Category Archives: Taxation

Economics, Elections, Governance, Politics 2022, Representation, Taxation

“with Liberty and Corruption for all.”

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There are always consequences to corruption in government agencies… and officials… and it’s not always mere dollars.  Simple graft is bad enough for it demonstrates the willingness to lie more or less directly to the people an official or “representative” has sworn to serve while in office.  Typically, we, the foolish voters in either party, see our “humble” servants gain ever more comfortable styles of living, but those gaining the increased comforts are usually careful to hide the actual scale of thefts from which they benefit, and we re-elect them.  We tell ourselves that the problems facing government are the fault of other or previous representatives or senators, mayors, city councilors, governors or, ultimately, presidents, not the ones for whom WE voted.  Our civil society is breaking down, it seems, in every way we contemplate, and yet we only shake our heads when trying to explain what is happening.  The scale of American civil failure disturbs us and we try our best to isolate the one thing we would change if we ran the zoo, but it’s not really clear that our ideas would really cause the change we think we want.  Besides, we’re busy and, fortunately, there’s an election on the horizon and we’ll be able to change the party holding power – or most of it – and “things” will get straightened out.

Except they rarely do get straightened out, or even “change” very much.  Over the past, say 70 years, America’s direction has not been toward strength or toward moral purity, but toward weakness and moral decline.  Still, there appears to be a majority in the country that prefers moral straightness and traditional American honesty and trustworthiness.  Why have “things” declined – lately quite dramatically, in the past 30 years in particular – when most people want the direction to be otherwise?  It’s a damned good question.

The Prudent thing to do, as our erstwhile Vice-President, Kamala Harris, likes to say, is look for a “root cause.”

Prudence offers a theory of the root cause based on extensive evidence: official corruption.  We are in decline not because “the times” are changing.  In fact, we have purposefully caused our own decline by electing corrupt people, and then re-electing them over and over.  The effects of this simple process are very complex – for good, purposeful reasons – and far-reaching to, now, threatening the survival of our nation.  While this sounds like there’s a single “thing” we could change to correct our decline, if this theory is true, we are so far gone that no election or piece of legislation can do it.  But Prudence is committed to never leaving her readers without a solution, or a host of them, so fasten your seatbelts.

Fifty thinkers studying the problem would have 150 opinions about what should be our FIRST move, and in truth, it is the largest conundrum.  So, we have to look for some of those root causes so that beloved corrupt politicians can’t make things worse.  Although its strictures are being eroded as quickly as the left (it’s always “the left”) can chip away at them, our remarkable Constitution is still the fundament of our laws and means of governance.  However, it cannot speak to our modern, sophisticated ways and means of subversion and corruption.  It needs some upgrading via amendment, and via an amendment process that cannot be corrupted by our “deep state” or current elected officials and representatives.  It won’t be easy, but Article V. of the constitution provides the mechanisms for proposing and adopting Amendments.  One such mechanism is for 34 states to apply to Congress for the calling of a Convention for the purpose of proposing amendments.  The Congress must issue the call for such a convention, and then step aside, as the Constitution allows for no further role for the Congress in this mode of proposing amendments.  Ratification is performed by the states, too: three quarters, or 38 of them.

The key to saving our nation, then, is the nature of those who actually attend the Convention, and there is the crux of the matter.  It seems obvious to Prudence that “the left” should have no role in such a Convention.  How can this be ascertained?  Could there be a test of philosophies to select each state’s delegates, like Supreme Court nominees?  State legislatures are going to control who represents their states.  One can hope that the 34 states that ultimately make Application to the Congress to call the Convention, will be the more conservative states, but there is no certainty to that.  Many resolutions over the decades have been passed by one state legislature only to be rescinded by a later legislature.  Most had specified one or two purposes for the Convention to form into amendments.  In many cases, the nature of those reasons to call for the Convention were the reasons for recission, later.

The likelihood of actually convening an “Article V. Convention of the States” appears remote.  A more likely possibility is that during Republican control of both houses of congress, an amendment could be proposed and submitted to the states for ratification.  Such an action requires a two-thirds vote in both houses, but no approval from a President.  Still, there will be a problem obtaining even that much cooperation when one of the key elements of an amendment is to impose term limits on Senators and Representatives.  Could the case be made that the time had come for courage and sacrifice?  It all depends on how corrupt the Congress is at the time.  But let’s assume that a clean, traditionalist, pro-American delegate body could be filtered out and assembled.  What are the “TOP 12” fixes the amendment should include?

