Why Democrats deserve blame for the tragic Amtrak accident

(UPDATED)
"Why Democrats deserve blame..."  Provocative title, no?  But I can prove it.

Democrats are screaming that the tragic Amtrak train wreck in Philadelphia is due to funding.  If only those stingy Republicans would give Amtrak enough money, we could have saved those lives.  This is a lie.  The problem is not money.

The problem is unions.  Railroad Workers United (RWU) is kind of an umbrella union for all railroad union workers.  RWU does not exist to ensure safety to riders, nor to provide excellent service, nor to run efficient railroads.  RWU's mission is to preserve jobs and money for its members.  How do I know this?  I read their  "Statement of Principles" .

Here's the smoking gun:

"The carriers are degrading and deskilling our crafts, implementing new technologies that threaten our jobs..."

This is from paragraph number one of their principles.  They exist to fight against "technologies that threaten our jobs" -  technologies like the ones that could have made that curve on the tracks safe and automatic.

Google has a self driving car.  Tesla is about to have one as well.  Next year, your new car will likely have an option that will automatically slow down in response to speed limit signs.  Even airplanes fly by themselves most of the time today.  Yet Amtrak trains, which run on a track and are easy to automate, still require human operators.

The reason Amtrak trains are unnecessarily dangerous today is the same reason Johnny can't read and GI Joe can't get quality healthcare at a VA hospital.  Unions run the VA, the public schools, and the trains. They also run the IRS, the Post Office, and every other government agency except the military.  Quality, efficiency, and customer satisfaction are not union priorities.  I'm sure you're shocked to hear this.      

You may also know that unions are the biggest funding source for the Democrat party.  Unions give billions every election cycle, practically all of it to Democrats.  Your safety, health, education, and constitutional rights take a backseat to the union agenda because that is how Democrats get money, votes, and power.

It doesn't matter how much we spend on government union agencies like Amtrak, they can never provide quality, cutting-edge service.  That's not what they are designed to do.  They are designed to be de-facto jobs programs and kick-back slush funds for the Democrat party.  Period.

(UPDATE:  Recent reports suggest that this train may have been hit by an object before it crashed. That may explain why the operator has no memory of what happened.  He could also be lying. The fact remains though that if this train had been automated, an incapacitated operator would not result in dead passengers, or even a derailment.)  

Je Suis Pamela

Let's review, shall we?  In America today, if you mock Muhammad you go to prison like Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the hapless guy who made a YouTube video, which Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon him, decided to use as a scapegoat for the deaths in Benghazi, Libya.  Or, you will be blamed like Pamela Geller when radical Islamists come gunning for you while you are pointing out that radical Islam is a threat to our safety and our constitutional rights.  

If however you mock Mormonism, you will get Tony Awards and rave reviews in the New York Times.  That would be OK, if the New York Times didn't have different standards for Nakoula and Pamela.  

Baltimore & The Peanut Butter Joke

When I was a kid, my uncle told me a joke that I've loved to this day.  I think it applies to the Baltimore riots.  It goes something like this:

Three construction workers open their lunch boxes.  The first one says; "Chicken parmigiana!  I love chicken parmigiana!"  The second one says, "Beef stroganoff!  I love beef stroganoff!  The third opens his lunch box and says, "Oh no, peanut butter sandwich.  I hate peanut butter sandwich!  (Of course, there were accents when I was told the joke, but hey this is 2015; can't do that anymore...)

This goes on for two more days, with the first two loving their lunches and the third complaining about his peanut butter sandwich.

Finally, the first guy says to him, "Why don't you tell your wife to make you something different?"  To that, the third guy says,"Who's got a wife? I make it myself!"

Baltimore has been electing Democrat mayors for at least three generations.  The people have been choosing the government.  The people have been choosing their police chief.  The people are essentially rioting against themselves!  They have finally come face to face with their own tragic choices and failures.  This is why they are looting and burning their own town.  They know who has been making the sandwiches, and it is them.

This same irony applies to Ferguson, Detroit, NYC during the Crown Heights riots, Asbury Park and Newark, NJ, LA, and on and on.  Only it's no joke.

Capitalism Sucks!

When was the last time you saw a movie where a businessman was the good guy?  (If you are one of the dozen or so people who saw the Atlas Shrugged movies, you can sit down now.)  Maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong people, but it seems to me most of my contemporaries lean anti-capitalist.  It gets even worse when I listen to younger generations.  Like our current president, it seems more fashionable in America today to be a Marxist, socialist, or communist.

This is no accident. 

    

Ask anyone who the father of communism or modern socialism is, and they will be able to name Karl Marx and explain Marxism in detail.  Next, ask them who the father of capitalism is.  I doubt you’ll get the right answer.

 

I contend the correct answer is again... Karl Marx.  Yes, I’m saying that Karl Marx is both the father of communism AND the father of capitalism.  In fact, Karl Marx was the guy who defined capitalism for the masses in a scathing critique of capitalism called Das Kapital.  In other words, the word most people use today when describing economic liberty, “capitalism”, is actually a Marxist epithet!

Many would credit Adam Smith as the guy who had the most influence in shaping America's economy. On that I agree.  Adam Smith’s book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” was conspicuously published in 1776.  That date rings a bell, no?  But the word capitalism didn't exist in Adam Smith’s day.  He never used it!    

If everyone knows what Marxism is, why doesn't everyone know what Smithism is?  Because it’s not taught.  Marxism is taught everywhere all the time.  If you want to learn about Adam Smith, you have to go looking.  If you go to Wikipedia and look up Marxism, you’ll find plenty.  If you go to Wikipedia and look up Smithism, you’ll get crickets. 

