Now that the smoke has cleared for 22 years let’s look back at 9/11 as a guide to the future. After all, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” (Winston Churchill)

I’m reminded by an aerial photo of a hay field mowed to say “never forget.” Never forget what? As I listened to my friend sing the great song he wrote on that day, I have to think it is more of a feeling (with several people teary-eyed and standing, as if it were the National Anthem) than a recalling of actual events.

If we are to take Churchill’s advice we need to go beyond feelings. The most important part to remember is what is forgotten. The terrorists. Where did they go? In those days following 9/11 nearly the entire world was united (as depicted on the news anyway) in shock and sympathy for the victims. It was comfortable to know who the bad guys were. Osama bin Laden confessed on TV. Now the jihadist villains are nowhere to be seen.

Ron Paul, you know that weirdo who reads and understands the Constitution, proposed Letters of Marque and Reprisal be used to go after those bad guys. So simple, a reward for bounty hunters. Do you think a band of retired special forces personnel could have brought bin Laden and his band to justice for less than a trillion dollars?

A destination would end the spending. The Cold War ended and the war industry needed new bad guys. The Iraq war was fought against Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. We were allied with the terrorists. Afghanistan was obviously a protracted childish lashing-out at a strange culture with no goal or plan.

Boeing and Raytheon make excellent products for civilized life. But their politicians are anxious for campaign money and comply when needed for extra profits. The politicians and war industry are like the parasitic wasp larvae I found on a caterpillar ( https://youtube.com/shorts/Yo4ifqPYzHo?si=4hQIqqB71r3Fbits ). The larvae suck the life out of the caterpillar at a rate that keeps the caterpillar alive long enough for the wasps to mature. We are the caterpillar.

The waters are muddied further by information gathered over the years since 9/11. Architects & Engineers For 9/11 Truth, with about 2,300 members, have published over 100 peer reviewed papers describing a demolition scenario on 9/11. Dan Rather appears to get it right on that day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_cJU95ugFU.

There has never been a fire in a high rise that brought a progressive collapse except only three on 9/11. Steel framed high rises have been successfully designed for that resistance for 100 years. Just these inconsistencies are the tip of the iceberg in the 9/11 story.

The Patriot Act was passed so quickly that one has to wonder if it was on the desk that morning. It is still in effect and allows the government to search anyone’s home, work, or computer without a warrant. We are herded like cattle through airports in obvious violation of Amendment Four (warrantless searches). The tears should be for the death of this constitutional republic. The “oh I’ve got nothing to hide” meme works fine until the bad guys are in power.

If we are to accept the terrorists versus U.S. citizens version, Osama bin Laden won in a big way and our own government turned out to be the real enemy through its response to the attacks. Trillions of dollars were flushed away with the lives of thousands of servicemen and hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Barack Obama found that George W. Bush’s hiding of the flag-draped coffins couldn’t conceal the carnage, so he promised that drone warfare would limit losses of the lives of U.S. servicemen while maintaining profits for the war industry. Then the Muslim terrorist threat was discovered to be a paper tiger, so on to the next threat. This one, Russian expansion in Europe, is even more dubious (details of that process to be revealed in a future column). But the American people, raised on video games and John Wayne, fell for that one too. Destruction of a country and its people in Eastern Europe does the same thing as the drones. It continues the deadly war machine trade as we enjoy a secure and peaceful existence here. Every state has the presence of so-called defense contractors. It’s easy to see they are represented better than any pro-lifers.

The truth is impossible to know but we do know what they tell us and that is bad enough. If we align our country with any foreign power, the enemies in and of that country become ours as well. That’s what 9/11 was all about as the alleged terrorists resented U.S. air bases in Saudi Arabia. After 22 years our government still conceals the 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report that may hold the real story.

I like to hear local news on the radio each morning. If not near the radio, I can listen on my telephone. On that website is a notice: “Stand with Ukraine. Save peace in the world!” To that, Peter Hitchens would reply, “Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?”

Senator Joni Ernst supports the billions of our dollars being sent to perpetuate the slaughter in Ukraine. We received an email from her yesterday saying she is going to “drain the swamp.” She is the swamp.

1. Pfizer stock peaked at $59 at the end of 2021and is now $36. (Look for a new surge in COVID cases.)
2. According to the World Health Organization there were 29 million to 45 million cases of Influenza annually between 2016 and 2020 but no COVID. 2020 to 2021 had 0.0038 million Flu cases. However, there were 32 million COVID cases that year.

Well it’s Labor Day and I’m laboring at this column while visiting with family. Labor Day was founded in 1882 by a union carpenter to celebrate labor with a day off from labor. Our middle kid, who we are visiting today was born on Labor Day and he knows how to work. He’s not in a union. His pay is decided by him and the customer. What a concept.

I note this because of the increased flight from unionized schools lately. Pay is not determined by an agreement between the customer and the teacher. Teachers are even priced out of their jobs by union contracts as they grow to perfect their skill which would otherwise improve the overall quality of education. This alone can explain the concern of ‘mama-bear like parents’ who have sought alternatives to declining school systems.

I’m being careful here because teachers rightly feel a sense of brotherhood and might take my criticism of unions personally. I have known many teachers and except for my English teacher in the 12^th grade, they are all caring individuals. They don’t enter teaching with the idea of sticking it to taxpayers and parents. They have a genuine concern for students and their preparation for the future.

Union contracts were negotiated in good faith on both sides. But with those negotiations being between groups rather than individuals, excellent candidates are not paid well enough and poor teachers don’t have to change careers. It’s a theme that has become a major factor in the decline of a broad cross section of human society.

I came across an old friend at the fair a couple of years ago. He has had lots of terrible health challenges. He looked up from his lunch and said, “If it weren’t for Medicare, I’d be dead.”

