Don’t Vote For Progressives: They Don’t Represent Progress by Peter Burrows 8-19-16 elburropete@gmail.com

There are three Grant County Commissioner seats up for grabs in the election next November.  All three have candidates on the ballot who proudly call themselves Progressives: Alicia Edwards for district 3, Marilyn Alcorn for district 4, and Harry Browne for district 5.

Of the three, I’ve only briefly met Browne and Alcorn, but I’ve known Alicia Edwards for years and I think she’s wonderful, as is Harry Browne’s mother Fran, whom I met over ten years ago.  Marilyn Alcorn is, like me, a Michigan State grad, so what’s not to like?

However, as much as we may like people who call themselves Progressives, they should never be voted into public office.  Progressives place too much faith in the efficacy of government. To them, government is the solution to all our problems: Just pass a law  Government is good, and more government is better.

We see this at the national level in the Democrat’s platform. In a Washington Post article of July 12, “The most progressive Democratic platform ever,” by Katrina vanden Heuvel, we learn Bernie’s Progressives were able to get the following included in the Democrat’s platform:

1) Free (OMG!) college tuition at in-state schools for families making less than $125,000 (!!!!) per year.
2) Expand, not contract, Social Security benefits.
3) 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, per year.
4) Card check organizing for non-unionized workers.
5) Taxing U.S. corporations’ overseas earnings at U.S. levels.

They failed to get “Medicare for all,” a ban on fracking, a carbon tax, or rejection of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal.  But, they did get a $15 minimum wage, which with card check and paid family leave, means, vanden Heuvel writes,  “Democrats stand for putting their thumb on the scales in favor of workers and unions.”

None of the above has a great deal of relevance to Grant County, but don’t be surprised if future labor negotiations for Grant County employees find the Progressives on the side of the unions, not the taxpayers.  It’s too bad there are “sides” on that issue, but all across America public unions and their politically elected enablers, of both parties, have negotiated ridiculously generous pay and benefits that simply cannot be paid.

Left leaning politicians will try to solve the problem by raising taxes. It’s what they ALWAYS do.  This will pit public employees against taxpayers, and drive states and municipalities over a fiscal cliff.  Check out Chicago and Illinois.   At the national level, expanding — or even holding flat– Social Security/Medicare benefits will do the same thing to the country.

At a Progressive Voters forum a couple of months ago for the Progressive candidates running in the Grant County primaries, a smart arse asked if any of the panelists had any ideas to CUT county spending.  HA!  Of course not. Progressives don’t CUT spending  — unless it’s military spending.

If the smart arse would have had his brain working, he would have asked if Antony Gutierrez’s vacant county job should be allowed to remain vacant.  Gutierrez was hired as Executive Director of the CAP Entity, and his former job as Grant County Planning & Community Development Director has since been filled. One has to ask: Why does no-growth Grant County need such a job, and a fairly high paying one at that?

(I would have done it for nothing, but nobody asked me. Sigh.)

Also at the forum, the above three candidates all thought passing a living wage law was a good idea but not something a county should pass. State, yes. County, no.  Too much confusion otherwise.  Pass a law, eliminate poverty.  What a great idea. They should do that in Haiti.

Passing laws to set prices, which is what minimum wage laws do, are a prime example of why Progressives should never be elected.  They think that they can legislate away natural laws like the law of supply and demand.  Kind of like passing a law against gravity.

Furthermore, Progressives have been passing price control laws since The Edict of Diocletian in A.D. 284, which had the same disastrous effects of similar laws more recently passed in the Progressive Paradise of Venezuela, where shelves are empty and people are hunting cats and dogs, not to adopt but to EAT.

Progressives never learn.  They can’t, because that would mean admitting the fallibility of their God: Government.

(In all fairness, there are people who call themselves Progressives simply because it is such a flattering term.  After all, who wants to be a regressive?  But don’t let the label fool you, folks.  Progressives are  progressives like Scientologists are scientists.)

The Progressives’ worship of government is not a new idea. In fact, it’s an old idea.  The Divine Rights of Kings, Emperors, Popes and Caliphates existed for centuries.  It only disappeared in Japan in 1945, and has been reborn today in the Islamic Caliphate of ISIS, and while Progressives will tell you that they, of course, don’t think government is God, they act like government is God.

The God of progressives is not a benign God.  Their God punishes “rich” people and corporations, the prime “exploiters” of other people.  Progressives say they’re just pursuing economic justice.  Progressives like to talk about “justice,” and apply the term to all sorts of things.  Being for “justice” makes Progressives feel good about themselves, makes them feel superior.

Did you know there is something called The Global Justice Movement? Their website says they are in favor of monetary justice, social justice, economic justice, environmental justice and peace justice, all of which is in pursuit of inclusive justice. Oh, my.  They left out fresh-fruit justice, just to name one obvious omission.

The problem with this Progressive obsession with “justice” is that it requires someone to judge. Gosh, who do you think the Progressives have in mind for that task?  Government, of course, and who do you think they think is best able to govern?  If you said “Progressives” go to the head of the class.

There are two problems with these nebulous concepts of justice.  The first is that they are quite subjective, meaning that justice would be a helluva lot different with ME as Cosmic Supreme Ruler rather than Bernie Sanders.  Secondly, the enforcement of subjective, always changing standards of “justice” means that government power is not held in check by objective laws.  Such power will always be abused. Witness Hugo Chavez’s billionaire kids.

In fact, humanity did not begin to make real social and economic progress until they began to put specific legal restraints on the power of government, starting with the Magna Carta and culminating in what is truly the most progressive document in history, the United States Constitution.  People who call themselves Progressives want to do away with the Constitutional constraints on government, and they have been working on that since Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.  This is progress?

At heart, Progressives are totalitarians who think that people should work for the government, not the other way around.  In Grant County, as elsewhere, that means every problem can be solved by the government if only the government had the power to force people to ride bicycles, use paper sacks, install solar panels, grow their own food, etc. etc, and of course, if this requires more money, the people, especially the rich ones, will have to pay more in taxes.  Taxes, you see are “good.”  Just ask a Progressive.

How the Political World Works 8/6/16 elburropete@gmail.com

Democrats and Progressives may not know how the world outside of politics works, but they sure know how the world inside of politics works: EMOTIONS TRUMP FACTS.  They know this instinctively. I think it’s in their genes.

For example, at a meeting of the local Democrats a few months back, they were discussing issues to use in the coming elections and one of their really big hitters piped up and said, “We’ve got to get emotional!!” She knew what she was talking about.

On issue after issue, state, local and national, emotions win elections.  Pundits blame Romney’s loss in the last presidential election because voters perceived he “didn’t care.”  That was actually an issue in the election. Think about that.

An occasional Republican gets it. Jack Kemp used to say that voters don’t care what you know until they know you care.  That’s sad because how do politicians show they “care?” By spending other peoples’ money, usually  on programs that do more harm than good. Sometimes the “caring” is in the form of laws that force other people, usually businesses, to spend money on such things as minimum wages, day care centers, sick leave, health insurance, maternity leave, wheelchair ramps, and so on.

I call this the compassion con, the “I feel your pain” con, and it really gets my knickers knotted when politicians are praised for their “generosity” when no such thing was involved.  What brought this to mind was an ad I saw on the Internet by some company in the business of refinancing mortgages. The headline said that “Obama generously” gave homeowners a one-time chance to refinance.  A lot of people, including Obama, probably think he was in fact “generous.”

Maybe the number one emotional hot-button of politics that doesn’t involve money is the identity con.  Why vote for Hillary? Because she’s a woman.  Why vote for Barrack Obama? Because he’s black.  The Democrats have mastered identity politics, and they have managed to fool their Republican colleagues into supporting immigration laws that over the years have resulted in a virtual stuffing of the ballot box for Democrats.

They knew what they were doing.  It is doubtful the nation can survive if racial identity becomes more important than national identity.  Anybody who criticizes La Raza, Black Lives Matter, CAIR, whatever, is a racist, troglodyte, xenophobe, a.k.a. a Republican. Maybe the Republicans can figure out how to divide and conquer before the nation is torn apart by identity politics, but I doubt it.

The emotional hot-button that brings it all together is the victim con.   “Oh, you poor (black, Hispanic, woman, single mom, unemployed college grad/factory worker/etc., LGBT, Muslim, welfare recipient, and so on ), your problems ARE NOT YOUR FAULT. Vote for me and I’ll punish your tormentors, be they corporations, banks, Christians, Jews, racists (if they‘re white), employers, cops, imports and whatever/whomever is the devil du jour.”

It’s very discouraging. As Winston Churchill once said, the biggest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.  On the other hand, the biggest argument against a dictatorship is after your five-minute conversation with that man on-the-street, ask yourself, would you like to be ruled by THAT SOB?

Unfortunately, if that SOB is a skilled demagogue able to hit enough hot buttons,  he, or she, will rule you.  It’s democracy’s fatal flaw.

The FBI and me by Peter Burrows 7/17/16 elburropete@gmail.com – silvercityburro.com

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, has shamed our nation with its abject cowardice or corruption –take your pick– in the Hillary Clinton email case.  Now, they have added stupidity to the list. The following is from a Washington Post article dated July 15, 2016, by Adam Goldman:

The FBI has found no evidence so far that Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people and wounded more than 53 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, chose the popular establishment because of its gay clientele, said U.S. law enforcement officials. “While there can be no denying the significant impact on the gay community, the investigation hasn’t revealed that he targeted pulse (sic) because it was a gay club,” a U.S. law enforcement official said.

