The French King Trump Threatens to End Support for the US Revolution

The British hold Philadelphia, New York City, Newport, Rhode Island, Charleston, South Carolina,  Savannah, Georgia, and numerous forts west of the Alleghany Mountains and east of the Mississippi River.  The French King Trump is weary of supporting the British Colonies of North America in their rebellion against King George III, so he declares an end of his support for the Americans unless they cede all of the cities, forts, and their surroundings held by the British to the British.  If the USA makes these concessions, King Trump of France will offer a pledge to protect the sovereignty of the USA in the future.

What President Trump of the USA is trying to force Ukraine to do is worse than the hypothetical I just outlined.  The British Colonies had belonged to Great Britain.  They were not previously entirely sovereign.  They had not had a pledge from Great Britain to treat them as sovereign states.  On the other hand, Ukraine did have a pledge by Russia, the USA, and the United Kingdom to preserve its sovereignty.  Russia dishonored its pledge twice, in 2014 with the invasion of the Crimea and parts of the Donbas and then again in the on-going invasion of 2022.  The USA to its dishonor did not uphold its pledge to preserve the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine in 2014, has done too little to do so since 2022, and now proposes to end its support for Ukraine's attempt to maintain its sovereignty and independence.  King Trump is telling Ukraine not only to give up the territory held by Russian troops, but to give up the grounds that Russia has been unable to take with human cannon fodder waves for the last two years.  King Trump tells Ukraine to reduce the size of its armed forces to two-thirds of its present size, while ceding the most defensible ground between Russian forces and its two biggest cities.  In exchange, the USA will once again guarantee Ukraine sovereignty over the remainder of the country.

France did not assist the USA when Britain invaded the USA in the War of 1812.  The USA did not keep South Vietnam free from the Communists as it pledged to do.  It left its allies in Afghanistan in the most ignominious manner.  It dishonored its pledge to Ukraine, which was given so Ukraine would give up its nuclear weapons.  The word of the USA is not worth much.

Putin is simply an evil man.  He will happily accept the cession of the Ukrainian lands this Trump Treaty would give him.  He will sell his oil and rebuild his nearly destroyed military.  Then he will attack Ukraine again.  The valiant Ukrainians will fight hard, but without their fortified positions, with a reduced military, and without intelligence and weapons assistance from the USA, they will lose people at a faster rate than they have in the present just war they are fighting.  The evil Putin will be rewarded with the present Trump Treaty and with conditions easing his next war against Ukraine.

Russia aspires to be the Mongol Horde.  Ukraine aspires to be a part of Western Civilization, a country inspired by The Enlightenment.  All good men are on the side of Ukraine, whose people have put up a most determined resistance to the tyranny of Russia and Putin.  No moral individual could propose the Trump Treaty to Ukraine.  Trump should be ashamed of himself.  Unfortunately, he is shaming the United States of America.

Does a President Have the Constitutional Authority to Demand that Congress Pass a Bill of His Liking?

Tonight, Obama said he was issuing an Executive Order to change immigration law because Congress had not responded to his demand that it pass a comprehensive immigration bill to his liking.  He is posturing that this is within his constitutional authority.  In fact, he does not care whether he has such authority under the Constitution or not.  He has always regarded the Constitution as an impediment to his agenda, as he made very clear in a radio interview back when he served as a Senator in the Illinois state legislature.  Twice he took the presidential oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution when he was always determined to undermine it.  These were the most colossal of his many lies.

If a president were to have such a constitutional authority to demand bills from Congress that were to his liking, the federal government would be no more than a despotic regime.  There would be no check on the power of the president by the people short of impeachment.  In fact, it is not at all clear that a president with such powers would even feel any need to care whether he was impeached or not by a toothless Congress.  Yes, the People might so threaten rebellion that he would come to pay attention, but short of that, why would he care?  Neither would he care what the rulings of the federal courts might be.  The People would only have recourse by refusing to carry out his Executive Orders.

Obama has already shown dozens and dozens of times that he believes he has the power to unilaterally change laws passed by Congress.  ObamaCare, the PPACA, or more honestly the Patient Subjugation and Unaffordable Care Act, has already been changed unilaterally over and over by the health care insurance and tax Czar, namely Obama.  Obama, the Justice Department, the EPA, the IRS, the National Labor Relations Board, and many other Obama Regime agencies have already ignored court orders and violated numerous laws including the Freedom of Information Act.  He has long ignored his duties under the immigration laws.

Now he is making massive changes in the immigration laws simply because a bill he liked that was passed by a Democrat-controlled Senate was not taken up in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.  He insists that if it had been taken up in the House, it would have been passed.  Maybe, maybe not. He is not making a similar argument that the 370 or so bills passed by the House and sent to the Senate should have all been acted on by the Senate.  There are problems in the way the parties work the rules of both the House and the Senate due to the majority party leadership having excessive control of each body.  Yet, those houses have control of their rules and it is entirely unwise to give that control to a president, especially one who does not believe in principles and general rules, but instead changes those rules in any way he needs to get what he wants.  Obama has no principles by which he governs his actions, except his single-minded devotion to collectivism and the total control of the individual by a state with a Great Socialist Leader at its head.

I make these comments on what I believe the essential issues are here despite the fact that I want our immigration laws to allow more lawful immigrants, most especially more who are well-educated and who have great skills and ability.  Obama's rule to increase the number of H1B Visas and not to count spouses against the quota is something I would favor, were it voted by Congress.  Unlike Obama and the courts, I believe it is wrong that the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the US are given citizenship.  To compound that wrong with a ruling that all of their parents illegally in the US will be freed of deportation and allowed to apply for citizenship is wrong.  I would allow children born in the US and their parents a path to citizenship, but they would have to prove themselves worthy.  But what I think Congress should do to change the law is just my opinion.  It is Congress' power under the Constitution to either do so, or not to do so.

Of course, this whole matter is one in which Obama has a very vested interest.  Because his father was illegally in the US when he was born, he should not himself have been considered a citizen and should have had to apply for citizenship.  This is especially so because he was abroad so long and became a citizen of Indonesia.  Had Obama applied for citizenship, he could have had his own Social Security number!  His Executive Order is designed to keep many of his citizenship problems from happening for the many illegal immigrants in the USA.

Because of the classical liberal viewpoint that infused the Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution, and most of the nation's leaders until about 1912, the powers of the Executive Office in the federal government were tightly controlled by many checks and balances and by an ideology that tended to make individual freedom and the rights of the individual our highest political values.  Thus, our philosophy of government was guided by principles.  Then the Progressives came along, who had given up moral and political principles as they had adopted a philosophy of Pragmatism. 

Unfortunately, Pragmatism is highly impractical as a philosophy of life.  Without guiding principles for one's actions and one's value choices, excepting the choice of one's own life as one's highest value, it is entirely impractical to assess every choice one makes in a complex world.  This is like trying to do physics without ever using the general principle of the Conservation of Energy, or Newton's laws of motion, or the principles of thermodynamics.  Yes, with a huge effort one might do all the research needed to make one right decision, but this is the equivalent of placing oneself in time prior to Galileo and Newton and trying to figure out what the momentum, force, and kinetic energy of a stone dropped off a cliff will be when it falls on the head of an enemy below.  Rational decisions without principles are made so difficult that real people give up on trying to make rational decisions and they make their decisions based only on emotional grounds.  This is why the politics of Progressives is entirely based on passions and feelings.  Obama and his followers are such people.  They are stultified by the effort to reason, so they default to their feelings.

Our federal government was crafted as mandated by the Constitution with a great many checks and balances which were to check the power of the executive, each of the two houses of the Congress, the judiciary, the federal government versus the state governments, and the elected politicians generally with respect to the People.  There were also temporal checks, either against passing fads and the madness of crowds or against old men too long in power.  These checks and balances mean that there are built-in frictions against governmental actions.  Some rational policies may take considerable time to be chosen and then put in place.  Patience is usually needed.  But, the Framers of the Constitution had learned that democracy was unstable and unsustainable and strong executive leadership was despotic.  The American system of government was designed to prevent those extremes and because of that, it has proven unusually stable and sustainable.  Unfortunately, Obama and the Progressives have de-stabilized our federal government and created huge discord among the People as they diverted the purpose of government from protecting individual rights to providing favors for special interest constituencies.  To do this, they have found it increasingly expedient to claim greater and greater powers for the president, except when the president is not in alignment with their agenda.

Obama does not care about the welfare of illegal immigrants.  It is very clear that he only cares that they become voters for the Democratic Party.  The evidence is that he even wants them to vote before they become citizens.  But, if he really cared about them or his black supporters, he would not have pursued so many anti-business, anti-job, and anti-right-to-earn-a-living policies as he has.  Both groups have suffered terribly under the massive unemployment since he occupied the White House.  Actually, everyone has lost freedoms and their standard of living has decreased under his increasingly despotic regime.

