2020: A Painful Year in U.S. History

 “Are the testers sent home for 14 days every time they come in contact with someone who tests positive?”

2020 is the year when we were willingly held hostage and still are to the communist flu.  I am not talking about the Chinese Corona-19 virus developed in the Wuhan laboratory. I am talking about the long and unending months of unnecessary lockdowns, destruction of small business America, complete transformation of our school system, public and university, the destruction of our stellar health care, and the complete obliteration of our Constitution.

2020 is the year when leftist America, driven to panic, fear, and misinformation by the main stream media and our own government at all levels but especially local and state governments, fundamentally transformed life for the rest of America into a socialist cesspool of corruption, lies, and lawlessness.

2020 is the year which will remain in history as the year when humanity cowered in fear and panic over a flu virus with a high spread rate but low mortality, mortality enhanced in blue states by the use of ventilators and the governors’ refusal to allow doctors to prescribe existent medication that worked.

2020 is the year when doctors became virtual puppets of the socialist healthcare system, refusing to see patients in person for fear that the government will take away their licenses if they keep their Hippocratic oath to do no harm to their patients. Fear is a powerful motivator and can make good people become cowards.

2020 is the year when philanthropist Bill Gates became the nation’s medical advisor and advocate for his vaccine that might cure Covid-19. 

2020 is the year of the first rushed vaccine. Without its miracle cure, people must remain hunkered down in their own homes and not come out until they can prove with a chip implant in their arms that they had been vaccinated.

2020 is the year when Dr. Fauci, a decades-long Washingtonian bureaucrat became the nation’s health czar, who told us that, unless we wear masks indefinitely, our lives will never go back to normal.

2020 is the year when bureaucrats took away our Easter, vacations, cruises, travel, beauty salons, barber shops, Thanksgiving, and Christmas and we agreed like the obedient sheep that we are.

2020 is the year when nursing homes locked up their long-term residents indefinitely for their own good and families were declined access. Suicides in all walks of life went up significantly.

2020 is the year when the old normal died and the “new normal” was installed by the communist left in America and nobody objected at all. Expensive public service announcements with sleep-inducing music reminded us of the “new normal.”

2020 is the year when thousands of paid protesters rioted in the streets of many Democrat towns with no worries of Covid-19 spread, but families had to hold virtual funerals. At the same time, a criminal with a long rap sheet got a stately funeral with thousands of mourners crowded near each other.

2020 is the year when schools were closed indefinitely, and “teaching” became virtual. We are not sure yet what happens to learning, retention, the students’ eyes, and mental health.

2020 is the year when we lost our faces and our identity, covered by a permanent and obligatory face diaper without which we cannot shop in grocery stores, fly, or enter any public buildings.

2020 is the year when 900 plus ordinary Americans were placed on a no-fly list because they refused to wear a mask.

2020 is the year when we lost our faith and our churches. The Corona-19 virus is very discriminatory – it can differentiate between rioting crowds, protesting crowds, and crowds in a theater or church.

2020 is the year we lost movie theaters, theaters in general, performance venues in parks and stadiums, and museums.

2020 is the year dominated by everything socialist and communist, supported by billionaires with money to burn and a wickedly Marxist agenda.

2020 is the year we lost law and order when political corruption and lawlessness had reached its zenith. Police was defunded in leftist towns and the population wondered why crime had skyrocketed.

2020 is the year when the only president in history had become the subject of impeachment days before he was even sworn in.

2020 is the year when a staged coup by our own government to remove a duly elected president from office has been unmasked but the culprits were never punished and are still in office doing harm to our country.

2020 is the year the Democrat Party became the Socialist Democrat Party of America, composed of all anti-Americans who wish to harm our country for political and financial gain.

2020 is the year when all civility and respect for authority, elders, and an elected office have died.

2020 is the year when the hatred from the left dominated domestic and international news.

2020 is the year when an innocent President that the left hates with an inexplicable and irrational fervor had been questioned, vilified, demonized, trashed, made fun of, threatened, and dragged into courts continuously. Experts have called this illness the Trump Derangement Syndrome which apparently has no cure. On November 3, a drug called Bidenol will be tested countrywide.

2020 is the year when President Trump has achieved more to further peace in the world and the Middle East than any other prior president. He was acquitted of the phony impeachment.

2020 is the year when technocracy took away our freedom of speech and started controlling what we read, watch, and listen to. Their moderators put us into our places of obscurity and silence.

2020 is the year when many large and medium retailers went bankrupt while the favored oligarchs and big crony capitalists thrived.

2020 is the year when the justice system went to the dark side and judges became overt activists and advocates for socialism and communism instead of being impartial.

2020 is the year marking the beginning of the last throes of the Constitutional Republic, a sharp decline decades in coming, whittled away, and stripped of its liberties bit by bit, like water chiseling away at a rock.

2020 is the year when our Constitutional Republic exists in name only, comatose and placed into a gilded coffin, waiting for the last nails to be struck before it is completely buried in a vault in the Washington Swamp.

2020 is the year of global communist media, global communist sycophants, and of the radical greens.

2020 is the year when law and order was replaced by criminality, treason, abject government corruption, riots, violent protests, and communist activism disguised as “social justice” and “systemic racism.” Innocent people not wearing a mask were fined or jailed, while hard-core criminals were released for fear of Covid-19 outbreaks in prison.

