Month: February 2016

Let’s Try Something New

~ thebeltwaybandit ~ 1 Comment

Washington-Portrait-021516

Let’s celebrate Washington’s birthday on his own birthday

Long ago, our Nation celebrated one of the great men of Western Civilization, George Washington. The United States honored him with an official holiday each year on his birthday, February  22nd.

But thanks to a fine example of the dwindling logic in Washington, DC, Congress changed his birthday to any Monday close enough to his birthday. In the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971, they did this to provide federal employees a three-day-weekend.

But even though it is known all over the country as “President’s Day”, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM)  https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/snow-dismissal-procedures/federal-holidays/#url=2016   it is officially listed as “Washington’s Birthday”.

So how did everyone start calling it Presidents Day?

When in college, I was pummeled by several history and political science teachers who relentlessly trashed George Washington. Was it a conspiracy of history teachers who thought too much emphasis was placed on the man who created every precedent for political humility?

You see, some states honored President Abraham Lincoln, while other states honored President Thomas Jefferson on his birthday.  As you can probably figure out, Northern states celebrated Honest Abe, and Southern states did not.

Lincoln’s birthday falls on February 12th. Congress thought that plopping a holiday between the his and Washington’s would pretty much split the difference.

So in its perpetual efforts to solve problems which do not exist, did Congress change Washington’s Birthday to “Presidents Day”…?  The common explanation was that the newly-named-holiday would offer Americans a day to ponder the many presidents and their grand contributions to our heritage.

The problem is, nobody has ever heard of Rutherford Hayes, Martin Van Buren, or Franklin Pierce. This effort to make Washington just another one of 44 men simply corroded the national reverence for Washington, and eliminated the celebration of Lincoln and Jefferson in those many states that had up until then done so. Pretty soon schoolchildren may not know Washington’s name either.

Every year during the week after Valentine’s Day you can flip through the local newspaper and see advertisements for “Presidents Day Weekend”.  There is always a cartoon-sketch of Washington with a speech balloon telling his Heirs of Liberty to buy cars, refrigerators or carpet. The worst are TV commercials with an actor dressed in a colonial uniform sprawled on a bed calling Americans to join him at the mattress store.

Meanwhile, no American  high school graduate has ever learned why Jefferson invaded Morocco, why Wilson belittled the Constitution, why Ford vetoed more bills in record time than any other president, or how Coolidge balanced the budget during a recession.

In fact, despite the effort to make Presidents Day a teachable moment, Americans don’t know anything about any president, except that some owned slaves, a few were assassinated for some obscure reason, and that all Republican presidents were stupid.

The funniest thing about assigning Washington’s Birthday to the 3rd Monday in February is that this year, Washington’s birthday is actually on a Monday, but the Federal government celebrates it on Monday February 15th—a week early.

Ahhh, the irony which once again reflects the nimble OPM and the federal bureaucracy. They can’t even change their own rules just a tiny bit to celebrate Washington’s birthday on his own birthday.

It is an amusing example of how inflexible the federal government is in almost all its endeavors. You can find dozens of such examples in the soon to be published book, Bureaucratic Bombs.

For almost a half century, our culture has belittled George Washington. Despite the  Federal Government’s growing habit of ignoring precedents and laws, he continues to stand out as a grand example of leadership and manhood.

As David Boaz of the Cato Institute explains, King George III, the man who wanted Washington hanged as a traitor during the American Revolution, summed up Washington’s stature best:

The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning independence. West replied, “They say he will return to his farm.”

“If he does that,” the incredulous monarch said, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/man-who-would-not-be-king

 

Too bad Americans don’t know how great George Washington truly was, and why he was so loved by his countrymen. And thanks to the insistence upon making him as bland as 40 of our 44 presidents, they never will.

The Biggest Loser

~ thebeltwaybandit ~ 2 Comments

How sad!

After a year of campaign hype in Iowa from the Mainstream Media about Trump! Hillary!

A little Carson! Now a little Fiorina!

No, no: now Bernie! No, no: more Hillary! No, no, no: more Trump!

After settling in on hyping the big three, The Media’s daily polls they relied on to promise a Trump Romp and a Hillary Trouncing turned out to be—completely wrong.

