Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.
Tags: 2016 elections, Dr. Robert Owens, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, President Obama, Socialist agenda, Progressive agenda, green energy boondoggles
What we learn before we turn eighteen becomes the common sense of our later life. Just as the vast majority of people after careful consideration of all the candidates and the issues end up voting for the same party as their parents so too most people can never break free of the paradigm impressed upon them as they grew up.
Many people repeat the time worn phrase, “Those who don’t learn from History are doomed to repeat it.” As a person who has read and studied History on a daily basis for more than fifty years one of the major lessons I have learned is that the general public never learn from History, mainly because they don’t read or study it. Perhaps they were spoon-fed a few classes as they meandered through the American education factory but they never tried to do more than memorize enough to regurgitate at the proper time to move on. What was presented was based upon biased agenda of whoever picked the texts and prepared the lessons. The only way to get a broader view is to read and study.
Note how many people can give you statistics ad infinitum concerning their preferred sports team but are unable to tell you the most basic facts concerning American History such as why there were battles at Lexington and Concord, or what was the gun trade and how it impacted the History of colonial America. Americans are woefully ignorant of History; therefore they have no context for the History of the future which is current events. The news of the day is text floating in a vacuum. Remember a text without a context is a pretext. And all the many happenings of the day all become pretexts for the furtherance of the Progressive corporate state.
History forms the seedbed of the future. If we can’t connect yesterday with tomorrow the study of History today is a wasted journey into futility. We might as well read fiction as it is usually better written and more imaginative.
Here is a lesson from History: Socialism doesn’t work. Look at the most spectacular crash of an empire in our lives: the sudden Christmas present to the world of the unexpected evaporation of that great prison house of nations the USSR. Look at the rolling blackouts of Venezuela. Look at the pathetic pictures of a once prosperous Havana now a slum frozen in time. Socialism provides example after example, it just doesn’t work.
Winston Churchill said, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Margret Thatcher told us that the problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money. Ronald Reagan said, “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.” The way I see it, once it becomes obvious that robbing Peter to pay Paul is the foundational policy of the State everyone will change their name to Paul.
A basic truism of economics is that if you subsidize something you get more of it and if you penalize something you get less. Using this as a lens, let us look at American society today.
We subsidize businesses that fail. Look at President Obama’s green energy boondoggles. Thirty-four companies that have received taxpayer money are showing us why we end up paying Six hundred dollars for a hammer. These white elephants have either gone bankrupt, they are laying off workers, or they are swirling around the bankruptcy drain.
The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:
- Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
- SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
- Solyndra ($535 million)*
- Beacon Power ($43 million)*
- Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
- SunPower ($1.2 billion)
- First Solar ($1.46 billion)
- Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
- EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
- Amonix ($5.9 million)
- Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
- Abound Solar ($400 million)*
- A123 Systems ($279 million)*
- Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
- Johnson Controls ($299 million)
- Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
- ECOtality ($126.2 million)
- Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
- Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
- Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
- Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
- Range Fuels ($80 million)*
- Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
- Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
- Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
- GreenVolts ($500,000)
- Vestas ($50 million)
- LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
- Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
- Navistar ($39 million)
- Satcon ($3 million)*
- Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
- Mascoma ($100 million)
*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy. As listed in the Daily Signal.
We penalize success. Our corporate tax rate is the third highest in the world. Because of this many of our most successful corporations are seeking to relocate to other countries with lower tax rates in a practice known as Corporate Inversion. Some stock holders might call that due diligence. Our wanabe Big Brothers call it treason. Our Dear Leader followed his habit of ruling by decree and declared the procedure to be illegal. Afterwards he renewed calls on Congress to pass a law to prohibit the practice putting the cart before the horse constitutionally speaking. We can’t build a fence to keep intruders out, but we can build a legal fence to keep earners in to pay for the very system that is penalizing them for succeeding.
The evidence that Socialism doesn’t work is all around us. The cratered hulks of socialist failure abound. Yet in America today we are told that the majority of Millennials have given up on Capitalism and embrace Socialism. This shouldn’t be surprising. If you receive a trophy for showing up it should not be surprising if you expect a trophy for showing up.
And then we have the phenomenon of Bernie Sanders. An avowed Socialist who has never had a private sector job, never had a steady paycheck until he was in his forties when he was elected to public office, and was even thrown out of a Hippie commune because he refused to work.
Here is this near-do-well who has never created a job, run anything productive, or even held a real job who wants to penalize everyone who works to support everyone who doesn’t, and millions of Americans say yes with their votes and their donations. If you need a visual for passing the tipping point Obama with his fundamental transformation of America, Hillary with her it’s my turn I’m a woman vote for me entitlement attitude and Goldman Sachs paychecks isn’t enough just take a look at Red Bernie and his fellow travelers.
