Posts Tagged → democrat
Response to PA Gov. Tom Ridge on Conservatives & the Environment
On April 22nd this year, Earth Day, The Atlantic published an opinion piece by former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, about conservatives and the environment (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/environment-gop-out-touch/610333/). The Atlantic solicited responses to Ridge’s essay, and so I submitted one to them, but received back no indication they would publish it. They did not publish it, because liberals like those at The Atlantic accept and publish only liberals, and reject conservatives. So here it is, my response to Governor Ridge’s essay about conservatives and the environment.
I felt compelled to respond to Governor Ridge’s essay, in part because I worked in his administration, and in part because I have met few Republicans who can articulate a truly conservative view of environmental policy, which Governor Ridge failed to do. I was also afraid of being seen as attacking someone I hold in high esteem, and I need to say that while I may disagree with Governor Ridge’s essay and some of his recent public stances, like supporting PA governor Tom Wolf’s covid19 lockdown, I remain impressed by Governor Ridge’s high character. I am proud to have served in his distinctively excellent administration.
Governor Ridge’s essay slightly opens a doorway that I am both pleased and also reluctant to push all the way open. But it needs to be opened, all the way, because for far too long establishment Republicans have claimed to be conservatives, while acting like liberals.
Governor Ridge writes his essay “as a conservative,” and despite boldly leading by example in placing highly competent gays, women, and minorities in senior government positions literally decades ago, long before most Democrats followed suit, Governor Ridge was, in fact, a true conservative. His achievements in conservative policy are legion, including Pennsylvania becoming a shall-issue concealed firearm carry state and his administration’s brownfield land recycling program.
Nonetheless, the emphasis today is on he “was.”
Governor Ridge was a conservative, and by today’s standard, he is not. This is not because Governor Ridge has changed, but because what now defines a conservative has changed so dramatically since the time he was governor. The same holds true for liberals, by the way, in their own way (we see the Democrat Party now a totally, openly, violent, racist, anti-America Marxist organization).
And like so many, if not all other political elites, especially Republicans, and most especially establishment Republicans from the hide-bound, bunker-mentality Pennsylvania GOP, Governor Ridge has not changed with the times. Governor Ridge was a conservative, and today he often speaks like a liberal, and sides with liberals on policy disputes. He is not alone in this, but each Republican who does so still causes pain to us conservatives in the political trenches. It is frustrating as hell to experience a former Republican appointee or elected official try to speak with authority as some sort of representative of conservativism, when in fact, they are simply liberals. Or RINOs for short (Republican In Name Only – not conservative).
Probably the biggest indication that Governor Ridge is out of synch with today’s conservatives is how he encourages us to adopt a laundry list of liberal environmental policies in his The Atlantic essay. This means that his solution for conservatives to succeed is for us to adopt liberalism. Even though most of the “environmental” groups are simply employment offices for Democrat Party operatives pushing Marxist, partisan policies. Very few environmental groups today are even seeking solutions, because they are busy dreaming up new problems.
Most of the policies pushed by environmental groups today are by definition Big Coercive Government, Small Defenseless Citizen, anti-Constitution, disregard for private property rights, mountains out of mole hills, and so on. These groups are not about the environment, they simply use the subject of the environment as another avenue to push Marxism and the Big Government necessary to force it down our throats. Governor Ridge should know this, of all people.
What Governor Ridge failed to address is: How can we conservatives embrace the very same failed and inferior liberal policies that drove us to becoming conservatives in the first place? If we adopt liberalism, then we are abandoning conservativism, and failing as conservatives.
Every single environmental policy recommendation that Governor Ridge lists in his essay directly contradicts core conservative principles, like small government, less intrusive government, less spendy government, less activist government, less regulatory government, accountable government and accountable taxpayer-funded government employees. Literally every single policy he lists requires the government to intervene in a big, coercive way, often over trifling differences or demonstrably false premises.
Governor Ridge’s environmental ideas are not conservativism; they are quintessential big government liberalism.
Perhaps the centerpiece of his essay is that conservatives must concede at least a bit on “climate change.” Yet, for conservatives, this particular issue, more than any other, highlights the distinction between us and liberals. For conservatives to agree with the Marxist, disproven, and notoriously phony climate change religion would be to abandon basic, solid, conservative principles altogether….like Capitalism 101, solid math and science, and transparency. Again, we are unpersuaded the climate warming-cooling-change-whatever issue even exists, let alone that a government solution consistent with America’s Constitution could be found.
