Bleeding heart, emotion based reasoning is part of the legacy, pseudoscience, pseudo-liberal mindset.
Whether Timmay wants to admit it or not, the meritocracy matters -- blacks, women, christians struggle when faced with asians, males, and jews, at least when faced with a difficult test. The world of physics blossomed after the Ivy League finally allowed Jews into their schools in the 1920's and 1930's. All that immersion in the Torah as a child really pays off.
So it's bad enough that we use emotional reasoning and group based resentment to address deep, legacy, historical issues within our society, such as blaming modern tech or white men, but the problem gets far worse upon consideration.
The US central government was built up to compete with the Soviet Union and China. Vast expansions of the President's cabinets have taken place over the last 60-70 years. Unlike the USSR and China, the US federal government has never collapsed or reformed.
Instead, our central government employs hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, with aggregate salaries in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and their raises are linked -- by contract -- to increases in the minimum wage.
A quick scan of the President's dozens of cabinets shows vague, overlapping mission statements. Unlike the DoD and NASA, both of which are regularly audited for program management efficacy, progress towards goals, verification and validation of milestones, and the like, these other cabinets were established by our grandparents or great-grandparents, in a time of emotional reasoning and limited information sharing. They have "forever funding" and no clear goal or issue to be resolved with permanence.
Instead of solving problems, the two party, republicrat system uses OPM (Office of Personnel Management, or Other People's Money) to house and feed the legion of party faithful, those who serve not to fix issues for We the People, but to assist the candidates in their never ending quest for incumbency.
So don't be surprised to see the number of shrill, race-baiting, gender-baiting, propaganda start increasing as the election approaches. Hillary 2016 will be the first-pumping mantra for the for the two primary, blue city, propaganda streams as the Presidential election approaches. The pseudo-liberal, modern democratic party leadership will say or do anything to protect the executive cabinets from a slim down or "Reverse BRAC". The New York and Los Angeles propaganda streams will be working overtime to steer the election. Their gravy train is on the line too.
Remember just how far they are willing to go -- in the aftermath of Ferguson, the President spoke out against the nation's police, even though the teen in question was proven to have "bum rushed" an armed officer. Within days, two cops were dead in NYC, and one was shot in the face in Ferguson. The race baiting paused temporarily, but the streams were flooded again as an angry teen was handcuffed by a white officer this week.
Note that, in nation of 300 M. people, 1 M of them cops, and an unknown number of armed felons walking the streets, an occasional tragedy is going to happen. Welcome to planet earth, it happens to white families too. A true liberal might manage this by erasing most of the laws and regulations every few decades. The Libertarians sometime make recommendations along these lines.
True liberals and scientists would let service levels and wages float. We'd transition much of the executive cabinets and their funding to the private sector -- and use modern management techniques to insure problems are actually solved. HUD has been funded to the tune of 30 B. a year for decades, but a house is still terribly expensive and difficult to buy for most people. Perhaps the brightest people in the private sector could be tasked to find a way to make a comfortable home that is as easy and cheap to buy as a car.
Why any executive cabinet needs more than about 10-20 tenured, PhD level management experts is puzzling, unless one considers the nati
The "Everyone Must Own A Home" easy credit debacle came close to destroying the global economy. People were able to buy homes with zero down, half of their gross income to payments, and APR increases after six years ("You can always refinance!").
In the aftermath, the nation's two legacy, blue city, propaganda streams successfully planted memes that blame wall street for the implosion, but the overall concept of risky easy credit dates back to the farm loans of the 1930's -- at least they had crops to use as collateral. The process was heavily expanded with the 2nd CRA (1977, not 1964). Sharing the risk out to wall street is only part of the disease.
Easy credit artificially boosts home values and reinforces the status quo of a largely unaffordable, overvalued real estate market. If we had a housing and urban development executive cabinet that used the scientific method, rather than simply house 8,000 party bureaucrats, enslaving the taxpayers at a cost of $ 30 B. a year, decade after decade, perhaps real innovation -- a process of goals, milestones, and a well-defined definition of success -- would create human primate habitats that are as affordable and easy to buy as cars.
Harvard elites? They rarely pay taxes -- why should they care about a government loaded with do-nothing bureaucrats. That's what their 4,000,000 words of IRS Tax Code is for, to give them loopholes to escape paying taxes entirely -- taxes are for the working class. It's probably no coincidence that the Rise of the Democrats, from their roots as the political arm of the KKK, practically mirrors the growth of the IRS Tax Code, legislated at an average rate of 40,000 words per year since ~1913. It all started with a simple, three level tax formula. The agency itself pleas for reform.
While wage and salary earners are puzzled about the 30% of their paycheck that gets vaporized into the government entity every two weeks, and the Ivy League Elites pay zero taxes (legally), the Modern Democrats offer workers an increase in the minimum wage. Of course the public unions, and government funded wages and salaries are all linked to the minimum wage, so it's entirely moot and dramatically inflationary. With a ratio of about 4:1 taxpayers per government funded employee today, inflation due to minimum age increases will quickly make any temporary reprieve from economic slavery moot, while accomplishing the two actual goals : wage increases across the board for the party faithful, and votes purchased from those at the base of the economic pyramid. It's a temporary increase in affordability, a vote buying scheme that the Democratic Party trots out as elections approach. The fact that increases in average American wages are in direct conflict with the three rounds of QE deflationary efforts -- which were intended to help American labor compete globally -- means nothing to vote-buying Democrats or their incumbency schemes.
Everything the government does -- from the minimum wage, to the tax code, to the massive bureaucracies -- is carefully crafted to favor incumbency, not to improve the lives of We the People. After pseudo-socialism overtook much of Europe and China, the political science departments of Harvard and the other Ivy League institutions thought the massive, centralized government model would rule the world. The US government bootprint on American lives quickly expanded to match -- huge government bureaucracies were created in executive cabinets below the Presidency, assuming that 100% government employment with the President as CEO would come to pass. Instead, China has dramatically evolved towards partnership with the private sector and the Soviet Union collapsed.
The massive US government bootprint has yet to reform, with the Democrats angrily pushing as much propaganda and vote-buying schemes through their legacy blue city propaganda distributors (Los Angeles and New York) as quickly as possible, hoping to prevent reform of their bloated, incompetent executive cabinetry. Amusingly, a true liberal, a true scientist,
There probably is something to global warming and GHGs. We should move to reduce emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, if for no other reason that public health.
