14 Tuesday Feb 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Apparently the first wall the president will build is not going to be along our southern border. His wish to protect Americans will start at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe he will test the new 11 foot 7 inch wall around the White House to see if two 12 foot Mexican-made ladders can get a person over it. He could see if a Mexican made pick-up truck could pull it down or a car jack can spring the bars wide enough to walk through it.
—END—
14 Tuesday Feb 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
A good portion of Chicago appears to be a war zone with each gang trying to kill members of other gangs. Whether it’s for increasing their territory, business competition or a perceived slight, it should be called terrorism. It is no different than what is happening in many cities and towns in Central America, Africa, and the Mid-East. They are just as terrorized as people in those areas.
In Central America, the federal government would send special troops in black uniforms and automatic weapons to “eliminate” the problem. Our country (Pre-Trump) would criticize the civil rights violations publicly while giving covert support. Such actions would never be allowed here. Just as in these areas, the bad guys range from young kids to hardened adults who think nothing of killing someone.
People watch “Blue Bloods” because they obey the rules. We watch “Chicago PD” because they put people away, legally or otherwise. In those terrorism areas “Blue Bloods” touchy-feely doesn’t work. Aggressive policing does. When a cop is in a homogenous area, racial profiling is obviously happening. Filling out tons of paperwork to explain why the person was stopped in ridiculous. Some good people will be harassed along with the bad.
The problem has grown progressively worse since the sixties because of the effective enforcement. Yes, a few people were forced into false confessions. The overall effect was to jail the gang leaders which fragmented the gangs. As those new leaders were jailed, fragmenting continued.
How to solve the problem is purely subjective. Some say eliminate gangs by arresting them all but that would require lifetime sentences for any crime. Another group says give them jobs. Few have any skills or work ethic which an employer would want to risk financing a business. The wages would have to be overly generous to compete with some of the income from illegal activities.
I wonder if it is possible to eliminate the terrorism aspect in the affected areas once it becomes part of the neighborhood culture. The one thing I am sure of, touchy-feely police tactics isn’t going to abate terrorism. In fact, I think it probably increases illegal activities by decreasing pressure on the gangs. The justice department should stay out of community enforcement until they come up with a real solution. They want touchy-feely and it won’t work in a war zone.
—END—
01 Wednesday Feb 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
Trump has no clue of economics. He thinks a 20% tariff on imports from Mexico will be paid by Mexicans. We, the buyer of Mexican products, will pay with a 20% increase on vegetables, fruit, nuts and a myriad of things the Japanese and Chinese make in Mexico. Who would pay for a whimsical wall — Americans! His Chief of Staff listed possible payer’s including Drug Cartels!!!
When a tariff is put on a country it responds with its own tariffs and restrictions. We export billions of dollars of grains and manufactured items to Mexico. This means a lot of those products will be replaced by products from China, Japan, Brazil or Argentina.
Speaker of the House Ryan is an economic wonk and said a tariff isn’t going to happen because it is a 20% tax on Americans.
I have heard Trump talk about putting a tax on items going to certain countries if they don’t do what he wants. First, they would buy from another country. Second, I remember a question on my Constitution test in high school. Article I, section 9 says no taxes can be imposed on exports. No President or Congress can put any kind of tax on exports for any purpose. The swamp is getting murkier and more expansive.
25 Wednesday Jan 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
This is scary and would be funny if it wasn’t so indicative of the new President. Kelly Ann Conway, one of Trump’s closest advisors, said they have alternative facts when the media doesn’t agree with their line.
Apparently it was an alternate fact that Trump would release his taxes. Another alternate fact is he had the biggest election win ever. Another is he will drain the swamp of the rich people running the government. Don’t forget he wouldn’t have any conflicts of interest by January 20 and the Russians had nothing to do with his winning the election. That’s only the edge of their alternate reality.
It is extremely scary when the President doesn’t realize the rest of the world is in the real world. Some of those people have nuclear weapons. Reagan apologized for his joke that he had just launched a nuclear attack on Russia. If it had been live radio, we might not be here. President Truman’s comments that South Korea could defend itself without American military led to North Korea’s invasion of the south. Our Ambassador to Iraqi thought she was following Bush I’s comments when she told Saddam we wouldn’t object to his invading Kuwait. I am sure historians can contribute more instances.
A President must be careful of every word he says, writes, or in Trump’s reality, tweets. America can cease to exist in fifteen minutes after some stupid statement or tweet!
23 Monday Jan 2017
Posted in Immigration
Tags
Dine out or eat chicken, or fruit and vegetables grown in America? If yes, then an illegals was probably involved. Many of our small and large businesses depend on migrant labor.
During one of my previous occupations, I was asked to sell a landscaping business. Most of the landscapers I contacted used illegal laborers to operate. Few locals were willing to do the hard dirty work that clients could pay. I got the same responses from restaurateurs.
Many people say we should deport all illegals and then prohibit immigration. About a decade ago Alabama’s Republican controlled government passed a law punishing all businesses that hired illegals. Businesses suffered, crops rotted in the fields, and prices rose. Two years later they quietly revoked the law. The next year the families moved back and life returned to normal.
When I asked the landscapers why they stayed all year, it was because they weren’t sure they could sneak back next spring. Many brought their families up for the same reason.
The owners hired illegals because the locals didn’t want to do the work since it is dirty and hot with long hours. Alabama thought teenagers and unemployed would do the work – they didn’t.
If we had the sensible work visas that the right wing congress wouldn’t pass for the last several years, we would have a manageable immigration problem. Families would stay in their home towns and the workers would go back and forth as needed.
