It has now become clear to me that the United States Government has become the enemy of these United States, its fifty states, its cities and towns and counties, federalism, and its citizens.  The legislators, the executive-branch elected and appointed officials, a majority of federal judges and justices, the departmental bureaucrats, and the agency regulators by the hundreds of thousands have adopted and reveled in the rule of men as illegal-and-unconscionable-substitute for the rule of law.

Some went to Washington fully-intent on this.  Others went to Washington with proper courage, conviction, and intent to obey in fact and spirit their oaths of office.  But with very-rare exception, they have been co-opted and corrupted.  The rare exceptions have been marginalized, and will soon be replaced.  Given human nature's underbelly, power -- when employing the rule of men versus the rule of law --corrupts.  Having over handsfull of decades parlayed power such that it has become near-absolute, the legislators, the executive-branch elected and appointed officials, a majority of federal judges and justices, the departmental bureaucrats, and the agency regulators by the hundreds of thousands have acquired and now exercise near-absolute power, and have become corrupted near-absolutely.

These officials have even adopted a separate language, that to hide their malfeasance.  Witness a budget process called "base-line budgeting" which starts with the assumption that each department, each agency, and each program will get a -- it's somewhere around 8-9% -- percentage increase each fiscal year, that before adjusting for inflation on top of that, regardless of whether said is necessary, useful, appropriate, or even requested.  That way, when Republicans in the 1990s sought to reduce an increase in the school-lunch (unconstitutional) program from the automatic 8% to 4%, they were charged with "cutting" and attempting to starve children.  Every -- and I mean "every" -- spending cut being proposed or floated by either the President or a legislator or a candidate right now is employing this trick.

Witness the Congressional Budget Office.  The CBO by law must ignore reality when "scoring" legislation or executive orders.  Scoring is projecting economic impact, both vis-a-vis revenues and expenditures.  As example, the CBO, scoring a bill that would increase the marginal tax rate on "the evil rich" to 100% would have to assume that "the evil rich" would continue to work, produce, and earn with no change even if the government took all of their money.  The reality is that "the evil rich" would pay to the Treasury exactly the same amount if the marginal tax rate were 100% as if it were 0%, but unknown, though estimable, anywhere in between.  It's called the "Laffer Curve".  This sham explains why liberals in the "country class" still argue about the "Bush tax cuts for the rich" and why liberals in the "ruling class" still demagogue the issue.

Try to read a piece of legislation.  Newly-elected legislators have to take courses to understand such legislatese.  Further, increasingly, legislation is written leaving details to newly-established regulatory agencies.  Watching that process is worse than visiting a sausage factory.  The Patient Protection and Healthcare Affordability Act of 2010, itself, created more than a thousand agencies writing so far more than 100,000 pages of regulations that none of us has seen, but all of us are controlled by.  This isn't unintended consequence.  This is malice aforethought.

There's a cadre of about 575 people in Washington D.C. who rule.  The roster changes over time, but all use the same playbook.  If the 575 didn't want America to have $114 trillion in unfunded liabilities, it wouldn't be.  If the 575 didn't want America to spend $100+ billion more per month than it receives in tax revenues, it wouldn't be.  If the 575 didn't want America to be $14.5 trillion in debt and looking to exceed $16 trillion in the next year, it wouldn't be.  If the cadre in Washington and the cadre in your state's capital, and the cadre in your locale didn't want you to have to seek and pay for a license to cut hair, to give a manicure, to sell a pie, to sell lemonade (even if you're age eight), to hunt, to fish, to marry, to divorce, to adopt, to buy a car, to buy or sell or own a handgun, and on and on and on ad infinatum, it wouldn't be.

Please be clear about where we are.  The $114 trillion in unfunded liabilities is a rectangle of $100 bills filling the footprint of the former World Trade Center Complex and stacked taller than the towers.  Invert that picture, and now see the debt as a hole.  It is that that we face, and that's just our fiscal problem.  If we cut the federal government's spending by 80% -- and to return to the Constitution, as written, original meaning, that's what it would take -- immediately and permanently, and its revenues remained constant, we'd pay off our federal debt in 2080, 68 years from now.  For those of you with enough rings in your tree, think through the period encompassing the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.  That's the timeframe we're talking.  Yes, at the beginning there wasn't even television.

I would wager that there hasn't been a member of the cadre of 575 during the past 68 years who would propose cutting the federal budget by 80% and restoring the lost Constitution.  And just as there aren't any 68-year home mortgages, there aren't any 68-year Treasury Bonds either.

For some context, I'm 69 1/2-years-old and wouldn't move to, say, Zimbabwe or Bangladesh to get away from this problem.  If I were under 50, certainly if I were in my 20s or 30s, however, I'd look at returning to Hong Kong, or moving to Singapore, Australia or New Zealand, or returning to Switzerland or Panama.  None is as desirable as America could be, but all are preferable to what America has become.

Bottom line.  What needs to happen if America is to be all that it could be, land of the free, home of the brave, shining city on a hill?  Americans -- by the tens of millions -- must run, walk, bike, train, bus, fly, auto, even crawl to Washington D.C., persuade Capitol Police to either join them or at least step aside, persuade National Guard to refuse to muster, then storm the Capitol, drag (gently and nonviolently) the 575 out, then secure the Capitol and keep it vacant, except for maintenance and custodial services.

If I were given the opportunity, I would invite Jenny Beth Martin, Dawn Wildman, Mark Meckler, and Debbie Dooley, all of the Tea Party Patriots, to participate in key roles on behalf of the tens of millions and on behalf of America.  I would invite Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution and Dr. Walter Williams of nearby George Mason University to participate as economists and patriots, and as advisors.  I would also beg the participation of Dr, Randy Barnett, Constitutional scholar, author, and professor of law at Georgetown University in the interest of restoring the lost Constitution.

We would meet with American and global media to let them know that the legislative branch was in recess until further notice, that this would serve notice to the White House that the People were asking the President to resign immediately.  If he would not, then this would serve notice to the world that, though the President continued to speak on behalf of the pre-existing United States Government, that he no longer spoke on behalf of the American People.  What was happening was a peaceful coup by the People and a very-temporary benevolent dictatorship.

Martin, Wildman, Meckler and Dooley would be tasked with evaluating current congressmen and senators who had been supported by the Tea Parties, and who had remained completely steadfast vis-a-vis reducing spending and government, and abiding the Constitution.  These people would be added as counselors and also as spokespersons around the country for what was being done and why.

We would defund the White House and defund all federal inferior courts to the Supreme Court, then (ala the 1930s threat of FDR) stack the Supreme Court with three additional strict-constructionist constitutionalists.  With the advice and counsel of the Drs. Barnett, Sowell and Williams we would eliminate the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health & Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing & Urban development, cut the budgets of Interior by 80%, State by 70% (including all of the Agency for International Development [USAID]).

Professor Dr. Barnett would supervise a review by legal interns and pro bono lawyers of all federal regulatory agencies and regulations.  Regulations would be eliminated which should not, and could not now, pass the "necessary and proper clause" constitutional standards.  Agencies which did not have regulations which were retained, would also be eliminated.  The current cost of these regulations is estimated by the Heritage Foundation to be $1.75 trillion annually.

All amendments to the Constitution except the 20th and 22nd would be submitted for repeal. To the term limit imposed by the 22nd, a new amendment would be submitted imposing a two four-year-term limit on senators (to match the length of gubernatorial terms), and two two-year terms for congressmen, and a single ten-year term for Supreme Court Justices.  We would pass HR-25 The FairTax, to take effect the January 1 following repeal of the 16th amendment, and the President of the People -- the temporary benevolent dictator -- would sign it.  A new balanced-budget amendment would also be added.

The POP (President of the People) would have the United States resign from the United Nations and deport it.  They would resign from NATO as well.  With counsel from Dr.s Sowell and Williams, the United States would also sever any and all ties with the Federal Reserve Banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and with both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

With counsel and assistance from Drs. Barnett, Sowell and Williams, the United States would immediately cease all "welfare", whether foreign or domestic, whether individual or corporate.  Federal participation in and mandates for Medicaid would end at the end of that month.  Ditto for Medicare Part D.  Medicare A and B would continue as a voucher program after one year for all current recipients and all citizens age 60 and over for life at unadjusted current levels.  For those age 50 to less-than-60 they would get the same less 5% for each year or part-year under 60.  For those below 50, they would be dropped.  Please note both that the FairTax will replace all payroll taxes and more, and that studies indicate that those who would opt out if they could at age 45 would do better than break even.  Social Security will be sunset on the same schedule as Medicare A and B.

The POP will order that all U.S. military troops be returned to the United States forthwith and as quickly as logistically-possible.  Our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan will be terminated.  Some will be reassigned to temporarily defend our borders, others our seashores.  Our land borders will then be secured using lasers and drones, and some troops to manage said.

The paydown of the nation's debt will be accelerated (a) by the FairTax, (b) by reduction of the amount of unfunded liabilities via the sunsetting of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and (c) by growth in the private-sector economy and, thus tax revenues.  New projections will be formulated to replace 2080 timeframe with a much-earlier end-date. 

Each of the states will schedule elections for federal offices.  U.S. Senators will be elected by each state's legislature.  Congressmen and Electoral College members will be elected as per each state's legislature's formula.  To understand all that is proposed herein, one must review the amendments to the Constitution added, but particularly those repealed.  Implications are many.  Though most are confused by this, please note that absolutely no one has a right to vote in a federal election.

The premise for the following is available at this previous essay blogpost.  It should be read first.  Then, if and only if America still stands in 2012 and with Tea Parties recruited-and-promoted primary candidates taking on Republican incumbents who wussed and were nadless, I call for the following:

Please let us hear the following in a thirty-second commercial.

To those among us who receive money and benefits from our federal government, I ask that you listen up for just a minute. The federal government has zero money and zero stuff that it doesn’t first take by force from others among us, the ones who produce what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, what we talk and text on, etc., and produce with hard and long work and lots of smarts.

 Sooner or later — and sooner has become more and more likely — they will find it no longer worth working and producing, and our federal government will just run out of money and stuff. To those among us who receive money and benefits from our federal government, I ask you to think — yes, think — about what you will do when the well runs dry, when the free lunch disappears, when the gravy train leaves the tracks, indeed when the producers just stop producing, and the government has no one to tax.

