We've lost valuable time
From 1965 until 1971 my wife and I were privileged to work at Cape Canaveral landing men on the moon in the Apollo-Saturn program. Recently my friend Mike Cox expressed disappointment regarding the impacts and implications of cutbacks in future manned space exploration and suggested a blog posting.
So Mike, this one’s for you.
We are huge fans of space science research and the technology advancements that accompany it. The Manned Space programs in the late 60’s and early 70’s brought amazing advancements in materials, communication, chemistry, aeronautics, medicine, mechanics, guidance, sensors, robotics, energy collection, circuitry, computer memory and programming; and many of them have found their way into everyday improvements in our lives. Those kinds of things and much unimaginable advancement would most certainly spin off from a wisely undertaken, innovatively managed and efficiently executed human spaceflight exploration program.
An affordable level of human spaceflight exploration should never have been stopped.
I am doubtful that NASA’s Constellation program is wise, innovative or efficient.
The national pride contest between the US and some sinister menace probably won’t work again to redirect national resources or effort, like it did in the 1960’s.
Maybe the most innovative way to achieve human space exploration objectives is international prizes, money or commercial franchises, to entice private enterprises and non-governmental organizations to risk their profit and their reputations; coupled with a much smaller NASA with reduced roles in mission planning, development and decision-making, and launch and mission execution.
The mission objectives could be linked to prizes and franchise rights like;
Objective: Demonstrate human spaceflight capability to go to and beyond the moon; land, deliver payload, and launch from the lunar surface and return safely to Spaceport USA.
Prize: $50 million dollars and concession rights for launch operations and commerce at Spaceport USA.
Objective: Establish and people a continuously occupied Spaceport Luna.
Prize: $100 million dollars and ninety nine year lunar concession for all commercial transport, habitation, commerce, natural resource, and tourism on the moon for all spaceflights originating and terminating in the continental USA.
Objective: Execute a human spaceflight to Mars, land, collect geophysical samples, launch and return people and samples safely to Spaceport USA.
Prize: A billion dollars and a ninety nine year interplanetary transport concession with exclusive Mars habitation and natural resource rights.
Objective: Establish and people a continuously occupied Spaceport Mars.
Prize: $100 billion dollars and a ninety nine year concession for transport, commerce and tourism to, from, around, and on Mars originating from Spaceports Luna or USA.
I think this fundamental idea and process would yield significantly faster progress in planetary space exploration and colonization, significantly speed up useful scientific discoveries and technology developments.
The idea of the government rewarding businesses and organizations for demonstrated capability, or faster development and completion of objectives is not at all unusual in our history. Intercontinental railways, canals, pony express, telegraph, undersea cable, radio and TV broadcast, electrical distribution, communication, orbital satellites, etc; all have had awards, rewards, franchises or concessions, many that still exist; making possible well known companies still operating today.
NASA is not without well deserved credit for many outstanding achievements, but at what costs in resources and lost opportunities. Their very poor management is bureaucratic, shortsighted and uninspiring. It is disappointing what they might have accomplished with the resources and time they have wasted. Have scientists, engineers or government officials do things, don’t let them manage things.
Just like the military is best at running things when our lives, liberty or pride are at stake; business organizations and individuals are best at getting it done when their money and their reputations are at stake.
Choose objectives, establish, guarantee, and advertise big prizes, impose only minimum restrictions and requirements, and get out of the way except to verify achievement before awarding the prize. Don’t exclude foreign enterprises and people or any reasonably qualified contestants.
Let’s hurry up and get restarted, we’re way behind where we should have been.
26 February 2010
10 February 2010
Kit Carson
His Life and Times
American Frontiersman, Soldier, Western Guide, and Indian Agent
Born: December 24, 1809
Madison County, Kentucky
Died: May 23, 1868, Fort Lyon, Colorado
Buried: Taos, New Mexico
Kit Carson first gained fame as a distinguished guide for explorers in the frontier west of the Mississippi River; Carson soon became legend.
Before he became a legend
Christopher "Kit" Carson was born in Madison County, Kentucky, on December 24, 1809. His father, Lindsey Carson, married Rebecca Robinson in 1796. Kit was the sixth of ten children. The Carson family soon settled in Howard County, Missouri. When Kit was just nine years old, his father was killed in a tragic accident.
It is doubtful that Carson received much of a formal education. Although he spoke several languages, he remained unable to read and write his entire life. At the age of fourteen he became an apprentice to a saddlemaker. Carson left after a year joining a group of traders heading to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Life on the western frontier
Carson's career in the West spanned the years from 1825 to 1868, a period of rapid national expansion, exploration, and settlement. From 1827 to 1829 young Carson spent time working as a cook, driving a wagon, interpreting Spanish, and mining copper. In August 1829 he gained valuable experience trapping animals along the streams of Arizona and southern California.
In 1831 Carson returned to New Mexico, where he joined up with the experienced trapper, Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick (1799–1854). With Fitzpatrick's men, Carson headed north into the rugged central Rocky Mountains. For the next ten years, Carson worked as a trapper in what is today Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Carson learned what he needed, becoming a respected guide.
In 1836 Carson married an Arapaho Indian woman, Waa-Nibe, “Singing Grass.” The couple had two children, only a daughter survived. After his first wife died, Carson married a Cheyenne woman, “Making-Our-Road”. The marriage did not last, and Carson took his daughter to St. Louis, Missouri, for her education. For the next eight years, Carson split his time between his daughter in St. Louis and his trapping duties around Taos, New Mexico.
By 1842 Carson met and became engaged to the daughter of a prominent Taos family; Josefa Jaramillo. After receiving instruction, he was baptized into the Catholic Church. At 34 Carson married his third wife, 14-year-old Josefa, on February 6, 1843. They had eight children together.
A turning point
In 1842 explorer John C. Fremont landed in St. Louis. Fremont came looking to hire the well-known guide Andrew Drips to lead his expedition to the Wind River in Wyoming. Unable to find Drips, Fremont chose Carson. From June until September, Carson guided Fremont’s party west through South Pass to the Wind River Mountains and back to Missouri.
Over the next several years, Carson and Fitzpatrick worked as guides for Fremont on three expeditions through Oregon and California. The timing could not have been better for Fremont or Carson. The American public was fascinated with life in the West and the tales of hostile Indian tribes and unsettled land found on the western frontier. Fremont’s published reports on his expeditions soon became famous, as did Kit Carson. Although many of Carson's adventures became wildly exaggerated, no one denied his contributions to settling the American West. Many of Carson's accomplishments were popularized in Dr. De Witt C. Peters's 1858 book, The Life and Adventure of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains. (By referring to Carson as a nestor, Dr. Peters meant that Carson was a leader in his field.)
In his journal entry for April 18, 1844, Fremont wrote “We struck the great object of our search—The Spanish Trail—which here was running directly north.” He had reached the Old Spanish Trail above Cajon Pass at the edge of California’s South Coast Basin, just before the trail began its bend to the east, descending into the Mojave River Valley.
As the party worked its way across the Mojave Desert, it encountered two New Mexican refugees, a middle-aged man, Andrés Fuentes, and a boy, Pablo Hernández, who were the only survivors of a small party from Santa Fe, New Mexico that had been massacred by Indians who had killed two men, staked two women to the ground and mutilated them, and stolen 30 horses. The two had been out herding and escaped among the loose animals. They left the horses at Bitter Spring and continued west until their chance meeting with the Americans. The expedition reached Bitter Spring, the stock had been driven off by the Indians. Carson and Godey promptly volunteered to go in pursuit and attempt a recovery. They tracked the Native band, locating them, rushed into their encampment. They killed two, scattered the rest, and returned with the horses. Upon their return Fremont wrote dramatically in his journal, “This expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among the boldest…in the annals of western adventure. Two men, in a savage desert, pursue day and night an unknown body of Indians…attack them on sight—defeat them in an instant—and for what? To punish the robbers of the desert and to avenge the wrongs to Mexicans whom they did not know, I repeat: it was Carson and Godey who did this.” This incident from Fremont’s second expedition report is probably where Kit Carson’s legend was born.
