The Twin Pillars

George Washington is generally credited with being the Father of this great nation, as he was not only the successful, resilient, crafty, valiant and ultimately the victorious General and Commander-in-Chief of our revolutionary forces, so too he became the president of the Constitutional convention and by his very presence helped to bring divisive factions together so as to create this Republic and our Constitution. Later, Washington was unanimously elected as our first President of the United States, not once but twice was his electoral vote unanimous, to a position that he did not gravitate to, and subsequently walked away from after serving two successful successive terms.  A man like George Washington, seldom graces any land, and America was fortunate to have a man of his character in an era in which most temporal power once achieved, was consolidated and seldom relinquished unless by death, conquest, or revolution. 

In Washington's Farewell Address of 1796, he made many points, of which one of them was:"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness…"  Alas, it is regrettable to say that in this present day, a day in which through the pure hubris of man's belief that he alone is the measure of all things, does something as sensible and as meaningful as Washington's parting words to this nation, a nation that was still in its infancy of its ascent to becoming arguably the greatest nation that the world has ever known are his words set aside by so many of the best and brightest ofhigh political office and influence as the mere chattering of a man who foolishly believed insuperstition and mumbo jumbo, to which today words like Washington's are commonly parroted but are not seriously adhered to by the powers to be.

If we were to be wise, we should take Washington at his word, so that those that are not true believers in the value and disposition of religion and morality signified by Washington's address, are clearly not to be considered to have the attributes of a patriot, which in effect, makes them enemies of this very State, that so many sacrificed so much for.  In point of fact, the warning in Washington's address is that those that labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness are no patriots, no true Americans, and are in fact, the enemy within.  In its more than two centuries of existence, America has never been conquered, yet, like great empires of the past, the erosion of its principles, its values, its morality, its religion, is the very thing that will ultimately conquer it from within.

There are far too many people of influence, that desire this to be a secular nation, to which, the citizens of such, will no longer have unalienable rights, but instead have rights as issued and adjudicated by the State.  That is the very thing this country successfully rebelled against, for there is a supreme difference between a nation that receives its unalienable rights and natural law by its true Creator as opposed to the arbitrary dictates of a king, or the privileged elite, or the military-industrial complex, or in obeisance to the oligopoly, which regrettably is the path that we now trod upon.

Sunup to Sundown and our lives of Quiet Desperation

One of Thoreau's signature quotes is: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," which was written in 1854.  In the year 1850, for the weekly manufacturing labor hours in America, the Weeks Report estimates that the average weekly hours work was a staggering 65.5 hours, which is confirmed by the Aldrich report which estimates an even higher 69 hours.  Clearly, those days, were days of quiet desperation, because many men had to work literally from sunup to sundown, with perhaps Sunday as the designated day off for religious services.  All these hours worked was necessitated because that was what was required in order for a man to make a living, so that those that are somewhat ignorant of history and consequently believe that the workweek has always been 8 hours a day for 40 hours a week, with appropriate overtime given for additional hours worked are hopelessly oblivious. 

The fact that men had to work those hours back in the 1850s, meant that his leisure time was virtually non-existent, and that his life besides his working hours was consequently filled with chores, upkeep, and the daily drudgery of just getting by, with little or no time for reflection, contemplation, education, or the like.  Anytime, that man is reduced to simply working at a job that he derives no just satisfaction from, his life is hardly one to be envied or desired.  Not too surprisingly, hard work with only enough money to fulfill the most basic of necessities, and with little opportunity to do anything constructive, other than reading, prayer, and family activities, would lead in many instances to a given man consuming alcohol to dull the frustrations of their daily struggle.

Of course, Thoreau added the word quiet, which itself is highly important.  The reason that people don't live lives of loud desperation or riotous desperation, is that the ruling class, will not long allow, the working class to be loud, vocal, and disruptive, so that therefore a man in many instances just quietly accepts his lot in life, adding to his desperation, because he is unable to vocalize his frustration, because the risk of doing so is so great.  That is why, people are so quick to believe the lie that certain workers or slaves back in the day were so happy, while forgetting to recognize, that biting the hand that feeds one, will provide only a momentary respite, before the whip of force comes snapping upon their bent back.

The great thing is that over time, those lives of quiet desperation, turned into a substantial and vibrant middle class in this nation, a middle class that sustained the notion that this is indeed the land of opportunity as well as realistically offering to many people the good opportunity of ownership of their own land and home, a nice car, good healthcare, vacations, sick leave, leisure time, entertainment, and the like.   However, unfortunately, in an era of massive federal deficits, stagnating wages, the destruction of the manufacturing class, the replacement of humans with robots, the off-shoring of jobs in service to large corporate interests, and a service economy that employs many but pays pathetically, we are in the process of re-creating a huge divide between the haves and the have nots, to which the have nots appear to grow daily, sustained only by a government that borrows from tomorrow to pay for today, and subsequently writing the tale that we have seen before, that the mass of mankind does indeed live lives of quiet desperation.

Be just and good

We read in Isaiah 56:1 "Be just and fair to all, the Lord God says…" which is echoed in Psalm 33:5 in reference to God, "He loves whatever is just and good…."  So too in a letter by John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, Adam after having read a copious amount of literature and books states: "for they have made no change in my moral or religious creed, which has, for fifty or sixty years, been contained in four short words, "Be just and good.""  From the above it would appear that the complete extent of the wisdom that we need to comprehend and thereby to implement in our lives is to be just and good to our fellow man; but woe to us that have fallen significantly short of this goal, so too for those that do not even attempt to try, and finally worse of all for all those that actively oppose this sound philosophy.

If, on the other hand, more people spent the time to actually think before they acted, planned before they took action, and took into consideration that the world does not and never has revolved around themselves, than this world and societies in general would be far more tolerable and accommodating.  The least that we have an obligation to attend to is to keep our own house in order, so as to thereby lead by example, rather than rail at others for their faults.  So too, we must keep foremost in our minds, that we must practice what we preach and in order to do so, we must focus in ourselves the very philosophy that we wish to see the world live by.