Attention FBI Director Comey: Of course he targeted Pulse because it was a gay club.  He’s a devout Muslim.  Add in gun-free zoning laws, and the Pulse was a sitting duck.

The FBI is way, way, past the point where ignorance becomes stupidity.  I wonder how many Americans will have to die at the hands of fanatical Muslims before somebody in law enforcement learns the essentials of Islam. Mateen declared his Muslim bona fides with a 911 call to affirm his allegiance to ISIS, WHILE HE WAS KILLING PEOPLE AT PULSE. Director Comey: Don’t you think that’s a clue?

Let me help you out. Devout Muslims follow the teachings of the Koran, but only some of the teachings, depending on the chronology of the “revelations“ in the Koran.  One of those Koranic teachings, found only once in the early Meccan verses but numerous times in the later Medina verses, is that Muslims must obey Allah AND HIS MESSENGER, Muhammad being the Messenger.

Nowhere in the Koran is this command cancelled by a later revelation from Allah, and thus it is a command for Muslims to obey forever.  Muslims consider the Koran to be the timeless word of God, proving how stupid people can be when it comes to their religion. (I could give examples other than Islam, but not now.)

A kafir like myself reads the Koran and sees the all-too-human Muhammad at work making his life as easy as possible, which in this case is the SOB telling people to do as he says because Allah commands it. How convenient

Obeying Muhammad today, the devout Muslim looks to the Gospels of Islam, called the hadith, and the biographies of Muhammad, called the sira.  The two together are called the sunnah of Islam. Since Allah, in the Koran, also declared Muhammad a good example for Muslims to follow, it means not just Muhammad’s sayings but also his deeds are sanctified. Oh, my. Decapitation, anyone?

Through the centuries, Islamic scholars, using the Koran and the sunnah, have developed a body of Islamic law called sharia.  There are different schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both between Sunni and Shia Muslims, as well as within the Sunni and Shia sects, but there is universal agreement on about 75 percent of what constitutes sharia, the remainder a matter of interpretation and execution.

The most respected book of sharia laws in the Sunni sect is “Reliance of the Traveller and Tools for the Worshiper. ”  This 14th Century  compilation of sharia has pages of mind-numbing instructions on such things as personal hygiene and prayer rituals, as well as what us Westerners would consider traditional law.

The “Reliance” on page 665 quotes the Koran to declare that homosexuals “are people who transgress.”  Then comes the coup de grace:  “The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.”   Remember, Muslims must obey the Prophet.

Director Comey and AG Lynch, now do you see any evidence that the Orlando shooter, a Muslim, may have in fact targeted the Pulse because it was a gay club?   What say?  Oh, you’re going to arrest ME for hate speech because I called Muhammad an SOB?   Why am I not surprised?

Income and Wealth Inequality: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,  Part Three: The Ugly by Peter Burrows 5/14/16 elburropete@gmail.com  silvercityburro.com

It’s ironic that Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a socialist, rails incessantly against income inequality.  Ironic because income inequality in socialist countries is gargantuan, far, far more than in free enterprise countries.

Bernie has been bitching about the wealthiest family in America, the Waltons, who are the children of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart. Hey, Bernie: Sam Walton built the world’s largest retail chain by offering the best prices, by helping all his shoppers live better, especially the poorest, whom you claim to care about.  Not a nickel of the Walton’s money was stolen from anybody.

Contrast that with the wealthiest family in Cuba, the Castros.  Some years ago, Fortune Magazine estimated Fidel’s worth at $900 million, but I personally don’t give their estimate much credence. It was mostly guess-work.  What isn’t guess-work are documents leaked from London-based HSBC’s Swiss branch in February 2015 that revealed 29 Cubans with 70 accounts worth $83.8 million, with the largest account being $48.5 million.(1)

None of the clients were Castros, but it strains credulity to think Fidel and Raoul and all their children don’t also have many millions stashed away.  And  remember, this is from only ONE bank.  In fact, it has been alleged that the Castros have their own bank for their accounts. (2)

Of course, Bernie will say that’s a bad example as Cuba is a socialist dictatorship and Bernie is a democratic socialist, an elected socialist, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Ooops! Bad example.

The Castros are poor cousins compared to socialists who have better stuff to steal than sugar, such as the afore mentioned Hugo Chavez, the late socialist leader of oil-endowed Venezuela. (I first wrote “oil-rich” Venezuela, but having oil doesn’t make a nation rich if socialists are in charge.)  Chavez died in 2013, but not before running the nation into the ground in his 14 years in charge.

Things are no better under his successor, fellow-socialist Nickolas Maduro. Today, Venezuela rations toilet paper, food, electricity, and just about everything.  People are hunting stray dogs and cats, not to adopt, but TO EAT.(3)

However, there are a few Venezuelans who don’t have to stand in line for anything or worry about eating their pets. One of them is Hugo Chavez’s daughter, Maria, who reportedly has $4.2 billion in American and Andorran banks. (4) Gosh, I wonder how she got all that money. Probably wrote some books like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which were made into movies and made Ms. Rowling a billionaire.  Of course. Maria must have done something like that.

Chavez had two other daughters, and the three of them were estimated to have cost Venezuela $3.6 million a day. (5) That‘s $3.6 million A DAY. Over 14 years, that’s a lot of money.

The source of all this stolen money is the Venezuelan oil company, PDVSA, owned and operated by the Venezuelan government.  (American-based Citgo is a wholly owned subsidiary.) PDVSA had peak profits of $15.9 billion in 2013 when oil prices averaged about $95 per barrel.  How much was skimmed from PDVSA’s profits over the years is something we may never know, but the leaked HSBC documents revealed 1,138 Venezuelan accounts with $14.8 billion in deposits. (6) This in ONE bank.

Alejandro Andrade, Chavez’s former body guard who became Venezuela’s treasury minister from 2007 to 2010, had three HSBC accounts with $698 million in deposits.   Andrade is now living in Florida, and is reputedly a horse aficionado. (7) Probably works in some stable somewhere, shoveling stuff out.  Right.

The HSBC documents also showed some $270 million in the accounts of citizens of Zimbabwe, where at last count, 98% of the economy was run by the government.  Remember, this is just one bank. Estimates of the total amount deposited in Swiss banks by Zimbabweans is $4.5 billion. (8)

Sure is easy to get rich in socialist countries, as long as you’re not one of the socialist masses.  You have to be one of those Hugo Chavez/Bernie Sanders types who come to power wailing and moaning about how the little guy is being screwed by an evil private enterprise system that has bought the government, hates poor people, exploits workers and eats babies.  Out with those guys and in with the  “good” guys, the Hugos, the Bernies, the Maos, the Kim Jong Uns who will then proceed to enrich themselves in the economic justice con game.

Mao, too?  Yes, indeed. While his people starved, Mao had gourmet food flown in from around the country; while families of three generations communed in one room, Mao had over 50 estates, some of which included entire mountains and lakes for his exclusive use.  (9)

Mao’s example is carried on today by China’s satellite, North Korea, where Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un spends a fortune on luxury goods while his people suffer widespread hunger and malnutrition, according to a UN report released in 2014. (10)

Sadly, once in power, all these “economic justice” types quickly become the new fat cats.  Read George Orwell  classic “Animal Farm.”  In fact, if all this blather about “inequality” puts people who want to “fix” inequality in power, it guarantees the sort of inequality we see in places like Venezuela. The power to “correct”  subjective inequalities is too much power, which will be abused. Always.

Gosh, you say, that sort of thing can‘t happen here.  Oh?  Have you ever heard of Franklin Raines?   He was President of Federal National Mortgage Corporation, a.k.a. Fannie Mae, from 1998 to 2004.  Fannie Mae was/is a government sponsored enterprise, a GSE, under the control of The Department of Housing and Urban Development.  It was also a publicly owned company with stock trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Raines resigned in the wake of an accounting scandal that involved overstating the earnings of Fannie Mae for years.  Those overstated earnings, to the tune of $6.3 billion, made Fannie Mae’s stock a Wall Street darling which resulted in BIG profits for Raines’s stock options:   “– of the more than $90 million in executive compensation received by Raines from 1998 through 2003, over $52 million  was directly tied to achieving earnings-per-share targets  through phony accounting.” (11)

Remember: FRANKLIN RAINES WAS ESSENTIALLY A GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE.

A few years after Raines left, Fannie Mae spiraled into bankruptcy and helped take the entire nation down with it.  I think the government should have gone after Raines’s huge compensation in a “clawback” like they did with those innocents who profited from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, but they didn’t.  Makes one wonder if there is a double standard in the Justice Department like there is in the mainstream media. If Raines had been a big-shot Republican, you‘d have heard of him!

