Perspective: What Can Be Done When the CEO Fails to Perform His/Her Duties?

If the top officer of a profit or a non-profit organization were derelict of duty or caused the corporate interests, goals or mission to be in jeopardy, that person would surely be replaced as soon as possible. When the top officer is the President of the United States it is more difficult to take such action. In that case the People can make a replacement at the next election cycle, but if the issue is severe, and the next election is in the distant future, the elected representatives of the People might consider Impeachment of and Conviction for “High crimes and misdemeanors”.



The Founders anticipated such a need and placed in the Constitution. Article II Section 4 “ The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on Impeachment for and Conviction of Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Those who have researched the Framer’s intentions believe that the Framers used the word “High” to mean a person in a high place, not that the crime be high. In other words, the Framers believed the President of the United States is under a special obligation not applicable to the ordinary person, and by this the Framers meant that the President is legally responsible for everything that he and everyone in the executive branch is doing, and moreover, the President is not protected by “plausible deniability”



I deliberately highlighted  the last sentence because this President states that he only knows something if he reads it in the newspaper. If you watch him on TV you will see him say that over and over.



Consider these catastrophes involving the Executive Branch of our Government about which he deigns to know nothing. Is this dereliction of duty?

• Benghazi

• Fast and Furious

• The IRS

• Monitoring Media phones, etc.



Or consider how he unilaterally takes action where Congress has decided not to pass a law. Is this overreaching beyond his Constitutional authority?

• Cap and Trade to achieve his stated goal of destroying the coal industry



Or he avoids performing his duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed by his office. Isn’t he Constitutionally bound to uphold the entire law dully passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate?

• Selective enforcement of Obamacare

• Selective enforcement of the Immigration laws



Lying to the Voters! Doesn’t the oath of office cover truth telling to the citizens at all times?

• Telling the citizens over and over (33+ times) via TV that under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), their health insurance and doctor would not change, when he knew that they would



Actually the problem may be worse than the misdemeanors listed above. Obama ran and came into office vowing to “Transform America” to achieve “Social Justice”! Moreover, we know that Obama was a Saul Alinski protégé and a friend of Bill Ayers. Both men believed that an institution should be destroyed and then re-built. Alinsky actually wrote a book that is the bible for transforming institutions by destroying them. Its title is: “Rules For Radicals”. If Obama’s intention is to destroy America , and one could make a case for that considering the way he regards the Constitution, that would be Treasonable Act.



The Framers would certainly consider such performance to qualify as Impeachable. But the “Convict of” part would have to be implemented by the democrat controlled Senate



You will recall that a democrat controlled Senate refused to Convict President Clinton who was Impeached for lying to a grand jury about sexually harassing a female intern in our sacred Oval Office! That that democrat party would protect one of their own regardless of what the person did and regardless what the party could gain from his removal is amazing.



I am amazed to this day that the public has never received a proper explanation for the Senate’s behavior. In President Clinton’s case, the democrat controlled Senate could have replaced Clinton with Gore for the last two years of Clinton’s term, and then Gore would doubtless have won the Presidency on his own for the next eight years. In short they could have held the presidency for ten years while they did the honorable thing, namely, supporting women employees who are sexually assaulted by their CEO bosses. No, they were willing to let Clinton escape for violating the very law legislation the democrats promulgated and got passed into law that punished the crime of sexual harassment of an employee. And then, having been found guilty Clinton lied about it before a Grand Jury.



Oh, I forgot! Clinton did tell the truth when he said that “I have not had sexual relations with that woman”. You see the proper word for what he did is so repugnant that God had to destroy a city that had the same name (Sodom) for the same reason. And by the way, had the Senators been there at that destruction and looked back, they would be pillars of salt today. Come to think of it maybe that would not be too bad!



If Impeachment for, Conviction of and thus removal from office is not viable, what is left? There are two alternates, (1) do nothing and hope for the best or (2) elect members of the House of Representatives and Senate in 2014 that will do what they can to minimize the impending disaster.



Doing nothing is not an option, period. Therefore, we must do all we can to elect members of the House and Senate who will do what needs to be done to keep the President and his subordinates from doing more harm. But the problem is a tough one because Obama’s strategy is to use every tool he can to destroy the Republican control of the House in 2014.