Or how about this sound-bite?

Government – specifically Democrats – destroyed the black family. Black men will have to fix that, but we Tea Party Republicans promise to get government programs out of their way. We want black men to once again be fathers rather than mere drive-by sperm donors. We want black children to learn what a man should be from their father, a role-model in the home.

This might be a 20-30-second spot.

Government – both Republicans and Democrats – have bankrupted your children and your grandchildren, even before they’re born. The current leftist-Democrat congress and administration have so crippled government revenues while spending beyond comprehension that America is already on the edge of a cliff.  We Tea Party Republicans promise to fix that. It will not be easy and not be quick. We’ll stop doing government and start undoing government. At first, most won’t like it. You’ll see what’s lost, but not what’s gained. Your children will. You’re grandchildren will. And they’ll thank you for it.

Aim this at so-called "Independents". 

Government for many decades has served as a ceiling. It limits energy production. It limits business potential. It stifles creativity and invention. It enslaves people on welfare and keeps them from being all that they can become. It makes operating a business so difficult that jobs by the millions are taken overseas. We Tea Party Republicans will  return government to its rightful role, the floor, one that’s level and allows all who wish to succeed.

Try this on college seniors.

If you want government to give things to you, you should vote for Democrats. They’ll steal it from other folks for you. If you want government to get out of your way, to quit stealing what’s yours, to allow you to grow and thrive, vote for us, the Tea Party Republicans. Government has no property or assets that it hasn’t taken from the American people, and it would have been better in the people’s hands than in politicians’ hands.

I'd love to see a Republican candidate say this to a local NAACP or Urban League meeting.

You know what “Affirmative Action” means? Half the time it means that a black person gets admitted to a college where they’ll fail or promoted to a job where they’ll fail. The other half of the time it means that a black person gets a job or into a college for which they’re eminently qualified, and all the white folks just know for sure that it was “Affirmative Action” that got them there.

“Affirmative Action” is what liberal-Democrat whites do to help blacks because those Democrats just know that black people are incapable of succeeding without their help. How arrogant. How condescending. Part of why liberal Democrats get away with this arrogance and condescension toward, and at the expense of, blacks is that they have Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons as cover. Why do Jackson and Sharpton do it? Follow the money. It’s called shakedowns.

Housing and Urban Development – HUD – is very good at what it does. It develops slums, then leaves it to gangs to run them. It’s how they get all the poor black people in one place so that they have no idea that life could be different and better. It’s how government keeps poor black people dependent on government forever and voting for Democrats.

A story to be told to self-labeled "Democrats" and "Independents".

In 1978 Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, and a handful of other entrepreneurs founded Home Depot in Atlanta, Georgia with two big-box stores in then-vacant J.C. Penney stores.  The company now has more than 2,000 stores in all 50 states and around the world, including a few in China.

Along the way, the original-owner group has built and donated hospitals and cancer centers, sponsored myriad events to raise charitable moneys, and been great citizens.  Marcus has arguably done more for Atlanta as a community than everyone else combined.  I find it noteworthy that a recent top-ten list of the most-influential Atlantans doesn't even include him.  There are singers and actors, though.

Even more significant and important -- as I see it -- is that among Home Depot's employees hundreds have become millionaires.  Home Depot has grown producers.  Most significant of all, however, is that Marcus recently said that today's regulatory environment would make what they did unfeasible and impossible.

A young new-local-boy University of Tennessee grad, Jim Haslam, opened a gas station to begin his business career.  His son, Bill, later replaced him as CEO of what had become Pilot Oil and Pilot Travel Centers.  Bill also became mayor of Knoxville and is now Governor of Tennessee.  Pilot is the largest travel-center (truck-stop) company in the world.  Haslam admits that today's regulatory environment would make what they did unfeasible and impossible.  The first station would never have opened.

Today, you can't cut someone else's hair with first completing government-mandated schooling and paying to become licensed.  Same if you want to contribute to a bake sale.  Police closed down a Georgia lemonade stand opened by a couple of eight-year-olds and levied a fine of $500.  The little girls weren't licensed.

"Give me liberty or give me death", said Patrick Henry.  Today, he'd be in jail for sure.  New Hampshire's motto is, "Live free or die."  Unfortunately, they don't give directions as to where you may do that.

There were more government regulations written and imposed during the 1930s than in the entire rest of the history of these United States . . . until 2009.  There have been more in the last 2 1/2 years than in the entire rest of the history of these United States . . . including the 1930s.

It is my opinion that you who almost-universally support and promote "a woman's right to choose" -- that is when the subject is abortion -- should also support and promote a woman's right to choose, say, a lightbulb or a showerhead or a toilet or a hairdresser or, indeed, a breast cancer treatment.

Okay, let's get to common ground where we can all agree.  Businesses and corporations should pay higher taxes.  Can I get a show of hands?

Businesses and corporations should lose their tax "loopholes" and "write-offs" and "deductions", and for sure when "corporate jets" are involved.  Can I get a show of hands?

Work with me here now.  Your grocery store:  What kind of profit margin on a dollar of sales does it have?  40 cents? 30 cents?  20 cents?  What?  If typical, after expenses, it's about 1.5 cents.

Should we increase their tax rate?  If we disallowed their deducting, say, the cost of utilities, what would happen?  Either prices to you would rise by that amount or the grocer would go out of business.  Okay, so which do you prefer?

Businesses and corporations don't pay taxes, folks.  They collect the taxes from their customers, and pass them on to the government.  If they didn't, they'd go broke.

Okay, so at least we can agree on the "corporate jets, right?  Well, let's just look at it for the fun of it.

You're the vp of operations for Home Depot.  You have 2200+ stores, each a big business and each a big part of its community.  Let's say you have operational problems -- maybe requiring a serious fix with store management or possible replacement -- with 10 of your U.S. stores.  You're at the corporate offices in Marrieta, just northwest of Atlanta, Georgia.

Though there is a private airport supporting non-commercial traffic just down the highway five minutes, you could go to Atlanta's Hartsfield International, just an hour's drive if it's not rush hour.

The stores in question are in Gainesville, Florida, in Blacksburg, Virginia, in Lexington, Kentucky, in Amherst, Massachusetts, in Hamilton, New York, in Ames, Iowa, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in Bend, Oregon, in Bellingham, Washington, and in Truth-or-Consequences, New Mexico.  And it's unknown how much time on the ground will be required to resolve the issue at each store.

As vp of operations, how much-more-productive can you be going to and from close-in airports, not having to be there an hour-and-a-half-minimum ahead of each  flight, not going through security, not having baggage restrictions, and not trying to make airline schedules and deal with delays and cancellations?

The United States Government, folks, doesn't grow America.  It shrinks it.  The Bernie Marcuses and the Jim Haslams and the Bill Gates grow America, create jobs, create millionaires, become philanthropists, and should be applauded, not denigrated, not envied, not regulated, and not stifled.  Or, like many already have, Home Depot could leave Marietta, Georgia and move its corporate offices to some other country, where taxation would be lower, regulation less onerous, and appreciation widespread.

A closing thought for the day, folks.  For all of America's history, those who sought opportunity and freedom gravitated here from all over the globe, those "tired, those poor, those huddled masses yearning to be free."  And it was said that we never had to stop boats from fleeing America to go elsewhere.  That changed with and from the Clinton Administration.  They, the Democrat-led 110th and 111th congresses, and now the Obama Administration, along with its czars, have passed laws and implemented regulations to prevent America's most-productive-and-successful from fleeing the United States and taking their assets with them.

Should we be the land of opportunity or the land of regulation and limitations?  The magnet or the repellent?  Home of the brave or home of the helpless?  The beacon of light or the tiny-curly-fluorescent-dictated-hazmat lightbulb?  The shining city on the hill or the coast-to-coast slum?  Trickle-down economics ala Marcus and Gates and Haslam and millions like them, or trickle-up-poverty as planned by Pelosi, Reid, and Obama and hundreds like them?

There are some 575 political lions in Washington D.C., Kings of Beast in terms of political power.  And because the 575 -- as a slowly-rolling cadre of plunderers -- eviscerate the United States Constitution and scoff at the Declaration of Independence with its proclamation of unalienable rights, all in service of their unquenchable thirst for power and prestige and their seemingly-incurable addiction to spending . . . other peoples' money, their power and egos grow geometrically while those pesky unalienable thingies wither on the vine and become unrecognizable.

If one is of those who must be elected to the Gang of 575 every 2-to-6 years, one might try to persuade individuals that you're a statesman or a conservative or a steward or the like.  But, you'd have to speechify rationally, logically, and with factual evidence to get that job done.  The great majority wouldn't dare point to factual evidence, much less argue rationally.  They would lose, and they know it.

Instead, they divide the nation into groups and "communities".  Blacks, minorities, women, "undocumented workers", "the poor", GLBT, "middle class", "blue collar", "the less-fortunate", encourage each group to see themselves as victims, then demagogue the bejeebers outa each cause for which the pols will fight.  Each of the groups has spokespersons emerge to provide soundbites for the lapdog media.  There's the race-pimps, the feministas, Code Pink, Latinos and Latinas wearing Che tee shirts, and union thugs.  The sum of the demagoguing-plunder-pols, the lapdog "news" media, the race, etc. pimps, and the union thugs comprised and comprise the progressives, liberals and just plain moochers.

Those who see as core basis for human interaction and community the unalienable rights to life, to liberty, and to property were for generations and for a century dedicated to personal industry and achievement by employment of their energy, their time, their intelligence and their wits.  They were also simultaneously dedicated to family, to church, to friends, and to community.  They had no excess time, industry, energy, intelligence and wits to dedicate to organizing and negating the progressives, liberals and just plain moochers.  The cacaphony from the progressives, the liberals and the just plain whining moochers was so loud and pervasive that many of the liberty-lovers thought that they were alone in disagreeing, and maybe even wrong.