It is comforting to note, that doing the right thing in life, does not even necessitate a college degree, or a non-dysfunction family background, or a certain religion or complexion, because doing just and doing good is beyond all those things.    The fairness and justice that we like to see applied to us, must as a matter of reciprocity, be equally applied by ourselves to others in our everyday interactions.  However, so often within our minds and by our behaviors, we display an attitude and take actions that belie fairness and justice, by believing or acting as if we are a bit more special than others and thereby deserve the benefits of that privilege, by receiving extra consideration over somebody or someone else.  That is neither fairness nor goodness, but favoritism which is the very thing that we need to relinquish in order to actually be just and fair.

Then again, there are those that make no attempt to be just or good, for whatever reason, never seeming to realize that such a mindset will as its ultimate consequence, result in a boomerang type effect that will set things right.  While it is true that devious and selfish actions can reap material benefits, so too it is true that every would-be Napoleon will inevitably meet its Waterloo, as the Grandmaster of it all is both fair and just, and that is why the gate that all will ultimately seek is found to be so narrow and the pathway so straight.

It is one thing to know what is right and then not to do it, and it is an entirely different thing to know what is right and to then perform that in our everyday actions, both big and small.  We are gifted with free will and free choice, which allows us all sorts of permutations, but in the end, you need only to adhere to being just and being good and all will be well both within and without.

Antebellum Unlawful Assembly

The right of the people to peacefully assemble is ingrained within our First Amendment to our Constitution.  However, when you are an enslaved people, as in the antebellum times, when particular States of the union, permitted and abetted this particular institution, there were laws that defined unlawful assembly in such a manner as to take what would for white people be considered under all circumstances to be a lawful assembly, to be unlawful for slaves.  For instance, in Mississippi its legal code of 1857 stated in regards to an assembly of more than five of slaves, free Negroes, or mulattoes that: " … at any school for the purpose of teaching them reading or writing, either in the daytime or at night, under whatever pretext, shall be deemed an unlawful assembly."   These types of laws in the States that later would make up the Confederacy were similar in nature to one another, all having the same purpose of precluding or making it unlawful to aid and abet the making of a slave literate.

The above law in application against slaves reflects the power of the written word to convey both information and knowledge.  That is to say, if slaves are illiterate than their only ability to communicate is verbal, to which their verbal skills will be minimize to imitating words and their perceived meanings through trial and error. So too without knowledge of reading and writing along with the ability to do the most basic mathematics being stymied, this in essence kept the slaves perpetually in a state of ignorance, and essentially by law meant treating them as if they were beasts of burden.  In addition, those that are not literate are perpetually in the grasp of those that are, so too those that cannot add and subtract are subservient to those that are, and those that cannot use their mind to perform gainful employment, or limited exclusively to their physical skills.

An unlawful assembly law specifically directed against slaves and those that wished or desired to help educate them, was both insidious as well as inhumane.  While the purpose of the law was quite clear, there was though a secondary purpose to the law which was to effectively make it illegitimate for slaves to congregate in groups amongst themselves, except as needed for labor, and for rest.  The desire was to keep one's slaves dependent upon the slave owner for all of their material needs as well as limiting outside influence on their minds.  Additionally, the access to outside contact with other plantations was both well monitored and controlled, which limited the slave's options and kept slaves mired in a world of endless drudgery of unrequited toil.

The laws against unlawful assembly were made specifically because slave owners knew that information is power and that the controlling of information or the providing of misinformation was vital to maintaining their control over their plantation slaves in which on any major plantation, the amount of slaves on that plantation far exceeded the few white plantation owners and their families that lived on it.  These plantation owners had no intention whatsoever of providing the means of uplifting the Negro, because their entire economy, their lifestyle, and their money, was based on extracting the profits from enslaved labor into their own hands, and thereby they knew for a certainty that when such a time came, that the slave would see that the Emperor did indeed not have any clothes, that the slaves would recognize for a certainty the swindle that had been played upon them when they were first stolen from their west African shores.

Buying too much House

According to mansionglobal.com, "the average size of a residence across the country has increased by more than 70% in the past century."  Yet, a century ago, average household size in America was over four people per dwelling and at the present time is around 2.6 people per dwelling, so while our household size has been shrinking, our homes have increased substantially in size.  Perhaps another way of looking more fairly at the increase in size in our homes is that we live in a more modern time, which is far wealthier in aggregate, and more appreciative of the modern day conveniences that we need, so that rather than seeing our homes simply as a place to lay down our head at the end of our working day, it represents a place that will have a family room, a nice big kitchen, plenty of storage space, garage, yard, separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms, guest bedrooms, room for our pets, and so forth, so that all of these extras and accouterments in aggregate just end up needing more space.

While it is one thing entirely to aspire to buying a big house or a house that is nicely sized, the fact of the matter is, bigger houses cost more money to build, and therefore costs more money to buy.  For instance, in America, there is a huge amount of choice in the automobiles that we purchase, to which many auto dealers make it a point of pride to try to get you into "more" car than what you really need by convincing you that you actually deserve it, when the more pertinent issues should be, is this the car that will actually be both within my budget and will provide the basic functionality that I require.  So too, lost in the noise of a bigger house, is the fact that the bigger the house, the bigger the home insurance, the home repair, the furniture required, the utility expenditures, and possibly your commute time.

Again, all of these things are fine to a certain extent, especially if you can realistically afford to buy the subject home, however, often not considered seriously enough is the fact that savings are absolutely correlated with expenditures both mandatory and discretionary, along with your income.  This means that buying more house than you really need will make a material difference in your ability to save the money required for a successful retirement, and while it is probably true that all things being equal a larger house with more bells and whistles will provide a slightly higher degree of happiness, the thing is, all things aren't equal, that is to say, by purchasing that house, you could conceivably be sacrificing thousands upon thousands of dollars of money that could have been set aside for your nest egg, needed for retirement, investment, and emergency situations.

What too many people fail to recognize is the housing size that so many Americans aspire to, is something that has been subtly programmed into their minds over an extended period of time, so that so often they really do believe that they need that large house when they really do have smaller options that could be utilized effectively instead.  The bottom line is that builders of homes need buyers and they wouldn't build what they build if they didn't feel confident that the buyers would come.  However, the main reason that a standard mortgage for a home is thirty years is that the price of the home is so much money, so that therefore the only way to break that down into "reasonable" monthly payments is to extend the life of the loan to 360 long months.  If more people truly understood that thirty years is an incredibly long period of time to commit to in order to actually own their home free and clear, they might be incentivized to take a more practical look at a home size that would fill their needs, cost them significantly less money, and allow them to save more.

