It is a form of American music that emulates free markets. Diverse elements coming together to create a unified whole. This gal has some strong lips:

January 14, 2021

In the news today: Iowa CCI (Citizens for Community Improvement) gathered inside the Iowa State Capitol. We have to be thankful that people are welcome inside our State Capitol Building. One of their demands was a moratorium on rent payments until the end of 2021. Here is a perfect example of ignorant people who have no idea how a peaceful society can operate through self-ownership and individual rights. In spite of that they get a voice. If you are confused about why I say this, consider the landlord.

The landlord worked and saved to purchase the property. He (this is not the U.S. House of Representatives so I can say “he” instead of “it”) pays taxes and maintains the property. The renter has a simple relationship with the property. He calls the landlord when any of the infrastructure fails (no heat, no water, no electricity). Basically, Iowa CCI thinks the landlord should be a slave. If he were black, would that change things?

In photos of the Capitol in Washington I see a guy carrying a confederate flag and a guy dressed up as if for Halloween, both among undisturbed paintings and sculptures. There was one photo of some idiot carrying Nancy Pelosi’s $1,000 lectern. A $1,000 lectern illustrates that our rulers have not made progress from the extravagant royalty that our forefathers rebelled against in 1776. “People are hurting” and Mrs. Pelosi uses a $1,000 book stand?

What’s with these “insurrectionists, thugs, and dangers to our democracy” that they don’t know how to start a fire? All summer long public and private property has been destroyed by social justice warriors and you’d think those events were like Ground Hog Day. But now, decades-long laws about voting procedures were broken and people who question the results are labeled anti-democracy.

I am the last person on earth who would be infected with Trump Adoration Syndrome. A lifelong Democrat gets elected president as a Republican, then leaves office after one term with the Senate, the House, and the presidency all in the hands of Democrats. There is something fishy here. The established order was under threat so election officials changed the rules.

In looking for what could have prevented the chaos in the last election, two things are obvious.

Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard’s bill, Securing America’s Elections Act of 2018 went nowhere because Republican and Democrat lawmakers don’t like evidence. It would have required paper ballots in federal elections. The other is the really big deal though. As Frederic Bastiat said, a proper government would make elections inconsequential. A proper government wouldn’t be up for auction through voting.

Votes are directly influenced by input received by the voters. Hitler won in a landslide. He controlled the media. I used to claim the government should keep its hands off the media in accordance with the First Amendment. Donald Trump tried to disarm the Communications Decency Act of 1996. It allowed tech companies to censor speech and absolved them of any liability (much the same as pharmaceutical companies are not liable for any deleterious effects from Covid-19 vaccines).

Tech companies are now part of the United States government. They have been operating that way for years around the world such as in the destruction of Syria and Libya, and now are doing the same thing here. The corruption of language makes the connection hazy but the effect is plain.

Trump pardoned a bunch of crooks and murderers but left real patriots to rot. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden were real journalists. Justice Hugo L. Black said, “… and paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.”

The tech/media complex paints the present conflict as simply Trump versus anti- Trump. Where do we come in? People ask, “Where do you stand?” My category does not exist. I’m anti-democracy. The reason elections are now so important is because they are vehicles of legalized theft. Legal seems good, right? Put that in perspective by considering what was legal in Zimbabwe, 1930s Germany, or Ukraine in 1932.

Those events were promoted for the common good, as were the events in U.S. cities last summer and Portland even today. “Democracy” and “anti-fascism” were rallying cries. Democracy is anti-minority by definition. Fascism, by Mussolini’s definition is an alliance of state and private interests.

What we are seeing today is Fascism. The goal of the rulers is to enslave us. Look around. There are $1,000 lecterns and $20,000 medals of freedom. Is that wealth available to “the people?” The erasure of history and silencing of dissent going on now will ensure mediocrity and poverty for our children and grandchildren.

Columbia finished up by Clark Fork in spite of the guy with the shiny new “tin hat.” Learning the ways of any new job can be confusing and with 10,000 pounds flying around, the consequences can be severe. So, phew!