Then came talk radio and the internet.  Then came "fair and balanced" and "we provide the news and you decide".  Millions of liberty-lovers discovered that they were, indeed, far from alone, and far from wrong.  And the advent of the blogosphere engendered, if not millions, tens-of-thousands of bloggers establishing communities of, say here, mostly liberty-loving-constitutionalist conversations.  Then were added "social media" such that now we can tweet our congressional leaders and even the White House, and post our thoughts on their Facebook "walls".

Early in 2007 -- the first year of the again-Democrat-controlled House and Senate -- I invented and inaugurated GetAmericaRight, a grassroots, bottom-up-activist liberty-loving-constitutionalist (original meaning) political community to recruit, choose, promote and elect Republican primary candidates who met our criteria to unseat incumbent RINOs and CINOs in all 435 congressional districts and in any state where a Senate election was to be held in 2008.  My initiative failed to gain sufficient traction, but within a year the Tea Parties "happened".

I uncomfortably went to a "Tea Party" rally here in Knoxville, Tennessee.  The only thing I'd ever protested was a traffic ticket, and I did that by myself, and only when the judge called me.  Most rallyers were uncomfortable to be there, and for the same reason.  The best-prepared at the outset were FairTax devotees because we had some signs and an already-rolling-existing cause.  I was absolutely blown away by my first Tea Party rally at the Capitol in Washington, and I assume so were the other 3-4 million in attendance.

The "victim and moocher gimme" protest rallies are top-down, organized and paid for by a "group" or "community", usually with bus transportation and a stipend provided by labor unions.  And they trash the site.  Tea Partiers are 180-degrees from there, and leave the site pristine.  The former groups are the typical pyramidal form.  Tea Parties are like octopi, no head, eight legs, and if you cut off part of a leg, it re-grows.  Tea Party opponents can demagogue and smear anyone they perceive to be a "leader", and it won't affect the movement one iota.  Time's 2008 Person of the Year was Barack Obama (See above re: "lapdog media"), but an objective appraisal would have selected the Tea Party.

Consider Congress and the DNC and the RNC and the czars and the regulators in the political arena to be lions, kings of the beasts and the animal kingdom, that only because of the power we've allowed them to assume, steal, and then assert.  Within that, even consider some the alpha-male lions.  What's the analogy here for a Nancy-Pelosi lion?  No, I won't go there.  Now consider -- throwing out your biases -- an impromtu assemblage of spotted hyena.

It's not a family, not an organization, not a pack with any permanence.  But, with no leader and no assigned roles these individually-less-powerful animals can bob and weave, zig and zag, to and fro, charge and retreat, then join together in a supper of lion and lion.  Don't know what it means, but when they're not supping on "king of beasts", they love to lick their genitals.  No, I won't go there either.

In the brand-new game, the "Ruling Class" is the lions and the "Country Class" with the Tea Parties on point are the spotted hyenas.  The lions and their lapdogs are saying that the number of Tea Party rallies and gatherings is declining, and that they are losing momentum and steam.  Meanwhile, the Tea Parties are target-tweeting, "walling", faxing, emailing, texting, and threatening the lions, intimating and intimidating, and all effectively.  The lions feel the hyenas at their heels.

The name of the game for liberty-loving-constitutionalist (original meaning) Republican candidates in 2012 -- if America makes it that far, and I'm doubtful, very doubtful -- is not to moderate, not to move to the middle, not to waffle, not to compromise, not to be "bipartisan", but rather to teach and persuade "moderates", independents, even leftist-liberal moochers and gimmes. 

Tea Partiers have promised to recruit and support 2012 primary opponents for any incumbent Republican who votes to increase the debt ceiling, and I applaud, support, and will participate in that.  Many among us should in my opinion do likewise.

Next, I'll make suggestions as to what I think Tea Party Republican candidates should say on the upcoming campaign trail.

The hue and cry for civility in today's political discourse is just one more "unintended consequence" of what progressive legislators, executives, bureaucrats, regulators, and jurists do.  And it is but another example of the reality that tens and tens of millions of chronologically-adult Americans are either ignorant or stupid or both.

"As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X.  Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or in the better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X . . .   What I want to do is look up C.  I want to show you what manner of man he is.  I call him the Forgotten Man.  Perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct.  he is the man who is never thought of . . .

"He works, he votes, generally he prays -- but he always pays . . . "

William Graham Sumner
Yale University, 1883

In his first campaign speech for the presidency in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did what progressives always do; he obfuscated, he plagiarized, and he lied.  In just one speech he flipped Sumner's treatise upside down, claiming that X -- not C -- was the "Forgotten Man", and  shed the "progressive" label in favor of stealing and redefining the term "liberal".  "Liberal" had meant "pro-individual liberty", and since it resonated, FDR stole it.

Roosevelt, like his progressive American predecessors -- Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson -- were all about what government could and should do, allegedly for the "Forgotten Man" (now X, not C).  This is how we got Prohibition, the New Deal, the Second New Deal, the Great Society, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, Jimmy Carter's Fair Housing executive order of 1980, TARP 1, TARP 2, QE-1, QE-2, and "Obamacare".

It should be noted that Professor Sumner was stumping against progressivism way before ratification during the Wilson first presidential year of the 16th amendment, bringing us the extraordinarily-progressive personal income tax.  Now progressives didn't have to coerce C any longer.  They just taxed him by force to do what they wanted, allegedly for X.

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Where I live here in Tennessee As and Bs have persuaded the State Legislature to pass and get signed by the Governor a bill outlawing smoking in restaurants and bars.  Rhetoric was loud, was contentious, even lacking in civility on the matter.  There's a reason for that.

In New York City, there is not only law prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars -- all restaurants and bars -- but prohibiting the use of transfats.  A new law to ban salt is in the works.  Rhetoric was -- and is -- loud, contentious, even lacking in civility.  There's a reason for that.

Knoxville, Tennessee just across the Tennessee River from me has just finalized selection of a dozen locations for new electric charging stations.  This is part of the San Francisco-based ECOtality's EV Project. The private concern has received grants from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2009 of $99.8 million, in 2010 of $15 million and from "partner" matches all to total about $230 million.  In my mind, there is zero reason for there to be a U.S. Department of Energy, much less one granting money to "green" firms and projects while regulating the bejeebers outa some poor shlub trying to open a gas station.  Am I sounding uncivil?  There's a reason for that.

_______________________________

How about if I open and operate a restaurant, customers may smoke if I say so and not if I say not.  It is, after all, my restaurant.  If I allow smoking and you don't like smoke, choose the restaurant across the street or down the block or down the road a piece.  You don't tell me what to do and I don't tell you what to do.

Ditto with transfats and salt and yada yada.  You choose what you want and I'll do likewise.  How about energy companies take the pulse of consumers and individually decide whether to focus on  oil, natural gas, solar, wind, coal, biofuel, ethanol, nuclear, or making cars out of tinfoil.  Some will win; some won't. So be it.

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What happens when governments do?  We get a zero-sum game.  Smokers lose; the other side wins.  Transfat lovers lose; the others win.  Salt lovers lose; others win.  It's either-or, win-lose, all-in-all-out, my-way or your way.

What happens when governments undo?  Smokers win and nonsmokers win.  Oh, and business owners win as well.  Some folks choose to see baseball while others choose to see football.  Some think the most-exciting sport is futbol -- that's soccer to you and me -- while others would rather watch grass grow..  It's not one size has to fit all.   Baseball wins and its fans do as well.  Football wins and its fans do as well.  Baseball fans aren't angry at football fans or vice versa.  I can sorta understand Navy guys in WW-II who got a tattoo, saying "Mom" while drunk in the South Pacific.  Other than that, tats are a scourge on humanity as I see it.  No girl or woman in the history of the planet has improved her appearance with a tat . . . or a nose ring for that matter.  Having made that clear, I see no reason why I should try to have someone pass a law outlawing tats . . . or nose rings.

Let's take Greenpeace, PETA, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Save the Earth, Friends of the Earth, International Agency for Sustainable Energy, Plant a Tree Today Foundation, and all of the other gazillion get-in-your-wallet nannies and do-gooders, along with the United Nations while we're at it, and ship them all to Haiti.  Even they can't make Haiti more hopeless.  Oh, and I forgot Michelle Obama, the public nutrition and exercise nanny and closet fried-foods piggy.

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So why are all the smart entrepreneurs and growing businesses and industries spending gobs on Washington lobbyists rather than market researchers?  With the latter you may grow market share a few percentage points or see how to position yourself better in the minds of members of select target markets.  With the latter you find out which way to play in the zero-sum game.  Why are investment bankers and stock brokers these days paying scant attention to market forces while focusing with laser-intensity on President Obama, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke?  The tail is wagging the dog.  Oh, and the marketplace of ideas, of inventions, of industriousness, of risk-reward -- the hallmark of Americanism and the American Dream toward which people flocked from around the globe -- is a hip-deep pile of dogsqueeze.

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Would the discourse be less-heated and more civil if there were no government (some call them "public") schools?  If there were no laws about pay and benefits?  If the "Civil Rights Act of 1964" had never been passed?  If there were no such thing as "government housing"?  If the government had never gotten into the business of medical care via Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and etc.?  If no government had a nanowit to do with the "institution of marriage"?

Folks, just pondering and writing this laundry list is like getting a massage.  My blood pressure is dropping like . . . the value of the dollar.  Can't we please have someone -- anyone -- in Congress or in a presidential primary shout from the podium, "What we here in the federal government need to do, and I mean now, is to undo . . . ," and then bullet-point for the next half-hour?  Please?

Former two-term (the limit) Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, is an honest politician.  "What?", you say, "that's not possible.  That's an oxymoron."  Currently, Johnson is also the Rodney Dangerfield of the Republican Presidential primaries.  He's getting no respect.  CNN didn't invite him for the televised New Hampshire debate.  Recent polls show Johnson in single digits.

Johnson is a triathlete, an ironman , and has climbed Mount Everest to the peak.  He started and  was owner-operator of a construction business in New Mexico before running for the state's governorship.  He won the Republican primary, defeating statee rep Richard P. Cheney (Thanks BrianR for the correction here).  He then won the general election, handily defeating the Democrat incumbent.  After his first term, he then ran against Albuquerque's Democrat mayor.   His campaign was that he'd continue doing what he had in his first term.  He won 55-45 percent.

