Big Government vs. Small Government Conservatives

Big Government & Small Government Conservatives
By Daniel G. Jennings
There is an intriguing battle taking place in today’s Republican Party, the battle is between two fascinating groups: Big Government Conservatives & Small Government Conservatives.
Basically BGCs buy into the ignorant superstition that government is all powerful and can do anything it wants while SGCs know that government is a limited and clumsy tool that often does more harm than good. Politically, SGCs are afraid of government power and want it limited while BGCs believe that government power can be used to achieve conservative ends.
Much of the base of the current Republican Party is made up of BGCs for example cultural conservatives who want to use the Federal Communications Commission to “clean up” television and radio. That is eliminate programming and content they see as offensive such as Howard Stern or the adult dramas on HBO.
The Small Government Conservative will oppose this because he knows that an FCC that can pull the plug on Howard Stern can also take Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Dobson off the air. The SGC also knows that an FCC that can shut down HBO can also cancel the Fox News Network. After all many liberals find Fox News, Rush and Dr. Dobson offensive.
The BGCs seem to have won the battle for Washington, the Cultural Conservatives want to use the power of the courts and the other branches of government to undue the social and cultural revolution of the 1960s. I.E., use government to erase thirty or forty years of history they don’t like, something that is impossible. Over at the White House “the Neo Conservatives” (Neo Imperialists would be a better term) want to use American military might to reshape the rest of the world in America’s image. The Republican Congress tries to solve the nation’s problems by throwing money at them.
Instead of shrinking government has grown and the powers and scope of law enforcement but not its effectiveness have increased. New bureaucracies and cabinet departments have appeared as the efficiency and effectiveness of government decreases.
Naturally, the BGC experiment like the liberal big government experiment before it has failed miserably, government has failed to create utopia. The Middle East is not Democratic and America hasn’t been transformed into Mayberry writ large. Instead we have an unpopular war, conflict with many other countries, an out of control national debt and an unpopular president.
The BGCs have also provoked a popular reaction, most rank and file conservatives and most average Americans are SGC’s. They have a healthy skepticism of government and fear it’s power because they know how destructive it can be. The Republican base is angry at the clowns in Washington because they are acting just like the Democrats. Some SGCs are so mad they are prepared to vote Democratic just to smite the bums in Washington.
Now with the BGCs failure clear for all to see is time for a revival of Small Government Conservativism. Some group of SGCs should get together and publish a Small Government Conservative manifesto. It’s provisions should include cut government regulations, abolish unnecessary cabinet departments such as the Education, Veteran’s Affairs and Homeland Security empires, abolish needless federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, FEMA, the FCC, NASA, (the success of Space Plane One and the shuttle disaster prove that private entrepreneurs can do a better job in space than bureaucrats) etc. End the war on drugs which is little more than an assault on individual liberties, abolish the income tax and the IRS. Cut the number of government agencies, perhaps combine the CIA and NSA into one spy agency. Take a hard look at government policies such as road building and zoning regulations do they do more harm than good.
Adopt a pragmatic foreign policy that says yes the United States will have no choice but to intervene in the affairs of other countries militarily and otherwise but it should be done in a limited and sensible way. For example, instead of trying to build democracy at gunpoint in Iraq, remove Saddam and replace him with a more pliable leader more in keeping with US interests.
Of course, such a policy will meet with opposition mostly from those who profit from Big Government the lobbyists, the lawyers, the bureaucrats, the politicians and the contractors. They want to keep the gravy train rolling at all costs and will fight tooth and nail to do so.
Even more bothersome is the media, the media presents government as all powerful then exposes all of its failings for the world to see. Reporters publicize the corruption and waste of government then scream for the President to use the magic wand of government to fix the nation’s problems. Even though they are well aware of the fact that the President is simply a man with a tough job to do, he is no wizard and he has no magic wand.
So how do we start the Small Government revolution? I don’t know but I suspect it’s coming and coming sooner than we expect. All it needs a leader someone like Ronald Reagan to rally the average folk and restore the real conservatism. Of course the last people to see this revolution coming will be the Big Government Conservatives who are too busy playing empire, building up the nanny state and feeding like pigs at the trough to notice the winds of change blowing around them.

