Life is Change and Change is Inevitable

Life is change and change is inevitable. No, I am not talking about the change that Barack Obama sold an unsuspecting public during his campaign, although his brand of change has much to do with the changes taking place in all of our lives.

Business is struggling with the uncertainty of how successful this President will be in achieving his radical goals. Business thrives with the ability to make and achieve short and long term goals. The plans those goals are based on are how companies create business plans to obtain bank financing, to determine employee compensation and even employee levels. The Federal government, under this administration, has cast a shadow of doubt over the nation and has forced American businesses to become dangerously reactionary instead of confidently focused.

My focus must now be sharpened on reacting appropriately in the face of so many dangers. If we cannot plan for the future, we must now create the dynamic infrastructure to allow us meet daily challenges quickly and effectively. I cannot serve two masters. The well being of friends and their families depend heavily upon on my ability to remain attentive to the demands of our business and I cannot devote the time and attention that demands and continue to write a daily blog.

As with any muscle, the Constitutional amendments that protect us all must be routinely exercised or fall prey to atrophy. I still believe in the need for the Vigilance Project, especially now that our most sacred first amendment rights are under assault, but I can no longer maintain the quality of my work here and in business without one or the other suffering. I had to make a choice.

Effectively immediately, The Vigilance Project will be a weekly publication with new posts being offered for review every Monday. I apologize for the absence of new materials over the past three weeks but other matters had to be dealt with.

Thank you for your patience.

Paul

Reagan Was The Real President of Hope and Change

There are so many assaults on one’s senses today, where can you reasonably begin without feeling that you’ve left something out? For a President that promised hope, I don’t think I have ever seen an atmosphere as thick with hopelessness as I see in America today. Even during the darkest days of the Carter administration when American hostages were being held in Iran and the economy was in turmoil, people still believed there was something that could be done with the right leader at the helm.

Maybe that is where Reagan really made his mark. People not only believed in his abilities, but because of his inspiration we could believe in our own abilities as a nation again. The hostages held in Iran for nearly four-hundred and fifty days were released as Reagan took the oath of office which we took as a clear indication that the world knew this President was not going to allow America to be disgraced by petty dictators and radical theocracies. The economy rebounded as Reagan released the restraints of regulation and the shackles of punitive taxation; the military took on the shine and precision of well oiled and meticulously cared for machine and our cities began to shed the decay after decades of neglect.

Critics would later criticize Reagan for quadrupling the National Debt but the numbers speak for themselves. Under Reagan’s policies, revenues to the Treasury had tripled. Not because of tax increases but because of the economic expansion brought on by tax relief that rewarded entrepreneurs for the risks they took reinvesting in America. The debt did quadruple but only because of congressional fiscal mismanagement which according to OMB records, spent $1.34 for every new dollar in revenue the treasury collected. Reagan continually asked for the line-item veto to enable him to eliminate the pork that bloated every spending bill but that was something Congress would not grant to Reagan. In the end, if Reagan wanted the appropriations he felt were critical to the nation’s well being, then he had to sign the bills and accept the additional spending Congress had irresponsibly sewn into them.

The line item veto was eventually granted to President Clinton in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which he signed into law and put to the test at least eighty-one times throughout eleven pieces of legislation. We will never know the full value of the line item veto as it was struck down by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in February of 1998. That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in June of that year. Similar legislation was requested by President George W. Bush in 2006 but failed to pass a vote in the Senate. A recent move to reinstate the line item veto was begun by Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Senator Russ Feingold in 2009, but never gained the support it needed to move forward. So much for the conscience of Congress.

After Reagan’s second term, the National Debt had climbed to $3.2 trillion dollars which represented 55% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, inflation had dropped from 13.9% under Jimmy Carter, to 4.67% when Regan left office in 1989. When 1990 began, we had a six-hundred ship navy, an air force that guaranteed superiority in any theater it would be tested and the best equipped and trained military that the world had ever seen. The economy was vibrant with every indicator showing steady gains. The Soviet Union was straining under the weight of trying to compete with capitalism in an open arms competition and would fail only a year later. From every gauge I use to measure success, it appears that America got an awful lot in return for its three trillion dollar investment.

