There is No Free Stuff,

There should not be Prohibited Stuff

 Both, Free things and Prohibited things are wrong, although the unintended consequences are different, both have them.  I grew up in the fifties.  We knew nothing was free by simple observation, and that someone had to have paid for it or it wouldn’t exist.  The only commonly known prohibitions were driving without a license, buying booze, and gambling for money.  We knew there were other laws that affected adults, but we only cared about those constraining us.

As a child growing up in a small desert railroad town on the way to Las Vegas we knew that gambling was prohibited for those of us under 21 years of age; but in a railroad town train crews laid-over in alternating directions for the next train.  With lots of free time there was always a poker game in room 103 of the Lay-Over Hotel.  I learned to play poker and cheat for money from off duty Rails willing to take a 12 year old kid’s money for amusement. 

As a 14 year old I bought beer, at 15 I bought Gin and malt liquor, at 16 I bought any liquor I wanted with fake Identifications stolen from Marines and modified to past as 21 year olds with out of state drivers licenses.

At 14 I bought a partially disassembled motorcycle from a junk yard and fixed it up, drove it to work with my father’s permission, staying mostly on utility roads, and off-road, avoiding local police and state highway patrol for almost 2 years before I had a learners permit.

Prohibitions create big black market businesses, have for thousands of years, and always will.  If there’s enough demand there will be providers.  If there is strong enough need, there will be many violators.

So much for Prohibitions!

Now, how about Free stuff; as a carefully observant young person, I noticed I never got anything for free.  If it seemed to be free, I knew someone must have paid to create it.  I didn’t work for free.  I didn’t know anyone who made stuff for free.  I never got anything for free that didn’t eventually cost me alot money, or misery or both in some way.  Subsidies are stupid also; just more artificially free stuff.  

How are these two alike?  They are artificial, fake, and phony. 

An attempt to limit dangerous mistakes made by children doesn’t require more ridiculous laws; it requires more effective education and more responsible parenting.

Attempting to limit dangerously ignorant behavior by adults is a foolish and expensive waste of time and money.  STOP IT, and stop deceiving ignorant people by implying that things can be FREE.

National Capitol Move

I first published this in April 2009.  I'm republishing it because I still believe it could cure many of the ills that plague us as a free people.

The Capitol and the White House have been located in Washington DC since 1791 and I suppose in many peoples minds it might seem it has always been so. Congresses have met in at least eight different cities, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton and New York City.

Article I Section 8 of the Constitution (1789) gave congress legislative authority over "such districts as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the Government of the United States.” In 1788 Maryland and 1789 Virginia both ceded land (ten square miles). In 1790 Congress passed the Residence Act. In 1791 President Washington chose Maryland's property and under the provisions of the Act selected three Commissioners to oversee the design and construction of the Capitol City and Government buildings.

Another Congressional Act can solicit states, re-establish commissioners, and arrange to move the Capitol, the Presidents Residence, and other necessary government buildings to another place at a site chosen by another President. A previous President chose the current place; a current President can choose a new one, in concert with a legislative act.

In other nations the site of the capitol changes from time to time, often by conquest or overthrow. Our overthrows take place in an orderly election and our ruler is a leader with a certain term and limited powers, but none have attempted to relocate the Capitol.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not proposing moving everything, just congress’s meeting place and the president's residence. The current White House, the monuments, the museums and other governmental buildings can stay where they are.

Why, you might ask, should such a folly be undertaken?

The time has long past since there was any benefit to the rest of the nation from this location. When our nation was a small North East Coastal country, 10 square miles in Maryland was fairly centralized. The Nation is now a larger entity. Washington DC is not central to the nation geographically, socially or economically. It's only central to itself and those who feed off the delusion that it’s the focus of a whole nation. It’s time to change its view of itself, and the easy familiar access of those from the tired, old, myopic, Euro-centric, northeast.

Relocate the Capitol and the President to any other city with modern communication and transportation infrastructure, preferably west of the Mississippi River. While you are at it, drop the 200-year-old idea that Ohio is mid-west. Utah or Nevada is mid-west, not Illinois or Iowa. The Capitol has been in the same place, an inconvenience to most of the country for 210 years. That's long enough.

