College Protests

Recently there were stories on the news about students demonstrating, and in some places, rioting over the increase in the cost of a college education throughout the country. The largest ones and the most violent ones were in California. Ok, I will concede that the cost of a college education has become very expensive. Not everyone has rich parents. Student loans take years to pay back, and there are just so many grants and scholarships to go around. That being said, I'm not sure that the students have looked at the big picture when it comes to higher education and access to it. For them at the moment, it's only about them and their access to higher education. It's another example of the entitlement mentality of spoiled rotten Socialisticly indoctrinated liberals. Everyone one of the students interviewed had their own version of the same thesis: "me, me, me, me..."

The looming threat of not being able to get a college degree is scary for these young people. I can understand why. We have become a society where credentials outweigh real world knowledge through hands on experience and practical training of how to do something. The real world knowledge comes later if at all. Today businesses are reluctant to administer pre-employment tests to potential hirees on the skills that they actually need to do a job. There have been too many lawsuits brought by various "victim industry" groups. So what else is new? The few exceptions to the rule are medical boards for doctors, bar exams for lawyers, exams for real estate agents and brokers, and CPA exams for public accountants. The trades have their own exams for tradesmen working their way up from apprentice to journeyman to master, but that's a different story. It's ok, because those trades are heavily unionized. Because of the lawsuits against practical knowledge of subject exams for people applying for a lot of white collar jobs, businesses use a Bachelors Degree as a screening tool to weed out applicants for positions that really don't require a college degree in the first place. It's a way of maintaining and perpetuating a caste system in a country where there isn't supposed to be a caste system. It's the caste system of the Bobos, and the hierarchy based on what degree you have; Bachelors, Masters or Doctorate. If you are going to wear a tie to work, you have to have a college degree even if the degree is in the proverbial subject, "Underwater Basket Weaving." If you don't, you are going to have to get your hands dirty and be part of the unwashed masses that the Elite Bobo Liberals despise. Ironically, many of those "get your hands dirty" trades jobs pay a lot more than some low level flunky white collar job. The Bobos despise that too. It goes against their sense of self-importance. In this new age of a society based on meritocratic hierarchy those with less education should never be the "haves."

The young people protesting are right about fairness. It's not fair. Life isn't fair. What they mean is that it isn't fair to them, and the hell with everyone else...free college for me, but I don't give a rat's ass about thee. These are the same young people that on a whole embrace the top down dictatorship of Socialism, because it's about "fairness." Did anyone say meritocratic hierarchy? "Why can't the evil United States be more like enlightened Europe?" I've got a great idea. Let's look at how this so called European style "fairness" will pan out. Let's look at access to higher education in other countries where the governments either provide for, or heavily subsidise the cost of a college education and see whether or not this is what these young people really want for this country. They could be in for a rude awakening. A large percentage of them wouldn't be able to attend college at all. They would move down a notch or two or three, in the meritocratic hierarchy food chain.

What the young people in this country don't quite comprehend is the fact that any time the government provides anything, there is rationing. You can't provide a quality product to everyone. That includes education. There is either rationing of the product or service itself, or rationing of the quality of the product or service, or both. The same thing will happen if the government decides to provide free college education to the masses.

Most countries that provide higher education to their citizens, have very strict requirements as far as who gets to benefit from the education entitlement. A college education is an earned benefit regulated by the state. There are very stringent exams that are taken in high school, and only the best and brightest (i.e. those that score highest on the exams) are allowed to attend college by law. If you don't "test well," tough shit. You lose. I guess they don't have to worry about Affirmative Action lawsuits.

Let's say the United States decided to go this route. Let's create a hypothetical situation: The government sets aside a certain number of dollars for funding of higher education each year. It's part of the federal budget that Congress drafts and approves, and the President signs into law. A real world scenario is that there is enough funding so that 10% of our high school graduates would be allowed to attend college at any given time. That's rationing. It's based on cost benefit analysis; those that score the highest on the exams are the most likely to finish college, so you limit the benefit to those most likely to succeed. If you are not part of that top 10% based on very difficult comprehensive examinations, you are not going to college. You are going to trade school at best, if it is determined by other exams that you are bright enough and mechanically adept enough, to learn a trade. If not, you are going into the workforce in some low paying menial job for the rest of your life. Most people in this country will become part of this mass cheap labor pool at the bottom of the social hierarchy—the serfs. Hey liberals, do you believe that in enlightened Europe there is no such thing as the working poor? If you do, you need to get your heads out of your asses. Social Engineering is built into their laws. If your parents have enough money, they can send you to college overseas, but if they don't, you are screwed. Is this what you want in this country? I know what the next question is: Won't private colleges be an option for those that can afford them? Partially. Most private colleges receive federal grant money for various research projects. In order for the government to enforce its social engineering plan, they could force the private colleges to only accept those that the government has determined are entitled to a college education under threat of witholding federal grant money whether or not private grant money and/or endowments are being used for financial aid.