The American People to an unusual degree rose up to oppose Obama's push for more and more despotic powers and controls in the election of 2014.  Obama is choosing to ignore this by and large.  Since he will not be able to control the actions of either the House or the Senate during the remainder of his administration, he has made it perfectly clear that he intends to by-pass their powers and ignore their constitutional authority.  He is ruling the USA with decrees and proclamations now.  This is a precedent which the American People must vociferously oppose, unless they wish a future as serfs without self-ownership or other individual rights.

What is Missing in the ObamaCare Car? The Chained Driver

So Obama is a used car salesman trying to sell a clunker that somehow escaped the Great Cash for Clunkers Buyout of his first term in office.  Well, I have nothing against used car salesmen in the private sector.  What is missing in this cartoon is the very critical fact that Obama is forcing us to buy this clunker.  And it is not just inoperable, but the buyer is chained to it.

Obama or any would-be tyrant like him controls the chain and they can ration our health care in any way they wish.  Obama is abrogating to himself the power to throw us under the ObamaCare car and kick out the blocks holding it up at his will.  Can you imagine the magnification of his power then?

You vota fer me or I kicka ofer these blocks!

I see you are alive and have diabetes.  Well, you pay 70% taxes or I cut off your treatment, since you have no social value unless you are paying your fair share of taxes. 

Hey, Grandma, you are too old to have social value, so we are going to stand by while you die because you cannot afford the mandated insurance that provides 10 essential health benefits you do not need and still afford treatment of your common elderly health problems.

A Nation of Sovereign Individuals with Unalienable Rights

Obama's 6 July radio address said that on 4 July 1776, a small band of men declared that we Americans were created equal and free to think and worship as we pleased.  He said we were now a land of liberty and opportunity.

Obama did not say in what very limited manner we were equal because his agenda requires that to be vague.  He did not note that while we are still free to think and worship as we please, we are very often not free to speak and write what we think or to act upon our beliefs, religious or not.  He did not note that our liberties are constantly becoming fewer and that he wants them to become fewer.  He did not say that he also wants to dictate the nature of our ever more limited opportunities and pick who will be given greater opportunity than others with manipulative government policies.  He habitually defends unequal status before government as an honest effort to create equality among the People.

To understand how insulting this man's ideas and policies are to the sovereign rights of the individual, we really need a much better understanding of what our individual rights are than most people have.  Indeed, even our founding fathers had an inadequate view of them, though I generally admire them for having understood the problem as well as they did in their time.

The Declaration of Independence, agreed upon on 2 July and published on 4 July 1776, wonderfully stated 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, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Yes, I do not agree that our rights come from our "Creator", but they do derive as Ayn Rand observed from our nature.  At that time, almost everyone assumed the nature of man had been determined by man's Creator and therefore the rights that derived from man's nature were endowed by man's Creator.  This reference to our Creator is a big deal with many who are religious today and because they attribute many of their beliefs to the will of a god they know nothing about, there are unfortunate consequences to this.  Despite this error, there are many really great insights in this quoted statement of the Declaration of Independence.

The statement firmly places sovereignty in the hands of the People, not with government.  It clearly takes individual rights to be of a very broad nature.  Note that it even implies rights beyond those of each individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness with the word "among."  At the time, most Americans believed in the individual right to life, liberty, and property.  The substitution of pursuit of happiness for property was clearly a way of broadening the claim of individual rights.  Of course, the pursuit of happiness implied a freedom to acquire and keep property.  But, it also would imply such things as a freedom to choose one's own friends and domestic partners, to choose what books one would read, to choose a religion or not to choose one, to enter into trade with others of one's choosing for the purposes of one's choosing, to maintain the privacy one desires, and many more actions leading to any of the many means to and forms of happiness that individuals might choose.  This is a clear statement of a very broad concept of individual rights.

These rights are unalienable.  The existence of a government does not diminish these rights.  These rights are always sovereign in the individual.  These rights are not given to the individual by the government.  No, the government is only legitimate and able to claim a reason for its very existence to the extent that the government serves faithfully and well to protect these unalienable rights sovereign in the individual.  The government is the servant of individual rights and when it fails to protect them as a matter of principle, the sovereign individuals will reform and reorganize government by their right so that it does follow principles to protect their individual sovereign rights.

These are powerful, well-stated principles that are manifestly ignored and/or misunderstood by the Progressive Elitists who dominate most academic viewpoints on the role of government today.  This American principle of highly limited government with a legitimacy limited to its protection of individual rights held unalienably by sovereign individuals is unheard in academia, most media, and from most politicians.  The People, long educated in government-run and dominated schools, no longer have a clear concept of their sovereignty, of their broad rights, and of their equally unalienable claim to these rights.  Individuals are obviously unequal in most respects, but in the context of government, the most essential way in which they are equal is with respect to their equal and sovereign individual rights.  To give some people favored status by law is to abrogate this one critical respect in which we are equal before the law.  Those who most claim to believe in equality in the present political arena are most likely to destroy the most important sense in which we are equal.  For all of his talk promoting equality, the Progressive Elitist today believes in neither equal rights nor even one-man, one-vote.

The sovereignty of the individual is re-affirmed in the Preamble of the Constitution.  The statement of the highly limited powers of government issues from the sovereignty of the individuals who constitute that government.  The government is formed only to serve their needs by protecting their liberties and their general welfare.  This reference to general welfare is now often used in an out-of-context manner to support the welfare state and a massive redistribution of wealth.  This could not be further from the intention of the time.  No, then the general welfare implied government actions beneficial to everyone, not a bare majority or some special interest as it means today.  Securing individual rights would provide peace and tranquility, justice, and the general welfare for everyone.  No other government purpose can do this.  Other government actions will most likely be unjust to many, require threats of violence upon many, and will harm the interests of many.

The 9th Amendment of the Bill of Rights makes a clear statement that the rights of the individual are broad and are indeed unalienable.  They are not to be denied or disparaged by the government.  It is no small infraction of the principle of legitimate government that our government has long ignored this amendment and overtly claimed it to be meaningless.  Indeed, the Supreme Court has actually claimed that the government is sovereign, which it most manifestly is not.  Were this the case, then there would be no means by which a legitimate government could be formed and judged.  There would be no possible basis for overthrowing it when it became tyrannical and inimical to the rights of the individual.  Such a government would be inconsistent with both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Indeed, a sovereign government, rather than a government serving to protect the rights of sovereign individuals, is inconceivable in a human-centered morality in which individuals think and act as individuals for the purpose of preserving their lives, flourishing in liberty, and pursuing their own happiness.

This enlightenment and early American view of sovereign individual rights and very limited government legitimately protecting individual rights is very much at odds with the loose and hoary notions of government and rights held by Obama, the Progressive Elitists, and other advocates of big government today.  They assume that it is the purpose of government to grant individuals such rights as it may choose to give them.  They assume that government is supposed to hurt the interests of many for the purpose of helping some who are incompetent in living their lives.  They believe it is just and moral to propagate innumerable laws and regulations limiting our individual freedoms, even as each mandate is enforced by the threat of violence should anyone stand upon their individual rights.  No peace and tranquility are possible as faction upon faction, special interest upon special interest, and even race upon race, battle for control of the brutal power of government.  It is clear that by the criteria of our own Declaration of Independence, our government today is illegitimate.

The rational American does not celebrate the federal government on the 4th of July.  He celebrates the American Principle set forth by the Declaration of Independence and implemented in the Constitution by the mandate of American individuals.  The American Principle states that the individual is sovereign and each individual has equal and broad rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It states that the only legitimate purpose of government is the protection of the unalienable rights of the individual.  Due to this very limited function, government has and can claim but few powers.  The sovereign individual retains his sovereignty with respect to the freedom to exercise his rights, while government is entirely his servant devoted to the sole task of protecting the rights of each and every individual American.  By adherence to this dedicated purpose, good government harms no one and never initiates the use of force against anyone.

Responding to a Progressive Elitist University Request for Donations

A Brown University student of the Class of 2015 sent me an e-mail request for a donation to the university from which I earned my Sc.B. in Physics degree in 1969.  Because of the magnitude of the tragedy that Brown has so failed to provide young and bright students with an adequate education, I took the time to write the following response:

It is precisely because far too many faculty, staff, and students at Brown University view themselves as "partners and agents for collective social change" that I am deprived of the pleasure of supporting a real education at Brown.  They share the image of themselves as Progressive Elitists justified fully in the use of governmental force to impose values on a largely immoral or amoral people.  They wish to micromanage the lives of millions of people they do not know, yet consider incompetent to manage their own lives.  They ignore the essential fact that people are complex and highly differentiated in character, life circumstance, and values.  They seek an easily acquired sense of intellectual and moral superiority, while abrogating to themselves power and money taken by force.

