Rep. Mulvaney on DEA Official’s Inability to Fire Corrupt Agents: “This Is Nuts!”

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

Have you had some nagging doubts lately about whether our system of government still works?

When you get home from your 50-hour work week, kick your shoes off your tired feet, and sit down to watch or read the news, do you get that hinky feeling something is terribly wrong — when even after spending everything we give them, and accumulating an $18 trillion debt, our government still can’t perform the basic functions it was designed for?

Do you wonder once in a while if the federal government has become so huge and out of control there is absolutely nothing anybody can do about it, regardless of who is elected?

I’m sorry to say, this won’t make you feel any better.

A while back the Inspector General’s office learned that a number of DEA agents on assignment in Columbia were enjoying the services of prostitutes paid for by drug cartels. The first agents who “‘fessed up” were suspended for two to ten days. Later investigations revealed the problem was much more pervasive than first thought, and had been going on for a much longer time.

Congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) thinks like you and I do. In the real world, this kind of thing is simple. When an employee egregiously misbehaves, utterly fails, is engaged in corruption, or worse yet – endangers the important mission he was hired to perform, you fire him. Right?

In the real world, yes. But not in the federal government. When Mulvaney, a member of the House oversight committee, asked top DEA administrator Michele Leonhart whether she could fire these bad actors, or whether she has ever seen a DEA employee who deserves to be fired, her answers were nothing short of breathtaking. Watch:

You didn’t know our government was this screwed up? It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Congressman Mulvaney was right when he said, “This is nuts.”

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Mental wounds not healing
Who and what’s to blame
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train!
I’m going off the rails on a crazy train!

Crazy Train – Ozzy Osbourne

Mulvaney: Budget Committee to Push Zero-Based Budgeting

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

see this article in its entirety at Watchdog Arena

There is no mystery to budgeting. Whether you manage the finances for your family, your little league baseball team, or your business, you and everybody else in the private sector makes spending decisions the same way: you determine how much money is available, and you set priorities for how to spend (or save) it.

Why is our federal government incapable of writing and managing a budget?

Those of us who live in the real world use a process called zero-based budgeting. You may have never heard of the term. It is such a common-sense approach that we all do it instinctively. We categorize our spending into “needs” and “wants”. Needs get priority. We provide our families the necessary things like shelter and food before we start thinking about vacations, big screen televisions, and concert tickets. If there are remaining “discretionary” funds, we decide how to spend or save them.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way that government – especially the federal government – thinks.

The way government has operated for many years, every department is entitled to the amount they spent last year, plus an increase. Call it “continuing resolution”, “continuing appropriation”, or whatever – I call it flat-out laziness. One of the primary responsibilities of our congress is to make sure that the funds taken from citizens are necessarily and appropriately spent. Oversight of government spending should be priority one. Unfortunately, it gets little, if any, attention from our elected officials, who spend their days pondering such weighty issues as whether the one tenth of one percent of the population who are sexually confused should get to choose which public bathroom they use.

You see, it is hard work to dig into the details of how each department and agency spends its money. It’s much easier to just give each whatever amount they got last year, plus a kicker – because the employees probably deserve a raise, right?

Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change if congress did its job and started managing our money the way the rest of us do?

Maybe there is hope. I asked my congressman, Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), who sits on the House Budget Committee, if there is any chance that the federal government might adopt zero-based budgeting. I was surprised at his answer. “I fully expect the House to pass budget reform this year, and that will include zero-based budgeting,” Mulvaney said.

This could be big. Existing programs are never cut back, only increased. And new programs require new funding. Is it any wonder our national debt spirals out of sight? Imagine our government agencies having to justify every program, every expenditure, every employee, every line item, on a yearly basis. Just like businesses do. Just like your family does.

“There is a chance it will pass and get signed,” Mulvaney said. “The budget process is really, really boring but really, really important. And it hasn’t been reformed since 1974. It will be the biggest story you won’t hear much about in DC this year.”

