This Christmas

This Christmas is different from others in my life.
The music thus far has been the same as Christmases past; so has the food.
The atmosphere is still festive, full of joy and cheer over the birth of our Savior, and the gathering of family and close friends in celebration.
But I am regarding at it all very differently this year, because this Christmas is my first as a father.
Granted, I’m just a foster dad, but a dad nonetheless to children who need one in their lives right now. And, while every moment of every day is special in the life of a child, there is something extra special about this time of year. There is a special something that happens in a child at Christmas time.
Yes, they do try extra hard to be extra good, don’t they? Nonetheless, their eyes fill with the wonder of the holiday season. The sights and the sounds tickle their senses. They become all giddy inside the way Ebenezer Scrooge felt upon his Christmas awakening.
Their excitement builds over the wait for Christmas morning when they know Santa Claus has left them something special for them under the Christmas tree.
Even my two foster sons, each only 11 months old, seem to have become giddier over the past month. Their baby senses must tell them that something good is going to happen. I look forward to the day that these boys will understand that something good happened a long, long time ago halfway around the world. The feeling of joy and excitement they get each Christmas season is the same that the shepherds and the wise men felt inside when they heard the news of the birth of baby Jesus and went to worship him at the manger.
I’ve known since I was a little boy myself the true meaning of Christmas, and what it means for my life. But this is the first Christmas in which I shall actually experience the true meaning of Christmas as it happens before my very eyes.
As I watch the two little boys in my care open their presents from Santa Claus, I just know that I will get a warm feeling inside; the realization that I have now just witnessed the true meaning of Christmas in action.
This Christmas I am gaining a completely new appreciation for the spirit of giving. Not that I haven’t given in Christmases past; but this year, I’m giving something else besides a present or a gift. I’m giving my heart and my love the way our heavenly Father gave to us when He sent His Son to earth as man-flesh in the form of a newborn babe.
For the first time in my life, I understand where God is coming from. I can now truly appreciate firsthand the joy He must have felt when He gave His multitude of children something very special; something from and of Himself.
This Christmas I am experiencing the kind unconditional love that only a parent can give to his or her child(ren). I cannot wait to see the joy, the smiles and the happiness on the faces of my two foster boys as they receive and open the gifts given to them out of unconditional love. That will be the most precious and important gift I shall receive this Christmas, and hopefully many more Christmases to come.
My eyes have been mercifully opened by the grace and blessings of the Lord. I once was blind, but now I see the truth of what I’ve been missing all these years.
Christmas isn’t just a holiday or a month-long season that comes once a year. Rather, it is a living example—a reminder, really—of how we should be treating one another and living all year long.
I’ve been blessed to have given so much of myself unconditionally to these boys over the past several months, because I’ve been practicing Christmas in my heart toward them each and every day; oftentimes without even noticing that I am. I just give to my foster sons because I want to, and because I love them. Until now, I haven’t really stopped to think that Christmas this year has lasted almost the whole year.
This Christmas the holy day of Christ’s birth is a culmination of all that giving to my foster babies; a manifestation of the way I’ve been living my life these past several months.
This Christmas is a reminder to me that the spirit of giving shouldn’t be limited to a single holiday or a brief season. God gave his Son, the Christ child and Savior, to all mankind, all people everywhere and for all time. His gift wasn’t just for the shepherds, the wise men or the Israelites living two thousand years ago. It was for all of us, too.
Thus, the lesson that Christmas isn’t just a holiday, or a holiday season. Rather, it’s an example for how each of us ought to live our lives and treat others each and every day: Like it is a gift…because it is.
My sincerest prayer for those still searching for and hoping to find the true meaning of Christmas is that you will come to actually experience it as I have. To know the true meaning of Christmas is one thing; but quite another to actually experience it for yourself.
For those who have already experienced Christmas truth, then my hope is that each holiday hereafter is a reminder of what you have been blessed to witness: The manifestation of God’s love for us.
May each Christmas also remind us that the holiday and its season don’t have to end or be limited to only this time of year. If we choose to let it, then Christmas can exist and be manifest in our hearts every day throughout the year.
Here’s wishing you and yours daily joy and Christmas cheer.

A case against Roe v. Wade

In 1973 the United States Supreme Court ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to choose an abortion. What is known today as Roe v. Wade became case law 410 U.S. 113 (1973), a legal precedent that extends the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to a woman’s decision to abort her unborn child. Specifically, the ruling invoked the Fourteenth Amendment’s privacy clause, which states, in effect, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
While a woman’s decision to end her pregnancy is now protected under the law of the land, the Supreme Court held in the same ruling that the “right” to abort must be balanced against the state’s interests in protecting prenatal life and protecting the mother’s health. It was determined that these interests of the state become stronger over the course of a pregnancy, and that the balancing test should be related to the current trimester of pregnancy.
The legal findings further determined that the state’s interests in regulating abortions are at their weakest in the first trimester when a fetus is less like a fully developed human being than at any other time; but those interests gain strength with each successive trimester of prenatal development. In the second and third trimester, abortion regulation must be related primarily to, and giving weight to the life and health of the mother over that of the fetus.
For the past 38 years the abortion debate has raged, at times more intensely than others. Abortion opponents maintain that life begins at conception, while abortion supporters say the issue isn’t about life, but rather the right to choose.
Abortion proponents, those who call themselves “pro-choice,” have even gone so far as to argue that an unborn child is not the same as a birthed child, and, therefore, is not entitled to the same rights.
Those identifying themselves as “pro-life,” or abortion opponents, have vehemently disagreed with this argument, defending the unborn as human beings without a voice of their own.
Personally, I am anti-abortion, too. Although I am usually a staunch advocate of essential liberty—i.e., the ability to choose without compulsion—I have determined in this case to error on the side of life instead of choice. The reason why is because abortion, while preserving choice for one party—the biological mother—simultaneously denies that same choice to another other party; that being the unborn child, who has no say, no voice and no choice in the decision of whether or not it will die.
Besides essential liberty, and the fundamental right to choose without compulsion, abortion consequently denies another of man’s fundamental rights: Life.
Founding father Thomas Jefferson summarized very succinctly the fundamental rights of man in the July 1776 Declaration of Independence for the American colonies: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Jefferson’s use of the term “unalienable rights” refers to the fundamental rights of man as articulated by the avant-garde of the European Age of Enlightenment. These are natural rights, God created and God given. They are universal and self-evident.
Jefferson references this, too, in the same document, as well as many other letters he wrote in his lifetime on a host of political and philosophical positions.
Other fundamental rights of the Age of Enlightenment and natural law theory include the right to property, security and resistance to oppression. Each of these is addressed in the Bill of Rights, or the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.
I find it compelling, though, that the very first fundamental or natural right that Jefferson articulates is the right to life: the right to be and to exist. It came before even the right to liberty and happiness.
The right to life is also protected by the United States Constitution in Amendment V, which states, in part, that “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”
And, yet, despite the obvious importance of the right to life in the minds of America’s founders and her constitution’s framers, it is the one right that is routinely ignored and sorely neglected among the unborn.
An important feature of the Fifth Amendment is the use of the term “person” instead of “citizen” or “the people,” the last two of which refer to those who are either naturally born or legalized Americans. To be a “person” protected by the U.S. Constitution does not require citizenship, residency or any other legal nomenclature, but rather just “being” a human individual.
The root of the debate, then, over abortion should not just be when human life begins, but also when “personhood” begins.
Medical facts establish that “life” begins at conception. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines life, in part, as “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.” Since very basic cellular development includes all of these traits, establishing life at conception is not only reasonable, but also rational.
But when does conceived human life become a “person” who is protected by the law? Pro-abortion advocates insist that personhood begins at the moment of birth, while anti-abortion activists argue that “personhood” begins while the unborn child is still developing in the womb.
Merriam-Webster further defines “person,” in part, as “the body of a human being.” The dictionary also defines “being,” in part, as “conscious existence,” and it defines “individual,” in part, as “existing as an indivisible whole” and “as a [separate] distinct entity.”
To be individual requires a level of autonomy that permits one to exist independently. Or, as Merriam-Webster defines, “existing or capable of existing independently of the whole.”
Millions children are born prematurely, and many of them are capable of living outside of the womb despite their prematurity. As such, they are capable of existing independently before they reach full term, and their autonomy can be established prior to birth. What, then, is the difference between a child physically born a month premature and an unborn child a month away from full-term birth?
They are the exact gestational age.
Scientifically and philosophically speaking, there is no distinction. One child is born while the other is unborn; but their functions are essentially the same and so is their physical development.
In addition to autonomy, an individual or person must also be sentient in their actions. That is, “responsive to or conscious of sense impressions” and “finely sensitive in perception or feeling,” as Merriam-Webster defines sentient beings.
Medical facts show that the development of a nervous system starts in the first trimester, as early as the fifth week of pregnancy, beginning with the brain and spinal cord. By week six of the pregnancy, the brain normally has developed into five distinct areas and some cranial nerves are visible.
At the end of 14 weeks, the “fetus” is very well distinguishable as human, with many recognizable physical traits, including head, limbs, beating heart and genitalia. And the baby is even able to make a fist with its fingers.
At week 15, the fetus can make active movements, including sucking motions with the mouth to demonstrate its awareness of hunger and efforts to communicate its needs.
By the end of week 21, the baby should be able to hear. There is hand and startle reflex present during week 26; the eyelids open and close, and the nervous system is developed enough to control some body functions between weeks 27 and 30.
Considering that a full-term pregnancy is about 42 weeks, the evidence is pretty clear that by the end of the first trimester, or after the first 14 weeks, an unborn human child not only looks physically human, but is also able to act human, too, by making a fist with the fingers to demonstrate functional independence.
The unborn child further demonstrates human being qualities within the first trimester by moving about (kicking and swimming) independently of the whole, on its own and self-aware that it can do so. The fetus is conscious at this point that it can move, and how it can move.
Early in the second trimester, the child can arrange its mouth muscles well enough to form sucking motions, indicating that it is aware of its need to satisfy the feeling of hunger and is trying to communicate hunger to its host (the mother). This is evidence of sensitive perception, as well as responsiveness to and consciousness of sense impressions.
The unborn child learns quickly that kicking becomes a form of communicating with its host (the mother) about its needs; specifically hunger. Prenatal babies, though, have also been shown to kick and move around playfully because they may feel good and are happy. They are communicating pleasure and comfort to the mother at these times. At other times, their moving about and kicking may be due to discomfort.
The point is that the moving about isn’t just a physical reflex. There becomes a purpose behind it long before the unborn child is ever delivered.
There is even evidence showing that unborn babies are able to recognize their mother’s voice by the second trimester of pregnancy, and they can grasp the umbilical cord when they feel it with their hands and fingers.
In the third and final trimester, evidence shows that the eyelids open and close; four of the five sense are used, including vision, hearing, taste and touch; the child can distinguish for itself the difference between being asleep and awake; and they are able to relate and respond to the moods of the mother.
The medical findings of prenatal development offer compelling evidence that autonomy to some degree is demonstrated by the unborn child, which can also show at least basic sentience by the end of the very first trimester of pregnancy.
Considering that “personhood” is dependent upon autonomy and sentience to establish that a human is “being,” I can see no valid reason why unborn humans should not be granted “person” status as early as the 14th week of pregnancy. Not only can the child make a fist with its fingers, kick its legs and swim independently of the whole, or host, but it does so freely and consciously without influence of outside forces.
I am convinced that medical facts establish the viability of a human fetus as more than just a “ball of flesh” with physical human likenesses. With sensory perceptions, consciousness and independent movements or actions, an unborn human is sentient and autonomous enough to meet the definition of “being,” and therefore, a person.
As such, I submit that “personhood” can and should exist before birth, and that full protection under the law ought to be given to all “persons” and all “human beings,” born or unborn.
These individuals can and should be given equal protection under the law, as dictated by the Fourteenth Amendment, and their lives as "persons" guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the Bill of Rights.
This would be consistent with the interests of preserving what our Founding Fathers and constitutional framers believed to be the first and most important fundamental right of man: Life.
An unborn child, having been established to possess degrees of autonomy and sentience, should not be considered as part of the mother’s “person,” or that which makes up her human “being.” Unborn humans are also not property, because they do not belong to the body. If they did, then they would function like an organ of the body: an essential part of what makes the whole thing work.
But we know that pregnancies are only temporary conditions that resolve by birth and when the womb is empty again. Pregnancies do not interrupt the normal, essential functioning of the mother’s body, although chemical and hormonal imbalances often occur.
As such, an unborn human cannot and should not be considered part of the body, or its effects, either.
The conflict that arises with the Fourteenth Amendment would then be, when and where do the rights of the mother end and those of the unborn child begin?
When a conflict like this surfaces between the rights of one and those of another, I believe that it is government’s responsibility to error on the side of life, simply because without that one right, all other rights are non-existent. There can be no right to liberty, property, happiness or resistance to tyranny without first being a right to life, and the protection of that right.
I don’t believe pregnancy should be forced on a woman, and that part certainly falls within the Fourteenth Amendment. In cases where the life of the mother is in imminent and immediate danger, then, again, it behooves society to error on the side of life and save the mother. To willingly put that life in jeopardy is to violate the natural right to life.
The conflict that results—the unborn life sacrificed to preserve the life of the mother—is not one easily remedied or dealt with. However, to trade the mother’s life for the baby could put the lives of the baby and any siblings in danger, and then the rights of those other individuals are impacted. The choice then comes down to which loss of life will cause the most damage, and clearly, losing the mother to save the baby would do just that.
In cases of rape or incest, I maintain that the Fourteenth Amendment applies. However, I think every reasonable effort should be made to counsel victims on their choices and the alternatives to abortion, because while the conception may have been a crime, the child that results from it is as innocent a victim as the woman.
Error on the side of life. And, whenever or wherever possible, both lives.

