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My Point of View by Brad Kramer

Today, I filled up a five-gallon can and, after spilling far more fuel than necessary, was reminded exactly why government is not the answer to everything. They took a perfectly good gas can design and made some regulations from some unelected agency; now, instead of leaking fumes, every encounter with a gas can comes close to requiring a hazmat team to respond. Somebody had an idea to lower pollution and pushed it into law with consequences felt by everybody in the nation who has a boat, snowblower, lawn mower or teenager that runs out of gas. Now it will take a Herculean effort to reverse and get our simple gas cans back that worked.

Brad Kramer

This made me ponder further about socialism. Democrats believe the answer to almost every question is government. Health care? Government managed and paid. Job creation? Create government jobs. Government is not efficient.

Democrats believe government is the answer to most of those challenges. Republicans typically want to leave the mechanism for improvement in the hands of the people through the free market. While there are certainly instances where government should be the referee, conservatives are leery of government control over too many aspects of our lives.

The solutions that Democrats often propose fall under the umbrella of socialism. Socialism has been the cause of untold misery in our world and has been tried and failed, all over the world. Democrats frequently repeat the mantra that conservatives simply dont understand socialism, or that its a buzzword by conservatives, like a boogeyman that doesnt really exist when we turn the lights on.

Why do conservatives detest socialism?

1. A government big enough to control that many aspects of our lives is big enough to control you. Governments do not last in the state that they are in. Only a handful of nations in world history have survived longer than 500 years, but at some point, every single government either fell from within, was physically destroyed or was conquered. In most cases, the fall was preceded by rampant corruption by those in power. Government is inherently powerful, and people who seek power gravitate toward control of government. Nobody in their right mind would argue that there is no corruption within the American government.

2. Socialism ignores human nature. Greed, corruption, individuality, desire to achieve big goals and other qualities are not considered.

3. Advocates of socialism are often people who have limited understanding of the means of production. Most strong socialism advocates have never owned a business. This is concerning because the economy is dependent on production. The entire question of socialism and capitalism is essentially who owns the means for production. When a segment of society that has never started a business tries to change the means of production ownership, its like a bunch of people, with no knowledge of piloting a ship, trying to demand the captain hand over the ship to let them steer it.

Business ownership is a very particular set of skills. Most of our great innovations never came from government-funded programs like NASA, but from the free market, where someone had an idea, that idea lit a fire in their belly and they built a company around it. They learned how to start a business and staked everything on it. When you dont have the principles of capitalism driving innovation, you dont end up with the same results. Even when the owner of that idea would still own it and depend on government approval or resources to move forward, that idea that might have changed the world could have languished on some bureaucrats desk awaiting an ignored request because that college-trained bureaucrat didnt see the potential.

4. Social programs are not bad, in themselves, when properly managed and when they have sufficient oversight by the public. Having some socialist programs does not make us socialist, but at some point, you tip the scales and lose the efficiency and prosperity of a capitalist system. NASA, the Postal Service and many other government agencies do their jobs well (mostly). However, when devoid of an administrative agency that understands how to run a business, those agencies can become bloated, bureaucratic, ineffective and just plain frustrating for people forced to use them.

Conservatives typically dont view social programs as bad but recognize the need for effective management because resources are very limited. Its not just because conservatives dont care, but the reason many business owners become conservatives is they recognize and understand the rules of money, which are rules the majority cant just change because there are immutable natural laws that govern economics and business.

Ill keep my capitalist economy, thank you very much. And if you have an old-fashioned, good working gas can for sale, Im a buyer!

Brad Kramer is a member of the Freeborn County Republican Party.

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My Point of View: Why do conservatives detest the ideas behind socialism? - Albert Lea Tribune - Albert Lea Tribune

The recent uprising and protests in Cuba have brought me to a topic I never thought I would be discussing in the United States as a serious one. It is a fact that there has not been one successful communist or socialistic country in the history of the world that has succeeded, and yet we have Americans who are pushing that very dogma to reach some utopia.

Many who read the previous few sentences will say, of course, the Scandinavian countries succeeded at socialism.

To an extent, Scandinavian countries did have limited success at socialism, but they have since moved away from that form of government to a more capitalistic form, like ours. Even if we say, for the sake of argument, the Scandinavian countries are a success that is three countries out of more than 170 countries in the world to have found the right mix. There are many more failures than those three and the countries who have failed have failed miserably.

Countries like Venezuela, which next to the United States was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere, failed quickly and dramatically to the point where people were and are eating rats in the streets so the food isnt stolen while taking it home. Cuba happens to be the one country in the news right now with the uprising this past weekend and in todays news cycle will likely be out of the news soon.

