Government Tells You What To Do

They bribe you with your own money. They take the means you need to support yourself and withhold it. They’ll keep you from spending your money on the things you want by forcing you to pay more for the things you need and the things they control.

We are not the freest nation in the world. We are also no longer the least enslaved.

We have become slaves of our government. The government tells you to vote and they’ll tell you who to vote for. You only see what it allows you to see and you only get what it wants you to have. You are not in the drivers seat but they'll let you buy a shiny new car and tax the shit out of the purchase. 

The television and print media are all in on it. They’ll back the government because it’s the government that will put them out of business and they’ll lose their high-paying propaganda jobs if they don’t tow the line. A free press? Right. There is no free press in America. They sold their souls to the devil and you have to pay for that too.

Why are you even watching, because you always watched? 

The municipal police and fire departments negotiate their fat pension plans at the public’s expense. You only need to pay for it, otherwise you’re participation is not needed. Then they send you letters asking for money to support their police and firefighters funds or to solicit your vote for their preferred political candidate. Don’t even think about the irony in that, just do as they say or it’ll get hard for you. They should be answering to you but you answer to them. It could get ugly if you don't, their entitlement to your finances has made them brazen in their demands. 

The court system and the lawyers are in on it too. If you have a beef with them, even if you are right, they will only back each other against you. This is because they know that the average person in America cannot afford the cost of justice in America. Even the people with money and who are willing to spend it will wait years of their life for a verdict.

That’s because, in case you haven’t noticed, that there is no longer swift justice in this country for the average citizen. Those arrested now face years before they get a trial. And that time costs money. This forces them to negotiate. 

If you play by the rules you’re screwed.

We get nothing for our money. They take it and ask for more. They’ll pass a tax, like the gas tax and say it’s for the roads but when we see the roads turn to shit and complain they say they need to increase the tax if you want good roads. Where did the money go? We don’t know and they won’t tell us.

The government drives up the costs of your health care by forcing doctors and hospitals to give away care for below market rates or for nothing at all. You pay that. That's why you pay a bundle for a healthcare plan yet still have a $1,500.00 to $2,000.00 out of pocket deductible. Why even have insurance? 

This is because we’re suckers.

Then you receive a jury duty notice in the government mail asking you to participate in their sham court system for free even though you couldn't afford to be on the other end of the dock. Who pays for that? You do. Don’t think about the disconnect, just do as you are told. Otherwise they will arrest you. They won’t arrest a drunken illegal alien ramming their unregistered uninsured car into yours but they will arrest you because YOU are playing by a different set of rules than they are. It’s their ball and you’re playing on their court.

We are constantly forced to provide evidence against ourselves. Our rights are constantly violated via unauthorized search, seizure and surveillance. Our license plates are scanned when we drive down the street or park on the road. Our phone conversations are monitored. Our bank transactions are scrutinized and our accounts can be laid open without a warrant. 

The government limits the right of the people to protest to “free speech zones.” I've got news for you, the whole country is a free speech zone and that’s the law of the land regardless of whether a court of law will back you on it or not. These rights are inalienable and God-given. Stand up for them.

We are targeted by the Internal Revenue Service and our assets seized without trial or notice.

The National Parks Service takes over massive tracks of land to “preserve” and then keep you from using it or as we have recently seen, forced you off of it even though you have a lease agreement. That’s because it’s THEIRS and it’s not YOURS. The law doesn't matter to these people so why should it matter to you? 

We are going to have a vote next week but it’s going to be rigged. There may be enough people to override the criminality of these Vile Leftists in this country but maybe there won’t be. 

And what we get, the Establishment Republocrats, won’t be any better. They like Big Government Control just as much since they are the other side of the same coin.

Big Government has taken over and tells you what’s good for you. It decides what you have access to purchase and what goods it will allow you to have and it decides how much money you have left in your pocket. If you should need more, the government will then provide for you once you come crawling to them. And crawl you will. This is what it’s about.

This is why the country has turned to shit. This is why you have to go on paying and paying regardless of who is in the White House or in the Governor’s office. This is why the quality of life for many people has become degraded. 

Your only job is to pay for being jobbed. 

This is why small business in this country cannot get off the ground. This is why the storefronts are empty. 

If you have an idea for making a buck and improving your life then the government that is there to “help” you wants a piece of it UP FRONT. We are regulated, taxed, monitored and prosecuted because we want something in life and because other don’t have what you have built so instead of building them up, you must be torn down. The illegals can go about their business but you, YOU must pay the toll for both.

How foolish to go along with this abuse. This must all be undone.

Don't go along and do not participate in your own demise. 

Do not participate in jury duty: Just chuck the letter. You never received it. The post office is in such a state of disarray, it could conceivable have gone anywhere. My car insurance bill always ends up at the neighbors but I'm supposed to be convinced the jury notice they get right?

Do not contribute to any government organization charity fund: If they aren't using your tax money for what they told you it was intended for, what makes you think the charity money is going to go to its stated purpose. How many lies can you rationalize? Tell them to screw. Hell, they’re screwing you.

The time for the end of politeness and civility is fast approaching its end. There is too much government and they take too much from our pockets and do nothing but tell us to shut up and sit down. Stand up for yourself. Use the tools available to circumvent the government whenever you can. 

Living on your knees is no way to go through life. 

