Eating Our Substance

The current economic situation comes from eating out our substance.   This Depression has been delayed, but expanding, since around 1990.  We have begun to eat the foundation beneath our wealth, and the outcome will be absolutely disastrous.  The outlook is amazingly bleak, and the only reasonable solution will never be implemented by our Republicans and Democrats.

I attribute the progression of this collapse to three primary problems.  First, we stopped manufacturing in America.  Consequently, we upped the tax ante for those players who tried to continue.  Third, we created a spending spree.

When we stopped creating wealth, we were the richest nation in the world.  We had enough cash in hand to finance several decades even though we knew it could not last forever.

We taxed the lion’s share from producers and manufacturers (employees and employers) to feed and house the displaced.   When we packed up our production and sent it away to foreign lands, we could afford the alternative from the money in our collective savings.  It was cheaper — in almost every way.

The logic in our situation called for rebuilding industry — newer, better, more up-to-date.  Instead, we went crazy building houses and shopping malls.  Fully 40% of the new jobs from the millennium change to now have been construction, real estate, and all the supports for the boom.  Not only did we fail to create wealth, we spent the last of it.  We went into a thirty-year debt with five to ten years of wealth.

Now our businesses are gone, our homes are falling apart, we have maxed out our personal and governmental credit, and anything we try to rebuild will have to come from China, India, Mexico, and a host of Pacific Islands.

The solution is quite simple, really.  We have to tighten our belts and go to work.   We must convert our assets into production, and stop spending money.  Many of us have already lost everything, but not our will to survive.

The great remaining obstacle to the solution is Congress and the succession of Presidents who brought us here.  We never could afford a few trillion here and there, and we need to stop them from trying.

In my opinion, we will not.  We will continue to sail the ship of state right into the rocks.

May God grant that I am wrong.

Joe Wilson Weigh-in

Joe Wilson blundered.  He knows his behavior offended the high office of the President, and even apologized directly and personally for his failing.  Public censure from his fellows in Congress is appropriate.

Mr. Obama changed facts and figures from one speech to the next.  The President misrepresented the contents of two existing health care bills, and even mislead Americans.  He radically altered his earlier goals and feigned a sort of continuity, and addressed the House of Representatives and citizen audience in a thinly veiled, highly partisan manner.  In other words, the President behaved in a deplorable and dishonest way.

Congressman Joe Wilson, however, as an honorable member of the House of Representatives, deserves a public scolding.  He offended the President of the United States from the floor of the House.  It remains the office, not the individual, that deserves respect from the members of the House.

I support the censure 100%, but it would be easier to swallow if Democrats had received the same censure for denigrating Presidents Bush and Reagan.

Just Three Questions, Plus One

The critical decision for all people comes down to one question: “How free do I wish to be.” To some extent, most of us readily answer, “Oh, very free!”  But in reality, that often is not the case.

We want certain freedoms, but enjoy some constraints as well.  Many of us choose, for instance, to be “bound” by obligations to our spouse and children, extended family and friends, religion and morals, our careers, homes,  and other restraints against absolute liberty.

And be careful!  There are freedoms we wish to restrict from others that we might enjoy for ourselves.  Those should be considered as well… in the same way that Congress and Mr. Obama want “universal” health care for all but themselves.

The second question is, “How much is freedom worth?”

The final question becomes, “Who will protect that freedom and exercise the authority over my neighbor and me?”  If you some say in it, you are “old-fashioned” and might just want to be free.

Liberty is best preserved by restraint.  Killing people and blowing things up leads to loss of freedom.  That is a no-brainer, but what about the liberties we enjoy most every day?  Raising a family, living securely and peacefully in our own homes, keeping our jobs (or changing them if we wish), making decisions about our money and where to use it, deciding what to eat, what to wear, and who to associate with have been the American way for over 200 years.  Why does our Radical government and its supports now want to change all that?

Radicals want to indoctrinate our children and limit how many you have. They prevent us from protecting ourselves while they openly harass and watch us, and take our money to spend for “the common good.”  They tell us what jobs to take with which corporation by whittling away the laws of liberty.  They even have designs on  condemning meat, leather, and fur as a “greenhouse gas problems.”

Are you content with all of this?

Those were the Three Questions Plus One.  You now have a choice (and you had better make it quickly!) you have to ask yourself one more question: “If this is not acceptable to me, what am I willing to do about it, and how long do I have before the shrinking pool of liberty is locked away?”

Decide what to do first, and do it now.

Freedom IV, Right Use of Power

Let your mind soar for a minute: what would you do if your income suddenly doubled? And what if you had a chance to double it again by changing jobs?  If you are unemployed, what if you could look in the paper and find great jobs waiting for you, and dozens of opportunities to go into business for yourself?

That is what would happen if the total tax burden was reduced to 15% of our wealth.

