Long have I hoped that the government of Justin Trudeau in Canada would have listened and heeded the voices of the truckers, farmers, and citizens of Canada long before writing on this topic. Unfortunately, Trudeau chooses to be tone-deaf to all voices but the ones in his head and those pouring money into his political coffers. Trudeau’s craven, cowardly, and corrupted government remains a disgusting and deleterious mark against the history of freedom. The history books will mark him the “Low-Water Mark” in Canada’s history, as I believe the people of Canada are fed up! Time will tell.
Unfortunately, Canada’s closest neighbor to the south is in just as poor hands and is acting just as incorrigibly! Yes, little Joey Biden, I am talking about you! Using the Department of Homeland Security to quash the American version of the Canadian #FreedomConvoy is so detestable as to rank with Kristallnacht in Fascist Germany! I do not make this comparison lightly. Using the government to silence the speech of others is WRONG!
Trudeau, are you listening? Using the tools (Police Officers) to steal fuel from truckers is the definition of theft and is illegal! Encouraging those in government, who have always longed to be a Storm Trooper to act in a manner that removes liberty and freedom while threatening the lives and livelihoods of others, is NOT how to govern in any representative government. Trudeau, Biden, pay close attention; you are authoritarians and have broken the social contract inherent in your ability to govern. Lacking the authority to govern means your only way to escape is to leave power!
Israel regularly arrests old people who are not wearing masks in the name of “curbing the spread of COVID.” Australia is still rounding up people and putting them in camps for “public safety during COVID.” Taxing the unvaccinated, as proposed in Canada, and the vaccine mandates and COVID restrictions in every country is 100% anathema to good order and discipline. While also being questionable legally and inherently immoral and unethical. Yet, those in power want to cling to COVID as a “health emergency” to clutch impotently to government powers gotten through coercion and theft.
COVID is only the latest excuse for grabbing power that rightly belongs to the people, but the government lusts after. While some laws can be drafted to steal that power, other powers must be given to the government to abscond with zeal and self-righteousness. Consider the following, certainly not an all-inclusive list:
- Taxes – These are legislated government demands forcing citizens to pay for the privilege of living in a society governed by that government.
- Private Property – At least in a Constitutional Republic, personal property must be given away.
- Individual Health Choices – If you live in a representative government with socialized medicine, the government CAN dictate what goes into your body, as you do not have the right to control your health.
- Individual Health Choices – If you live in one of the few countries remaining without socialized medicine, you retain the right to decide. These governments are working overtime to steal this right from you, using incentives and legislation to remove your choice of governing your health.
Let’s say you do not like the vaccine mandates; in a socialized medicine country, the government says, “Tough! Take the jab!” Then use the power of Storm Trooper bureaucrats to ensure you do what they demand. In a non-socialized medicine country, the government is as powerful and refuses to be idle. As has been witnessed in America, the government continues to employ whatever means necessary to confuse, blind, and sow chaos to win the power to demand you get the jab. Lusting after power that rightly belongs to the electorate has become a game for the government, and insufficient numbers of people understand what is happening and the long-term effects. Worse, the enemies of freedom and liberty already know the long-term consequences and are salivating at the thought of controlling others for personal gain!
Pope Gregory I, around 600AD, provided the capital sins, cardinal sins, also known as the 7-Deadly Sins. Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride are the specific cardinal sins, whose curative opposites or virtues are: Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. Why do I believe people are fed up and ready to take action? All 7-Deadly Sins are in such power in the representative governments that no excuse can justify their continued existence. While simultaneously, anyone living by the 7-Virtues is castigated, derided, and excluded from power, being demonized and made into the enemy.
History has proved, multiple times, that when governments throw off all virtue and embrace the 7-Deadly Sins, that government is ripe for a hostile takeover. NO! In making this observation, I am NOT advocating violence for political purposes. Let’s be clear; change occurs without violence, sometimes. I hope for a violent free shift in direction in the global elected representative government crop. Still, the realist in me has long understood that weak people execute violence to protect what they deem as theirs. Trudeau and his ilk have already begun beating the drum calling for violence against the truckers assembled in Ottawa, and I hope and pray for a peaceful resolution. Australia and Israel have executed violence to protect the political pandemic and keep powers stolen. America is ordering violence against all who stand in opposition as the US Constitution is dismantled for private gain.