The Power of the Prosecutor

We like to think that we live in a free country, and it can feel like a free country to most people, until they come up against the Law, either personally or through someone that they know that has been arrested, to which many that are arrested are routinely found to have enough probable cause to then be prosecuted.  You might think that police officers not being lawyers and not being judges, don't always get it right, after all, there are so many laws, with some laws that even lawyers have a hard time comprehending, as well as the fact that evidence collected by police officers may not be admissible for a variety of reasons, as well as police officers being fallible human beings, that therefore, with all those things considered, that people typically being arrested don't necessarily end up getting prosecuted, yet the way that the wheels of our justice system work, with the police and the prosecutorial elements working closely together, that just isn't the case at all.

Once you are arrested, prosecutors have options as to how to pursue any particular case, to which, you might think, the very first option would be to ascertain as to whether there is real probable cause to bring an actual charge against the arrestee.  While many prosecutors will state that this is exactly what they do, in practicality and in actuality, that often is not the case, as prosecutors are far more likely to press the charge before any real investigation is made, simply on the basis that an arrest in and of itself with the appropriate paperwork filled out is probable cause enough that a crime has been committed.

Anytime that you set up a system to which justice becomes a numbers game in which the higher the percentage of convictions, whether via an actual trial by one's peers, or through the pressure of a plea bargain, and that thereby you have thrown out the window any semblance that the prosecutor should be in the business of pursuing truth and justice, believing instead that the prosecution should as a matter of course assert all the force of government itself, if necessary, to get convictions, no matter what, than you do not have a legitimate justice system whatsoever, but a total bastardization of it.

Far too often in this country, the prosecutorial element in conjunction with our policing forces, asserts incredible pressure against the very people that cannot effectively fight back, which are the poor, the indigent, the illiterate, the helpless, the mentally damaged, the substance abusers, and so forth, to bully them into submission and to incarcerate them so as to effectively make sure that these people will be perpetual wards of the State, without real hope of anything else, until the day that they die.  The prosecutor wins their case again and again, but nowhere at any point has real justice been done, nor is this any credit to the community at large, this country, or to any aspect of true justice.

If the prosecutor's sole job is to just put people behind bars any way and anyhow that they can, they are performing that work exceedingly well, however, if the prosecutor's real job is actually to see that justice shall be done, they are failing their country and failing their profession.  The power of the State to convict poor people on dubious charges is a given, but that is not justice, it is merely the assertion of the might of the State against the defenseless.  Above all, the prosecution has an obligation to bring honor to the justice system, and this honor can only come forth in recognition that the people are to be served and not thereby to be lorded over, that justice without compassion, diligence, and justice unequally applied, is inherently unjust and un-American.

Whatever happened to Virginia?

The most populous and powerful States in our union at the present time are California, Texas, and New York, ranked # 1, #2 and #4,  respectively, in population at the present time, to which each of these States have multiple claims to fame, such as the great public University system and the agricultural might of California, the largest oil producer of all the States and owner of its own power grid in Texas, and New York with its great natural harbor and is well known as the financial capital of the world.  Yet, at the time of the founding of America as we know it, the most populous State of our union was not New York, but Virginia, a crown it would keep until 1810.  In fact, four of our first five Presidents, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and James Madison were all native Virginians.  Yet, in the present day, the population of Virginia doesn't even make the top ten, and although it is true that the western portion of Virginia was separated during our civil war and became its own State in 1863, even with West Virginia's population Virginia would barely beat out Georgia in population for 8th place.  And while it is also true that Kentucky was carved out of a portion of Virginia, so too it was true that Tennessee was carved out of North Carolina, as well as other States having some portions of their State separated at some point into new States.

Back in its day Virginia was an economic powerhouse, but highly dependent upon tobacco crops and therefore slavery for its wealth and for its continual growth of the plantation class and gentry, but over time, because of a lack of diversity in economic opportunity, its lack of industrial might, its tired soil, its lack of a natural deep harbor such as New York, Virginia began to lose its power and influence, and instead relied more on its historical significance and failed to recognize that its national influence was being overtaken by New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

What probably hurt Virginia more than anything else was that it was a slave-owning State, to which, in any economy whereby a significant portion of the labor and thereby its wealth is generated by those that are enslaved, encourages indolence by the upper class because labor, especially hard labor, is frown upon as being beneath them, and thereby ultimately produces owners of capital and land, that are lacking in the characteristics and the value of hard work, study, and industrious fortitude, replaced instead with the attitude of a slothful leisure class, with the projected image of genteel mannerisms, while lacking in substance and character inside.

A State, or a nation, is only as good as its people as a whole are willing to engage themselves in profitable enterprise, to which, hard work, dedication, effort, courage, and perseverance, are all attributes necessary for positive results to come to fruition.  There was a time when the best and the brightest were indeed in Virginia, rare men of incredible fortitude, insight, and brilliance, but rather than listening to and emulating these great men, Virginia believed wrongly that things would always be as they had been and failed to recognize that ultimately you surely do reap what you have sowed.

Streaming Media Autoplay

Whether you are watching Facebook newsfeeds, or YouTube, or Netflix, or something similar, those organizations have demonstrated the true value of your eyeballs to their websites to which that all of them have added autoplay features to the video that is streaming in front of you.  The bottom line is that the more engaged you are with any particular website the more that the providers of such can improve their viewership numbers, advertising numbers, and so forth.  While it is true that for motivated people one can actually shut off the autoplay feature, there is something rather strange about the experience that precludes certain people from doing so.  Whether the media being displayed is inherent mesmerizing itself,  or you are just too lazy or lethargic to click away, or you are curious, or bored, or possibly even desiring to watch and watch and watch, the autoplay feature does keep more people on particular websites for longer periods of time, and some of those people, for considerably longer periods.

In the world of television with commercial advertising, keeping viewers engaged is a trickier route to take, simply because most advertisers want to take up the full screen with their advertisements, and also because most shows being shown on the half or full hour, that people know that they will have a few minutes of commercials before the next program begins.  One way to get around this, is to utilize some of the same tricks that streaming media does, which is to take the previous program and reduced its screen size, while adding the pending program to the corner with some previews, and perhaps have some banner ads around the television, with the hope that you can rope in your viewer into watching the next program and then hit them with commercials at the ten or twelve minute mark, after you have gotten their attention.

