Jumpstart Strategies

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
---Wayne Dyer (American Psychologist)
 
If the news media, certain elected officials and/or your schoolteachers have you in a panic over our changing weather patterns,  you may want to study a concept known as Radiative Forcing. Specifically: the independent factors that contribute to this effect; as well as the relative impact each individual factor over time.
 
Here’s how the Massachusetts Institute of Technology describes Radiative Forcing in layman’s terms:
 
"The concept… is fairly straightforward. Energy is constantly flowing into the atmosphere in the form of sunlight that always shines on half of the Earth's surface. Some of this sunlight (about 30 percent) is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed by the planet. And like any warm object sitting in cold surroundings — and space is a very cold place — some energy is always radiating back out into space as invisible infrared light. Subtract the energy flowing out from the energy flowing in, and if the number is anything other than zero, there has to be some warming (or cooling, if the number is negative) going on."
 
We draw your attention to this because people who are fanatical about “Climate Change” are either lying to your or they’re grossly ignorant.
 
A number of credible studies comparing and contrasting anthropogenic factors (i.e. man-made carbon emissions) to natural effects (i.e. solar activity & geophysical phenomenon) are deliberately buried by wolves in sheep’s clothing. Specifically, opportunists who are hellbent on enslaving your mind.
 
Plenty of political and financial opportunists stand to profit personally from regulatory programs designed to restrict your liberties. Most notably, carbon taxes and plans to eliminate gasoline powered vehicles by the year 2050. These vultures present the public with lies and half-truths through corrosive media establishments that prostitute themselves for ratings. They also pocket immoral elected officials who sell their souls to the devil.
 
It's little surprise that reports like the one published in Science Direct’s March 2017 edition of the Quarternary Science Review are buried by the press and grossly ignored by bureaucrats in Washington D.C.. Simply put, they can’t scare you with the truth.
 
There’s strong evidence that solar radiation and geophysical phenomena have more of an affect on the weather than human factors ever could. Yet, some of the most well-educated among us have the gall and the hubris to presume that human beings control the fate of our planet.
 
Scientists who shine light on the truth like Dr. Roger Higgs are ostracized by pagans who’ve embraced an esoteric mantra known as “Climate Change” as their almighty deity. He writes:
 
“We urgently need to expose the ‘CO2 = pollutant’ fallacy being forced upon your children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces by schools, universities, governments and mainstream media worldwide, and to denounce it in scrupulously truthful terms easily understood by the public, including those youngsters themselves.”
 
Don’t be fooled: People with bad intentions have created a cult around Climate Change, and the lot of them seem intent on organizing a religion around this unholy deity.

​None of this should surprise you. All throughout history, sycophants have capitalized on shifts in weather patterns to stoke fear and hysteria, simply to line their own pockets and ultimately seize power.
 
Students of history should take note of the eerie parallels between what’s happening today and the events that sparked the Dark Ages, also known as the Migration Period. The weather cooled over the European continent then, congruent with the fall of the Roman Empire. Panic and mass hysteria ensued which destabilized their economy and enabled barbarian marauders to seize power and tyrannize the populace.
 
Similar events also took place on the European continent when the weather warmed during what’s known as the Medieval Warming Period. Increased precipitation disrupted crop cycles, causing famine and death. Unscrupulous noblemen exploited the conditions to rob farmers of their property, and send the populace into serfdom and indentured servitude.
 
In other words, shifts in weather patterns are nothing new; and despotic opportunists often gain political leverage through the chaos of uncertainty when this happens. They fuel mass hysteria to feed their own selfish interests and breed a demon of despair.
 
 
 
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
 ---Matthew 7:15
 

“The public library system of the United States is worth preserving.”
---Henry Rollins (American Musician)
 
Up front, we want to make one thing perfectly clear: we are NOT in favor of nationalizing our primary schools nor our secondary educational institutions. Under our Constitution, these matters reside with our state and local governments; and we believe that it should remain that way. Nevertheless, it would be foolish or naive to ignore that the fabric of American education is changing dramatically during the digital revolution.

Take a look at the numbers. The education market in the United States has grown dramatically since the advent of the Internet and it's only expected to grow more over the next several years. In short: the ED hasn't kept pace with the changes; and it’s time we recognize the cultural shift that's occurring as a result. In other words, we ought to re-engineer and re-tool our educational systems; and we ought to act quickly!


THE STARTING POINT
The amount of information available today to the public over the world wide web is unprecedented in our history. Concurrently, the information age has spawned a number of innovations in the field of education. Among the most sweeping changes in primary and secondary research:

1. Search Engines have effectively replaced the traditional library “Card Catalog” - as well as librarians for the most part.
2. Wiki sites have become our society's primary encyclopedias.
3. A plethora of dictionaries, thesauruses and other reference tools are currently available at a moment's notice over the web and through digital distribution platforms.