However, the democratic party's politics seems to be distorting what needs to be done, and in what time frame. They seem to confuse popular spending with effective spending. Many of the cabinet hierarchies have names like "Housing and Urban Development" but urban blight seems as bad as ever, and housing unaffordable, with little innovation in either area for many decades, even though this one federal hierarchy has 8,000 employees and spends 32 B. a year.
Too often the Democrats and the social left clamor for spending authority on a popular crisis, but there is no mission statement, milestones, time frame, or definition of success. The IPCC and the National Academy have, at times, said that climate change is not a major priority, as the gases have been pumped into the atmosphere for many decades, and will not "half life" out for many decades to come.
The USA is no longer the largest contributor to GHGs, and that makes it a UN / International issue. As we've seen in Kyoto and other conferences, it is very expensive for a nation to shut down or modify their fossil fuel plants early. They're led to US technologies and services to do so. It has the taint of self-serving corruption -- the USA and Europe claim "Doom is coming! And by the way, here's the technology you need to buy from us, and the new loans to do it". No wonder they want western nations to share the costs.
Now for the democratic party hypocrisy : The famous green senator from California, Barbara Boxer, was all smiles and fist-pumping two years ago when she and her zealots finally shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant. In the aftermath, fossil fuel plants had to be brought on line to compensate, increasing California's CO2 output by some 12%.
Note also that Californians spend an additional $1 per gallon for gasoline than the rest of the nation. Not sure how that affects climate change, but it is an indicator that democrats will harm Americans in the pocketbook when their tax and spend zealotry is allowed to run unchecked. No oversight means unlimited power -- when the Democrats controlled all three federal branches after the "everyone must own a home / easy credit" real estate collapse, they immediately accepted record donations from health insurance companies, wrote a 120 thousand word bill, and expanded it into 400,000 or so new federal regulations. In reality, a person could count the basic complaints about health insurance on three fingers -- high costs, refusal to cover, denial of service. What we've ended up with is rapidly becoming as expensive as what we had before, with the added bonus of forcing religious organizations to provide contraceptives.
The expansion of electric cars everywhere is going to happen. It's a crucial step towards reducing GHGs. Also many businesses and homes are shifting to solar and installed energy efficient devices. Yes, the Democrats are largely responsible for pushing these technologies along. Two gold stars.
But the day to day hysteria over GHGs doesn't match the reality about what can be done about GHGs and in what timeframe. The IPCC and the National Academy both agree that there are time frames involved -- goals for the next 20 years, 75 years, 150 years. They've also said that little can be done beyond what we are doing now -- monitoring, trying to foster international agreements, reduction in fossil fuel use, exploring advanced energy technologies. Generally speaking, we are doing what can be done. Having the two traditional, pseudo-liberal, national propaganda streams -- New York and Los Angeles -- pump out hysterical stories about the issue is tiresome, annoying, and more about influencing elections and scaring people than improving the atmosphere.
Because scared people might quickly vote Democrat and ignore the larger problems : A 4:1 ratio of taxpayers to government funded employees. 4,000,000 word
At least it's a private company that utilizes the scientific method to accomplish goals and achieve measurable success.
NASA and the DoD both use rigorous planning and oversight to insure that every task has a mission statement, milestones, and progress.
Contrast that with the rest of the Democratic Party's legacy centralized government. For the past 100 years, they've loaded the tax code with giveaways, we're up to 4,000,000 words of tax code that even the IRS says is no longer fair or enforceable. Wealth inequality very likely begins with tax inequality.
We have a mass of government employees -- it's practically a ratio of four taxpayers per government worker. The public school systems are drenched in national socialism and political correctness -- spending based on feelings and beliefs, as opposed to issue tracking, efficacy, and measurable solutions.
The soviet union and china reformed their central governments, the USA has not. Britain is down to six liberal democrat seats in parliament, apparently their people have realized that voting on emotional reasoning and vote-buying schemes is an ineffective waste.
It's not that the Republicans are all that much better of a choice, being a religious party, but they do make occasional squeaky noises about reform. They did work with Bill Clinton to establish PAYGO and Workfare, although both are largely bypassed or ignored today.
Bill Clinton supported workfare and PAYGO ("pay as you go") -- a balanced tax and spend government. Neither ended up happening in any significant way. It's doubtful that any democratic candidate will be mentioning these two topics again in the near future, even though they were prominent policy topics just 20 years ago.
Some fair tax advocates are supporting a return to origins, perhaps going as far as replacing the 4,000,000 words of legislated loopholes and giveaways (The IRS Tax Code) with something like a simple tiered formula, perhaps like the simple formula the agency began with in ~1913. If organizations really need financial help, perhaps they should lobby through appropriations and undergo oversight of funding. A lot of "wealth inequality" might begin with this "tax inequality".
It would be nice to perform a "Reverse BRAC" -- task the apolitical Joint Chiefs / DoD / NASA to run a team of tenured verification and validation specialists to run through all of the regulations, laws, and executive cabinets, identifying any fraud, waste, abuse or redundancy, and suggesting closure or reform of areas that lack a credible mission statement, milestones, or show a lack of progress.
The scientific method works when it is applied, we see success all the time in the organizational hierarchies below the DoD and NASA. Government and private sector contracting have made very concrete, measureable advances.
Getting the process expanded through the rest of the government -- federal, state, and local -- is a huge challenge.
Consider the following statement : Some european nations recommend that women test early, test often, and should they choose not to continue a pregnancy, make that decision within 8-10 weeks, so the safe, non-surgical option can be utilized. Just saying this in America results in howls of frustration from abortion advocates who demand an elective right to surgical abortion up to the 6th month of a pregnancy. Is women's health the real issue, or is it social engineering for votes?
Consider the following statement : The IPCC and the National Academy both agree that there are no economical, short term solutions to climate change. What can be done, is being done. It is funded. Note that the environmentalists declared victory in California when the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant was closed in 2013, even though California's CO2 emissions rose by ~12% in the aftermath. Again, just mentioning these things results in howls of frustration from the green hysteria industry. To this day, the greens claim that up to a million people died early due to Chernobyl, even though the actual count is holding at ~80 -- and around half of them died early due to improper treatment.
Consider the following statement : School vouchers increase competition. Howls from the public school unions.
