Who is the Ruling Class? They Exposed Themselves Last Night

Let me start by saying that I have a deep reverence for John McCain as an American hero of the last century. In his currently stricken state, it might seem that he is a poor choice of starting point for this particular argument. I would argue that exactly the opposite is true. For more on the other side of Senator McCain, here is a good primer.

Last night he and two other Republicans drove a stake through the heart of the attempt to stop the nationalization of health care. He left the care of his own doctors and flew to Washington for that express purpose. This is the very pinnacle of ruling class hubris. Whilst engaged in a battle for his own life and taking advantage of a level health care that most Americans can only dream of, he flew across the continent to cast a vote against the tide of failed government interference in the market for medical care that has succeeded only in breaking the system to the point that we are on the brink of an irresistible movement to take freedom out of health care altogether and institute “single payer” government control.

Leaving aside the illogic of increasing the control of the government in order to “fix” what the government broke in the first place, I want to focus on the people whose ”leadership” keeps us digging while it becomes more and more improbable that we could ever climb out of this hole into which we have all, leaders and constituents, dug ourselves.

The most privileged people in our country are arrogant and self-important. But they are still dependent on the votes and confidence of the public. To convince the voting public, themselves and each other that they are magnanimous and trustworthy, they make public shows of “compassion”. They crusade to expand insurance coverage for “the uninsured”. They open our borders without discrimination both to those who will enrich our culture and those who will impoverish it. They grant subsidies for all manner of anti-social and counter-productive behavior: low interest financing and tax benefits for useless degrees at schools that offer not much more than “party campuses” and breeding grounds for political unrest, welfare benefits that encourage families without fathers and multi-generational dependance the list is endless. The bottom line is that The United States of America is turning into a modernized reproduction of the Ancient Regimes of pre World War I.

Instead of “The Church”, The Royal Families and the Landed Aristocrats, we now have Politicians, Academics, Journalists and Money Manipulators as our “betters” but the result is very similar. If I had the artistic talent, I would do an updated version of the Heinrich Kley drawing showing the new worthies loading up the backs of our working people and entrepreneurs with illegal immigrants, affirmative action, alternative energy, relaxed mortgage requirements for people designed to encourage minority home ownership, single payer health care and all the other vanity projects of our ruling class.

John McCain is sick and he is fighting, once again, for his life but let’s get this straight because it is life and death for the rest of us. He had the opportunity to get treatment and his operation at the VA. He is entitled and deserving of that for his service. As a grateful nation, we should ensure that the VA gives the best care possible to our veterans. He, however, chose not to get that treatment but to go to The Mayo Clinic. I cannot fault that decision personally but politically, it is very telling.

 More and more our “public servants” send their children to private schools, use government paid transportation, live behind security walls with armed guards, ignore laws and ethical practices the rest of us are held to, avoid taxes with impunity, amass private wealth at the public trough and, in general, live lives that are entirely unlike ours.

They keep pushing the idea that they are compassionate, not by living compassionate lives or even by helping the poor achieve better lives, but by posing as compassionate people. It is an illusion! The programs they create do nothing but continually decrease the difference between those who work and those who don’t work. They take our tax money and create federal fiefdoms (EPA, HUD, BLM, Education, etc…,) that create and exacerbate more problems than they solve.

Most corrosive of all, they tell the undocumented aliens and the entrenched poor they have taken into their plantation that they are their benefactors. then the go home, with a wink to their fellow elitists, to their gated communities. This is where we are headed as a nation unless we can get the right leadership in place. We now have a president who gets it but the McCain, Collins, Alexander, Moore-Capito, Heller, Murkowski, and Portman votes of last evening just added more burden for us all, This virtue posing and false compassion is killing us. We need it to stop.

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The Staircase to Government Corruptocracy

In Toronto, common sense is severely lacking. A resident spent a relatively paltry $550 — provided through the benevolence of him and his community — to erect a park staircase on a dangerous slope. Apparently, government officials were upset over the initiative shown by the resident, who had serious and legitimate qualms with the city’s project estimate of at least $65,000 (and possibly as high as $150,000). Under the guise of safety requirements, the city considered destroying the stairway to install what it deems is a regulatory-compliant structure. Fortunately, new indications are that demolition is probably off the table and refinements will be pursued.

Update: The city moved forward with destroying the structure and a new one will be assembled for roughly $10,000. Which begs the question: Where in the world did the original estimate come from?
According to Mayor John Tory, “We just can’t have people decide to go out to Home Depot and build a staircase in a park because that’s what they would like to have.” The question is: Why not? To be fair, the mayor did also call his government’s price tag “completely out of whack with reality.” But that’s not stopping him from venting frustration. We’re literally talking about eight steps. Park-goers were getting injured. And for $550 residents solved two issues: unnecessary government expenditure and a dangerous situation that wasn’t being sufficiently remediated. It may not be the most well-built structure, but it’s better than government either doing nothing or wasting tax dollars. It would be easy to mock Canada for this uncanny situation, but it’s hardly a Canadian specialty. Taxpayers here in the U.S. know just how pitiful the government is when it comes to frugality.

John Stossel chronicles a similarly obnoxious case of government waste in his most recent column. He writes, “Did you see the $2 million dollar bathroom? That’s what New York City government spent to build a ‘comfort station’ in a park. I went to look at it. There were no gold-plated fixtures. It’s just a little building with four toilets and four sinks.” He adds, “No park bathroom needs to cost $2 million. An entire six-bedroom house nearby was for sale for $539,000.” But no matter: “Everything costs more when government builds it.” For the record, another bathroom located at nearby Bryant Park was constructed for a far more reasonable $300,000 — because, Stossel says, it’s privately managed. He notes, “Since government spends other people’s money, they don’t care that much about cost and they certainly don’t care much about speed.”

