Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Perspective: How Should We Choose a Presidential Candidate?

Our country is in bad shape due to lack of Presidential leadership. We have been through six and a half years of doing nothing to stimulate the economy while doing everything to “transform” the country via redistribution of the wealth. Constant and repetitive talk about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer or that the wage level for unskilled labor is not growing is not an answer. We have had six years of such asinine rhetoric, and we don’t need four more years of it.  Meanwhile our foreign policy is in shambles.

That we are in such a weak position  is amazing considering our windfall of energy supplies, our leadership in the digital revolution and the worldwide leadership the US had a decade ago that pleased our allies and brought fear to our enemies.

So how are we to judge the candidates in terms of what the country needs? We currently have roughly 20 candidates running for President of the United States, and so far the Republican and Democrat candidates for President of the United States do not have specific and concrete plans for getting the US back on track. Many of the candidates just tinker around the edges or get lost in the weeds of alleged problems which do not require immediate solutions such as the decades old immigration problem and climate change concerns.

The candidate that we want should be able to state unequivocally what the major problems are and would show the proven leadership qualities to make us voters think that the candidate could and would solve them.

 

To start let’s list the major problems requiring immediate solutions.

  1. Getting the US economy growing again
  2. Dealing with the infrastructural needs
  3. Dealing with the bankrupted entitlement programs
  4. Dealing with the Islamic Terrorist problem
The Economy

The United States is in the best position in decades to grow the economy and create jobs because of our energy windfall and our worldwide lead in digital technology. Natural gas and the products it contains can reduce the energy of manufacturing and provide low cost building blocks for petrochemical and polymer products. Consequently, manufacturing can be encouraged to return to the United States creating high tech digital technology jobs. Coincidentally, millions of low-tech jobs can be created by converting petroleum fueled trucks, trains and even automobiles and their filling stations to compressed natural gas CNG replacing diesel and gasoline fuels.

Excessive Federal regulations, especially related to climate change, keep the US from capitalizing on these assets. Primarily what is needed is to go all out to develop our natural gas breakthrough and use it to replace other fossil fuels as rapidly as possible.

This can reduce green house gases by 25% and toxic emissions by even higher percentages.

In addition to the above, the tax structure for US manufacturing companies must be made competitive with that of overseas competition.

 

The public would agree, and these programs could be put in place by a new administration virtually at once.

 

Infrastructural Needs

Obviously, roads, bridges, electrical infrastructure, airport and rail facilities need to be kept in good repair. That they are not is unacceptable and requires little if any discussion. If government lacks the funds, that can be changed with the stroke of a pen. The aforementioned infrastructure plan needs to include pipelines to supply our natural gas to markets, and the Keystone Pipeline should be authorized at once. Bureaucratic barriers that impede market growth need to be removed, as well.

I am including our educational system as part of infrastructure. The shortage of high tech candidates for the growing digital jobs is an embarrassment and requires a whole new approach to education. An education system that was designed for the Industrial Revolution of the 1900’s is not what the Digital Revolution of the 21st century requires. The fact that the Smart Phone contains the up to the minute information of the entire world’s knowledge should give educators a clue how to design and apply the new system.

For perspective, we students of the older system had to go to the school library to look up information in the schools usually only copy of the encyclopedia. Imagine what it would have been like to have had a “bookcase” attached to our desk to hold our very own encyclopedia? Nearly every school kid now has that in the palm of his/her hand. Moreover, it is up to date by the minute. You don’t have to wait for the updated book to arrive at your “bookcase”. Oh, and the information can be accessed verbally challenging whether the reading levels need to be equal for all students.

Another way to judge our educational system is to consider it as a business. Imagine that you are manufacturing a product that takes 12 years on the production line and costs about $100,000 to make. However, only 70% of the product meets specifications, i.e. graduates! How long would you be able to remain in business?

 

Entitlement Programs

The Social Security program was put in place in 1935, and was designed to pay out to citizens at age 65. Interestingly, the life expectancy was only 62 at the time so little would have to be paid out. Similarly, Medicare was enacted in 1965 when life expectancy was 67 years. Today, in 2015, life expectancy is 80 years. An elementary school math student could calculate that a system designed for death at 65 might be in financial trouble if the person lived 15 years longer. The problem gets worse. By the end of the century the life expectancy is expected to be above 100. As an aside, the elementary school math student could provide the answer in seconds with the Smart Phone. A thought for our politicians!