NSA Searches, Big Government & the 4th Amendment

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized.”

The NSA, as an agent of the law, is bound like any other, to adhere to and uphold the Constitutional protections outline in the Bill or Rights. Without the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution would not have been adopted by the States and therefor e is the lynchpin of all it stands for and the modern structure of the United States of America. To think otherwise is to ignore history and reality.

The whole idea of the term “Probable Cause” has been that authorities have to prove adequate reason to arrest someone or conduct a search, or seizure of their property. Probable Cause is required to be declared in a document where the facts for the arrest or search are detailed and a judge must agree, even if this step is a matter of course, for a warrant to be issued. These facts must be specific and not based on a “hunch”.
 
Now does any of this sound like what is going on?

Is the possibility that “Everyone could be a criminal.” a good enough excuse or that “it’s for the good and protection of the country.” when it clearly is not. However, it IS good protection for the preservation of the status quo of Big Government.

Does anyone believe, in light of the Internal Revenue Service scandal regarding the targeting of opposition groups and individuals for audit, denial of due process and exemption approval and the sharing of private tax information with the ruling party members that the NSA would NOT be called into service to listen in on and provide additional surveillance of these people?

And so this vague and general reason for the NSA listening in on conversations and sweeping and storing phone data and the ability and execution of reaching into a citizens computer records is a clear violation of the truths we hold as self-evident: It is wrong.

The NSA, thanks to Edward Snowden, has been revealed as yet another tool of the Authority State.

The current government and its agents the NSA and the IRS are acting in the unconstitutional exercise of authority.

This harkens back to the British “Writs of Assistance” exercised in 1761 where an officer of the British custom houses court could walk into any house and search it for smuggled goods without specifying the house or the goods. What is the difference between then and now except the means of the search?

The protection of the 4^th Amendment is not limited to one’s home but extends to one’s personal effects and papers where ever they may be. It does not mention “telephone” for obvious reasons but what is stored on today’s personal communication devices of only which part of is a phone these days should obviously be regarded as “your papers”. And in this world of converged networks where your personal computing device whether it be your laptop, tablet computer or your smartphone, you have a Constitutional protection from intrusion into your personal effects.

This is important to note because this amendment is specifically believed to have come from an incident when the controversies between England and the Colonies were reaching confrontational proportions whereby certain prominent opposition colonists were targeted for prosecution by the English state. Sound familiar?

Our ancestors didn’t bust their asses to come here to be held to an allegiance with the government for their sustenance, livelihood and well-being. They came here for the opportunity, the chance, to make the most of themselves in a free market of ideas and industry and to carve out a life of their own, free of an overbearing presence that dictates their behavior and customs. They had lived without the freedom of worship; they had lived without the right to be private in their homes and their affairs and without the protections from unreasonable searches and seizures. The challenge is what to do about these rights being ignored.

This is not a case of the Government preserving itself, this is a clear attempt at one party seeking to hold power into perpetuity and subverting the process of purging and renewal that keeps this country growing and going forward. Should this succeed even in the short run, stagnation and decay shall follow.

It is ironic that these United States, a country that has stood as a symbol of freedom and liberty throughout the world attempts to secure itself by rescinding the very statutes that made the nation what it was.

Our Ever Changing HealthCare Law

Just what healthcare law did the Supreme Court uphold anyway?

Was it the Affordable Care act of 2010 or the 14 different versions of that law that has been passed to the American public by word of mouth from the White House?

Was it ever even a law? I've heard it was and people are acting like it was a law but there doesn't really seem to be a law.

As the late, great Harry Nilsson wrote in his epic story The Point: "A point in every direction is like no point at all!"

When you try to cover everything, you end up covering nothing.

We have no President and we have no Healthcare Law.

Not if you don't want it to be at any rate.

Unlike what you may be reading in the government newpapers and hearing on the government news channels, the Affordable Care Act is not what President Obama says it is whenever he gets around to telling us what it’s going to be about THIS WEEK. Has anybody check the latest presidental TWEET?

In the 237-odd years that the country has been the United States, laws have tended to be more static in the past once they are signed into law. Now they are anything someone might tell you they are.

What makes anyone believe that any of this is going to be enforceable?

Challenge away o’ folks who still have enough money to actually be able to afford justice in this country, you will have this law tied up for a decade. All you have to do is ask for a dated copy of the new provisions passed by Congress. What? It WASN’T passed by Congress? Well then, were the new provisions signed by the President? They WEREN’T? Trying to find somebody who can interprete THE AIR will be a daunting task don't you think? Or maybe they just find some crazy homeless person who'll wave his hands around and tell the court what it's all about. And who's to say they would be wrong?  

And how the hell is the IRS going to enforce these tax penalties? Challenge away you scofflaws. The wheels of justice have been moving slower than ever before and will most likely grind to a halt over numerous and consistent court cases asking for proof of the new measures.

There is no law, not this law not ANY law anymore.

Maybe it won't be long now before the police will be shaking pedestrians down for cash and he courts will fine you for just about anything you can think of. The country is descending into one big  money-grab.  

It's been the American Way for way too long. You can live like a cricket and spend everything you earn and at the end of the day the government will take care of you. You can toil like the ant, scrimp and say and all you do is end up paying for the crickets healthcare plan. So why bother?

