Silken Slippers and Hobnail Boots Surviving the Decline and Fall

by R.E. Hannay

ENDANGERED SPECIES

  There is a great hue and cry from such passionate warriors as the Sierra Club, Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation and others when they perceive some species of animal, bird, fish or bug is diminishing in population or -- Gasp! -- in danger of dying out. Consider the rationality of those concerns.

  The supreme law of nature is Adapt or die. Survival of the fittest applies not just within each species but between species. It is the essential basis for the improvement and continuation of some species, and the decline and disappearance of others unable to adapt and compete successfully. The survival of the fittest ensures preservation of the most efficient and viable species on earth, providing the optimum use and balance of the earth's resources. More capable and aggressive individuals and groups become dominant, weaker ones accept subordinate positions in the pecking order or disappear. In extreme cases, weaker groups disappear completely. That is nature’s grand scheme, competition for the planet’s resources and space. It applies to individuals, groups and nations.

  Pecking orders are nature’s efficient way of organizing and managing all critters, including the naked apes, with a minimum of conflict. The strongest, cleverest and most aggressive individuals, groups and nations often maintain order and control simply by acting dominant, avoiding actual conflict.

  It has been estimated that about ninety-nine percent of all the species that have ever lived are now extinct. Why must the environmental radicals now interfere with that process? (The term radical is used to distinguish those who ignore private property rights and legal requirements to pay the costs of appropriating them and who do not consider the estimated costs-benefits tradeoffs in proposed restrictions.) When some humans, in their infinite wisdom and compassion, interfere with natural competition, they are not doing a favor for nature or for struggling species. Often they are simply providing crutches for weak or incapable species that will probably fail anyway.

  Federal biologists in Oregon announced that hunters working for the California Academy of Sciences are killing barred owls on the Klamath National Forest, saying they have invaded the habitat of their sacred northern spotted owl. The politically-incorrect barred owl has moved in from somewhere east and is described as more aggressive and adaptable, an apparently unforgivable sin. Nature’s survival of the fittest is being turned upside down by bureaucrats.

  Guiltiest of the parties in this fiasco are the courts, which apparently cannot read our Constitution, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with the power to dictate Endangered Species Act rules by powers delegated to them by Congress. FWS imported wolves from Canada in 1994. By 2002 the wolves had again become a nuisance killing livestock, FWS delisted the wolves, a federal court ordered that the wolves still be protected, Congress intervened and delisted the wolves, and environmental groups immediately filed another suit to protect the wolves -- another expensive imbroglio started by the tree-huggers. There is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government to do what it is doing, with or without compensation to property owners. Still, if some species preservation were conducted on a rational basis, probably few people would object.

  There are a few species for which some protection or attempt to restore a viable population were justified, like American bison and Chinese pandas. Now such decisions are made by a few bureaucrats or a few politicians, using taxes carelessly and often taking private property simply by restrictions on its use but without the compensation required by law. The result is an incredible number of species on the endangered species list that simply cannot be justified either rationally or legally, in addition to causing many lawsuits seeking compensation for denial of private property rights..

  Almost 1,300 domestic species of plants and animals are listed, unconstitutionally protected by our great government benevolent and protective society. On a recent count only 10 species had been reclassified “recovered.” The construction of schools, hospitals and all kinds of public and private developments are delayed or prohibited by the anointed elites who say there is or even might be a snail darter, sucker fish, pygmy owl or some other sacred critter either on the property or, incredibly, that might like to be on that kind of property. California alone has 308 plants and creatures on the endangered species list, including one fly and one rat.

  The July 15, 2013 Wall Street Journal reported a typical example of the damages caused by President Obama in his “transform America” adventures. This spring his Bureau of Reclamation cut water allocations to one of the most important bread baskets in the United States because 300 desert smelt, a threatened species, were caught in the pumps at the south end of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The Administration cut the water deliveries to between 20 and 35 percent of the contractual allocations, flushing 800,000 acre-feet of irrigation water into San Francisco Bay. That’s enough water to sustain 800,000 families, irrigate 200,000 acres of land, grow 20 million tons of grapes and employ thousands of workers in an area with high unemployment. The report said more smelt are captured by biologists conducting population surveys every year than are trapped by pumps.