Governor Ridge writes “The Republican Party has largely abandoned environmental issues.” To which I and a host of other conservatives would respond, No, but many Republicans have abandoned the citizen voters and the forgotten taxpayers of America. Many careerist Republicans have embraced popular culture and its feel-good-now bubblegum policies. For Republicans to respect openly partisan “environmental” groups and embrace liberal nonsense like so-called ‘climate change’ and similar policies would only be one more betrayal in a long line of policy and political betrayals committed by the Republican establishment. Conservatives have perfectly sound environmental policies based on perfectly sound, all-American principles. If you but ask us, we will explain them. We conservatives didn’t abandon environmental issues, nor did we leave the Republican Party. The Republican establishment abandoned us.
Josh First is president of Appalachian Land & Conservation Services, LLC. He has worked at the US EPA in Washington, DC, The Conservation Fund, the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy, and was Director of Environmental Education and Information at the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation & Natural Resources in the Governor Tom Ridge administration.
No cop, no gun
For decades liberals have been working overtime to disarm the American people. Every conceivable argument, legal maneuver, public stunt, lie, deception, logic pretzel, you name it, anti gun activists have done everything possible to remove even the most rustic, rudimentary firearms from private hands.
Now we have a movement to outlaw the police. Yes, to defund your local police department. No more police. No more law enforcement. The Only Black Lives Matter imperialist racial group has taken liberals into true Anarchy Land with the idea that there just should be no police, no law enforcement.
So, what does a society get when we have no guns at home so we can protect ourselves from bad people, and there is no one to protect us from law breakers?
Why, we get victims, lots and lots of victims! Wahoo!
This defund-the-police thing sure sounds like a purposeful recipe for disaster, or at least for ending civilization as we know it. The people pushing it have to know this. Why, you could almost swear people were trying to turn America into a land of petty tribalism and constant violence, certainly not the same successful nation we have been for a really long time. Now why would that be? Is it some secret goal to make everyone equally unhappy, in the name of a bizarre notion of equality?
Just adding up the No Cops plus No Guns gives us a result of two Hell Nos. Factor in the reverse-racist drumbeat, the demand for widespread inequality, the aim for ending capitalism, and hey, whaddya know, you got yourself the makings of another Rwanda, massacres and all. Sure seems like a good return on all that recent effort expended burning stuff down.
So sure, nice working Democrat People, go and thoughtlessly vote again for that wonderful family ending, career-ending, business-ending, nation-ending liberal candidate you always supported before. Keep mindlessly voting Democrat and before you know it, you will have no one protecting you and no way to protect yourself, endless crime in the name of “it’s our culture,” and then you will know that the long-promised liberal Utopia has arrived.
Sounds like fun! See ya, have a nice trip to CHAZ!
But those of us who choose to keep our guns and to willingly pay local taxes to pay for law enforcement will continue to enjoy our stable, happy lives; we will not be on your boat to Hell. Don’t be jealous of us, you have Utopia.
Good cop, bad cop
Most of America’s large urban areas are and have been firmly dominated by one political party for at least fifty years, and yet these same urban areas remain a seething mass of angry people who feel preyed upon by their own police forces.
Isn’t it fascinating that fifty whole years of liberal domination of urban politics has not brought the “change” that urbanites are now saying they want by burning new landscapes into their skylines? In fact, after fifty years urban conditions are worse now in so many ways than they were back then.
And yet, urbanites continue to vote for just one political party that is dominated by white liberals, whose policies have obviously failed by every measure.
One area that is now being purposefully failed is urban policing.
In some cities the police are being neutered by their political bosses, told not to enforce the law, not to make arrests. The police are actually prevented from upholding the law, applying the law, and at the worst times. Like when violent thugs attack peaceful protesters, or when those violent thugs become violent arsonists and go on vandalism rampages. No police response. No protection of innocent bystanders, peaceful protesters, or private property.
But those same police were heavily mobilized by their mayors to confront and often arrest normal everyday people who simply went outside their homes during the fake Wuhan Flu sham-demic. They were also heavily mobilized to confront peaceful protestors whom the various mayors disagreed with politically in Seattle, Portand, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, and many other cities.
This selective use or non-use of the local policing power is patently illegal. It was used during the 1950s and 1960s by southern Democrats to attack and suppress peaceful protesters who wanted voting rights and de-segregated bathrooms, restaurants, buses, and schools. And when this selective use of the police was used to protect murderers of young black men and black church arsonists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation moved in.
Back then, the FBI aggressively arrested police and elected officials who had deprived American citizens of their civil rights. Those bad police and elected officials deprived people of the equal protection of the law for simply belonging to the “wrong” political party, or having the “wrong” skin color or religion. That deprivation often included severe violence, either by the police or by their aligned street thugs, and included murder and torture.