A real education would encourage students to see how honoring the equal, sovereign rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, the ownership of one's own body, mind, and labor, and the pursuit of personal happiness is the real path to achieving the general welfare.  This education would illustrate the need for a legitimate government whose only purpose was the support of these individual rights and which would never seek to harm some while claiming it was helping the majority or some favored minority.  A real education would make it clear that a government that forces some or many to serve the interests of others is tyranny and disruptive of the real benefits of life in a society.  It would show how those benefits flow from the incredible richness of choices and freedom of action when all of our relationships are freely chosen for our mutual benefit.  It would honor freedom of conscience and of association, rather than crippling these freedoms as the big government approved by most at Brown University does.  These freedoms are critical to man who must live by the use of his mind.  An education is supposed to aid man in developing the rationality and analytical capability of that mind.

Unfortunately, any money I give to Brown is used mostly to deprive me and those I love of our individual rights.  It is used to increase the level of already exorbitant tyranny in the Land of the Free.  It is used to diminish the many wonderful advantages of living among others willing to engage in a free trade of ideas, goods, and services.  It creates a government so complex that the vast majority of citizens cannot understand what it is doing and how to control it.  They become pawns due to their limited time, money, and intellect to those few Progressive Elitists who actually do control government to some degree.  But just as the slave master was enslaved by his slaves, so are the Elitists enslaved by the ignorant or insufficiently informed people they think they control.

Soon, as is the case now, control of government is really in the hands of haphazard and conflicting special interest groups (factions in the terms of the founders), who step in and take what they want at the expense of everyone else.  A few of these special interests or factions:

• Crony mercantilists such as green energy companies,
• GE, GM, Chrysler, Boeing with its Export Bank subsidies,
• farmers with crop supports,
• students taking government student loans,
• faculty taking government funded research grants,
• labor unions forcing workers to pay them dues and buying politicians' votes, while systematically underfunding worker pension plans,
• radical environmentalists claiming that economic development is the enemy even as developed countries do most to clean their environments,
• global warming alarmists falsely accusing user's of fossil fuels of overheating the planet,
• people faking disabilities by the millions,
• millions on unemployment benefits for years,
• big bankers and stock investors happy to see the Federal Reserve flood the economy with devaluing printed money,
• home buyers buying homes they cannot afford with government encouragement,
• insurers happy to see people forced to buy health insurance they cannot afford for coverage they do not need as the government asserts its ownership of our very bodies,
• millions happy to use food stamps and other welfare rather than take a job,
• those who use government licensing to keep others out of their profession, 
• a huge government-run education establishment dominated by pro-big government propaganda, teachers unions, and mediocrity,
• large companies that seek to cripple smaller companies with a myriad unintelligible regulations, and of course
• the many power-hungry and corrupt politicians who populate both major parties, though especially the one most favoring the accelerating growth of government.

I had the independence of mind and the knowledge of history, economics, civics, business, and science to withstand the many pressures at Brown to conform to the Progressive Elitist viewpoint that the brutal use of force to accomplish their goals was justified by the claimed purity of those goals.  Of course, kings and aristocrats of old, slave owners, fascists, and communists all made very similar claims.  The end result for any society that deprives its individual citizens of their rights is all too well-known and can be ignored only by the ignorant or the malevolent.

Being a small business owner who has repeatedly converted his limited retirement funds into capital to keep his independent laboratory going through this government caused and government maintained recession of five years duration, my charity activity has to be carefully directed to those fighting the critical battle of our time, indeed of all time.  I am supporting the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Atlas Society, the Institute for Justice, the Club for Growth, the Tea Party movement, the NFIB, and the Right to Work Committee.

Brown University is not very competitive given its concerted deception and propaganda exercised on young minds, too many of which are weak.  It gives me no pleasure to say this, since it is a huge tragedy that Brown is not performing the great service it should be and could be doing.

Betrayal: Republican House Votes to Fund ObamaCare Again

Once again the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has betrayed our individual right to own our own bodies.  They have again sold our bodies to the government for momentary power for themselves.  On a vote of 267 - 151, a continuing resolution to fund the government for the remainder of the 2013 fiscal year was passed.

Only 14 Republicans voted against this monstrously tyrannical act.  Many, many representatives who had pledged they would defund ObamaCare voted in favor of funding ObamaCare.  What is more, the 2010 Pledge to America to post bills up for a vote online for 72 hours was violated.  The efforts of 14 Republicans to defund or to at least keep funding from infringing upon religious freedoms was beaten down by the Republican Establishment.

This Establishment has been re-asserting itself so it can maintain control of the party in the face of efforts of the Tea Party and libertarians to make the Republican Party a true party of limited government and a defender of individual rights.  This heinous act of betrayal by the great mass of the Republican Party representation in Congress must not be forgotten or forgiven.  These unprincipled men must be replaced.

The only principled Republican Representatives were:

Justin Amash (Mich.)
Jim Bridenstine (Okla.)
Paul Broun, M.D. (Ga.)
Ron DeSantis (Fla.)
Scott DesJarlais, M.D. (Tenn.)
John J. Duncan Jr. (Tenn.)
Phil Gingrey, M.D. (Ga.)
Louie Gohmert (Tex.)
Jack Kingston (Ga.)
Tom McClintock (Calif.)
Thomas Massie (Ky.)
Bill Posey (Fla.)
Matt Salmon (Ariz.)
Steve Stockman (Tex.)

These men are heroes.

The rest of the Republicans are villains.  It was in their power to prevent the funding of ObamaUncaringTax during this critical period of its implementation.  Instead, they calculated that it was politically expedient to lay their hands upon our throats and strangle the last vestige of self-ownership until it is dead.

If we do not own our very bodies, are we not slaves?  Yes.

Is the power held by any slave-master ever legitimate?  No.

Failed Federal Education Ideas

I just read Edward Hudgins article Obama offers more of the same failed education ideas.  It is an easy read and a good review of the futility of federal spending on education going back to George H. W. Bush.  He points out that despite all of the federal spending on education, there is only evidence that student knowledge has not increased.

The level of student knowledge and thinking skills was poor when local and state governments were the only governments controlling the K-12 schools and there has been no change with federal controls and spending.  Government spending on education is generally popular because almost everyone agrees that education of children is very important.

But eating is also very important and most of us agree that it would be nuts to have government-controlled farms, food processing plants, food distribution, and kitchens.  It would be even more appalling if we were all required to take our meals at the government-operated and controlled kitchens, because eating is so important.  In fact, because eating is so important, we would be very unlikely to entrust it to the government.  So why do we entrust the education of our children to governments?

Americans are said to be pragmatic more than principled.  A real pragmatist is actually the most principled of people, but it takes a great deal of high level thinking to understand that, so most people see no inconsistency in the idea of being an unprincipled pragmatist.  Many would claim that there is an optimal degree of commitment to principle that each pragmatist seeks within the context of his society.  But with respect to the education of children, it appears clear that Americans are not even in that respect principled or pragmatic.

They have been conned.  The con is not very sophisticated.  The failures of government-controlled education are really, really obvious.  The damage to American children is horrific.  The lingering damage into their adulthood is all too clear.  The resulting retardation of our economy is also very obvious.  Strangely, the very fact that everyone recognizes these facts is actually used by every President to justify spending still more unproductive money on education.  The same is true at the state and local levels of government.  Hope springs eternal that more money spent on government-controlled education will improve its quality.  It will not.

What is more, government controlled education has a critical conflict of interest.  Throughout history, most men have been the servants of their rulers.  The Norse god Loki recognized this and claimed that freedom for man was an illusion.  America has historically managed to be the home of an unusually free people.  We proclaimed famously that the only legitimate purpose of government was to protect the rights of the individual and we rebelled against the most powerful military nation in the world at the time in the name of that principle.  Now we pretty much forced to send our children to government-run schools that claim that principle to be false.  If we do pay for both the public schools and a private school for our children, the curriculum is still substantially controlled by governments.

What else would one expect of government but that it would revert to the historical tyrannical ruler known so well to Loki?  We are not even ruled by a government equivalent to the government we rebelled against in 1776.  Ours is a more tyrannical government despite being a democracy.  That government is actually very happy if most of the people are dumbed-down servants willing to be ruled by the political class of Progressive Aristocrats, most of whom have never escaped government indoctrination themselves.

As I have many times, Hudgins calls for more school choice and for private education.  Only private education will ever be capable of providing the knowledge and critical thinking skills needed by a people to be free and to stay free.  With greater knowledge and better thinking skills, we will flourish as self-managing individuals and the standard of living will rise rapidly in our society.  The stagnation of the Big Government era in freedom, knowledge, and our standard of living will be ended.  The rule of a tyrant such as Obama would no longer be tolerated.