The streaming media autoplay is a feature that can be shut off, but many people just don't get around to doing that, and the brilliance or insidious of such an autoplay feature is the fact that so many people allow the autoplay to be the master of what they are viewing rather than taking responsibility themselves for what they really want to watch.  This implies strongly that for a significant amount of people and for a significant amount of time, that viewers of streaming media aren't necessarily watching what they are watching because they really love the program, but rather that they are watching the media to fill in their free time because they are bored and rather blasé in their overall outlook.

Everyone has seen some version of a commercial stating that "I bet you can't eat just one", and often times this is true, because the particular product does taste so good, or doesn't fill you up enough, or whatever, and you really do eat more than one.  The streaming media autoplay takes advantage of the fact that for many people, watching streaming media is a relatively passive experience, so that the providers of such makes sure to keep the punchbowl full so as to keep viewers watching, whether that is what they really want to do, our ought to do or not, the bottom line is that it works.  At least, at this point, there is a way to stop the autoplay feature, so that the ultimate control in still in our own hands, and eyes.

The United States has over 11 Million Illegal Immigrants

As reported by Wikipedia: "The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has estimated that 11.4 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States in January 2012."  To the uninitiated or for those that are just waking up from a Rip Van Winkle sleep, the number of illegal immigrants present in this sovereign nation is absolutely stunning, almost unfathomable.  After all, the United States spent within the last decade over $2 billion dollars on border fencing and has over 21,000 border patrol agents to patrol our borders, yet somehow or other, millions of illegal immigrants have migrated to America and live and work amongst documented Americans.

The top four countries that illegal immigrants originate from are all Spanish speaking, of which, by far, the country that provides the most illegal immigrants to America is Mexico.  There are a lot of questions to be asked about why there are so many illegal immigrants in America, but most of the answers to those are rather intuitive or become rather obvious after any sort of thought.  For instance, although America at the federal level does not have an officially designated language, it is quite obvious that if it was to declare one, that it would be English.  Yet, strange to say, calling just about any customer service agency in America from any place within America, will almost invariably give the caller the option of hearing instructions or information in either English or Spanish.  The reason that this is so is because America has an incredible amount of immigrants, legal, illegal, permanent residents, and those granted amnesty to which their first language is Spanish, to which, quite clearly, being able to communicate utilizing their language of preference makes everything easier.

The next question of interest, would be, once someone has crossed the border somehow, they have to find means of employment, housing, and so forth, to which with all the identification rules, laws, and policing that America has, would appear to be quite formidable.  The answer to that particular puzzle is to understand whether in war or peace, that there is always and always will be an "underground railroad" or similar, to which all it takes is citizens or businesses that out of humanitarian concerns, or for self-serving economic reasons, or for various other reasons, feel a need to help, abet, and support illegal immigrants in their quest for the American dream.

The fact of the matter is, that hotels need housekeepers, restaurants need dish washers, cooks, and janitorial services, dual working families need both maids as well as nannies, construction sites need cheap labor in order to be competitive, agricultural interests need hands in the fields, and so on, to which each of these industries in one way or one form or another, have a need that an illegal immigrant can easily fill, and usually at a much lower price point than legal domestic labor.  This means that these businesses and personal interests have a vested interest in illegal immigrants being part and parcel of this land, and thereby the local governing authorities not wanting to upset what already works and is common knowledge, for the most part, allows it to be.

Then there is the fundamental question, as to how do so many illegal immigrants actually successfully cross the border to begin with, and the most basic answer to that question is that there are now and always have been powerful vested interests that make sure to accommodate policing and governing authorities so as to permit the crossing of these immigrants into our nation.  The bottom line is that the sheer number of illegal immigrants in this country can only mean that these illegal immigrants are strongly desired by influential and important people in conjunction with business interests for their benefit, and until such a time as those interests dissipate, the number of illegal immigrants and those needs will not materially change.

The Impossible Task of Pension funds

We have lived primarily over the last decade in an era of low inflation, historically low interest rates for borrowing as well as investing, and historically low GDP growth rates.  America is a mature country that is aging, has a population growth rate of less than 1% per year, and devotes more and more each year of its money or its borrowing of money for legacy items such as social security and healthcare.  All of this means that for investors, investment returns must be lower, because inflation is quiescent, and therefore real returns are more proximate to the actual invested returns, than what was the case back two or three decades ago. 

One of the fundamental things that helps defined benefit pension funds, that is to say pension funds that stipulate how much and how long you will receive a certain amount of money upon retirement, is that those numbers may or may not be tied to inflation, may or may not be limited to a certain cost of living increase ceiling, and may or may not be correlated with an inflation rate that favors the pensioner.  This means in most cases, that inflation helps pension funds earn their particular goal of 7.5% or whatever it is, because inflation helps to push investment results up, even though the real return will actually be considerably lower because the value of that money has been devalued through inflation.  This means that with inflation investments are able to utilize a tailwind that helps to achieve desired investment goals, and deflation or very low inflation provides a headwind.

The last decade has proven that low inflation, low GDP growth, and low interest rates, are not necessarily going to be transitory, that indeed, they may be part of the "new normal", which means that the type of safe investment choice, such as bonds, which historically offered a steady rate of return with minimal risk, are not an investment vehicle that many pension funds can take advantage of, because bond yields at the present day are so anemic.  This means, that pension funds must increase their investment choices as well as their investment risk, which makes for a much higher volatility in their investment returns just to achieve what previously they had achieved, with relative safety and sanguinity.

In the investment world, there are going to be winners as well as losers, with those that just have to make 7.5% or thereabouts, forced to take risks in order to achieve their benchmark, because by not doing so, their pension fund will begin to suffer shortfalls to its commitments to its pensioners.  At the same time by taking those risks, the volatility as well as the standard deviation of these investments will begin to accelerate into previously uncharted and shaky territory.

In the US stock market, all the major indexes at the present time are either at their all-time peak, or near them, which suggests that the easy money has already been made, further to the point, GDP growth in America has not exceeded 3% since 2005, and inflation has exceeded 4% just once since 1991.  All of the above, points to the invariable fact that to get a return north of 5% going forward, pension funds have to invest outside of the United States market, which increases risk and unknowns, with invariably disasters coming back to haunt pension funds.

