Seed Corn....

Have you ever stopped to consider that our society lives in constant anticipation that something is going to occur to make things better? Now nothing we are doing is making things better, to the contrary, what we are doing is making things worse. Yet we continue waking up every morning with this dull eyed optimism based on wishing. This is not new nor is it native to the American experience. There was once a sense of optimism in this country that included effort for achievement. We looked out over the future with a sense that we could build something for ourselves. There was no drive for entitlement provided by the state. No expectation that the fellow who was innovating and getting rich was somehow responsible for our wellbeing. The change in the way Americans looked at the world has a starting point and that is World War II. After the war there was a sense of entitlement instilled in the children of this country and in each successive generation it has gotten worse.

We have conducted an experiment on our children and our children’s children and their children and the outcome is not good. We are now looking at huge numbers of people who think that by their mere existence on Earth, the rest of the society should be impressed and financially liable. It is as if simply by managing to be born, something people have been doing for thousands of years, they are special and have come into this world owed a debt. Each year for decades this number has grown and grown until today, they represent a plurality that “feel” they don’t really have to contribute in proportion to what they consume. As a society we have placated this group as they have grown. We have created more and more rules, regulations, safety nets, institutions, programs and excuses for why they couldn’t make it in the real world and indeed shouldn’t have to. We have paid dearly and will pay dearer still. Our economic model will not sustain it.

A big problem with any solution anyone might offer is the nature of the entitlement these people feel is their due. It isn’t basic food and shelter they think themselves entitled to. It isn’t some abstract freedom or liberty they demand. It isn’t equality of opportunity they seek. It is equality of result and not on the low end. What our self-proclaimed, ever growing and self-created underclass demands is access to material wealth and leisure time on the high end. Not only that, but they demand it whether they produce any of it or not. They demand that those who build buildings provide room. They demand that those who create technology make it available. They demand that those who produce food feed their children for them. They demand that those who are educated in the fields of medicine provide for their care. They demand that the shrinking number of net producers be made to pay more to provide more for the net consumers. They demand that this continue even as reality is peeking through and threatening the world with economic ruin.

We have codified such thinking into our laws under the mistaken belief that the mob makes right and that the emotional arguments to help the needy be applied to the majority even as the bar that defines ‘needy’ has risen. As the unfunded liability against future entitlements grows, those who profit from the welfare state apply a new tactic. That tactic is now part of the daily onslaught of state messaging. The vilification of the rich. We are being told at this point that the reason for poverty is the creation of wealth. We are being told that the creation of wealth occurs in a zero sum economic environment where every dollar that goes to one man is necessarily taken from another and the poor are being told that those dollars are being taken from them. They don’t have the cognitive skills to reason it out.

The main commodity being peddled by the purveyors of this zero sum game is ignorance. In the time since World War II leading up to the present, in parallel with the placation of the entitlement mentality we have also let those who believe in the absolute power of the secular state have control over our education system. What we teach in these government schools is relativism and a system of moral equivalence. What we deliver to our children is a point of view based in ignorance with a large helping of phony self-esteem. We teach that self-worth is divorced from achievement and that there are different definitions of intelligence. We teach that every idea has merit and every culture is equal to every other culture except for the ideas of markets and the culture of America. We condemn all the evidence to the contrary as intolerance and racism. We are committing suicide as a civilization in order to create some imaginary utopia that will work by magic if only we will hand over power to the state and destroy the economic freedoms of the markets. It is insanity.

I don’t know if it can be fixed. The people who are now the champions of this nonsense aren’t smart enough to see through it. They use circular reasoning to defend what the rest of us can see clearly as a failing proposition. We are moving backwards as a civilization and being told it is progressive. We now find ourselves with an unelected bureaucratic monster that spends greater than a trillion dollars a year more than it takes in. It has accumulated fifteen trillion dollars in direct debt against the treasury and over a hundred trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities against future revenues for entitlements that can never be paid. Those who support the position of the statists with their votes are being told that the solution is to confiscate the wealth remaining in the free markets so that even modest reductions in spending can be avoided. Any suggestion that we live within our means is met with cries of draconian attacks on the working people. We are like the poor farmer in a bad winter eating the seed corn that he set aside for spring’s planting. He doesn’t have a plan for the spring he just knows he’s hungry now.