9/12 Demonstrators Strike Terror in Progressive Elitists

On Sunday, 12 September 2010, I and my wife Anna joined the 9/12 demonstrators before the Capitol to protest against big government, wild, insane spending, and massive violations of the rights of the individual.  The crowd, on a rainy, wet day, was large, but not so large as at the 9/12 demonstration of a one year ago.  I suspect that many people stayed home to work to get Tea Party candidates elected to office.  Others, most likely learned from their earlier attempts that the current politicians in Washington, few of whom were there due to the election coming up in November, are so contemptuous of the people they rule, that they have no interest in the people's thoughts and concerns.  Therefore, it is wisest simply to toss them out of office.  Still, the crowd was large and I observed it from about 1 PM to about 4:30 PM.  I took 246 photos of demonstrators and will present some of those here.

Of course, we have from the good authority of the socialist media that such people as these demonstrators are racists, ignorant rednecks, neo-Nazis, all radical, intolerant Christian bullies, homophobes, immigrant haters, and violent beyond belief.  Let us examine some pictures of these people who would strike terror in the hearts of any civilized human being:

"Our Founding Fathers Warned Against National Debt," hmmm.... is that a well-known Nazi saying or what?  "We Can't Afford You."  Perhaps being too poor to be a good Nazi socialist is just a redneck thing.  Notice the many military-like uniforms, the blackjacks, the hobnailed boots, and the raised arms.  We would see the fangs, except everyone is looking in the direction of a speaker, probably a Hitler-like harranger and demagogue.

This gray-haired woman under an umbrella looks mighty threatening.  Quite interesting that on a rainy day she had the creativity to use her umbrella as a protest sign.  If she gets her hands on the controls of government, we had better watch out.  She will be a formidable foe to the Progressive agenda.  ObamaCare = Slavery and Got Personal Responsibility?  How could you be more threatening?

This smiling lady did not look sufficiently threatening to be holding such a subversive sign.  Imagine someone sending the message that people should read Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged.  Imagine telling people it is OK to be concerned about their own self-interest and to act on it.  Then there is all that horrible stuff about legitimate government from the American Declaration of Independence and even a notion that people have rights not granted to them by a beneficent government in the Bill of Rights.  Imagine calling our Mommy Dearest government a tyranny and illegitimate!  That it spends 70% of its expenditures unconstitutionally.  So, I investigated and found that she was simply holding the sign for a husband who was running around the demonstration taking pictures.  He is, no doubt, the evil one.  Then note also that the umbrella lady has also enjoined you to Work Harder: Millions on Welfare are Depending on You.

Here we have someone scaring the children, babies even, with the idea that their debt is huge.  How much kinder it would be to leave the baby in innocence until it discovers how much debt it owes, say, after graduating from college.  At least we know the government-run schools and the progressive colleges will not scare them with such hoary facts!  They are so kind and thoughtful, but not these wicked people!

How uncouth to imply that a Congressional Democrat is a socialist?  How can anyone complain about the government pulling money out of their wallets when they are doing so much good with while paying off Obama's supporters and enlisting them as special interests so they will support socialist policies?  Oops, I meant to say so they would support forward-thinking Progressive policies with central planning by the Mommy State to take care of those many, many Americans who are so helpless and pitifully in need.

Oh, another Uncle Tom.  Ahh.... maybe not.  He is probably a poor homeless, uneducated man who can't even read the sign he is holding.  Those nasty protesters probably paid him so much to hold that sign that he just couldn't resist.  This just demonstrates once again how right the Progressives are in knowing very well that black Americans are incapable of choosing their own values and living their own lives.  Look how they are just so vulnerable to the manipulations of the worst elements in our society.  We elitists must remember it is not his fault.  This is why we have a very, very big government:  To take care of him and to manipulate his vote before the nasty people do.

The woman in the wheelchair stood up briefly.  This proves she is probably an assassin waiting for a black Congressman to pass by.  You have to watch carefully for these sleeper terrorists that fill the ranks of the right-wing wingnuts.

Note the women with a young girl in the lower left.  She is holding a baby.  Is she just really, really irresponsible bringing these vulnerable innocents into the midst of these raving lunatic neo-Nazis?  Or is she an even more cleverly disguised assassin?  Note the sign quotes John Adams, that regressive firebrand of old, that claims that the Constitution is inadequate to a People who are not moral and religious.  You know, he almost got that right.  If he had said it is inadequate to a people who not moral, as we Progressives know no one is, and had left out the religious characteristic, he would have been a Progressive!  Of course, we Progressive do welcome religious people if they subscribe to the Progressive social program and if they understand that the Constitution is inadequate.

"Stop Convolutin' our Constitution."  My, she is even trying to sound like a redneck.  Doesn't she understand even that the Constitution is a living instrument of the Progressive Program?  What kind of education did she have?  Surely, not one in a quality school such as all of our union and government controlled schools are!  "Clean out Congress."  That sounds as though she intends to attack Congress with an assault weapon!

Wow, these neo-Nazis sure are effective in recruiting women.  This one is quite good-looking too, but I am sure her heart is black with evil.  Because she hates her black heart, she probably hates her black President.  Yes, that sounds like the right Progressive spin to put on this.

"Oust the Marxist Usurper! ...His Czars and Thugs!  Honduras did it!"  Wow, how extreme can you get.  These people have probably been reading too much of the radical Charles Anderson!  Why can't they understand that socialism will make everyone equal and provide for all their wants?  Why can't they understand that the State has to use Force to Make People do the Right Thing?  Why can't they understand the collective love of taking your neighbor's income and property and of making him give his time to community service.  Sure, sometimes we have to send someone sort of rough around to take his income or his property.  Sometimes we have to haul his retrograde ass off to jail because he would not obey the great will of the collective.  Sometimes we have to shoot someone.  But, mostly they get with the program and it is so good for everyone to be equally poor, except the elite leaders, who of course need to have more goodies than the rest so they can comfortably lead.  The President should have fine suits, while the people are more moral if they wear rags.

Oh no.  Apparently these three wandered into the midst of this dangerous, black-hating crowd by horrible accident.  It is unlikely that they made it out alive.  The wolves surely devoured them.  Do you suppose that pink jug is full of acid?  Gee, their bodies were probably not even found.  Their bones were probably even dissolved.  The werewolves probably drank all of their blood first.  How awful.  See why you blacks must always vote Democrat?  We give you the best police protection and the best educations.  We really take care of you.  And you owe us.  Never forget how much you owe us, the white Progressive elitists who put Obama into the symbolic Presidency.  The real power is in Congress.

Well, enough of this Progressivist commentary.  I saw no acts of violence and no angry arguments.  There were a few sentiments that this is a Christian nation, one sign against abortion, but not really very much of that even.  Mostly, the signs wanted less government, a constitutional government.  I only saw one sign opposing the Victory Mosque at Ground Zero.  As usual, the police were not needed, but the Progressive DC government and the Democrat Congress needed to pretend that they were.  The people there were a cross-section of America with people of all races there.  Yes, black Americans are in such thralldom to the Democrats, that they are underrepresented.  But, I get the impression that more black Americans are beginning to think for themselves.  There were rich and poor people.  There were grandparents, parents, young adults, and children.  You know, just your everyday group of terrorists.  Well, actually that is what they are, because they are terrifying the Democrat, socialist Congress and their minion politicians all across America.  Good for them.  The People have Awakened and Risen.  They want to cast off tyrannical government and replace it with a more constitutional, limited-power government, which respects their individual rights.

Broader Lawsuit Filed Against ObamaCare

In addition to the lawsuits filed by Virginia and by Florida with another 19 states including Arizona, the Goldwater Institute has filed a private lawsuit against ObamaCare on a much broader basis than that of the state lawsuits which are mostly concerned about the traditional authority of the states to regulate health care.  The private lawsuit, Coons v. Geithner, makes the arguments that ObamaCare:

• exceeds the powers of Congress
• violates individual rights
• interferes with the authority of the states
• violates the separation of powers with a bureaucracy lacking sufficient Congressional direction and judicial review

The plaintiffs are Nick Coons, who owns a small business in Tempe, Arizona; U.S. Representatives from Arizona, Jeff Flake, Trent Franks, and John Shadegg; and by the Speaker of the Arizona House Kirk Adams and 28 other Arizona state legislators.  Obama, Treasury Sec.Tim Geithner, Health and Human Resources Sec. Kathleen Sibelius, and Attorney General Eric Holder are being sued.

Nick Coons will be forced to buy government approved health insurance by 2014 or face IRS fines.  He wants to continue to make his own health care decisions.  He also objects to the legislated violations of his medical privacy to an insurance company, the federal government, and others without his permission.

The three U.S. Representatives object to the lack of Congressional oversight of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which will make assure that costs are controlled and will therefore ration care and care quality.  This board will also not be subject to judicial review.  Unfathomably, the law also says the board cannot be repealed except for a short window of time in 2017.  I cannot understand how a present Congress can override the intentions of a future Congress with any act other than a Constitutional amendment, which requires additional approval from the states.

The Arizona legislators claim they have been forced by the federal government to restore prior cuts they made to their state's relatively generous Medicaid benefits because the federal government had threatened to take away $7 billion in federal payments to the Arizona Medicaid program.  They say this violates their First Amendment rights to vote in the best interests of Arizona citizens.