So, the battle lines are clear, and we have our work cut out for us!

Perspective: Where Did the Boys Go?

An earlier blog pointed out that we have a 25% shortfall in the number of graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), which is keyed to the reduction of the number of men going to college. It turns out that the ratio of men to women college graduates has reversed in the last 40 years from 60 men to 40 women in the seventies to 40 men to 60 women today. Men still favor majors in STEM, but less than ten percent of women major in and graduate with STEM degrees. As a consequence, we have a shortfall. In that blog I focused on what we could do to promote and encourage more females to major in STEM and stick with it so that we would at least have a few more mechanical, chemical, electric, electronic and civil engineers and persons skilled in information technology (IT).But I left unaddressed the question about why the boys have dropped out.



It turns out to be worse than we thought! The boys have not just dropped out of school; they have dropped out of marriage, fatherhood and the American Dream, as well. What is surprising is that boys are also dropping out of school and marriage in Australia, Canada and Europe. Because men are opting out of school, marriage and parenting, women cannot find suitable mates and therefore remain single. Today, the number of single mothers who never married is 44%. For perspective, in 1960 single mothers who had never married were just 4% of the total of all single moms. Of further concern is the fact that out of wedlock births in the United States is reaching 50% and among the blacks that figure rises to nearly 75%. Yes, the men are still having children, but they are not becoming parents, so they are contributing little if anything to the essential job of producing responsible morally-compassed citizens. If we have this large a problem after a mere generation of men not performing as fathers, we can predict that the drop out rate of the next generation of males will be reaching tidal proportions right in front of our eyes. That should scare us to death!!



It is clear that the United States, indeed Western Civilization, does not know exactly why the boys have opted out. But what is really shocking is that Society does not seem to even care enough to find out why or how solve it. When a society has a problem this gigantic and so fundamental to its ability to sustain itself, and no one seems to notice it, or care enough to do anything about it, that society is in deep trouble. To phrase the question more bluntly: Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of Western Civilization?



So, what is different today versus forty years ago? Here are a few key items to consider:



• Boys want to continue to imitate their fathers and grow up to be like them, but today many boys have no fathers living with them

• Boys learn best when learning is “hands on”, i.e. touching, moving, climbing on, and building things. Today schools focus on reading and writing. Boys are not wired for such early exposure to something as abstract as reading and writing. In the 1970’s we did not teach reading in Kindergarten; today we do

• Boys are much more active than girls. Many schools have reduced or even eliminated recess time to make time for reading and writing.

Here are some theories regarding the cause.



The Education System

“Why Boys Fail”, by Richard Whitmire a journalist, written in 2010 does an excellent job of analyzing the problem. Interestingly, he and others believe that the emphasis placed on reading and writing in elementary school benefits girls more than the boys because girls are “wired” to read, grasp and use words at an earlier age than boys. Thus, the sub-title of his book is “Saving our Sons from an educational system that’s leaving them behind”. Here are some of his findings.



• Boys start to fall behind girls as early as third grade, and by ninth grade many boys have given up on school altogether.



• Boys who give up drop out of high school, don’t go to college, and if they do go to college often do not graduate from college



Whitmire explains that the problem shows up in boys from affluent husband/wife families as well as those who come from poor single mother families. However, because the data are lumped together for all the boys, white, black and Hispanic, the impact on Caucasian. boys is masked.



Since the early nineties numerous studies and books have been written that statistically confirm that the boys have dropped out of school. Joseph Torbin, Author of Good Guys Don’t Wear Hats, a Professor of Early Childhood Education at Arizona State University, asks the question “Is it boys or is it School?”, and points to the feminization of our schools and the emphasis on reading and writing at too early an age for boys. Tobin also points to the fact that boys are more active than girls and thus have trouble sitting still. The reduction of and often elimination of recess exacerbates this problem which leads to teacher’s feeling boys have problems that need to be treated. The treatment includes medication via Ritalin.

When Did Feminism Begin?

The 19th Annendment to the US Constitution was the first phase, but the surprise popularity of Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique triggred the second phase. This wave of feminism was largely concerned with gender inequality in laws and culture and the end to discrimination and spanned roughly from 1960-1980. During this time, feminists campaigned against cultural and political inequalities, which they saw as inextricably linked. The movement encouraged women to understand aspects of their own personal lives as deeply politicized, and reflective of a sexist structure of power.