During his two terms Governor Johnson slashed the size of state government, slashed the budget, pushed for statewide school vouchers, reduced crime, and led the fight against the huge Cerro Grande fire, earning praise from Republicans and Democrats alike.  He left office with a $1 billion surplus.   He earned the nickname "Governor Veto", vetoing 750 bills, many from Republicans, and employed the line-item veto thousands of more times.  He vetoed more than the other 49 state governors combined.

The construction company started as one man and, when he sold it, had a thousand employees.  The State, on the other hand, shrank in size, shrank in payroll, shrank in budget, shrank in tax rates, and left a surplus.  Grow private business, shrink government.  How do we stop legislators who are addicted to spending other people's money?  Have a chief-executive veto them . . . as often as it takes.

Johnson is fiscally-conservative, wanting a balanced budget immediately, cutting spending everywhere, including "entitlement" programs.  He is socially pro-liberty.  David Weigel of Slate calls Johnson "the original Tea Party candidate."

The "honest politician" lays it out at http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/.  Any disagreement I have with Gary Johnson is minor shading and tactic.  There is no candidate on today's radar with whom I more agree, and there hasn't been for a very-long time.  I met Gary Johnson early this Spring at the Republican Liberty Caucus meeting in northern Virginia, and found him most-amiable.

There is a lot to like about Congressman Dr. Ron Paul of Texas.  That he is known by colleagues in the House as "Dr. No" may be my favorite.  It is my mantra that the federal government doesn't need to do anything.  Indeed, it needs to undo a bucketload.

There is a lot to like about Congressman Dr. Ron Paul of Texas as a presidential candidate as well.  He advocates closing the Federal Reserve Banks and returning to the gold standard.  Massive evidence is there to show that the U.S. economy has been much-more-subject to booms and busts with the Fed than before it was founded a century ago.  Additionally, if there were ever a ripe opportunity for collusion and plunder at the expense of unalienable rights, the relationship between the Department of the Treasury and the private Federal Reserve Banks would top my list.  Witness "quantitative easing".

Paul argues for securing our borders with Americans' tax dollars as opposed to "nation building" (Bush 43's term) in Iraq and Afghanistan, and stationing troops from Germany to South Korea.  I disagree with Congressman Paul about whether we should have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan.  He says not, I say aye.  I'd have gone with better intel and with black ops.  He'd have not gone.  I'd have taken out Hussein and alQaeda.  Paul says that, if you hit someone with a stick, they will hate you, and likely strike back at some time.  I say, if you're gonna hit someone with a stick,  hit 'em very hard and with a really-big stick.  They'll then pretend to like you, and do everything they can to not provoke you ever again.

The good doctor advocates free markets for "healthcare", and I agree.  The doctor counts on his fellow physicians treating "the poor" pro bono, not per law, but per doing what is right.  I watch what "being green" does in terms of making corporate executives act silly, and have concern about there being unconscionable  pressure on physicians to give away parts of their lives, their liberty, and their property.  Further, if Americans who wish to then give freely to charity, it is they who pay.  If docs give away care, they still have, say, 65% overhead, and someone must pick up the slack.  If docs give freely, it is their paying patients -- wittingly or unwittingly -- who pay.  Ditto with hospitals.

In Paul's book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, he says that before there was Medicare and Medicaid,  " . . . every physician understood that he or she had a responsibility towards the less fortunate and free medical care was the norm."  It is at the very least interesting to me that a self-professed Libertarian would advocate such violation of liberty.

Ron Paul would be our first prexy to oppose any and all illegal immigration, oppose any and all amnesty, oppose "anchor babies", and reform from the ground up our immigration policy.  Ron Paul would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, and the federal government completely out of the education business.  I agree with him.

Ron Paul would work to repeal the 16th amendment, and would support the FairTax.  Those moves are consistent with his strong advocacy of individual privacy and protecting said from government intrusion.  In late 2009 -- way late -- he called "global warming" an "elaborate hoax".  I agree with all of this.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Paul says, allowed the federal government to intrude in every business in the country, and its hiring, employee relations, and more.  Further, it failed at its mission.  Paul says that the Act was a mistake, and I agree.

So I agree with a lot, and disagree with some.  What's the worst thing --  There is always a best and  a worst about someone who you either like a lot or despise -- about Ron Paul?
   With rare exception -- I assume, but have not yet witnessed -- the loyal and rabid supporters of Ron Paul are the most-obnoxious people on Planet Earth.  It is said that you can learn a lot about a person by the company they keep.  So, even if I want to support a Ron Paul candidacy, do I want to be a Ron Paul supporter?

For decades Democrats have obfuscated and demagogued about federal income taxes by talking about "tax cuts" when there is no such thing.  All that Congress and the President may do is change "tax rates".  Taxpayer behavior then determines whether anyone pays more or pays less.

The obfuscation and demagoguery du jour is "deficit reduction".  'Scuse me, but the real subject du jour must be debt reduction, not reducing how much we continue to increase our debt.  In FY 2011 the federal government is expected to spend 75% more than it takes in in revenues.  To actually reduce the nation's debt -- no, not deficit -- by a dime (pre-inflation), the budget -- everything on the table, the whole magilla, the full monte -- must be cut by more than 57%.

This Congress -- never mind the 2012 elections and stuff -- must cut $1.62 trillion from this year just to stop exascerbating the crisis.  Given a current federal debt of $14.5 trillion -- and federal government unfunded liabilities of in excess of $114 trillion -- and a fiscal necessity of eliminating said, this House of Representatives will have failed us, the American People, if it does not cut  FY 2010 spending  (There was no budget, despite there being a legal requirement for one) by $3 trillion.  Just for context, the Paul Ryan proposal was alleged to cut $4.3 trillion from the expected  annual deficit (not debt) . . . and over ten years.

That number  -- $3 trillion -- is a restrained and humble beginning, given the magnitude of the current disaster.  My analysis still has us a debtor nation well into the 2020s as we pay both debt and interest on it; and that is before we begin to actually fund the Social  Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other now-completely-unfunded liabilities.  As of this morning the Peoples Republic of China had already divested itself of 97% of all its U.S. Treasury bonds.  The ChiComs aren't All-State, the "good hands people".  Buh-bye.

The federal budget in 1960 was $151,000,000,000 (That's billion).  For 2011 it's $3,690,000,000,000 (That's trillion).  In 50 years the federal government's spending ballooned by 25 times.  No federal spending can occur unless and until the House of Representatives passes a bill or budget to allow it.  During the past half-century Democrats have controlled the House for 39 of those years.  The dozen years wherein Republicans were majority in the House, they reduced deficits to zero during the first half, then acted sorta like Democrats when George W. Bush became President.

Medical and pharmaceutical consumers have become addicted to treatment.  People call 9-1-1 for paramedics just because they're lonely.  Cost is no object.  Heck, it's someone else's money.  Welfare recipients spend 80% of the month's check in the first few days.  It's free money.  Every parent knows that it's easier to give in than to correctly parent.

Congressmen and the members of the "world's greatest deliberative body" -- that's how Senators think and talk about themselves -- are upon arrival, or soon become, addicted to spending money.  Not enjoy spending money; addicted to it . . . and it's other people's money, your money and my money.  Presidents suffer the same addiction.  They buy friends, buy futures, buy legacies.

When congressmen and senators meet wherever they meet now that smoke-filled rooms are verboten, they don't twist arms by negotiating who'll cut more from the other guy's home-state or home-district earmark pork.  The quid pro quo is always I'll support your pork if you'll support mine.  Absolutely nothing is easier for congressmen, senators, and prexys to do than spend money, other people's money, your money, my money.

When President Obama and his minions proclaim that the economy is improving, they mean it and it is by their definition.  Capitalism and the private sector is diminished and government; public-sector unions, and community organizers ala ACORN and SEIU, et al are empowered and expanded.

More than 80% of what some 575 legislators, executives, and a few jurists spend is unconstitutional, has been for decades, but they don't care.  Addictions make people that way.  A crack or heroin addict will steal, even kill to get more.

Reflect on what we've learned about treating addictions -- smoking, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, gambling, accumulating and hoarding, shopping, whatever -- and then apply that to how we should treat our 575.  If a Gang of pick-a-number gets together to McCain (I've made that a verb, and y'all know intuitively what it means), Tea Partiers should blow down the door and hurl some flashbangs in the room.  When Speaker Boehner and President Obama have their upcoming play date on the links, there'd better be a couple of Tea Partiers on the bags (caddying).  These addicts cannot be left alone with their poison, i.e., your money.

Unless Washington D.C. and most of Maryland and Northern Virginia is kept shaking and twitching with spittle dripping down chins, going through withdrawal, and unless the gnashing of teeth and the moaning from deprivation, is audible from sea to shining sea, and from Key West to the Montana Badlands; if not that, then the addicts are all still inhaling, guzzling, toking, parlaying, and spending.  And Timmy G and Benny B are printing new greenbacks and exchanging T's.

Just in case a congressman is reading this, and can't imagine how $3 trillion could possible be cut this year while we refuse to raise the debt limit one red cent,

• Defund the Department of Agriculture  $26 billion
  
• Defund the Department of Commerce  $13.8 billion
  
• Defund the Department of Education  $46.7 billion
  
• Defund the Department of Energy  $26.3 billion
  
• Defund the Department of Health & Human Services  $78.7 billion
  
• Defund the Department of Homeland Security  $42.7 billion
  
• Defund the Department of Housing & Urban Development  $47.5 billion
  
• Cut funding to the Department of the Interior by 70%  $8.4 billion
• Defund the Department of Labor  $13.3 billion
  
• Cut funding to the Department of  State by 60%  $31 billion
  
• Cut funding to the Department of Transportation by 50%  $36.3 billion
• Defund the Environmental Protection Agency  $10.5 billion
• Defund 50% of "other agencies"  $10 billion
  
• Defund the National Science Foundation  $7.0 billion
  
• Defund the Corporation for National and Community Service  $1.1 billion
• Defund Medicaid  $290 billion
• Defund all "mandatory" programs except Social Security and Medicare  $571 billion

That's $1.26 trillion, but using 2009 figures.  Add 40% conservatively for 2010, and you now are at $1.764 trillion.  Defund NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ACORN, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Defund 40% of the Department of Justice and defund the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Defund the Health Affordability and Patient Protection Act of 2010, and defund whomever has TARP money by what's left.  Defund the stationed troops and their facilities in East Asia and Western Europe, and bring them home to guard U.S borders.  The budgets of the House, the Senate, and the White House are all bloated.  Defund by 50%.

