Stop Pulling the Wagon

LIVING IN AN IDIOCRACY

First, and in full disclosure, I must admit that I was once a smoker.  I gave up smoking  many years ago when my daughter who was some eight years old, looked up at me with those beautiful, big brown eyes she inherited from her mother, and said:  “Daddy, will you quit smoking for me”.  I did.

So, I don’t come to this discussion with perfectly clean hands, but, the United States Army disciplined into me that a smoker does not throw their cigarette butts on the ground.  If no ash tray is available you “field strip” them and put them in your pocket till a proper waste receptacle is at hand.

Having said these things, I heard on the news yesterday that California is in the process of prohibiting the discarding of filtered cigarette butts.  Just the filtered kind.  The proposed fine for doing so would be $500 per incident.  It seems that the genius’s in charge of this scheme have figured out that used cigarette filters are a health hazard. 

But, not to worry, if you are homeless or live in one of California’s homeless encampments it will still be legal to urinate in merchants doorways,  defecate on/in the public sidewalks and gutters, dispose of used narcotics needles and all manner of other trash anywhere, at will,  with no penalty or fine. 

It will also be permissible to pilfer and  steal from nearby stores (as long as you keep the theft on any one trip to below $950) with only the possibility of a misdemeanor ticket.  And, by the way, their shopping carts are free.

In addition, rioting, looting, burning and destruction of public and private property will still be ignored legally as long as you do it in the name of a “Progressive” or “Liberal” cause as championed by the main stream media. 

Under our current leadership, California is becoming a trash ridden, Insane Asylum without the usual rules, order and discipline you find in such a place.  It is like we have put the residents of such an establishment in charge of maintaining public law and order.

I am of the opinion that if America really wants to defeat whatever enemies it has, all we need do is export to those enemies California’s brain dead Legislature and Governor, Gavin Newsome.  Then somehow put California’s leaders in charge of our enemies economies and legal system.  That ought to do them in. 

Bob Bandy – January 2022

To be clear from the beginning, I believe Black Lives Matter.  Not an issue for me.  What is an issue is the integrity of the Black Lives Matter Organization.  

Read On

Soros – Obama – Biden – Harris

From an internet posting

What connection does the Black Lives Matter Organization have to do with the above?

It’s all about manipulation. 

Once the Black Lives Matter Organizers,  including their Marxist Leader manipulated our government and major corporations into meeting their demands and contributing Billions of dollars into their “Foundation”.  They have since, for the most part, seemed to have just faded into the shadows. 

Oh, there are a few die-hards showing up as supporters for mostly George Soros funded ANTIFA riots and other destruction in places like Portland, Seattle, Milwaukee etc. for public demonstrations, damage and other devastation. 

But it seems that once the founder(s) acquired their palatial homes, things have quieted down.  Can anyone point to what changes the now well funded BLM organization has made in the tattered lives of the residents of the hell hole ghettos of Chicago or other major inner city slums?

It seems to happen over and over and we never learn.  Huge amounts of dollars are either coerced or pledged with good intentions by government and major donors, such as corporations, for what is universally accepted as good causes and yet very little of that money produces noticeable results.

Some years ago Jesse Jackson and his “Rainbow Push Coalition” extorted Millions and Millions of dollars from corporations with very little in the way of tangible results.

People like Bill and Hillary Clinton have turned massive charitable spending into an art form for enriching themselves.

When Port-Au-Prince in Haiti was devastated by a massive 7.0 Earthquake in 1993 over 13 Billion Dollars was pledged to help rebuild the City and surrounding area.  Several Billion of these dollars were “flushed”, and I use the word intentionally,  through the Clinton Foundation to rebuild housing and infrastructure in Port-Au-Prince.  Very little housing was rebuilt and the infrastructure remains a shambles to this day but the money disappeared into the “black hole” of the Clinton Foundation.  One can’t help but wonder how many of these dollars ended up, directly or in-directly in the “Pleasure Palaces” of folks like Jeffrey Epstein?  

So where have all the Billions of dollars donated to BLM gone?  Or did the Organization just use the riots, burnings and threats of violence as a way to manipulate huge amounts of cash into their coffers for the private use of the leaders?

Your government does much the same thing.  And government does it on steroids.  A large amount of  those dollars that you work so hard for and must spend for your daily living is extorted from you in seen and unseen taxes.  An unforgiveable amount of this ends up in the pockets of the “Ruling Class”, Bureaucrats and their supporters while you are taking out a second mortgage on your over taxed home to buy a tank of over taxed gasoline  for your over taxed automobile so you can get to your job and pay more taxes.