Subsequent to the 1960-1980 period and beginning about 1990 numerous writers have explored the feminist movement to determine its impact on men. Some of their works are listed in the Sources of Information section of this Blog.





Testosterone Level

One other factor that might be relevant is what is happening to testosterone levels in men. The following is summarized from two authors: Malcolm Carruthers, MD. And Eugene Shippen, M.D. Studies in the 1940's showed the average testosterone level to be at 700 ng/dl, 300 ng/dl higher than for men today. In the past, a drop in testosterone levels to 250 ng/dl was rarely reported before men were 80 years of age. Yet today, it is not an uncommon value for middle aged men, and the decrease in testosterone levels is now occurring at an even earlier age. Up to 50% of all men at 40 now have testosterone levels below what was considered the normal range.



What Can be Done to Reverse the Male Drop Out?



Now, consider this irony!



Man-made climate change began to get Societies serious attention at about the same time that the male drop out began to be observed. And we have been told endlessly about the deleterious affect on human life from man-made climate change. But what huge catastrophic consequence of global warming has been observed with just our human senses of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste? None, only multi-million dollar extremely complex computer models can tell us about the catastrophic events that might occur at some distant future date. Nevertheless, the government spends millions of dollars and adds hundreds of regulations aimed at preventing man-made climate change.



Now, we don’t need a complex computer model to tell us what is happening or what might happen with the boys dropping out. We can observe what is happening with out own eyes. If high school records show that 30% of our males are already dropping out of school and half of our children are born out of wedlock, all of which has happened in the last generation or so, how difficult is it to imagine what the drop out and out of wedlock rates will be in the next generation! One would think that such an event might be catastrophic enough to scare us to want to take some corrective action



Unfortunately today’s politically correct atmosphere makes it difficult if not impossible to discuss the male drop out problem let alone to define it in such a way that you can come to grips with it and do anything about it. Actually, what our government is doing is wrong. Obamacare permits the 26 year-old male to stay home with Mom and Dad to get health care, but it fails to understand that today’s 26 year old “teen-ager” wants to stay at home with Mom and Dad where he can continue to play video games, be engrossed in the toxic culture available via the Internet, not get an education, not get a job, and in no way will he be thinking of becoming a married parent.



Obviously, because of political correctness, government and society at large will unable or unwilling to search for or to correct whatever the root cause of the problem. So the individual parent or perhaps groups of parents will need to learn how to deal with the problem by themselves.





While nevertheless understanding the difficulty of parents doing that, here are some ideas put forth by Dan Kindion, PhD and Michael Thompson, PhD. in a book entitled “ Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of boys” about what parents might be able to focus upon to help their sons.



• Boys want to grow up to be like their male role models, which is principally their father. Boys who grow up in homes with absent fathers have to try hardest to figure out how to become a responsible male. Single mothers, whether divorced, widowed or never married, should try to find male role models for the boy to emulate.



• Recognize and accept the high activity level boys require, and help them learn how to manage their physicality but not be shamed for exuberance. Become involved with the son’s school, particularly the elementary school to determine what physical exercise can be included in the curriculum. Such exercise will also help daughters. If it is not available in the school, work it into the home with some simple physical tasks that occur daily before and after school.



• Face the fact that your young son’s brain may not be wired for the exposure to reading and writing at such an early age as kindergarten. Find out what your son’s reading level is, and get early help without treating it as an ailment. Get him books with action stories so he learns how much fun reading can be. Get him a Kindle, or equivalent, so books can be easy to get, easy to read and easy to carry around.



• Above all do not let his teachers or especially the child himself think there is something wrong with him just because he is a boy. The bottom line is that boys are not girls and visa versa, thank God!!



Imagine some future historian writing that, “In the 21st century the United States was sitting in the “cat bird’s seat” regarding its newly found supply of fossil fuels and its cutting edge digital technology but could not capitalize on these assets due to a shortage of engineers and technicians caused by their males dropping out of school, marriage, parenting and worse of all, dropping out of the American Dream!!”

























