Category → Government Of the People…
Mueller impeaches Mueller
Did you watch any of the Robert Mueller testimony before Congress?
I just had to watch it, as boring as it was, because there has not been a richer opportunity for someone in DC to go meaningfully rogue than Robert Mueller could have today. As slowly as his testimony went, I kept thinking “OK, here it is, here is the moment he just says whatever he wants to say, for political gain, to hell with the report he authored that found no evidence of anything against the US president.”
But Mueller did not go rogue, he went to sleep. And he only woke up when members of one political party questioned him with loaded opportunities to score political points against the president.
When questioned aggressively by the disbelieving, incredulous members of the other political party, Mueller seemed very tired, worn out, confused, disoriented, unsure. He either has early dementia, or as journalist Matt Drudge speculated, he is taking heavy drugs. It was simply a bizarre performance by a man whose reputation has been said to be so perfectly perfect forever and ever.
But the real icing on this weird day was when Mueller repeatedly mis-remembered and mis-stated a lot of answers to basic questions about the “investigation” he conducted and the report he wrote about it. Mueller was either perjuring himself right and left, or he has dementia, which is no excuse for lying but it could give him an out. The net result is that Mueller blew up his own credibility today, and apparently set himself up for a dose of his own medicine. Few would be surprised if Mueller is now rightly investigated for having overseen an illegal political witch hunt based on falsified evidence, in which he repeatedly obstructed justice to protect his allies, and where he also filed false charges against innocent people and hid and purposefully destroyed exculpatory evidence that American law says these victims are entitled to have.
Mueller’s vague responses to important questions about how disgraced FBI agent Peter Stzrok’s official FBI cell phone was scrubbed of all texts and emails by Mueller’s (all Democrat) staff before being turned over to the DOJ Inspector General was spectacular: “Umm, I really don’t know how the most important piece of evidence in this entire fake Russia collusion hoax fiasco was mishandled. I Just don’t know.” [more or less this was his answer]
If Mueller was perceived by some in Washington, DC, as a clean, smart, honest, credible professional yesterday, that would now be a thing of the past after his sad performance today. His media allies have done a great job of covering up Mueller’s many criminal misdeeds over the years, but today’s performance is out there for all to see. You get to watch one slow-motion, low energy lie after another on video, yourself. With no intervening allies to spin or hide Mueller’s frail performance.
If any impeachment was going to happen in DC, it just happened today, as Robert Mueller impeached himself, his credibility, and the fake “Russia collusion” investigation and fake-fake-fake report he wrote about it.
The next step is an investigation of perjurer Mueller and his team, notably Andrew Weissman, who, like Mueller, has a long record of abusing his investigatory powers and putting innocent people in jail.
Now can we please please please just get back to the business of running the country? No more fake outrages, no more fake breathless “Gotcha!” moments by the media, no more partisan rumors-as-news. Stop already. Let things settle down, the country has suffered enough from this one man’s indecency.
Five things that are worse than racism
Racism is bad, but there are many other things that are far worse.
Racism is bad in America because America’s Constitution, and our subsequent policy and law, are grounded on the core idea that all our citizens are equal before the law, that they should all have equal opportunities, and they should all have equal representation. Any kind of official discrimination between our citizens is inherently in conflict with that core principle; it undermines our cohesion as a nation fundamentally built on fairness to all who play by its rules. Racism is one of the most visible forms of discrimination, because at one time parts of the United States were segregated based on skin color. In 1794, American states nearly fought a civil war amongst themselves over slavery, and eventually the nation settled the question at the conclusion of “the” civil war in 1865.
America’s promise of fairness to all citizens was too strong of a value to ignore, and so hundreds of thousands of Caucasian men fought and died so that all Negro slaves could live as free citizens. It was a fight worth having; an idea for which it was worth sacrificing and risking the nation. Since that time all states and the American government have made every effort to stamp out not only racism, but all bigotry and discrimination of every sort.
On the other hand, outside of America, racism is standard operating procedure today. Literally everywhere you travel in the world, you will find native ethnic groups, cultures, even linguistic groups who openly disdain and discriminate against others based on appearance, primarily skin tone, but even different facial characteristics.
