Gas Prices Part Three

We inturrupt this blog for a little reminder, courtesy of :Neal Boortz:

“So when you pull up to the pump this week and see that you’re paying almost $2.50 for a gallon of gas, don’t blame George Bush….don’t blame the oil companies….and don’t blame the gas station.  Blame your friendly neighborhood environmental leftist who won’t allow any new refineries to be built and opposes oil exploration in this country at every turn. ”

We now return you to the blog, already in progress.

I suppose it’s a measure of how I’m positioned in the Google listings, that the majority of my hits today… several hundred of them in fact, are from people looking for the Captain’s Quarters blog, and finding first, stuff of mine that link stuff of HIS.

If you’re looking for the Captain, here he is… though I should warn you bandwidth on his servers is an issue at the moment, and likely will be for a week or so.

In a half-assed effort at solidarity, I’ve posted his original post on the subject of AdScam, here…

Glad as all heck I’m not paying his bandwidth the last few days. Canadians might think of hitting his tip jar. I’m sure he could use the Looneys.

Billy;

Had it occurred to you that the people whose rights you’re so interested in not trampling on, are the very ones who are seeking the increase of government?

Get that one worked out, then come back, and we’ll discuss your perception of immorality.

Dale at Q&O this morning gives some voice to his frustrations over the discussion that’s developed over the last several days between the libertarian Purists, and the rest of us. He nails it, here:

I object to being called unprincipled.

Because the principles we hold are, in our view, extremely important ones: Always increase personal liberty to the maximum extent possible; Always reduce the size and scope of government to the extent possible.

I guess I should say that unless you’re following some of the threads here at Q&O and elsewhere, you won’t really understand what I’m talking about. I’d urge you to look there for some backfill if you need it.

Anyway, Dale goes on to make the argument I’ve made here on several occasions… That change is a slow process.

We advocate political pragmatism in furtherance of a set of principles: Increased personal liberty and smaller?much smaller?government being chief among them. What would be the point of compromising those principles in the name of pragmatism? The pragmatism is merely a means to reach the ends specified by those principles. It is a recognition that the path back to a free society will be reached through incremental steps, not through a revolutionary change in politics.

But change is made at the margins. In politics, you usually don?t have the opportunity to implement all 100 points of your personal political manifesto. The traditional libertarian response to this fact of life is to bitch and complain at how stupid the average person is not to understand the intellectual clarity of the libertarian Party, pick up their marbles, and go home, having accomplished nothing.

Such has been the effect so far. The purist libertarians have been running the play as Dale describes it, for at least the last half century.  Nearly as long as the Marxists and Stalinists have been running THEIR play. Both seem to be making the claim that the problem is they’d not run the play correctly yet. Give ’em both credit for trying, but damned little for practical smarts; It seems to me about as productive as flushing money down the crapper in the hopes that they’ll get rich. As evidence to the validity of the action, they point to the fact that every once in a while, some of the money floats back up. I daresay the comparison would be an offense to each, but, alas, that the comparison fits all too well.

Perhaps the best way to address this issue is to ask a simple question: Are not others, allowed to be principled in this society? Or is it that to be really free, one must needs be in lockstep with YOUR established principals? Sounds rather big brotherish, to me.

There seem many in this discussion who are willing to toss around the idea that people who don’t share their views are “unprincipled”. I’ve had the charge tossed at ME often enough… mostly in the last two weeks. Of course, that concept ought to be a laugher for anyone who’s read my stuff for longer than those last two weeks.

As I said in a different thread over at Q&O:

A free society or even a marginally free one…tends not to move in any direction all at once. We got to this juncture in our nation’s history because of a continuing effort by the left over the last century towards the situation we have today…. and because of a lack of involvement in the process by people who have refused to take part in the process of turning those losses around… in short abandoning the dream, while claiming to be fighting for it. I am resigned to a fight I may or may not never see come to anything like victory.