Two men, let's say,  may agree to have a committed relationship, including sexual, and it is the job of government -- in the final analysis, the federal government --to protect and defend that right against all comers, whether individuals or other governments.  Indeed, three men and four women, along with a transsexual whose current sex classification is unclear, may agree to have a committed relationship, including sexual, and it is the job of government -- in the final analysis, the federal government --to protect and defend that right against all comers, whether individuals or other governments.  They may also decide to include a goat and a Bengal tiger, since animals do not have unalienable rights.  The tiger, you might think, is not only gross like with the goat, but stupid as heck.  I agree, but the folks have an unalienable right to stupidity.  The "family", of course must own the goat and the tiger.

If this "relationship" has or acquires children, then we have a new subject and new discussion.  Others' rights and self-defense become germane.  Liberty may, indeed, now become license.

I have an unalienable right to do with my property whatever I wish, just as long as doing that whatever doesn't infringe on another's right to life, to liberty, and to property.  I -- my ideas, my talents, my treasures, my mind, and my body -- am my property.  Government, thus, seeks to protect my ideas and creations with copyrights and patents (as per enumerated power 6 of Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution).  If I choose to offer myself as a prostitute, and if someone -- another adult -- chooses to purchase my service and we agree on the terms, I have an unalienable right to do that, and it is the job of government -- in the final analysis, the federal government -- to protect and defend that right against all comers, whether individuals or other governments.

Since I have an unalienable right to property, and since my body is my property, I have a right -- from the Creator -- to offer any and all of my tissues and organs for sale on, say ebay or craigslist, and it is the job of government -- in the final analysis, the federal government --to protect and defend that right against all comers, whether individuals or other governments.  Willing buyers would then be free to bid on said and to come to agreement on terms, given their unalienable right to offer their property -- say, money -- in exchange.  Just as there is in the (semi-) "free" marketplace mansions and "affordable housing", not all folks' organs and tissues would be valued equally, so the market would include "affordable organs".

As I have an unalienable right to liberty and to property, I have a right -- from the Creator -- to grow corn or wheat or soybeans or coffee or marijuana or poppy with which to produce heroin or coca from which to produce cocaine.  And the result will be property of mine.  I then have a right -- from the Creator -- to offer said for sale to any adult who wishes to buy and of these on agreed-to terms.  The buyer, then, has an unalienable right to either exchange said with other agreeable adults or to consume them.  It might well be stupid, but I iterate that we all have an unalienable right to stupidity.  It is the job of government -- in the final analysis, the federal government --to protect and defend those rights against all comers, whether individuals or other governments.

The Harrison Tax Act of 1912 under progressive President Woodrow Wilson sought to control heroin and then cocaine as well.  It was the first skirmish in what was to become America's "War on Drugs".  In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared the "War on Drugs", calling it America's enemy #1.  For four full decades the federal government has spent tens of billions of dollars while incarcerating millions of Americans for exercising their liberty.  American government should act as necessary to protect children.

It took but just under fifteen years for the nation to undo the 18th amendment with the 21st.  Woodrow Wilson generated both the controls on heroin and cocaine and abolition.  Both were gross plundering of liberty.  Declare peace.  Sign a new treaty.

If I own cocks, it is my right to have them fight on my property and to sell tickets for others to watch.  If I own dogs, it is my right to train them to fight, invite others of like mind to bring their fighting dogs, hold contests, and sell tickets for others to watch.  Both the venue and the animals are my property.  If I own a restaurant, no one -- no local government, no state government, and not the federal government -- has a right to prohibit me from allowing smoking on my property.  And no one has a right to smoke on my property if I disallow it.

If I wish to sell raw -- never mind rare -- hamburgers at my eatery to adults who wish them, that is my right.  Prudence, though, would suggest that I get my customers to sign liability waivers.  It's my free choice and the customer's free choice.  If I want to cut hair, extract teeth, perform heart transplants, complete others' tax forms, etc. it is my right to offer those services and it is the right of adults everywhere to either patronize me or not, all without the interference of any government or licensing or certifying body.  Caveat emptor!

Am I against all licensing?  Absolutely not, just most.  I think that requiring training and a license before driving a motor vehicle on the roadways, piloting a boat on the waterways, or piloting an aircraft in the skies can pass the "necessary and proper" clause test for a priori proscription.

It is, of course, not only the job of the federal government to protect and defend individual liberty and private property, but that of the states as well.  If a local government or state government infringes on unalienable rights, plaintiff may see remedy in that state's courts.  If that state's court system fails to right the wrong, however, the plaintiff may seek relief in the federal system.  One might only hope that the courts, including the Supremes, do a pantload better than in Kelo v. City of New London.

In my lifetime of now almost seventy years, I've known no president, no governor, no judge or justice, no legislator, and not a lot of just folks who've advocated what I just have, but then, almost everyone and anyone is more progressive than I.  And as well, human nature being what it is, normalcy bias is near ubiquitous.  If in our lifetimes, we've never seen something different, it's hard to imagine its happening.  It's why so few can see America's current implosion.

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While most Americans -- starting, maybe, the second winter of the Virginia Colony in the first decade of the 17th century under Governor Bradford -- have relished liberty and freedom, rugged individualism, the opportunity to reap what they sow, and the pursuit of the American Dream, not all have.  There have always -- it's human nature -- been some who have wanted happiness delivered rather than pursued.  These include two distinct types: the "ruling class" plunderers and the "country class" moochers and gimmes.  And the two types wash each others' hands, have a quid pro quo.  These folks trade liberty for comfort and security, but, necessarily, at the expense of the producers.

The American society and economy has finally passed a tipping point wherein there are more people riding in the wagon -- either just sitting or giving orders to the still working -- than pulling the wagon.  To buy the support and votes of the moochers and gimmes the "ruling class" plunderers have spent the society and economy -- today's, tomorrow's, the rest of this century's -- into bankruptcy, collapse and implosion.  There is no will in Washington D.C. by anyone involved to abide the oaths of office to which they swore.

Normalcy bias is part of human nature.  If you've never seen something happen or learned of its happening, it is all but impossible to imagine it.  All of the evidence -- and it is massive and consistent -- is there for any and all to see that America is about to implode, and the implosion will be lightning quick.  Some Americans can imagine Russia imploding or Greece or Iraq or Libya, but not -- definitely not -- the United States, the biggest-and-strongest, the word's "super power".  Sure, we're in some trouble, but, hey, we're America and we're Americans.  Rome fell, and America is as well, and for the same reasons.

Gimmes, moochers, "ruling class" plunderers, they traded infringed liberty for comfort and goodies.  As well, however, so have Christians -- no, not all, not most -- wanting to outlaw gay marriage, have blue laws, close shops on Sundays.  So have anti-smoking zealots, environmental nutjobs, anti-capitalists, healthy-living advocates, and all the folks who just think everyone should live the way they do or want to.  The nannies.  Because these people are so convinced that they're right and smarter than the rest of us, it never ever occurs to them that if they get government to take away the rights of others, government can also be made by others to take away their rights.  After a while, no one has rights.

Three- hundred-million people have allowed -- often encouraged -- about 575 federal legislators, justices, and executives to eviscerate the Constitution and the rule of law, collude with union thugs and corporate-titan-plunder sleaze, buy votes, and kick the can of shattered America down the road to the next generation of 575, who duplicate the feat at no personal cost.  Without the 575, none of this debt would exist.  Without the 575, none of these entitlements and welfare and "cash for clunkers" crappola would happen.  If the 575 didn't want all of this, it wouldn't be.  And we put the 575 there, and returned them there, and returned them there, and retain them there.  And pay them . . . whatever they decide . . .  to do it . . . whatever they decide it is.

What incredible fools.  Well, American Dream?  R.I.P.  Somebody play Taps.  How about a 200-million-gun salute.  Is that Kate Smith over there?

Then -- very soon -- will come anarchy and rioting in America's streets, exhibiting class warfare and hatred for the "evil rich" and lust for their "stuff".  It will have to play its course before quiet results from sheer exhaustion and adrenaline depletion, along with absence of food and drink and shelter.  The "ruling class" will have bunkered itself securely while the raggedy-assed masses have childish tantrums.

The entire world will quickly become an immensely-more-dangerous sphere, where thugs and trouble can be seen in any direction and at any distance, and leadership and protection found nowhere.  Global anarchy will be unleashed, and massive devastation will accrue.

Like the Romans, my fellow Americans, though we'd been admonished to the contrary, we came to be convinced that there is such a thing as a free lunch.  We were, of course, wrong.  In the midst of all of the rioting and anarchy, just think what most of the rioters and anarchists will still be seeking.  Amazing.  Will we never learn?  "You can't fix stupid."

*It's too late to undo progressivism in America.

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As for me, I'll enter the crisis with little planned.  My wife won't allow guns in our house.  She -- as educated as she is -- as I see it, suffers near-ubiquitous normalcy bias.  Politically, she has no core or absolutes.  Everyone has a right to his opinion, you know, and that doesn't make anyone right.  A majority of her family voted for Obama, and a sister works for him as an assistant secretary of agriculture.  They're big fans and advocates of "social justice".

I'll have a stuffed freezer and pantry, some stored gas for the boat, access to ample water (I already do) . . . until it's all taken.  I have assets and investments . . . until they're taken.  Like even 97% of all of America's so-called "poor", I have television and it comes to me via satellite.  Programming will become even more-universally crap.  So, I'll flush three times to evict that crap to compensate for my Gore-toilet.  And I'll remove the government-imposed restrictor on my showerhead, that to be able to rinse off the "ruling-class" bilge.  Then, I'll live simply on what's left, whatever that is . . . until it's over.

I've said this hereon before, but I'd have already left, moved myself, family, assets, investments, and life to an island off Panama.  That'd be my exit strategy.  But, my wife sees zero reason to leave the lovely place we have and move farther from her family.  My "ranting" causes eyes to roll and heads to shake horizontally.  Probably deserved.  My wife's probably spot-on, and I'm out to lunch, way off the reservation.  Oh well.