Some political analysts advocate the “penny plan” as a budget-balancing measure. The penny plan would cut one cent across the board from every dollar the federal government spends for five years, and then put a cap on national spending at 18% of GDP. Mathematically it works, but it doesn’t address the fact that some spending is totally wasted, while not enough is allocated to other important work that taxpayers would support. Cutting back on totally worthless programs while starving worthwhile ones is not good oversight.

Many programs, like the corrupt, obsolete Export-Import Bank, continue year after year with no justification other than inertia. To this point, Congress hasn’t been able to muster the willpower to put these programs to bed even after they have long outlived their purposes, and they continue to stumble around like aimless zombies lost in timeless hell. If every program had to justify its budget annually, we could quickly gain the upper hand over our exploding debt.

Here’s hoping the most important number in government this year is zero.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Maybe I’ll win
Saved by zero.
Maybe I’ll win!
Saved by zero.

Saved By Zero – the Fixx

Net Neutrality Could Make MSNBC Official Govt. News Agency

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

Juli Hanson – Shutterstock.com

In today’s 30-second sound-bite world it’s so easy to pull one over on the American people.

“Net Neutrality? What’s in it for me? Oh, I will get the same high-speed broadband as the big guys for the same price? Cool. I’m for that. Hey, look at this Beyonce video!”

It’s the old tried-and-true class-envy play: Promise to take something away from the big, rich corporations and give it to the ‘little people,’ who won’t ask any questions about the details or the real motives.

This week the FCC will vote on Net Neutrality, a proposal which would authorize them to regulate the internet as a public utility. As recently as Monday FCC chairman Tom Wheeler again refused to release the details of the regulation to the general public until after the vote. Like ObamaCare, we won’t know what’s in the bill until we pass it. And like ObamaCare, when we know, we won’t like it.

Some of the dangers of Net Neutrality are obvious: whenever the government takes over a segment of the economy, competition is throttled. Prices are higher, service levels are worse, and a few well-connected pay-for-play corporate cronies are the big winners. No wonder Comcast and a few other mammoth internet players are huge supporters of Net Neutrality.

Some of the dangers are not so obvious. Here’s one: Is there any doubt that an administration which frequently tests the limits of the Constitution would use this new authority to intercept and accumulate web data for political purposes? You might want to hold back on making those online contributions to your favorite conservative candidate.

Here’s another: Big-government Democrats have long wanted to stifle conservative voices by reinstating the “Fairness Doctrine”. Having control of the internet would give them the tools to accomplish just that. Broadcast, cable, and satellite television will soon be obsolete as more consumers receive their news and entertainment digitally over the web. It’s not hard to imagine MSNBC, owned by Comcast, being ‘selected’ as the government’s official news outlet.

[please see the rest of my article by following this link to WatchdogArena.com]

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

A Pat On the Butt for the Democrats

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Tom Balek Standard 2

photo by Rich Sugg – Kansas City Star

Point guard Frank Mason of the Kansas Jayhawks took the outlet pass and pounded the ball down the left sideline on the fast break. Out of the corner of his eye he saw teammate Perry Ellis racing for the basket behind the TCU defender. Mason lobbed a perfect pass over the rim to Ellis and BOOM! With one hand Perry caught the ball and hammered it down through the rim, even while being fouled. “That’s gonna be on Sports Center,” chuckled the TV announcer. Wide-eyed fans howled as the cameras panned their faux-shock-and-awe faces.

One of the TCU players passed behind Perry at the free throw line and gave him a pat on the butt. Even though they are mortal enemies, a great play like that has to be recognized.

This morning I have to give the Obama administration a little pat on the butt.

Don’t get me wrong, we are mortal enemies too. I am furious and frightened by almost everything this administration does. But I have to admire how well they execute their game plan. Nothing is left to chance. No player on the administration’s team makes a free-style move. Every statement is carefully coordinated. They all get the memo, and they all follow the script.

