Argentina, 1954; USA, 2013

We Have Peronists in the US too

Written, 8/27/10, still true today.

 by Joe B. Hewitt

Argentines are still sucking on the pacifier Juan Peron gave them in 1946. All they get out of it is frustration. But they still believe the Peronist promises and remain suckers, left with debts and piles of printing press money.

The disastrous snowball Peron started rolling with promises of something for nothing has left Argentina billions in debt and still sinking. In spite of the Peronist’s track record, voters continue returning them to office.

Peronist-to-the-bone President Carlos Menem had brief encounters with reality when he tried to privatize businesses such as the money-losing national telephone company. His constituents failed their painful course in cause-and-effect. Feather-bedded employees, rewarded with jobs from the political pork barrel, with no expertise and nothing to do, didn’t want to give up their cushy jobs. Like others before his, the inflation morass swallowed Menem’s administration.

Peronist, Nestor Kirchner apparently supposed printing press money would work this time when it never worked before? Then his wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner succeded him and continued with the printing press money mentality.

The United States has its share of Peronists. They don’t call themselves Peronists, but their philosophy is the same. Get the vote by promising the descamisados, shirtless ones, or in North American parlance, “The little man,” a better cut out of the national pie. “Tax and spend, penalize the producers. Look not to productivity but to government handouts for a better life.” And who pays for it? “Why, the government. They have lots of money, and can print more.”

Fortunately the North American Peronists are much in the minority. Everyone doesn’t believe their divide-and-conquer slogans, such as “We’re for the little man. We’re for the old folks. We’ll keep the opposition from destroying Social Security. We’re fighting poverty. How can the richest nation in the world still have poor people?” Like Juan Peron and his ilk, they are either political opportunists who want power at any price or sincere liberals out of touch with reality.

I suggest a good lesson in cause-and-effect. Look at Argentina. Argentina has been a great nation. The country has a climate and natural resources, much like the United States. The Peronist political philosophy continues to drag it down like a panicky horse in quicksand.

Look at Great Britain and its declining pound sterling. I remember when it was worth around $5.00. Then for a long time it was worth around $3.50. Now it’s more like $1.50.

Look at Canada and its declining dollar. I remember when it took $1.10 US to buy one Canadian dollar. Now it’s more like 90 cents.

The US dollar has continued to depreciate at the same time, so these currencies fall is accelerated. Why? What have these great nations done differently? They have given in to the urge to have the government take care of everyone for life,  provide medical care for all, and a regular government check for those who don’t work.

I met a 27-year-old man in England who had never held a job. He was big, strong, healthy, and intelligent. The government had helped him get a job several times. Each time he got sick at his stomach and couldn’t work. As soon as the job was terminated, he got well. The government declared him disabled, so he lives on the dole.

Our “Peronist” politicians encourage that way of life here.

Key to Economic Progress

Key to Economic Progress

We have witnessed the folly of printing money and giving it away to fat cat corporations. It’s obviously not working. Unemployment, the best economic health indicator, keeps going up. The answer to our economic crisis has been demonstrated many times in past history and forgotten.

The answer is increased productivity.

·         Bill Gates was more responsible for the great leap forward in prosperity and a balanced budget than the government. His genius made us all more productive.

·         Before that the space program’s research helped;

·         Before that the telegraph, and telephone;

·         The Industrial Revolution and the steam engine; and before that

·         In around AD 1000 a newly invented horse collar enabled horses to plow much better than oxen and doubled farm productivity.

All these increased productivity and benefitted everyone. The Government cannot increase productivity, but can encourage it.

Death and resurrection are better than rusting away. World War II destroyed the industrial might of Germany and Japan. They were forced to retool from the ground up. It hurt  and took time, but with their new industries up and running those countries progressed more rapidly than our older technology. Giant China emerged from its long sleep and started new industry with new technology. What was China’s secret? The oppressive government finally recognized that people had to be free to use their natural initiative based on hope of reward rather than fear of punishment motivation that destroyed the Soviet Union.

General Motors was a dying dinosaur, diseased with greed, but instead of letting it die,  the Government put it on life support. Greedy executives thought only of their bonuses. Their partner in crime, the Auto Workers’ Union, demanded and got two or three times more pay than equivalent workers in other industry. The results were decreased productivity and shoddy products. Had General Motors had been allowed to die a natural death, something better would have replaced it. Volkswagen after World War II was practically worthless, it rose up like a phoenix from its ashes and became a major auto producer. As in other WWII cases of renewed technology strength and enthusiasm, VW first had to be reduced to ashes. That’s the way nature works.

 The Government fooled with nature by encouraging sorry mortgages, resulting in fat cat corporations “too big to fail” teetering on the edge of oblivion. It was a concocted artificial problem. So the Government threw around a trillion dollars, so we have an artificial solution to an artificial problem. It’s not working.

