Consequences, Intended and Not
Planning is usually a prudent thing to do and, usually, the planning pans out. Sometimes, though, especially when the planning is done by politicians, unintended consequences of misbegotten schemes make you wonder where the pols’ heads are.
Communist regimes are big on planning. Five Year Plans to re-vamp its economy were always a big favorite with the old U.S.S.R. commissars and always resulted in big failures.
One of the few sad remnants of Communism, North Korea, also has little luck when it comes to economics although it is spectacular in staging funerals. The recent obsequies for its late dictator Kim Jong-il were no exception.
North Korea demonstrated its expertise in not only planning its Supreme Leader’s funeral but in its consequences for hapless North Koreans who didn’t cry enough.
As an informant reported, within days of Kim Jong-il’s death, “The authorities are handing down at least six months in a labour-training camp to anybody who didn’t participate in the organised gatherings during the mourning period, or who did participate but didn’t cry and didn’t seem genuine.”
So much for Communism, so much for the dictatorship of the proletariat where the proles are forced to grieve for a bloody tyrant.
More relevant to Americans are interesting intended and unintended consequences in the U.S.
Last month, the FBI released a report indicating that violent crime in the U.S. fell 6.4 percent in the first half of 2011 and property crimes fell by 3.7 as contrasted with the same time 2010 time period.
That was the unexpected good news.
The bad news–for liberals who seek to disarm law-abiding citizens–is that the increasing number of armed law-abiding citizens in the country no doubt accounted in large part for the drop in crime.
As proven in Florida and elsewhere, criminals are far less inclined to maim, murder, and break into homes and businesses when their prospective victims are prepared to blow them away.
The intent of gun laws is to inhibit the unrestricted ownership of guns, the true consequence of which is to concentrate guns in the hands of criminals while denying honest Americans the right to defend themselves. The joke on liberals is that the latter stocking up on weapons to defend themselves serves as a deterrent against the former.
In a related issue, a presumed unintended consequence of excessive liberality has led to excessive violence.
A federal court judge decided last year that allegedly non-violent California prisoners were uncomfortable in their crowded facilities. He didn’t comment on the discomfort felt by their victims but did order California to give more space to the perpetrators. Strapped California had no money to build more prisons and chose instead to release thousands of convicted and accused “non-violent” offenders into society.
According to La Puente Mayor John Solis, his city and others are suffering the consequences of the judge’s beneficence. Solis reports that ”Sexual assaults are up about 300 percent and assaults with guns and knives up nearly 150 percent citywide” since the release of the reprobates.
He blames “prison realignment,” a euphemism for loosing barbarians in a state where gun laws are strictly enforced and a resultant explosion of barbarity.
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12104.)
Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communism. Show all posts
Friday, January 13, 2012
Monday, April 11, 2011
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
The infamous Cold War espionage case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has taken a new turn. Their son, Robert Meeropol, after years of denial, has finally admitted “his father deserved to have been convicted of the legal charges that led to his parents’ execution. ‘Yes, he was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage,’ ” Meeropol told New York Times reporter, Sam Roberts.
That must have come as a body blow to the Times, which has long been a leader in the leftist campaign to exonerate the Rosenbergs and, as late as 2003, fifty years after their executions, was still editorializing, ”The Rosenbergs case still haunts American history, reminding us of the injustice that can be done when a nation gets caught up in hysteria.”
There may have been a degree of hysteria at the time when American schoolkids hid under their desks to shield themselves from The Bomb, a thermonuclear explosion compliments of the U.S.S.R., and their parents read newspapers detailing the Russian threat but there was no injustice in the case of the Rosenbergs and their accomplice, Morton Sobell.
Like Julius and Ethel, Sobell also pled not guilty. However, he got away with a sentence of 30 years and served less than 18 at Alcatraz and other federal prisons. Forty-two years after his release, he admitted his own and Julius Rosenberg’s guilt, also to Sam Roberts. Asked whether he were a spy who fed American nuclear secrets to Uncle Joe Stalin, the aged Sobell tried to mitigate his crimes and replied, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that. I never thought of it as that in those terms.”
If there were any injustice in the Rosenberg-Sobell trials it lay in the fact Sobell, and Ethel Rosenberg’s brother and another accomplice, David Greenglass, didn’t also fry in Sing Sing’s Old Sparky, its electric chair. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4119)
The infamous Cold War espionage case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has taken a new turn. Their son, Robert Meeropol, after years of denial, has finally admitted “his father deserved to have been convicted of the legal charges that led to his parents’ execution. ‘Yes, he was guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage,’ ” Meeropol told New York Times reporter, Sam Roberts.