If Paul Revere were to ride down my street, shouting, "We have anarchy and chaos coming!" people would poke their heads out and order fries with it . . . and a medium drink.

Recently in Ubiquitous myths: exhibit A I spoke about the "poor" and how "the poor" reflects a stage rather than a permanent condition. Much earlier back in 2009, I'd also written and posted here on "The Poor Revisited".   The Obama Administration now seeks to obfuscate.

As of the 2010 Census, boys and girls, the "poor" ain't poor.  The picture conjured by the in-the-tank-for-big-progressive-government media is of Americans living like Haitians after the earthquake or fly-covered children in the Congo.

The median American "poor" person owns a home (3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, garage, patio) and the residents are not cramped therein.  The space per resident is larger than for a middle-income resident of, say, Paris or Rome or Munich or Stockholm, London or Vienna.   The median American "poor" person has air conditioning; has two color televisions, cable or satellite service, a VCR or DVD and a stereo, refrigerator, freezer, microwave, stove, washer and dryer, and owns his own car (30% own two).  By his own words, he has access to adequate medical care, is able to feed and clothe his family, and meet the family's essential needs.  In contrast to the picture of the Haitian or Congan starving child, the average "poor" person in America is classified as "obese".  Indeed, Census figures indicate that the "average poor" child has the same nutrition as the average "middle-class" child and 100% of necessary protein.

In America one is "poor" either because (a) they are young and just starting to be a producer rather than a dependent child or a student; (b) they have made negative choices and behaved badly; or (c) they are the dependent child of a "b" who continues to behave so as to remain poor.  At age 16 I was a "c".  By age 18, after two years living on my own, I was no longer poor.

There are three progressive talking-point terms that make me want to puke: the "less-fortunate", the "more-fortunate", and "giving back".  Progressives are either demagoguing, or actually believe that there is a communal and finite pile of money from which the "more-fortunate" are those that found the pile earlier and took more than their fair share, or that the "more-fortunate" were allowed to hoodwink the "less-fortunate" out of their stash.  Progressives either are economics-clueless as to that and how wealth is created or just refuse to acknowledge it.

Even with the Obama Administration trying its very best to implode capitalism and the American economy as a matter of principle and ideology -- and so far succeeding quite well at it -- if I weren't retired or if I had to, I could have worked and prospered over the last two years.  When someone has a problem, that creates an opportunity for another to solve it.  Just as one of many possible examples, I'd have contracted with laid-off construction and remodeling workers, contacted banks now holding thousands and thousands of foreclosed and empty houses, and offered to watch over and secure them, make repairs as necessary to maintain value, all for a fee plus actual costs.

The "do-gooders" in our midst who seek to "end chronic homelessness" or "end poverty once and for all" are feelers, not thinkers, well-intentioned, but hopelessly-naiive.  Sorta sad.  Government, now having spent $trillions on the "War on Poverty" boondoggle of President Lyndon Johnson, all while admitting -- albeit falsely -- that the problem keeps getting worse, isn't said.  It's outrageous and intolerable.  It should be stopped.  Welfare by government must end.  It enables slavery, not progress.

Human nature is what it is.  Included is that people respond to incentives and to disincentives.  If, for example, the federal government taxes the earnings of "the rich" at 0%, the Treasury will receive zero.  If the federal government taxes the earnings of "the rich" at 100%, the Treasury will receive zero . . .  and a bucketload of unrich will lose their jobs.  In the average "poor" household there is one person working outside the home, part-time at less than 30 hours.  In the average "rich" household there are two or more persons working outside the home, each full-time, and that's not a mere 40 hours, and they've better-educated themselves and are, thus, more-productive.

The Obama Administration will this year redefine poverty, that because the progressive lie is loosing its luster.  Rather than define "poverty" in terms of purchasing power -- i.e., how much stuff you can buy -- it will hereafter be defined as relative purchasing power -- i.e, how much steak and potatoes you can afford relative to other people.  The effect will be that, if each and every American -- from the "poorest" to the "richest" (current definition) -- had their income tripled, there would be zero drop in "poverty" (new definition).  And under the new Obama definition the poverty rate versus the United States would be lower in Haiti, Albania and Bangladesh.

The one and only way under the Obama plan to reduce "poverty" is to shrink inequality.  Wealth must be taken from those who have it and transferred to those who have less.  Unless that is achieved, "poverty" will always be with us, and progressivism will always have its mission.

If the United States federal government disincentivises working long and hard, creating, inventing, and producing value for others, America will cease being the economic, technological, and scientific engine of the world . . . or itself.  If the United States federal government also incentivises the behaviors that have always resulted in people becoming and staying "poor" (current definition), it will result in (a) much more equality of outcomes, (b) an end to "trickle-down" economics, and (c) replace it with trickle-up poverty.

The tax-rate share for the "rich" in 1980 was 5.62 times that of the "poor".  In 2008 it was 9.0 times, a 60% increase.  But, for the Obama Administration, that's not nearly enough.  Is America better having Bill Gates and Steve Jobs use their wealth to invent and create new marvels and the resulting new jobs and greater productivity, or have the federal government take their -- excuse me, that -- wealth to hand out to the near-non or non-producers so that they can purchase more beer, more cigarettes, and more lottery tickets?  And are "the poor" better off with more job opportunities or more handouts?

So who wins with progressivism?  The formerly-"rich"-now-plundered producer class?  The "poor" non-producing-now-loaded-with-more-stuff moocher class?  The progressive government "ruling class"?  Remember that the "ruling class" always gets and keeps its goodies while fleecing the "country class".

Each human being is endowed by the Creator with the unalienable right to life.  America's Founders so proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, then wrote the United States Constitution defining a federal government with the duty and responsibility to collectively protect and defend that unalienable right along with liberty and property (with which to pursue happiness).

Dr. Pete Stevens, aka "drpete"

So, when does human life begin and when does one become so endowed with the unalienable right to life?  Does a woman indeed have a "right to choose"?  If so, is that so under any and all circumstances?  May a state impose and execute a death penalty?  If so, is that so under any and all circumstances?  It would seem that there is no way to determine answers other than science and logic combined.  Though many will have answers based on religious texts, the treatise here deals only with the law of the land, that with the United States Constitution the supreme law of this land.

Any argument that life begins at any time other than at conception miserably fails the smell test.  Any argument based on live birth or viability or "choice" implodes both scientifically and logically. 

Behaviors have consequences.  Study long and hard in school, learn much, and graduate, and those behaviors enhance your opportunities in life.  Fail to do your homework and don't pay attention in class, drop out early and don't graduate, and those behaviors limit your opportunities in life.  Have children before marriage and before being able to afford to take care of them, and those behaviors limit your opportunities in life.  Being "poor" and "less-fortunate" doesn't just happen.  It is the result of choices and behaviors.  Being rich isn't being "fortunate".  It's the result of smart choices and behaviors.  We have no right to happiness, just to pursue it.

Being pregnant -- with rare exception -- is result of choices and behaviors.  A woman's "right to choose" is -- with rare exception -- what results in pregnancy, not what she does afterward.  She has sexual intercourse.  She has sperm implanted.  She has fertilized eggs implanted.  To kill a pregnant woman and her fetus is considered a double homicide in twenty-nine states.  Scientifically and logically, then, to kill either the mother or the fetus is a single homicide.

A pregnant woman does not cede her unalienable right to life by virtue of that pregnancy.  Nor does she cede her right to self-defense.  If, then, to carry to term seriously endangers her life, she has a right to choose . . . to self-defend or not.  I have known women who made that excruciating choice and chose differently, and excruciating choices they were.  None of us -- pregnant women included -- has an unalienable right to not be inconvenienced, not be burdened, not face adversity.  Forrest Gump said it well when he said something like, "Stuff happens".

For a state to impose the death penalty is identical to a woman seeking out her rapist, then shooting him.  It's murder, whether she does it or agents of a state do it.  If she kills the rapist during commission, that's self-defense.  If a state first concludes that a convicted criminal is a substantial and imminent threat to the lives of even prison guards, and if then a court concludes that the taking of the convict's life passes the "necessary and proper clause" test to proscribe unalienable rights a priori, then, and only then, is such act constitutional.

What of a pregnancy resulting from rape?  Does the woman's not having chosen to behave such that pregnancy might result, does her victim status, then, endow her with the right to terminate the life of the fetus, another innocent and nonthreatening human life?  This for me is the most-emotionally-vexing question and dilemma.  Science and logic -- and, thus, I -- say that it does not.

As warm-up, please get your blood boiling with this piece from National Review Online on Year One of Obamacare.

Fox News contributor James Pinkerton  has written a five-part series on Medicare which I commend to you.  Please see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

I ended a blogpost a week ago on ubiquitous myths with, "The very idea that people -- whether Americans or anyone else -- have a right to stuff is either naive and adolescent or arrogant and demagogic."  But, progressives have been selling (arrogantly and demagogically) successfully to Americans (both naive and adolescent) for 100+ years.

The drpete alternative health system/marketplace underhaul bill of 2011

(The below is an update and revision on a blogpost here at gumballs circa April 03, 2010.)

This bill prohibits the federal government from regulating insurance companies, except for laws and regulations that apply to all companies, regardless of industry. Medical insurance policies, thus, would not be required to cover new-client pre-existing conditions, just as a homeowners’ insurance company wouldn’t be required to cover new-client fire insurance for a dwelling already aflame. In addition, medical insurance companies would not be permitted to drop an existing client who develops a condition, just as the homeowners’ insurance company would not be permitted to cancel a policy because a client’s house was ablaze.

In this blogger's humble-and-amateur opinion the current relationships between medical insurance companies and medical providers -- in-network, not-in-network, reduced-fee agreements, etc. -- is collusion in restraint of trade and, thus violates the unalienable right to liberty and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.  This bill would call on the Justice Department to properly enforce.  The result would be that insurers' relationships would be with individual policyholders and employers providing policies to their people.  Medical providers' relationships would likewise be with individual patients, and not with insurers.  The consumer/patient/customer would again be in charge of his property, himself, and for the costs of maintaining that property.