This is to say, outside of America and perhaps a few Western nations, racism is widespread and is considered to be normal. Especially so in Africa, where the 800 or so different ethnic groups still to this day compete amongst one another based on skin tones; even to the genocidal death, like the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, and the various ethnic antagonists in South Africa.
So, yes, racism is bad, and it is also an ancient and everyday human occurrence outside of America. What can we say, the rest of the world does not adhere to or aspire to American values and norms of equality. That is why the entire world is trying to come to America; America is hands-down better than any other nation on our planet, and everyone knows it.
Recently, subjective, false, and politically motivated accusations of racism have been casually bandied about among some political actors to the point where the term now means almost nothing. And what is intriguing is that while so much focus is put on to this one term, there are in fact many other things that are worse, and which are going on. Below is a short list of behaviors and beliefs that are worse than racism.
One: Reverse racism and racial hypocrisy. When a person accuses someone else, or a group of people, of racism, and yet also employs racism to make that accusation, it is reverse racism. This hypocrisy is worse than the basic form of discriminatory racism, because the reverse racist should know better, often does know better, and yet desires to inflict political damage to gain power and control more than they desire to be consistent. Examples of reverse racism include most forms of affirmative action, which have been recently taken to absurd levels at college admissions offices, and the overtly racist “Black Lives Matter” group. BLM members can be seen in videos aggressively confronting Caucasian students trying to quietly study at college and accusing them of inherent racism because of their “white” skin color. The irony of this overtly racist accusation seems lost on BLM and their supporters. So instead of diminishing racism, they have managed to purposefully increase it. Same with accusations of “white privilege,” the most racist thing I have ever heard in my life. Drive through rural America, and see how some people live. There is no “privilege” in it, and to allege that it is, is a patently racist action.
Two: Bearing false witness. Nearly every culture around the world places top value on telling the truth, especially about important things that hold human societies together. Bearing false witness, which is lying, is terribly destructive to everyone and everything, so that it is universally abhorred. And yet, false accusations (including and maybe even especially of racism) are made routinely by certain political actors. The destructive force of these false accusations can tear apart communities and even nations. Examples of false testimony include accusations against all police officers, all “whites,” and political support for violent anti free speech ANTIFA thugs. And how about the double legal standard applied to liberals and conservatives? A Christian baker can be officially forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but no gay baker will ever be similarly forced to bake a cake for religious Christians. Hillary Clinton can engage in all kinds of huge violations of important federal law with impunity, and yet Donald Trump gets falsely accused and investigated for having done nothing wrong at all. The endless character assassination of everyone who stands between liberals and their goal of destroying America….Perhaps the best example is the falseness of the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other self-appointed arbiters of what is racist and discriminatory, who themselves are racist and discriminatory.
“White lies” meant to lubricate and smooth social discourse and stability are often considered acceptable, if not desirable.
Three: Treason and sedition. In every human society, treason is the worst crime. Same in America. Free speech does not include efforts to destroy a nation. A great deal of what is called political criticism today are direct, treasonous efforts to destroy America from inside. One political party is openly dedicated to a lawless assault on every American institution and social structure. Examples include “sanctuary cities” that house illegal invaders, the unwillingness of one political party to follow even the basic rule of the US House of Representatives, and college professors everywhere who openly promote “revolution” against America. US Rep. Ilhan Omar is a great example of someone who moved to America and is trying to destroy America; she is a traitor, and so are her supporters. Traitors are usually executed, but deportation would be justified. Sending her back to Sudan [old Somaliland] is both justified and merciful. How and why treason and sedition became acceptable forms of political discourse is a mystery, and it must be ended, with crushing force, if necessary.
Four: Sexism. If racism is common across the globe, sexism is epidemic. While many islamic cultures endorse the mutilation of female genitals, so that the woman can feel no sexual pleasure as an adult, and while women unwillingly occupy second-class status almost everywhere around Planet Earth, the truth is that anti-male sexism is rampant throughout America, as exemplified by government job recruiting and university hiring practices. Clear examples of overt sexism against women are found when men pretending to be women compete in women-only sports. Men by nature are bigger, stronger, faster than women, so allowing men to pretend to be women in order to artificially win sports awards is obviously sexist. But the self-appointed guardians of women allow this to happen. This is much worse than racism.