But I’m DAMNED sure we’re never going to get where we want to be, in my lifetime or afterward, if we don’t start pushing in the other direction, within the existing system. (Interesting; I’ve been preached at, both in E-mail and in my comments section about “why we can’t wait”… yet such people seem perfectly willing to fritter away another 50 years waiting for a miracle instead of working toward it.

To that end of working toward it, I have been outspoken in my support of the President, and of a goodly portion of the Republicans… not because I hold any affinity with them because they?re Republicans, but because I see them, on the whole, as working toward the end of the reduction of government to it’s original purposes… at the moment. At the moment, they are going the direction we need to go. When I see someone come along that has a better change of providing what I seek, at that point THEY will have my support.

Removing one’s self from the system is not the answer. The last number of years should reveal that.

There are a few immutable facts involved in all of this. The first is that for whatever faults that have developed in the American system since it’s inception, it still was and remains the place where the greatest amount of freedom on the planet exists, bar none.

The other immutable fact is that the “all or nothing libertarianism’ crowd has accomplished NOTHING.. no forward gains at all, over the last 50 years. Indeed; such efforts have managed to label those people as outright flakes. Thus, the aggregate movement because of their principals and their application of them, is not toward the goal of reduced government, or even the elimination of it, but away from that goal.

Re-running however many times that play isn’t going to help; It made it worse the last 700 times it’s been tried… one more will make it 701 failures. I say it’s time we started doing what we can to actually attain the goal.

Who’s with me?

Ok, here it is, Gang.
I spent about an hour considering this action. I debated not posting this from captain Ed’s out of respect to him, but several thoughts over-rode this:

1: He’s getting more traffic than he can handle, and I doubt my small voice will take anything away from him in terms of traffic.

2: The message needs to get out

3: A government trying to save itself by trying to silence people who spread the truth, doesn’t deserve to stand.

4: Anything that tweaks the Canadian Left’s nose can’t be all bad.

5: A show of blogger force will have reprecussions not only in Canada, but here at home in the US, I should think, with the FEC, as well.

Ed’s got some guts standing up to this nonsense… and I think the remainder of us should be standing with him. Besides, Ed knows me well enough, I think, to understand my motives, here.

So, here’s the text from Ed’s that’s causing the hair-tearing in the Martin Government. I will encourage other bloggers to do as I have here, as well.

A political scandal involving the Public Works Ministry, a government effort called the Sponsorship Program, and allegations of corruption in the ruling Liberal Party has Canada abuzz with rumors of payoffs, Mob ties, and snap elections.  For the last two years, Canadian politics has been gripped by the so-called “sponsorship scandal” – tens of millions of dollars in government contracts which were funneled into advertizing firms closely connected with the Liberal government for little or no work, but with shadowy rumours that much of the money found its way back into Liberal coffers.  Prime Minister Paul Martin, himself a Liberal, appointed the Gomery Commission to investigate these charges and determine whether to bring charges against government officials for corruption and malfeasance.  (See the blog Small Dead Animals for some excellent background on the case.)

Most of the testimony heard by the Commission has been public, but Judge Gomery has decided to create a publication ban on the testimony of three key witnesses: Jean Brault, president of the ad agency Groupaction, Charles Guité, an officer of the Public Works ministry who worked on the Sponsorship Program, and Paul Coffin, president of the ad agency Coffin Communications.  The potential damage of their testimony has so unnerved the Liberal Party that they have reportedly started working towards a snap election so that they will not have to face the voters once the facts surface from the record. 

And well they might, if Brault’s testimony gives any indication of what they will face.  Thanks to a friend of mine, CQ readers can get a taste of what Brault has already told the Gomery Commission.  For obvious reasons, I cannot reveal this person’s name or position, but this person is in a position to have the information.  Bear in mind that this comes from a single source, so while I have confidence in the information, you should consider the sourcing carefully.

Payoffs And Kickbacks

On Thursday, Jean Brault began his testimony, subject to the publication ban, and revealed a massive pattern of corruption going to the highest levels of the Liberal party and government.  Brault testified to hundreds of thousands of dollars of bogus transactions designed to benefit the Liberal Party of Canada over a period from 1994 to 2002.