Anyone with their eyes open can look at the world around them and see that it is on the brink of financial and economic collapse yet we turn away to look at the shiny bauble being dangled before us as a distraction from this reality. And if you ask the dull eyed folk who demand more control and more regulation and more debt what they are counting on, they have no answer other than to keep feeding the beast, keep taking from the productive, keep the entitlements growing, keep the engine of our doom well greased. They demand we trade our freedoms for the security of the state’s entitlement apparatus. They insist that we are helpless to take care of ourselves or our own families. They demand more and more power be entrusted to our permanent ruling class who are protected by law and immune to elections. They insist that they have the right to vote themselves the treasury for as long as it lasts and to replenish it from what remains of the wealth of those who feed us.

When it finally goes it will be mercifully swift. One day we will wake up and the lights will be out, the currency worthless, the stores closed and the government checks will be gone. Mobs will form from gatherings of the once entitled and they will rail against the evil greedy rich. That will be the fellow with the can of corn.

Liberals & Westboro Baptists

I have been thinking about the events over the last week and the more I think about it, the angrier I become. Basically what happened is that people got shot and killed by a lunatic and the very first thing that happened is that the political left decided to use that event for political gain. A nine year old girl was murdered and all the liberals could think about that was as a vehicle to attack the Tea Party Movement, Fox News and Sarah Palin. What this tells me is that the American political left is complete bereft of compassion and discernment.

The Westboro Baptist Church, a group of vile opportunistic religious fanatics, has decided to protest at the funeral of the little girl killed in the shooting in Tucson. They too are bereft of compassion and discernment. The Hells Angels motorcycle club has decided to stand between these subhuman cultists and the family of the little girl. The Hells Angels are the good guys on this day. They are not known for their restrained rhetoric.

I put the liberals who are using this little girl’s death for political gain in the same category as the Westboro Baptists. I cannot think of a significant difference. Both have their own agenda, both believe that agenda comes before the feelings and well being of others, and both are exploiting this death for their own gain. Both will fail in their goals.

The Westboro Baptists demand that the nation repent for our sins and they claim that any evil that befalls our soldiers, citizens and now this little girl is the result of God’s retribution. The Liberals demand that the nation using the power of the state to silence and disarm those with whom they disagree. Both will go to any extreme to impose their warped sense of justice on the people. Both hope that Americans will lash out so they can point their fingers and claim to be the victims. It is how the Westboro Baptists get money and how the liberals get power.

Both of these groups are liars. The Westboro Baptists tell us that God kills our finest young men in battle because He hates homosexuals. Such a belief is absurd. It merely tells me that the God of the Westboro Baptists is very small and insignificant. The Liberals tell us that the lunatic in Arizona shot all those people because the Republicans told him it was okay by way of common political campaign rhetoric. I don’t believe either group believes what they are saying. They are simply saying it for personal political or monetary gain. It is evident that they have no shame or conscience. They only have a sense of “them versus us.” Both sides of the political spectrum look at the Westboro Baptists and see them for what they are, but the political left is looking at a reflection of what they have become.

I have zero respect for either group at this point. I call on both to repent. Not in a religious sense, as I have no dog in that hunt…but in a human sense. I call on them to embrace decency and to try and develop some sense of scale in the things they claim to believe in. One of the favorite things for the political left to do is claim that opposition to them as expressed by conservatives is “hate speech.” It is like a mantra repeated without example on a daily basis.

Political opposition is not hate. Opposing nationalized healthcare is not hate. Opposing the unbridled growth of government is not hate. Being in favor of the 2nd, 9th and 10th amendments as well as the 1st and 4th is not hate. Loving the Constitution is not hate.

Love of country is not hate. Wanting to keep the fruits of one’s labor is not hate. Wanting the policies of the President to fail is not hate. Wanting public unions to be outlawed is not hate. Admiring the wisdom of the Founding Fathers is not hate. All the things labeled as “hate” for political expedience is not hate and the liberal’s labeling it as such doesn’t make it so.

How I feel about their exploitation of these events in Tucson….that is hate.