The Obama administration is expected to request that the lawsuit be dismissed since the federal law will not be fully implemented until 2014.  U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson already rejected this argument in the state of Virginia lawsuit against the federal government.

While I am delighted that 21 states have challenged the federal government on its over-reach into an area traditionally regulated by the states, I am much more pleased with this lawsuit which seeks to directly defend our individual rights.  As I have argued repeatedly, it is impossible to make the case that we have an individual right to life and to the pursuit of happiness if ObamaCare is brought into execution.  We will not even be able to say that we own our own life.  We will not be allowed to manage our own health care to maintain our own lives.  We will not be free to help those we love to maintain their lives.  We will not be free to take medical remedies to ameliorate pain, so we will not be able to pursue our happiness in a most fundamental way.  We will not have the freedom to correct medical problems without the consent of the federal government, yet these medical problems may incapacitate us to pursue the interests and values we need to provide us with happiness.  In short, ObamaCare is a prescription all by itself for that illegitimate, tyrannical government we defined in our Declaration of Independence.  ObamaCare gives us much greater reason than our colonist forefathers had to dissolve our allegiance to that illegitimate government and to seek independence from its tyrannical grasp.  The several lawsuits and/or a supermajority in Congress capable of repealing ObamaCare are the last hope of saving our Union and our much beloved Constitution.

A Step to Force Medicare Advantage Insurers into Bankruptcy

The 11 million seniors on Medicare Advantage plans administered by private health insurance companies are about to be given new premium and co-pay rates.  Despite medical care costs going up 6% this year, the Obama administration sent letters to Well-Point Inc., Cigna Corp., BlueCross BlueShield Association, and Health Care Service Corp. that they must not increase their premiums and co-pays this year, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal on 7 June 2010.  This is part of the Obama effort to minimize citizen anger at the ObamaCare bill.  These insurers and others had planned to cut back on services offered and to increase payments required.  The bill itself requires government payments to be cut by $136 billion by the end of the decade, but those cuts do not begin until 2012.  The present cost freeze implied by the Kathleen Sibelius letter was not in the bill.

It is appropriate for the government to determine how much of the costs of Medicare Advantage it will pay.  At least it would be if the government had any business being in this business at all.  It is not right for the government to mandate what the costs of such plans offered by private insurers will be or can be, however.  The insurance industry estimates the insurance payment cuts on Medicare Advantage over ten years will be about $200 billion.  They do not see any way to offer these plans without cutting the services offered or raising the payments charged to the Medicare Advantage customers.

The Obama thugs are also planning to announce $250 million in grants to the states to fund their toughening insurance premium regulations.  The grip of state and federal government on our health care insurance industry is tightening.  The plan is to make it impossible for private insurers to make money in the health insurance market, just as the plan is to bankrupt all coal-fired electric power plants.  When insurers have stopped offering health insurance or have gone bankrupt, the socialists will institute the tyrannical plan they have always wanted: a single-payer plan, that is, a government payer plan, that is a taxpayer massive redistribution of income plan.

The IRS Ganders and Gooses

We Americans each have one great treasure in common.  We each have an equal, sovereign individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  We also have two extremely important documents in our shared American history.  The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.  The Declaration of Independence declares that we each have an equal, sovereign individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It is simply recognizing that right, not granting it.  It also notes that government is legitimate only to the extent that it serves the sole purpose of protecting and preserving the individual rights of the People.  It declares any government that tramples those rights to be a tyranny which men must overthrow.  Our second great shared American document, the Constitution, provides for a very limited federal government whose purpose was limited to preserving the individual rights of the People by providing for their defense and very limited and carefully enumerated other powers for their general welfare.  Our present government has largely ignored these governing documents.

Among many other problems, it fundamentally does not believe that we have the individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It taxes us to a much greater extent than that needed to provide for our defense, which is only 19% of the 2010 federal budget.  Such other of its legitimate functions do not even constitute a sufficient part of the pie chart of government outlays to be separated out from the 38% covering all other activities and shown in the pie chart below:

The incredible expansion of government has led to a necessary problem that we are no longer seen as individuals with equal rights.  To have equal rights, the scope of government must be very small.  As that scope grows, the government becomes the decider on who gets the benefits of the exercise of each of those powers.  If the primary function of government is to provide for the national defense, we all benefit equally with increased security for our lives.  But when the governmental powers include crop subsidies, ethanol mandates, carbon dioxide emissions policies, export loan guarantees, home mortgage guarantees, student loans for college, medical care regulations, alternative energy subsidies, electrical grid improvements, income taxes, death taxes, dividend and interest taxes, capital gains taxes, sales taxes, education tax credits, mortgage interest deductions, sulfur dioxide emissions regulations, railroad regulations, power plant regulations, airline regulations, banking regulations, insurance regulations, and an almost infinite number of other exercised powers picking beneficiaries and losers, we are not recognized as equal.  With this expansive vision of government we cannot be treated equally.  It is impossible.  Yet, the socialists commonly claim that they want government to exercise a new power in order to make us more equal.  The opposite must be the effect, at least with regard to our rights, if not always with regard to our income.

So, we have a society of gooses and ganders.  Some of us are ganders and most of us are gooses.  The ganders goose the gooses.  This was the way of life throughout human history until the American Founders tried to set up the government of the United States of America with a more enlightened vision.  In the early days of the republic, we fell short of the vision due to slavery and perhaps too great a role for religion.  In the past century, we have lost sight of this vision due to the obscuring vision of the Progressives who see the People as being in conflict with one another for material goods and services, which they value more than their sovereign, equal individual rights.  We too often have a materialistic viewpoint heavily laden with envy and jealousy supplanting a spiritual recognition of the equal right of every American to choose his own values and then to manage his own life in accordance with his chosen values.  The socialist vision is of two children fighting over a couple of toys with a parent, the ruler, to moderate the fight, while the American vision was of adults taking on the joys and responsibilities of living their own lives in a harmonious society of voluntary associations.

The IRS has long had the reputation of a piranha, for its role in tax collection.  This is an American federal government agency that according to a list compiled by Richard W. Rahn, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, does the following:

• Unnecessarily strikes fear into the hearts of tens of millions of your fellow citizens, causing such anguish and despair that some are driven to suicide each year.
• Requires citizens to know 10 million words of rules and regulations because the failure to do so may result in draconian fines and even jail, while at the same time no one in the agency has a full understanding of all the rules and regulations it requires others to know.
• Routinely ignores the constitutional protections against self-incrimination and the right to the presumption of innocence.
• Seizes the assets of citizens without obtaining court judgments.
• Penalizes marriage.
• Discriminates against many of the nation's most productive citizens.
• Destroys incentives to work, save and invest, and undermines job creation.
• Routinely protects agency personnel who have engaged in citizen intimidation, misrepresentation or worse.

But, it also decides in other ways, which of us are ganders and which are gooses to be goosed.  Consider the case of the gander Tim Geithner, now Secretary of the Treasury, which manages the IRS.  In 2006, he was audited by the IRS, and they examined his tax records for 2003 and 2004.  They found that he had not paid his Social Security and Medicare taxes which were not paid by his employer at the time, the IMF.  They withheld his income taxes, but for some reason they did not pay the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.  The IMF did send out frequent reminders that their employees needed to be sure to pay these taxes themselves.  The IRS audit found that Tim Geithner needed to pay $17,230 in back taxes and interest.  What?  No tax penalty?  What's this?  If you or I paid taxes owed late, we would be hit with tax penalties that would make the interest look puny in comparison!  But not Tim Geithner.  No, he is a goose.

While he was vetted for the nomination by Obama to become the Treasury Secretary, it was discovered by the vetters that he had also not paid his Social Security and Medicare taxes for the years 2001 and 2002.  He and his tax expert had decided he did not need to pay them even after the results of the 2006 audit, because the statute of limitations meant he had gotten away with not paying them.  But, to ease his conformation by Congress, he then paid $25,970 of taxes and interest, but no penalty.

The vetters also found he had charged expenses for overnight camps for a child as dependent care tax deductions, though these are not allowed.  He had taken an early withdrawal from a retirement plan, a small business deduction, a charitable deduction, and a utility cost deduction on post 2004 returns which were not allowed.  He had also had an immigrant housekeeper whose papers expired while working for him.  So, he owed $4,334 of additional taxes and $1,232 of interest.  Still, he paid no tax penalties!

We have all seen the many TV ads for the services of companies specializing in getting your past unpaid taxes paid for a small fraction of the amount owed.  They often boast of the many employees they have who used to work for the IRS.  Apparently, they call up an old buddy still with the IRS and say, "Hey, Wesley, this is your old buddy Mouch!  I've got a client who needs a bit of help with paying $20,000 of overdue taxes.  They are finding it a bit hard to pay so much money.  I want to ask you to give me a little favor and agree not to charge them a penalty, or any interest, and just take $0.35 on the dollar of the overdue amount."  "Yeah, thanks old buddy."  "Yes, the money here is good.  When you retire or want to leave the government, I'll hold a position here for you."