Fortunately, we are still a free society and higher education is not rationed by the government. If you can get accepted into college and can find the way to fund it, you can attend. Graduation is a different matter. Today in the United States, aproximately 40% of our high school graduates go on to college. However, about 40% of college attendees never graduate for a variety of reasons. A small percentage of that 40% run out of money. It's not fair, but that's the way things are sometimes. Many of those in that predicament never explore various financial aid programs offered through the college or university financial aid office. Some get offered a once in a lifetime career opportunity that "they can't refuse." Some decide that college is not for them, and they chose a different career path. Some just can't handle the course work when you get into the higher level courses. For those for whom cost becomes a barrier, however, there are ways to get money.

Currently, there are ways to reduce the cost of a college education, but most of the spoiled youth wouldn't be caught dead exploring some of the options. Yes there are scholarships, but you are going to have to study your ass off in high school, get involved in community or church projects, and be the ultimate model citizen. 99% won't even be considered for a full scholarship. There are partial scholarships too, but you are going to still have to be exceptional for consideration. Another thing you can do is get the first two years out of the way at a community college and live home with your parents. That will save a lot of money. Oops, that means that you won't be able to spend every night getting drunk and getting laid in the dorms. There are even more vile options—vile for the lefties and hippies that is. There are heaven forbid, ROTC scholarships. The trade off is you have to look GI and wear a uniform to classes on certain days of the week. You also have to spend some time after graduation as a commissioned officer in one of the military reserves being a weekend warrior one weekend a month and serving two weeks active duty during the summer. You are required to do this for a given number of years until you accumulate enough points to meet your obligation. Yes kiddies, that means you have to give something for something. You want something for nothing.

You can even go one step further and actually join the active duty military. Have you ever heard of the Tuition Assistance Program? I used it when I was in the Air Force to pay for college classes. Depending on the education budget for the year, the services will pay anywhere from 75% to 100% of your college tuition costs as long as you receive at least a C in the course. Here's another option. Currently, the Army has a program where they will pay off your student loans if you join up. The other branches are considering similar proposals at this time too. Think about it. You come out of college with a nice big fat student loan debt, and the Army will make it go away. Plus, you have a degree, so you can sign up as a commissioned officer rather than an enlisted person. You get to be junior executive management right out of the shoot. For this, you owe them something like five years commissioned service followed by several years in the inactive reserves. Inactive reserve means you can be recalled back to active duty in the event of a national emergency or during time of war. If you go the enlisted route, you do four years active duty and then eight years in the inactive reserves. I'm sure that another thing you brainwashed brats probably don't know is that only 10% of the jobs in the military are combat related. The rest are support positions ranging from mechanics, to photographers, to graphic artists, to musicians, to lawyers, to doctors, to computer programmers and software engineers, and even to physical trainers in the base gyms. What's the down side? You have to wear a uniform, cut your hair, and...and...and...drumroll please...you are subject to random drug testing and you have to submit to authority! Yes I know, you all have a "problem with authority." That, and the military is a top down dictatorship. Wait a minute. Isn't Socialism? You would get along just fine once you realized that you were not going to be the ones in charge for several years. You would have to start as a peon just like everyone else...it breaks my cold conservative heart just thinking about it.

There is also the option of working your way through college. I know several people that took years to finish a degree that way. They would work for a couple of years and save their money. Then they would take courses part-time while they continued to work. Then they would work for a couple of years saving their money, and repeat the cycle. One of my old family doctors worked his way through medical school that way. He financed his college and medical school educations by working in the coal mines of western Pennsylvania. If you want it bad enough, you'll find a way to do it.

John Ellis, who is the President of the the California Association of Scholars and is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz has an article in the online publication mindingthecampus.com where he explores the reasons for the huge cost increase in higher education. You can not have affordable public higher education unless you have a strong business community that is paying for it through tax revenues. If you make the climate for businesses oppressive, like California has done, businesses "vote with their feet." They leave. Once they leave, they don't pay taxes to the state.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

"Unemployment in California is still rising. It just went up from 12.3 to 12.5%, nearly three points above an already bad national average. This horrendous figure is the source of California's budget problem. The huge loss of tax revenue is compounded by greatly increased unemployment outlays. If we look at the few other states that have unemployment figures well above the national average, there are obvious explanations. Michigan is at 14.6 because employment in its major industry (automobiles) has collapsed. Nevada, at 13.0, is dependent on discretionary cash at a time when there isn't any. But California is too big to be dominated by one industry, and its plight can only be explained by the state's having grossly mismanaged its affairs.