How does one know when authoritarians have forsaken all virtue?
Observing the 7-Deadly Sins is easy; observing virtue is a lot harder, but at the same time is easy, and a simple test exists to help further the observation. Look at their fruits; look at the results of the decisions, and judge for yourself the consequences. When was the last time a political leader admitted they were wrong, apologized, and then worked tirelessly to reverse course publicly? Did it take a judicial decision to initiate the process of repentance, or was the repentance process begun through self-realization? If a judge ordered repentance and an adjusting of course, did the person act immediately or slow walk, or worse, refuse to honor the judicial decision?
In my youth, I watched the Monica Lewinsky debacle with abhorrence! Watching President Bill Clinton use an apology, which wasn’t an apology, for political course correction and stave off impeachment proceedings sickened me! How many times has the same non-apology tactic worked? Let’s ask Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Governors Newsome, Grisham, and Whitmer, as well as countless others who have made non-apologies. Are the fruits of the 7-Deadly Sins and 7-Virtues apparent; maybe not; let’s use another example.
Currently, the United States is suffering under inflation not experienced in 40-years. While I fully believe Biden and his executive branch despots are to blame, not all of the blame rests upon Biden and his team of despots. The US Senate and especially the US House of Representatives are just as responsible and deserve to suffer from the fruits of their poor decisions. Under the US Constitution, the President is not in charge of the budget; the US House of Representatives controls the American Government’s checkbook. Speaker Pelosi is more responsible for the inflationary disaster in America, which is having a trickle-down effect globally, and thinks she can continue to skate because, in her opinion, “Americans are ignorant.” Look at the fruits of the government, and you will find all 7-Deadly Sins, but little to none of the 7-Virtues.
Let’s take a moment to revisit the 7-Virtues, which stand in stark and absolute opposition to the 7-Deadly Sins.
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- Faith – is defined as an action that inspires firm belief based upon confidence in authority and veracity (truth) of another, rather than upon one’s knowledge, reason, or judgment.
- Hope – is defined as possessing confidence (trust) that the action taken is possible and there is an expectation of succeeding, eventually.
- Charity – is all about actions that help others in need without caring for a reward.
- Justice – is a concept that encapsulates moral rightness (decency), conforming to a moral code from a desire, not from a third-party executing authority. Governing self is the first step in putting more justice into the world.
- Prudence – Acting without regard for self-interest, seeking knowledge from others, exercising caution and wisdom in practical matters, executing common sense in planning for the future, and being reserved in exercising authority.
- Temperance – is all about how one conducts their business in moderation, with self-restraint and care.
- Fortitude – is centered around strength of mind allowing a person to endure pain, adversity, and chastisement with courage and conviction.
Those who uphold and honor the 7-Virtues in their lives do not plasticize words. For example calling peaceful citizens gathered to importune the government for redress, terrorists, racists, and fascists. Leaders who desire to be honored and kept in office do not spend the public’s money like drunken sailors on a 3-day port visit. Elected representatives embody the 7-Virtues reflecting their commitment to living as an honor of the trust the public has invested in them. These leaders do not take bribes, sell access, and do not execute a lavish lifestyle paid for by big donors to the detriment of the electorate electing them to office.
Look carefully at the leaders elected and ask yourself, are they embodying the 7-Virtues or the 7-Deadly Sins? If they honor, through living the 7-Virtues, you are better off economically, and your children are not saddled by debt. However, the opposite is true if those political leaders embody the 7-Deadly Sins, which means there is nothing but trouble, pain, chaos, and the division imposed by the leaders to pit neighbor against neighbor, all leading to destruction.
How do we change the government? First, we, the citizens, embody the 7-Virtues, living better, learning, and choosing a different path. Second, we change how and who we elect to office. Third, we change the laws to protect our society from the vagrants, tyrants, and societal abusers to keep them from elected office: we, the citizens, control and own the government. We must remember this fact and then teach the elected representatives to respect us!
© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Words fail to describe how much I detest seeing the same abuses week-after-week, month-after-month, and year-over-year. To witness the disaster known colloquially as The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), as told from the Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG). Not merely witnessing but also being abused by the VA leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth.