Yes, despite the equal protection provision of the Constitution, some of us are more equal than others.  Many of us are gooses and some of us are ganders.  For most of us, the IRS is the beak of the gander and it is a cruel gooser.  I hope you paid all of your taxes, because those tax penalties will kill you.  It does not matter that year after year the IRS owed you money and they never, ever paid you interest on the money they held and used for maybe 9 months on average or more interest-free.  The IRS is the gander, and you are the goose.

Besides, the great socialist leader Obama tells us it is our patriotic duty to pay him our taxes so he can buy the votes of those who like his social welfare entitlement programs and those who like his subsidies for his friends.  He chortles at the Tea Party American protesters who gathered across the country on 15 April and implies they are unpatriotic.  And so the tyrant tramples on our individual rights and calls himself and his largely fascist and Marxist socialist followers American Patriots!

Interesting fact:  By definition, a gander is also a stupid and foolish fellow!  What an inverted society we have where the stupid and foolish fellows rule their intellectual betters.

Our Illegitimate, Fascist Socialist Federal Government

The House of Representatives has signed the Senate health insurance takeover bill and Obama will now sign it.  There is an intention to make some amendments to this bill, but in essence it will remain the same.

Americans are now to be forced at the point of a gun to buy health insurance mandated by the federal government.  The government will dictate what services are to be covered and many aspects of what will be charged for those services.  The government will dictate when and to whom these services will be provided, since it must ration health care severely.  Of course, it will bring on the rationing a bit slowly so that We the People will stay in the ever hotter water just as frogs do if the heat is turned up gradually.

What has been accomplished with this health insurance takeover bill?  We have been lied to over and over by the Democrats that our health insurance costs will go down, but they will actually go up greatly for almost all of us.  Companies will have to reduce employees' take-home pay in order to pay still higher health insurance premiums for their employees.  Or, they can drop such coverage and pay the fine, which makes no sense, because it converts something of value to employees as compensation into something of value to neither the company nor the employee.  Still, companies will take this option in some cases rather than to be subject to further hassles from the IRS about whether the employee health plans meet the government specifications.  In fact, the IRS management may mean that if a health care insurance premium payment is a day late, companies will be hit with the fines and interest that they are hit with for late payroll tax payments.  The main reason small companies go out of business relates to cash flow issues and the most rigid cash flow issues of all are payroll taxes.  Adding to this cash flow problem will drive more companies out of business and cause more to go to the lower tax penalty cost on health care insurance since that rigid payment will be easier to make than the larger rigid ever-escalating cost of the government-mandated health insurance plan.

The quality of health care will go down.  I discussed some of the reasons for this in my last post.  There are many other reasons, but some of them I have discussed in earlier posts and others will be discussed in future posts.  Health care rationing must become more severe, as I have discussed in numerous earlier posts, such as this one.

But, the main thing we have lost is a government that protects our individual right to our life itself.  It is now transformed into a fascist socialist government which claims we have no individual right to our own lives.  We have lost government protection of our right to manage our own health to preserve our lives, as an exercise of our liberty, and to allow ourselves a chance to actively pursue our own individual happiness.  We now have a socialist government which plans to heavily interfere with our exercise of this right by putting us under the armed and intrusive surveillance of the IRS and well over 100 government agencies, all of whom are mandated to make many of our health decisions for us.  We can be sure that this tangled web of power-seeking bureaucrats will evolve their role in that decision process to be ever more dominant with time.  Not only will we be enslaved to these many agencies, but we will have no possible way of knowing and complying with the almost innumerable requirements which will be put upon us.  Even if we could know them all, we could not comply, because these agencies will put contradictory requirements on us as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow.  With equal certainty, many of us will die long before we manage to comply with their mandates, because many illnesses will not wait long enough for us to comply.  Implicit in all of our loses, is our loss of the effective ownership of our own bodies.

Socialist governments are always hot to control three aspects of our lives.  They insist on controlling the education of the People, so they can control them and teach them to serve the state.  Obama has made it very clear that he wants even more control of the American education system than government already has.  He wants to control the funding for all student loans for college, the curriculum, and the research money for colleges to control the faculty.  Obama is in tight with the socialist teachers unions on the control of American education as well.

Socialists seek control of commercial activity, so they can control the People's productive work and their jobs.  The redefined interstate commerce clause and the failure to enforce property rights, contract rights, and commercial association rights have long been used to wrest considerable control of the private commercial sector and to extort it.  Obama has shown a socialist commitment to this purpose with his takeover of banks and financial institutions, the takeover of GM and Chrysler, the legislation on credit card use, and Senator Dodd's proposed new regulations on financial institutions and for "consumer protection."  Legislation promoting more unionization of the private sector will be next.  Many administrative rulings have already helped the unions, as has some stimulus bill money.  The effort to gain control of our energy use with the false claims of the catastrophic man-made global warming scare has been followed by the absurd EPA ruling that CO2 is a pollutant.  The socialists claimed the environment justified this further death grip on the private sector and this opened many more avenues for extortion.

Finally, every socialist government lusts for the bodies of it citizens.  It must possess them.  They always pretend to offer medical services as a concern for the welfare of the People in order to take over control of the very continuation of their lives.  By taking over control of their health care, they make the People fundamentally dependent in the most subject way.  The government gains control over how long people live and how much pain and suffering they will be subject to.  This is an immense power.  The power-hungry socialist loves this kind of power and again such power is very useful as a tool of extortion.

The evil of this mindset is beyond recognition to any rational, benevolently joyous individual who thinks that life on Earth should be and can be a wonderful and rich adventure.  We cannot comprehend it, but we can see that it is there.  Evil people do indeed exist and they exist in fairly large numbers.  The Framers of our Constitution were very aware of this and this is why they neither trusted to a democracy nor to any oligarchy of elitists.  They gave us a representative government and insisted that even that government live within the tight constraints of our Constitution.  That Constitution was written to so limit the powers of government that it was not supposed to be able to do anything more that protect our inalienable, sovereign individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Our Founding Fathers had already established the principle that no government was legitimate which did not protect these individual rights and do so equally in the Declaration of Independence.  They had already told us that a People have the right, and even the duty, to rebel and throw off the shackles of any government that violates the rights of the individual.

Our present government has made it clear that it has no intention of limiting its powers to those given it by the Constitution.  Obama told us long ago that he does not like the Constitution because it does not allow redistribution of income and forced servitude of individuals.  Indeed, our federal government has not limited its powers to those of the Constitution for a long time.  But, this government has set a new standard as a terrible tyranny.  It could not be more clear that this government intends to respect the individual rights of the People to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness not at all.  It clearly has its jackboot squarely on each of our necks and intends to crush any individual who does not meekly and docilely serve the socialist state.  Obama really meant it during the election when he said that service to the state was going to take on new meaning during his presidency.  He is using every trick of demagoguery, misdirection, lying, and extortion he learned as a Saul Alinsky community rabble-rouser to make the federal government a socialist tyranny.

Many of the American People have never put up with tyranny.  But, when the tyranny was Great Britain, there were Tories who were docile.  America today is full of Tories.  They are called Democrats.  The Obama government and the Democrat Tories have declared war on our most fundamental American value that the People, each and everyone, has the inalienable individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  These are not collective rights.  These are rights each of us holds individually.  I have the right to my life and all aspects of its management.  I have the right to my liberty.  I have the right to choose my values and to manage my own life in accordance with those values.  I have the right to think for myself and to take action based on my own individual judgment.  I own my body, my time, and my labor.  I have the right to act in pursuit of my own happiness.  I have the right to manage my own health choices.  You also have these rights equally.

When the federal government has declared war by using arms and the threat of arms to deprive me of my individual rights, it has performed an act of war on me.  It has done the same to you.  Every individual has the right to defend his rights from those who use violence and extortion to deprive them of those inalienable rights.  Anyone who does not defend his rights is not really an American.  I am an American and I believe completely in the inalienable rights our Founding Fathers believed in and I believe completely in the Constitution which the Framers set up to protect our individual, inalienable rights.  I intend to defend the Constitution against this tyrannical onslaught of fascist socialism.

As the tyranny of Great Britain mounted before the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers and those who joined them, frequently disobeyed the illegitimate laws of Great Britain.  This might mean they did not always put the required stamps on their playing cards, pay the tax on windows, or they might dump tea into Boston Harbor, or they smuggled in goods to avoid tariffs.  Americans today often exceed the speed limit and round a few corners on reporting all of their income, but most of us obey the laws as best we can.  But, some laws, such as those requiring us to report our health care insurance to the IRS, we ought to start massively disobeying.  It is time to start telling this government that we will not bow docilely and place our necks under their hobnailed boot.  It is time to defend our individual rights and our Constitution with some civil disobedience.