I truly believe that Ronald Reagan will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidents this country had ever had the good fortune to elect. That is, unless the same revisionists that have slandered Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus have the opportunity to re-write his accomplishments as well. Beyond the economic and military legacy he left, I still insist that his greatest gift to this nation was the faith he instilled in us. He spoke from the heart and I can’t remember a time that I had cause to question his words. He was truly, the “Great Communicator”. Is there anyone under the age of forty that doesn’t recall the challenge he shouted out in Berlin? “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” echoed through the hearts and minds of the world. Is there anyone that doubted his sincerity as he eulogized the crew of the ill-fated Challenger spacecraft? For all his critics, was there anyone that has ever doubted his loyalty and love for the United States?

What has changed? I remember when I was a boy, we went to the World’s Fair and the biggest attraction was the “World of Tomorrow”. We clamored for a glimpse into an amazing future and the wonders that technology and innovation promised us. We saw the Space Program grow from a single man perched precariously atop what was in fact, a ballistic missile, to the towering Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon and back. Movies like “2001 a Space Odyssey” took us to explore the outer planets and Carl Sagan’s documentary “Cosmos” introduced us to the wonders of the Universe. Technological advances had taken the cords off our phones and put the power of computers on our desk tops. To all appearances, the promises of the future were coming true. But what did we give our children?

It began with the television shows of the late 1980’s. As if Hollywood were revolting against Reagan for ruining their vision of utopia as capitalism rebounded and communism fell, the youth were targeted with one show after another. Father didn’t know best anymore, now parents were portrayed as witless idiots while their children kept the family on track. Actually, that began back in the ‘70s but those shows were directed at adults in an attempt to show them the evil of their bigoted and selfish ways. This was different. These were shows for kids, about kids. Then the disaster movies came; the post apocalyptic adventures of Mad Max and Robo-Cop. One film after another that told our young adults that their future would be a barren wasteland in which survival itself, was their only job. Now we have the “environment-gone-wild” movies where the adults have finally destroyed the planet and now mother earth was revolting against us.

No wonder our kids are disillusioned. No wonder they have no interest in school or responsibility. After all, why bother? The earth is doomed and according to the latest big screen calamity, we won’t make it past 2012 anyway. Now they are completing the picture by telling school children that the earth is in peril because of global warming. Oops! I meant Climate Change. Ever since the data has been showing a cooling trend they changed the name or people might actually question the science behind the claims. Why would anyone want to do this to our children?

The only reason I can think of is to complete the work of demoralization that began decades ago. Those misguided students of socialist doctrine that have now become the teachers, still believe that utopia lies just beyond the greed of capitalism. If the youth can be shaped early enough then it isn’t just a thought, it is a core belief; nearly a religion. The climate crisis is being presented to them in such a way that we don’t have the luxury of thinking about what to do. We must follow the only clear path and that is the complete reversal of our industrial society or we face certain doom. I intend to take that apart tomorrow piece by piece but first there is a more pressing need.

Despite everything we are being told, there is hope. Sane and reasonable actions can bring America out of financial crisis but it will take hard work, a lot more Reagan Republicans and solid capitalistic principals. We can ill afford more progressives in our government regardless of whether their names are suffixed with a “D”, an “R” or an “I”. Those principals have already given us a national debt that is about to top twelve-trillion dollars, which is 98% of the GDP. For perspective, the next largest debtor nation is China and their debt is at 23.5% of their GDP. Our greatest challenge is that the progressives in Congress coupled with the Marxists in the White House have placed America up for sale. It is critical that nothing passes this legislative session until the system of checks and balances are safely restored.

Most important is the time you invest with your children. Restore their sense of wonder for the future and encourage a courageous desire to explore the unknown. Give them the knowledge and hope that their future is not written for them but by them. Empower them with free thought and for God’s sake, break down the rote memorization of social doctrine that the left has been brainwashing them with. Be understanding; they have been using our children’s worst fears to obtain their devotion. You must be their “Reagan”. You must give them the hope and faith that Reagan gave you and your words must have the same weight of truth because above all else, that is really what made Reagan the great communicator.

