Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh

1989 A Bittersweet Year

I watched recently the video of a speech given by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to an adoring crowd of communist useful idiots a few days before the dictator was arrested in December 1989. Ceausescu, a megalomaniac who appointed himself the Father of the Country, was touting the slave wages he had ordered raised for his unlucky proletariat from 700 lei per month to 800 lei.

“I Can’t Believe” This is Happening in America

My “I Can’t Believe This is Happening to America” list is growing larger by the day. It is so vast now, I can write a book. Would my book have an audience? Judging by the eagerness with which most Americans have embraced the transformational hope and change of our country to communist utopia, the answer is no.

Environmental Conservation Easements Trump-ing Property Rights

A new battle is waging in Virginia involving the restriction of land use in rural areas. The protagonists are the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) with its "comprehensive planning" of Virginia's rural areas and Donald Trump with his proposed Trump National Golf Club in Albemarle County near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Do Teachers Really Know Best?

Teachers have been maligned, derided, put on a pedestal, ignored, followed, awarded, lionized, and sued by parents. Administrators choose their favorite teachers as educators of the year, star teachers, or outstanding faculty, lavishing praise and accolades on those they deem the best team players.

Cyprus and Venezuela, Castro Care

Cyprus, a tiny island of less than one million people, is a small scale study in “big banking out of control,” “insane spending like there is no tomorrow,” coupled with “socialism runs out of other people’s money.” While researching the bailin and bailout of early summer, I found disturbing accounts of their socialized health care.

The Baby Boomers and the not so Affordable Care Act

Why is it that we needed the Affordable Care Act? Was it because everybody was told inaccurately that Americans were dying in the streets untreated? If you ask Europeans and people from other continents that is exactly the perception they have about the United States.

Socialized Medicine should be labeled as poison

Twenty-four years after communism went underground in 1989 (and is resurfacing with a vengeance today), medical care has not improved by leaps and bounds. If you are 17 years old and injure your foot, even though you carry with you the expected envelope stuffed with cash for the inexperienced doctor, your toe will look like this after six weeks of “expert” care.

The American Dream, Just an Illusion

As a teenager, I used to day dream about escaping the oppressive communist society where we lived. I did not have a passport and a snowball chance in hell of getting one, I did not have any money, and our travel was restricted to a 20- mile radius, as far as our feet could carry us, as far as the rickety government-run buses would transport us, and as far as our pocketbooks allowed. We were so poor though, the wind whistled through our pockets most of the time.

Rationed Food and Purposeful Starvation

I remember our daily food always coming from a long, long line at the end of which was a loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a stick of butter, a bottle of murky cooking oil, or a kilo of bones with traces of meat and fat on them.

Benevolent Masters and Controllers of Water

A lot of Americans take water for granted because it is relatively cheap and readily available in most areas. They count on turning on the water tap and the water flows. They also take for granted their water heaters – few people had to do without hot water in recent memory. Perhaps those who were the victims of tornadoes and hurricanes can better understand having to do without water, hot water, heat, and electricity for days and weeks at a time.

The U.S. Post Offices Are Golden Real Estate

I mailed a package of clothes overseas today. It cost $120. The same package cost $30-$40 to ship not long ago. So much for this administration’s highly advertised “non-existent” inflation. The service has not improved, nor did the sour demeanor and the speed of the government employees, but the cost went up at least three times. The pay is good and the benefits are stellar, but then, who wants to sort mail all day and deal with the stressed public?

Trevor Loudon, Advocate for Freedom

“Absolute power is when a man is starving and you are the only one able to give him food.” 
- Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean dictator 
(The Times, UK, July 9, 2004) Trevor Loudon is a ball of energy. A New Zealander, Trevor is more passionate about saving America from the scourge of communism than most Americans are. Why would he care about what happens to America?

Sarasota Key

It’s five a.m. and the bright full moon is casting dancing shadows in the hawkish wind. The dense, tall trees are creaking in the back yard forest with giant limbs swaying. The air is cold and dry; it has not rained in several days. It’s a far cry from the balmy Florida of yesterday. We got up at 6:30 a.m. to watch the sunrise over the ocean. Joan’s cottage is five minutes from the beach. In the salty damp warm air, the street greeted us with pitch blackness.

Rain, God’s Water Regulated by Progressives

“The water you drink today has likely been around in one form or another since dinosaurs roamed and Earth, hundreds of millions of years ago.” – National Geographic Water is life and it is recyclable, covering 70 percent of our planet; 2.5 percent is fresh water and “only 1 percent is easily accessible, the rest is trapped in glaciers and snowfields.”

Elder Abuse under ObamaCare

Jane* went to bed one night last week, thanking God for her many blessings. She woke up next morning screaming, an entirely different person. Hallucinating, alternating between an imaginary world that only she could see and hear. Her family took her to the local hospital. She was admitted immediately and routine blood tests and an MRI were ordered.

Private-Public Water Partnership, UN Agenda 21

"Your failure to be informed does not make me a wacko."--John Loeffler Water is a precious and scarce commodity for some nations who are geographically located in areas prone to draught or with a predominant desert landscape.

District of Columbia, the Seat of Power and Corruption

Washington, D.C. and its surrounding suburbs are interesting places to visit. Populated by over two hundred different nationalities, legal and illegal, it is a hodge-podge of humanity stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on most days and nights.

ObamaCare’s Personal Health Assessment

My 81-year-old mom received a letter from her doctor, four days before the Affordable Care Act takes effect. It is a two-page questionnaire titled Personal Health Assessment (PHA) from the Accountable Care Organization (ACO) that her doctor chose to voluntarily participate in, thus enrolling all his patients onto this LLC (Limited Liability Company), a mixture of partnership and corporation. How was the group formed and why?

Movies and Books, Inequality for All

A friend has mentioned recently how insidious and malicious is the work of progressives in this country who have one goal in mind, to destroy our culture. They should be called regressives since they are fond of shaping society in their warped view of reality, not building it up.

Coal Miners and Mountaintop Strip Mining

I was in a terminal at Reagan National Airport recently and an electronic ad drew my attention. It was the beautiful face of a middle aged gentleman creased by time, worries, and hard work. He introduced himself as Sid. "I'm proud of my Appalachian roots," he said. "And I won't give up on our mountains." In smaller letters, at the bottom of the ad sponsored by Earth Justice, earthjustice.org/MyStory, was one sentence, "Tell us your story to help stop mountaintop removal coal mining."