Saturday, April 17, 2010

Bill Clinton and the Tea Parties

Last week (April 16, 2010) Bill Clinton addressed some public gathering and ominously drew a parallel between what he and Janet Reno did in murdering the hapless Branch Davidians at Waco and the Tea Party movement. He commented that "words matter" indicating that violence could be incited by what he characterized as the overheated rhetoric of the tea Parties.

Interestingly, this was from the man who quibbled over the meaning of "is" to defend himself from perjury. "Words matter", Mr. Clinton? To you they evidently don't. But we take them very seriously indeed, especially the words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. We intend to see that our goverrment is re-anchored in them again.

This push-back is evidence that the Progressives are desperately afraid they are on the losing end of this fight. In my lifetime, I have never seen such vitreol over ordinary citizens speaking up and getting involved. Make no mistake. Clinton and Obams's recent words about the movement are an attempt to squelch it.

One strange thing about this movement that clicked for me recently. To put you where I am: I am a former SDS member from the sixties, and an advocate for "Power to the People," until I learned just who the "people" were that I was trying to empower. Since then I became an evangelical Christian, and I see the world clearly now.

The Tea Party movement so far has been a revealing expose of the Main Stream Media (MSM) and its reaction to Conservative protests. I think that many of us went into the tea party movement thinking that we could impact the government the way the radicals of the sixties did with their demonstrations, and street protests, etc. Back then, and since then, every time some Liberal or “progressive” crap philosophy has been espoused by public demonstrations, it has received sympathetic and usually over the top exposure from the media. There was a “million man march” several years ago that was a complete fizzle, but the media played it up like half the country showed up.

When we had the capital packed out before Thanksgiving (I think it was) there had to be several million people there: wall to wall people. Media estimates: 50,000. Talk about misrepresenting what went on!

The moral of the story is that people like me who grew up in the Sixties learned that if you wanted to change the world, you protested publicly. The media would pick up on it and we would achieve something. Well, that lesson is even being taught in schools today, but there is one important caveat which many of us naïve tea party folks overlooked: that example of demonstrations only works if it is Marxist or Progressive subjects that are being advocated by the protestors. If they happen to be Traditional, Conservative Americans – a la Tea Party citizens – well! That cannot be accepted! They are counter-revolutionary! They are trying to reverse what has been “achieved” by the Left-culture, and hence it is slandered, ridiculed, opposed, ignored, lied about, diminished, threatened, refused permits, insulted, high-jacked (attempts), infiltrated, mis-characterized, and even painted darkly as a menace to our freedoms and accused of being part of some para-military group. Why do you think they trotted out Bill Clinton the other night to talk about Waco? To remind us what he and Janet Reno did to the Koresh cult people who just wanted to be left alone. Don’t miss that: it was a threat.

So the moral of the story is: the Left controls the (diminishing) main stream media and use it to slap down, if they can, any resurgence of Americanism. That is why the Tea Parties have seen such opposition. The Sixties radicals became “cool” very quickly. Not so the Tea Parties – they get more “un-cool” every day in the MSM. Nevertheless, thanks to the internet, FB, Fox and other venues, the movement continues to flourish and grow. We have done an end-run around MSM. Citizens are not intimidated any more. We are more and more angered and hardened by the self-styled arrogant “rulers” and their MSM media lapdogs.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

A Most Unlikely Savior

Senator Charles Shumer, NY (D) today announced that he is going to rescue beleagured American air travellers from the evil airline companies who are planning to charge for the first bag of luggage they must check. Senator Shumer is outraged at this horrible abuse of air travellers by the airlines. These companies, by Shumer's estimation, are able to charge for baggage simply because they are greedy - and worse, they feel they can get away with it.

So, our well-intentioned Senator, out to save the world (and perhaps to make people forget that he isn't really their savior after all) has decided that what the airlines need is a new regulation making airline baggage a necessary part of travel and  therefore something that must automatically be included as part of their travel fare.

All this, ostensibly, to save the airline passengers from the ravages visited upon them by those powerful airline companies, who everyone knows, have a strangle hold on their passengers' wallets. Shumer knows, even if no one else living in the real world of business knows, that airline companies set prices whereever they want. 

Mr. Shumer knows nothing of free markets, or markets of any kind for that matter. In Senate-world, prices are things set by government, and markets are things that academics talk about but are not for the "real" world. Therefore to him, the simplest thing in the world to fix is a charge for baggage. And best of all, he gets to claim that he is helping out the poor abused travellers at the same time!

The real world, of course, never cooperates with the likes of Mr. Shumer. The Law of Unintended Consequences always seems to trip him up. What he intends as a boon to the travellers and a stick in the eye to the airlines will actually turn out to be favor to the airlines, and higher air fares to the customers. The air lines, after all, have been struggling to find a way to boost their revenues - even concocting the idea of charging for luggage. But they have not been successful.