  Such interference has often proved to be folly. Because of a supposedly endangered red squirrel, there were years of hassles and delays in building an observatory on Arizona's Mt. Graham. Years later, after the government finally located someone who could identify and count the endangered red squirrels separately from ordinary red squirrels, it was found that the endangered population on Mt. Graham had increased substantially since the offending telescopes, roads and buildings had been constructed, joining the trend to urban living.

  The environmental radicals trying to kill the Alaska oil pipeline project said the caribou population would die out because they would not cross the pipeline during their seasonal migrations. As it turned out, the caribou like to stand under the nice warm pipeline, think warm thoughts and make love. Consequently, the Central Arctic Caribou herd which inhabits the Prudhoe Bay region has increased fivefold since oil operations began there, increasing from around 5,000 to 27,000 today.

  This country is or should be desperate to reduce its dependence on foreign oil imports, but there is still a controversy over drilling for what is believed to be a large amount of oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), also known as the Alaska National Mosquito Refuge. It has been reported that the estimated 10 billion barrels is more than a five-year supply of our worldwide oil imports, at the present rate. Environmentalist opponents always describe the area as “a pristine wilderness” and use photos of some other gorgeous area, but photographs of the proposed drilling site show it to be a desolate, soggy moonscape. New horizontal drilling techniques allow geologists to tap the oil from a tiny surface area of 2,000 acres -- a mere 1/100 of 1 percent of the ANWR’s 19,000,000 acres. The only people really affected are the Inupiat Indians who are pleading for the development of their oil, along with Alaska citizens generally, 75 percent of whom favor the drilling and development. The Alaska pipeline is down to half of its design capacity, endangering its future ability to function, and it could handle substantially increased flow from the ANWR's and other new production.

  The obvious conclusion is that sophist bureaucrats, the Obama gang and the limousine liberals think critters and even non-commercial fish are more important than people. If they followed the Constitution’s property-rights provisions, the list of endangered species would be short, their protection would be rational and taxpayers would pay fair compensation to private property owners now denied their property rights.

  EARMARKS AND RECKLESS SPENDING

  Career Politicians vs. Our Children and Grandchildren

  Once upon a time voters had a fairly clear idea how to vote, depending on whether or not they favored a bigger government, more welfare spending and higher taxes. Now voters must choose between tax-and-spend Democrats and don’t-tax-but-spend Republicans. In January, 2007, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner punished Republican Representative Jeff Flake for his continual, almost
sole opposition to earmarks legislation. Both parties are leading us astray, buying votes today in the hope that future politicians will handle their mess some day -- while today's politicians are collecting fat congressional pensions, “consulting” and lecture fees, book royalties and high-priced lobbying.

  The Democrats seek a utopian socialistic democracy, with every American and business owing their survival to a government wagon loaded with subsidies, special benefits, welfare goodies, pensions, medical care, housing, food, unemployment and other forms of taxpayer-paid and borrowed welfare. Since 1940, toward the end of the Great Depression, real GDP has increased by five times and, during those years, government “benefits” have increased by 25 times. From 1966 to 1976 alone, Democrat-controlled congresses expanded federal benefits - now called “entitlements” - six-fold in inflation-adjusted dollars.

  Democrats have never met an “entitlement” they didn’t like – benefits to special interests are a religion to them and a bribe to make voters political dependents. While Republicans have never met a tax cut they didn’t like, under George W. Bush they also learned how to spend even more than the Democrats did when they ruled. Then unknown mountebank Obama and his Democrat puppets broke all records, spending us close to national bankruptcy. We have become a welfare state, killing the incentives to achieve, to risk capital to start or expand businesses, to save and to enjoy the satisfaction of personal responsibility and success. Now Americans look to the gummint to solve their personal and business problems, and Americans are suckered into thinking that government help is free. They have voluntarily become government vassals.