Brett Favre: Hall of Shamer?

As a Green Bay Packer loyalist, I used to marvel at the way NFL superstar quarterback Brett Favre would connect with Sterling Sharpe, Mark Chmura, Robert Brooks, and Antonio Freeman et al on some seemingly improbable pass plays. He was the maestro, the conductor of a symphony of talent that made beautiful music together.
Now, though, the name Brett Favre only produces sour notes.
The so-called Jenn Sterger scandal involving Favre and a former New York Jets “game hostess” has turned the prolific career of one of professional football’s most endearing figures upside down. If the allegations turn out to be true—that is, the voice in those voice messages, and the, uh, pictures in those “sexts” indeed belong to Brett Favre—then he will be enshrined into the hall of shame long before he makes it to Canton, Ohio.
I only hope for Brett and Deanna Favre’s sake that the allegations aren’t true, and that the perpetrator was an imposter.
But if recent history has proven something, it is that professional athletes are capable of anything. Just a year ago, professional golfer Tiger Woods went from mega sports idol to chump all in one night.
The same thing could happen to Favre, too, in much the same way.
A lot of people have thrown in their two cents about Favre, Sterger and the entire sleazy mess. I guess I’ll put mine in, too.
I don’t know how far Favre took this. There aren’t enough facts about the case yet. What we do know is that Favre has admitted to leaving the voice mails on Sterger’s phone, but he denies sending the “sexts.” Of course, if the telephone number used to send the voice mails and the “sexts” turns out to be the same, then Brett will have a lot more explaining to do. I figure the chickens will come home to roost eventually.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion about the whole mess.
Brett appears to be guilty of flirting with the “game hostess” by his own admission that he left the voice mails for her. Considering that Brett is a married man to a wife battling cancer, a father, grandfather and a role model—whether he wants to be or not—to millions of youth, this doesn’t speak well for him, his character or his credibility.
There is a lot of noise out there in cyberspace complaining about how the scandal is really nobody else’s business except for the parties involved. If these were obscure, private individuals, then I’d agree.
However, Brett Favre is a public figure; he has been for 20 years. He implicitly accepted this responsibility when he signed his first professional football contract back in 1991. Privacy is traded for wealth, fortune, glitz, glamour, fame and notoriety.
I want to laugh when a celebrity insists on privacy—to which they are entitled, but should have little expectation of—when they spend so much of their time in the public eye, influencing what people see, hear and ultimately think. While privacy should be respected for everybody, public figures should expect much less if only because the very nature of their work puts them under the scrutiny of the public eye to begin with, and they can often have a great deal of influence on public opinion and behavior.
Former NBA basketball star Charles Barkley once remarked that he is not a role model, and that children shouldn’t be looking to him as a role model. Instead, children should be looking to their parents and others in their communities to be role models for them.
I don’t disagree with Barkley on this; but his expectation is also unrealistic. Professional athletes, movie stars and entertainers all have a responsibility to act and behave in a manner that is appropriate for the people who admire them. This is because they are public figures, which are positions of great power and influence over others. People become captivated with celebrities, and as such, they can easily become a captive audience for a public figure to influence with his or her speech, actions and behavior.
We can tell our children until we are blue in the face who real role models are—and we should—but ultimately it is up to the child to decide who to admire and emulate. As such, every adult has an implicit responsibility to model positive behavior for impressionable youth who will one day become adults, leaders and role models in their own communities. If we don’t insist on responsible behavior from ourselves, then how can we expect future generations to do the same? All of a sudden, society faces a slippery slope.
As Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
Athletes like Barkley, Favre and others should heed this advice, because it applies directly to them.
Do I really care whether Favre flirted with a former Playboy model a third of his age? No, not really. I don’t want to know the salacious details of the voice mails or the texts. But what I do care about is that Favre’s behavior is a model for the youths that follow him—in some cases religiously—every Sunday afternoon. I certainly don’t want my own little boys admiring a professional athlete who disrespects his wife by playing around with other women.
Having said all of this about Brett Favre, I also have to wonder the extent to which Jenn Sterger was involved with Favre. Was she really the innocent victim of unwanted solicitations, or did she perhaps flirt with him at first and the whole situation got out of hand?
Does anyone else wonder why it took Jenn Sterger two years to release the “sexts” that allegedly came from Favre? If the voice mails, texts and images were that disturbing to her, then why didn’t she report them right away and file a harassment complaint against the perpetrator?
In addition, there are two former New York Jet team massage therapists who both claim Favre made advances toward them, or looked at them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable.
But why are we hearing about all of this now? Does it not hurt the credibility of the accusers if they wait two years before saying something? It isn’t as though anyone was holding a gun to their heads and threatening to kill them if they talked.
Therefore, I must ask: Why now? Why not then, when it actually happened?
Sterger herself isn’t exactly a paragon of credibility, either. After all, her claims to fame (until Favre) were nude or nearly nude photo spreads in Playboy and Maxim magazines. She was discovered in the stands during a Florida State University football game by a television camera man, who probably wasn’t thinking at the time that she would qualify as a New York Jets sideline reporter.
In short order, several magazines subsequently solicited her for modeling opportunities that accentuated her, uh, assets. Among them were Maxim and Playboy, well known as either smut or borderline smut material.
Somehow she got hired by the New York Jets as a “game hostess,” whatever that is.
Frankly, I’m not really sure how someone gets hired as a “game hostess” for a professional football team. My best guess is that it had less to do with any credentials or qualifications—either academic or intrinsic—she may have had, and more to do with her magazine spreads.
What’s more, Sterger is now supposedly a sports reporter who hosts her own cable sports show. She also identifies herself as an entertainer, actress and model (no surprise) by profession.
Is there anyone naïve enough to think that Sterger got to where she’s at because of what she has between her ears? The truth is, Sterger can attribute her success to what’s below the neck and above the knees.
Sorry, but that’s just the cold, hard truth of it all.
I don’t mean to knock Sterger here. This wasn’t meant to be a roast of the woman who claims to be the victim in this “sexting” scandal co-starring Brett Favre.
But to ignore the obvious might just be to dismiss some mighty big clues.
Sterger claims the salacious voice mails and texts were unsolicited and unwanted. Strange, though, that she has been silent about these disturbing phone calls and “sexts” for two years until just last month.
According to media reports, Sterger had given her phone number out at the request of an unnamed New York Jets football player. Why? The player who requested her telephone number remained unidentified to Sterger, and yet she released it anyway to someone she did not know or even recognize.
All right, maybe as a “game hostess” it was her job to talk to the players on her phone. I don’t know. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
Based on the limited information out there about Sterger’s actual duties, she was a “hostess” in the fundamental sense: She greeted customers (fans) at the place of business (in the stands of the stadium). This means her contact with players would have been minimal, at best, because her contact with the general public was maximal.
So, assuming that Sterger’s job with the Jets primarily involved fan contact, then why was she so willing to give out her telephone number to an unidentified player? For all she knew, the person wasn’t a player at all, but some deranged fan who was stalking her.
How stupid is that?
Perhaps most strange about Sterger’s involvement is her apparent complete naivete in the whole matter.
This is a woman who flaunts her sexuality the way Arnold Schwarzenegger used to flaunt his muscles as a former bodybuilder and Mister Universe.
It isn’t as though sex and the sale of it are new to Sterger. After all, she has uninhibitedly taken most or all of her clothes off for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine and Maxim, having known full well what both her body and the magazines publishing images of it were selling. A woman doesn’t agree to pose for smut publishers and not know the purpose of those products.
Yet, somehow, she was shocked and surprised to receive flirtatious voice mails and dirty text messages?
Okay, I’ll cut her some slack here. Unwanted sexual advances are exactly that: Unwanted. If she didn’t want them, and she got them anyway, then that is harassment. Period. I don’t care how “hot” Sterger is or that she is a sex symbol and a bimbo. If she didn’t want it, then the perpetrator shouldn’t have forced it on her.
On the other hand, do we really know that the “Favre” flirts were unwanted? She insists that they were; but then again, we have to consider Sterger’s credibility here, too.
She knows that she’s got it where it counts. She has used her body to her advantage. She has willingly sold sex with it. Then, she gives out her telephone number to an anonymous football player, and we are supposed to believe that this was all done innocently?
Either Sterger is not being entirely truthful in the matter, or she has got to be the epitome of bimbo naivete.
Her brain may be the least exercised part of her body, because she didn’t have the sense enough to report the harassment when it happened. She didn’t have the sense to avoid selling sex with pictures of her naked body and still insist on being taken seriously as a sports entertainment intellectual. And, she certainly exercised poor judgment by giving out her telephone number to an unnamed and unidentified player, who, for all she knew, wasn’t a player at all but a stalker.
What is with the news media these days hiring former models to “pose” as reporters? Whether it’s TV Azteca reporter Ines Sainz or Jenn Sterger, there seems to be a bimbo eruption going on in the media industry these days. I guess the sports news media has reached the same conclusion that advertising did years ago: Sex sells.
Jenn Sterger evidently knows this, too. Her notoriety with Playboy and Maxim speaks volumes about her understanding of the direction sports entertainment has been heading. Otherwise, she wouldn’t dress the way she does at games or in the studio where she hosts her cable sports show.
Because sex sells, then maybe—just maybe—that’s why this so-called “scandal” surfaced in the first place.
Could it be a set up? Hmmm.
If, by chance, it is then Brett Favre is perhaps more naïve than Sterger. It sucks to go from champ to chump. Just ask Tiger.