OBAMA(S)CARE

The 112th Congress, at least the House of Representatives, has promised the American people that they will vote to repeal Obamacare. It is officially called the “Affordable Care Act.” Politicians name bills like this for political reasons. They are just as likely to come out with the “We Love Puppies Act” then fill it with billions in pork so they can claim opponents hate puppies, so Obamacare it remains. This 2200 page monstrosity was passed last year largely unread by our intrepid representatives and pushed through even as strong opposition came to light across the country. It wasn’t easy. The Democrats in Congress even had to bribe their own members with sweetheart deals to get them to vote for it. The ex-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (and well known intellectual lightweight) claimed that they would have to pass the bill to know what was in the law. This is what passes for leadership on the political left. The press took a powder. Once considered the watchdog of the people they remain today the lapdog of the Democrats.

The law was constructed in such a way that the government could start collecting the revenue 4 years ahead of the expenditures. This was done so they could claim that the first 10 years would cost less than $1 Trillion. In the feeble minds of Democrats, today’s definition of real costs doesn’t start until you get to 12 zeros. So they managed to convince enough of their party to accept what amounted to a scam, claiming that collecting for 10 years and spending for 6 was a valid way to hold down projected costs. The Democrat rank and file and the press bought it hook line and sinker.

The Federal Government has never been particularly good at predicting costs. What they generally do is lie to get a bill passed and then deal with the aftermath of cost inflation after the fact. Medicare is a prime example. When it was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson in July of 1965, its supporters predicted that by 1990 the annual cost would grow to $12 Billion. At the time even that was an outrageous sum of money. But the Democrats controlled both houses of congress and the White House. Moreover, they felt that this would affectively purchase the undying loyalty of old people for the party in future elections. Medicare passed into the language along with the notion of “entitlement.” In 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 Billion. In 2009, $490 Billion. Medicare actually has an unfunded mandate of $23 Trillion based on the people alive today and that alone could double the National Debt if left as is. But hey? Who’s counting? We are entitled.

So here we are in 2011 and Obamacare is the law of the land with a projection of less than $1 Trillion in costs for the 1st 10 years. Let’s say that Medicare was a fluke. Let’s really go out on a limb and say that the accounting in 1965 was way off base and that today’s accountants are much more accurate. Let’s say they are 75% better at these kinds of predictions now rather than then. Let’s also pretend that Congress didn’t pass the $250 Billion supplemental spending bill to pay doctors so they could leave that money out of the totals on the final health care bill. That would mean that instead going up 800% in 25 years it will only go up 200%. So if it is projected at $100 Billion a year average and let’s keep inflation at 4%...because I too am a dreamer, by 2035 this monstrosity could be costing us, $5.7 Trillion a year.

Just as an aside, the healthcare law creates 159 new federal bureaus and agencies some of which have to do with healthcare and some that don’t. This cost all gets rolled into the projected budget of the Department of Health and Human Services one of the more bloated bureaucracies in history.

Now none of this is really going to happen because before we ever reach the final cost in any of these entitlement programs this country will have collapsed and we the people will be lucky if we can find something to eat by then. Once there are zero entitlements I am not sure what the Democrats will promise in exchange for power. One has to ask what they are counting on. We have a large and growing segment of the population that hates the private sector that the bureaucracy relies on for its continued existence. So they work diligently to hamstring the marketplace while demanding more of its output for government growth. They aren’t insane, they are suicidal.

So here’s the really funny part. The Democrats, our nation’s accounting gurus, now claim that Obamacare is going to save money and that repealing it will cost money. Okay stop laughing…I know, I know…but you have to understand something. They have managed to convince a lot of people that unbridled government growth, unemployment payments and taking money away from the person who signs our paychecks creates prosperity. They were able to convince a plurality of the American voter in 2008 that a fellow who had never held a real job, who believes in wealth redistribution, who went to college under an alias, and who had served only 140 days in the Senate before starting his Presidential run was capable of leading the free world. We aren’t the smartest people. We have allowed this to happen. There was a time when if someone wanted to run for President we would at least have an interest in their background and character. Times have indeed changed. The last election was indeed historic.