Take a moment, read the full articles reporting these crimes, and ask yourself, have ALL the guilty parties been held accountable before the law, or are some parties noticeably missing? If you reach different conclusions, please note this in the comments, and let’s discuss. Show me your thinking, I want to learn!
While the above are not all the reports from the VA-OIG launching 2022, they present the bulk of the criticisms and reflect the need for greater scrutiny and improved leadership at the VA. More to the point, these represent the danger the American public is in from a runaway government that keeps biggering (with a nod to The Lorax and Dr. Seuss)! The VA is abusing your veteran neighbors, and you are paying for it. Doesn’t this stir in you feelings motivating to action? If not, please ask yourself why. Do veterans deserve to be abused relentlessly? Do you like being complicit in a crime perpetrated by bureaucrats, cheered on by elected officials, and paid for by your tax dollars and the future of your children through forced taxation and out-of-control debt? The choice is yours, I know my choice, and I WILL continue to resist the government atrocities every step of the way!
Eliadis, Hill, and Howlett (2005) edited a book, “Designing Government,” used in many different academic institutions to teach courses on government in the United States. The book and the authors are well known in academic circles, so when I discuss the findings in the book, I am not pulling information from an unknown, hardly read, obscure source. I wanted this made clear from the beginning, for recently, several media sources have tried to declare that the cost of government is inconsequential and does not hinder a country’s economic forecasts significantly. As I continuously state, draw your own conclusions.
Total social regulation costs for 1997 were $198 billion. Please note that this total does not include costs of regulations that totaled less than $100 million or regulations from independent agencies. There is a possibility that some agencies might have underestimated the costs of their rules. Thus, the $198 Billion is a guess, and the end total is probably much higher. Moreover, the estimate of $198 Billion is based upon educated guesswork performed and accepted by academics, legislation, and other banking regulations. Not included in the costs of regulation are the simple transfer costs of money inside the banking system itself, as these are not considered as costs of regulation.
The point is elementary; those who think they have power, bureaucrats in government employ, consider themselves authoritarians. These authoritarians have presumed to possess the audacity to control how they spend your money because their bosses have allowed them leniency through laziness and disinterest. Through a lack of scrutiny, the bureaucrat has become fat on power and must be placed upon a diet if a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” is to survive. Are you more aware of the problem? What will you do today and tomorrow to help fix the problem?
With a nod to Bill Engvall, let’s honestly discuss three complete holes in America where suicide by legislative fiat and executive stupidity has produced catastrophic failure. Let me be perfectly honest, if either of these states were a business, they would have been forced into receivership, broken up, sold for parts, and their leaders jailed for incompetency and felonious charges of malfeasance long ago! The charades have ended, the rose-tinted glasses are off, and frankly, the party is over, all the taxpayers are fleeing, and the businesses are closing shop and fleeing for healthier climates.
The time to awake and arise is now! The fight for liberty and freedom will be fought and won or lost in the American West. Sure, the coasts of America are well and truly infected. But, the fight for independence is not on the shores; it is right outside your doors. The media and politicians like to hyperventilate about the coasts, but the rural communities in the “Fly-Over” states are more important to liberty and freedom surviving than any other local in America. Awake and Arise!
Sometimes revisiting a topic is required to help promote urgency in learning. Other times revisiting a subject helps to broaden the mind to more of the problem. My intent in reviewing the topic of understanding is for both of these reasons. President Madison provides counsel that every American should be adhering to, regardless of political flavor, as the first policy in being a responsible citizen.
Afghanistan and the fraudulent President Biden have had me thinking about the Walmart effect over the last three days or so, and I cannot help but think there are some lessons to be discussed. More to the point, the lines of congruence between the Walmart effect and the current political situation possess the potential for correcting course and saving America. Not just America, but representative governments worldwide. The Walmart effect is a global pandemic more powerful and pernicious than COVID ever will be, and we need to at least recognize this truth.
Walmart has always competed on price. As if there was nothing else to compete upon. Lowest prices, regardless of the junk sold, price mattered more. Hammer the price to nothing in every aspect of the supply chain. Hammer the costs of doing business to lower costs to consumers. Cheapen and eliminate packaging, “helping the environment,” and reduce costs. Force suppliers and vendors to absorb traditional costs stores assumed, lowers costs, and increase profit margins. Everything in the Walmart model is about lowering consumer costs, and Walmart has been very successful at twisting arms and breaking heads to reduce costs.
