Someone PLEASE Turn ON the Lights!

A government that has the power to dictate your light bulb choices and to compel you to buy health insurance has the power to control, regulate and dictate every aspect of your life.  Is this what the Pilgrim’s loaded into the Mayflower, crossed a merciless sea and faced an unknown world of harsh conditions and menacing savages for?  Seriously, this is why they came to the New World?  Our Founders fought off the tyrannical yoke of King George just so that they could regulate trans-fats?  The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, won a revolutionary war and then established a constitutional republic had a healthy distrust of strong centralized government power and an unwavering respect for religious freedom, personal property and individual liberty.  The current administration has demonstrated an insatiable appetite to regulate and dictate every aspect of our personal lives in direct violation of their responsibilities and constraints as clearly outlined in the Constitution.  They seek to circumvent the constitutional limits placed upon their power by imposing myriads of extra-legal rules and regulations and fines through bureaucracies and agencies which have no legislative authority.  They command people and businesses through intimidation, confusion, complexity, threats, fear and bluffs.  They demean and disparage people who cling to the actual wording and intent of the Constitution.  These people are called hicks and hayseeds and throwbacks and outdated anachronisms.  The Constitution is referred to as either a living, breathing document subject to endless reinterpretation by liberal, activist judges to mean whatever is expeditious to their cause at the moment; or an old, dead document written by dead white men in an old language that no one today can understand which might have meant something 200 years ago, but is without relevance today.  They completely ignore the fact that the framers understood this evolutionary reality and provided the amendment process just for this eventuality.  Wisely, the framers made this process just difficulty enough that it could not be employed for capricious, fleeting fads of the day.  But this is just too inconvenient for the libs.  Better and quicker to have judges impose dictates and legislate from the bench.  Let’s face it, to the Obama administration, the Constitution is nothing more than dirty, used toilet paper.  Such a rogue administration, in the interest of promoting ‘The General Welfare,’ will try to impose any and every possible progressive policy and program upon a nearly helpless populace.  Under this tyranny abortion is celebrated but you go to jail if you kill an endangered mouse or cut down a tree on your own property without a government permit.  Here’s what’s coming, mark my words.  You must drive a hybrid car and let us control the thermostat on your home furnace.  It’s now illegal to buy Edison’s light bulb, instead you must use the expensive one with the funny glow that blows up and spews mercury all over your kids.  If they can’t get Cap and Trade environmental legislation through Congress, no problem just instruct E.P.A. to enact it as a regulation and presto!, Al Gore’s carbon credit business takes off.  You can still buy cigarettes (they need the tax revenue, and hey, most libs smoke), but you can’t smoke anywhere, including your own car or house.  You can still buy booze (tax revenue again, and who can forget Ted Kennedy?) and now marijuana, but not trans-fats, Happy Meals or salt (unless you’re Barack and Michelle Obama, ribs anyone?).  Coke or Pepsi, we’ll decide for you.  If you’re a Christian (and yes, most of our Founders really were) keep it in the church and keep your mouth shut about it and keep your shirts and crosses out of the schools, work places, public parks, government buildings and proceedings and Friday night high school football games.  The government will dictate to G.M. (Government Motors) how many Volts to build and then when no one buys them they will regulate gasoline cars out of existence.  Oh you don’t have to give up your car, but they will just regulate the domestic oil industry out of existence and drive up the price of gasoline until no one can afford it.  They refuse to enforce our borders and sovereignty and then arrest our border agents when they shoot drug-running illegals in the butt.  We the people wind up paying for housing and transportation and food and medical care for illegals who break our immigration laws, come here and take our jobs.  Then, instead of prosecuting and deporting these illegal invaders, this administration wants to reward them with amnesty and a fast-track to citizenship (thereby guaranteeing a new voting block of entitlement-driven supporters).  This administration is printing and borrowing money, spending and racking up debt at a dizzying and unprecedented rate, almost certainly guaranteeing national insolvency, collapse of our currency and runaway inflation.  They are systematically taking over our health care system, thereby controlling one-sixth of our economy and having control over beginning and end-of-life issues for population control and meeting financial targets.  Is there any evidence that anyone in government knows more or is better at managing our health care industry that those people actually working in the industry every day?  No!  Where is the evidence, what is the track record?  Medicare is broke.  Medicaid is broke.  Social Security is broke.  They dictate to banks to make bad loans and then when the banks fail the feds step in, bail them out and take over the mortgage banks and the loans.  Guess what, the federal government now owns most loans (and homes) in America.  Gee that’s comforting.  There is no nook or cranny of your life safe from this marauding band of control freaks.  There is a word that describes this type of government-industry complex:  fascism.  Don’t flip out, I am not saying that Barack Obama is Adolph Hitler, but his policies are fascist pure and simple.  For some reason he hates the way this country is structured and is dead-set on ‘transforming’ America.  He has elevated class warfare and racism and religious intolerance to new levels.  He is the most un-American and anti-American President I believe that we have ever had in office.  Nobody had ever heard of this guy and he had never done or accomplished anything before George Soros catapulted him onto the national stage with all of that ‘Hope & Change’ and ‘Yes We Can’ baloney.  There is no substance there.  Just promise the masses bread and circuses.  We are at a crucial point in our nation’s history.  If this collective mind-set is allowed to continue running our government and our lives I sincerely believe that the United States of America is doomed.  We must dispatch this evil administration and all of its minions to the dustbin of history in the next election (sooner if we can get the Congress and Courts to do the right thing) or I fear we face some sort of civil war or see states begin to separate.  Good, hard-working Americans are not going to tolerate this foolishness and live under a boot of tyranny.  Enough is enough.  The line in the sand has been crossed.  May God have mercy upon us all and bless America once again.