2020 is the year when nobody died of any other disease except Covid-19 and many got rich making masks, ventilators, novel and expensive drugs, and experimental vaccines.

2020 was the year of the unemployed on government stimulus checks.

2020 was the year of teachers and administrators refusing to go back to work for fear of Covid-19, but the paychecks rolled in.

2020 is the year when civility, morality, family, faith, modesty, patriotism, nationality, borders, honor, courage, and marriage have succumbed to leftist evil.  Everything good is replaced by malevolence and love is replaced by vitriolic hate created by media’s manufactured reality.

In the art imitating life category, the infamous Matrix is holding Sully by his leg over a precipice, and asks him if he remembers when he told him that he promised he would kill him last; Sully is dropped over the cliff while Matrix says ominously, “I lied.”

Update:

We end 2020 on an even lower note of destruction on November 3, 2020, the presidential election date when communism finally took permanent root in America through deception, lies, decades-long media and school indoctrination, voting fraud, ignorant voters, and riots, the year when the best president in my lifetime lost to a communist candidate with dementia and his VP pick, a radical Marxist. So ends the storied history of the best country in the world, the United States of America.

 

Poverty Induced by Socialism Is Hard to Shake

Empty meat market     Photo: Octavian Paul Draja

To say that poverty induced by socialist dictatorships is hard to shake would be an understatement. Ask Cubans and now Venezuelans what is like to live in the workers’ paradise that Fidel forced upon his people while he stashed away billions he has stolen with his cronies.

The socialist dictator Hugo Chavez left behind billions in personal bank accounts while Venezuelans struggle to survive under his socialist successor Maduro, who mismanaged the economy just as badly. One of the nations with the richest oil supplies cannot feed its people and provide basic goods that Americans take for granted, bread, milk, butter, diapers, detergent, just to name a few, and must spend hours each day in endless lines to find what they need if they are lucky.

Most people are confused about poverty and each person and economists define it differently. People, who desire socialism and are voting for either Bernie the borderline Marxist or Hillary the Socialist, complain endlessly how unjust and rigged the system is, how the Man keeps them down and there is no equality and social justice. Nobody seems to have any idea about personal responsibility and work ethic.

When compared to most countries in the world, American “poverty” is a bonanza from heaven paid for by government largesse with taxpayers’ money. This government largesse will eventually come to an end when it runs out of other people’s money and it can no longer print trillions once hyperinflation sets in.

According to many Romanians, including hundreds of thousands of poor gypsies who refuse to integrate into normal society and change their lives, Romanians are the citizens impoverished by the communist party and their Securitate successors after the revolution of 1989 when communism ended officially on paper.  Twenty-seven years later, not much has changed for most rural populations.

The online news expunere.com reported that fifty percent of Romanians are very poor and 54 percent of rural inhabitants do not have an occupation.  Most children raised in rural areas have one family member working or the family depends entirely on social welfare.  According to this source, 72 percent of rural families cannot provide their five-year olds a minimum acceptable diet, resulting in malnutrition and disease - 225,000 children go to bed hungry.

To make matters worse, 37 percent of people fifteen years and older are functionally illiterate – they either cannot read or cannot write correctly. In the rural area, 20 percent of children have only an eighth grade education. Citing Eurostat, the overall school dropout rate in 2014 was 18 percent. Unemployment in rural areas among young people, 18-24 years old, was 22 percent. http://www.expunere.com/jumatate-din-populatia-romanieie-este-afectata-de-saracie-in-mediul rural-54-din-localnici-nu-au-ocupatie.html

The standard of living, while vastly improved for people in most large cities, remained the same in the suburbs and rural areas where no significant progress in terms of infrastructure has been made. People live and die trudging through deep ruts in the mud of mostly unpaved roads, carrying water from the village well because nobody has running water or sewer pipes. Outhouses dot the landscape.

In a comment to the poverty news, Silvia Cristescu stated  that “all corrupt individuals who fall under the investigation of the National Directorate of Anti-Corruption (Directia Nationala Anticoruptie or DNA) were members of the former Romanian Communist Party and their heirs. All who defrauded the country, she said, are pro-Russian communists and their children. 

The more than four million Romanian citizens she believes, who left the country for greener pastures of economic opportunity and freedom, understood perfectly who robbed the country blind.  A large percentage of this diaspora voted anti-Ponta, anti-PSD (Social Democrat Party), and anti-socialism. “The enemy of the country is socialism, Marxist atheism of KGB origins,” said Cristescu.

In her view, those who sold the national forests, the land, the factories, and other items in the patrimony of the country, were the same individuals who rejected serious foreign investors under the pretext that they were not “selling the country” but sold everything they could in secret. After all, they knew all the ropes and judges, and, without accountability and fear of the law, pocketed the money, enriching themselves beyond belief.

When honest Romanians tried to replace these former Securitate members who were running for office or incumbents, their votes were stolen by those who were bribed to vote favorably or, not unlike here, mysterious boxes were discovered with hundreds of thousands of votes for the presidential candidate the people did not want.

