The Immigration Debate and the Boston Terrorists

The AP has this mushball story today:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Boston Marathon bombings cast a shadow Friday over the start of debate on legislation to remake the U.S. immigration system, as some Republicans argued that the role of two immigrant suspects raised questions about gaps in the system.

There was no suggestion that the two suspects, brothers who had lived in Dagestan neighboring Chechnya in southern Russia, had entered the U.S. illegally. And authors of a sweeping new immigration bill, which got its first hearing Friday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued that their legislation would improve U.S. national security because the estimated 11 million people now living here illegally would have to come forward and undergo background checks.

Those 11 million living here illegally can never pass a background check.  Their first step into the country was to violate US federal law.  They fail.  Every one of them.

There are plenty among that number who have committed further crimes, in fact, there are huge numbers who have committed crimes.  “Sanctuary cities” that don’t turn over illegal aliens to ICE for deportation are full of them, in no small part because local law enforcement does nothing to them.

The Boston terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev could’ve been deported already.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a wild shootout with police, was a legal U.S. resident who nevertheless could have been removed from the country after a 2009 domestic violence arrest and conviction, according to a Judicial Watch source. That means the Obama administration missed an opportunity to deport Tsarnaev but evidently didn’t feel he represented a big enough threat.

Other reporting confirms Tsarnaev’s arrest for domestic violence but we’re seeking confirmation of a conviction. Nevertheless he would have been subject to removal for the arrest itself.

This falls under crimes of moral turpitude, which are deportable offenses.

Of course, the immigration bill is about amnesty for illegal aliens and creating more Democrat voters, cheap labor for businesses, and changing the nature of the nation into one that has a huge underclass to rule, and a ruling overclass that distributes the handouts looted from the evaporating middle class.  It’s how socialists stay in power and how socialism and class warfare works.  Whether or not terrorists stay in the country is irrelevant to them.

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They care about neither criminals nor terrorists.  To give some idea of how bad sanctuary cities and sanctuary states are, consider that in Massachussetts, the illegal aliens can hit state representatives while driving drunk and laugh because they know there will be no consequences.

What’s going to happen when you start “background checking” all these illegals and find out they’ve stolen social security numbers, have numerous arrests for DUIs, have numerous arrests for domestic abuse, and such?  It’s all very prevalent among illegal aliens, because many of them tend to be low-class unskilled laborers who well know they can commit crimes because the police will do nothing to them because the politicians will deny the law.

To give a perfect anecdotal example of the sanctuary city mentality, a friend of mine rode with state troopers in WI.  The trooper encountered a car that wanted to race with his unmarked police car, and he obliged just enough so he could make an arrest and take the idiot straight to jail.  When they hit a high enough speed (in a safe area), the trooper pulled over the racer.  Turned out the racer, doing 100 mph as his top speed, was an illegal alien.  No arrest.  The illegal alien walked because it’s WI state policy to not arrest illegals.

Every Democrat immigration bill is about expanding their base.  It’s about destroying the nation and securing Democrat power through the Curley Effect, and it’s about giving away the nation because the Ruling Class Democrats don’t feel like you’ve earned your life – no matter how hard you worked or fought for it, so they’re going to give the nation to someone they feel is more deserving.  After all, you didn’t build that.

School Vouchers, Milton Friedman, and Alabama

Milton Friedman’s distilled short version of why vouchers work:

HotAir has the news roundup on Alabama’s introduction of a voucher system, where the left reacted with rage.

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Milton Friedman’s elaborate, thorough version of why vouchers work, why centralization is a problem, and why decentralization and freedom to choose solves many educational problems:

Around 18:40, he begins to discuss “the modern view”, which is much of what Cass Sunstein and the masters-of-men anointed elite regulators believe.  Friedman then goes on to explain how that relates to schooling, and the collectivist vs. individualist view of the purpose of education.

Death and Taxes and Death Taxes

Via HotAir, a reminder that we’re about to be taxed after death.