Following Obama’s claims last week that poverty is the root of terrorism, the administration sent out State Department’s Marie Harf to explain why young men become terrorists, behead Christians, and burn victims alive in cages. Harf said, “We need the media to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it’s a lack of opportunity for jobs … ” And this: “They are using social media to get converts to their cause and to spread their hatred all over the world.”

Today Jeh Johnson, director of Homeland Security, was the administration’s point guard, running the offense from the same playbook. He, too, blamed social media – repeatedly – for ISIS’s organizational success, along with poverty and joblessness. And he threw in, for good measure, the need for Congress to fully fund Homeland Security while disregarding the president’s executive amnesty edicts.

Absurd. Blaming social media for the ISIS atrocities is like blaming Hitler’s World War II barbarity on the telephone. And, as George Will pointed out, singling out poverty as the cause of terrorism is “an insult to poor and jobless people all over the world who don’t strap bombs onto their women and children and send them into shopping centers to kill innocent strangers.” Not to mention, most ISIS terrorists are far from destitute, according to CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen.

But here’s why I have to give the “pat on the butt”.

This week Congress will have a hearing and likely a vote on whether to turn control of the Internet over to the FCC by classifying it as a public utility. The “Net Neutrality” issue has been misrepresented, misreported, and remains totally misunderstood by most Americans, and unfortunately by most of our legislators, who swallow the warm, fuzzy claims that we poor citizens must be protected from the money-hungry huge corporations who want to deny us fair access to the internet. Government good! Competitive free internet bad! In reality, it is yet another federal power-grab that would result in poorer internet access and performance, loss of privacy to government snooping, and huge profits for a select few crony corporations at taxpayer expense. (Is it any wonder Time Warner / ComCast is a huge supporter of net neutrality?)

Concurrently, the Obama administration is pushing for a new blowout budget with higher spending on social programs, and they want Congress to release its hold on funding Homeland Security and allow Obama’s executive amnesty edicts to continue unfettered.

The administration is using the “ISIS Crisis” to drive home their real domestic agenda: Pass Net Neutrality and give the government control of the web. Pass the budget and give the government more taxpayer money for the ‘poor and jobless’ (mainly more government jobs). Fund HHS without restrictions so we can open the borders and give full rights and benefits to illegal immigrants.

More government control. More dependence on big government. More Democrat voters.

I hate it. I hope to hell enough thoughtful people see through it. But Democrats, I have to give you a patt on the butt for executing a great play.

Tom Balek, Rockin’ On the Right Side

From Piston Pete to Doctor J,
Michael Jordan’s fadeaway,
Hip hop is the way I live
And basketball’s the game I play

Basketball Jones – Gabe York

March Madness is around the corner, and then the NBA playoffs!

Here is the very indiscreet, racist, misogynistic, nasty, politically incorrect and mostly funny original by Cheech and Chong – watch at your own risk, you will be offended, and I am not responsible for content! 1975 was a very different time!

FTC Endorses Hacking Private Data

Posted on December 3, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

Hacker_Detected So there you are, minding your own business, running a company that provides a much-needed medical service – lab analysis of specimens to help doctors diagnose and treat cancers and other dread diseases. And out of the blue you find you are under attack by your own government.

Michael Daugherty, founder and CEO of LabMD, has been through hell, at the hands of the “Devil Inside the Beltway”.

His story defies logic and reason. Why would the federal government – specifically the FTC – join forces with a for-profit extortionist hacker to wreak havoc on a private company? And how could our court system not recognize theft of personal data as a crime?

Here’s the story, in a nutshell: In 2008 a LabMD employee, against company policy, installed a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing application called LimeWire to her computer so she could share music files with other subscribers. She just wanted to listen to music. Unfortunately, this opened a port which made other data on her computer accessible to outsiders. And an opened port is all the Devil needs to do his evil work.