Five: Last but not least, tolerating and promoting discrimination by others, while you yourself profess to be against racism and discrimination. This practice is so common today that it is almost part and parcel of our every day experience. If racism is bad, pretending to be against racism while facilitating it is even worse. Perhaps the best example is the Red Hen restaurant, whose owner openly discriminates against her political foes, even when they are her customers, including physical intimidation and abuse.
In conclusion, we can see that while much is made about subjective, hypocritical, almost always false accusations of “racism,” much that is worse than racism is not only tolerated, but promoted by the same people who run around yelling and screaming and accusing their political opponents of “racism.” The next time someone goes bonkers and starts slinging around accusations of racism like they are handing out potato chips, start looking at their background; see if they have already committed one or more of the five violations above. If they have, and you are almost guaranteed they have, then you can automatically discount their accusations. These are just a smokescreen for political purposes.
Many Americans are now seeing through this falseness, this corrosive and destructive political set of rules. And those Americans are justifiably becoming more and more angry about it.
And why wouldn’t they get upset? Nobody likes being discriminated against.
Home is Where the Heart Is
Home is where the heart is, goes the old and proven adage.
Home is that place you love, where you feel safe, loved, comfortable, surrounded by the fruits of your labors, like a flower garden behind a hand-laid stone wall, a manicured lawn, a bird bath or bird feeder, a porch for sitting on after a day of work. Maybe you raised a family in the home, and on bedroom walls in a couple places hidden from paint touch-ups there are some old finger prints from children who are now with families of their own. After putting so much work and love into your home, you naturally feel love for it. Just the memories alone inspire you!
So yes, your heart resides there, in your home, the ultimate symbol of all your efforts, the fruits of all your labors.
And so this is all true for those of us who have worked in and paid taxes here in America, our home, our house. Our Social Security payments, mine since I was fourteen years old, our volunteering for charitable organizations and Little League, our playing by the rules and laws of America, being good citizens. Always building the country up, making it a cozy and safe home for those who live here, who contribute to it, who will move here with the intention of participating in it.
And yet, unbelievably, America now houses people like US Reps Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and other elected representatives, who are actually openly advocating for tearing down the national house, our home, America. These people are openly working every day to destroy the home that you and I have built. Along with “free” healthcare, income, education, and even a “free” home for people who have come here illegally, never paid anything into Social Security, and who themselves fly the flags of the other nations from which they come, where their hearts remain.
None of us lifelong taxpayers will ever get any of this “free” stuff, even though it is our tax money that creates it in the first place!
Can you imagine if some stranger walked into your house and began tearing the place apart, and offering to hand out your furniture, clothing, your food to passersby on the street outside? It would be even worse if it was someone you had invited in, so they could participate in all of the wonderful opportunities America offers to anyone willing to work hard. Well, this all is exactly what is happening with Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and all of their supporters and enablers.
So it is a natural thing, an understandable and totally human thing, for our elected President to say “If you don’t like America, then go home to your parent countries.” He is definitely speaking for a majority of Americans. This should be no surprise to anyone. Every other country does the same. In every other country what Omar, Tlaib and their political party are doing would correctly be seen as treason and an intolerable act of war against the nation.
Like a lot of Americans, I applaud President Trump for writing this in one of his public messages the other day. Good for him. He understands that this current illegal invader situation is not sustainable. Not financially, not economically, not legally, not socially, and not politically. It is a testament to how good we Americans are at heart that this has been allowed to go on at all. We have such a strong generosity, even if we can’t always afford it. Americans are a giving people. Very few other nations, if any, will allow foreigners to literally walk into their nation and begin demanding free this and free that, tear down the border so anyone can literally walk in; it is quite insane. In most other countries, you would either be killed outright, or jailed, or expelled. Understandably.
Yes, we understand that there is a political party that has turned this illegal, lawless, anti-human, anti-America behavior into a business model, a way to gain political power. But just because that one political party is using and abusing the democratic process to achieve non-democratic results does not make this situation acceptable.