Other Mojave Incidents
On the Muddy River in Nevada, the party was surrounded and threatened by 300 hostile Indians. They may have been Southern Paiutes or possibly Utes on their way to coastal California to rustle livestock. Through sheer bravado, Carson dispersed the Indians when they refused his order to withdraw. Carson often surprised natives by threatening with bravado to kill their leaders first, in their native language.
Many episodes in his early career were linked to the Old Spanish Trail and the Mojave Desert. After delivering dispatches in Los Angeles he reported for military duty, since he was now a lieutenant. The governor assigned him to spend the winter in command of a detachment guarding Cajon Pass on the Old Spanish Trail. His instructions were to intercept thieves, Indians, or others who might be fleeing eastward with stolen animals.
A soldier's career
In 1846 Carson served in California with Fremont at the outbreak of the Mexican War 1846 - 1848 that resulted in U.S. ownership of much of what is now the American Southwest. His duties were quite dangerous, as he carried messages between command posts in enemy territory. When Carson was sent to Washington with dispatches, he was stopped by General Stephen W. Kearny (1794–1848) in New Mexico and ordered to lead his troops west to California. At the battle of San Pascual (1846) near San Diego, with Kearny's tired men losing the battle, Carson and two others slipped through enemy lines to go for reinforcements. Although Kearny's men were unable to take San Pascual, they soon captured San Diego, San Gabriel, and Los Angeles in rapid succession. Later, President James K. Polk (1795–1849) called Carson a hero and appointed him lieutenant in the mounted rifle regiment. However, the Senate rejected this appointment, and Carson returned to Taos.
Career as an Indian agent
By 1849 Carson had settled near Taos to farm and occasionally scouted for army units fighting hostile tribes. Carson also served in the Office of Indian Affairs, first as an agent and then as a superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory. In 1854 he became the agent for several southwestern tribes. Carson worked for years to keep peace and ensure fair treatment of Native Americans.
While working for the Office of Indian Affairs, Carson often clashed with his superior, Territorial Governor David Meriwether. Carson disagreed with many of Meriwether's policies and thought that Native Americans were being treated unfairly. In 1856 their conflicts boiled over. Meriwether suspended Carson and later arrested, charging him with disobedience and cowardice. Carson soon apologized and got his job back as agent.
Back in the army
With the outbreak of the Civil War (1861–65), Carson left his position with Indian Affairs and was soon appointed a lieutenant colonel commanding the First New Mexico Volunteer Regiment. During the war, Carson fought against invading Confederates at the battle of Val Verde, NM. Carson also directed successful campaigns against the Apache and Navajo from 1862 until 1864, with final battles against the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache in the Texas panhandle. In 1865 he was appointed as brigadier general of volunteers and for the next two years held assignments in the West, leaving the army in 1867.
Conflicts with the Navajo
Army contact was prompted by a Navajo raid on Socorro, New Mexico near the end of September, 1846. General Kearny, passing nearby on his way to California learned of the raid and directed Col. William Doniphan to send a regiment of soldiers into Navajo country to secure a peace treaty.
At a winter meeting Col. Doniphan informed the Navajo that all their land now belonged to the United States, and the Navajo and New Mexicans were now the "children of the United States." In spite of this insult, the Navajo signed the Bear Spring treaty, on November 21, 1846. The treaty forbade the Navajo to raid or make war on the New Mexicans, but allowed the New Mexicans to make war on the Navajo, if they saw fit. Despite the treaty, the Navajo continued raids, as did the Apache, Ute, Comanche, and Kiowa.
On August 16, 1849 the U.S. Army began an expedition into the heart of Navajo country led by Col. John Washington, the military governor of New Mexico. The expedition included nearly a thousand infantry, hundreds of horses and mules, a supply train, 55 native Pueblo scouts, and four artillery guns.
On August 29–30, 1849, Washington's expedition needed water and food, and began pillaging Navajo cornfields. It was clear the Navajo intended to resist. Washington was still able to communicate that the Navajo and the whites could "still be friends, if the Navajo came with their chiefs the next day and signed a treaty."
The next day Chief Narbona came once again to "talk peace," along with several other headmen. An accord was reached on nearly every matter. When a New Mexican thought he saw his stolen horse and the Navajo protested its return, a scuffle broke out. The Navajo position was that the horse had passed through several other owners and now belonged to its Navajo owner. Col. Washington sided with the New Mexican. The Navajo owner took his horse and fled. Washington told the New Mexican to go pick out any Navajo horse he wanted. The Navajo figured out what was happening, and turned and fled. At this, Col. Washington ordered his soldiers to fire.
Seven Navajo were killed; the rest ran and could not be caught. One of the dying was Chief Narbona, who was scalped as he lay dying by a New Mexican souvenir hunter. This massacre prompted the warlike Navajo leaders such as Manuelito to gain influence over those who had advocated peace.
Carson's Navajo campaign
Raids by Native Americans had been constant up through 1862, and New Mexicans were demanding that something be done. Col. Canby devised a plan to remove Navajo to a distant reservation, but Canby was promoted to general and recalled east. His replacement as Commander of the Federal District of New Mexico was Brigadier General James H. Carleton.
Carleton believed that the Navajo conflict was the reason for New Mexico's "depressing backwardness." He turned to Kit Carson to help him fulfill his plans for upgrading New Mexico and his own career; Carson was nationally known and had helped boost the careers of several military commanders.
Carleton used the anxieties stirred up by the Confederate invasion and that the Texans might return. The territory was already on a war footing. The whole society was alert and inflamed; why not direct this energy toward something useful? Carleton immediately declared a state of martial law with curfews and mandatory passports for travel, then, brought all his authority to bear on cleaning up the Navajo mess.
Furthermore, Carleton believed there was gold in the Navajo's country and they should be driven out to allow development. Before Carleton's Navajo campaign he would force the Mescalero Apache to Bosque Redondo. Carleton ordered Carson to kill all the men of that tribe, and say that he had been sent to "punish them for their treachery and crimes."
Carson was appalled by this brutal order and refused to obey it. He accepted the surrender of more than a hundred Mescalero warriors who sought refuge with him, and relocated them within a month.
When Carson learned that Carleton intended for him to pursue the Navajo he sent a resignation letter dated February 3, 1863. Carleton refused to accept it and used his personal persuasion to maintain Carson's cooperation. Using language similar to that used on the Mescalero Apache, Carleton ordered Carson to lead an expedition against the Navajo, and to say to them, "You have deceived us too often, and robbed and murdered our people too long, to trust you again at large in your own country. This war shall be pursued against you if it takes years, now that we have begun, until you cease to exist or move. There can be no other talk on the subject."
Under Carleton's direction, Carson instituted a scorched earth policy, which eventually coerced the Navajo to surrender. He was aided by long-standing enemies of the Navajos, chiefly the Utes. Carson was pleased with the Utes, but they went home early when they could not keep what they took from the Navajo.
Carson also had difficulty with his New Mexico volunteers. Troopers deserted and officers resigned. Carson accepted resignations saying, "As I do not wish to have any officer in my command that is not contented or willing to put up with as much inconvenience and privations for the success of the expedition as I undergo myself."
There were no pitched battles, only a few skirmishes in the Navajo campaign. Carson rounded up and took prisoner every Navajo he could find. In January 1864, Carson sent a company into Canyon de Chelly to investigate the last Navajo stronghold. The Navajo surrendered because of lack of food supplies.
In the spring of 1864, 8,000 Navajo men, women and children were marched or rode in wagons 300 miles to Fort Sumner. Navajos call this “The Long Walk.” Although Carson had returned home to Taos before the march began, he is held responsible by some Navajo for breaking his word that they would not be harmed. Perhaps 300 died along the way and many more during the next four years on the reservation. In 1868, after signing a treaty with the U.S. government, these Navajos and thousands of non-reservation Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland, where a large Navajo Reservation exists around Canyon de Chelly today.
In 1868 Carson was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory, but he never worked in this position. He died May 23, 1868, at Fort Lyon, Colorado.
Although Carson's later career in the army and his work with Native Americans was very impressive, the name Kit Carson will forever be linked to tales of the wild frontier and westward expansion.