One statement that I read in doing research for this article was one from Norway in which a single person with no dependents paid 40 percent income tax, 25 percent sales tax and other taxes and fees. So, over half of a persons income is taxed away just with those two taxes and that doesnt include other fees and other taxes. In the same article it said that you would need to have 95 percent voluntary compliance to make a system such as that work effectively and, of course, that will never happen.

What it comes down to is that socialism will always fail. It promises prosperity, equality and security and yet in Cuba, Venezuela, Soviet Union, North Korea and many others it has delivered poverty, misery and tyranny. Equality was only achieved because everyone except the ruling class was equal in their own misery. Basically, the concepts of socialism go against human nature because incentives mean little to nothing in these countries and human nature desires a need to strive for something.

Our current system of governance is capitalism, and its strength can be attributed to an incentive-based structure. By socialisms failure to promote the potential of its people through incentives a persons humanity is deprived of the need to succeed. Socialism fails because it kills and destroys the human spirit.

The drive to socialism is constantly alluring to many because by giving up a little freedom a person will gain more security through the government. The bargain is tempting but it has never paid off. Those who enter that bargain end up losing both freedom and security.

As such socialism will remain a constant temptation but will not produce the results that those who strive for it want.

Capitalism on the other hand has a proven track record of successes and plays a major role in setting people free from poverty and oppression.

Capitalism promotes an air of enterprise and nurtures the human spirit. By providing a powerful system of incentives that promote thrift, hard work and efficiency.

Capitalism creates wealth unlike any system out there.

The main difference between socialism and capitalism is that capitalism works.

Socialism causes misery and yet capitalism promotes wealth and the ability to gain individual value.

The United States, for example, has created more millionaires and billionaires than the rest of the world combined.

Of course, the argument against capitalism is that it only makes the rich richer. The fact is that even the poor get richer in a capitalistic society. Capitalism benefits all by lessening historical racial and gender disparities basically making anyone who has the drive to succeed have an equal potential for success.

In the end, there is no doubt that capitalism is the right path to follow and while socialism has an attractive allure for some, the pitfalls are such that failure is more likely than not.

State Rep. John Wills (R-Spirit Lake) may be reached at john.wills@legis.iowa.gov.

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Wills: Capitalism is right path; socialism alluring but full of pitfalls - nwestiowa.com

The Bush-Cheney administration responded to 9/11, not with an internationally supported manhunt for perpetrators but by invading two Muslim countries. Their response was based on right-wing research into how the U.S. could dominate the world, detailed in their 2000 document Rebuilding Americas Defenses. Page 51 concludes the plans realization likely to be difficult absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor (or 9/11).

Told about that attack, President Bush continued reading to Florida schoolchildren. Cheney fashioned two wars that followed. Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer were in charge. The former allowed looters to sack Baghdad; the latter dismantled the Iraqi army, fueling the 2003 insurgency. The Mideast was destabilized. These invasions are regarded as the worst foreign policy decisions in U.S. history.

Afghanistans circumstances conjure images of another policy mistake helicopters rescuing persons from the embassy roof in Kabul, as they were from Saigon. Our history textbooks are patriotically designed to deceive. Wrong choices have been legion.

Historically, our governments policies have been anchored in a white supremacy mindset brought from Europe, allowing murder of native people, slavery, brutal efforts to force Indians to conform to the newcomers norms, exploitation of Chinese labor to build railroads, immigrant exclusion acts, and the imprisonment of Japanese American citizens.

Exploitation of labor has also been the basis of policy choices. Historically, farmers and workers have struggled for fair prices and wages against controllers of the markets. The powerful have resisted and dominated government. Russias Marxist revolution threatened capitalist exploitation. But it provided the label socialism, the powerful could use to defend capitalist practices. Any effort to equitably share wealth or provide for human needs was called socialism; politicians who focused on human needs were termed socialists. Worst still, any country governed by Marxist beliefs was automatically considered a grave threat to the U.S.

This survey of some foreign policy decisions is limited to our own time the past 80 years.

In contrast with his other wartime partner, Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt developed warm relations with Joseph Stalin. Roosevelt regarded Churchill as a colonist and racist.

He had no illusions about the ruthless Russian dictator and knew he would insist on political control of Eastern Europe. After all, Russia had been invaded by Napoleon and twice by Germans.

Stalin had renounced international revolution. Roosevelt was initiating a diplomacy in which the political systems of other countries are accepted as they are, that it is not our business to insist others conform to our own.

His successor, President Truman, used possession of atomic weapons as threat to the Soviet Union and directed financial aid Roosevelt intended for rebuilding devastated Russia, instead to rebuilding Germany. Truman followed historic anti-socialist policy in both Europe and Southeast Asia, in so doing, created the Cold War. He supported French efforts to restore their colonial empire, leading to the Vietnam War.