So, in addition to the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice aggressively brought lawsuits against municipalities, corrupt police, and their elected bosses. As a result, the South changed, because segregation laws were struck down, schools were de-segregated, black people’s voting rights were protected, and the bad people went to jail.
So how does today’s liberal version of good cop, bad cop stack up to what happened in the 1950s and 1960s?
Well, today’s Black Lives Matter violence and racial attacks sure look at least as bad or a lot worse than the Southern anti-black racist riots and arson attacks back then. The roles are completely reversed today, and the DOJ is MIA.
So why isn’t the U.S. Department of Justice acting swiftly to bring equal justice and equal protection of the law to the current spate of BLM insanity? You and I are not alone in asking this question. It is a huge, important question.
I will take a shot at it and simply re-state the oft mentioned point that Republicans and conservatives believe they are debating ideas with their opponents, while their opponents are arming up for seditious revolution and organizing voter fraud and street violence. So a guy like U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr is uncertain how to act now. He keeps expecting the Democrat Party folks to weigh in like pro-America adults and urge people to stop rioting and looting, and they won’t. Barr expects his political opponents to engage him in a gentlemanly duel, may the loser buy drinks afterwards. But as a career-long Washington, DC, guy, Bill Barr is not wired to resolve these kinds of conflicts the way they need to be resolved…the way the Democrat Party resolves them ….. with overwhelming policing and legal force. Instead, Barr is firmly resolved to having stern interviews with the mainstream media political activists.
It is way too early to say that America is lost or headed into severe civil war, but we are facing a major leadership crisis that is being exploited by violent people. The Republican establishment is not used to fighting, ever, unless it is against a conservative running for a Republican seat somewhere. Last week in the Pennsylvania State House a bunch of aggressive, violent rioters took over the House floor, and the entire Pennsylvania House GOP caucus just stood there and watched. That good ol’ Republican culture encouraged all the elected Republicans to …just…do…nothing…just as they are almost all (not all) doing nothing for America right now.
Right now across America, only one person in an official capacity, and a few people around him, is providing any leadership and guiding light. That is President Donald Trump. Hopefully some of the high officials in his administration get on board with this fight for equality and justice. We all deserve to be treated equally by the police, regardless of where we live and regardless of our political views.
No more liberal good cop, bad cop, while bad people burn and loot our cities, attack peaceful citizens, and get good people fired from their jobs or frightened from their homes. This must end, now.
This photo of bad cops in a bad judge’s court room may be from 1967 Mississippi, but it could just as easily be from today in any major liberal city, with ANTIFA members and the local Democrat mayor snickering in the background
Why having your own philosophy of government is American
It is American nature for each individual citizen to have a philosophy of government. That is, to have a firm idea of how you want and expect all levels of government to relate to you, to serve you, to represent you, and to respect you.
Maybe there are too many syllables in this, so let’s just say that every American citizen should have a belief in how they want to relate to their own government, at every level – local, state, and federal.
From America’s founding until right now, our entire nation is still predicated upon the expectation of direct citizen involvement in every aspect of what makes America work: Voting in every election, staying updated and informed on the political and cultural issues of the day, participating in jury selection when called upon, serving on school boards, local zoning and planning boards, etc.
America is a citizen-run nation. That is how we were founded. Consent of the governed. Right now, a surfeit of material success has put many Americans almost to sleep. They are too busy taking care of their own individual desires to look up and participate in the larger happenings around them. They are almost believing that American government is on autopilot, and that their participation is unnecessary. Once American citizens stop participating in how government is run, then automatically people will step in who use government for their own benefit. Self-enrichment, long undeserved careers paid for by the taxpayers, funneling limited taxpayer money to interest groups who then work hard to get career politicians re-elected, selling American interests and secrets to foreign governments, these are just a few examples of the problem.
No longer are career politicians “public servants.” Now career politicians are self-servants who use government to enrich themselves and their friends and family. Examples include politicians from both political parties at all levels. Joe Biden (D) and Richard Burr (R) are just two easy low-hanging examples. Biden used his public vice president office to get undeserved contract work for his sons in Ukraine. Burr used his position as US senator to sell his stocks before they lost value, an act on private information about potential stock losses, which is insider trading.
Across government entrenched bureaucrats make decisions every day that determine or influence the paths of our life. Somehow these “public servants” have also aggregated huge power, with little to no accountability. Many of these bureaucrats quite clearly demonstrate their own philosophy of government. They believe in the overwhelming coercive force of government intruding directly into individual lives. They believe in the diminution of the Bill of Rights that protects our individual freedoms, rights, and liberties. They believe in death-by-a-thousand-cuts regulations that render a great deal of American life almost meaningless and almost illegal. They believe in all kinds of specific policies that are totally at odds with the rights, freedoms, and liberties that Americans have always enjoyed, and which are spelled out in our founding documents.