Forget Congress, they aren’t enforcing their own laws and have passed laws exempting them from being subject to laws in the first place which makes me wonder if they are actually subject to the laws they’ve passed making them not subject to the laws they have passed. Right?

So do as you please these days. Get health insurance, don’t get health insurance. Pay the fine, don't pay the fine or don't even pay your medical bills. They can't do anything to you by law anyway. They can't charge you interest and they can't put it on your credit report. All they can do is have someone call you on the phone so what the hell does it matter anymore?

Doctors should go back to the way things were before Medicaid and the meddling of the government in the business of providing healthcare. They should go back to coming to your home to give your kids a shot in the ass. Growing up in the Boston Projects, we had a doctor who visited our place to do just that since when one kid in the project got the measles, all the kids got the measles. The doc would come buy, give you a shot (Penicillin, remember those days before they shot all that shit into the livestock and screwed everything up?).

Anyway, the doctor gave us a shot in the patoot and my mom paid him and he left. No office manager, no insurance claim, no discount, no offset, no government overhead and no bullshit.

And it all worked just great. I got a shot in the butt, the measles went away, the doctor got paid and my mom got some sleep.

So what went wrong?

Government of course, solving problems that weren’t problems in the first place and buying their way into the industry with promises to the doctors that they wouldn’t lose a dime if they went along with their plans. And in the beginning they didn’t.

But look at them now.

Doctors have to consolidate their services in order to survive. There aren't many single doctors offices anymore. Now doctors have to be affiliated with a larger medical group to absorb all the liabilities that come with the field and that the ACA never even addresses.

Doctors should drop all insurance carriers period, especially the government ones that drive up the costs of patient care and just administrate their own billing. They’ve got their own billing and  collections departments now already anyway; they wouldn’t even have to gear up. All they have to do is drop the government plans and quit taking their filthy money. And need I remind anybody that it’s OUR filthy money which has gone to everything BUT us and which is used to batter any dissatisfied citizen challenger into the ground.  The government has taken all the resources before you can even think to fight them.

So then let the government take everybody to court and try to drive "rouge" medical centers out of business. Like they aren’t going to be forced out of business ANYWAY by ever increasing government intervention and the prospect of receiving ever decreasing payments for the services they provide. Their dead ducks either way so they might as well fight for their rights and their livelihood.

Let the government try to enforce their ever-changing illegitimate bullshit iron-gloved Healthcare boondoggle of a law that nobody on God’s Green Earth really knows what it does anymore.

So ultimately we should pay our doctors directly and CUT OUT THE MIDDLEMAN, namely THE GOVERNMENT and let them try to stop us.

The NSA: Keeping America Safe from Angela Merkel

We can all sleep more soundly in our beds with the knowledge that the multi-billion dollars spent on the National Security Agency is well worth it so that Angela Merkel won’t be sneaking into the country to carry out her nefarious evil deeds upon an unsuspecting American public.

Our government’s most prominent anti-terrorist organization has taken the necessary steps to insure that Ms. Merkel , along with a reported 35 other world leaders, will not pose a terrorist threat to the United States.

Does anyone actually believe that the NSA is not doing the same thing to the American people? If millions of phone conversations in France, Spain, Brazil and Germany are being monitored, how could the government not monitor communications in the U.S.?  They are supposed to have a warrent here and they're supposed to have probable cause but that means nothing any more. We're told that the White House just didn't know about it, that's all.

And who believes that tight-ass of a president didn’t know about it? The same person who couldn’t delegate the reading of an 1-800 number on TV for his cratering Affordable Care Act and who has the last word on pushing the button on one of our Drones to bring death from above to Middle Eastern terrorists and civilians alike isn’t going to know? Sure he knows.

And yet, according to the administration, they never saw Bengazi coming. Let’s ask Ambassador Stevens about how safe he feels with the NSA monitoring phones and computers. Wait, you can’t, HE’S DEAD!

Let's ask U.S. Boarder Patrol Agent Brian Terry how safe he feels that the U.S. Department of Justice is doing all they can to protect our agents on the U.S. boarder with Mexico. Oh snap! You can't 'cause HE'S DEAD TOO!

What else will Obama and "his people" claim they don't know about?

The NSA and its sister groups the CIA and the FBI are all in place to do one thing first and foremost and that is to keep the people who are currently in power, in power.  This is why they’d rather tap millions of devices in Spain, Germany, Brazil and Russia than find out where all those guns they let walk across the Mexican border went to and who was behind it. Those people are to be protected.

Is protecting the American public really the NSA's top priority?

Who will protect us from them?

Perhaps this is why, as more and more people are growing dissatisfied in this country about the way the present administration is treating private enterprise and squelching individual freedom, that the national policing agencies have become more aggressive towards the citizenry. One need only look at the “non-government shutdown” where the National Parks Service and other “cop” agencies just closed parks and the businesses on them for the sole purpose to inflict pain upon the American Taxpayer who wanted to frequent them. An especially smart thing to do given the current state of the economy. But it wasn't about being smaret, they just wanted you to know that it’s THEY that control access and you…do not. Ditto concerning your privacy.

But it looks like the cat is out of the bag about the United States ambitious attempt at becoming the worlds new evil empire despite an 11th hour charge by the National Media outlets that are printing accounts of how other countries are spying on us also. Too late.