The Russian KGB influence was so strong in Romania that overturning the disaster of socialism is still a daily battle that takes place today. Socialism will eventually die with the older people who grew up under the mentality of socialist dependency.

However, young people who have no experience, no historical knowledge or recollection of how bad it was under a socialist dictatorship, are lured today into the promise and blind belief that socialism is egalitarian and socially just, the same leitmotif running through the strident and eager-for-their-own-demise collegiate voting crowd, the very ignorant millennials.

Some Romanians take comfort in the fact that Christian America is on their side, that there is now a strategically placed American military base around Constanta, and that socialism will collapse in Romania. Unfortunately, there are many NGOs at work on the ground in Romania that interfere in its politics with loads of cash and grants that are hard to resist, given the stressed economic situation there.

 

 

Interview across Cyber Space

“Truth is sleepwalking with a hole in its head.”  - Mircea Brenciu

Mircea Brenciu Photo: Wikipedia

I met Mircea Brenciu on a sunny day in May 2015 in the downtown park as he was delivering a speech in Brasov on Heroes Day. The background of the rally was a huge cross erected in the memory of those who lost their lives during the Revolution of December 1989, when dozens of people were shot in the anti-communist revolution. Some of those young people were buried not far behind the cross.

I don’t believe in coincidence – there is a higher purpose for this seemingly chance encounter on such an important day in Romania’s history.

I interviewed Brenciu that day and again, more recently, across cyber space. Mircea Brenciu, born and raised in Brasov, educated in Economics and mass communication, is a writer, poet, founder, co-founder, and editor of many publications and organizations, including the prestigious Journalism Society of Romania, author of many books and recipient of numerous local and national awards. He comes from a family of scholars with a long history of anti-communist activity. He and Mircea Sevaciuc proclaimed November 15 the Anti-Communism Fight Day.

My theory is that a “fundamental transformation” is currently sweeping the globe and this massive change is not necessarily in the best interest of the citizens of various countries nor desired or initiated by them.

I asked Brenciu about the political power in Romania. Those currently in power and the opposition form a “common front” against the executive, the president and the prime minister, he wrote. Even though there are numerous political parties, they have no real power, he said, they make up a “decorative Parliament” reminiscent of the Stalinist era, easily recognized by those who were unfortunate enough to have lived in that dark period of history and who do not belong to the “Facebook generation.” Brenciu calls this type of political power, “artisan politics.”

The majority of the members of Parliament are just voting machines, Brenciu said, with salaries and inflated official bonuses much higher than what the average citizen earns. There are a few among them who have amassed huge fortunes, taking advantage of the traffic of influence among those who have the power to make decisions, who received bribes in exchange for rubber stamp approvals, for faux public auctions, and even for political and judiciary decisions.

Using a hyperbole to describe the corruption, Brenciu believes that the majority in this category of influence trafficking belonged to the former President Basescu regime. He was “a retired sailor who reached Romania’s deck with the goal of transforming it into a pirate ship.” The Romanian people were and are still taking all the risks while floating on this boat called country that is taking on water really fast.

“Our government is named by Brussels through the strange intervention of President Johannis, resulting in a total loss of state sovereignty. The government answers to Brussels. I spoke about the dissolution of Romania in my book, Cardinal Dialogues, Brenciu said. One of my interlocutors, Ilie Serbanescu, a political and economic analyst, had introduced for the first time the idea that Romania had become a colony.

The technocrats have enabled this colonization which took place under the pretext of eliminating corruption and moving the country towards a European way.  Hired by various non-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and financed by the ‘generous and dispassionate’ George Soros, the technocrats were principal enablers.” Brenciu wondered why Soros was connected to the interests of the Old Continent. Soros seems to be interested in many continents but particularly North America and Europe.

I asked Brenciu who elects such corrupt members of Parliament and if there is a connection to the former communists who went underground, disappeared, or died during or shortly after the tyrannical couple, the Ceausescus, were executed on Christmas Day 1989.

The crypto-communist period of the children of former Securitate members and communist apparatchiks has somewhat passed in great measure by biology; those were mostly present during the regimes of Ion Iliescu and Emil Constantinescu who ruled following the 1989 Revolution.

Crypto-communists secretly sympathize with communism or are secretly members of the Communist party if the communist party is allowed to exist. In the U.S., crypto-communists have come out of the shadows and engage in overt anti-American activities, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and destruction of property without any fear of prosecution or retribution. There are ample examples where communist minority groups funded by Soros have burned, looted, and pillaged businesses in several towns and neighborhoods while the police watched.

But there is a more nefarious group at play in Romania called “intellectuals,” added Brenciu, with Masters and Doctorates purchased with cash in dubious subjects such as political and military strategy, former and current officers, faux journalists who shape the political opinion with their inaccurate reporting by deriding and annihilating patriotism, faith, and hope in a nationalistic future.  These manipulators, whether they are found in politics, justice, business, mass-media, or in pseudo-cultural circles, are the actual millionaires and billionaires who are sinking Romania into the abyss of the Mariana Trench, to use another maritime hyperbole, said Brenciu.

Brenciu concluded that talented, honest, and sincere opinion makers who are not financially motivated or bribed are usually marginalized, eliminated, and compromised. “Truth is sleepwalking with a hole in its head.”