For More Information
Abbott, J.S.C., LIFE OF KIT CARSON.
Burdett, Charles, LIFE OF KIT CARSON.
Carson, Kit. Kit Carson's Autobiography. Edited by Milo Milton Quaife. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 1935. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966.
Carter, Harvey L. Dear Old Kit: The Historical Christopher Carson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.
Ellis, Edward Sylvester. The Life of Kit Carson. Lake Wales, FL: Lost Classics Book Co., 1998.
American Frontiersman, Soldier, Western Guide, and Indian Agent
Born: December 24, 1809
Madison County, Kentucky
Died: May 23, 1868, Fort Lyon, Colorado
Buried: Taos, New Mexico
Kit Carson first gained fame as a distinguished guide for explorers in the frontier west of the Mississippi River; Carson soon became legend.
Before he became a legend
Christopher "Kit" Carson was born in Madison County, Kentucky, on December 24, 1809. His father, Lindsey Carson, married Rebecca Robinson in 1796. Kit was the sixth of ten children. The Carson family soon settled in Howard County, Missouri. When Kit was just nine years old, his father was killed in a tragic accident.
It is doubtful that Carson received much of a formal education. Although he spoke several languages, he remained unable to read and write his entire life. At the age of fourteen he became an apprentice to a saddlemaker. Carson left after a year joining a group of traders heading to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Life on the western frontier
Carson's career in the West spanned the years from 1825 to 1868, a period of rapid national expansion, exploration, and settlement. From 1827 to 1829 young Carson spent time working as a cook, driving a wagon, interpreting Spanish, and mining copper. In August 1829 he gained valuable experience trapping animals along the streams of Arizona and southern California.
In 1831 Carson returned to New Mexico, where he joined up with the experienced trapper, Thomas “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick (1799–1854). With Fitzpatrick's men, Carson headed north into the rugged central Rocky Mountains. For the next ten years, Carson worked as a trapper in what is today Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Carson learned what he needed, becoming a respected guide.
In 1836 Carson married an Arapaho Indian woman, Waa-Nibe, “Singing Grass.” The couple had two children, only a daughter survived. After his first wife died, Carson married a Cheyenne woman, “Making-Our-Road”. The marriage did not last, and Carson took his daughter to St. Louis, Missouri, for her education. For the next eight years, Carson split his time between his daughter in St. Louis and his trapping duties around Taos, New Mexico.
By 1842 Carson met and became engaged to the daughter of a prominent Taos family; Josefa Jaramillo. After receiving instruction, he was baptized into the Catholic Church. At 34 Carson married his third wife, 14-year-old Josefa, on February 6, 1843. They had eight children together.
A turning point
In 1842 explorer John C. Fremont landed in St. Louis. Fremont came looking to hire the well-known guide Andrew Drips to lead his expedition to the Wind River in Wyoming. Unable to find Drips, Fremont chose Carson. From June until September, Carson guided Fremont’s party west through South Pass to the Wind River Mountains and back to Missouri.
Over the next several years, Carson and Fitzpatrick worked as guides for Fremont on three expeditions through Oregon and California. The timing could not have been better for Fremont or Carson. The American public was fascinated with life in the West and the tales of hostile Indian tribes and unsettled land found on the western frontier. Fremont’s published reports on his expeditions soon became famous, as did Kit Carson. Although many of Carson's adventures became wildly exaggerated, no one denied his contributions to settling the American West. Many of Carson's accomplishments were popularized in Dr. De Witt C. Peters's 1858 book, The Life and Adventure of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains. (By referring to Carson as a nestor, Dr. Peters meant that Carson was a leader in his field.)
In his journal entry for April 18, 1844, Fremont wrote “We struck the great object of our search—The Spanish Trail—which here was running directly north.” He had reached the Old Spanish Trail above Cajon Pass at the edge of California’s South Coast Basin, just before the trail began its bend to the east, descending into the Mojave River Valley.
As the party worked its way across the Mojave Desert, it encountered two New Mexican refugees, a middle-aged man, Andrés Fuentes, and a boy, Pablo Hernández, who were the only survivors of a small party from Santa Fe, New Mexico that had been massacred by Indians who had killed two men, staked two women to the ground and mutilated them, and stolen 30 horses. The two had been out herding and escaped among the loose animals. They left the horses at Bitter Spring and continued west until their chance meeting with the Americans. The expedition reached Bitter Spring, the stock had been driven off by the Indians. Carson and Godey promptly volunteered to go in pursuit and attempt a recovery. They tracked the Native band, locating them, rushed into their encampment. They killed two, scattered the rest, and returned with the horses. Upon their return Fremont wrote dramatically in his journal, “This expedition of Carson and Godey may be considered among the boldest…in the annals of western adventure. Two men, in a savage desert, pursue day and night an unknown body of Indians…attack them on sight—defeat them in an instant—and for what? To punish the robbers of the desert and to avenge the wrongs to Mexicans whom they did not know, I repeat: it was Carson and Godey who did this.” This incident from Fremont’s second expedition report is probably where Kit Carson’s legend was born.
Other Mojave Incidents
On the Muddy River in Nevada, the party was surrounded and threatened by 300 hostile Indians. They may have been Southern Paiutes or possibly Utes on their way to coastal California to rustle livestock. Through sheer bravado, Carson dispersed the Indians when they refused his order to withdraw. Carson often surprised natives by threatening with bravado to kill their leaders first, in their native language.
Many episodes in his early career were linked to the Old Spanish Trail and the Mojave Desert. After delivering dispatches in Los Angeles he reported for military duty, since he was now a lieutenant. The governor assigned him to spend the winter in command of a detachment guarding Cajon Pass on the Old Spanish Trail. His instructions were to intercept thieves, Indians, or others who might be fleeing eastward with stolen animals.
A soldier's career
In 1846 Carson served in California with Fremont at the outbreak of the Mexican War 1846 - 1848 that resulted in U.S. ownership of much of what is now the American Southwest. His duties were quite dangerous, as he carried messages between command posts in enemy territory. When Carson was sent to Washington with dispatches, he was stopped by General Stephen W. Kearny (1794–1848) in New Mexico and ordered to lead his troops west to California. At the battle of San Pascual (1846) near San Diego, with Kearny's tired men losing the battle, Carson and two others slipped through enemy lines to go for reinforcements. Although Kearny's men were unable to take San Pascual, they soon captured San Diego, San Gabriel, and Los Angeles in rapid succession. Later, President James K. Polk (1795–1849) called Carson a hero and appointed him lieutenant in the mounted rifle regiment. However, the Senate rejected this appointment, and Carson returned to Taos.
Career as an Indian agent
By 1849 Carson had settled near Taos to farm and occasionally scouted for army units fighting hostile tribes. Carson also served in the Office of Indian Affairs, first as an agent and then as a superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory. In 1854 he became the agent for several southwestern tribes. Carson worked for years to keep peace and ensure fair treatment of Native Americans.
While working for the Office of Indian Affairs, Carson often clashed with his superior, Territorial Governor David Meriwether. Carson disagreed with many of Meriwether's policies and thought that Native Americans were being treated unfairly. In 1856 their conflicts boiled over. Meriwether suspended Carson and later arrested, charging him with disobedience and cowardice. Carson soon apologized and got his job back as agent.
Back in the army
With the outbreak of the Civil War (1861–65), Carson left his position with Indian Affairs and was soon appointed a lieutenant colonel commanding the First New Mexico Volunteer Regiment. During the war, Carson fought against invading Confederates at the battle of Val Verde, NM. Carson also directed successful campaigns against the Apache and Navajo from 1862 until 1864, with final battles against the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache in the Texas panhandle. In 1865 he was appointed as brigadier general of volunteers and for the next two years held assignments in the West, leaving the army in 1867.
Conflicts with the Navajo
Army contact was prompted by a Navajo raid on Socorro, New Mexico near the end of September, 1846. General Kearny, passing nearby on his way to California learned of the raid and directed Col. William Doniphan to send a regiment of soldiers into Navajo country to secure a peace treaty.