So once again it's the United States that proves the biggest threat to the United States, the biggest casualty being our credibility. How does it look now when we condemn hackers from around the world and it turns out we’re hacking almost every device on the plant, certainly every wireless device.

Thanks to Edward Snowden, everybody knows. The problem now is what are we going to do about it?

Government Spending Does Not Grow the Economy

I don’t know where the disconnect is. Is it just politics and the people who are the recipients of government money just pretend they believe it or are people just stupid to begin with and join the “destruction leads to economic success” crowd.

Government does not produce anything for sale. They get their money mostly from taxes, income taxes, excise taxes, sales tax and other administrative fees. These moneys come from the taxpayer< people who work for private business and produce goods and provide services> for which they are paid by the consumer> with this so far?

When the government takes these moneys in they then transfer these funds to their prospective budgets and agencies that spend it on what they do, like the USADA, the FBI, the FDA and the money is also allocated to Medicare, SSI and states in the form of Federal Highway Funds.

All this moving of funds takes people, government employees, who handle the accounting, the money transfers and keeps track of the money coming in from their various sources. In private enterprise we call these people “Overhead”. These people cost money in pay and benefits. They only exist to handle the tax money coming in and there are legions of them from local IRS agents, town collectors, state collectors to the federal IRS. This process carries a price tag.

This is why when either State or Federal agencies spend taxpayer money, they put out much less than they take in. This is in the form of the previously mentioned overhead. The money handling  costs reduce what the government takes in.

A great example of government spending in action is Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, aka The Big Dig, a federal highway’s project that when 9 years beyond it’s 1998 completion date and over ran its budget from a projected $2.8 Billion to an incredible $14.8 Billion and will end up costing a total of $21 Billion once the bonds floated have been paid for. Taxes have had to go up to pay for this massive expenditure. The Feds only contrubuted $7 Billion to the project meaning the State of Massachusetts has to pay the other half. And it was a lousy job. The tunnel leaks like a sive and the ceiling panels are suspect. And they didn'even make the road wider.

Government too often starts to look for a place to put a bridge rather than where a bridge is needed. So when someone says the government creates jobs I have to laugh out loud. The government does not create jobs. Companies create jobs. The only difference is when the government takes money out of the private sector to create a jobs, we only see those jobs. We don't see the jobs, the buildings  and the opportunities that money would have created because it was never allowed to happen.

These private sector jobs would also have taken place without the overhead that government is stuck with as a matter of course. This is why a government job is not a net gain to the economy. These jobs don’t grow the economy because they go to non-producing jobs that provide no measurable return to the economy. Oh, the government workers put money back into the economy when they spend it but as a whole, less money is going back into the economy than was taken. This is a loss in economic growth, not a gain. There are too many people handling the process for there to be any cost effectiveness to their public works.  This is not a political thing, it is an accounting thing. It’s just the math of the situation. The more people involved in the process, the less that comes out of it. Everyone gets a check but not every job produces growth.
Growth only occurs in the private sector where the efficiencies of competition and the marketplace determine success and expansion. If you make something people are willing to buy voluntarily, you will grow the economy. Governent didn't invent Microsoft or Samsung.

The latest outright lie I’ve heard was that the U.S. economy shrank mostly because of government cuts. What didn’t the government produce that they had to cut back on other than killing machines perhaps? No, the nation does not run on government spending, the nation runs on private sector production and that is something that the government itself is killing because of higher taxes and increased regulations. This is squeezing the consumer and when people stop consuming, the economy shrinks.

This is not a surprise to anyone where they can see government growing and taking resources out of the economy and causing producers to produce less since they can’t sell what they’re making because consumers are buying less since there is less in their pockets.

What did they think was going to happen?

Obama Hikes Taxes, Promises Less of Everything

Saying that the U.S. economy is an “unfinished task” one has to wonder what President Obama really means. Did he mean that the economy is struggling and he would like to get it moving again or did he really mean the economy is struggling and that he’d like to “finish the job” of killing it entirely. By his actions over his presidency so far, one has to wonder.

It is an audacity to say that his administration has reduced the deficit or cut spending when nothing of the sort has even been considered never mind not carried out. Even the dreaded "Sequestor" is not a cut in spending but a reduction of increases in spending. So much for responsible government. If the Sequestor was so damaging, Obama wouldn't have signed it into law, a fact that seems to have been overlooked in the days leading up to it's implementation.

President Obama is the “spendiest” president there ever was, dwarfing the second spendiest president, G.W. Bush by Trillions of dollars. How he can stand up there and say otherwise is really a sham.

It is a pre-emptive strike on the call for cuts in the runaway government spending when Obama emphatically announces that the country can’t “cut its way to prosperity”  since that is exactly what it will take to get the economy going: Cut Spending and put more money in the pockets of the taxpayers. It’s economics 101.

The less money in people’s pockets, the less there is to spend. The less there is to spend, the less there will be to buy and more people will find themselves out of work. Less money, less products, less workers.

But the only jobs president Obama cares about keeping is those of teachers, firefighters, cops and other government workers. The private sector gets no mention.

There have been quite a few mergers lately as well as more layoff announcements. This is because of the steady implementation of the Affordable Healthcare Act which is raising costs, adding bureaucracies and layers of paperwork. These consolidations are meant to rid companies of the only cost variable they are unable to get control of: People. Thanks to all the overhead attached to them, the less people the better.