Being conservative

There are a number of popular misconceptions circulating about American conservatism that have been spun by the progressive left-wing political machine, and that are also widely believed by progressive and even centrist moderate voters.
My purpose in writing this commentary is to set the record straight about what being a traditional American conservative is really all about. After all, I am one myself, and I ought to know my own mind better than any progressive leftist claims to.
So, without further ado, I present my rebuttal of common misperceptions by the left and offer a defense in my case as a traditional American conservative.
Admittedly, I feel a little bit like a defendant representing himself at his own trial, because I am not only rebutting accusations made against my political persuasion, but I also must argue in defense of what I believe in.
To be a conservative in America today feels like being an ostracized family member with a scarlet letter on his back, because popular culture—heavily influenced and arguably controlled by the political left—shuns anything remotely perceived as right of center. I am guilty until proven innocent by virtue of the fact that I identify myself as a conservative.
I suppose this is the left wing’s way of exacting some retribution for former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s “Red Scare” and Hollywood blacklist of suspected communists.
Today the political left is conducting its own version of the “Red Scare” by stereotyping traditional American conservatives and trying to fit us all neatly into their little bottle of right-wing ideology, so that it can rubber stamp us all whenever our dissenting voices start to annoy them. The left wing then pulls tricks out of the little bottle in an effort to discredit each and every conservative voice that challenges it.
Among the more predictable little tricks is the accusation of bigotry.
The left seeks to immediately discredit conservatives, so that it can avoid debate of any kind at all with them. By accusing conservatives of a character flaw, the left tries to neutralize right-wing arguments by assassinating character and calling credibility into question.
The political left tends to see things in colors anyway, so it has painted traditional American conservatives as predominantly white, which ultimately translates into racism. Anytime there is found a bunch of mostly white Americans under one umbrella, racism is naturally and automatically suspected by the left. Even though there are plenty of socially and/or fiscally conservative blacks, Hispanics and other races in America, conservatism is seen by the left as mostly white and generally racist. Any racial minorities who fall under the right-wing umbrella are either misled, ignorant, gullible, or just plain shallow and unenlightened. The left wing has all but concluded that there can’t possibly be any remotely intelligent people on the right; especially minorities who don’t know what’s good for them.
Unfortunately, conservatives are dismissed as idiots before they even have a chance to defend themselves. That is the second trick that the left pulls out of its little ideological bottle: Conservatives are all just plain stupid, so there’s no point in debating the issues with them.
In other words, neutralize the opponent with absolutist blanket statements that paint all conservatives as one color…and a singular level of intelligence.
Diversity, after all, is supposed to be an invention of the progressive mind, and to have conservatives practicing it sort of takes the fire out of left-wing ideology and steals the thunder from its storm.
As far as the political left is concerned, conservatives are supposed to be closed-minded, simple reactionaries whose views are so extreme that they become irrelevant in the arena of ideas and circles of debate. Conservatives like me aren’t supposed to be reasonable people who think for themselves and deliberate about their opinions. We are supposed march lock-step to the trumpets of conservative talk radio. We are supposed to let the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, Sean Hannitys, and Michael Savages et al do the thinking and speaking for us. We are supposed to fit neatly into the left wing’s little ideological bottle, after all.
Nothing perturbs a leftist more than a conservative who refuses to be a peg shaped to fit into a particular hole.
When conservatives defy the left-wing stereotype, then that’s when the left launches its credibility assaults with character flaw bombs meant to assassinate who we are and sabotage what we believe in. The resulting carnage includes racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia, among many other forms of irrational thought.
The political left has worked very hard over the years to corner the market on tolerance, open-mindedness and compassion, while alienating conservatives as the antithesis of these virtues. In large part, it has succeeded where popular perceptions are concerned.
Common misperceptions of conservatives these days are that they are intolerant, closed-minded and uncompassionate.
Being a conservative myself, I can say categorically that these beliefs are not based on anything factual, or even substantive. The misconceptions about conservatives have been fabricated by the left wing for one distinct purpose: To discredit and make them irrelevant to the political debate.
Leftists routinely misinterpret and take what a conservative says out of context.
For instance, when I say that I oppose affirmative action, the left-wing reaction is to automatically assume that my opposition to a program that promotes minority equality in the workplace is because I am a bigot. There is no effort made to get clarification, and no attempt to understand why I oppose reverse discrimination. It is just assumed that I do so because I am an intolerant racist, sexist homophobe.
Another example is when a conservative like me opposes abortion or welfare, and supports a privatized option to Social Security. First, I am closed-minded and not being reasonable. Then I am being an uncompassionate slob.
Why, because I think that abortion rights ignore the fundamental human right to life for the unborn child? Or because I think the welfare system is being abused by people with no intention of improving themselves or the lives of their children? Or because I think the individual is being cheated out of a much better retirement with compulsory FICA withholdings?
Once again, the left never has and never will make any effort to understand my reasons. What matters is that I fundamentally oppose things that the left wing supports. As such, I am the enemy not to be understood and certainly not to be negotiated with; not one iota.
The left’s ruthless and merciless attitude toward conservatives seems inconsistent with the image of tolerance, compassion and understanding that it tries to market itself with to the apathetic populace. Go figure.
Yet, in spite of its own contradictions, the left wing is somehow able to require conservatives like me to be more open-minded and tolerant of it. Go figure again.
I used to get really angry about being stereotyped as a mean-spirited bigot by virtue of my political ideology.
Not anymore.
I have had to teach myself to laugh and chuckle at the gross misrepresentation of conservatism by the left wing. The accusations made by the left against the right are so baseless that they sound like stand-up comedy jokes…without the punch lines.
I just can’t help but think that leftists are really being facetious and sarcastic when they are calling me a racist, homophobic bigot or a sexist pig.
But I also have to remind myself that the left wing is entirely serious in its accusations, even though it knows that what it charges against conservatives is laughably baseless, unsubstantiated and largely false. The point is to sabotage conservatism by branding it as an evil ideology; or at the very least, an antiquated way of thinking that is far outmoded by more progressive thought.
As such, it is imperative that we conservatives don’t just sit back, laugh and take it the way Stan Laurel would verbal abuse from Oliver Hardy. When the left makes an accusation against conservatism, conservatives should speak up and denounce it.
Yeah, I know that anything we say in our defense lands on deaf ears, because the court of the progressive left is set up much like the old English courts of law where a defendant is guilty unless he can prove himself innocent of a crime.
But that shouldn’t stop us from telling Oliver Hardy that the mess we are in may not be Stan Laurel’s fault at all, but rather Ollie’s.
Truth be told, Ollie got the two of them into as much or more trouble with his self-righteous indignation of others than Stan did with his bumbling.
Speaking as a traditional American conservative—not to be confused with left of center new or neo-conservatism—I’ll spell out in very clear, concise and succinct English language my values, the virtues I hold dear to, and the principles that I believe in.
First, I am not a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe or a bigot of any kind. I don’t hate all non-Christian beliefs. I am not an anti-government or anti-tax lout, either. Those would be anarchists—not conservatives—anyway.
I have close friends and family members who are ethnic minorities. I have a foster child who is mixed race.
I supported my wife in going back to school for a college education, and put my own graduate education on hold so that she could complete hers. I perform domestic tasks because I want my wife to know that I believe in a fair division of labor, and that these chores are not below me.
I have a gay brother who I love and for whom I am there to support if or when he ever needs it.
I believe in immigration, and that America should remain open for the oppressed, the tired and the huddled masses to come here legally.
I unconditionally and categorically support religious liberty for all belief systems, because religion is a cornerstone for family and community stability, and more often than not, promotes positive behavior and spiritual wellness.
As a traditional American conservative, I am not—let me repeat that—I am not anti-government or anti-tax. Did I make that clear enough? If not, then read the first line over again.
I am fed up with local, state and federal governments that seem to only be getting bigger and more intrusive. I am against big and intrusive government. I believe in a government with limited powers, and one that respects those limited powers.