The new Congress elected in November ran under the guise of fixing the things that are wrong with America. They have promised a vote to repeal Obamacare. They will have a vote and it will pass the House, the Senate won’t pass it and that is where it will stop. I believe that we have reached a plateau in this country where, as former Texas Senator Phil Gramm used to say, the people riding in the wagon exceed the number of people pulling it. This isn’t accidental. The first order of business in destroying a Constitutional Republic is dumbing down the people to the point where they don’t understand the mechanics of liberty or the effects of neglecting free markets. We now have 2 or 3 generations who feel (as opposed to think) that it is the duty of government to make life’s outcomes equal. Who believe that those that have wealth only have it at the expense of those who don’t and those who don’t have wealth shouldn’t have to work hard, or at all to get it.

This is what creates the kind of entitlement mentality we are seeing in Europe right now. People who wouldn’t lift a finger to help themselves will riot in the street to demand that others provide what the politicians promise. I no longer believe that short of collapse or revolution that we have snowball’s chance in hell of turning things around. So buy guns and ammo while you can; food while it lasts and teach your kids a manual trade or perhaps send one of them to medical school just in case.

WELCOME TO REALITY

Okay so the Republicans took over the House of Representatives and tied up the Senate where the Democrats can’t override a filibuster. If the Democrats want to do something stupid and the Republicans want to stop it…they can. Round one goes to the right.

Here is the problem. The government is spending too much money, borrowing too much money and growing exponentially. Entitlements are out of control and the political class fears to address them because they see these elections as their entitlement. The big lie is that Social Security and Medicare are solvent until some date in the future. We have a 14 billion dollar debt and about 130 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities. Nothing is solvent.

In the bizarre world of Washington DC something is solvent if they don’t have to address it publically until they are retired or dead. Letting the problem fester is just fine with them because any problems that can occur only exist in some hazy undefined future state. The screams of the electorate is just an annoying buzz. Besides, they have their own retirement plans and medical plans that are immune to the state of the programs they have stuck the people with. For some reason the political left is perfectly happy to let them lie about this as long as their party remains in power.

This is what the Tea Party was created to address. We got a few of them elected. A large majority of our newly elected Representatives and Senators are perfectly content to play lip service to the goals of the Tea Party as long as they get to ride the wave into power and don’t have to deal with the brutal reality of entitlement reform. Smaller limited government, if it is going to be anything other than a slogan, has to be both smaller and limited by law.

Here is what is about to happen. The Republican House of Representatives will propose changes to the spending habits of the government knowing full well that their proposals won’t get past the Senate and even if they did the President would veto them and neither party has the votes to override. The Press, that institution enshrined in the Constitution as our watchdog over government excess will claim that the Republicans are ineffective. The Republicans will pass a budget and refuse to compromise with the Democrats who will demand that government continue to spend at an unsustainable rate and the government will shut down.

This happened when Reagan was President and when Clinton was President. When Reagan was President the press blamed him for the shutdown. When Clinton was President the press blamed the Republican Congress for the shutdown. I am willing to venture a guess that when the government shuts down this time the Republican House of Representatives will be blamed by the press, the President and the Democrats and the majority of Republicans will capitulate and our country will continue to grind its way down the road to financial ruin until our economy collapses under the weight of this crushing debt. Then it won’t matter who gets the blame.

So what is the solution? I have one. Nobody is going to like it.

The solution is obvious and lies in the definition of the problem for all to see. The problem is high out of control government spending that is causing a growing unsustainable debt. We stand on a razor’s edge hoping that the interest rates don’t rise or that inflation doesn’t wipe out the dollar. One of the great truths of the human race is; if we wish in one hand and crap in the other we all know which one gets full fastest. We have our heads in the sand hoping these things won’t happen, knowing that they will and pretending that the cause isn’t the cause. If we are to address the problem we have to stop the growth of the federal government and reduce the outlay to entitlement programs. That means we have to spend less in real dollars next year what we spent last year indexing for inflation and repeat over and over until the debt is at least manageable.

This means that we have to repeal Obama Care. We can’t afford the entitlements we have adding another one was insane when we did it and the idea hasn’t gotten better with age. We need to get the government completely out of healthcare and understand that medical care isn’t a right it is a service provided at a price. The current price is too high and we cannot simply wish it were free and have it be so. Just because someone invents something doesn’t make you entitled to have it especially at the expense of your fellow citizen. We may be created equal but the resulting equality depends on you not the government. Despite sloganeering to the contrary you can legislate morality but you cannot legislate a new reality.