Part of the upcoming “Forward, over the fiscal cliff!”-scenario we’re potentially looking at includes a big hike in estate taxes (or, as they’re perhaps more aptly called, death taxes). Currently, the estate tax is applied to inherited assets at 35 percent after a $5 million exemption; most Republicans and even a mix of Democrats are in favor of lessening or eliminating the death tax altogether, but if President Obama gets the tax deal he wants, estate taxes will go up to 45 percent after a $3.5 million exemption.

In the event of neither a Bush-era extension nor President Obama’s plan, however, going over the cliff means that the estate tax shoots back up to the pre-Bush level of 55 percent after a $1 million exemption — and that has disastrous implications for our economy (which is just great, because we clearly don’t have enough disastrous economic implications looming over our heads already).

HotAir has a good video by Milton Friedman that breaks it down a bit more.

For those not quite clear on what that 55% of 1 million really entails, revisit this:

There’s A Homeplace Under Fire Tonight In The Heartland

Remember the first three planks of the Communist Manifesto:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

And it’s not just communists, there are also the opportunists putting up barriers to competition by are pulling the ladder up behind them to further cement themselves as Ruling Class oligarchs:

As the fiscal debate focuses on whether to raise the federal income tax rates for the top 2 percent of Americans, other possible tax increases have taken a backseat in the debate.

But a group of billionaires led by Warren Buffett and George Soros to change that — by raising rates for the much-maligned estate tax.

The wealthy taxpayers  — organized by Responsible Wealth, which advocates for “progressive tax policies” — have signed a pledge calling for a “responsible estate tax proposal” as part of any fiscal cliff deal. In addition to Buffett and Soros, signatories of the pledge include other left-leaning billionaires, including Bill Gates Sr., Richard Rockefeller and Abigail Disney, as well as politicians like former President Jimmy Carter.

Let’s say you’re a super-wealthy conglomerate hedge fund megacorporation owner whose only real threats are from more agile upstarts.  What better way to destroy them than by using the tax code?

Family farm owner dies?  Drown his family in taxes so they have to sell the farm.  Small business owner dies?  Drown his family in taxes so they have to sell the business.

Responsible Wealth is calling for only the first $4 million of a couple’s income to not be subject to a tax. After that, it would be taxed at 45 percent, which would gradually rise on the largest incomes.

Yeah, only.  So if you’re land-rich and cash-poor, like many farmers and ranchers, you’re up shit creek.  If you have a few thousand acres of land you bought for cheap decades ago, the government will go in and appraise it again, adjust it for inflation, adjust it for whatever Agenda 21 zoning crap is going on, and adjust it for residences and improvements, and when they come up a few million higher than it was before you die, well… your kids are now stuck with that bill.  Or, you can sell… and who’s going to be the big agricultural conglomerate there to snatch up your land, bulldoze your farmhouse and barn, and plant some genetic uber corn where you buried your old bird dog Duke?  Oh, that’ll be Warren “TAX YOU TILL YOU F***ING DIE BECAUSE I GOT MINE B****ES!!!” Buffet.

The death tax itself is a destructive, regressive, horrible tax instituted by communists and their sympathizers.  Again, it’s in the bloody manifesto.  The death tax argument usually goes “well, they benefited in life, so they should pay back”.  What that ignores is that they paid taxes their whole lives.  Those who are veterans signed a line that said “up to and including my life”; and yet some bureaucrat communist oligarch tells them they need to “give back to society?”

“It’s shameful to leave revenue on the table from those who can afford to pay,” said Rockefeller, the great-grandson of industrialist John D. Rockefeller, said in a conference call organized by Responsible Wealth Tuesday.

So because they have something to take, it’s shameful not to take it from them by force?  This isn’t “revenue”, it’s confiscation from the citizen by force.

John Bogle, founder and former CEO of The Vanguard Group, added: ”If we’ve been privileged in life and weren’t paying our fair share of taxes, somebody else is going to have to pay them. It will inevitably be those who are less able to do so.”

Bogle, like Soros, Buffet, and the rest, can always opt to pay more taxes.  They can always cut a check for more.

“Every step, large or small, to come after that deficit is good,” Bogle said. “Who bears the burden? … Our position is that those who have most resources to bear the burden ought to step up to the plate.”

His position is that we need to liquidate the kulaks.  He’s the oligarch, they’re the damned tight-fisted landed peasants.  Kill the have-some want-more farmer.