I don’t like government that acts in the name of compassion, but ends up just becoming larger, more intrusive in the lives of individuals, and a glutton for revenue.
Being a traditional American conservative is all about enough government and enough taxes. As the national TEA party stands for: “Taxed Enough Already.”
What I don’t like is government doing for people that the vast majority of them are capable of doing for themselves, like providing for retirement, health care, employment, income, and even school lunches, which my mom always made sure I had when I left the house for school every morning.
New York City government has already outlawed certain transfats and lipids in foods sold within municipal limits in an effort to battle obesity and diseases caused by unhealthy eating habits. The city of Santa Barbara, California, has also made the sale of fast food meals with toys illegal, because city leaders say that the toys entice children to eat food that is unhealthy and bad for them.
Should it really be the government’s role to tell the individual what they can or cannot eat? Where is the line drawn between empowerment of the individual consumer to make choices for themselves and the government to make choices for them?
Essential liberty to choose to do the right thing is being trampled by municipal, county, state and federal laws and regulations meant to protect the people from themselves, because we are not capable of being trusted to do the right thing or make the right decisions.
Modern American government has become far too paternalistic in its approach, its management and its enforcement or delivery.
Consequently, we are allowing government to do things for us, make choices and decisions for us, and provide for us that which we should be capable of doing, choosing and providing for ourselves.
I believe in the old proverb, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”
I believe in the individual: Individual initiative, individual ingenuity and innovation, individual pursuit of opportunity, individual fortitude, and especially essential liberty of the individual to do what is right. I believe that the individual is capable of righting wrongs and solving problems, and that the government does not always have to be there to do it for us.
I believe in self-sovereignty of the individual above the sovereignty of the state.
I believe in common sense laws and their enforcement; not redundancies in the law or regulations so weighted down in bureaucracy that their enforcement is inefficient and ineffective. Most importantly, I believe in laws and regulations that do not trample on opportunity and essential liberty of the individual.
I believe in a government that is a supporter of individual prosperity, rather than a barrier to it.
I believe in a government that promotes opportunity by empowering the individual to make a better life for himself, his family and his community. I don’t believe in a government that takes the initiative itself to try to better our lives for us.
I believe that fundamental rights secured by the U.S. Constitution, freedom and essential liberty are given by the grace of God; not the grace of government or men.
I believe in the unalienable rights articulated by founding father and former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
To make a long story short, this pretty much sums up the values, principles and virtues of the American Revolution, which traditional American conservatives like me are devoted to preserving. Jefferson’s conclusion also sums up the values, virtues and principles to which American conservatives hold dear.
If believing in the things that I do still makes me an extremist or a bigoted, ignorant wretch in the eyes of a leftist, then so be it. I can go on forever trying to explain that the left’s perceptions of conservatives are grossly exaggerated or outright false, but that will not change the mind of one whose mind is closed to correction.
There’s nothing more I can say or do that would convince a closed-minded left-wing progressive that I’m not at all what they have conceived me to be in their own minds.
Take it or leave it. That’s the choice.

What is so bad about privatizing Social Security?

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada has created quite a stir with her candid remarks about privatizing Social Security. She has softened her stance as of late, though, stating that she wants to fix Social Security by putting a lockbox on the trust fund. Perhaps she fears that her original message may alienate voters and end up costing her votes in the election. The campaign of her opponent—incumbent Harry Reid, D-NV, and current U.S. Senate Majority Leader—certainly has used Angle’s original privatization message to its advantage by preying upon voter fears.
Before we just summarily dismiss Sharron Angle as a loon for suggesting that Social Security be privatized, though, let’s look more critically at the proposal.
Privatization of Social Security is not a new concept. You may recall that former President George W. Bush proposed establishing a private account option for younger workers to place their FICA (Social Security) withholdings into. This idea was met with scorn, of course, by the progressive left, which claims proud ownership of the program originally introduced by one of its own, former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1935.
Consequently, the Bush proposal never saw the light of day in Congress.
As things stand right now, though, I’m not confident that the money I have been paying into Social Security will be there for me in 31 years when I finally retire. The safeguard of a trust fund disappeared years ago when (1) the Social Security Administration began using that money to pay out disability insurance benefits, and (2) when lawmakers borrowed money from the account to pay for spending bills.
In other words, bureaucrats and politicians took money from our retirement savings to pay for other things that the trust fund was not intended to be used for. As far as I know, the Social Security Trust Fund has not been fully reimbursed, either. The money borrowed from it has not been paid back yet. We are still waiting for the bureaucrats and politicians to make good on IOUs that they never signed.
As such, I am skeptical that the supplemental security income I’ve paid into Social Security will even be there for me in the next three decades. For my sake, that of my spouse, and our family, I must assume that it won’t be.
Fortunately, I have a 401(k) portfolio that I’m building and paying into with each paycheck, and I set up a deferred compensation account as a safeguard against insufficient retirement funds come the day I hang it all up.
However, I shake my head in disgust when I think about how much better my retirement outlook would be had I been free to choose where my FICA withholdings were invested in. Heck, had I been able to invest all of the money withheld for FICA into a private savings account—where I could earn compounded interest over time—then I’d be coming out much farther ahead in my future retirement than I am on pace to now.
I imagine where my retirement portfolio might be today if the $100 a month or so in FICA withholdings could have been diverted into a private individual retirement account (IRA), certificate of deposit or some other high-yield interest savings account when I first started working at age 17. My account would be considerably wealthier, and my retirement portfolio substantially more robust, than it is now.
This is because FICA withholdings do not compound with interest over the years the way contributions do in private savings accounts. Under the current system, benefits are calculated based on what one has paid into the system and how long one has worked. There’s no interest factored into the Social Security check.
I’ve worked and paid into the system since age 17. I am now 36 years old. Let’s say that my average monthly FICA withholding is $100. Over 18 years, that calculates out to a little less than $22,000 paid into the system to date. Now let’s say I work another 31 years and retire at age 67. I will have paid roughly $59,000 to FICA over my employment lifetime. Of course, FICA withholdings are graduated, not flat, which means they go up as income increases. So, I’m paying more in withholdings now than I did when I was 17. Just bear that in mind when calculating what you could have been saving had your FICA withholdings been diverted into a private account earning compounded interest.
But, for the sake of argument, and because it’s easier to do the math, I’ll say that my average FICA withholding over the years has been $100 a month. Now, imagine if I could have put the $100 a month in FICA withholdings into an IRA with a five percent fixed annual percentage yield (APY). That’s five dollars in interest earned every month with each withholding, and $60 earned in interested the first year. This annual number doubles the second year when I’ve paid a total of $2,400 in withholdings, and goes up 50 percent more in the third year, and so on. The more I pay into an interest account, the larger it gets and the more in interest I earn on APY over the life of the account. In other words, with an interest savings account, you make money on the money you put into it. You never lose money.
So, after working 50 years and paying, on average, $100 a month in retirement withholding, the principal works out to be about $59,000. By the time I retire, my APY has grown to nearly $3,000 a year in interest alone. After just 25 years (my halfway point), my five percent APY would have been $1,500 a year, or $125 a month, in interest alone. This means that annual interest payments on my account would then gradually increase from $1,500 to $3,000 until my retirement, or from $125 a month to $250 a month on interest alone. Not too shabby at all.
But we can’t get that same yield from the current public FICA withholdings and Social Security retirement program. You get what you get based on a formula that considers how much you’ve paid into the system and how long you’ve worked.
My point here is that a privatized option to the current Social Security system isn’t irrational or unreasonable. It makes sense to those of us who would like to maximize our supplemental retirement income, but cannot under current law, which compels us all to pay into a system that is really cheating us out of a better retirement.