That must have come as a body blow to the Times, which has long been a leader in the leftist campaign to exonerate the Rosenbergs and, as late as 2003, fifty years after their executions, was still editorializing, ”The Rosenbergs case still haunts American history, reminding us of the injustice that can be done when a nation gets caught up in hysteria.”
There may have been a degree of hysteria at the time when American schoolkids hid under their desks to shield themselves from The Bomb, a thermonuclear explosion compliments of the U.S.S.R., and their parents read newspapers detailing the Russian threat but there was no injustice in the case of the Rosenbergs and their accomplice, Morton Sobell.
Like Julius and Ethel, Sobell also pled not guilty. However, he got away with a sentence of 30 years and served less than 18 at Alcatraz and other federal prisons. Forty-two years after his release, he admitted his own and Julius Rosenberg’s guilt, also to Sam Roberts. Asked whether he were a spy who fed American nuclear secrets to Uncle Joe Stalin, the aged Sobell tried to mitigate his crimes and replied, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that. I never thought of it as that in those terms.”
If there were any injustice in the Rosenberg-Sobell trials it lay in the fact Sobell, and Ethel Rosenberg’s brother and another accomplice, David Greenglass, didn’t also fry in Sing Sing’s Old Sparky, its electric chair. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4119)
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Communism in America: Mission Accomplished
Communism in America: Mission Accomplished!
“I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country. Several of the best friends I have got are Communists.”
Those words, famously spoken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seem archaic today. In retrospect, pre-dating the Cold War against the Communist Menace, they are also fatuously naive.
A common misconception is that, largely thanks to President Ronald Reagan, we overcame that menace and won that war when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed, 1989-1991.
Here’s a newsflash. We may have won that war but we lost the “peace” that followed.
Most of us are aware that communist states are still around. Think China and the third rate countries of Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. However, Communism is no longer seen as a viable threat even if most countries do have communist political parties and dictators such as unavowed communist, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, make a lot of noise.
It’s important to realize that China, which supplies most of our consumer goods, and Russia, now headed by the puppet Dmitry Medvedev but actually controlled by former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, have never renounced Marx’s, Lenin’s, and Mao’s ambitions to rule the planet.
That reality came to mind when I stumbled on a document that was entered into the Congressional Record some 46 years ago which detailed the aims of the old menace.
If the Reds don’t seem threatening to America anymore, it’s only because they’ve already achieved most if not all of those aims. One last obstacle remains, the economic and moral implosion of the United States of America and President Obama is well on his way to facilitating those finalities.
The referenced document was entered into the Congressional Record (appendix pp. A34-A35, January 10th, 1963), by Rep. A.S. Hurlong, Jr. of Florida. The late congressman was a Democrat, long before that party was subverted by the likes of Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.
That entry into the CR is capsulized here http://bit.ly/mMOKl.
Rep. Hurlong cited 45 aims of the Communist Party in America, including:
. “Free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.”
. “Recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.”
. ”Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind.”
. “Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.“
. “Get control of the schools.”. . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
“I do not believe in communism any more than you do but there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country. Several of the best friends I have got are Communists.”
Those words, famously spoken by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seem archaic today. In retrospect, pre-dating the Cold War against the Communist Menace, they are also fatuously naive.
A common misconception is that, largely thanks to President Ronald Reagan, we overcame that menace and won that war when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed, 1989-1991.
Here’s a newsflash. We may have won that war but we lost the “peace” that followed.
Most of us are aware that communist states are still around. Think China and the third rate countries of Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. However, Communism is no longer seen as a viable threat even if most countries do have communist political parties and dictators such as unavowed communist, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, make a lot of noise.
It’s important to realize that China, which supplies most of our consumer goods, and Russia, now headed by the puppet Dmitry Medvedev but actually controlled by former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, have never renounced Marx’s, Lenin’s, and Mao’s ambitions to rule the planet.
That reality came to mind when I stumbled on a document that was entered into the Congressional Record some 46 years ago which detailed the aims of the old menace.
If the Reds don’t seem threatening to America anymore, it’s only because they’ve already achieved most if not all of those aims. One last obstacle remains, the economic and moral implosion of the United States of America and President Obama is well on his way to facilitating those finalities.
The referenced document was entered into the Congressional Record (appendix pp. A34-A35, January 10th, 1963), by Rep. A.S. Hurlong, Jr. of Florida. The late congressman was a Democrat, long before that party was subverted by the likes of Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.
That entry into the CR is capsulized here http://bit.ly/mMOKl.
Rep. Hurlong cited 45 aims of the Communist Party in America, including:
. “Free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.”
. “Recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.”
. ”Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind.”
. “Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.“
. “Get control of the schools.”. . .
(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)
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