A Solution in Search of a Problem

A Solution in Search of a Problem

The View from the Middle

While I’m on vacation, I thought I would give you a couple of quick thoughts to keep ya’ll thinking.

I think all of the news outlets have read my recent article on the transgender bathroom situation.  Most have concluded, as I did, that this action by the White House is a solution in search of a problem.  Whether it is the new non-discrimination laws to protect the LGBT community or forcing transgenders to provide birth certificates to go to the bathroom, where are the offenses?  An anecdote does not a trend make.  We need common sense, not more laws.  Below is a link to my article.  If the link doesn’t work, just copy and paste the address into your browser.

http://kevincanfield.blogspot.com/2016/04/transgender-bathrooms-mountain-or.html

            Finally, did any of you see this season’s final episode of Marvel – Agents of Shield?  Not only was there a necklace with a cross on it floating in the cabin of the Shield aircraft, they even talked about a single man (the hero) defeating the villain (they even called him Satan during the show) and thus saving the world through his “sacrificial” death.  It was a great parallel to the Christian faith.  Hear, hear!!  I loved it.  If you haven’t seen it check it out.

Now, I’m checking out until next week.  Read the “Of Mountains and Molehills” article above.

Love ya’ll

Kevin C

Hillary's Big Tell

Hillary’s Big Tell

The View from the Middle

Just out of curiosity, I looked up the definition of a “Freudian Slip” the other day, and here’s what I found.  It is “An unintended error in speech or writing that reveals a person’s real intentions - OR – When a politician accidently tells the truth and reveals his or her true motives.”  OK, I added the “politician” part, but it really makes sense doesn’t it.  And my timing was impeccable, because Hillary had a whopper of a slip earlier this year. 

Here’s what Hillary said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”  She didn’t say that the coal business was dying of natural causes.  She said that, “We are going to put coal companies out of business.”  Oops, the truth slipped out.  And I know it's the truth because that statement is very consistent with what Barack Obama has been saying for years.

Mr. Obama said, “If someone wants to build a coal powered plant, they can.  It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all of the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”  He has also said, “Under my cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” 

Notice that neither Hillary nor the President said that coal companies would go out of business because it is getting too expensive to get coal out of the ground.  They implied that they would destroy them through governmental regulations, fines and taxes.  The good news is that at least the truth is out, and now we can deal with it.  Hillary Clinton will try to destroy the coal business, and eventually the oil business if she gets the opportunity.  Should we be doing that?  The short answer is “No”!

First, we should be thanking God that he has blessed the United States with the bountiful recourses we have.  We have more coal than Saudi Arabia has oil.  We have more oil than all of the Middle East countries combined and natural gas may be our most abundant resource.  Thank you, God, and these are the resources that have fueled our industrial growth for at least the last 200 years. 

I’m also a big fan of renewable energy, especially the sun.  Did you know that the sun puts down more energy in an hour than the world consumes in a year?  But unfortunately, we haven’t figured out how to effectively and efficiently convert that power to a usable form.  Today, solar power only accounts for about 1% of the US electrical power.  I’m confident that we’ll figure it out, but it’s not ready to shoulder the power needs of our country today.  So how should we proceed?

There is a natural process called “creative destruction” that has fueled capitalism from the beginning.  Creative destruction is the ceaseless churning of the free market as old businesses and industries are replaced with new more productive and efficient ones.  The really good news is that our total society benefits through better products, shorter workweeks, better jobs and higher standards of living.  The fundamental role of government in this natural process is to stay out of the way. 

But that’s not what Hillary and Barack Obama want to do.  They want the government to step in and destroy entire industries with no realistic plan on how to replace them.  Let me give you an example of how creative destruction should work.  Back in 1768 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the first car.  It was powered by steam, and at that time, virtually everyone in America got around by horse and buggy.  Over a hundred years later in 1886, Karl Benz made the first gas powered car and the horse and buggy were still king.  In 1908 there were only 8,000 cars in the US and there was only about 144 miles of paved roads, and the horse and buggy was still dominant.