ObamaCare is essentially a "People Tax" which all new hires will carry with them over and above their salaries. It makes people a very expensive commodity to hire and so it is now better and cheaper in the long run to spend the money on machines that replace people.

So when facing a harsh reality of the consequences of Mr. Obama’s health plan what does he propose?

Why raising the Minimum Wage, of course!

Since his other policies haven’t put enough people out of work, why not keep more people from getting jobs? It’s the logical conclusion of the economically ignorant. Or is Mr. Obama ignorant of these economic realities? One has to wonder.

There are plenty of jobs not worth $9.00 an hour. Grocery stores, gas stations, delivery drivers and more. If the business you’re working for or want to work for can’t afford to pay it, those jobs are gone.  The fixed minimum wage is just another People Tax.

Of course in announcing this proposal, the president cites “Corporate Profits” never being higher like big corporations will be the ones paying the price. Nothing was said about the small businesses that will be reeling from the effects and who are also responsible for employing more people than big corporations do.

Keep in mind that Mr. Obama has never run even a hotdog stand. Either he knows what this will do to people looking for work or he doesn’t know what it will do, either way it’s going to lead to less jobs. I mean, a person can’t be this ignorant of what makes the world go ‘round, can they?

And speaking of around the world, this overhead will also make American business less compeditive in the global marketplace. Higher costs, less compeditive.

Obama’s ceaseless push for more education funds and more education possibilities is a step in the wrong direction. There is no money to fund these initiatives and without industry, where are all these educated people going to work? We’ll be like China back in the 1970s with engineers plowing rice fields. As it stands right now, there is no place to go for our current crops of college grads who are coming out of school with huge debt and no jobs to pay it down. For them there is less of a future. Less jobs, less opportunity.

The president is currently out on the campaign trail saying and promising anything to anybody who’ll listen. His latest proposal is Universal Pre-School beginning at 4 years old. I’m not making this up! This is an illusion, shear lunacy to the point of embarrassment.

With the Federal Reserve continuing to buy government debt, with the government continuing to buy GM automobiles to boost their sales and with the government expanding at every turn, there is going to be less of everything else.

The Gross National Product of the United States has shrunk yet government continues to spend. Less production and less jobs means less taxes coming into the government yet the federal budget continues to expand.  Heaven help your savings and 401k if they decide to print money to cover the budget deficits. No amount of money will be safe from the ensuing inflation. Just check out Argentina and Venezuela with their 20% inflation rate and shortages of even the most staple of products. Don’t say it can’t happen here. Without the profit motive, people will stop producing. Less buying power, less business, less purchases.  

So the State of the Union proposals: More spending, more laws, more subsidies, more government and more executive power means only one thing: Less.   

More for government means less for you. 

U.S. Government Remains Dedicated to Money Losing Energy Companies

Even while facing the much balihoo'd Fiscal Cliff, big government still clung tightly to the funding subsidies of it's failing green energy companies.  

The government will pick the winners and losers of American industry. And if they don’t win, the government will just keep throwing taxpayer money at them until they win.  And in the case of the government backed solar companies, they'll also impose tarriffs.

What next? Will government force us to buy General Motors automobiles?

They are already forcing citizens onto their Federal Health Plans. By forcing insurance providers to cover everybody regardless of ability to pay and by forcing healthcare providers to carry the illegal populous who do not pay a dime into the system, thereby driving up costs for health insurance, they will soon be the only game in town.

They’re already forcing the American public to buy mercury laced “energy efficient” light bulbs and will make sure they are the only thing on the market available by phasing out the “bad” light bulbs that we’ve been using for over 100 years. They may save a watt or two but they’re dark and where you going to throw them out? Their a light bulb the government can embrace because they can put warning labels on them and create a whole new bureaucracy around just disposing of them.

The government, by their taxing and regulating policies, is forcing people onto Unemployment Insurance. Where once stood a productive employee now stands a jobless government dependent. Millions now collect unemployment in an anonymous, almost secret fashion. Image if it were 1981 with this rate of unemployment. The lines would go for blocks and everyone would see how really bad it is. Nah, just pick up the phone and register, give them your bank account and routing number and your money will be sent straight to your checking account. No waiting.

The government is also forcing us to listen to endless propaganda via their media machine television stations: CBS News, New England Network News, Fox News, and CNN News. I was watching at my local fitness center how overjoyed CBS News was that “things were going well” with the unemployment rate ticking up to the “official” total of 7.8%.

There is no news. There is nothing to be believed anymore on the airwaves. It’s as though I’m living Terry Gilliam’s movie “Brazil” in real life. Oh, but it can’t happen here. But it has, hasn't it? 

But for all the governments promoting, funding and propping up, of all their inventive bureaucratic feats of conjuring government industry out of the need to have a government industry, all of their enterprises are very “lossy” propositions. They just lose tons of money. Why? Because nobody wants what they’re selling, that’s why. If they did, they wouldn’t need to be subsidized. They’re services and goods are too expensive are made poorly and delivered uncaringly and the increasing amounts of tax money it requires is not just killing the economy but stunting the growth and incentive of a generation.

Check the success rate of the City of Chicago’s public school system if you want to witness the trap of government industry. They won’t allow a voucher system for school choice so if you can’t pay twice, once for the public school you have no use for and again for a privates school you need, you’re stuck! Talk about no future. Perhaps they can all get jobs in the Illinois Public Works Department. A fine janitor you've raised there Mr. Smith.