 

French Socialist: “We’re Just Doing What Obama Does”

From CNBC, via Drudge:

The French politician who said Indian steel company ArcelorMittal should leave the country has told CNBC that his government is only acting like U.S. President Barack Obama.

Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, a member of the governing Socialist party, caused controversy last week when he said that the Indian company, which employs close to 20,000 people in France, should leave after it said it would have to close down a factory.

The French government announced on Thursday that it could nationalize the factory in question, with backing from an unnamed businessman.

The news raised the specter of the nationalizations of the early 1980s, which were instigated by Hollande’s predecessor Francois Mitterrand.

Montebourg told CNBC after a meeting with trade unions in Paris: “Barack Obama’s nationalized. The Germans are nationalizing. All countries are nationalizing. I’ve also noticed the British nationalized 6 banks.”

Montebourg is believed to be referring to the takeover of struggling automakers by the U.S. government earlier in the financial crisis.

Y’know, when socialists justify their actions by saying the US president is a socialist and he’s nationalizing industries, that’s bad.

That’s like when Pravda says you’re a communist.

Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it.  He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia.  Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.

Normally it’d be so easy to say “it’s Pravda, synonymous with anti-American lies”, but when international socialists are using Obama as an example of how their nationalizing policies should expand… well… if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, and has advisors who are self-avowed ducks, cabinet members that consider ducks their favorite philosophers, and it was raised by ducks, it stands a pretty good chance of being a duck… especially when other ducks are saying “he’s a duck”.

Old Soviet Jokes Become The New American Reality

I’d laugh more, but The People’s Cube is predicting the future.  The beginning of the piece is about how the author moved from the former USSR to the US, and how the jokes didn’t translate because of the wild differences between the US and the USSR.  I studied the former Soviet Union in college, and many of my professors and instructors had lived under the USSR’s rule and managed to escape one way or another.  The “great ideas” of communism and socialism are reprehensible, and a turn away from self-reliant liberty back to the thousands of years of human history in which man has lived subjugated by tyrannical rulers and governments.  It is very sobering to realize that we live today in an anomaly, where the mass of men are for the most part free… for now.

With our fundamental transformation firmly underway, things are beginning to change, and the jokes are beginning to fit.

Old Soviet Jokes become the new American reality

The six contradictions of socialism in the USSR

• There is no unemployment – yet no one is working.
• No one is working – yet the factory quotas are fulfilled.
• The factory quotas are fulfilled – yet the stores have nothing to sell.
• The stores have nothing to sell – yet people’s homes are full of stuff.
• People’s homes are full of stuff – yet no one is happy.
• No one is happy – yet the voting is always unanimous.

Already in America I discovered that most of my old Soviet jokes didn’t work in translation. It wasn’t so much the language difference as the fact that Americans had no first-hand knowledge of a totalitarian government, ideological uniformity, and shameless propaganda.

But that is changing. The more America “progresses” back to the Soviet model, the more translatable the old Soviet jokes become.

Let’s see how an old Soviet joke can be rewritten into a new American joke.

The six contradictions of socialism in the United States of America

• America is capitalist and greedy – yet half of the population is subsidized.
• Half of the population is subsidized – yet they think they are victims.
• They think they are victims – yet their representatives run the government.
• Their representatives run the government – yet the poor keep getting poorer.
• The poor keep getting poorer – yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
• They have things that people in other countries only dream about – yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

There’s more where it came from – or where we’re going, whichever the case may be.

The six contradictions are worth re-reading, as the whole post and the whole thread are also very worth reading.

A few others are less funny as they become truer:

“Thanks to Obama we have all the clean energy we need!”
“Yes, but now we have no electricity or gasoline.”

These videos aren’t on the People’s Cube post, but should be:

Update:  I just spent an hour or so reading a lot of Soviet/FSU/USSR jokes and stumbled on this one, from “Russian and Ukranian Jokes in English“:

- Why do authorities in United States respect their people?
- Because their people can easily and legally buy fire-arms.

It’s perhaps the only heartening thing in the entire slew of jokes that are otherwise depressing, and given that it’s the emergency last-ditch dump-the-warp-core option, it’s not very cheery either.

