US Constitution, Round Two

As a nation, we're at a crossroads. Do we continue down our present path and destroy the country? Is it still possible to save the Republic?

Personally, I think the Republic is dead. In my fantasies, I see a practical way to save it, although not without a convulsion. My fantasy involves the Old Testament concept of Jubliee along with a rewrite of the Constitution

Every 50 years was Jubilee - slaves were freed, debts canceled and property returned to it's owners. Notes were actually calculated based on how many years remained till the next Jubilee.

The idea of a modern day Jubilee needs further development. Some thoughts I have are: It needs to be a one time event, and not just all debt, but the bankers themselves need to be thrown out in the process. The income tax, IRS and >95% of the Federal government goes as well. All federally owned land will be returned to the states. The states may keep such parks as could pay their own way, privatized, via tourism and donations. All other state owned land will be given to the people under the old homesteading laws.

We return to coining money, as the Constitution required. We abolish not only the central bank, but fractional reserve banking. (The one aspect of Islam I find appealing is their banking laws. It wouldn't hurt to model our laws after theirs.)

The interstate commerce clause needs to be tightened up if not eliminated altogether, and a good part of the Constitution needs to be made inviolable, as in no amendment or constitutional convention can ever deprive us of certain rights, or expand many government powers. On that list would be no federal or state income tax, ever. No VAT, ever. No property taxes, ever. No government debt, ever. No central banking, ever. No government involvement in schools, ever. As to regulation, government would be free to set standards but not enforce them. A company could voluntarily comply with the standards, if they and consumers found the standards appealing. The federal government could not directly regulate any industry - this would be left to the states. (I suspect that very little regulation would work far better than too much regulation has, and such is the most logical approach to try next.)

At any level of government, no new law passed can be more than three 8 1/2 x 11 pages long, one side only, and in standard 12 point type. Two existing laws must be repealed in order to pass each new one. No unrelated spending of any kind can be attached to another bill - every penny spent on pork must be voted on separately. Any legislator who cannot score at least 70% on the implications of a law he voted for may be executed on the spot, no bag limit. Legislators who vote for a program are individually and jointly liable for any of the program's cost overruns, which will be considered fraud under the law. Legislators serve without pay, and may not accept gifts. (Hmmm... Apparently Pelosi saying we need to pass health care in order to find out what's in the bill was the last straw for me!)

No fine can be collected without a jury trial, and charges must be dismissed if a fair and speedy trial cannot be provided. Fines cannot be used by any level or branch of government as revenue, and all fines will be donated to a church or charity chosen by the payor. No asset forfeiture, no eminent domain, no drug laws. No government run welfare programs will be allowed. No fees of any kind can be imposed by any level of government. State and local governments must run on sales tax alone, and the total sales tax that any American must pay cannot exceed 3%, including special districts of any kind.

I haven't fully considered how to deal with the federal crime mess, but I'd certainly eliminate most of the federal statutes and federal courts as a start. We could eliminate the SEC, for example, which has failed dismally at consumer protection. (The slight loss of revenue to the porn industry is a small price to pay!) Crimes can be dealt with by the states.

I would make a limited number of exceptions to this such as a fuel tax for roads, but not a cent of it would go to the Feds. It would all go to the states, or even directly to the counties. I'm not sure we need incorporated cities at all, for anything. The county can do it. All city facilities could be turned over to the counties and a lot of redundancy could be eliminated.

The one thing I can't figure out is what to do with millions of low-functioning humans who will be released from our welfare rolls and government jobs all at once. That just mystifies me. Best idea I have so far is to give them all some seed and make them stay home and grow gardens. Since they won't have a mortgage or taxes to pay, that would probably work out well enough. If they wished to relocate to a utopia such as Cuba where things already run according to their fantasies, they'd be welcome to leave. (Funny thing is, they'd be planting a subsistence garden when they got there!)

The truly needy - those with disabilities and handicaps who really need a hand would be well served by voluntary charity, as has always been the case in America. We're the most charitable nation on earth as it is, and this would just get better when citizens weren't being fleeced six ways from Sunday by government.

In our current climate, none of this is likely, even plausible. Sadly, barring a Jubilee type event followed by an immediate return to honest money and radically limited government I do think our only way out is forward through a collapse.

Thoughts???

Extraordinary Liberal Delusions

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

Today's shrill climate should be no surprise, given that Bastiat penned that gem of a warning in 1848. Those who presently endeavor to live at the expense of everyone else are living quite a lie, and must become more and more shrill in defense of their fantasy as time goes on. It's a natural law.

The left has been engaged in a futile yet revealing smear of the Tea Party for months now, which slander reached crescendo as the April 19th rallies in Washington DC finally took place.