This is why government has to force you to take their goods and services. This is why competition must be legislated and taxed out of existence. This is why the propaganda machine has to tell you that this is a good thing.

But we know it’s a lie. THEY know it’s a lie but it’s for your own good if you know what's good for you. You just don’t know any better. That’s why government is here to help you with your choices. By limiting your choices, the government will help you make the right one.

If you think this isn’t right, think again.

Surveillance Drones and the Right to Privacy

The proliferation of surveillance drones and the legal right to use them will be the next hotbed of legal wrangling. Recently it was reported that a PETA-like (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) organization named SHARK (Who Gives a Rats Ass) put a private surveillance drone in the air over a privately owned plantation that was going to have a pigeon shoot. Now I don’t shoot pigeons myself and consider the critters more or less “rats with wings” but if someone wants to organize a pigeon shoot on their own land with presumably their own pigeons, as a Libertarian I would have to say it’s their right to do so.

But during this event was coined a new maxim: "Never bring a drone to a pigeon shoot." because after SHARK broke up the event by their presence, they launched their drone anyway and SURPRISE, somebody on the property in South Carolina shot the fool thing out of the air. The culprit was never found or identified. Now SHARK wants to make a federal case out of the incident which I think is a good idea but for a different reason.

I don’t think SHARK has much of a case but I do think the Broxton Bridge Plantation near Ehrhardt, S.C., the real victim in this affair, certainly does. Can anybody just fly a surveillance drone over my property? Isn’t this a form of harassment? This incident is an open and shut case of invasion of privacy.

Can my neighbor hover a drone over my house to see if I get the morning newspaper in my underwear? This is a hypothetical question of course because who reads a newspaper anymore? But the question is a valid one. Who has the right to fly over my house? Technology will eventually allow everybody to have a drone and I suppose I could probably cobble one together myself with a small camera and one of those toy helicopters they sell at the local Mall. Perhaps I can catch the woman next door sunbathing in the nude. Wait, I’ve got to make a quick run to the Mall, I’ll be right back!

Anyway, I see a new legal frontier that should give many an underemployed ambulance chasing lawyer the chance to finally pay for that private school education that they promised their wives they’d pony up for the kids. The establishment of boundaries and certain “fly-over” rights will need to be established. How can what SHARK was doing be construed as perfectly legal? If so, I should be able to fly my freshly purchased Mall “Heli-drone” over my local Police Dept. Or perhaps over my local Town Office building on a Friday to see who cuts out early. Perhaps I can even catch some local town workers sleeping on the job. This sort of thing cuts both ways.

Of course, government can just establish rules for itself which is what will most likely happen first. THEY are already exempt from laws banning talking on the phone while driving so it stands to reason that they would ban drones over “Town Property” even though it was bought with taxpayer money and should be technically construed as “Our Property”. But such is the rule of our overbearing and obtrusive government. Rules and laws are now for others and not for them.

But at any rate, this issue will have to be addressed at some point in the not too distant future. There should and will be challenges to the supposed legality of flying a drone and the rights to privacy one expects on their own property.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some flying to do.

Free Health Care for All!

The latest farcical controversy between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government is astounding on so many levels as to confuse the most astute observer.

On one hand we have the government giving away yet another chunk of taxpayer money for the colossal non-issue of women’s contraception. Add to that the over-reach and tyrannical nature of government dictating to private organizations like hospitals and insurance companies on what they’re going to do with the money they make and the services they render. Then there is the other head of the Hydra, the Catholic Organization.  That’s just for starters.

Given the political and economic climate of the United States right now where we as a nation are broke but have an incumbent president who holds the dual sword of wielding more power than he was ever meant to have but lagging so low in popularity among the paying classes that he is driven to entice a large population of those who don’t to vote his inept behind back into the White House for another acrimonious and predictably disastrous four more years.

The government giveaway campaign continues with free contraception for women. No co-pay, no nothing, the contraception of your choice is free. And if the organization has an objection on religious grounds, no worries because their insurance company must pay for it anyway. Free of charge. That’s the plan.

But anyone with half a brain or without a political agenda will admit that there is no such thing as free. Somebody, somewhere will have to bear the costs of such a plan. Go look in the mirror. Who do you see? That’s right, you’ve found the person who is going to pay more for the same services that they receive while others get them for free. But wait, they’re poor and you’re loaded so what’s another $20.00 out of YOUR pocket? You’ve got it, moneybags, working for a big greedy corporation that rapes the unsuspecting consumer by charging a price for their products and services. There are so many more deserving of that money.  And so what if your phone bill has gone up, your car insurance has increased, heating your home has gone up and the cost of your health insurance has almost DOUBLED in the last four years. What’s another 20 bucks?

Then we find the Catholic Organization has cried “foul” at being forced to provide free contraception in their businesses. Yet they have for decades been in bed with the government on so many issues, the major one lately is illegal immigration. Another is their tax free status on not only churches but for Catholic businesses like the YMCA & YWCA. Their hospitals have benefited from government money. So now they’re upset that their “partner” wants them to hand out free contraceptives? So now they find religion?

