In response to the horrific attack and massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by the terror group Hamas, leadership at SUNY-Broome chose to remain silent. When given the opportunity to sign an open letter in support of a coalition co-founded by SUNY Chancellor King of over 100 colleges and universities, amongst them some 18 SUNY campuses condemning, “the brutality and inhumanity of Hamas.”, SUNY Broome President Hawkins took a pass.
After multiple efforts to contact Hawkins, he finally responded and excused his inaction by writing his own “official message”, which was frankly political pabulum that said nothing, meant nothing, and condemned nothing.
SUNY Broome Board Chair Connerton was also silent and failed to respond to my request for an explanation of why SUNY Broome made the conscious decision to not sign this statement in support of Israel.
Hawkins and Connerton should follow in the foot-steps of fellow-travelers, former University of Pennsylvania President Magill and former UPenn Board Chair Scott Bok and both resign immediately.
Raising their fingers to the political winds and offering empty and meaningless platitudes indicates a sickening silence of complicity without saying it out loud. That level of failed moral leadership has no business in shaping students ideologies.
Honor. The word is mentioned 147 times in the Bible. The Medal of Honor is the highest US military award for valor. The last sentence of the Declaration of Independence says, “… we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” The last word in the last sentence of US Declaration of Independence is honor. This word was not some esoteric and theoretical exercise in hyperbole but a life-changing, some times life-compromising obligation as well as a sacred expectation.
History tells us that of the 56 signers of that oath, more than half died fighting, or lost their fortunes, or were captured and tortured and lost their families. Others died bankrupt, fled their homes and families in exile and had their homesteads, farms, fields and lands laid to waste. To the founders, their honor was real, tangible, brought to bear by their actions, to the point of being more valuable and more important than their very lives.
In the history of the United States, Medal of Honor recipients make up less than one-one-hundredth of one-percent of the entirety of the ranks of the armed-forces. More than 40-million have served our military and only 3,517 have earned that medal. Honor, especially when combined with valor is indeed rare.
The Bible instructs us to, “Honor thy mother and thy father”, “Let marriage be held in honor among all”, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your produce” and finally, “Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life, righteousness, and honor.” Let us not forget, in the Declaration it was their, “…sacred honor…” that they willingly embraced and which related them directly to God.
What about our honor? What about honor in today’s world?
As recently as 200-years ago, honor was so important to men that duels were fought defending it. Then sitting US Vice-President Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel after he had assailed his character. Modern day dueling would likely make for a more restrained and polite society when “talking smack” might well get you killed.
Socrates tells us, “The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be,” an ancient version of fake-it-till-you-make-it, as well as an uncomfortable revealed truth for many.
The fact is honor exists only in the make-believe world of most people. The rarity of the trait makes those who possess it exceptional. Somewhere along the line, we have taken what was in the first instance rare, and rendered it into near extinction today.
And so it is that amongst the ranks of the “honorable” we should be selecting and electing our political leaders. We should expect no less from today’s politicians than we did from our founders, but how does one test for and measure honor?
Ironically, our deceased-duelist, Alexander Hamilton penned the following in Federalist 51. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Hamilton was obviously lamenting about the shortage of honor amongst men and because of that reality, he helped design a political philosophy and governance blueprint that recognized the issue of men’s propensity towards self-dealing with a series of checks-and-balances to temper against such acts.
Thomas Jefferson wrote those eternal words in the Declaration, not accidentally ending with honor and additionally said the following:” Honor and duty are superior to rights and self-interest.” And finally, ““A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”
Where we find ourselves today seems like a bridge-so-far when compared with those great men of our founding.
Isaac Asimov warned of the following:
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life; nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
By fostering and nurturing our relationship with God and re-asserting our sacred beliefs and eternal expectations, we can re-gain our collective honor. If we fail, we cannot prevail in that exquisite model of perfection those wise and exceptional men designed and created for us some 250-years ago. The concept, so often misunderstood: “American Exceptionalism”, is inextricably linked with our “sacred honor” and with that, undeniably the worship of and glory to God Almighty. It will be up to the honorable amongst us to insure that continued success of this great nation or if not, we then shall indeed deserve to perish. In the truest sense of a humble prayer, I ask for God to guide us in our quest for honor.
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.