Most of the illegal campaign contributions involved Brault either hiring “employees” — who were in fact working full time on Liberal Party activities — or paying invoices for Liberal Party campaign expenses (which were never declared as such) or making untraceable cash donations to Liberal officials.  In exchange for helping the federal Liberals in Quebec, Brault received millions of dollars in federal advertising contracts.

Brault said he met with Jean Carle, a key aide to then Prime Minister Jean Chretien to propose a more direct way of ensuring that Groupaction got a large share of federal advertising dollars in Quebec.  Carle referred Brault to federal bureaucrat Charles (“Chuck”) Guité and told him that “there was room for everybody.”  Guité later put together the sponsorship program, in which five Liberal connected firms — including Groupaction — were guaranteed a monopoly on government “sponsorship” advertising (e.g. federal

advertising at sporting or cultural events) and related work.  The sponsorship program eventually became a huge slush fund into which over $250 million was poured, over $100 million of which was paid in fees and commissions to these five advertising firms, with little or any evidence of work done or value for money.

In exchange for these large contracts for little or no work, Brault kicked back generously to the Liberal Party, putting Liberal organizers on his payroll while they continued to perform party work (including, at one point, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s brother, Gaby Chrétien), paying invoices to other companies for work actually done for the Liberal Party, and giving large donations — in cash — to the Liberal Party through Renaud or Liberal Party organizer (and close associate of Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano) Joe Morselli.

Protection Racket?

Towards the later part of the sponsorship program, the friends and associates of Public Works Minister and former ambassador to Denmark Alfonso Gagliano, some of whom have been linked to organized crime, played a larger role in the schemes.

At one point, Gagliano associate Tony Mignacca told Brault that if he didn’t rehire Renaud (who had left Groupaction to start a new company), he would lose his newly acquired contract with Via Rail — Canada’s state-run passenger rail service.  Brault broke down in tears after he recounted this testimony.  At a meeting in 2001 with Joe Morselli, Brault said that he arranged to have the meeting in an overheated room in a restaurant — so that Brault could ask Morselli to take off his coat and ensure that he wasn’t carrying a body pack.

This is just the beginning of Brault’s testimony.  If the Gomery Commission can corroborate Brault, then the reek of corruption goes through all levels of the Liberal party and may explain their ability to out-campaign the Conservatives.  After all, they’ve siphoned off hundreds of millions of government dollars to promote their own party and to guarantee their monopoly on power.  They hijacked the Canadian tax base to fund their own campaigns and hide the financial trail.

More will be forthcoming, but it isn’t difficult to understand why Liberal politicians have begun to panic already.

According to The Washington Daily News Online, President Bush is planing on attending the Pope’s funeral. He’d be the first US president to make such an appearence, to my memory, though I can’t confirm that at the moment.

But I wonder how that will be played among the culture of death as I mentioned over the weekend? I supose we’ll see their positions exposed as what they are, soon… very soon indeed.

Update:

AP is now reporting that the Bushes will leave midweek for the Friday Funeral, but those plans are still being finalized.

George Will echoes my Bit’sBit of this week:

In an amazingly fecund 27-month period, the cause of freedom was strengthened by the coming to high offices of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and John Paul II who, like the president, had been an actor and was gifted at the presentational dimension of his office.

I took some heat here a few days ago regarding my comments about the longish list of lies coming from the Canadian government.  It does my heart good to see that things are starting to unravel, north of us.

How does the Martin government react? Predictably. Using the power of law, they try to silence those exposing them. Captain’s Quarters has the details.

Update: The Captain must be getting clobbered with traffic today.
I’ve taken at least 25 hits myself from people obviously looking for his site.

Jon Henke over at Q & O this morning notes a post from Reynolds, who in turn makes note of Hitchens basicly kicking the Pope when he’s dead.