For many reasons, the Catholic Organization’s influence is waning in the United States. For one they change “religious” doctrine to suit their needs. Another is that they’ve protected pedophile priests for perhaps centuries and they never seem to let religion get in the way of closing a church one they stop producing a revenue stream. Mexico and South America is teaming with Catholics just waiting to be tapped as a useful revenue stream. Hence, the “Catholicism as a business model” is all for illegal immigrants being granted amnesty.

The economy is ¾ driven by consumer spending. That axiom is repeated like a mantra across this land but the major malfunction I see is that every giveaway takes more and more money out of the regular person’s pocket so they have less to spend. Less purchases means a reduction in production. This in turn generates less taxes and so government has less to support its giveaways. Less spending, less production. less taxes, less giveaways. It’s Economics 101. Yet the giveaways are increasing without any thought to where the money or production will come to pay for them. The word for this is: Insane. 

There is nothing in my copy of the Constitution that says the Federal Government should be in the business of providing free contraceptives to women. In fact, there is no Constitutional mandate that I can find that gives the Federal Government the right to be in the healthcare business. Or the retirement business, or the business of educating our children or a government lunch program in those schools. But the Feds have bought their way into these areas and have made them a disaster. Everything they have made a policy of or a “war” against has become a costly, bureaucratic shambles. 

So here we have it: An omnipresent and dictatorial president pushing minutia and ignoring the difficult problems in an attempt to buy votes to extend and consolidate his power, a grasping kleptocracy of a government machine that can’t find time to produce a budget over the last three years but has managed to take over private enterprise in this country and raided the treasury for their own gain. A nation of youth that has had their future spent for them for short term political gain and short-lived economic balance, and the rest of us who played by the rules, saw this coming and knew better in the first place.

Just another day at the office in “Other People’s Money-land”.

That's It For The GOP

It’s time we hold up the current two party system for the failure that it is. The Republican Party should be immediately folded into the Democratic party and have a new second party take their place. It is time for the Tea Party to step up, hold a convention and pick a candidate of their own.  The currant class of politicians calling themselves Republicans isn’t capable of dealing with what really troubles our nation and is in the way of allowing a Tea Party candidate to come forward to do the job. 

I haven’t been able to tell the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans for decades so it’s time they just merge. We’d still have a two party system and the Republicans can drop the pretense that they are any different from the Democrats. We all know now that they’re the same party and have been for decades. Neither can stop spending taxpayer money or the expansion of government “services” if their lives depended on it.

There are no major differences between the Demlicans and the Republocrats anymore. Neither has room for new ideas and only seeks to hold power for themselves and their moneyed backers. The people get nothing but taxed from either syndicate and they have left little doubt that they both believe in the expansion of government. There’s a hand in my pocket. Do I care if it’s a Democrat hand or a Republican hand? No, there’s a hand in my pocket! And I want it out.

We need a new party of the American Taxpayer. A party that isn’t afraid of how they’re going to “Look” to the American public when they propose tax cutting and entitlement reform legislation. How about "The Backbone Party"? 

The Tea Party didn’t send the new wave of Republicans to worry about how things look. They were sent to cut spending and they haven’t. Why? Because they’re still outnumbered by the biggest party in Washingtion DC, the Gravy-Train party.

Let there be a national Tea Party and we’ll see who votes for them. Tea Party vs. the Gravy Train party and we’ll just see on what side of the fence the nation falls. At least it will all be out in the open and the people of the United States can then make the decisions they’ll need to survive if the current establishment wins.

The American Taxpayers have just received another $1 Trillion spending bill. Although there are some cuts in this bill, they are modest and there are plenty of increases. Of course there is the provision that extends unemployment insurance another 99 weeks or should we just call it what it is: The Dole. There are also provisions making it easier for companies to bring in workers from overseas via the H-2A and H-2B temporary worker programs. How is that going to help US jobs? Although National Public Radio is to be supposedly weaned off public funding by 2014 (which still means it receives funding for the next 2 years), the “Corporation” for Public Broadcasting is still getting $445 million.

But to boil it all down, it’s $1 Trillion to prop up the government…again. And who do we have to thank for all this? The Demilcan Party. Or the Republocrat Party, whichever you prefer.

If we can’t do anything to change this “system” and soon, we’re going to end up like the UK or Japan or worse. I find the thought revolting.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Government Sponsored Bankruptcy

It seems that global investors are just figuring out that banking on the debt of what is known as Government Sponsored Enterprises is a bad idea. As Claude Reigns said in the movie Casablanca; "I'm shocked!"

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are GSEs which means that the full weight of the United States Treasury is standing behind them, guaranteeing the loans they purchase from banks. Or rather the US taxpayer will cover any losses they may tend to incur because, you know, every banking entity, despite their best efforts, can make a bad loan here or there, right?

But it is being reported that the purchase of Fannie & Freddie’s mortgage debt by Russia, China, Brazil and India have declined and their faith in the US government’s ability to back up that debt has been shaken. These countries are divesting themselves of this debt as a government holding fearing a lack of return.

But why?

Perhaps not knowing how much in debt these two GBEs are in may play a roll.

Picture rooms full of brokers, hundreds no, thousands of brokers all over the nation and their job is to get one loan every hour. And picture this happening every weekend for 12 years and know that every one of those loans, no matter how good they may be or bad, was sent to Fannie & Freddie and they BOUGHT them.