In 2007 Raymond Keating formulated a Small Business Survival Index, which is a composite of various aspects of the climate for business in a particular state: business and personal taxes, regulations, mandates, and so on. In that index California ranked 49 among the 50 states. Rhode Island ranked just above California, and its unemployment rate is 12.7. At the bottom of the Index is D.C., and its unemployment rate is 12.1.

In the component parts of the SBSI index, California ranks worst of 51 (including D.C.) on top personal tax rates, worst on top capital gains tax rates, 42 on corporate taxes, 43 on health insurance mandates, 46 on electric utility costs, 47 on workman's compensation costs, rock bottom again on state gas taxes, 45 on state and local government five year spending trends, and 47 on state and local per capita government spending. It also ranks 49 among the states on the US Economic freedom index, and it has the highest state sales tax rate too: where some states have an income tax but no sales tax, and others have a sales tax but no income tax, California has both, AND it has the highest rates in both.

In short, California is a disaster for business. The state has piled up so many taxes, regulations and mandates that businesses are leaving the state. Just this week I learned that a spare part order for my Lennox fireplace is delayed because Lennox is moving this division of its business to Tennessee. Wealthy individuals are also fleeing the state to avoid the country's highest tax bracket. When both wealth and wealth creation leave the state, tax revenues leave with them.

How has this happened? As everyone knows by now, California has a dysfunctional legislature. Already in 2003---well before the current national crisis, and when the national unemployment rate was only 5.9%---California was bankrupt, and spending was so out of control that a Governor was recalled. The legislature enacts every politically correct whim that comes into its head, loading on one mandate and regulation after another. Cap and Trade could not pass nationally, but the California legislature proudly passed its job-killing global warming bill.

That is why the state now has a budget crisis of staggering proportions, and why university students are seeing those large fee hikes. But why is the California legislature so irresponsible, not to say goofy? Well, California is extremely rich in state university campuses: the UC and CSUC systems alone amount to 33 campuses, about a third of them mega-campuses of 30-35 thousand students, with another 10 around 20,000. The mega-campuses completely dominate the Assembly districts they are in, and their large concentrations of students and faculty skew the district electorate not just to the left, but to the devoutly politically correct but hopelessly unrealistic left. Virtually all of them routinely send Democrats to Sacramento. College towns with more modest sized campuses play their part too, but mega-campuses make their districts so one-sided that in the last election UC Berkeley's Assembly seat had no election even though it was vacant: the Democratic nominee still ran unopposed. Where there is real competition between the parties the two sides keep each other honest and realistic, but when Assembly seats are so inevitably left that there is no contest, there is nothing to stop the side that has automatic electability from sliding into fantasy. Those districts provide the margin that allows an immature leftism that has lost contact with reality to control the state legislature and ruin the business climate of the state."

Hey Hippies, it's your beloved Liberals, Progressives, Marxists and Communists that are advancing the Socialism that is killing your chance of getting a college education. You are the perfect "Useful Idiots." Grow up, get a life and get your heads out of your asses. Stop supporting the people and the policies that are going to make your lives harder while advancing more power to the controlling elite class of Liberals that have taken over American society. You are suffering the effects, like the rest of us, of the slow march through the culture that was implemented by the International Communist movement over the past 100 years. The problem is, you are too brainwashed to see it. Wake up idiots. Yes I know, it's all George Bush's fault. Go back to your classes that have the word "studies" attached to their title.

Al The Whiner

There have been several articles on the Internet talking about former Vice President Al Gore's whiny editorial in the New York Times about the crisis of global warming, and how the skeptics are out to get him. Awwwwwww......Poor little Al. What's the matter? Do you see your cash cow based on fabrications and lies going down the toilet? Does Generational Investment Management, the London based carbon trading scam operation you founded stand to lose money? Does this mean that you won't become the world's first carbon offset billionaire while you destroy the American middle class as part of the plan? GIM doesn't mean anything to me anyway. I don't have the million dollar minimum investment required to get in on the plan, or is it scam? You know Al, my heart goes out to you. Why don't you just move your butt down to Cuba or Venezuela where you can wallow in your sloth and greed with like minded Communists.

It's nice to see the American people finally waking up and realizing that the Progressive Left, which has been working slowly behind the scenes since the early part of the 20th century to mold the United States into a Socialist dictatorship. We are not going to be ruled by Progressive Elites. We will make this country great again, and this time you sanctimonious Progressives are going to get what is coming to you. The average American, most of whom are just a touch right of center, have had enough. We don't mind when politics is fought between the 45 yard lines. We can accept a slight move to the left on occasion. However, when you try to move the fight to the 20 yard line, there is going to be an opposite reaction when the right moves the play to THEIR 20 yard line. Things will be brought back to the center. And Al, I hope that you end up broke.