Of course, not everyone would benefit right away! Many, many people would lose their government jobs and many others would lose their welfare.  Still others would lose private industry jobs reporting to the government, and yet more would lose regulatory jobs regulating the regulators.

Sound interesting?

Of course, if it happened suddenly, riots and horrible violence would lead to civil war.  Ruthless groups and individuals would seize control.  New crimes would be invented by ingenious thugs and thieves, and instant supply and manufacturing problems would nearly cripple the country.  It would be an instant mess of epic proportion.

Still, it can and should be a long-term goal, and there is no reason to wait.

It requires just one thing in the mind of American voters: we will only abide by the limits of our national and state Constitutions.  That is legitimate use of power and the Law of the Land.

Freedom III, Power

Power is energy and force, and a very useful but dangerous tool.  A power saw, for instance, allows me to cut through a board in 10 seconds that would take 10 minutes by hand because it allows the use of electricity as power.  In human terms, a good neighbor working with me can empty a load of lumber from my truck in less than half the time it would take me alone, and with far less strain to either of us.

This changes greatly if we abuse power.  I can burn my shop to the ground by straining the power supply, or lose a good neighbor.

Political power is the same.  Properly and legitimately harnessed, government allows people to work together to produce and defend a greater common good, yet even small abuses can tear the people apart and destroy common welfare.  George Washington called government, “A dangerous tool and a fearful master.”

Political power stems from the will of the people, the consent of the governed, and properly extends only as far as individuals cannot control but must have for their common good — common defense, peace among international trading partners, police powers to quell internal violence, limited and specific maintenance of the nation’s interstate roads and communications, and protections against oppressive force used against, or by, individuals.

Political abuse is power that removes liberties and options in preference for a mandated scheme, or the forced taxation and compliance of the whole even for a system of support for the majority — especially if the support comes as oppression for the few. This becomes a political crisis when the options and freedom of the majority are seized and eliminated by force of law.

This becomes especially important as we look at current policies (and by “current” I mean progressive and developing abuses, not entirely the current Congress and President.)

The clearest and most obvious abuse of power is unfair taxation.  Any individual who has nearly half his income siezed by the government is oppressed, and any government that demands nearly half an individuals income is oppressive.  This abuse is compounded when the siezure requires force and is used against a bloc of the people to eliminate or severely impede their lives, liberties, and pursuit of property and happiness.  It is further compounded when the siezure cannot adequately pay for the damage that is being done and afixes a price tag to posterity.

As this article goes to press, Americans pay nearly 50% of our produce and value to government, who in turn use it to restrict our productive capacity and make treaties to devalue our labor and production; seek to eliminate legitimate business for the purpose of generating forced government controls and methods; force price fixes and restrict energy supply to control and impede gainful employment; pay individuals, states, and municipalities to oppress the liberties of the people; establish laws making small business unable to compete; encourage and enforce values and oppression by foreign governments against their own citizens and ours; buy political favors and frivolous projects; interfere in the moral and ethical fabric of our people; provide unwarranted services to illegal residents of our nation; suppress standards and enforce quotas and pet projects; ignore the Consitutional limits on government in virtually all of these abuses; and at an annual cost of nearly two trillian dollars annually to our posterity, with the expectation that the debt, controls, enforcement cost and destruction of America’s production will continue to rise phenomenally.

Freedom II, Constitution

You no doubt heard that the colonies gathered to discuss a replacement for the Articles of Confederation because that instrument gave the federated government no power.  That is true, but there is more to the story.

In essence, the 13 original colonies reluctantly offered any power to the federal government, and if they could survive without one, all the better.  For that reason, the Constitutional Convention became a sort of miracle just for existing.  Once it built up enough steam, some colonies sent representatives more to keep an eye on things than to consent to anything.  The people of these somewhat united states liked freedom, and now that they had it giving it up remained out of the question.

The Constitution gave very specific powers to three distinct branches of government.  Congress was divided between the Senate — appointed by and representing State government, and the House of Representatives — representing the popular vote of the individuals in the regions of each State.  These two groups, representing the rights of the States and the rights of the people, had to agree before laws could be made.  (Blame New York for screwing things up and making them both popularity contests.)

The President enacted and enforced what Congress gave him to do. The main job of the President of the United States was to lead the military and create treaties for peace.

The Supreme Court had the job of judging laws by the Constitution.

The US Constitution was designed to limit the power and authority of government in order to maintain the freedom of the people.

Freedom III will look at the Power to the People, and the necessary responsibility that went with it.

Freedom I, the Roots

This series actually begins with the previous post.  You might want to read that post first in order to understand where this leads.

Way back when, the world gathered into groups and appointed a leader to govern.  In one way or another they called him “king.”  The king controlled everything, and more often than not he became a tyrant.  The people accepted this tyrany because, well, it came from the king!

