[NOTE: “omnibus—Including or covering many things or classes: an omnibus trade bill.” Guard the Borders, John Kerry’s 180 (see Cao’s post), a well-deserved dig at the ACLU and its ilk and a Fairtax note, plus a few–all in one handy dandy slightly longer than usual post. And no, I’ll NOT post it with an extended entry. So there]
Top four, in no particular order
- National Security
- Taxation and the Economy
- Education and Culture
- Civil liberties and Justice
But let’s take them in that order, anyway, shall we?
National Security
On the national level, apart from our armed forces, which are doing an admirable job in Iraq and Afghanistan of cutting off the heads of snakes before they enter our country, the federal government is performing not only under par but so badly that the very words “national security” make this observer choke. “Homeland Security”? A farce. A cruel farce. Something on the order of 15 million illegal aliens resident in this country? How can our federal government be considered to be serious about its number one constitutional job when they have no idea who and where these people are? (Or, knowing anything, do nothing serious about the problem.) _1_, _2_
“Homeland Security”? Native Americans (nah, can the PC crap: not American Indians, native Americans—you know, people who were born and raised here, speaking English, etc.) are harassed at airports by officious terrorist aides working for the Thousands Standing Around (making trouble for and transforming good citizens into either cringing sheep or unwilling rebels), do nothing substantive to  enhance security and waste enormous amounts of tax dollars providing full employment to self-made idiots. _3_, _4_, _5_.And those are the good points of Homeland Security.
Taxation and the Economy
I received this in email from fairtax.org
Time to tell Washington that we want the FairTax! If you don’t tell them – nobody will and they will hurt us with more oppressive taxation again! If you have called, faxed or written your congressman on the disappointing results of the tax panel, now is the time to CALL the White House. Tell them NO flat tax, no income tax – ONLY the FairTax. Call today when the panel is meeting!!
After last week’s disappointing news from the Tax Reform Commission, we need to let President Bush know that the FairTax is the only plan that we will accept. There is a story out today saying the panel is entertaining a 30% graduated? Flat tax (still keeping all of the other taxes)! That’s just unbearable and wrong. [see LINK]
“The “X tax” proposal would end taxation of investment income and interest deductions for businesses and individuals. It would also set a single rate for all businesses and allow unlimited write-offs for equipment purchases. Individuals would be taxed only on their wages. In his proposal, Bradford set graduated tax rates on wages with a top rate of less than 30 percent.â€
Call! Be polite, be strong, ask for the FairTax and please let them know what state you’re calling from.
The number for the White House switchboard is 202-456-1414 – let’s be sure to light up their switchboard all day Tuesday.
You may also call the “comments “line. Do BOTH today.Call The President’s Comment Line:Monday through Friday 9:00am through 5:00pm EDSTTelephone number 202-456-1111
Get The FairTax Book today! Please visit http://www.fairtax.org/boortz_book.html
If you are as yet unfamiliar with the FairTax proposal, go, get the Linder/Boortz book and read it. Visit the FairTax site linked above (and here) and study the information there. Get involved with your state FairTax organization (if any) or get in on the ground floor of organizing your state FairTax organization. Just do it. See also FairTax linked blogs at Technoratti.
As to other economic issues, start here and then ask yourself, what happens when we “outsource” essential secuurity-related manufacturing/infrastructure to… slave labor in Red China? How is that different to exporting essential infrastructure/manufacturing in general? Are the two interrelated?
Education and Culture
I have a simple two-step proposal for remedying most of the failures of “public education” in the United States.
- Get Washington D.C. out of your kids’ classrooms. Heck, get your state out of your kids’ classrooms. Return complete control to the local level. Sure, there will be some poorly-funded schools. Some poorly-run. But the overall level of real learning of useful things will rise dramatically when those whose children are in the local schools have a genuine say in the process and when the buck for their children’s education truly does stop with them.
- Fire all the educrats. School administrators (principals, superintendents) are by and large not useless drones. They are a cancer. A big suck on a sour lemon. They are infectiously stupid. In the classroom, school administrators are the single largest immediate stumbling block in the way of your child’s education. Stupid (or simply incompetent) teachers are way, way down the list. Other educrats include all the blowhards from Washington D.C. on down to the local level as well as most of the brainwashing (and brainwashed) loons in education departments of colleges and universities nationwide.
Get rid of them all and put them in labor camps breaking rocks or something. With their heads, perhaps. As to other cultural issues… aw, gee… We’ve been manufacturing stupidity in public schools for decades, so it’s no wonder mush-mouf (heh), tone-deaf (non-)”singers” dominate the musical culture of our day and movies, TV and even novels (cf. any Dan Brown book) are so often mind-numbingly stupid. And still popular. *sigh* Even Mass Media Podpeople—whose job you might think would entail wordsmithing at some level—can’t speak literate (or even grammatical) English, so why expect popular culture to do better?
And at a more fundamental level, dishonesty and a lack of commitment to any real ethical standard is so endemic in our culture that only a credulous idiot (or an idealist—often synonymous terms *sigh*) would take their neighbor’s word or a handshake “contract” on the most trivial of exchanges, and “everyone knows” that the cop who speeds on the way to his donut break will lie about a convenient (for him) traffic ticket. Enough.
Civil Liberties and Justice
*profound sigh*
When an organization that disingenuously calls itself “The American Civil Liberties Union” campaigns to obstruct free speech* and free exercise of religion, seeks to endanger that greatest of rights—life itself—and can get YOU to pay for their misbehavior, can civil liberties long survive?
When the feds (or state or local) authorities can place serious obstructions and limitations on even Constitutionally-guarranteed rights, are those “rights” even rights any more or have they been remanufactured as licenses?
(*You may experience a momentary cognitive dissonance when clicking that link. Yes, I am saying that flag-burning is NOT speech–unless accompanied by actual, you know, like, WORDS SPOKEN. And pejoration of the term “free speech” into “free expression” is a crime for which the ACLU should burn in hell, along with the assinine Supreme Communists of the United States from the court that ruled in agreement with the ACLU. Destruction of the language of protecting our rights is among the chief of the ACLU’s accomplishments in its goal of ultimately destroying America).
And on the other end of the equation, governments at all levels are doing everything they can to create an atmosphere of what Jerry Pournelle calls “anarcho-tyranny” through encumbering the citizenry with so many laws and regulations that we are all outlaws whether we desire or intend to be or not. Rule of law? Rule of bureaucratic whim. With so many legal snares that NO ONE knows them all, any time a bureaucrat wants to find a way to “get you” he can.  And that kind of chaotic goonery spawns ever more and more scofflaws, as people see that the law is more and more only about whatever you can get away with. See this (or this or this) for another rant on the topic… *sigh*
And who, ultimately (at least in what is putatively a democratic republic) responsible for these problems and their resolutions?Look in the mirror, as I do, and you’ll see who’s responsible.
As long as, as an electorate, we insist on being short-sighted, greedy, lazy S.O.B.s; as long as we as a people continue to tune into THESE S.O.B.s (Mass Media Podpeople-a; Mass Media Podpeople-b; Mass Media Podpeople-c) and their ilk and actually give them any of our air/ear time; and as long as we continue—as an electorate—to evidence our short-sighted, greedy stupidity by electing such as this (where are your records, you lying S.O.B., Jean Fraud sKerry?), then we’ll deserve what we have.
And what we have coming to us.
*sigh*
Update: Edited the lead-in; added to the last paragraph and two lines above.
Also: linked at “Jo’s Cafe, Tuesday Specials”.
…And linked at Cao’s Open Trackback Wednesday party and at Stop the ACLU.