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Economy
Another Side of Beef?
Special interest lobbyists across America have essentially gutted our Republic. They have become so adept at picking through the bones of our public treasury that they behave more like ravenous wolves than Sons of Liberty.
Yesterday’s House budget deal, delivered by the new Speaker Paul Ryan is nothing but a John Boehner organized Republican blessing on all of Obama’s artful designs. This budget deal, like others over the past 20 years will ensure continual federal debt and deficits while driving the federal leviathan toward complete dysfunction.
Butchers at the Meat Mart
Politicians, in both parties, act more like butchers than representatives as they wield their tools. They specialize in separating the tender morsels of meat stock from the remainder of the carcass. Their self-serving promotional pieces and basic handouts look like the sections of a butchered beef cow.
I Smell More than One Rat!
My article, KBRA – The Trap is Set, caught (pun intended) some heat and lots of comments, too.
Please know that I chose my words carefully and I never accused anyone of being “a rat” but I did set up an illustration to point out that the federal government treats most of us like rats.
Apparently, the big boys in their white, lab-coats like having us run in our cages. They want to control every aspect of our lives:
Dam Removal is Fishy Business
Last Friday, I was on Bill Meyer’s Radio Show discussing the KBRA/KHSA agreements. Bill asked Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams, former Shasta Nation Vice Chairman Gary Lake, and myself to provide insight to the apparent support for dam removal from Oregon’s only Republican House member Greg Walden.
Unfortunately for Rep. Walden, he can’t have it both ways. He can’t pretend to work for rural American values while flushing our property rights and precious fresh-water resources into the Salty Pacific.
Not only does the KBRA and KHSA take water resources from Klamath and Siskiyou counties and the Rogue Valley, but it sets precedence throughout the United States. These measures, if successful, will instruct others on how to successfully use political power to transfer private wealth into collective interests’ pockets. The KBRA/KHSA represents the classic “Divide and Conquer” paradigm: tribes against agriculture, project irrigators against non-project irrigators, wind and solar interests against ratepayers, business cronyism against taxpayers, and finally, the Endangered Species Act against the rest of us.
KBRA – The Trap is Set
The KBRA media blitz gets a second wind
Currently, a grossly misguided dam removal agenda is sweeping across the US. In my backyard, Klamath County, Oregon we have a classic example. So-called stakeholders want politicians to give agriculture subsidized energy, give tribal interests 100,000 acres of US forest land while detonating 4 hydroelectric dams and giving the bill to taxpayers and utility rate payers. The dams are located in Southern Oregon and Northern California and the agreements forged by this cabal are known as the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreements (KBRA).
The KBRA proponent’s siren song for “water certainty” has reached a fevered pitch. The legislative clock is running out of time and the special interest stakeholders are desperate to sway public opinion in favor of destroying four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River.
The KBRA is really no different than the false promises of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Bernie offers Utopia – free college, food-stamps, housing, even the kitchen-sink. This type of despotic lie has plagued democracies throughout history. It is not new.
EPA – a Rogue Agency
The EPA’s recent actions prove beyond any doubt that the organization is a rogue agency operating in a capricious and unlawful manner and it ought to be defunded.
Last month’s 3 million gallon spill of toxic mine waste into the Animas River is a perfect example of the EPA’s gross negligence and derogation of the rule of law. The Aug. 5 mine breach, sent millions of gallons of bright yellow, heavy-metal-contaminated water and sediment gushing into the Animas River.
That waste then flowed into the San Juan River, and eventually flowed into New Mexico and poured into Utah’s Lake Powell.
Power and Privilege
Executive Focus
President Obama has both eyes focused on completing his “fundamental transformation” of America. As a statist, he believes in the power and authority of the government to regulate and control every aspect of our lives.
Even Alexander Hamilton, an ardent proponent of federal control, recognized the pitfalls of power concentrated in government.
“The instruments by which it must act are either the authority of the laws or force. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government, there is an end to liberty!
Secrecy Breeds Corruption and Tyranny – Part I
Secrecy breeds corruption and tyranny, while openness and transparency breed Liberty. Especially in matters of governance.
Which would you prefer?
This is a simple question because it is a very straight-forward idea.
Secrecy Breeds Corruption and Tyranny – Part II
As I mentioned in Part I, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP, Trade Deal) is a secretly engineered scheme that unashamedly supports centrally planned economies.
In this article, I have pulled an excerpt from the TPP which I will use to illustrate this globalist agenda. This portion highlights healthcare where pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers and public health entities will be jockeying for positions at the public trough.
Given the poor performance and rising costs of Obamacare, what will happen when Congress allows the President (via the TPP) to wedge his insatiable bureaucrats deeper into your wallets and future health decisions.
Federal Over-reach Damages Us
The Federal Payment-In-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILT) and Secure Rural Schools (SRS) payment schemes are not in the best long-term interests of Oregon’s citizens. I have attended countless budget meetings where hard-working folks strive to manage their limited resources. However, the hard-truth is that relying on these monies will only place us on the same street corner next year, with the same cardboard sign, asking once again, “Please, Sir, More…”
All of these federal disbursement models are outdated, whimsically amended, and hobbled by bureaucratic ineptitude. They are built on a mishmash of legislative actions from self-interested parties that are forged deep within the marbled halls of our nation’s distant capital. Worse yet, most federal actions are rank with either executive or legislative over-reach or pregnant with deplorable raids on the US Treasury.
Consensus is Not Truth
The Consensus Agenda
Today’s regulatory enterprise is following the same pattern as Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman during the American Civil War. Sherman’s strategy was to gather livestock and crop production data from the Federal Census of 1860 to effectively lead his troops through areas where his army could do the most damage. Today, the EPA, USFS, USGS, NOAA, BOR, FWS, BLM and IRS are following the same pattern.
They are amassing enormous volumes of data which enables them to push their agenda driven preferences onto the American scene. The problem isn’t the data collection per se. The problem is the agenda driven data interpretation which happens in the secret recesses of their bureaucracies.
The data being stockpiled and the interpretations being propagated are uniquely prejudiced. Isolated results are paired with faulty scientific modeling and rigged with invalid assumptions which has led to the advancement of consensus as truth.