Capital Offense

I am just back from a visit to our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.  Walking around town it’s hard not to be struck by the sheer enormity, inertia and energy of the whole endeavor.  Having said that, I must also report that the city is a jumbled mess of contradictions, juxtapositions and hypocrisy; starting simply with the streets.  They must have been laid out by a drunken sailor.  Diagonal streets intersect square grids creating a dizzying mess for the accidental foot traveler.  Start out going straight up one street and you can suddenly find yourself on a completely different street without ever noticing a change in direction.  And don’t forget whether your hotel is in the NW, NE, SW or SE quadrant.  Geez.  Now, there are many parks, statues and memorials scattered all over town.  Study these memorials and you find that they are dedicated to the memory of many brave, courageous and wise founders and fighters for our country.  Strangely, there are no monuments to the ‘great’ compromisers and timid consensus builders; the whimps and wusses of our national heritage.  Wonder why that is?  One street is populated by foreign embassy after foreign embassy, another by every conceivable public interest and advocacy association and organization known to man.  And all of them clamoring for what?  Your federal tax dollars that’s what!  While you could say that the business of this town is government, and I guess that is technically true; today government is merely a euphemism for other people’s money.  When you look around this city and give it some thought, there really are no great leaders or visionaries here anymore.  Virtually everything done here really just comes down to moving money around; rewarding this group, punishing that one.  Administrations change and the direction of money movement changes course.  That’s all.  Different players, same song.  The role of Congress today sadly is to merely play elves to the President’s Santa Claus.  It’s Christmas every day here!  (Except that you can’t say ‘Christmas’ anymore)  You walk by these monstrous, gaudy, ostentatious federal office buildings and realize that they are just brimming over with bureaucrats whose only job is to find ways to make our lives more difficult and find creative ways to get at our money.  They don’t create anything, not wealth; they suck it out.  They don’t make things better or easier for people, they just make things worse.  I sincerely believe that we could level all of these boring, gray federal buildings and send all of these teeming masses of leeches out into the countryside to find real jobs and everything in our nation would instantly get better.  It is easy to see how someone could spend their entire life inside the beltway, as they say; never having to cross the Potomac and having no idea that there is anything of any importance beyond the district boundaries.  Some of them probably believe that there is nothing but wilderness and Indians from D.C. all the way to the Pacific!  They spend all of their time running around in circles in the city, talking to each other and telling each other how great and important they are.  Full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.  It is the most self-absorbed city and population one can imagine.  That and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee at Denny’s.  LOL!  And then you come to Fort White House.  Literally a fortress within the city.  How sad that our nation’s leader is virtually a prisoner inside a jail in the city that is our country’s capital.  How ironic, he is arguably the most un-free person in the land!  And right across the street from that jail are multitudes of homeless people sleeping in the gutters, literally a stone’s throw from the most powerful person in the world.  If he can’t do something about that (compassion?) should we expect him and his government to truly ‘help’ any of the rest of us? Umm, no.  The funny thing is that they will look you right in the eye and say that they can and will help you while carefully just outside the screen shot are testimonies to the fact that in reality he cannot and will not.  He is powerless.  The ultimate irony.  Nothing more than a straw man, a straw leader, a straw President.  But no one will tell him that he has no clothes.  His handlers constantly whisper in his ear how important and powerful he is.  You see, by building him up they keep their cushy jobs and coveted parking spots.  The simple reality is that I am not impressed by the people working in this town; Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet members or bureaucrats.  For the most part they are here just there promoting themselves and their personal agendas.  It’s not about the Constitution and the Republic, it’s only about them.  They will lie, steal and cheat to get what they want.  It is a town of outrageous irresponsibility gilded with soaring rhetorical crap.  I shudder at the prospects for the future of the Republic.

Protect Your Medical Information!

To Any and All Medical/Health Care Providers,

I hereby prohibit you from providing any medical and/or personal information about me and my family in any format to any entity not directly involved in participating in our medical care for a specific issue or to my personal medical insurance company.  No such information may be placed on and/or made available through the internet to anyone or any entity except those above.  No such information shall be made available to any entity of the State of (State) or the United States Federal Government.  Information shall not be made available even if stripped of any personally identifying information.  Any information in electronic format must be stored only on your local premise and computers.  It may not be stored or managed offsite and/or by another entity.

Bread & Circuses

"The FCC demanded that CenturyLink Inc. offer low-income households broadband for $10 per month and computers for $150, and double the number of homes and businesses that can get fast broadband, with speeds of 12 megabits per second or more." --Colorado Springs Gazette, Saturday, March 19, 2011
Just who the hell is the FCC?!  A bunch of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats acting unconstitutionally.  They don't have this power or authority, and frankly neither does the Congress.  And the Congress certainly can't delegate these kinds of powers.  What is the controlling legal authority here?  And please don't insult my intelligence by dragging out the Interstate Commerce Clause!  That is the most lame, pathetic and moronic justification you people always fall back on.  Give me a million breaks!
Secondly,  under the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause, if you are going to (for the sake of argument, even though it is actually unconstitutional) give some citizens certain benefits you must extend those same benefits to all U.S. citizens equally.  To not do so is to illegally create different classes of citizens with different rights and privileges, something that cannot occur under our constitution.
I am serious as a heart attack about all of this.  This is what the Tea Party is all about.  Returning to the legal, legitimate federal powers enumerated in the Constitution; and nothing more.  This would eliminate about 70% of federal spending immediately.  Good!  We will prevail, just you watch and see!

Federal vs. Personal Spending

I just ran some quick numbers and was shocked to find that if
I use the 2011 federal budget numbers,

$2.2T Tax revenue (income)
$1.6T Deficit spending
$3.8T Total spending

it turns out that the deficit spending is 73% of tax revenue (income).

If a family makes $25K, they would be spending $43.25K using the federal budget percentages.
$50K income would be $86.5K in spending.
$75K income would be $129.75K in spending.
$100K income would be $173K in spending.

Sign me up!

We must return to the Constitution to dictate and limit federal spending.
We must also come to grips with the entitlement monster.  Now reports show that one-third of all wages paid in the United States are actually welfare payments!  Yikes!