Some might say the effort is too expensive, some might say it's racially motivated, the east coast media might characterize it many ways to protect their long held easy access and unearned influence. Some might say just moving the capitol wouldn’t necessarily change that. They may be right, but it will provide a different prospective and different players, and some tired old ideas will be lost.

If nothing else, the old lobbyists and old media people would have to move to the new territories, assimilate a new culture, learn a new language, develop new insights, modify their values, restore their faith and judgment, I think these sound like worthwhile objectives. The nation would gain all this and the Easterners would lose nothing but a little time to take a slightly longer plane flight to the Capitol. The people of the west would have shorter flights and a renewed interest in remaining part of this great union.

Pick a city, any city west of Ohio. I don't care where; Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Reno, Helena, Fargo, Sioux Falls, Topeka, Denver, this isn't a campaign for a place, it's a campaign for a new view and new behavior. Recovering the energy, spirit, courage, innovation, and individual involvement that once made this nation willing to act upon its beliefs, instead of one hamstrung by legal precedents that ignore our values. One where academics ponder instead of inspire, officials procrastinate instead of permit, and some people try to hold everyone back instead of helping others to reach new heights, and some people willingly accept that which they have not earned.

Health Care Insurance; it’s not a Right.

The Unaffordable Care and Tax Act isn’t anything I want.  I worked for 50 years and saved money whenever I could, scrimping all my life so I would have enough money for housing, food and medical care when I would no longer be able to work.  Even though the Government took my hard earned money for 50 years supposedly for a retirement insurance supplement (Social Security Act); and for 37 years without any benefit to me, and still to this day take my money for Medicare which I didn’t ask for, never wanted and don’t need but must pay for this poor quality, badly managed, heavily regulated, government mandated insurance.   

I didn’t and couldn’t save enough to provide FREE health insurance to anyone else, who likely contributed nothing or very little to their own well-being. 

Health Care Insurance is not a Constitutional, nor a Human Right!  And it should never be.

It has nothing whatever to do with Social Justice; whatever they claim that means now or next. 

I have paid for decades and continue to pay today for health care for people I don’t know and will never meet; people not even from my neighborhood, town or state.  

I pay for emergency care at many hospitals, for social security eligible surviving children, military members and families, veterans, military and civilian prisoners, poor children, single mothers, Medicaid recipients, handicapped, crippled, mentally ill, and the severely infirmed.  Oh, and, I forgot foreign visitors and workers, and legal immigrants and illegal intruders (you can’t be any kind of immigrant unless you are here legally) and invaders. 

Intruders are just bad mannered; invaders come here intending to take our jobs, our benefits, and our property (including money) or do us physical harm and more.  

Everyone, citizen or non-citizen, in our country for any reason can get medical care at any true hospital; they must treat you, it’s the law.  No one in our country has to go without medical care. 

No person has to have health insurance.  It’s a farce created by insurance companies and conniving politicians tricking the ignorant into wasting money or voting for a lying corrupt public parasites.

Every person, legally here or not, can save money for health care in a bank savings account or in a shoe box.   Citizens can create a tax free Health Savings Account (HSA) from which any legitimate medical expense can be paid in cash. 

Every legitimate medical treatment or urgent care can be financed and paid for incrementally by honest responsible individuals.  And if not, there is the Bankruptcy process to escape debts you are not sincerely capable of ever paying.

The reason health care is so expensive is Health Insurance and government interference.  If people would ask, “How much does this cost?”  Then decide whether or not it would be worth it to them to have another X-ray, blood test or Stress test, if you had to pay with your own cash.  Offer to pay your Doctor in cash in advance what Medicare or Insurance will pay minus the costs of billing them.   You will be shocked how much less you could pay than the Government/Insurance billing price. 

  

No one is entitled to medical care for FREE, or at anyone else’s expense.

No one is entitled to FREE Medical Insurance paid for by me or any other citizens under threat of criminal punishment by our Government.  Nor should any free citizen ever be forced to pay for or forced to accept any kind of insurance, poor quality government or high quality private, for which we have not individually and freely consented.