Trump’s wall will only boost the shovel and ladder business in Mexico. If we had a workable visa system we could save the billions he wants to waste on a wall. Visas first — walls second!
10 Saturday Dec 2016
Posted in Coal Mining, Global Warming, Uncategorized
Trump did not invent the idea that the EPA is responsible for the loss of coal mining jobs but he played to their beliefs. People who are out of work and don’t have any other marketable skills want to blame somebody or something. Since I come from a family involved in coal and oil production, I understand the mentality of the miners. The owners tell their employees they are going to lose their jobs because the government is over-regulating mining and burning of coal.
Today my home area has one of the few mines left in southern Illinois. Most of the other mines operate like the Science and Industry Museum’s exhibit. The horizontal shafts are six to eight feet high and fifteen to twenty feed wide extending out more than a thousand feet with side shafts. It requires over 600 miners. This type of mining usually means the surface isn’t affected because the shaft ceiling is supported.
The mine in my home area uses a super long wall technique and operates with a third as many miners while producing more. The mine uses a machine that grinds off a 1,400 foot wide seam of coal while allowing the shaft behind the machine to collapse. The coal is transported from the front of the grinders back to where it is sent to the surface by conveyors. The grinding machine can go 3.5 miles before needing to start another shaft.
The sulfur content of the coal is almost as low as the Western Powder River Coal but it has trouble competing against gas. How are the Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia mines going to compete?
10 Saturday Dec 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
If our elected officials really want to do something bi-partisan, then make it a crime to create or pass along a conspiracy causing a crime. It would be like a law inciting a riot or yelling fire in a theater. Both laws limit free speech.
Examples of what would be criminal would be the story that a Pizzeria in Washington D.C. is a base for a child sex ring. Besides the death threats and harassment of the owner and his employees, a gullible idiot drove six hours with an assault weapon to stop it. He surrendered after the police assured him nothing was true. Another was the Sarah Palin tweeting that people should target twenty Congress people. A nutcase followed her directive and shot representative Gabrielle Giffords wounding and killing others.
Some of Donald Trump’s speeches and tweets have caused the ethnic slurring signs and actions. Some people think they are the reason for the sudden increase of white on brown and black assaults and killings.
Responsible media should never allow such stories to be aired or printed since it continues the incitement. The electronic media like FaceBook and Twitter isn’t catching and erasing the lies and half truths as fast as they do in Europe. Trump’s new security advisor or his son (sharing was on Dad’s device) shared the pizza shop story. A quick fact check would have revealed the truth.
Have Americans gotten so gullible or stupid they will believe any hare-brained story? How long will we allow Putin’s dirty tricks people to tell us what to think? How long before the Chinese follow his lead?
04 Sunday Dec 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
I just finished mowing my front lawn on December 3. Each year I have been mowing later in the fall. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow. Maybe that will stop the grass from growing until spring. Yesterday I saw landscapers out mowing their client’s grass.
Leaves fall because of lessening sunlight and grass stops growing when the temperature drops. In the 1980s, I finished mowing before many leaves had fallen. A decade later I mowed leaves and grass. Now all the leaves are down, most raked up, and I am hopefully finished mowing for 2016.
For those who haven’t guessed, it’s called Global Warming. Oh yes, the Rockefeller Foundation just filed suit against Exxon for hiding the truth about their contributing to the Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming.
04 Sunday Dec 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
The purpose of this blog is to give a view that many people have said needs to be given a wider distribution than the newspapers commentary pages. doing so means I have succumbed to the ego side of my battle between ego and humility.
Doing a little blog means that my wife, Susie, has taken on another job. I am a G-One guy with a flip phone that is used for one purpose – talking to people. Susie does my e-mail when it’s required. Giving people the opportunity to not only see my opinions ut to comment on them allows for a greater discourse than the Joliet Herald’s call-in section.
Is it an over-inflated ego when the people from both the right and left agree with my views? I have never been accused of “Going along, to get along.” My opinions have been considered as liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian,m and crazy at time, but compatible at other times.
I am a news junkie. I form my opinions from what I read (Chicago Tribune, Joliet-Herald, Time Magazine, and a myriad of scientific and ecology cnetered magazines) and see on televison (local and national news, PBS interviews, and foreign news shows).
16 Wednesday Nov 2016
Posted in Politically Correct, Politics
The following is what Captain Picard told Worf in a Star Trek – Next Generation episode.
“We think we have come so far. The torture of heretics, the burning of witches is all ancient history and then, in a blink of an eye, it all comes back to start over again… she, or someone like her will always be with us, waiting for the right climate, spreading fear in the name of righteousness.”
Why do leaders seem to always have to be divisive to get power? Hitler’s was Jews. For today’s potential European leaders, its Syrian immigrants, for Madura Moros President of Venezuela, its elites, and the Philippine President, Benigno Aquino, he has people killing drug traffickers and users.
We have often, too often, had such demigods blaming an ethnic group or race for some problem. In our colonial days it was Indians and religious zeal. Later the focus groups were Indians and ex-slaves. In the last century it was Germans in the First World War era, Japanese in World War II, Asians in 1800s and most of 1900s, Catholics until John F. Kennedy and Hispanics during the 1900s and today. The most infamous was Senator Joe McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt in 1954. He scared Ronald Reagan into naming his friends and other people as sympathizers.
Today’s demigods are pillaring museums,, Hispanics, working poor, scientists and liberals. My Mother told me not to put other people down to get my way. Most of us do that on occasion, whether it’s a Pollock or a dumb-blond joke. It’s when we go past political correctness into national belief and phony survival policies that we become dangerous and away from our ideals.
Commentary About the Blue Marble 