Term limits for federal offices keeps coming up as of prime importance.  With our longer lifespans, instant communications and unbridled budgeting with perpetual debt, the opportunities for becoming wealthy in Congressional “service,” are legion.  All that is required is a tingle of corrupt aggrandizement.  One need only pick apart any budget legislation or any “emergency” spending bill – often an “omnibus” bill – that is more than 20 or 30 pages long, and numerous “earmarks” can be found.  These happy “gifts” to Rep’s and Senator’s districts and, often, key supporters, are the price we pay to keep our elected “representatives in office for 20, 40 or more years.  During those decades the motivation to represent the constituents who elect a 2-year or 6-year representative, is twisted into the overarching motivation to keep a cushy, well-paid job in which lots of people treat the lucky “seat-holder” as if he or she were very important.  News media seek out the elected and ask for their unique and oh-so-important thoughts about whatever is “hot” at the moment.  Before too many months have passed since taking office, the elected begin to think that they are wise, not just smart.  After the first re-election, they also begin to accept that they occupy their “seat” because they are one of the uniquely capable humans who can understand the positions to which they have been elected, and understand, at the same time, the incredibly complex and arcane workings of government and legislation.  How fortunate are the ordinary people who are represented by any one of these august creatures.

We have a “system” of election and “representation” that corrupts men and women, alike.  Their jobs are too comfortable and too permanent.  We pay them too well no matter how poor or sloppy a job they do, and no matter how poorly the country and their constituents are doing.  There are too many “perks” and advantages built into their job descriptions and, with the exquisite tools available for twisting news and social media, there is virtually no oversight of their performance.  We re-elect them so that they might “fight for us” in Washington, or, at least, so that they can keep the scurrilous bastards and bitches in the other party from taking away our Medicare, 401k’s or Social Security, or from raising taxes and fees and imposing onerous regulations.

Helping to grease the skids toward illicit wealth are an army of lobbyists – more than we can imagine.  Many of them represent not only business and hand-out interests, but also foreign countries who all, it turns out, have their hands out, too.

The whole corrupted enterprise depends in large part on long-term relationships with those lobbyists and the abiding motivation to be re-elected.  What makes it work is repetitive re-election.  The first article of the new Amendment should be Term Limits on consecutive terms of service.  It doesn’t seem proper to create a group of people who cannot run for certain offices.  Forcing them to remain out of particular offices for a period of 4, 6, 8 or 12 years will open up representation to people who are NOT compromised by lobbyists and re-election corruption.

The second article should pertain to the budget, but not simply that it be balanced.  It should force Congress to manage budget legislation while forcing oversight of the administrative state and the flood of regulations that emanates from it.  So, the “A” paragraph will force the congress to budget no more revenue than that collected in the previous 12 months, and that it shall have 4 budgetary cycles to accomplish this goal.  The “B” paragraph will require that every Cabinet Department’s budget and planned regulatory effort for the next budget year, shall be analyzed and approved or modified separately from other departments.  A sub-committee shall also be charged to review existing regulations and to recommend changes to or “sunsetting of” regulatory regimes.  Finally, the “C” paragraph shall require a date-certain for completion of budgeting and oversight that is prior to the beginning of the next fiscal 1-year or 2-year period.

A third article would simply state that the Congress may, by law, change federal budgeting to be bi-annual rather than annual, should the work of review described in Article 2 take longer than will allow for annual budgeting.

The fourth article will require that: A. No legislation may include items of appropriation or law that are not listed in the title of the bill; B. No bill that raises or lowers taxes may be more than 40 pages long, printed in 8 point or larger type; C. Any bill that appropriates funds for projects or support for any cause or construction that impacts a single District or two or more Districts in a single state must be presented as a single bill to be voted upon separately from any other matter; and, D. Any “continuing resolution” deemed necessary for continued operation of any agency or department of the Federal Government shall include spending at a rate equal to that of the budget cycle preceding that which is just ending, whether a 1-year or 2-year budget cycle.

Finally, the fifth article will replace Social Security with a mandated private investment plan at the same rate of payroll contributions as currently required, with restrictions on dates of retirement similar to those now enforced.  A period of years would be required to completely phase out the current federal “piggy-bank” structure of Social Security so that once privatized – carefully overseen and regulated – the funds will build wealth for taxpayers and cease being a drain on the Federal budget.

