Posts Tagged → economic
The drowning men of Europe
Most of Europe is drowning.
Drowning in debt they cannot afford, drowning in socialist economics like climate alarmism, drowning in power-mad authoritarianism that backwardly pits governments against the citizenry, drowning in cultural dissolution from uncontrolled mass migration by foreign people from failed nations who have zero interest in becoming European, but who simply want whatever quality of life goodies Europe can offer them for free.
Everyone around the world is watching this slow motion train wreck happen, and the worse it gets, the more the drowning governments refuse to change their policies to save themselves. This is the price of worshiping power and holding onto it at all costs. Drowning is the eventual cost.
Only a handful of European countries have resisted this drowning, namely Poland, Hungary, Russia. Border enforcement is the first and best method to ensure that Poland, Hungary, Russia remain themselves, and control their expenditures and streets. Russia obviously is a separate subject due to its invasion of Ukraine, but the fact is, Russia is still Russian, one of the greatest cultures in world history, in terms of art, literature, music, dance. There are no bongo drums at the Bolshei, yet, nor likely ever.
Spain, Ireland, England, and Germany are especially fraught, the water lapping at their lips, with their native citizens starting to engage in open street warfare with the invaders. But these same governments have strangely taken the side of the invaders, who do not pay taxes, commit endless violence, and are an unbearable financial burden. Censorship and repression of the native citizens for merely speaking about the lawless invasion is now common policy, so the governments can artificially, not legitimately, hold onto power. Everyone can see that confrontations between fed-up, repressed citizens and their corrupt governments are inevitable. And yet, the repression only tightens.
Governments in Germany, Spain, Britain, and France, especially, seem to be laser focused on Must…Hold…On…To… Power. At any cost. And so they continue to drown, going under from the weight of their increasing mistakes.
What do drowning people do, but grab onto anything or anybody around to keep from going under for the last time. A drowning person will pull down every rescuer with them, due to mindless panic and a primitive attempt at self preservation.
When I was young, I was a Water Safety Instructor. WSIs taught Red Cross lifesaving, and we certified lifeguards. I signed only those Red Cross lifeguard certification cards that I believed were truly earned. At any waterfront or pool, we WSIs were automatically the senior pro in charge, and I conducted many drills to prepare and train active duty lifeguards at many different lakes, pools, and beach fronts.
And I did rescue drowning people, many. Almost every time the drowning person would scratch me, claw at me, try to stand on me, in an attempt to climb on top of me so their lungs could reach the air. It is a dangerous moment trying to rescue a drowning person. Both the swimmer and the life saver can go down together, locked in a fatal embrace driven by panic.
The drowning men of Europe are doing the same thing right now as does a dying swimmer. They are all wildly splashing away at their own people, while trying to find something, anything, anyone, to prop themselves up onto. Here are some of the public policies the drowning men of Europe are doing that will in fact only hasten their death:
A) More unlimited mass migration, censoring and even jailing critics
B) More climate alarmism nonsense, censoring and even jailing critics
C) Siding with Islamic jihadis, the worst enemies of Western democracy, and thus pledging to “recognize” a new state of “palestine” in boundaries no one knows, under undefined conditions, with inevitably violent results. France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, and Germany are the leading proponents of rewarding jihadi terrorism by giving it another official place to call home. Just like they did with the new jihadi rulers of Syria.
That this new country would be created in the middle of an active war zone, not after the conclusion of a war as has been done in the past, does not daunt these drowning men. That it would be run by the avowed opponents of everything the drowning men used to stand on, does not daunt them. They are simply willing to sacrifice Israel and Middle East peace if it just buys them a few more minutes of life above the water closing over their heads.
I think Americans are going to end up riding in and saving Europe a third time, because the inevitable results of all of these self destructive policies by the drowning men is going to be that Europe goes under. And when Europe goes fully under water, all hell will break loose between the native Europeans and their would-be replacement invaders.
America is not going to stand by and let nuclear-armed England, France, and Germany become run by jihadis. Just ain’t gonna happen. We didn’t let Hitler drown Europe, and we sure won’t let the Mega Hitler jihadis do it, either.