Today, I walked into 80 Allen Street in Johnson City, NY for the first time since I left there in my mother’s arms some 66-years ago. A seven-family, three story walk-up with a basement apartment on the side, the standard flat-roof box of an apartment house sports a crumbling concrete front-staircase overwhelmed around the edges by grown-over weeds guarding a wide-open front door.
The place was no palace back-in-the-day, but at least it was clean, neat and occupied by modest-hard-working families like ours. Two apartments on each floor, left and right, opposing doors on a small platform between stair flights, the same today, but in 1957 the soft tones of a radio or TV show, the smells of meals being cooked or the soft cry of a baby would be the norm. Today the overwhelming odor of a wet dog and cat crap, a blaring TV, a barking dog, loud shouting and as I climbed the stairs, filthy walls probably painted while I was last there and that unmistakable smell of poverty, so familiar and so much the same no matter where you find it.
In 1957, my parents had been married only 6-years. My dad worked in the local hospital laundry and mom stayed at home with me. My sister was about to be born and we needed bigger and better digs. My grand-mother made a deal with my dad and bought a single family home just up the street that had a mother-in-law apartment, the condition being that she had her home within ours into her old-age. She died there. The rest of the in-progress Kingsley family, eventually 6 of us, lived through our formative years at 40 Allen Street, 100-yards up the street but across that imaginary line that separated poverty from plenty.
We had occupied the third-floor apartment on the left side of 80 Allen and today, instead of driving by and wondering, as I had done 100 times before, I stopped and made my way up those squeaky dirty stairs. As I made that last 180-degree turn between the second and third floors I could see that both apartment doors on the third floor were open. I heard some noise from the apartment on the right and as I approached that open door, I said, “Hello?” just as he came into view. “He” turned out to be Alan, the tenant and who would have been my neighbor across the hall had he been there 66-years ago. But Alan was there today, a slightly build black man, introducing himself as “A-L-A-N” as he paused the video game I had interrupted. I wondered why he thought it important to spell it for me, maybe because we were on A-L-L-E-N Street I guess. He had been sitting on a square plastic milk crate while playing his game and at his feet was a tin-foil ashtray with maybe 50 filtered cigarette butts competing with the other odors of the place.
Alan got up and we began to talk. I told him that I used to live across the hall and seeing the door wide open and the place vacant, I asked if he thought it would be ok if I took a quick look inside. He told me that the place was not only vacant but condemned and with that, he proceeded to give me, completely unsolicited, a tour of his own apartment before I could say thank-you and good-bye.
As Alan began the tour he warned me about the infestation of the bed-bugs. Our first stop was one inwardly facing-windowless room just off the hallway that made the lack of light seem like twilight no matter the time of day. Inside and on the floor of this door-less room Alan declared this his “shoe-closet.” Perhaps as many as 50 or so pairs of sneakers were strewn and unmatched all over the floor. As he began to tell me about his, “collection worth $5,000.00,” he snagged two multi-colored Nike shoes from the pile, holding them up while telling me they were worth $150.00 but stating that he got them for $50 bucks.
The next stop was the other bedroom, this time instead it was clothes strewn in a semi-circle on the floor in just the same fashion as the shoes, again, self-described as the mans closet.
As we moved into the kitchen, Alan demonstrated how none of the 4-burners on the gas stove would light, never mind there were no grates over the functionless burners showing nothing but the igniter sparks as Alan proved his point by turning on the burner knob only to hear the staccato tick-tick-tick-tick of the false promise of a flame.
Alan must have been saving the worst for last because the small bathroom off the kitchen was truly wretched with ripped off jagged layers of yellowed linoleum exposing a soaked wooden sub-floor dark with 100 years of stains and what must have been the original tub, crammed into a 5-by-5 closet.
As we made our way to the back porch, this was a place I remembered as a child. The wooden and open porch stretched across the width of the building linking the back doors of the apartments. A stair case zigged and zagged its way down to the parking lot, now mostly grown-over with trees and weeds gradually besting the beaten and cracked tarmac and pushing the surface back into dirt and reminding me of how 66-years can change things. As I looked over the single, three-foot-high wooden railing, I wondered what miracle of miracles kept any number of toddlers from falling to their deaths during the past 100-years.