ward churchill

Notes on Colorado
Ward Churchill - I see from The Denver Post that an investigation of controversial CU Boulder Professor Ward Churchill by the university has proven what the media revealed long ago: Churchill is a lousy scholar who engages in unethical practices such as plagiarism. The investigators determined that Churchill’s transgressions are so bad CU has grounds to fire him, and legal experts believe that Churchill has no basis for a court challenge to CU’s action even though he threatens a law suit.
Now obviously CU, should fire Churchill, he is a disgrace to the university and an affront to legitimate scholars and Native Americans. Churchill claims to be a Native American even though he can produce no proof that he is legally a member of any Native American tribe. Those who squawk about Churchill’s freedom of speech need not fret, once he is kicked out of CU old Ward will have more time to speak his mind on the lecture circuit and talk radio and plenty of time to promote his new book. My guess is that Churchill’s income will increase because of his firing.
Those who claim that Churchill’s firing could lead to a costly lawsuit should remember this. CU has lawyers on the payroll right now, why not let them do something namely defend the University from Churchill. Churchill’s lawsuit may or may not drag on for years, my prediction is that Churchill’s lawsuit will last as long as he can get somebody else namely rich leftists to foot the bill. The minute their support ends, and Churchill has to start paying his own legal fees with his own money the suit will be quietly dropped.
CU should fire Churchill out of principle, if CU is to be a serious university and it’s scholarship is to mean anything a fraud like Churchill can’t be tolerated. Churchill got his job through fraudulent means - claiming to be a Native American when he is not - and his scholarship is unethical. Scholarship must be based on truth, without truth scholarship becomes hollow and meaningless propaganda.
Once Churchill is given the boot another investigation should be launched, important questions need to be asked. Questions such as how did Churchill get hired in the first place? How was he able to teach at CU for so many years, get tenure and even serve as Chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department, even though he lacks the proper qualifications and complaints have been made about him before? Who hired Churchill and why?
Once Churchill is fired his position shouldn’t be filled, instead of “ethnic studies” the money used for Churchill’s salary and benefits should be used for scholarships for qualified Native American students. Instead of letting some lazy white charlatan milk the system by posing as a Native American, CU should give real Native Americans from the reservation a chance to go to college and get a real education. That would do far more for Native Americans than Churchill’s laughable ego trip.
One more thing if CU doesn’t have the guts to fire Churchill the college will become as a big a joke and a disgrace as Ward Churchill himself. How much longer will this buffoon be allowed to make a mockery of higher education in Colorado.

