Musings of a Patriot

Tag: thoughts

  • Contributing to the fediverse

    This is both new and old for me. I wrote consistently on political policy topics for over 10 years but then life happened and I tapered off nearly 10 years ago. I was writing before social media was a thing – back when decentralized personal publishing was the norm rather than everybody using one or…

  • The Issue of Secession

    Is the lack of a constitutional provision for secession a problem? What would such a provision look like? I would like to explore these questions to see what it reveals about secession and about our nation.

  • Repeal vs Lawsuit vs Nullification

    photo credit: Smabs Sputzer Ever since the passage of that rancid piece of legislative sausage labeled health care reform Republicans have been talking about repealing the bill. Some even talk about “repeal and replace” as their goal. Alongside that rhetoric (and that’s pretty much all it is at this point) there has been the action…

  • Multi-Dimensional Political Perspectives

    photo credit: mkandlez Jane Hamsher wrote about the 11 Dimensional Chess approach to health care legislation that the Obama administration tried. That sent me back to some earlier thoughts I had shared about how we visualize the political spectrum. The simplest way to view things is one dimensional. Like the opening image here it breaks…

  • Abolish Earmarks

    photo credit: Skrewtape For some time I have been internally conflicted on the issue of congressional earmarking. Many people, including such diverse characters as President Obama and Congressman Chaffetz, have been vocal about calling for an end to earmarks. Others such as my own Congressman, Rob Bishop, reply that earmarks are not an addition to…

  • Taxes: Supply vs Demand

    The bulk of the discussion at the legislative town hall meeting last week was focused on fiscal issues of one kind or another. One thing that was briefly touched on was the potential return of sales tax on unprepared food. I have always been a fan of not having that tax, because of its supposedly…

  • Ensuring Personal Independence

    Last week Charles D. left a short but challenging comment stating: I will be interested to read what steps you believe one can take to insure personal independence in the event of an economic collapse. Today I will attempt to specifically describe what we can and must do to ensure that we are not utterly…

  • A New View on the Flag and Pledge of Allegiance

    photo credit: eschipul I had some interesting thoughts this morning after reading an article I would normally not bother to read. It was talking about a specific historical flag, but my thoughts were turned to the flag generally and then to the Pledge of Allegiance. Here’s the statement that got my brain moving: The flag…

  • Public to Private is a One Way Economic Street

    photo credit: taberandrew A post entitled The New Robber Barons got me thinking about what happens when public and private enterprises compete in a marketplace. Thinking about that led to some interesting observations. The first of which is that progressives are right in their assertion that public and private enterprises can compete without eradicating each…

  • GOP Sheep with No Shepherd

    Yet Another Fire Dog Lake post led me to this Progressive Change Campaign Committee poll. My interest in the poll focused on the results of two questions: Would you favor or oppose a health care bill that does NOT include a public health insurance option and does NOT expand Medicare, but DOES require all Americans…