So I applaud President Trump for speaking out on behalf of the nation he was elected to lead, the home he was sworn to protect. He is doing what any American president is supposed to do. Anyone now opposing his standing up for America and our rule of law is openly a declared enemy of America.
America: Love it as it is, or leave it, as it is. And no, you cannot take our stuff with you. We worked for it, we built it, it is ours. It is not yours.
Independence Day Redux
Tomorrow is America’s July 4th Independence Day, the day Americans celebrate our Declaration of Independence from the tyrannical Great Britain in 1776.
In modern days we tend to take this holiday, and all it stands for, for granted. We enjoy fireworks displays, we grill out with family and friends, we travel and vacation, communities gather together to celebrate. After dark, red flares are lit around the entire circumference of Chautauqua Lake, which is pretty neat to see. All those disparate communities and property owners unified for that one moment. America’s greatest moment, our crowning achievement – God-given Liberty for all people.
What we do not celebrate or take note of today is what ensued after the Declaration of Independence. The long, bloody, wearying, expensive war with Britain and her mercenaries; the lost communities that were divided along loyalty lines, and which self-destructed in mass hangings and reprisals; the lost fathers and sons killed in combat; the bloody raids from Canada deep into Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, that lasted until after the War of 1812 had concluded.
The American War for Independence was, in fact, a civil war, our first civil war. On one side were advocates for political, social, and commercial stability, harmonious continuity, and loyalty to our British benefactors and feudal overlords. On the other hand were a handful of people who believed in something radical, something new, something previously unseen in human experience: Liberty for all, freedom of choice and of association, government devoted to representing the interests of The People, and not just the monarch or his chosen few.
Winning American freedom was very hard, and it cost a lot of lives lost and money spent. The destruction of towns north and south is still legendary. Boston, New York, and even Philadelphia were severely damaged, and with that went economic damage and deprivation that reached everyone.
Yet it was all of this deprivation and tenacious warfare and willing sacrifice that cemented the American spirit of self reliance, true grit, and patriotism for the most unique, freest, best nation on Earth. And yet, as success bred success and material success bred complacency and satiety, Americans began to lose that original spirit. Our material wealth has spoiled us and put many of us to sleep, to the point where we actually have a major political party advocating for the gifting of “free” healthcare to anyone who illegally walks into our country. And none of the current taxpaying citizens here qualify for that same free healthcare!
I do not think it is alarmist to say that America is now in another civil war. The evidence is all around us. Oh, we are not yet fully lined up and shooting at each other. But we are becoming fully lined up along ideological differences and shouting at each other, which is the exact way traditional battles are and have been fought with spears and swords or muskets and cannons. Both sides line up and size each other up, brandish their weapons, make bold declarations, and then charge.
Despite the many violent ANTIFA skirmishes against freedom and free speech advocates, Americans just have not yet charged at each other. This is because while the many normal Americans went to work, paid their taxes, mowed their lawns, volunteered, took their kids to Little League, another segment of the population was working hard at infiltrating and capturing institutions. Once captured, those institutions (Media, academia, education, unions, charitable foundations, all levels and branches of government, the Boy Scouts etc.) have been bent to the purpose of promoting leftist ideas and policies, to mainstream treasonous anti-America policies.
All of this infiltration and capturing has gone on under the feet of the normal Americans, the citizen taxpayers, who are just now beginning to wake up and realize that while they did their duty, others were doing their utmost to gain full control of our political institutions, in order to force a very non-free form of government upon us. A very non-America form of government.
Enjoy your Independence Day, friends. In between the beers and the hotdogs, you should consider talking with friends and family about current events, about how freedom and government accountability can be restored, how America can be brought back from the precipice on which it presently stands.
And maybe talk about an Independence Day redux, too.
Pennsylvanians deserve an open primary
“I don’t want some unaffiliated voter determining the nominee in my political party,” goes the overused and unpersuading assertion for why closed primaries, where voters can only vote for who is in their particular political party, and not across party lines. Independents cannot vote for Republicans or Democrats, only for Independents and so on etc.
Pennsylvania has a closed primary election.