A more prudent course of action with pension funds is to reduce the benchmark to something far more legitimate, such as 4%, and make wholesale changes to defined pension plans so as to reflect those more realistic returns and therefore pension pools that will be disbursed must be lower in the future; rather than pretending that benchmarks of 7.5% can be hit year after year, when, in fact, in aggregate, that will not and cannot happen.

Don't Call this a Revolution

Our Declaration of Independence was approved by Congress on July 4, 1776, a date that is still celebrated each and every July 4, with fireworks, parades, and family gatherings.  Although many people call the war between those that had declared their independence from Great Britain, the revolutionary war, the words revolution are not found in our Declaration of Independence, mainly because those that debated and signed this document did not believe that that their purpose was to declare a revolution against Great Britain but instead that their purpose was to present to the world the candid facts as to why they had a right to dissolve the political bands that connected them with Great Britain.

While some people may consider that the words revolution and independence, and the denial that we fought a revolutionary war, some sort of semantic dance, it fundamentally is not.  There are many people that rebel against their government for all sorts of reasons, legitimate or not, carefully constructed and debated or not, but far fewer, that put pen to paper, to declare the reasons why they must declare and have the right to their independence from the tyranny that presently oppresses them.

In the case of America, the Declaration of Independence is the seminal document that is the very essence of what our Founding Fathers risked their lives, their fortunes, and their scared honor towards.  Their appeal was made to not only other men and other nations, but more importantly was also made to the Supreme Judge of the world, signifying that their underlying belief was that the rights of mankind was not bestowed upon them by the so-called Divine rights of Kings, but instead that each of us are gifted by our Creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that to secure these very rights, governments are instituted amongst men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, and when the form of that government is inimical to these unalienable rights, it is the right, it is their duty, to throw off the chains of that oppressive government and its agencies.

The petition made by our Declaration of Independence, was a well reasoned and carefully constructed argument that justified Americans from further remaining under the oppression and control of the British State, and that the illegitimacy of the present rule was entirely to the disgrace of Great Britain, for a litany of abuses and usurpations to which the British government had enacted against the people, without their consent, as if the people were mere pawns to the British crown.

The Declaration made clear that the King was unfit to be our ruler, and that any ruler that becomes destructive of our life, liberty, and happiness had no place as our ruler and was by definition, a tyrant, and therefore illegitimate in his power.  Further, in order to secure our natural and unalienable rights, America had to fight Great Britain, in a war of Independence, to which our justifications were clearly delineated, clearly understood by the people, and clearly declared to the world. 

This war was not a revolution it was instead, a war to return to the people fair access to the public good, as well as to their natural state of free association and freedom, to which these natural rights had been wrongly taken from them.  It was, therefore, a war of independence, lawful in its purpose, against the lawlessness of those that believed that they were above the law.

Walk a mile in my Shoes

By far the easiest type of prejudice, prejudgment and the like, relies simply upon the look of the man in question, to which, ingrained within the American milieu, those that are other than white in complexion, are invariably treated by the white ruling class with at best suspicion or perhaps a begrudging respect, sometimes with apathy, and to a large extent by a significant portion of the status quo with disgust, outright hostility, and categorical racism.  Although overt prejudicial conditions within America have most definitely improved over time, that progress is quite deceptive, to which even a cursory glance at justice and injustice in virtually every community clearly demonstrates that minorities, especially minorities of darker complexion are far more likely to be incarcerated as well as poor with little real hope of progress.

The one thing in America that has not changed and is not subject to being changed, is the systemic attack upon minorities that are impoverished and are living in poor conditions whether ghettos or the equivalent to, with significantly high numbers of single parent households, anemic employment opportunities, pathetic and unequal public schooling, substantially higher incarceration rates, and substantially lacking all the positive accouterments that  so many of us take for granted, such as safety, love, respect, positive role models, and so forth, replaced instead with being treated as less than human and unworthy of our respect.

There is though a rather disturbing tale that isn't told often enough, which is the hubris of the ruling class in regards to those that they feel are not worthy to sit with them at the same table and this is that the truth of the matter is that it is the circumstances of our life, that is to say, where we were born, who we were born to, our wealth or lack of it, our good education or lack of access to it, our good family or lack of one, and the complexion of our skin, that define so often the choices or lack of choices that we really do have. 

There isn't any reason to cue the violins, because when you deprive a man of his self-respect, when you deprive a man of fair merit-driven opportunity, when you deprive a man a fair wage or even a fair opportunity to make a fair wage, when each day is a struggle, when you are in debt to your eyebrows, and harassed or targeted by policing authorities, when the area that you live in is both dangerous as well as dilapidated, when the laws are unequally applied specifically against you, and the color of your skin convicts you of crimes that you have not committed, you are going to basically get the results that we presently see in these communities that are forsaken.

While certain white people are inclined to feel high and mighty that they would never freefall to such depths, we know that it can't be because white people are created with superior stuff, because there is also an underclass of white people that are impoverished, ill-educated, and oppressed.  When we take a look at those white people that have nothing, are nothing, and have no opportunity to be anything other than nothing, their lives intersect rather dramatically with blacks of the same milieu, signifying that so often it is the conditions that we are borne into and live with on a daily basis, that ends up becoming our identity and thereby our destiny. 

While it is true that we are the masters of our fate, what is also true and extremely relevant, is that the dice held in the poor man's hand is dice tooled specifically to roll only snake eyes.

How Not to Govern the World

We read in Matthew 26:52: "Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."  We read in Leviticus 19:11: "Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another." So too, there are many more passages dealing with the general comportment that we should have person to person and thereby the way that we should properly conduct our life.  The thing is, no matter how complicated the world may seem, no matter how modern this day and age may be, the most basic morals and ethics that mankind has been bestowed with, are timeless as well as always being relevant.

That is to say, it is the height of hypocrisy to believe that the courteous rules of conduct, and of treating our neighbor as our self, somehow only apply to individual human interactions, and are not applicable to the government and its actions.  Ultimately, any government is made up of individuals, and this very government, on the most fundamental and meaningful level,  if it is to be legitimate, is thereby a government meant to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, so that, therefore, when the very government that we pledge our allegiance to, the very government that we pay our taxes to, the very government that professes to offer the golden door to the huddled masses that are yearning to breathe free, is, in fact, by its very actions, working not for the people, but against the masses, so as to support its own agenda of favoring the elite and powerful while deceiving and cheating the many, than this government has lost its aura of legitimacy.

