They Cut Their Own Throats

Pat Buchanan explains how the GOP lost middle America.

At the Cold War’s end, the GOP reached a fork in the road. The determination of Middle Americans to preserve the country they grew up in, suddenly collided with the profit motive of Corporate America.

The Fortune 500 wanted to close factories in the USA and ship production abroad — where unions did not exist, regulations were light, taxes were low, and wages were a fraction of what they were here in America.

Corporate America was going global and wanted to be rid of its American work force, the best paid on earth, and replace it with cheap foreign labor.

While manufacturing sought to move production abroad, hotels, motels, bars, restaurants, farms and construction companies that could not move abroad also wanted to replace their expensive American workers.

Thanks to the Republican Party, Corporate America got it all.

Click the link to read the rest. I tend to agree with this, although I know it's not Approved Conservative Thought. But you know, when conservatives bash public employees' unions as being greedy and overpaid - - excuse me? Isn't that just envy? How is it any different than the envy that the leftist shows toward the rich? I don't get paid that much and work just as hard as *those people,* goes the thought, so I don't think they should be paid that much, either. You're guilty of the same envy as the Left - - rather than drag yourself UP, you'd rather see someone else dragged DOWN.

Injustice In Florida

Story.

Ronald Thompson of Keystone Heights is 65 and a 14-year Army veteran who has logged 5,000 hours of volunteer service at the VA Medical Center in Lake City.

Thompson is nearly blind, diabetic and has had multiple heart surgeries. In the last few years he's had surgery on his prostrate[sic] and to remove tumors from his face.

And he's in prison.

Two years ago, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison under Florida's mandatory minimum laws for firing two shots into the ground to scare off some teenagers. The judge was so appalled that he called the mandatory minimum sentence "a crime in itself" and sentenced him to three years instead of 20.

Click the link to read the rest. It's a case of the rigidity of "mandatory minimum" sentencing laws being applied in a way that is fundamentally unjust. Thompson is in prison because Fourth Circuit State Attorney Angela Corey, who is in the news more recently as the vengeful prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, appealed the 3-year sentence that the trial judge imposed.