  Few Americans really understand the financial disaster this country is headed for. They hear the Republicans saying that Social Security needs to be reformed and the Democrats saying that there is no problem, or that we have decades to make some little changes in Social Security. The biggest disaster is the future of Medicare and Medicaid, and now Obamacare. The public hears there are some problems with them but feel no urgency to address them, only to be sure they get theirs, and the politicians repeatedly kick the problem down the road, lest they lose a vote or contribution.

  Most people don't understand or care about huge federal deficits continuing into the indefinite future, massive imbalances in our foreign-exchange payments, a weakening dollar and the threat of reduced foreign investments in the United States and reduced foreign holdings of dollar reserves, all causing our interest rates to rise, with inflation set to destroy savings. Those threats are vague, meaningless, or simply of no interest to most Americans. The truth is that those are all crucial, compelling matters that need to be understood and addressed promptly.

  Jaded by years of overspending, politicians talk about billions and now trillions as if they were just numbers. Forecasts of future deficiencies in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security vary from $90 to $200 trillion, an unimaginable amount, but politicians continue to delay action. For perspective, our nation’s total net worth is estimated at $40 to $60 trillion, including all real, personal and financial property owned by U.S. residents.

  In his 2004 book, Running on Empty, Peter G. Peterson, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said some estimates of our unfunded benefit liabilities range from $45 trillion (American Enterprise Institute) to $74 trillion (Federal Reserve Bank of New York). His forecast concluded that if we want to balance the budget by 2014, on our current track we would either have to raise both individual and corporate income taxes by 38 percent or cut both Social Security and Medicare by 55 percent. Farther on, with the Woodstock generation retiring en masse, the trends begin to worsen quickly. To balance the budget by 2030 (assuming we do nothing until then), we would have to raise all payroll taxes by 100 percent and individual income taxes by 50 percent or we would have to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits in half and cut all non-defense discretionary spending by half. Those disastrous forecasts are low – very low. The head of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank estimates the future shortfall at $104 trillion, and others at almost twice that, an unthinkable future.

  What went wrong? What is still going wrong? Every American knows that his personal and business spending and incurring debt have to be limited by his earnings. A reckless Congress and the Administration spend and borrow as if there were no need to equate income and spending, no tomorrow, no day of reckoning -- they just borrow more money. Aside from the usual problem of career politicians buying votes and campaign contributions, many of them have the national baby-boomers’ disease: If you want something, just borrow the money and buy it!

  Earmarks are another source of runaway spending, allowing money to be spent on projects that undergo no legislative evaluation. They are, in effect, “no questions asked” gifts to powerful and obedient legislators. In 1982, the House transportation authorization bill contained only 10 earmarks, while the 2004 bill had 2,881 earmarks plus several billion dollars more set aside for unspecified future earmarks. In that bill, average House members got about $14 million in earmarks. Representative John Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, got $150 million for his Johnstown airport that has only three flights daily, to and from Washington, D.C. Murtha said, “If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.”

  Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, took $590 million for his district, including $200 million for a Ketchikan, Alaska bridge to replace a delightful seven-minute ferry ride to the airport. Even Ketchikan residents reportedly called the “bridge to nowhere” a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money and the controversy eventually killed the project, but Congress immediately gave Alaska the same amount of money to spend elsewhere.

  Citizens Against Government Waste ranked Alaska’s Senator Ted Stevens, then Republican head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Number One Hog every year since it began calculating pork per capita in 2000. In 2005 he took $984.85 for each Alaskan. One slice of his 2005 pork was $1,500,000 for one bus stop adjacent to the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.

  It seems almost hopeless to drag the entrenched politicians out of their self-serving games, but it can be done, and it must be done. For starters, we must:

  1. Educate the public, particularly our young people who eventually have to suffer the consequences of spending by our prodigal politicians. Now most of the public get their understanding of politics and economics from 45-second TV sound bites from biased liberal news media.

