The Constitution, Slavery and the Progressive Tax Code

Yes, the US Constitution incorporated a dreadful and unjust compromise.  Our founders chose to proceed with forming a less imperfect union that would, they hoped, eventually complete the task of making all men free of every form of tyranny.  The compromise was in part a recognition that the state could possess only the powers granted it by the people.  As it happened, a significant proportion of ‘we the people’ declined to grant the to-be-formed government the power to prohibit them from using force against some men to coerce them to labor for their “owner’s” benefit and submit to being held as chattel.  The state was prohibited from preserving and protecting the rights of some men simply because they were different.

Then, roughly seven score and nine years ago, men and women previously deprived of their right to liberty had it redeemed.  Abraham Lincoln commanded an army which fought so that other men would cease and desist from taking by force another man’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Men died to preserve “a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The progressive tax code is an equally unjust compromise.  Using the state’s power to confiscate X% of one man’s income while taking (X+Y)% of another’s is as unjust as using the state’s power to sanction one man’s ownership of 100% of another man’s life.  Freedom isn’t fractional or divisible.  How bloody will be the war that restores the freedom of men who are different from the rest because they have more money?  A majority vote within each of the thirteen colonies made slavery legal, but not moral or just; nor can a majority vote justify a progressive tax code.

While there is a legitimate argument against any compulsory tax, there are nevertheless rational arguments for an income tax provided it has exactly TWO rates:

 - 0% tax on income up to an amount necessary for basic essentials; no man should be required to contributed to the ‘general welfare’ until he has provided for his own.

- X% tax on income above that amount, up to a maximum level above which the tax rate returns to 0%.  (At some point, ‘fair share’ has a meaning, does it not?)  X% shall be determined as the amount necessary to fund ONLY those functions authorized in the Constitution and would vary as necessary to keep the government from overstepping its constitutional boundaries.

Free men will contribute willingly to a government which does nothing more, and nothing less, than it is empowered to do – preserve and protect every man’s inalienable rights.  That the duties and functions necessary to do that should consume $3.6 trillion per year is a ludicrous proposition based upon a perversion of the law, namely the government’s arrogating unto itself the power to take from some for the benefit of others, the government’s exempting itself from the law against theft.  Once the state assumes the responsibility of protecting a particular man or group over another, the rule of law is an illusion.  Then there is only the rule of the gun, and the governing class, along with the people who stay on the correct side, are free; everyone else is different,  everyone else is . . . a slave.

Are you free or are you different?

Political Power For Sale; Karl Rove chosen as Auctioneer

Originally posted December 2011.

In The Wall Street Journal of December 29, Karl Rove offers his predictions about the political battles of 2012.  Correction, the political races of 2012 – the real political battle (the debate about passage of laws) oh, there’s no reason to opine on that, since to Karl Rove and everyone else in Washington, DC, WHAT matters relatively little compared to WHO.

Speaking as a business owner, I have long suspected that Mr. Rove has never done a thing in his life for which I’d pay $1.00.  Coincidentally, recently on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell told us the last reason I needed to hold that opinion.  In 200[x] Rove offered outgoing Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson the position of Secretary of Agriculture, so that Nebraska’s governor (R) could name his replacement.

I am sickened by that.  Sure, a senate majority can matter to a president’s legislative agenda, and, Agriculture, . . . well, how much damage can an old, dishonest dunce do from there, right?

Oh, really? – then why in God’s name do we make it a cabinet position with all the trappings of power.  It shows what a sham the whole city of DC has become.  The only end for those people is POWER, not good policy; nothing but POWER matters.  A hack like Rove can hand out cabinet positions willy-nilly if that helps the ‘party’ have more power.  Vomitus.

To [ab]use the appointment process as just another political tool is disgusting and probably illegal.  It ought not need to be illegal – men possessed of such power should hold it in sacred trust, and personal shame from any abuse thereof should be the only necessary deterrent.  Instead, possessing the discretion to exercise such power is a sign of having reached the top of the heap, and in DC abuse of power is more praiseworthy and highly-rewarded in direct proportion to its blatancy.