The back door to my old apartment was open and I entered the kitchen and looked around. There was a vague familiarity but mostly I was surprised by how small the rooms were. My recollection had them twice their real size in my minds eye. As I made my way into the front of the apartment, Alan pointed out the pile of dead bumble bees in the corner of the living room. The darkness and dinginess made for a somber and sad tone that seemed to define this space now, but it wasn’t always that way.
I don’t think we knew we were poor back then, just like Alan sees himself today, the heir to his valuable sneaker collection today. No, 66-years ago, the Johnson City Fire Chief and his wife lived right next door. Next door to them was Miss Cuttings little apartment, my later-to-be high school English teacher and the woman I credit with teaching me how to write.
We were blue-collar but moving up, learning to appreciate what we would have later in life, as my father became a police officer and we finally moved up the street into 40-Allen with my grand-mother.
At 13, I became the streets paper-boy, giving me a passport into the living room of everyone on the street. Even as a young teen, the compare and contrast of what we once had versus what we now were was conspicuously obvious and now here I am back at 80 Allen standing with my new friend Alan, after a lifetime lived.
This is what it seems to me. 66-years ago, life was defined by work, family, faith, friends and community. People were on their way up; the country was on its way up. We had shared goals, shared dreams and shared interactions regardless of financial stations. It wasn’t unacceptable to start from the bottom and work your way up, it was honorable and expected.
Today, it seems that the many who are defined by the 80-Allen Streets of the world are stalled out at best, and more likely on their way down. The country is on its way down. A culture of excuses, excesses and expectations without effort has gutted what used to be a common work-ethic. We are divided like never before, have as many nightmares as dreams and wall-off each other according to financial status. The 80 Allen Streets throughout our country are crumbling and along with them those they house.
Simple observation tells the not-so-obvious story and holds the key to why. With churches on every other corner, 66-years ago most of them were well attended on Sunday’s and families, mostly spanning at least three generations went out of their way to have meals together. Today, those same churches are teetering on bankruptcy, are sparsely attended, and during the week, after the remaining few Sunday faithful have gone home, church halls quietly replace the traditional family meal for the poor and down-trodden that have nowhere else to go and no one to turn to.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s our floundering relationship with God that holds the answers.
I tell people all the time that I am so happy to be 70 instead of 30 and that is because I don’t see a happy landing for our future. I for one ply the memory of the 80 Allen Street that forged the future of our family as we passed through that station on our lives with dignity, humility and grace, earning what we eventually accomplished and buoyed by the experience that then allowed us to fully appreciate our new lives by comparison. So much of that is gone today and other than my telling others about it, I fear mightily that building a sentiment for recreating that system of maturity and growth my soon exist only as a short story as told by some old guy that has faint and fading memories of a better time.
When is enough enough? Apparently never with you. In spite of driving mostly empty buses up and down and back and forth on routes that could be easily serviced with a motorcycle and a side-car, you are happy to take your check and the taxpayers be damned. As long as you’re getting yours, those of us who pay the freight can go to hell, is that it?
What happened to the good old-fashioned concept of letting your conscience be your guide, remember, before you traded in your sense of right-and-wrong for a paycheck?
How in good faith can you burn through thousands of gallons of diesel fuel in land-yachts capable of carrying scores of people and do so, happily, without a care in the world, knowing that your efforts are a make-work-joke? If this were a private business, it would have been shuttered years ago. Properly managed, smaller vans would be put into use but no; the grand masters at the almighty union would rather waste taxpayer dollars then use common sense.
Over the past 50-years or so, many in our country have tried to retire the concepts of shame, embarrassment and honorable behavior in the name of preserving self-esteem and not being “judgmental” or critical. In doing so, we have created a climate of comfort for slackers, the lazy and those that believe someone, anyone, owes them something.
Driving mostly empty buses, day after day in silence clearly demonstrates your acquiescence in accepting those terrible alternatives instead of proud, honorable and productive life’s work.
Ending by saying “shame on you” is sadly wasted breath because you apparently buried the concept of shame some time ago when you decided to shut-up and drive your bus, even when it makes no sense, except to your bank account. You my friends offer no solutions but are a core part of the problem. Complain no more about government or social justice issues when you clearly have no concern about them when the rubber meets the road.
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.
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.