Which brings to mind a thought experiment:  Assume that instead of the Clinton Foundation, there was a Bush Foundation that had received hundreds of millions in contributions from around the world, had hired Bush cronies at BIG salaries, had a Bush kid running it and that Jeb Bush was the Republican presidential nominee who had made $21 million giving speeches in a recent 18 month period. Now assume the New York Times had endorsed Bush —WHOA! That’s an assumption too far when it‘s a Republican being ugly. (12)

(1) http://babalublog.com/2015/02/09/swiss-leaks-reveals-84-million-in-illegal-hsbc-bank-accounts-by-70-castroite-cubans/
(2) http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=74
(3) http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/05/09/venezuelans-are-now-hunting-cats-dogs-and-birds-for-food-because-socialism-cant-provide-n2160036
(4) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3192933/Hugo-Chavez-s-ambassador-daughter-Venezuela-s-richest-woman-according-n
(5) ibid (4)
(6) https://panampost.com/pedro-garcia/2015/02/11/venezuela-outdoes-all-latam-nations-in-hsbc-tax-evasion-scheme/

(7) http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article9601697.html
(8) http://www.voazimbabwe.com/a/zimbabwe-money-foreign-currency-offshore-accounts/2634022.html
(9) http://tucson.com/news/opinion/mao-preached-the-hard-life-but-lived-in-luxury/article_c2be87cd-fa70-517f-996b-c42c09fd2282.html
(10) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/18/north-korea-luxury-goods_n_4808823.html
(11) Gretchen Morgenson And Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment (Times Books, 2011)  p. 254.
(12) New York Times, 1/30/16: Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination – Voters have the chance to choose one of the most broadly and deeply qualified candidates in modern history –

Income and Wealth Inequality, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly – Part Two: The Bad by Peter Burrows 5/4/16 elburropete@gmail.com – silvercityburro.com (Note: I somehow failed to enter this blog back in May of 2016. Retyped and posted 3/20/2020. Another mistake. Sigh.)

Bernie Sanders is on to something when he says the top one percent of American workers are screwing the rest of us royally, and it’s all because they enjoy special privileges and protections from the government.  The system is rigged, all right.   

Where Bernie is wrong is saying it’s only one percent. It’s closer to seven percent. Here’s how I figure it:  The number of state, local and federal civilian workers is about 17 million. (1) Add almost seven million retired government workers and the number is about 24 million, or seven percent of the total population of 324 million. (2) This is the REAL “one percent.”  

This privileged group of fat cats is under-worked, overpaid, impossible to fire, retired too early and retired too generously. Most are unionized, and most are Democrats. Some enjoy job security that is absolutely scandalous.(3)  They form the backbone of the Democrat Party, supplying money, volunteers and party officials. Attend a meeting of your local Democrat Party and there they are: Government workers, active and retired, federal, state and local.  Don’t forget: School teachers and college professors are BIG in this group.   

These people enjoy the REAL income inequality we should do something about, not the meritorious inequality that Bernie et al hyperventilate about. I suspect part of the “one percent” meme is a smoke screen to divert attention from the inequality government workers enjoy, at taxpayers’ expense. This pay inequality is for the most part undeserved and simply a function of politicians buying the votes of government employees.  

The clueless Republicans should make this inequality an issue, and they should also raise the moral issue that part of the public payrolls are essentially involuntary donations to the Democrat Party from taxpayers who aren’t Democrats. Union dues, after all, come out of the workers’ pay that first comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets. 

We’re not talking trivial stuff here.  At the federal level, a Cato Institute study last year put the average difference in pay AND benefits at an astounding $52,000 per year, which amounts to federal employees receiving 78% more than workers in comparable private jobs.  The author of the study summed it up pretty well: “The federal government has become an island of secure and high-paid employment, separated from the ocean of average Americans competing in the economy.” (4) 

At the state and local level, things are not much better. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the total cost of a state or local worker at 45% more than for an equivalent private sector worker. (5) In fact, the state and local government jobs are by far the bigger problem. While the number of civilian employees at the federal level has been surprisingly flat for the last twenty years or so at about 2.7 million, state and local government employment has gone from six million in the 1950’s to over 19 million today. (6) 

Let me be clear about a number of things. First, I don’t blame the workers. They are taking advantage of a good deal that they individually had little to do with. At a recent visit to my dermatologist, while he was carving and freezing spots on my haggard old visage, he was opining that he should have gone to work for the VA years ago and I was saying I should have gone to work for the IRS. Why, instead of sitting in his office, we’d probably both be sitting on deck chairs enjoying a Caribbean cruise and blah, blah, blah. Hindsight.  

Second, not all government workers are Democrats. I know two Republicans in good health who retired, in their 50’s, from good government jobs and both are very active in Republican politics.  Both should still be on the job, but that’s just my opinion, one they would both take issue with, to put it mildly.  

Third, some government workers are worth every penny they are paid. Cops come to mind, some teachers, plenty of health workers, and the occasional conscientious vin ordinaire bureaucrat. But the 634 school custodians, a.k.a. janitors, who made over $100,000 per year in New York City for the school year 2013-2014? (7) Not them.  Also, not Chicago school teachers, whose median salary is $71,017, of which only two percent goes toward their fat pensions. This is outrageous considering that almost 92 percent of the Chicago schools have over half their students NOT proficient in reading or math for their grade level. (8) 

The Republicans share the blame for this inequity in government pay. When in control in Washington, D.C., they’ve done nothing to rein in Federal worker compensation, and today there are 32 states with Republican governors and Rauner of Illinois is the only one I know of who’s tried to get a handle on state pensions – unsuccessfully, I might add.  

A good start would be to tie state and local retirement outlays to the age requirements in the Social Security system.  For example, a state worker spends thirty years on the job, is 52, fully vested and wants to retire. Well, congratulations and Bon Voyage! Oh, by the way, your retirement checks won’t start showing up in your mailbox until you are 62, or 67 or whatever the Social Security ages are for partial and full payment. It’s a thought. 

The huge problem of unfunded pension/benefit obligations is beginning to get noticed. At least a couple of states, New Jersey and Illinois, have obligations that are simply unsolvable short of bankruptcy, an escape hatch states are not legally able to pursue.  Cities have the bankruptcy option but will first raise taxes, as is happening in Chicago, and then turn to their state governments for bailouts, and then from there will join their state governments in the queue to get the Federal government to foot bail-outs. Bet on it.  

I can hear the arguments now: If they did it for General Motors, they can do it for Poughkeepsie (or wherever.) If this is allowed to happen, the unions representing state and local workers will have pulled off a major tax swindle: Negotiate state and local labor contracts that pay the moon and send the bill to Washington.  

To prevent this, the stated need the potion of bankruptcy law protection. Bankruptcy allows contracts to be rewritten or even annulled, including pension agreements.  The Federal law disallowing state bankruptcies should be changed, but I’m not sure it will ever happen.  Too many retirees will flock to D.C. to tell their tales of impending doom, many of them absolutely true.  

FI don’t know how this problem can be solved without a lot of pain. Perhaps some sort of grandfathering scheme for pensioners with reasonable benefits, some sort of claw-back for pensioners with unreasonable benefits, but SOMETHING has to be done.  

Allowing states to declare bankruptcy still wouldn’t do anything about the Federal workers and their fst pay and fatter retirement benefits. Maybe Bernie will start bitching about this inequality, the inequality that government can, and should, do something about. I’m not holding my breath.   

(1) http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/11/07/the-federal-government-now-employs-the-fewest-people-since-1966/                                                                                                                  (2) I tried, hard, to get a number for all retired government workers, state, local and Federal. The best I could do is to use a number, seven million, implied in an article in the Wall Street Journal, 12/29/15, “States’ Pension Woes Split Democrats and Union Allies” by Timothy W. Martin and Kris Maher.                                                                                              (3) http://nypost.com/2016/01/17/city-pays-exiled-teachers-to-snooze-as-rubber-rooms-return/                                                                                                                                                  (4) http://freebeacon.com/issues/study-government-workers-make-78-percent-more-than-private-sector/                                                                                                                                      (5) http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/03/13/government-workers-cost-45-more-than-private-sector/                                                                                                                    (6) ibid (1)                                                                                                                                              (7) “Most New York City Custodians Do Really, Really Well” by Matt Vespa, Townhall 9/21/15                                                                                                                                                    (8) http://townhall.com/columnists/timbenson/2016/01/13/thanks-to-teachers-union-chicago-public-schools-are-a-perpetualmotion-machine-of-mediocrity-n2103697                  (9) http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/02/01/pension-bill-on-hold-despite-rauner-cullerton-agreement/    

Income and Wealth Inequality: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly – Part One The Good –  by Peter Burrows 4/27/16 elburropete@gmail.com – silvercityburro.com

Exit polls show Democratic voters in the presidential primaries put “income inequality” near the top of the list of things to be concerned about.  This is typical of politics in America today: The Democrats find some statistical disparity and make a political issue out of it, regardless of the underlying facts, and the Republicans let them get away with it.  The evil party and the stupid party.

Since statistical disparities abound, the Democrats get lots of political mileage out of portraying things as unjust when they are just the opposite.  For example, blacks are incarcerated more than whites, which Democrats claim is proof of racism, not that blacks commit more crimes, which they do. Women earn less than men, which for decades Democrat have claimed proves gender discrimination, in spite of numerous studies showing other perfectly reasonable factors at work. Which brings to mind the festering problem of there being no women playing quarterback in the NFL or center in the NBA.

OK, I made that last one up, but it wouldn‘t surprise me if somebody were to sue the NFL or NBA someday on that statistical discrepancy. Women are being shoe-horned into all sorts of jobs where they are physically at a disadvantage, so why not  NFL quarterbacks, NBA centers or for that matter, hockey goalies, etc. etc. ad absurdum.  It seems that common sense has disappeared these days.

