The Debt Deal

So, Congress has passed legislation that raises our debt limit and supposedly will reduce the deficit through spending cuts over the next decade.

Only one part of this legislation will do what is reported, our debt will increase. Because Base Line Budgeting was used in formulating this massive scam, nothing will be cut. Rather every single part of government spending addresses in the bill will receive a budget increase. Yes, increase. The so-called cuts are cuts in the "proposed" spending, not one of the cuts is an actual budget decrease over what has been spent previously.

I suggest you all write to your representatives and ask them to openly, in front of media cameras, talk about the difference between actual cuts and baseline porposal cuts. The replies you get will be quite telling.

The 28th Amendment

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States".

There are plenty of bloggers, news people and big government supporters out there who are bending over backwards to keep this amendment from ever becoming a reality. One argument is this,

“Ever since the passage of the Congressional Accountability Act in 1995 Congress has been answerable to the same civil rights and equal employment regulations that pertain to private businesses. Other alleged disparities, such as those having to do with Congressional retirement provisions and health care coverage, are misrepresented above as well.”

One huge hole in the argument is that the CAA was never written to protect the American voter from the disparities created by the elitist culture that has grown in our nation’s capital. This paragraph from the introduction of the text of the law says it all;

“The CAA protects over 30,000 employees of the Legislative Branch, including employees of the House of Representatives and the Senate (both Washington, D.C. and state district office staff ); the Architect of the Capitol; the U.S. Capitol Police; the Capitol Guide Service; the Congressional Budget Office; the Office of the Attending Physician; and the Office of Compliance. Certain provisions of the CAA also apply to the Government Accountability Office (GAO, formerly the General Accounting Office) and to the Library of Congress.”

As you can see, the CCA was nothing more than an additional bandage to bolster the bureaucracy that keeps government bloated. The 13 or so laws that were included in the act did little to prevent the problem of members of congress being able to treat themselves as royalty. Consider these recent examples:

Members of Congress do not have to go through the same TSA grope down you and I do. Is this something you consider fair and just?

Members of Congress are not included in the provisions and mandates imposed on everyone else through ObamaCare. They have faster and better access to medical care.

Those are only two examples, but they are glaring ones. How anyone who respects our founding fathers can consider the proposed amendment to be unneeded is beyond me.

Right now the Obama Administration is claiming that a simple majority in the Senate can eliminate the requirement for a US President to be a natural born citizen. This is exactly the kind of mindset the proposed amendment will be dealing with. When we have extremely high ranking government official totally ignorant of the US Constitution and its concurrent amendments, we have big trouble on the horizon. And if the American voter will not deal with them, we have to have laws that do.

Heil Obama

The knock came on the door long after we’d put the children to bed. I’d been expecting it. To me, caring for my family was far more important to me than obeying arbitrary laws. Nodding to my wife in a prearranged signal, I walked over to the door as she hurried to the back of the house. The bags had been packed since that terrible vote by Congress last year. I hadn’t expected it to be the last thing Congress would ever do, but there you go. Some say a dictatorship is more efficient.

I chuckled sourly to myself as I approached the door. Who ever thought that Canada would be considered a freer country than the USA? I hoped the tunnel into Alberta was still open.

Twin silhouettes against the door’s glass panel blocked the view of the sidewalk. The new IRS personnel had to have been hired by the pound. My papers were where they were supposed to be, in their clipboard by the door. The knock came again, slightly louder.

I opened the door and said the approved rote phrase of greeting, “Heil Obama.”

                                                ♦          ♦          ♦

Last night the liberal wing of the Democrat Party took the first step in Obama’s planned transformation of the United States into a progressive dictatorship. If any of my readers find this statement to be over the top, think for a moment. When has Obama done anything but continue to assert that this has been his agenda all along? Does the phrase, “This is just the first step,” or “This is what change looks like,” sound familiar? The ultra-liberals who desperately desire the sort of world George Orwell envisioned are still disappointed. Some have actually chided the House Democrats for “not going far enough.”

What none of them understand is that this entire process is one big lie. Obama lied when he promised transparency. He lied when he said this bill would reduce the deficit and he lied when he promised at the last second that federal money would not be used to fund abortions. The only time he hasn’t lied is when he pontificates about his dreams of a socialist dictatorship replacing our democratic republic.

2.4 trillion, that is our current deficit. The healthcare bill adds another trillion over the next decade. Pelosi and Reid call that “deficit reduction”. Doesn’t that seem just a bit slanted?  In Orwellian newspeak that would be “doublenotgood”.