The “Waters of the United States” regulation emitted by US EPA in the last administration is a classic example. People’s private property rights were trampled beneath the coercive weight of government control, with very small benefits.
While the establishments of both political parties, nationally, are not terribly far apart on some key aspects of governance, it is fair to say that the Democrats believe in crushingly big government and unlimited coercive force to achieve their policy goals, while Republicans believe in free markets and free choice.
Party responses to the Wuhan Chinese Flu (coronavirus, covid19) are instructive. The Democrats have tried to use the virus to achieve policy goals they could not otherwise gain through the political process or from the voters. Things like enormous amounts of regulation on individuals and business sectors, and enormous amounts of taxpayer cash paid to their private sector supporters. This Democrat attempt at extortion of sick Americans held up passage of a covid19 relief package last week, which hurt people. Democrats are using the Wuhan Chinese Flu crisis to gain political power and control over Americans, and to artificially damage the American economy and President Trump. Democrats will destroy America to try to wrest control of it. Sick Americans who die from this are simply collateral damage to them.
So, if you have not yet developed your own philosophy of government, now is a very good time to do it. Events happening right around you demand that you participate in some way.
Determine your philosophy of government based on your own principles and values.
Do you believe in the pre-eminence of the free citizen, and the innate smallness of government, as defined by the Bill of Rights? Or do you believe in a Marxism-inspired vision of forced wealth redistribution, open borders, endless streams of illegal aliens into America, and endless amounts of taxpayer money given freely to these aliens, even while it is tightly withheld from the very American citizens who paid it in the first place?
My own philosophy of government is based on America’s founding documents (Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights) and their promise of free and equal opportunity for all citizens. This means I work for a government that is a big safety net, with arms and legs sticking out of it, and not the over-reaching nanny state that micromanages and dictates every breath we take.
Flumageddon shines spotlight on failed US bureaucracy
The Wuhan Flu aka coronavirus has resulted in a Flumageddon hysteria that has damaged America’s economy and forced millions of students to stay at home, supposedly “study online,” and pester their working parents.
Flumageddon has shut down public meetings, schools, and work environments coast to coast. Almost everything that Americans take for granted has been stopped cold by it. Entire cities on both coasts are entering constitutionally questionable lockdown status, where the citizenry may have to “shelter in place” just like the ancient Hebrews did in Egypt, as God’s death plague worked its way through the first born of humans and animals alike.
Why are we here? What on earth happened to bring the freest, most technologically advanced nation to this point?
Was America really, truly unprepared for this moment?
Two things happened that got us here.
First, China has been doing everything it can, in literally every way possible, to undermine, hamper, damage, and take over America. China is a socialist tyranny, and so they have been able to direct hundreds of millions of Chinese to sit at keyboards all day every day with the goal of filing fake Trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office in DC, and to hack into credit card companies, and to hack into everyday websites, and to post antagonistic messages on websites, and to play around with ordering and then canceling American products and services, and so on. Not to mention the 500,000 Chinese fake “researchers” posted at American research institutions. They are spies, really, stealing our knowledge out from under us in the phony name of open-ness and tolerance and diversity and other meaningless nonsense.
The tentacles of China are long and many, its parasitic sapping of America’s strength a long-held accepted fact.
And nothing allowed China to wreak its havoc on Americans more than people in BOTH Democrat and Republican parties allowing it to do so openly and in plain view. Because a handful of ultra wealthy wanted to be even more ultra wealthy. And they share a bit of that wealth by giving it to re-election campaign funds of careerist politicians, who hold on to power and do China’s bidding in American policy and law. Thus were American jobs and factories outsourced to China, and basically everything good America has or had was literally handed to China. All for thirty pieces of silver, on top of the thirty pieces of silver that had already been handed out a million times before to just a handful of highly placed recipients. Traitors to America, really.
So China’s Wuhan Flu is a direct product of the artificial and unhealthy economic relationship between our two nations, maintained by a billion people in China and just a few thousand people in America. Wuhan Flu spread through the world, and into America, because of an unnaturally open one-way relationship, and a criminally porous American border.
Second, Flumageddon happened because American bureaucrats are an incompetent and lazy bunch, artificially protected by artificially way-way-way over-generous personnel rules.