Americans Are Not Europeans

Our current administration and its minions want to make the United States Of America into a European style Socialist welfare state run by a cabal of Left Wing highly educated elitists, who think they know what's better for us than us. Here in the Washington, DC area you find a large percentage of these Narcissists in the upper northwest sections and gentrified areas of Washington, DC, Montgomery and Howard Counties in Maryland, and the Northern Virginia suburbs. These highly educated, high salaried professional types want to safeguard their lofty perches in American society from competition from the masses through stringent government regulations that protect their upper middle class lifestyles, while throwing a bone to appease the working class and lower middle class chattel that they hold in contemptuous pitty. These elitists want to remake America into their version of Socialist Western Europe. There is only one problem. The average American is not going to go along with the program, because American think differently than Europeans. This is the main reason that Europeans tolerate high taxes and cradle to grave Socialism. The reason has to do with our comparative histories. Look at European history and especially the modern European history of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries, which is where most of the the current European memory exists, even though the events that define Europe go back a thousand years or so. You will see, bloody revolutions, dictatorships and total wars that killed millions and millions of people. These events have made Europeans content, or for many, reluctantly complacent to rely on a strong central government for physical, financial and emotional security—the Nanny State...Not so with the average American.

Everything has a price. Europeans are willing to trade the higher standard of living that can be achieved through hard work and initiative, for a lower standard of living involving less effort propped up with a plethora of social benefits, for the non-elite, non-advanced degreed citizens that make up the bulk of their middle class. The average middle class European, not professional class or those that are in management positions in government, has a comparative standard of living that is just a notch above a welfare recipient here in the United States. That's not a very good standard of living. However, for many it is "good enough," because it means you can be relatively lazy. Europeans are bought off by their governments with social benefits that allow them to pursue a more leisurely lifestyle. Europeans get government run health care, mandated vacation time, state mandated salaries based on one's education level and job, mandatory retirement ages with generous pensions and benefits, endless unemployment benefits and a host of other expensive social programs. These programs are paid for with high taxes. One deep dark secret, however, is the fact that the salaries for advanced degreed professionals and high-end government workers are over inflated, so those professionals and the upper reaches of government employment enjoy a standard of living comparable to America's upper middle class despite those taxes. Despite the cradle to grave nanny state, however, Europeans still have their poor. They just keep them hidden from view so no one pays much attention to them. The media seldom report on the European poor, because it would show the failure of the Socialist system that the media are helping the Elites bring into fruition here in America.

Average Americans don't think that way. We are not victims. We are not helpless. Unlike many Europeans, most working class and lower middle class Americans believe that there is a direct connection between effort and reward. Unless you are extremely lucky, you can not be a slacker in America and succeed. Consequently, Americans have a strong independence streak. We don't need government social protection run by a bunch of Socialist elites that will define what is best for us. We don't need an "educated class" telling us how to live our lives, what to eat, what to drive and where to live. I like my greasy hamburgers, milk shakes, donuts and sugared soft drinks. I don't like tofu and wheat grass tea. You are not going to force me to consume the latter.

I like my Dodge 1500 Ram van. I despise the idea of being forced by government bureacrats to drive some roller skate with a lawn mower engine, because it's better for the environment and/or the "common good." You are not going to force me to ride public transportion. If I'm going to take public transportation, I'm going to do it out of my own free will. Personally, I like taking public transportation when I go into the city, and I'm not transporting band equipment. That way I don't have to drive when I don't want to, or try to find a place to park. However, no sanctimonius, holier than thou, Marxist Progressive is going to force me to take the bus while they tool down the Beltway in their Prius.

While I don't care for having a yard—I'm not into yard work, I like the fact that I can live in a small single family house, where I can practice my drums without pissing off the neighbors. I like the fact that I have enough space to store my collection of drum sets and other percussion equipment. I can carry them out the door, load them in my truck and head to the gig. The thought of being forced to live in cramped high density housing, having to store my equipment in a storage facility along with my truck, and either walk there or take public transportation there before and after each gig to load and unload my gear doesn't appeal to me. That's restricting my freedom. I've worked very hard and made many personal sacrifices for my career and consequently I am able to reap some reward for my hard work. I am not a slacker. I can't stand slackers. If you want to thrive as a slacker, move to Europe.