There are a hundred other ideas for cleansing our federal spending and taxation and limiting opportunities for self-enrichment while in office.  With more frequent turnover of elected personnel the expectation will be that more Congress-people will employ statesmanship more often, and not fear fighting the bad habits of others.  The same will limit the amount of damage a bad-apple can do in his or her limited period in office.

Meanwhile, let us stop electing career politicians.  Let’s impose our own term limits, particularly at the caucus and primary levels.  The office-holders who have participated in expanding the debt to, now, more than $30 TRILLION, do not deserve re-election.  Remain Prudent.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Family, Taxation

BUSINESS, PROFITS, CHARITY & FREEDOM

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Taking care of business…

Fewer and fewer people understand capitalism, despite every, single, one of us being a capitalist.  This is an odd distortion of knowledge and understanding, and it has taken a lot of work.  There are two kinds of capital: earned and unearned.  Figuring out which is which will make clear where each of us is on the spectrum.

Consider a newborn baby.  He or she will cry and fuss until he or she receives food and/or comfort – often the very same things.  There is no sense of sacrificing for greater rewards an hour or two later, or of “saving up” cries in order to obtain a larger portion at a later time.  Babies exhibit raw capitalism: pure barter.  I won’t make your motherly instincts feel the discomfort of a crying baby if you will provide what it takes to comfort me and put enough food into me so that I will sleep… like a baby.  We all start out as capitalists.

We might also note that a baby doesn’t save any food or comfort for later, nor does he or she offer more quiet alleviation of motherly guilt in exchange for food than it takes.  Everything is on the expense accounts as “current” – no accrual.

It takes a while for infants and toddlers to figure out that kindness and caring can be “banked,” as it were, for increased pleasure and happiness any time later.  It’s a big concept.  If lovingly raised, however, children do learn to avoid punishment for “bad” or costly actions, and to express love and kindness toward parents and others when they are not hungry or uncomfortable… and even to share possessions.  At some point they learn to trade possessions for perceived “profits.”  Something Tommy has seems more desirable than what Jeffy has – and vice-versa – and both parties “profit” from an exchange of goods.  Also a big concept.

Like all human “isms,” even incipient capitalism requires regulation and “institutionalized” bounds.  Almost every child learns that simply taking something of Tommy’s is extremely profitable: nothing is given up in exchange.  Parents or other adults are, at that point, obligated to punish – or dis-incentivize – that practice.  Jeffy’s taking, or stealing the possession of Tommy’s, must be made costly enough that Jeffy learns as immediately as possible, that there is no advantage or profit in that act or acquisition.  And, it must be a cost that exceeds the simple return of the stolen property.  Whether it’s a period of disfavor from a parent, or deprivation of a desired activity, a slap on the hand or something else proportional to the “crime,” there must be a cost that the perpetrator, Jeffy, will do his best to avoid going forward.  Otherwise, stealing becomes a habit and will be perceived as profitable and worthwhile.  Several big concepts.

It’s easy to imagine the fairly short-term consequences of the lack of institutionalized sanctioning of “bad” actions.  In this case, the “institution” is the “law,” or, at least, the automatic and swift punishment (let’s hope, by parents) of theft in addition to retribution.  This is the fundament of civilization; capitalism is woven amongst all the threads of civilized society.

Now let’s assume that our properly guided and sanctioned child grows up, essentially according to the Ten Commandments.  People of faith attempt to obey all ten, there being nothing negative about any of them, which is to say: nothing that hurts social cooperation and quality of life, or the raising of new adults with civilizing self-control.  Strictures against creating and worshipping graven images instead of God; taking the name of God in vain (cursing involving God’s name or power); keeping the sabbath day holy is also a good idea, albeit one that we in America have cleverly set aside; honoring our fathers and mothers is both logical and essential to the health of society; not killing one another; not committing adultery; not stealing; not lying about our neighbors; and, not coveting the property of our neighbors.  These are essentially society-protecting strictures that we attempt to talk ourselves away from only at our peril.  The hate-based riots of 2020 are the clear and clarion proof of the fragility of civilization in the absence of “the Commandments,” whatever their source.

Our new adult decides to start a business.  Having been raised “with a conscience,” Jeffy plans to sell his skills as a carpenter, and he recognizes that he’ll need a partner with similar skills in order to keep his contracting promises and to help avoid mistakes.  He makes arrangements with a local lumberyard to establish an account with sufficient credit to do significant renovation or add-on projects.  The account is based on Jeffy’s reputation as an honest person and, in part, on his father’s equivalent reputation.  The lumberyard considers the potential of a growing business customer as a worthy risk of a certain level of credit, or debt.