If there is one thing that the two main political parties can agree on, it’s that they do not want to share power with anyone else; certainly not the voters! So many cozy deals between the Democrats and Republicans – dividing up the spoils of elected office – have been revealed over the years (the biggest most recent is the PA Turnpike Commission scandal) that is it any wonder why this happy and very lucrative lovefest between the two political parties is being protected at all costs…
The thing is, both the Republican and the Democrat parties are private organizations. I found this out first hand in 2009 when I ran for congress, against the wishes of the PA Republican Party. I was one of those first-in “Tea Party” candidates who declared after just six months of Obama’s treasonous communism and the GOP’s complacency. Except that neither I nor the other similar grass roots candidates knew that we were in the “Tea Party.” We were just mad as hell at both political parties, neither of which seemed interested in helping us, the working people of America, and were rather devoted to the constellations of money-sucking special interest leeches circling about each of them. Elected officials, party hacks, and party functionaries in both political parties did just fine in that scenario, even if the rest of America was falling apart.
And when we began to push our own GOP, we learned that they were accountable to no one, because they were and remain a private entity.
A couple years ago another independent-minded candidate ran in a Dauphin County Democrat primary, and learned the same lesson from his own party. Nope, no transparency for you, you little peon citizen!
Both political parties answer to absolutely no one in the public, because they are private corporations. They can play all kinds of money games, and rumor whispering games, and endorsement games, and information hiding games, because they can; and no one can do anything about it.
So why are we taxpaying voters footing the enormous annual election bills for these two private entities, so that they can hold on to power and keep us citizens at bay, fending off change and accountability?
Why do the Democrats and the Republicans alone get to determine so many important outcomes in our government, when we taxpayers are the ones who are paying for how these two political parties are elected in the first place, let alone all of the expenditures they feed to themselves and their chums? In other words, we voters pay for everything and are told no, we can get only a small portion of what we should get in return, in terms of determining the political outcomes that affect us.
If the two parties want to remain private, and also want to have closed primaries, then let them pay for all of the election expenses in Pennsylvania. We taxpaying voters owe these two private entities nothing, as they owe us nothing (they tell us).
It is well past time to open up our primaries. That flexibility is the true representation of freedom, the freedom to choose, which is the core of representative government. And in Pennsylvania’s particular case, that freedom to choose is about political parties sharing something with the taxpayers who pay for all of the elections of which the two parties are, so far, the sole beneficiaries. It is not right, it is not good, it is not fair.
Open up and let us in!
Awesome fist courtesy of Lee Vanden Brink
PA Farm Bureau & PA Grange thieving property rights and gun rights
Who would think that two organizations I have always revered would turn out to be the absolute biggest threats to private property rights and our Second Amendment rights?
Sadly, it is true that the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and the Pennsylvania Grange have gone on a crusade against private property rights, hunting, and gun rights that has shocked everyone to the bone, most especially the traditional opponents of these activities like the Humane Society and CeasefirePA, who have now joined with them.
When the PFB and the Grange shack up with the Humane Society, a group dedicated to ending farming and animal husbandry as we know it, and with CeasefirePA, and against the NRA, then you know both organizations have gone off the rails. But the fact is, both PFB and the Grange are in full crusade mode right now, and there is no end in sight.
It all started with their opposition to expanding Sunday hunting in Pennsylvania. Including small game, groundhogs, or big game in Sunday hunting (presently limited to coyotes, foxes, and crows), somehow ignited a firestorm of indignation among the octogenarians running both of these organizations. Canes were rattled, and the political war was on against anyone advocating for more hunting opportunities in Pennsylvania. Every bit of political and legislative capital these two groups can muster has been brought to bear in every avenue of political decision making. The net result is not just that they are on record being against other people hunting on Sunday, but that our existing hunting rights, gun rights, and property rights are now being diminished and in the case of Sunday target shooting, at real risk. Until now, no one outside of the anti-gun CeasefirePA had been opposed to target shooting, especially on private property.
Pennsylvania is one of just THREE states in America that has no big game hunting on Sunday. So it’s not like Pennsylvanians asking for expanded Sunday hunting are on the fringe of some crazy movement. The rest of the country is already doing it.