In this case, the Devil is a company named Tiversa, Inc. – the self-proclaimed “World Leader in P2P Cyberintelligence”. Tiversa developed a program which scours the internet, looking for open P2P ports and any tasty files that might be exposed, in the hope that a particularly delectable file might be useful for the purpose of extortion.

During the very short time that the LabMD employee’s computer was vulnerable, Tiversa grabbed a file that included patient data including social security numbers, medical codes, etc. – information that could be used by a bad actor for identity theft, blackmail, or other nefarious purposes. And what did Tiversa do with their ill-gotten booty? First they attempted to extort LabMD with an expensive, open-ended and loosely-defined service contract. When LabMD CEO Daugherty logically told them to take a hike, they turned the file over to the FTC as an indictment of LabMD’s failure to protect their clients’ data.

This is where it gets crazy.

The federal government is there to protect and serve its constituents, right? You would think that if somebody hacks into your computer system, and steals your sensitive information and then blackmails you with the release of it, the feds will help you nail them. Right?

Instead, the FTC, typical of today’s over-reaching federal bureaucracy, decided to join forces with the bad guys to beat up on one of those despicable, “for-profit” private businesses. “You didn’t build that!” , they declare. “And we will punish you for your success!”

Instead of pursuing the people who aggressively sought to steal sensitive data (they claim their program performs exponentially more searches than Google) the FTC went after the victims of the theft. Most of their victims acquiesced to the relentless FTC pressure and accepted demands for consent decrees (guilty without proof). LabMD and Michael Daugherty took a courageous stand against this extortion, and continue their brave battle today.

The obvious questions beckon: what is the relationship between the top brass of the FTC and for-profit hackers like Tiversa? Will the federal courts recognize data as property, and accept theft of data as theft of property? And most importantly – when a federal agency like the FTC (or the IRS or EPA) lines up its infinite roster of taxpayer-funded lawyers against an individual or private company with limited resources in a ideological battle, is there any hope that justice will prevail?

Cyber-security is the 600 pound gorilla in the room. Our government admits that China, North Korea, and Russia routinely hack our government databases. It’s bad enough that foreign bad guys feverishly work at worming their way into our national databases. How can we tolerate our own government cooperating with extortionist hackers who attack our private data?

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Listen, Do you want to know a secret?
Do you promise not to tell?
Closer, Let me whisper in your ear,
Say the words you long to hear,
I’m in love with you!

The Beatles – Do You Want To Know A Secret

No live video, just a good old Beatles song here:

Conservative Immigrants – Don’t Turn Around!

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard Reply

Turn-Around-Sign-300x196 I’m trying to get a better understanding of the immigration reform and amnesty issues, and while traveling recently I have had some enlightening conversations with immigrants.

Rafael is from the Dominican Republic. He has been working in New York City as a driver for about ten years, and is saving money to rejoin his wife and daughter back in Santo Domingo permanently. Meanwhile, he watches for airfare bargains and makes several brief trips home each year. Rafael believes in the “American Dream” – anyone who is willing to work hard can succeed here. But he is skeptical of the US government. He bought some land in the Dominican Republic and plans to build a house on it. “Nobody can take your land away from you there,” he said. “Once you pay for your land, it’s yours forever. Here in the US, if you don’t pay your taxes, or if the government wants your land for some reason, they can just take it away from you.” Hard work, personal responsibility, and property rights – Rafael is a conservative immigrant.

Jonathan immigrated to New York City from Hong Kong with his parents ten years ago. He started a couple of small businesses in Chinatown, but both failed. Undaunted, he is still bullish on the US economy and while working a couple of service jobs he is an ardent investor in stocks. I asked him about the dicey situation in Hong Kong, where the communist Chinese government is now stripping away many of the freedoms citizens enjoyed when it was a British protectorate and then a quasi-independent state. “The government has become so corrupt,” Jonathan lamented. “You can’t do anything without having to pay off somebody in the government.” I suggested that our government has become corrupt, too. “But there’s a difference,” he said. “In China, everybody knows about the corruption and just deals with it. Here, it’s supposed to be a secret.” Opportunity, free markets, and freedom from big, corrupt, oppressive government – Jonathan is a conservative immigrant.