We moved south to Coeur d’Alene and it was a two-hour drive from the Dead End so I got a motel room. It was an example of what a motel should be like. It was a series of little cabins and I could park my car right outside. The manager (who by the way, was eligible for Medicare) sat in a recliner in front of a picture window. She lit her cigarettes from the previous smoke. She had a giant ashtray stacked high with butts. It was like a freshman in college stacking empty 12-pack boxes as a sign of accomplishment.

Summer brought conditions that were perfect as long as it stayed under 85 degrees. Above that, the ship couldn’t lift enough weight to justify the fuel and labor expense. It was hard for the loader to keep up and so he had to put a lot of dirty logs in the trim deck. That took some pressure off of me, the knot bumper and fit right in with my tendency for procrastination. I paid with interest later.

The loader operator and I stayed after everyone else had quit for the day. After a ten-hour day we went another three or four. The guy was constantly opening the door of the Cat 966 and yelling at me to hurry up. We had several trucks waiting so going late took a load off the next day’s work.

Finally the trucks quit coming and the piles of logs were cleaned up. We headed down the mountain. I can hardly believe today what good shape I was in to keep at it like that. About halfway home I told my master to stop so I could get out and upchuck.

The Coeur d’Alene project lasted into winter and I was homesick for the Dead End so I quit and went home. We had wood to cut for winter and the snow gets really deep in Northwest Montana, at least it used to.

When living like my frugal mom taught me, I could take winter off and live on savings. I made $7.62 per hour in the mid-seventies. That was pretty good and I had no gym expense.

Google employees are forming a union. They are organizing to have more say in Google’s policies, not wages. The median pay at Google is $258,708 per year.

There are trade-offs in life. I’ve enjoyed physical work in the natural world. I imagine Google employees shop for fashions and work in an environment devoid of any life but what sticks out of a collar. They pay to run an exercise machine that produces nothing, and climb fake cliffs. That might explain the wide acceptance of fake money.

How fortunate we are that there are “different strokes for different folks,” as Sly Stone wrote in 1968. Google employees can have their cubicles and outlandish wages. That keeps them from clogging up our beautiful countryside.

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year, would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Taylor [November 26, 1798]

I’m sure our friends remember Wally, our Huntaway Dog. He has been gone three years now. He was named after Walter E. Williams, because he was black. He also was a dedicated friend, as Dr. Williams was to the black community.

Now we’ve lost Walter Williams as well. Sometimes a friend is taken for granted. A real friend is there for you no matter what.

I’m speaking as a white guy who has lived in diverse neighborhoods. As such, my viewpoint can be objective and judgmental. Being in rural Iowa for the last forty years makes me distant from those diverse neighborhoods but also not swayed by group-think and propaganda.

In everyday life we deal with others as individuals. Those of us who see others as mere members of a class or race are depriving themselves of many joys as social beings.

As a black man who was born to a single mother in the projects of Philadelphia, Walter Williams was a neighbor to Bill Cosby, Weird Harold, and Fat Albert. In the service he was an activist for racial equality. He was even court martialed for speaking up with fellow soldiers. He defended himself and was found not guilty.

Walter Williams constantly harped on government constraints as defined by the Constitution. It grew tiresome. But let’s examine his intent.

Walter Williams focused on this because of his roots and his realization that it is violations of the Constitution that are responsible for problems in black and low income communities. He never looked at the Constitution as some ancient scrap of paper. It was a set of rules to him and wound up as the answer that settled uncounted debates.

I find it interesting the role models that are promoted by community leaders. It is almost like they are promoting failure to ensure power for people who don’t deserve it. Achieving stardom in the world of entertainment or sports is extremely rare, requiring exceptional skills or connections. Aiming this high guarantees failure if the learning of useful skills are ignored in the process.

Anyone who plays sports would be appalled if rules were routinely broken or compromised. Why bother to play if a touchdown were achieved by a run to the five-yard line or you were called safe when the throw beat you to first base?

