Perhaps the eternally famous phrase, “All Men are created equal…” might have been followed by the quip, “but they don’t stay that way for long.”  Many today confuse the equality of opportunity with the guarantee of an outcome.  In the long run, the equality of outcomes would homogenize everyone into generic and genetic sameness and mankind would mimic a gigantic school of sardines. 

Human differences in intellect, ingenuity, physical attributes such as strength, height, weight, all play a role in determining outcomes.  The intricacies and complexities of physics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry and mathematics to name a few, are beyond the intellectual capabilities of many, but thank God grasped by some amongst us in the interest of advancing all of mankind.  No intelligent person vilifies the physician, astronomer or mathematician because they are smarter.   Regardless of our individual abilities to understand some things, we still benefit by the knowledge.  The science that created the computer I am using to create this article is well beyond my personal ability to completely understand its operation yet I am able to harness that complex compilation of components, hardware and software in a way that makes me productive in my own way.  Because of our individual and internal limitations, the theory of the sameness of outcomes would demand devolution towards the lowest of abilities and outcomes in order to accommodate everyone.

Sameness is nothing to celebrate, it is our differences that add nuance, tone and contrast to our lives experience.  Those who seek equality of outcomes are also likely in my observations to be those who seek to control climate, control speech, control firearms and affirm an invented “right” to abortions.  “Control” in general is antithetical to the American version of freedom and the sameness of outcomes is a direct goal of communism.  The further we stray from the Word of God the more we believe in our realm of control.

All Men are created equal and thank the Lord they don’t stay that way for long.

Earlier this week on a local radio interview, Broome County Sheriff Fred Akshar lashed out at Endicott Mayor Linda Jackson, repeatedly accusing her of “living under a rock” regarding conflicting reports of whether or not officials were properly informed of the sheriff departments activities within the village.

Akshar’s conduct was not becoming of a high-ranking public official but unfortunately, predictable from a power-hungry-bully.

M.K. Davis reminds us, “You can tell a bully from a leader by how they treat people who disagree with them.” 

Akshar demonstrated all of the tendencies of a typical bully.  There was no need to attack the mayor that harshly and with that degree of venom.  Only a coward would accost a weaker person in that way.  He could have handled the situation professionally but instead he demonstrated to the community exactly why we shouldn’t want a man like this anywhere near the levers of power yet here we are with a sheriff that essentially won a beauty contest in becoming Broome County’s living-breathing version of GI Joe.

Akshar’s personal life illustrates the same troubling tendencies; control, bully and dominate.  First a inappropriate tryst with a subordinate at the sheriff’s department, then jeopardizing a murder case by having sex with the mother of one of the victims during the trial, and finally, converting a secretary in his then senate office from low-paid part-timer to a really well-paid girlfriend and eventually wife, all examples of manipulating power for his own pleasures and benefits.

Here’s the game plan if you haven’t already figured it out.  Akshar cultivates and burnishes his image and authority by “assisting” local police agencies with all kinds of policing initiatives, painting the picture of why it makes so much sense to unify the policing county-wide into a single agency that, of course, he will head.  With his hand-picked District Attorney in waiting, team Akshar/Battisti will control the entirety of Broome County law enforcement and adjudication.  Voters have to also shoulder the blame for electing pretty-boy Battisti in another beauty contest that wrongly elevated our local Ken-doll over experienced and proven professionalism.

Team GI Joe/Ken have a track record of ignoring the boundaries of law enforcement.  In 2014, Battisti called his buddy Akshar, then a Captain in the sheriff’s department, in order to have his estranged wife arrested in the parking lot of Dicks’ Sporting Goods in Binghamton.  Ignoring jurisdictional boundaries that made it clear that the Binghamton police should have handled this call, Akshar not only approved dispatching a deputy instead of calling Binghamton PD, he sent his younger brother, a sheriff’s deputy at the time, to Dick’s and guess what?  He arrested the ex-wife and of course, all charges were eventually dropped because the whole thing stunk to high heaven of the abuse of power.

God-forbid team GI Joe/Ken take over the entire county.  The bar for integrity cannot be set too high and these guys will lower it until even snakes can slither over it.

I ride my bicycle 50 or 60 miles every week in a mix of roadways, walking and bike paths and parks. The added benefit beyond exercise is the opportunity to observe people close-up. What I notice the most is that the majority of people create around themselves a shield or wall of insularity courtesy of electronic devices. Headphones, ear-buds and cell phones indicate to the outside world that not only is no inter-personal interaction sought, it is outwardly discouraged. They might as well hang a sign around their necks that says, “Do Not Disturb.”