From this grew the notion that kings are God’s anointed.  (If you believe in a master, it makes sense to imbue him with a touch of divinity.)  This belief in the great leader is called, appropriately enough, “The DIVINE RIGHT of KINGS.”

Here and there, people began to see that kings were not so divine.  Kings, they began to see, were men who suffered from being human.  In some places the people actually rose up against the king.  Most of them were also quickly put down by the king’s armies.  Eventually a few societies were able to add some new authority.  In England, for instance, they kept the king but added parliament.  (Ironically, paliament means “talkers,” and they started out as a sort of cabinet — not much of a control, but a good start.)

A new way of thinking began to emerge. Although it originally received little attention apart from those who were jailed, suppressed, or killed for it, some scholars and theologians began to recognize that each man and woman controlled his own behavior based on his ability to think and rule himself, and the variety of behavior in society was pretty much proportional to the number of people in society.  The king, still a mouthpiece and force, was just one more voice with his own quirks, moral issues, and limitations.

A new way of thinking!  Samuel Rutherford worked it out theologically, John Locke developed it politically, and Thomas Jefferson penned it practically into the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.“

Jefferson was smart enough to recognize that these equally created individuals might want to be king, so during the Constitutional Convention he was heard to declare,

“Enough about the rights of man! Let us bind him down with the chains of the Constitution!“

Before proceeding with Freedom II, take 20 minutes and read the Constitution.  It will help to understand what it says and does as well as what it is.  What it is, of course, is the law of the land — at least theoretically, until a progression of wouldbe kings got their hands on it.

Stay tuned.  I promise this gets very interesting.

Freedom For All

Defending and resisting can exhaust a good soldier.  Sometimes more can be accomplished by setting out on a mission than sitting in a bunker shooting back.

Our current “wars” amount to government controls on the citizenry of the United States, and add up to about half of our nation’s resources.  These wars include Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, but also the so-called “wars” on poverty, drugs, climate change, prejudice, the economy, pollution, natural disasters, inequality, ignorance, bigotry, terror, guns, influenza, etc.  They suck the lifeblood right out of us, and each new war brings on new enemies to destroy and kill.

Death, destruction, humiliation, and surrender are the goals of war, and the United States government are masters.  We should re-direct and focus our efforts on creation and encouragement, and surrender to the peace of life, prosperity, liberty, and happiness.

We have only one legitimate threat to free society today, and that is the war for freedom itself.  It can be, and should be, won without a bomb or bullet being flung against the enemy, because the great solution to the war on liberty is refusal to fight for the tyrant.

In fact, our other wars are mere distractions — sucker punches designed to blind us to the prize.  The prize is freedom.  In freedom, we all get exactly what we want and work for, unless what we want and work for is something that is not ours to take.

Dilations: Freedom and the Coup will begin a new series today on the effects of freedom on oppressed people.

Begin with Freedom I, the Roots

Freedom, the American Way

Freedom once pushed out America’s boundaries, created a fantastic land of expanding wealth, and allowed generations of joyful hardship.  Those days are over.  We left freedom at the door to perceived security.

Sadly for us, security creates boundaries, denies expanding wealth, and disallows both the joy and hardship of possibility.  Once the land of liberated opportunity, America is now the nation of restrictive managed care.  We watch time slip away on cheap Chinese watches, get phone support from India, and drive away wealth in Japanese cars.

Oblivion is our destination, so get off the train, because we have no strength to stall the locomotive.  In far more than a simple analogy, the engineers are throwing our lives into the hopper to feed its fire.

Where we find ourselves when we jump from the train will be solid, un-shifting ground.  Though we might not immediately recognize our surroundings, we can make it home.

Easier said than done, we have no opportunity left but to bail, reclaim our opportunity, and start again forging a great nation from the wilderness that remains of the American landscape.

Representing What?

Maurice Hinchey is our entrenched encumbant in the US House of Representatives.  We have met several times.  I have never had cause to appeal to him for anything in particular until recently.  Knowing that he is favors socialized medicine, it finally seemed appropriate to let him know how strongly our family feels. I wrote in no uncertain terms that supporting such an un-American and outrageously destructive piece of legislation would not only lose my vote, but stimulate me to “actively campaign against him.”

The stock reply came back: “Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns about health care legislation… Thank you again for contacting me.  Your comments and concerns are always welcomed.”

In between was a long dissertation intended to rationalize and justify what he is going to do.  His goal will not be diverted by public opinion.  He is not interested in what his constituency wants.  Mo says, “I think the best solution is to establish a national health care system.“

Maurice Hinchey thinks wrong.  He is not a representative because he does not represent any group of people.  He spends money, gets elected, and does what he wants.

Does your Representative listen?  If not, vote “no” on your encumbant.  Get the self-serving, self-centered bums out of Congress.