About 38 states have filed their suits against the feds to opt out of Obamacare, basing their suit on the 10^th amendment, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Catherine Cortez Masto, the Nevada Attorney General, a Democrat, has refused to join in on the suit. No surprise there.

Now some, especially those who believe in the nanny state will claim that the Commerce Clause gives Washington the right to ride roughshod over the states. Oh really? First, look at the phrase, “by the Constitution”. The Slaughter Rule, which I wrote about in a previous column, violates the Constitution and can easily be challenged in the Supreme Court. Secondly, look at this Commerce Clause:

The clause, article I, Section 8, Clause 3,  states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes".

Can anyone who isn’t a mushy-brained liberal read these words and claim that this clause gives the federal government the right to tell a private citizen what type of insurance policy they are allowed to buy?

Regulating commerce, based on the understanding of trade when this article was written, meant allowing free trade, not constricting it. Again we are back to the Obama version of newspeak.

Back when the Articles of Confederation were first written, states were able to erect barriers to trade with other states and foreign countries. This caused a number of problems, one of them the formation of monopolies within some states. The Commerce Clause was added to the Constitution so that true free trade was able to flourish. The liberal definition of the Commerce Clause is a polar opposite of the original intent which should come as no surprise to anyone. You should go back over all of the archives where Obama is describing his plans for our nation. By compiling them all together they form a chilling vision of a socialist workers paradise…without any of the checks or balances we used to have.

Those who claim that only by controlling the people can we insure freedom have already been brainwashed by the liberal big brother.

A Free Press

The First Amendment to the US Constitution reads,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The third clause, “or of the press;” is one that the mass media somehow manages to move to the front of the line whenever what is published has objections attached to it. These men and women have held this clause before them like a shield claiming they have every right to destroy a person’s reputation in print or on the airwaves, because “it is news” and “the First Amendment gives us every right to print what we feel like printing”.

Does it really now?

I have spent a considerable amount of time studying the constitution and those papers concerning the development of our country. Some call the collection the Federalist Papers. Nowhere in there do I find a support of the right to libel, slander, cheat, steal or commit fraud. In fact, the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson alludes to quite the opposite. In John Adams’ administration there was even a law spelling out the penalties for libel. However, the act Adams signed into law was based more on old English statutes and paranoia than on any constitutional restriction and it faded into extinction in 1801.

But does that expiration remove the restrictions on conscious defamation by an overzealous press? Not in any way. Again, there is no constitutional right to lie. The problem we have is that the US has developed a near schizoid personality when it comes to such acts. Consider a confidence man who uses his ability to lie convincingly to cheat an individual or business out of a fortune. Upon capture this individual claims first amendment protections because all his lies fell under the umbrella of protected speech. If a defense attorney attempted to use that tactic he or she would be laughed out of court. However, such claims have been made and successfully carried out by the defenders of an unscrupulous press.

What is the difference? Is not a lie that steals someone else’s money just as unintegral as a lie that steals a properly earned reputation? If you have to stop and think about the difference you must be a result of today’s public school system. Where the constitution is concerned there is and can be no difference and any Supreme Court Justice who believes differently is either mistaken or intentionally wrong.

On its face the constitution again adds a restriction to the power of Congress. That body is prohibited from making any law that abridges the freedom of the press to “print the truth”. Those last three words are not found in the bill of rights but they are consistent throughout the Federalist Papers and the Jefferson/Adams correspondence. Even Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin write about a free and honest press because so much of what was published under the oppressive weight of the English Crown was neither free nor honest. To make this relevant to today’s reader, the writers of the constitution did not want the American Press to be what it has become today, a propaganda arm of the government.

Free Speech

The First Amendment to the US Constitution reads,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The second clause in the First Amendment has no title like the Establishment Clause, but in spite of that, this short string of six words has garnered more print, debate and utter hostility than any other portion of our constitution.