How did it ever come to this? We allowed our educational system to be captured by Progressives who indoctrinated generations of America hating, entitlement grabbing, special interest supporting citizens who have voted for getting more and more and more and willing to contribute less and less and less.
If socialism works, why don’t we just vote ourselves $100,000 a year, free medical, guaranteed retirement at 40, and a home in the Hamptons while we’re at it? Just charge it to Peter, if you can find him.
One final question might frame the discussion nicely, “Who is John Galt?”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2016 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy, Uncategorized.
Tags: Hillary Clinton, Dr. Robert Owens, Email scandal, Benghazi scandal, Corrupt Hillary
That ultimate symbol of mischievous scamp Bart Simpson in Season One of the longest running show in TV history when caught red-handed offered up one of his signature phrases, “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, there’s no way you can prove anything.”
This came to mind when I was thinking about Hillary “They’ll Never Indict Me” Clinton and her morally challenged obviously corrupt character. Donald Trump has said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Hillary could say, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t get indicted.”
Everyone in the country knows that if any of us common people did one hundredth of what she has done in the email scandal alone we would have already been indicted along with the ten year Navy Vet indicted for taking a selfie on a submarine. The Obama Justice Department is not going to indict Mrs. Clinton no matter what the FBI recommends. She is above the law and she knows it or as she infamously said in the Benghazi hearing with regard to our four dead heroes, “What does it matter now?”
As a person who has been involved with and has closely followed the American political scene for more than fifty years this is the first time in my personal memory or Historical knowledge that a potential candidate for one party has promised to prosecute a potential candidate of the other party if elected.
As Secretary of State, Hillary’s accomplishments include the failed reset with Russia and of course her debacle in Libya. As a United State Senator what did she accomplish? In eight years she only sponsored three inconsequential laws:
S.3145, which designated a portion of U.S. Route 20A, located in Orchard Park, N.Y., as the “Timothy J. Russert Highway,” after the former “Meet the Press” host.
- 3613, which renamed the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 2951 New York Highway 43 in Averill Park, New York, as the “Major George Quamo Post Office Building.”
- 1241 which made the brick house of 19th century female union leader Kate Mullany a national historic site.
Her major accomplishment is that she married a man who became the most ethically challenged president in American History. As the wife of Bill Clnton she was deeply involved in smothering the serial bimbo eruptions which grew out of his long history of having affairs, sexually harassing women who worked for him, and assaulting others. This is the person who portrays herself as an advocate of women’s rights.
To highlight just one of her hypocritical faux stances for women’s rights look at her advocacy for equal pay. The Clinton Foundation pays women executives 38% less than their male counterparts. During her time in the Senate she paid women 72 cents for every dollar she paid men. According to public records her current campaign pays women staffers less than she pays men. So much for putting your money where your mouth is!
Looking back once more to the email scandal that Hillary so nonchalantly dismisses if as she maintains she never received nor sent any classified material during her entire term as our Secretary of State my question is, what was she doing besides traveling the world at our expense? Was she out of the loop and merely Secretary of State in name only? It is inconceivable that anyone could be the Secretary of State and not send or receive any classified material. That is beyond belief and a lie so transparent it shows total contempt for those it is meant to fool.
In the current election the Great Impresario likes to label people. In many ways it is an effective form of political shorthand. It sums up the thoughts, accusations, and beliefs about a person and brings them crashing in whenever they hear the catcall. Lyin Ted and Little Marco have taken their toll picked up and repeated by the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media and their pet FOX. Now we have Crooked Hillary. The others were just effective. This one seems appropriate.
If Hillary wins the presidency it will be a watershed just as the election and then re-election of her husband was. As his marked the end of public morality hers will mean the end of the rule of law. It will become evident to anyone observant enough to note the sunrise that enforcement of the bewildering lattice of laws and regulations are only aimed at the common folk not at our masters.
If such a legally challenged individual can fool enough of the people all the time to sit in the oval office it reminds me of what Bart said to Homer after it was revealed he had cheated on an important test, “I cheated on the intelligence test. I’m sorry. But I just want to say that the past few weeks have been great. Me and you have done stuff together. You’ve helped me out with things and we’re closer than we’ve ever been. I love you, Dad. And I think if something can bring us that close it can’t possibly be bad.”
Doing bad things for good purposes is the operational rational of Progressive Liberalism. The ends justify the means was the operational rational of all the megalomaniac dictators of world History. Please explain the difference.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2016 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Like this:
Like Loading...
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Politics, Politiocal Philosophy.
Tags: Obamacare, Dr. Robert Owens, 2016 elections, Obama abandons Whites, class warfare, social democracy, Obama socialist agenda, Obama transform America, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton
Some people believe in the Six Degrees of Separation Theory: the idea that everyone in the world is separated from everyone else by six links. Some people believe all of us are in this thing together, and that diversity is our strength and I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
Even if we are all connected in ways we cannot know I believe the world is filled with strangers. Take a ride and as you pass through country, town, and city you are constantly presented with the faces of people you will never know, and all of whom have lives and families that will never know you or your life or your family. Every day we see people we have never seen before and will never see again. They rise out of the mist beyond the pale of our personal knowledge and immediately are submerged again never to rise again. Our only connection will forever be that one fleeting moment when we moved through a single frame of the separate sagas which are our lives.