Huh—imagine that. I hope they didn’t pay those pollsters in advance…

But it turns out that they missed the biggest failure of all: the demise of Martin O’Malley.

Martin who??

Yeah, I know, the rest of America asked the same question. He was the governor of Maryland.

The governor of what?
Maryland. It’s that tiny little state right outside of Washington DC that is California in miniature: overflowing with political lunatics who think it’s okay for boys to go to into The Girls’ bathroom; who are confident that having a fifth of its population which can’t speak English is progress; and where the government taxes its citizens when it rains.

You read it right: Martin O’Malley pushed through a tax which calculates how much rain falls on your property, and then sends you a bill for it. Homes are taxed; shopping centers and doctor’s offices are taxed; even churches are taxed for their rain. The only ones exempted from the tax? Government buildings.

Maryland’s slogan used to be “The Free State”, adopted during the Civil War because it voted to stay in the Union. But thanks to Governor O’Malley’s management, Marylanders now call it “The Fee State”, because he raised taxes 44 times in the 8 years he lived in the Governor’s Mansion.

Oh yeah, and during those 8 years, Maryland lost 8,000 jobs and 2,000 businesses. He tried to ban guns too; but because of a strong rural electorate (even on the Democrat-side) he was only able to force through suffocating gun restrictions in an already gun-unfriendly state.

The internationally famous Beretta army pistols were manufactured in Maryland. Because business taxes skyrocketed under O’Malley, they publicly warned that they could no longer afford to stay in Maryland. But the state never contacted them to try to negotiate their tax bill, or to figure out how to keep them and their hundreds of manufacturing jobs in the state. They moved their factory to Tennessee. The week they were moving, the local papers published a couple stories about the move. When asked about the loss of the factory and its Maryland jobs, O’Malley is reported to have said to one of his staff: “who needs them?”

O’Malley has spent his entire political career doing exactly what the European Socialist Wing of the Democrat Party has demanded. As city councilman and then mayor, he poured an unending stream of cash into welfare programs in Baltimore. As governor, he manipulated the state budget to take money from every other county in the state to feed the needs of that declining city. He allowed violent crime to percolate, and copied the Clinton model by blaming Republicans for all that city’s ills (even though the Democrats outnumber them 2-to-1). He raised taxes again and again yet businesses fled the state, as did many Marylanders who moved to West Virginia, Delaware and Virginia.  He raised the State’s sales tax by 20%. And yet during his 8 years, the state consistently ran a deficit.

During his gubernatorial reelection campaign, he was asked about the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens living in Maryland, and specifically about all the welfare money being spent on them. He scolded the interviewer for insulting these people. With his typically sleazy smile, he explained that they shouldn’t be called such an insulting term. They were not illegal aliens, but “New Americans”.

He was the perfect copy of the Obama model: correct on unions, correct on multiculturalism, correct on a constantly expanding government, and most important, aggressively correct on abortion. He even spent all of 2014 and 2015 clawing his way onto every Sunday-morning political show to promote Obama’s agenda, in a dual effort to increase his national visibility and to kiss up to the president in hopes of gaining his endorsement during this campaign.

With those credentials, he thought to himself, how could he NOT be the obvious choice as the Democrat’s next presidential nominee?

So during this Presidential Primary Campaign, Marylanders have watched with giddy delight as O’Malley earned a consistent 1% in the polls.

Radio host Chris Plante chuckled, “Ol’ Marty is only one percent higher in the polls than I am, and I’m not running!”

During a campaign stop last Fall, O’Malley was asked about his stuck-in-the-mud poll numbers. He smiled his little metrosexual smile and told the reporter he was glad that he hadn’t peaked too soon.

So when I learned this morning that he had dropped out of the presidential sweepstakes, and was saddled with a half-million dollars in campaign debts, I was very sad.

I wanted so desperately for him to be accountable to the voters in the Maryland Primary on April 26th. It would be so delicious for him to finish in 3rd Place behind the European Socialist and the soon-to-be indicted former Senator—here in his home state.

The Democrat Party voters would reveal what they honestly think of him.

Nothing would have been more satisfying than giving him another ego crushing one-percentage-point in his overwhelmingly-Democrat-leaning home state.

—The Beltway  Bandit