Calm 'eco-frenzy'
Daniel B. Jeffs - Apple Valley, Calif.
Eco-friendly events that leave behind "trails of waste" serve as evidence of the "eco-frenzy" that has been hurting our country's economy for many years ("When eco-friendly events go unfriendly," Life, April 22).
Indeed, shades of green are more often shades of gray painted red by extreme environmentalists and global warming alarmists.
Reasonable environmental concerns notwithstanding, common sense should tell us that the escalating cost of nearly everything can be connected to environmental restrictions and reactionary regulations. It has become painfully clear that the only way to stop the damage is for environmentalists to calm down a little.
I agree with Ron Mader, founder of the journal Planeta.com, who told USA TODAY: "The dialogue is cheapened when environmental events themselves do not showcase some environmental criteria for how they are implemented."
Daily Press
April 21, 2008
Carter should no longer be subsidized by government
Daniel B. Jeffs - Apple Valley, Calif.
What is it with former president Jimmy Carter? He brokered the first peace accord between Egypt and Israel and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Then, among other blunders, he coddled terrorists who seized our embassy in Iran and took hostages, gave away the Panama Canal, and left America in economic shambles when he left office.
Since leaving office, Carter thinks he has license to meddle in U.S. foreign policy whenever he chooses. In his latest brush with what is tantamount to treasonous behavior, and against the wishes of the State Department, Carter embarked on a nine-day tour of the Middle East, which will include a visit with Hamas terrorist leaders in Syria.
Carter ought to be stripped of his former president title, along with any and all compensation at taxpayers expense, including costly secret service protection. America should not subsidize anti-American zealots, particularly former presidents. Indeed, the Constitution prohibits granting titles of nobility000">
USA TODAY
April 10, 2008
Give Big Oil a break
Daniel B. Jeffs - Apple Valley, Calif.
It appears that USA TODAY has joined the congressional inquisition against Big Oil. This makes it painfully clear that USA TODAY has lost its common sense. Though oil profit percentages are up, taxes on the industry have long been double those percentages.
Big Oil and most large corporations are owned by many millions of middle-income Americans who are invested in retirement programs and savings accounts. They are the ones being punished, not the corporations.
Why do we shoot ourselves in the foot by voting people into power who advocate for more taxes and regulations? Reasonable efforts to produce renewable energies, which are better for the environment, are good. But when these efforts escalate into prohibiting Americans from using readily available oil, coal and natural gas, then it is clear that the USA is headed down a dead-end road to economic collapse.
USA TODAY
March 31, 2008
Hold public servants accountable to words
Daniel B. Jeffs - Apple Valley, Calif.
Considering the lies and distortions of the presidential candidates, it has become painfully clear that there is a double standard at work ("Clinton acknowledges sniper 'misstatement,' " Electionline, News, Tuesday).
If a person lies on his or her employment application, then he or she likely will not be hired. The words of those campaigning for office become an employment application, of sorts. Sen. Hillary Clinton isn't doing so well on hers.
Her recent "misstatement" about ducking sniper fire and running for cover in Bosnia is appalling. If we don't do something about the corrupt behavior of office seekers, our complacency could very well be our undoing.
San Diego Union Tribune
March 31, 2008
Considering our declining history and the lies, distortions and embellishments of the candidates for president, it has become painfully clear that there is a double standard applied to the people and those who are elected to represent us. If we lie on our employment applications, we would not be hired. What is said by those who campaign for public office is their employment application.
Honorable intentions aside, it has also become painfully clear that too many of those who are elected to public office, re-elected or seek higher office are doing so to gain more personal power in what has become a highly partisan, self-corrupting two-party political system of ideologues, which has betrayed the very foundation of our Constitution.
If we don't do something about it, our complacency could very well be our undoing. The solution is simple. Make all elected offices nonpartisan. Elect the most qualified professional government managers to represent us and truthfully inform us. Give them the task of downsizing our laws, regulations and bloated bureaucracies of inefficient government. And have the voters decide matters of taxation and public policy.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Apple Valley, CA
Founder's letter published in USA TODAY
April 26, 2007
Pathetic ploys for power
The congressional freak show exploiting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is little more than the latest pathetic round of persecution politics aimed at President Bush and his administration.
