Peter Koelliker replied to comment from John Batchelor

I take it you have watched Trump’s show. I have not. Therefore, your references to his show escape me. I base my assumptions on what I do see: Trump Towers in New York and Trump Casino in Atlantic City.

Given our current economic conditions, his claim that he still has enough money to manage a presidential campaign also speaks volumes. In addition, I hear what he says. I have heard nothing, since embarking on his quest for the presidency, with which I disagree. What he said previously, is of no importance to me since it was not said as one who would hoodwink the public in a political sense. From now on, I will pay attention.
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It is now generally accepted (mostly by conservatives) that raising taxes does not necessarily translate into more revenue for the government; that, in fact, what the government collects is likely to stay the same as a percentage of GDP no matter what the tax rate is. This is not fantasy. It can be documented by historical example. Therefore, the emphasis should be on growth.

If our problem is that government does not have enough money to pay its bills – as we are told – then lowering taxes across the board would seem to be a significant part of the solution. Yet current policy makers insist that we go in the opposite direction.

There should not even be an argument about this. The same percentage taken out of a smaller pie will result in reduced intake by the treasury and vice versa. The fact that we cannot agree means that something else is at stake: social engineering in the form of the redistribution of American’s wealth as to achieve total equality (both domestic and globally).

Our politicians are loath to tell us of their true intent; our universities fail to educate. So we are sent out into the street to protest the mere possibility that our neighbor makes a dollar more a week than we do. This is considered ‘unfair’. Everyone should have the same after all. The next step is for all of us to start wearing matching uniforms.

It bugs me no end when politicians use this canard to bat around. Why don’t they just tell us outright that they want to make us all the same, discard all pretense of actually balancing the budget and raise the debt limit to infinity? This way, all of us would be cured of the compulsion to compete and concentrate on simply staying alive.
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“How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here”

--Pink Floyd

Circular Ruins

Steve Slater, folk hero, captures America’s current mood precisely. He isn’t the first. He now joins the likes of Joe Wilson, who famously shouted “Liar!” during a joint session of Congress, and Rick Santelli who let loose from the floor of the stock exchange - all of which had the elites screeching like stuck pigs.

The American people have had just about enough of those who would shunt them aside and deny their humanity; subject them to endless experiments in social engineering while berating them and robbing them blind.

Something’s got to give at some point. The daily insults: the proposed mosque at Ground Zero; the government suing Arizona; the moratorium on oil drilling; the relentless spending of our money; ever accelerating tax rates and national debt; the now steady diet of blatant propaganda; the re-write of history - I could go on and on.

It’s nice to see that we’re not giving up; that we have come to realize that our enemies are mere ankle biters; that we can shake them off with some small gesture. All is not lost when such gestures - without violence, for violence is not in our nature - garner tidal waves of support that even the media can’t gloss over and render illegitimate.
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Lou, this one’s for you: You said you’d enjoyed reading Borges. I was given “Labyrinths” to read in college. It made no sense, so I left it. I just came across it again some 40 odd years later. I am reading it now and understand it perfectly. Last night I read “Circular Ruins” in which the protagonist arrives at the ruins of a temple with the intent of dreaming (creating) a man. He does so after so many fits and starts. At some point the temple burns and the man is consumed as well. As he walks into the flames, ‘they do not bite into his flesh, they caress him and engulf him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understands that he too is a mere appearance, dreamt by another.’

Reminds of Barack Hussein Obama.

American Universities Doing Their Part

My neighbor and his family are currently away, vacationing in Japan. They are expected back this weekend. They will be here for approximately a week and then they’re off to sunny France for an additional two weeks. Both he and his wife are immigrants. He works for Google.

Look, education costs are crushing alright. I know; I put two kids through college. Both turned out alright and have jobs, thank God. But higher education in America has ceased being education in the classical sense. Instead, it has become a ticket for entry into the upper classes. The basics are no longer stressed. What is critical is that one conforms to and shows promise in advancing a specific ideology. The lower grades have essentially become day care and PC engines of social conditioning.

Education in America has become pure fluff. This is why we require foreigners to innovate, build, and maintain whatever remains of our industrial and financial base. In this we have already been overtaken by what we condescendingly refer to as the Third World (primarily Asia). Since fluff, like financial derivatives, can be priced at whatever the gullible are prepared to bear, education has become a toxic investment.

It has come to my attention that major American colleges and universities are looking to open up campuses in India. Will these be having American teachers? I doubt it. Perhaps there’s a strategy emerging here. It has been said that the best way to bring about the downfall of a nation is to export liberalism to it. Let no one claim that American universities are not doing their part.

Equality and Marxism

The backbone of Marxism is equality. Equality is like an artificial limb that replaces one that has been severed or has been withered by disease. Equality can be viewed in one of two ways: Equality of opportunity, or equality in outcome. The two are vastly different and, if one or the other were implemented, it would produce widely divergent results. Today, they are seen falsely, either as one and the same, or used interchangeably.

When it was found that taxation could be crafted for purposes of social engineering, the old idea of viewing taxes purely as a revenue stream withered on the vine. Politicians now consider taxation as a vehicle to advance their own careers, used primarily to reward supporter and punish opponents. Social engineering is always dependent on fostering a false impression of groups which are then goaded to oppose each other. With a population thus fractured, it becomes possible for politicians to pick through the shards and build a base of support. Sometimes their fingers get bloodied.

This system has worked successfully for politicians; so much so, that these have now evolved into a parasitic, elite class with powers and privileges quite divorced from the everyday experience of its constituents. Today we are, in effect, no different from countries like Russia or China.

There are two reasons why it has turned out that way (or has worked to promote the fortunes of career politicians like Ted Kennedy): One, the public does not understand that for the government to punish one, it punishes all. (The same is true for bestowing favors at the expense of others.) The public is yet too unsophisticated to realize that it is government itself that is inherently prone to evolve into an existential threat to their freedoms; that this danger does not derive from proxy skirmishes between parties or artificially defined population segments. Two: the public remains unaware of its own power in the shaping of policy; that without public support, government is reduced to an empty shell.

The battle we face today is not between Republicans and Democrats; it is not between progressives and blue dogs; it is not between rich and poor; old and young; blacks and whites; male and female; etc. The battle is between a (hopefully) united people and their now clearly illegitimate government. Government has grown too large; too unresponsive. This is not a new phenomenon. Incrementally, this has been building for some time. It is only since the Obama administration has come to power that the American public has been awakened to the possibility of being held hostage to unaccountable totalitarianism because of Obama’s insistence on heading toward full government control within the span of a single presidential term.

No doubt, big changes lie ahead. No doubt, the American people will re-discover their footing, and a dystopian future can yet be averted. There will be disruption; there will be chaos. But when the dust settles, the steady advance of government intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans will have been thwarted and turned back to reflect a more reasonable balance everybody can live with.