Most revealing of all is the left's attempt to misconstrue the significance of the date. When you have over six billion people on a planet and only 365 days in the year, any date will end up the anniversary of something significant. All the same, and somewhat remarkably, a number of history's most profound events have taken place on April 19th. The one that matters most to this essay is the shot heard 'round the world, fired in 1775 when the American Revolutionary War started in earnest at Lexington and Concord. April 19th is traditionally called Patriots' Day in honor of this history, and is still a state holiday in Massachusetts. Paul Revere's ride and the battles of Lexington and Concord are re-enacted annually. This is the history the left studiously ignores in all their smearing of the Tea Party movement, and listening to them one might never learn of our history.

Our history.

American history.

But how about April 19th in the years before and since? To anyone with a more than passing interest in Liberty, it's a fascinating study. In 1529, at the Second Diet of Speyer, a group of Protestant Furcht und Reichsstadt (loosely: leaders and cities) united against the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, thereby launching the Protestant reformation into high gear. This came just 12 years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door - the intellectual spark of the Reformation. It was this unity in 1529 which fanned that spark into a flame and assured that the nascent Reformation would flourish. (Note that the term "Protestant" is rooted in the word protest.) This event set the stage for much of subsequent western history.

In 1861, the initial bloodshed of the (First) Civil War took place in the Pratt Street Riots in Baltimore on April 19th.

In 1943, that same date marked the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - an episode that any student of oppression (and particularly gun control) should become well acquainted with.

In 1956, two vestiges (perhaps the last two) of the ancien regime united when Grace Kelly married Prince Ranier in Monaco. (Not of the greatest import, but the passing of this kind of class and style is a noteworthy factor in our decline.)

In 1993, Janet Reno's troops picked the date to incinerate 82 Branch Davidians at the Mt. Carmel complex outside of Waco, TX, which had been under siege for nearly two months. Coincidence?

Two years later on the very same day came the OKC bombing, allegedly carried out by Tim McVeigh in retribution for the Waco conflagration two years earlier.

This last event is what the left desperately hopes to link to the Tea Party in people's minds. It's a far fetched ploy, that no honest person could embrace - unless they were historically illiterate. The Tea Party name very obviously derives from the action of the Colonists in 1773, an event significant because of the transition from talk to action. The present Tea Party philosophy is reflective of that same pungent attitude.

As with the Colonists in 1773, the Tea Partyers of today don't wish to be taxed excessively or without representation, and are just as concerned with the oppressive course of government today as their intellectual predecessors were then.

That concern is not universal. The left is quite pleased with the course of government these days, and the Tea Party movement is an unexpected and alarming challenge to the left's hope and change socialist nirvana, finally within reach.

Implicit in the sentiment behind these protests is potential for action, once again. Action that spells defeat for an increasingly unpopular agenda, to which the left remains totally committed. Their sympathetic media cronies understate attendance at Tea Party events, and diligently advance the base teabagger reference and every other desperate smear at every opportunity.

Underneath their condescending facade, the left knows that for every Tea Party event attendee there are hundreds of mainstream Americans who share the protester's alarm at our out-of-control government. An alarm that is founded in rather reasonable concerns, such as the impossibility of any nation successfully spending trillions of dollars that it doesn't have as a path to prosperity, or the ability (of a government that has failed conspicuously at every large program ever undertaken) to make any aspect of health care safer, more accessible or less expensive.

The left has no answers for those concerns. If they did, we'd have heard them before now. When the best you can bring against a reasonable and informed opponent is insults, innuendo and slander, you reveal more about yourself than you understand, and the revelations are less becoming than you would ever know.

The result for me, personally, is a new and vivid insight into the frightful nature of these enemies of freedom. These folks are delusional, and utterly passionate about their delusions. They actually do live in a fantasy world - one which they're willing to maintain/enforce at any cost - any cost to us, that is. They're profoundly dangerous, highly organized and intent on victory regardless of consequence.

We're talking civil war, and it's well underway. Think about it, and prepare...

Amazing Police Corruption Website

I stumbled on this site last night, and fell asleep grieving (yet again) for America. I knew that police corruption was rampant, but this researcher has driven home just how bad it actually is out there. Nobody is safe, and we need to be outraged.

This guy is doing yeoman work documenting police corruption, and deserves our support. As in, financial support. It appears that his work is being ripped off by others, without accreditation let alone compensation.

Tell everyone. Broadcast the link. Send money. Thanks!

Injustice Everywhere

Atlas Shrugged, in 8 Minutes!

If you're a leftist, this may be incomprehensible. (Just sayin')

By The Way...

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials." — George Mason, Virginia Convention Debates on Ratification of the US Constitution

A Recovering Liberal Looks at Obama, Not Liking the Picture...

WOW!!!

Good one. Thanks, Mike.

Reality Check

OK, it's good to do a reality check now and then, just to be sure you rinse off all the media Kool Aid stains. (A quarterly review can't hurt anyone, can it?)

So, a few questions:

Are we done with the layoffs?

Are the decent jobs coming back?

Has the wave of foreclosures stopped?

Have home values really bottomed?

Is no-one upside down in their mortgage anymore?