What we are now seeing in this country is the culmination of what the late Christopher Lasch wrote about in his books "The Culture Of Narcissism" and "The Revolt Of The Elites." The tool that these elites are going to use to re-engineer society for their benefit is health care. The "educated class" elites want to force government run health care down our throats for one reason. It's the ultimate control tool. They get to decide who lives and who dies. They will do this through denial of care to those that the elites consider to be expendable and/or their enemies. Denial of care based on the science of comparative effectiveness will become the norm. They will start with the elderly. After that will come the terminally ill. Following that will be "special needs" children. After that will be the mentally feeble. Next there will be denial of care to those that the government considers to be subversives, with dissent re-defined as a mental disorder; didn't I just say the mentally feeble? Finally, there will be forced abortions and infanticide in order to Eugenically "engineer" society for the benefit of the Left's vision of a Socialist utopia. Once the threat of eliminating you if you don't do as you are told is in place, all the other parts of the social engineering process can be brought into effect: where to live, what job you do, what car you drive, what you eat, what you drink, what you think...

Guess, what? It's not going to happen. The left, with President Obama at the helm, have woken up the sleeping giant. The "little people" as getting really pissed. The Tea Party movement is only the beginning. Americans relish freedom and as history shows, are willing to fight and die for it anywhere in the world including on our own soil.

Average Americans see themselves as the "doers" of the world. We despise elites with advanced college degrees telling us that we are stupid, helpless morons that need to be cared for by those same elites. We are not helpless people needing a Nanny State government taking care of us in high-end poverty. Most of us don't need therapy in order to cope with life either. Benefits in America are earned. Programs like Social Security, Medicare and military pensions and benefits, are rewards for a life time of effort. You receive a benefit because you've earned it. There is a difference between a benefit and and an unearned entitlement.

Most Americans despise big-government programs the put no connection between hard work and reward. The last thing in the world that we want is our tax dollars funding some lazy bastard that refuses to work. Originally, our welfare programs were started in the 1930s to keep widows with children from starving. That was a good thing. However too much of a good thing, becomes a bad thing. Starting in the 1960s with President Johnson's Great Society social programs, welfare became a huge "industry" rewarding mothers who didn't work, and had multiple children with multiple partners with no man in sight. In fact, if there was a man in the house or if the mother worked part-time trying to get ahead, there would be no welfare benefits. This also excused men from having to take responsibility for the children that they helped produce. Consequently, supporting welfare for slackers has become very unpopular with those of us that are stuck funding it.

Much to his credit, President Clinton understood the mindset of working class Americans who pay their bills on time, and go without because they can't afford things, when he signed welfare reform into effect 1996. Yes I know, I've heard about how he was forced to do it, because of a Republican Congress. Bullshit! He could have vetoed it but he didn't. President Clinton understood the mindset of the average Middle American, because he personally came from the lower middle class. Clinton came up the hard way through hard work in Arkansas. Arkansas is a state with vastly unequal income distribution. You have an elite ruling class of extremely wealthy families like the Waltons and the Tysons, a small professional upper middle class, and you have a majority of the population that is basically lower middle class and/or working poor.

We now have a nation that is governed by anti-Middle America elitists. President Obama and his minions along with the fellow travellers and useful idiots of advanced degreed, information age, meritocratic upper middle class liberals, wealthy hedge fund liberals and their ilk, look down on working class and lower middle class Americans as stupid victims of their own prejudices who need to be controlled for their own good; the "little people" would be better off dependent on government benevolence than on their own initiative. Most Americans don't see themselves that way and resent this sanctimonious condescension. We are also sick and tired of using the "pawns on the chessboard," all the special interest groups of the "victim industry," to advance Marxism in this country. You can only push people so far. I'm wondering when the straw that breaks the camel's back is going to happen, and I'm hoping that things get fixed before that happens. Fortunately, the 2010 mid-term elections are only 9 months away. America needs to come back to being America, and stop this slide into becoming like Europe. If you want America to be like Europe I have a great idea. Move there. I understand that it's a great place to have a whine and cheese party.

Environmental Sanctimony

I'm chuckling inside. The spoiled rotten elitist environmentalists are finally getting their comeuppance. Now that even Phil Jones has come out and basically admitted that the entire environmental movement is one giant scam, the chickens are coming home to roost. Does this mean that Al Gore will now no longer become the world's first carbon trading billionaire? Damn, it breaks my cold conservative heart just to think about it.

Undoing the damage of the Socialist environmental movement is going to take time. It's going to be a hard uphill battle. There is just too much money for the socialists to make trying to destroy big business with the multi-billion dollar per year environmental "big business." It almost worked. However, the "stupid little people" are finally on to their scam, and we see them for the phonies that they really are. It's not about the environment. It's about establishing a one world Socialist government.