Souces of Information:



Warren Farrell’s various books on the subject from Why Men are the Way They are (1988) to Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men (2007);Helen Smith’s: Men on Strike , Why Men are Boycotting Marriage , Fatherhood, and the American Dream and Why It Matters; Kay Hymowitz’s Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys; Kathleen Parker’s Save the Males: Why Men Matter and Women Should Care; Leonard Sax’s The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Under Motivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men; Christina Hoff Sommer’s The War Against Boys; Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men and the Rise of Women



Male Menopause: Restoring Vitality and Virility. HarperCollins Publishing. London, England. 1996, p.132 and Eugene Shippen, M.D. Testosterone Syndrome: The Critical Factor for Energy, Health, & Sexuality-- Reversing the Male Menopause. M. Evans & Co., New York, 1998. Their findings are summarized here

Perspective:Our Middle East Policy

The current Administration has done everything that they can to disrupt the Middle East. They encouraged the Egyptian Brotherhood to kick Hosni Mubarak out of office, then they led from behind to remove Moammar Gadhafy in Libya, while rebels upset the governments in Tunisia and Mali. Notwithstanding what the rebels did to us in Benghazi our State Department continued to demand that Bashal Al Assad of Syria, who is deeply immersed in a civil war, also be removed from office. Obama announced a military surge in Afghanistan at the same time he announced a pull-out date, and he prematurely left Iraq without securing any kind of agreement to help Iraq. Now, the President wants the United States to unilaterally attack Syria because he is convinced that Assad used chemical weapons against innocent children.

One wonders how long a string of collapsed regimes in the Middle East that Obama wants? Moreover, the Administration seems to pay little if any attention to the true allegiance of the Islamic rebels despite its being known that in every case the rebels throughout these failed regimes are imbedded with a goodly splash of Al Qaeda and their affiliates. If the Administration keeps up this unbelievable policy, it will only be a matter of time until there is an all out war between the Sunnis and the Shiites across the entire region. If this happens, the supply of oil from the Middle East will be severely disrupted, if not cut off altogether.

Watching our President, our elected representatives and their employed “experts’ trying to deal with Syria whom they claim used Sarin, a toxic nerve gas, to kill hundreds of their innocent children is disappointing to say the very least. This must be the most incompetent foreign policy team our Nation has ever produced. They can’t decide what the Syrian problem is, don’t seem to know what to do and can’t decide who should take responsibility for solving it. But if we had a leading from the front President instead of one who leads-from-behind, he would insist that the UN take responsibility for finding a way to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and he would work tirelessly to persuade the rest of the world.

The chemical weapons use in Syria is clearly one for the UN to handle. After all, except for Syria and a handful of other countries, 189 nations signed an agreement in 1997 to ban the use of such weapons. It is interesting to note that in nearly every issue of this type, Obama and his supporting progressives want to delegate such problems to the United Nations. In fact the UN is already involved but has not completed their examination of what chemicals were used and by whom. So, why not let the UN handle the entire problem? Well, that is because Russia and China are blocking any such action, and none of our major allies sees fit to do anything.

Luckily our current Secretary of State, John Kerry in London the other day answered a reporter’s question as to why the UN should not deal with the problem. Instead of ignoring it, Kerry made the gaff that it might work but he stated that he doubted that it would work. Then, within an hour, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, called to say in effect, hey, that’s not a bad idea, and then Assad seconded the motion saying that all his chemical weapons could be turned over, and he would join the countries banning such weapons.

We can all thank Secretary Kerry for stumbling onto the correct plan. Assad says he did not use chemical weapons; he is willing to turn them over to an international entity and will join the rest of the nations banning chemical weapons. If all this happens, he will not have them to use again. So, regardless what we think of Assad, the Administration gets the limited goal it says it wants, namely, that Syria never uses chemical weapons again.

Before we leave this Syrian question, lets explore how we got here and what the Administration wanted to happen. Someone used chemical weapons to kill about 1400 innocent Syrian persons including 400 children. Obama is convinced that Assad did it, and that if not stopped, he will do it again. Now, stop for a minute and ask yourself what Assad had to gain by performing such a heinous act? He is already winning the civil war, and he must know that if he used such weapons the US and probably many other countries would go bananas. On the other hand we know that the rebels want the US support. What better way to gain that than to find some chemical weapons, kill some children and make it look like Assad did it.

