Looking at North Korea and Into Our Future

President Obama was visiting the DMZ in South Korea and looking through binoculars into North Korea. He said it was like looking 50 years into the past. I can't help but wonder if looking into the past in North Korea is the same thing we'd see if we looked into the future of the United States.

I know that might sound a bit dramatic but our government is becoming much more involved in our daily lives with each passing year. We lose more freedom and choice a little bit a time over and over again. The government is involved in our insurance, mortgages, jobs, vehicles, food choices, education, and the list goes on. It would probably be difficult to find something that the government is not involved. You might be asking yourself how that could put us into the past. I don't think it would put us into the past but I'm sure it's dragging us down and keeping us out of the future. 

The federal government spent $500 billion of our money on the solar firm Solyndra. That money is now gone. Had it been left up to the private sector to spend that money, it could have gone to further research and development into things that people actually need or want. I would love to have a solar set up on my house. Sounds great. But the technology isn't quite ready yet. When it is ready, the free market will know it and people will buy it. Until then, the government should quit spending our money on the pet projects of those in charge or we will find ourselves living in the past of the countries that have moved on with technologies at the right time.

Supreme Court Rules Against EPA

The Supreme Court ruled against the EPA in a case involving an Idaho couple trying to build a house on their land. The short version of the story (long version here) is that they had permits from the county to build the house. A county owned ditch was clogged with trees and backing water up on their property. They got permission from the county to clear the ditch and the water went away. The EPA prosecuted the husband in criminal court for destroying a wetland and he was found not guilty by a jury. After the EPA lost in criminal court, they came after him civilly with a threat of fines if he didn't restore the land to its state prior to him clearing the blockage caused by the county. The family tried to get a hearing with the EPA but were told that individuals could not appeal compliance orders. They were also told they couldn't file a lawsuit until the EPA tried to enforce the compliance order and the fines would continue to grow. Once the enforcement order was filed, they could sue. The fines could have been in the millions by then. The suit they won was basically about having the right to sue the EPA about whether the land was actually a wetland. They could still lose that lawsuit.

This case is incomprehensible to me. How can a government agency force its will on the people this way? Their original case makes no sense by itself. But to then follow that up by not giving the people a chance to resolve the situation without incurring untold thousands or more in fines is nothing but regulatory tyranny. The countless laws passed by Congress are multiplied and magnified by the regulations imposed by the federal bureaucracy. People governed by this many laws and regulations are no longer free even if they think they are.

Attorney General wanted to brainwash our rights away

Breitbart is reporting that Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech in 1995, when he was a US attorney, stating that he wanted to brainwash people into thinking differently about guns. He wanted to use a campaign similar to what was used in anti-smoking commercials to convince young people that guns were bad. Let's switch the subject of his speech to freedom of religion, freedom of speech or maybe the freedom to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. People around the country would be demanding an explanation and probably insisting that he resign or be fired. Add to this the serious allegations of the Fast and Furious scandal and we need a new attorney general.

The head of the Department of Justice should be defending all our freedoms and not just his personal favorites. Anything less, shows that justice in this country is not fair and impartial.

Limbaugh's Word Choice

Recently Rush Limbaugh caused a controversy with his choice of words regarding Sandra Fluke. Many people took offense at his words and many people support him. Which side to choose? How about I choose the third side. One thing that was lost in all the arguing about his word choice is the actual topic of conversation that started the whole thing: the federal government forcing private religious institutions to provide insurance for something that contradicts one of their core beliefs.

No religious organization should be forced to subsidize something that contradicts their beliefs. This is a blatant violation of religious freedom. Nobody forced her to attend a Catholic school. She made that choice of her own free will. Yet she's willing to use the federal government to force her will on others. The fact that the federal government even considered such a regulation shows how far we've come from the freedoms the founding fathers fought for.

Limbaugh's words, whether right or wrong, moved the conversation from the actual issue to his word choice. And that is why he was wrong.