Today, there are almost as many passenger vehicles as people in America (256 million in 2013) and we have over 2.5 million miles of paved roads, and the horse and buggy have been relegated to hobby status.  Slowly, over those 248 years, people who make cars slowly replaced the people who made buggies.  Today there are many more people employed by the auto industry, at relatively higher wages, and society has benefited tremendously from this transition.

What if our government had decided to place its heavy hands on the horse and buggy industry back in 1768 by over taxing it, over regulating it and applying punitive fines to it with the intent of destroying it?  Even if their intent were to accelerate the development of the automobile, it would have had the opposite effect, because that industry was not ready to satisfy the transportation needs of our country.  What if they had done it in 1886?  Same affect.  What about 1908?  Same.  We would have only retarded the development of the auto industry here and thus around the world.

With a wisdom that ran from Washington to Lincoln to Wilson to FDR, our government allowed the auto industry to develop at its own pace.  That is what we should be doing with the energy industry. 

We will eventually figure out how to convert solar and wind energy effectively and efficiently, but we can’t do that today to satisfy our energy needs, even with massive subsidies.  Punishing or destroying fossil fuel industries will not get us there faster.  In fact, it will probably retard the progress and punish the average American through job losses and higher energy costs. 

As usual, my recommendation is for the government to get out of the way and let the natural creative destruction process do its job.  Put money into research (NASA, MIT) instead of subsidies (Solyndra), which we can do at a fraction of the cost to encourage the process, but most importantly, GET OUT OF THE WAY!!

Transgender bathrooms - Mountain or molehill?

Of Mountains and Molehills

The View from the Middle

As if we don’t have enough serious issues in our country like crushing debt and declining wages, our politicians are constantly trying to create additional “wedge issues” to divide us.  These wedge issues are designed to turn friends into enemies in order to grab a few votes and get these creeps elected to some public office.  There are two problems with this approach.  First, these scumbags who will do anything to win an election often do win, and second, in the wake of these election fights they leave our country angry and fractured.  Let me give you a couple of examples.

Back in 2012, Sandra Fluke (remember her) entered the political stage and suggested that there was a crisis of access to birth control for women across the US.  Her solution was to make birth control free for every woman in America.  Many people, especially women, took her word that things were indeed critical, but we should have stepped back and considered her claim.  Was this a real emergency or just a “straw man” used to defeat conservatives?  Let’s look at the facts.

In her argument Sandra pointed out that 99% of women who wished to use birth control were, in fact, using it.  She used this factoid to show the broad use of contraceptives among American women today.  But, at the same time she exposed the fact that there was no “crisis” of access.  If more than 99% of women are using birth control as needed, where is the crisis?

Next, Ms. Fluke suggested that birth control should be free for all women, and if anyone disagreed with that position, we were denying contraception to women living in poverty.  Again, this was not the case.  I, for example, don’t want to buy Ms. Fluke’s birth control pills, or Chelsea Clinton’s or Alexandra Pelosi’s (Nancy Pelosi’s daughter), or any other woman who can afford to pay for it.  I do support, however, free birth control for those who can’t afford it, and there are over 15,000 clinics, health centers and hospitals around the country that provide it.

So this was a great example of a molehill that was made to sound like a mountain to divide us.  There really was no crisis of access to contraceptives, and no one was arguing against providing them to those who truly couldn’t afford them.  But this didn’t stop Ms. Fluke from offering her deception.

The latest molehill being elevated to mountain status is transgender access to public bathrooms.  First of all, we all must realize that only .3% of Americans are transgender.  That’s three tens of one percent.  For perspective, if you did a survey of 100 people you would probably find zero transgender persons in that group.  If you did another survey of 100 people, you would again probably find none.  If you did a third survey of 100 people, you might find one transgender person.  So, changing our public bathrooms across the country to accommodate this small group is the absolute definition of “the tail wagging the dog.”

In addition, where are the examples of transgender people being denied access to bathrooms in America today?  Where are the riots?  Where is the coverage by our crack lamestream media correspondents?  I’ve been to many restaurants and other public places in my long life, and I have never witnessed an issue.  Have you?  Be honest? 