When you take a step back and look at the big picture, it's evident that how and where we learn in this era is much different than it was before. This led us to ask the following questions: 

• Aren’t the tools and resources described above the very foundations of a public library system?  If so, why are corporations and select non-profits the principal gate-keepers of vital strategic resources like these? Does the current situation pose national security risks? 
• If guarding, growing and enhancing these resources is crucial for our nation, then shouldn’t our federal government step in and assert some span of control?
• If both are true, then when, where, and to what degree should the federal government be involved?

These are the fundamental questions we’ll address in this article. We’ll argue that Americans need to fully understand and quickly accept the fact that educational tools like Google, Wikipedia, and the Dictionary.com’s of the world all serve the public interest and ought to be nationalized to some degree. In other words, a complete re-tooling of our Department of Education is long overdue.
 

AS SIMPLE AS 1,2,3
Here’s where we’d start:

1. A search engine, an encyclopedia, and other reference tools (e.g. a dictionary and a thesaurus) ought to be considered part of our national library system.
2. It makes sense for Google & Wikipedia to become public utilities (similar to AT&T way back when),  or whole parts of the ED as soon as possible.
3. Still allow for competition within these categories through private enterprise.

The proposed system would re-tool the Department of Education; and also support crucial National Security and Defense initiatives.  We’ll explain what we mean as you read on:  
 

MOST OF US NOW CARRY A “POCKET LIBRARY”
Like 77% of all Americans, I own a smartphone; and I often download and access useful apps for personal education, writing and research purposes. The apps on my device include a couple of different Search Engines (Google and Bing), a global encyclopedia (Wikipedia), a dictionary and a thesaurus (my preferred version is Merriam-Webster), as well as a multitude of other small reference tools (e.g. area code lookups and zip code lookups, etc.).

If you were born after 1989, these things probably seem natural.  However, for those of us who are older, the Internet revolutionized access to libraries of information as well as primary and secondary research tools. Imagine: before the 1990's, people actually had to travel (by automobile or by foot) to a library to access a wide body of research materials if they weren’t fortunate enough to own them themselves. Furthermore, if their research requirements were extensive, they often had to travel to multiple locations to complete their research! 

Research tools and materials are vital necessities for individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset: people who wish to invest time and energy in determining their own futures. Nearly every entrepreneur and investor will tell you that if you want to gain advantages over your competition, you need to excel in school and continuously strive for personal growth. In other words, you spend a great deal of time in library facilities.

Any way you look at it, a public library is about education, growth. and learning. It’s a core extension of our public education system. As Campbell Brown of Facebook notes, “It comes down to what your priorities are, and if public education is about children and learning. It’s a core extension of the public education system. As kids, then every decision we make should be focused on the question of 'Is this good for a child?' And that should be the driving focus and the priority when we decide what our policies should be and what our laws should be.”

(Keep in mind that we are all considered children in eyes of our Creator to a certain degree regardless of our age...)

Currently, we have libraries in our public school systems for our children from grades K-12; and reference materials are of course vital to those systems. Ask any teacher, and they’ll definitively tell you that high-caliber tools facilitate quality education. So then, why aren't the tools in our "pocket library" considered an extension of our public education system, if public libraries in fact are?

It boils down to this: some of the tools within our aggregate pocket library must be integrated into the ED in order to effectively manage public education in the United States today. Otherwise, we may put the American way of life at risk as things currently stand.


A CASE FOR NATIONALIZING OUR POCKET LIBRARY
Is it in our best interests to have all our digital research tools developed, managed and updated by private corporations and select non-profits? The answer is unequivocally NO!

Of course, Innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity are the driving factors behind the success of the corporations that maintain our "pocket library" (Google and Microsoft as well as the Wikimedia Foundation and others).  For example, Google launched in 1996 as a research project by PhD students at Stanford University. Two years later, the company received a $100,000 angel investment; and away it went!

Nevertheless, Google has received a great deal of scrutiny and criticism recently from conservative & libertarian political pundits and conservative economists; as well as from radical leftist ideologues like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

on the right side of the political spectrum, Conservative and Libertarian political pundits accuse the tech monolith of down-ranking sites and pages that don’t align with corporate’s political positions, thereby suppressing free speech. The concerns of the conservative economists are largely geopolitical in nature. For example, Google has agreed to build a censored version of their search engine for communist China. Both sets of concerns suggest that Google deliberately stifles competition and suppresses the very principles that led to the company’s founding: entrepreneurship and innovation!

On the other hand, far-left zealots have seized upon these factors to push forth visions of an impossible socialist utopia. For example, Sanders (a self-proclaimed "Democratic Socialist” demagogue) contends: “You go to your public library, or you call your fire department or police department, what do you think you are calling? These are socialist institutions.”