Health Care is not a Constitutional Right.  And it should never be.

Equal Taxation, Equal Liberty, and Equal Justice for each citizen must be urgently restored!

Non-Christian Conservative

Some may be alarmed that there is such a thing.  I’ve been a Conservative all of my adult life, in spite of most of my far flung family and relatives being Democrats, Liberals and Socialists.

I am a fiscal Conservative and don’t care about social issues in the political forum; a Cultural Libertarian.

I’m a social Libertarian and do not believe do-gooders and the governments have any business dictating personal choices for anyone in our cultural; unless they are receiving entitlements.

I’ve been a non-Christian more than fifty years.  I’m religious, just not a member or believer in any organized Christian church.  I don’t believe I need any self-ordained intermediary, middleman, or broker to speak with God.  I’ve never asked God for anything for myself and never will.  I’ve never asked God to bless our country or its government, only its people; and never will.  I’ve never asked our Government for anything except for the careful use of the vast amounts of money I’ve sent them, and the enormous amount of land and other resources we have allowed them to use, though it certainly has imposed a lot on me and my family.

One need not be a believer in any religion to be a Conservative.  They need only believe in the care and careful use of the things that our Creator has made available to us, and truly doing things for people that in the long run genuinely benefit them when they are truly in need, not just when they want them, or think they are owed something they haven’t earned.

I believe in using but not wasting what I’ve earned.  I believe in preparing for our and our family’s needs, and helping them avoid some of the calamities and miseries of fate, tyranny, conscription, crime and violence.

I believe in individual taxpaying citizen freedoms and minimum government.  I believe our Federal, State, County and City governments should be much smaller, much less intrusive, much less expensive, and focused on the defense of our country and its borders, and protection of our lives, our rights, our liberties, and our properties.   

Religious bigots need to stay out of politics; it just tarnishes what noble beliefs they may have, and the truly religious have no business seeking association with the vile and tawdry worlds of politics or government.

What I choose to do privately that affects only me or no other non-consenting adults; or what I choose to think, or to say, or to write; or what I choose to believe or not believe; is certainly no one else’s business

I’m just a Conservative that values our inalienable rights, and abhors tyranny, waste and corruption; and respects the honor and dignity of other hard working, wealth creating, law abiding citizens of the world.    

            

Openly Criticize Religions

Joke about the Muslim Faith Constantly

Blaspheme Allah and Mohammad Everyday.

It drives Muslin believers crazy, cripples their rational thought capability, destroys their ability to coordinate among there various factions; while we still have the most powerful military in the world and can easily defend ourselves.

It’s so easy to disturb and disrupt them.

And while we still have plenty of pigs and pork products, pig blood and carcasses to spread around, splash on, and bury to protect our most valuable and important infrastructure.  And create weapons that splash them in pig parts and blood that will literally drive them insane and damn them to hell with one splatter.

Anyone so frightened of the food product that nourishes two thirds of the known world, can’t possibly initiate, sustain, or prevail in war with peoples that will literally eat nearly everything.

The realities of the modern world so befuddle these primitive savages, that why anyone fears them except for their petty terrorist forays astounds me.  We could without assistance from any one of our allies, annihilate them from the face of the earth.  In a few days we could damage them, destroy their infrastructure, communication, militaries, foods, medicines and hospitals; and lay waste to their economies and finances, leaving them in a stone-age like chaos from 30,000 years ago.

We should go farther than that; discuss, denigrate, debate, and satirize all organized religious institutions everyday.  There should not be a paranoid phobia about religion discussions, denigration or humor.  It’s just beliefs.  If there is nothing ridiculously assuming, hypocritical, or peculiar about your religious beliefs, then it’s a very small, probably quite new, and quite obscure belief.

We should joke about, make fun of, criticize, and evaluate by comparison all religious beliefs; debate daily and publicly until the entire world becomes insensitive to critical comments, humor, slurs, or outright blaspheme; and denigrate every revered saint, savior, prophet, or deity; and discuss and compare every religious belief, and criticize every religious organization, dynasty, nation state and church everyday.