Proving once again that Europe was always the rough prototype, and that America was the perfected implement, God’s gift to humankind.
American guinea pigs
A long time ago, guinea pigs were used for scientific experimentation. Feminine makeup, tool impacts, eye and ear capabilities, G-force and rotational effects on their brains and orientation, chemicals and drugs, and much more were all tested on what many Americans viewed as family pets. Like with most other small, cute, furry critters, the optics of the most egregious of these tests conducted upon them did not sit well with the American or European publics. And so most guinea pigs became liberated from the horrors of quasi-scientific testing.
Enter the human as the new guinea pig. There are so many of us humans on Planet Earth, and especially so many Han Chinese, that the value placed on a single human being is being dramatically reduced to measures of momentary comforts of the people standing around (post-birth infanticide), the organs in a human body (China), and hacked-up teenaged trans-sexual Frankensteins. At one time, Americans, at least, highly valued human life. Not anymore.
Today, we allow our American selves to be subjected to all kinds of unknown, un-volunteered scientific tests, conducted by distant Han Chinese politicians and scientists. Covid-19 was the first time we became fully aware of Chinese biowarfare testing being conducted upon our entire American population, but there were plenty of past strong hints that our health was being meddled with, and watched.
Unusually stronger and stronger influenza strains over the past two decades come to mind. Once correctly called the “Asian flu”, as these influenzas in fact come from Asia, wokeism/ political correctness demanded that Americans stop calling it what it was. Probably inspired by the prompting of a host of Chinese academics burrowed into American universities, where ridiculous ideas seem to come from non-stop.
Well, here we are in late March, 2025, and a lot of Americans are struggling with the strangest cold virus family doctors have seen (several family doctors told me this). I myself have had this weird cold virus for over three months now, and although the hacking cough stopped last week, the nasty mucous continues. I feel like crap, am low energy, and every time it seems I am past it, it comes back. Normal cold viruses last a week, maybe ten days. Like many others who have caught this “cold”, I am past ninety days. This is not just not normal, it is orders of magnitude waaaayyy not normal.
Several friends and acquaintances have experienced this cold virus much worse than I, getting pneumonia and being hospitalized. Many of my friends simply had its endless hacking cough for months. My own family physician told me “We are seeing a lot of it and we don’t know what it is.”
Well, I am going to venture a guess at what this is: Yet another Chinese bioweapon being tested on the American public.
What made me curious about this virus was the day I was exposed to it. I was flying back from a southern fishing trip in December, and a guy in the seat behind me was coughing, hacking, and sneezing his head off. Strangely, he made no attempt to cover his mouth, and everyone around him was objecting loudly to his unpolished behavior.
And what was his most unexpected behavior, as he was a white guy in his mid sixties, short hair, wearing a button down Oxford shirt, chinos, and Dockers. This very epitome of Middle Income propriety was behaving like someone raised in a cave. Very odd clash of how someone presented in public and how they then acted in public. Everyone raised as this guy was raised knows that you cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze, and yet he deliberately did not. Almost like he was trying to share his misery with those around him.
I remarked to the Princess of Patience next to me, “It’s like the airport scene in the Twelve Monkeys movie, where the deadly pandemic virus is exposed to the public.”
And then a week later, sure enough, I showed symptoms that now over three months later are by far the worst, longest, and strangest cold I have ever had. Too many people I know have had a similar experience. Normal viruses last a week. This far outlier thing has to have been made in a lab. Add to that the remarkably bad Asian bird flu this year, resulting in egg shortages, and we have two or three data points to plot on an X-Y graph. The R² is looking like almost a perfect 100.
And so now I share with you, the public, a curiosity in my mind that will not cease: Are people being paid to go forth into the American interior and deliberately spread experimental viruses created in Chinese labs, for the purpose of both damaging America and using us as a giant colony of guinea pigs?