Now, the power broker of power brokers, Rove, makes a fortune analyzing horse races, having never in his life done a single productive thing, having spent his life simply out-flanking other political hacks, so that he can rise to be the senior-most hack, judging other hacks’ candidates’ ability to play the game of accumulating power.  That talent is worth millions of dollars only because the government controls the giving of favors and sells protection from competition and exemptions from harmful regulation.  The monetary values of the levers of power are directly proportionate to the amount of power behind those levers.  And, when the inevitable auction of power is held, it will be sold to the highest bidder every time.  Rove’s crowd knows that, Rove’s crowd lives and craves to perpetuate it, all day every day, thus making their access to the levers more valuable as the government gets bigger.  !$Cha-Ching$!

Suggestion: engage Karl Rove, David Axelrod, Charles Krauthammer, Chris Matthews or Ann Coulter in a discussion covering a topic about which they know nothing: try to discuss with them real life, real freedom, making payroll, mowing the lawn, or going a week without a television appearance.  Talk about the America of our fathers and mothers who didn’t spend their every waking moment worrying about who will be the next Assistant Deputy Director of XYZ-PDQ, because politicians in a small(er) government couldn’t harm them and expect to survive in office.  After that discussion, we’ll see who has an understanding of America, and who is awash in the filth of Washington, DC, and ought to be kept away from any place he might influence the actions of the state.

May God save this country, I pray.

Government’s Definition of “Good” – Is that what you want?

In Paul Krugman’s recent column (NY Times link here) he makes the point that the Occupy Wall Street crowd should be going after an even smaller slice of the population, the top 0.1% – maybe he figured out he’s in the 1.0%, huh?  He wants to tax the sh^* out of the super rich so as to make economic outcomes and wealth/income distribution more balanced and fair.

I’m not sure how a journalist with access to the vast research capabilities of the NY Times could fail to investigate the mathematics of such a loony idea, but we’ll address that another time.

Instead, consider this.  One assumes that Mr. Krugman’s well documented support of more government spending (how else to dispense with all that money he wants to confiscate from evil rich fat-cats) would be one of the methods he would employ to generate income balance and fairness.  How does he conclude that concentrating more economic power in the hands of the federal government – 535 men & women + the POTUS – would accomplish that objective?  (Isn’t 536/300,000,000 smaller than 1.0%?)  Can Mr. Krugman name one example in all of human history where concentration of that much power in the hands of government (or any other group) did not lead to totalitarian, tyrannical control of the population.  Has it ever happened that way – has giving more power to government ever benefited the ‘weak’ or does it invariably entrench the powerful?

The answer?  Disperse power AWAY from government and into the hands of as many free people as possible, and you make men and women more free.  And, free men and women, in turn, do enormously good things with the fruits of their labor.  More to the point, the government, unlike free men and women, has no heart and no mind.  Government is merely an instrument or tool of power and the powerful – nothing else.  It can not do good things, it can only do what the politically powerful want it to do, and only occasionally, and even then only incidentally, are those things good.

I posit that only vile men want to control the lives of other men.  Further, notwithstanding conventional wisdom, it is not possible to outsource your compassion, your acts of charity, to the government.  To imbue the government with human traits, feelings and motives is the first step toward totalitarian rule.  A government empowered to do ‘good’ things can have no practical or logical limits on its powers.  The power to do good must, by its nature, be absolute.  In time, good will come to mean whatever the the invariably vile men in charge tell you it means.

Which men and women do you trust to define “good” for you?  I am free to define it myself.  Are you?

Will You Own Your Life or Serve Others?

As I type, there are approximately 59,600,000 people who think that, since 59,599,999 other people agree with their choice of Barack Obama as POTUS, they now have the power to tell 57,000,000 Romney voters AND 200,000,000 of their countrymen how to live our lives. Barack Obama and the rest of Washington, DC – including every Republican – intend to help them keep you in your place.

The fact those 59.6 million Obama supporters fail to grasp is it that the 536 men and women who write the laws will not write any exemptions for anyone but themselves. The laws they pass will apply to every last arrogant one of them – unless they have a highly paid lobbyist on their payroll. They think they put the Romney voters and the rest of us in our place. They will soon see that they put themselves there as well – right into the shackles the keys of which are held by a political class that sees no limits to its power to tax and otherwise regulate and control the flow of capital, the production of energy, the distribution of medical goods and services, the production of motor vehicles, and any other part of your life they think you might be spending outside their approved guidelines.

We know now that neither Mitt Romney nor any one in the Republican Party will defend our freedom and our individual liberties. It does not follow that we must lie down. It does not follow that we must click our heels and salute.