Consider the following statement : 150 years ago 600,000 Americans, and a beloved President, died on US soil largely due to the legacy of the European and African slave trade. Shortly after the Civil War, the Democratic Party (the political arm of the KKK) spread into the northern cities and began exchanging benefits for votes. The Rise of the Democrats coincided with the expansion of tax loopholes, red ink, and the federal government. There are films in the national archives from the 1930's showing whites, blacks, and the remaining vets from the North and South, in their old uniforms, crying, hugging, and remembering the sacrifice. 52 years ago, MLK stated "free at last". This week another 22 black males will die fighting over their fair share of America's illicit drug trade. No white cop present, no national news. In a nation of 320 M. people, 1 M. of them cops, and an unknown number of armed felons walking the streets, why are so many people choosing to flee from, harass, or assault the police? Is zero tolerance for police errors -- if they are errors -- a reasonable mindset in this context?
Skepticism is an important part of gauging project goals, milestones, and progress.
NASA and the DoD would accomplish nothing of value without this crucial part of the scientific method.
The LLNL NIF lasers are currently chemical, but recent breakthroughs in solid state lasers are being evaluated in the Netherlands. Hopefully some truth data will come of it.
If only all of the President's cabinets were held to the same level of scrutiny.
Is it really the government's job to "create"? Portions of the US Constitution were intended to restrict government and to enhance freedom and liberty.
Too many cities have water bills that started out with just water 60-100 years ago, and now have 15-20 line items for a number of services, not involving water.
I have one electrical service to my home, but a choice of three private sector management companies. At least if one does something foolish, I can switch.
It's all in the mix and how things are done -- I would never want a bill from the "Internet Department" of a local government shop, loaded with public union employees, appointed by the supporters of the most recently elected mayor. It's a disgusting practice and it's all over the country.
The record of the drug war has been phenomenal -- every weekend around 22 black males die in drug turf battles across the USA.
The legal industrial complex in the tax and spend social utopias is making so much progress. When they catch an armed gang banger, they can no longer afford to cage and feed them. They just release them back to the streets with zero time, another felony conviction, see you in a couple weeks, no room at the Inn. It's really working out well for America.
More laws and regulations -- on yeast -- are practically guaranteed to take the drug war to an entirely new level of success.
Iraq was hardly stable to begin with. Saddam -- a supposedly devout Sunni leader who loaded the government with his insane brood of offspring, decade after decade. Desert Storm and the UN inspectors. The list goes on.
President Bush offered several opportunities to avoid the war with Iraq, mostly involving increased inspections and Saddam's resignation. None of the proposals were accepted. Some WMDs were eventually found in Iraq, but not much in the way of active programs or fresh stockpiles. It was still a violation of Saddam's UN agreements.
Circa 2005, the CIA issued a public apology on their website, admitting to the grotesque intelligence failures that mislead the President, Congress, and We the People. Most people recall DCI George Tenet's commentary to the President about Iraq's WMD programs being a "slam dunk". In all likelihood, the failures go much, much deeper.
The Al Qaeda / IS split happened because Bin Laden wanted western influences out of Muslim nations. Our presence is a direct contradiction to "perfect" Qur'anic revelation. Bin Laden did not believe that the caliphate would be restored in his lifetime, only that his grandchildren might see it. On the contrary, IS believes that Muslim nations will soon submit to a new caliphate, and that Sunnis will be in control. After 1400 years of squabbling and slaughter, it seems unlikely.
The low quality western press routinely publishes big red maps of IS control, but in reality, much of it is just connected dots between small towns in vast, empty regions. Some special forces have commented that they've entered a small IS occupied town, dropped six or so IS hoodrats, and within days a huge part of some western news map suddenly changes from red to tan. Laugh, the western press is almost pathetically incompetent.
There is a bit of humor in all of this -- democratic elections voted Shiites into control of Iraq. This does explain why IS has such a focus on Iraq though -- the Sunnis lost. Another bizarre contradiction.
Whatever the evolutionary growing pains, this is a great opportunity for Muslims to continue the path towards moderation. Most Jews and Christians accept that their texts are flawed, and many of the archaic rules can be safely disregarded. Many fundamentalist Muslims, particularly in the middle east, believe that every word of the Quran is perfect, including beheading, amputation, slavery, pedophila, global domination, and the extermination of nonbelievers.
It's really a matter of interpretation. Mohammed put in a lot of effort trying to get the Jews of Medina and Mecca to accept him as a prophet, and they rejected him. He held quite a grudge for the rest of his life. The prose of the Quran evolved about 300 years after Mohammed's death, so its a slam dunk that the Quran, like the New Testament and Torah before it, is loaded with interpretations and opinion unrelated to the opinions of its prophet.
There is a glimmer of hope, among educated Muslim women in particular, as long as they can speak in relative safety from western nations. As one can imagine, they're a bit tired of seeing their husbands and children die due to these fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran. And all the talk about getting the virgins -- women can be a bit sensitive about that kind of judgement.
For all we know, Mohammed might have promised one, 72 year old virgin. Not quite as appetizing for the fundamentalist warriors of the Quran.
15 April 2015 : Chris Roberts posted "a joke" on twitter about his ability to access aircraft control systems and alter the cabinet oxygen mixture while in flight.
That's more than enough to get interviewed by the FBI / TSA.
Now the fur is flying (ha, ha) over who said what, when, and the various interpretations of statements. Welcome to the legal industrial complex in a free country. His tweet started the whole mess.
As long as the efforts actually pass scientific muster, as opposed to simply frightening a gullible public into ineffective tax and spend policies, it's a good idea.
That said, when an article begins with the assertion that infrastructure is crumbling, it's already biased.
Maybe a few of the drivers will be smart enough to adapt and learn to maintain the fleet or become one of the regional people who work the local offloading of fuel and material.
The idea that society exists to create a large middle class is more about supporting stable, political incumbency than "social justice". We might be far better off accepting a pyramid shape and innovating comfortable, low cost primate habitats for the unemployed.
It's similar to the "wealth inequality" issue. Wealth inequality starts with tax inequality -- the modern IRS was founded circa 1913 with a simple three level formula. Today the agency has over 4,000,000 words of lobbyist purchased, Legislated giveaways, roughly corresponding to the Rise of the Democrats. The agency itself states that the code is unmanageable and has repeatedly issued pleas to We the People for reform.