Criminals hold you up with a gun.  Organizations like BLM, The Clinton Foundation and Government do it by manipulation and corruption, even coerced authority.  As the saying goes:  You can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig.

Bob Bandy – November 2021

I became acquainted with this mans writings and works a few days ago.  I agree with his thoughts and words and could not say them any better so I will not try, simply reprint them here from the website I found them on. 

    https://thefederalist.com/author/delanosquires/

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Delano Squires

“there is a “narcissistic classroom cosplay that involves two groups in the elite, privileged class: White liberals seeking absolution for sins that they didn’t commit; and Black liberals seeking empathy for injustices that they didn’t endure.”

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photo: poigraem.net

I wrote the following article some three and a half years ago (March 2018) under the title “Tipping Point”.  At the time I felt the United States was losing its way and approaching a time when the freedoms we had all taken for granted would be lost to a “dark time” of national insolvency (bankruptcy), hyper-inflation, tyranny, socialism and eventually communism as we see it ruling places like Cuba;  where there is a small ruling class of brutal dictators and the rest of the population living in abject poverty and misery.  In my mind slavery in all but name.  It is happening here, now, in real time.  The “Tipping Point” being a majority population that believes in a “Santa Claus” central government and is too blind to see what is happening and no longer able to take care of themselves.  Have we reached a “point of no return” on this road to destruction?  

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TIPPING POINT

“When the public discovers they can vote themselves money from the public treasury, the [American] experiment will be over”-Tocqueville 1838.

Along with a good many other people I feel despair when I see a disaster happening right in front of me and I can do nothing to stop it.

One example is a friend who becomes addicted to a drug that will destroy their lives.  You can see it happening but no matter what you say or try to do, they will not turn away from the addiction.  It becomes the most important thing in their life.

This happened in my own life with a friend who became addicted to alcohol.  We tried to help him over an extended period of time but the addiction was too much and ultimately alcohol meant more to him than his life.

I have heard that “Meth” (methamphetamine), sometimes called “Crystal Meth”, is so addictive that as high as 99% of first time users will become addicted.  “Street Wise” Drug Pushers will give away “free” samples knowing they are creating a future paying clientele for their life destroying commodity.

Anything that creates an addiction also creates a form of slavery.

National Parks have signs that say “Do Not Feed The Animals”.  The reason for the signs is that they know that if you feed the animals many (or most) of them can become addicted to the food provided for them “free” and will lose the ability to feed themselves in the wild. 

I am not the only one seeing this happening in our country.

The United States is divided into opposing forces in the quest for the hearts and minds as well as the future of the American people. 

One group feels that American citizens will ultimately be happier, with greater self respect and knowledge of the real  joy of freedom,  if they are independent of the need to have government take care of them and prefer the pride of taking care of themselves with government restricted to the role of providing a National Defense and Public Safety – primarily protection from foreign enemies and domestic criminals – along with Emergency Services plus care for the Biblical “Widows and Orphans”.

The second group, much like the “Street Wise Drug Pushers” seeks to achieve power by first creating and then feeding the addiction of a voter base to government provided “free” programs to provide for their daily needs.  This group, either unwittingly, or under the misguided notion of charity (using other peoples money) seek power for themselves and in the process to build a dependent, addicted class of “clientele” to the governmental “pushers” of  dependency.

This second group will do anything to grow their power by creating a majority voter base.  Either by conversion of existing needy groups or importing new clients for supposedly “free” government services. Their plan is to achieve, maintain and expand a majority voter base to keep them in power and control.  Power and control being this groups own addiction and drug of choice. 

Which group is achieving the greatest number of new voters?

What I see, fear and observe is a greater and greater number of people who are, by choice or self inflicted circumstances, unable to care for themselves and are willing to become slaves to a more and more dominate and corrupt State and Federal Government holding out a false promise of security based on debt and the confiscation, often at gun point, of “other peoples property and money”. 

Government confiscation of personal property, including land for redistribution is happening in South Africa as this is being written.  Is the United States a candidate for something similar?

I am very much afraid that we have already passed the “tipping point” and the majority have become the “glassy eyed” drones of the “pushers” of government dependency.

Makes that cabin in the woods look pretty good.

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” Thomas Jefferson

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Bob Bandy – October 2021

seedkin.com

I make no claim of being a prophet.  Three years ago – October 2018 – I posted the following article – “The Garden” – for the first time. That article was based on something I had read some 20+ years earlier from another author (name forgotten) who predicted what is happening today all around us.  It was one of the most shared, copied and requested articles I have ever written.  The original article is copied below the divider.