Javier is from Puerto Rico. “I’m a US citizen,” he boasts. Still, as a Hispanic he is considered a minority and somewhat outside the mainstream. He works long hours, and loves it. The more he works, the more he earns. And he has no patience for those who expect to be cared for without working, whether they are traditional American citizens or immigrants. “They make me sick, these guys who do nothing all day. Why should I pay taxes for them to be lazy?” he rails. Hard work and the desire to keep what he earns. Yes, Javier is a conservative immigrant, too.

I did not ask these gentlemen whether or how they vote. The Democrats believe all minorities are their chattel property. And because Democrats have so vilified Republicans and conservatives in the mainstream media, minorities do pretty much vote in lock-step for liberals.

Why? Every immigrant I talk to is a conservative. It is conservative values that drives most immigrants to our shores.

Donna, a native of Guyana of Chinese descent, is a conservative activist. She told me the compelling story about her path to America. “I was in Guyana, minding my own business. I turned around, and suddenly I was surrounded by socialists. So I moved to Venezuela. I was minding my own business, and when I turned around, again there were the socialists. So then I came to the United States.”

“The moral of the story,” she says, “is don’t turn around!”

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Don’t turn around, uh-oh
Der Kommissar’s in town, uh-oh!
You’re in his eye and you’ll know why
The more you live, the faster you will die

Der Kommisar – After the Fire

Is Federal Waste and Fraud Inevitable?

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard 1

graphic courtesy of ProofDirectory.org My congressman, Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), frequently holds town hall meetings in his home district. Each meeting includes a half-hour presentation of current, relevant information and a one-hour question and answer period. Mulvaney tells his constituents what is on his mind, and then really listens to them. His responses are honest and direct, no evasion or weasel-words. He is knowledegable, articulate, engaged, and pragmatic.

Mulvaney sets the bar high for transparency and communication from a US Congressman. A while back I attended a meeting by a Republican congressman from North Carolina and the contrast is striking – from the outset he was defensive, unprepared, and seemed to consider the attendees to be combatants rather than constituents. He cemented his position as a Washington insider, solidly aligned with Boehner and the good-old boys, was not up-to-speed on facts and details, and had no intention of listening to any conservative point of view from his audience.

So I’m tickled to have Mulvaney representing me in Washington, DC. Still, I always leave his meetings totally bummed. Here’s why:

Congressman Mulvaney sees the waste, fraud, and over-spending in government first-hand and with clarity. He is loaded with anecdotes and examples of Washington’s out-of-control checkbook and frequently quotes from Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) “Waste Book”. Mulvaney knows how bad the corruption and ineptitude is, and hates it as much as we taxpayers do.

But then, after exploding our heads with his tales of fiscal terror, Mulvaney pulls the chain. “There’s not really much we can do about it,” he says. “The federal budget is so huge that it is impossible to find and correct problems in large enough increments to make a difference.”

Mulvaney points out that only 29% of our $3.5 trillion annual federal spending is discretionary – the rest is mandatory. If 5% of that $1 trillion in discretionary spending is wasted, we would need 50,000 fiscal repairs of one million bucks each to fix it.

So nobody even tries to stop corruption and waste.

Does that sound horrific? It’s actually worse. I would bet the percentage of waste and fraud in the discretionary part of the budget is much larger than 5%. Further, I submit that the waste and fraud in the mandatory part of the budget is just as bad or worse!

Our legislators have oversight responsibility, but do not have the time or resources to even begin to supervise federal programs and departments. And do you think for a minute the government bureaucrats give a damn about 5% of somebody else’s money being wasted or stolen? Quite the opposite – the more money their respective departments spend, the greater their power, prestige, and salaries. They know nobody is watching, and they know nobody ever gets fired.