Career bureaucrats at Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Drug Administration have been unprepared for this moment for decades, despite plenty of warning shots from SARS and Swine Flu before. Instead of developing flu testing kits and extensive steps for combating Wuhan Flu, career bureaucrats at CDC, NIH, FDA and a host of satellite agencies and state offices, all took long lunches on the forgotten taxpayer’s dime. They posed and preened and presented themselves as dispassionate arbiters of public health interests. And in fact, when the moment of truth arrives, we see that they are simply lazy and incompetent. In China, which so many of our federal bureaucrats love because of its ruthless efficiency and all-powerful government, they would all have been shot in the back of the head by now for their failure.
Instead, we are treated to a host of foolish talking heads from CDC and NIH who are, in fact, partisan political activists using their public positions to advance a political campaign to discredit the one person who has absolutely no blame for Flumageddon: President Donald Trump, who, unlike 95% of Congress and 100% of the federal bureaucracy, has NOT been in government his entire career.
Flumageddon is not even Obama’s fault, though he did experience at least one, arguably two, fatal flu public health events, and, therefore, Obama could have directed CDC and NIH and FDA to begin making testing kits and vaccines. In anticipation of future outbreaks. Nope, the fault really lies with our open borders mentality, which carries nation-ending risks, and with our lazy, incompetent, over-protected, entitled, unaccountable bureaucrats, who then cement the open borders risks into stone.
In order to pound down Americans even more, and make us more pliable, more amenable to their supposed solutions. Which are always more and bigger and more powerful government intervention into our lives.
Interesting how this works. The symmetry was so clean and easy. Until Trump came along and challenged it. Cue the hysteria…
collusion with Russia meddling is real and happening
No doubt about it, Russia has been meddling in America’s elections for decades. It is one of the weaknesses that an open society like ours has, and which a closed, authoritarian society like Russia (and China) do not have. The nature of our democratic process leaves America vulnerable to tampering from without and to treason from within. And in our universities, our corporations, and our news outlets. And so it is not news anywhere that some Americans have been colluding with Russia in its meddling since forever, like since the 1920s.
Looking back on the 1930s responses to open treason and the 1950s “Red Scare” and the resulting Hollywood blacklisting of Americans openly colluding with Russia in the attempted murder of America, it seems the problem’s surface was only scratched then. Groups like the ACLU, founded by open communists (Roger Baldwin – “Communism is the goal”), are still active and incredibly destructive today.
And even more so, we have a a political party whose leaders now openly identify as “Democratic Socialists.” They are not even hiding their actual allegiances any longer.
Yes, we see the American young people flocking to this Democratic Socialism Free Stuff banner. It is surprising and painful, because it is so at odds with the self-reliance and independence that marked American culture from our very beginning.
It is a fact that my wife and I have been complicit with others in our generation and the generation before us in absolutely spoiling rotten our kids, and priming them for this Free Stuff movement. Giving them everything, demanding from them very little. And sonofabitch, wouldn’t ya know it, when the little bastards grew up to teens and twenties, they actually expected everything for FREE. We trained our own kids to be this way.
Even though I had done my best to require from my kids home chores before dinner, or before fun time, I think I was like a lot of other old fashioned dads who also collided with our beloved wives on this.
As dads, we were boys once. And as boys, we in our generation were expected and often aggressively forced by our dads to work our butts off all the time, to do chores, in order to earn TV time, to earn a bicycle, to earn telephone time after homework was done, and so on. God bless our good wives today, they love our children so very much, they can’t imagine hurting their feelings by always backing us up on enforced chores. Making the children do chores gets in the way of their homework, ya know…hey, are you doing your homework or scrolling through endless humorous memes over there?
God help the dad who demands chores from the kids! Even my own son, my pride and joy, a good kid, the ‘mini me’ who is supposed to grow up to be smarter, stronger, faster than me, when tasked with helping fill our wood sheds with enough split firewood for the winter said “Well, that doesn’t sound like very much fun.” And then pouted about not being able to spend that time with his buddy.
So now America has one, maybe two generations of young people who really expect everything to simply be handed to them. Without having to work for it at all. Free participation trophies for everyone. Contrast this to the old days, a mere thirty or forty years ago, where young people expected to eventually inherit from their parents, but only after working very hard to achieve much on their own.
And so here we are, Crazy Bernie Sandals and every single other Democrat candidate for president, is promising free everything for everyone, like free college tuition, free income, free housing, free health care, including for law-breaking illegal aliens who illegally invade America and who have neither put money into the collective taxpayer pot nor will they. America’s own material success and wealth are being used as a weapon against America.