At a winter meeting Col. Doniphan informed the Navajo that all their land now belonged to the United States, and the Navajo and New Mexicans were now the "children of the United States." In spite of this insult, the Navajo signed the Bear Spring treaty, on November 21, 1846. The treaty forbade the Navajo to raid or make war on the New Mexicans, but allowed the New Mexicans to make war on the Navajo, if they saw fit. Despite the treaty, the Navajo continued raids, as did the Apache, Ute, Comanche, and Kiowa.
On August 16, 1849 the U.S. Army began an expedition into the heart of Navajo country led by Col. John Washington, the military governor of New Mexico. The expedition included nearly a thousand infantry, hundreds of horses and mules, a supply train, 55 native Pueblo scouts, and four artillery guns.
On August 29–30, 1849, Washington's expedition needed water and food, and began pillaging Navajo cornfields. It was clear the Navajo intended to resist. Washington was still able to communicate that the Navajo and the whites could "still be friends, if the Navajo came with their chiefs the next day and signed a treaty."
The next day Chief Narbona came once again to "talk peace," along with several other headmen. An accord was reached on nearly every matter. When a New Mexican thought he saw his stolen horse and the Navajo protested its return, a scuffle broke out. The Navajo position was that the horse had passed through several other owners and now belonged to its Navajo owner. Col. Washington sided with the New Mexican. The Navajo owner took his horse and fled. Washington told the New Mexican to go pick out any Navajo horse he wanted. The Navajo figured out what was happening, and turned and fled. At this, Col. Washington ordered his soldiers to fire.
Seven Navajo were killed; the rest ran and could not be caught. One of the dying was Chief Narbona, who was scalped as he lay dying by a New Mexican souvenir hunter. This massacre prompted the warlike Navajo leaders such as Manuelito to gain influence over those who had advocated peace.
Carson's Navajo campaign
Raids by Native Americans had been constant up through 1862, and New Mexicans were demanding that something be done. Col. Canby devised a plan to remove Navajo to a distant reservation, but Canby was promoted to general and recalled east. His replacement as Commander of the Federal District of New Mexico was Brigadier General James H. Carleton.
Carleton believed that the Navajo conflict was the reason for New Mexico's "depressing backwardness." He turned to Kit Carson to help him fulfill his plans for upgrading New Mexico and his own career; Carson was nationally known and had helped boost the careers of several military commanders.
Carleton used the anxieties stirred up by the Confederate invasion and that the Texans might return. The territory was already on a war footing. The whole society was alert and inflamed; why not direct this energy toward something useful? Carleton immediately declared a state of martial law with curfews and mandatory passports for travel, then, brought all his authority to bear on cleaning up the Navajo mess.
Furthermore, Carleton believed there was gold in the Navajo's country and they should be driven out to allow development. Before Carleton's Navajo campaign he would force the Mescalero Apache to Bosque Redondo. Carleton ordered Carson to kill all the men of that tribe, and say that he had been sent to "punish them for their treachery and crimes."
Carson was appalled by this brutal order and refused to obey it. He accepted the surrender of more than a hundred Mescalero warriors who sought refuge with him, and relocated them within a month.
When Carson learned that Carleton intended for him to pursue the Navajo he sent a resignation letter dated February 3, 1863. Carleton refused to accept it and used his personal persuasion to maintain Carson's cooperation. Using language similar to that used on the Mescalero Apache, Carleton ordered Carson to lead an expedition against the Navajo, and to say to them, "You have deceived us too often, and robbed and murdered our people too long, to trust you again at large in your own country. This war shall be pursued against you if it takes years, now that we have begun, until you cease to exist or move. There can be no other talk on the subject."
Under Carleton's direction, Carson instituted a scorched earth policy, which eventually coerced the Navajo to surrender. He was aided by long-standing enemies of the Navajos, chiefly the Utes. Carson was pleased with the Utes, but they went home early when they could not keep what they took from the Navajo.
Carson also had difficulty with his New Mexico volunteers. Troopers deserted and officers resigned. Carson accepted resignations saying, "As I do not wish to have any officer in my command that is not contented or willing to put up with as much inconvenience and privations for the success of the expedition as I undergo myself."
There were no pitched battles, only a few skirmishes in the Navajo campaign. Carson rounded up and took prisoner every Navajo he could find. In January 1864, Carson sent a company into Canyon de Chelly to investigate the last Navajo stronghold. The Navajo surrendered because of lack of food supplies.
In the spring of 1864, 8,000 Navajo men, women and children were marched or rode in wagons 300 miles to Fort Sumner. Navajos call this “The Long Walk.” Although Carson had returned home to Taos before the march began, he is held responsible by some Navajo for breaking his word that they would not be harmed. Perhaps 300 died along the way and many more during the next four years on the reservation. In 1868, after signing a treaty with the U.S. government, these Navajos and thousands of non-reservation Navajo were allowed to return to their homeland, where a large Navajo Reservation exists around Canyon de Chelly today.
In 1868 Carson was appointed superintendent of Indian affairs for the Colorado Territory, but he never worked in this position. He died May 23, 1868, at Fort Lyon, Colorado.
Although Carson's later career in the army and his work with Native Americans was very impressive, the name Kit Carson will forever be linked to tales of the wild frontier and westward expansion.
For More Information
Abbott, J.S.C., LIFE OF KIT CARSON.
Burdett, Charles, LIFE OF KIT CARSON.
Carson, Kit. Kit Carson's Autobiography. Edited by Milo Milton Quaife. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 1935. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966.
Carter, Harvey L. Dear Old Kit: The Historical Christopher Carson. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.
Ellis, Edward Sylvester. The Life of Kit Carson. Lake Wales, FL: Lost Classics Book Co., 1998.
24 January 2010
Haiti
What’s Wrong?
After decades of international effort and billions of dollars from the US and around the world, Haiti remains a starving, diseased, corrupt, ignorant, impoverished semi-nation, perhaps the worst place in the western hemisphere before the earthquake.
It is said that more faith-based organizations operate there than any place on earth, except India. It is often repeated that the average Haitian survives on 2 dollars per day. I’m unable to confirm if that is accurate, but according to the CIA World Fact Book, Haiti as a French colony was once the wealthiest nation in the Caribbean. Independent since 1804, it has been plagued by lawlessness, disease, corruption and political violence for most of its history, finally inaugurating a democratically elected president and parliament in May of 2006.
Its population is 9,035,536, and its area is 27,750 sq km, ranking 153rd, about the size of Massachusetts. Its literacy rate is 52.9% of age 15 and over that can read and write in any language. Its ethnic makeup is 95%, black, 5% mulatto and white. Claimed religions - Roman Catholic 80%, Protestant 16% (Baptist 10%, Pentecostal 4%, Adventist 1%, other 1%), none 1%, other 3%, but roughly half of the population practices voodoo. The official languages are French and Creole. People living with aids - 120,000 (2007 est.), 43rd in the world. With1.4% of GDP (1991) spent on education, its 175th in the world.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agricultural sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and are vulnerable to frequent natural disasters, made worse by the country's widespread deforestation. While the economy has recovered in recent years, registering positive growth since 2005, four tropical storms in 2008 severely damaged the transportation infrastructure and agricultural sector. US economic engagement under the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act, passed in December 2006, has boosted apparel exports and investment by providing tariff-free access to US markets. HOPE II, passed in October 2008, further improved the apparel export sector extending preferences to 2018; the apparel sector accounts for two-thirds of Haitian exports and barely one-tenth of GDP. Remittances are the primary source of foreign exchange, equaling nearly a quarter of GDP and more than twice the earnings from exports. Haiti suffers from high inflation, a lack of investment, and a severe trade deficit.
Since 2004, about 8,000 peacekeepers from the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) maintain civil order; despite efforts to control illegal migration, Haitians cross into the Dominican Republic and sail to neighboring countries. Haiti claims US-administered Navassa Island. Haiti is a primary Caribbean transshipment point for cocaine en route to the US and Europe, and a center for substantial bulk cash smuggling activity. Colombian narcotics traffickers favor Haiti for illicit financial transactions, pervasive corruption and significant cannabis use.