Regardless of the truth of who did what to whom, the US was ready to take unilateral action, without allies, to bomb Assad assets. Such action in effect would have put the US on the side of the rebels, whether claimed or not. Do we really want to take down another regime in the Middle East and leave it in the hands of the Islamic rebels many of whom are Al Qaeda and their affiliates?

Perspective: Where Do We Get the STEM Graduates?

For some time now I have been writing that the United States leads the world in the creation and application of digital technology, which combined with the windfall we are reaping from the new discoveries of abundant and low cost fossil fuel energy, puts the United States in the cat bird seat in the world wide market we call globalization. Manufacturing is also returning to the United States because of these two advantages. However, there is another factor that is slowing our ability to capitalize on this incredible opportunity. It’s that we lack the graduates with the commensurate skills needed to implement and manage the digital technology and new energy sources to make our economy grow at sufficient speed to meet our Country’s needs.
I am going to start off with a fifth grade word math problem to see if you can figure why we have a shortage of the skills I mentioned. These skills are in science, technology, engineering and math, STEM for short.
“In 1970 there were about 60 men college graduates to 40 women. Today there are 60 women to 40 men. In 1970 about half the boys graduated with majors in STEM while only about 5% of the girls did. Today about half the men graduate with STEM degrees, while only about 10% of women do. How many STEM graduates out of a hundred did we have forty years ago and how many do we have today?”

If you are as smart as a fifth grader, you should have found that there were 32 per hundred graduates in 1970 and 26 today. So, our schools turn out 20% fewer per hundred graduates with STEM majors today than a mere generation ago. As the problem illustrates the reason we have a shortage of STEM graduates is two fold; (1) the men, half of whom normally major in STEM, are not going to college in the first place, and (2) the women who do go to college do not major in STEM.

This problem is not going to be easy to solve, but we must solve it! To be frank, it is not clear that society knows why the men have dropped out. While many writers, notably Bill Bennett, have written about it, they only note that is has happened. If we cannot define the root cause of the problem, we will not be able to solve it. However, it is not clear that society cares enough to even find out why or how solve it.

With regard to the women, it is not that they cannot excel in these majors, but they just do not want to work in those fields. How to get the women to enter and graduate with STEM majors is the challenge. Hopefully, when women learn that they can make twice as much salary with STEM degrees than with non-STEM degrees they might become more interested. If for example, they researched Google, they would find that a graduate engineer’s starting salary probably exceeds $100,000, whereas a major in history or English will usually earn less than $50,000, if indeed there are jobs for these non-stem majors at all. Since both stem and non-stem students end up with the same amount of student loan debt, which graduate is going to be able to manage the loan better?

Now, before the feminists question what right have I, a man, to comment on this, let me state my credentials. I married a Johns Hopkins Medical School 1954 graduate and she, as an MD, immediately entered the medical profession where she practiced and advanced to manage a drug related clinic while I worked as an executive of the DuPont Company. Together we raised three children. One of the children, our daughter, is a Senior Vice President in the field of public relations, who along with her husband, who works at his own profession, are raising their two children. So, I know something about two generations experiencing the stress of two professionals, both in high level jobs, having and raising children together. However, as complicated as managing two careers while raising children is, it can be done. I have always encouraged people, including children, and especially women, to be all they wish to become. Today we need women with STEM degrees more than ever.

The literature is filling up with research to determine why women will not take the lucrative majors, and additional literature is being produced to find out how to motivate them to make the change. However, because of political correctness, genetic differences between males and females cannot even be mentioned. But it seems natural for girls to think of STEM as a “boys thing” because they don’t see many women making careers in these fields. Consequently, many women have no idea this opportunity presents for them. From my point of view it does not matter if it is genetic, because if our Nation is going to be able to capitalize on our assets of enormous energy supply and leading digital technology, we simply must find a way to have women tackle these tasks for the benefit of themselves and the country whether the root cause is genetic or not. The alternate is to increase the number of immigrants who have obtained these coveted STEM majors in our United States schools.