The fact is, government is just about the worst money manager there is. Take Barack Obama’s “stimulus,” for example. According to The Washington Free Beacon, some of the waste that occurred from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included funding for studies analyzing duck penises, erectile dysfunction and obesity, alcoholic effects on mice, as well as funding for puppet shows vilifying free enterprise and, least but not least, the infamous Solyndra debacle.

Even Obama conceded that “shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” And no wonder — a good deal of it was spent on frivolous and unnecessary things. This underscores too the importance of making frugal decisions when it comes to infrastructure repairs. As Tony Caporale and Marc Poitras write at Real Clear Policy, “Infrastructure Spending Must Justify Itself.” And the private sector has to play a critical role. Otherwise, you risk outlandish outcomes. Like $2 million bathrooms, multi-thousand-dollar staircases and even research on duck private parts.

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Leftists Suddenly Worry About Politicizing Boy Scouts

What could be less controversial than the president of the United States addressing the Boy Scouts of America jamboree in West Virginia? Of all the public addresses given by President Donald Trump in the first seven months of his presidency, surely this one would keep Democrats and their media attack dogs from going into hysterics.

Think again. Leftists managed to characterize the speech with their typical vitriol, exaggeration and animosity. Some even compared the event to a Hitler Youth rally. But it doesn't take long to figure out that much of the criticism has less to do with Trump talking politics at the jamboree than it does with Trump talking about the "wrong" politics.

Case in point: New York Magazine's headline reads, "The 14 Most Inappropriate Moments From Trump's Speech at the Boy Scout Jamboree." The headline suggests that Trump invited the Scouts to join him for beer and poker after the event. Yet many of the 14 points are based on Trump criticizing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the press. Trump's speech was indeed political, and we could have done without his reference to a party in New York, but it was hardly inappropriate.

Opining in The Washington Post, Stephen Stromberg took issue with the ideological content and erratic nature of Trump's address. He remarked, "Sure, scout membership skews right. But those of us who did not fit that stereotype know that the organization is and should be open to all. I spent middle and high school in a small troop that met in a Mormon church but contained Jews, agnostics, a Seventh-day Adventist and various others." But Trump didn't say anything about religion. Talk about erratic.

Scroll down a few paragraphs and the real reason for the outrage over Trump's remarks comes to the surface. Stromberg adds: "When one of our fellow scouts came out of the closet, he left the troop. But the BSA has since revised its membership policies to better reflect its mission of offering guidance to all young men."

There you go. Stromberg and other leftists aren't as upset over Trump's partisan remarks as they are about his failure to touch on the issues that Democrats want the boys to hear. We doubt Trump would have been criticized had he stated that the Scouts need to be more diverse and inclusive. Had he called for more transgender Scouts, Democrats would be lauding his remarks.

Some of the criticism of Trump's speech is understandable. He should have focused more on the Scouts' history and core principles, or on American patriotism and civics more generally. But the most critical remarks have come from Democrats and Republicans who already have issues with the president.

While the content of Trump's address has been the focus, far less reporting has been done on the fact that the Scouts cheered just about everything he had to say, despite the fact that the president of the Scouts discouraged them from showing partisan support for Trump. But they couldn't resist. Despite his flaws, the Scouts know that Trump will defend and fight for their values.

Apparently, however, the organization's leadership wasn't pleased. On Thursday, Chief Scout Executive Michael Surbaugh stated, "I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree."

But Surbaugh didn't mind getting political when transgender Scouts were admitted earlier this year. At the time, Surbaugh exclaimed, "Communities and state laws are now interpreting gender identity differently than society did in the past. And these new laws vary widely from state to state." It was no different when they accepted homosexual Scouts four years ago and homosexual leaders two years ago. In other words, some in the BSA are perfectly willing to change according to the shifting political winds, as long as those winds are blowing in a certain direction.

Surbaugh's apology seems hypocritical and one-sided. After all, where were the apologies to the Scouts offended by the Left's political and cultural ideology over the past generation? And did anyone apologize when delegates to the 2000 Democrat National Convention actually booed Boy Scouts when they walked on the stage?

There were no apologies then, just political attacks against the Scouts. Philip Wegmann writes in the Washington Examiner, "The Boy Scouts have come under fire in the last two decades because of their membership standards concerning gay boys and leaders. They were regularly attacked as bigots in the editorial pages of the New York Times. They were mocked by the likes of Madonna (the elderly Queen of Pop creepily proclaimed she knew 'how to scout for boys.') And they were assaulted in the courts again and again and again."

As for the media, it's beyond hypocritical that they're suddenly worried about the Boy Scouts of America. The Left has successfully forced the BSA to change core principles and beliefs for many years, but suddenly media types are worried that Donald Trump criticizing Barack Obama is somehow going to tarnish a century's worth of Boy Scout values. All this damage had been done long before Trump took the stage at this year's jamboree.

The Rules and Regulations of the Boy Scouts of America state that the organization "must not, through its governing body or through any of its officers, chartered councils, Scouters, or members, involve Scouting in political matters." The handbook should have been revised years ago, because the BSA is very much a political organization these days. All President Trump did was provide a different political view. And that's the real reason why his speech has been condemned.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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