And keep doing it until people can sit quietly listening to others who believe differently and actually consider the merits of their beliefs.  No screaming, no putrid faces, no tongue sucking distain, no attempt to change their beliefs, or them to change yours; just consider for a moment that some part of what they sincerely believe may be more right, more useful, or of more help to as many other people, as the most important parts of what you believe.

It is important to be able to discuss religious beliefs quietly and peacefully; because I think more people are being deliberately murdered today for differing religious beliefs than for any other reason, including crimes and non-religious war; if there is such a thing.

If you are driven to an exasperated frenzy by a little name calling or negative comments about your favorite deity, then you are too easily distracted, your beliefs may be weak or poorly chosen, and you can be easily beaten in any conflict by a little name calling, demeaning insinuations and the denigration of a sacred person or symbol.

You are a weak combatant, easily vanquished.

Get over it; it’s just a belief, an opinion, unsupported by anything resembling proof or even any rational evidence.

Believe what you sincerely believe; but listen openly, observe carefully, and thoughtfully consider that which you do not. 

Our Government Doesn’t Allow Success

We Earn That Ourselves

Shame on you, Mr. President; apparently you have forgotten what little you might have once known about government by consent of “We the People”.  Last week you said the government allowed us to become successful.  Wrong, Mr. President, so wrong.  We don't need government permission or any government help to become successful; just stop over-regulation, over-taxing, and needless interference.    

We allowed you, Mr. President, and we’ve regretted each and every day of your administration since.

We originally allowed the government and established its limits.

You, nor our government, had anything to do with what we were endowed with by our creator.

My parents received no help from any government when I was born.  They were hard working farmers in Eastern South Dakota.  No Medical care, no farm subsidy, no welfare, no paved roads, no electricity or running water; just the expectation that if they worked hard eighteen hours a day, planned ahead, acted wisely, took good care of the land, equipment, buildings, livestock and their family, and trusted in God for the things they could not influence; they might be successful someday.

Farming wasn’t to be my father’s success.  He sold out, moved to California with help from his family, not the government.  Although the government made sure it took its tax from everything he had made.  He became quite successful, in spite of government restrictions, excessive taxation, constant regulation and interference, mostly by buying and developing real estate.

He developed a very successful business building and leasing billboards, with no help from the government.  A business which the “Beautify America Act of 1964” made illegal destroying everything my father had built, all the while governments only provided harassing interference, endless regulation, exhaustive permitting, and punitive taxes which it used to build poor roads and faulty bridges, and ineffective schools, and unnecessary government jobs, and expensive offices, ineffective and lavish entitlement programs, and pointless conferences, and meaningless travel on the backs of my father’s and other taxpayers hard work, rewarding them with more interference and more confiscation for more government than they had asked for or could possibly pay for. 

My mother worked hard raising a family and working for others, and eventually owning and running several small businesses.  The government never helped, they only interfered and took all they could confiscate from her hard work too.  My folks never needed nor ever sought anything from the Federal government.  

I went to schools my father’s hard work helped pay for.  I drove to work, sometimes at three different jobs per day, on roads my father built and some he helped pay for.  I earned the right to go to a college, which my wife and I, and my parents and hers, helped pay for with no help from the government.  I earned my degrees, none were granted by the government.  We paid our own way by working while I went to college, all the while the government took part of our wages for failed social programs, and gave college entrance and jobs to those who had not earned them, in a seat next to me and we paid for them to be there.

Our government didn’t help me find and keep a job, get and use an education, buy and maintain a home, raise and support family, work 60 and 70 hours a week, save money for retirement, stay healthy, or pay for medical care, or ever give my family money for food; instead it just took some of what we made without option, for things we didn’t want and didn’t ask for, and gave it to those who might never earn anything.

Governments were a constant hindrance!  They put unnecessary roadblocks in the way frequently.  Conscripted us without option into programs like Social Security and Medicare that any fool could plainly see would be bankrupt by the time we might need them.  And robbed us of hard earned money most of which it then wasted on frivolous vote buying programs.  And we never wanted or ever sought anything the Federal government had to offer, and we never thought we were owed anything, and we never took anything we didn’t earn

So, Mr. President you have it exactly wrong.