Unfortunately what was foreseen in the original article has come to pass.  We live in a badly fractured land filled with mistrust, corruption, anger, finger pointing, hate and lies. 

I have been tormented with the realization that there is little that I can do to “fix” what is wrong in Washington D.C. or Sacramento or so many of the broken cities around the country. My readers know that I have written about these issues for some 12 years.  While I receive much appreciated comment and agreement, little has changed in what has become  a downward spiral that I witness continuing.  I don’t have the power to correct what is happening.  

I vote for change and nothing changes.  I have no representation at either a State or Federal level to Champion my Values.

The one area where I can make a difference is in my own life.  I can practice what I believe and try to plant seeds of hope in my own sphere of life.  My family, friends, neighbors, where I worship and those strangers I come in contact with in the normal course of living.  I can demonstrate that I am not a racist, or a “whatever-phob”.  I can tell the truth, keep my word, help a neighbor or friend.  I can practice what I believe, not just in words but by what I do.  

If enough of us do this we can carve out a space or sanctuary around us that resembles, on perhaps a smaller scale, the world I grew up in and cherished.

I can’t fix the mess in Washington or Sacramento but I can work on fixing “me”.  I can plant seeds of hope in my own little garden.

So, in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets.  Matthew 7:12

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Here is the original article

THE GARDEN

Many years ago, twenty or more, I remember reading about a time in the future when the writer believed the United States might very well “Balkanize” itself.  That is turn into a fatally fractured land and people, where reconciliation into any kind of unity becomes impossible.  Or, in other words, goodbye “E Pluribus Unum”.

A people who become so divided along idealogical as well as cultural, religious, political, and ethnic identities that a unified effort for the “greater good of all” becomes impossible. 

A time when our national diversity, instead of being our unifying strength, is instead used as a weapon of destruction.

Elements within our previously “United” government and society become fortresses of non-negotiable demands.  These elements threaten the total destruction of our way of life unless their specific demands are granted.  They will use any means to achieve their goals.  Violence, fear, intimidation, destruction of families, corruption on a national scale and any other means to get their way.  

Following the leadership of writers such as Saul Alinsky and funded by anti-American zealots such as George Soros, these elements seek to impose a society which is in direct conflict with the values and institutions envisioned by our Founders and treasured by most.  For their agenda, co-existence is not an option.

In the process they are planting a garden, the rows of this garden contain the seeds of Lies, Hate, Anger, Rage and Bitterness.  Tell me, what do you harvest if these are the seeds you plant and cultivate?  

They have also infiltrated and corrupted many previously thought incorruptible government agencies and departments like the FBI and Department of Justice,  just to name two.

These,and other Agencies and Departments have become  populated too often by self serving un-elected demigods wedded to the principle that they are entitled to lifetime pay and benefits and are not answerable to the taxpayers.  What is now being referred to by many as the “Deep State”.  

If the average citizen did the things these bureaucrats are allowed to do, the citizen would find him or herself in prison while the government employee or elected official seems to have an endless “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. 

Cross them in any way and they have the power and the taxpayer paid for resources to hound you, bankrupt you and ruin your life just for the fun of it.

I don’t think of Washington D.C. as a Swamp.  It is better defined  as a “Cesspool”.

Original Article – October 2018

Bob Bandy – September 2021

Homeless camp downtown Sacramento next to Steinberg sign.

(Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)

Almost two years ago Sacramento, California Mayor Darrell Steinberg and the City Council approved a 22.5 Million Dollar one year plan for Sacramento’s homeless.  The plan was to provide housing and beds for some 750 homeless.  (Search “Tweedledum & Tweedledee” on this site) At the time I calculated that the cost per proposed homeless recipient to be $29,605 per person assisted and questioned if any of these decision makers owned a calculator.

“Mayor Steinberg also approved tiny apartments in a renovated old downtown hotel, which cost more than $445,000 per unit for about 250 square feet of living space, as the Globe reported. This project only benefitted the union contractors.” (see California Globe Aug. 6, 2021)

The homeless problem has continued to grow worse, not better.

Now Major Steinberg and the City Council has approved a 100 Million Dollar plan on a unanimous City Council vote.

This plan is targeting about 9,000 people living on the streets and byways of downtown Sacramento.

“The Council will authorize an inventory of sites with enough capacity to match the scope of the problem,” the mayor’s office said in a news release. “In addition to specific sites, the plan identifies strategies to tackle homelessness that include motel conversions, increased housing voucher usage and scattered site housing. The plan also includes the intent to create a larger “campus” model that could serve 350 people,” according to the news release.  (KCRA News)