The question that we should be asking is, “what are transgender people doing now to get access to public bathrooms?” because it seems to be working!! 

Did you know that there are more men in the US who are taller than 6 feet, 6 inches than there are transgender people? What if this group demanded that we change the heights of all of the doorways in our restaurants and other public buildings so that they won’t whack their heads?  This would be incredibly expensive for all those small businesses that would have to comply.  Why not just tell those incredibly tall people to duck their heads, like they have been doing forever?

As a country, we should be employing the same strategy with both of the issues mentioned above, and every other wedge issue our politicians dream up.  Virtually all women who want contraception are getting it, and those who need it for free are getting it for free.  The process is working.  We are also not experiencing massive restroom battles across the country.  Transgender people are somehow accessing bathrooms and fitting rooms right now without causing women or children or themselves any distress.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I am neither a misogynist nor a transgenderphobe (if there is such a term).  I would never discriminate against either group and wish them all God’s speed as they travel though life.  I’m just a realist who tries to analyze both sides of every issue.  In these cases, action may make us feel fulfilled and proud, but it takes wisdom to recognize when our actions are either unnecessary or even harmful.

Hypocrisy of the Elite

Hypocrisy the Great Divider

The View from the Middle

There was a great book written about 10 years ago called Do As I Say Not As I Do, which pointed out the duplicity of Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and others.  It made me sick, sad and angry all at the same time.  But recent statements by politicians and celebrities have reminded me that hypocrisy is still alive and well in America and unless it is exposed it will continue to divide us.

Mark Zuckerberg recently came out and lectured those of us who favor border security by claiming that, “Instead of building walls we can help build bridges.”  That sounds so compassionate until you imagine what a borderless America would look like and cost.  But it borders on ironic when it comes from Mark Zuckerberg who purchased all the houses around his home in Palo Alto just to build a wall of control around it.  So, I guess walls are good for him, but just not for us.  Then I thought about all of the Hollywood celebrities in gated communities or who live in walled estates making the same unthoughtful, hypocritical claim.

But the duplicity doesn’t stop there.  When we discuss education in America, there are people, like me, who believe that we need competition that charter schools and vouchers deliver to solve our problems.  Bill and Hillary Clinton, however, would push the failing public school system and call me a racist for even suggesting such things.

But when the Clintons were in Washington, they sent Chelsea to the exclusive Sidwell Friends School in DC., and Congress today is five times more likely to send their kids to private schools than the rest of the country.  I don’t begrudge them those decisions, I just want to give that “choice” to every family in America, not just the rich and well connected.  Bill and Hillary would say that we have public and private schools in this country, and public schools are good for you and me.  But they need a choice.

The global warming crew isn’t any better.  Did you know that Al Gore has 15 homes, and just one of his mansions uses 20 times the energy to warm and cool than the average home in America?  Yet, Al tells us that we need to live in smaller homes and reduce our carbon footprint.

And the climate change conference in Paris may be the absolute definition of hypocrisy and possibly absurdity.  To get the President to the conference, Air Force One consumed 19,275 gallons of jet fuel and emitted 189 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Just getting the 20,000 attendees to and from the conference, in their planes, trains and automobiles dumped 300,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.  That’s as much energy as the entire City of Los Angeles will consume in a week.  Has anyone told these idiots about the availability of teleconferencing?  Now, that would have made a statement.

Finally, just last night in her victory speech in New York, Hillary Clinton talked about reducing the vitriolic political rhetoric and uniting America.  While I applaud that sentiment, isn’t Hillary guilty of the very same divisive language that she is condemning?  She has called anyone who disagrees with her solutions a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a bigot.  Is this the kind of language that will unite our country?  Do you think those terms really describe half of America that just happens to disagree with Hillary?

Do we need border security and to improve the immigration process at the same time?  Yes.  Do we need good public schools and school choice to solve our education problems?  Sure.  Do we need to be good stewards of our world without destroying economies and lives?  Of course!  Finally, do we need to listen before we condemn?  Absolutely.

As a country we need to avoid extreme positions and malicious rhetoric and gravitate to the middle where truth can be found, compromise forged and progress made.