To be worried about income and wealth disparity in America is a silly concern, at least it is as the Democrats frame it.  Bernie Sanders rails against the top one-tenth of one percent of income earners as though those people are guilty of something. Just what are they guilty of, Bernie?  Being successful? Being lucky? Being hard working? Being creative?

How about just being old?  Thomas Sowell in one of his books, I forget which, had an interesting thought experiment in which a perfectly run society has everybody being paid the same, saving the same amount and retiring after 50 years.  In this society, everybody starts work at 18 and retires after 50 years at 68. Population is ridgidly controlled so for each retiree there is a new 18-year-old workforce entrant.

Everybody is paid ten dollars a year and saves one dollar. What this means is that the 68-year-old retiree has saved $50 and the 19-year-old has saved $1.00.  Along comes Bernie who rails at the “system” that has the top two percent with fifty times the wealth of the bottom two percent.

It gets even more unequal if the dollar saved each year is invested at 5%. The retiree’s savings will be not be $50 but over $200 dollars.  WOW! Bernie will be in demagogue heaven! Furthermore, in the year before retirement, the older worker will not only have two hundred times as much wealth as the 19-year-old, his income of one dollar will be supplemented by over $10 of interest income, so his income will be eleven times as much as the 19-year-old.  Go get ‘em, Bernie! (1)

In the real world, of course, workers are not paid the same starting wage their entire careers. They get raises, they get promotions.  The typical person about to retire therefore has much more wealth and income than a person just entering the work force, and huge discrepancies in wealth and income are to be expected. That’s only fair.  But you’d never know it by just looking at the statistics.

To add to this inherent, “natural” inequality, we have what I call Cosmic inequalities. Some people are gifted with intelligence and talent far above average and if–IF– they have the ambition and work ethic to develop those talents their earthly rewards will be way beyond what most will experience. Examples are easy to cite.  Oprah Winfrey’s income was $175 million one year.  She earned it. Robert Downey Jr. made $80 million last year. He earned it.  (I don’t know what movie –movies?– he starred in and I don’t give a damn.) (2)

In the business world, which Bernie sees as inherently evil, the two richest billionaires are both liberals, as are many lesser billionaires, e.g. the Google Boys, the Facebook kid, the Amazon founder, and many others.  They earned it. Nobody is forced to do business with them. People repeatedly reward these entrepreneurs with their business because they offer a valuable, competitive product.  That’s as it should be. In a meritocracy, people should be rewarded for their achievements.  Ignorant, stupid people whose only achievements are in the world of politics should butt out.

In the Bible, Jesus calls attention to the fact that how a society treats its less fortunate is something He takes personally.  “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”  (Matthew 25:40 ESV)  Why shouldn’t the same apply to unfair treatment of best of our brothers?

(1) The embellishments of interest on savings are mine, not Dr. Sowell’s. Any mistakes are ergo mine, not his.
(2) http://www.slashfilm.com/highest-paid-actresses-actors-of-2015/

P.S. The top .1% of income tax filers represents only about 115,000 taxpayers.  They averaged $9.4 million in earnings in 2015 and paid 20% –that’s twenty percent from one tenth of one percent!!–of all the income taxes paid.(2) Hillary Clinton is in the group. Also in the group are the two quarterbacks in the recent Super Bowl. What harm did they do to society that Bernie is so pissed about?  Lots of sports figures and entertainers are in the .1%, most only temporarily. Not so Oprah Winfrey, Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough, and many others getting $10 million or more year after year. The common crime of almost all these big earners is that they excel, and in so doing risk making others feel inferior. Can’t have that can we, Bernie?  http://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24

Hate Speech, Congress and the Prophet, Part 2 by Peter Burrows 2/20/16 elburropete@gmail.com silvercityburro.com

Donald Trump took a lot of flak from all sides of the political spectrum for saying this country should halt Muslim immigration and even Muslim tourism “until our representatives figure out what‘s going on.” Pundits across the political spectrum thought this display of “racism” xenophobia, whatever, would hurt Trump in the polls. Just the opposite. (1)

Obviously, there is a large and growing divide between the political classes’ protection of Islam and the public’s perception of Islam.  But tourists, too?  It turns out Trump was on to something.  The Department of Homeland Security recently reported that over 500,000 aliens overstayed their temporary visas in 2015, and that 482,000 are thought to still be here.

If it wasn’t for the reality of worldwide Islamic terrorism, this wouldn’t be of much concern. Unfortunately, 3,614 of those overstays were from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen, and many are still unaccounted for.(2) This doesn’t include any Muslims who may have came in indirectly, i.e. via Latin America.

In Trump’s press release, he cited a poll of Muslims living in the U.S. that indicated 51% thought they should have the choice of American or sharia courts and that almost 25% thought violence against “those who give offense to Islam” was justified. (3)

The poll he cited has been criticized on its technical merits (4), but Trump could have easily cited a Pew poll of international Muslim attitudes, which also shows these are people no nation should welcome, e.g. 39% of the Muslims in Afghanistan support suicide bombings, as do 13% of the Pakistanis, 7% of the Iraqis, and Lord know how many from Yemen, Syria, Libya and Iran, nations not surveyed but which are all represented on the “missing tourist” list. (5)

What is wrong in Washington, D.C. that they  can’t or won’t recognize the threat from orthodox Islam, not “radical“ Islam, which is a redundancy?  People wonder at Trump’s popularity yet he’s the only one who has made the common sense observation that we should halt all Muslim entry until we can “figure out what’s going on.”

Given the virtual certainty that there will be more acts of Islamic terrorism in this country, and that some of those acts will be committed by the refugees the Obama administration is so eager to spread across the land, Trump is going to look pretty good for taking on the PC crowd, the “Islam is peace” crowd, the multiculturalists, and even the pacifists.

Both major political parties have members in good standing in one or more of those groups, but the Democratic Party will bear the brunt of criticism for future domestic Islamic terrorism simply because the Democrats have been so conspicuous in supporting Islam and immigration of Middle East refugees, with the most conspicuous Islamophile being President Obama.

His statement to the United Nations General Assembly that “The future must not belong to those who insult the Prophet of Islam” will go down in history right next to Neville Chamberlain’s “peace for our time.”  Perhaps his most public display of sheer stupidity was the exchange of  five Taliban murderers held at Guantanamo for the pathetic deserter Beau Bergdahl.

Obama was so proud of himself he had a press conference with Bergdahl’s parents.  Eventually, one or more of those released prisoners will achieve international infamy for some heinous act of terrorism. I guarantee it. It’s how they think: publicize the ex-Guantanamo bastard’s act as a big bird to the stupid Great Satan.

What is hard to believe is that Obama thinks closing Guantanamo will enhance his legacy.  Note to Obama: Your legacy is a cooked goose, buddy.   You may be the only ex-President to be tried for treason,  thanks to your release of so many Guantanamo prisoners who warred against us again, plus your shutdown of all surveillance of Mosques in the U.S. in 2011, an act of stupidity that defies reason. (6)

Put George “Islam is Peace” Bush in the docket, too.  He also released Guantanamo prisoners. Include Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House who approved a budget with expenditures to settle immigrant Syrian refugees.  Very short-sighted, very PC, and very stupid.

No wonder Trump is leading in the race for the 2016 Republican nomination.  He is a highly flawed candidate, but for many his approach to Islamic terrorism is THE overriding issue.

Some pundits have said that if Trump wins the Republican nomination, it will be the end of the Republican Party. Maybe. But what about the Democratic Party? After approving the resettlement of thousands of Middle East Muslim immigrants throughout America, they’re going to own the chaos that follows.

Probably the first group of Americans to feel the effect of the Muslim influx will be American Jews, who can expect an increase in hate crimes.  It may already be starting. (7) Why these long-time supporters of the Democratic party should accept the party‘s love affair with Muslims is beyond me.

That great Jew-hater Muhammad, in the two most revered “Gospels” of Islam, Sahih al-Bukari and Sahih Muslim, is quoted seven times saying something to the effect that on Judgment Day, Muslims will kill Jews and stones and trees will help by saying: “Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.” (8)

Why isn’t anybody quoting that sweet little gem from Muhammad?  Would doing so constitute “hate speech” against Muslims or against Jews?   At the moment, in our upside-down politically correct world, I suspect Muslims would think quoting the above from Muhammad would be hate speech directed at them. Go figure.

(1)http:/www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/immigration/december_2015/voters_like_trump_s_proposed_muslim_ban
(2) http://freebeacon.com/national-security/report-dhs-incapable-of-accurately-reporting-visa-overstays/
(3) http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/06/23/nationwide-poll-of-us-muslims-shows-thousands-support-shariah-jihad/
(4) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/07/donald-trumps-call-to-ban-muslims-from-  coming-to-the-u-s-has-a-very-bad-poll-at-its-center/
(5) http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/
(6) http://www.westernjournalism.com/islamic-mosques-excluded-from-surveillance-by-feds/
(7) http://pamelageller.com/2016/02/hijabi-muslimas-casing-florida-synagogues.html/
(8) http://quotingislam.blogspot.com/2011/06/muhammad-says-that-one-day-very-trees.html

Hate Speech, Congress and The Prophet by Peter Burrows 1/28/16 elburropete@gmail.com

Eighty one Democrats and one Republican have cosponsored a House Resolution, H.Res. 569, “Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States.”  This was introduced only 15 days after a Muslim couple killed 14 and wounded 23 in San Bernardino, CA.