I told you nobody would like it. One alternative is waiting until the country can no longer prop up the government programs we have and simply falls apart. Another alternative is printing money until it isn’t worth anything. Still another is to hold our hands over our ears and chant “lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala” hoping that this one time reality will be created by our desired perception. At some point what I am suggesting we do in an orderly process over a period of time will happen violently and all at once. It will get very ugly very fast and the government we get out of those events will not be an elected one.

Immigration Reform My Eye

Topic #1

We are a nation of immigrants so illegal immigration is good.

The problem with this argument is that it allows no room for consideration of either the rule of law or of changes over the last several hundred years. Everything has changed. This is no longer an empty continent looking for settlers nor are we on the cusp of the industrial revolution looking for a labor force. When all of the past immigration waves entered the country there was no welfare state, no social safety net being funded by an ever smaller segment of the population. Opportunity was what you made it. Assimilation was expected and desired by the immigrant. Today, we have more than 300 million people in the country, there are no vast empty spaces looking for settlers and no industrial growth requiring cheap labor. There are still agricultural jobs and if the argument is that we should keep the illegals and pay them next to nothing…then I guess you can make that argument. If any side of this argument can be said to be racist it would be the one that argues for keeping the illegals picking tomatoes for slave wages.

Topic #2

Illegal immigrants do the jobs American’s won’t do.

I hear it said that the illegal aliens provide a needed source of cheap labor for the United States and that without this labor America would suffer. That brings me to my question…how can we ensure that the illegal aliens wages are kept low so that they don’t out earn their usefulness? If they are indeed doing jobs that Americans won’t do and we agree that we need to secure our borders so that the new “comprehensive” immigration laws can work their magic, how do we keep them working for low pay and in the fields? What do we do to prevent them from exceeding our need and moving into the mainstream leaving a shortage of cheap labor? If we secure our border and leave 12 million people in place and open the lines for a guest worker program are we counting on the guest worker program to take all the low paying jobs currently being held by illegals while they pursue citizenship, union membership and higher wages? How many guest workers will that take? What if there is a shortage of guest workers willing to pick tomatoes and those who receive the latest amnesty from deportation won’t pick tomatoes anymore? Will the market attract new illegals? Will we deport them? The proponents of not enforcing our laws need to define their point of view on what they want to happen with this necessary immigrant work force they insist we must have. Are they suggesting that we will have to endlessly import low wage unskilled labor and pay for their educations and healthcare and eventually import their replacements?


Topic #3

A secure border.

Mostly those in favor of allowing the illegals to stay or to come and go in a guest worker program have no desire to do what it takes to secure the border. They don’t want a wall, a fence or the military on the border. They don’t want local and state authorities checking the legal immigrant status of anyone. They do not favor limiting social welfare to non-citizens and they don’t want the laws governing the hiring of illegals by businesses enforced. Without these measures a secure border is impossible and they know it. Without a secure border any move to liberalize our handling of the current crop of illegal aliens will result in the immediate influx of the next wave looking for their amnesty deal. Anyone telling you different is either stupid or a liar, perhaps both.

So let’s recap:

I believe there’s just a little bit of disingenuousness in the way various political groups are behaving towards illegal immigration. First you have the Republicans. There are two groups of Republicans. One group wants to pretend that the issue of illegal immigration will lose its luster with the American people and businesses can go right on hiring cheap labor. The second group is listening to the voters and wants to deport the lot of them as soon as possible and then let some of them back in the country so businesses can hire them as cheap labor.

Then you have the Democrats. There are two groups of Democrats. One group wants to pretend that we have no borders and no laws so the illegal immigrants can come here unfettered and be given the vote. The other group wants to pay lip service to the immigration laws without really enforcing them so that the illegal aliens already here can stay and when others come they can stay too so that they can be given the vote in the hopes that they will vote for Democrats.