Tax Cheat Timmy Geithner on Eliminating the Debt Ceiling, Keynesian Idiocy to the Keynesian Endpoint

At video on HotAir, Geithner is asked if we should get rid of the debt ceiling.

Interviewer: Do you agree with Alan Greenspan that we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling?

Geithner: Oh absolutely.

Tim Geithner can’t pay his own taxes, so there’s zero reason he should’ve been Treasury Secretary to begin with, but that’s just another in the long string of Obama appointments that are glossed over entirely by the media.  Just a reminder, though.

ZeroHedge asks what Geithner will do now, as it seems he’s leaving the Obama administration, and briefly recaps his past, which also ties in with his statement above:

Tim Geithner’s public “servant” tenure has not been without its blemishes: from his deplorable run as the (figure)head of the New York Fed (from 2003 until 2009), when the entire financial system literally imploded under his watch, to his epic failing up as Hank Paulson’s replacement as treasury Secretary of the United States, despite his legendary inability to navigate the Minotaurian labyrinth that is the TurboTax income tax flowchart, the Dartmouth alum has had his share of run ins with adversity (and adversity won). Of course, Geithner’s tenure in charge of the Treasury in the past 4 years has been somewhat mollified by the fact that here too here was merely a figurehead, and the true entity that runs the US printing presses is none other than the JPM and Goldman Sachs co-chaired Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee (for more on the TBAC read here and especially here as pertains to the former LTCM trader and current head of JPM’s CIO group), meaning that the US Treasury, just like the Fed, are merely branches of the one true power in US governance: Wall Street. Geithnerian figureheadedness aside, the one undeniable fact is that Tim Geithner’s days as head of the Treasury are now numbered: he has made it quite clear that he will not accompany Obama (should the incumbent be reelected) into his second term. So what is a career “public servant” to do once the public no longer has any interest in retaining his services? Bloomberg’s Deborah Solomon has some suggestions…

First, it may come as a surprise to some, that just like virtually every other central planner currently in charge of deciding the fate of billions of people in US and around the world, Geithner has never really had much interaction with real life:

Despite the fact that much of the public — not to mention some lawmakers on Capitol Hill — assume Geithner worked on Wall Street, he never has. Instead, he has spent most of his career in public service. Before taking the Treasury post in 2009, Geithner headed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for six years and worked at the International Monetary Fund. His main private-sector job was at Kissinger Associates Inc.

 The years in public service — particularly engaging in diplomacy with domestic and foreign partners — left a deep impression on Geithner, infusing him with a sense of purpose that he might find lacking on Wall Street (see: “Why I Left Goldman Sachs” by Greg Smith).

This by itself isn’t to much of a surprise, but consider what the debt ceiling is.  It’s an artificial limit set by congress that says “we’re not spending money we don’t have past this mark”.  It’s a way (though not a great way) to somewhat reign in spending by government.

Tim Geithner, who can’t figure out how to pay his own taxes, has been a Treasury Secretary who’s functionally done nothing but print more money.  His plan to deal with the economy and government debt has been Quantitative Easing 1, 2, and now Ad Infinitum.  Of course he’d want to eliminate the debt ceiling.  Then the government can just spend spend spend into oblivion without even a hint of restraint.  Besides, Geithner is part of the powerful elite ruling class, and he won’t be living a life impacted by his own decisions, whether he leaves as Treasury Secretary or stays on.

Remember this condemnation from the Chicoms, from last year?

SHANGHAI — China, the largest foreign holder of United States debt, said Saturday that Washington needed to “cure its addiction to debts” and “live within its means,” just hours after the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded America’s long-term debt.

…

“The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” read the commentary, which was published in Chinese newspapers.

When the govt. is printing bonds and TIPS and everything else to sell to the Federal Reserve and all the mess that is Quantitative Easing, and especially if the debt ceiling is removed, at best, all this becomes is a longer game of kicking the can down the road, assuming someone wants to solve the problem.