Paying the Piper

Ah, to be in Washington when the President’s budget is released.  What better way to forget Valentine’s Day than by looking at barrels of red ink?  To sum up, it weighs in at about $3.73 trillion with a deficit of only a mere $1.65 trillion this year, more than a third of the budget.  It cuts nothing really and relies on many new taxes.  The projection is for nearly trillion dollar deficits for the next 10 years, bringing our national debt to $26 trillion then, up from $14 trillion now; of which Obama has added $4 trillion in the last two years.  The House Republicans talk of trying to pare anywhere from $35 billion, to $50 billion, to $100 billion in the best of scenarios.  That’s what, 1, 2, 3%?  WOW!  That sort of draconian slashing will right our sinking ship in no time, right?  NOT!  Who knows if cutting 40 or 50% now would even stop the inevitable?  Our current national debt is now more than our annual GDP and service on the national debt in ten years will be almost a trillion dollars a year.  You can’t just monetize that without triggering hyperinflation, you can’t tax people that much and you certainly won’t be able to borrow all of that from the Chinese.  After all, they own a big chunk of the debt to begin with.  And we haven’t even discussed the fact that in ten years we will be square within the throes of the baby boomers retiring and accessing MediCare.  That means that Social Security and MediCare are headed for certain insolvency.  Not to mention the big ObamaScare question mark.  Needless to say, this kind of social entitlement spending, these deficits and the ensuing national debt are simply unsustainable and intolerable.  They will undoubtedly lead to financial collapse and social chaos.  The dollar is already teetering today. Throw into that mix the uncertainty of events in the Middle East and the effects that could have on the price of oil, which ultimately affects the price of everything else and we have a recipe for disaster. 

So how have we come to this lowly state?  The answer is really quite simple but the ramifications are enormous.  The federal government has ventured into spending for things for which it has absolutely no constitutional authority.  Things such as MediCare, Social Security, farm subsidies, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education and ObamaScare, just to name a few.  So much of what the federal government spends trillions of dollars on has no legal basis in the constitution.  And the expenditures for these boondoggles grow exponentially far beyond their original projections.  Yet, with a lackey Supreme Court and neutered governors and state legislatures this federal juggernaut just careens on down the highway with a drunk at the wheel heading straight for a bridge abutment.   Wake up Ralph, because this is going to be quite a crash to see!  The only medicine for this ailment is to admit that these and other costly federal programs are constitutionally unauthorized and financially unsustainable.  The federal government must bow out of these programs as quickly and fairly as possible.  Many of the functions could, and should be assumed by the various state legislatures.  This would provide exactly what our founders intended, many state laboratories around the country trying different approaches to see what does and does not work.  Government solutions which are closer to the people.  And sometimes the solution might not be a government one at all.  The private sector is amazingly flexible when not fettered by onerous government regulation. 

Lying to the people and forestalling the inevitable reality of our situation does not solve anything.  The sooner we face the stark truths about where we are and what must be done the sooner we can take the medicine and get about the task of righting our ship.  The longer we wait the harder and more expensive it will be.  And we are rapidly approaching the point of no return.  Let’s pray that we can knock some sense into the collective heads of the Republicans and Democrats in Washington and the 50 state capitals before we see pitchforks in the streets.

Federal Spending is NOT the Problem...

This issue with our federal deficits and debt is not a result of federal government spending.  What?!  No, it's a result of UNCONSTITUTIONAL federal government spending.  The only big ticket item that the federal government is authorized to spend money for is defense.  Period.  Not Social Security nor welfare nor Medicare nor farm subsidies, etc.  I would wager that upwards of 75% of federal government spending is unconstitutional.  Prove me wrong!

Time to Set Our Compass

All of this talk by RINO's about repealing ObamaScare because it is bad economics or using it as 'foundation' for more tinkering with our health care system totally misses the point and sets us up to be used as 'useful/useless' idiots by the liberal progressives to further their heinous agenda.  ObamaScare must be repealed because it is simply UNCONSTITUTIONAL in toto.  The federal government has absolutely no constitutional authority or power in the arena of health care.  Period.  It's not really complicated.  At this point in time health care policy is strictly a State function.  As it should be.  If the other side wants federal power over health care policy the very first step must be a constitutional amendment.  Let's see them propose that.  And I would throw Medicare and Social Security into the same mix.  I know that the Supreme Court has ruled in that past on those programs, but the court is made of up fallible people, not gods.  And they DO have their own personal political agendas, all of the protestations about objectivity to the contrary not withstanding.  Courts have certainly been overturned by Congress and subsequent courts.  The basis for ruling that these programs are constitutional usually revolves around Congress' taxing authority.  As I have argued prior the power to tax is not synonymous with the power to spend.    The taxing authority is to support the legitimate, constitutional powers of the the federal government.  It is not carte blanche to spend money on anything they darn well desire.  If so, why have Article 1, Section 8 in the Constitution?  This reasoning defies logical thought.  What if Congress raised tax money from all of the citizens and then spent it to hire thugs to break the kneecaps of their political opponents?  They can't do that we would scream, breaking kneecaps is illegal!  Ah, they would reply, we are doing this under our taxing authority.  Say what?!
The Constitution is our fixed point of reference in law and government.  Without it we are not a nation of laws, but rather a nation governed by the whims of men.  This is a recipe for disaster.  And that is where we are headed, and have been for years.  Think of it this way.  In the Christian world the Holy Bible is the fixed point of reference.  It is considered the revealed, inerrant Word of God.  It is not changeable by men.  It is not subject to their interpretation.  If it were, Christianity would not be a religion of God, but rather of pastors.  And that would be a recipe for disasters.  If I can pick up my fixed point of reference and move it, then it's not really a fixed point of reference.  It's not really of much help in troubled times.  What if the North Star kept moving?  How would mariners navigate?  What if the lighthouse on the rocks kept moving?  How many ships would wreck?  When our Constitution is treated like Silly Putty we are adrift in a dangerous sea with no North Star and no lighthouse.  We are rapidly approaching the rocks and don't seem to realize it.
The ends do not justify the means.  We must follow our constitutional dictates if our republic is to survive.  The states are the great laboratories of freedom.  Let them deal with the health care questions and see what works best.  Then other states can duplicate the best programs.
Keep the feds out and freedom and diversity will solve our problems.