The Democrats refuse to touch it, the Republicans pledge to but likely won't. An apolitical task force needs to be created -- perhaps something like a "Reverse BRAC" -- to run through all the executive cabinets to remove fraud, waste, abuse, redundancy, and insure that every tax dollar is collected and spent in a reasonable and effective way -- every cabinet should have a list of goals, and validated milestones to accomplish them.
Just ending the fiscal and social nightmare of red ink would likely create a resurgence of innovation and "job creation", the likes of which we haven't seen for decades.
Educators in the K-12 public school system run about 78% female.
It doesn't match the population at all.
This entity is managed below a federal, executive level cabinet hierarchy and the members are all in public unions.
If our disgusting, politically correct, racist, sexist, red ink, democrat-controlled, federal government can't manage diversity within its own ranks, who the hell are they to complain about the private sector?
Imagine what would happen if the nanny state spent this kind of effort and money getting the same quality of diagnostics tools into auto tuner's hands, instead of badgering people as they drive down the highway or catching them late, at a test date or what not.
That's before we consider that most pollutants are sourced from powerplants, not cars.
Cars are just not an issue -- EVs are getting popular and older cars fade away fast. Auto emissions were cut massively in the US with the advent of mandatory fuel injection in 1988, 27 years ago. A thirty year old car on the road is getting to be a rarity.
It's also worth considering that while the Democratic Party considers the closing down of a nuclear powerplant in California a huge victory, it also increased Cal's output of CO2 by about 12%. That's huge.
That's why I dislike green people and modern democrats -- they always have some shoddy agenda, and if it's implemented, a slew of negative consequences.
Look at Chernobyl -- to this day, the green hysteria industry claims that hundreds of thousands died because of Chernobyl, but they refuse to disclose the data or methodology. Contrast that with the scientific method -- two fully open studies show about 80 people dead from Chernobyl, mostly from improper treatment.
80 people dead is bad and tragic, but it's also about the same count as black-on-black thug crime over a four week period in the US.
The California Democrats were all high-fiving when they finally killed off the SONGS nuclear powerplant, increasing California's CO2 emissions by around 12%.
Total Chernobyl deaths are around 65-75 people, many of whom did not receive proper medical treatment.
If the green hysteria industry and the modern democrats can frighten their way into our wallets again, they will do so, gleefully.
The social sciences are a massive scam. Consider that NASA and DoD are at least partially privatized -- as part of appropriated spending, they have strong oversight, verification, and validation of requirements and performance. That's why our military is top notch, and many of our space missions succeed.
Contrast that with "social spending". Often the requirements are just based on absurdities. Strategies to diversify the workforce, or just payouts to Democratic Party voters -- the legacy of "Great Society Programs" that were based on emotional rhetoric, not the scientific method. It's disgusting. The K-12 education hierarchy, all public unions, is 78% female. If the Crown Jewel of the public indoctrination system can't diversify, who are they to criticize the private sector?
Slavery has been history for well over 100 years, but damn near every day, every black person in America is saturated in school, or in the two Los Angeles / New York propaganda streams, with negative imagery. What aren't they told? About 20 black men will die each weekend, from the tragedy of the stupid drug wars. It's black-on-black, with no white cop present, making the deaths wholly uninteresting to the Modern Democrats and their victim group agenda.
In reality, all of the President's cabinets should be privatized. Like the DoD and NASA, there should be a small shim of government employees, highly qualified requirements and performance analysts, that report on success and failure.
The 4,000,000 words of IRS Tax Code giveaways are even worse. The IRS was founded in 1913, with a simple three-level tax formula. Today, the code is 4,000,000 words of loopholes and giveaways, bought and paid for by a Sea of K Street Lobbyists and Lawyers, drowning the American Worker in a sea of red ink. The agency itself has plead for reform for many, many years. These loopholes just bypass the entire tax and spend system, crippling the nation's funding and oversight systems, and making a mockery of Taxation with Representation.
There are some reports that MIT itself was the zealous party -- the prosecutors and the perpetrator were ready to cut a deal, but MIT wanted to make an example of him.
Like it or not, the nation's public indoctrination system is in a terrible state. It's a morass of political correctness, CYA, and favoritism towards the modern Democratic Party.
My brother and I watched with a mixture of horror and hilarity as my nieces tried to enter their math homework on these stupid iPads. They were given their math homework on paper, and required to DRAW THE SOLUTIONS WITH THEIR FINGERS on the iPad. It was the dumbest process we'd ever seen.
Democrat controlled blue city, democrat controlled blue state, and Apple the darling of what passes for modern liberalism.
Around 22 black men will get gunned down this weekend. Pretty much no white cop present, so no national headlines for them.
Assaulting a police officer and fleeing arrest are problematic behaviors unrelated to race. Some states do allow an officer to shoot-stop a person fleeing arrest, which can result in death. Chances are the person who died had a stack of active warrants, or drugs in the car, which are the usual reasons for fleeing a traffic stop.
Claims of racism are being uttered, evidence would usually involve spoken or written epithets, or other race-based ideologies in the perpetrator's background. None have come to light so far.
This case involves excessive force. It also involves social issues like nature and nurture, which led to the stack of warrants, and an officer gunning down a low life. It's a spectrum of issues, and the democratic left's "blue city" New York and Los Angeles propaganda streams consistently blame the police and only the police.
There's a reason that We the People divide into groups so well. It's some combination of nature and nurture. Women, blacks, jews, asians, christians all have aggregate differences at the group level that are measurable. Some differences are desirable, some not so much. The current zeitgeist shames and blames straight white males for these differences. It's probably more legacy issues than the actions of any person living today.
For example, asians and jews, regardless of wealth, tend to love and encourage their children long before they get exposed to the modern democratic left's education complex. They have unbreakable spirits that survive the withering negative messaging of the democratic party / public union education complex.
The other groups struggle. The legacy of christianity, slavery, the endless shaming and negativity in modern US history texts. Negative reinforcement is probably not the best way to nurture We the People into healthy, happy lifestyles. It does favor one of the political parties.
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Bleeding heart, emotion based reasoning is part of the legacy, pseudoscience, pseudo-liberal mindset.
Whether Timmay wants to admit it or not, the meritocracy matters -- blacks, women, christians struggle when faced with asians, males, and jews, at least when faced with a difficult test. The world of physics blossomed after the Ivy League finally allowed Jews into their schools in the 1920's and 1930's. All that immersion in the Torah as a child really pays off.
