Tag Archives: corruption

60s and 70s Protest Music – It’s Relevant Today

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Country Joe McDonald at Woodstock

Ah, the great music of our youth – all those protest songs extolling the virtues of Freedom, and railing against government corruption.  Songs about how a person shouldn’t be judged or given favors because of the color of his skin.

It was a time when the Leftist youth of our nation took us all by the sleeve and cried out for peace, and justice under the law, and tolerance for others who might have a different point of view.  “Let us run the world!” they sang.  “We’ll make it all better!”

And now, the Leftists are in power.  They got their wish.  They do rule the world.

Funny thing is, I listen to those lyrics and they still ring true today – only the players have changed.  Our government is more corrupt than ever, picking winners and losers based on contributions and voting blocs.  Our laws are a shambles as our administration chooses which ones to enforce and which to ignore.  Racial and social divides continue to widen as self-serving politicians separate us into groups to pit against each other.

Now it’s the aging Tea Party people who cry out for Freedom from a government that has turned its back on the Constitution.  It’s the grandparents who fear that government corruption will destroy their life savings and the economic futures of their grandkids.

I can’t make the case any better than Pete Townshend did in 1971 (below).

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again

We Won’t Get Fooled Again – the Who

Crony Capitalism At Its Ugliest

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Eric Clapton with Gibson Les Paul guitar

Is it any wonder American businesses are afraid to open their doors in the reign of King Obama?

Today Gibson Guitar’s CEO Henry Juszkiewicz announced that the company has settled with the Dept. of Justice, who ruled last year that Gibson had violated the Lacey Act by importing unfinished rosewood for guitar fingerboards from India and Madagascar.

It was clearly another case of “picking winners and losers”, the Obama administration’s favorite political tool – used to bludgeon opponents and reward cronies and contributors.

You see, most guitar fretboards are made with imported rosewood.  Guitar manufacturers often buy fretboards which have been manufactured in India, and the Indian government is grateful for the business (memo to Obama – most nations appreciate the chance to employ their citizens).  In fact Martin Guitars imports the very same rosewood for its guitars, from the same suppliers that Gibson does.  If this is a crime (which it has not been proven to be), it certainly is a victimless one.

Gibson plants were raided by armed federal agents, who confiscated $1 million worth of rosewood inventory.  They were shut down for a time, and now the company has been extorted for a $300,000 fine and a $50,000 “contribution” to the US National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Martin’s use of the same rosewood has never been questioned.

Oh, did I mention that Gibson’s CEO Juszkiewicz is a Republican supporter, while Martin’s CEO, Chris Martin, is a long-time donor to the Democrat party?

We have always been taught that there was a presumption of innocence in this country, and an opportunity for defense and redress if we have been wrongfully charged.  Unfortunately in today’s world where government agencies and czars rule with impunity, that’s no longer the case.  A bureaucrat can be judge, jury and executioner.

“We’re in this really incredible situation. We have been implicated in wrongdoing and we haven’t been charged with anything,” Juszkiewicz said. “Our business has been injured to millions of dollars. And we don’t even have a court we can go to and say, ‘Look, here’s our position.”

Due process be damned, this is politics.

The “picking winners and losers” tactic has worked so well on the national level that our Montana Democrat administration has taken the page from the Obama playbook.  Stay tuned as that story develops.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps – George Harrison
(guitar solo by Eric Clapton on a GIBSON LES PAUL )

Our Federal Govt. – Dumb and Dumber

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And now, here’s the latest headlines from Right Side News:

  • The IRS estimates they will pay out $21 billion in fraudulant refunds within the next five years.  I bet it’s triple that.  They received 2,137 returns from one address in Michigan in one year.  They sent him $3.3 million dollars in refunds.   It never occurred to the IRS top management to add one line of code to their program that checks for multiple returns or refunds at one address.  By the way, your kids and grandkids will have to pay the $21 billion (or more) back to the Chinese, who loaned it to us so we could give it to the crooks.  Nice work, guys.
  • Our Missile Defense Agency has been putting our top-security computers at risk by downloading porn from Russian web sites.   Well, it’s been kind of slow around the Missile Defense Agency office.  They don’t have anything important to do.
  • In spite of the mind-boggling increase in our national debt, the feds just keep buying more cars, increasing their fleet to 449,000 vehicles.   The taxpayers now provide only one car for every seven federal employees.  But we make it up to them by providing smart phones for all of them.  That way they can watch porn and play Angry Birds without having to use the office computers.
  • The Post Office is now in default, owing billions of dollars on union employee benefits that it can not pay for.   Oh well, it’s okay.  Hey Bernanke, could you start that printing press back up?