Stir the Pot

I hear so much talk from Barry and his minions in Congress about doing so many good things for the collective good of the people--for society.  When I start hearing politicians talking about the collective I get the heeby jeebies.  Haven't we heard this before?  It's like dejavu all over again.
The first thing that bothers me about this is having politicians determine what is 'good' for anyone.  What that really means is what will help the politician get re-elected and line their pocket with money.  Period.  That's the only 'good' they know.  This is why we have checks and balances and limited, enumerated powers in the Constitution.  Now if we could only get them to obey those dictates.  But that's a topic I have already opined on repeatedly in this  blog.  Something about a nation of laws, not men.  Our Constitution lays out what is good for the nation.  We don't need politicians trying to throw in their two cents.   I really don't want or need other people deciding what is 'good' for me.
The other challenge with this is having politicians trying to define just who or what exactly is society, or the collective.  Does it self-define?  Is it just intuitively obvious?  I think in reality politicians tend to define the collective as whatever group they are trying to pander to at the moment for, here it comes; votes and money.  There really is no great amorphous, homogenous society with all the same needs and wants at the same time.  We are a bubbling cauldron of individuals and various interest groups who shift and move and change and meld and dissolve and come back together again in differing forms over time with our own personal changing needs and desires.  You can't really take a snapshot at one moment in time and say, aha! that is the collective society and these are its needs and so based upon that, I; beneficent politican will go forth and do 'good' for it (and maybe help me in the process).
So the 'collective' and the 'good' are really only aritifical creations of polticians at any given moment in time which in reality wind up only promoting what is best for the politician; and their wants and needs (votes and money).
When you hear politicians talking about these things, run away, run away!

The Means Justify the End?

I detect an insidious mentality permeating the federal government, particularly the Obama administration and the Congress.  It is the idea that the authority to tax, granted by the 16th Amendment is an automatic authority to spend that money on anything at all.  This has led to a backwards approach to government spending, i.e.; Congress decides that it wants to spend money on some program (for which there is no Article 1, Section 8 authority) and then simply justifies the decision based upon its authority to raise taxes (in their mind for any foolishness they desire).  The means justifies the ends.  Congress needs to understand that the power to tax means that Congress has the authority to raise taxes to fund the legitimate, constitutional functions of the federal government (Article 1, Section 8 again).  It does not mean that Congress can fill a bucket with tax dollars and then spend them willy nilly on every silly thing that comes to mind.  If we are to preserve, indeed save our Republic we must insist that the Congress understand that the Preamble to the Constitution is just that, a Preamble which in legal terms carries no empowering authority but is merely a statement of why the following document (which does include empowering language) is being written; that the 16th Amendment empowers the federal government to raise taxes only for its legitimate Article 1, Section powers; that their specific powers and authorities reside in Article 1, Section 8; that the Necessary and Proper Clause merely authorizes them to enact laws to carry out their legitimate, constitutional powers in Article 1, Section 8; and that the Interstate Commerce Clause is a very narrow and specific clause relating to preventing States from erecting undo burdens to commerce, not granting Congress unlimited power to do virtually anything it wants.  If that were the intent of the writers, why have Article 1, Section 8?  That sort of begs the question.
Short of reigning in the scope of the federal government along the lines of the preceding provisions, I see no hope of salvaging the idea of the Republic of the United States IN America and most likely the federal government will collapse under the weight of unsustainable taxation, spending, debt and entitlement.
Wake up!

Why Do Rich Liberals Hate Rich People?

I am convinced that there must be a logic gene in the brain and that it is most assuredly missing in liberals.  How else could one explain the phenomenon of someone looking at history, be confronted with facts and then completely ignore it all and arrive at a screwball conclusion devoid of any logical explanation? 
Several years ago I was chewing the fat with a liberal colleague and the discussion swung around to the topic of the progressive income tax.  If you are ever in need of some cheap fun just watch a liberal try to explain the logical basis of this iconic institution and then figuratively explode at the end!  Personally, I believe that if conservatives cannot win the arguement against progressive income tax rates, then we probably will never win any substantial governing majority for any length of time.  To me, this is a seminal issue that separates the mindset of the two warring parties.  Someone's attitude towards this seemingly minute point of policy reveals the fundamental orientation that individual's outlook and perspective on nearly every question of governance.
It is quite clear that the 14,000 or so pages of federal tax code really have little to do with raising revenue and so much to do with the raw exercise of power, with control, with social engineering and with rewarding and punishing friends and political enemies.  If it is only about raising revenue we could have a post-card flat tax or a sales tax and be done with it.  No, the tax code is powerful tool for inciting class envy, class warfare and for buying votes.
Back to my friend.  The crux of our disagreement was, of course over the concept of a system of increasing tax rates for increasing income levels.  Thus, the 'progressive' income tax.  The liberal argument quite simply put is that those who make more should pay more.  They should give back to society.  They should pay, hold your breath, their fair share.  At this point I drew out the following scenario:

$10,000.00 x 10%=$1,000.00
$100,000.00 x 10%=$10,000.00
$1,000,000.00 x 10%=$100,000.00