Second, quality and service have disappeared in competition. Safeway, as a grocery store, has excellent service; but they cannot compete on service and quality because the Walmart effect has changed these two adjectives to be synonymous with higher consumer costs. Believe it or not, the grocery store model has not changed in the last 200 years. Walmart changed society to believe everything was about competing on consumer costs, and the rest of the competition has played along. Want to know a secret, you as a consumer are being deceived into believing that Walmart has the best prices, but when quality is added to the picture, Walmart is selling you junk.
On the third point in the Walmart effect, politicians spend enormous amounts of effort to use marketing science to play upon emotions to get and keep an audience. The same marketing science employed to keep you in a retailer making purchases keeps you “connected” to your political party. Worse, because there are familial traditions in being one political party or another, there remain tighter ties to a political party. These strings are played to the fullest to bind you ever tighter, so you do not use conscious thinking when voting the party line.
Believe it or not, on social media, I have witnessed people advocating for Carbon Taxes for the United States and Canada in more than one or two posts. Mentally shocked, stunned, and intrigued, but not wholly surprised by this turn of events, I have been reading some of the literature, the websites, and the emotional pleas. May I congratulate the producers of this literature on the masterful job of marketing ideas anathema to liberty as espoused by these materials?
In a scheme fit to fully infuriate patients and pad wallets, the VA providers prescribe medications; generally, the medication provided is a cheap knock-off, a generic mixture, or drugs with rebate incentives where the hospital providers are “encouraged” to use one drug more than another and the “higher cost” is rebated back the hospital in a profit-sharing scheme. All these schemes and more play out at your local hospital and VA facilities, so please do not think this is industry-specific to the government. However, as proved by the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) reports, t improper controls and governance wastes the rebates, harms patients, and still cannot get the programs correct.
I have three prescriptions hindered by the pharmacy practices of the VA, where the knock-off drug is useless, the mixture of the medication does not do as well as the original medicines prescribed, and where the cost of an ingredient has changed one medication to another and made the prescription less effective to the point where more medication is required for less overall effectiveness. If the patient has to take more medication, does that mean that the cost savings never happened or that the cost savings were pushed down to the customer? Does the patient even have a voice in the pharmaceutical decisions? Why?
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The following remains a case where there are too many lawyers and not enough truth to ascertain what in the world is going on. If you have further insight, please weigh in. “
The VA-OIG conducted a 
The 
What was the desired intent of this despicable piece of self-righteous trash? I have had three calls to date from two different VISN’s and VAMC’s requesting me to get vaccinated, neigh demanding me to get vaccinated. Yet, the VA cannot even answer simple questions about my concerns for the vaccination, including future sterility, why vaccinated people are only catching the DELTA variant, how the vaccine interacts with medications already being taken, the neurological issues and heart issues from receiving the vaccine, and the list goes on and on! But the VA wants to send me a letter talking down to me and my intelligence trying to promote the vaccine and claiming this is like serving in the US Military again!
Every one of you should be ashamed! Each one who has sat by and watched your governor or president be the flaccid media mouthpiece of cheap science, faux interest in public health, and have voted to create inflation, destroy businesses, livelihoods, and communities, while cheering the destruction of law and order, you also need to be held accountable for your culpability in this most disgusting and distressing event, COVID-19! I absolutely require your retirement packages, repayment of all funds, and a dishonorable discharge from public service for every one of you! Why have so few of you even asked the simple questions regarding COVID; for example:
COVID
Simply put, a sales tax holiday is a day, usually just a single day when the government allows you to purchase goods and services without paying a sales tax on the receipt. However, all the other sales taxes are still built into the cost of the good or service; just on this special day, the final receipt sales tax is not charged. Sales tax holidays are one of the most inefficient and ineffective methods of “sharing unanticipated government money surpluses with the taxpaying public.”
For example, Florida in 2021 held a “
I agree, mightily, sales taxes are progressive, which makes them a poor tax, to begin with. Adding sales tax holidays make a sales tax worse! Yet, they are sold to the public as if they were the best thing since sliced white bread. While it may be true that taxes are the cost of society, there are better ways to collect taxes, and there are infinitely better ways to spend taxpayer dollars than the profligate waste we see happening daily!
DNC-Consulting 