The last groups are the Hispanics. There are two groups of Hispanics. One group wants no borders or laws and wants as many other Hispanics to come here so they can eventually vote to replace the Democrats and Republicans with Hispanics. The current politicians actually think the Hispanics will vote for them. The other group is illegal aliens and they want to stay here, earn a decent living, bring their families here, and eventually become citizens. Both groups deep down want to take over a portion of the United States and make everyone be bilingual and get as many government perks as possible. The outcome of this thinking is that they will eventually overwhelm and bankrupt the very system they have come here to enjoy. It is an irrational goal.

Currently there is no one looking out for the best interest of the country or listening to the demands of United States’ citizens, at least those citizens who see citizenship as a perk.

Here is what is true.

The idea that we can’t deport the illegal aliens because there are 12 million of them is a non-sequitur. We should enforce the law by beginning the deportation process as we encounter illegal aliens. We don’t have to round up and deport all 12 million or nothing. Those aren’t the choices. We can deport 5% or 10% or 50% or 2 guys caught in Laredo. It is a journey, not an event.

The assertion by the Democrats that we need the Hispanics to do the jobs Americans won’t do is a myth. By the second generation, the Hispanics will all be American enough to not want to pick fruit and roof houses and we will need to continue to import new sources of cheap labor to do those jobs. The only real solution to maintain cheap labor without creating a permanent underclass of newly arrived immigrants is to deport the illegal aliens, control the border and issue work visas on a temporary basis.

The assertion by the Republicans and Democrats that the illegal laborers are net contributors to the economy simply cannot be true. They are counting on our dismal public school system to keep everyone too stupid to do simple math…so far so good. Since 50% of Americans pay 97% of the taxes and we are running deficits each year, that means some number of American workers are net consumers of government largess and not contributing as much as they are taking. Odds are that the lowest paid are the least likely to be a net contributor to positive revenue flow. So if you are making $5.25 and hour, paying no income tax, using the local emergency room as your medical insurance and sending your kids to public schools, you are not a net contributor to the economy no matter how many heads of lettuce you pick. In other words, you consume more tax money than you contribute with your sales taxes and productivity. If the lowest paid laborer was adding to the revenue instead of consuming it, this country wouldn’t even have a debt, let alone a yearly deficit.

What we really need in this debate is more honesty and less political hot air. When I see people waving Mexican flags and calling for the re-conquest of the southwestern United States, I take them at their word. Now that the protestors have a PR firm and know to carry American Flags and tone down the invasion rhetoric, I view them in the same light as I do the politicians on this side of the border…with distrust. The latest defeat of the people by the government in favor of ignoring the rule of law brought out the Mexican flags again. This will backfire horribly for the pro-open borders/illegals crowd.

Opposition to illegal immigration is not about voting patterns, racism, hospital districts, individual schools or even that over used, under defined term; “fairness.” It’s about the sovereignty of the United States and the worth of our individual citizenship. If we are to be a country of laws and not whims, we must either enforce our current body of law, amend it or abandon it. What purpose are laws without enforcement? What purpose is citizenship without perks? When I see lawyers, office holders or any other representative of the people defending the mass violation of our laws I have zero tolerance. These people need to be shunned by the public at large and the voters in elections.

I believe the United States has the same right to control its borders as any other country in the world. My objection to the defenders of illegal immigration is that they seem to be saying that my country has laws that can simply be ignored based on politics. I also object to the notion that I have to defend my opposition of open borders against charges of racism. I don’t want white European lawbreakers ignoring our immigration laws either. I am colorblind when it comes to criminal behavior. But if I am in Laredo, Texas looking for illegal aliens and 99.9% of all illegal aliens in Laredo are from Mexico, it makes little sense to pull over and card African Americans and old white people in wheelchairs. That is almost as stupid as the airport searches for terrorist suspects making a point to ignore young Arab males.

I object to the ridiculous notion that illegal aliens are net contributors to the economic situation in this country. I would suggest with some certainty that the vast majority of illegal aliens are net consumers of government programs and the same shrinking percentage of American wage earners and producers are paying their way. Not just at hospitals and schools…but in all aspects of government provided programs and infrastructure. If anyone wants to defend the wholesale breaking of our immigration laws, then I will oppose you as I would oppose anyone helping another country invade the United States.