AIG was “too big to fail,” we heard. Its layers of top management and partnership with quasi government mortgage companies had swollen it into a monster too fat to rise and walk. Its failure would have had an impact world-wide and it would have hurt. But after disintegration the pieces have a way of coming back together into new and efficient companies. But we have to allow a top heavy beast to collapse.

Apparently most of the stimulus money went to banks. How productive is two entities swapping money? Not very. They are like an old story of two little boys, one with a lemonade stand and the other across the street with a popcorn stand. They had only a nickel between them. So the lemonade boy bought popcorn all day and the popcorn boy bought lemonade, trading their single nickel. After running out of the products their moms had so generously provided, each boy reports that he made a dollar. Each bought the other’s product with the same nickel. They produced nothing, used up their stock, and while crossing the street, they lost their only nickel to a bully who claimed to be a tax collector charging 10 per cent of net profit. They were short five cents and would be subject to late fees and interest.

While the banks got the money, the workers got laid off; small businesses had to cut benefits and reduce workforce. Business that produces wealth is hurting, while those who trade money prosper.

The economic stimulus behaves like a morphine addict: feel good now, hurt later. (When Heroin was first introduced it was hailed as a cure for morphine addiction.) The economic stimulus has not increased productivity. Rather it is the narcotic that keeps recipients going back for more and has decreased output of real goods.

 The Government can keep on printing more money, but it only makes the addiction worse.

Bureaucracies and politicians don’t produce, they consume. They may take our money and give some of it back, and we feel good temporarily. But the money we have left is worth less. Inflation is lower than I can remember, but it is being held up artificially. When the natural order of things begins to come together, we will see how inflation is the equal opportunity

Use Your Grudge Bucket

Use Your Grudge Bucket

Intentionally or not, with malice or without,

Close kin, strangers, friends and all will do you wrong,

Will make you so angry you’ll scream and shout.

Stay calm and build a grudge to last so long,

Then put the big bad grudge in your grudge bucket.

Take the grudge from your mind; replace it with a song.

Be sure your grudge bucket has a hole in it.

---Joe B. Hewitt

Watchtower Disciplines Jehovah's Witnesses

Cult Members are Under Total Mind Control

Almost every family in North America has a member who is under total mind control of the Watchtower Society. Some examples of the extreme discipline these people are under:

The Watchtower intrudes into the married bed. They have rules about sexual foreplay and state that a husband and wife’s passion “should not go unbridled.”

Watchtower rules shelter sex abusers of children in the Kingdom Halls.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are prohibited from

Playing chess

Possessing wind chimes

Attending any event sponsored by a church, including a picnic.

Giving to the Red Cross or Salvation Army.

These are just some of the topics covered in my book, Rescuing Slaves of the Watchtower, Hannibal Books, 2011, . ISBN 978-1-61315-006-1. Available in Christian bookstores, Amazon.com, www.joebhewitt.net; www.rescuewatchtowerslaves.com, in print or e-book from Barnes and Noble, Sony or Amazon.

My first book, I Was Raised a Jehovah’s Witness, (Accent Books, Denver, Colo. 1979; Kregel Publishing, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1997). Sold 45,000 copies in English and more in Chinese translation published in Taiwan.

I served as pastor of churches in the Dallas area for 39 years. I retired in 2001 and devote most of my time to writing and serving as a court-appointed mediator handling cases for Dallas and contiguous counties.



The whole load of hay information on www.joebhewitt.net.

Routine Circumcision of Baby Boys

Some people want to routinely cut off part of helpless baby boys’ penises just in case they should grow up to be sexually promiscuous and/or fail to keep themselves clean. Not as bad as some Africans’ custom of “circumcising” (more like mutilating) young girls by cutting off their clitoris lest they grow up and want to enjoy sex. Not as bad, but close.

Those who advocate routine circumcision of all baby boys are obviously circumcised males and females who don’t know any better. They are the least qualified to claim a right to assume power over baby boys’ future sex life.

Circumcision is a religious sacrifice. It indicates total submission to God. The circumcised man has forfeited some sexual enjoyment for life. A family’s religion is the only justification of routine circumcision of every baby boy.

Routine circumcision has nothing to do with religion but rather with vogue, utility and big-brother-knows-best. I knew young soldiers who underwent circumcision only because they wanted to be like the other guys: the majority who were circumcised.

The idea behind routine circumcision is that circumcised men are less likely to contract the HIV virus.
It’s not like we were facing an AIDS epidemic by leaving all those foreskins intact. The increased vulnerability for the uncircumcised is minuscule at best and non-existent if he practices monogamy and/or cleanliness.

Explaining the difference in sexual satisfaction to a circumcised man is like trying to explain a rainbow to a person born color blind. He doesn’t know what he missed because he never had it.