Similarly, if you go to Wikipedia and look up communism, Marxism, or socialism you’ll find exhaustive explanations.  If you look really, really, hard you might find a brief criticism near the bottom of these entries.  If you look up capitalism, you’ll find a long section titled “Criticisms of Capitalism”.  Moreover, most of the entry is laced with subtle and not so subtle digs at capitalism.  This is not surprising because the word capitalism itself is a straw-man.

How about some of the more modern terms, like Supply Side Economics?  You are probably familiar with many criticisms of supply side economics.  But can you accurately define it?  Can you define its opposite, Demand Side Economics?

 

·         Supply side economics is the theory that people will enthusiastically SUPPLY their efforts and capital if they are free to realize the rewards.   

·         Demand side economics is the theory that people will enthusiastically DEMAND the efforts and capital of others if they are subsidized to do so.

 

These are opposite approaches for achieving economic goals:  Supply Side seeks to optimize overall economic vitality (Smithian).  Demand Side at times seeks to stimulate economic consumption (Keynesian stimulus), and at times to achieve egalitarianism (Marxist redistribution).

If you look up supply side economics on Wikipedia, you’ll find a thorough entry.  You’ll also find plenty of criticisms.  Look up demand side economics, and you’ll find nothing.  No definition, and certainly no criticism.  Again, the language is controlled by anti-capitalists.  (I made an attempt to define Demand Side Economics in a tongue-in-cheek cartoon a while ago:  See it here.  (language warning!))

I understand why Marxists, communists, socialists, and Keynesians use Marx’s term, capitalism, for our economic system.  What I can’t understand is why others use the term also.  

I’d love to see supporters of economic liberty use terms like Smithist, Smithism, Smithian or just plain "liberty" to describe their ideas.  Let the critics argue against economic liberty for a change!

Scientology vs. Clintonology

Friends discuss Scientology and Hillary Clinton's campaign for president.  Oh, and there's even a labradoodle in it!

(If you like the technology that makes this possible, support NAWMAL / XTRANORMAL as they try to get back on their feet.  www.nawmal.com  www.xtranormal.com)

Ready for Hillary [VIDEO]

Forget the destroyed servers, the email, foreign donations, Benghazi, the jailed video maker, the Rose Law Firm, Cattle futures, WH travel office, Whitewater, etc., etc., etc.  This woman, who wants to be the next president has been covering-up her husbands sexual assaults and infidelity for decades.  But even more than that, she was in charge of the systematic smearing and intimidation of his victims! Hillary Clinton is unfit for any job.  Period. With the possible exception of license plate maker.    

Obama vs. Christians

[VIDEO 22 seconds  - Obama and David Cameron on whether their countries are Christian.  Cameron's comment was from this Easter.]

Yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon him, chose an Easter prayer breakfast as an opportunity to berate Christians for their "less than loving" expressions, presumably in response to the reluctance of some Christians to perform services which contradict their faith.  Adhering to religious beliefs is somehow "less than loving" in Obama's world, at least when it comes to Christians.

When it comes to Muslims rampaging across the globe mass-murdering Christians (among other infidels), Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon him, cannot even name the "less than loving" religion they are acting in the name of.  Moreover, he chooses to ignore the fact that the murdered victims were targeted because they were Christians (or Jews, or infidels) preferring to refer to them by the generic "folks", or "citizens", or simply ignoring the massacres altogether.

Have you ever heard Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon him, berate jihadist Muslims in a manner commensurate with their evil?  Or with even close to the disdain he shows for Christians? No, instead he berates Christians for the Crusades!

None of this matters to the majority of nominal Christians who voted for Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon him.  In this they are much like their Judeo-Christian coreligionists the Jews, who have a habit of ignoring danger until it's far too late.

Bitter Clingers vs. The Mullahs

If you are a law-abiding Christian who supports the second amendment, Barack Obama believes you are a terror threat, a "bitter clinger", and has you living under severe ongoing sanctions.  If you are a Shiite Mullah with intercontinental ballistic missiles, thousands of spinning centrifuges, plans for a nuclear bomb, who chants death to Israel, death to America, and is in the process of gaining regional hegemony, you just had your sanctions lifted.  Take a moment to let that sink in.

Remember when Barack Obama referred to rural gun owners as "bitter clingers", bitter over their economic malaise and clinging to their guns and their religion?  These are the people being sanctioned by Barack Obama in numerous and diabolical ways.  They are being forced to pay for abortions, their groups are discriminated against by the IRS, the DHS targets them as a terror threat, their gun shops are sanctioned by Operation Choke Point, their legal right to purchase ammunition is thwarted by government bulk purchases and bans,  they are being forced to perform services against their beliefs, and they are mocked and ridiculed by Obama and his minions.

Meanwhile, Iran, a totalitarian theocracy, the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism, the most egregious rogue nation on the planet, fomenter of regional chaos, persecutor of women, gays, and minorities, a nation which seeks to bring about global armageddon, which regularly chants death to Israel and death to America, just got a green light to keep all their existing nuclear infrastructure, all their intercontinental ballistic missiles, and got all their sanctions lifted in exchange for some vague promise to allow limited inspections by some guys in blue helmets sometime in the future.

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

(UPDATE:  Remember when Obama declared, "We are no longer a Christian nation..."?  Meanwhile, David Cameron just declared that Great Britain still is.  Below is a video compilation of the two statements by the two leaders.  Incidentally, the US is about 80% Christian, while Great Britain is about 60%.  [VIDEO - 21 seconds])

WTF?

Wilco to play Klan Rally?