to say how much we “love” our jobs, but as we age we “love” our regular jobs a bit less each year. If someone were to give us a big fat check with no strings most of us would be out the door like our hair’s on fire.  

And that’s us, the boomers, who have been accustomed to working for money since we first babysat, mowed a neighbor’s lawn or shoveled their driveway, played in a band, or delivered papers. We grew up wanting money to buy things and saw work as the only sure way to get our own money.   

Imagine that you’re someone who has never had to work for money, because there was no point; you could just as easily survive and have most of your basic needs met by government handouts. If you earned money, taxes would take most of whatever you earned anyway. So why bother? 

If you wanted a bit more, but didn’t want to lose a chunk of it to taxes, you could just work off the books and not report your income. Voilà.          

When enough people start acting that way, fewer people are in the actual workforce and paying taxes.  With fewer people paying taxes, and ever-rising costs to keep funding an ever more inclusive safety net, politicians who want to stay in power only have a couple of choices:  borrow more money or raise taxes, or, in the worst case, do both.      

That’s been Obama’s plan, and the plan of liberal Democrats.  

What got me thinking about this were recent statements by Bernie Sanders who wants the U.S. to provide free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage, and free single-payer healthcare as a basic human “right.”  Bernie’s drawing huge crowds which indicates there are a lot of folks out there who think the freedom envisioned by our founders should really mean free - dom. 

Then there’s Greece.  And, much closer to home, Puerto Rico. 

Both are bankrupt for the same reasons. They spend too much and collect too little. Instead of addressing that imbalance, successive sets of politicians have papered over growing deficits by borrowing billions. Now they can’t pay those billions back. They can’t even pay the interest. 

Not enough people are working in either Greece or Puerto Rico. The Greek unemployment rate is about 25%; Puerto Rico’s is about 12.6%.  It’s important to remember that the rate only accounts for those actively seeking employment; it doesn’t tally how many simply aren’t working because they don’t want to or don’t have to because they are receiving benefits. 

In Puerto Rico the problem's even more interesting than that, however. Those who are working there are only about as a third as productive as their mainland U.S. counterparts. But since employers have to adhere to U.S. minimum wage standards, even Paul Krugman – the avidly liberal economist who writes for the New York Times – now thinks there should be a much lower minimum wage for Puerto Rico, especially given the low productivity per worker.

So it seems, a higher minimum wage isn’t always the answer to boosting the economy or redistributing income. Unless it’s here in the States, of course. And unless you’re talking about Walmart, McDonalds, or other entry-level employers here. Go figure. 

Also hampering Puerto Rico are a lot of laws that make it difficult for companies to fire or lay off employees.  In every U.S. state except Montana employees are “at will” employees, which means if they aren’t part of a union or covered by a contract, they can be fired “at will” for any reason. Not so in Puerto Rico.  The same goes for severance packages – stateside non-union employers aren’t always obligated to provide severance packages to employees they terminate. But they are in Puerto Rico and the length and amount of mandated severance payments can be substantial. 

Now I’m sure these are all popular with Puerto Rican workers. But these are also job killers. Why would anyone build or run a company there with employees that are a third less productive than those stateside, but paid the same, and who cannot be easily fired?

Socialists will say that’s why capitalism is evil and based on exploiting the hard work of others just to get what the Pope recently called “the dung of the devil.”  

Krugman’s call for a lower minimum wage in Puerto Rico inadvertently proves one of my points about socialism.  A large part of the world’s population will only work as much as necessary. Given enough free stuff to satisfy most of their needs a lot of folks simply won’t work at all; in fact, they’ll start to demand more and better free stuff. 

And they’ll fight like Hell against anyone who tries to take any of their free stuff away

Mark Twain once said that if you feed a dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog an a man. He was right, unfortunately, too often.  

That’s why pie-in-the sky, cradle-to-grave safety nets proposed by socialists inevitably fail. They run out of money because they run out of people working and paying taxes. After a while, the generosity of the system makes it more attractive to too many to simply stop working.    

The takers eventually outnumber the payers. The system collapses.    

Human nature being what it is, there will never be enough hamsters on the wheel.    