As Henke goes to some lengths to point out, Hitch is known for this kind of idiocy. (I won’t bother quoting it; I assume most of my readers have been exposed to Hitchens in the past. Do go read Jon’s post, though)

However, is there something deeper going on here? A look at some of the other reaction around the MSM this morning is instructive. With the exeption of FOX and the Catholic networks, (both radio and TV) each seems to be spending a great deal of time calling for a more liberal Pope to be elected in this turn.  Now, first I’ll suggest that’s not likely to happen, given the number of Cardinals that John Paul II put into place over his years.  But it seems to me this MSM effort to liberalise the church from without is part and parcel of what Hitch has been doing for years.

Consider the list of people Hicthens has gone after in his time… as Henke points out…Winston Churchill, Bob Hope, Ronald Reagan. He even spent an entiure book trashing of all people, Mother Teresa.

Henke points out in an update that his objection to Hitch in this case is his wilingness to speak ill of the dead. I have no problem with that, personally.  If someone was a bastard in their life, I have no problem with saying so.

But, perhaps a look at the dead he targets will explain much. At what point has Hitchens ever gone after someone who wasn’t a middle-to-right icon in this fashion?

There’s a LOT of parallels we are presented in our lifetime. Usually, we can learn from the slight differences we discover between them.

This week, I examine the Parallels and the differences between the deaths of Terry Shaivo, and Pope John Paul II., and their implications.

The parallels that life presents are sometimes bigger than the lives they directly touch.

An example;
The nation held it’s breath, last week, and watched while the final chapters of Terry Shaivo’s murder got played out. And let’s not decieve ourselves, kids… that’s what it was. She had a heart attack, many years ago, but that’s not what killed her. What killed her was a husband who lacked a heart, backed by the Hemlock Society Glee Club.

Then, so soon afterward, comes word that Pope John-Paul II is on his way to meet the Lord he has served for so many years… after weeks.. indeed, years, of his own struggles against death… both his, and that of others.

The timing of these two events is remarkable. There’s a lesson in the juxtaposition of these two passages from this world. I’m not sure I’ve got my arms around all the lessons therein… or for that matter, if anyone ever could. But there are points even I can see, even if I’ve not worked out all the levels of implication yet.

Investor’s Business Daily editor George Meumayr writes this week, to the subject of Terry Shaivo, saying in part;

“Under judge-made law, euthanasia has become America’s most astonishing form of premeditated murder, a cold-blooded crime in which husbands can kill their wives and even turn them into accomplices to it through the telepathy of “their wishes.” To wonder if we’re on the slippery slope sounds like an obtuse moral compliment at this point. The truth is we’re at the bottom of the slope and have been for quite some time, standing dumbly as the bodies of innocent humans pile up around us. As we sift through them — puzzling over how they got so numerous — we’re reduced to mumbling sophistries about compassion and consent.

This is the “humane holocaust” of which Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, a culture that kills the weak, from deaf unborn children to mute disabled women, and calls it mercy. Those responsible for this humane holocaust look into the mirror and see Gandhi, but it is Hitler who glances back. If someone had taken the passages of Mein Kampf that speak of euthanizing “unfortunates” and inserted them into the columns from newspapers and magazines cheering Schiavo’s death, would anyone have known the difference?”

(H/T McPhillips)

And then along comes the Pope, who declares it, by way of his example, to be a virtue to ‘go down swingin’, and declares in so doing, the move toward abortion, euthenasia and so on… the culture of death, in short, as utterly LACKING in virtue.

It interests me, the relative positioning of the Pope and his followers, versus those who cheered for Terry Shaivo’s death. Consider this with me. Hugh Hewlett writes of the Pope;

“With Reagan and Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II represents the three forces of opposition to communism that shattered the evil empire, the Soviet Union –the American-led West, the Eastern European resistance, and the Russian dissident movement. “

Belmont Club, in their commentary on the matter, correctly brings up a couple more names of the like: Margaret Thatcher, and Lech Walensa.