The downright scary part is what FerFal wrote about in Argentina:

As for the rest of the population, nothing has ever worked as well for the peronist party as keeping those families poor and numerous, and the Ks repeat that same recipe. The handouts for one reason or another make sure those votes keep coming. Handouts per child, for political support, its all there if you show up to the rallies or protest against the companies that aren’t “team players” with the government.  If you are a company owner, in the legal or illegal pharmaceutical business, a good amount of donations will go a long way in ensuring the health of your business. We’re (sic) does the money come from? Stealing the retirement funds helped, so does sucking the blood out of what’s left of the middle class through taxes…

What if they really don’t want to solve the problem?  What if they just want to destroy everything?  Fundamental transformation?  The super-rich Democrats have for the last few decades managed to paint themselves as a party that cares about the poor through giving handouts, and they’ve done well politically with it.  There are entire regions in cities that vote exclusively for Democrats, and mostly because they’re areas that are clearly politically defined as handout-recipients and usually along ethnic lines.  Thomas Sowell has written extensively on how the Democrat party has abused the urban black community into poverty and squalor and convinced them that the Democrats will save them, a disturbing mass Munchausen by proxy.  Democrats by their Alinsky playbook mean to go out, create a crisis, and “solve” it; they never let a good crisis go to waste, and instituting a crisis in order to further their own political goals is something that has been done many times before.

And while there are some in the party who do want that, there are others, like Geithner, who are probably just ignoramuses, or insulated “geniuses” convinced of their own superior intellect who don’t understand that spending money you don’t have doesn’t work forever.  Isolating purely the economic side of it and ignoring the political power grabs that are coming from it, you simply cannot kick the can down the road forever.

Apparently there’s a nice term for when this ends, now.  A Keynesian Endpoint.

Keynesian endpoint is a phrase coined by PIMCO’s Anthony Crescenzi in an email note to clients in June 2010 to describe the point where governments can no longer stimulate and rescue their economies through increased government spending due to endemic levels of pre-existing government debt.

“Time, devaluations, and debt restructurings might be the only way out for many nations,” Crescenzi wrote in an e-mailed note titled “Keynesian Endpoint” that referenced the Great Depression era economist John Maynard Keynes. Debt-fueled spending programs aimed at combating the global financial crisis of 2008 are among policy tools now “being seen as a magic elixir that has morphed into poison.”

Margaret Thatcher summed it up well years ago:

Of course, while the financial system may fail on this, there are a lot of scapegoats to go kill and enemies to destroy, and a lot more people to blame.  The Democrats are already gearing up to blame the Republicans for the fiscal cliff – it benefits them to go over the cliff and hurt the country so they can blame Republicans.

There’s A Homeplace Under Fire Tonight In The Heartland

Except it’s not the bankers of the 1980s (the origins of which could be a series of posts on its own)… it’s the GOVERNMENT that’s going to be taking lands and homes away.

Via FOX:

Rancher Kevin Kester works dawn to dusk, drives a 12-year-old pick-up truck and earns less than a typical bureaucrat in Washington D.C., yet the federal government considers him rich enough to pay the estate tax — also known as the “death tax.”

And with that tax set to soar at the beginning of 2013 without some kind of intervention from Congress, farmers and ranchers like Kester are waiting anxiously.

“There is no way financially my kids can pay what the IRS is going to demand from them nine months after death and keep this ranch intact for their generation and future generations,” said Kester, of the Bear Valley Ranch in Central California.

Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.

For supporters of a high estate tax, which is imposed on somebody’s estate after death, Kester is the kind of person they rarely mention. He doesn’t own a mansion. He’s not the CEO of a multi-national. But because of his line of work, he owns a lot of property that would be subject to a lot of tax.

“Our number one goal is to repeal the estate tax, to get rid of it, not have it for every generation, when I die and my kids die and so on,” he told Fox News. “For everyone to have to re-purchase the ranch or farm over and over for each generation, that’s inherently unjust. So what we’re doing is asking our politicians to understand that and repeal the estate tax.”

Not going to happen, Kevin.  Your land is going away.  This is part of the plan to equalize wealth by destroying you.  It is unfair that you worked hard and earned something.

From a couple paragraphs later:

“The idea behind the estate tax is to prevent the very wealthy among us from accumulating vast fortunes that they can pass along to the next generation,” said Patrick Lester, director of Federal Fiscal Policy with the progressive think tank — OMB Watch.