Viewing Sharron from a different angle

To some, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada is extreme.
No, she is the epitome of extreme.
After all, Angle wants to end Social Security as we know it and privatize the system. She wants to privatize the federal Veterans Administration. She wants to eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, and several other federal bureaucracies. She also believes in forcing young girls to have babies that are the by-products of rape or incest. And, she is an anti-Muslim bigot.
Well, all of this is, of course, what the left-wing has concluded from comments that Angle has made; and this is what the left wants the rest of us to believe about her, too.
There is no question—and no denying—that Sharron Angle is a hard-line, right-wing conservative. She is solidly right of center, and that makes most leftists and centrists uncomfortable and uneasy. It’s no different than the way hard-line left-wingers make centrists and right-wing conservatives feel.
Sharron Angle is a polarizing candidate; there’s no doubt about that. Then again, so is the incumbent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV.
It really just depends on who is asked and what their point of view is.
While I think Angle’s opinion on Social Security, the VA and other federal bureaucracies is idealistic and probably unrealistic, I can see the rationale behind what she advocates.
I don’t think what she advocates is entirely unreasonable, either. I’ll explain why.
First, let’s talk about Social Security. Originally established to provide Americans with supplemental income to their retirement—and to offset the devastating effects of the Great Depression on people’s retirement savings—the Social Security Administration has come to be relied upon as a primary retirement funding source; something it was never intended to be.
Millions of Americans over the years have failed to responsibly save and prepare for retirement with a private nest-egg, and instead have counted on Social Security to be there for them when they can no longer work.
The program was supposed to remain viable and self-sustaining with individual payroll deductions going to fund individual supplemental income benefits, and a trust fund for this reserve revenue was established for the express and exclusive purpose of supplementing retirement.
So, when SSA bureaucrats began paying out disability benefits from the Social Security Trust Fund, and Washington politicians also took money from the trust to pay for other government spending bills, the money that was once reserved for retirees had disappeared.
The result is a house of cards that has little or nothing left in reserves. Instead, Social Security relies on annual payroll deductions and federal budget appropriations just to keep it afloat these days.
What’s more, there are still no safeguards in place preventing the trust fund from being raided again should it be restored. In other words, there’s nothing to stop bureaucrats and politicians from doing again what they did before.
This puts Social Security’s viability and sustainability as a supplemental retirement source for future generations at great risk.
What Sharron Angle has advocated is a private option to a public system for younger workers, who can choose to put their Social Security withholdings into a private supplemental retirement account rather than be forced to pay into a program whose benefits may or may not be there when they are ready to retire.
What exactly is so extreme about this position?
Heck, if I had been able to invest all of the money withheld for FICA into a private savings account where I could earn compounded interest over time, I would be coming out much farther ahead in my future retirement than I am on pace to now.
My point here is that Sharron Angle isn’t irrational to advocate for a privatized option to the current Social Security system. It makes sense to those of us who would like to maximize our supplemental retirement income, but cannot under current law, which compels us all to pay into a system that is really cheating us out of a better retirement.
Moving on now, let’s talk about the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Veterans Administration.
Admittedly, I don’t know exactly what Sharron Angle is advocating here. She hints at privatizing the VA system. Whether that means privatizing the health care delivery or completely relieving the federal government of any and all responsibility is not clear.
But I will say that privatizing the delivery of care and the management of the health care of our nation’s veterans is not irrational or unreasonable.
I believe that Congress and the American people have an obligation and responsibility to support our military veterans for their service and sacrifice to defend their country. We owe it to the men and women who gave up their freedom to protect, preserve and defend ours. As such, if Angle is advocating that we no longer pay taxes to support our veterans, then I completely disagree.
However, if she is advocating that the delivery of health care and its management be privatized, then I don’t see why this is such a problem. Other arms of the government use private contractors to carry out their programs. For instance, the U.S. Department of Labor contracts with private companies to operate and manage Job Corps centers across the country. The Job Corps program remains federal—and federally funded—but its delivery is handled privately.
There are numerous U.S. veterans who have been grossly underserved by the current VA system. Many veterans would even argue that the current public management of the VA is flawed and that a lot of patients aren’t receiving the kind of quality care and attention they deserve. Public management doesn’t seem to be working very efficiently. If private management can do it better, then why the heck not? The health and well-being of our veterans are worth it.
Then there are Angle’s comments about eliminating the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, among others.
Reasonable arguments can certainly be made as to why these bureaucracies should remain in place; but just the same, reasonable arguments can also be made in support of either their elimination or reduction.
Angle has argued that many of the current federal bureaucracies are not supported by the Congressional enumeration of powers contained in the U.S. Constitution. Because these bureaucracies exist and operate in addition to the powers of Congress, they are not necessary at a federal level. What Angle advocates is an observance of the Tenth Amendment to the Bill of Rights, which guarantees powers to the states that are not enumerated to Congress by the Constitution.
Unfortunately, the federal government has stepped on states’ rights far too often over the years, usurping for itself powers to govern and regulate that were Constitutionally intended for the states to do for themselves.
A good example is the U.S. Department of Education. Where exactly among the enumeration of powers does it say that Congress is responsible for providing public education?
Left-wing progressives and even centrist moderates tend to argue for each and every federal agency using the “Commerce Clause” of Article I, Section 8 (enumeration of powers) as well as the phrase “provide for the general welfare of the United States.”
Too bad they ignore the original interpretation and intent of the founders who framed and ratified the document in the first place. To provide for the general welfare is to provide a climate of prosperity where opportunity flourishes and essential liberty is maximized. That’s what our founding generation believed in.
The founders certainly didn’t believe in a bloated and overbearing federal bureaucracy that is involved in an individual’s life from cradle to grave; but that’s exactly what the United States government has become.
Frankly, I disagree with the current powers of the U.S. Department of Education. The federal government really has no business telling local school districts what they should be teaching our children. Those decisions are best made locally; not nationally.
History proves this.
Before the U.S. Department of Education was established—and before curriculum, testing and learning standards were federalized—American public schools offered some of the finest education found anywhere in the world. Prior to the federal DOE, public schools were funded, managed and run primarily at the local level; meaning state, county and municipal communities.
Coincidentally, education quality has gradually and steadily deteriorated since public education became yet another enterprise of the federal government. Low test scores and graduation rates, high drop-out rates, and a growing number of students requiring remedial education are among the embarrassing nationwide results of federally controlled public education.
Oddly enough, public education quality was higher before there was a U.S. DOE, and before there were national testing or curriculum standards. States did better on their own, because they knew the learning needs of their regions, their populations, and especially their economies much better than the feds.
At the very least, the U.S. DOE’s powers should be significantly rolled back and limited to the distribution of federal funds; development of professional teaching standards; and enforcement of ethics laws pertaining to the industry and the profession.
The federal government should get out of the curriculum and testing business, and instead leave that to the individual states, whose educational needs differ by region and regional economics.
I’m okay with the federal government providing subsidies to states and/or local school districts…but without the strings attached. Emergency aid should be available for struggling districts. However, I think it’s wrong for the federal government to provide funding on condition of meeting curriculum or educational program mandates.
Federal mandates are one major reason why education per pupil these days has become so expensive. School districts have to satisfy these mandates in order to either receive federal money and/or keep it. Consequently, more time is spent courting the federal government for money, and trying to meet federal mandates, than is spent focusing on local educational concerns and issues. As a result, parents and other local community members seem to be ignored by school districts that have tuned out their local support in favor of getting more federal support.
Is it any wonder why home schooling has become so popular over the past couple of decades? It is the educational modality of choice these days for parents, because they can at least have some say in what their children are being taught. In today’s public school system, parents are under the thumb of the federal government with little or no voice concerning what kind of curriculum is being handed down from Washington, D.C., and into the classroom. Children are at the mercy of the feds, too, and they are the ones who have ultimately suffered the consequences of federalized public education.
The last thing I will comment on about Sharron Angle is her abortion views.
The Reid Campaign has misrepresented her views as being policy driven for the entire country.
This is what Angle actually said about abortion in cases of rape or incest: "My own personal feelings—and that is always what I express—my personal feeling is that we need to err on the side of life. There is a plan and a purpose and a value to every life no matter what its location, age, gender or disability. ... I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at-risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade."
Now, you may categorically disagree with her point of view, and that’s fine. It is your right to do so. But for the Reid Campaign to suggest that Angle wants to turn her personal views into national policy effecting the entire nation is a gross exaggeration of what she really said.
I happen to believe the same way about abortion. If there are alternatives that preserve life, then why encourage a young girl to choose abortion?
I think many young girls in trouble aren’t aware of their options. More often than not, they are offered one alternative to having the baby, and that is abortion. They assume that their choice is either to get an abortion or else give birth to and have to raise a child that they are not equipped to care for. There are alternatives to being stuck with a child that cannot be cared for: Adoption, most notably. For every young woman who gets pregnant out of wedlock, there are several couples that can’t have natural children of their own, and who are willing and waiting to adopt an unwanted child.
Does this mean I favor laws outlawing abortion? No, at least not at the federal level anyway. I’ve always maintained that the individual states have a right to decide whether abortion should be legalized carte blanche or regulated and/or restricted to a degree.
I’m not about to advocate for a law that bans abortion in cases of rape or incest. But, like Angle, I’d like to see a more concerted effort to preserve life by ensuring the young girl in trouble is fully informed of all of her choices and alternatives, as well as the consequences of some of those choices. I think abortion is pushed too liberally on young women who might otherwise decide that giving birth to the baby and putting it up for adoption is a better choice than killing it.
The bottom line for me is that Sharron Angle is not near the extremist that her senate campaign opponent paints her as. Not when I look at the bigger picture of the issues, and also when I read the complete version and full text of what she has said.
I’ve no doubt that Sharron Angle is an extremist to a leftist, or even a centrist. Anyone solidly on the right is considered extreme if they don’t show any hint of compromising toward the center.
I find it amusing that the left especially demands compromise from the right in order for the latter to even appear remotely reasonable. Yet the left does not hold itself to the same standard of compromise that it holds the right.
In order for Sharron Angle to appear even remotely reasonable to a left-wing progressive, she would have to come to the center, while the left remains solidly entrenched…where else?...on the left. There’s neither a compromise from the left nor even an expectation that it should meet the right in the center.
I admire Sharron Angle for refusing to compromise where the left thinks she should—which is just about everywhere and on just about every issue.
No doubt, it gnaws at the left-wing and irritates it to no end that a right-winger would have the gall to say “no” when the left asks her to compromise in its direction, but doesn’t itself move a muscle toward the center.
I believe it is time for the left-wing to learn to compromise also. That isn’t something for the left to preach and the right to practice. If you are going to dish it out, then you should be willing to take it, too.
Dishing it is something the left-wing does, well, liberally; but taking it is something entirely different. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, too. If the left and the center are going to insist that Sharron Angle is an extremist, then perhaps it’s time for us “right-wingers” to start pointing out just how “extreme” all those enlightened leftists and centrists can be.
To borrow a phrase, “Extreme is as extreme does.”
Personally, I am extremely cautious of extremists who call other people extreme.