Why wouldn’t China do this? China is already at war with America at every contact point between our two nations. China’s concept of “total war” includes making war against our public health, as much as it includes economic war and aircraft carriers. America’s freedoms can be an Achilles heel in this fight, and we had better get a handle on what is being done to us before China’s domestic allies here on our soil (America’s domestic enemies) begin demanding that we again curtail our freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, etc.
America must really get control of its borders and know exactly who is here and why they are here, before something much worse happens. God only knows what the imperialistic Han Chinese CCP is concocting in their genetic engineering bioweapons labs right now, with the goal of eliminating us.
[Edit: I apologize for the many small mistakes and the slow editing process to fix them all day. I feel like wombat sh*t, which is to say, kind of weird and uncomfortable, and not totally focused] UPDATE 4/8/25: TOLDJASO!
One dad’s Father’s Day question to young Americans
Hi kids. Today is Father’s Day, a card company-inspired day for Americans to spend money on things like cards and gifts. It is a blatantly commercial event, but in the grand scheme of things, there are worse things to celebrate than fatherhood. Like an entire month dedicated to a person’s private sexual practices. I can make a strong case for June being Gardening Month.
Along with Motherhood, Fatherhood has been the guiding idea of the healthy and safe human family for probably close to a hundred thousand years: Physical protection from predatory animals and humans, life guidance in a world full of pitfalls and confusion, passing on skills and knowledge in a competitive world where making a living to stay alive and out of poverty is not easy. In short, fathers have been the other half of a successful family since the dawn of our species.
So don’t forget to call, email, text, or send a card to your dad today. Show some appreciation, even if your dad is occasionally foolish, an assh*le, selfish, whatever. The truth is, this man created you (with your mother), and you are here only because of him. Your life exists because of him.
So, in my role as a dad I have a question for the young people in America right now: Why are any of you supporting the main source of uncertainty that you face in the world’s greatest nation?
America went from a powerful and successful economy in 2020 to a continued and purposeful self-destructive free-fall from 2021 to today, with high inflation that eats away at the value of the Dollar in your pocket, fewer and fewer jobs, fewer good jobs, higher fees and taxes, millions of illegal invaders pouring over our borders who impose huge costs directly on you, and a huge amount of uncertainty now facing you.
There is just one source for all of this uncertainly: The political Left, which includes the mainstream media, academia, the government schools, the teacher’s unions, government bureaucracies, and the Democrat Party.
Not to mention all of the censorship, the attempt to control your words, your thoughts, your freedom to spend your money the way you want, your freedom to travel when and how you want. I could go on, but there is just one source for all of this effort to control everything you do and think and say: The political Left.
You say that abortion is your number one issue? Why? What on earth makes you feel empowered about ending the life of another person on demand, on a whim, without any thought or consideration? Don’t you think this is a weak approach to a literal life-and-death issue?
Did your parents treat you like a whim and just tear your little body apart and flush you down a drain? No, because you are here reading these words, probaby because your Father and Mother valued you and your presence on Planet Earth as a living human.
And if you think abortion is a constitutional issue, well, that has been dealt with in recent years. You can choose to live in a state that supports abortion on demand, if that is what is most important to you. As a dad, I find this a confusing motivator, but each to her own…just how many abortions do you plan on having?
For the constitutionally uneducated, abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, mostly because abortion was frowned upon for the vast amount of human existence. Especially in 1787, when the Constitution was being ratified. Children (like you, who were not aborted and are therefore reading these words here and now) were almostly always welcome, not seen as burdens.
But the argument can and has been made that abortion involves some self-rule over one’s body, because the Constitution blocks the government from having unfettered access to your person, place, and things, and it is hard to argue with that on principle. And so abortion has become legal in many places. This is the Yin and Yang of a dynamic America.
Consider how your perception of abortion rights compares to the general mainstream media discussion of self defense and firearm rights, which the Second Amendment expressly says “...shall not be infringed...” while in Pennsylvania our state constitution says the right to own and carry firearms “...shall not be questioned...” Universal abortion rights are presented as absolute and unquestioned, despite being found nowhere in our founding documents or debates, while the mainstream media complex constantly presents private citizens owning guns as completely up for debate, even though this is an actual right expressly enshrined in our founding documents.
