The items found on this blog were written during the past few years and strictly reflect my own opinions. Because these articles deal with difficult issues they are bound to be controversial. They reflect my personal analysis based on the limited information that I have. I am certainly no expert and fully respect different opinions. Difficult issues would not be difficult if there were clear-cut answers. Although you will see in reading some of my material, I don't like being pigeonholed with a label, I will admit to being politically independent with a tendency to be more conservative fiscally and slightly more liberal with regard to social issues. Having lived through the 1940's, I have a great appreciation for the sacrifices made by our armed forces and, in fact, all Americans during World War II. The greatness of this country shone bright as we rehabilitated and rebuilt our enemies after winning that war. I am very patriotic and proud of our country. While we are far from perfect, we're not as far from that ideal as most other countries in the world.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Scary Thoughts For Halloween 2011

As we approach another Halloween season, recent behavior of our federal government brings to mind scary thoughts from the past.  It’s said that history repeats itself and the following actions by our government are much too reminiscent of actions by other governments during some of darkest moments of human history.   Tyrants like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein intimidated, threatened and punished real and imagined political foes.  No actions were out of bounds or too extreme to feed insatiable egos and to assure iron grip control of their countries.

I’m not suggesting that our current government even approaches the evil represented by these tyrants and their corrupt regimes but the very fact that some recent, highly questionable, activities makes one think of such things is disturbing.

Consider the following four current government scandals:

  • Fast and Furious
  • Boeing
  • Gibson Guitar
  • Solyndra

In the cases of Boeing and Gibson, the government has employed “strong arm” techniques in an attempt to silence political foes, i.e. Republican supporters and to shore up Democrat supporters, i.e., labor unions.  In both cases their actions are almost certainly harassment if not outright unconstitutional bullying.  In any case, if the government prevails in crippling the legitimate business activity of either this large corporation or this relatively small musical instrument company, the net result will be not only a loss of jobs but, more importantly, fear struck in the hearts of other companies that they better toe the line.  It’s ironic that this is occurring at the hands of an administration attempting to convince the public that it is pro-job growth.

The “Fast and Furious” and Solyndra cases are both the result of incredibly poor decisions made by the administration, and that’s putting it in the nicest possible terms.  Considering the recent revelations that billions of dollars have been wasted in providing illegitimate unemployment benefits and that nearly one trillion dollars were wasted in the last “stimulus program” that didn’t stimulate anything except the bank accounts of the administration’s political allies,  you have to question the administration’s true goal, particularly since they seem to show no real concern for the fact that our country is hurtling along the road to bankruptsy as our national debt soars above $14 trillion.

I don’t like scary thoughts but maybe we had better heed the ghosts of the past.

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