There have been frequent unofficial and official US interventions in Haiti for over the past 200 years. Below are a few examples.
Haiti Show of Force 1888
On 20 December 1888 a display of force persuaded the Haitian Government to give up an American steamer which had been seized. Rebellion, intrigue, and conspiracy continued to be commonplace.
Navassa Island Incident 1889-1891
Uninhabited Navassa Island was claimed by the US in 1857 for its guano (organic phosphate fertilizer), and mining took place between 1865 and 1898. In 1889 the island's operation passed to the Navassa Phosphate Company of Baltimore, Maryland which mined with African-American laborers
Abusive conditions soon provoked a race riot and the workers hacked off the arms, legs and heads of some of the whites. At the end of the battle five white supervisors were dead and others injured. US warships gathered up the people and bodies and took them to Baltimore. October 1889 the USS Galena took nine ring-leaders to the United States Marshal on 25 October 1889. A total of eighteen of the workers were returned to Baltimore for trials.
Intervention in Haiti (1914)
The country's most productive president, Cincinnatus Leconte, had died in a freak explosion in the National Palace in August 1912. Five contenders claimed the country's leadership over the next three years.
During 1914, US naval forces intermittently protected American nationals from rioting and revolution in Haiti. The United States periodically considered annexing the whole Island of Hispaniola, but the divisive issue of slavery kept the nation from acting. Until 1862 the United States refused to recognize Haiti's independence because the free, black, island nation symbolized opposition to slavery.
Occupation of Haiti (1915-34)
Civil disturbances and lack of a friendly stable government caused the United States to occupy and rule Haiti by military government between 1915 and 1934. During the occupation infrastructure development made material improvements to the country and the peoples lives. Port-au-Prince as the major city and trading center is largely the result of the changes made during the occupation. Resentment of the foreign occupation led to protests and several notorious episodes in which many Haitian civilians were killed by the US Army and Marines. When U.S. service members left in 1934, Haiti reverted to their typical dictatorial style.
A former governor general of the Philippines, W. Cameron Forbes, headed the Forbes Commission that praised improvements made by United States, but criticized the exclusion of Haitians from positions of real authority in the government or constabulary. The commission further asserted that "the social forces that created [instability] still remain--poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government."
Operation Uphold Democracy
In December 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide won 67% of the vote in an election deemed free and fair by international observers. He was overthrown by elements of the army and forced to leave the country in September 1991.
From October 1991 to June 1992, President Joseph Nerette led an unconstitutional de facto regime and governed with a parliamentary majority and the armed forces. In June 1992, he resigned and Parliament approved Marc Bazin as prime minister with no president. In June 1993, Bazin resigned and the UN imposed an oil and arms embargo, bringing the Haitian military to the negotiating table.
President Aristide and Gen. Raoul Cedras, head of the Haitian armed forces, signed the UN-brokered Governors Island Agreement on July 3, 1993, establishing a 10-step process to restore constitutional government and return President Aristide by October 30, 1993. The military derailed the process and the UN re-imposed economic sanctions. The military and the de facto government sanctioned repression, assassination, torture, and rape in open defiance of the international community's condemnation.
In May 1994, the military selected Supreme Court Justice Emile Jonassaint to be provisional president of its third de facto regime. The UN and the U.S. reacted by tightening economic sanctions. On July 31, 1994, UN Resolution 940 authorized member states “to use all necessary means” to facilitate the departure of Haiti's military leadership and restore constitutional rule and Aristide's presidency.
The United States formed a multinational force (MNF) to carry out the UN's mandate by military intervention. US objectives were foster democratic institutions and reduce the flow of illegal immigrants. The Military-backed regime did not relinquish authority becoming increasingly repressive. Deteriorating conditions resulted in tens of thousands of impoverished Haitians fleeing the country, many attempting to enter the United States.
Operation Secure Tomorrow.
After President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party swept legislative elections in 2000 they were widely dismissed as flawed and international donors froze millions of dollars in aid. Unfortunately, there were irregularities that occurred in the election and the vote count. Aristide's party claimed an overall victory in disputed legislative and municipal elections. In November 2000, the opposition boycotted the presidential election and Aristide won unopposed.
By 2001, external support for Aristide had receded. President Clinton had restored Aristide to power, an action that Republicans opposed.
On 04 February 2004 the international community, made up of United States, Canada, France, the OAS, CARICOM, and the United Nations, presented a tough peace plan. The plan called for three persons from the international community to select a council of seven wise persons, who would then choose who would end up being a prime minister. The President accepted, but the opposition rejected the peace plan, and the rebels could not be controlled.
On 29 February 2004 Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country, and the country's Supreme Court chief justice assumed leadership as hundreds of loyal armed militants protested outside the national palace. In the neighborhood surrounding the national palace, gangs loyal to the president patrolled the streets cars and shot randomly at local residents. Elsewhere in Haiti rebels took over Haiti's third largest city, Les Cayes and controlled much of northern Haiti advancing to within 60 kilometers of the capital.
Immediately after his departure President Aristide said he had been "kidnapped" and taken by force to the Central African Republic.” Congress member Maxine Waters said Aristide told her that he had been threatened by US diplomats, who told him that if he did not leave Haiti, that they would withdraw Aristide's security and would allow paramilitary leader Guy Philippe to storm the palace and kill him. Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica said that Aristide emphatically denied that he had resigned, and said "He was abducted by the United States in the commission of a coup."
On Sunday 29 February 2004, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1529 endorsing the deployment of a Multinational Interim Force to Haiti.
Operation New Horizons.
In a region of scarce resources, New Horizons engineering and medical exercises have significantly benefited the people of the Caribbean, while enhancing the capabilities of US Armed Forces to deploy and train in foreign environments. During 2001, Southern Command conducted three New Horizons exercises in the Caribbean area -- Bahamas, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia. Fiscal year 2002 saw three more New Horizons exercises in Barbados, Dominica, and Jamaica.
Operation Unified Response.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday 12 January 2010 collapsed the presidential palace, monuments, and the city's largest hospital. Shoddily built schools and houses lay in ruins across the densely populated city. Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told (CNN) Wednesday, he believes more than 100,000 people may be dead. Working hospitals were overflowing, and bodies lined the roadways. The International Red Cross said up to 3 million people have been affected. Development efforts have suffered severe setbacks because of political violence, lawlessness, corruption and natural disasters.
President Barack Obama directed a swift, coordinated effort from the U.S., saying "the people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble and to deliver the humanitarian relief of food, water and medicine that Haitians will need in the coming days." The United States has launched a major civilian and military response led by U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah, who says the immediate objective is to save lives.
Here’s what I Think.
Aid, not money, should be sent to help the Haitian people recover, to the extent their corrupt repressive government will allow from this current disaster.
I will not be voluntarily contributing any more money to Haiti or Haitians. Our voluntary tax-exempt donations and involuntary redirected tax payments and Federal aid contributions over our working lives appears to total about $15,000 dollars in today’s money, and I believe that’s much more than our fair share.
It will be a shame if any more of my hard earned overly taxed, money finds its way to Haiti, especially after the injuries, suffering, and disease from this terrible disaster have been relieved.
It is a mistake to keep giving the repressive government and wealthy elites of Haiti more money and resources to continue pillaging and abusing the ignorant people of Haiti.
If we keep shielding them from the penalties for their mistakes, or allowing them to escape their poor decisions, they will continue to make those same mistakes. If they are to improve themselves they must be allowed to understand the true and complete costs of their ignorant, destructive behaviors.
Ignorance, poverty, corruption, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and crime is what we have encouraged, and it’s what we tolerated, so that is what we have taught them that we will allow. And no matter how badly they act, the well-meaning will always shield them from their fate.
Let them suffer the pain and penalty of their bad choices and foolish behavior; perhaps they will eventually learn to save themselves, if not, they should never again be aided.
After decades of international effort and billions of dollars from the US and around the world, Haiti remains a starving, diseased, corrupt, ignorant, impoverished semi-nation, perhaps the worst place in the western hemisphere before the earthquake.