This has been a bit of a digression from our initial question above, but the point has to be made, especially for young people: How you perceive yourself and your rights and your freedom and opportunities is largely influenced by the far-Left that has a death grip on academia, schools, and media.
As a loving dad on Father’s Day today, I encourage the young people who have stumbled upon this essay to really consider your future. Think hard and long about the causes of your scary future and the bedrock support most of us get from our family and dad. The political Left and its primary agent, the Democrat Party, is at war with family, with motherhood, with fatherhood, with your economic future and your personal freedoms and choices.
Everyone else is extending a helping hand to you. This essay is my way, as a loving, caring and understanding father, of helping you young people get your bearings. You know this, and you should vote like you know this.
To all the dads out there: Today we all salute you, and thank you, for doing your best to help guide us through our life.
OK, call me a Whig
For those like me who are bothered by the simplistic, almost child-like identity politics of partisan political party identification, there is always the third way out: Independent.
True to its name, being an Independent means that one is much less driven by one-dimensional partisan interests, and much more broadly politically driven, by more philosophical interests.
Oh please, don’t kid yourself that the Democrats and the Republicans today represent philosophical strands of thought on government involvement in the lives of the citizenry. That is a joke.
Both main political parties, Ds and Rs, are each practically wholly-owned subsidiaries of their respective special interest groups. Because I believe in economic freedom, among other things, I am more drawn to the Rs than the Ds, who have now pretty much openly embraced socialism.
Socialism is the opposite of economic freedom, and socialism requires tremendous inroads into personal freedom to achieve its artificial “income equality” outcome. The Ds have completely thrown in with the communists, the socialists, the chaotic ANTIFA, and the 1%-ers like George Soros who fund all the anarchic, violent, anti-America street melees. If you like your doctor, you will not be able to keep your doctor, as the previous ANTIFA president demonstrated, despite his lies to the contrary. There is nothing here with this group or amalgamation of groups for the average American family trying to get by comfortably and live a simple, happy life.
However, there are plenty of Rs who are D-lite. Call them RINOs, GOPe, whatever, they are part of an established, elite political class who have elevated themselves above the broad interests of the citizen taxpayer. Their interests are narrowly economic and even more narrowly financial. Big corporations, the Koch Brothers, US senator Mitch McConnell’s big and financially rewarding ties to the Chinese government, the various guises of the Chamber of Commerce, etc.; all seeking to funnel as much financial gain into as few big pockets as possible. At the cost of Americans’ freedom now and future liberty.
Like the Ds, this GOPe group also tries to manipulate national policy for personal gain, with open borders and no checks on the el-cheapo labor force that comes with a huge cultural and school tax price tag. Obviously the GOPe has little in common with the interest of The People, either, though more economic freedom can be found here than with the Ds. Nevertheless, the GOPe RINOs are not really committed to defending citizen freedom and liberty.
Thus the demand for the Independent identity. The problem with the Independent Party is that it is frozen out of many states, where there is a bi-partisan death grip on electoral process. If there is one thing both Ds and Rs can agree on, it is that they and they two alone must control, if only occasionally share, political power and outcomes for everyone else.
This is why there is so much collusion and bi-partisan deal making in places like Pennsylvania, where our closed Primary artificially limits voter choice. Being an Independent in most places, like Pennsylvania, means one cannot really vote in a meaningful way in the primary election, arguably when votes matter most.
If the Republican Party of the 1860s was the vehicle for the great Abolitionist movement, much of that great spirit is now gone. Obviously. Oh yes, we have the congressional Freedom Caucus, a refreshing group of patriots and individualists. But they are largely outnumbered by the corporatists within their own party.
And never mind that the Ds demand their minorities aka modern-day slaves remain and vote on the Democrat Plantation, just like they did in the old days. And that everyone else fall in line with their autocratic control schemes. Or else.
I do not identify as a Democrat and probably never will again (to do so would be like gleefully standing by the road screaming “Heil Hitler” in 1930s Germany as the latest Democrat Socialist Messiah drove by), so trying to figure them out is a waste of time.
