Newsletter - January 2018

So, what has this year been like for the country?  Well, to read the vitriol in the county newspapers we are degenerating into a third world country with most minorities in chains.  An opposing viewpoint must be against the deeply held beliefs of the owners and editorial staff.

A tax cut?  Come, Come.  Nancy Pelosi, multi, multi millionaire states that the tax bill was pathetic noting that the tax savings were mere “crumbs.”  In case you don’t know 80% of tax payers will see tax cuts with the average family receiving $1,200 in savings.  In addition, over 100 companies have announced major bonuses, wage increases and charitable donations because of the bill. 

In 2011, Ms. Pelosi applauded a mere $40 payroll tax cut per paycheck passed by President Obama as a “victory for all Americans” that would make a difference for the “average family.”  Now, if someone were making this up a person would not believe it. 

Immigration?  Of course, many people appear to be happy to have foreigners here who are law breakers and worse, members of groups such as MS13 who make it a practice to kill people in especially horrible ways.  Any effort of the President to protect Americans and our country’s national and cultural identity are decried as racist.  Any effort to have a merit based immigration system is declared racist.  People like Senator Dick Durbin lie about what the President has said.  It is certainly possible that most people do not know that Senator Durbin has a history of lying and has been caught in many variations of the truth. 

Many Americans, in part due to our failing school system, do not understand that a country without borders will be a very different country from the one they grew up in.  For many persons, that is the goal.  So many Americans have been taught that the United States is evil and the source of all problems in the world.  Of course, this does not compute with the people who desperately want to come here. 

Those of us who are the children of legal immigrants understand what America meant to our parents and the opportunities this country provided them.  It is sad to see people in power cheapen what coming to America means.

As a point of information which will likely not appear in our local papers, a memo from Jennifer Palmieri, former top aide and executive vice president for communications and advocacy for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, called on Democrats to make the fight for DACA recipients a “moral imperative” or else risk jeopardizing their chances in 2018.  

Let’s remember that less than five years ago, every single Democrat in the Senate voted to double the length of a border fence, double the number of border agents, end the diversity visa lottery and create a “merit-based” visa system.  At this time it appears that those same Democrats would rather score political points with their far-left base than make a bipartisan deal on DACA.

Let’s take a look at “Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.”  We have now spent close to $5M with this investigation led by Robert Mueller.  Of course he promptly hired 16 lawyers most of whom were big Clinton donors.  He has obtained some indictments regarding people close to the campaign.  Michael Kelly agreed to plead guilty to lying because he was threatened with jail and fighting an incredibly expensive battle with the federal government which would have left him in abject poverty.  Paul Manafort had issues with his tax returns which have nothing to do with Donald Trump’s campaign.

However, Mueller has not been able to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. What has been discovered is that the Trump Dossier which was totally made up by Fusion GPS was paid for by the Clinton campaign.  By the way, there has been a congressional investigation into this issue and the Russian uranium deal brokered by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton going on for months.  Has this been reported in many places in our mainstream media?

One last issue that Donald Trump has led on: Net Neutrality.  Those words sound so great.  Who could be against such pleasant words?  The people demonstrating against Agit Pai, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission and some threatening him with physical harm, have no idea what is going on with the internet.

The term Net Neutrality was created in 2003 by legal scholar Tim Wu.  Net Neutrality has come to mean government oversight of the internet aimed at protecting the consumer from exploitation by internet service providers. 

In 2015, the Obama FCC reclassified the internet as a “telecommunication service.”The FCC asserted this authority to regulate the internet as a “utility” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 which was enacted to deal with the phone company which was a monopoly.

Mr. Pai states that a more accurate way to describe net neutrality is to call it “internet regulation” because the essential question is whether we want the internet be governed by technologists and engineers and business people, as it was under the light-touch approach during the Clinton administration or by government lawyers and bureaucrats in Washington.  

As he travels around the country, Mr. Pai states that people want better, faster, cheaper internet access.  He states that the FCC should be focused on this question: What is the regulatory framework that will maximize the incentives of every company to deploy the next generation of networks?  Mr. Pai notes that the infrastructure of the internet isn’t like slow-moving utilities. There are 4,400 ISP’s big and small.

Ultimately, the fear of many people is that treating the internet as a utility is that some people in government will want to legislate content.  Given the history with many in government, this is not a foolish fear.

The last point that we can look at is Donald Trump’s manner, his tweets and his words.  According to many people in both parties he is just not presidential.  That sounds so polite. Some history.  Do you all remember Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney? All three were and are very nice people for whom politeness and kindness were characteristics.

What did the Democrats and the left do to them?  Reagan was a dunce, ready to start nuclear war and just a dumb actor.  George W. Bush was a war monger who was looking out for the rich.  Mitt Romney was sure that 46% of the country were free loaders and of course he was unable to challenge Candy Crowley in the last debate when she lied about certain facts.

Donald Trump is not the polite guy who will take whatever is thrown at him.  Therefore, he keeps his opponents off balance.  Unfortunately, this is the only way a Republican President can survive in our current environment.