Unlike Cain I do believe we are our brother’s keeper, and unlike Scrooge I believe we should help our brothers in need instead of seeing them boiled with their own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through their hearts. However, unlike the rhetoric of Marx, Lenin, President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders I do not believe that life should operate on the basis of from each according to their ability to each according to their need, or as we say in America today, spreading the wealth around. In other words, I am not a socialist. I believe in personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity. Sadly I find myself out of phase with the Progressive Clique which has successfully maneuvered its way to power using the education system, the media, government handouts, and uninformed, uninvolved, and emotional voters.
Out of phase or not, I believe in the equality of opportunity which gives everyone a shot at success as opposed to the equality of outcome which our Dear Leader and his fellow-travelers wish to foist upon us, and which gives everyone the assurance of mediocrity. No matter the consequence, no matter the sacrifice we must stand up for what we believe or we will stand by while our nation is transformed into what we won’t be able to believe is still called the United States of America.
Day by day the bean counting pencil pushers who make up the nameless faceless bureaucracy grind out rule after rule and regulation after regulation with the force of law. President Obama’s signature piece of legislation, Obamacare, churns out thousands upon thousands of pages of federal requirements all meant to fill in the blanks in a 2600 page bill that we had to pass to find out what was in it.
Hope and change has become bait and switch. In the last presidential election Mr. Obama wasn’t even trying to win votes from those who disagree with him. He wasn’t trying to change minds. He was blatantly buying votes. He was betting that generations of entitlements had finally birthed the lumpen proletariat that his theories of government proclaim must exist for History to reach its summit. He bet his second term on the belief that there were enough people dependent upon the government that they would vote for a handout instead of voting for a hand up. He bet that America had been dumbed down enough and bribed enough to trade our heritage of freedom for the yoke of a guaranteed something instead of the opportunity for everything.
Class warfare, penalizing success, dividing America into interest groups and voter blocks this was the strategy Mr. Obama thought would win as he worked to build a coalition of leftist intellectuals and those convinced they were disenfranchised. Looking at the polls it appeared he had the solid core of 40+% who will vote for a Democrat even if he is the devil himself. The question was would the unengaged and uninformed voters when combined with the illegals and the dead who at least get to vote in Chicago be enough for him to win? In the end it didn’t matter when Romney decided to take the last month of the campaign off after throwing the last few debates.
Can you imagine what a third Obama term (or as some call it Hillary’s first term) will look like won on the basis of her promise to double down on social democracy, a complete disregard for the balance of power, and a desire to totally transform America? What will be left of the America we have known? How would we ever get back to where we came from? No entitlement once enacted has ever been repealed. The size of government never shrinks. The power it usurps from the people and the States is never surrendered and the check and balance of the Supreme Court will be frozen into a Progressive rubber stamp.
A world filled with strangers keeps getting stranger all the time. No matter how many degrees of separation we should never be as divided as our Progressive Leaders try to portray us. We are Americans, and we can do better than this. Reject the siren song of free entitlements which are never free, and embrace the liberty our forefathers won for us. Let us renew our great experiment in human freedom and strive to see our nation rise again to be the last best hope of man that it is meant to be. The shining city on a hill that can light the way to a future worthy of free men and women held together by unity. Not a falling empire of competing special interests cobbled together as a ruling coalition led by an elitist clique who promotes separation and hyphenated Americans.
Even if it takes more than six degrees of separation to connect to others what does it matter how connected we are to people around the world if we are in terminal disagreement with our fellow Americans? As a nation we are divided between those who want to strive to achieve and those who thrive because they receive. The Progressives have bred generations of passive takers who believe they are entitled to the fruit of others’ labor. They pay no taxes so they don’t care how high taxes go. They have no conception of paying for what they have, so they don’t care about the national debt. They see America as a vending machine, so they don’t believe in our unique place in History. They desire a shabby world of bread and circuses based on equality of outcome, so they don’t long to be all they can be.
Those of us who want America to be what America has been and what it should be, the home of the brave and the land of the free can’t let divisions divide us anymore! We must unite to save liberty or we will stand alone at the end of the day. We may be strangers to one another. We may not know each other but if we are fellow believers in the personal liberty, individual freedom, and economic opportunity we must unite over what connects us to save what has always made us E PLURIBUS UNUM.
Either that or we admit we are merely strangers in a strange land looking around at the social and cultural turmoil of today wondering how strange can it get.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2016 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Like this:
Like Loading...
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 