So what is to be done to save Social Security and Medicare? Easy! We can stay on the do nothing course we are on which means that the programs go broke so the Millennials, our grandchildren who are just entering the workforce, have nothing when they retire. Or, we could change the retirement date, or we could increase the amount starting workers pay in,  or both. None of these plans including doing nothing will affect those who have already retired. So, what is the problem? The problem is lack of a leader who will tell it as it is and lead us out of this quagmire!

Dealing With the Terrorist Problem

There is no question that we have a world-wide problem from terrorists. The question is what is the source of the terror? If you cannot define a problem, you cannot possibly solve it, and this current Administration refuses to call it what it is. The terrorist attacks are not “workplace incidents”! Clearly the attacks are caused by or instigated by radical Islamic jihadism, and terror is its tactic! And it is not confined to the Middle East. It is world-wide!

If it is radical Islamic jihadism, the next question is whether it involves all the billion plus Muslims in the world. A cursory inspection reveals that it does not involve the entire Muslim population of the world. But what it does reveal is that the good Muslims are frightened to death. They need someone they can trust to protect them. That requires strong US leadership.

At this point only a strong US president can provide that leadership. That leader could build a coalition of allies from Europe, the Middle East and especially the good Muslims who will want to join in the effort to rid the world of the radical Islam jihadists. Such a president would start by personally persuading the good Muslims to join the plan.

The current President’s unwillingness to lead has cost the US the support of the very Muslims we need most as allies against Islamic Extremism. Muslims in the Middle East, indeed in the world, have been terrorized into inaction by the brutal Islamic Jihadists who live among them. Imagine yourself in their place and you see Christians and Jews being beheaded for their being infidels, and you know that if you, a Muslim, were to disagree with the Islamic Extremists, you too would be called an infidel and treated the same way! Are you surprised that Muslims in the Middle East don’t lead as our current Administration claims they should?

In summary, what is needed in our new president is that he or she be first and foremost be a proven leader! A leader who will face the major problems as the ones that needs to be solved first. The number one problem is that the economy is not growing(worse it has shown negative growth this year). Moreover, this is the problem that is causing the stagnant wages and high unemployment. We need a leader who attacks the lagging economy as the primary problem and talks and acts like he or she understands that and is willing to do something to solve it!!! The solutions are at hand!!! And in the case of energy, switching to natural gas would ameliorate the climate change question, as well!

 

 

Friday, July 3, 2015

Perspective: Whither the Republic


Many of us are concerned about the rate at which the United States is abandoning the essential structures of society. The coming July 4th celebration of the 239th year of our Republic is a good time to reflect on what is happening to our society as a result.

 

 I have written much about the concern I have for the Millennials who will be trying to work and raise children in this new society. In one generation the four pillars that were the framework for raising a child to become a responsible citizen have been weakened if not completely removed. These pillars were:

  1. A parent who knew what a parent was (not just a pal)
  2. A neighbor who was a willing partner of the parent  (not to be sued)
  3. A school who was also a willing partner of the parent (not to be sued)
  4. Children went to Sunday School

 

Now, the Supreme Court is getting into the act by finding language in the 14th Ammendment of the Constitution that is not there. Next the Court will find new words in the 1st Amendment about Church and State and Free Speech. Today, in the words of President Bill Clinton, “It depends on what the meaning of “is” is!”

 

Regarding the recent LGBT ruling, Chief Justice Roberts was right on when he said the Court should not get ahead of the States. He might have included that the Courts should not get ahead of “We the People”. “We the People” have been considering and debating the issue regarding changing the century’s long religious belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman. The basic question is will homosexual marriage affect marriage and child rising? Since heterosexual marriage is failing as measured by the divorce rate and out of-wedlock birth rates that exceed 50 %, and 2/3 of the Millennials are not planning to ever get married, regardless of whether they have children, the Electorate would  probably would have reached the conclusion that LGBT marriage would not add harm. This concept was progressing State by State according to Constitutional principles. But now the new words discovered in the Constitution will have a far greater impact on how “We the People” will be permitted to behave. That is the great danger of what the Court has done than whether marriage will be harmed.  