Rewriting history …

The Confederate battle flag has been taken down from the capitol grounds in South Carolina.

Northerners, black activists, and liberal Democrats everywhere are now pushing to have every symbol of the Confederacy and the soldiers who fought for it banished forever.

They’ve pressured retailers like Amazon, Walmart and others to stop selling anything that uses the battle flag in any way. Broadcasters have taken reruns of the old Dukes of Hazzard off the air just because the series featured a car called the General Lee with the battle flag painted on its roof. Congress is considering banning the display of the Confederate battle flag on the graves of Confederate soldiers buried in national cemeteries.

There’s even a move to tear down monuments to Confederate dead throughout the South, and perhaps destroy the Stone Mountain bas relief of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. There’s also pressure to purge the names of Confederate generals and statesmen from public schools, parks, and universities, as well as any statues or portraits memorializing them or any of their peers on state or Federal property.    

Proponents of all this are calling it a “turning point in history.”

To me, it’s eerily reminiscent of the Taliban demolishing the Buddha statues, ISIS taking sledge hammers to ancient artifacts, and the Communists rewriting history books to remove any mention of former leaders who fell from favor, and even airbrushing them out of famous photos. 

It creeps me out. It’s like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 wrapped up in one. 

Many of the generals and statesmen now being considered for “non-person” status were highly regarded in their day well beyond their role in the Civil War. 

Robert E. Lee was a top graduate of West Point, a hero of the Mexican-American War, and was on Lincoln’s short list to be commander of the Union Army before he resigned – reluctantly because he had misgivings about supporting slavery – to command Virginia’s army. After the war he was pardoned at the request of General Grant, and he served as the president of Washington College.   

Jefferson Davis was also a West Point graduate, fought in the Mexican-American War, was U.S. Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce, a Democrat Senator from Mississippi, and argued against secession before the Civil War. In fact, when he resigned from the Senate to support the South he called it the saddest day in his life.  In his later years he actively supported reconciliation with the North telling Southerners to be loyal to the Union. 

Stonewall Jackson’s tactics in the Civil War are still studied in military colleges worldwide today, not as examples of fighting to support slavery, but for their brilliance.   

In short, many of the leaders of the Confederacy and the Confederate armies were distinguished Americans in their own right. Like many of the soldiers under them, many fought primarily because they felt they had a greater duty to their states than to the Federal government. 

They are all long dead. As are the men who fought with and against them. There’s nothing to be served now by destroying monuments, removing portraits and names from schools and parks, and refusing to mark the graves of the Confederate dead. None of that will change what happened then, what happens now, or what may happen in the future.   

The Civil War is part of our history. Attempting to erase symbols of the defeated by the victors only serves to remind the vanquished of their loss.

The South suffered greatly during the Civil War and for many years after though Reconstruction, which was less about reconciliation and more about seeking retribution.  

It’s taken the better part of a century for the South to fully recover. The Civil War’s been over for almost 150 years and the South has largely moved on.

However, the North and race-baiters have not. 

Even today the prejudice against the South and its people by Northern politicians is ever present. That’s despite enormous strides in race relations there that have yet to be matched in the North. While there’s probably less racial animus in the South today than in many other places in this country, plus a greater commitment to integration, it’s still a convenient target for any demagogue who wants to fan the flames of racial division by invoking long-gone days of slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow laws. 

Push hard enough and you will get a reaction. While you now can’t buy hats, jewelry or belt buckles with the battle flag at Walmart or Amazon, those retailers who still sell battle flags and merchandise with the battle flag are selling out.

Not because people want a symbol of slavery, but because people want a symbol of rebellion against the forces of political correctness and overreaching politicians and activists. 

So while vandals spray paint “Black lives matter” on monuments to long-dead Confederate soldiers and politicians, and activists attempt to expunge them and Confederate symbols like the battle flag from American history, it’s going to lead to a backlash. 

Expect to see more Confederate battle flags on display, not less, if this keeps up. Maybe not on government property, but certainly on private property.  And not just in the South.    

History is what it is. Not always what you want it to be. You rewrite it at your own peril. And when you try to alter history to serve your own needs, it can also alter the present in ways you might not like.    

Donald Trump ...