The resolution expresses “condolences for the victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes” in America, but no condolences for the 14 killed in San Bernardino or the other 75 Americans murdered by Muslim terrorists in the United States since the Twin Tower tragedy on 9/11/01.  In that same time period, only ONE Muslim was killed in a hate crime in the U.S., committed by a white supremacist right after the 9/11 attack. (1)

FBI statistics show that in 2014 there were 1,092 religious hate crimes, 16.3% of them against Muslims and 58.2% against Jews. (2)  Wikipedia puts the U.S. Muslim population at 3.3 million and the U.S. Jewish population at 6.8 million. So while Jews outnumber Muslims by a little more than two to one, they suffer hate crimes over three and a half times more often than Muslims.

Where is the House Resolution condemning violence, etc. against American Jews?  A cynic would say one isn’t needed because the Jews are already in the Democratic camp, while the Muslims, especially if the Obama Administration carries through with plans to grant around 170,000 visas to Muslim immigrants this year, are a brand new minority that can be appealed to by the time honored tactic of depicting them as “victims” to be rescued by the Democrats.

When combined with other Administration actions to whitewash Islam, the House resolution makes political sense, though not in any other context.  For example, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson recently visited a Mosque in Virginia where he said the overwhelming majority of Muslims want to live in peace and anyone who doesn’t understand that “does not understand Islam.  The very essence of the Islamic faith is peace.”

Think about that.  Our Director of Homeland Security thinks the very essence of Islam is peace when all over the world Muslims are proving otherwise, everyday. (3)

Last December, Attorney General Loretta Lynch,  no one to take a back seat when it comes to PC butt kissing, attended a dinner celebrating the 10th university of Muslim Advocates, a lobbying organization that makes sure the First Amendment protects Muslims’ right to undermine our free society.

At that dinner, Lynch said she was concerned about an “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric,” which if it leads to violence against Muslims or people thought to be Muslims, would prompt the DOJ to take  action against the hate speechers.  House Resolution 569 also “denounces in the strongest term the increase in hate speech–.”

Accusing people of  hate speech raises some tricky First Amendment problems.  Who defines hate speech?  If hate speech is a crime “when it leads to violence,” aren’t Muslims guilty of hate speech when they quote the many parts of the Koran that call for violence against non-Muslims? (4)

Was Donald Trump guilty of hate speech for saying this country should halt Muslim immigration and even Muslim tourism until “our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”?   Hate speech or free speech?  Trump’s comment was quickly denounced by the Obama administration, most leading Republicans, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders et al, only proving that Trump’s statement is a non sequitur because it’s obvious our representatives can’t figure out what’s going on.

A petition in the U.K. has gathered over 600,000 signatures to ban Trump from entering the country because of  his comments.  He wouldn‘t be the first not allowed in because of anti-Muslim activism, e.g. Robert Spencer, Pamella Geller, and Geert Wilders come to mind.  Too bad very few people know who those three are.

You don’t have to go all the way to England to find muddled thinking on free speech.  Last March, The Associated Students of the University of New Mexico, the undergraduate student government at UNM, unanimously passed a resolution asking the university administration to publicly denounce Islamophobia, which they define as “a dislike or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.”

What are these kids thinking? It is precisely as a political force that Islam is such an abomination, as anybody paying attention should know.  ISIS has declared itself a caliphate and is proceeding to behead, crucify, rape, enslave and subdue anyone who opposes their Islamic theocracy.   All of the atrocious things they are doing are condoned by their religion. They are not “radical” Muslims, they are orthodox Muslims.  This is something decent people have a hard time understanding unless they have a knowledge of Islam.

Memo to the ignorant kids at UNM: Objective observers SHOULD dislike Islam and since “prejudice” has become a pejorative, people with knowledge of Islam have every reason to view Muslims with a “healthy skepticism.”

Unfortunately, we are approaching the point where anything that offends anybody can be defined as hate speech, regardless of the veracity of what is said, especially if the offenders are from the political right.  An “artist” can put a crucifix in a glass of urine and call it “Piss Christ,” and a dissident can burn the American flag at high noon in the town square, and lots of high-minded people will defend those acts in the name of free speech.  If you say that Islam condones pedophilia because Muhammad had sex with a nine-year-old, those same people will accuse you of hate speech.

Occasionally, former President Bill Clinton does something that gets my grudging respect, like his Sister Souljah moment, when he put down that black racist.  (Black racist? Hate speech! Hate speech!!)

Last January on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, he said Islamic politics “advocates the world’s greatest double standard: if you come to our country, we won’t let you worship the way you want, we won’t let you say what you want to say, we won’t let you do what you want to do. However, we have come to your country, therefore we have the right to do whatever we want to do, including kill you if you make us mad.” (5)

Questions:
(1) Is there anyone reading this article who knew Bill Clinton had said that?
(2) Does his statement constitute hate speech?
(3) Is his statement more or less offensive than Trump’s?
(4) How many signatures are there on a petition to ban Bill Clinton from entering the U.K.?
(5) Do you think there is another great double standard, that being in the mainstream media?

There are two important points to make about what Clinton said.  First, if a Republican had said what Clinton did, the media would have raised Hell and dismissed the statement as racist, untrue, xenophobic, whatever. Secondly, what Clinton said was undeniably true.  In other words, the media will accept a truth from somebody identified as a liberal, progressive or a Democrat, while the same truth will be dismissed as a lie, hate speech, or political pandering if it comes from the right side of the aisle.

Next week: Part Two

(1) http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks/american-attacks.aspx
(2) https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2014/topic-pages/incidentsandoffenses_final
(3) http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks/attacks.aspx?Yr=Last30
(4) silvercityburro.com   Memo to Clueless Republicans: Start Quoting the Koran 11/29/15
(5) http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7134/islam-islamism-america  See summary comments.

Why I am an Islamophobe  By Peter Burrows 1/5/16  elburropete@gmail.com  blog – silvercityburro.com

Phobia (1). A persistent, abnormal or illogical fear of a specific thing or situation.

“Islamophobe” is not an apt word.  “Phobia” implies something illogical, but there is nothing illogical in seeing Islam as a threat to everything humanity has so painfully, and incompletely, gained in the last few centuries: representative government, freedom of speech, economic prosperity, equality for women, the abolition of slavery, freedom of religion, and the list goes on and on.  Furthermore, phobia connotes fear, and while people who know Islam have every right to fear it, their primary emotion is apt to be one of revulsion.

Those who defend Islam usually know nothing about the Koran or the importance of the life of Muhammad to devout Muslims.  This lack of knowledge doesn’t prevent them from confidently calling Islamic terrorists  “radical” Muslims, something that must amuse the Allah fearing, Muhammad imitating bastards as they behead, crucify, rape, murder, enslave and plunder.

The problem with Islam, in a nutshell, is that its scriptural foundation, the Koran, is worshiped as the infallible, timeless and unchangeable word of God.  This belief does not seem to have diminished over the centuries, in spite of what a skeptical non-Muslim would see as evidence that the hopelessly out of date Koran is the work of a man, Muhammad, and is NOT the work of an infallible God.

Nonetheless, the important thing is to try to understand the Koran as devout Muslims do, not as you or I do, or how the ignorant, politically correct people who dominate Western leadership and media think Muslims do.  To that end, I recommend you get a copy of  “Towards Understanding The Koran,” an English translation of the Koran from Urdu, the language of Pakistan, which was in turn translated from Arabic by the highly respected Pakistani Islamic scholar Sayyid Mawdudi (1903-1979). (1) This translation-of-a-translation suffers from no difference in meaning that I can detect when compared with the straightforward English translation by Yusuf Ali. (2)

The reason I recommend the Mawdudi Koran is that it is an abridged version of a decades long project that Mawdudi undertook to not only translate the Koran, but to footnote it with very helpful explanations of the context and meanings of many of the verses. My abridged version was published in 2011, and has a forward by Pakistani Islamic economist and scholar, Khurshid Ahmad, who gives us an insight into how today‘s Muslims view the Koran.

In that forward, Ahmad says of the Koran:  “Being the Final Revelation, God saw to it that the ravages of time would play no havoc with it: that nothing of it would be lost, nor any part altered, nor anything extraneous find its way to it. It was God’s Will that the Final Revelation should be preserved in its entirety exactly as it had been communicated to the Prophet (peace be on him) by Gabriel, and exactly as the Prophet (peace be on him) had communicated it to his contemporaries. All this was essential since this Last Book was meant to serve as a beacon of light for the guidance of all humanity till the end of time.”

He goes on to say that the Koran is “doubtlessly” the word of God, that Muslims should use it to build “bridges of understanding across the religious, cultural, and ethnic divide found in our world today.” Here is an educated, respected Islamic scholar, who believes the Koran is unquestionably the word of God and “was meant to serve as a beacon of light for the guidance of all humanity till the end of time,” and who believes the Koran can unite humanity when Muslims themselves are hopelessly divided.

The Mawdudi Koran also has a preface written by the editor and translator, Zafar Ishaq Ansari, who writes this about Mawdudi: “–Mawdudi distinguished himself by his forceful writings aimed at establishing that the principles propounded by Islam were intrinsically sound, that they were relevant for and viable in every age and clime, that they were intrinsically good and benevolent and conducive to the overall well-being of mankind.”