Obviously this free stuff movement is financially and socially unsustainable, because resources have limits and it is innately unfair. But that is not the point for the Free Stuff movement. The point is to use that lure and false promise to buy enough votes from gullible kids and illegal aliens to attain communism in America through our democratic process. That is, to turn America into a communist country.
Crazy Bernie Sandals honeymooned in the old Soviet Union Russia, because he was and still is a proud authoritarian communist. But he is not alone in this view; every other Democrat candidate has said more or less the same things he has said, sometimes differing by a few shades of grey.
Leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917, which is when Russia became an authoritarian communist country exporting its cruelty abroad, there were two movements to achieve communism in Russia. One group was the Bolsheviks, whose belief in Bolshevism required a violent overthrow and replacement of the existing government. Their competitors were the Mensheviks. They believed in the eventual slow drip-drip-drip overthrow of the Russian government, one chip at a time, one government position at a time, one vote at a time, using the democratic process to slowly implement their goals until the government was dominated by communists. And only then they would use force to implement their authoritarianism.
Know what the Mensheviks were called?
The Russian Social Democratic Party.
Sound familiar to something happening today right here in America?
on Mayor Steve Reed
Steve Reed was the long-time Democrat mayor of Harrisburg City, and he died last week. I knew Mayor Reed and I feel compelled to say some things about him.
My uber-Republican grandparents Ed and Jane introduced me to Steve back in the early 1990s, when he was first running for mayor of Harrisburg. When I queried how such ardent partisans as they could support a Democrat, the response they gave was a life-changing truism that is worth everyone remembering:
“Support the best candidate who will do the best for The People, regardless of political party.”
And besides, the Republican Party had long since abandoned Harrisburg City, as the GOPe has chicken-out abandoned all other urban areas across America. So there was no real Republican to challenge Reed.
The truth is that Steve Reed really did have the best interest of The People, the citizens of Harrisburg City, at heart. Like a lot of gay men his age, he felt that his opportunity for personal companionship was self-limited, and so he had nothing else to live for than his citizens, the people he viewed as being under his care. And he did dutifully care for all of us to his best ability.
When a bad vehicle accident would occur in the city in the very dead of night, or a homicide, Steve would show up in coat and tie, maybe fuzzy slippers on his feet, to find out exactly what happened so that he could try to fix the cause. Or at least communicate to the city’s citizens what had happened, so that there was the least mystery possible. He was always on the job. The guy cared about his job in a way that hardly anyone ever cares about public service jobs any more. Reed was truly a public servant in every good sense of the phrase.
Long ago I joked with Mayor Reed that when he died, I was going to embalm his body, dress him up in one of his dowdy suits, put a cigarette in his hand, and prop him up in the window in his old office, so that the citizens below could look up and see Steve, The Mayor, still on the job, still doing his best for us, and that knowing all was well, they would all be consoled of all concerns and go on with their lives, happier and more confident. A perpetually stable Harrisburg.
He always smiled at that joke.
His attempt to build the nation’s premier cowboy / Western museum was a great idea, like his successful idea to build an incredible civil war museum. But that Wild West Museum did not happen only because it lost momentum, despite having a veritable mountain of wonderful bona fide Western frontier artifacts to show. When the museum lost momentum, questions began to arise about how all those wonderful artifacts had been obtained with scarce public funds, and where were they kept, etc. And once those questions were asked, it was the beginning of the end of Steve’s reign. Such was the public’s trust in Mayor Reed that he could really do no wrong, and when he demonstrated that even great people have weaknesses, the public mostly abandoned him.
The last I saw Steve was at a home in Uptown Harrisburg, down the street from where we live. It was a gathering of a political who-is-who in the area that I rudely barged into uninvited, and the hostess, Peggy, cheerfully greeted me with hugs and a hot drink nonetheless. The three of us, Peggy, myself, and Mayor Reed, were all back in a corner chatting while eating fresh fruit. Steve looked happy, and Peggy was her usual 100 MPH self. Until Steve asked me “Josh, you don’t support Trump, right?”
“Of course I do, mayor, I absolutely do support President Trump. He is doing a great job for America, and I think you of all people should appreciate how hard that is to do,” I responded.
Peggy exploded, poor thing. She was standing elbow to elbow with me, and her unhappy response was broadcast in bits and pieces across the side of my sweater and cheek. She was nearly foaming at the mouth with anger, indignation, her eyes were crossed, and a garble of unintelligible words poured forth from her mouth that I did not have to actually understand in their particular to understand in their overall gist.
Peggy disliked (still does) President Trump, and was ummm…frustrated that I would support him.
“Ignore him, Peggy,” said Mayor Reed. “He is just saying that to get a rise out of you.”