Eisenhower Administration foreign policy was largely directed by the Dulles brothers, Allen at CIA and John Foster as Secretary of State. In the Far East, Cuba, and Central America, overdue and legitimate revolutions against dictators connected with U.S. business so-called inevitable revolutions were opposed. U.S. military advisors began decades-long interventions; counterinsurgency soldiers were trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia.

When Fidel Castros revolution ended dictatorship, Mafia presence, and U.S. business exploitation in Cuba, Castro was denounced as a Marxist and driven, for survival, to seek support from the Russians.

Obliged to deal with consequences in both Cuba and Vietnam, President Kennedy refused to support the Dulles invasion of Cuba and turned the subsequent Missile Crisis into a correspondence with Khrushchev on ending the Cold War. A month before he was assassinated, he acted to withdraw troops from Vietnam.

Israels repeated success in fighting Arab-Muslim defenders in Palestine brought massive U.S. financial support. President Nixons support of Pinochets overthrow of Allendes leftist government in Chile began a horrible repression- the disappearance of 30,000 leftists in South America.

Along with opposition to socialism, white supremacy continued to prompt foreign policy choice. Our enemies were Arab, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Hispanic.

President Carter protected the villainous Shah of Iran, ending historic peaceful relations with that country. Before attacking Iraq, the U.S. supplied Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran. This circles us back to the beginning of this essay.

The deeper problem of wicked, undemocratic choices by both Democratic and Republican Party leaders is that outcomes are either omitted from our textbooks, or refashioned and justified as noble causes.

Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an author and historian currently at work on a re-examination of and challenge to the American narrative.

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My Turn: With trillions spent and millions dead - The Recorder

The scene is familiar to us now. People in the streets waving U.S. flags and protesting a socialist government that promised equality and prosperity but failed to deliver either.

Cubans are standing together by the thousands chanting Libertad! in the island nations strongest ever condemnation of the 62-year-old tyrannical regime. Cubans are rejecting government censorship, they're rejecting turning off the internet to the whole island of Cuba, and they're rejecting a government who decides what rights they need.

I stand with Cuba and against socialism, the disease that infected that island so many years ago. I stand with the people of Cuba, and with all freedom-loving people that reject the idea that government gets to decide what rights we can enjoy.

Alison Putman

Kemah

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I stand with Cuba and against socialism | Letters to the Editor | The Daily News - Galveston County Daily News

Penny Kemp, who has died aged 71 after a long battle with Parkinsons Disease, was a pivotal figure in the rise of the Green Party of England and Wales; she was its co-chair when it first made an impact, in the 1989 Euro elections, a long-serving member of its executive, and the handler of its relations with the wider Left.

Witty, exuberant, committed and a gifted organiser in a movement not prone to being organised, she was to her collaborator Peter Tatchell a true trailblazer of Green socialism. She tried to persuade Jeremy Corbyn to enter a pact with the Greens, and once turned down a safe Labour seat.

Penny Kemp joined what was then the Ecology Party in 1979. Between then and 2017, when her health deteriorated, she was at crucial points the partys chair, co-chair or communications co-ordinator. She worked tirelessly to ensure Green speakers got their share of publicity, lining up panellists for Any Questions? or wangling an appearance on a daytime chat show and won a place for the Greens in one of the leaders debates during the 2015 general election.

By her death, the Greens could claim one MP, two peers, three London Assembly members and 477 local councillors. In Scotland, their sister party is in coalition talks with the SNP.

Penny Kemp believed that the three tenets of economic, social and ecological justice must be part of a whole. You cant just add on environmental policy [to a conventional partys manifesto]; it must be central.

Justice is the driving thing and if you have a just and more equal society, you have a happier and healthier society. Im not just here to save the planet I think the planet will save itself quite happily without us on it. I think we are here to save ourselves.

One of her achievements was a United Nations resolution on the environmental effects of the 1991 Gulf War, which stemmed from a symposium she organised.

Penny Kemp rang the Jordanian royal palace because the war had cost the country 37 per cent of its GDP, and King Hussein sent his chief scientific adviser to the symposiums first session, in London; the Iraqi ambassador and the chairman of Shell also attended.

She then took the event to New York, where influential figures including Paul Crutzen of the Max-Planck-Institut and the cosmologist and author Carl Sagan came on board. I went to the UN, and ended up writing a new resolution which was taken up by Canada, Sweden and Jordan.

Thereafter, whenever King Hussein was in London he would send a car round for her. The first time he asked what she would like to drink she started to say gin and tonic, but quick as a flash turned that into the juice of an orange.

Penny Kemp also played a part in advancing Green politics in Taiwan. In 1996 she was invited there for the islands general election, and helped the Taiwanese Greens win a seat. The Mayor of Taipei even wore a green suit when they met.