So, I am now reaching and looking farther back in time for a political identity, back to more philosophical times, to when big ideas had relevance to everyday lives. And in that past I find the old British Whig Party actually captures my current philosophical views.
The Whigs of the 1700s-1800s believed in spreading political power and decision-making to the citizenry as broadly as possible.
The Whigs believed in Abolitionism, the movement to abolish slavery. Plenty of economic and financial gain at stake there, so it was a truly principled stand in the meanest sense.
The Whigs believed in a parliamentary monarchy, which was radical at the time. Though the Magna Carta had been written and signed by the British king so many centuries before, its notions of freedom, representative government, and due process for the average citizen only took a few centuries to refine and percolate up and out to the point where the monarch’s absolute grip on power was actually, truly challenged by erstwhile representatives of The People.
That slow progress also involved a couple civil wars that were spiced nicely with religious feuding. Lots of heads rolling in the streets, families burning at the stake…what the Chinese call “exciting times.”
So given they had witnessed the great evil and cruelty carried out in the name of official religious control and power, the Whigs were naturally against the establishment of all religious tests for citizens, and against an official, established state religion. On this score they eventually lost, as Anglicanism is now the official state religion of Britain.
Similarly, Scotland has the Church of Scotland as its official place of worship. Not that either of these churches are very Christian nor pro-Western today. The Whigs correctly viewed official religions as being against the interests of the People, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Church of England’s official anti-West, anti-freedom do-gooder political meddling.
In short, Britain’s Whigs were non-conformists who believed in a third way: diffuse political power, as opposed to centralized power. They promoted economic freedom and individual liberty for all, including for the lowest slave.
British history and people may appear rather blase and boring to today’s casual reader, but rest assured it was nothing of the sort. An overabundance of violent civil wars resulted in the seemingly placid society one enjoyably visits today.
As a result, the Whig party was transcendent for almost two centuries. With its enlightened philosophical views came maximum freedom and opportunity for the greatest number of Britons, ever. Many Whig views found their way into the American Constitution.
Given the anti-citizen Uni-Party political establishment here in America, the weakness of the Independent Party, and my own Constitutionalist views, I am mighty tempted to join the 1700s Whigs. At least they stand for something real and valuable.
And what does it say that in 2018 we must now reach back to the early 1700s Britain to reconnect with our greatest individual rights and needs in 21-st century America?
Aggressive timber management necessary in the Northeast
When I tell some people how aggressively we try to manage standing timber (forests), they often recoil. It sounds so destructive, so environmentally wrong.
It is not environmentally damaging, but I will be the first to admit that the weeks and months after a logging operation often look like hell on the landscape: Tops everywhere, exposed dirt, skid trails, a tangled mess where an open woods had stood for the past sixty to eighty years just weeks before. No question, it is not the serene scene we all enjoyed beforehand.
This “clearcutting” gets a bad name from poor forestry practices out West and because of urban and suburban lawn aesthetics being misapplied to dynamic natural forests.
However, if we do not aggressively manage the forest, and the tree canopy above it, then we end up with tree species like black birch and red maple as the dominant trees in what should be, what otherwise would be a diverse and food-producing environment. Non-native and fire-sensitive species like ailanthus are quickly becoming a problem, as well.
When natural forest fires swept through our northeastern forests up until 100 years ago, these fire-sensitive species (black birch, red maple) were killed off, and nut trees like oaks, hickories, and chestnuts thrived. Animals like bears, deer, turkey, Allegheny woodrats, and every other critter under the sun survived on those nut crops every fall.
Without natural fire, which is obviously potentially destructive and scary, we must either set small prescribed fires, or aggressively remove the overhead tree canopy to get sufficient sunlight onto the forest floor to pop, open, and regenerate the next generation of native trees. Deer enjoy browsing young tree sprouts, so those tasty oaks, hickories, etc that lack sufficient sunlight to grow quickly usually become stunted shrubs, at best, due to constant deer nibbling. Sunlight is the key here.
And there is no way to get enough sunlight onto the forest floor and its natural seed bed without opening up the tree canopy above it. And that requires aggressive tree removal.