To my mind, for reasons I will make abundantly clear, it is astounding that anybody could think that Islam would be viable for every age, is intrinsically good or contributes anything to the well-being of mankind.  Ansari also writes that he hopes the English edition will “be a source of enlightenment for a great number of people.” I hope so , too, but in an entirely opposite sense, because I think exposure to the reality of the Koran is just what the non-Muslim world needs to combat the worldwide jihad now underway. (3)

The two Pakistani scholars quoted above were born in the Twentieth Century and are living today, so their observations and attitudes have to be seen as contemporaneous, which means Islam has NOT mellowed over the past fourteen hundred years.  This is appalling and very, very sobering. Can we expect the vast majority of Muslims who are not as educated, not as worldly, to have opinions that are any different?

From an historical standpoint, believing the Koran is “doubtlessly” the word of God makes Islam the most “revealed” of the revealed religions, i.e. those religions claiming divine inspiration, which are generally thought of as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  You see, the Koran, unlike the scriptures of Judaism and Christianity, was not written by divinely inspired human beings: IT WAS DICTATED BY GOD HIMSELF.  Obviously, human writings that are only divinely inspired can’t be as authentic as the actual words of God.

In this sense, there is nothing comparable to the Koran in Christianity. Jesus did not dictate hundreds of pages of revelations.  Several of his followers wrote accounts of his life, as did the followers of Muhammad. In Christianity, these writings are the four Gospels, in Sunni Islam they are the six hadith, collections of his contemporaries’ recollections about Muhammad’s life, his deeds and non-revelatory sayings.

(Sunnis comprise 85% of the Muslim population, Sh’ia s 15%. The Shi’as have a separate collection of four hadith.)

While the New Testament is about Jesus, the Koran is not ostensibly about Muhammad, who is mentioned by name only four times, instead usually being identified as Allah’s Messenger, or The Prophet.  Muslims worship the Koran as God’s timeless word not Muhammad’s.  God revealed the Koran to His Prophet, Muhammad, over a period lasting 23 years until Muhammad’s death.

Those who defend Islam, whether they know it or not, are implicitly accepting its foundational premise: The Koran is God’s word, straight from God, not touched by humans. This has consequences that would be amusing if they weren’t so tragic.  For instance, in chapter 4, verse 34, God proclaims the forever truth that “men are the protectors and maintainers of women because Allah has made one of them excel over the other.”  And, no ladies, that can’t be twisted to mean that the one that excels is the woman.  (Although I could believe so.)  Allah is definitely male.

In the same verse, God says if you merely “fear rebellion” in one of your wives, when all else fails, the wife can be beaten.  That’s the word of GOD. No wonder women’s rights are so absent in the world of Islam  Where is the NOW crowd to raise hell about this? Would Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton continue to defend Islam if she knew the God of Islam decreed men superior to women, and that  the God of Islam commands men to discipline their wives by beating them for essentially no reason at all?

Remember, O ye infidels, to us the Koran is essentially the words of one MAN, Muhammad. To us nonbelievers, then, it is no surprise that God’s revelations frequently sound like the all-too-human Muhammad giving Heavenly Blessings to his desires and emotions.  While the Koran is OSTENSIBLY not about Muhammad, in many ways it is very importantly about Muhammad.

Exhibit A is a verse in the Koran I call the Verse of The Ego, 33:21.  This verse gives Muhammad carte blanch for his personal life, and essentially places him above criticism. In my Mawdudi Koran, the translation of 33:21 has Allah describing Muhammad as a “good example”  for Muslims to follow. In the Yusuf Ali translation, Allah describes Muhammad as a “beautiful pattern (of conduct)” for Muslims.  Take your pick.

In other words, Muhammad was an example for all of us to follow.  That’s what God said, and who are you and I to question God’s word?  This opens a whole Pandora’s Box of things Muhammad did that are described in the hadiths and biographies that most of us would find abhorrent, but that GOD said were good examples for Muslims to follow, which they do to this day, e.g. prepubescent marriage, beheadings, torture, slavery, rape, virulent Jew-hatred, religious intolerance, and theocracy.

Exhibit B is chapter 33, verse 50 in which God grants Muhammad as many wives as he can handle, including any first cousins he has an eye for, or who had an eye for him.  I suspect the ladies were starting to be very attracted to the ascendant Muhammad, and by all accounts He was of an accommodating nature. He eventually had 11 wives, plus an unknown number of slave women at his beck and call.

Other Muslim men were and are limited to four wives, plus slave women, and it was at the time verboten to marry first cousins.  The Koran says this privilege is only for God’s Messenger, Muhammad.  Interestingly, this revelation came after Muhammad was criticized for taking a fifth wife.   Allah was certainly quick to come to the rescue of His Messenger.

Exhibit C that shows the Koran is very much about Muhammad is the abrogation verse.  To abrogate is to annul by authority, to overrule.  When Muhammad left the unfriendly city of Mecca for Medina, he found himself in a much more accepting environment.  As he gained followers and power, he realized he did not have to be accommodating anymore to those who disagreed with him.  In other words, power began to corrupt.

To clear the deck, chapter two verse 106 says for any verse abrogated, “We substitute something better or similar: don’t you know that Allah has power over all things?”  In other words, Allah can change His mind and who is to say He can’t?   This was another revelation that rescued Muhammad, this time from Jewish critics who pointed out contradictions in the revelations.

As a practical matter, verse 2:106 meant that any early revelations advocating peace and harmony could now be ignored.  The prime example is the infamous Verse of The Sword, 9:5, which abrogates as many as 124 earlier verses. (4) What complicates matters is that the Koran is NOT in chronological order. After the first, very short chapter, it’s pretty much by length of chapter, the longest to shortest.

The very long second chapter in the Koran, for example, is chronologically the 87th chapter of revelations.   Consequently,  Islamic apologists can quote verses  from the Koran that sound good but are meaningless because those verses were later abrogated.

Fortunately, the chronological order of revelations can be found on the Internet, and I strongly recommend anyone wishing to study Islam first get a chronological listing of the chapters of the Koran. It will save much time and confusion if you ignore the 86 chapters of early revelations received in Mecca, and concentrate on the  28 received later in Medina.  (There are no Meccan verses cited in this article.)

As an aside, Chapter Two was the first set of revelations Muhammad received after arriving in Medina.  As the longest chapter in the Koran, one could say that Muhammad’s new surroundings really inspired Allah. In fact, six of the first ten chapters are Medina revelations,  including the final chapter of revelations, chapter nine.

What the abrogation verse 2:106 means is that the Koran is the infallible, timeless word of Allah unless it isn’t, and it isn‘t if a verse is abrogated by a more recent verse.  How convenient for Muhammad.  One would think that an all-knowing God would know He was going to change His mind in the future, but that’s just something a blasphemous infidel would think.  Such an infidel might also conclude that if God had to change His mind, that GOD HAD MADE A MISTAKE.  Blasphemy!

So, to be a devout Muslim you must believe in the divinity of a book whose claim of infallibility and timelessness is internally contradicted.  My favorite example of this is a verse the Islamophiles always use to defend Islam, chapter two verse 256: “There is no compulsion in religion.”  This is in stark contrast to verses that came later, e.g. 9:5 and 9:29, which command Muslims to slay pagans and subdue, at the least, Christians and Jews.

In the opinion of a leading Saudi Sheikh and imam, Saalih al-Munajjid, verses in chapter 9 abrogate the no compulsion verse, 2:256. (5)  Therefore, if you are unlucky enough to fall into the hands of ISIS jihadists and try to extricate yourself by pointing to verse 2:256, they will point to 9:5 and/or 9:29, and disengage your head from your body if you don’t convert, on the spot, to Islam, or start paying them not to kill you. I would call that compulsion.

One key fact about the Koran that defenders of Islam don’t seem to realize is that the Koran was “revealed” in the deserts of Saudi Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries AD.  Therefore, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Koran reflects the culture of the time and place of Muhammad, an Arab who lived from 570 AD to 632 AD.  Actually, if it did otherwise, you might be able to make a case that the Koran was in fact divinely written.

Alas, the Koran reflects contemporary customs which it enshrines as the eternal Word-of-God/Way of God when those customs are absurdly out of place today.  As an example, chapter four verse three mentions marrying “two or three or four” women, which Mawdudi footnotes with the following: “It should be noted that making polygamy lawful was not the real purpose of this verse, for polygamy was already in vogue in Arabia and the Prophet (peace be on him) himself had more than one wife when this was revealed.”

Well, what was “in vogue” in Arabia at the time became the forever word of GOD, making polygamy part of “the beacon of light for the guidance of all humanity until the end of time.”  (To be fair, polygamy was not confined to Islam over a thousand years ago.  I have occasionally thought the Mormon icon Joseph Smith made Muhammad look relatively celibate.)

Here are some other God-ordained practices and beliefs in addition to polygamy that are enshrined forever in the Koran, the foundation of Islam, the religion so vociferously defended by so many.  (Chapter and verse in parentheses.)