She was also prepared to take direct action. In the 1980s she was one of a group of activists tracking nuclear-waste trains through Kent with a view to disrupting the traffic. An undercover police officer infiltrated the group and the attempt was foiled.

The police searched my car and found a coat hanger, and tried to use that as evidence of conspiracy to commit criminal damage. I didnt get charged in the end, but I wanted to go to court I would have loved to ask how I was supposed to damage a nuclear train with a coat hanger!

She was also the tireless long-time organiser of Glastonburys Green Futures field, pulling together a set of visionary guests each year many of them personal friends for her Speakers Forum.

Personalities spanning the political and social divide came to speak under the distinctive pink canvas roof, and stayed on around the campfire backstage, talking well into the night: Sir David King, Tony Benn, Ruby Wax, Justin Rowlatt, Billy Bragg, Vince Cable, Ed Miliband, Jonathan Cainer and many more.

Penny Kemp was involved in more festivals than Glastonbury. She was marketing director of the Big Green Gathering, and during the 1990s staged events based on green and earth magic principles on her own field at Headcorn in Kent, culminating in the hugely popular Small World Festival. One happy memory was of her inaugurating the first compost toilet on her land, emerging from the canvas curtain to rapturous applause.

She also co-founded Headcorn Sustainability, encouraging the use of local produce. She explained: A typical Sunday dinner travels 49,000 miles to get on your plate, and emits 37kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. You can see the difference that would be made if its only travelled 12 or 20 miles.

She was born Penelope Bineham in Watford on May 10 1949, one of five children of a quantity surveyor and a post mistress. The family moved to Sussex, and she attended Fosse Bank School at Tonbridge.

Penny married at 19, had two daughters, and until joining the Green Partys staff ran her own driving school (Not very green, said her daughter Tracy.)

She was introduced to the Ecology Party by a friend who was its regional treasurer. I knew there had to be something else than just socialism combining social justice, economic justice and ecological justice. Id read books about ecology and then I came across the Ecology Party it was the missing link!

In the mid-1980s she became the partys South-East regional representative, finding herself on the interview panel when it decided to employ its first press officer. The successful candidate was Caroline Lucas, now MP for Brighton Pavilion. She recalled: Penny was a brilliant boss, immensely kind and huge fun and an utterly tireless champion for climate and nature.

Penny Kemp was instrumental in opening dialogue between the relatively young Green movement and the traditional Left, organising the first national Greens and Socialists conference with Tatchell and Robin Cook. She pursued some of these themes in a book she wrote with Derek Wall in 1990, A Green Manifesto for the 1990s.

While the Green Party won 14.5 per cent of the vote if no seats in the 1989 Euro elections, she felt it had done so on a false premise. Her fellow co-chairs took references to animal rights and opposing Nato out of its manifesto yet the Telegraph still condemned the partys programme as dangerous.

After this ground was lost at the 1992 election she was elected to manage the partys election campaigns, then took charge of its media operations.

Penny Kemp did not bother with diplomacy when Germanys Greens agreed to troops being sent to Afghanistan to support Americas war on terror. She wrote: Greens who are propping up the German government have put power before principle. Their claim that they must participate in the war effort in order to make it more humane is obscene.

However, she did make concessions to the art of spin. After the Greens first took control of Brighton & Hove council in 2011 on an anti-austerity programme, then pushed through a package of cuts, she blamed Labour councillors for having joined with the Conservatives to block the Greens proposed budget increase.

Before the 2015 election, the broadcasters proposed three party leaders debates without the Greens, with David Cameron and Ed Miliband, plus Nick Clegg in two and Nigel Farage in one.

Penny Kemp got them to change their minds, firing off a letter of protest. She wrote: The Green Party received 150,000 more votes than the Liberal Democrats in the 2014 European elections and won three times as many seats. In general election opinion polls the Greens are neck-and-neck with the junior coalition partners.

Despite our comparative lack of airtime, our policies are consistently popular with the public. Political commentators have declared the decision to be unfair and even the prime minister has called for the Greens to be included in the debates on the grounds of fairness.

She succeeded in setting up a fourth debate in which the Greens Natalie Bennett took part.

Penny Kemps illness forced her to give up full-time work for the party in 2017, but she kept up her involvement at Glastonbury for two more years. The gradual onset of the disease was both debilitating and frustrating for Penny as her speech was affected, a colleague said. For a woman of many opinions it was difficult for her to be understood, but understood she was. She insisted on being there, and had the support of dedicated and wonderful friends.

Penny Kemps marriage to John Kemp was dissolved in the early 1980s. She is survived by her partner Johann Sikora, her two daughters from the marriage, and five grandchildren.

Penelope Kemp, born May 10 1949, died June 12 2021

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Penny Kemp, campaigner and activist described as the trailblazer of Green socialism obituary - Telegraph.co.uk