As a kid, people would give me jig saw puzzles as gifts. Honestly, I didn't like them. I still don't. I suspect it's because I can't pay attention long enough to actually complete one. Plus, it seems rather mundane to me. Sorting all the little pieces based on their color, looking for border pieces, and to what end? Just so you can say you spent hours of your life - hours you will never get back - piecing it all together?
Other types of puzzles can be quite enjoyable. The second best thing about being a trial lawyer was trying cases in the courtroom. The best thing about being a trial lawyer, for me, is the puzzle of trial preparation. I absolutely loved it. Going into a conference room, closing the door, spreading the entire litigation file over the table, and scribbling notes on a white board about strategies, themes, and specific tactics to use during a given situation in the court room - that was awesome. I learned early on that it's okay to lose in court, provided you didn't lose because you weren't prepared. That would be inexcusable. I also learned that most lawyers didn't prep to the extent I did, which gave me a tremendous advantage in front of the jury.
My wife is also a lover of puzzles - even jig saw ones. And she's one of the smartest people I know. I'm talking SAT-and-ACT-scores-in-the-stratosphere/full-ride-to-college/passed-the-entire-CPA-exam-on-the-first-try kind of smart. So it's no wonder that she likes puzzles such as Sudoku and Words With Friends.
What she will be quick to tell you is that she isn't a big consumer of news. She overloads on financial reporting, SEC regulations (and I don't mean the South Eastern Conference) and FASB accounting standards all day long, and so when she's done she'd rather not spend time digesting news and information. That is left to me, and I am to feed her important news from time to time as I see fitting.
The other night, we were talking about the news and current events, and I told her how alarmed I was to see how much our government is growing, how our nation's finances are in peril and how our civil liberties have been eroded over the last twenty years. I shared my thought that the pace of this growth and erosion has picked up considerably since 2001. She responded by saying that she isn't fully aware of what I was talking about (an intellectually honest answer) and asked me to pull together some articles highlighting my concerns. I suspect her lack of information on these issues stems largely from the fact that it requires people to put pieces of a puzzle together - news articles, government documents, and data - from a large number of sources.
I started pulling information together on Saturday evening (because my life is just that exciting...I surf the net on Saturday nights, looking for gloom and doom articles), and by Sunday evening, I had amassed a number of stories to share with her. It dawned on me this compendium might be of some help to you as you discuss these matters with your friends.
I set two rules for myself to follow during this exercise:
- To the extent possible, I would only cite to mainstream media sources. I've been fairly successful in that regard.
- I would not editorialize or share my opinion on the pieces. I want her to draw her own conclusions without suggestions from me.
It's my hope you can find some use for these articles as you discuss our current affairs with your friends and family. I know there are many wonderful and bright Americans out there that, for one reason or another, aren't really aware of what we are facing. We need to help them get up to speed. And if they are aware but feel too paralyzed to take action, we need to encourage them to do so. It's my hope and prayer that all of us, irrespective of political orientation, can agree on the nature and scope of the problem and set ourselves on a course to remedy what ails us, sooner rather than later.
And what if I'm wrong? What if the Paul Krugmans and Bernie Sanders of the world are right, and that we just need to spend more and tax more to fix our problems? What if unemployment drops so dramatically over the next two years that more people re-enter the work force and successfully find good paying jobs? What if we're able to generate so much tax revenue that we eliminate the deficit and start making progress on the reduction on our national debt?
Just typing those hypotheticals and re-reading them makes me more confident that those things cannot - and will not - happen without a dramatic course change in our nation's future direction.
Read these stories below. Share them as you see fit. Please understand that there's not a seminal book or treatise out there - and if there is, please tell me - that puts all of the pieces of the puzzle together. That's for us to do on our own. I wish you well in your efforts.
From Fox News – “Army halts training program that labeled Christians as extremists.” From the article:
“The Camp Shelby briefing was one of a number of incidents
on Army bases around the nation where soldiers were instructed that groups like
the American Family Association and Family Research Council should be
considered domestic hate groups because of their support for traditional
marriage.
Last week soldiers at Fort Hood were warned that
participating in or donating money to evangelical Christian groups or Tea Party
groups could result in military punishment.
And last May an Army Reserve training brief listed Catholics
and Evangelical Christians as examples of religious extremism. That incident
prompted 34 members of Congress to raise objections.”