Civil War and NASCAR

The last battle of the Amercia Civil War is being fought in of all places Staten Island, the forgotten borough of New York City. That middle and class working enclave famous only because it is just a ferry ride away from Manhattan Island. Staten Island is rarely thought of, no TV shows and movies are set there. No comic book superheroes call it their home. As far as I know only a couple of movies have been partially set there, "Working Girl" and a "Law and Order" spinoff. In both films, the real action took place in New York.
Yet action of a kind is now taking place on Staten Island, a battle over NASCAR, the stock car racing combine is planning to build a track on of all things an abandoned oil field on Staten Island. The plan is generating considerable opposition from island residents, working class Italian Americans it seems prefer the Yankees and Jets to Jeff Gordon. Yet NASCAR is pressing ahead with plans for the multimillion dollar track. Why? It makes little business sense, New York is a center of intellectuals and first generation immigrants hardly stock car racing fans. Even if there is stock car fandom there, it'd probably be cheaper and more sensible to build a track in New Jersey or somewhere upstate. That way all the NASCAR fans who drive around in those big RVs wouldn't be clogging up city streets.
From a practical point, a NASCAR track on Staten Island makes no sense. But it has lots of emotional appeal to Southerners. NASCAR is a Southern institution, it was born on the dirt tracks when the moonshine runners wanted something to do on Saturday nights. Now NASCAR is modern and it's big business, the most profitable sport in America, a hightech money making machine with a bottom line that NFL would kill for. A Southern success story, a small town pastime retooled as a high speed symbol of the New South. Sure NASCAR's roots are pure but it's as hip, as post modern, as sophisticated and as cool as anything from the Big Apple. Naturally, Southerners are proud of it, and the Southern boys who run NASCAR want to rub their success story in the face of the big boys up north. In the most northern place of New York City (after all it's beloved baseball team is called the Yankees). NASCAR only wants to build a track in Staten Island because it's in New York.
That's where the Civil War connection comes in. New York has long been an obsession of Southerners. Clear back to the Gettysburg campaign in the Civil War when the Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania. Forget Southern chivalry the real objective of that campaign was to burn the great Northern cities, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston to the ground. To destroy the heart of the North. When Southerners couldn't destroy the North on the battlefield they tried other means. Shortly after Gettysburg much of Manhattan went up in flames during the Anticonscription Riots when mobs of Irish immigrants obstensively protesting unfair draft laws burned and looted much of the city. The mobs were largely made up of gang members egged on and led by Confederate agents. One of the mobs' main tragets was freed blacks many of whom were savagely lynched in a manner reminiscent of the worst outrages of the Klan. After the war, the Southern obsession with New York continued
rich southerners who made it in business or some other field wanted to move to New York and rub it in the faces of the Northerners or at least build cities and business enterprises that rivalled or exceeded those of the North. The South has finally succeeded in that dream, Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas now rival New York as great cities. Southern corporations dominate the American business scene and the South rules politically. Yet those damn New Yorkers don't seem to notice and continue with the delusion that they run the country. So once again the South wants to rub it in the face of those damned Yankees up there in New York City. Or more precisely make the Yankees smell their exhaust fumes. Will it work? I don't know but I do know one thing New Yorkers won't like NASCAR anywhere in their city, even in Staten Island. A state of affairs that amuse the populace down in Dixiland no end.

Comments on News

The Washington and media hot air and bull shit machine is sinking to new depths is sinking to new depths of prejudice, hypocrisy and absurdity. Pundits and politicians are attacking President Bush's choice to lead the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden because he is a career Air Force man who wears a uniform. The major justification for this opposition appears to be prejudice, Hayden is being attacked not because is unqualified but because he is a career soldier. That is prejudice pure and simple it is every bit as irrational as if Gen. Hayden were being attacked because his skin was black or if he attended a synaguage instead of a church. People would never dream of condemning a person because of their religion or race are branding a man evil because of his career choice. The attacks on Gen. Hayden are a despicable attempt to appeal to the sensibilities of the Far Left and the Media types who believe all soldiers are Nazis. These attacks are made all the worse by the stench of hypocrisy, the same pinheads attacking Hayden are those who celebrated John Kerry for his military service and wartime heroics, the same people who attacked Bush's questionable military record and worship mindlessly at the feet of any retired general or colonel who mouths a word in support of their pet causes. Elitists stop treating military people as either heroes or villains instead start treating them as what they are: human beings just like the rest of us. Judge Gen. Hayden by his personal behavior, values, beliefs, past performance and history not by the suit he wears.
David Blaine.
I see a lot about this moron David Blaine in the media lately. Blaine is the English man ABC news is all gaga about Blaine's idiotic stunts he tried to hold his breath for nine minutes on TV before that he spent a week living underwater. I find nothing spectacular or even interesting about such carnival stunts. Nor do I find them very heroic. There are undoubtedly many people out there who can do what Blaine does but don't. I'm sure a large percentage of the US Navy SEALS could do what Blaine does, they choose not to instead those guys are over in Iraq and Afghanistan doing something far more dangerous and demanding that gives nincompoops like Blaine the freedom to put on their freakshows. Ditto for a lot of fire fighters who run into burning buildings to rescue people. Or what about those two miners down in Australia who spent a couple of weeks underground in a gold mine after an accident. They were were nearly crushed and came close to starving to death. They went down there not to do something heroic but to earn a living for themselves and their family. Yet what they did was probably far more dangerous than Blaine's moronic stunts. So guess what David Blaine there's nothing special about you, you're nothing but a sideshow freak. The real heroes are those taking risks for real things, protecting their community or their fellow citziens or their country or just earning a decent income for their families.