So it's bad enough that we use emotional reasoning and group based resentment to address deep, legacy, historical issues within our society, such as blaming modern tech or white men, but the problem gets far worse upon consideration.
The US central government was built up to compete with the Soviet Union and China. Vast expansions of the President's cabinets have taken place over the last 60-70 years. Unlike the USSR and China, the US federal government has never collapsed or reformed.
Instead, our central government employs hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, with aggregate salaries in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and their raises are linked -- by contract -- to increases in the minimum wage.
A quick scan of the President's dozens of cabinets shows vague, overlapping mission statements. Unlike the DoD and NASA, both of which are regularly audited for program management efficacy, progress towards goals, verification and validation of milestones, and the like, these other cabinets were established by our grandparents or great-grandparents, in a time of emotional reasoning and limited information sharing. They have "forever funding" and no clear goal or issue to be resolved with permanence.
Instead of solving problems, the two party, republicrat system uses OPM (Office of Personnel Management, or Other People's Money) to house and feed the legion of party faithful, those who serve not to fix issues for We the People, but to assist the candidates in their never ending quest for incumbency.
So don't be surprised to see the number of shrill, race-baiting, gender-baiting, propaganda start increasing as the election approaches. Hillary 2016 will be the first-pumping mantra for the for the two primary, blue city, propaganda streams as the Presidential election approaches. The pseudo-liberal, modern democratic party leadership will say or do anything to protect the executive cabinets from a slim down or "Reverse BRAC". The New York and Los Angeles propaganda streams will be working overtime to steer the election. Their gravy train is on the line too.
Remember just how far they are willing to go -- in the aftermath of Ferguson, the President spoke out against the nation's police, even though the teen in question was proven to have "bum rushed" an armed officer. Within days, two cops were dead in NYC, and one was shot in the face in Ferguson. The race baiting paused temporarily, but the streams were flooded again as an angry teen was handcuffed by a white officer this week.
Note that, in nation of 300 M. people, 1 M of them cops, and an unknown number of armed felons walking the streets, an occasional tragedy is going to happen. Welcome to planet earth, it happens to white families too. A true liberal might manage this by erasing most of the laws and regulations every few decades. The Libertarians sometime make recommendations along these lines.
True liberals and scientists would let service levels and wages float. We'd transition much of the executive cabinets and their funding to the private sector -- and use modern management techniques to insure problems are actually solved. HUD has been funded to the tune of 30 B. a year for decades, but a house is still terribly expensive and difficult to buy for most people. Perhaps the brightest people in the private sector could be tasked to find a way to make a comfortable home that is as easy and cheap to buy as a car.
Why any executive cabinet needs more than about 10-20 tenured, PhD level management experts is puzzling, unless one considers the nati
The "Everyone Must Own A Home" easy credit debacle came close to destroying the global economy. People were able to buy homes with zero down, half of their gross income to payments, and APR increases after six years ("You can always refinance!").
In the aftermath, the nation's two legacy, blue city, propaganda streams successfully planted memes that blame wall street for the implosion, but the overall concept of risky easy credit dates back to the farm loans of the 1930's -- at least they had crops to use as collateral. The process was heavily expanded with the 2nd CRA (1977, not 1964). Sharing the risk out to wall street is only part of the disease.
Easy credit artificially boosts home values and reinforces the status quo of a largely unaffordable, overvalued real estate market. If we had a housing and urban development executive cabinet that used the scientific method, rather than simply house 8,000 party bureaucrats, enslaving the taxpayers at a cost of $ 30 B. a year, decade after decade, perhaps real innovation -- a process of goals, milestones, and a well-defined definition of success -- would create human primate habitats that are as affordable and easy to buy as cars.
Harvard elites? They rarely pay taxes -- why should they care about a government loaded with do-nothing bureaucrats. That's what their 4,000,000 words of IRS Tax Code is for, to give them loopholes to escape paying taxes entirely -- taxes are for the working class. It's probably no coincidence that the Rise of the Democrats, from their roots as the political arm of the KKK, practically mirrors the growth of the IRS Tax Code, legislated at an average rate of 40,000 words per year since ~1913. It all started with a simple, three level tax formula. The agency itself pleas for reform.
While wage and salary earners are puzzled about the 30% of their paycheck that gets vaporized into the government entity every two weeks, and the Ivy League Elites pay zero taxes (legally), the Modern Democrats offer workers an increase in the minimum wage. Of course the public unions, and government funded wages and salaries are all linked to the minimum wage, so it's entirely moot and dramatically inflationary. With a ratio of about 4:1 taxpayers per government funded employee today, inflation due to minimum age increases will quickly make any temporary reprieve from economic slavery moot, while accomplishing the two actual goals : wage increases across the board for the party faithful, and votes purchased from those at the base of the economic pyramid. It's a temporary increase in affordability, a vote buying scheme that the Democratic Party trots out as elections approach. The fact that increases in average American wages are in direct conflict with the three rounds of QE deflationary efforts -- which were intended to help American labor compete globally -- means nothing to vote-buying Democrats or their incumbency schemes.
Everything the government does -- from the minimum wage, to the tax code, to the massive bureaucracies -- is carefully crafted to favor incumbency, not to improve the lives of We the People. After pseudo-socialism overtook much of Europe and China, the political science departments of Harvard and the other Ivy League institutions thought the massive, centralized government model would rule the world. The US government bootprint on American lives quickly expanded to match -- huge government bureaucracies were created in executive cabinets below the Presidency, assuming that 100% government employment with the President as CEO would come to pass. Instead, China has dramatically evolved towards partnership with the private sector and the Soviet Union collapsed.
The massive US government bootprint has yet to reform, with the Democrats angrily pushing as much propaganda and vote-buying schemes through their legacy blue city propaganda distributors (Los Angeles and New York) as quickly as possible, hoping to prevent reform of their bloated, incompetent executive cabinetry. Amusingly, a true liberal, a true scientist,
There probably is something to global warming and GHGs. We should move to reduce emissions and reliance on fossil fuels, if for no other reason that public health.
However, the democratic party's politics seems to be distorting what needs to be done, and in what time frame. They seem to confuse popular spending with effective spending. Many of the cabinet hierarchies have names like "Housing and Urban Development" but urban blight seems as bad as ever, and housing unaffordable, with little innovation in either area for many decades, even though this one federal hierarchy has 8,000 employees and spends 32 B. a year.
