Monthly Archives: July 2023

Bath National Cemetery

Upstate New York is one of the prettiest places on the planet and the Finger Lakes region is right in the heart of it.  While the glacial magnificence of the lakes and ravines, gorges and waterfalls are the main attractions, tucked away in Bath, NY near the South end of Keuka Lake is the Bath National Cemetery.  This is a very special place and everyone visiting the region ought to put this destination on their list of things to do.

My work takes me all over New York State so I am fortunate to stumble upon interesting places in my travels.  The first time I visited this place, I was taken by the sense of going back in time.  The quaint and austere brick buildings that make up the Veterans Administration campus adjacent to the cemetery are actually the original buildings that comprised a veteran’s hospital and small support community dating back to 1877.  Little has changed and the government does a nice job of maintaining the property mostly in its original manner.

On my first visit, as I came into view of the grave sites, it took my breath away in seeing the thousands of white, wind-burnished headstones, arrayed like the good soldiers they were, in orderly rows and columns stretching far across the rolling landscape.  After I had stopped the car to get out and take a look around, I could hear the sound of a lawn tractor and saw a man mowing and making his way in my direction.  As I had finished taking a few photos, the man pulled up along side of me and turned off his tractor and asked me if I had any questions.

For the next 10 minutes or so, this maintenance man took the time to explain to me the significant of this place.  He told me that over 13,000 souls are interred here, including five Medal of Honor recipients, the highest honor the country bestows to a member of the armed services.  This gentleman told me about the history and the tradition of this landscape.  He was as proud of this cemetery as the father of a newborn and was outwardly emotional in explaining the significance of this patch of earth and his patriotic spirit in caring for it so thoughtfully and carefully was pride and enthusiasm he could not hide.

This man was hired to maintain the physical premises of this 28 acre cemetery, to cut the grass, rake the leaves and plow the snow.  He was however, also something so much more.  He was the absolute highlight of my visit because he instilled in me the spirit of that place; the sense of pride, of awe, of honor that he shared was such a jolt of inspiration.  This man knew as much or more than what one would expect from someone trained and hired as a tour guide, but he wasn’t that, he was a maintenance man that took it upon himself to share with me the history, the significance the immortality of this hallowed and sacred ground that is the final resting place of the finest examples of the soldiers and sailors that define and defend the United State of America.

This solitary maintenance man could not have made me feel stronger about being an American and his example bolsters my faith in what I see as our future.  I want to publicly thank him for his service and for his patriotism and for giving me the hope that there are more like him out there that I just haven’t met. yet.

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The China Problem


Michael Pillsbury is an expert on China. In a recent Forbes article citing his work, this is
what the author, John Mauldin had to say. “In his book, The Hundred-Year Marathon,
Michael Pillsbury marshals a lot of evidence showing the Chinese government has a
detailed strategy to overtake the US as the world’s dominant power. They want to do this
by 2049, the centennial of China’s Communist revolution. The strategy has been well
documented in Chinese literature, published and sanctioned by organizations of the
People’s Liberation Army, for well over 50 years.”

If you think this hyperbolic, consider the following:

Approximately 290,000 Chinese nationals attended American colleges and universities
last year. Because Chinese nationals live in a totalitarian state, every student here in the
US is a potential spy for the Communist Chinese Party, (CCP.) Cyber-security company
Cybereason reports that “trillions” of dollars in data have been stolen (hacked) from some
30 multinational corporations over the past several years. The FBI estimates US
corporate loses from theft and espionage from China at between 225 and 600 billions
dollars annually.

China is clearly not only an adversary, but our largest and most dangerous threat. In a speech in April, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “There is no doubt that the greatest long-term threat to our nation’s ideas, our economic security and our national security is that posed by the Chinese communist government.”

China is the largest surveillance state in the world. IHSMarket estimates that China has
approximately 226 million Closed-Circuit Television, (CCTV) cameras in public places.
Chinese people are “graded” by the Chinese Communist Party, (CCP) in terms of their
“social credits” by monitoring and then critiquing their behaviors. This in turn earns
them negative consequences if their behaviors are reportedly “bad”, like driving too fast
or smoking in public areas then limits ones ability to travel, lowers their credit score or
slows their internet speeds.

Between 2009 and 2018, China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, (PLA)
spending rose 83%, the largest increase of any developed country in the world. The
Chinese military has over 2-million soldiers and sailors with half-a-million in reserve.
Comparatively, the US military manpower count is approximately 1.3 million. China
has approximately 340 warships to 300 for the USA.

Quoting from the Council on Foreign Relations, (CFR ) article, “according to reports
filed to the Justice Department under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),
China has spent more over the past six years—$280 million—to influence U.S.
politics… Again, in the words of the CFR article, “A report by the Hoover Institution,
a U.S.-based policy institute, found that Beijing or its proxies, such as pro-China business
people, now control nearly all of the Chinese-language media in the United States. This
allows the Chinese government to feed its propaganda to millions of people, potentially
influencing how they vote; many of these readers and viewers live in highly competitive
congressional districts in California, New York, and other states. The report also said that
Beijing is gaining control of U.S. university associations for students of Chinese heritage
and using those to try to shape campus and political discourse.”

China’s Belt and Road Initiative, (BRI) is designed to dominated the worlds demands for consumer goods,
commerce and the establishment of Chinese currency as the global default.

Does this look like sound planning? According to the U.S. Department of Commerce,
China now accounts for 95 percent of imports of ibuprofen, 91 percent of imports of
hydrocortisone, 70 percent of imports of acetaminophen, 40 to 45 percent of imports of
penicillin, and 40 percent of imports of heparin.

The CCP has also established “police stations” throughout the world, including here in
the US. According to an article in The Hill, “According to one assessment, at least 102
known or suspected Chinese overseas police stations are currently active in 53 countries.
The real number is undoubtedly higher. In the U.S., stations have been identified in New
York City, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco, as well as smaller cities in
Nebraska and Minnesota.

And most recently, we all remember the infamous Chinese spy balloon finally shot down
over the Carolina coast. This is what the Wall Street Journal had to say about this. “…
Analysis found the balloon was crammed with commercially available U.S. gear, some of
it for sale online, and interspersed with more specialized Chinese sensors and other
equipment to collect photos, video and other information to transmit to China, officials
said. Those findings, they said, support a conclusion that the craft was intended for
spying…”

China also owns some 384,000 acres of US land, some of which is alarmingly close to
sensitive US military installations throughout the country.xiv China owns some $859
billion of US debt. According to an April article in Reuters, Jared Bernstein, a member
of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told a Senate Banking Committee
hearing there was “some evidence” that China wants the dollar to weaken as the
international reserve currency.

And finally, consider that China is the foremost producer and exporter of fentanyl to the
US. This is what the US Justice Department said in June of this year. “The Justice
Department today announced the arrest of two individuals and the unsealing of three
indictments in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York charging China-based
companies and their employees with crimes related to fentanyl production, distribution,
and sales resulting from precursor chemicals.”

With all of this knowledge and solid evidence demonstrating the malicious intent of the
CCP, why do we continue to allow Chinese nationals access to our universities, or allow
them access to our country at all? In the interest of national security, American
sovereignty and the preservation and furtherance of American ideals, Chinese nationals
should have no access to the US or our universities.

The CCP is at war with us and Chinese citizens are subservient to their dictatorial
government. It’s about time we defended ourselves.

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