Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Mead Was Right


Margaret Mead said that although the mom's role in child rearing has many biological components, the dad's role is largely social. And if we break that mold, it will be hard to reconstruct. 

We took young pregnant girls out of their neighborhoods, where blacks following WWII were born 75% into two parent families, and put them in high rises to raise their sons and daughters without any dads nearby. They grew up with no gramps, no uncles, and not knowing how to parent as a male. It’s little wonder their resulting behavior resulted in being 35 times more likely to commit violent crime and 75% of black babies born to single moms and sperm donors.



I only quote black numbers because they are the most glaring. I know it’s not just a minority problem.

Another glaring menace is the danger to babies of live in boyfriends who are not their biological father.  As the new lion kills existing cubs in the pride, human males seem dangerous, too. 

Most nations had a more humane 'dole' for families down on their luck. For us, if the dad was out of work and mom secured a place in the Omaha projects in the 1960's, social workers and police during midnight raids chased the cheaters, AKA Dads, out.  At the time it seemed the right thing to do.  LBJ's war on poverty only funded single moms with Aid to Dependent Children and it became a way of life.

We are living with the results now. 

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Becoming a True Democracy

What comes next? I'm not fortune teller but, many of the blue states are broke.. worse then broke, they owe billions.

Obama will assist them and that means Bernanke must keep adding to the money supply.  Raising taxes on rich can't fund the deficit for more than a few months.  Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will continue to expand money supply.

To let a blue State go broke, is not something Obama will be willing to do. So look for MORE debt.. Bernanke right now is buying (with new US$s) $40 Billion a month in "mortgage backed securities" from who? not you or me, but the 1%, making housing prices appear to be recovering. After that, then what?

All the while, Bernanke is keeping interest rates below inflation so there is no chance of saving and building a nest egg.. buying power actually evaporates in our savings accounts.

Obama will be lauded for saving the Blue States and any vestige of our Republic will finally be crushed.  Centrally planned Democracy will result, explained here and the US will be destined to end as Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury to Washington and author of the Federalist Papers explains: "It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."... and other founders back this up:

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

~ John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
 
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death."
 
~ James Madison, 4th President of the United States, Father of the Constitution
 
"The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived."
 
~ John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States
"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."
~ John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1801-1835

Saturday, October 6, 2012

1798 Wisdom


"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad." (from a letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798)

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Federal Reserve and TARP

Jon Stewart 'gets it' yet neither one of the Presidential teams will TOUCH IT.  Audit the Federal Reserve, yes.  Quit putting bankers and federal reserve executives in government.  Force our currency to remain market based, not banker based.


If you read many of the old English tales, the family inherited a set amount of pounds annually making them either independent or barely above poverty level.  But never did their pounds buy less decade after decade as does our US$.  The British pound, also referred to as the pound sterling, was asset based and held its value.


As this chart shows, Nixon's ending of the Bretton-Woods Agreement (44 allied nations agreed not to inflate,) unleashed inflation.  Why would Nixon break an agreement that had brought us such economic growth and stability after WWII? Nixon needed inflation to mask the costs of his secret wars in Cambodia, for one.   If you want to learn how the 'inflation tax' steals our wealth from the 99% and redistributes it to the 1% who are connected to the fiat currency or connected to government, google it.

All we have to do is repeal legal tender laws allowing other currencies or precious metals to be used as currency and what we earn can again retain it value.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Born 1930-1970, how did you survive?

Those of You Born
1930 - 1979

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!


First, we survived being born to mothers
Who smoked and/or drank while they were
Pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing,
Tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs
covered with bright colored lead-base paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles,
Locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode
Our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.

As infants & children,
We would ride in cars with no car seats,
No booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no
brakes.

Riding in the back of a pick-up truck on a warm day
Was always a special treat.

We drank water
From the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends,
From one bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon..
We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar.
And, we weren't overweight.

We were
Always outside playing...

We would leave home in the morning and play all day,
As long as we were back when the
Streetlights came on.

No one was able
To reach us all day. And, we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps
And then ride them down the hill, only to find out
We forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes
a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's and X-boxes.
There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable,
No video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's,
No cell phones, No personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms.
WE HAD FRIENDS
And we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth
And there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt,
And the worms did not live in us
Forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,
Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and,
Although we were told it would happen,
We did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and
Knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just
Walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.
Those who didn't had to learn to deal
With disappointment.
Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law
Was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best
Risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.

The past 50 years
Have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility,
and we learned how to deal with it all.

If YOU are one of them?
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others
who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the
lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives
for our own good .

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know
how brave and lucky their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house
with scissors, doesn't it ?


My two cents --- our life expectancy has gone up or down since then? We learned what NOT to do early with less dangerous activities, maybe?