Mayor Reed looked at me, smiled, popped a grape in his mouth and walked off into the bigger party. He was politic to the end.
In our hunting camp there hangs a large moose head above the living room. It is named “Stephen” after Mayor Steve Reed, because it was purchased from the eventual auction of the Harrisburg Wild West Museum contents. When I picked up the enormous wooden crate with the moose head inside, I couldn’t wait, and I opened it up right away in the bed of the pick up truck. Inside was all the original documentation going back to the original purchase of the moose by Steve Reed, years before. He had acquired it from an old frontier saloon in southwest Minnesota, and apparently many cowboys had hung their hats on it over the decades. It was a real, bona fide emblem of the wild west; at least as the Western frontier was known in Minnesota.
Steve the Moose now looms over all our comings and goings at camp, provoking small children to squeal with delight and with fright, and grown men to pose all manly-like. No question the moose head is a symbol of the Big Woods and all that is wild in America, a proper companion to other real cabin furnishings like beaver pelts and traps. But to me, Steve the Moose symbolizes Steve Reed the mayor, the all-knowing bull moose, watching over his sanctuary, his people, his charges.
It is comforting to me.
Bye, Steve, you are gone but not forgotten. Here, let me dust off your ears for you. And have a light.
Mayor Steve Reed looks at one of the Remington bronzes he purchased for his Wild West Museum. The bronze was among the gazillion other real wild west artifacts sold at auction. Denver Post photo credit
Ammin Perry cartoon symbolizing about $7 million city dollars up in smoke, and Mayor Reed did like to smoke
Steve Reed the moose still oversees all
Put Joe Biden on trial in the senate
Yes, we know, the Republican Party has little fight in it, and that is the reason why the ridiculous kangaroo show trial in the senate has been allowed to go on for more than the first five minutes. I mean, compare the hidden way the Democrat Party handled the due process-less “impeachment” in the US House to the hands-off way the GOPe handles the Senate side.
The entire impeachment hoax has been nothing but a non-stop anti -Trump political activity that began before Trump was even sworn in.
So now that we have listened to months of lies about Trump, it is time to set the record straight. Oh, I know, the GOPe doesn’t have the stomach for drawing this out, for letting this go on and on. They just want it to end and go away.
Except, it won’t go away. The Democrat Party Press will never allow this to go away. They will have panels discussing it every day until Election Day, and never in Trump’s favor. Every Democrat Party anchor – George Stephenapolous, Chuck Todd, Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow, you name it – will be talking about it until Election Day, and never in Trump’s favor.
So, let’s get the cause of this up on the stand, under oath. Get corrupt Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the cocaine addict dishonorably discharged from the US military, up on the stand, under oath, to explain what the hell they were doing in Ukraine that lead to this whole cover-up and fake impeachment effort to stop the criminal investigations into the Bidens in the first place.
If Joe Biden is put on the witness stand under oath, then the American people will finally get to find out, one way or another, what exactly happened in the Obama administration that channeled so many inexperienced young Democrats from high level families into high paying jobs in Ukraine.
So, irony of ironies, if there is one possible silver lining and hidden purpose to the whole fake impeachment, it is the possibility to get the criminals who started this whole thing under oath on the witness stand. Answer some questions.
Of course it would require not only the Senate republicans to want to actually do something, but then the US Dept. of Justice would have to, too. And as we have seen, the US DOJ is just as corrupt now as it was four years ago, when a previous administration ran it. Sorry to say, because AG Barr does give some great talking head. He sounds freakin awesome, but he then allows corrupt and partisan holdovers in the DOJ to have their way politically, with no consequences. Which means Barr is not in this fight, either.
The sad thing is, with a few notable exceptions, the Republicans just do not have any fighting spirit in them. None. And they are facing a very determined enemy, who will say and do anything, no matter how untruthful, how damaging to America, to achieve their goals and to protect their criminal history.
It may be that in the end there is no political solution to this mess, and that instead of the politicians, the American people are going to have to sort it out themselves.
Fake impeachment ruins MLK Day
Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been a flawed man, but in his best moments he was the conscience of America in his day, and he embodied the hope that America represents for everyone who works to make it the best it can be.
Flaws make people into real people, and King’s “I have a dream” speech was so effective and moving because it was his own original work, worked out over several years of sermons and political speeches across the South and Northeast. He had spent years honing a message of de-segregation, equality of opportunity, and valuing character over skin color when he delivered his most famous speech.
Simultaneously, King struggled in his personal life, surrounded by adulating women attracted to his charisma. His own personal struggles were reflected in his self-reflection and resulting inner strength. Just as America has struggled with its own flaws, and worked hard to improve itself.
