'Robert Underwood Blog �

	Robert		Underwood

We are once again being treated to various mayoral candidates and their speeches about violence. The subject quickley switches from violence to citizen disarmament in the face of the governments refusal to get serious offenders off the streets.

When Albano ran for mayor he wanted a local trigger lock and storage ordinance. It was later made a state law. Legislators always pander to the gun control advances.

It had no effect on violence for the simple reason that the law applied to people who would obey laws any. The only beneficiaries were a few bureaucrats and the lock companies. Anyone of average intelligence, or even blow average intelligence would have been able to see that it would not have en effect.

Now Albano’s protégée Mayor Domenic Sarno says he will have zero tolerance for violence. He is saying it because of several shootings. State law specifically exempts the city police from responsibility to protect people, property, or to arrest criminals. Yet Mayor Sarno’s solution has emphasized more police. There was even a fist fight among the cops in the police station.

The city does not have a court, nor jail. The entire responsibility for dealing with serious offenders is in the hands of incompetent legislators, supported by both Sarno and Tosado.

Then not be outdone, Jose Tosado is getting into the anti-crime act. He says we need to get the guns off the streets. Usually statements like that result it yet more laws that harass and take money from honest people. The only way his policy would work would be if the police were presently not enforcing the existing gun control laws. Not anyone can just walk into a store and buy a gun. After 30 years of having this myth propagated by the citizen disarmament movement he must know better.

Tosado did not say what should be done with violent offenders and repeat offenders. He is deliberately avoiding the subject. He does not want conflict with his incompetent friends in the legislature.

Tosado then goes on to say that the underlying causes of crime need to be addressed, such as unemployment. I would agree with that. But Tosado’s party supported NAFTA and other laws which exported American jobs. He helped bring about the unemployment that he now says is a problem. He refuses to confront his party’s leadership on the issue.

Yes Sarno and Tosado have experience and doing things that do not work. While they shower money on some people and sell a buiding for $1 they would have us believe that they can stop crime by doing more of the same.

Working people have been having their jobs shipped to cheap labor countries for years. The high unemployment and the lack of revenues that the unemployed are not paying are partly responsible for the state’s budget problems. Yet we have seen attorneys who thing nothing of charging their clients $50 an hours and up. Various court fees are also a great financial burden on the working poor. Access to the legal system is not for the poor. Law schools continue to charge astronomical fees, which determine what their graduates will charge people.

Attorneys are more represented than any other occupation in Local, County, State, and Federal government than any other occupation. Legislatures pass the war on drugs, victimless laws, Congress passes laws which allow the exportation of jobs, and excessive immigration which depresses wages. But after they helped to create a recession, they still want to be paid.

The Springfield Republican has not said very much in objection to the movement of jobs to China, Mexico, and other cheap labor countries. It has been very quiet on the issue of anything that might depress wages. But now one of the mostly costly of occupations has hurt by the policies that they themselves supported and we are treated to an editorial.

http://www.masslive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/05/editorial_hiring_new_massachusetts_lawyers_will_hurt_economy_poor.html

Each year more laws are passed, more people go on trial, and the rates for attorneys keep going up. In the meantime the taxpayers are not getting a raise and may be losing their job. There are limitations on what they can pay.

There was a time when Organized Labor and “progressives” supported an income tax as a means of financing government. The idea was that sales taxes, real estate taxes ( on housing ), and other fees charged the poor disproportionately since a higher percentage of their income would by used to pay those fees.

Now the Unions are against lowering the sales tax. They are allied with vested interests on the subject. How did this happen?

Organized Labor backed politicians who supported NAFTA ( North America Free Trade Agreement) and other free trade agreements that allowed jobs to be exported to Mexico, China, and other cheap labor countries. Like their private sector counterparts, public employee unions also backed the “wrecking crew” of free traders. Now they are virtually by themselves.

As the private sector jobs moved to slave labor countries U.S. workers lost their jobs. That made the public employee’s unions a much larger part of organized labor. They are now the main beneficiaries of the sales tax, and they are perfectly willing to tax the poor, the unemployed, and homeless to get money to pay their salaries. Eugene Debbs must be proud.

I hope the unemployed will not be frightened out of voting for a sales tax reduction.

Will teachers be laid off? We could abolish victimless crime laws, the CORI check ( most of it ) and the Sex offender list ( it has gotten too big to be useful ), without hurting the public. But that would pit the teachers against the cops, prison guards, lawyers, etc. Their leaders feel their alliance must be preserved at all costs. We need to replace the legislature. It is the poor and unemployed who will pay more of their income to the sales tax.