It is said that more faith-based organizations operate there than any place on earth, except India. It is often repeated that the average Haitian survives on 2 dollars per day. I’m unable to confirm if that is accurate, but according to the CIA World Fact Book, Haiti as a French colony was once the wealthiest nation in the Caribbean. Independent since 1804, it has been plagued by lawlessness, disease, corruption and political violence for most of its history, finally inaugurating a democratically elected president and parliament in May of 2006.
Its population is 9,035,536, and its area is 27,750 sq km, ranking 153rd, about the size of Massachusetts. Its literacy rate is 52.9% of age 15 and over that can read and write in any language. Its ethnic makeup is 95%, black, 5% mulatto and white. Claimed religions - Roman Catholic 80%, Protestant 16% (Baptist 10%, Pentecostal 4%, Adventist 1%, other 1%), none 1%, other 3%, but roughly half of the population practices voodoo. The official languages are French and Creole. People living with aids - 120,000 (2007 est.), 43rd in the world. With1.4% of GDP (1991) spent on education, its 175th in the world.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agricultural sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and are vulnerable to frequent natural disasters, made worse by the country's widespread deforestation. While the economy has recovered in recent years, registering positive growth since 2005, four tropical storms in 2008 severely damaged the transportation infrastructure and agricultural sector. US economic engagement under the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act, passed in December 2006, has boosted apparel exports and investment by providing tariff-free access to US markets. HOPE II, passed in October 2008, further improved the apparel export sector extending preferences to 2018; the apparel sector accounts for two-thirds of Haitian exports and barely one-tenth of GDP. Remittances are the primary source of foreign exchange, equaling nearly a quarter of GDP and more than twice the earnings from exports. Haiti suffers from high inflation, a lack of investment, and a severe trade deficit.
Since 2004, about 8,000 peacekeepers from the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) maintain civil order; despite efforts to control illegal migration, Haitians cross into the Dominican Republic and sail to neighboring countries. Haiti claims US-administered Navassa Island. Haiti is a primary Caribbean transshipment point for cocaine en route to the US and Europe, and a center for substantial bulk cash smuggling activity. Colombian narcotics traffickers favor Haiti for illicit financial transactions, pervasive corruption and significant cannabis use.
There have been frequent unofficial and official US interventions in Haiti for over the past 200 years. Below are a few examples.
Haiti Show of Force 1888
On 20 December 1888 a display of force persuaded the Haitian Government to give up an American steamer which had been seized. Rebellion, intrigue, and conspiracy continued to be commonplace.
Navassa Island Incident 1889-1891
Uninhabited Navassa Island was claimed by the US in 1857 for its guano (organic phosphate fertilizer), and mining took place between 1865 and 1898. In 1889 the island's operation passed to the Navassa Phosphate Company of Baltimore, Maryland which mined with African-American laborers
Abusive conditions soon provoked a race riot and the workers hacked off the arms, legs and heads of some of the whites. At the end of the battle five white supervisors were dead and others injured. US warships gathered up the people and bodies and took them to Baltimore. October 1889 the USS Galena took nine ring-leaders to the United States Marshal on 25 October 1889. A total of eighteen of the workers were returned to Baltimore for trials.
Intervention in Haiti (1914)
The country's most productive president, Cincinnatus Leconte, had died in a freak explosion in the National Palace in August 1912. Five contenders claimed the country's leadership over the next three years.
During 1914, US naval forces intermittently protected American nationals from rioting and revolution in Haiti. The United States periodically considered annexing the whole Island of Hispaniola, but the divisive issue of slavery kept the nation from acting. Until 1862 the United States refused to recognize Haiti's independence because the free, black, island nation symbolized opposition to slavery.
Occupation of Haiti (1915-34)
Civil disturbances and lack of a friendly stable government caused the United States to occupy and rule Haiti by military government between 1915 and 1934. During the occupation infrastructure development made material improvements to the country and the peoples lives. Port-au-Prince as the major city and trading center is largely the result of the changes made during the occupation. Resentment of the foreign occupation led to protests and several notorious episodes in which many Haitian civilians were killed by the US Army and Marines. When U.S. service members left in 1934, Haiti reverted to their typical dictatorial style.
A former governor general of the Philippines, W. Cameron Forbes, headed the Forbes Commission that praised improvements made by United States, but criticized the exclusion of Haitians from positions of real authority in the government or constabulary. The commission further asserted that "the social forces that created [instability] still remain--poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government."
Operation Uphold Democracy
In December 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide won 67% of the vote in an election deemed free and fair by international observers. He was overthrown by elements of the army and forced to leave the country in September 1991.
From October 1991 to June 1992, President Joseph Nerette led an unconstitutional de facto regime and governed with a parliamentary majority and the armed forces. In June 1992, he resigned and Parliament approved Marc Bazin as prime minister with no president. In June 1993, Bazin resigned and the UN imposed an oil and arms embargo, bringing the Haitian military to the negotiating table.
President Aristide and Gen. Raoul Cedras, head of the Haitian armed forces, signed the UN-brokered Governors Island Agreement on July 3, 1993, establishing a 10-step process to restore constitutional government and return President Aristide by October 30, 1993. The military derailed the process and the UN re-imposed economic sanctions. The military and the de facto government sanctioned repression, assassination, torture, and rape in open defiance of the international community's condemnation.
In May 1994, the military selected Supreme Court Justice Emile Jonassaint to be provisional president of its third de facto regime. The UN and the U.S. reacted by tightening economic sanctions. On July 31, 1994, UN Resolution 940 authorized member states “to use all necessary means” to facilitate the departure of Haiti's military leadership and restore constitutional rule and Aristide's presidency.
The United States formed a multinational force (MNF) to carry out the UN's mandate by military intervention. US objectives were foster democratic institutions and reduce the flow of illegal immigrants. The Military-backed regime did not relinquish authority becoming increasingly repressive. Deteriorating conditions resulted in tens of thousands of impoverished Haitians fleeing the country, many attempting to enter the United States.
Operation Secure Tomorrow.
After President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party swept legislative elections in 2000 they were widely dismissed as flawed and international donors froze millions of dollars in aid. Unfortunately, there were irregularities that occurred in the election and the vote count. Aristide's party claimed an overall victory in disputed legislative and municipal elections. In November 2000, the opposition boycotted the presidential election and Aristide won unopposed.
By 2001, external support for Aristide had receded. President Clinton had restored Aristide to power, an action that Republicans opposed.
On 04 February 2004 the international community, made up of United States, Canada, France, the OAS, CARICOM, and the United Nations, presented a tough peace plan. The plan called for three persons from the international community to select a council of seven wise persons, who would then choose who would end up being a prime minister. The President accepted, but the opposition rejected the peace plan, and the rebels could not be controlled.
On 29 February 2004 Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country, and the country's Supreme Court chief justice assumed leadership as hundreds of loyal armed militants protested outside the national palace. In the neighborhood surrounding the national palace, gangs loyal to the president patrolled the streets cars and shot randomly at local residents. Elsewhere in Haiti rebels took over Haiti's third largest city, Les Cayes and controlled much of northern Haiti advancing to within 60 kilometers of the capital.
Immediately after his departure President Aristide said he had been "kidnapped" and taken by force to the Central African Republic.” Congress member Maxine Waters said Aristide told her that he had been threatened by US diplomats, who told him that if he did not leave Haiti, that they would withdraw Aristide's security and would allow paramilitary leader Guy Philippe to storm the palace and kill him. Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica said that Aristide emphatically denied that he had resigned, and said "He was abducted by the United States in the commission of a coup."
On Sunday 29 February 2004, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1529 endorsing the deployment of a Multinational Interim Force to Haiti.
Operation New Horizons.
In a region of scarce resources, New Horizons engineering and medical exercises have significantly benefited the people of the Caribbean, while enhancing the capabilities of US Armed Forces to deploy and train in foreign environments. During 2001, Southern Command conducted three New Horizons exercises in the Caribbean area -- Bahamas, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia. Fiscal year 2002 saw three more New Horizons exercises in Barbados, Dominica, and Jamaica.