Well, what has been holding the airlines back up until now? A little understood concept to the Senator, tbe concept of competition. We may take it as a fact that if the airlines could get away with charging extra for the first bag of luggage then they would have gleefully done so already. But they have not done it. They know that as soon as one airline chooses to break from the pack and charge extra, there will be some other airline who will announce that they are not going to charge extra for it, and thus drive the offending airline out of the market.

The market easily punishes or rewards as it sees fit, and the companies are powerless to do anything about it.

But now enters Mr. Shumer with his bullying tactics. The airlines, if he is successful, will begin to "not charge" for the luggage anymore. And Shumer will loudly trumpet that he has "saved" the interests of the hapless American flying public. Kudos to Shumer!

But what will actually have happened? The airlines will simply raise their prices - all of the airlines in lockstep- since they no longer will compete in the area of luggatge charges. So since there will no longer be competition in that area, price can go up without market penalty to the airlines. In fact, the increases in fares will reflect, in the long run, more than simply the cost of the luggage but will prove to be a convenient way to make up some lost profits that competition had previously taken out of their hides.

Regulation, you see, does not protect the consumers from the companies; it protects the companies from the consumers.

So in the end, Shumer's intervention will prove again that government cannot regulate markets; it only destroyes them and harms the public. Try to explain that to the Progressive/Socialists who haunt the halls of Congress. Shumer, like almost all of the members of Congress, regardless of Party, doesn't understand free enterprise because he has never lived it.  He and his fellow travellers style themselves as "above all that." They aren't really, of course, but their blundering just continues to waste our nation's wealth, and perpetuates a system that is destructive of Liberty and our lives.

Shumer is the problem that needs curbing, not the airline’s baggage fees.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Not One Cent for Tribute

Tribute is a term that has fallen into some disuse today, but it is a word that refers to paying some tax to another because it is owed due to some arrangement or act of allegiance. It can mean simply taxes, but it can also mean a kind of protection payment. The US paid tribute to the Barbary Pirates in the late 1700 and early 1800's in an attempt to appease them into leaving our merchant ships alone. The US did not have a navy to speak of, and we had no way to protect our shipping off our own shores, much less projecting Naval power across the Atlantic.

The book "Six Frigates" chronicles the fascinating political and historical developments that led to the formation of the US Navy. One of the first uses of the frigates by President Thomas Jefferson was to put down the Muslim pirates who were sponsored by several small city-states in North Africa.  They had terrorized shipping with impunity for many years before the American merchant ships came increasingly into their region, and they found the undefended ships easy pickings. They captured them and made slaves or hostages of the crews, holding then for ransom. Tribute did not work long, for the Muslims found that they could up the ante and extract more money out of the remote infant nation. There was no visible end to their demands. It was that realization that finally brought the US to conclude that we could not go on with tribute.

That kind of activity is still going on today in Muslim lands where they think they can act with impunity (Sudan pirates are an example.)

Anyway, on a Facebook thread today, I commented on a few rants by anti-war "conservatives" who thought the real problem with the US was it's warmaking against other nations. The implications being that if we would just fold up our tents and go home, suddenly the world would love us.

The Tripoli Pirates and Jefferson's solution is a history lesson we need to re-teach. Here was my answering thread: "I am a bit taken aback when I encounter such strident anti-war comments from some, as if, in their opinion, the only real problem we have as a country could be traced to the US's intervention in other people's problems - or that our war-making is in some way a colossal plot to enrich a bunch of international bankers and other miscreants, and we the people are just led like lambs down the primrose path.

I am not a sheep or lamb. I remember my history and the need for the infant US to build six frigates in the midst of a huge internal debate over whether we even needed an army or navy. The Congress finally concluded that our shipping would continue to be ravaged - without any retaliation - by Islamic pirates emanating from North Africa unless they were forcibly stopped. Remember the "Shores of Tripoli"? We mounted an expeditionary force to stomp the pirates into submission to us, rather than paying tribute (in ever increasing amounts) to the Islamic thugs who had been terrorizing the Mediterranean area for centuries. It took the little fledgling USA to do what no other country had ever done – take the war to them.

Our motto: “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” Talk is sometimes cheap, but in this case the US did something no other nation had ever done with the pirates - they called their bluff. They resolved that they were not going to pay any more tribute. They would fight instead.

It was necessary to take the war to them to live in the same world with them. Same to day. Amidst all the other problems we have, that same gang of Islamic thugs is still out there intent on carrying on the tradition of Mohammed, which is to intimidate, dominate, exterminate or assimilate all opposition. The last thing you should ever do is ignore them as irrelevant.

Also keep your powder dry as we deal with another group of thugs based in Chicago, who have recently moved their seat of power to Washington, DC.