The foreskin not only is a protective sheath, but sensitive nerves in the foreskin provide much of the pleasure of sexual intercourse. Because the tip of the foreskin is so sensitive, the aroused man can find the correct place of entry “with no hands.” The foreskin keeps the male’s natural lubricant where it needs to be. The lubricant works its way within the foreskin and prepares the head for entry. As entry is achieved the sheath slides down the shaft. Those sensitive nerves in the foreskin now form a ring around the shaft enhancing sexual pleasure.

To remove the protective sheath from the sensitive penis head is like turning a woman’s vagina inside out and exposing it to the drying air and irritants. It would lessen sensitivity and necessitate artificial lubricants; the same results of male circumcision.

Rather than routinely circumcising baby boys, I suggest a less drastic approach to the HIV problem. Teach them the old adage, “Be good. If you can’t be good, be careful.” Or you might paraphrase it, “If you can’t keep that thing in your pants, at least keep it clean.”
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Joe B. Hewitt is a retired pastor who did marriage
and family counseling during his 39 years of ministry.

Dealing Death Legally

Each time I go to a super market or major discount store and see racks of cigarettes, snuff and chewing tobacco, I think of the more than 300,000 people in the United States and 500,000 people in Europe killed each year by tobacco products. And I wonder, "Do these retailers have a conscience? Do they care at all about human life?"
The middle aged lady behind the counter just works there. It's not her decision to sell the stuff. Same with the manager. You can ask questions all the way up to the corporate board rooms. "Business is business. We have to compete."
Obviously profits from sale of tobacco products are more important to them than human lives.
Tobacco bad news is not hidden in a corner. "Big Tobacco needs to recruit 500,000 new smokers each year to replace the ones who die prematurely due to smoking-related illnesses . . ." news reports quoted David Byrne, the European Union health commissioner after the EU outlawed tobacco ads on December 2, 2002.

In the United States the tobacco industry has been socked with billion-dollar court judgments for killing people. Yet the industry considers those losses part of the cost of doing business and keeps on going. Grocery chains, discount stores, and drug stores keep on retailing the deadly products, some of which finds their way to teenagers who become addicted and fill the ranks of the old smokers who are dying off.
Tobacco farmers keep on growing it. Big Tobacco keeps on making cigarettes, snuff, and chewing tobacco. Wholesalers keep on distributing. Retailers keep on selling. People keep on dying. Who cares?
I started smoking when I was 15, before I had enough sense to make such a life or death decision. I fortunately was able to quit when I was 30. I have outlived my old friends who could not quit. I have been present many times when people died, killed by tobacco. When I see a man die, gasping for breath in cancer-filled lungs, I think of those racks of cigarettes, the nice lady selling them, the store manager, the president of the company, and the board of directors. Corporations are not mechanical entities out of control. Humans make up the mechanism that grows, makes, distributes, and sells tobacco. Have they no conscience?
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Babies Need Not Die in Hot Cars

Another two-year-old child died in a hot van. Another family drowned after their car went into a lake. These needless deaths can be prevented.
Frequently we read of a forgotten toddler imprisoned in a hot car with the windows closed, killed slowly but surely. These babies need not die. An easy way of prevention exists if we will just put it to use.
Creativity has been described as a new combination of things already known. Just a little creativity, combining existing electronic elements to make a “Baby Rescue” device can save hundreds of lives in the United States every year.
The usual scenario: A day care worker can’t count, or forgets to count, leaves a toddler asleep on a back seat, and leaves the van in the sun. The child wakes and starts crying. No one hears. The child may try to escape, but no one sees. Modern devices can detect high temperatures and the high pitched cry of a child. Another device can roll down windows. Another can sound an alarm.
These devices could be built and installed in cars and vans at little cost. The Baby Rescue device wouldn’t be 100 per cent effective, because some dying children won’t cry out. But the majority who do cry out would be saved.

People don’t drive into a lake or river deliberately, but such accidents happen. I recall a news article several years ago of a man driving with his wife and children in a rainstorm. He lost his way and drove down a boat ramp and into a swollen river. The family drowned. Evidence showed they tried to get out of the car but couldn’t.
My brother, Gordon Hewitt, parked his car in the driveway of a hurricane-proof house when Hurricane Ike hit Grand Cayman Island. The storm surge swept his BMW car off the driveway, down the street, and into deep water. When he found the car, all the windows had been rolled down. I assume BMW has a safety device that causes the windows to roll down when the car is submerged. Such a device could have saved the family that went into the river, and many others as well.
If BMW can do it, why can’t the other automobile manufacturers?
Women who leave babies in hot cars while they visit bars are not likely to buy a Baby Rescue device. Automobile manufacturers close their eyes and refuse to look at safety devices that will add cost to their products. Seat belts and air bags came into use with pain that hurt car companies like childbirth. So for the children’s sake, there should be laws. Devices to rescue babies from hot cars and families from submerged cars should be installed in each new car, and all existing day care center vans and buses.