Many Democrats argue the tax promotes equality among classes, especially in capital gains — or stocks passed from one generation to another. Since stocks are only taxed when they are sold, the government can’t profit from long-term investments without the estate tax.

“Very large portions of very wealthy estates are tied up in stocks and they have never been taxed,” said Lester. “The estate tax is one of the ways we make sure the wealthy pay a little bit more as an overall share of their wealth and income compared to low-income individuals.”

For those unfamiliar with how this idea works, I go to the first three planks of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

That’s what the Death Tax/Estate Tax is.  It’s the most critical part of communism – destroying wealth and destroying Jefferson’s ideal American, the yeoman farmer.  This is just calling for the liquidation of the kulaks.

Worth noting is who imported this communist drivel:

The estate tax dates back to 1916 when then-President Woodrow Wilson imposed the tax of 1 to 10 percent on the wealthy because World War I reduced federal government revenues. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the tax rose to 77 percent, as Congress tried to prevent wealth from becoming concentrated among a few powerful and super-rich families.

One used it to fund a war we didn’t belong in, the other to crush prosperous American citizens… in order to defend the existing rich from the new rich.  The Ruling Class kept the Country Class down, using the best tools of oppression – communist ideas.

Obama to Argentinize Businesses?, Warnings from Ferfal in Argentina

That’s the prediction the folks over at Astute Bloggers are making.  The full post only takes a minute to read, mostly citing the Hostess strike and the soon-to-happen Black Friday Walmart strike, and sums up with this:

NICO (WHO LIVES IN ARGENTINA) LEFT A VERY IMPORTANT COMMENT. I THINK IT IS LIKELY WE WILL SEE THIS HAPPEN WITHIN THE NEXT YEAR:

Starting to sound a lot like Argentina. Here though the government can force you to keep your company running since shutting it down could land you in prison.

People here say the government doesn’t understand how business works. I am sure they do. But they also understand how to REDISTRIBUTE wealth. Unions are the best way to do that. Unions have the power to bankrupt a company (and they do), but here the government has the power to force the company to remain open to every last dime that the evil rich guy had gets distributed!

For those who missed what happened in Argentina, here’s the short version.  In the 90s and into the 2000s, Argentina was hurting.  The socialists in power decided to mess with the currency.  Inflation and loss of value of the Argentine dollar followed, and pretty soon those who had money had lost it.  Those who had lots of money never felt it, and gave handouts to the newly poor, making them dependent on government.

Years ago there was a poster on The High Road (which used to be Oleg Volk’s forum, but that’s another story) named FerFal, an architecture student from Argentina.  He wrote a long series of Q&As on how to be a modern survivalist.  Really good, really interesting stuff.  The original posts can still be found and are full of good info, but he also went on to write his own blog, and a book – “Surviving the Economic Collapse” (under his name, Fernando Aguirre).

I read a lot of his posts a long time ago, and now I’m probably going to get the book.  It’s not the kind of thing I want to think about as actively happening.  I’d like to engage in the normalcy bias and just assume the USA will go on being the USA, but with all the changes in the last few years, it’s something that can’t really be denied as a possibility.  From the criminal actions of the current government in Fast and Furious to the coverup of Benghazi to Quantitative Easing 1, 2, and ad infinitum, things are changing.

I suggest reading some of FerFal’s posts at his blog.  A couple of fairly recent excerpts, just to give you an idea:

And So It Ends For Argentina:

Some of the events I’ve written about have been hard to digest. Even though I’m firmly against the doom and gloom fascination so common in the survival and preparedness world, there’s times when you just have to tell it as it is. You can’t disguise the death of a person you know, or relate incidents of crime and violence looking through pink-shaded glasses because one extreme is just as bad as the other. The nature of the topics discussed here are serious, sometimes matters of life and death, so that’s why to a certain nouvel readership it might seem dark to read. Even with a pragmatic eye and objective point of view none of this reads like a walk in the park.