The one world government elites with the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and European Union (EU) are busy incorporating and bringing in line as many countries as possible under their global communism umbrella.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

The American Oligarchy

We are fundamentally changing, it’s been coming for decades but it is more noticeable now because we have Internet, wireless devices, pocket size encyclopedias encapsulating libraries around the world, and instant access to real news around the globe.

We see how the main stream media has become the spokesperson for the ruling elites, corruption rules and day, and education is melting in the flames of common core.  

We are no longer a Constitutional Republic because we failed to keep it. We are a benign oligarchy composed of same party rule of the few oligarchs, no matter how we vote at the polls. The oligarchs do as they please.

Oligarchy is a “form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; it is government by the few.” Nations ruled by oligarchies do not fare well, whether they are benign oligarchies or absolute tyrannies.

Newly elected politicians sign worthless pledges to constituents which they immediately break on the first day of Congress, joining those they swore to defeat and corruption is epidemic with all politicians, new or expert octopuses with tentacles strangling the heart of the republic. The oath of office is just a meaningless step to power.

We go about our daily lives; we go to work, shopping, to the movies, to parties, and watch surreal “reality TV” and sports while our country continues to fall apart. Nobody understands the insurmountable debt accumulated by Congress after Congress that is looming over our futures.

We still have food, we are fat thanks to food additives and a sedentary lifestyle, we are lulled into a false sense of security, we have a warm place called home, some have jobs, some have 2-3 part-time jobs, the welfare checks keep rolling in, what is there to worry us?

We are like the declining Roman Empire – America is waning because of the corruption of our leaders which we elect time and time again.

The average American does not really care right now. But the day to day contentment will change during their life time because of millions and millions of illegal aliens brought into the country by this administration. Their children will exist in a third world state riddled with poverty, illiteracy, crime, welfare, shortages, and equal and deplorable penury.

Most people are not feeling the change in their lives, but “fundamental change is in the air” and coming at dizzying speed.

We still have freedom of religion, although some “religions” are catered to more by government laws and regulations, forcing the rest of us to accept a “religion” that is contradictory to our Judeo-Christian values, lest we are sued or killed. Christianity is constantly under attack around the world and at home.

We have to self-censor or pay the penalty of hate-speech. The United Nations wants to codify into law a punishment for anyone who dares to criticize the very violent “religion of peace.”

Theoretically, we still have freedom of speech but, if we exercise it, we are marginalized as loons or phobes, forced to apologize for factual statements, or lose our jobs. In essence, we have lost the freedom of speech guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. We are now fearful to speak publicly, to our neighbors, and even whisper to relatives who have not yet written us off as strange and inimical because we have divergent opinions.

Ask tenured professor Dr. John McAdams of Marquette University about his suspension for exercising his freedom of speech in a blog which criticized an instructor who forbade students to have dissenting opinions in his class because the topic “was settled.” http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/fight-erupts-over-universitys-censorship-of-student-speech/

Speech is free as long as you agree with me. If you advocate for freedom of speech, you are going to be fired or suspended in the very place that prides itself over freedom of speech. But are universities a place where anyone can express their thoughts freely anymore? Especially when they have installed tiny corners called “free speech zones” but you have to ask permission from the university to use it.

We have freedom of the press but the press is run by liberals. We can write our opinions, but can we get them published? After all, most of the publishing houses are owned and staffed by brainwashed progressives.

We have freedom of assembly as long as the city government pressed by progressive agendas approves our petition to assemble and the topic of discussion. Conservative groups are often told no, while illegal immigrants can freely assemble to protest their illegitimacy and law-breaking presence in our country.

What is the goal in bringing into America four million Muslim immigrants per year who are intolerant of infidels and of their freedom of speech, as evidenced in the most recent massacre of twelve innocent Parisians who dared practice their trade of free speech through cartoons? The slain policeman who arrived on a bicycle and unarmed, was unable to protect the other eleven victims.

How could this happen in the liberal paradise of France where police has been disarmed and guns prohibited as demanded by the progressive society who believes that an unarmed populace will convince terrorists to give up their weapons. Surely they will respond to reason and mercy. We are all civilized humans, aren’t we?

Fareed Zakaria said on his CNN show, “There is within the world of Islam many, many pockets, many groups that really have a great deal of difficulty with the modern world, and particularly with the open Western freedom of speech loving, freedom of expression loving world.  The grievance, the grievance is that they feel they live in a world not of their making, a world of the west's making.” Well, in that case, let’s remake the world in the intolerant image of Islam and terrorism will go away. If they hate our world so much, why are they immigrating in droves to the west? http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/01/09/left_focuses_on_non_existent_islamophobia_to_smear_conservatives

Christiane Amanpour, referring to the Paris massacre, said, “One of the things that we're living right now is a very ugly and unseemly rise yet again of Islamophobia, and this is very worrying.  All these governments now are gonna be watching to see how the far right, which made huge gains in the last local elections in Europe a few months ago, National Frontier, UKIP in England, you know, the groups in Belgium and Germany and elsewhere, which are mobilizing big anti-Islamic demonstrations, how this is gonna play into this very ugly political situation.” http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/01/09/left_focuses_on_non_existent_islamophobia_to_smear_conservatives

What “ugly political situation?” Twelve innocent individuals, doing their jobs and exercising their right to free speech in the civilized world, have been slaughtered by the adherents to Islam. Can anyone name contributions to civilization that Islam has made since the 11^th century other than violence, destruction, and death?