By virtue of hiring Aaron, a friend he knows from High school, who also loves building things, Jeffy takes on a remarkable burden of employer obligations, including various benefits that must be paid, including health care and liability insurances, and, of course, meeting “payroll.”  As owner of the business, Jeffy also is responsible for legal contracting with customers, and for other tax consequences of success.  He and Aaron still believe in their abilities and respective roles. and business commences.

“Jeff’s Construction” finds itself busy and able to pay both the owner and his employee reasonable wages while gaining assets in the form of two trucks and several power tools, and while accumulating some money in a local bank.  In other words, “Jeff’s” is profitable.  Knowing that his little company was facing taxes on his profits at both the state and federal levels, Jeff decides to make a donation to his church’s Christmas Food Drive.  With profits on the books of about $12,000, Jeff donates $2,000 to the food drive.  He and Aaron get their picture in the paper handing over a big cardboard check to the chairman of the Drive committee.  The minister and several other key people are also in the picture.  Jeff makes a handful of new connections, as a result, a couple of whom later contract with “Jeff’s Construction” for renovations of their homes.

As the years go by, “Jeff’s Construction” becomes “J & A Builders, Inc.” incorporated and no longer a proprietorship.  They grow to 6 full-time employees.  Each summer J & A work with the regional technical high school to provide summer jobs to budding carpenters.  Aside from income taxes to state and federal government, J & A’s building and garages plus the property taxes on the two partners’ and their 6 employees’ homes total over $100,000 per year, while excise taxes on their vehicles kick in another $26,000.  Donations to the Food Drive, the Boys and Girls Club and to the local “Y” for Summer Camp sponsorships plus support of a local Little League team, amount to nearly $25,000.  J & A also matches 401-K contributions up to 5% of income for all 8 personnel.

Those who misunderstand the immense values of honest profit are always looking for “businesses” and “business owners” to right non-business wrongs in society, perhaps because they are “fortunate.”  But that is not a business obligation.  The business is obliged to operate legally and honestly, delivering what it promises and not cheating customers, and to do so at a profit so that all legal obligations to employees and suppliers are met.  By providing multiple streams of tax revenue, businesses provide for all that civil society is relied upon to provide for residents.  Charity is in addition, and a blessing, not an obligation.

Of course, everything is different for those small businesses that have a room in the back that’s full of cash… cash they’re just too greedy to share with their oppressed workers and every poor person in town.  But, there are damned few of those. 

There are  many ways to add new wealth to an economy and to a nation.  The first of these was personal manufacture, in a sense, where the best tools or weapons compared to other groups or tribes created an advantage in terms of safety, hunting and survival.  Next came agriculture, permanent villages and cities and the need to defend them, which latter need spurred invention, metallurgy, and more.  Along with agriculture, fishing also introduces wealth and spurred marine technology.  In the presence of defensive pressures came a third major source of new wealth: mining.  Everything, of course, required managed labor and the necessary efficiencies that make ever-larger projects, whether construction or war-fighting, possible.  Indeed, it all made the Roman Empire possible – a success of management and leadership that taught some lessons to all of today’s successful – and failed – governments.  Religion, particularly in terms of Judaism and Christianity and the economic and familial ethics they spread across Europe, led, eventually and often unpleasantly, to the enlightenment and the explosion of technology, which made intellectual invention a new source of wealth and source of medical advantage, which is another form of civic wealth.

Today, virtually pure intellect is like a global form of mining.  New products are “manufactured” from a raw material of electrons, bringing new wealth into existence.  Construction, of homes or factories or office towers or highways and bridges, adds new wealth, too: fixed assets, from which use is derived for years and decades, enabling other wealth and our gigantic “service economy.”  Still, no matter the type of business in which one engages, the obligations of businesses and business owners – including stockholders – are the same.

What are they?