This bill sunsets Medicare such that persons ≥ age 60 at passage will receive an annual federal government payment beginning at age 65 equal to the premium value of Part A for the rest of their lives. Those ≥ 55 but < 60 at passage will receive an annual federal government payment beginning at age 65 equal to the 50% of the premium value of Part A. Those ≥ age 65 at passage who have enrolled in Part B will receive an annual federal payment equal to the premium value of Part B for a period of five years. Those ≥ 60 but < 65 at passage will receive an annual federal payment equal to 50% of the premium value beginning at age 65. Part D will continue for current enrollees for a period of one year following passage.

This bill sunsets Medicaid and SCHIP 30 days following passage. The bill also sunsets 120 days post passage all medical licensing by governments and associations of medical practitioners and entities, because such licensing is collusion in restraint of trade and a violation of liberty.
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 is herein repealed. The act required that hospitals and ambulances provide emergency treatment regardless of ability to pay or even legal status to be in the country if they received any payments from Medicare, Medicaid or the Department of Health and Human Services. The repeal will cease demand on these entities that they submit to slavery.

Congress hereby amends the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 to allow interstate competition in medical insurance. Thus, Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting medical insurance companies from competition.   The U.S. Supremes ruled in 1945 that Congress could regulate insurance companies under the "commerce clause", but not that they should.  The amendment uses the proper original meaning of "commerce" and of "regulate" to make interstate insurance commerce "regular".

This bill repeals the National Organ Transplantation Act of 1984 (Was there a book about this?), banning the sale of human organs by either the living or the dead.  The bill was rushed for judgment by Congressman Henry Waxman and then Congressman Al Gore Jr., later of "Global Warming" hoax fame.  The unalienable right to liberty and, thus, property is infringed by the law.  It is, thus, egregious, and unconstitutional.  When, say, ebay becomes a broker, just watch the magic of the free market go to work.  Not that I'm the kinda guy who'd stick a thumb in somebody's eye, but I wanna name this provision, "Cash for Clunkers II".

The exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company's home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today. That's the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations, Viagra, and hair transplantation, and on and on and on.
A medical insurance company could offer a product which pays for regular office visits, routine tests, teeth cleaning, and the like, just as an auto insurer may offer a product that pays for car washes, oil changes, and tire rotation for example. Neither, of course, would be in the “insurance” business. Any entity – physician, hospital, clinic, pharmaceutical firm, pharmacy – has an unalienable right to liberty and, thus, may enter contract with another party, say, a patient or client.
Physicians, etc. may agree to a price schedule with new patients for a variety of services which is lowest when agreed upon “malpractice” liability is a “Yugo” plan, moderate when liability is a “Camry” plan, and highest when liability exposure is a “Lexus” plan. For professionals who so choose, liability insurance is thus controlled and paid for.

Further, federal tax treatment of individuals will match that for employers vis-à-vis medical premiums and costs and health savings accounts and the like. Finally, Congress acknowledges that it has no constitutional authority to involve itself in the health of citizens, the medical treatment or care of citizens, or to force some people to pay for services rendered to others.
Given its reduced role, the budget for the Department of Health & Human Services (the largest of any department budget) shall be reduced (in real dollars YOY) by 50% for the year following passage, an additional 25% of the original base the second year, and an additional 25% for the third year.  Do the math.

____________________________________________

drpete contends that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), despite its use by rule of what’s called “static budgeting” – which assumes that no matter what the government does, the people will not alter their decisions and behaviors one nanowit – the CBO will conclude that this bill will result in zilch new costs in the federal budget, and will indeed—ceteris paribus – reduce the federal budget, cut the deficit, cut federal debt, and cut federal unfunded liabilities by a cubic pantload.  Though not of concern to the CBO, drpete also contends that each of the 50 states will, following passage, have more sovereignty and the elimination of 35-50% of its mandated annual expenses.  Then, those state legislators can really start throwing money by the bucketload down the rat hole that is government "education".

drpete further contends that Americans are the most-generous people in the history of humankind, and that they will come forth to care for the truly needy and that they will prod the lazy, shiftless, irresponsible, nonresponsible, ignorant and stupid to get up and start pulling their own wagons.

And lastly, drpete poses the thought that God might just respect and value more the charity of the American people, individually and freely given, than the required and forced largess demanded by the United States government.

An apology is rendered because, even after this underhaul is translated into government-legalese, this bill will come in some 2,096 pages short of the overhaul bill with which readers are already familiar.

Postscript: 

The drpete bill would undo much that is now wrong with medical care costs, but without unraveling what is great.  Government has never ever helped even a teensy bit.  Individual Americans with freedom and liberty, acting either individually or collaboratively, have invented and perfected more in medical and pharmaceutical care than maybe in any other fields.

Medical and pharmaceutical care today is not your father's Oldsmobile.  Medical and pharmaceutical care today is much-more-expensive than it was in 1950 . . .  before the Salk vaccine, before MRIs and MRAs, before untrasound, before gamma knife, before scoping, before chemotherapy, before stints, before valve replacements, before organ- and tissue-transplants, and on and on and on.  And get ready for genomics, medication based on your genetic profile, family history, and DNA; personally-produced medication.  It will be "miraculous", but yet-unseen-hugely-costly.  If you're gonna demagogue apples and intergalactic rocketships, please don't pretend that we're comparing apples and apples, much less apples and oranges.  And if you want to choose 1950s medicine, it's cheaper than it was then.  Have at it.

And please understand that "healthcare" as a term is designed to obfuscate.  One's healthcare is the provence of oneself.  Only you can choose and behave healthily.  And physicians and medicine cannot make you well or healthy, just unsick.

Post-postscript:

You may have noticed that I have provided no plan for transferability or portability between or among insurance carriers, of particular interest to those with pre-existing conditions.  That is because this is about undo, not do.  When consumers have a problem, business find opportunities.  The problem will be solved by the market.

* This myth is not ubiquitous, but is pervasive.

This is third in a series.  To first see exhibit A go here  To then see exhibit B go here.

There ought to be a federal law defining marriage as between one man and one woman.  There should be no such thing anytime anywhere as gay marriage.

The American Founders and authors of the Declaration of Independence  -- brilliantly in my opinion -- opined that each human was endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these were life, liberty, and (property from whence comes) the pursuit of happiness.  Those same Founders and authors then penned the United States Constitution, which was ratified with the consent of the governed.

Those people who consented could not grant authority to their government which they didn't already possess.  Each of them had the right of self-defense of their unalienable  rights.  The Constitution granted to the federal government the authority to protect and defend individual life, liberty and property collectively as each individual had authority to do individually.  The document did no more and did no less.

Each member of congress swears an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution and abide by it.  So do the President and Vice-President.  While it is clear to me that about 425 congressmen and 98 senators at the beginning of each term, along with a POTUS and Veep every four years cross their fingers behind their backs and have a Pinocchio moment, it is to that which they swear.

Though there is no either requirement or suggestion that they do so, most raise their right hand, while placing the left on a Bible.  They are then swearing on the Bible, but to uphold the Constitution.

Any federal legislator or any presidential candidate who says or promises to sponsor or support, say, the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" is, in effect, promising to perjure himself when taking the oath of office.  Perjury being a felony -- beyond high misdemeanor -- then, that would be, and should be, grounds for impeachment.

Liberty means that any of us may do whatever he or she wishes, with the single caveat that in the process, we may not infringe on another's like right.  To infringe is license, not liberty.  If two men willingly wish to marry, they have an unalienable right (from their Creator) to do so.  Ditto two women.

Just to tweak some minds -- and souls -- even more, polygamy is also an unalienable right.  As is beastiality, since animals are property and have no rights of their own.  Children don't enter the equation here, because they cannot freely enter contracts or agreements with adults.

---

Just surmising here, because I'm certainly not equipped -- much less expert -- at explaining God, God's will, or God's wishes.  But, it seems that each of us possesses free will and can choose how we behave.

Maybe, God will judge us on our choices at some later time.  Maybe also, God didn't delegate to the United States Government the authority or responsibility to enforce His will or His wishes here or now.

Just sayin'

---

A quick multiple-choice question:

Was the sentence in the Michael Vick federal dog-fighting trial

a.  about right?
b.  too short?
c.  too long?
d.  infinitely too long?

The correct answer is d.  The jury should have known that it was, and is, not a crime.  There should have been jury nullification.

This is Part 2 in a series.  To see or review Part 1, go to Ubiquitous Myths: Exhibit A.

"Healthcare is a right, not a privilege."

---Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders

"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of oneself and one's family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care."

--- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
United Nations General Assembly, 1948

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . "

 
-- United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1976

"The notion of the social contract is that individuals unite into a society by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by certain rules and to accept duties to protect one another from violence, fraud, or negligence. Although developed for understanding human societies, sociobiologists have adapted it to societies of other social species or even to interspecies symbiotic relationships.^[1] Among humans, it implies that the people give up sovereignty to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract

The right to healthcare, declared by Senator Sanders, and proclaimed in 1948 by the United Nations seem consistent with the concept of a "social contract" ala the Jean-Jacques Rousseau treatise of 1762.  Each, however, is incompatible with both the Declaration of Independence -- which is then basis and premise  for the U.S. Constitution -- and with basic logic.

Neither Senator Sanders nor the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights nor Rousseau declares that individuals have a human right to steal from another.  Yet each asserts that individuals may empower a government to do exactly that on their behalves.

Basic logic leads the reasonable person to the conclusion that individuals may not grant rights that they don't themselves possess.  Further, as to the position taken by Sanders, et al, as it applies to Americans, they are denying and negating the proclaimed unalienable rights to life, to liberty, and to property (from whence comes the pursuit of happiness).

The premise from the Founders' brilliant -- in my opinion -- proclamation of those unalienable (from the Creator) rights was that humans also had an unalienable right to defend those rights, i.e., self-defense.  The Constitution was ratified "with the consent of the governed".  The people, thus, granted to the federal government the power to defend life, liberty, and property collectively, a right that each person possessed individually.  That they granted, but no more and no less.