Nevada’s Rx of Recovery

Four years ago, the state of Nevada was the fastest growing state in the entire nation with some of the fastest growing counties in America, too. It had one of the healthiest economies, boasting a favorable, business-friendly tax climate, which enticed companies to relocate to the Silver State. There were also plenty of job opportunities for any and everyone who wanted to move here and work.
Well, as the old axioms go, “what goes up must come down,” and “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
Within two years, Nevada’s economy went from first to worst in the nation. The impetus was the mortgage lending crisis and subsequent real estate collapse that cost Nevada thousands of construction-related jobs. Adding insult to injury, Nevada tourism and service industries dwindled because of the nationwide recession, which kept a lot of people close to home.
All of a sudden, the Silver State had one of the highest unemployment rates in the United States. It now leads the country in the percentage of people unemployed at more than 14 percent.
Making matters only worse, Nevada has also led the nation in foreclosure and loan default rates since the credit crisis began. Furthermore, no state in the union has a higher rate of bankruptcy filings than the state of Nevada.
The state government’s budget has faced a deficit each of the last two bienniums, and is expecting its largest budget deficit to date for the next biennium beginning next year.
For nearly eighty years Nevada has relied primarily upon gaming to (1) be the impetus of economic growth, and (2) supply the lion’s share of state government revenue.
But like the gold and silver booms that eventually played out in Nevada’s first century, the gaming boom is poised to play out in the state’s second century.
Several states now have legalized gambling, and most American Indian reservations across the country feature casinos and gaming.
There is also Internet gambling that can be accessed from just about anywhere.
Gaming is no longer distinct to Nevada. It is no longer unique from the rest of the country. As such, fewer people are visiting the Silver State for the gaming.
And thanks to the “Great Recession,” fewer still are traveling here for leisure and the sheer fun of it.
Tourism, another of Nevada’s primary industries, has suffered right along with gaming in the current recession, which has caused many people to batten down the hatches, reign in their spending and travel as little as possible.
It is little wonder that Nevada’s economy is struggling perhaps more than most other states.
Okay, so we know what Nevada’s problems are. What are the solutions? How do we fix the problems and get Nevada back into the black (and out of the red)?
I have some ideas.
They aren’t simple ones, mind you; but then again, there is no easy solution to a struggling economy.
Some tough decisions will have to be made; not just by our elected representatives, but also by the residents and people of Nevada.

When the going gets tough…
…the tough get going.
The first thing Nevadans must do is decide whether to admit defeat, retreat from or continue to fight this recession. If we surrender, then we are giving up, and I know of nothing positive that has or ever will come from giving up. It is one of the first lessons many of us learn when we are small children: Don’t give up.
It is also one of nature’s most profound lessons. An animal that gives up just makes it easier for the predators to kill it.
If Nevadans decide to retreat, then nothing good can come of this, either. No problems ever get solved by running away from them. This is also a fundamental law of nature: Fight or flight. If we flee, then all we’ve worked for over the years is lost. Do we really want to leave our children with the mess that we helped to create? By running away, we would be doing exactly that.
As a Nevada resident for the past seven years, I will say that my family and their future are worth fighting for. It is because of them that I don’t just pull up stakes and leave for greener pastures, more fertile ground elsewhere. Besides, if I give up and run, what message am I sending to my children? Is that really the lesson I want them to learn?
No, as a man and as a Nevadan, I feel it is incumbent upon me to fight for the livelihood of my family.
Our ways of thinking about this recession must change if we are to have any hope of changing our ways of doing.
We must stop all of this negative thinking, fed primarily from the messages of doom and gloom produced by the news and entertainment media, popular culture, and most especially politicians who generally like to capitalize on a good crisis, because it gives them opportunities to do things that they might otherwise avoid.
Nevadans are all Americans, after all, and “American” ends in “I can” the last time I checked, not “I can’t.”
So, a little bit of internal housecleaning and soul-searching is necessary before we set out to accomplish anything else.
Once each has his own house in order, then we can go about trying to right our state’s ship.
This now brings me to economic solutions for Nevada.
The key to any state economy is the infusion of cash, or capital. The more of it that is circulating within the state, the more investments there are and the more economic growth there is. When cash leaves the state, the less there is to infuse the marketplace with investment capital, to grow business and create jobs, and the less there is to fund the state coffers with tax revenue.
Nevada’s problem is a lack of cash flow within the state. Ours is anemic, to say the least.
So, what can we do to improve the flow of cash and capital in Nevada?
One is to establish new alternatives to gaming and mining, which have been Nevada’s two primary industries since the very beginning.