France24 reports that fifty world leaders have gathered in Paris to attend the Anti-Terrorism Rally on Sunday, January 11, 2015. http://www.france24.com/en/20150110-paris-rally-charlie-hebdo-sunday-leaders/ Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority among them, “are marching in solidarity against radical Islam,” said LTC Ralph Peters on Fox and Friends Weekend.

Kirk Lippold, Commander of USS Cole, wonders on his Facebook page why the United States is not represented in this massive rally against terrorism. “This is an embarrassment for the United States and speaks volumes about this Administration's commitment to defeating radical Islam and the terrorists who kill innocent civilians.” https://www.facebook.com/kirk.lippold.9/posts/10205683838880415?notif_t=close_friend_activity

We are in the phase of a “soft, benevolent dictatorship,” some call it “despotic oligarchy,” shaping what we do, what we say, what we think, what we eat, what we drink, what medicines we take, what doctors we see, but people are generally blind so far to this new phase of reshaping America away from the “evil” capitalist empire that has brought prosperity and development to the entire world.

The moral decline of America is driving more nails into its coffin because everything deviant is now protected and promoted by law and the medical field is encouraging and paying for any physical changes desired.

Rome did not fall in one day, it took a long time for its collapse and it split into two empires, the Western and the Eastern. The Western Empire fell quickly in 476 A.D. to the barbarian hordes that wanted the Roman lifestyle but were unwilling to assimilate.

Political corruption, a mercenary army disloyal to Rome, unchecked immigration,  waves of Visigoths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Franks, Ostrogoths, and Lombards who took turns damaging the Empire, an inflationary economy, decreased agricultural production, trade deficit, decadence, piracy, and lead poisoning were other variables that contributed to the fall of Rome. The Eastern Empire flourished for another 1,000 years as Byzantium.

How long is the American Empire going to survive under a soft, benign oligarchy?

 

 

 

Detroit's Failure, a Product of Liberalism and Greed

“The last thing Detroit needs is a bailout. What it needs is to sweep away a city charter that protects only bureaucrats, civil-service rules that straightjacket municipal departments, and obsolete union contracts. A bailout would just keep the dysfunction in place. Time to start over.”
- Bill Nojay, Former COO of Detroit’s Department of Transportation

Detroit, the former “Paris of the West” is now oozing blight, rust, decay, garbage, and union corruption. It is now a pathetic example of its former greatness, the city of the auto industry, envied around the world, the city of a thriving middle class.

At the height of its glory, Detroit was America’s fourth largest city with almost 2 million people. After decades of population flight, there are 700,000 people left. Police response to an emergency call is 58 minutes, street lights are cut in half, and the median home price is $9,000, with some homes worth as little as $500. It seems like a bargain if the city will ever be rebuilt. Its location is certainly strategic, with access to the Great Lakes. There are interests in the heavy rail industry and there are plans for a $25 million light rail.

The statistics are sad. Thirty percent of Detroit’s 140 square miles are vacant or deserted; 33,500 homes are unoccupied and 90,000 lots are vacant. Many homes have been bulldozed. If a lone home is occupied on an otherwise abandoned street, the residents are forced to move and the house is demolished. Sixty percent of children live in poverty. Homicide rose 79% in 2011. There is no chain supermarket left in the city.

Detroit is a classic example of failed obamunism and personal responsibility; it played out the union-controlled socialism to the bitter end and it lost the destructive game - eventually all socialists run out of other people’s money as Margaret Thatcher used to say. Detroit is now a picture of litter and filth with few suburbs left that take pride in their appearance. Pontiac and Flint are not far behind in their march towards insolvency.

There are 61 counties and municipalities currently in the U.S. who have filed for bankruptcy or will follow in the footsteps of Detroit, the largest municipality to fail in a string of more to come.

The administration’s Cap and Trade policies will de-industrialize our country, bankrupting so much of the coal industry that generates electricity, devastating businesses and individuals alike in the process, and causing more cities and counties to fail.

Many executive orders signed under every presidency since Bush Sr. (1992) implemented the United Nations Agenda 21. Through green zones, stacking people in high rise, mixed-use apartments in approved corridors, the Wildlands map, Smart Growth, Sustainability, environmentalism gone amuck which claims to save the planet from a manufactured global warming, will cause abject poverty in many other places.