Monday, April 16, 2012

Four Ways in Which we Spend Money

"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income."
Nobel prize winning economist Milton Friedman.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Political football

Had Planned Parenthood executives read Homer, they might have avoided the sirens' song which has corrupted them. They may never have accepted the 'golden handcuffs' associated with taxpayer funding. Every new administration can declare services illegal only because taxpayer funds pay the piper and politicians call the tune.
Most charities, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Family Services, and others vie for taxpayer funds and find they, too, must play the government's tune regardless of their stated missions.
When my daughters were young, I wrote checks to Planned Parenthood because I believed strongly in birth control and I advised teenage girls about free or very reasonable services at Planned Parenthood. It was win-win.. no one was forced to pay for Planned Parenthood services (thru taxes) and those who didn't agree with those services were not forced to use them. No one was coerced and all transactions were voluntary--close to a libertarian's Utopia.
But then the government wheedled their way into the process by making 'gifts' using taxpayer dollars (the only resources available to government.) Eventually Planned Parenthood hired lobbyists instead of those effective fundraisers who once tapped into the social conscience of women and like minded men (the Buffetts of the world/and Nebraska Furniture Mart's Mrs. B.) 'Society' lost an independent source for women's health and informed choices to government control for a handful of golden coin.
Society is not government and government is not society. No law can be written, regardless of ideology, that is caring or thoughtful and without unintended results, some catastrophic for our society.
Following WWII, 75% of black children were born into 2 parent families, and most of the rest lived in extended families and caring communities. Then our federal government created AFDC, only for women with children instead of a millenniums-tested family dole. Young dads found their meager paycheck competing with a check from Uncle Sam and public housing for their families. Young women 'in trouble' were whisked off to high rises or projects to raise their children in a female dominated environment. If an unemployed dad attempted to stay with their families and be a father to their children, they were driven out as 'cheaters' and their family might be tossed into the street. After many generations of this kind of nonsense, the 'sperm donor' was born.
Margaret Mead stated, and I paraphrase, that women's role in parenting is largely biological while men's role is largely social. And if we deny men that social role, we will play hell bringing the dads back. Senator Patrick Moynihan [D,NY] understood and worked on Welfare reform with President Clinton trying to reverse social decay.
Some see me as uncaring because I don't support taxpayer funded programs over private charity but why is hard to understand that our social planners good intentions created scores of millions of fatherless children who have suffered the consequences. Moms are like the Lioness. We protect our kids from what we perceive as danger or extreme excitement. Dads roughhouse (studies now showing the importance to children's development,) or start pillow fights at bedtime and then say 'Okay, time to settle down' or 'You are not going out dressed like that. Go change.' Dads parent differently. Is it better parenting or worse to toss a child in the air when you greet them? How many moms do that versus dads?
I will be scorned by many on both sides for my views. I will be scorned by many for thinking, had Planned Parenthood not played footsie with the government in the first place, they could still be providing the services Sanger hoped they would. But I feel compelled to speak.

Friday, March 2, 2012

What's a liberal or a conservative?

What is a liberal? What is a conservative? What is right wing and what is left wing? What do you do when you don't fit into any category used today?

The American dream was not 'diversity' but a 'melting pot' with Americans of all ages, races, sex, and sexual orientation, heritage, etc. believing in the rights of the individual over any government defined group or category. No individuals has the right to initiate force or fraud so of course we need a police force and we need enforcement of laws like theft, too. But ....

MLK Jr said we should be judged not by the color of our skin (add age, heritage, religion or lack thereof, male or female, disabled or not. disadvantaged or not-- the basis of many laws) but by the content of our character. As someone once said, paraphrasing 'as long as they don't scare the horses and kids, its fine by him.'

In "America's 30 Years War" Balint Vazsonyi points out political correctness is an affront to the 1st Amendment. He lived under Hitler and Stalin and knows about repression of free speech and speech codes. As a student in a conservatory of music, he was called before a board of government for saying to a friend, 'communism is not the best form of government for musicians.' His punishment was no performances outside the school for two years.

"The term 'politically correct' first came to my attention through the writings of Anton Semionovich Makarenko, Lenin's expert on education. Adolf Hitler preferred the version 'socially correct.' Then came affirmative action forms which classified people by ancestry--1st signed into law in Nazi Germany--and the preferential treatment of specific categories, introduced by the Stalinist government in 1950."

"Prophets of social justice -- communists, whether by that or any other name-- focus on who should have less. Because they have nothing to give, they can only take away. First, they take away opportunity. Next, they take away possessions. In the end, they have to take away life itself."

Please don't characterize me until you have considered where central planners are heading. They may limit what foods we eat, what drugs we take, where we fly and and have federal enforcement, even SWAT teams at the ready, even at the Department of Education. When I was a child, we used to say 'Well its not a federal offense,' meaning a federal offense meant the FBI, federal police, enforced it.

Germans feared the knock at the door. Now the raids come at the crack of dawn, the dogs are killed, and everyone presumed guilty. Now this President who you may trust with this power, NDAA, may snatch a citizen off the street with no charges and detain them forever. Remember though the next President won't give up powers once available just as Obama did not give up the Patriot Act powers.