*Muslims must fight and slay pagans wherever they find them, e.g. San Bernardino. 9:5 (Verse of the Sword.)
*Muslims must fight Jews and Christians until they pay the Muslims protection money (jizya.) 9:29 (Mawdudi’s
footnote says this is not so much to compel conversion as it is to establish that unbelievers should never rule
anybody. “The authority to rule should only be vested in those who follow the True Faith –.”)
*Islam is the religion of truth and perfection that rules over all other religions. 9:33, 5:3, 9:29
*Those who fight against Islam must be killed, crucified or have their hands and feet cut off. 5:33
*Muslims are encouraged to cut off the heads of unbelievers in battle. 47:4 (33:21 declares Muhammad
a good example which leads to beheading captives after battle. See The Life of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq, page
464.  This beheading of captives has been embraced with enthusiasm by ISIS jihadists, as you can see for
yourself on the Internet.)
*Muslims must not have unbeliever friends. 3:28, 4:144, 5:51, 5:57
*God made men to excel over women. 4:34
*God says men can beat wives “of whom you fear rebellion.”  4:34
*God says women are half as reliable as men. 2:282
*God condones slavery, maybe even requires it. 4:92 and 5:89
*God condones sex with (raping of) slave women.  4:3, 4:24, 33:50
*Prepubescent marriage is OK with God. 65:4 plus the example of Muhammad, 33:21, who married a six-year-
Old and consummated the marriage when she was nine. According to that Iranian SOB the Ayatollah
Khomeini, who married a ten-year-old when he was 28, marriage to a child before her first menstrual period is
“a divine blessing” and he urged Muslim fathers to “do their best” to marry-off their daughters before they
began menstruating.(6)  This makes my blood boil.  What sort of father would do that to his girls?
*Muhammad as exemplar, 33:21, means e.g., it is OK behead prisoners, use torture, hate Jews, etc. etc. Lots of
examples in the hadith and biographies.

Given the above, I find it shocking that there are educated, contemporary Islamic scholars such as those quoted at the beginning of this article who have an unqualified belief in the Koran.  Even more discouraging, is the knowledge that over a billion people are adherents of Islam, justifying a very pessimistic outlook for humanity.

For those very courageous and all too rare Muslims who wish to reform Islam, the eternal God-given infallibility of the Koran makes that impossible.  In chapter five, verse three, of the Koran, Allah says, “This day I have perfected for you your religion –.” What is perfect from God should not be changed, and those who try are guilty of blasphemy in the eye of devout Muslims, a sin punishable by death.

The unfortunate truth is that Islam is inherently unreformable. Those good souls trying to reform Islam have an impossible task.  They must recognize, as we all must, that because Islam can’t be reformed, it must be rejected.  A good start is to recognize Islam for what it is, not what we would like it to be.

1. Sayyid Abdul A’la Mawdudi, Towards Understanding the Qur’an; Abridged version of Tafhim al-Qur’an,
translated by Zafar Isaq Ansari, UK Islamic Mission, Dawah Centre Birmingham, U.K., 2011
2. Abdulla Yusif Ali, translator, The Qur’an, Tashkike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc., New York, Sixth US. Edition, 2001
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks
4. Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, Regnery Publishing, 2005, pg. 25.
5. Ibid pg. 27.
6. Robert Spencer, Islam Unveiled, Encounter Books, 2002, pg. 48.

Memo to Clueless Republicans: Start Quoting the Koran by Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com silvercityburro.com 11/29/15

In a November 19 speech in New York, Hillary Clinton was morally outraged that some people, mostly Republicans, think the escalating global terrorism has something to do with the Muslim faith:  “Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”

I heard that and I thought, “There is a God and She has given the Republicans a golden opportunity.” Alas, I was a little hasty.

Instead of leaping on this monstrously ignorant statement, the Republicans have responded with — silence.  Hillary makes a fool of herself, again, and the Republicans don’t call attention to it. (One commentator has described the current political scene as a conflict between the evil party and the stupid party.  Hmmmm. I wonder which is which.)

OK, Republicans, for the good of the country and for the good of free people everywhere, you have to make Islam THE issue of the coming presidential campaign — and beyond.  You have to educate the American people, including some of your brethren, e.g. a former “Islam is peace” president, on the true nature of Islam.

Peaceful and tolerant? Islam? Nothing could be further from the truth. That is the politically correct point of view that the Democrats have staked out and they should be impaled on that stake.  Below are a few Koranic verses that I’m betting most Americans would be shocked to hear.  I’ve taken a little literary license with some to clarify them.

All of the verses quoted are from the final, and therefore most authoritative, revelations received by Muhammad: the Medina revelations.

Start with one of Allah’s last commands in the Koran, verse 9:5: Fight and slay the Pagans wherever you find them.  ISLAM SAYS MUSLIMS MUST FIGHT AND SLAY THE PAGANS WHEREVER THEY FIND THEM.  See anything peaceful and tolerant in that, Hillary? To fight and slay the pagans is the forever command of Allah, and is a sacred obligation for all Muslims to follow until Islam rules the world.

Gosh, you say, thank goodness I’m not a pagan. I’m Jewish (or I’m Christian.) Sorry. Allah goes on to command in verse 9:29: Fight those who do not believe in Allah or that Islam is the religion of truth even if they are People of the Book (Book = Bible, i.e. Jews and Christians) until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued. (Jizya is a tax imposed on non-Muslims by Muslims.) ISLAM SAYS TO FIGHT JEWS AND CHRISTIANS UNTIL THEY PAY MUSLIMS PROTECTION MONEY.

That sounds pretty tolerant, right? Maybe that explains why an Imam in England has urged all his followers to quit work and collect welfare (jizya) because Allah has decreed that to be the proper world order, i.e. nonbelievers are supposed to pay protection money to Muslims.(1) Remember, this is the unalterable forever word of Allah.

Muslims believe in the superiority of Islam not for any tangible reason I can think of but simply because Allah sent Muhammad “with Guidance and The Religion of Truth to proclaim it over all religion, even though the Pagans may detest it.” (verse 9:33) ISLAM IS THE RELIGION OF TRUTH AND RULES OVER ALL OTHER RELIGIONS, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT.

Very tolerant, don’t you think, Hillary? This is from the penultimate chapter of revelations, sura 9, which is the last of the commanding suras (chapters), and is therefore Allah’s final word, not ever to be changed. So much for the possibility of there ever being a Muslim Reformation.

An earlier verse, but still one of the final, authoritative Medina verses, 5:33,  says that the punishment for waging war against Muslims is: “execution, or crucifixion or the cutting off of hands an feet —-.” ISLAM COMMANDS THAT THOSE WHO FIGHT ISLAM BE KILLED, CRUCIFIED OR HAVE THEIR HANDS AND FEET CUT OFF.  Sweet stuff that obviously has nothing to do with terrorism, right? Explains why some captives have been crucified by ISIL. Crucified! In this day and age.

Another Medina verse, 47:4, commands: “When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind  your captives firmly.”  ISLAM SAYS BEHEAD THE UNBELIEVERS.

Maybe Hillary thinks that only applies to actual battle, and all those horrific Internet videos of  ISIS captives being behead is somehow a perversion.   Hardly.  Muhammad, after conquering the Jewish village of Banu Qurayza,  personally beheaded 600 to 900 prisoners. Very peaceful and tolerant fellow. No wonder Allah said Muhammad was an exemplar to be emulated (Verse 33:21), which is precisely what the devout young Muslims in ISIS are doing.

Occasionally I hear some PC moron touting how nice his or her Muslim friends are.  I don’t think those friends would be so nice if they were in the majority, especially if they were “good” Muslims. Good Muslims would follow at least the seven verses that I‘ve found, all from Medina suras, and  there may be more: “Take not for friends Unbelievers rather than believers.” (4:144)  “Take not the Jews and Christians for your friends and protectors.” (5:51) “Take not for friends those who take your religion for mockery or sport –.” (5:57)

Perhaps the most revealing verse in regard to Muslim ”friends” is 3:28:  “Let not the Believers take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than Believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that you may guard yourselves from them. But Allah cautions you to remember Allah.” The next verse says that Allah knows what is in your heart, therefore pretending to be a friend is allowed to “guard“ against the Unbelievers, as long as in your heart you are true to Allah.

ISLAM COMMANDS MUSLIMS TO HAVE NO INFIDELS FOR FRIENDS, BUT IT‘S OK TO PRETEND TO BE THEIR FRIEND.  I think that should raise the warning flags pretty high when it comes to Muslim “friends.” If you have any, ask them about the four verses above. (See also 60:1, 60:9 and 60:13.)

One of my favorite verses, again a Medina verse, is 4:34, in which Allah passes out a little domestic advice on how husbands should treat wives guilty of poor conduct:  Scold them and if that doesn’t work, don’t sleep with them, and as a last resort, beat them.  Another Islamic holy text, The Reliance of the Traveler and Guide for the Worshipper, advises that the beating should not draw blood, break bones or be to the face. How thoughtful.

ISLAM COMMANDS DISOBEDIENT WIVES BE BEATEN IF ALL ELSE FAILS.  It’s in the Koran. It’s the word of Allah. Shout it out, Republicans.  Sura 4.34 also has this little bit of revelation that should get the NOW knickers all knotted up:

MEN HAVE AUTHORITY OVER WOMEN BECAUSE ALLAH HAS MADE THE ONE SUPERIOR TO THE OTHER.  And to think poor Lawrence Summers was driven from the presidency of Harvard because he cited a possible superiority of males in math.   He probably wishes every now and then that Harvard was a Muslim University.