So is our federal fiscal viability as hopeless as Congressman Mulvaney fears? It shouldn’t be. And I hate that we, as a nation, have given up.

Here are some suggestions from a retired CFO (me) who has run businesses by the numbers and knows that waste and fraud are not inevitable:

Eliminate government employee unions – it is impossible to manage people who can’t be fired, and it is immoral that the campaigns of elected officials are funded by the very employees they are supposed to manage
Prosecute any officials who are caught stealing or wasting federal funds
Pass a balanced budget amendment, with restrictions on raising taxes – in other words, set and adhere to a real budget
Audit and/or eliminate the Federal Reserve – the cancerous growth of our federal government will continue until we stop printing fiat money
Return most government functions and authority to the states – restrict the federal government to only those functions specified in the Constitution
Require detailed public online reporting of all federal spending – sunshine is the best disinfectant

And that’s just a start.

Could federal government waste and corruption be brought back under control? You bet! But, like Mulvaney, I fear that it won’t. Because as of now not enough Americans give a damn. Too many of us are under-informed, disengaged, overwhelmed, or mired in self-interest. Just the way the Washington insiders like it.

It will take a big bang – something really strong – to get our attention.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

I’ve been feeling so much older
Frame me and hang me on the wall
I’ve seen you fall into the same trap
This thing is happening to us all, yeah

Something so strong could carry us away
Something so strong could carry us today, yeah

Something So Strong – Crowded House

The lights went out but the sound system was working – so the band kept playing! Crowded House playing in the dark in 2007.

No One Ever Is To Blame

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard 1

U.S. Capitol, Senate Office Buildings It must be great to work for the federal government.

The pay is outstanding – the CBO says wages and benefits for almost all federal workers are much higher than for the same jobs in the private sector. Federal employees get extra paid days off, like extra holidays, personal leave time, snow days, sick days, etc. They get full pay for not working whenever the President chooses to shut the government down rather than live within a budget. They can take early retirement from their federal jobs after 20 years if they are 50 years old.

Heck, while private sector managers work 45 – 55 hours per week, the upper-half of the federal food chain works only about half-time. I have offered a standing challenge for many years (and done the exercise myself many times): pick any manager-level federal employee, at random, from the government phone directory and call his or her office after 2:00 pm on Monday through Thursday, or after 12:00 pm on any Friday. You will never, never, never reach that person. Never. Try it!

But the best thing of all about working for the federal government is: nobody ever gets fired. Once you land a federal job, you will get your full paycheck, pay raises, ever-growing benefits, and bonuses for the rest of your life, no matter how poorly you perform. Turnover is virtually non-existent. Even the guy who was written up for farting at employees 61 times in 17 days was not reprimanded.

Jeff Neely, the GSA executive who helped put together the million-dollar conference in Las Vegas for his 300 hard-working office jockeys, is a rare exception – he actually got fired. But he was reinstated eleven months later with full back pay.

My Congressman, Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), at one of his outstanding recent town hall meetings, told us, “The Veteran’s Administration has 330,000 employees and only about 500 have been fired in the last ten years.” Meanwhile executives in the VA received bonuses based on fictitious reports about their pristine performance while soldiers died waiting for health care. Director Eric Shinseki was powerless to fire anybody, and committed political hara-kiri by resigning.

Congressman Mulvaney told another stunning story about a meeting he had with an upper-level HUD executive. He was grilling her about some problem in her agency, and she was having none of it. “Don’t give me a hard time,” she said. “I don’t make that much money and it doesn’t matter whether I do a good job or not.” She had absolutely no fear of discipline from a United States Congressman. Is that job security, or what?

