What If Diogenes Shined His Lantern on Washington?

Harlingen, Texas, June 28, 2009: It is a tale of ancient Greece.  Diogenes, the Cynic wandered the earth most of his life, holding his lantern high and searching for an honest man.  For him the task was impossible, because he believed that men and women lived lives dictated by specific rules and therefore no one was truthful or honest.

Most Americans today feel that if the lantern of truth were shined on Washington, it would reveal just what Diogenes saw during yesteryear, a District where men and women live lives dictated by their political beliefs and therefore are incapable of any honesty when addressing the people they have sworn to serve.

A variety of polls conducted over the past decade reveal that almost 75% of Americans feel Congress lacks honesty and integrity.  But, the dogma of party politics is even at work in these poll numbers.  For example, almost 70% of Democrats feel Hillary Clinton is honest.  Only 16% of Republicans have that same feeling.

With the start of the Bush Administration second term there was a continuing erosion of public confidence in the federal government.  Seeing this distrust as an opening, Representative Henry A. Waxman and the Democrats on the Government Reform Committee concocted a list of six proposals to restore government honesty and accountability.

The first of these proposals was to Ban secret meetings with lobbyists and close the revolving door.  The committee said that with the Democrats in power they would require full disclosure of contacts and end secret meetings.  However, according to the Washington Post, lobbying efforts have markedly increased since the Democrats assumed control of the government, with hundreds of millions being poured into lobbying efforts and millions more being placed in Democrat campaign coffers.  We don’t know about secret meetings.  They are secret.

The second proposal hawked by this Democrat committee and even pledged by President Obama, was to Restore open government. How did that work out?  Bills have been prepared in secret with no Republican input.  They have been placed on the floor for vote without being read.  The Obama promise to put all planned legislation on the Internet for five days before any vote is cast never saw the light of day.

We must Clean up federal contracting, said the committee.  But, has that happened?  According the Representative Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia, there were extended committee meetings that resulted in nothing much happening. He says the inquires “will help feed the Democrats’ anti-war base and will highlight two or three examples of waste without instituting any real substantive outcome.” The real boon to contractors Davis said, “Is the $800 billion-plus stimulus package.”

Block the appointment of cronies, said the committee.  Did that happen?  No need to get into total numbers here.  Just look at the laundry list of Obama’s Czar Team.  Not one of them was screened, vetted, or approved by the Senate.

The committee also said it would Take politics out of science. Never again would there be manipulation of science for political purposes.  A look at the so-called clean energy bill that just scraped through the House of Representatives makes a lie of any statement that politics has been removed from science.  Highly questionable and widely disputed science is that basis for the entire bill.

Protect federal whistleblowers is the sixth and final proposal of the Government Reform Committee. Admittedly, the new Administration is only about six months into a four-year term.  Still nothing has taken place to resolve the issue of more than 1,000 whistleblowers that have been silenced by government order.  Some of them have been held silent for years.  Added to that is the legislation of the False Claims Act has a six-year statute of limitations and the time frame under that statute starts the minute a claim is filed.  Thus, for many whistleblowers, time could expire before any of their charges are heard.  The sad thing is, a Congress that deplores honesty in any form passed this legislation to keep honest comment silent.

So, we return to that man with a lantern, searching for honesty.  The question in most scholars’ minds is, “If Diogenes the Cynic believed there was no such person, why did he keep looking for an honest man?” In today’s Washington that same question would be even more perplexing.

Semper Fidelis,
Thomas D. Segel
tomsegel@sbcglobal.net

Hey GOP, Grow a Backbone and Come Home

As fiscal conservatives most of us found ourselves quite lost when the Republican Party left us.  We really had no place to go.  In our highly structured two party system, no third party has a chance to do anything but act as a spoiler.  Taxpayers were really faced with voting Democrat or Democrat-Lite.  So, from the time Ronald Reagan left office it has usually been a case of selecting the candidate who was least offensive and giving that individual the vote.

Most of us have never understood how any Republican could change into Democrat-Lite, but they managed to do just that…and they started losing, losing, losing.  They are now so weak in Congress that the Left just laughs every time they step in front of a TV camera with some form of protest. The Democrats have successfully branded the GPO as The Party of No. 

In their election campaigns, the Republican candidates seem to have reduced themselves to following the Democrat candidates around the country yelling “Me too! Me too!” Has any of this worked?  Just do the math.

If any fresh face was ever to attempt entering that pit of moral misfits, vipers and panderers we call Congress, he or she could develop no better practice than to find opposing ideas to just about everything now being offered as legislation.

Most conservatives now realize those individuals who have managed to hold on to their political offices lack the vertebral column to hold themselves upright.  If, perhaps one or two exist, they could make themselves national heroes by either creating legislation or attaching amendments to everything moving forward in Congress. 