As I write this, I can’t avoid feeling two very clear sensations. The first one I can only explain by saying that it’s like stepping out of a boat just as it finishes its slow, decadent sinking and finally goes under the surface. The second one is genuine sadness. Of all the posts I’ve written, this is without a doubt the saddest one I’ve written. I’m not talking about the loss of culture, standards of living or the death of a friend. Its not about the starvation of children of violence towards people close to me. It’s about all that and more. It’s about the death of a country itself.

As the press all over the world talks about the political success of the current administration, and mentions the “flourishing”, prosperous Argentina, a clear minority which I’m part of sees things differently. It makes you wonder and ask yourself a few other things as well. Who writes all these praises? What kind of data do they use to make such positive statements? How can a country be booming economically, yet keeps having shantytowns grow at an accelerating rate, poverty, misery and decadence never backing down one inch, and the 3^rd greatest inflation in the planet as the icing on the cake? After reading some of the emails people sent me on the “success” of Argentina, I wonder if its just innocent stupidity, lack of professionalism or if there’s more to it than meets the eye and there are other intentions behind it.

Argentina was fatally wounded almost ten years ago and Argentina as I knew it died yesterday, October 23, 2011, when Ms. Kirchner was re-elected  with over 50% of the votes, gaining complete control of the country. She now controls the executive of course, but also the congress, unions and even the media through the Kirchner Media Law.  The headlines of the world consider this something of a surprise, a small number of Argentines such as myself consider this the culmination of a decade long process that started with the destruction of opposing parties by any means, legal or not, the indoctrination of the generations to come through several channels including the mandatory “Citizen Formation Studies” in schools and even an officially approved version of history. It seems insane, but the “History” I was taught twenty years ago is different from the one my son is taught, much worse, its different from the recent history I SAW with my own eyes.

One can only wonder how can such an authoritarian leader earn so much public support? Wasn’t it bad enough when they controlled the media through an unconstitutional law, or what about our retirement funds begin stolen (nationalized) right in our faces?

Consider the Democrat threat to tax IRAs which surfaced a few years back, and to nationalize 401k plans.

Update: Obama begins push for new national retirement system.  Just to back those other two assertions up about retirement funds getting stolen by the government.

A recent hearing sponsored by the Treasury and Labor Departments marked the beginning of the Obama Administration’s effort to nationalize the nation’s pension system and to eliminate private retirement accounts including IRA’s and 401k plans, NSC is warning.

More from Ferfal – 8N Mega Protest in Argentina:

… The name 8N is in reference to 7D, next December 7^th, the day the government is supposed to take over the Clarín Media group which is the last bastion of free speech in Argentina. This is possible thanks to a recent media law called “Ley de Medios K” which the government swiftly approved so as to take over printed press, TV and radio.
Tonights 8N is a popular outcry against that, but also against the government not recognizing both the financial problems and most important, the crime problems that the K government refuses to admit. Most of my readers are well aware of this huge issue, and were often surprised not to see more reference to it from other sources.  Tonights protest is an outcry to such censorship and denial of such an obvious problem that rips through the lives of Argentines each day.

This protest is a clear grass roots movement, organized by people that are simply fed up. Of course, politicians try to take advantage of the protest but due to popular request most politicians from opposing parties said that while they do support the claims of 8N, they will not go themselves or send people with flags so as to not pollute a legitimate popular claim. Unlike pro government “popular” rallies, these aren’t people that are paid to go protest and take the streets, these are mostly working class and middle class people that feel identified with what the protest stands for: Acceptance of the crime problem in Argentina, that the government acknowledges the true inflation instead of cooking the numbers, and that the government stops meddling with peoples business in terms of personal freedom and freedom of press. I’ll change channels if I don’t like watching one, you are not supposed to decide for me what I read, listen on the radio or watch on TV. Those that identify with these claims will have a chance to make themselves heard tonight. The protest is not only in Argentina, but also in other places where Argentines expats are living, most of us forced to live elsewhere because of the current situation in Argentina.

I don’t believe it will cause Cristina Kirchner to resign as president, even though she may want to after tonight. Most people are making it clear that they do NOT want her to resign, most just want her to listen and stop acting like a dictator (which she will not do, because that’s exactly what she is) but we learned the damage that kind of thing does to a democracy. I believe it might just stop her enough so as to not seek a change in the constitution for indefinite reelections. That alone will be enough. It may also give strength to other political sectors so that Argentina may have a true chance of finally rebuilding itself in the next elections. My American friends, take note. This could be you 1-4 years from now.