  • Operate legally (but don’t hesitate to challenge regulations and laws that are irrational and which amount to unequal application of the law)
  • Earn a profit legally, without cheating customers
  • At best, manufacture a product (best way to create new wealth benefitting the most people)
  • Next best, grow a product and/or improve the growing process
  • Treat employees equally and provide appropriate training and safe conditions for work
  • Provide real services that add value to products and their use or availability
  • Deliver what is promised, never less than promised, and more if you can
  • Do not employ false advertising or sales tactics
  • Maintain honest accounting, pay applicable taxes
  • Do not dirty your property, the air or the waters

Individuals, business owners or not, are always free to be charitable and to take part in politics or social issues they believe in.  But these should be personal decisions and personal resources.  A business owner fails his or her basic obligations to a community , to customers and to employees, by diverting business resources that should be enhancing working conditions, or providing insurance against future threats to the business.  Otherwise, if this sense of purpose and obligation to the health of the business is being weakened for any number of reasons, the business should be sold to those who will work to meet the listed obligations, or folded, having fulfilled, or no longer fulfilling, its mission.

Culture, Economics, Governance, Politics 2021, Taxation

American virus

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For the children… their children… their children… their children…

The general malaise that has infected the United States far more significantly than the Wuhan, China virus, has many markers for human-engineered mutations in its DNA.  COVID-19 seems to have just ONE insertion of non-natural protein into its DNA, and look at all the trouble that has caused!  It was inserted to make COVID a human-transferrable pathogen not for a good reason, but an evil one. 

America, on the other hand, began by the insertion of several new ideas, all for good reason, designed to spread amongst mankind for the betterment of all.  The greatest of these was “We the People…” forming a government to protect our liberties and our God-given rights, and to adjudicate injustice among the citizens and between citizens and governments when the latter lose their way.  Sadly, dangerously – if one agrees that the loss of the American ideal is a danger to mankind – many, many mutations have been inserted into America’s DNA over the decades, some for good reasons, many for vilely bad ones.  The resulting disease, socialist tyranny, is now eating our muscles and brains.  There are treatments and ways to build up our immunity against these foul mutations, but they’ll be bitter pills for some.

The most pernicious mutation in our genes was slavery.  We were born with it and have fought, quite literally, to remove it and its errors since the very beginning.  Even those who depended upon slavery knew it was wrong and out of place, needing a cure.  Various forms of compromise, as if we might be happy with a little sickness if it didn’t spread, were tried and failed: too much prosperity was involved.  Even those abolitionists who railed against it from the North, happily processed the cotton slaves picked, in their humming mills along rivers large and small.  When the bitter pill of secession and civil war was finally swallowed the young nation gave up hundreds of thousands of lives and casualties and nearly all of its treasure to effect a cure.  It worked on the grand scale but not the tiny one.  Thousands, perhaps millions of Americans still clung to the false premise that inferiority could be discerned by skin color, and fears and hatreds remained for another century, now mostly gone.

Originally, slavery interfered with politics, bringing distrust upon those who lived where it was practiced, and upon their representatives.  But the bad gene of organized hatred gained strength under Reconstruction and into the 20th century, and politics learned how to GAIN power with hatred.  That gene has not been excised, and indeed has become dominant, now.  We have so far refused the bitter pill that could reverse its spread.  Indeed, for POLITICAL purposes, we have undermined full equality for blacks, in particular, by wrecking their family structure and making large fractions of their numbers dependent through welfare, always, publicly, for the most compassionate reasons. 

We have inserted the unionization gene into public employment, including education, for wonderful POLITICAL and not educational reasons.  Once unleashed it metastasized throughout local and state governments and infected the federal behemoth, sapping education itself while cementing incumbents into power they have not earned.  There is a cure, but insufficient courage to take its bitter pill.  We’ll run out of money and taxpayers before we gulp this one down.  Power will remain in the same hands that have prevented a cure for 60 years, however.  The pill requires voters to elect those willing to change the laws that cement unions in place, and who will then de-certify those unions.  Unfortunately those organizations have successfully changed the definition of “education” and voters think “teachers” and education are synonymous, to the detriment of generations and the future of our nation.

The debt-ignorance gene was inserted in 1913, right after the income tax gene – a bad year for our DNA, 1913.  Once the Federal Reserve got its “sea legs,” debt became our friend and the ticket needed to buy votes and to confuse our voters and taxpayers.  The “Fed” has become a $28 TRILLION ride… mostly downhill.  The pill to reverse the damage this gene has done is so distasteful that its name is almost never mentioned: cutting the budget and ending the borrowing.  [Did you know the Fed was created with legislation that makes it legal for it/them to loan “money” to the United States that it/they, the Fed, does not have?  Yet we pay interest on it, anyway?  It’s wicked cool.]