Reusable energy.
At this very moment, tons of nuclear waste sits underneath Yucca Mountain collecting dust and half-lives. The federal government doesn’t want it, and either do the states that are sending theirs here to our state.
There’s an old saying: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
Nevada has a golden opportunity to capitalize on somebody else’s garbage by turning it into economic treasure.
Other countries around the world have demonstrated that nuclear waste can be recycled and turned into reusable energy. The technology is available to break down the waste and turn it back into energy that can be used again.
Over the last few years, there has been a big national push toward developing alternative energy sources. Well, here’s one right in Nevada’s own backyard. All the state has to do is reach out and take it off federal hands. The current White House has made clear its intentions to close the Yucca Mountain facility and to stop sending waste to Nevada.
So, if Nevada is going to jump on this opportunity, she had better do it soon before the feds close the door for good.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of Nevadans who downright fear anything nuclear. You say the word and it’s like spreading an airborne plague by mouth. It’s akin to uttering blasphemy. People run when someone says “nuclear waste.”
If they only appreciated that most of the waste inside Yucca Mountain is not a by-product of the lethal weapons-grade plutonium, but rather comes from industrial grade uranium used to power nuclear reactors that produce electricity.
I’m not saying the stuff is safe to touch or be exposed to by any means. But it’s not going to explode and cause a deadly orange mushroom cloud, either. Using existing technology, we can harvest energy from this waste by breaking it down and recycling it.
You can’t get much greener by promoting recycled energy. Not only is it environmentally responsible, but it would be economically smart for Nevada. Imagine the revenue the state of Nevada could collect from the tons of waste shipped here by the feds and other states. Not to mention the jobs that would result.
What has to happen first, though, is to convince the nay-sayers that nuclear waste doesn’t mean the end of the world, or that anyone who works around it is going to grow an extra eyeball. Unless these pessimists and cynics can be persuaded, Nevada will likely miss the last boat of opportunity on this.

Waste management.
Fortunately, there are other opportunities for Nevada besides nuclear waste. At this time, waste management companies in Northern California are partnering with a Nevada firm to ship Bay Area garbage to landfills in Northeastern Nevada. This is going to help create jobs in Nevada, something our state desperately needs.
But once again, there are opponents to this effort who just don’t want somebody else’s trash in their backyard. They don’t want Nevada becoming known as the “Waste State.”
Well, remember the old saying about one man’s trash. Life is what you make of it. If you are handed lemons—as Nevada has been for the past three years—then make lemonade with them.
California has for years had a waste and space problem. Home to 37 million people, it’s no wonder. There is a lot of open space in Nevada, some of which could be used as landfills for California waste. Imagine the fees the state could collect from its western neighbor, and the jobs that could emerge from a new waste management industry here in Nevada.
Be it nuclear or human, waste presents an opportunity for Nevada. Either we turn up our noses at it, or we take advantage of the chance to rebuild our state’s economy. While nobody likes the idea of waste coming to our state, sometimes we must choose to do what we don’t want to do. The livelihood of Nevadans is more important than either appearance or reputation. If I had to choose between maintaining an image and getting a job, I’d choose the latter hands down any day of the week.

Clean energy.
Fortunately, waste storage isn’t the only new industry open to Nevada. Clean energy production through the harvest of solar and wind power is both practical and realistic in the Silver State. With an average of 300 days of sunshine year-round, sunlight and solar energy is abundant. Wind blows in bulk here, too. With a lot of open space and a bounty of sun and wind, Nevada is the ideal place to establish solar panel and wind turbine farms.
There are also subterranean geothermal pockets dotted all over Nevada’s high desert landscape, which are ripe for the harvest.
With the current national push toward alternative and clean energy sources, Nevada is poised to be at the forefront of production to fill this demand.
But again, though, doing so will require construction of big, ugly geothermal plants, thousands of acres of giant wind turbines and solar panels that will dot the natural landscape. With these spires, Nevada won’t look as pretty or pristine anymore.
So, we have to decide what’s more important: Aesthetics or economic livelihood.

Logistics.
Exploring new opportunities and introducing new industries is only one way to revive Nevada’s economy. Another way is to revitalize parts of the current economy.
For instance, Nevada is positioned strategically between the major markets in the East and the primary West Coast market of California. With Interstate 80 running right through Northern Nevada on its way to the San Francisco Bay, it is a main arterial for freight transportation by truck or rail.
Northern Nevada, in particular, has a solid foundation in the logistics industry with regional distribution centers and warehouses for some of America’s largest companies: Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, JCPenney, Federal Express, United Parcel Service, and even General Motors, among many others.
Nevada could continue to be at the forefront of the logistics industry. As more and more retailers transition to an electronic retail environment, companies will continue to need strategic regional distribution centers to provide products that are regionally accessible to consumers, and cheaper to transport and ship because of locality.
Both Reno and Las Vegas have international airports from which company distributors can fly products out to anywhere around the globe.
In fact, Las Vegas is as strategic to the logistics industry as Northern Nevada is. Just three to four hours east of Los Angeles, Southern Nevada is within easy trucking distance from the largest metropolitan area west of the Mississippi River, and the second largest in the entire country. With Interstate 15 running right through Las Vegas on its way to Salt Lake City, Southern Nevada is located along another major transportation arterial that links markets on the west coast to markets on the east coast.
The logistics industry in Nevada is a no-brainer to revitalize and refocus our economic energy on.
Nevada would do well to bill itself as an important business link between east and west coast markets by offering a plethora of warehousing space for huge regional distribution centers that can ship a product regionally much faster and cheaper than it would take to fly it coast to coast.

Tourism.
In addition, yet another economic solution is to reinvent parts of the current economy and change the way current industries do business.
The gaming industry is a prime example. Gambling is not unique to Nevada anymore. Casino gaming, in fact, is gradually losing its draw in Nevada and will soon no longer be the lure for state tourism that it once was. As such, the Silver State should consider rebranding itself.
For years, Las Vegas had been known as “America’s playground.” Why not make this a statewide motto? Or something similar to it, like “America’s Theme Park.”
Not only does Nevada have plenty of open space and public lands for outdoor recreation, but it also offers something unique for the urban tourist: Miles of theme park attractions. From the dozens of resorts along the Las Vegas Strip to Virginia City and the major casinos in Reno, Nevada north to south could become America’s foremost family friendly destination for fun and entertainment.
There’s also the vacant Ponderosa Ranch at Incline Village. Imagine an Old West themed destination hotel resort complete with shows, shopping and rides. Whoever owns that property, I sure hope they consider revitalizing it, because Nevada sure could use the Cartwrights one more time.
Some Northern Nevada casinos—such as Circus Circus, Boom Town, and the Grand Sierra Resort—are already appealing to families with venues that are as appropriate for children as they are for adults. The other casino resorts in Northern Nevada ought to consider following suit, because family resort destinations are far more popular—and lucrative—than adult destinations. They are also the wave of the future in tourism: One-stop destinations that offer everything on-site that a vacationing family could possibly want or need. They would never have to leave the property.
The Walt Disney Company proved this with Disneyland and Disney World. Six Flags and Busch Gardens also understand this business model very well.
But Nevada hotel resort destinations, by and large, have not tried to attract families. They have focused for decades primarily on adult entertainment. This has to change.
Las Vegas is getting the message. Most of the old “Rat-Pack” era casino resorts have been razed and new, deluxe themed resorts complete with outdoor rides and shows have been built in their place.
Could Nevada become the next best thing to Disney World? That’s very possible; but only if the casino industry changes the direction of its business and begins to focus more on family-friendly entertainment.
Nevada needs a tourism product that goes beyond casinos and gambling. There needs to be a unique draw to Nevada; something to lure the tourists that is very different from anything they may have at home.

Conclusion.
Whether we try to develop new industries or reinvent existing ones, the bottom line is that Nevada needs to think outside of the box if it is going to climb out of the hole caused by the recession, work toward long-term economic recovery, and return to prosperity.