So how much in debt are these two “companies”?

I’ll bet that as of right now, three years after the beginning of the housing market collapse, that nobody knows. The Feds don’t know, the people at Fannie & Freddie don’t know and most important, the idiots buying their debt sure as hell don’t know. How can they know if they bought them?

The Federal government has no business being in the mortgage business. There is no Constitutional mandate nor business need to be involved in who gets a mortgage. And a "Government Business Enterprise" has no reason to even exist. Fannie & Freddie became instruments of a government agenda, an agenda that everybody should be able to achieve the “American Dream” of owning their own home. And if Fannie & Freddie were going to buy the loan, the banks writing these loans didn’t need to carry the paper and were absolved of responsibility.

With Fannie & Freddie driving the bus, it was full speed ahead for the wanton purchasing of mortgages that fueled unbridled speculation and runaway lending practices that drove housing prices through the roof. And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, the “No Income Verification” loans, otherwise known as “Liar Loans’ and “Interest Only” loans (which cannot be refinanced) were the last products of a dying enterprise.

Then, in a final effort to keep the money spigot on, Federal Reserve Chairman Allen Greenspan lowered the interest banks pay to borrow money to zero. Nowhere to go from zero is there?

And here we are. The music stopped and the Fed was all out of chairs. Allen Greenspan’s apology was sincere and dramatic: “Sorry” he said before collecting his pension and flying off to Hawaii.

It is now classic comedy to view the youtube recordings of  US Congressman Barney Frank, the guy in charge of the House Financial Committe, saying in 2004, having been warned by the Republicans of mismanagement at the agencies and of a possible failure, stating that he had seen nothing to indicate that the safety and soundness of Fannie & Freddie was an issue and there was nothing to worry about, just three years before the colapse.

Fannie & Freddie, although still buying loans, have had to tighten up the rules considerably. All those people who were looking for the American Dream found it was fool’s gold and for all the “Good Intentions”, the government once again finds that it cannot defy gravity.

And for Fannie & Freddie, well it will be years before we find out just how much in debt they really are. The final number will have a “T” in it.

Government Business Enterprises should be constitutionally banned. All they do is run a deficit. They don’t make money and only serve to drive out legitimate business from a given industry. They don’t solve any problems and suck funds from the economy. Having been established in 1992, it only took a little over 13 years for Fannie Mae to drive our economy into the ground. Quite a feat.

Now just think about what would be in store for us if Barack Obama had gotten his Public Option piece included in our overwhelmingly foolhardy National Health Plan? The Public Option called for esentially a GBE to compete with private insurance businesses in the marketplace for healthcare coverage.

Who here now thinks that this would be a good idea? Show of hands please?

Obama has no answers...

The telling part in the President’s speech yesterday was that Mr. Obama only has his social conscience, his moral outrage and his class envy platitudes to fall back on and the more he spouts them, the more clueless he looks.

• He is now appalled at the prospect that the nation can’t fix the roads even though the ever increasing gas taxes we’ve been paying for decades were originally allocated to fix the roads. Where has that money gone all these years? 

• He is now morally outraged that we can’t fund education even though half and increasingly more than half of every town budget goes to pay for the schools. Where's THAT money going?

• He is saddened to live in a country that won’t be able to fund Medicaid and Medicare even though there really was never enough money in the world to keep those pyramids from toppling over now. And their decline is accelerating with each government give-a-way.

President Obama sees no problem with government that more money couldn’t solve. And specifically the problematic Federal Government who over the last 50 years or so has bought its way into every facet of the American economy with plenty of strings attached and public unions, added regulations and unfunded mandates to ice the cake.

Government has grown and expanded its bogus services creating $ billion industries like the School Lunch Program, now so ponderous and inefficient that some systems are mandating that kids not bring their lunches from home so they must also pay into the system. Sound familiar?

But that’s the recipe for failure government programs cook up. Now that the gravy train has come off the rails, what we’re hearing on the airwaves right now are interviews with school teachers and other public union representatives on how they’re “reforming” their systems to work more effectively. NOW they’re reforming! NOW! Yes, it’s the NEW reform. Not like the OLD reform. They’ve had 20 years. When will they get it right?

Well, actually, the answer is NEVER. Government can never get it right. The system isn’t setup for getting it right and truly, it’s not about getting it right. It’s really just about CONTROL. The Federal Government buys its way into a market by allocating public resources at a greater extent than a private firm can do. It can also control lending rates which a private firm cannot do. But the major difference between government and private entities is that the government will continue to run at a deficit. So that year in and year out losses in gov’t programs do not result in a re-examination of how things are run or to incorporate efficiencies, it just throws more taxpayer money at it.  The program budget grows and the results decrease. It’s greatly evident in our public school systems where the overhead just gets larger and the results weaker. One doesn’t need a sheet of statistics. Dont' take my word for it, just ask a teacher.

So when the president addresses a looming financial crisis with a speech to the American public and says we have to actually increase funding to a wasteful and bloated education system or that we have to continue to fund a failing Medicare and Social Security system that will sink not only this generation but the next one too, and seeing a so called leader who by rote tosses out the old Class Warfare rhetoric, well I can’t help but think that we are truly the modern Romans.

But not the bitchen’ battling Republic of Rome but the gasping, grasping, toppling Empire of Rome.

Never thought I’d see this in my lifetime.