Their laws presume that I owe a portion of my life to something they call the community, and that they have to power to determine what that portion will be. Any laws with that premise are immoral and unjust. While I renounce them, I will not breach them overtly, as martyrdom is not my calling nor suicide my duty, but I will undermine their laws and their efforts to control you and me with all my might. With my last breath I will scream of my right to own

and live

my life

for me.

In 1776 our forebears faced a crisis of conscience – would they be free or serve their king? We know what they did for themselves. What will you do? Will you declare your own independence or will you serve your country?

We will introduce a solution shortly.

Declared. Again.

Benghazi: The Dissembling Continues

According to Secretary of Defense Panetta, the administration needed more information, otherwise we would have sent in reinforcements to help our countrymen in Benghazi.  (See NY Times for details of his explanation.)

And, if you believe that one . . .

Hmmm.  A few follow-up questions:

1.  Mr. Secretary, was it your or the President’s concern that an uprising caused by a video on YouTube would be carried out by miscreants in possession of weaponry and armaments that could or might overpower the US Army?  If so, does that cause you to reconsider the budget cuts contemplated by the sequestration that is part of standing law.

2.  Mr. Secretary, why didn’t you or anyone in the White House tell us before now that you considered sending help but decided against it?  Why does it take 7 weeks to find out what YOU did/didn’t do and why?  Who did you ask and may we question him?

3.  Mr. Secretary, why didn’t you (and/or others in positions to act) know more about what was happening on the ground?  Wasn’t Amb. Stevens there on official duty?  When DID you find out what was happening and what have you done about it since then?

4.  When a trained Navy Seal or a US ambassador calls for help, is it standard practice to assume that the situation is too dangerous to comply with the request, or was this an exceptional case?  Why?  In the future, will Navy Seals and/or ambassadors get different training or briefings on whether they should or should not expect assistance when they report that their lives are in danger?

5.  Mr. Secretary, was the President involved in the determination that we didn’t possess enough information?  Who else was involved?  What factors were considered?  Did anyone take notes?  What information did you possess that led you to believe there was too much unknown information to risk a rescue operation?

6.  The President has previously said that ‘the minute [he] knew what was happening’ he ordered that everything possible should be done to protect American lives.  When did he issue that order?  Was that order carried out, or was it ignored because of the risk associated with the lack of knowledge of the situation on the ground?  If so, when did you report to Mr. Obama that his orders had been reversed?  How did he respond when presented with that information?

Add your questions in the comment section.

Benghazi – Flushed Down the Memory Hole?

On September 10, 2012, the day before Ambassador Stevens died in Benghazi, the NY Times published a lengthy report on the failure of George W Bush to anticipate and prevent the attacks that occurred 11 years earlier.  Click here – NY Times

The next day, certain Americans in the White House watched as a CIA outpost in Benghazi was overrun by Islamic jihadists and four of us perished.

Today a search for “Benghazi” on the NY Times website (Here) returns a list of opinion pieces and several news pieces.  Not one of them contains any scrutiny of the sitting president’s actions.  Several of them criticize Republicans’ (Mr. Romney in particular) “politicization” of the tragedy.

Oh well.  Based on what I’ve read in the last few days on various news organizations’ websites and in comment threads, the Obama team and their hacks have concluded that this is the way to summarize the Benghazi situation:

“YouTube video started it, and GOP budget cuts made it worse. Obama knew immediately that this was terrorism, besides it’s a chickenshit, partisan issue and nothing more than another bump in the road. Hillary took the blame for it already any way, you jackass right-wing nut. Bush should have stopped 9/11/01 from happening too, because he had even more warnings about that than Obama had about this attack! And, we can’t comment until we complete the ongoing investigation to find out what Obama knew and when he knew it. No one is more interested in knowing what Obama knew than, um, himself. Are we clear for take-off to Vegas yet?”

That’s all clear.

Now, don’t let them flush it down the memory hole.  SCREAM LOUDER.

GM’s Alive. Rule of Law is Dead.

After last night’s spat over Mitt Romney’s OpEd (Let Detroit Go Bankrupt) I’m again doubly perturbed.  Mr. Romney did recommend ‘post-bankruptcy’ government guarantees, contrary to his opponent’s statement to the contrary.  He won the bogus ‘fact-check’ battle.