I ask him, at a flat 10% tax rate who is paying more?  Silly question.  The person making a million bucks a year is paying a lot more than the person making a hundred grand and a heck of a lot more than the 'little guy' making ten grand.  Isn't that progressive, isn't he giving a lot back, isn't he paying his fair share?  Well, not to the liberal's satisfaction.  And why not?  Well the millionaire can afford to pay a higher percentage of his income, he replies.  How do you know, I ask?  Well, he should be able to the liberal snorts back.  Why should he have to, under what Constiutional principle and more importantly who is to decide how much is enough, I shoot back?  Well, the government, of course will decide.  So, will it be 20%, 30%, 50%?  This is where the control comes in.  Whoever sets the rates controls the taxpayer.  Whose money is it I ask?  Well, it's his money, but he has a responsiblity to plow more of it back into society since he took so much out of society.  And here is a fundmental liberal misundersting of economics.  It's the idea that when someone gets more, someone else must get less.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  The zero-sum pie game.  What the liberal does not understand is that rich people are usually in business...the business of making more economic pies.  Their business activity increases the wealth of everyone.  They create jobs, they create goods and services that people want, they spend their income on houses and clothing and cars and boats that must be manufactured, thereby creating more jobs.  And all of these people with jobs are paying taxes.  A rishing tide does lift all boats.  The liberal simply does not see or does not believe all of this and thus thinks that society must wrest some retribution from the rich by imposing every-increasing taxes on them.  All that does is take more money out of their pot with which to expand their businesses and hire more people.  The liberal winds up killing the golden goose and doesn't even know it.
This is all very interesting, but for me a more fundamental question is that of how we justify treating people differently in the eyes of the tax law.  It's a very American tenet that all men are created equal and that all men are treated equally before the law.  To not do so is to set up a class system of favoritism and thus fan the flames of class envy and hatred.  The liberals are quite adroit at setting up big business and the rich as the boogey-man (you know those big businesses that give people jobs and create new medicines and make your cars and clothing and tv sets and food) and convince the masses that these people are ripping them off and the liberals must ride in to save the day and protect the 'little guy.'  Somehow the liberals convince people that by sticking it to the fat cats somehow the little guys will be better off.  But when rich people pay more taxes it doesn't put a single dollar in the average little guy's pocket.  But he is supposed to feel better about America for some reason.  So if you take the time to study the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution you find that an overarching theme is the equality of all people.  We are to all be treated equally.  There is no royalty or nobility by simple virtue of birth.  The rights we hold to be self-evident are for all Americans equally.  Lady justice is blind.  It doesn't matter if you are a pauper or a President, the law looks at you the same.  The law is supposed to be the great equalizer.  Yet, for some strange reason when it comes to income tax law, some of us are more equal and less equal than others.  The tax rates and income levels they apply to are completely arbitrary and change with the whims of changing political administrations.  There is no rhymm or reason to it.  And that's just the tax rates.  The other 13,999 pages of tax law amounts to the exceptions and exemptions and favors and punishments that politcians dole out to their friends and enemies.  Some fairness, some equality.  What the politicians (mostly liberal) have done is to pit one class of society against the other; then they play the middle and keep getting re-elected.  Fanning the flames of class hatred keeps them empowered.  They must be there to protect the little guy from the big, bad businessman.  All the while taking huge campaign contributions from the big, bad businessman trying to buy one of those exemptions.  I'll take loopholes for $300 million Alex.  This tap dance is divisive and runs counter to what is really in all Americans' best interests.  This sort of philosophy doesn't usually end well.  Think of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.  That ended of with a country that could not even feed itself and tens of millions of citizens slaughtered by their own governement. 
Is this where we're headed all over the concept of 'the fair share?'  The problem with the fair share is that it really is not fair by any logical deduction and someone must arbitrarily decide what it is.  When someone gets to decide what someone else's fair share is there will never be peace and there will certainly never be fairness or equality.  The Constitution provides no guidance on how to treat people unfairly and unequally.  It's, well; un-American.  Perhaps we should not even try. 
So now, my liberal friend is just about to the point of exploding.  He still thinks that the rich should pay more than their fair share, well just because, um, well, just because.  It just seems right to him, besides they can afford it.  Oy, here we go again.

My New Year's Resolutions for the Federal Government

1)  Abolish lame-duck sessions of Congress or seat the new Congress immediately after the election.
2)  Transition to a Flat or Fair-Tax (NOT a V.A.T.); eliminate the graduated income, estate and capital gains taxes.
3)  Go back on the gold standard.
4)  Abolish anchor babies, seal the borders and enforce the immigration laws currently on the books.
5)  Give the President the line-item veto.
6)  All new bills in Congress will be one bill, one topic, one vote.
7)  All bills in Congress must explicitly cite the Article 1, Section 8 authority for any new government program, spending or legislation.  (Hint: ObamaScare, Social Security and Medicare; just to name a few, have none)
8)  Adhere to the strict, limited and original text and meaning of the Interstate Commerce Clause.
9)  Abolish the unconstitutional precedent of executive branch agencies implementing rules, fees, fines and penalties.  Only Congress can make law and there is no provision in the Constitution for Congress to delegate that authority.
10)  The Constitution requires that the President be a natural-born United States of America citizen, but makes no process for certifying that stipulation.  Congress should enact legislation that requires prospective presidential candidates to certify their birth status by a legally recognized method to their respective party officials, to Congress, to the Supreme Court, to the State Governors and legislatures and to the people at large through the media prior to their nominating convention. 
11)  All legislation must treat all citizens, companies and institutions equally; no special treatment, no special punishment, no special sweetheart deals and no exceptions for anyone.
12)  All members of the federal government; whether elected, appointed, contracted or hired shall be equally subject to all laws of this country.  Period.
13)  Audit the Federal Reserve and abolish its autonomous authority over our currency.

The Envelope Please

Give this quiz to your kids' civics/social studies/history/government teachers.  If they don't get all of them correct, DON'T LET THEM TEACH YOUR KIDS!
 
1)  Do U.S. Supreme Court rulings amend the U.S. Constitution?

2)  Do the 50 state governments function as sub-units of the U.S. federal government?

3)  Do the people of the United States directly elect the U.S. President?
4)  Does the phrase, “separation of church and state” appear in the U.S. Constitution?

5)  Does the federal government put your social security taxes in an account earmarked for your retirement?

6)  Is the term, “abortion” found in the U.S. Constitution?

7)  Is public education provided for and/or guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution?

9)  Is health care a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution?
10)  Is the U.S. federal government a pure democracy?

(p.s.  If you don't know the answers you're at the wrong blog!) 