Too often the Democrats and the social left clamor for spending authority on a popular crisis, but there is no mission statement, milestones, time frame, or definition of success. The IPCC and the National Academy have, at times, said that climate change is not a major priority, as the gases have been pumped into the atmosphere for many decades, and will not "half life" out for many decades to come.
The USA is no longer the largest contributor to GHGs, and that makes it a UN / International issue. As we've seen in Kyoto and other conferences, it is very expensive for a nation to shut down or modify their fossil fuel plants early. They're led to US technologies and services to do so. It has the taint of self-serving corruption -- the USA and Europe claim "Doom is coming! And by the way, here's the technology you need to buy from us, and the new loans to do it". No wonder they want western nations to share the costs.
Now for the democratic party hypocrisy : The famous green senator from California, Barbara Boxer, was all smiles and fist-pumping two years ago when she and her zealots finally shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant. In the aftermath, fossil fuel plants had to be brought on line to compensate, increasing California's CO2 output by some 12%.
Note also that Californians spend an additional $1 per gallon for gasoline than the rest of the nation. Not sure how that affects climate change, but it is an indicator that democrats will harm Americans in the pocketbook when their tax and spend zealotry is allowed to run unchecked. No oversight means unlimited power -- when the Democrats controlled all three federal branches after the "everyone must own a home / easy credit" real estate collapse, they immediately accepted record donations from health insurance companies, wrote a 120 thousand word bill, and expanded it into 400,000 or so new federal regulations. In reality, a person could count the basic complaints about health insurance on three fingers -- high costs, refusal to cover, denial of service. What we've ended up with is rapidly becoming as expensive as what we had before, with the added bonus of forcing religious organizations to provide contraceptives.
The expansion of electric cars everywhere is going to happen. It's a crucial step towards reducing GHGs. Also many businesses and homes are shifting to solar and installed energy efficient devices. Yes, the Democrats are largely responsible for pushing these technologies along. Two gold stars.
But the day to day hysteria over GHGs doesn't match the reality about what can be done about GHGs and in what timeframe. The IPCC and the National Academy both agree that there are time frames involved -- goals for the next 20 years, 75 years, 150 years. They've also said that little can be done beyond what we are doing now -- monitoring, trying to foster international agreements, reduction in fossil fuel use, exploring advanced energy technologies. Generally speaking, we are doing what can be done. Having the two traditional, pseudo-liberal, national propaganda streams -- New York and Los Angeles -- pump out hysterical stories about the issue is tiresome, annoying, and more about influencing elections and scaring people than improving the atmosphere.
Because scared people might quickly vote Democrat and ignore the larger problems : A 4:1 ratio of taxpayers to government funded employees. 4,000,000 word
At least it's a private company that utilizes the scientific method to accomplish goals and achieve measurable success.
NASA and the DoD both use rigorous planning and oversight to insure that every task has a mission statement, milestones, and progress.
Contrast that with the rest of the Democratic Party's legacy centralized government. For the past 100 years, they've loaded the tax code with giveaways, we're up to 4,000,000 words of tax code that even the IRS says is no longer fair or enforceable. Wealth inequality very likely begins with tax inequality.
We have a mass of government employees -- it's practically a ratio of four taxpayers per government worker. The public school systems are drenched in national socialism and political correctness -- spending based on feelings and beliefs, as opposed to issue tracking, efficacy, and measurable solutions.
The soviet union and china reformed their central governments, the USA has not. Britain is down to six liberal democrat seats in parliament, apparently their people have realized that voting on emotional reasoning and vote-buying schemes is an ineffective waste.
It's not that the Republicans are all that much better of a choice, being a religious party, but they do make occasional squeaky noises about reform. They did work with Bill Clinton to establish PAYGO and Workfare, although both are largely bypassed or ignored today.
Fiscal conservatism is being explored again.
Bill Clinton supported workfare and PAYGO ("pay as you go") -- a balanced tax and spend government. Neither ended up happening in any significant way. It's doubtful that any democratic candidate will be mentioning these two topics again in the near future, even though they were prominent policy topics just 20 years ago.
Some fair tax advocates are supporting a return to origins, perhaps going as far as replacing the 4,000,000 words of legislated loopholes and giveaways (The IRS Tax Code) with something like a simple tiered formula, perhaps like the simple formula the agency began with in ~1913. If organizations really need financial help, perhaps they should lobby through appropriations and undergo oversight of funding. A lot of "wealth inequality" might begin with this "tax inequality".
It would be nice to perform a "Reverse BRAC" -- task the apolitical Joint Chiefs / DoD / NASA to run a team of tenured verification and validation specialists to run through all of the regulations, laws, and executive cabinets, identifying any fraud, waste, abuse or redundancy, and suggesting closure or reform of areas that lack a credible mission statement, milestones, or show a lack of progress.
The scientific method works when it is applied, we see success all the time in the organizational hierarchies below the DoD and NASA. Government and private sector contracting have made very concrete, measureable advances.
Getting the process expanded through the rest of the government -- federal, state, and local -- is a huge challenge.
Consider the following statement : Some european nations recommend that women test early, test often, and should they choose not to continue a pregnancy, make that decision within 8-10 weeks, so the safe, non-surgical option can be utilized. Just saying this in America results in howls of frustration from abortion advocates who demand an elective right to surgical abortion up to the 6th month of a pregnancy. Is women's health the real issue, or is it social engineering for votes?
Consider the following statement : The IPCC and the National Academy both agree that there are no economical, short term solutions to climate change. What can be done, is being done. It is funded. Note that the environmentalists declared victory in California when the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant was closed in 2013, even though California's CO2 emissions rose by ~12% in the aftermath. Again, just mentioning these things results in howls of frustration from the green hysteria industry. To this day, the greens claim that up to a million people died early due to Chernobyl, even though the actual count is holding at ~80 -- and around half of them died early due to improper treatment.
Consider the following statement : School vouchers increase competition. Howls from the public school unions.