Since it’s against their nature to admit that their messiah made a mistake, Romney’s critics are saying ‘post bankruptcy’ guarantees would have arrived too late.  They thereby reveal their utter ignorance about finance – Mitt didn’t mean ‘let it happen and THEN provide guarantees’ – he meant that the government should have offered the guarantees up front as an incentive for private capital to do the bail-out.  Mitt makes a distinction without a difference. Mitt reveals his latent views that government can ‘fix’ things (ergo my ‘doubly perturbed’ state of mind).

So, Mitt was being honest about having recommended a policy proposal that was different only incidentally, not fundamentally.  In either case, the government would [wrongly] subsidize and perpetuate a failed business model.  [For brevity, I won't address the flaw Romney should - the political, illegal recognition of the unions' claims over those of the bondholders.] The market, millions of players making billions of decisions, and not political payola considerations, should have determined the right re-allocation of resources (plants, labor, technology, etc).

“GM is alive” and “private markets wouldn’t have done it” and other statist defenses of the GM bail-out reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of free market capitalism.  Instances where the government exercises the power to TAKE our money and risks it where we wouldn’t is the ultimate conceit of government power. The market doesn’t guarantee success or profit. It does guarantee an efficient, best possible (again, not flawless) allocation of capital that does not leave any of the losers (GM bondholders) wondering if political pull rather than merit and the rule of law are the cause of their loss. The market and rule of law are inextricably connected – severing that connection is tyrannical, unconstitutional and destructive.  The GM bail-out (both Obama’s AND Romney’s version) was an impeachable offense. It was antithetical to the Constitution and freedom.

So, regime risk – a horrible new term in our lexicon – is the darkest cloud hanging over our economy.  Though I’m not Romney’s most ardent fan, I grant that the specter of regime risk will be significantly reduced on November 7 in the event the current regime is fired.

I pray.

Who Is Giving The Orders?

It appears that the BHO administration wants to engage in a debate about whether there was in Libya a spontaneous uprising or a planned terrorist act. That suggests that the guards at our embassies have orders to ask “Why are you attacking us?” when men show up with guns and start to scale the walls and further ordered to respond as follows:

IF they answer: “We’re usually peaceful Muslims, but today we’re really mad about that mean video a guy posted on YouTube, so this is a spontaneous uprising” then > Reply 1: “Oh, OK, you can shoot 3 of us.”

IF they answer: “We are terrorists, you damned American infidel!” then > Reply 2: shoot to kill.

Is that how it works?  Is that why this man is dead?

Of course not – when attacked, “shoot to kill” should be the standing orders for those securing our embassies. They were either given different orders or were otherwise disarmed by our Commander in Chief (or someone who reports up to him) and that is an impeachable offense, end of discussion.

VP Debate – Forget Biden. Want Chains or Rope?

Martha Raddatz asked in a calm, level tone, “If your ticket is elected, which men shall serve others and who shall be master?”

Ok, her actual words were “If your ticket is elected, who will pay more in taxes and who will pay less?”  No one blinked, neither candidate flinched. There was no gasp, not even a peep in the room, after that question was posed during the VP debate.

Forget Joe Biden’s antics.  All we need to know about today’s political situation and our civilization’s downward spiral is in that question and the seemingly universal view that it is an appropriate one to ask. Both candidates dipped eagerly and instinctively into their standard rhetoric to tell us which man in their view is less free than his masters.  They knew, without pause or reflection, what portion of which men’s lives were to be sacrificed for the sake of their more deserving, needy neighbor.

Freedom is fragile, it is hated and will be attacked by politicians, meaning vile, puerile men who covet and then possess power over men. Vigilance is necessary to maintain our freedom, and we let down our guard at some point between the time one man wrote “We hold these truths” and another defiantly said, “Tear down that wall.” Now, our liberty is being crushed with our aid and consent.

The government constituted in 1789 to preserve and protect freedom and individual rights in America was not empowered to divide its citizens, not even based on their income. Yet, the men who have custody of that government ignore their duty to us and have arrogated unto themselves the power to pass one set of laws for group A and another for B. That is immoral and unjust by any rational standard that recognizes, as it must, the fundamental premise of our foundational documents – the sovereignty of the individual and his reign over his life. The rule of law is extinct, replaced by the rule of voting coalitions. Organized mobs rule your life.

If we don’t wince, shriek in fear – if we won’t revolt in protest to that power – we deserve the tyranny we get. To acquiesce to that power is the first step on the road to serfdom. To vote, to actively campaign in favor of one man or group having that power over any man, be he rich or poor, black or white, is to don the shackles ourselves, to slip the noose over our own head.