But PFB and the Grange have acted as if Sunday hunting will end civilization as we know it, and they went to war with a scorched earth approach. Both organizations are now on record trying to eliminate even target shooting on Sunday, even on private land, let alone archery hunting on private land on Sunday. This has been an all-out political assault on private property rights and on our Second Amendment rights. What private property owners do on their own land on any day of the week is of zero consequence to anyone else, but PFB and the Grange have made it their business to control what you do.
Didn’t Pennsylvania pass the right-to-farm laws so that farmers could do what they need to do, seven days a week, without interference? Turns out that the organizations dedicated to farming are not dedicated to the actual farmers and property owners themselves. Not really. Lots of farmers and farmland owners want to hunt and shoot on Sunday.
Take the Grange. Their motto is “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.”
Their mission is “Pennsylvania State Grange supports the local Granges to help members grow as individuals, unify their communities and create opportunity through legislation and community service.”
And yet the Grange is taking hard political positions exactly opposite of their motto and mission. There is no unity, liberty, or charity in their opposition to private property rights and to the Second Amendment. There is nothing helping members grow as individuals when the Grange stands in our way of hunting with our families and friends, on our own private land, when our complicated schedules allow for us to be together.
Beware these two organizations. They are prime examples of how a few people can hijack an organization and destroy its credibility in one swift and foolish move, and take our most sacred rights down the toilet with them.
Asking PA Fish & Boat to protect our best trout waters
June 17, 2019
Mr. Tim Schaeffer, Executive Director
Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission
1601 Elmerton Ave, Harrisburg, PA 17110
Dear Tim,
This past weekend I listened to a presentation about making Pennsylvania’s best, most productive trout streams “all-tackle,” which includes bait fishing. While the presentation was primarily about the newly acquired stretch of Spruce Creek, a clear timetable was laid out for making all of our best trout waters all-tackle over the coming three years.
Traditionally, or at least for several decades in many cases, these few hundred miles out of 80,000 miles of Pennsylvania waterways, have been restricted to artificial lures and flies. Those limitations were installed to protect trout from being gut-hooked or gullet-hooked by swallowing bait left to sit on the bottom of the waterway. Once a fish is gullet- or gut-hooked, it is guaranteed to die. This is fine for a put-and-take waterway, or for panfish, or for private waters. But for expensive stocked trout paid for by the license-buying fisherman, or even worse, for native reproducing trout, using bait is almost always a death sentence that eliminates the re-use (through catch and release) of that limited and valuable resource.
The main representation of this all-tackle proposal is that using bait in moving waters does not result in nearly as much fish mortality as once believed. Several studies or carefully observed fishing situations over the late 1990s to 2017 were cited as evidence.
Not having had the time to review this evidence, or to compare it to other factors like increasingly improved water quality state-wide, which resulted in better stream conditions and more trout, my concern is this proposal is moving too fast and asking too much. We just do not really know all that is happening in our best streams. The consequences of being wrong about this could easily set Pennsylvania’s best trout waters back, and it would take years to rebuild them to their current productivity. Additionally, we must consider the long road we have walked to educate anglers that trout and other sport fish are worth much more being released alive than they are being hung on a stringer and then stuffed into a freezer for a year. The cultural progress we have all made on this point has strengthened the use of fishing methods that strongly enhance the success of catch-and-release waters. Would allowing bait on all our catch-and-release waterways be taking a step backwards, after slowly, painfully teaching fishermen that a dead trout is much less useful or fun than a trout slipped back into the water alive to be caught again?
I request that PFBC staff conduct and issue their own wide-ranging analysis of catch-and-release bait fishing in moving waters before adopting anything beyond the Spruce Creek all-tackle catch-and-release stretch. If PFBC staff are confident that, under the right conditions, bait fishing will not result in undue or excessive fish mortality and the degradation of our hard-won resource, then that will be enough for me to drop my opposition. So long as the proper monitoring is in place to ensure that the decision is correctable, should new information develop.
Separately, it made me happy to see you appear officially in public in casual clothes, including shorts. The stuffy formality that used to attach to these executive director positions was a barrier to effectively reaching and communicating with the user communities. Easy but professional informality speaks volumes that you are most focused on solving substantive policy issues, good government, and on effectively connecting with the public, not on self-aggrandizement. What a breath of fresh air, it is exactly what Pennsylvania needs, thank you.