The American public hates all the governmental giveaways and bailouts taking place.  Republican bills and amendments to every piece of legislation should call for a stop to the spending and a recall of all unspent appropriations.

The citizenry can’t stand the lack of oversight on those 16 czars that the Obama Administration has running everything from payrolls to border fences.  How about bills and amendments calling for them to report all their actions to Congress and seek approval before implementation?

Don’t you think we need legislation assuring terrorist detainees be kept out of the United States and that they be tried as war prisoners instead of being moved into our already crowded courtrooms and perhaps the American prison system where they could radicalize even more malcontents?

What about amendments to block the carbon tax, the healthcare tax, the energy tax and the tax on using your office cell phone to call home and tell everyone you are working late?

What about legislation to deny government bailouts to any private company?

And we haven’t even addressed the Big Gorilla in the room…. healthcare reform.  The Obama news networks tell us that 3 out of 4 Americans want the government to give them better healthcare.  That may, or may not be the truth.  We all know the truth is very hard to find in today’s media.  Even if it is the truth that number changes to the negative side when you talk about government-run healthcare or socialized medicine.  Any Republican bill or amendment assuring the public this will not happen would be a blessing.

The reality of all this is, there are not enough votes to win anything. Whatever the Democrats wish to happen…will happen.  But, Republicans who employ that tactic will have the strongest position in years, come the next election.  But, the trick is, you can’t just say no.  There needs to be a positive alternative.  If those things happen, perhaps the Republican Party can come home to all of the conservatives it left standing alone.

Today's Orwellian America

Harlingen, Texas, June 6, 2009: If you have never faced the academic challenge of understanding the hidden warnings contained in George Orwell’s novels “Animal Farm” or “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1984) the words of this commentary will have little meaning.  However, everyone who has studied literature should be aware of the author’s very insightful messages.  If you have read and understood the author, just pause and look around.  It may have arrived some years later than the announced date, but you are already living in an Orwellian America.

In what is perhaps the most significant science fiction novel ever written, the work published in 1949 by Orwell tells the story of a future repressive and totalitarian society.  The world of 1984 is one of government control, massive surveillance and the denial of personal or human rights.  There is unending propaganda, an altering of historical fact and the changing of meaning for historical documents, the amending of news articles, the reduction in standard of living, the diminishing of resources and a war with no end in sight. Most of all, in everything a person does or says, “Big Brother is watching.”

We have already faced the unveiling of this scenario.  There is now government control of insurance, the housing market, auto industry, banking, and a rapid advance toward capturing the health care of the nation.

Here is the United States we have been aware of the government’s massive surveillance actions since the fatal attacks on our freedoms that dark morning of September 11, 2001.  With The Patriot Act, just about everyone gave up his or her individual and group constitutional rights.  There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the main stream media of today is nothing more than the propaganda machine depicted by Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” and if you don’t believe our elected officials have altered the meaning of the Constitution, than you must have missed those classes in American Government.  Every day this Administration bombards us with its scornful commentary about how much we consume of everything from food to energy.  There is also not a single individual in this country that can even hazard a guess of when our War on Terror or Overseas Contingency Operations will end.  As in Orwell’s world this war is ill defined by the government and ever changing in scope or objective.

In the 1984 world of Orwell everyone in society is equal.  However, there is the Inner Party, the Outer Party and Proles.  The Inner Party makes the rules and provides governance.  The Outer Party is made up of the “worker bees” or followers and the Proles are everyone else or almost non-people. With the exception of the Inner Party, life is a dank drudgery with little to no joy.  There are Inner Party officials examining almost everything and everyone at every hour of the day and night.

It could be said that we already have these Inner Party officials in our own government.  The Obama Administration has already appointed the Border Czar, Alan Bersin; the Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, the Guantanamo Closure Czar Daniel Fried; the Urban Czar Aldolfo Carrion, Jr.; the Faith-Based Czar Joshua DuBois; the Non-Proliferation Czar Gary Samore, the Terrorism Czar John Brennan: the White House Weather Czar John Holdren; the Car Czar Dr. Ed Montgomery; the Green Czar Van Jones, the surgeon-general who is usually called the Health Czar Nancy Ann DeParle; the Tech Czar Vivek Kundra; and there are plans to establish a cyber security czar.  All of these positions have been appointed and have dodged any examination by Congress or confirmation by the Senate.  There is nobody to challenge them, nobody to overrule them and nobody who even knows what they are doing, or to whom they are doing it. Added to all of the unregulated and unchallengeable mandates these “Inner Party” people can bring forth are the inescapable dangers we face by having created a one party power structure in Washington D. C.

But we have failed to mention the messages contained in Orwell’s “Animal Farm”.  In this tale about the animals taking control of the farm there is a proclamation that all are now equal.  However, the pigs assume the animal leadership role and soon have all the power and privileges.  The tale is one that truly displays the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim the absolute equality of all citizens.  As the pigs of “Animal Farm announce, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”