In 2010, we must turn out of office every Democrat possible in the House of Representatives and the Senate.  We must replace these members of the socialist party with someone who has at least some commitment to our Constitution and to our inalienable individual rights.  I am sure we will not always get a really good choice, but we must still teach tyrants the important lesson that we will turn them out.  If we work with the Tea Party enthusiasts, we will be able to find many candidates who are at least a marked improvement over the present socialists of the Democrat party.  We must not let up, since we must turn out even more socialists in the election of 2012 and then we must become very serious about rolling back the socialist state.  We must return government to the role of protecting, not violating, our inalienable individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Betsy McCaughey - O's Broken Promises

Betsy McCaughey, former Lt. Gov. of New York and founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, has written an op-ed providing still more vital information about the Democratic health insurance bills in the House and the Senate. It is entitled O's Broken Promises - Health Bills v. Prez's Words. These Democrats are an unending source of amazement. It is no wonder they are in a hurry to push their health care insurance bills through Congress in a super hurry. They will not stand up under scrutiny at all. Most Americans will be furious when they come to understand what is in these bills. It is remarkable how committed the Dems are to Socialism that they would try to put this over on the American people despite the backlash which will surely sweep them aside afterward! Clearly, they believe the American people will be permanently saddled with socialized medicine even after they are thrown out of office.

What are the main points of McCaughey's op-ed?

• You will be forced to enroll in a "qualified" health plan chosen by a new government bureaucracy.
• If your employer provides your plan, you will have 5 years to enroll in a "qualified" plan. If you are self-employed, you will have less time.
• You must prove you are in a qualified plan when you file your taxes. If not, you will be fined thousands of dollars and put into a randomly chosen government plan, which you will have to pay for.
• All "qualified" health insurance plans will be managed care plans. The goal is to reduce everyone's consumption of health care, make everyone have the same low quality of care, and to prevent people with more money from having better health care.
• Any change in your present plan, even a change of deductible or copay amount, will result in your being forced to give it up and pay for a "qualified" plan.
• There is no "qualified" health insurance plan cost information, but a family of four with income up to $88,000 per year will qualify for some assistance.
• The Congressional Budget Office estimates (their estimates are always low) the cost of the plan to taxpayers as taxpayers (not as consumers, that cost is extra) is $1.04 to 1.6 trillion [from 2010 to 2019. 17 million will still have no insurance.]
• The cost will be covered by increased taxes on individuals making more than $280,000 per year in 2010, with their new taxes being doubled in 2012. The remaining money will come from reducing senior's health benefits under Medicare.
• Much of the expense in the government takeover of health care (He who pays and "qualifies" makes the rules.) is in making "community transformation grants", home visits for expectant families (to encourage government paid abortions?), services for migrant workers, and the creation of many, many new government councils, programs, and advisory boards.

The Democrats keep claiming that drastic action is needed to reform our failing health care industry. Yet, the World Health Organization ranked the U.S. number 1 in being responsive to patient's needs, including a timely response and a good choice of doctors. If you have cancer, you have a better chance of survival in the U.S. than anywhere else. A poll by ABC News/Washington Post found that 83% of Americans were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their health care and 81% were satisfied with their health insurance. This will be a high point in American satisfaction if these Democrat bills pass. It is all downhill from here. We will have much worse health care and we will be treated like children whose parent bureaucrats will make all decisions for their children.

The only time your input will ever matter is now. Scream bloody murder to your Congressman and Senators now, because soon the government will be limiting your ability to make your own life decisions, as well as those of your loved ones. This is a giant step into a state of servitude and tyranny.

The Tyrannical Nationalization of Health Insurance

Obama promised us that his nationalized health insurance plan would allow us to keep the health insurance plan we already had if we liked it. It turns out that he means to do absolutely no more than just exactly that. The bill before Congress is far more effective in nationalizing health insurance than anyone sane would imagine given Obama's assurance. But these Democrat socialists are power-grubbing scoundrels with a great deal of cunning. Anyone with this much cunning is not stupid, they are either strangely insane or flat out evil.

Investor's Business Daily has started the process of actually reading the 1,018 page bill, which you can be sure none of our Congressmen and Senators will actually do. On page 16, they found:

Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law.

The editorial in IBD goes on to explain:

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

It is now clear that a smaller and smaller group of people will have insurance coverage of their own choosing. Eventually those grandfathered in will all be on Medicare and there will be no more private health insurance plans available. In practice, these plans will disappear even before that date since the numbers of people staying with their old plan will become to small for the plan to be continued.

The end result: Government will make all decisions on what medical procedures will be covered under health insurance, who will receive those procedures and who will not, how long a patient will wait for treatment, who is too old to bother with treatment, whose sickness is too expensive to treat, which minority groups will receive special treatment and which will be ignored, which babies are healthy enough to be allowed birth, how obsolete medical equipment will become, and which new equipment will be bought and in what numbers. Individual patients and their doctors will have no say. All decisions will indeed be in the hands of bureaucrats.

This is a very serious matter. We must all shout it down until we are hoarse and then write until we can write no more. This tyrannical takeover of the care of our bodies must be denied. What could be more important?

The Government Problem

We have a massive problem with government ignoring the best interests of the people in these United States of America. Both the people and their elected representatives clearly have come to hold each other in disdain. One would think that in a democracy, the people could use the power of their vote to elect representatives who respected them and cared strongly for their welfare, which translates into believing that the principal requirement of the people is their freedom to choose their own values and to be able to act on them to manage their own lives. But, many of the people themselves are elitists who believe that many other people are incapable of choosing their own values and incapable of managing their own lives. Almost all of our politicians arise from this elitist group of the people and they are also of a group that lusts for personal power and influence.

Throughout history, democracies have been short-lived. They always have transitioned into tyranny. They fail because most of the people have their hands full managing their own lives and do not make the effort to understand what is going on in government. Even when some understand what is going on, they rarely take the necessary time to oppose it. Those who lust for power always have more incentive than those who wish to prevent its use. The Framers of the Constitution were fully aware of this lesson of history and they greatly feared democracy. They were confident that the people could manage their own lives, but they understood that the people were not very good managers of government. So, the Framers worked very hard to produce a government whose powers were limited to the minimum needed to protect the rights of the individual to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness from anarchy and from a transition into a tyranny.

They allowed the people to elect the members of the House of Representatives who had the sole power to originate bills to tax the people and had a short term of office of two years. They balanced this democratic arm of the legislature with a Senate, whose members were chosen by the legislatures of the states. This balanced the perceptions of the people with those of a group of people who were more select in abilities and who might be more likely to bear the interests of the states and local regions in mind. Democracy was not absent here, but it was a level removed. The six year term of office of the Senators was also a means to give them a longer range viewpoint of the needs of the people, which would be less subject to the fads and fashion that swept through the people from time to time. The President was not to be chosen by direct vote of the people, but was to be chosen by the Electoral College. The Electors in the Electoral College were in the position very briefly and would not have time to accrue interests contrary to those of the people common to those who hold power for some time. They were also to be selected by a process that included state interests and kept them removed somewhat from the whims and inattention of the people. Of course, they were expected to be intelligent and interested citizens.

Over time, we have removed many of the republican features of our government as designed by the Framers of the Constitution. We have replaced them with democratic features. We have put the government very directly in the hands of the people. Despite this, recent events and a long history have made it clear that the people do not really control the government. This result is just what the Framers of the Constitution understood would happen. For a very long time, polls of the people show that they have very little respect for Congress members. Meanwhile, contrary to the Framers belief that the people could manage their own lives, our democratically elected Congress members believe that they must micromanage the lives of the people, because the people are not capable of managing their own lives. So, we now have a system of government in which the people, who are thought to be incapable of managing their own lives, are given the responsibility to manage government by democratically selecting their rulers, who will really rule them with massive volumes of laws to regulate their every behavior and action.

On the face of it, this inversion of the wisdom of the Framers of the Constitution makes no sense. One simply would never turn over the management of the household to the children. Yet, we have a government that regards the people as children and yet all of whose officials, save the Supreme Court, are selected directly by the people, those very same children. Why would this be desired by the elitists? Because this was the cost of power and as the system evolved, it became very clear that the people were easily manipulated.

What would have prevented this even with the trend toward democracy? The only hope would have been that the people had a strong concept of the need for highly limited government so that the people, who were capable of managing their own lives, would be free to do so. Once upon a time, most Americans did understand this. However, the elitists who hungered for power found the means to prevent this principle from continuing to be strongly held by the people. In the 1800s they worked very hard to build up public school systems designed explicitly for the purpose of controlling the information that would inform our youth about America and its principles. They found that they could use a fear of immigrants and their different cultures and religions as a means to sell this idea of public schools to the American public, but the elitists who ran the school boards, ran the colleges of education, and wrote in the teaching journals, never lost sight of their real goal to use public schools to broadly indoctrinate our youth in the need for stronger and more controlling government. In addition, the public schools are very adamant that our society is full of victims and people who are incapable of managing their own lives. It is biased against industry and employers and belittles their accomplishments. To this day, men such as Weatherman Bill Ayers, are working tirelessly to further the cause of public school discrimination against all things of the private sector and all things pertaining to individual competance and rights.