We are taught, or at least it appears that on paper we are taught, that honesty, courage, selflessness, mercy, and teamwork are all part and parcel of what makes for good Americans; but is this exemplar lived by the very government that leads us?  It is pretense to believe the lie, that in order to bring peace and harmony, you must bomb, shoot, and kill those that don't believe these things or are inconveniently in our way.  You cannot create peace by killing, you cannot have harmony by dropping bombs indiscriminately on other countries, and you cannot have justice when you are unjust to others.  If you take from another without due process, whether that is liberty, land, or their life, you must recognize that by doing so, any validity that you may have had has effectively been compromised.  If most everything that you do of real import, involves deceit, lying, misdirection, and outright cheating, as well as many more things that you do are obfuscated because they are hidden behind layers and layers of classified bureaucratic walls, along with convoluted, distorted, and unequally applied laws, than you will never be able to be an honest man, because dishonesty has never birthed honesty and never will.

You cannot successfully preach peace, love, and harmony while wielding the sword of war in one hand, and in the other taking away the fruits of one's labor by the tyranny of your injustice.  The war to end all wars will not be another war, so too the end of injustice will not be from stealing another man's liberty; these things can only be conquered when governments that represent the people, recognize and live the Word as stated in Matthew 16:20: "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." 

Fuel Pumps, Warnings, and Fires

There use to be a time when gas stations offered as a consumer choice: full service, that is a designated person would pump your gas, clean your windows, check your oil gauge, and so on, while still offering self service at a lower price point, before eventually the lower price crowded out the need for a full service option.  This means that in modern times with the only exceptions being two States, Oregon and New Jersey, there is nothing but self service, so, yes, even little old ladies, have to pump their own gasoline. 

Although gas stations have existed for decades and decades we see that in this era of constant warnings, litigation, and governmental overreach that the list of warnings at gas stations seems to have increased substantially.  For instance, the only two warnings that you really need at gas stations, are to not utilize an open flame near the gasoline fumes while pumping gas and to be wary of static electricity and its ability to create a spark that could ignite the gasoline fumes into a possible fire.  Both of these warnings are pertinent and make sense with most people intuitively understanding that fires and gasoline are not a prudent combination, whereas many people are pretty much blithely unaware of any danger of static electricity but should be.

However, in an era where obfuscation replaces common sense, there are warnings for all sorts of meaningless things of which none of them help the safety of people at gas stations.  For instance, some States place the age that you can legally pump gasoline at 16 years old, which is ridiculous, as if you can't treat your own children as free labor and give them a few simple tasks to do from time-to-time; I mean at what point are children going to actually stand up on their own two feet?  In addition, there are the ubiquitous not to talk on your cell phone warnings, but there are no known cases of cell phones creating any fires at a gasoline station; and whatever are people supposed to do when pumping gas, anyway, especially in States in which you aren't allowed to talk or text on your cell-phone while driving?

If gas stations were really concerned about more safety, than as a matter of course, they would add static discharge pads to their gas stations and would take the means to make sure that gasoline vapors from their pumps were both regularly maintained as well as minimized.  Instead, we get warnings that go on and on and on, to which sort of like prescription medicine warnings, people are just going to ignore them because of their length and overall lack of applicability.

Of course, if pumping fuel really is that dangerous, than perhaps the government should eliminate self service, and replace it with nothing but full service stations, while this would mean that the price of gasoline would go up by a small percentage, it would also bring some employment back to the gas station industry, as well as probably cutting down on loitering, fighting, cursing, and just general rudeness that one will see at certain gas stations from time-to-time.  It would also be in keeping with the governmental nanny state, and ties in well with the government's overriding objective of trying to keep its population forever fearful, and thereby necessitating more governmental oversight and control.

The economic fall of Cuba

In 1959, Cuba suffered a revolution and the regime of Batista was replaced by Fidel Castro and his cohorts.  Incredibly, Fidel Castro is still alive today but because of poor health relinquished his Presidential position to his brother Raul Castro in 2008, and of course, Cuba as a country still exists, a scant 90 miles from Key West, Florida.  In February of 1962, America imposed an embargo on Cuba, an embargo that might be lifted soon but still is in effect; in the meanwhile Cuba has trading partners and alliances with other countries, most significantly with Venezuela, Russia, and China. 

The website solidarity-us.org has estimated the Cuban growth rate from the years 1950 to 2006 at 0.80%,  in which from 1950 to 1958, when Batista ran the country the growth rate was 1.61% nearly matching ”Latin America's average per capita GDP grew at a rate of 1.67%," which was from the period of 1950 to 2006.  Additionally, "In 1950, Cuba ranked seventh in per capita GDP in (the 47 countries of) Latin America (and Caribbean)," but because of its anemic growth rate since then, the GDP per capita of Cuba at the present day is estimated for 2013 and as reported by tradingeconomics.com is at $5351, whereas for Trinidad and Tobago it is at $16093, and for Puerto Rico, a United States territory, it is at $19801.  Quite clearly, the Cuba economy since the revolution has done quite poorly, especially poorly in comparison to other Latin American countries, as well as in comparison to where Cuba once ranked before Castro, despite the fact that Cuba has made alliances and received funding from countries that typically have been inimical to America and its interests.

The above does not mean necessarily that conditions under Batista were better in aggregate for most Cubans, although it certainly does mean it was better for certain privileged people under Batista, but it also means that in whole Cuba as a nation has regressed, in other words, while there may be a more even distribution of income in Cuba, that simply translates into essentially being that there are more poor people in Cuba that are poorer, with the middle class simply no longer existing.

In regards to Puerto Rico and Cuba, in comparison of these two Caribbean countries, while Puerto Rico has its own troubles and a rather shaky economy with high unemployment and high debt, it still represents as a massive success in comparison to Cuba.  The fact that one country, Puerto Rico, is a territory of the United States, while the other country, Cuba, has an embargo impressed upon it by the United States, would strongly imply that spitting in the face of your rich Uncle, is probably not going to be beneficial for your people or your country.  Further to the point, Trinidad and Tobago whose GDP is three times the amount of Cuba, proves conclusively that if Cuba would make the structural and political changes that would normalize its relations with other Latin American countries and America that its GDP would surely grow so as to make up for lost ground.