There were many reasons why Detroit failed:

-          union control and collective bargaining

-          automatic union deductions funds; public unions block any meaningful reforms and help elect local officials who are sympathetic to unions and who in turn negotiate the union members’ salaries and benefits

-          public employee unions corruption (pension abuse such as “spiking” pensions with excess overtime during the last year of employment; claiming disability in the last year before retirement; contracts with much earlier retirements than the private sector)

-          nobody is terminated for incompetence if they belong to a union

-          use of union dues to support Democrat coffers with or without employee approval

-          non-stop Democrat control of the city since 1961

-          out of control corruption

-          citizens re-electing the same individuals who actually did jail time for their crimes

-          lack of personal responsibility and work ethic

-          job losses in the auto industry

-          decades of population flight

-          race riots in the late sixties and early seventies

-          environmental and health warfare

-          diminished tax base following the population exodus

-          the failure of the federal government to protect our manufacturers

-          the main stream media misinforming low information voters

-          bank deregulation and capital flight

-          closings of catholic schools in the 1970s

-          racial tensions exacerbated by Coleman Young

-          purposeful segregated areas in town by various black mayors

-          lack of collection of property taxes (50% collection rate) and enforcement of non-payers

-          distorted Christian values

-          burdensome additional utility, sales, and property taxes extracted from the poorest of the poor instituted by Mayor Cavanaugh (an additional 3 percent)

Detroit is the most race-conscious city in America. Blacks have been told for so many years that white men are the reason for their economic plight therefore they blame white people for their problems. The culture of drug dealing and drug use dominate the inner-city. Single parent households have replaced fathers with the nanny state. Government welfare enabled women to procreate and survive while making fathers obsolete.

Children are prescribed Ritalin when it is not really necessary, adults are over-prescribed anti-depressants, and their diets are poor. Is it any surprise that people are left confused and unable to make proper decisions, especially when they are lied to by the MSM?

The two-thirds majority in Congress carries the blame for voting for NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, and bank deregulation, for enabling the manufacturing exodus to other countries in search for cheaper labor. Over-demanding union contracts shipped more jobs to right to work states, diluting the tax base even more.

NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, Mexico, and U.S., passed in January 1, 1994, and CAFTA, Central America Free Trade Agreement, an extension of NAFTA, passed through U.S. House of Representatives by one vote in the middle of the night and signed by Congress on July 27, 2005, “caused the race to the bottom in labor.”

In the Chapter 9 bankruptcy court documents, bankruptcy which was allowed to proceed, half of the city’s liabilities are in pension plans and retiree health care costs. These benefits were negotiated by unions on behalf of their constituents.

Steven Rattner of the New York Times argues that we have to bail out Detroit and tries to make the case that the “700,000 remaining residents of the Motor City are no more responsible for Detroit’s problems than were the victims of Hurricane Sandy for theirs, and eventually Congress decided to help them. America is just as much about aiding those less fortunate as it is about personal responsibility.”

I happen to disagree because Hurricane Sandy was a sudden act of nature, totally out of anybody’s control, whereas Detroit’s problems were exclusively man-made over many decades of corrupt mismanagement. Many issues could have been addressed and avoided at the voting booth and through personal responsibility.

He further argues that the “shared sacrifice by creditors, workers, and other stakeholders” in the General Motor and Chrysler auto “rescue” should be maintained in rescuing Detroit. I would argue that he is comparing apples and oranges.

First, the auto rescue was not a “shared sacrifice,” it was a forced government reimbursement of stockholders of 29 cents on the dollar to the benefit of union interests, setting aside capitalist contract law and the prior claim of bondholders.

Second, the rest of the country should not have to “sacrifice” for the irresponsible behavior of Detroit unions, union members, politicians, mayors, and the lack of responsibility of Detroit citizens at the ballot box who thought that it was a good idea to keep in power the same corrupt Democrats since 1961.

Americans were not and are not in favor of bailing out General Motors, which is now investing more taxpayer dollars into job creation, factories, ventures, research, and dealerships in China rather than the U.S., and Chrysler, which is now an Italian-controlled corporation. Likewise, the majority of hard-working Americans are not in favor of bailing out Detroit nor California.  

Further reading: 

Who Killed Detroit City and Why? By Dave Hodges, Activist Post

We Have to Step In and Save Detroit, Steven Rattner, The New York Times
The Public Union vs. the Public (Philip Howard, founder of Common Good)
http://bit.ly/13Xllat

 

 

Silvio Canto Jr. 7-22-13 Detroit Bankruptcy

Thirty minutes on the Detroit Bankruptcy, how it relates to Agenda 21, and will it be coming to a town near you?
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2013/07/23/todays-message

Disorder and Corruption in a New World Order

When I deplaned from my comfortable KLM flight on a late September afternoon at the ultra-modern Henri Coanda International Airport at Otopeni, Romania, I was greeted by stifling humid heat inside and out. People were milling about with sweaty brows from the lack of air conditioning use. I picked up the key and contract to my rental car and hurried outside. It was somewhat more bearable – at least there was a slight breeze.

The rental lot gate keeper required a small bribe to let me in. The employee who handed me the key to the car spent an inordinate amount of time presenting all the features on the car, treating me gingerly as if I was incapable of comprehension. I probably drove more vehicles and more years than he had imagined or I cared to admit. The VW Jetta would be my means of transportation for the next 12 days – no crowded trains, buses, metro, trolleybuses, or trams. I had spent an extra $55 on a GPS, knowing that it would be my lifeline between being utterly lost and finding where I wanted to go. Road signs, I learned the hard way last year, were scarce and incomprehensible at best. I never knew when roads ended sharply onto pastures as far as my eyes could see.

With a condescending smirk on his face, the Avis attendant allowed me to drive off, not before tipping the gate attendant again. Because remuneration is so miserly for most people, they supplement wages with bribes. Little has changed since the communist regime. And thus began my journey of discovery and reportage into the new world order of capitalism infected by neo-communism of European lineage.