Consider the following statement : 150 years ago 600,000 Americans, and a beloved President, died on US soil largely due to the legacy of the European and African slave trade. Shortly after the Civil War, the Democratic Party (the political arm of the KKK) spread into the northern cities and began exchanging benefits for votes. The Rise of the Democrats coincided with the expansion of tax loopholes, red ink, and the federal government. There are films in the national archives from the 1930's showing whites, blacks, and the remaining vets from the North and South, in their old uniforms, crying, hugging, and remembering the sacrifice. 52 years ago, MLK stated "free at last". This week another 22 black males will die fighting over their fair share of America's illicit drug trade. No white cop present, no national news. In a nation of 320 M. people, 1 M. of them cops, and an unknown number of armed felons walking the streets, why are so many people choosing to flee from, harass, or assault the police? Is zero tolerance for police errors -- if they are errors -- a reasonable mindset in this context?
Consider the following question : Hillary Clinton
An engineer driving the train at twice the speed limit, and "doesn't recall" the entire three minutes before the accident.
When a computer needs to take form this engineer, there's already something rotten in the system.
Skepticism is an important part of gauging project goals, milestones, and progress.
NASA and the DoD would accomplish nothing of value without this crucial part of the scientific method.
The LLNL NIF lasers are currently chemical, but recent breakthroughs in solid state lasers are being evaluated in the Netherlands. Hopefully some truth data will come of it.
If only all of the President's cabinets were held to the same level of scrutiny.
Is it really the government's job to "create"? Portions of the US Constitution were intended to restrict government and to enhance freedom and liberty.
Too many cities have water bills that started out with just water 60-100 years ago, and now have 15-20 line items for a number of services, not involving water.
I have one electrical service to my home, but a choice of three private sector management companies. At least if one does something foolish, I can switch.
It's all in the mix and how things are done -- I would never want a bill from the "Internet Department" of a local government shop, loaded with public union employees, appointed by the supporters of the most recently elected mayor. It's a disgusting practice and it's all over the country.
The record of the drug war has been phenomenal -- every weekend around 22 black males die in drug turf battles across the USA.
The legal industrial complex in the tax and spend social utopias is making so much progress. When they catch an armed gang banger, they can no longer afford to cage and feed them. They just release them back to the streets with zero time, another felony conviction, see you in a couple weeks, no room at the Inn. It's really working out well for America.
More laws and regulations -- on yeast -- are practically guaranteed to take the drug war to an entirely new level of success.
Iraq was hardly stable to begin with. Saddam -- a supposedly devout Sunni leader who loaded the government with his insane brood of offspring, decade after decade. Desert Storm and the UN inspectors. The list goes on.
President Bush offered several opportunities to avoid the war with Iraq, mostly involving increased inspections and Saddam's resignation. None of the proposals were accepted. Some WMDs were eventually found in Iraq, but not much in the way of active programs or fresh stockpiles. It was still a violation of Saddam's UN agreements.
Circa 2005, the CIA issued a public apology on their website, admitting to the grotesque intelligence failures that mislead the President, Congress, and We the People. Most people recall DCI George Tenet's commentary to the President about Iraq's WMD programs being a "slam dunk". In all likelihood, the failures go much, much deeper.
The Al Qaeda / IS split happened because Bin Laden wanted western influences out of Muslim nations. Our presence is a direct contradiction to "perfect" Qur'anic revelation. Bin Laden did not believe that the caliphate would be restored in his lifetime, only that his grandchildren might see it. On the contrary, IS believes that Muslim nations will soon submit to a new caliphate, and that Sunnis will be in control. After 1400 years of squabbling and slaughter, it seems unlikely.
The low quality western press routinely publishes big red maps of IS control, but in reality, much of it is just connected dots between small towns in vast, empty regions. Some special forces have commented that they've entered a small IS occupied town, dropped six or so IS hoodrats, and within days a huge part of some western news map suddenly changes from red to tan. Laugh, the western press is almost pathetically incompetent.
There is a bit of humor in all of this -- democratic elections voted Shiites into control of Iraq. This does explain why IS has such a focus on Iraq though -- the Sunnis lost. Another bizarre contradiction.
Whatever the evolutionary growing pains, this is a great opportunity for Muslims to continue the path towards moderation. Most Jews and Christians accept that their texts are flawed, and many of the archaic rules can be safely disregarded. Many fundamentalist Muslims, particularly in the middle east, believe that every word of the Quran is perfect, including beheading, amputation, slavery, pedophila, global domination, and the extermination of nonbelievers.
It's really a matter of interpretation. Mohammed put in a lot of effort trying to get the Jews of Medina and Mecca to accept him as a prophet, and they rejected him. He held quite a grudge for the rest of his life. The prose of the Quran evolved about 300 years after Mohammed's death, so its a slam dunk that the Quran, like the New Testament and Torah before it, is loaded with interpretations and opinion unrelated to the opinions of its prophet.
There is a glimmer of hope, among educated Muslim women in particular, as long as they can speak in relative safety from western nations. As one can imagine, they're a bit tired of seeing their husbands and children die due to these fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran. And all the talk about getting the virgins -- women can be a bit sensitive about that kind of judgement.
For all we know, Mohammed might have promised one, 72 year old virgin. Not quite as appetizing for the fundamentalist warriors of the Quran.
15 April 2015 : Chris Roberts posted "a joke" on twitter about his ability to access aircraft control systems and alter the cabinet oxygen mixture while in flight.
That's more than enough to get interviewed by the FBI / TSA.
Now the fur is flying (ha, ha) over who said what, when, and the various interpretations of statements. Welcome to the legal industrial complex in a free country. His tweet started the whole mess.
As long as the efforts actually pass scientific muster, as opposed to simply frightening a gullible public into ineffective tax and spend policies, it's a good idea.
That said, when an article begins with the assertion that infrastructure is crumbling, it's already biased.
How dare they defy our theories! Rebel scum!
Maybe a few of the drivers will be smart enough to adapt and learn to maintain the fleet or become one of the regional people who work the local offloading of fuel and material.
The idea that society exists to create a large middle class is more about supporting stable, political incumbency than "social justice". We might be far better off accepting a pyramid shape and innovating comfortable, low cost primate habitats for the unemployed.
It's similar to the "wealth inequality" issue. Wealth inequality starts with tax inequality -- the modern IRS was founded circa 1913 with a simple three level formula. Today the agency has over 4,000,000 words of lobbyist purchased, Legislated giveaways, roughly corresponding to the Rise of the Democrats. The agency itself states that the code is unmanageable and has repeatedly issued pleas to We the People for reform.