They say that you cannot be an island to yourself, Cuba proves the point, has proved the point, for a period of over fifty years, that their version of all for one and one for all, has enriched only the very elite of the elite, and left the masses worst off and with little economic hope.

The True Meaning of our Religious Rights

The First Amendment to our Constitution states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" to which in 1962, Justice Black delivered his opinion in the Engel v. Vitale case for the majority that: "….For this reason, petitioners argue, the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State."  The thing is, the Constitution itself does not once use the word "wall" or "separation" in its entire document, nor does it ever use the above metaphor or imply such separation within its words.  This Supreme Court decision wrongly takes away our religious rights to such an extent, that the expression of religion within governmental buildings, schools, and other public areas subject to federal jurisdiction has been eliminated, eradicated, or on the defensive.

The most important thing to take away from all this, is that the very people that met to put together, argue about, write, debate, and finally to approve our Constitution with its amendments as representatives of each of the thirteen States would have as a matter of course if they truly wanted a wall of separation between Church and State, expressed that very viewpoint in black and white in the Constitution to begin with.  The fact that they did not do so, indeed, did nothing of the sort, proves that the present day interpretation of such is wrong and a prime example of judicial activism in which if the justices can interpret and make our Constitution to mean whatever that the prevailing winds wish it to be read or interpreted as, then we effectively have no Constitution.

In point of fact, when the thirteen States met at what became the Constitutional convention, America was a confederation of States with a weak central government, in which that central government had no real power over the sovereign States of the union, yet, the representatives of the respective States, recognized that in order to provide domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and provide for the common defense, this would necessitate a National government.  Not too surprisingly, having fought for their freedom from the iron hand of the oppressive tyranny of Great Britain, the arguments against such an alliance were vociferous and highly charged, yet at the end of the day, the advantages of having one Federal government that would unite the States into one body politic outweighed the disadvantages.

At the time of this convention, different States had different established religions as part of their respective State Constitutions, to which none of them desired to sacrifice their established religion to the National government, to wit, the primary purpose of the First Amendment was to preclude the National government from establishing a national religion that all would have to pay tribute to.  Further to that point, the First Amendment, made it clear that the National government would not interfere with the free exercise of one's religious belief.  The very point and purpose of the First Amendment was not to tread upon the free exercise of religious conscience, nor to eradicate religion from the Nation; which if this was truly the case would be senseless, since our unalienable rights come via our Creator and not by our government.

Our National government should as a matter of course encourage religious faith, devotion, moral and ethical behavior, with the only caveat being that this government cannot establish one particular exclusive faith that all must pay homage to.   To not do so and instead to continue on our present course of removing God from the public square will inevitably mean the destruction and denial of all our liberties.

Land and Migration

As physical beings we have to in order to live, reside on physical land, to which, land is legally owned either by government and its agencies or by private individuals.  In regards to either the government or to private individuals, the fact that they control the land, means that essentially whether you call it taxation, rent, tribute, or whatever, you as individual have to come up somehow with some sort of income to live upon some part of land, or you will be reduced to becoming a "squatter" by taking over a small portion of governmental or private land.

Not too surprisingly, in areas of a country, such as rural lands in which the land itself is often primarily owned by a few select individuals or organizations, in order to have gainful employment, you as a non-land owner are going to have to play the game per the rules of that given community, which typically means that the "income" that you earn there will only be enough to sustain you and your family, but not enough to provide you the velocity to escape from this particular economic prison.

This means, because of the gross inequitable distribution of land in rural areas, that, one way or another, many residents of such, will find a way to gravitate to cities, not because the land situation will be better in a city in the sense of ownership, but primarily because economic opportunity as well as the accouterments of city life will beckon people to come, for better or for worse.  The above often means though that the new city residents without any material net worth, will take accommodations any way that they can, in any manner that will provide them with some sort of shelter.

This then essentially translates into cities becoming subdivided into specific blighted areas, overcrowding, and slums because the residents of such more often than not, don't own any real property and don't have the means to improve their living quarters because their income is often too low, too erratic, or non-existent. 

The correction to poverty, whether for city dwellers or rural, can come from many means and directions, but, by far, the best solution to such endemic conditions, is a more equal distribution of land, property, and opportunity.  For if a man does not own any land, is not permitted to hunt the land, or fish upon the waters surrounding the land, or to create things with his hands without a license or a permit on the land, to which, in all of these things he has been crowded out of in order to protect the status quo, than he is without the reliable means or wherewithal to sustain himself and his family.

While America prides itself on being perceived as the land of opportunity, the actual reality of it, is that America is a land of a huge divide, between the elite wealthy of the very few worth monetary sums unimaginable, against a massive underclass of those that basically are worth nothing, to which marketplace.org recently stated: "Around 50 percent of the US population, Zucman said, has zero net wealth."  While there are a lot of reasons why this is so, the three most primary reasons are lack of land ownership, lack of capital, and lack of ownership of your own means of production. 

Paroled and no Right to the Internet

As reported by crimeinamerica.net, "An estimated 4.7 million adults were under correctional community supervision in the United States on December 31, 2014," which is an absolutely staggering amount of people that are under probation or parole or similar.  Not too surprisingly, most people in a position of incarceration or the threat of incarceration will sign up for just about anything that the government insists upon in regards to restrictions and access in order to have "freedom" or a modified version of freedom on the outside by being released, rather than being kept locked up.  In some communities, and States, there are restrictions or outright prohibitions for parolees in regards to the access to the internet, in a time in which any smart-phone, tablet, laptop, play station, and similar devices can access the internet readily, and in an era in which many job sites no longer accepting applications except through online forms, and/or employment jobs are basically only listed online, this restriction or prohibition seems to be out-of-touch with reality.

The most basic problem with outright bans of internet access to parolees is that it limits or precludes said parolees from being able to access information or to stay in contact with people and opportunities, so that they are at an expressed material disadvantage to other people, no matter how motivated they are to become productive and gainfully employed citizens of America.  It's one thing to setup monitoring software on a parolee's computer or for governmental authorities to have access to email or other social media sites of the parolee for the purpose of verifying and confirming that the parolee is not operating outside the law, but it's an entirely different thing to simply ban it, as a condition of a given parole.