Interesting; Of those who cheered for Terry Shaivo’s death, and those who fought to preserve that life; which side of the politcal and social isle, whom do you suppose it was that chose to confront the evil empire as such, and which were those who figured we’d be better off with containment of the monster the USSR represented, instead of the elimination of it, all the whiile moving us toward a more socialist model here in the west?

Granted, that this is a generalized argument, as are all such. There are exceptions. But it seems to me that as a rule, the holders of each of these positions tended to line up remakably true to the named groups. These each are, in my estimation, the markings of a very different angle in the foundations of what constitutes thinking of each group.

There is something to all of this, a continuity of thought and action, which I fear is too large for most people to grasp. This implication is clear to me, though; We’re dealing with the difference between Good, and Evil.

One side… the one backing the culture of life, is willing to recognize the great truth that evil exists… and they’re willing to say what is an is not evil. More, they’re willing to act based on those convictions, to fight against what they see as evil.

The other, what I will call the culture of death, won’t call something evil, but will repeatedly insist that there is no good and evil, (Let’s not be judgemental, after all) and that there is only power, and those willing or unwilling to seize it. Interesting, how those who make that claim are invariably those seeking power, and usually, are evil. And isn’t it interesting that these latter, have so often tried to kill off the former… as they did the Pope, President Reagan, and Lech Walensa?

(And look what they’re saying about the pope over at the DU(H))

There’s another similarity of the names above, that’s is interesting and important, as well; None of them had proof that their actions would create the positive situations that they did. But they took those actions, anyway. That’s courage. That’s faith… that’s greatness… and their like is not among the culture of death. Those of that mold assume there’s no hope for recovery, even while the person involved is alive, and strong, and in the end took nearly two weeks to kill.

If there is a culture war, it is to decide the question of which direction of these two chocies, which of these two roads, are we as a culture going to travel. It may be a struggle, but I think I know which way that’s going to go, eventually.

I think you do, too.

AP has the details

Well now we have some reason for the Iraq war reporting the BBC did were so far off. According to links found at Boing Boing, the Beeb recently tried to set up an interview with Bob Marley, regarding his hit single “No Woman, No Cry”.

Marley, as you likley know, already, died in 1981 from cancer at age 36.

And no, this isn’t an April Fool’s prank.

Tell me again, how bloggers have no street cred, mahn.

John Weidner over at Random Jottings speaks today to the complaints by Libertarian purists about the Republicans. Weidner argues… and I agree… that libertarians shoot htemselves in the foot when complaining about Bush;

There’s something missing here (And I’m partly quoting myself from this post about Bill Quick’s recent similar argument. Sorry, time is short). I don’t like the lard either, but in both cases Bush traded (and this was at a time when we didn’t control the Senate) spending increases for important components of the Ownership Society. The Medicare bill included HSA’s, and NCLB included the parental-choice provisions.

What’s the thinking behind the Ownership Society? First, that shrinking the government isn’t going to happen. Not now, not never. Every law, subsidy, tax-break or program creates a constituency that will fight to preserve that bit of big government. It’s a trap that liberals have created for us, and no number of grumbling fiscal conservatives will ever get us out of it.

BUT, there is a way out of the trap. Even though Social Security (to take just one example) is a big-government program, any diversion of dollars into Private Accounts is, effectively, shrinking government. And that creates a trap of the opposite sort, one that will make people want more and more privatization as they start to see their accounts grow. (Or, similarly, more and more choice over which school your kids go to. Or more ability to just choose any medical service you want and pay it yourself without consulting any bureaucracy)

That’s why the Left is fighting private accounts so bitterly.

Indeed.  It seems to me passing strange that the hardcore libtarians can’t seem to bring themselves to recognize the impact that the ownership society would have in working us as a people back toward the goals libertarians claim to espouse. 

The left recognizes it as a serious threat to the nanny state.
Why can’t the libertarians?

I’ve had some added time these last few days to conisder this blog’s status.
I’m pleased with the way things are progressing, overall.