“or abridging the freedom of speech,”

Again, we see that this is not specifically spelled out as a right, but as a restriction on what the government can impose upon its citizens. Again there is no specification as to where or when such free speech is to be exercised and there is no specification as to content. There is also no mention as to whether or not this applies to individuals, groups or even corporation. George Carlin’s prohibited television words are not mentioned and there is no difference specified in the differences of speech whether they be religious, political, romantic or inflammatory. The clause simply says that Congress cannot make a law that restricts free speech. Abridging means to restrict or prohibit. Therefore, every law that the United States Congress has proposed and/or enacted since December 15, 1791, has been done so in violation of this clause. link

Now some may bring up the old argument of the changing times and the need for the government to ensure security. Those points have merit for the purpose of debate, but they mean nothing in the face of original intent and the laws governing grammar. Because of the British Crown’s sedition laws, the framers of our constitution made sure that the newly formed congress could not become an imperialistic body. If they were brought forth in time to see how that body has metastasized, I imagine several members of congress would be challenged to a duel.

We have to remember, what someone says means nothing until those words are acted upon. If Van Jones were given a soap box so he could harangue the folks in the public square about the glories of communism, which would be his right to do so, he has every right to not be prohibited from speaking. He does not, however, have a right to expect anyone to stand there and listen. The clause says nothing about the audience of that speech. Nowhere in the constitution does that document mandate or even mention that an issuer of an opinion has to be heard. Listening, by extension contains the same personal freedom as speaking. The government and the speaker have no right to expect an attentive audience, except where the government is the audience. The men who wrote our constitution were not fools. When we get to that clause we will look into that part in more detail.

This all means that by extension every time some Washington functionary with an inflated sense of their own importance attempts to shut down speech or censor speech through some form of law, that law being used is wrong. Congress, the highest law-making entity in this country is forbidden from making such a law. However, the 10^th amendment muddies these waters because in that amendment everything not specifically placed into the hands of Congress is left to the states. And that means that by a strict reading of the language in the first amendment, the states can restrict speech. This is why it is so important that we the people pay attention as to who we elect into government office. This is also why is it so important to pay attention to the lessons of history and to understand the principles under which we live.

Over $6000 in debt and counting

This statement was sent to my email via the Tea Party Patriots website, link to site .

”The House of Representatives voted against raising the debt ceiling last night. More than 70% voted against the measure (No-318, Yes-97, Present-7,Did Not Vote-6) that would have increased the debt ceiling by over $2 trillion dollars. Thank you for your phone calls, emails, and faxes. Your engagement really does make a difference and Congressional offices keep track of the number of times that issues come up in various communication with constituents.”

 

What does this mean to the average US citizen? Let’s take a look at a few numbers. Our

current population in the US is about 310 million people. The Obama administration has

asked Congress to increase our debt by two trillion dollars, that’s a 2 followed by 12 zeros.

The rest is straight forward division. 2,000,000,000,000 divided by 310,000,000 equals

6451.6129. That means that Obama wants each and every citizen in this country to add over $6,000 to their debt load.

The average yearly wage in the US is about $46,000. I don’t know about you, but with the cost of gas hovering around 4 bucks a gallon and the cost of a cart full of groceries well beyond a couple hundred dollars, I don’t see where going another six grand in debt is going to help the situation. Obama and his economic team claim we must do this in order to keep our country solvent. That makes about as much sense as a regular at one of those check cashing companies claiming that if he or she just kept borrowing money they would eventually be out of debt. How?

In a recent interview Obama claimed that he had the economic record to win reelection. link to article Again, I ask how? His administration has increased our debt by over a thousand fold and he somehow considers this a good thing. When Obama says that we must reduce our deficits by trillions of dollars he is not speaking of economizing, he is talking about adding additional taxes to an already over-taxed nation. Reducing the size of government, increasing efficiency and being more prosperous are concepts of which he has no grasp. His economic record is about as outstanding as the humanitarian record of Uganda’s Idi Amin. If Obama really did wish to better this country’s economy he would have to do something that would scandalize every existing support group in his contacts list.

The reason for that reaction is that part of the recipe for prosperity demands a lessening of the greed factor. Right there we have ruled out a significant portion of corporate and political America, but, believe me, it is necessary. A NeoCon considers the Michael Douglas character in Wall Street to be something to strive for. What America needs rather is a whole container load of Sam Waltons.

In order to deal with our current economy, we need to consider the problem from two sides, both in the reduction of costs and in the growth of revenue. The first factor is the cost of fuel, which is directly related to infrastructure. If we spent the time to put in place the infrastructure to handle and distribute alternative fuels, increase continental exploration and refinement and to eliminate our unnecessary importation of both oil and gas, fuel prices would plummet. Nothing balances a market like competition, and building that infrastructure would add thousands of high quality jobs. The greed and corruption factor could be handled by adding in real oversight that included stiff fines and even jail time for offenders, including that of politicians. As is often the case, there are some who claim that such oversight is too far-reaching and adds a chilling effect. This may be true as oversight often does disturb some of the powerful and it may prevent certain multinational corporations from participating. However, would that be a bad thing? Not one of the major corporations in this country began at the size they are now. Many began in a garage or even a bedroom. This country has plenty of smaller and smarter firms willing to step in and grow.