Every 350 meters, the GPS voice warned me of roundabouts. After a while, I felt like I was in roundabout hell. As long as I followed the only traffic rule that Romanian drivers respected, the car already in the roundabout has priority, I was safe. As I become more comfortable with roundabouts, I realized that they saved me money, time, and Diesel. This was welcome news since gas and Diesel were $10 a gallon. Diesel Maxx, a bio fuel mixture with rapeseed oil, was almost $11 a gallon. We used rapeseed oil to cook with under Ceausescu’s regime when sun flower cooking oil was hard to find. I could have sworn my Diesel smelled like French fries.

Traffic rules were mere humorous suggestions. Only visitors like me respected or followed them. Drivers passed each other on the left, on the right, on the sidewalk, on the pedestrian median, on the tram tracks, parked wherever they wished, drove very fast and in reverse in the middle of a multi-lane street. The few traffic police, Politia Rutiera, hardly kept up with the infractors. Now and then I would see a car with a boot on or a speeding car stopped by a policeman who was writing a ticket. Most drivers get out of paying fines by offering bribes. They know someone who knows someone else and thus the ticket is voided, no lesson learned.

I finally understood the condescension of the rental lot attendant. Male drivers considered female drivers a nuisance on the road that prevented male chauvinists from reaching their destinations faster, like a fly in a fresh glass of milk, an attitude left from the communist era when women were generally not allowed to drive and few actually passed the very stringent driving test.

Stations used attendants to pump gas for patrons, especially for women. Perhaps men thought we were not competent enough to pump our own gas. I enjoyed this service immensely, not having to get my hands dirty with Diesel. I gladly paid the tip.

Drivers honked angrily and constantly at each other, leaving those driving within the speed limit in a halo of dust. The noise pollution in big cities was huge. Pedestrians were target practice for the angry, rude, and hurried drivers. The mortality rate of pedestrians was unacceptably high.

I became exhaustingly defensive and tense in my driving, watching for goats, sheep, cows, shepherds, buggies, horses, bad drivers, and foolish pedestrians darting across busy highways and roads with total disregard for their own safety.

I was driving cautiously slow in the Carpathian Mountains through endless hairpin curves, my four-cylinder Jetta struggling to climb the steep incline. The GPS’ purple image of the twisted road looked like a heart monitor in atrial fibrillation. I did not dare look much to my left or right – the huge drops made my stomach churn and gave me vertigo. Yet drivers would honk and pass me with total disregard for the double lines painted on the road or the risk to their lives and the lives of others. They were on a mission to get wherever they were going really fast. The roads were littered with smashed vehicles and upturned 18-wheelers, taking up sometimes 5 hours or more to clear the road. Forty miles from my medieval town destination, Sighisoara, the driver of an 18-wheeler had overturned his fully loaded rig, blocking both lanes, and stopping traffic for six hours. I only hope that he survived this terrible accident that he alone had caused.

Many things have improved in the lives of Romanians since the fall of communism in 1989. Capitalism and entrepreneurship are flourishing because regulatory bureaucracy is insignificant when compared to regulations in the west. But unchecked and unpunished corruption coupled with expected briberies have reached pandemic proportions.

Business is conducted on two levels – there is the legal contract for taxation purposes, and the “sub rosa” contract, hiding the real transaction. Usually, the written contracts contain lower figures in order to escape taxation. The oral, under the table contracts, during which bribes and percentages are paid to various middlemen, are really the bona fide contracts. Written contractual documents are so arcane and complex that state notaries have very lucrative offices, raking in more money than attorneys.

State owned enterprises are scavenged by various interested parties who are appointed to run them, with total disregard for public/private ownership or accountability. Those running and/or managing the plant become “ticks” that “suck” the plant’s resources to bolster their own private companies, just like they used to do under the communist regime.

Case in point, Oltchim S.A., one of the largest chemical companies in Romania with over 3,300 employees, has not paid its employees in months and is now bankrupt. The economic crisis of 2008, mismanagement and theft of resources by employee “ticks” that drained resources and sucked the lifeblood of Oltchim for their own private interests were the undoing of Oltchim S.A. Oltchim S.A. used to be the Ramnicu Vilcea Chemical Works during Ceausescu’s communist regime. It became a joint-stock company in 1990 by post-communist government decision.

According to Dan Straut, Oltchim had become a victim of the fall 2008 economic crisis when Petrom, the main supplier of inputs for Oltchim, closed its petrochemical installations. Oltchim is heavily in debt, owing 250 million euros to AVAS (the state authority) and 147 million euros in utilities. Oltchim is a major player in the Romanian economy because it produces chemicals used in 80 percent of consumer products and is a main exporter. (September 10, 2012)

While I was in Romania, the scandal and the circus that followed Oltchim’s inability to meet its payroll for six month or more and pay its creditors, placed two camps at odds on a daily basis – those who wanted to maintain the state ownership of Oltchim, promising to raise the 45 million euros needed to save it, and those who wanted to completely privatize it in order to reorganize it and weed out the waste, unaccountability, and corruption. Dan Diaconescu, a TV station owner, misled the whole country that he would raise the necessary funds to give workers their back wages and pay creditors, coming up short and empty-handed with only 3 million euros in a bag from mysterious European sources. The corruption and mystery continue.