To those who would say that we are historically a nation of immigrants, I say, yes we were. But if you pour water into a glass and glass gets full, do you not stop pouring? Are you suggesting that the United States has an infinite capacity to import people without impacting the standard of living of current citizens? Are not the current citizens entitled to determine where that capacity lies? We are a world of independent sovereign nations, each with the right and obligation to determine our own laws with regards to entry into the country. There is no right extended to the rest of the world for tax dollars or egress into the United States.

To those who say that we are so overrun that we cannot do anything, I would suggest that capitulation in the face of difficulty never succeeds. How many burglaries have to occur before we declare stealing legal? How many instances of shoplifting? How about fake ID’s? If 10 million people manage to break the law and get a fake ID, should it be the policy of the United States that a fake ID is acceptable because enforcement will be hard? Those who say we cannot deport the current population of illegal aliens present us with a false dichotomy. We don’t have to round up all 8-12 million at once and send them across the border. We merely have to round up as many that we have capacity for at any given moment and send them across the border. Maybe that is 10 at a time. 100. 1000. 10000. But it remains the duty of law enforcement to enforce the law.

This is not so much a partisan issue, but I know that the main opposition to illegal immigration is Republican. While George Bush was on the wrong side of this issue as well as a lot of Republican lawmakers, the current infestation in the White House along with the other Democrats are universally against stemming the tide.

THE WAR AGAINST CAPITALISM

Have we completely lost our minds? Are there really people out there who think that because of the current recession we should dump capitalism as the focus of our economics? Are we totally without a memory or a working brain cell? Capitalism is the only system of economics that we can count on to grow our economy and support future generations. The absolute insanity that is currently driving this nation towards a collective government approach to economic control will be the death of this country. It is frightening when I think how we could end up because of a knee jerk reaction to the recession and the election of a left wing ideologue. There is no room for compromise here.

If you have pure water there is no rational argument discussing how much poison you would like to add to the mix. Collectivism, socialism, communism, and Marxism are all just different aspects of the same sick belief that security is more important than liberty and that more government can provide either. I have no room for consideration and anyone’s opinion on this matter. The danger of going down this path is something I understand with the evidence of history and with complete clarity.

The collectivist approach to economics and national governance is designed to entice the non-productive and the parasitical class to provide power to a political class by offering them access to the success and wealth of others. It is a cancer. It must destroy more and more of the nation’s wealth in order to sustain itself and like cancer it will eventually kill the patient. We know this. We have seen it before. We are seeing it now in Europe. We are seeing it in California. Yet we still have a political class clamoring for more and more government, greater spending and debt coupled with a demand for more power. They are in a hurry. There is a reason for the haste. They know that what they change now will be difficult and perhaps impossible to undo. Both they and I understand the outcome yet they push this agenda anyway. I don’t know what they are counting on.

The reason we have a high standard of living is capitalism. The only way we will keep a high standard of living is if we maintain our ties to capitalism. The way to financial collapse leads through the collective notion that equality of result can be forced on the country by government. The people who support this direction are stupid. They are ignorant of economics and they are ignorant of history. They are gullible to a degree unprecedented in our existence as a nation. The only other explanation is that they are so short sighted that they would rather see the United States end as a country of economic freedom and political liberty because of their hatred and jealousy of those who work harder and do better than they do.

Recessions occur every eight years or so. This is because all economies go through cycles. This particular recession was worse than some others but there is a group of people in the government or people tied to the government who took this event as an opportunity to line their pockets. The government voted to take billions of tax payer dollars and shove them into banking operations to protect and enhance the banker’s positions. The ideologues on the left saw it as an opportunity to push this incompetent leftist boob into the White House and the first thing he did was turn on the spigots of deficit spending over and above what the Bush Administration had already done. Absolutely nothing has been done that could remotely help the economy.

During the same timeframe a bunch of people who refer to themselves as “journalists” decided they would push their belief in collectivism by telling the masses that the capitalism had failed. The print media is quickly going out of business along with the network media because they have stopped being the watchdogs the Founders envisioned. They are now simply cheerleaders and shills for the political left and irrelevant to those who desire the press to report the news. They aren’t even convinced by the destruction of their own industry. These are not smart people and we shouldn’t be listening to them about anything. More and more we aren’t.