Food & Freedom

Food & Freedom: the Next Battle for Liberty
By Daniel G. Jennings
The frontlines in the next great battle for personal liberty maybe at the dinner table, the restaurant and the supermarket. That battle will be the fight to buy, cook and eat the food we want in the way we want to eat it.
In his column for the libertarian e-mail newsletter Tech Central Station UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge likens the Chicago City Council’s recent efforts to ban the sell of foie gras to laws against sodomy and homosexual acts. Bainbridge’s argument is this the goose liver ban like the anti-sodomy laws is an effort by a group of people to force their morality upon the rest of us and deprive us all of individual liberty.
Foie gras - a delicacy to gourmets - was banned because animal rights activists believe that the conditions the geese from which the livers are harvested from are cruel. Like those who want the sex police in our bedrooms, the backers of the food police cloak themselves in higher morality. They claim that abandoning meat eating is the next logical step in humanity’s moral evolution and liken meat production to slavery. Others would regulate food because many foods are unhealthy.
Bainbridge is asking an important question here? Why is individual freedom being restricted only to sexual practices? If people have a right to decide who and how they have sex with, shouldn’t they also have a right to eat what they want?
The issue of food freedom goes far beyond bans on particular varieties of meat. In his excellent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”* author Michael Pollan profiles an interesting rebel “grass farmer” Joel Salatin, Salatin and his son David raise chickens, hogs, cattle and rabbits on their Virginia farm using intensive organic methods. The Salatins slaughter and processes their own chickens and sells them directly to the public. They have a large following among both the general public and gourmet chefs in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and Washington DC.
The interesting thing is Salatin isn’t some hippy dippy granola eater he’s a self described Christian libertarian who attended Bob Jones University and home schooled his kids. Salatin likens his efforts to grow, kill and process his own livestock in an alternative method to home schooling. That is he is trying to “unplug” his family from a system of industrial food production he finds offensive, oppressive, Unchristian and UnAmerican. Many of Salatin’s customers are young mothers who have started homeschooling their children and now want an alternative to industrial food as well as industrial education.
Like the home school movement, Salatin has ran afoul of bureaucrats and the system. Regulators from the Federal Food and Drug Administration prevent Salatin from slaughtering and processing his own cattle and hogs on the farm like farmers (such as my grandfather and great grandfather) used to do. The same regulators prevent entrepreneurs from setting up small slaughterhouses to kill and process livestock regulated by small producers like Salatin.
The issue here isn’t health or safety, Salatin has offered to have his meat tested for disease. No the issue is that Salatin’s local food production just doesn’t square with the large scale industrialized meatpacking system the FDA was set up to regulate. The real issue maybe power, like the educators who hate the idea of parents controlling their own children’s education, the FDA bureaucrats may not want to loose their power over the food chain.
Salatin sees the FDA system of regulation as a threat to basic rights. He believes small producers like him could feed America if it were not for the big government system of regulation that benefits big agribusiness. In other words Salatin is a Jeffersonian fighting for a traditional agricultural America against a big industrialized one. Pollan even likens America’s alternative food producers to the small farmers who grew much of the food in the former Soviet Union outside the system of government production.
The moral of the story is this, both Bainbridge and Salatin equate eating with freedom. They both see government attempts to regulate food as a threat to individual liberty. A threat that Salatin at least intends to fight, a fight that many people will undoubtedly be joining in the years ahead.

* “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” by Michael Pollan, New York, the Penguin Press, 2006.