The fact is virtually all parolees are willing to sacrifice some liberty for the opportunity to be on the outside but it isn't fair to take away necessary and vital tools that are part and parcel of modern life, to a person that will be handicapped enough already, just trying to find something to legally do that provides real worth.  The critics that provide the impetus for the restriction and prohibition of the internet for certain law breakers, in particular those that have been convicted as sex offenders, seem to as a matter of course, want to punish such offenders for an unending period of time, whereas once a convicted felon has completed his time behind bars, that person should not be then judged guilty of future crimes, when they haven't done anything material in the first place that reflects that charge.

in addition, many of the people that are currently under correctional supervision have in common that they are poorly educated, substance abusers, lacking self-control, and with a poor family structure background, so in reality, their biggest crime they have committed is having been born into compromised circumstances.  Far be it for America, rather than making their lives even more difficult, by denying them the internet or mandating other insensible and unreasonable restrictions, should take it upon itself, to willingly provide the tools to these parolees that will enable them to have a decent fair chance, so that they too can pursue happiness.

Christianity and the Resurrection of the Christ

The Bible is full of stories, some symbolic, some metaphorical, and some in parables, so too there is the story of Jesus the Christ.  In order to understand the Messiah, it is important, of vital importance, to comprehend and to understand that Christianity would not exist, without the resurrection, without the ascension of the Christ, and without the Pentecost, because without these events you have a man of great wisdom, a great prophet, and a great mentor, but you do not have the immortal Christ.

While there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with presentations of Jesus that ends with His death, because physical death is almost invariably the lot of humanity, believing this though in such a manner, that Christ died on the Cross, never to return is foundationally wrong, and isn't consistent with Biblical truth, or the life of the Christ.  Those that somehow can't accept the concept that anyone could ever come back from physical death in any form, aren't Christians in the most complete sense of word, but rather are those that are essentially reduced to the admiration of a good man, a prophet, and a wise soul. On the other hand, in order to be considered a Christian, you have to implicitly believe that Christ rose from the dead on the third day, that he thereby consorted with his apostles, later to ascend to the Father on the fortieth day, followed by the Pentecost of the Holy Spirit that descended upon the apostles on the fiftieth day of Jesus' death by crucifixion.

The thing is, the apostles that went forth to preach the Word, did not do so, under the impression that they were preaching about a good man, or simply a prophet, or remembering the wisdom of a wise soul, they were instead specifically preaching that Jesus the Christ, was crucified, that He died, andthat on the third day, Christ rose again as He reconstituted his body, still containing the wounds of his crucifixion, and walked, preached, and mentored his apostles, before ascending to the Heavens, from which he originated in spiritual form, and on the fiftieth day the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, which created a unity of spirit, through the "tongues of fire" which rested upon each of them.

The apostles of Jesus now well understood, that the man that they had been listening to, learning from, and walking with, was not just another great prophet from God, was not just a spiritual man who could heal people from injuries both psychological and physical, was not just a man gifted with the ability to raise the dead back to life, but that He was the son of man, that is physically present here on earth, as well as through his spiritual oneness with God, the son of God.  This meant, that the Christ the apostles preached and ultimately the Christ that they proselytized about, was the immortal, unchangeable, omniscient, Creator God of the universe, the alpha and the omega.  It was their firm belief in the knowledge that Christ rose from the dead that inspired these good and common salt-of-the-earth men, to preach boldly, knowing that in time that they too would become martyred but that their deeds would live on in the generations to come.

The story of the Christ is not and cannot be complete without the story of His Resurrection and ascension, demonstrating conclusively that fallen man suffers from the illusion that mortality is the end, whereas instead all that we are is actually contained within our indestructible soul which cannot rest till it rests within the heart of God.

Nutrition and their Governmental Regulators

When we go to the grocery store and select our items for purchase, one can't help noticing all the nutritional information placed on the label on the products that we buy, of which, some people pay very close attention to that specific information, and many, perhaps just a cursory glance.  In any event, for most people, the fact that these products are sold in grocery stores in the first place, implicitly means that these foods can't be outright dangerous for our bodies, so typically people stress less about the nutrition and stress more about its price and value.

The government through the FDA and other general rules and regulations appears to have an abiding interest in the food items that Americans eat, in fact, based on charts such as food pyramid, the government provides to its citizens guidelines as to how much to eat from a given food group, so that through this and other means the government distinctly presents the impression that it cares what its citizens eat. 

The FDA has a budget of about one billion dollars specifically earmarked for food items which is directed towards protecting and supporting the public heath of its citizens, but does the FDA do its job uncompromisingly?  One way to answer that question is to understand that the most basic reason why anybody works is to earn an income, to which, people that have expertise in nutrition and food items would be in demand by both private as well as governmental agencies.  Not too surprisingly, the FDA and multinational corporations, clearly have a revolving door type of policy, in which, the regulators migrate over to private enterprise, and private enterprise employees move over to the FDA.  While there isn't anything wrong with this from the perspective that people should be entitled to work where they desire while utilizing best their skill-sets, there is a fundamental issue though, when there is either a quid pro quo or understanding that what is good for PepsiCo, with sales of $40 billion dollars is also good for American citizens as the prevailing viewpoint, supported by an acquiescent FDA.

The fact of the matter is, that the regulators are in fit and function not really independently regulating the food providers in a manner that places real science and real nutrition in the forefront, but more akin to rubber stamping the biggest players in the industry, because multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, Kraft foods, and the like, have billions of dollars invested into their infrastructure and products so that if the government would somehow rule that, for instance, refined carbohydrates or sugar and its equivalencies were a bane to the health of American citizens, their stock price would take a massive downward hit, which would eviscerate market capitalization and portfolios.  If, on the other hand, the government merely allows bygones to be bygones, or gentle suggests that perhaps we should ingest a little less sugar or a little less refined carbohydrates than it will pretty much be business as usual. 

What the FDA isn't going to do, is to actively take on the biggest players of the food industry, for first of all, that revolving door precludes such as action, and secondly the FDA seldom produces truly independent research that challenges prevailing wisdom so as to not come abreast of an inconvenient truth that would thereby force its hand.