Solution to Obamacare

To say that the health care law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama earlier this year is unpopular would be a gross understatement. For every person who thinks the law is good, there’s a person who thinks the law is bad.
My personal opinion is that the law is bad; not only because consumers are being forced by the government to buy a product (health insurance), but also because the problems with health care cost and management are only being perpetuated under the new law.
Health insurance companies are being given even more power than they had before, because the consumer is going to have to buy their products; we can no longer choose not to.
Demand for health care can reasonably be expected to rise sharply in the next several years, just as it has for the past few decades. There are no indicators to suggest that demand is going to be brought under control by the new law. Not with the baby-boom generation retiring and aging; certainly not with a current shortage of medical school graduates and a high rate of physicians leaving the profession; and not at all with a new population of insured patients requiring routine care for their pre-existing conditions.
The “Obamacare” law is also setting the health insurance industry up for failure, a consequence of the law that was assuredly by design and not by mistake. Forcing insurance companies to take on pre-existing conditions, placing a cap or moratorium on premium increases, and levying a series of taxes, fines and regulatory fees is ultimately going to end with the industry begging on its knees before Congress for a government bailout. When that happens, the proponents of government provided, universal single-payer health care will have their victory.
This could realistically happen within the next decade. It all depends on how long health insurance companies can operate in the red, because they’ll be losing their black pretty darn quick.
For those of us who oppose government run and managed health care, the consequences of the current law seem pretty clear and the future rather bleak. We needn’t be reminded again of what happens to a product, service and even an entire industry when competition disappears.
What happens, unfortunately, is that we get Amtrak, and an airline industry whose quality and service has suffered in direct correlation with shrinking competition.
Conversely, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has vastly improved the quality of its services and products with increased competition. Thanks to UPS, Federal Express, DHL and other package delivery companies, as well as the introduction of the Internet and electronic mail, the USPS has been compelled to modify itself in order to better compete for business in a highly competitive logistics industry.
Because of competition, the USPS isn’t just a letter carrier anymore; it is a communications partner and a package delivery service, too.
Perhaps that is what is necessary to change the health care industry for the better: More competition, not less.
I’d like to suggest that the federal government introduce a public-private partnered subsidized health insurance company that competes for policyholders with other private insurance providers around the country. I think we have been going in the wrong direction trying to replace the current private insurance system with a “free” public option program.
Why not simply add another insurance provider into the mix?
Like the USPS, this new health insurance provider could be funded using some public money to start with; but most revenue would be privately generated through the marketplace: Sales and consequent profits, which shall ultimately sustain the endeavor.
The USPS is more or less self-sustained anyway, and is capable of operating independent of tax revenue—most of which covers the salaries and benefits of federal postal employees. Realistically, the USPS could probably stand on its own two feet without the federal government at all; but the service is mandated by the Constitution. Besides that, public employee unions would likely stand in the way of any attempt to privatize their salaries and benefits.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Back on point, would it be unreasonable to introduce a federal health insurance company that offers expanded coverage for pre-existing and other high-risk conditions, lower premiums for policyholders, and affordable deductibles and/or co-pays?
Maybe I am just naïve, but it seems to me that if there can be one company that pioneers more inclusive health insurance coverage at an attractive price, then more consumers will want to buy a policy from this company instead of its competitors. This would create greater demand in the marketplace for better products and services from the health insurance industry as a whole. Other insurance companies would likely respond by trying to become more like the federal insurance company that everyone seems to want to buy a policy from.
What you would have, then, is consumer-driven rather than government-mandated change. That’s what turned the USPS around, and it can be what turns the health insurance industry around, too.
We have to stop thinking in terms of regulating, punishing and/or replacing the current system, and instead use the system against itself to change things for the better.
More regulation isn’t the answer. All that seems to do is grow government and shrink competition, because regulation tends to choke enterprises out of business or leads them to mergers and into conglomerates.
Replacing the private health care system isn’t the answer, either, because the world is ripe with examples of bad things that happen when health care becomes a public rather than a private endeavor.
The solution, in my opinion, is to work within the current system to change it. Use the system against itself. Fight fire with fire. If insurance companies are reluctant to cover pre-existing conditions, then they need a healthy motivation to do so.
That kind of motivation can only be found in the free market and a competitive environment that challenges them to either change or else lose business and money.
If you hit an opponent or competitor where they hurt the most, then they will yield.
But simply taking money from them in the form of regulatory fees doesn’t work, because that money doesn’t get re-circulated back into the marketplace.
If insurance companies are going to get inspired to change, then that change must come from within. There must be a change in the dynamics, the processes and the practices of the industry.
The best solution to inspire this kind of change is to have an agent within the industry. All it takes is one bold pioneer to change the way an entire industry works and does business.
Henry Ford proved this with his assembly line production of Model T Ford automobiles.
Prior to Ford’s revolutionary production standard, the automobile was made-to-order. Consequently, only the wealthy and well-to-do American could afford to buy a new transportation novelty like the automobile.
Ford’s invention of mass production not only met the demand with supply, but he managed to make cars that even the common man could afford, too. The rest, as they say, is history. Ford set the standard for production not only in the automobile industry, but in so many other product industries as well.
This happened because one pioneer had an idea that changed the way his competitors and his industry did business. And it was done without government regulation, mandates or complete public replacement of a private industry.
One lesson I’ve learned from studying history is that if it had been done before, then it can be done again.
I know that many conservatives may look upon my solution with skepticism or scorn. That’s okay. I understand why.
No true conservative would consider using government as an answer to a problem.
Well, I’m not advocating that government be the answer at all. I am advocating a free market, consumer-driven solution using the federal government as a tool. The answer is the consumer and the market. The vehicle is the federal government.
Per the U.S. Constitution, the federal government—Congress, in particular—has a duty to promote and provide for the general welfare of the United States of America. This means creating a climate favorable to prosperity, growth and expansion of opportunity.
By entering the competitive marketplace, the federal government would not be taking control of anything, but rather providing another product or service from which consumers can choose.
My solution calls for a federal insurance company that would be self-sufficient, sustaining itself on profits from the products and services it sells to the consumer.
Why the federal government, you ask? Why not just another private entity?
Well, I’m waiting for one of those to show up and do what other insurance companies aren’t willing to do. So far, none has appeared. Furthermore, considering the mandates of the current health care law, I don’t think any will appear in the near future, either.
So, it is up to us, the people of the United States of America, to provide for the general welfare, just as it is written in the Constitution’s Preamble.
Use the federal government as the tool for promoting the general welfare that it was meant to be. Make the government part of the solution instead of part of the problem by turning it into a product supplier, a producer and competitor in the free market.
If it works for the mail, then why couldn’t it also work for health insurance?

Green cars not as clean as you think

So you’ve gone and purchased one of those green electric or gas-electric hybrid automobiles. You believe in being environmentally responsible, and you want to do your part to save the earth.
Good for you.
However, owning a so-called green car isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. The electric or hybrid vehicle you are driving may not be as green as you think it is.
Whether you are driving a gas-electric hybrid or a fully electric vehicle, you ought to consider where electricity comes from in the first place. Most electricity—including the energy stored in batteries—comes from power plants that, more often than not, are either fueled by coal or a nuclear reactor. Some are hydroelectric—meaning water powered—but even many of the internal mechanical parts of a dam run on fossil or nuclear fuel.
Take a closer look at the materials that make up your green car, too. Plastics, fiberglass, resins, rubber and other laboratory-created materials are commonly derived from polymers that originate most often from fossil fuels and other carbon-based elements. From tires to wheels; from the paneling to the shell; from the handles to hooks, floor mats, steering column, hoses, belts, battery, gas tank, and even the paint job—among many other intricate parts of an automobile—fossil fuel is used as a base to make most car parts.
Then there are the fluids and lubricants—such as engine oil, axle grease, automatic transmission fluid, and brake fluid—needed to run the various systems of an automobile. Most, if not all, of these chemicals have a fossil fuel base or are primarily composed of fossil fuel elements.
How about the manufacturing equipment and machinery used to assemble the green cars? Don’t you suppose that these run on fossil fuel, too?
If you are a green car owner, then I’m sorry to rain on your parade. Knowing what goes into producing green cars, however, puts a whole new spin on the term “green” technology.
Sure, you save money at the pump by not purchasing as much gasoline and not filling up as often as other conventional automobiles; but there is still a significant amount of fossil fuel and carbon-based materials that are required to build green cars and keep them running.
I just don’t want you to mistakenly think that you are somehow sticking it to “Big Oil” or saving Mother Earth by driving an eco-friendly green car, because there is oil even in the cleanest and most environmentally responsible automobiles.
Chances are, too, that you will be doing business with the oil companies over the life of your new electric or hybrid vehicle more times than you care to count.
The worst part about all of this is that electric and hybrid vehicles are grossly overpriced because of their popular façade. Consumers can expect to pay on average $10K or more above the price of a conventional model just for the privilege of owning an electric or hybrid vehicle. Imagine paying $25K for a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight, the standard equipment and options for which really aren’t any different from those of the more conventional gasoline-powered models. To add insult to injury, you pay $25K for a compact car that, in size and functionality, isn’t any better than other compacts priced between $10K and $15K.
Furthermore, imagine having to fork over $2,500 to replace the hybrid battery once its life has run its course. That’s a huge expense for a used vehicle that probably won’t be worth much more than that on the open market when the time comes.
Imagine paying $35K for a hybrid compact SUV or $50-60K for a full-size SUV hybrid. Again, standard equipment and options are comparable, if not identical, to those available on conventional gasoline-powered models. And functionally, you are paying $60K for a $40K vehicle.
The concept of an electric car is nothing new or avant garde to the automobile industry. It isn’t some radical new technology.
Electric technology has existed for about a century, when the first electric prototypes were produced as alternatives to gasoline-based internal combustion engines. In the early days of automobile development, steam and electric motors competed with gasoline-powered engines. Unfortunately, none proved as efficient or effective as the fossil fueled internal combustion engine.
The electric motor has been reintroduced as something new, something better and something different multiple times throughout the history of automobile manufacturing. Each time, however, electric cars fail to catch on.
Popular opinion has it that “Big Oil” and automobile makers are in bed with each other, and that there is a conspiracy to produce only fossil fuel based engines because that’s what keeps the oil companies in business.
I admit that such an argument sounds convincing; but when you look at history and the reasons why the electric car has failed to become a household item, then a conspiracy does not seem likely or even reasonable.
The bottom line is that the consumer historically has rejected electric vehicles, because they haven’t been efficient enough in the use of their energy; that is, they haven’t had the range to drive them from point A to point B before running low or out of energy. Consequently, electric vehicles have certainly not been effective or reliable in getting people where they want to go, either.
Then there is repair and maintenance of an electric vehicle to consider. Parts and components for an electric motor have historically been cost prohibitive for the average consumer. Batteries required to run an electric engine these days can easily cost four digits—perhaps as high as five digits in some cases—and have an average life of a little more than 100,000 miles.
If you insist on going electric, then, by all means, go for it.
It’s your money, after all; spend it however you want to spend it.
But please don’t insist that you are somehow being more environmentally responsible than I am for operating a gasoline-powered vehicle, because yours still uses fossil fuel and carbon-based materials that are not supposed to be good for the environment.
Don’t claim that you are buying smart by going green, either, because in reality, you’ve probably overpaid at the dealer and you will likely overpay over the life of your vehicle.