Laughter: the Best Answer to the Intellectual Elite

The best way to defeat intellectual elitists and Cultural Marxists is not to challenge or debate them but to laugh at them.
The power of buffoons like Ward Churchill and charlatans like Noam Chomsky is not the strength of their intellect or the effectiveness of their arguments. Their arguments are little more than political propaganda disguised as education. No it is the fact that people - both their supporters and opponents - take them seriously and treat them like scholars and intellectuals rather than what they really are laughingstocks.
Ward Churchill is a prime example of an intellectual buffoon he’s a sixty year old man who’s still playing cowboys and Indians. Churchill claims to be fighting stereotypes of Native Americans while dressing up like an extra from an old Western Movie. He claims to fight for the rights of Indians by picketing Columbus Day parades and terrorizing elderly Italian American immigrants. Churchill, who doesn’t have a drop of Native American blood in his veins, and lacks a doctorate claims to be an Indian and an expert historian. At the University of Colorado at Boulder, Churchill teaches a course in the stereotyping of Native Americans in old Hollywood movies. In other words Churchill has figured out how to get CU to finance his DVD collection. Churchill travels around the country charging high lecture fees to groups like Marxists and Maoists.
The way to deal with someone like Churchill is not to debate him or protest him that’s what he wants but to laugh at him. To tell the public how ridiculous Mr. Churchill is and show them what a mockery he is making of higher education. A good start would be by calling Churchill “Tonto” after all he dresses up like the Lone Ranger’s sidekick doesn’t he?
Noam Chomsky, the notorious MIT professor and admirer of Communism, is another prime example he claims to be a Marxist and a critic of capitalism yet he is a millionaire with a large stock portfolio. Chomsky is a critic of America who is living the American dream with a good job, lots of money, and a big house in Suburbia. Chomsky a life long opponent of the military industrial complex teaches at a university largely financed by the Defense Department.
Chomsky isn’t a scholar or an intellectual he is a joke and a very bad one. His books are little more than poorly written political tracts filled with blatant historical denial. Chomsky’s books sell well because they reinforce popular prejudices not because they contain any intelligent argument or original positions.
The best way to deal with Chomsky is not to pay attention to him or his books but to laugh at him. Chomsky only has power because he and his ego trip are taken seriously, start laughing at Chomsky and he’ll be revealed as what he really is a pathetic little crackpot who has become an expert at marketing his political venom.
It is time for conservatives to stop debating people like Churchill and Chomsky and to stop trying to expose them. Instead it is time for conservatives to start mocking them with skits, jokes etc. Instead of a debate with Ward Churchill, why not a video of a red neck dressed up as Tonto lecturing rich white people on Native American culture he’s learned about from reruns of Bonanza. That’s what Ward Churchill really is.
Instead of exposes of Noam Chomsky’s excesses why not a video of a man like Chomsky lecturing an audience about the evils of capitalism and money and greed. Then somebody whispers in his ear and he screams, “What do you mean the check bounced and you can’t cover my lecture fee. I’m out of here.” Then he turns and storms out the door.
Such humor would hit closer to the truth and do far more damage to the pompous fools on the universities than all the exposes of the Hate America Left. Recent history proves this point, the most effective conservative commentator in America today is Rush Limbaugh, Rush is popular and effective because he is funny. Liberals hate Rush because he refuses to play their games and take them seriously. Or Ronald Reagan much of his effectiveness was his humor.
So perhaps the real danger to the cultural Marxist elite is not David Horowitz or the Washington Think Tanks but the South Park creators and all their imitators. South Park reaches a far larger audience than any blog and has more effect, just ask Tom Cruise and his handlers at Scientology what happened when they tried to censor it. Wouldn’t it be poetic justice if the left wing establishment were brought down by the very media it promotes so heavily?

Fuel Prices, Etc.