If they manage to vilify capitalism and turn this country down a socialist path, there will be no place in the world where individual liberty can flourish. I know there are people who don’t have a problem with that. People who want the government to tell them what to do and tell everyone else what to do. These are weak cowardly people who hate the success of others or fear to make the effort to succeed on their own. Parasites that live off the efforts of others and can’t see past what they can steal next. Those of us who see the future as a place where we can continue to build, succeed and prosper should make an all out effort to stop these losers. By any means necessary.

MESSING WITH THE MACHINE

“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, 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,” Thomas Jefferson.

“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” From Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau.

I stand humbled by the language of these two men. There is a time honored tradition in this country that when the government inflicts on the people a law, rule or tax that is unjust and goes against the will of the people then it should be resisted and then rescinded. Government can only rule with the consent of the governed and we have seen that part of our heritage trampled and disregarded too many times. The government is setting itself up as our overseers and not as our servants and the time have come for the people to reassert the individual sovereignty that is ours. After all it is not the government that is in control here. This is a Republic and we the people employ the government to serve our wishes and they serve at our pleasure. They have forgotten this. I believe that the people’s sovereignty has been lost of late and those who imagine themselves in power are operating under the delusion that we serve them. This has to stop or be stopped.

We have 7 months to wait before we have the opportunity to express our displeasure and send them packing. I fear that they can do a lot of damage in that length of time. I further believe we must make some immediate effort to keep them busy lest they do permanent damage to our country. We all know they are inefficient, slow and bureaucratic so let’s prove it. Let us put them to the test and take their alleged minds off messing with the principles of our nation. Help me help the government prove their inefficiencies.

Call them every day. Ask your Senators and Representative for a flag that has flown over the Capitol. Ask what new laws they are considering and ask for paper copies, if you can have them faxed some place do that. Ask for speaking schedules, ask to speak to your Senator personally, and agree to hold. Ask to speak to your Congressman, agree to hold. Just call and ask the receptionist about the weather in Washington. Prepare by having what you want to ask clear in your mind.

Tie them up in any way you can. Be polite but firm. They work for you and they are well paid for the privilege. Ask them who they work for and if the answer given is anything other than you, be sure and correct them. If we can't stop them from screwing us, let's screw with them a little. Send the Treasury a penny in the mail. Say in a letter that it is for the national debt. Then call and demand a receipt. Write them checks for 31 cents. Get on the Internet and look up all the different Departments and Agencies and call them or write them and ask for any information they might be offering and any they aren’t. Apply for jobs with them and then call them back every hour to see if they have made their decision yet. If you feel particularly patient fill out Freedom of Information forms about UFO’s, bigfoot, who killed Jimmy Hoffa, etc…

Call the White House, ask for Sasha. See if she wants to come over and play with your daughter or granddaughter. Send her a toy. Civil disobedience can bring them to their knees. Don't forget to order your copy of the budget and a copy for all your kids. Send them those paint samples from the hardware store and suggest they paint the White House that color – I suggest red. You all have magazines around the house fill out those little cards with 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, on it so that companies will send them free samples of stuff. Copy them on all your commercial emails. Sign them up for a visit from the Army or Navy recruiters. Enter them in raffles. Send them gift subscriptions to magazines. Force them to notice that there are people out here and we expect a little action for our hard earned money.

Go to the Post Office and mail your letters one at a time. Stand in line and buy a stamp, mail the letter and then get back in line for the next one. Apply for grants. There are lots of grants. If you get one use the money to continue the pressure or convert it to individual checks for 31 cents and start paying down the national debt with it. Always get a receipt. Write letters, send emails, make phone calls, send faxes, knock on the doors of the local offices…if you can get a fax number give it to every sandwich and pizza shop in the United States. Get a name, share it on Facebook.

This may all sound silly to some, but it isn’t about the individual act, it is about the volume of little acts. These are just small things that I thought of in a couple of minutes. We are a creative people. Think of new things, legal things, annoying things. Share them with those who believe the government has overstepped its Constitutional mandate. Expect retaliation. Publicize it when it comes. Ignore the criticism from those who support the government. These are people who express a desire to be ruled and have a need for someone to run their lives, why would anyone listen to the helpless about anything?