Americans have an unalienable right to pursue happiness, not to have it delivered.  Americans each have a right to medical treatment or pharmaceuticals if, and only if, they enter a mutually-acceptable agreement with a provider of said.  The very idea that people -- whether Americans or anyone else -- have a right to stuff is either naive and adolescent or arrogant and demagogic.

From his neck down, a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.

---- Thomas Alva Edison

Golf is a game played on a five-inch course -- the distance between your ears.

--- Bobby Jones

The rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer.

--- Any progressive who's received the morning "talking points"

Progressives lie . . . early, often, and very very well.  Conservatives study, research, analyze, study, then speak . . . truth.  Republicans who aren't conservatives lie less-early, less-often, and very very badly.  They lie because they are latent-closet-progressives.

One of the many things that most Americans know to be true is that the rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer.  Statistically, they've been shown that the gap between rich and poor is growing . . . and that is true.  And it's the very-last thing that's true.

Divide the American population of above the age of twenty-three into five quintiles from lowest, second-lowest, middle, second-highest, and highest.  The subject is income.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of those who a decade ago were in the lowest quintile, almost eighty percent are gone.  Some are in the second, some the middle, some the second-highest, and even a few are now in the highest.  Many who a decade ago were in the highest quintile are now gone.  A few even went belly-up and are now in the bottom.  Incidentally, if the BLS had included in its studies those younger than twenty-four, the changes would be even more stark.

When it comes to income, the bottom has a floor, but the top has no ceiling.  That's why the gap may be larger, but the conclusion that the poor are getting poorer is slight-of-hand.  Today's "poor" in America are richer than were those in the third quintile in the 1950s, are richer than the average Frenchman of today,  and are the only "poor" in human history to be in the aggregate obese.

What should be the federal government response be to "the poor"?  Be patient and do nothing.  The only permanent-poor America has are those "helped" by the Great Society's "War on Poverty".  They have been incentivised into choices and behaviors that enslave them to remain at the government trough.

See a more-thorough and -exhaustive treatise from an earlier blogpost here.

Immediately below is the banner atop the United States Department of Justice website circa the final year of the Bush (43) presidency.

 


Immediately below is the banner atop the United States Department of Justice website circa the Obama first term.




In The Declaration of Independence America's Founders -- in my judgment -- brilliantly proclaimed,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, . . . "

Contrast those words and their implications with those quoted atop the current banner, that of the Eric Holder-Barack Obama Justice Department.  That quote is also now inscribed on the DOJ building in Washington D.C.

January 19, 2009 the law was collective defense of unalienable rights ordained by the Creator to each and every human being in perpetuity.  Having sworn the afternoon of January 20, 2009 to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from  all enemies, foreign and domestic, the new President tossed  unalienable rights, along with that Constitution, along with its separation of powers into the garbage dumpster, appointed Eric Holder, and together they embarked on the new world order, that by imploding America at as warp-speed as possible.

"The common law is the will of Mankind issuing from the Life of the People."  That capitalism, free markets, individual liberty, and property rights lead to far-better prosperity and happiness for all than any other societal format ever devised in human history can be proven in a number of ways.  If one understands human nature, having observed and analyzed it, one but has to run what-if scenarios.  Common sense.  One can read the diaries of Governor Bradford of the Virginia Colony.  One can ask a refugee from the Soviet Union or Hungary or East Germany or Cuba or myriad other places.  One can even read the history of The Farm Community, located in Summertown, Tennessee

The commune, organized and populated by 1960s California hippies, peaked at about 1200-1500 residents.  There are now about 175.  In 1983 leadership came to the conclusion that the commune was going broke, and deemed that residents would be required to get outside jobs and bring in money.  Once folks saw Paris, or in this case Nashville, it was impossible to keep them down on The Farm. 

Obama and Holder, Sebelius and Napolitano, the Cabinet and the czars, Reid and Pelosi, Waters and Dodd, Schumer and Durbin, et al, just know with certainty that they are smarter and better-educated than anyone who's ever lived, and that they -- the best and brightest, elite intelligentsia, smarter even than God -- can fix humankind and create utopia.  And on top of that, both Obama and Holder have a chip on the shoulder, unresolved issues, and dreams from their fathers.

"The common law is the will of Mankind issuing from the Life of the People."  The aforementioned smarter'n'God-elite-intelligentsia know the will of Mankind, even though the RAMs (raggedy-assed masses) don't know what they will, and the Life of the People is what the smarter'n'God-elite-intelligentsia know should be the life of the people.  So -- bottom line -- the law is what the smarter'n'God-elite-intelligentsia say it is.

Why would the President and his Health & Human Services Secretary ignore the rulings of federal courts vis-a-vis the Patient Protection and Health Affordability Act?  Why would the Department of Justice gear up to fight the federal judiciary?  Why would Secretary of State Clinton say with respect to Libya that "we" ( the smarter'n'God-elite-intelligentsia) don't care what the Congress does or says? 

Why would this adminisitration expand and accelerate -- geometrically -- the malfeasance of Congress, leaving more and more to regulators while detailing less and less in legislation as the Congress is supposed to?  Just as one of myriad examples, six pages late in the Patient Protection and Health Care Affordability Act has now been fleshed out to more than a thousand pages of rules and regulations for businesses and individuals.  If we generalize just to that one piece of legislation, the 149 federal regulatory agencies created would from the 2,200-page bill generate 367, 400 pages of rules and regulations.  Each and every small and fledgeling American businessman would become responsible for reading, understanding, implementing and complying with every nanowit of that liberty-obliterating drivel.  Why?  Either, folks, you're in the clique or you're not.  Either you're part of the smarter'n'God-elite-intelligentsia -- also known as the "ruling class" -- or you're not.

The February 2011 (shortest month of the year, and not a leap-year) federal deficit was $223,000,000,000 (That's billion).  Multiplying by twelve -- and discounting the extra days in all those other months -- that's $2,676,000,000,000 (That's trillion) per annum.  Republicans in the House of representatives are laying it on the line, drawing the proverbial line in the sand, fighting the good fight, heeding the call of the November 2010 election mandate from the Tea Parties, that by demanding $61 billion in spending cuts, though willing to compromise with their Democrat colleagues, so settling at, say, $30 billion.  Wow!!  That'll knock off more than 7 1/2 days-worth of deficits.

The rest of the quote above from the Declaration of Independence is

" — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

If you -- in my almost-always-humble opinion -- are among those who are focusing on the elections of 2012 to restore America and its lost Constitution, restore the rule of law versus the rule of man, to tip the scales wherein there are not -- as is now the case -- more Americans working for government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining, and utilities . . .  combined; if you are of that mind, I -- with respect and humility -- recommend that you move to Summertown, Tennessee where pot smoking is a sacrament.

Election of congressmen and senators, and of the president and vice-president, are per the laws of the states.  That betrayal of the oaths of office is or is not considered either treason or a high crime is, thus, also per the laws of each of the states.  I estimate that no more than about what-you-can-count-on-your-fingers-and-toes members of this Congress and no more than a single handful of sitting Senators have not had multiple Pinocchio moments and have arthritic hands from keeping their fingers perpetually crossed behind their backs following swearing their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.

Including congressmen (415), senators (95),  Supremes (4), prexy and veep (2), there are probably about 515-520 criminals holding office in Washington who should immediately be brought to justice by the states, and discharged forthwith.

There are almost 300 million Americans.  If a controlling majority of about 575 people in Washington didn't want the United States to be bankrupt, it wouldn't be.  If those 300-ish officials didn't want an unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank, it wouldn't be.  If those 300-ish officials didn't want a "floating dollar" or inflation, they wouldn't be.  If those 300-ish officials didn't want a government that was 80% unconstitutional, it wouldn't be.  If those 300-ish officials didn't want U.S. troops acting as meals on wheels and keels or acting as community organizers of peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan who'd rather remain mired in the 7th century, they wouldn't be there.  If those 300-ish officials -- Democrats, Republicans, Independents -- didn't want a country moving inexorably toward socialism, it wouldn't be.

Never mind the characterizations emanating from Washington Republicans and Democrats and so-called news-media types, the Tea Parties -- as I now see it -- are being way way too moderate and timid.  I don't want to co-opt the Republican Party.  I wanna bulldoze it.  Take the comity and compromise and shove it.  The Tea Parties were very-effective with a scalpel.  Now, however, machetes are no longer sufficient.

The "ruling class" is imploding America's "country class".  America's "country class needs to heed the Obama message of "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."  The "country class" needs to implode America's "ruling class", immediately, completely, and permanently.

---

Addendum:

Sunday April 3 -- a day after this blog essay was posted -- Congressman Paul Ryan appeared on Fox News Sunday and announced the Republican plan for the next fiscal year budget, the one to begin October 2011, as opposed to the one for this year -- already half over -- getting all the current buzz and referenced above.  See Associated Press coverage here.

The proposal will cut some $4 trillion from the deficit over the next ten years.  Impressive?  Encouraging?  Let me try to make the complex simple here.  Let me read the stitches on this fastball even before it leaves the pitcher's hands, just as he starts his wind-up.

Above on Saturday I extrapolated from February's deficit and calculated that at that spending pace, the annual deficit would amount to $2,676,000,000,000 (That's trillion) per annum.  Rember now, that Ryan said "reduce the deficit", not "reduce the debt."  At current spending pace, the deficit would increase over the next decade by $26,760,000,000,000.

So, Republicans plan to propose the draconian decimation of the federal government over the coming decade by reducing the nation's debt from $41 trillion (adding the new $26,7+ trillion to the current $14 trillion) down to a mere and miserly $$37+ trillion.  The nation's GDP (total output of goods and services) for 2011 is projected to be about $12.9 trillion.

The Republican plan -- as portrayed by Congressman Ryan -- seeks by 2021, thus, to have America's public debt become 300% of the sum of the output of each and every American.  And the Ryan-Republican proposal -- given CBO "static budgeting" -- does not factor in the effect of interest rates rising, and they shortly surely will.  It also -- and not to the slightest surprise of this humble blogger -- pays no-nil-nada-zero-zip-zilch mind to the United States Constitution.

From this small parcel of real estate somewhere between sea and shining sea and somewhere southeast of the fruited plain, what you hear is the sound of one hand clapping.