From Forbes.com – “1.6
Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It's Time For A National
Conversation” From the article:
“Why, indeed, should the federal government not be deploying
armored personnel carriers and stockpiling enough ammo for a 20-year war in the
homeland? Because it’s wrong in every way. President Obama has an
opportunity, now, to live up to some of his rhetoric by helping the federal
government set a noble example in a matter very close to his heart (and that of
his Progressive base), one not inimical to the Bill of Rights: gun
control. The federal government can (for a nice change) begin practicing
what it preaches by controlling itself.”
From The Blaze – “Homeland
Security-Funded Study Lists People ‘Reverent of Individual Liberty’ as ‘Extreme
Right-Wing’ Terrorists.” From the report
written by the University of Maryland and paid for by the Department of
Homeland Security: the authors of the report deem those who are extreme
right-wing as likely terrorism perpetrators. In their estimation, those
who are extreme right wing are those in
From The Blaze – “Soros Warns of ‘Riots,’ ‘Brutal’ Clampdowns & Possible Total Economic Collapse.” From the article:
“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as
serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros told Newsweek.
“We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the
1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the
developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or
worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case
scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”
“'At times like these, survival is the most important thing,' he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether."
From Fox News – “Cloward,
Piven and the Fundamental Transformation of America.” This is an
opinion piece written by Glenn Beck. It does a good job of explaining
“the concept that there are people in this country who want to intentionally
collapse our economic system.”
From The Atlantic – “No
Taxes, No Travel: Why the IRS Wants the Right to Seize Your Passport.” From the article:
“A new bill, quietly making its way through Congress, allows the federal government to stop people with unpaid taxes from leaving the country-- even if they haven't been charged with tax evasion or any other formal crime.”
“A law recently passed by the Senate which would place
domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the
military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of
anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them
terrorists. So much for innocent until
proven guilty. So much for limited government. What Americans are now facing is
quite literally the end of the line. We will either uphold the freedoms baked
into our Constitutional Republic, or we will scrap the entire project in the
name of security as we wage, endlessly, this futile, costly, and ultimately
self-defeating War on Terror.”
From the US Department of Defense - Military Training Manual Calls Founding
Fathers “Extremists.” You can
read a Russia Today news article about the story here; you can read the
actual allegations in the training manual here. From the manual:
“In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples….. Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publicly espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”
From the Cato Institute - "The Damaging Rise in Federal Spending and Debt." From the article:
"Federal spending is soaring, and government debt is piling up at more than a trillion dollars a year. Official projections show rivers of red ink for years to come unless policymakers enact major budget reforms. Unless spending and deficits are cut, the United States is headed for economic ruin as growth falls and rising debt threatens further financial crises.
"Some analysts worry that spending cuts would hurt the economy, but other high-income nations have cut spending with very positive results. In the mid-1990s, for example, Canada faced a debt crisis caused by runaway spending — similar to our current situation. But the Canadian government changed course and slashed total spending 10 percent in just two years — which would be like us chopping annual spending by $360 billion in two years. Total government spending in Canada was cut by more than 10 percentage points of GDP over a decade. The Canadian economy did not sink into a recession as Keynesian economists might fear, but instead was launched on a 15-year economic boom."
In my next blog entry, I will address what we in the preparedness community should take from this and what we should be doing as a result of it.
“In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples….. Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publicly espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.”
From the Cato Institute - "The Damaging Rise in Federal Spending and Debt." From the article:
"Federal spending is soaring, and government debt is piling up at more than a trillion dollars a year. Official projections show rivers of red ink for years to come unless policymakers enact major budget reforms. Unless spending and deficits are cut, the United States is headed for economic ruin as growth falls and rising debt threatens further financial crises.
********
"Some analysts worry that spending cuts would hurt the economy, but other high-income nations have cut spending with very positive results. In the mid-1990s, for example, Canada faced a debt crisis caused by runaway spending — similar to our current situation. But the Canadian government changed course and slashed total spending 10 percent in just two years — which would be like us chopping annual spending by $360 billion in two years. Total government spending in Canada was cut by more than 10 percentage points of GDP over a decade. The Canadian economy did not sink into a recession as Keynesian economists might fear, but instead was launched on a 15-year economic boom."
In my next blog entry, I will address what we in the preparedness community should take from this and what we should be doing as a result of it.