Obama’s idea of what to do to increase STEM graduates is to add pre-school programs. The usefulness of that plan is doubtful considering how Head Start worked out. But in any event, do we have fifteen years to solve this problem? Of course not! A better plan would be to approach females and males in their sophomore year in high school and explain the opportunities we are talking about. Recently I had the opportunity to help a daughter of friends to learn of this opportunity, and I am pleased to say that she is entering college to major in civil engineering. These lessons could and should be integrated into the high school curricula so these young folk can use their high school years to plan for their best post-high school education.

But the high percentage of female college graduates presents another challenge. Women will have to take more of the leadership roles in technology, health, business, education and government than ever before regardless of whether it is good for them or society. This will place a strain on them, and on their families. And then there is the question of how will the human species be perpetuated? Someone has to produce our replacements, and biologically speaking, only a female can perform that duty. Moreover, since it takes eighteen years to turn the helpless baby into a responsible citizen with a working moral compass, who is to be in charge of that? Historically, Mom played the dominant role of raising the children while Dad “brought home the bacon”. For most animals, including man, largely the female assumes the role of the nurturing care-giver for the young. How to deal with this reversal of the natural order of things is the question of our time. It is the first time in all of history we are doing it on such a huge scale, and there are no precedents. We have to solve this problem!

Whether the activists like it or not, the world that they will be entering as managers and leaders was organized by men centuries ago. It will not be possible to change it to the way women might like or how women might have organized it had they been the organizers centuries ago. Now, if you have trouble following what I am talking about, consider the language used in the business world. “We are at war with our competitor”; “We are arming ourselves with a new market plan to attack so and so.” This is the language of men because they have had to fight “wars” with nature, and other men to survive and protect their women and families for millennia. We all know that women do not normally use that kind of language. The language is loaded with blunt and aggressive terms, indigenous of the male animal, and the organizational structures look like a military chain of command.

Another problem pointed to by the AAUW and many women’s organizations is the salary gap between men and women. It is real as the data show,* but we do not fully understand why. It may relate to what we talked about earlier, namely the rules of the game made by men centuries earlier. However, I encourage women not to become mired in this problem because I believe this gap will narrow as women learn how to play the game by negotiating what they want in job assignment or salary, and as their bosses become more sensitive to the advantages that women bring.

The good news for our young women and men who will be assuming these new roles is that there is a growing body of literature sponsored by the American Association of University Women and other organizations that can be found via Google that is very useful to understand what women face and are experiencing. One of the best is a full length book entitled “Lean In”, by Sheryl Sandberg that I highly recommend. Ms. Sandberg is an extremely bright young woman, now in her forties, who currently is the COO of Facebook. Her experiences in college, business school, government, with Google and now Facebook along with her getting married and having children while in the high pressure of her work world ,provides first-hand knowledge of what is going on and how to deal with the issues women are facing.

In short, women becoming leaders in the global economy that has been dominated by males for centuries, is a new ball game. How the men play and have played the game for centuries is radically different than how the women would play, and that can’t be changed overnight. Women will find that they have to speak up if they want their point of view heard or, if for example, they think they deserve a raise, or, in extreme cases they may need to change jobs to get what they want and deserve, even if that feels unnatural for them. Ms. Sandberg talks about this!

In closing, I recommend that if you know a high school female who is getting good marks in math and science, and doesn’t hate these subjects, that you inform her of the opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math. Chances are she may not know about them. To really catch her attention, simply down load the numerous studies that have been made. As I mentioned earlier, many are sponsored by women’s organizations as the AAUW from whose report the following salary data have been obtained.



*Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013, Women in the Labor Force:A Databook (Report 1040) (Washington, DC), Table 11

Note: Each STEM occupation  employed more than 85,000 people in 2011 according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In some large STEM professions, such as biological science, chemical engineering, and engineering management, no significant gender difference in median earnings was found.

Perspective: The Fossil Fuel Supply is Virtually Endless.

Did you ever think that you would live to hear or read such lines as “We will never run out of oil, and fracking is safe”? Well, the title on the cover page of the May, 2013 issue of the Atlantic was “We will never run out of oil”, and in late July, 2013 the Associated Press reported that a landmark Depatment of Energy study showed no evidence that chemicals from the fracking process contaminated drinking water in aquifers in western Pennsylvania.