Operation Unified Response.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday 12 January 2010 collapsed the presidential palace, monuments, and the city's largest hospital. Shoddily built schools and houses lay in ruins across the densely populated city. Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told (CNN) Wednesday, he believes more than 100,000 people may be dead. Working hospitals were overflowing, and bodies lined the roadways. The International Red Cross said up to 3 million people have been affected. Development efforts have suffered severe setbacks because of political violence, lawlessness, corruption and natural disasters.
President Barack Obama directed a swift, coordinated effort from the U.S., saying "the people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble and to deliver the humanitarian relief of food, water and medicine that Haitians will need in the coming days." The United States has launched a major civilian and military response led by U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah, who says the immediate objective is to save lives.
Here’s what I Think.
Aid, not money, should be sent to help the Haitian people recover, to the extent their corrupt repressive government will allow from this current disaster.
I will not be voluntarily contributing any more money to Haiti or Haitians. Our voluntary tax-exempt donations and involuntary redirected tax payments and Federal aid contributions over our working lives appears to total about $15,000 dollars in today’s money, and I believe that’s much more than our fair share.
It will be a shame if any more of my hard earned overly taxed, money finds its way to Haiti, especially after the injuries, suffering, and disease from this terrible disaster have been relieved.
It is a mistake to keep giving the repressive government and wealthy elites of Haiti more money and resources to continue pillaging and abusing the ignorant people of Haiti.
If we keep shielding them from the penalties for their mistakes, or allowing them to escape their poor decisions, they will continue to make those same mistakes. If they are to improve themselves they must be allowed to understand the true and complete costs of their ignorant, destructive behaviors.
Ignorance, poverty, corruption, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and crime is what we have encouraged, and it’s what we tolerated, so that is what we have taught them that we will allow. And no matter how badly they act, the well-meaning will always shield them from their fate.
Let them suffer the pain and penalty of their bad choices and foolish behavior; perhaps they will eventually learn to save themselves, if not, they should never again be aided.
15 January 2010
Laws for All,
No Exemptions, No Exceptions, No Subsidies
No bills should be allowed to come to the floor in the House or Senate that excludes any citizen in good standing from any obligation, requirement or privilege granted in the language of the law.
A bill whose merit depends on or requires exemptions, exclusions, exceptions, subsidies or tariffs, or any form of special protection, is not equitable, and on its face unjust if it must penalize or subsidize other citizens in good standing to achieve its objectives or make compliance possible.
It is a poorly crafted bill if it depends upon pages and pages of explanation to justify disadvantaging someone who has done nothing improper and advantaging someone else who has done nothing exemplary, except for only existing.
The same would be true for righting a wrong, by wronging others. Reparations cannot depend upon disadvantaging someone new or more. If you cannot repair someone without doing others more harm, then don’t make the whole of the human condition worse.
Good laws should be simply stated, and the condition requiring a remedy easily understood, and affecting all citizens (not interlopers) in some way.
No bills should be allowed to come to the floor in the House or Senate that excludes any citizen in good standing from any obligation, requirement or privilege granted in the language of the law.
A bill whose merit depends on or requires exemptions, exclusions, exceptions, subsidies or tariffs, or any form of special protection, is not equitable, and on its face unjust if it must penalize or subsidize other citizens in good standing to achieve its objectives or make compliance possible.
It is a poorly crafted bill if it depends upon pages and pages of explanation to justify disadvantaging someone who has done nothing improper and advantaging someone else who has done nothing exemplary, except for only existing.
The same would be true for righting a wrong, by wronging others. Reparations cannot depend upon disadvantaging someone new or more. If you cannot repair someone without doing others more harm, then don’t make the whole of the human condition worse.
Good laws should be simply stated, and the condition requiring a remedy easily understood, and affecting all citizens (not interlopers) in some way.
09 January 2010
Progressives,
Misunderstand America
The socialist, communist, fascist, progressive movement (a few more Democrats than Republicans) has once again misunderstood American values.
Their formula of preying upon the most ignorant lowest motives of those they have traditionally manipulated has backfired on them.
The practice of naming a tax increase something that sounds good and valuable, like Health Care reform, is just impoverishing and dehumanizing more and more of the vulnerable ignorant and is readily apparent to even the most naïve non-citizen newcomers.
Stop trying to pass the massive Health Tax and Penalty Bill. No one wants to pay for more and get less, especially to give others something they won’t pay for, that many don’t want or need, and most haven’t earned.
The people have become even more cynical about government, the Presidency, and Congresses corruption and incompetence; their poll ratings are at all time lows because they don’t understand long held carefully distilled American values.
These people apparently only talk or listen to like-minded ideologues that clog the area around the beltway and overpopulated, big city, cosmopolitan, cocktail parties telling each other what the media elitists, academic snobs, and the politically correct think will gain them acceptance with their shallow companions.
It’s like expecting a talking parrot to think before it speaks, it won't.
Stop trying to block the First Amendment rights of others. Not just because you look stupid, but because it harms your corrupt cause and feels tyrannical to most Americans.
Stop demonizing those who disagree with you. It makes you look childish and weak.
All Americans citizens are entitled to freedom of speech. Your objectives and viewpoints are anti-American and in the distinct minority. If you don’t like being disregarded, reevaluate your radical beliefs and adjust them to something more rational with fewer unintended circumstances that most of us find objectionable. If you do, the majority may give them a moment’s consideration.
Progressive elitist principles and policies constantly repackaged and exhibited since the 1900’s are unworthy of consideration.
Stop trying to impose your ideology; if your ideas are worthy, many more people will choose them freely.
You might try presenting updated, carefully thought out, rational improvements to those tired, old, repeatedly discarded progressive ideas from the waste heap of history; maybe someone naïve will buy it; I’m not.
This nation can no longer afford to indulge your ignorant whimsy to avoid hurting your delicate feelings.
Update your argument or find a better cause.
The socialist, communist, fascist, progressive movement (a few more Democrats than Republicans) has once again misunderstood American values.
Their formula of preying upon the most ignorant lowest motives of those they have traditionally manipulated has backfired on them.
The practice of naming a tax increase something that sounds good and valuable, like Health Care reform, is just impoverishing and dehumanizing more and more of the vulnerable ignorant and is readily apparent to even the most naïve non-citizen newcomers.
Stop trying to pass the massive Health Tax and Penalty Bill. No one wants to pay for more and get less, especially to give others something they won’t pay for, that many don’t want or need, and most haven’t earned.
The people have become even more cynical about government, the Presidency, and Congresses corruption and incompetence; their poll ratings are at all time lows because they don’t understand long held carefully distilled American values.
These people apparently only talk or listen to like-minded ideologues that clog the area around the beltway and overpopulated, big city, cosmopolitan, cocktail parties telling each other what the media elitists, academic snobs, and the politically correct think will gain them acceptance with their shallow companions.
It’s like expecting a talking parrot to think before it speaks, it won't.
Stop trying to block the First Amendment rights of others. Not just because you look stupid, but because it harms your corrupt cause and feels tyrannical to most Americans.
Stop demonizing those who disagree with you. It makes you look childish and weak.
All Americans citizens are entitled to freedom of speech. Your objectives and viewpoints are anti-American and in the distinct minority. If you don’t like being disregarded, reevaluate your radical beliefs and adjust them to something more rational with fewer unintended circumstances that most of us find objectionable. If you do, the majority may give them a moment’s consideration.
Progressive elitist principles and policies constantly repackaged and exhibited since the 1900’s are unworthy of consideration.
Stop trying to impose your ideology; if your ideas are worthy, many more people will choose them freely.
You might try presenting updated, carefully thought out, rational improvements to those tired, old, repeatedly discarded progressive ideas from the waste heap of history; maybe someone naïve will buy it; I’m not.
This nation can no longer afford to indulge your ignorant whimsy to avoid hurting your delicate feelings.
Update your argument or find a better cause.
03 January 2010
Good Things
About Global Warming
With all the exaggerated claims of impending doom from global warming, I thought I might mention a few good things likely to occur if the planet warms noticeably.
Incidentally, wouldn’t it be interesting to discover that increased atmospheric greenhouse gases are caused by global warming from solar and geothermal sources; instead of greenhouse gases causing global warming
First, cold weather winter mortality rates are much higher than summer, so something about cold weather is more stressful to humans than hot. Make plans and provisions for both cooling and warming. One thing is obvious from earth’s history, climate changes will occur.