Paul

Progressive Arrogance - The Lights Are On But the Rats Aren't Running

I suppose if there is a bright light on the horizon it is the fact that important discussions on the direction of our nation are finally taking place. The actions of government since the election of Barack Obama have sent a clear message across the country that this is the year we must act to restore our Constitution or there very well may be no Constitution to restore. As November approaches, we may end up thanking President Obama; not for his agenda, but for his arrogance. The Progressive movement saw in Obama, a President that would end their wait and take bold action to finish the work begun by American Socialists during the early years of the twentieth century. The end result is today’s Progressives are so emboldened by President Obama that they are standing out in the open for a change and attempting to force transformative change upon an unwilling society.

Saul Alinsky made it clear in his book “Rules for Radicals” that an open attempt to force major change would be met with harsh opposition. His tactics called for subterfuge and infiltration to gain the advantage over an unwilling public. He strategized that by looking and sounding like Middle America, one could guide political conversations and eventually gain support for a whole host of Socialist programs by cloaking them in a false sense of urgency or compassionate need. Well, since the election of Obama the cloak has been lifted and the light of day is shining on the most massive and immediate shift towards Socialism ever attempted by the left. The resistance Alinsky predicted certainly came as expected but with an overwhelming Democratic majority in the House and Senate, Progressives didn’t concern themselves with the outcry of concerned Americans as they pushed forward.

Some have been uncharacteristically vocal about their intentions. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), said the so-called “comprehensive” healthcare bill was now going to be followed by much more legislation. She added that it is really more about diet than diabetes indicating that Americans have surrendered more than their freedom where the purchase of healthcare insurance is concerned and may soon be subject to government interference in what they eat and how they live.

John Dingell (D-MI) said in a recent interview with Paul W. Smith “The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people." Mr. Dingell doesn’t say what kind of control he is talking about but it is clear that this bill is about far more than the access to affordable healthcare that they sold it as.

Max Baucus (D-MT) was interviewed by CSPAN as the Senate voted on the reconciliation package. Appearing disheveled and sounding tired, Baucus may have spilled more than he planned because his comments finally admitted what many of us had feared; that the healthcare bill had less to do with health than it did with some warped Progressive idea of Social Justice. Baucus rambled before the cameras “Too often, much of late, the last couple three years the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.”

So a healthcare bill that was sold to the American people as being designed to address the problem of thirty million Americans that could not afford healthcare insurance and would have the additional benefit of reducing the cost of insurance for employers, the Federal government and average citizens, suddenly has a myriad of new purposes that were never discussed or disclosed until it was already signed by the President. Now that it is actually law, they are willing to tell us that in addition to forcing everyone to buy health insurance, it will control diet, it will control us and it will fulfill the Socialist dream of stealing the earnings of those that create wealth to fund entitlements given to those that merely consume wealth.

To the many of us that actually took the time to look past the campaign rhetoric of Barack Obama and research the man himself; this comes as no surprise. Most of this was already out there well before his bid for the Presidency. He had always supported a universal, national healthcare system; he said that he did not believe in reparations for slavery because in his own words “reparations do not go far enough” and he said that “the Constitution was a document of negative values because it only said what the government could not do to you”.

Obama admitted in his own book and in his own words “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists." Even the photograph that has been widely circulated of his days as a college professor contained more proof than we needed. It shows professor Obama at the blackboard adding detail to a chart taken directly from Alinsky’s book. Now why would someone that claimed to be a centrist late in his campaign for President be teaching Marxist economic principals taken directly from a book written by an icon of Progressive radicalism?

I think Reverend Al Sharpton said it all when he admitted in an interview with Fox news "First of all, then we have to say the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama. Let's not act as though the president didn't tell the American people…the president offered the American people health reform when he ran. He was overwhelmingly elected running on that and he has delivered what he promised." I’m sure that revelation comes as a shock to all the people that voted for hope and change and had not considered that Socialism was one of Obama’s campaign promises.

Despite two years of candidate Obama’s rhetoric, hope and change are awfully hard to find right now. Nearly 80% of Americans fear the economy is on the verge of collapse and even though the President promised new focus on economic stability and jobs during the State of the Union Address, Barack “Nero” Obama is still fiddling around with healthcare, immigration reform and cap and trade as the Federal government under his leadership racks up a second straight year of record budget deficits; adding three trillion dollars to our unsustainable debt. In fact, Obama’s deficits are nearly four times higher than the deficits that he roasted Bush for during the campaign. Don’t get me wrong…I am not defending the spending policies of the Bush administration. Part of the reason Obama was elected was that Bush personified a Republican Party that had turned its back on conservative values and not only lost the trust of independent voters but lost the attention of the Republican base as well.