I can understand why he would be glad to be alive. I am too. But there is so much more to the story.

While Richard Nixon is mostly famous for the Watergate break in, his impact on the United States is felt today in higher medical costs because of his decoupling of gold from the dollar and wage and price controls.

With the value of our currency subject to arbitrary change to fund Medicare, politicians can claim to be helping seniors with medical expenses, but with other peoples’ money and without their consent. That eliminates any market restraints on cost for a vast majority represented by anyone over 65.

An even bigger factor is wage and price controls. Nixon instituted them as an attempt to control inflation. To attract or retain good workers without being allowed to raise wages, medical benefits were offered through insurance group plans. As in all students and teachers being treated as a group, all patients and healthcare providers were then treated as non-individuals. Poor lifestyles are essentially rewarded when careful people have the same insurance costs.

The failure to achieve ultimate efficiency in these two sectors should be a lesson for those who think the force of government can work better than a strict enforcement of individual rights, working with human nature rather than against it.

Bob Streit, Iowa’s premier agronomist, says CO2 is not a poison like one Iowa group has professed. Other agronomists focus on short term sales strategies such as what herbicide kills which weed or balancing N, P, and K (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash), with a nod toward a couple trace minerals. Bob sees agronomy as a dizzying cast of organic (living past or present) and inorganic compounds and elements that can work in harmony. He’s worth listening to.

I see CO2 as something that is a poison if it is too concentrated but plant food otherwise. Greenhouse businesses buy CO2 to enrich their air and supercharge plant growth. Most things can be a poison in high concentrations. Iowa CCI (Citizens for Community Improvement) and the Sierra Club use alarmist terms such as “poison” to garner support for their positions. In this case an approach to the carbon pipeline issue based on opposition to eminent domain could jeopardize actions they support such as regulation of confined feeding operations. They use the term “eminent domain abuse” as a way around the fact that they favor public control over private owner control.

(I need to take a moment to address confinements. If there were enough hogs around to supply the amazingly affordable pork we have today and they were raised the way we did 40 years ago, the stench would be unbearable and the runoff an environmental disaster. Regulations in place today do more to protect pig companies than promote neighborliness. Simply treating impact from neighbors as just that would have done more good than regulation.)

Private owner control is the issue at the root of these pipelines, not whether they are hazardous and need to be regulated to perfection or disallowed altogether.

The primary reason for the carbon capture pipelines is to abide by the theory that increased carbon in the air causes the climate to change. When our politicians rammed ethanol incentives down our throats they didn’t foresee climate based emissions regulations as a threat to their scam. Seeing the strength of the climate lobby, they chose to join it and use carbon capture as another profit center. If they had any backbone they would have pointed out the history of the world and relationships between weather and human activity and cried “Nonsense.” But once again, like Country Joe McDonald said, “There’s plenty of money to be made.”

When you consider that diesel mechanics say 90% of their business is emissions equipment related, solar and wind cannot supply the energy required to maintain our present lifestyles, the electricity grid is inadequate to keep a widespread use of electric vehicles going, materials used in the alternative sources require immoral and unaffordable mining practices: Why quibble over pipelines and private property?

The concept of private property is basic to scientific advancements essential for who we are. Using government to take our land or tell us what we can use for fuel violates the Golden Rule. When Iowa CCI and others who oppose carbon capture base that position on individual rights instead of some “scientific” detail that happens to elicit emotion for its support, I’ll be a willing partner.

And this from a reader in North Dakota:

North Dakota legislators passed a bill that allows land surface owners
to decide if CO2 can be placed under their land.  CO2 is being
injected below our farmland and neighbors’ farmland, even though we
objected.

The CO2 could displace minerals in the Bakken Formations, which are
below our farmland.  In addition, oil companies will not drill where
CO2 has been injected under the land.

Injecting CO2 overrules mineral rights owners the minerals they own,
with no just cause.  This results in multi-million-dollar losses for
the mineral rights owners.  The State of North Dakota should be held
liable and pay for those losses.

Can the North Dakota legislators create a law that blocks minerals
from mineral rights owners?   This case should be taken to the US
Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the most qualified students should be admitted to colleges ahead of less qualified students. How could anyone be upset about this? It may be racist of me to say so but people are not identical, whether as groups or as individuals.

I think it is reasonable to want to help people who are disadvantaged. That is what the administrations at Harvard and North Carolina have done trying to make up for the lousy education black students received on their way there.

Students of Asian descent were denied entry in order to make room for people with darker skin. What makes this our business is the fact that each institution gets federal funding. If not for that, it shouldn’t concern us. They should be allowed to educate anyone they choose. Federal funding makes everything our business.

But as Hillary Clinton said, practicality ought to rule over ideals. Is affirmative action good for the country? In 13 years writing a column for the Hampton Chronicle only once did anyone send them a letter to the editor disputing what I had to say. I had written about college debt and the importance of considering debt and time in the decision to go. The writer asked, “Would you want surgery done by a doctor who hadn’t attended college?” He missed my point and has probably grown up a bit since then.

But I didn’t miss his. In all aspects of our society we all benefit from the most qualified performing in each field. Black students who don’t qualify for college should not displace qualified students because it detracts from the common good.

Affirmative action might feel good for some privileged white folks who like seeing diversity. But objectively it is demeaning. It says, “you are sub-human so you need special treatment.” It aims to correct inadequate education but doesn’t address the root cause which is lack of choice.

The history of affirmative action shows that most of the time students promoted by these programs find themselves in over their head and they fail. If left to pursue an education better suited to their background they learn and progress. They flounder about while the better prepared students learn at a faster pace.

“Is there any point in public debate in a society where
hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions
have been taught what to think?” ~ Peter Hitchens