Fast forward a bunch of decades, and MLK Day is annually devoted to remembering and practicing the best, most basic lessons America learned from this amazing man. And yet, the one political party that emptily claims to represent the interests of the American Black community has chosen MLK Day 2020 to begin a complete sham of a political impeachment attack on the US president. That is, MLK Day has been kicked to the curb by members of Congress Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler, in their lust for political carnage to cover up the many crimes committed by the Obama Administration (e.g. Joe Biden, Adam Schiff, John Kerry) in Ukraine.
Clearly the politicians who now head up the Democrat Party value the very worst of shallow, meaningless political shenanigans over emphasizing the very best of American character. What a damned shame. Maybe this is due to the fact that the great awakening occurring among American Blacks (“Blexit” as represented by Candace Owens among others) has these politicians looking ahead for new victims to add to their voting base.
Anyhow, here is MLK and his amazing I Have a Dream speech, which is worth watching and listening to every year, at least, to remind us of how incredible America is, how it was designed to improve itself from the very beginning, and how it has improved itself with the devotion and sacrifice of people like Martin Luther King, Jr.
Trump not legally impeached, but wear it with pride anyhow
Trump was not legally impeached, but he should wear it with pride anyhow…
Because the US House has failed to deliver the phony “Articles of Impeachment” to the US Senate, as required by the US Constitution, there is no actual impeachment. President Trump has NOT been impeached by the US House. Not yet, anyhow. So all those wahoo-for-political-chaos partiers and “Merry Impeachmas” fake news reporters/ partisan political activists will just have to put off their foolish celebration until the process moves to the US Senate. If it ever goes there.
The reason the Founders of America structured the impeachment process this way was to give everyone a bite at the apple, both accuser and defendant. This simple structure is the heart of America’s due process found at every level of our legal system. If either half of the process is procedurally deficient or missing, then it does not exist. The impeachment process is a whole, not two separate halves existing by themselves.
This is because America’s Founders did not want an accused president guilty by accusation only, without the ability to defend himself. Just like you and I would not want that situation to exist. Would any of us want such a deficient process to exist in America, at any level? For example, would you yourself want to walk into a local magistrate’s court to defend yourself against a speeding ticket, and have the cop simply tell the judge that you are guilty because he says so, and have the process end there, with no opportunity for you to defend yourself?
That would not be a fair or balanced process, would it? Well, without the impeachment articles being delivered to the US Senate, it is not a fair or legal process.
But this deficient process does fit in with the entire previous false accusations against President Trump, starting with the Russia collusion hoax, and when that failed, jumping seamlessly over to yet another hoax, this time Ukraine. Ukraine is where the entire Democrat Party is running interference on behalf of corrupt criminal Joe Biden. Biden used his position as Vice President of the USA to illegally enrich himself and his son, Hunter Biden. President Trump tried to get to the bottom of it, and was falsely accused of exactly that which Biden had done.
And this un-American process also fits in with the Democrat Party’s novel and un-American approach to criminal charges: To them, you are guilty until proven innocent, contrary to the US Constitution’s guarantee that all defendants are innocent until proven guilty. That is, the burden of proof is on the accuser, not on the accused. If the accuser cannot make their case, then the accused goes free. No matter how empty the accusations against President Trump have been, the Democrat Party and their mainstream media propaganda arm have said “We don’t have the evidence yet, but we know it is there, and the evidence we have we can’t share with you, and you are guilty.”
Dear Democrat Party members: Are you truly proud of this un-American farce? Are you really OK with an entire American political party devoting itself to the destruction of the core rights and procedures that make America so much better than every other country? Would you ever tolerate this happening in your own life? If you are OK with this, then shame on you! Shame Shame Shame on you!
To be a true American, your love of America must be greater than your willingness to sacrifice America and all things American for your own personal goals or feelings. This feeling has always defined Americans, and yet the Democrat Party has one-two-three thrown it overboard.
What has actually (legally) happened in all of this is the US House has in effect censured President Trump, though once again without following correct procedures. In any event, the Democrat members of the US House are now on record as not liking the president. Are any of us surprised? The Democrat Party has not gotten over their 2016 loss to Donald John Trump, and they have allowed raw hatred, disdain for the US Constitution, and rejection of basic American civil rights to define them ever since. We know this already, but what the heck, make it official.
So, Mister president Trump, I encourage you to wear this fake “impeachment” with pride. Wear it as a badge of honor. The people who have put you and the rest of America through this destructive process are not true Americans, and if they say they don’t like you, that is to your credit. Keep doing what you are doing, Mister President.