As far as change is concerned, there is little that Obama can claim there either. He said he would unite Washington with a new sense of bipartisanship and then pursued an agenda so radical that he was barely able to get it past moderate Democrats in his own Party. Every closed door meeting and corrupt deal he brokered to gain passage of healthcare led people to question “where is the change?” Every story of waste, abuse and cronyism associated with his massive stimulus bill caused people to ask “where is the change?” Of course, Democrats in Congress and in the Liberal press didn’t help his case when all they would offer is how many times these strategies were used by Republicans in the past. Well, if Obama is going to continue the same tactics used by the Bush administration; again, “where is the change?”

The change is there all right; it’s just not what he promised or people expected. As the statements made by Obama and his Progressive friends add to the tally of Socialist rants, those of us that warned about their intentions from the start suddenly don’t look as crazy as we did in January of 2009.

Paul

A Thanksgiving Message from Our President

I must say I was surprised when I received a Holiday Greeting from President Barack Obama. I've sent a number of communiques to the White House regarding my concerns and they were not very complimentary but I guess that automatically earns you a place on the Holiday e-mail list.

Considering his e-mail contained requests for my continued support and hard work to help him bring "change" to America, it is painfully apparent that my original messages for him were either never read or grossly misunderstood.

Still, I could not miss the opportunity to respond to this as much of his message was lacking any sense of reality. Considering what we all know this man has and has not done; I decided to post both letters to the blog today to bring some attention to the dream state our President obviously lives in...

Paul --

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.

American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.

Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.

So tomorrow, I'll be giving thanks for my family -- for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.

But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.

The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.

We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.

So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.

It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.

In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.

You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished -- and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.

So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.

With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,

President Barack Obama

And now for the official reply....

My Dear President Obama,

My family and I will also spend Thanksgiving Day humbly giving thanks for all the blessings that God has bestowed upon us. The treasure of family and the shared ideals of our religious and moral beliefs are the glue that binds us together. Among the things that we give thanks for are the selfless acts of our military that sacrifice more than comfort and a holiday meal to insure the safety and security of our Nation. These brave soldiers risk all for us and while they remain constantly in our prayers what they truly need is a Commander in Chief that has the courage to provide them with the means to fulfill their mission safely and successfully. Vacuous platitudes will not shield them from the jeopardy that they face in the absence of meaningful leadership.

Sadly many Americans work two jobs to put food on the table and educate their children but many more wish for the opportunity to work at one job; an opportunity that has been denied to them because despite your every assurance and belief, government cannot create wealth or employment. In fact, government is the antithesis to economic development; much as any parasite, government consumes, it does not create. The best thing government can do to create jobs is to withdraw from its oppressive interference in the free market and allow business to do what it does best.

Yes, I recall that cold winter day in Springfield when you launched you campaign for the Presidency; from Bill Ayers living room I believe. However, it does not seem like a lifetime ago, it has been more like an eternity in Dante’s seventh level of hell. Fortunately, I can claim at least some level of participation in all you have accomplished which Saturday Night Live succinctly pointed out, has been absolutely nothing. I intend to continue my mission to educate as many Americans as I can reach to keep them informed as to the true intent of your “fundamental change” for America. Your socialist doctrines are doomed to failure because they require two things you do not have. First is the courage to do anything that is not hidden behind closed doors or the cover of night. The second and most important is the faith of the American people. We do not believe you and we have no faith in your word. I've got a much better idea...let us keep our money and you can keep the "change".

Sincerely,

Paul M. Magel Sr.

P.S. Have you ever contacted Hawaii about getting that birth certificate issue cleared up? You know….the one that actually has a seal and signature on it.


I thought you might like a look at the messages that are possible when only one person takes the time to read them. I have not forgotten the Holiday and our reasons to be thankful. My description of my family's celebration of Thanksgiving was from the heart and I know that if you are reading this, you understand what I mean and are enjoyng the same revenence for the day that we are.

Please accept my hopes and prayers for a blessed Thanksgiving for all of you and your families. As much fear as we may have for the future of this nation, we also have much to give thanks and praise for. God Bless you all and have Happy Thanksgiving.

Paul