Economic Inequality: A Small Price To Pay For Staying Human

A really good article by Oleg Atbashian over at The People’s Cube:

To paraphrase Baudelaire, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world of the moral superiority of collectivism. According to Ayn Rand, if we don’t convince the world otherwise, nothing else will work. Our greatest ally in this fight is human nature. Our greatest asset is morality itself, which is really, truly, undeniably, and absolutely on our side.

Today’s political debates often end up in the following compromise: capitalism may be more economically efficient, but it’s no moral match to economic equality that benefits most people. But the only way economic equality can benefit people is by pandering to their class envy. In all other aspects — economical, political, cultural, philosophical, and spiritual — it’s a dastardly, immoral cause.

~

To begin with, it is the efficiency of capitalism that benefits most people. Among other things, it raises everyone’s living standards and quality of life; expands consumer choices; boosts innovation that reduces the share of low-paying, mind-numbing manual jobs; increases the pool of well-paid professional jobs; gives the poor access to things that only the rich could enjoy a short while ago; promotes the creation of new cures of diseases; extends life expectancy and makes old age much more enjoyable.

The alternative to capitalism — whatever one would like to call it — is the loss of freedom, loss of choices, government corruption, and moral decay. What do we get in return? The vague promise of economic equality.

But in human reality, complete economic equality cannot be achieved. A century of collectivist social experiments around the world has proven three undeniable facts: One, government-enforced economic equality results in a forced inequality of a powerless, impoverished populace ruled by a corrupt elite. Two, the main obstacle to economic equality is human nature. Three, human nature cannot be changed, no matter the effort to re-educate, indoctrinate, or punish the violators.

An essential part of everyone’s human nature is what collectivists are maligning as greed. Generally speaking, it is a normal desire of all humans to achieve a better life for themselves and their children. In a free capitalist system, “greed-driven” achievers engage in lawful productive work, start businesses, and build things. In a restrictive socialist system, to achieve a better station in life, one must either join the corrupt government apparatus, or become part of the criminal underworld with its vast shadow economy. The alternative is to succumb to misery and, very likely, alcoholism or worse. In the end, capitalism brings out the best in people; socialism brings out the worst.

How worthy and moral can an ideal be that punishes achievement and criminalizes human nature?

Read the rest at The People’s Cube.

Worth noting is that Atbashian did Soviet agitprop back before the USSR fell, and thus learned much of this through direct experience by being on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Dolores Huerta: Recipient of Our Nation’s Highest Award for Civilians

We at the Patriot Perspective have introduced you to this lady before: Two Ducks in a Pond – Dolores Huerta and Hilda Solis

President Barack Obama awards American labor leader and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday.

 AP Photo

 

The last time we discussed Ms. Huerta, she and Hilda Solis were pushing a federal program aimed at getting farm workers, “documented or not” federal aid. We went on to further discuss Ms. Huerta’s speech at an Arizona Highschool which was filled with socialist rhetoric.

Fast forward now to May 29, 2012.

From Mydesert.com:

Dolores Huerta, an icon of California’s farm labor movement, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday for her lifelong work promoting civil rights.

For those of you aren’t familiar with this award here is some info on it.

She received the award for promoting civil rights? You might want to check and see which rights Ms. Huerta favors. At LosCulturas.com, a small bio, some accomplishments, along with several organizations Ms. Huerta has affiliated herself with. Would you believe that the first organization listed are the Democratic Socialist of America? Never in these United States would I have thought to see a socialist president awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor on another socialist, who espouses the cause of illegal immigrants and finding ways for said illegals to received taxpayer money to help their families that shouldn’t be here in the first place.

This is the country we live in now. Wealth Redistribution, open borders, massive deficits, unmanned drones flying our skies in the guise of public safety, and these are just a few of the issues occurring as the country is pushed down the path on the road, (as Shorttimer would say) “…to a glorious soviet socialist republic.”