Let's see where people fall into the hierarchy of the Marxists promoting this "Religion of Gaia". At the top of the heap are the big time players; Al Gore, George Soros, Goldman Sachs, etc. These are people and businesses that stand to make billions of dollars destroying the Capitalist system, especially the American Capitalist system, by advancing Socialism. They have to perpetuate the "big lie" in order to pull off their quest for a world-wide Marxist regime with them being the feudalistic ruling class. Many corporations are in on the bandwagon too for a variety of reasons. One, they are scared. It's protection money. They don't want to be completely destroyed and their leaders herded into re-education camps or executed once the Commies have finally taken over. Two, they believe that they can at least get partially rich as a consolation prize in the process themselves due to the concept of trickle down economics, if they go along with the program to destroy the Capitalist system. There will be at least some reward for them.

Next down the list you have the Fellow Travellers. Notice how the environmental movement seems to have the same hierarchy as Communism? Fellow travellers are not actual revolutionaries, but they firmly believe in the cause, and will do anything in their power to help the revolutionaries achieve their goal. They also know that supporting the cause will garner them a certain level of financial security and privileges that the "little people" will not receive. In the old Soviet Union they were called the Nomenclatura. Here you will have the typical upper middle class Whole Foods crowd; David Brooks refers to them as Bobos, or Bourgeois Bohemians. For the most part, they are highly educated sanctimonious meritocratic elites, who consider themselves better than the average person—that average person being, of course, the working class and lower middle class suburban family. They can not stand the fact that someone with less education than them can own property. They can't stand the fact that those same Neanderthals can afford to drive a car. They should be forced to take the bus and live in New Urbanism planned communities, but not the same luxury level planned communities that the Bobos live in. The scum need to live in slightly above bare bones high rise housing projects with centrally controlled thermostats and no parking. That way they will have to live in an environment that is 60 degrees in the winter and 90 degrees in the summer, and will have to take public transportation to work. That way they can be controlled for the "common good." That also means less traffic for the Bobos when they drive their Priuses down the interstate. Afterall, everything is about them, and having to sit in a traffic jam is a huge waste of their valuable time. These upper class "Phonies In Paradise" are people I absolutely despise.

The next notch down are the environmental Useful Idiots. These are the people that get sucked into the cause out of being gullible and guilt-ridden. Most of them have lived very sheltered lives, and haven't had to struggle in order to survive. There was always more than just food on the table and a roof over the head. There was always discretionary income, vacations, paid for college educations, trust funds, and what have you. They have been the recipients of the benevolence of the American Dream. Therefore, they have to be made to feel guilty. Through public school, private school, and media brainwashing, they are force fed a diet about how America sucks. America is this horrible Capitalist country that exploits everyone else in the world. We are the worst polluters on the planet (but only when a Republican is in the White House), and that we need to atone for our sins. (i.e. reduce our standard of living so our middle class can live like the middle class in Europe. Of course, that doesn't mean them. That means the lower middle class). These are people that are usually involved in other "feel good" social causes too. If you get to know some of these folks, you will also find another common thread. Most of them are in some sort of therapy. They can't handle adulthood. It's too difficult for them, so they need counselling. They have never outgrown their adolescence. Group therapy like anti-war (anti-America) protest marches and demonstrations for left-wing social victimhood causes count too. They've bought the entire victim/oppressor, evil Capitalist/good Socialist, America sucks "business model" of the Progressive Left's world government multi-billion dollar "industry." It's so shameful to live here. We have so much and the rest of the world has so little. Why can't we be like Europe? Their middle class doesn't need a big house. Their middle class is environmentally enlightened. They live in collective housing. If they live in single family houses, they are "less wasteful." They ride bicycles and public transportation to work, because the care. They are not greedy bastards like we Americans are. Damn, the guilt is just gushing forth. What doesn't dawn on these dumbasses is the real reason that Europeans ride bicycles and take the bus; they can't afford the cost of driving, unless they are members of the upper middle class professional elite or the aristocracy. That's why they live in much smaller houses too. It's not because they are environmentally savvy. It's because the average lower middle class European can not afford anything larger than about 500 to 700 square feet of living space for a typical family of four or five. Hey liberals, that means that three children get to share one bedroom. Maybe one of them can sleep in the kitchen or the living room. Is this what you want? Oh that's right. Not for me, only for thee. That's what the average European can afford. They can't afford a larger dwelling, and they can't afford the subsequent cost of the utilities for a larger home. The environmental left wants us to be like Europe? How about starting with THEM giving up their upper middle class lifestyle and moving into high rise ghetto projects. Put your money where you mouth is, hypocrites. Setting the example by living in luxury New Urbanism planned communities of million dollar brownstones and high six figure condos next door to a Whole Foods or Harris Teeter in the outer suburbs doesn't count...not that I have anything against Whole Foods or Harris Teeter. I enjoy shopping in both stores when I can afford the occasional luxury. If you, in your phony desire for fairness, choose out of your own free will to live in the ghetto housing projects with winos passed out in the stairwell that you are proposing for the swine, I just might start taking you seriously. Until then, you are nothing but hypocritical pieces of S&*t.