 I’m sorry, I can’t take him seriously.

Sure, from time to time he says something most of us think. He also has a tendency to blurt out stuff that’s simply nuts, unfortunately.  So while you’re nodding your head at the former, you can also find yourself cringing at the latter and wondering what planet he’s from. 

Let me clarify that for you.

He’s from his own world – Trumptopia.  In Trumptopia he is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all powerful. He is the wisest man he knows. The sharpest businessman. The best negotiator. Foreign leaders fear him. Other business leaders admire him.  Women love him. And so on. 

Plus, he’s rich; something he constantly likes to point out. 

Trump is truly a legend in his own mind. 

This would be okay except that he’s running for President of the United States as a Republican and some people are apparently taking him seriously. In a recent poll he’s sitting at almost 11% among the wide field of Republican hopefuls, declared and undeclared. 

So that’s made me wonder why such a shameless publicity whore, who routinely makes outrageous and unfounded claims that would make even Harry Reid blush, is getting such support. Is it because people think he’s actually who they want as President?  Is it because they believe he’s such an accomplished businessman he could run the US government well?  Does the American public now want big, bold and ballsy after the Obama years of frustratingly feckless management of the country?   

Is that it?  We’ve had to deal with one self-serving publicity whore who thinks and acts like he’s a king already, so is the time right to elect another?    

Honestly folks, I don’t think that’s it. Bluster alone doesn’t make anyone a good leader, especially not of this country.  I think that’s been proven by the past 6+ years. 

I’m not denying that Donald Trump is smart. He is. I’m also not saying that he’s not a successful businessman. That he is as well, but I think when your daddy leaves you about $200 million in cash plus valuable real estate holdings to get started, that helps a great deal. On his own, however, he’s parlayed that into billions, so he certainly deserves a lot of credit for that. 

He gives himself high marks for being an extraordinary negotiator as one key to his success. I’m sure he’s a tough negotiator, but that doesn’t mean what works in a business deal is transferable to negotiating with the leaders of other countries, or even Congress, when you’re not holding all the cards.   

I’ve personally known people I respect who’ve done business with Donald Trump. Their experience might be telling. 

They said he was a bully and a chiseler when they tried to collect on a past-due bill for advertising and marketing work they did for one of his Atlantic City casinos. It was fairly big money for them, and Trump himself was said to be very pleased with their work, so they got a face-to-face meeting with him to try to resolve it amicably. 

His “art of the deal” was to bludgeon them with threats of disputing every single invoice covered by that bill – which totaled in the millions of dollars – which might take years of litigation to resolve before they saw a dime. Or they could accept a check now for substantially less than they were owed.

They took the check and vowed never to do any work with him again.

If you listen to how Trump portrays himself now, and how he claims he will deal with the leaders of foreign nations – friends or foes – “negotiation” seems the farthest thing from his mind.  Unless you consider bullying someone into submission “negotiation.”       

Like it or not, no President can just tell the world to kiss his ass. And although Obama has largely ignored the Constitution and dismissed Congress as irrelevant, Trump would be even more dictatorial.

So why are so many in the public embracing him?   

I really believe the American public is so annoyed with politicians in general – on both sides of the aisle – that they are supporting outliers like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump to send a message. Sort of a high-colonic for the political establishment.

The public has tried to send that message in a passive-aggressive way by not showing up to vote. That hasn’t worked so now they are trying something different – supporting off-the-wall fire-breathers who almost nobody in the political establishment even remotely likes. 

It’s a bit like when people voted for Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, Lyndon LaRouche, or even Pat Paulson for that matter. They despised the politicians the major parties kept putting up; they knew their candidate didn’t have a prayer of getting elected, but so what? They wanted someone to shake things up and let politicians know how much they disliked them.

A vote for Trump – or Sanders – is less a vote for them as much as a vote against more of the same.  That I can understand. And I’m in the boat with those who want to throw the rascals out across the board. We’ve had enough of the political establishment. It’s time for new blood.     

Trump’s not it.  Entertaining, yes.  Cringe-worthy?  Too often, yes. 

Enjoy the show while it lasts.  Then Trump will be off on his next big adventure to keep his name and face on the front pages.