  2. De-polarize the political parties. The “I hate Republicans” rantings of Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and others show what has happened to our “leaders.” When Carl Hayden and Mo Udall, Democrats, and Barry Goldwater and John Rhodes, Republicans, were congressional leaders, they differed on the legitimate role of government but worked together for the good of the country and got things done rather than making war. Voters should have no tolerance for the current divisive bickering and mud-slinging.

  3. Enact term limits, twelve years and six. Send the career politicians out to pasture and elect capable legislators who do their turn in Congress and then go back to the real world. Now the careerists devote much of their time and activity to getting elected again and again, increasing their spending of taxpayers’ money with time in office. In contrast, those pledged to term limits decrease their spending toward the end of their terms.

  4. Stop penalizing the thrifty and successful. “Means testing” is a perverted penalty for thrift and achievement. Punitive tax policies and lavish welfare spending are a perverted deterrent to ambition, productivity, and the accumulation of the capital needed to expand the economy and create jobs and national prosperity. Government jobs and stimulus spending reduce wealth rather than create it.

  5. Reform the budget process and eliminate unspecified, secret earmarks.

  6. Insist on federal accrual accounting, required of all businesses, so long-term government liabilities are revealed and must be planned for.

  7. Fix gerrymandering, already done by four states with bipartisan citizens’ boards rev
iewing district boundaries every ten years. Gerrymandering is one matter opposing politicians cooperate on to protect those already in office.

  8. Repeal the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance “Reform” bill, also known as the Incumbents’ Protection bill.

  We could fill a book with specifics on pork, but suffice it to say the current gang of irresponsible Republicrats in Congress is incapable of fiscal discipline, and with President Obama, everything is about power politics and full-time campaigning for future elections.

  Wake up, America! Get involved, or your children and grandchildren will hate you for the mess you left them.

  1984 FINALLY ARRIVED, IN 2012

  In 1949 George Orwell wrote a wonderful satire of a government gone mad, titled Nineteen Eighty-Four. His Oceania, the government of the future, is a society tyrannized by The Party and its totalitarian ideology is a world of perpetual war, ubiquitous government surveillance with public mind control by the Inner Party elite that persecutes all independent thinking as thoughtcrimes. Big Brother, who foments a cult of personality, heads the tyranny. The Ministry of Truth is responsible for propaganda and rewriting news and historical records. The Ministry of Love oversees torture and brainwashing, the Ministry of Plenty oversees shortage and famine, and the Ministry of Peace oversees war and atrocity. The novel was a sensation and was translated into sixty-five languages.

  To see the evolution of our government, follow the time-line of certain events before and after FDR cooked his alphabet soup of welfare-state legislation and controls:

  * 1776-1932: In the Constitution the states gave limited, enumerated powers to the federal government, principally defense, foreign relations and protecting interstate commerce from restrictions imposed by states on free trade with other states. Taking assets from some citizens to give to others was discussed but was not authorized, and that was reaffirmed by the founders soon after the original passage.

  * 1933: Roosevelt imposed the WPA, PWA, NRA, CCC and a dozen or two other “temporary” welfare programs to end the recession. Those programs failed. The programs weren’t temporary and they spawned our welfare state.

  * 1964: Johnson imposed his Great Society “to cure poverty forever”, making permanent our welfare state. Forty-eight years and an estimated 16 trillion taxpayers’ dollars later, U.S. poverty is the highest in the last 50 years, with 15.1 percent of the population in government-calculated poverty and almost 50 million are getting food-stamps welfare.

  * 1971: Nixon destroyed the monetary stability of the gold standard and repudiated our Bretton Woods agreement, ensuring more government spending and deterioration of the dollar’s value.

  * 1977: Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act punished banks and savings & loans that didn’t make enough unsound loans in blighted neighborhoods to satisfy the bureaucrats.

  * 1989-2008: Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 continued the regulatory expansion, overspending and social engineering that, among other mistakes, facilitated a flood of real estate loans to unqualified and speculative buyers. Finally the bubble burst and the Great Recession began in 2008.