A walk in the park serenades you with song-birds, rustling trees, babbling streams, laughing children, buzzing bees and the casual greetings and conversations you will not have when you block it all out in order to be left alone. Everything electronic can be viewed or heard at any time. Every moment of you life, if you stay in the moment, is un-recordable, un-reviewable as it passes into yesterday.

As I bike past a young mother and her baby in a stroller, I alone hear the soft coos from the infant as mom has her head buried in her phone, tuned out.

The push for exchanging gas for electric in transportation is an idea that has ironically
placed the proverbial cart in front of the horse. While the problems of an inadequate
power grid, too few charging stations, short range, high costs, long recharging times and
battery fires are real, there are two gigantic issues looming that rival them all.

Current state and federal gas-tax regulation siphons off about 67 cents from every gallon
of gasoline purchased in New York State. In California, that amount is $1.18-per-gallon.
Nationally this equates to more than $53 billion a year in tax revenue. Those taxes
account for more than a quarter of the expense of road and highway costs around the
nation. No such system of taxation exists for electric vehicles. For every ten-percent
reduction in gas vehicles being replaced by electric, a resulting decrease of more than $5
billion in tax revenue will occur.

Add this to the long list of issues that the rush to electric crowd has failed to address but
the second concern is a direct threat to our freedom, our autonomy and our God given
right to be left alone, (the abuse of which fits nicely into the liberal wish-list of control.)
The electrical connection from charger-to-car doubles as a stealthy surveillance tool.
Every interaction records the time, date, location, mileage, etc. basically interfacing with
the extensive computing system of the vehicle to potentially deliver any and all of the
data contained in the vehicle, which is extensive. Even charging at home, with the advent
of “smart meters”, consumers can “program” their vehicles to charge at off-peak power
times in order to save money. This same smart meter of course is also recording the time,
date, duration of charge and potentially more data from your vehicle of which you won’t
even be aware.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has got the ball rolling in taking advantage of not
only the surveillance aspects of the modern-electric vehicle, but to simultaneously solve
the lost-revenue problem as well. Whitmer proposes using GPS technology to track
vehicle-miles-driven data in order to tax driving based upon usage.

While most people don’t think of lost freedom when it comes to these technological
issues, it is time we did. Incrementalism is the hardest to identify poison because it kills
you so gradually and slowly while providing what seems to be a nice service or that
makes your life easier and better.

Is it really a stretch to believe that if you can summons “Siri” or Google on your smart-speaker
that perhaps they might be capable of eavesdropping on you? If electronics in
your car can call 911 after sensing a crash, is it really a stretch to believe that same
technology might be able to know how long you were parked in a bar parking lot to the
interest of the local police? If you show up between charging stations and your speed
was above that posted, is it a stretch for you to see yourself getting a ticket by mail a day
later? Is it hard to fathom a jilted police Captain searching license plate camera databases
to identify his wife’s lover?

Every time you link your phone to a vehicles blue-tooth connection in order to use hands-free
cell service, that vehicle “infotainment system” dumps the entire content of that
device; call logs, list of phone numbers, texts, pictures, all of it. Think of that the next
time you rent a car or sell yours to a stranger. You’re unwittingly leaving your digital
DNA all over the place.

The final piece of this tech-driven plan to eliminate personal freedom completely will be
the replacement of our currency with a digital version. Once this happens, (God-literally
forbid), the oversight will be complete. Not only do we know where you are, how long
you were there and how fast you were going; now we know if you eat too much junkfood.
(Expect a call from your health-care-provider.) You drink too much alcohol.
(Time for some counseling or your insurance goes up.) Didn’t show at the gym again?
(Report to the doctor.) Expect “social scoring” type schemes to develop, of course for
your own good, just like the Chinese system.

Those who seek to control people will suggest that you write this off as a dystopian,
hyper-paranoid tale of things to come. The Covid era was a Beta-test on our reactions to
authoritarianism and fear-mongering and we failed miserably. This has emboldened
those who seek to control us. That good-old incrementalism isn’t noticeable until it’s too
late. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

What a cruelly-ironic harbinger of thing-to-come to know that that iconic symbol of
freedom and mobility, the automobile, might well serve as the intrusive and unrelenting
sentinel of the beginning of that next era in American life that sees the sun-setting on
what it means to be free.