It is simply incredible. Whenever someone finds a way to get us off Arabian Oil dependency opposition movements spring up out of the wood work. There are many problems with the finances of the Cape Wind Farm Project, like every other project in this state. How much does nuclear power cost? We do not know because we cannot project the cost of handling atomic waste over the next several centuries. We also cannot know the cost of constant breathing of hydrocarbons in the future. We do not know what the cost of protecting the oil supplies would be, if they were to not run out.

Now Brimfield is objecting to windmills. They want to use electricity and have the source of the power in someone else’s back yard. I suppose if we ever end up with rolling brownouts, as happened in California, they will be complaining about not having enough electricity

First the aristocrats complained about their view being spoiled. That did not get much sympathy. Then the Wampanoags decided it interfered with their sacred land. How much sacred land per person are they demanding? Even supposed reform organizations have spoken against the project. Most of them are dependent on donations from the well to do. Even some people who are against the proposed wood burning plant are against the windmill project. The money is talking from many different directions. They will keep the cities breathing in the fumes of fossil generated power while they themselves continue to use electricity generated by petroleum and nuclear power.

European expansion here is riddled with cases of native chiefs selling tribal land as though it was their own. Once again the nations aristocracy has shown that in general, the health and well being of the average American is not one of their priorities.

Other windmill projects have also run into opposition. A windmill project on a mountain top, which is reversible, comes under greater scrutiny that lopping to top of the mountain off for a gravel pit.

I am all for conservation , but the same lobby that wants us to use less electricity is also for unlimited immigration. Are those immigrants going to use electricity? Of course, that is one reason why they came here. We also have other things that have a place in the mix, solar power and hydro-electric power. Although no study had been done as to what would happen if extensive sun light were to be used for electricity. None of them may work all of the time, but every unit of electricity the produce is less oil burned. It is not kind of dumb to pollute the air with oil when you can use something like the wind and water which is already running?

No one is attempting to straighten out the financing of the project. There is something missing, a scientific comparison of the pollution an energy use of a nuclear power plant, a fossil plant, and a windmill. We have a few good cases. Great Britain, Denmark, Greece, and the Netherlands have successfully used windmills. In short, some of the losers of World War II can make a windmill work and we cannot?

Quite clearly very few people would work to get us off Arabian oil. We need to carefully scrutinize which reform movements we support, and change the legislature. In the case of the legislature it would be hard to make it worse.

Without Unions the American worker would have almost nothing to show for a hard weeks work. And the work week would be at least 80 hours a week. In the past poll taxes ensured that only the wealthy would vote. Today the American worker is being accused of being “non-competitive.” Many of the accusers are themselves ignorant members of working class background, some of whose families have contributed for generations to the military effort to prop up foreign governments which prevented their people from forming unions.

The Union Leadership itself never discouraged the average American from risking his life for peanuts to prop up anti-labor third world dictators. The leadership of organized labor then subserviently backed politicians who supported “Free Trade” such as the North America Free Trade Agreement. Kennedy, the darling of the organized labor voted for it, and continued to enjoy the support of organized labor. The result is that now only about 12% of American labor is unionized because of massive layoffs due to the exportation of jobs from the United States.

Organized Labor, like government, suffers from a simple lack of intellect among its leadership, sometimes corruption. It was less than intelligent to not appose NAFTA from the begging. It was less than intelligent to not try to organize the workers in other countries. It was less than intelligent to not oppose anti-labor dictators in other countries. Now the lack of intelligence among the leadership is costing us.

Now locally the Union at Stop and Shop might strike. I would like to see those people get a raise. I find it repugnant to cross a picket line. We also have no small number of ignorant people who are engaged in a life long obsession with a crusade against working America. But what will happen if the only store facing a strike for wages is Stop and Shop while its competitors remain unmolested?

What will people who do not wish to cross the picket line do? Many will shop at Walmart, where the conditions are even worse. To my knowledge there is no effort to unionized Walmart. They pay their workers a pittance. They hire illegal aliens to drive down wages. And they force their suppliers to move their production to cheap labor countries. They can do that thanks to laws passed by politicians who continue to enjoy the support of organized labor.

Tracy Bennet. I will believe that when they die in prison. Wiggins was actually wearing an ankle bracelet for other crimes when Tracy Bennet was shot. The people who we pay for watching over criminals have done a much better job of watching over their own paychecks.