To be blunt, Senator Sanders full of crap. The police, the fire department and the public library ARE NOT socialist institutions.  Rather, they’re public resources; and there’s are HUGE differences between the two!


BERNIE SANDERS MAY BE MISGUIDED... BUT HE DOES HAVE A POINT
Several of the tools we've listed (i.e. search engines, dictionaries and encyclopedias) and are in-fact primary and secondary research staples used in libraries the world over.  However, unlike brick and mortar libraries, the information available within our "Pocket Library" is decentralized, poorly curated and loosely maintained at the present time. 

For example, a dictionary reference tool now often appears in Google's search results when you include the word “definition” with a search term. That said, the word inclusion criteria (and definitions) appear to be determined by Google itself!

This should concern anyone who believes in the American Dream. If you look under the surface, you'll find that terms like Fascism were completely omitted from Google's dictionary tool last year after the Daily Caller questioned the definition that Google supplied.

Perhaps even more disturbing, Google has now integrated a feedback tool to report “wrong and offensive” definitions; quite possibly modifying or altering definitions on a day-to-day basis in most extreme cases.

Google currently dominates the search industry. Coupling search with a dictionary and thesaurus in effect makes Google (and the semi-anonymous voting body that supplies feedback on word acceptance) the principle arbiters of English, Spanish and a multitude of other human languages!

We must question whether it’s reasonable and prudent to allow companies like Google and non-profits like Wikimedia such enormous sway over the literacy and education of the American public! It seems to us that leverage these monoliths have over our society could in-fact fuel Fascism; very word Google omitted from their dictionary back in 2017!


THIS IS A NO-BRAINER
Clearly, the "Pocket Library" we’ve discussed here is vital to our national interests. In-fact, you could say that it’s a national treasure of sorts: Young and old men and women of varying backgrounds and ethnic persuasions scour their "Pocket Libraries" daily seeking to educate themselves, better their lives and expand their horizons.

When it comes to the tools and resources in our "Pocket Library" we need to ensure there's a level playing field.  We must ensure the accuracy and integrity of the information available to the public, preserve our national heritage and cultivate advancements that strengthen our society.

So, why not:

1. Nationalize some of the tools and materials that comprise our aggregate Pocket Library?
2. Create a repository under one branch of the federal government, where the library's tools and resources can be effectively curated, expanded and protected?

For the reasons we've described, both these ideas make clear sense to us.
​

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's socialist ideals are in-fact Utopian fantasies. They're a means to an apocalyptic end for American free enterprise, free speech and free expression. We’re not proposing an end to the free market in the case we've presented. Instead, we’re talking about centralizing a core set of vital public services; just like the United States postal service does for mail and package delivery. Not the whole enchilada mind you; just the meaty part of it.

We also argue that setting up such a service will lead to a much fairer competitive environment and open the door for a wide array of entrepreneurial business ventures within the affected industry categories. You only need look at the success of shipping companies like Federal Express, UPS and DHL to realize that opportunity will eventually open up in this space if the federal government steps in and asserts a degree of authority.

Jesus, I hope more Americans soon realize the strategic importance of the research tools that comprise our aggregate "Pocket Library" and demand immediate action from our lawmakers. ​Otherwise, we’re headed toward a world where George Orwell’s "Doublespeak" becomes a real possibility.


​
​Author: Erik Gagnon - Managing Partner, Chi Rho Consulting

​"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
---George Santayana (American Philosopher 1906) 

So far, 2018 has been a very busy and productive year for our consulting firm. So much so, that we decided to put our blog articles on hiatus while we focused our attention on our clientele's priorities.  We’ve also gone dark on our social media pages for much the same reason.

However, this past Saturday a client of ours posted a statement on his personal Facebook page which I happened to catch.  His statement related to the allegations of sexual assault made against Supreme Court Justice Brett during his confirmation hearings.  Frankly, the sentiments our client chose to share disturbed me greatly. So much so, that I felt they warranted a response.

Sadly, much of social media has become a thought ghetto in recent years.  Rational debates and logical discussions have largely been silenced and replaced with emotional outbursts by angry mobs.  Their comments are largely rooted in animus and in fear; and are oftentimes agenda driven. Consequently, I decided to write a personal letter to him expressing my concerns instead of posting my thoughts to his feed or sending him an instant message.

As I said, our client’s statements on this matter were deeply disconcerting on many levels. The responses he received troubled me even more. As a result, I've chosen to share my response letter publicly. His original comment is included near the opening of my very lengthy response which follows below:
​

​OUR LETTER IN RESPONSE TO THE KAVANAUGH CONFIRMATION HEARINGS AND THE QUESTION OF DUE PROCESS

THE INEVITABLY DIRE CONSEQUENCES IF WE DEMOCRATICALLY FORGO OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
I have yet to receive a response to my letter from our client. That said, I am hopeful that he will take the time to reflect on my arguments, recognize the extreme nature of his original statement and recant his position.  That said, we are witnessing a rapid spread of absolutist rhetoric within our society today. It is a very real danger to anyone who disagrees with agenda-driven propaganda based on subjective truths and partial facts. That's why I felt compelled to come forward and speak out on this matter.