The next part is to behave like every other member of the UN and actually have a national language. Government printing agencies would save literally billions by only printing official documents in English. If a business wished to cater to other language speakers, which is their choice and their right. It used to be that in order to obtain citizenship the applicant had to prove a proficiency in English, the one-time common language of this country. We have reached a point where this standard needs to be reestablished. We need to do so for the simple fact that it makes economic sense. Believe it or not, English is the language of business worldwide.

Another area is education. An educated populace is by every historic record a prosperous populace. Our problem is that the education establishment in America has become far more concerned about self-esteem and cultural diversity than the three r’s. Going to school used to be not only a right but a desired privilege, and it is still that way in many countries. The teaching profession used to be one of honor, but not so in present day America. All of this has to change. The only way a business is going to be able to compete on the world stage is by hiring and retaining the best employees available. It is preferable that those employees be here already rather than having to be imported.

Next, those businesses have to be present in order to hire workers. Jobs cannot be created out of thin air. In order to do that the government has to relax its stranglehold on development and allow entrepreneurs to at least try to succeed. The Toyota Volta is an electric car that combines Italian styling with Japanese ingenuity and can travel upwards of 250 miles on a single charge from a standard household outlet. Mini Cooper has teamed up with a third-party company to produce a hybrid that gets 85 miles to the gallon with no loss of acceleration. There are dozens of other examples of vehicles that would sell and sell well in the US, but none of them are allowed to be sold in the US. The reasons for this as expressed in Washington are varied and underwhelming. What it boils down to is that the bureaucracy is not comfortable with success, especially when that success is in the private sector. Here are some examples:

Just north of Las Vegas, up I15 before you get to the town of Mesquite, there is a long stretch of BLM land that would be ideal for an industrial development. Plants to build cars like the Cooper Hybrid and the Volta would be ideal fits for both the region and the infrastructure. When proposed, the idea runs into a problem. The federal act governing BLM lands does not allow for-profit development without considerable time, trouble and expense, even if those working in the BLM see the benefit. Members of congress won’t even discuss attempting to amend the act.

In Nevada’s Armagosa Valley there is a dairy. Because of milk price controls (the price is kept high, not low), the dairy is not allowed to sell all of its production. A deal was worked out so a gourmet ice cream company could build a plant across the street from the dairy to turn the overproduction into ice cream. Nevada and California sued to prevent the plant from being built because of “environmental concerns”. Now Utah has yet another prospering concern adding to its fortunes.

Ever since gambling was legalized in Nevada, tourists have been crowding I15 as they flow in from California. Train tracks run along that route for most of the way. A commuter train has been discussed without resolution for about as long as the highway has existed. A number of companies have proposed both maglev and high-speed rail with some, but not significant interest. The problem lies in both the government’s timidity in the face of radical environmentalism and the desire of assorted politicos to line their pockets. Again, the best course is to do it the old way, allow the business to prove itself or fail trying, or to forge public/private partnerships where both the taxpayer and business work together to improve each other’s lives. Not doing anything gets us nowhere.

A major factor in America’s bleak economic picture is the mortgage issue. With so many banks crumbling because they allowed themselves to be sucked into the ACORN ponzi scheme, a radical restructuring had to be considered. Both the lender and the borrower created the problem. Neither one of them really had to bend to governmental pressure, but they did and now we have the problem. A good portion of the solution lies in denying the legal profession easy access to unsophisticated clientele. The last thing a person needs when faced with foreclosure is an attorney asking for several thousand dollars that could go toward the mortgage. Another part is the lenders need to be able to restructure the contracts based on actual value rather than contract value. Since the vast majority of mortgages are under the federal umbrella, all the government needs to do is step in and help both the lender and the borrower create a compromise both can live with, but that will take the Obama administration actually doing something to benefit big business.

So, the recipe is, education, entrepreneurship, corporate and governmental honesty, public-private partnerships, the ignoring of bothersome environmental suits only intended to prevent growth, and common sense. The last component could be the rarest of all.