Another verse that Hillary might like is 4:3, that says “–marry women of your choice, two or three or four–.” Think of all the trouble Hillary and Bill could have avoided if they had been Muslims: ISLAM ALLOWS ORDINARY MUSLIM MEN TO HAVE UP TO FOUR WIVES.

There was one exception, and that was Allah’s Messenger. Verse 33:50 allows Muhammad to have as many wives as he wants, including first cousins and “any believing woman who dedicates her soul to the Prophet if the prophet wishes to wed her; —this only for you and not for the Believes (at large.).”

ALLAH GRANTED MUHAMMAD AS MANY WIVES AS HE WANTED INCLUDING WOMEN WHO WERE HIS FIRST COUSINS.  Does this sound like a command from Heaven, or more like an expedient law “revealed” by a cult leader who had women throwing themselves at him, including a good looking cousin or two?

I’ll close by noting the Koran has numerous references to slavery, none of which condemn the practice. In fact, the Koran implies that slavery is quite acceptable to Allah and it may even be a tacit requirement of Islam. That is how I interpret passages that describe how certain transgressions and sins can be expiated by the freeing of a slave, e.g. verses 4:92 and 5:89.

In addition, the Koran has a number of references to “those whom your right hand possess” meaning slaves. For example, sura 4:24 prohibits marrying “women already married except those whom your right hand possess.”

ISLAM APPROVES OF SLAVERY AND THE RAPE OF SLAVE WOMEN. That explains the accounts of slave dealings by ISIS, especially of captive women.  Note that ISIS leader al-Bagdadi took as his slave the American Kayla Mueller, whom he repeatedly raped and was going to force to be his fourth wife before she was reported killed in a Jordanian bombing raid.

Question for America’s Black Muslims: Is your embrace of Islam due to ignorance or a desire to one day have your own slaves? If the later, you can do that today by moving to North Sudan or Nigeria. See http://www.csi-usa.org http://www.antislavery.org for details on the slaving activities of your brother Muslims.

In summary, are Muslims peaceful and tolerant people, Hillary?  Absolutely not.  Your political correctness has blinded you to the facts. Ben Carson has recently been criticized for his lack of foreign policy knowledge, but if the former Secretary of State can’t see Islam for what it is, what does that say about her foreign policy chops?

What does this brief lesson from the Koran tell us to do about taking in Syrian refugees? Hillary and other PC fools say not to worry because the refugees will be extensively vetted, as though that were possible.  The vetting process is simple: NO MUSLIMS.

Anybody proposing that will of course be immediately accused of being a racist, which is the favorite charge against anyone disagreeing with liberals on anything, but it is also a preposterous charge because a religion is not a race and the vetting process should also ACCEPT SYRIAN CHRISTIANS.

People who will accept Muslim refugees but not Christian refugees are either damn fools or traitors.  The Republicans should call them that, frequently.

Something else the Republicans should bring up over and over is President Obama’s release of five hardened jihadist fighters from Guantanamo in exchange for one American deserter, Bowe Bergdahl.  The President was so proud of himself he had a press conference with Bergdahl’s parents.  This was a war time act of such stupidity is  grounds for impeachment.

A final word of advice for Republicans: The Koran reveals the redundancy of the phrase “Radical Islam,” and the Koran is not the most radical of the Islamic holy texts, not by a long shot. People must be made to see that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization. It is intolerant, misogynistic, violent and theocratic.  It attracts psychopaths, sadists, rapists and the weak minded.  It has been waging war on us for almost 14 centuries and it’s time we woke up and started the long process of wiping Islam from the face of the earth.

Remember, Islam commands its followers to wipe us unbelievers  from the face of the earth if we don’t convert to Islam or pay them the jizya.  It is the command of Allah.

(1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9875954/Muslim-preacher-urges-followers-to-claim-Jihad-Seekers-Allowance.html

Saving The World From New Mexico’s Coal by Peter Burrows elburropete@msn.com silvercityburro.com 10/10/15

For the past few years, Public Service of New Mexico (PNM) has been under an EPA mandate to reduce the haze around their San Juan Generating Plant.  To meet EPA standards, PNM proposed shutting down two of four coal-generating plants at San Juan and replacing the lost power with natural gas nuclear and solar generated power.

You would think this would be a simple process, and you would be wrong. PNM has been battling over the details with a number of intervenors. (Intervenors are somewhat analogous to individuals or groups filing amicus curiae briefs in court cases, advocating a particular court decision.) Last month, PNM reached an agreement with a majority of these groups and submitted a proposal to the Public Regulatory Commission (PRC) which accepted the agreement and scheduled hearings to start October 13, with a final PRC vote hopefully by year end.

At those final hearings, objections to the PNM agreement will very probably be voiced by Santa Fe-based New Energy Economy (NEE), an environmental group that did not sign on to the agreement with most of the other intervenors.  That’s because NEE wants to replace the power from the two to-be-shuttered coal-generating plants entirely by wind and solar power.

From an 8/14/15 article in the Silver City Daily Press:  NEE Executive Director Mariel Nanasi claimed that PNM’s plan was both environmentally and economically unfeasible. “Coal is a loser compared to solar and wind. Check out who’s going bankrupt. Check out who’s losing market influence and spiraling job loss. Check out the very serious risks and liabilities from coal and the viable and cheaper solar and wind alternatives,” Nanasi said in a press release. (1)

Ms. Nanasi’s assertion that wind and solar are cheaper alternatives is an opinion not held by America’s richest liberal and ardent Global Warmer, Bill Gates, who said the cost to use solar and wind to replace conventional fuels would be “beyond astronomical.”  Plus, Gates’ occasional bridge partner and America’s second richest lib, Warren Buffet, said this about wind farms: “They don’t make (economic) sense without the tax credit.” (He should know. His firm Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest, if not the largest, wind farm operator in the country.)

Such realities aside, Ms. Nanasi may be correct that “coal is a loser” in the U.S., where it is being regulated to death, but what about the rest of the world?

A March 2015 research report, “Boom and Bust – Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline” co-authored by the Sierra Club, shows that around the world coal is a big winner. Net new coal capacity totaled 733 gigawatts for the nine years 2005 through 2013, and as of 2014, there were 276 gigawatts of new coal generation capacity under construction and 1,083 gigawatts in the planning stage.  (2)

If only half of the planned capacity is built, that half plus the total under-construction means new coal capacity would be 884 times as much as will be retired at PNM’s San Juan Generating Plant — 884 times as much! (3)

Hmmmm.  Seems the rest of the world does not want to be saved from the global warming and deleterious health effects blamed on burning coal. There are even a few people right here in New Mexico who may not want to be saved.  You may become one of them after you check  the “Renewable Energy Rider” surcharge on your PNM bill.

Surcharge? What about the claim that renewables are cheaper? Only if you add in humongous health costs society allegedly pays due to breathing air polluted by burning coal, and equally humongous costs the world will eventually pay due to predicted global warming costs, although none — none — of those alleged global warming costs are yet apparent.

By the same reasoning, you could say that the automobile industry imposes huge costs on society because of all the foul air we breathe from auto exhausts, plus the huge toll from auto accident deaths and injuries, plus all the green stuff we could grow where highways are now.   I’m surprised there isn’t a movement to shut down the auto factories and force people to ride bicycles and take rickshaws until electric autos take over, speed limit 20 mph.

If you’re like me, you’re tired of paying for other peoples’ causes.  I would like PNM to assign all renewable surcharges to people who advocate renewables.  In a perfect world, if not enough people paid for renewables, there wouldn’t be more renewables shoved down our throats. Ain’t gonna happen.

The best that PNM can do is something called the Sky Blue program, where PNM’s customers can voluntarily choose to pay extra for a renewable mix of 85% wind, 15% solar.  I’m told there are a couple thousand customers actually doing this but, alas, the list of such customers is confidential.

I wonder if NEE’s Mariel Nanasi is on the list.  I wonder if PNM could publish a list of Sky Blue customers who had no objections to being identified. I would think such environmental champions would be quite happy to be recognized for their green bona fides. Of course, the idea is to identify those environmentalists NOT on the list.  I can’t think of any nice, libertarian way to do that, can you?

Sources:
(1)http://www.scdailypress.com/site/2015/08/14/pnm-opponents-reach-deal-on-coal-plant-cutback/
(2) Boom and Bust – Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline

Click to access BoomBustMarch16embargoV8.pdf

(3)Wild Earth Guardians: Powering Past Coal at the San Juan Generating Station.  This report notes the four coal-fired generators produce 1,848 megawatts of electricity.  One half is 924 megawatts or 924,000,000 watts. From (2), under construction = 276 gigawatts + one half of the 1,083 gigawatts planned = 276 + 541 = 817 gigawatts or 817,000,000,000 watts.  817,000,000,000/924,000,000 = 884
http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/DocServer/San_Juan_Generating_Station_Fact_Sheet.pdf?docID=1342

Note: A http://www.PowerForProgress.com report I received from a PNM employee puts the San Juan Generating Station current capacity at 1,683 MW, of which 836 MW will be retired. Using that number: 817,000,000,000/836,000,000 = 977 times as much capacity coming on stream around the world, at least, than the amount to be retired by PNM. This report uses the lower figure of 884 to be conservative. If one assumes 100% of the proposed coal capacity is actually built, the equation is 1,359,000,000,000/836,000,000 = 1,626 times as much coming on stream. Regardless, anything New Mexico does to reduce worldwide coal burning is trivial and meaningless in the real world.