DC hypocrites act like spoiled kids on playground by pointing fingers

By David McElroy · September 24, 2011

There is no real search for truth in the modern political system. Maybe seeking truth has never been a priority for any political system. I’m not sure. What I am sure of, though, is that what passes for truth-seeking today is nothing but partisan political theatre.

Republicans in the U.S. House attempted to grill the top executives of the failed Solyndra solar energy firm on Friday, but the chief executive officer and chief financial officer for the company declined to answer any questions, repeatedly invoking their Fifth Amendment right against answering questions that could incriminate them. (I’ve written about the ongoing scandal before, if you’re one of the few who hasn’t run into it already.)

Why were Republicans so eager to go after this egregious example of government stupidity? Was it because they were suddenly concerned about half a billion of U.S. taxpayer money being handed to a company that will never pay it back? No, it was because a Democratic administration was the one who gave them the loan and because the industry being subsidized was one they don’t like.

Are these same Republicans holding hearings to look into why billions of dollars in taxpayer money was poured down various ratholes during the Bush administration? Of course not. They look the other way at those times. This is political theatre designed to gain advantage in next year’s elections by tagging an administration with a scandal.

While Democrats might be nodding up until this point, they’re just as guilty when the shoe is on the other foot. When it was a Republican administration in power, Democrats in Congress did everything they could to expose what they saw as corruption and malfeasance in spending the might possibly be blamed on Republicans. Remember them trying to turn Blackwater and Haliburton into millstones around Republicans’ necks?

Those loud-mouthed Democratic advocates for the people turned meek and mild in Friday’s hearing, with U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) complaining when Republicans kept trying to ask questions of the Solyndra execs after they’d invoked their Fifth Amendment rights:

“I just want to take this moment to assert the fact that I think it’s unseemly and inappropriate for members to be asking questions that you know they will not answer,” Waxman said, saying the GOP questions were “sound bites” for the press.

Waxman, of course, wouldn’t ever do such a thing — unless it was a Republican administration he was trying to score points against. These people are all hypocrites, but they only get away with it because you allow it by supporting them.

The power structure in D.C. — or anywhere else around the world among the coercive states of various stripes — isn’t interested in truth. It’s not interested in the welfare of “the people.” It’s interested in jockeying for power and squeezing out the political opposition. What you see when they claim to “fight for you” is pure political theatre. You’re a fool if you believe it’s anything other than a thinly veiled attempt at getting their own way.

Any system that puts power into the hands of the majority — and gives those people the necessity of picking a few people to control everybody else — is doomed to create this situation. We keep complaining about the politicians in Washington and in our state capitals and city halls, but it’s not the people who are the problem. It’s the system.

We need competitive governance — a system by which people can be free to vote with their dollars and their feet about which sort of rules they live under. We need to get rid of the idea that everybody has to live under a one-size-fits-all set of rules handed down by elites selected by the majority.

Until then, we’re going to continue to be slaves who live under the authority of squabbling children whose whims can be carried out by thugs with guns.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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