Northeastern forests typically have deep enough soils, sufficient rainfall, and gentle enough slopes to handle aggressive timber management. Where my disbelieving eyes have seen aggressive management go awry is out west, in the steep Rockies, where 1980s “regeneration cuts” on ancient forests had produced zero trees 25 years later. In fact, deep ravines had resulted from the flash-flooding that region is known for, and soil was being eroded into pristine waterways. So, aggressive timber management is not appropriate for all regions, all topography, or all soils.
But here in the northeast, we go out of our way to leave a huge mess behind after we log. Why? Because how things appear on their surface has nothing to do with how they perform natural functions. Those tangled tree tops provide cover for the next generation of trees and wildflowers, turtles and snakes, and help prevent soil erosion by blocking water and making it move slowly across the landscape.
Indeed, a correctly managed northeastern forest is no place for urban or suburban landscape aesthetics, which often dictate bad “select cut” methods that work against the long term health and diversity of the forest, as well as against the tax-paying landowner.
So the next time you see a forest coming down, cheer on the landowner, because they are receiving needed money to pay for the land. Cheer on the loggers and the timber buyers, the mills and manufacturing plants, and the retailers of furniture, flooring, and kitchen cabinets, because they all are part of a great chain of necessary economic activity that at its core is sustainable, renewable, natural, and quintessentially good.
Hunting season preparations – Xmas in July
Though hunting seasons may be many months away, the truth is that hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania hunters are quietly sorting out their plans far ahead of time. Doe tags, DMAP tags, licenses and berths in a Quebec hunting camp for black bear and caribou, a camping permit for an ADK wilderness…it is all lining up now across the state.
Summertime preparations for Fall and wintertime hunting activities are a sign that yet another round of sustainable, renewable economic development is upon us here. After all, hunting is a $2.8 billion industry (or business sector, or economic sector) in Pennsylvania. Hunters are a renewable, and sustainable source of income and economic activity, so long as they have places to hunt.
Longingly fondling old, trusted firearms and bows, sighting them in on the sitting room wall or at the range, hunters can already smell that clean air, feel that cool breeze upon the cheek, and hear dead leaves rustle under foot, if they but close their eyes and imagine it.
It is Christmas in July now, as hunters across the Commonwealth gear up, trim up, and make sure everything is in order for that best time of the year: Hunting season.
Harrisburg’s new parking scam
Today I parked in a Harrisburg municipal garage. Got my ticket when I entered, and tried to pay when I returned four hours later.
Several poorly written, hand-written notes on lined paper were taped to the payment kiosk. These notes said that the kiosk was now taking only exact payment, that no refunds were being given, that inserting your credit card to pay could result in the permanent loss of your card, and that receipts slips were not printing.
In other words, you might mistakenly over-pay, because few people carry exact cash for anything, the machine would not give you a receipt for proof that you had overpaid, and you’d get no change back. What happens if you are in a rush to exit the garage and get on your way to your next destination? You might just leave a few extra bucks behind to save the time…no doubt that’s part of the purpose.
And we are not talking about nickels and dimes, but dollars only. It cost sixteen bucks to park in the garage for the four hours I was up at the Capitol. That is four dollars an hour, or four quarters for fifteen minutes of parking time (as opposed to one quarter for ten or fifteen minutes like it was until last year). It is a huge amount of money for parking.
And on top of the rip-off parking price, you get zero service, theft of your change due back, and no receipt to prove you did indeed pay.
Harrisburg has some serious challenges, and this parking scam is going to make recovery worse. One of the ways the city is supposed to re-coup its bad debt on the incinerator is lease out the parking garages. Well, here ya go; here is the natural result of that leasing arrangement: All rip-off, no service, outrageous prices, no due process. Really hope the “geniuses” who thought this up are held accountable for this failure.
Wait a minute! The guys who ripped us all off with the incinerator debt never got held accountable, and now we have a whole new set of rip-off guys milking us in new ways. I guess it just doesn’t end, until every taxpayer will have moved from the city and abandoned the place to the crows and the weasels.