And it’s not just the mid-level federal employees who are totally unaccountable. When pressed for evidence that she knew would implicate her in a world-class corruption scandal, IRS director Lois Lerner made up a story about seven simultaneous hard-drive failures that ate her e-mails. The odds of that happening are one in 79 billion. Nobody has been held accountable.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is made of Teflon, too. She never has recanted the lame excuse that terrorists murdered our Libyan ambassador and his brave defenders because they were upset about a Hollywood video. One of the terrorists admitted planning and executing the Benghazi attack, but knew nothing about any video, and the CIA was listening in on terrorist phone activity during the attack, which never mentioned any video. She still deflects questions about her failure to provide adequate protection after it was requested, saying “what does it matter?” And nobody has even asked yet why the ambassador was in Benghazi in the first place. Not only is she not accountable for the fiasco, Clinton is the current leader in the 2016 presidential race.

President Obama carries a long list of excuses for the many failures of his administration. Most of them blame his predecessor. The latest failure is the border crisis that resulted from his open invitation to illegal immigrant children to enter our country and enjoy the amenities. When he finally did go to Texas to meet with Governor Perry, who is trying to deal with the situation, he spent most of his time shifting the blame.

I seldom agree with John Boehner any more, but I jumped up and cheered when, in utter exasperation with the Obama administration, he cried, “He’s been president for five and a half years. When is he going to take responsibility for SOMETHING!”

But hey, it’s the government. No one ever is to blame.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Doctor says you’re cured but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain
No one ever is to blame.

Howard Jones – No One Is to Blame

I want to thank all the many great songwriters and performers who inspire and enrich my blog topics. This is one of the best “fits” – music to message – yet, I think! Here’s a great live performance by Howard Jones, very much enjoyed by his audience.

Don’t Back Down, Mississippi

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard 1

Mississippi Conservatives, I urge you – DO NOT VOTE FOR THAD COCHRAN in the general election.

At some point we have to take a stand. We have been patient. We have been loyal. We have held our noses and voted for weak, establishment Republicans only in the hope that they might be marginally better than the Democrat opponent.

We have been threatened and bullied and cajoled to “take one for the good of the party.” The establishment Republicans have counted on hard work, funds, and votes from conservatives for a long, long time. They think we will have to vote for them no matter how many times they spit on us.

No more!

Over the last few election cycles the establishment Republicans have withheld funds from conservative candidates – case in point: the GOP failed to support Tea Party favorite Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor’s race, handing a narrow victory to unqualified, ethically-challenged and beatable Democrat Terry McAuliffe. It gets worse.

The insider Republicans have consistently bad-mouthed the Tea Party movement, the last and only hope for honesty in government and economic survival for the nation. They have pulled out all the stops to harm conservatives in every way possible. It still gets worse.

Now the establishment Republicans have signed a pact with the devil. They took out Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel by playing the race card to entice low-information Democrats to vote for insider Thad Cochran in the Republican primary runoff election for Cochran’s US Senate seat. This is the last straw.

“It’s too early right now to get those raw emotions out of the way,” McDaniel told Hannity. “… They used everything from the race card to food stamps to saying I would shut down public education. … I’ve fought for this (Republican Party) all my life, but they abandoned us, made fun of us and ridiculed us and brought in 35,000 Democrats to beat us.” — the Clarion Ledger, ‘McDaniel Still Pondering Challenge’, 6/25/14

For those who missed it, let me break it down. Republicans leaders reached out to Democrats – to defeat a sharp, young, conservative Republican – to protect a weak, squishy, entrenched old Republican – by claiming the Tea Party candidate is a racist – like all Tea Party supporters – and that he wants to prevent them from voting [somehow].

They (Haley Barbour’s Super PAC) robo-called black Democrats with race-baiting lies.

They printed race-baiting flyers.

Can you vote for a man – and a party – that will resort to these tactics against their own fellow Republicans? If you do, you are perpetuating and encouraging such despicable acts. We should no more vote for a Republican liar and race-baiter than a Democrat liar and race-baiter.