Dr. Williams called out the same thing in his focus on the Constitution. Article One, Section Eight spelled out Congress’ duties and Amendment Ten declared all other actions by Congress to be unconstitutional. Breaking these rules has corrupted the purpose of government.

In his later years Walter Williams focused more on education, as that was his path to success. He exposed the failure of inner city schools to prepare students for a successful life in the article he wrote the day he died.

In two Milwaukee high schools only one student tested proficient in math and none were proficient in English. Yet an entire week was spent learning about “systemic racism” and “Black Lives Matter activism.” What kind of a cruel school administration and teachers would do this to their students?

Reading a letter in the Cedar Rapids Gazette a few months ago criticizing Dr. Williams’ column, I was so disheartened that such a gift to the black community as he would have his help rejected with such hatred.

I will miss the loving kindness of both Walters forever.

Mr. Trump is certainly a wild and crazy guy. Two thousand dollars apiece is still not enough. Why stop there? In this world where we are willing to destroy our childrens’ futures and call it compassion (people are hurting), anything goes.

At first when I heard Trump wanted to give (or have Santa give) each of us $2,000 I thought he was kidding. But anyone who can declare bankruptcy five times and get elected president proves that the cream does not rise to the top. The top is where the scum is and it’s pretty crowded. Or, is Trump trying to educate us on the stupidity of legalized theft? The minimum wage follows the same philosophy, an arbitrary declaration of how much liberty is to be sacrificed for a guess at fairness. If a minimum wage of $15 suits the millionaires’ utopian vision, why not $100? Fifty dollar hamburgers anyone?

Anyone who has voted for Charles Grassley or Joni Ernst on the grounds of fiscal responsibility should be comfortable with what went on just north of us last month. There was fifty acres of grass in the Conservation Reserve Program. The contract expired and the land was sold. I came out of the house and looked north to find it on fire and a giant disk was murdering all life that had been thriving there for the last twenty years or so.

I asked the new owner what they planned for the land. He said “organic soybeans.” “Organic” is supposedly morally superior to chemically dependent farming. There was this extremely rare ecosystem, a refuge for God’s creatures. The disk releases vast quantities of carbon (theoretically responsible for “climate change”) to the atmosphere and most soil life is destroyed. Morally superior? I doubt it. On top of that, he asks, “What about that river, does it flood?” I told him only 37 out of the last 40 years. He bought 50 acres without knowing it floods too often to profit from growing crops. Only government central planning (tax breaks in this case) could produce such illogical waste.

A logical use of that land would have been grazing (or maybe haying) the usually good grass with the option of moving the cattle out of the inevitable flood. But nowadays lawyers and accountants make more profitable farmers than producers of food.

Various lobbies had produced tax policies that made illogical land use justified in the same way the insane Covid relief bill benefits lobbyists instead of people.

The Smithsonian received a billion dollars from that program. We have a subscription to the magazine and there was an article about indigenous people in Southeast Alaska. They have a concept “ …that not only honors one’s ancestors but takes care to be responsible to future generations.” Future generations are being impoverished by these reckless attempts at correcting these fascistic decrees as a feeble attempt to stop a virus.

But let’s not stop there. Egypt is to receive $1,300,000,000. Show me the American who wants to give Egyptians $1.3 billion. We gave an Egyptian some money once for a pretty neat little ottoman that we stuffed with kapok from my father-in-law’s old mattress he had in World War II (two). We thought it was a fair exchange.

We’ve arrived at this point through interpretations of precedent by courts through the years. Judges no longer go back and read the original design, they just look at the most recent decisions that, like the telephone game, have expanded the limits of government over the years.

We no longer look for mutual beneficiaries for our financial dealings. We are addicted to “seeking funding,” which means finding the best way to steal. H.R. 133 is 5,593 pages long. As I looked through the list of thieves who voted for the bill I noticed that outgoing Congressman, Steve King didn’t vote on it. I mentioned that to Dawn. She said, “Maybe he hasn’t finished reading it.”

Activists spreading awareness of the Holodomor in Ukraine are attacked by Communist supporters and sympathizers. Chicago, 17 December 1933.