*WARNING-TRUTH AHEAD*

If you have a weak stomach for the truth then you might just want to skip this post.
If you proceed you have been warned.
We are told repeatedly by the lame stream media that Barack Obama is certainly the smartest President in the history of our republic.  We are told that he is the most ardent communicator ever. 
Well, I think I smell a rat.
If this imposter is so smart why has he not permitted his undoubtedly stellar school transcripts to be released?  Modesty?   Please!  If this guy's grades were really all that outstanding they would have run off several million copies and would be throwing them out of airplanes by now. 
First black president of the Harvard Law Review.  How convenient. 
Great orator?  Without his precious teleprompter he can't string together a simple grammatically correct English sentence.  That monotone sing-song delivery puts me to sleep within two minutes.  And who told him that your inflection is supposed to go up at the end of every sentence?  Good grief!  Ronald Reagan has nothing to fear.
Genius?  Just listen to him answer off-prompter questions which were not submitted for review in advance.  Pathetic.  He becomes totally incoherent.
I get the sense that he really has no interest in actually governing.  He has no knowledge or interest in foreign policy or affairs. 
Now the tough part. 
I firmly believe that he is our first affirmative action President.  Someone who was intentionally slid through the system with less than mediocre credentials just for this moment in time.  No wonder the liberals and progressives are cheering him.  This is what they have pushing on us for the last 50 years.  Finally success!  Affirmative action taken to the pentultimate culmination! 
And for what purpose?
Now it gets really dicey here.
I think that Obama was put (yes, put) into the Presidency under these circumstances to coerce, and perhaps shame the country into agreeing to de facto reparations for slavery by a variety of income redistribution schemes including the tax code, various entitlement programs, ridiculous stimulus spending, health care reform and cap and trade, to name a few.  And that's it.  He really has no other purpose and has no other interests.  If it takes one term, fine.  It might take two.  He really has no say it and frankly couldn't care less.  He and Michelle are just along for the ride and the bennies.  What a scam!
Well, the country is waking up to this farce of an administration and are about to pull the rug out!  The jig is up!
Mr. Obama, what does your teleprompter have to say about that?

Sunset on Sunstein

So Mr. Cass Sunstein (an Obama advisor) thinks that the Constitution was written with disappearing ink, today nothing more than a blank canvas on which he and his cronies can paint a new American landscape. Not a document of absolutes, not even a document of suggestions; but rather a document of outdated platitudes written in a language that no one understands or speaks any more. Thus his posse must come along and essentially rewrite and redefine what America is and is to be. But why his posse and not mine? If the document is meaningless and must be reconstituted then who is to say who gets to do the job? Why does Sunstein have the final say about who has the final say?  Doesn't sound like he's being very, um, democratic.
I for one would vote to keep what we have and just simply return to following exactly what it says. If it does need to be updated (and it has been 28 times so far) the drafters clearly spelled out that process. It's called amending. Not letting five people in black robes change it and not letting the President or Congress change it. The people and the states must play a pivotal role. As it should be. The bottom line is that Sunstein thinks that you and I are too stupid to either understand the current constitution or write a new one. In reality what he's really all about is radically transforming America into something it was never meant to be. He wants to establish a socialist state where he and his ilk can control everything and take everything from anyone producing anything and give it to his lazy, non-productive followers. We've seen this movie before and it doesn't end well for anyone. The only problem is the current constitution stands in the way of this megalomaniacal scheme and the legislative process is too slow and uncertain, the legal process is too slow and uncertain and the amendment process is too slow and uncertain for he and his lackeys. They want radical change and they want it now! Just dump the whole document now and impose their one-sided tyranny upon the unwashed masses. Well I sense that a lot of the masses, maybe even a sizable majority want no part of this heinous plot. The election of socialist/progressive Barack Obama and the introduction of crackpots like Sunstein onto the national scene is the lowest point our republic has reached since the Civil War.
The great silent majority is rising up and will be heard this November and in 2012.
It's time for the Tea Party to party like it's 1999!

Freak Show

How did it come to pass that those of us who understand and respect our national history and founding, who respect the rule of law, who respect and obey the Constitution and who believe in personal freedom and liberty have come to be vilified in the mainstream media and political establishment as wacko, radical, extreme, fringe kooks and nuts? All the while those who reject our history, flaunt the rule of law, ignore the Constitution and would restrict personal freedom and liberty are heralded as the true American patriots and the only rational thinkers and rulers in our society. The world is turned upside down. Right is now wrong, good is now bad and up is now down. What is the allure of such bastardized thinking?
I believe that it derives from the natural human tendency to envy those who have more or better than you and a desire for them to improve their lot at your expense without going through the traditional and time-consuming route of education and long, hard work. Our education establishment in cahoots with the media and political establishments have conditioned people to assume victim status if they don't have enough stuff. They have taught people to demand entitlements which are nowhere guaranteed in the Constitution. This gnawing class envy mentality is dragging down our whole society and economy. Political opportunists gladly seize on this tension to empower themselves by promising free largess to millions of disgruntled citizens; buying their votes with hand-outs. William F. Buckley, Jr. once remarked that when the middle class discovers that they can vote themselves goodies from the public treasury the republic is doomed. How close are we to that prophecy?
The Constitution was written to try to protect these eventualities from coming to pass. Unfortunately, when those in power gleefully ignore the dictates of the this, the Supreme Law of the Land and We the People seem to have no recourse to force their compliance (two hundred years of elections and the problem is only growing worse); what are we to do to save the republic? We don't seem to be keeping it very well Mr. Franklin. Do we really want to become one of those creaky, rusty insolvent European socialist countries? Just look around, they don't work!
The people, the states and state governments must reassert their rightful authority over the federal monster and reinstate the Constitution! Now!