WOW! Do you realize how significant these two reports are? The mainstream Media is telling us that we have an enormous supply of fossil fuels, and that digging them out of the earth in the United States is safe. This means that we are no longer dependent upon oil from the Middle East, and more than anything else, this also means that a sensible Energy Policy for the United States could be implemented at last.

Oh, but you say, what about global warming which is allegedly caused by the carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of these fossil fuels? Well, let’s assume that global warming is man caused and that carbon dioxide is the culprit. The question then is, can we control CO2 emissions? Actually, we know of a number of possible ways to manage carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, it’s true that these ways are not currently economic and will require research to bring the ideas to fruition. But so are so-called “green’ technologies currently uneconomic, but the government funds these and most have gone or are in the process of going bankrupt.

So do you squander government research funds on wind and solar projects that are uneconomic, where the available energy that could be produced from these sources could ever meet the rising demand for energy the economy of the US requires and where transporting the energy from the wind and sun sources to the end-user is impracticable, or do you want to conduct research to make fossil fuels environmentally acceptable, where the supply is virtually infinite and the transportation facilities are already in place?

If this sounds like a no-brainer to you, go to the head of the class!

Does anyone believe that our government doesn’t know that we have all of this fossil fuel supply and that research could be supported to take care of the CO2 emissions question? Of course the Department of Energy, Congress and yes, even our President, all know this! So why then are they not jumping on the fabulous opportunity? Something else is going on!

I hate to be cynical, and I definitely don’t generally believe in conspiracies, but the answer is staring us right in the face. Ever since President Obama has come onto the political stage he has mouthed one thing, namely, that we must transform the United States to obtain social justice. What better way to transform the country without our being willing than to frighten us with dooms day scenarios about Climate Change caused by CO2 emissions.

But how can the government control CO2? By taxing it! But how do you levee a tax if Congress is the only government agency that can levee taxes, and they have refused to do that? The answer, the President can have the Environmental Protection Agency label CO2 a toxic gas.

But every school child knows that CO2 is not a toxic gas! And besides, what fool would believe that since without CO2, life on this earth would not exist? I hate to let you in on this, but Obama takes all of us for fools!

So, do we and our Congress want to twiddle our thumbs while Obama, single handedly, blocks our country from using our massive fossil fuel supplies and our leadership in digital technology, which together, will allow the United States to experience its greatest century ever? If we do, the current voting generations should be ashamed and the generations that follow should hate us!

Perspective: Is Congressional Gridlock Bad?

It should be clear to anyone following what is going on in our Federal Government that nothing significant will be accomplished during the second term of President Obama. The question is this: Is that bad? According to the Media and Obama himself this is terrible considering the huge problems that the Nation faces. OK, so what are the huge problems?

• Immigration? Since this problem has been festering since 1986, can this be considered a crisis?

• Guns? Inasmuch as most murders are committed with hand guns by black on black in our major cities where hand guns are banned and by an isolated few mentally ill persons who get their hands on someone else’s gun, can this be considered a crisis that Congress could solve?

• Global Warming? Carbon dioxide is considered to be a major factor in greenhouse-caused global warming, so why did Obama fail to get a law passed to reduce it’s production when his party controlled both houses? Does that sound as though the Nation considers global warming a crisis?

• Obamacare? The plan is to provide thirty million persons, who don’t purchase insurance, with medical care mandated by the government program. Since most are young and healthy and decide not to buy insurance, is the need to insure this group a crisis?

• Foreign Policy? Since we now have all the oil and gas we will ever need, is worrying about what to do about the Arab Spring in the Middle East a crisis worthy of our attention and involvement?

The Media and the President are obsessed that the Congress cannot get its act together to work on and develop plans for these so-called crises. But from the point of view of “We the People”, shouldn’t we be pleased with this gridlock? If Congress did indeed create plans to solve the above crises, would you want to bet whether the plans would be ones we would like and could afford?

We have seen this before. Consider how earlier solutions for the aforementioned crises have worked out.

• Immigration: Regan’s plan to deal with limit illegal immigration in 1986 actually resulted in the number of illegals expanding from about 3 million in 1986 to about 12 million today.