Sincerely yours,
Josh First
PA wildlife: damned if we do, damned if we don’t
Like every other state in the Union, Pennsylvania protects, conserves, and manages its wildlife through a combination of user-pays fees like hunting and fishing licenses on the one hand, and a helping of federal funding collected from user-self-imposed federal taxes on hunting and fishing equipment like boats, guns, ammunition, fishing rods etc on the other hand (the same people who buy the hunting and fishing licenses).
Yes, 100% of the nation’s citizenry benefits from the self-imposed taxes and fees paid by just 1% of the population: the hunters, trappers, and fishermen. Yes, you read that right: just 1% of the population is carrying 100% of the public burden.
And yes, as you are correctly about to say out loud, you and I will not see this bizarre and totally unsustainable arrangement in any other area of public policy. Not in roads, not in schools, not in airports, not in museums, not in anything else official and run for public benefit. And so, yes, it is a fact that wildlife agencies across America are perennially underfunded, and have been for so long that it’s now accepted as the way America does its wildlife business. Here in Pennsylvania, despite endless rising costs and endlessly more expensive public pensions, both houses of the PA legislature have long blocked the PA Game Commission from getting a hunting license increase in decades. So the PGC is even more behind the financial Eight Ball than most other state wildlife agencies. Hunters and wildlife managers in other states look at Pennsylvania and shake their heads. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is.
Despite the obvious imbalance and weakness inherent in such a unique and faulty funding arrangement, for fifty years this approach worked pretty well, nationally and in Pennsylvania, with some states occasionally putting new money into holes that opened up in the regular wildlife funding support. Those states with significantly increasing human populations tend to be forced into dealing with inevitable wildlife-human conflicts more than other states, and when Mr. and Mrs. America are increasingly hitting deer with their cars, you can bet that they will demand their home state do something about it. So more money is found.
So along comes the Pennsylvania Auditor General, to investigate the management and expenditure of money at the PGC. And why not, right? The PGC is a public agency, and hunting license revenue is a public trust. So sure, go ahead, look into it, audit the agency. And so it was done, and some interesting things emerged just a bit over a week ago.
In the “Atta boy” column is the fact that there appears to be no corruption, graft, or misuse of scarce sportsmen’s dollars at the PGC. By all accounts, PGC is transparent and well run. Given how much the sportsmen are always scrutinizing the agency, we all figured as much. But it is nice to have our beliefs and trust confirmed like this. We love the PGC even more today than before the audit.
In the “Aww shucks” column is the revelation that PGC staff do not immediately deposit oil and gas royalty checks when they are received, nor does the PGC ascertain for itself if those royalty payments are accurate in the first place, instead trusting the oil and gas companies to do what is right on their own. Hmmmm….This is a potential problem area, and we are all glad the auditors found it. Anyone who knows the PGC can bet money on the fact that PGC staff are right now doing all of this payment followup with a vengeance. Look out, oil and gas companies!
But then there is the big weird issue, the biggest issue of all, where the auditors “discover” that the PGC is sitting on $72 million in the bank. And accordingly, the auditors immediately and erroneously ascribe this to bad money management. After all, they say, public money is meant to be spent. “If you got ’em, smoke ’em,” goes the ancient and totally irresponsible government approach to managing public dollars. After all, under normal budgeting culture, agencies that do not spend the money budgeted to them risk losing those dollars in the next budget cycle. Failure to spend money is correlated with a failure to implement an agency’s mission, and for senior agency managers, there is the usual ego factor; the bigger the budget, the bigger the…you know. This is the old approach to managing government funds, and it is wrong, and it certainly does not fit the PGC’s reality or targeted way of doing business.
Let’s ask you a question: If you knew your family was going to be receiving less and less money going forward, and yet your family costs would be held steady, wouldn’t you begin to bank any extra money you had, in preparation for lean times ahead? If your family is responsible, then yes, this is what you do, it is what we all do. And it is what the PGC has done, thankfully.