 

Two writers, Pat Buchannan and Jay Leno, put their fingers on it. Their articles follow.

 

Jay Leno wrote. “They talk about writing a constitution for Iraq. Why don’t they just give them ours. It was written by a lot of really smart guys. It worked for more than 200 years. And hell, we’re not using it anymore”.

 

   By Patrick J. Buchanan June 29, 2015

 “Natural law — God’s law — will always trump common law,” said Alveda King,     niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a Christian leader in her own right, “God will     have the final word in this matter.”

But, for now, Justice Anthony Kennedy has the final word.

Same-sex marriage is the law of the land, as the right of gays and lesbians to marry is right there in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868. We just didn’t see it.

Tony Kennedy spotted what no previous court had detected.

The absurdity of the decision aside, it represents another stride forward for the revolution preached by Antonio Gramsci. Before we can capture the West, the Italian Marxist argued, we must capture the culture.

For only if we change the culture can we change how people think and believe. And then a new generation will not only come to accept but to embrace what their fathers would have resisted to the death.

Consider the triumphs of the Gramscian revolution in our lifetime.

First, there is the total purge of the nation’s birth faith, Christianity, from America’s public life and educational institutions. Second, there is the overthrow of the old moral order with the legalization, acceptance and even celebration of what the old morality taught was socially destructive and morally decadent.

How dramatic have the changes been?

Until the early 1970s, the American Psychiatric Association regarded homosexuality as a mental disorder. Until this century, homosexual actions were regarded as perverted and even criminal.

Now, homosexuality is a new constitutional right and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is marrying homosexuals in front of Stonewall Inn, the site of the famous 1969 gay riot against police harassment.

Similarly with abortion. It, too, was seen as shameful, sinful and criminal until Harry Blackmun and six other justices decided in 1973 that a right to an abortion was hiding there in the Ninth Amendment.

Did the Constitution change? No, we did, as Gramsci predicted.

We are told that America has “evolved” on issues like abortion and homosexuality. But while thinking may change, beliefs may change, laws may change, and the polls have surely changed, does moral truth change?

Are the Ten Commandments and Christian tradition and Natural Law as defined by Aquinas just fine for their time, but not for ours?

If what Justice Kennedy wrote Friday represents moral truth, what can be said in defense of a Christianity that has taught for 2,000 years that homosexual acts are socially destructive and morally decadent behavior?

Three decades ago, this columnist was denounced for writing that homosexuals “have declared war on human nature. And nature is exacting an awful retribution.” Hateful speech, it was said.

Yet, when I wrote that line, AIDS victims in America numbered in the hundreds. Worldwide today they number in the millions. And there is a pandemic of STDs among America’s young who have joined the sexual revolution preached in the 1960s.

Can true “social progress” produce results like that?

And if it is an enlightened thing for a society to welcome homosexual unions and elevate them to the status of marriage, why have no previous successful societies thought of so brilliant a reform?

The late Roman Empire and Weimar Germany are the two examples of indulgent attitudes toward homosexual conduct that come to mind.

“No-fault” divorce was an early social reform championed by our elites, followed by a celebration of the sexual revolution, the distribution of condoms to the poor and the young, and abortions subsidized by Planned Parenthood when things went wrong.

How has that worked out for America?

Anyone see a connection between these milestones of social progress and the 40 percent illegitimacy rate nationwide, or the 50 percent rate among Hispanic-Americans, or the 72 percent rate among African-Americans?

Any connection between those fatherless boys and the soaring drug use and dropout rates and the near quadrupling of those in jails and prisons over the last third of a century?

One notes a headline the other day, that, among whites in America, deaths now outnumber births. This has been true for decades in Europe, where all the native-born populations are shrinking as the Third World crosses over from the Mahgreb and Middle East.

Any connection between the legalization of abortions — 55 million in the USA since Roe — and the shrinkage of a population?

“God will have the final word in this matter,” says King.

Certainly, in the world to come, He will. Yet, even in this world, it is hard to recall a civilization that rejected its God, repudiated the faith and morality by which it grew great, embraced what was previously regarded as decadence, and survived.

Our utopian president may see ours as an ever “more perfect union.”

Yet, America has never been more disunited and divided — on politics and policy, religion and morality. We no longer even agree on good and evil, right and wrong.

Are we really still “one nation under God, indivisible”?