The Democrats refuse to touch it, the Republicans pledge to but likely won't. An apolitical task force needs to be created -- perhaps something like a "Reverse BRAC" -- to run through all the executive cabinets to remove fraud, waste, abuse, redundancy, and insure that every tax dollar is collected and spent in a reasonable and effective way -- every cabinet should have a list of goals, and validated milestones to accomplish them.
Just ending the fiscal and social nightmare of red ink would likely create a resurgence of innovation and "job creation", the likes of which we haven't seen for decades.
Educators in the K-12 public school system run about 78% female.
It doesn't match the population at all.
This entity is managed below a federal, executive level cabinet hierarchy and the members are all in public unions.
If our disgusting, politically correct, racist, sexist, red ink, democrat-controlled, federal government can't manage diversity within its own ranks, who the hell are they to complain about the private sector?
All those emissions! It's not green!
Run in circles and cry you nanny state greenbeans
Imagine what would happen if the nanny state spent this kind of effort and money getting the same quality of diagnostics tools into auto tuner's hands, instead of badgering people as they drive down the highway or catching them late, at a test date or what not.
That's before we consider that most pollutants are sourced from powerplants, not cars.
Cars are just not an issue -- EVs are getting popular and older cars fade away fast. Auto emissions were cut massively in the US with the advent of mandatory fuel injection in 1988, 27 years ago. A thirty year old car on the road is getting to be a rarity.
It's also worth considering that while the Democratic Party considers the closing down of a nuclear powerplant in California a huge victory, it also increased Cal's output of CO2 by about 12%. That's huge.
That's why I dislike green people and modern democrats -- they always have some shoddy agenda, and if it's implemented, a slew of negative consequences.
Look at Chernobyl -- to this day, the green hysteria industry claims that hundreds of thousands died because of Chernobyl, but they refuse to disclose the data or methodology. Contrast that with the scientific method -- two fully open studies show about 80 people dead from Chernobyl, mostly from improper treatment.
80 people dead is bad and tragic, but it's also about the same count as black-on-black thug crime over a four week period in the US.
The California Democrats were all high-fiving when they finally killed off the SONGS nuclear powerplant, increasing California's CO2 emissions by around 12%.
Total Chernobyl deaths are around 65-75 people, many of whom did not receive proper medical treatment.
If the green hysteria industry and the modern democrats can frighten their way into our wallets again, they will do so, gleefully.
The social sciences are a massive scam. Consider that NASA and DoD are at least partially privatized -- as part of appropriated spending, they have strong oversight, verification, and validation of requirements and performance. That's why our military is top notch, and many of our space missions succeed.
Contrast that with "social spending". Often the requirements are just based on absurdities. Strategies to diversify the workforce, or just payouts to Democratic Party voters -- the legacy of "Great Society Programs" that were based on emotional rhetoric, not the scientific method. It's disgusting. The K-12 education hierarchy, all public unions, is 78% female. If the Crown Jewel of the public indoctrination system can't diversify, who are they to criticize the private sector?
Slavery has been history for well over 100 years, but damn near every day, every black person in America is saturated in school, or in the two Los Angeles / New York propaganda streams, with negative imagery. What aren't they told? About 20 black men will die each weekend, from the tragedy of the stupid drug wars. It's black-on-black, with no white cop present, making the deaths wholly uninteresting to the Modern Democrats and their victim group agenda.
In reality, all of the President's cabinets should be privatized. Like the DoD and NASA, there should be a small shim of government employees, highly qualified requirements and performance analysts, that report on success and failure.
The 4,000,000 words of IRS Tax Code giveaways are even worse. The IRS was founded in 1913, with a simple three-level tax formula. Today, the code is 4,000,000 words of loopholes and giveaways, bought and paid for by a Sea of K Street Lobbyists and Lawyers, drowning the American Worker in a sea of red ink. The agency itself has plead for reform for many, many years. These loopholes just bypass the entire tax and spend system, crippling the nation's funding and oversight systems, and making a mockery of Taxation with Representation.
When the Raptor pilots had concerns about the F-22 they carefully followed the whistleblower laws. This guy couldn't figure it out.
Most kidnappings are parental custody disputes, and the California system is biased, the legal backwash of the "deadbeat dad" movement.
...and the African continent needs jobs. Keeps them from joining the Jihad.
There are some reports that MIT itself was the zealous party -- the prosecutors and the perpetrator were ready to cut a deal, but MIT wanted to make an example of him.
Like it or not, the nation's public indoctrination system is in a terrible state. It's a morass of political correctness, CYA, and favoritism towards the modern Democratic Party.
My brother and I watched with a mixture of horror and hilarity as my nieces tried to enter their math homework on these stupid iPads. They were given their math homework on paper, and required to DRAW THE SOLUTIONS WITH THEIR FINGERS on the iPad. It was the dumbest process we'd ever seen.
Democrat controlled blue city, democrat controlled blue state, and Apple the darling of what passes for modern liberalism.
Around 22 black men will get gunned down this weekend. Pretty much no white cop present, so no national headlines for them.
Assaulting a police officer and fleeing arrest are problematic behaviors unrelated to race. Some states do allow an officer to shoot-stop a person fleeing arrest, which can result in death. Chances are the person who died had a stack of active warrants, or drugs in the car, which are the usual reasons for fleeing a traffic stop.
Claims of racism are being uttered, evidence would usually involve spoken or written epithets, or other race-based ideologies in the perpetrator's background. None have come to light so far.
This case involves excessive force. It also involves social issues like nature and nurture, which led to the stack of warrants, and an officer gunning down a low life. It's a spectrum of issues, and the democratic left's "blue city" New York and Los Angeles propaganda streams consistently blame the police and only the police.
There's a reason that We the People divide into groups so well. It's some combination of nature and nurture. Women, blacks, jews, asians, christians all have aggregate differences at the group level that are measurable. Some differences are desirable, some not so much. The current zeitgeist shames and blames straight white males for these differences. It's probably more legacy issues than the actions of any person living today.
For example, asians and jews, regardless of wealth, tend to love and encourage their children long before they get exposed to the modern democratic left's education complex. They have unbreakable spirits that survive the withering negative messaging of the democratic party / public union education complex.
The other groups struggle. The legacy of christianity, slavery, the endless shaming and negativity in modern US history texts. Negative reinforcement is probably not the best way to nurture We the People into healthy, happy lifestyles. It does favor one of the political parties.