However, times are changing. The sleeping giant has awoken. What's happening as we speak is that the so called "little people" are no longer buying the snake oil. We can see who is behind the curtain, and we are no longer going to go along with the program. The Proletariat are not revolting against the Capitalists like Marx envisioned. They are revolting against the Progressive Elites who feel it's their birthright to be the massas on the plantation. There is a definite revolt going on against the Educated Elite, and the Educated Elite can't stand the fact that the "little people" are not going to allow them to be the rulers. I'm hoping things get resolved peacefully at the ballot box. I don't even want to think about the other possibility. I hope that the anger never drives us to that point as a nation.

"Volunteers"

I was just watching the news this morning. It looks like a lot of the municipal governments are looking for volunteers to go to the various schools in the area in order to shovel out the driveways and parking lots. They want to make sure that the school busses can get the children to the schools, and that the staff have places to park their cars. There are a couple of ways they could do this: First of all, aren't all students today required to "volunteer" for some type of community service in order to graduate from high school? Shovelling snow should count as community service. I guess you could ask a Boy Scout troop to do it, but then NAMBLA and the ACLU, along with SEIU and the other public employee union thugs would be pitching a fit. Look at the fit they threw when they went after a retired man who volunteered his time to be a crossing guard in order to help keep school kids safe while they were waiting at a bus stop.

I have a better idea. How about going into the city and rounding up all the able bodied welfare recipients that are sitting home smoking crack or hanging out in the park drinking cheap wine and being the lazy bums that they are. Make them earn their entitlement for a change. While we are at it, how about sticking shovels in the hands of the left wing activists that use the homeless and the welfare bums as tools to advance their Marxist agenda. It would serve them right.

More Feel Good Boycotts

The other night a friend of mine informed me, after spending the day hanging out with a left wing lawyer friend of hers, that she was no longer going to eat shrimp. The reason being that shrimp fishing is really bad for the environment. They throw parts of the shrimp back into the ocean, and that's polution. I guess no thought was given to the fact that those body parts are going to end up as food for other ocean creatures. Unenlightened lil' ol' me was unaware that most ocean dwelling creatures were vegans. I didn't know that sharks ate tofu. Gee, I must be one of the uneducated masses that needs to be controlled for the "common good."

This is just another example of the typical holier than thou attitute of the highly educated liberal elite that want to control our lives. Well guess what? I'm now going to go out of my way to eat MORE shrimp just out of principle. Why? Because I can. I'm really starting to become contemptuous of sanctimonious, holier-than-thou left wing types. Mainly, because the vast majority of them are hypocrites. Bobos In Paradise.

I'm one of the "little people" that is finally getting fed up with the new meritcratic upper middle class phonies that have self-anointed themselves to be our rulers. There are others like me out there too. We are going to resist their every move to control us. The other thing we need to do is expose them for what they really are, and this time there can be no benefit of the doubt. Marx claimed that the proletariat would rise up against the Capitalist ruling class. What he didn't count on was the proletariat would embrace Capitalism and use it, along with hard work, to get themselves their own little piece of the pie. The educated class gradually embraced Marxism over the years, and started to embrace it in earnest starting in the 1960s. They figured that they would become the ruling class, just like the government hacks in the old Soviet Union. What they didn't count on was the proletariat rising up against them. Scott Brown is the tip of the iceberg. Now, I think I'm going to start up my gas guzzler Dodge Ram 1500 and head on down to the super market and buy myself a nice big bag of shrimp.

Woodstock, The Shot Across The Bow of America

This past weekend was the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that took place on Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York in 1969. I find it amusing that Yasgur was a conservative republican who agreed to allow hippies to destroy his farm, but I guess he was paid enough money for the use of his land to make it worthwhile. I hope he made his money up front, because the promoters lost their shirts when the everything is about them spoiled brats, who showed up without tickets and had not intention of paying for admission tickets, knocked down the fences and declared it a "free" concert. I have always had mixed feelings about Woodstock. I was lured by the whole celebration of the primalism that it was, because I had received my proper dosage of liberal brainwashing in the public schools. However, I did have a few conservative teachers. There were still a few of them left when I was in school. They hadn’t been purged from the system yet.

I always thought the music was great. This was the music of my generation, both liberal and conservative. The bands that played there were rock music’s royalty. However, as I look back at it, I can see that it was the celebration of the left fork in the road of the two divisions of the Baby Boomer generation; there were those who came from a life of spoiled privilege and there were those that didn’t. Those that didn’t made up the right fork in the road, and the divide has been getting further and further apart as the years have progressed. Being part of that interim generation of the Baby Boomers that some demographers refer to as Generation Jones, I was too young to attend. I was only fourteen at the time, and there is no way that my World War II generation parents were going to allow me to attend an event of that kind anyway. My dad was a public school history teacher. Unlike most of the teachers today, and quite a few teachers at that time, the only liberal leanings he had were in regards to the New Deal. He thought the world of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Until he died, he remained a true patriotic American, who had no use for anti-Americanism.