But as a result of the audit, this single fact is being used to beat on the agency, to coerce the PGC to adopt unsustainable policies and irresponsible money management, despite the agency sailing through ever less sustainable funding waters every day. Seems like now every elected official and every Monday morning quarterback sportsman has some variation on the foolish theme that PGC has more money than it knows what to do with. Wrong!
So the real outcome of the audit is that Pennsylvania wildlife are damned either way, because the PGC is the useful straw man whipping boy for every aspiring demagogue in Pennsylvania politics. No matter what the PGC does, our wildlife resources are going to suffer. If PGC carefully, frugally husbands its limited resources, preparing for rainy days and needy wildlife, then the agency’s critics say the agency is miserly and hoarding, and they seek to punish the agency. And on the other hand, if the PGC immediately spends every dime it has, and has no money left over to deal with yet more unfunded mandates like Chronic Wasting Disease, then critics say the agency is wasteful and ineffective, and they seek to punish the agency.
And either way, the net result is the PGC’s critics damn and condemn our wildlife. Because that is the true result of all this second-guessing and monkeying about with the PGC budget and funding streams. Plenty of elected officials use their criticism of the PGC to artificially burnish their “good government” credentials, when in fact they are demanding the worst sort of government, and a total disservice to the sportsmen and wildlife everyone enjoys.
Many years ago, sportsmen were organized enough to react strongly to political demagogues who threatened our wildlife resource (and PA’s $1.6 billion annual hunting economy) with their petty politics. This latest iteration of the politics of wildlife management indicates that we need to get back to the old days, where sportsmen were unified and forceful, even vengeful, in their expectation that their elected officials would not politicize or hurt our commonly held wildlife resource.
If I were a Bernie voter, I would vote for Trump
Bernie Sanders has a lot more in common with President Trump than you’d think, and if I were a dedicated Bernie voter, I would vote for President Trump in 2020, because only with Trump will Bernie’s biggest ideas become political reality.
What do Bernie and Trump have in common? Two key things that speak across political and cultural boundaries:
One: Both Bernie and Trump are victims of Hillary Clinton’s cheating and lying and conniving. Bernie was cheated out of the 2016 Democrat nomination because of Hillary’s cheating with Democrat establishment fixer Donna Brazile. Remember Hillary getting the hidden notes, getting the debate questions and answers ahead of time from Brazile, the debate moderators coddling her and attacking Bernie? Yeah, that was real fair! Remember the 2016 primary election Democrat super delegates who were bought and paid for by the Clinton political machine, who were dedicated to Hillary over and above Bernie’s high votes in their districts? Yeah, wasn’t that super fair!
Now think about Trump, and how badly he has been victimized by Hillary, before, during, and after the November 2016 election. The whole BS “Russia collusion” thing was dreamt up and implemented by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and supporters inside the Obama Administration. We now know that the 100% fake “Steele Dossier” is a 100% product of Hillary’s campaign, and it is central to the whole Mueller political witch hunt against Trump, said witch hunt being 100% staffed by Hillary Clinton donors and active supporters. After nearly three years, Trump is still being falsely accused by Hillary and her chums, who want fifty bites at the fake collusion thing…fake fake fake evil Hillary!
Two: Both Bernie and Trump speak plainly and honestly about how both Democrat and Republican political establishments are stacking the US government against working people, against the citizenry, against our interests. Both Bernie and Trump have different policy solutions to this hijacking of the American government by the two main political parties, but both guys are saying the same thing. Who else are you going to hear this from? Will you hear it from political establishment hack Hillary, who in a hissy fit of sore loser spite and spoiled brattedness is this week blasting Bernie at every turn?
It is true that both Bernie and Trump have a lot of different policy positions, and why not? Bernie has held paid public office positions his entire career, while Trump has been a businessman taking risks and making sacrifices. Naturally their different backgrounds are going to result in mostly different takes on public policies.
But, if you are looking for someone to carry Bernie’s biggest message, which is the failure of the federal government to actually serve We, The People, then you should give your vote to Trump. Because Trump is the US President and he is going to be re-elected in 2020, actually implementing big ideas, while Bernie is only going to continue the speaking circuit with a handful of people in the audience.
Trump is the best use of your one vote, and if it bothers you to vote for a Republican, consider your vote a protest vote against BOTH political establishments.