The power struggle in Washington is an unconscionable waste of political capital at the people's expense. Indeed, nothing could be a more vivid example of inept government than our elected representatives throwing political rocks at each other amid growing terrorism and high-risk national security.
Politics in the USA is turning our democratic republic into an over regulated wasteland of petty politics. America is better than that.
USA TODAY
April 26, 2007
The congressional freak show exploiting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is little more than the latest pathetic round of persecution politics aimed at President Bush and his administration. The Democrat and Republican struggle for power in Washington, and throughout the several states, is an unconscionable waste of political capital at the people's expense.
USA TODAY
May 23, 2002
American Idol exacerbates social dilemma
America was already celebrity-obsessed before American Idol came along and shifted the hysteria into hyper-drive. And as if that wasn't enough enticement for people's hopes and aspirations to be famous, even for a limited time, television networks leaped into the lazy and shallow, high profit business of reality shows for people who seek fame for anything.
USA TODAY
July 25, 2007
Tobacco tax unfair
The Senate finance committee's approval of a large tobacco tax increase to fund healthcare for children is simply another tax move against beleaguered smokers, most of whom are low income people who can least afford it. It's bad enough that anti-smoking zealots have discriminated against smokers as social outcasts, holding them up to public hatred, ridicule and humiliation.
But to attack a class of people with punishing taxes to pay for non-smoking related healthcare and other hot-button programs that have little or nothing to do with smoking is simply wrong. President Bush is right by indicating that he will veto an unfair tax on low-income smokers to pay for middle-income people's healthcare for children.
Daniel B. Jeffs
Founder, DDC
Washington Times
May 23, 2007
Former president Carter's revision of his remarks about the Bush administration being the "worst in history" is typical of his history of inept thinking. He's done it many times before. When it comes to the worst administration in history, Carter is certainly in the running.
Los Angeles Times
May 26, 2007
Re: 'Smoking's sinful sensuality in movies' Meghan Daum 5-19-07
Meghan Daum's half-hearted attempt to defend smoking in movies for the sake of history in the art of movie-making doesn't address what is going on in real life. Indeed, in the end, she gives-in to the inevitability of surrender to the tyranny of anti-smoking zealots.
Daily Press
March 18, 2007
Privatization, not more money, will fix public education
The state of public education in California is unconscionable. Indeed, little or no progress has been made in the quality of education in our entire country since the scathing 1983 report, "A Nation at Risk."
Published in the Daily Press
February 13, 2007
The Freak Show of Anna Nicole Smith
It's a relief to see that our local newspaper, the Daily Press, has chosen not to cover the Anna Nicole Smith freak show that is consuming television news and other programming.
Smith's tragic death notwithstanding, this is simply another indictment against our society, news media and entertainment industry, already stricken by a culture of political hostility, social aggression, shallow behavior, and superficial extremes.
We should demand better from them and ourselves. Indeed, as Edmund Burke wisely observed, the only thing necessary for evil to exist is for good people to remain silent...
Daniel B. Jeffs, founder
The Direct Democracy Center
Published in the Daily Press
November 6, 2006
What was John Kerry's 'joke' referring to?
(John Kerry: un-American)
John Kerry's contempt for our military expressed this week comes as no surprise. His condemnation of our troops in Vietnam in 1971 and his condescending comments about our troops in Iraq are merely the reflection of the privileged liberal elite looking down their noses at the vast majority of people in our country who are real Americans.
Indeed, Kerry's remarks about our military being less educated than others is a contradiction in terms, particularly when the anti-establishment revolutionaries of his generation ruined public education and left subsequent generations functionally illiterate.
Sadly, little has changed in education -- and our society is worse -- thanks to people like Kerry, radical environmentalists like Al Gore, fraudulent politicians like the Clintons, the academic and corporate elite, and those in the news media and entertainment industry -- who are terminally infected by narcissism and social engineering.
Only in America can they be that way and get away with it. Being grateful Americans like the rest of us simply isn't their long suit. However, we don't have to put up with letting them run our country into the ground, particularly in this dangerous world of terrorism. On November 7th, we must start voting for our freedom, our security and our future. Our survival is at stake.
Daniel B. Jeffs, founder
DDC