One of the principal reasons that education is valuable to an individual is precisely because a knowledge of history and a study of government will cause many to understand the need for limited government and for a republican, not a democratic, government. It will also teach youth that they are capable of managing their own lives and to help them find moral principles by which they can manage their lives. Modern public schools are a creature of government and the teachers and curriculum are chosen to further the needs and interests of a power-seeking government, not the needs of the students and the people generally. There is an obvious conflict-of-interest here. Furthermore, public schools must at least pretend to respect religious freedom, so they long since abrogated the moral guidance that would conflict with religious freedoms very overtly. They do offer much moral guidance nonetheless, but it is carefully chosen to support a belief that people are commonly incapable of managing their own lives and need the extensive help of government in doing so.

Of course, the people are not in school anymore for most of their lives, so it is necessary to carefully control the information they get after they have left school. This is done by a very careful control and manipulation of the media. Of course, people who can write and who feel comfortable speaking for hours to the public, are generally elitists educated and indoctrinated in the public schools and universities. Even most of the private colleges and universities are now run by elitist socialists. They ignore the stories of how government power has abused the interests of the people and pretend that all problems are caused by the private sector. They favor the idea that any identifiable problem requires a solution by government, even if it was government that first caused the problem. Since the news is so dominated by stories of government, the reporters need to keep close to government officials to have early access to stories, so this is a further means of control. In addition, big government releases all stories with a spin favorable to big government, which takes in many reporters over time, even if they begin with some skepticism.

Americans are problem-solvers. They like the idea of identifying problems and solving them. This is done all the time in the private sector and it is generally done well, but we seldom hear about these problems being solved. Since we like the idea that we Americans are problem-solvers, it gives most Americans something of a thrill when the government announces that it has identified and solved a problem. We like it when action is taken to solve a problem, so government takes advantage of this and "solves" problems better left to the private sector all the time. The private sector too seldom toots its own horn to tell the public about the many problems it solves and solves well. Besides, the schools and the media are biased only to telling the people about government "solutions."

Back to where this has left us. The elected officials of the federal government have their own agenda, which interestingly enough, most of the people do not approve of. Polls of the people clearly show them to have a very low regard for Congress. Despite this, Congressmen are re-elected over and over. Apparently, the very vast majority of Congressmen are masters of the re-election game. Perhaps most voters are happy with their Congressman and only unhappy with all the other Congressmen. More likely, I think this unhappiness with Congressmen commonly does visit their own representative. But, the alternative choices on the ballot usually offer only slightly different principles of government, the media backs the government activists more often than not, and as the voter thinks about who to vote for his mis-education recall kicks in and he makes the wrong choice. Besides, as often as he is disgruntled by government actions that inconvenience him, he has only the most muddled sense of history and or moral principles, so how is he going to make a rational choice?

Let us examine a couple of specific issues that illustrate some of the problems. Let us start with the ethanol mandate passed more than a year ago. This bill mandated the expanded use of ethanol in gasoline mixtures because it was a means to increase energy independence and to decrease air pollution. Of course, it was also a means to add considerable income for corn farmers. Corn was already a heavily subsidized crop. It also produced income for ethanol refiners such as ADM. Of course, what was most important for our political Congressmen was that they could buy many corn state votes and the rest of the country would not complain too much because of the energy independence and pollution control rationales. About the time of passage, it was a bit inconvenient that a number of studies discovered that ethanol from corn took as much energy to produce as it provided when it was combusted. Also, it was found that it probably increased, rather than decreased, pollution. It also soon became apparent that food prices for grains went up, the value of farmland increased, and those meats produced by feeding livestock corn went up drastically. Rising food prices hurt our large food export market.

Did Congress revoke the bad law mandating the use of ethanol? Of course not. The special interests making more money had to be kept happy and the general public did not much seem to care that they were being bilked. If the states still had any power over the federal government, they might have brought pressure to bear, but the many states with minor corn production no longer have such power to watch over the interests of their citizens in our no longer representative government scheme. We are a democracy now!

How about the Waxman-Markey energy tax being called a cap and trade bill? Its rationale is that it will prevent the pollution of the globe by American CO2 emissions. More Americans now know this rationale makes no sense than those who believe it. This does not matter. The Congress hides morally behind their claim that man-made CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic global warming, even though the globe has been cooling for 11 years despite CO2 emissions increasing and despite the growing scientific evidence that sunspot inactivity is going to result in cooling for several more years. They are buying the votes and campaign contributions of all those many Americans who are opposed to business and industry and of those who are religious-type environmentalists who hate all things in man's best interest. They are also buying the campaign contributions of all the wind generator, solar power, biomass conversion, and electric smart-grid companies.

It bothers them little that they will cause large-scale unemployment in the coal industry, the oil refinery business, the oil pipeline business, for those railroads that haul large amounts of coal, and the coal-fired electric generator plants. They will badly hurt energy-intensive industry, including aluminum, steel, coke, bakery, paper, brewery, oil refinery, trucking, busing, and cab companies. Some industries have been bought off in the short term by free coupons for CO2 emissions, but these will not exist in a few years. Meanwhile many other companies will see their electric bills rise greatly. My $880 per month laboratory energy bill may well double. This is not a trivial expense item for us. This increased cost of energy use will hurt American exports. It is also going to hit all of us at home. Of course, in the early years the pain will be less and it will then be ratchetted up all the while the Earth will continue to cool! But our democratically elected Democrat Congress will not care. A huge phone call volume that overwhelmed the phone system in the House for three days did not prevent the Waxman-Markey bill from passing. To be sure, it was diluted in the early years to make it less of a pill to the coal-using states and plenty of earmarks were added to gain other votes, which changes required that 300 additional pages be added at 3 AM to a bill that was already 932 pages long. The House passed it that same day. No one read the bill before voting for it.

It will be very hard to get this reversed, once it passes the Senate. The Senate might once have been a stronger bastion of state interests and the coal-rich, coal-using states and the oil-refinery rich states might have brought this massively destructive bill to a stop. It is now likely to be a closely run affair, especially now that a selective recounting of votes in Minnesota has put Al Franken in the Senate producing the Democrat Party's 60-vote control against filabuster.

Let us consider the massive bailouts. Most of the people opposed these. The Congress did not listen. Now that companies receiving bailout money are finally being allowed to return it in some cases, the government wants to spend it elsewhere rather than to reduce the debt. The debt burden is huge and now there will have to be general tax increases. There have already been increased taxes on businesses, which will have to pass on the costs to consumers. There will be increased taxes on the sort-of-rich, but much of that will have to be passed on to the customers who made those people rich by buying their services. There will be increased energy taxes, even if Waxman-Markey does not pass the Senate, since they will simply go back to the drawing boards and come up with an energy tax that will pass.

Finally, the people have long thought that there are problems in the health care industry. There are. Most of those problems are caused by the government and some of the complaining people understand this. Some do not. But, most people are happy with their own health insurance plan. Obama said we could keep the plan we were happy with. But now, Congress is talking about taxing many people's company's contributions to their plan. Obama's administration is also saying that they will establish criteria for acceptable health insurance plans. You may not be a candidate for drug addiction, but you will have to have a plan that covers care for such people. This will raise your costs. You may not have any need for menal disability care, but you will have to pay for a plan to cover those who do. So, you may very well not be allowed to keep your present plan. If the company you work for does not offer a plan, in many cases it will have to. To do this, some companies will have to fire some employees. Some will also opt to pay the penalty fee and no longer offer a more expensive government-qualifying health insurance plan. One can only imagine how the government will spend that income. You will wind up buying the government health insurance plan then and it will come to be subsidized, thereby eliminating all private sector health insurance plans. The people are very clear in rejecting a government run health care industry, but this is exactly what Congress wants to force upon us. We are a democracy, but Congress does not listen to us. They do not have to, since they are masters at fooling us into re-electing them.

What is the bottom line? Our republic became a democracy. The people do not have a sufficient grasp of history, of the principles of good government, and they do not follow the shenanigans of our government well enough to actually control it. Our democracy has become exactly what the Framers of the Constitution knew democracies will always become. It has become a tyranny! To correct this situation, we must at least create a strong education competition by private schools with the public schools. In time we should eliminate the public schools. This is critical. Only when the people have a firm grasp of history, the critical need to greatly limit the scope of government, an understanding of our Constitution, and the conviction that most people are capable of managing their own lives, will they have the means to wrest back control of our out-of-control government. Only then can we end the tyranny which is now single-mindedly squashing the right of the sovereign individual American to choose his own values and to pursue them in the management of his own life!