But now we get to another issue. The mother of one of the defendants should have known that he was involved in illegal activities. She is a Haitian and her lawyer is crying that she does not understand English. When you are in a foreign country, and you cannot speak the language, there is all the more reason for squeaky clean behavior. The undesirables who were born here we are stuck with, but the ones who were not should be deported quickly.

Our local legislators are silent on the issue as to who was in charge of Wiggins while he had that bracelet. Had a patronage job in the probation or parol departments been touched they would have been howling like wounded hounds. Neither is there a clamor to get rid of the undesirables involved who are not US Citizens.

Some people are waging a crusade, not against the exportation of jobs from the USA, not against crime, not against unconstitutional wars, but against any plan that would get health insurance for those who do not have it. People who have been goose stepping the Bush family, unconstitutional wars, and every limitation on personal freedom imaginable are telling us that universal health insurance ( and also the pittance of a minimum wage ) is Communism. They would bring us back to the society portrayed by the author Charles Dickens.

They talk about our wonderful free choice over our health care. Did they just come out of a mental asylum? You do not choose your doctor, you insurance company chooses you doctor. You get whatever treatment they will pay for.

Death panels? Have they been in a drunken stupor for 30 years? Those of us who have not have read of stories of people dying because their for profit insurance company refused to pay for the treatment. The death panels have been convened by the insurance companies decades ago.

The harsh reality is that those fanatics who are against any health plan that would cover all Americans have been against just about anything else that would help the average worker. While they profess freedom ( for the rich of course ) they are bought people. While they wail over the cost of a health plan, the sit by silently at other forms of wasteful spending.

It is time we called them what they are, ignorant bought people who will go down in history with those who said the economy would collapse with the abolition of slavery, the end of child labor, and the 40 hour work week.

After 15 years Mayor Sarno has decided to try to close a hot dog street vendor. The list of complainers according to the media was a restaurant owner who is a cousin of Mayor Sarno, and the police.

One point is that a restaurant pays thousands of dollars to operate. How much money should a restaurant have to pay to operate?

Why should the vendor be the only guy in Springfield who cannot park in that spot?

Why are the police complaining? Their job is to protect people’s rights, not to decide what rights we shall have. Personally I think it is a good idea for people who have been drinking to eat some food before they drive. I am not a detective, but I think no crime was ever committed in that area with a hot dog.

Now the City Council is offering to help. The place ran find for 15 years without their help. I am sure the solution will be to make everyone pay more for eating a hot dog.

Police Commissioner Fitchet was correct in having ordinances enforced. But we do not need a marijuana ordinance the state law passed by the voters is enough. Noise which his department has been unable to control bothers people more than marijuana smoking does.

For those who are in law enforcement and do not know how to write a citation after years on the job and have been promoted to higher rank, you should get another job, one hopefully that does not “confuse” you.

Whine as you may, they are in there for 2 more years. Some of the very people who were telling us to vote form them on November 4, have been (1/12/2009) lambasting them several weeks later for looking after the patronage interests.

Of course those who did an about face will continue to feel qualified to advise the rest of us.

The City Council, which keeps getting re-elected voted to raise our taxes. They could demand more from the state. For instance, they could demand more state police. While our legislative delegation runs off statutes like sausage, the city must pay to enforce these laws. They city council and the legislative delegation also supported laws which have caused the exportation of jobs outside of the United States.

So, besides getting laid off and no raise, many got a tax increase. We will get it again also. The valuations went down. When they go back up, we will pay more taxes even though the tax rate remains the same.

A 7 year old boy accidentally shot himself at an Uzi machine gun shoot at the Westfield gun club.

Knee-Jerk Representative Costello is lamenting that gun clubs are not regulated as much as he thinks they should be. As a member of the legislature he is responsible for ensuring the safety of us all. Since Costello has taken the stage over the incident we have had several murders in Springfield alone One would think that if Costello is so concerned about human life he would be examining murders which happen several times a week, rather than the only Uzi accident to happen in 390 years.

John Stossel explains in his book that the leading cause of death is poverty. Costellos response, along with his Republicrat colleagues, is to support laws that export jobs from the United States, thus increasing the poverty.

Not to be outdone District Attorney Bennet has indicted everyone but the father of the boy who wanted a clear video of his son shooting the machine gun, really more like a machine pistol.

It is somewhat of an empbarassment for the anti-gun crowed, which says that only the police should have guns, because the company that runs the shoot is run by a chief of police. That, added to the statistics that most hunting accidents occurred among hunting parties which consisted of law enforcement people adds to the unmentioned embarrassment.