A Tale For Two Cities

It has become quite clear to me that the people of this nation are dividing into two distinct camps. One group wants the federal government to control and regulate everything; wages, salaries and profits while providing everything from health care to food to housing to transportation to education and beyond. The other camp wants exactly the opposite. "Don't tread on me!" They want the federal government to do no more than is expressly authorized in the Constitution. Period. The first group doesn't even know what the Constitution is, have never read it, couldn't find a copy if their life depended on it. And they don't give a rip. To them the nation is the federal government and the federal government is the nation. Some dusty old scrap of paper written by racist, slave-owning rich white men over two hundred years ago has no relevance for their lives. Constraints upon the power and size of the federal government seem strange and ridiculous to them. They don't understand all of the fuss about "States' Rights" and can't quite grasp why some states allow things and others don't. To them this whole business of dividing the country up into different states with different rules and laws makes no sense; it confuses them. I believe that many of them really believe that the states are merely administrative subdivisions of the federal government, that they in essence work for the federal government much like counties are subdivisions of state governments. This first group doesn't understand why anyone would want to limit the scope and power of the federal government. Why, isn't that just limiting what it can give you and do for you? This is what decades of pathetic (intentional or unintentional?) education of our children in the areas of American history, heritage, economics and government has led us. Sadly, far too many people have no idea how or why this nation came to be. They have no concept of what is required for successful self-government. They do not understand how wealth is created or exactly what money is and where it comes from. The relationship between business and labor and capital completely eludes them. This first camp is the 'entitlement at any cost' camp. They willingly surrender all of their freedom, liberty and wealth to the federal government in exchange for a guarantee (now that's rich) of security and provision (however meager) for their entire lives. They wind up with no control or responsibility for what happens to them. Like lemmings over the cliff. As the old saw says, the man who surrenders freedom in exchange for security will have neither. The federal leviathan will never look after their personal best interests as well as they would. They become assimilated into a huge amorphous mass of people, leading dull and boring lives simply serving the beast. That may be existence but it is not living.
Some in the press say that we are more divided now that during our Civil War time. While I don't foresee another civil war, I do believe that we as a nation must decide if we intend to remain the constitutional republic we were founded to be and commit to following the Constitution. Or do we make a deliberate decision to jettison our constitutional moorings and launch out into the darkness with no map or compass, destined to become like the failed socialist societies of Europe? I certainly hope not. It does seem to me that time is short and we freedom-loving remnants have a very tight window in which to reclaim our national freedom and liberty and greatness or risk irretrievably losing them forever. It is time for bold action!

Two Roads Diverged...

Several weeks ago Walter Williams remarked while guest-hosting Rush’s show that perhaps it is time to admit that this nation will no longer continue the charade of abiding by the Constitution and simply proclaim that it is null and void. After all, the federal government by its very actions declares that fact every day. Williams pointed out that much, if not most of what the federal government does and spends has no legal basis in any clause of the Constitution. And while the Supreme Court has given the feds the appearance of legal cover on many occasions, no action of the Court has the authority to amend the original text. In short, many of the Courts rulings are simply wrong, either by intention or accident. After all, members of the court are just people, subject to the same personal and political vagaries as the most partisan politician.

What is the Constitution after all? Well, only the document written by the founding states which created the federal government to serve their few collective needs and defined the powers and limits within which it must operate. The states ceded power and authority in those few areas, but retained the final oversight, which is amendment. Power flows from the states to the feds on the states’ terms, not vice versa. That which the states give the states can take back. The drafters never imagined that the federal government would dictate terms to the states and to the people. But just in case they included the 10th Amendment. You know, the one the feds pretend does not exist while it actually does, all the while finding new rights and powers which don’t actually exist but the feds pretend they do via the ‘doctrine’ of penumbras and emanations. A living, evolving document if you will. Poppycock!

Federal officers and officials and judges love to cherry pick the Constitution, abiding by those parts that they like (such as extracting taxes and spending money), while conveniently ignoring the more troublesome parts, like the whole religious freedom thing or the part about the people bearing arms. The trouble with this approach is that the Constitution is like pregnancy. Well, not exactly like it but in one important aspect it is, i.e. a woman can’t be a little bit pregnant. Either she is or she isn’t. Similarly (stay with me), the Constitution is an all or none proposition. It must either be accepted and followed in toto or not at all. To accept anything less is lawlessness which leads to anarchy. In another way it is like the relationship between the Holy Bible, Christianity and Christians. The Bible is God’s written covenant between Himself and His people. For a Christian to ignore or disobey some parts while accepting and following others begs the question of whether that individual is truly a Christian. Can you truly be a Christian if you reject part of God’s Word? Likewise, can this nation truly call itself a lawful constitutional republic if it rejects parts of its foundational law? ‘No’ anyone?
If the nation collectively disagrees with a portion of the Constitution or if times have changed to the point of requiring modification, that is available through amendment. But only through amendment. Unilateral decisions by presidents or Congresses or Supreme Courts cannot and must not be permitted to change the fabric of the document. That is nothing more than rule by fiat, by decree, by the whims of men. And that is disaster. The beauty of our Constitution is its protection of the rights of the minority from the whims of the majority. The ruling majority cannot simply ride roughshod over the lives of those not in power. They cannot trample the God-given birthright of those they disagree with. But, if they are permitted to freely trample the Constitution at will then there is no hedge of protection otherwise available to those standing in their path of destruction. At that point we cease being the United States of (or in, as they used to say) America and have become a Unified State of America, where all power is vested in one federal government which alone dictates the scope of its power and authority. The rights of the citizens are not recognized as deriving from their God, but rather from their government. And what the government gives it can take back. The states have no power, if they even exist in more than name only. The people have no recourse, no ability to petition the government with their grievances for a just redress. Eventually anarchy and tyranny will rule the day. We will have sunk to the basest expression of human depravity. Perhaps, just maybe the drafters knew this about human nature and set about to write a document which took that into account. The document works as long as we all agree to abide by the complete, unaltered manuscript. We must also understand and teach our children that what the Constitution provides for is not pure, unfettered democracy which sounds good to the untrained ear but always leads to tyranny of the majority over the minority; but rather a republic, with democratically elected representatives, and with a Supreme Law that protects the God-given rights of the smallest minority among us. We must elect and appoint and hire people to all levels of government that have a strong sense of morality and ethics and the rule of law, who will respect every dotted-i and crossed-t of the Constitution if there is any hope for the survival of our republic. George Washington understood this when he said that “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.”