Is the mortgage delinquency rate falling?

Is the shadow inventory of homes cleared?

Is the bankruptcy rate falling?

Are private pensions solvent?

How about public pensions?

Are the states solvent?

How about municipalities?

Are the toxic debts off the FED's books?

Are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of the woods?

How about the FDIC?

And, is the wave of bank failures behind us?

Are the US automakers OK?

How about the bond market?

Is Medicare in the black?

How about Social Security?

Are banks back to lending?

Is the retail sector OK?

Is the energy picture good?

Are farmers/ranchers in the black?

Is the dollar sound?

Are the EU countries stable?

China?

Russia?

The middle east?

Heck - how about America - are WE stable?

Is wall street suddenly honest?

Is the government suddenly honest?

Is the government even under control?

Are the unfunded liabilities gone?

Are federal deficits back to a "reasonable" size?

Will Obamacare save money?

Is the media telling us the truth about anything (besides last night's low temp)?

Sorry. You know the answers. The DOW may be at 11,000 but I see no valid reason for it. If you like gambling, have at it, but I just don't see the value. The market is (allegedly) forward looking, so where's the acknowledgment of our predicament? If we're honest, America really looks like some kind of sick amalgam of Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe, with a little Soviet bureaucracy thrown in for good measure.

I've probably mentioned this book before, and if you haven't read it it's high time: "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds." It's the first book any investor should read. Otherwise, your odds may be better in Vegas. I can suggest a few good chapters for the next revision of that classic: Union defined benefit pensions. Social Security. Tech stocks. The US Housing market and subprime lending. The Federal Reserve.

As Hitler observed: "What luck for the rulers that men do not think."

RFID Chips in Health Care Legislation

"This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read."
-- Sir Winston Churchill

Can't say they didn't try for that, but people have been reading anyway. Along about page 1000 comes this fantastic news:

Sec. 2521, Pg. 1000 – The government will establish a National Medical Device Registry. What does this mean, in English?

From H.R. 3200, pages 1001-1008: "(g)(1) The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the ‘registry’) to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes data on each device that— "(A) is or has been used in or on a patient; ‘(B)and is— (i) a class III device; or (ii) a class II device that is implantable, life-supporting, or life-sustaining."

On page 1004 it describes what the term "data" means in paragraph 1, section B:
"(B) In this paragraph, the term ‘data’ refers to information respecting a device described in paragraph (1), including claims data, patient survey data, standardized analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of data from disparate data environments, electronic health records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the Secretary"

What exactly is a class II device that is implantable? Approved by the FDA, a class II implantable device is an "implantable radio frequency transponder system for patient identification and health information." The purpose of a class II device is to collect data in medical patients such as “claims data, patient survey data, standardized analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of data from disparate data environments, electronic health records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the Secretary.

See it with your own eyes: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Medical.../ucm072191.pdf

This new law – when fully implemented – provides the framework for making the United States the first nation in the world to require each and every one of its citizens to have implanted in them a radio-frequency identification (RFID) microchip for the purpose of controlling who is, or isn’t, allowed medical care in their country.

Healthcare Bill H.R. 3200: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/...CA09001xml.pdf

Pages 1001-1008 “National Medical Device Registry” section, page 1006 “to be enacted within 36 months upon passage”

Also page 503 “… medical device surveillance”

Welcome to the brave new world, kids.

Airhead Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death

From the ecoEnquirer - the Onion of environmental news: "(Punta Arenas, Chile) Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing", recounted the pilot, Jimmy Dolittle. "There were two snowmobiles with cargo sleds, a tent, and a bright orange rope that had been laid out on the ice, forming the words, 'HELP-COLD'".

One friend of Prof. Schneider told ecoEnquirer that he had been planning a trip to an ice sheet to film the devastation brought on by global warming. His wife, Linda, said that she had heard him discussing the trip with his environmental activist friends, but she assumed that he was talking about the Greenland ice sheet, a much smaller ice sheet than Antarctica.

"He kept talking about when they 'get down to chili', and I thought they were talking about the order in which they would consume their food supplies", Mrs. Schneider recounted. "I had no idea they were talking about Chile, the country from which you usually fly or sail in order to reach Antarctica".

Apparently, while all of Prof. Schneider's friends were assuming that the July trek would be to Greenland, during Northern Hemisphere summer, his plans were actually to snowmobile to the South Pole - which, in July, is in the dead of winter.

Mr. Dolittle related how some people do not realize that, even if there has been warming in Antarctica, the average temperature at the South Pole in July still runs about 70 degrees F below zero. "Some people think that July is warm everywhere on Earth."

"And I was surprised to see how close they got to South Pole Station. They ran through all of their gas supplies for the snowmobiles", explained Doolittle. "They had cold weather gear and clothes, but during this time of year you just don't go outside unless it is an emergency."

"At least James died for something he believed in", said Mrs. Schneider. "He died while trying to raise awareness of the enormous toll that global warming is taking on the Earth."