We allowed you and our fraudulent, corrupt, excessively repressive government to violate the pact between; “We the People” and a badly flawed mutant version of our original Federal government.

You are right about one thing, Mr. President; we didn’t do that by ourselves.

Is It News

Or Propaganda?

Watching for the “News” coverage of the most recent tragic mass murders in Aurora, Colorado, it occurred to me that almost no new news was being treated as “Breaking News” on broadcast, cable and satellite TV.

What is “News” and what isn’t, seemed like an important question to me? 

Recently I’ve seen many people getting their News from the Internet via You Tube, Facebook, Blog sites and web pages, some dedicated to news coverage of world and national events and some just using their Internet access to exhibit their photos or videos of events in which they were either witnesses or victims.  

Some I saw were from Libya, Syria, and Colorado.

These were News!  At that place and that time in the direction that that camera was pointed, assuming it was not a staged event, to the extent its visual content and context was self evident with little chance of misinterpretation; it was News.

Most contained no expression of opinion, just statements of fact, like the time, the date, the place name, and distances and cardinal directions.  The destruction, foreboding, terror, mayhem, and fear were evident by the actions of the people in the video.  Little commentary was needed.  No commentator feelings, value judgments, assumptions or opinions were needed or wanted.  Although some showed up from self proclaimed, “Major news” organizations days later standing in front of ruins speaking as though they knew something about what happened there

That is as close to news as I have seen in several decades.  It’s no wonder to me that millions of young and old have turned to the Internet to get first person unadulterated, un-amended, mostly unbiased, un-manipulated event audio and video. 

On NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and even FOX provided almost no factual data, and went immediately to conjecture, insinuation, musing and supposing things about which they had not a scintilla of facts, data, or even second person information, and brought on agenda driven personalities and celebrities with even less news and more opinions.

And they all moved immediately to accusing one faction or another (NRA or businesses) implying involvement by insinuation, or by asking why would a seemingly intelligent advanced degree student from a liberal university go crazy and start killing people like a disgruntled middle aged white male conservative, or the big one; can’t we now get some more new gun and ammo control laws, so that those crazy people who won’t give up their religions or 2^nd Amendment Rights can stop causing our children to be killed by these poor misguided unfortunates.

All about feelings, agenda, demonizing, attitude, accusation, insinuation, mischaracterization, and in ABC’s case misidentification of a 59 year uninvolved man as the 22 year old, immediately arrested, perpetrator.

Virtually no news was provided.  Just the gun control mantra repeated in various ways and by various representatives from among the well-meaning pretending that inanimate objects, not a deranged liberally educated person, animated, loaded, aimed and fired itself spontaneously and was responsible for the terrible deaths and mayhem.

Assumptions, accusation, insinuation, agenda, and opinion is, they apparently think, Good News.  

Thank You, Blog Readers

Around the World

I’m honored to have readers from so many other countries.  Some from many countries I haven’t visited yet.  Most of my readers are from USA, but often there are many from Sweden, Germany and Russia, and a few from more than thirty (30) other countries.  I’m not sure why, but I’m happy they find my opinions about American life, politics and religion interesting in some way.

I wish they would comment more often.  I’m interested in their opinions about subjects important to them and their view from a different culture and history from mine about events in my country or theirs.

I have access to a language interpreter for almost any written language; so, even in their own language I can probably read and understand their comments.

I’m sorry I don’t know more about current events and issues in each of the countries where I have blog readers, but I will study each country’s current events looking for subjects that I could have an opinion about.  It might be presumptuous and a little ignorant of me to comment on issues in other countries about which I know very little, but that hasn’t stopped me from having an opinion about anything, anywhere in the world before, and it certainly won’t stop me now.

I am sure the friendly blog readers from other places will quickly inform me about their countries, and their values, and their thoughts.  

So, thank you again for reading my blog.  Please make comments.  It’s easy just click on the word comments at the bottom of each article.  Comment in almost any language.  If your comment adds to the discussion, or is your true opinion, or a link to your opinion blog, I will post it.  If it’s advertisement, or vile and offensive to me; I won’t post it.

Have fun, be well, and learn something new everyday.

Citizen Stormo