His dad had been a builder, and had quite a bit of money until the Great Depression hit and he lost all of his business. From that point on they struggled financially just to survive. My mother grew up relatively poor in an Italian immigrant family with thirteen children who all ended up in some sort of blue-collar job, as they grew older. Not one of them went to college. They all struggled growing up. My dad served in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific during World War II, and he consequently had absolutely no respect for the anti-war crowd. All he saw were spoiled brats who were in dire need of a good beating. My mother’s brothers also all served in the military during the Second World War. The value of self-sacrifice that my parents grew up with, was part of my upbringing. We did without if we didn’t really need it. Luxuries were few and far between. As a schoolteacher he didn’t make a huge salary anyway. We were what would be considered to be lower middle class. We were the next rung up the food chain ladder from the working class. However, the working class and the lower middle class shared a lot in common, despite education and some minor value differences. We lived in the same neighborhoods, and we went to school together. One thing that was definitely shared in common was that many of the sons received a certified letter that required a proof of delivery signature that when opened began as follows: "Greetings." And guess what? They went to Viet Nam. You don’t hear much about these folks. Those that came back, which were all but 58,000 of them, got on with their lives. For the most part, they embarked on careers that pretty much made up the bulk of the working and lower middle classes, which is where they came from in the first place. However, first of all they had to endure getting spit upon, have feces thrown at them, and be called "baby killers" when they returned by the other fork in the road, the Woodstock Generation.

Let’s look at the demographics of that left fork in the road, the hippies and their ilk. Most of them grew up in a life of privilege. Few of them grew up working class or lower middle class. Many came from inherited wealth, but most of them were children of upper middle class professionals and left wing educators. They were spoiled. If they were the children of liberals and leftists in the education establishment, they were either open or closet Marxists. Everything was back then, and now that they are the establishment, about them. They despised back then, and still despise the working class and lower middle class whites. The hippies are now in charge of our government, legal profession, education system, and lurking in many of the policy-making positions of Corporate America and the Pentagon. This almost wasn’t the case.

In 1968 various radical student groups and racial groups, now revealed by the Venona Project to have been financed by the KGB in Moscow with millions of dollars smuggled in from Canada, became violent. These were cogs in the ongoing cultural war to destroy the United States from within. To this day, this "cold civil war" continues.

Members of these groups seized control of Columbia University in New York City. There were other riots at other colleges and universities that followed, but they probably wouldn’t have happened if the Columbia riots had been handled differently. Originally, the faculty of Columbia wanted the authorities to take back control of the campus by "any means necessary," but they backed down in their request at the last minute. Back then there were still quite a few college faculty members that were conservatives, but they were ultimately afraid of the political and social consequences of regaining control of the campus with force. This emboldened the Left, the Marxist Leninist funded by Moscow left mind you, to begin the acceleration of their assault on the American way of life. Let’s hear it again for the Woodstock Generation. Nelson Rockefeller was the governor of New York at the time, and had the faculty requested "assistance," he would have sent in the National Guard to storm the campus, and restore order using "any means necessary." The university president's decision not to request National Guard assistance was a huge mistake.

The Silent Majority, my father being one of them, would have stood up and cheered as the spoiled brats brandishing Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book were taken down. I remember seeing him smiling and hearing him say, "good, it’s about time," while he was watching the Chicago Police gave the anti-war protestors a good thrashing during the 1968 Democratic Convention riots. Even though he never said anything about it, I think that he silently cheered when the National Guard shot those four students during the Kent State riots too. As for me, now that I look back at that incident from the perspective of someone who is older, wiser, conservative, and a veteran, it shouldn't have happened. What should have happened was this: Since the protesters had burned down the ROTC building at Kent State, that should have been declared either an act of war by a domestic enemy within, or it should have been considered an act of sabotage against the government. The National Guard should have made it 400 or 4000 instead of 4, and the ring leaders should have been arrested, tried by military tribunal for sabotage and treason, and executed.

This error of cowardice on the part of the Columbia faculty was the turning point that set the stage for the Communist take over of our government that is attempting to come to fruition with the 2008 election. Woodstock in 1969 was the Left’s smug, arrogant, celebration of the beginning of the end of the despised values and prosperity of Middle Class America. With the final push happening today to force a socialist dictatorship on the American people, run of course, by the spoiled rotten leftists from the Woodstock Generation, I have a feeling that my dad is spinning in his grave.