My hotel in Brasov was hosting a Cybercrime Seminar sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, American Express, EBay, Microsoft, Western Union, MoneyGram International, and Trust wave. During discussions encouraging Romanian authorities to pass tougher laws on cyber criminals and offering help and expertise, a participating Romanian judge took umbrage with the suggestion and pointed out that foreigners cannot come into their country and tell them what to do. In other words, we like to maintain the status quo. So what if hapless Americans and westerners with money to burn are defrauded by young Romanian cyber criminals, often underage, by hundreds of millions of dollars?

It appears that old habits die hard. Sixty years of communism, theft, and abuse of power are hard to overcome even though a strange form of capitalism has taken strong roots in Romania. The shadow communism never went away and is re-emerging with a vengeance in public life with empty promises of free food, easy money, and free housing. The corruption that emerged from communism got more sophisticated and exploded on a grander scale, aided by the Internet age and the ability to travel freely and quickly across many time zones.

Impeachment Referendum for Old or New Communism

Tomorrow, July 29, 2012, Romanians are going to the polls to vote for or against impeachment of their President, Traian Basescu. It is not something Romanians are happy about since their choices are either the old communist guard represented by President Traian Basescu or the new communism represented by the Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, and his ruling parliamentary coalition government.

It was unprecedented that a German Chancellor attacked another European Prime Minister so publicly. Angela Merkel gave Victor Ponta a dressing down for his attempted coup and unconstitutional removal of the President in a democracy.

Never before did the President of the European Union raise his voice to a Prime Minister of a member country in the manner in which the socialist Martin Schulz expressed his displeasure to the humiliated socialist Victor Ponta.

Victor Ponta and his USL (social liberal union) dominated coalition are eager and desperate to remove President Basescu by any means necessary. In order to remove the president, USL must win the referendum which must be valid, meaning that 9 million Romanians must show up to vote, according to the decision of the Constitutional Court.

Sadly for Prime Minister Ponta, he and the USL do not have popular support. If they did, Romanians would show up en masse to vote and President Basescu would be impeached. The problem is that Romanians are sick of all parties and their endemic corruption. There is a reason why representatives spend millions to get elected – they stand to make billions once they win a coveted parliamentary post.

Prime Minister Ponta was reminded that Romania is beholden to the powers that rule the EU and the monetary policy of the euro, the European Central Bank, the IMF, and indirectly Germany and United States. Romania’s budget is partially covered by its economy and the tax base from the existing private firms. The rest of the national income is derived from EU loans, backed by various banks.

When Romania finally said no to communism in December 1989, the former communist apparatchiks took advantage of the temporary power vacuum created and dismantled as much of the industry as possible, selling national assets for personal gain, piece by piece, without any accountability, to foreign investors who had no idea that those assets belonged to “the people.” Honest citizens remained poor – they did not steal anything, and refused million dollar loans from the west that they knew they could not possibly pay back.

Ponta’s government has a 70 percent majority in Parliament and there should be no reason why it cannot begin to govern and implement the anti-crisis plans they had promised the voters during the electoral campaign. Unfortunately, Romanians know well that the coalition’s sole interest is the interest of most politicians - corruption and bribery. Since President Basescu started doing his job and arrested some of the more blatant corruption culprits, the USL dominated coalition would have to play by the rules of law, an inconvenience that could be eliminated by impeaching the President.

Prime Minister Victor Ponta wrote an article titled “Romanian Reality,” in Foreign Policy Magazine on July 26, 2012, defending his government takeover attempt.

“Impeachment proceedings have been carried out in strict accordance with the law, as confirmed by the Constitutional Court. The proceedings themselves are a response to Basescu’s repeated abuses of power, again confirmed by the Constitutional Court. The vote for impeachment passed Parliament by a two-thirds majority, and 70 percent of voters now oppose Basescu, according to opinion polls. The final word now rests with the Romanian people, who will vote in a free and fair referendum on Sunday, July 29…Basescu’s call for a boycott is an anti-democratic step designed to avoid impeachment at any cost.”

Ponta forgot to mention in his article how he stripped the Court of its right to overrule the Parliament when the Constitutional Court made the decision based on precedent that the President should attend the European summit not the Prime Minister. He also failed to mention how he replaced some members including the Ombudsman, with his political allies. Ponta did not mention the fact that “he seized the official bulletin in which laws were published in an attempt to control legislation, delay the Court, and prohibit the release of new rules by President Basescu.” (Andrew MacDowall, Christian Science Monitor, July 12, 2012)

Prime Minister Ponta sugar-coated the truth with his version of events. Any other objective witness would have called his coup an attempt to bypass democratic rule of law, with the final outcome to remove the democratically-elected President. Traian Basescu may not have been the best and effective president but the Romanian people should decide his fate at the voting booth.

Romanians are ambivalent as to which brand of communism they will have to follow because they know corruption and lawlessness will rule the day. Will it be the winds of the old guard communism or the new brand of European socialism/communism? Either way, voters will be stuck between the rock and the hard place of economic austerity measures proposed by the European Union.