And black voters, why don’t you join us! We in the Tea Party movement know how you feel – the politicians we have supported have disrespected us and only made things worse, not better. We want the same things you do – an economic future for our children, good jobs and a government that is functional and solvent. One that works FOR us, instead of the other way around. Stop falling for all the lies! You are better than that!

Mississippi, please stand your ground. You will be blamed by the establishment for all kinds of terrible things, but don’t back down. We can’t let them get away with this – again! Don’t vote for Cochran.

Tom Balek, Rockin’ On the Right Side

Hey baby! There ain’t no easy way out.
Hey yeah! Stand my ground.
And I won’t back down.

Well I know what’s right, I got just one light.
In a world that keeps on pushin’ me around,
I will stand my ground. And I won’t back down.

I Won’t Back Down – Tom Petty
with Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Jeff Lynn and Mike Campbell

There Must Be One Honest Democrat Out There

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Tom Balek Standard 3

honesty Several years ago, while on a long drive, I tuned in to National Public Radio’s afternoon talk show featuring Diane Rehm. I nearly wrecked my truck as several Democrats fervently defended government officials and scientists who were caught fabricating weather data and computer models to make it appear that man-caused global warming was real. They forthrightly stated that lying was the right thing to do if it achieved the results they sought.

Democrats routinely approve of dishonesty. There is no longer any question that many Democrats will say anything, do anything that will keep them in power. Part of the vaunted Cloward-Piven strategy, and the teachings of Saul Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals“, the playbook used so effectively by the Obama administration, is this tenet: “The end justifies the means”. They believe it. Honesty and playing by the rules does not matter, as long as you win.

Conservatives like me can’t understand it. We value honesty. It is the bedrock on which civilization is built. Relationships, societies, commerce and governments can not function without trust based on honesty.

But liberal Democrats don’t see it that way. It shocked the conservative world when our president looked squarely into a television camera and said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” and then later admitted that he did. As stunning as his lapse of morality was, what really blew us away was the unanimous dismissal of his dishonesty by Democrats. They justified their support of a proven liar on the grounds that they generally agreed with his politics, and found him to be “cool”. Conservatives asked, “if he would lie to his wife and family, and openly lie to the American public, how dangerous is it to believe anything he says as the leader of the free world?”

When a Republican is caught in an outright lie or an illegal or immoral act, he or she is removed. When a Democrat is caught in an outright lie or an illegal or immoral act, his party and the complicit media circle the wagons and often will tell more lies aimed at baffling the dumbed-down, undiscerning populace – case in point, the Obama Administration’s ham-handed Benghazi Lie.

In an attempt to justify dishonesty, Democrats frequently turn to the only example they can think of by a conservative: the claim that President Bush lied when he said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They stop short of admitting that he based his concern on intelligence that was acknowledged by every official in the U.S. government, including their own Democrat leaders. And Bush may yet be proven right – just this week our state department reported terrorists gained control of one of Hussein’s poison gas factories.

The level of dishonesty and immorality in American government during the Obama era has reached epic proportions. When Nixon was found to have lied about a rather minor, but nonetheless illegal and immoral campaign activity, and then tried to cover it up by erasing taped evidence, he was unceremoniously thrown out of office by officials and supporters of both parties.

This week we are told that Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS, directly after being questioned about illegal targeting of conservatives during a campaign, had a computer malfunction that caused the loss of smoking-gun e-mail evidence from her and six other officials, and that in spite of legal requirements, department policy, and common practice, no backups exist. Just “Oops, you’ll have to trust us.”

And NOT ONE DEMOCRAT will question her honesty. Not one is bothered by the stench of corruption.

It is hard for me to accept that there aren’t still a few honest Democrats out there. There must be. Believing that every single Democrat accepts dishonesty is like believing that every single voter in 59 Philadelphia precincts pulled the lever for Barack Obama.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.

Honesty – Billy Joel