High Fuel Prices What America and Colorado Should Do
By Daniel G. Jennings
The news is full of stories about high gas prices, in some parts of the country people are pawning their possessions to pay for gas.
Predictably the politicians are making all sorts of pronouncements about the crisis but doing nothing constructive. Republicans on the national and state level are offering fuel tax cuts or suspensions (where I wonder in this age of high deficits will get money for the construction and maintenance of our crumbling transportation infrastructure with no fuel tax money coming in?) While Democrats are demanding higher taxes on fuel company profits, more money for politicians to play while higher costs are passed on to consumers. There are also plans for a witch hunt to locate the evil oil cartel that is pushing up prices for insidious reasons. President Bush is talking about alternative fuel and little else.
None of our so called leaders is talking about the one technology we can take advantage of to reduce energy dependence now: rail. Nobody is talking about expanding the rail system, modernizing the railroads or electrifying them so that they run on something besides imported oil. Nor is there a serious effort to expand rail transit in our nations’ cities.
Of course rail would cost a lot of money, take years to build and require a lot of political sacrifices. Naturally our politicians aren’t interested in it, it isn’t a quick fix.
So what should we do? Well nationally Congress should launch a major effort to expand and electrify all of our major railroad lines within ten years. Amtrak should be abolished and a series of regional passenger railroads operated by regional authorities should be set up to provide an alternative to air travel and cars. A serious effort to create a nationwide high speed railroad system to haul freight and passengers perhaps utilizing maglev technology should also be implemented.
Major efforts to expand regional and local bus, light rail and commuter rail services should be implemented. A national program to provide bus service to rural communities should be considered.
Federal funding for transit should be greatly increased so bus, light rail, subway and commuter service in our communities can be expanded. This would be a better use for those increased fuel tax revenues than a one time voting buying giveaway.
Here in Colorado, high fuel prices should be a wake up call. In virtually every corner of our state it’s impossible to get around without a car. Even the poor need one to get to basic stuff like work, the doctor and the grocery store. Alternatives are needed and now.
We should set up a state wide system of commuter buses like the Regional Bus Service offered by RTD and the Colorado Springs based FREX (Front Range Express buses between Denver and Colorado Springs). The FREX should be expanded to Pueblo, Canon City, Woodland Park, Cripple Creek and perhaps Salida and Trinidad. RTD Regional Service should be extended to Park, Clear Creek, Gilpin and Summit Counties, Loveland, Fort Collins, Greeley, Estes Park, Limon and Fort Morgan. Similar systems should be set up on the Western Slope, the San Luis Valley and the Eastern Plains.
The state should look into creating a commuter rail system along the Front Range similar to the LA area Metrolink which could operate on existing tracks. Perhaps a state wide commuter rail system to New Jersey’s could be organized with trains using the existing rail lines in the Arkansas Valley and through the Moffat Tunnel (which is owned by the state).
In Denver, we’re off to a good start with the T-Rex and FasTracks projects. Perhaps it’s time to tweak FasTracks, for example the $1 billion RTD plans to spend on its ridiculous and wasteful transit hub scheme at Union Station could be reallocated to buy the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern railroad lines that run through Denver and Boulder. The railroads could use the money to build a rail bypass on the Eastern plains so freight trains wouldn’t need to go through Denver, Colorado Springs and Pubelo. The tracks could be used for commuter and light rail trains instead. This would reduce congestion and save money.
RTD could the existing Union Pacific and Burlington Diesel shops and railyards in Denver to service diesel commuter trains eliminating the need for building expensive new railyards.. These could serve the entire Front Range and give commuters an alternative to I-25. They could also serve as transport to the ski areas. Light rail should be expanded. With the Union Station scheme laid to rest, RTD could instead simply extend the T-Rex north enabling light rail trains to bypass downtown and providing a direct transit connection between bedroom communities up north and the jobs at the Tech Center. The possibility of building T-Rex style light rail along the Boulder Turnpike, the Northwest Parkway, I-70, West Hampden, C-470, E-470 and other local freeways needs to be put back on the table.
If the RTD board doesn’t want to go along with this then perhaps it’s time for T-Rex style ballot initiatives to force their hand. What about a super T-Rex that would expand all of our city’s highways, buy the railroad right of way and build light rail lines along all the major freeways. This super T-Rex could include funding for Commuter Rail and buses along the Front Range and a light rail system in Colorado Springs as well. I have a feeling Colorado’s voters might be interested in such an initiative especially if it were combined with a tax cut of some sort.
One more thought, here in Denver RTD needs to learn to say the S-word, subway. The major streets around Downtown and Cherry Creek, East Colfax, Colorado Boulevard, Speer and Broadway are blocked by congestion much of the time now. Putting additional buses or light rail trains on these streets would only lead to accidents. The only answer would be to dig a number of subway tunnels that light rail trains could run through enabling the trains to serve Downtown and Cherry Creek without interfering with traffic.
Yes these ideas are radical and different but the crisis created by high fuel taxes requires radical and different solutions. Unfortunately we’re not going to get any such solutions from our timid leaders on the state or national level.