So how about it, is it time to throw in the towel and relegate the Constitution to a resting place in the National Archives? Is it too late to be saved? Can we find enough like-minded people to pool our resources and martial our strengths for one last great hurrah?! Time will tell, in very short order.

How about it Mr. Franklin, have we kept the Republic you gave us? Furthermore, can we keep it?

I pray to God that we can and will.

Techno Tantrum

Technology Hardware/Software Pet Peeves:

• The ‘On/Off’ conspiracy. Everyone knows what ‘on’ and ‘off’ mean. Who the heck can remember what the silly little circle and line mean? What’s wrong with ‘on/off?’

• Buttons with meaningless symbols on them. Triangles and exclamation marks, etc. Just write on the button what the heck it actually does!

• Software applications with goofy names that have no meaning relative to what the application actually does. Can’t we just call things email and calendar and search instead of Lotus Notes and Outlook and Entourage and Google?

• Error messages that don’t tell you what the error is, whether it’s even important or not and how you can fix it; or even if you need to or can. If it’s ‘Done, with errors’ what the heck am I supposed to think or do about it?

• Help files that don’t have entries for the most common problems that keep popping up.

• Trouble-shooting routines that never diagnose or fix the problem.

• ‘Productivity-enhancing’ applications that are not intuitive. It’s not obvious when you open them how they work or how they’re going to help you accomplish what it is that you want to do. It takes longer to read the instructions and figure out how to make them do what you need done than just doing it the way you always have. You wind up having to adapt your work routine to the application to make it work, rather than the application adapting to your routine. Ultimately it doesn’t really do anything to ‘enhance’ your productivity. All of these types of applications should start with a welcome page that asks, ‘What can I help you do today?’

• Applications should communicate in plain logical English sentences and phrases. Just like we all speak and write. The end-user should not have to learn computer geek-speak.

• Cryptic key-stroke combinations and hotkeys on the keyboard to make things happen that are totally arbitrary and meaningless.

• Applications that try to figure out what you’re trying to do and start doing things and making changes and decisions without your knowledge and permission. It may not even be what you want to do. Then you can’t figure out how to turn it all off and undo what the application has done.

• Applications that keep changing my formatting on the fly. Sometimes I want things to stay exactly the way that I created them, even if it doesn’t look right to the application.

• Things that don’t print the way that they look on the screen.

• Corporate networks that are so secure you can’t get any work done.

• So much corporate stuff loading at start-up that it takes 10 minutes to turn on your machine in the morning.

• A 100 megabyte QuickTime/iTunes update every week.

• Corporate software updates loading every morning when you start your computer.

• Default settings that no one would have ever selected and it’s impossible to find how to change them or turn them off. And they keep coming back, even after you change them but then you shut down the application and they go back to the old default when you re-start.

• Turning off a machine by pressing the ‘Start’ button!

• Numbers, letters and characters on microscopic buttons on cell phones/blackberries that no baby boomer can read!

• An office telephone that I have to go to a training class on just to know how to use the darn thing!

• Corporate web-based applications that are slower to load each page than the old client-server application.

• New and improved, that isn’t. Do designers/developers ever talk to end-users first?

• Those canned automated voicemail greetings/menus that go on for 10 minutes before you can leave a message.

I'll Be Forever in Your Debt...

So let me see, the United States federal government is over $13 trillion in debt and racking up over a trillion dollars more each year. Now we learn that in order to try to finance this deficit spending the federal government is going to buy its own debt. Huh? Run that by me again, slowly and with clarity. Let me think, how can the federal government get money to finance its deficit spending? Well, it can raise taxes on the citizens; and it does. But there is a point of diminishing returns that we have certainly already passed. The Laffer curve is real. At high levels of taxation business growth slows, job growth slows, people defer or shelter income and returns to the federal government coffers actually start to shrink. Lower the tax rates and the opposite happens, tax receipts actually grow. This is what Reagan did in the ‘80’s. But that is a discussion for another day.
The next way that the federal government can obtain funds is to sell bonds, T-bills and the like to U.S citizens, people in other countries and governments of other countries. Sell our debt, indenture the nation to a variety of creditors, don’t worry about ever really having to pay off the principle; just keep rolling it over and over to new creditors and pay the interest out of current tax receipts or borrowed money (is there a never-ending loop here?); or via new printed money added to the current money supply. This brings us to the third source of federal revenue: the printing presses.
This is the latest development being announced in the media-- monetizing the debt. The government is the only entity which can legally print its way out of debt. But can it really?? Dumping newly printed money into the current money supply doesn’t really add any new wealth, it’s not backed by anything of substance or value (except the federal government’s promise to pay, to make good on its debt. I know; ROTFL!). All this does is look good for a brief flash in the pan, then the effects ripple out through the economy, artificially inflating the money supply which ultimately only devalues the currency to the extent it was expanded and inflates the cost of everything-- labor and goods and services to the extent of the expansion. The final outcome is runaway inflation. Can you say Weimer Republic? Wheelbarrows full of worthless paper just to buy a loaf of bread. This can happen because our currency is not backed by anything tangible and universally accepted as valuable, such as say, oh something like gold. It’s only backed by the federal government’s, ahem promise to pay. Here we go again.
What would happen if you or I tried to buy all of our debt back? Could we? Well, if we actually had the money to buy our debt back then we really wouldn’t be in debt would we? (Hint Uncle Sam) We can’t raise taxes on our neighbors to buy our debt back. In our case that would be called theft! We probably can’t just keep rolling it over to new creditors because our credibility to pay it back, our promise to pay (which is in reality our credit rating score) would plummet and no one would eventually take our credit. Sort of like the Chinese getting skittish about buying our bonds. Something about that promise to pay thingy. There has actually even been talk about lowering the federal government’s credit rating. Hmmm. Now you and I certainly can’t print money and monetize our debt, well legally anyway. So we’re stuck, we actually have to pay back our debts with real money or file for bankruptcy.
Time to start burying gold in the backyard?