More atmospheric heat should accelerate the hydrologic cycle increasing potential rainfall everywhere, noticeably in arid and desert areas, increasing crop variety and yields worldwide. Increased rainfall will bring more abundant fresh water to all locations, oddly meaningful to arid polar regions that receive little annual precipitation. It will also speed up icecap melt contributing to coastal flooding, but much of it will evaporate increasing worldwide relative humidity, rainfall, and eventually fuller and new terrestrial rivers and lakes, and more abundant hydro-electric power.
During earths ancient history the atmosphere has had many times the current levels of green house gases. During the Jurassic period about eight times current levels, with planet wide temperatures perhaps 50 F degrees higher than today, with prolific plant, insect and animal life, although long before humans.
Increased carbon dioxide will fertilize rapid plant and crop growth feeding many more of the worlds starving people and covering barren landscapes helping to moderate higher temperatures. Increased insects will pollinate many more plants; bees should thrive and animals that eat insects will do well. Larger populations of self pollinating plants will thrive and evolve quickly; bad for the allergic, but, good for the hungry.
A greater variety of plant nutrition will be more widely available in larger quantity with less distribution cost with many plants, animals and insects ranging much farther and migrating much closer to the poles than anytime in recorded human history.
Human activity in colder climates is less economically efficient and infrastructure construction and maintenance are more costly. Clothing, food, housing and transportation are all more expensive in colder climates. Cooling occupyied spaces and pest control will be more expensive, as will the control of warm weather parasites and diseases.
So what is so bad about moderate global warming?
Mostly, businesses and governments can’t control it and therefore will find it more difficult to adopt quickly to tax and profit from it. The kinds of power and oppression that use the artificial scarcity of food, clothing, housing, health and security will be lost to dictators and despots, and they will have to resort to more outright violence and vulgar manipulations in plain view.
A person will be able to accumulate resources and wealth, replace ignorance, clamor toward freedom, and throw off the yoke of oppression and excessive taxation once again.
With all the exaggerated claims of impending doom from global warming, I thought I might mention a few good things likely to occur if the planet warms noticeably.
Incidentally, wouldn’t it be interesting to discover that increased atmospheric greenhouse gases are caused by global warming from solar and geothermal sources; instead of greenhouse gases causing global warming
First, cold weather winter mortality rates are much higher than summer, so something about cold weather is more stressful to humans than hot. Make plans and provisions for both cooling and warming. One thing is obvious from earth’s history, climate changes will occur.
More atmospheric heat should accelerate the hydrologic cycle increasing potential rainfall everywhere, noticeably in arid and desert areas, increasing crop variety and yields worldwide. Increased rainfall will bring more abundant fresh water to all locations, oddly meaningful to arid polar regions that receive little annual precipitation. It will also speed up icecap melt contributing to coastal flooding, but much of it will evaporate increasing worldwide relative humidity, rainfall, and eventually fuller and new terrestrial rivers and lakes, and more abundant hydro-electric power.
During earths ancient history the atmosphere has had many times the current levels of green house gases. During the Jurassic period about eight times current levels, with planet wide temperatures perhaps 50 F degrees higher than today, with prolific plant, insect and animal life, although long before humans.
Increased carbon dioxide will fertilize rapid plant and crop growth feeding many more of the worlds starving people and covering barren landscapes helping to moderate higher temperatures. Increased insects will pollinate many more plants; bees should thrive and animals that eat insects will do well. Larger populations of self pollinating plants will thrive and evolve quickly; bad for the allergic, but, good for the hungry.
A greater variety of plant nutrition will be more widely available in larger quantity with less distribution cost with many plants, animals and insects ranging much farther and migrating much closer to the poles than anytime in recorded human history.
Human activity in colder climates is less economically efficient and infrastructure construction and maintenance are more costly. Clothing, food, housing and transportation are all more expensive in colder climates. Cooling occupyied spaces and pest control will be more expensive, as will the control of warm weather parasites and diseases.
So what is so bad about moderate global warming?
Mostly, businesses and governments can’t control it and therefore will find it more difficult to adopt quickly to tax and profit from it. The kinds of power and oppression that use the artificial scarcity of food, clothing, housing, health and security will be lost to dictators and despots, and they will have to resort to more outright violence and vulgar manipulations in plain view.
A person will be able to accumulate resources and wealth, replace ignorance, clamor toward freedom, and throw off the yoke of oppression and excessive taxation once again.
05 December 2009
Want Lower Costs?
Increase Supply.
Fuel costs too high, increase supply. Electricity costs too high, increase supply. Medical costs too high, increase supply. It’s demand that determines supply
Do not subsidize fake demand. It’s false and only steals profit from the economy and reduces tax revenue.
Reduce market restrictions and excessive unnecessary government regulation, restrictions and fees.
Create freer, fairer and more open markets that can evolve quickly to meet new and emerging demands.
A word about conservation, and the senseless and wasteful misuse of anything; no one should take more than they will use, or horde, or try to save things that cannot be preserved.
Who buys more fuel than they need and doesn’t use it? Who buys more electricity than they want and just wastes it? Or buys more than they will eat just to let it spoil; not any sane person.
You cannot meet this nation’s economic and security needs by conserving energy, or by artificially raising its price. These actions will reduce supply and increase the price of everything. Provide more beneficial energy. If you want consumers to buy energy from new production methods instead of old, it must be plentiful, reliable, practical, and its total costs must be competitive.
Everything we eat is grown or raised using energy; processed, transported, stored, distributed, displayed, and sold; or manufactured, transported, warehoused, transported, displayed, sold, and carried home using energy. And then more energy is necessary to use or store it for future use. And even more energy is required to prepare for and go to the work to earn the resources necessary to sustain life.
If there are 10 actions using energy from creation to final use, and you add 10 percent to the cost of energy in each of them, you could double the cost adding 100% to everything you need and use including whatever you do to earn the money to buy them.
First, the government should adopt policies that encourage, not subsidize the production of more fuel, more gas, more electricity and not restrict it. Crisis exaggeration and radical policies by the government are thwarting demand.
Second, encourage alternative energy methods by research and incentive helping to make them economical, not by subsidy or restrictive conservation, not by making existing methods artificially expensive or restricting supply.
Fuel costs too high, increase supply. Electricity costs too high, increase supply. Medical costs too high, increase supply. It’s demand that determines supply
Do not subsidize fake demand. It’s false and only steals profit from the economy and reduces tax revenue.
Reduce market restrictions and excessive unnecessary government regulation, restrictions and fees.
Create freer, fairer and more open markets that can evolve quickly to meet new and emerging demands.
A word about conservation, and the senseless and wasteful misuse of anything; no one should take more than they will use, or horde, or try to save things that cannot be preserved.
Who buys more fuel than they need and doesn’t use it? Who buys more electricity than they want and just wastes it? Or buys more than they will eat just to let it spoil; not any sane person.
You cannot meet this nation’s economic and security needs by conserving energy, or by artificially raising its price. These actions will reduce supply and increase the price of everything. Provide more beneficial energy. If you want consumers to buy energy from new production methods instead of old, it must be plentiful, reliable, practical, and its total costs must be competitive.
Everything we eat is grown or raised using energy; processed, transported, stored, distributed, displayed, and sold; or manufactured, transported, warehoused, transported, displayed, sold, and carried home using energy. And then more energy is necessary to use or store it for future use. And even more energy is required to prepare for and go to the work to earn the resources necessary to sustain life.
If there are 10 actions using energy from creation to final use, and you add 10 percent to the cost of energy in each of them, you could double the cost adding 100% to everything you need and use including whatever you do to earn the money to buy them.
First, the government should adopt policies that encourage, not subsidize the production of more fuel, more gas, more electricity and not restrict it. Crisis exaggeration and radical policies by the government are thwarting demand.
Second, encourage alternative energy methods by research and incentive helping to make them economical, not by subsidy or restrictive conservation, not by making existing methods artificially expensive or restricting supply.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)