And that’s the news for this afternoon.  Actually there’s more, but I think I need a drink . . .

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

We think we know what we’re doin’
That don’t mean a thing
It’s all in the past now
Money changes everything

Money Changes Everything – Cyndi Lauper

Old Bean Counters, Revolt!

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I spent most of my career as a “Bean Counter” –  that’s what the other managers of a company call their CFO or controller.   We Bean Counters take a lot of ribbing about how dull our lives must be, buried in numbers and surrounded by computers.  But successful managers know that good businesses are run by the numbers, and with careful planning, analysis, and execution, the company will create consistent and predictable profit for owners or stockholders, rewarding jobs for employees, and many benefits for the community at large.

These days we Old Bean Counters are frustrated.  We believe success in a free market democracy should be a slam dunk –  predictable, manageable, with steady growth and improvement in the standard of living for everyone.

In our “Adam Smith” world, the free market economic formula works flawlessly.  Businesses prove it every day, and our nation became the envy of the free world relying on the economic principles of supply and demand, lowest cost production, improved technology and efficiency, personal responsibility, and charity of free will.

So what happened?  Our predictable, successful “controller’s” world has been turned upside down.  We are buried in debt, jobs are scarce, and the only solution offered is more taxation and government spending..

The free market is no longer free, as our government at every level tears away layers of personal freedoms, and chokes businesses with red tape and unnecessary costs at every turn.  Personal responsibility has become “old school”, as our government rewards bad behavior and punishes good behavior in every conceivable way.   And charity, once a rewarding personal choice, has become a grating mandatory redistribution of wealth.

Even some of the young Bean Counters have gone astray, having sold their ethics on Wall Street along with some bundled mortgages.

I am convinced that if all the Old Bean Counters from across the nation stormed the city, state, and federal government offices and took over, we could straighten out our country’s financial mess in no time.  We would run the government like a business!  Government employees, you will work a full 8-hour day, 50 weeks a year.   We will find every asset owned by the government and sell the ones we don’t need or use.  Every agency will justify its budget every year.  Disability is only for the disabled.   College is for serious students.   Corruption will be punished.   No more grants!  No more watching porn on government computers every day!  No more six-figure guaranteed pensions at age 50!  No more $800 hammers!

And most importantly, we would convince Americans once again that it is in their best interest to be a part of the production and success, rather than throwing rocks at those who are pulling the wagons.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know,
We’d all love to see the plan!

Revolution – the Beatles

Montana has too much money, let’s party!

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Today there is a big headline in our small-town newspaper: “$200,000 Available in Special Event Grants”.  It was “submitted” by the Montana Department of Commerce.  I guess that would be an advertisement, right?  Our government is so desperate to give money away, they have to advertise in small town newspapers.

Anyway, they want us to have parties.  “Any Montana event is eligible to apply and the funds must be used to advertise and promote the event to target markets outside a 100-mile radius of the event site.”

I think I’ll have a beer kegger and invite the motorcycle dudes from Butte.  Those guys know how to party!

“Since its inception in 2002, the Special Event grant program has been able to provide $757,500 in grant money to 89 events across the state”, the article continues.   Gee, that is so generous of the program to give us all that money!  Oh wait, where did that money come from?

This “grant” thing has become an epidemic.  Taxpayers in Fargo pay for a party in Milwaukee, and Little Rock pays for a party in Phoenix, and Kansas City pays for a party in Missoula, and everybody thinks their parties are free.  Now multiply this by thousands and thousands of grants awarded in every city of the United States every day.   Grants for trails.  Grants for home improvements.  Grants for trees.  Grants for seminars on how to write grants.

There are people in Montana state offices (paid by your tax dollars) who think having community parties is a good thing.  Maybe it is, but then why shouldn’t the community pony up the money to advertise its own party?

Unfortunately, our dumbed-down citizenry thinks that grants really are free money.  They repeatedly hear mayors and city councils say, “No local money is being spent on this project – we received a grant.”  In my small hometown we have a lady who makes a nice living doing nothing but writing grant requests.  Local officials love them because it gives voters the impression that they are “doing something” without spending our hard-earned money.  How can anybody turn down free money?