• Guns: The ban on high power guns ten years ago did not stop the use of such weapons

• Global Warming: The Government’s selection of such clean-energy “winners” as Solyndra and the other solar energy producers have all ended in financial disasters at enormous expense for the tax payers.

Now, there actually are two crises that need be addressed!

• The National Debt and the Deficit!

• The lack of jobs for the under skilled, coupled with the lack of skilled workers for the high-tech jobs that exist!

The best answer to these two crises is to get the Congress out of the way! The collateral to this is that we don’t want the President to do anything that “We the People” don’t want either.

The less tax payer money spent to solve problems that need not be solved, the more likely we will be able to balance the budget and make inroads on reducing the National Debt. Likewise, the less the Government does to regulate and tax business, the more likely the private sector will create jobs for the unskilled unemployed, and the more likely industry will be able find and train persons to meet the high skilled jobs that are currently expanding faster than there are workers who have the needed training and skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to fill them.

If we understood the principles involved here, we would stop berating the Congress, and instead compliment them for blocking the work that we don’t want. Maybe then their rating in the polls would rise from about 10% to about 90%.

In a sentence, the best news is that Congress is gridlocked and thus can do no harm. And oh, by the way, did anyone ask how the members of Congress got their jobs? That is correct. “We the People” elected them. Now, if “We the People” wanted our representatives to do what the Media says Congress should do, wouldn’t you expect that “We the People” would select candidates who would do what the Media says we should want? Isn’t it just possible that Congress, as a body representing us, is doing exactly what we want done, namely NOTHING?

Oh, maybe if they do NOTHING, they should be paid NOTHING!

Perspective: What Would the Founders Say?

I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think about what is going on with our current Administration. If we still taught Civics and the Constitution in high school, perhaps more of us would be as fearful about government’s power as the Founders were. The Founders feared government so much that they added amendments to the Constitution to protect the people. Consider these:



First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”



Second Amendment: “The right to bear arms shall not be abridged.”



Forth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by Oath.”



Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”



Let’s begin by listing a few items that we have recently learned about that would have given the Founders concern.



• The Government has obtained access to phone messages and e-mails of certain members of the press without prior notification or Court Warrant.

(1st Ammendment)



• The government wants to register all who own arms. (2nd Ammendment)



• The Government has obtained access to our phone messages, e-mails, Facebook, etc. without prior notification, probable cause or Court Warrant.

(4th Ammendment)



Now, let’s visit some recent actions of the Executive Branch of the government that should give us pause viz a vis the 10th Ammendment.

• Who authorized the IRS to extend their purview to harass certain political groups

• Why is the President expanding the use of drones to kill enemies on foreign soil without informing anyone, including the leader of the foreign country involved?

• Why is the president unilaterally, without consulting Congress, authorizing a tax on coal with the announced objective of shutting that industry down? By the way when his party controlled both houses of Congress, that body voted against this scheme

The Founders would have been appalled at these power grabs by the Executive without congressional approval.

Now it is true that during wartime Presidents such as Lincoln and Roosevelt did exercise extreme powers. In the case of Lincoln suspending the right of habeas corpus in the civil war, and Roosevelt imprisoning Japanese Americans in WWII.



In the case of Obama one does not know if we are war or not. He never labels those who do want to attack us as “Terrorists” and then just recently he announced that the war against Terrorism is over. OK, if there is no war just bad criminals that can be handled by the police, does the Administration have to violate our Constitutional Rights to manage criminal activity? This is the central question that we need to ask ourselves as We the People.



If history were still taught, students would know that this would not be the first time that a democracy was taken over by a dictator. What if Obama, a Solinski protégé, decided he had to abort the Constitution in order to transform the country in the name of “social justice”. Wait, Obama’s campaign pledge in 2008 was that he would transform the country in the name of social justice! Transforming the country is exactly what Hitler had in mind for Germany when he, as duly elected Chancellor of Germany, burned down the Reichstag, the equivalent of our Capital Building, and took over the government. And you know how that worked out!



Now, we can just complacently sit by and watch our government do these un-constitutional things and go about our business in a blasé fashion and just trust the government, or we can demand better answers and better behavior! Remember Ben Franklin’s advice: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty. Our Founding Fathers are probably rolling over in their graves and probably at mach speed considering the complacency of the press and the main stream citizenry.