Radical leftist ideologues repeatedly ignore objective truths in order to push forward agendas premised on "equality of outcome". They fail to grasp the fundamentals of Natural Law. Additionally, they willfully or blissfully ignore the repeated failures of Marxist and Socialist ideology all throughout history.  The fact of the matter is that "equality of outcome" is an impossible Utopian ideal. Humans are inherently flawed; and there are individuals among us who crave absolute and unlimited power over others. There always have been and always will be such individuals. All throughout history, they have risen within socialist regimes to impose authoritarian or totalitarian forms of rule. 

Based on the circus we have witnessed on Capitol Hill in recent days, my hope is that more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that leftist rhetoric is becoming increasingly radical in our society. It's no wonder this is occurring when you take into account that authoritarian extremists permeate our educational institutions and our media outlets. In fact, journalistic standards have been all but been abandoned by a majority of prominent American media outlets that lean left of center. 

To loosely paraphrase the Santayana quote I cited above: we will one day find ourselves in shackles if we forget the aggregate lessons world history teaches. Make no mistake, sowing distrust in our judicial system and chipping away at our Constitutional protections are but a means to an end. Evil in fact exists. There are individuals walking the planet today who would like nothing more than than to see an erosion of America's founding principles and the complete destruction of our Constitutional Republic.  Doing so would open the gates for tyranny, injustice and oppression around the world.
​

"It is business that generates the jobs, income and taxes that keep a country going."
 ---Mark Skousen (American economist)
 
If you keep up with current events, I'm sure you're aware that the Republican-controlled Congress passed a sweeping tax reform bill last week.  We’re not going to address the full minutia of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in this article. However, here are a few of the salient highlights for American businesses:

• The new Tax Act lowers the corporate income tax rate permanently to 21%, starting in 2018
• The new Tax Act establishes a 20 percent deduction of qualified business income from certain pass-through businesses. Specific service industries, such as health, law, and professional services are excluded. However, joint filers with income below $315,000 and other filers with income below $157,500 can claim the deduction fully on income from service industries.
• The new Tax Act allows full and immediate expensing of short-lived capital investments for five years. It also Increases the section 179 expensing cap from $500,000 to $1 million.  

The substantial cut in U.S. corporate tax rates is undoubtedly the single greatest change in our federal tax laws in the last 30 years. It also seems to be the most controversial portion of the new legislation.  Indeed, left-wing politicians and left-leaning media outlets have been quick to condemn the new Tax Act as a gift to the wealthy at the expense of the middle-class.

Before and after the House and Senate votes were taken last week, the pollical hyperbole was in full effect.  According to Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), the tax bill seemed to “stuff even more money into the pockets of the wealthy and the biggest corporations while raising taxes on millions in the middle class.”  House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) went even further stating, “This GOP tax scam is simply theft, monumental, brazen theft from the American middle class and from every person who aspires to reach it. The GOP tax scam is not a vote for an investment in growth or jobs.”

It’s interesting to note that the final votes in both the House and Senate fell squarely along partisan lines.  While a handful of Republicans opposed the bill in the House, not one single Democrat representative voted in favor of the legislation. The same was true in the Senate where all but one Republican (Bob Corker (R, TN)) voted yea and the entire Democrat Senate voted nay.

We'd be remiss if we didn't mention that an estimated 40-45% of all Americans pay no federal income taxes whatsoever today.  There are many factors behind this astounding figure. However, an economic stimulus package of this magnitude will most certainly reduce welfare and unemployment figures in the years to come. In addition, the average American worker who pays taxes is expected to realize a sizable tax reduction under the new plan.

More important to our nation's future, American industry will once again have competitive advantages in the global arena. The truth of the matter is that our nation benefits wholly when job creators have more capital available to create, execute and innovate.  Unleash the financial handcuffs from the John Galts of American enterprise and the free market will flourish.  The positive effects will certainly ripple though society much as Mr. Conerly stated in his recent Forbes column.
​
In closing, a sad truth was revealed in the final Tax Cuts and Jobs Act debates and voting tallies last week. The leadership of the Democrat Party, as a whole, has now moved as far to the left on the political spectrum as the self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” Bernie Sanders (I, VT). They seem to have completely abandoned the virtuous, free market principles that have guided our Constitutional Republic for the last 241 years. Their "progressive" label appears to be a thinly veiled euphemism for neo-Marxist ideology. If John F. Kennedy were alive today, I imagine that he'd be aghast at what's become of his Democrat party.