It’s embarrassing how easy it has become to fleece the average American.

Well, I guess if the keepers-of-Montana-cash decide it should be spent on parties, so be it.  But I don’t want to hear any whining about how we “can’t afford teachers or firemen.”

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Money !  It’s a gas!
Grab that cash with both hands
and make a stash!

Money – Pink Floyd

Hooray! Shovel-Ready Green Jobs!

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James O’Keefe has done it again.

He has the union bosses on camera, saying “let’s get the money and then figure out what to do”.  Apply for a grant that includes the words “green” and “jobs”, call it “shovel ready”, and it’s automatic.  Dig a hole, fill it in.  Get the money.  Happens all the time, like for instance the “Green Jobs Green New York” program.  “It’s a lot of BS”, according to the union.

Watch the video – there’s nothing I can add to this:

 

God bless ya, O’Keefe, keep them coming!

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Digging a ditch where madness gives a bit
Digging a ditch where silence lives
Digging a ditch for when I’m through
Digging this ditch I’m digging for you

 

Hey Barack – Send Your Poor Brother George a Check

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My wife (that lovely, delicate, sensitive little flower) often exclaims (rather loudly) to any liberal who feels the government does not do enough for their parents/siblings/children or somebody else’s parents/siblings/children, “If you don’t care enough about your family to take care of them, why should I?”

She has a point.  Take our president, for example.  His aunt, Zeituni Onyango, lives in Boston in subsidized housing, on disability payments.  For years she was on the public dole as an illegal alien, but eventually she and her taxpayer-funded attorney got a “waiver” to avoid her deportation to her home country, Kenya.  So she is no longer technically “illegal.”

Um, Mr. Obama, if you don’t care enough about your aunt to slip her a check once in a while, why should the taxpayers take care of her?

The latest Obama relative in the spotlight is his brother George.  It seems George, who lives in Kenya on a few bucks a day, doesn’t hear much from his big brother, Barack, these days.  “He’s got other issues to deal with,” George says.

For someone so insistent on “sharing the wealth”, and someone who continues to amass personal wealth, our president appears kind of, well . . .  niggardly (please look it up before you call me a racist).

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

I pay my money to the welfare line –
I see you standin’ in it EVERY TIME!

Why Can’t We Be Friends – War

Sen. Max Baucus Payback to Big Tobacco Donors – Kill Small Businesses

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The “pay for play” culture of corrupt cronyism is alive and well in Washington, DC.

Sen. Max Baucus, (D) Montana

Senator Max Baucus, (D) Montana, has just taken out an entire industry, its small business owners, and their employees with the stroke of a pen.  By hiding a small amendment in the transportation bill that passed last week, Baucus ensured that every small “roll your own” tobacco company in the US will go “up in smoke”.

The roll-your-own cigarette companies sell papers and loose tobacco through retail outlets and vending machines.  The market advantage of roll-your-own cigarettes is lower price and the pureness of the tobacco – the RYO companies do not add chemicals to the product like the big guys do.

Before Baucus’ amendment, the loose tobacco companies were exempt from the big sin taxes which afflict the finished cigarette manufacturers.  His amendment eliminates this exemption, and the crushing cost of these taxes will snuff out the small companies, according to Robert Weissen, owner of nine Sin City Cigarette Factory outlets in Las Vegas.

These entrepreneurs are just trying to make an honest buck and are barely a blip on the big tobacco radar.  The additional tax revenue will certainly not make a dent in the $16 trillion debt Baucus has helped create.  Montana does not have any roll-your-own companies.  So why does Baucus care about this tiny band of entrepreneurs?  Well, among Baucus’ campaign contributors is Altria, aka Phillip Morris.  Connect the dots.

Baucus has become the prototypical corrupt, sold-out, big-money, big-government, purely partisan, inside-the-beltway, showing-off-his-new-girlfriend cartoon character at its worst.  He embodies everything a thinking citizen should abhor.  Max does NOT represent Montana and seldom even SEES our beautiful state or its people.  He has become an embarrassment to the citizens of the Big Sky state.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

I got one hand in my pocket –
And the other one is flickin’ a cigarette

Alanis Morissette – Hand In My Pocket