The debt gene mostly finances bad ideas, like 20 years in Afghanistan, and the dissolution of our national borders.  It finances economic shutdown in the face of a communicable disease, instead of analgesic treatments that slow the progress of the disease in individuals, allowing the human body to fight it off without lengthy – or any – hospitalization.  It finances incredibly corrupted federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA.  It finances public transportation that people don’t use.  Debt is one of the most debilitating diseases a free people could ever suffer, since it will steadily make them not free.  We have to take the pill that fixes it else we’ll have it shoved down our throats in the disappearance of American sovereignty.

We think we’re so smart because we are the only people on Earth who have figured out that our unique nation is the first and only one that will never have to pay its debts – at least the “intelligentsia” of the Democrat party have figured this out, which makes them much smarter than stick-in-the-mud traditionalist Republicans – these are not all Republicans, who tend to be liberal, but the Conservative ones who tend to be the most honest and patriotic.  The actual debt gene is paired with another, the dependency gene, which were both inserted into America’s DNA sometime in the 1930’s.  They were tickled a few times by the Roosevelt “Brain Trust,” but lay mostly dormant until the U. S. went off the Gold Standard under Richard Nixon.  They’ve blossomed since then and would normally have obliterated the debt-ignorance gene, but that pesky ignorance has hung on after the gold window closed and we started borrowing our own currency from the nearly empty vaults at “The Fed,” who pays the U. S. Mint to now print Federal Reserve Notes instead of U. S. Dollars.  The debt-ignorance gene enables us to call those notes “money.”  Very bitter pill to cure that gene.

The combined actual-debt and dependency gene pair causes a mental disorder that we call liberalism or progressivism.  Liberals are convinced, genetically, that their malady actually is a cure, although here and there some sufferers do “snap” out of it and become conservatives.  Soon after that they become patriots as well.

The main symptom of the liberalism disease is a belief that people are not individuals and have no individual rights and that, further, a government can make groups of people into better humans by giving them free stuff.  Naturally, as any progressive liberal will partially explain in just a few words, certain groups respond better to those free gifts than others, and that is why the others are left on the outs when all the free giving is going on.  Makes sense to liberals, anyway, so it is taught in public schools, especially the out-group part, whose attempts to stop the free gifting exposes them as racists, who should be on the outs, everyone agrees.  Don’t join THAT group, children.

Ultimately the only cure for liberalism is knowledge of history and a change of beliefs, making the liberalism “symptom” of genetic weakness, the hardest to undo.  There is a pill for it, however, containing the essence of Judeo-Christian philosophy and tiny bits of hemoglobin from the Revolution, Civil War and other righteous conflicts men have died to win.  Unfortunately, a large fraction of the body politic refuses to consider taking it or even acknowledging it, mainly those who exhibit the disorder known as progressivism or liberalism.  Sadly, we may have reached a point of liberal virulence when not enough of the out-groups are praying for the survival of the United States of America and its unique Constitutional Republic, based upon individual independence, responsibility, structural honesty, prosperity and charity.  We still have faith, however.

I hope inspired people are working on a real vaccine against our progressive disease – a vaccine that trains the body politic to recognize infection and remove it before it gains strength, again.  That pill will taste sweet or, if it takes a shot or more, they won’t sting a bit.  America’s health and longevity are worth it.

Biden, Economics, Elections, Governance, Politics 2021, Responsibility, Taxation

Biden’s Billingsgate

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Who was that masked man? Why, he’s grown stranger…

President Biden is proposing to exceed the THIRTY TRILLION dollar debt level.  What he suggests is not only partisan and disingenuous, but includes multiple effects that restrict and undercut capitalism.  If he ever understood the relationship between debt, productive surplus and growth, he has forgotten it… along with Constitutional provisions and any semblance of American exceptionalism: down the memory hole.

Under his and other socialists’ direction, American will be exceptional again:  among all industrialized nations we will lead the world in our concerted, legislated efforts to destroy our hard-won success and relinquish our sovereignty.  Biden wants to “go big” – biggest fool, perhaps.

The only system that can both destroy debt and increase freedom, is free-enterprise capitalism.  That is, NOT monopoly capitalism OR globalism, both of which concentrate money and power OUT of the hands of free citizens and OUT of the hands of their elected representatives – although not out of their pockets in many cases.  Those must be stopped before it’s too late.  Some serious trust-busting is essential to restoring America.

Practically, a clear course-correction would be to limit the level of corporate net-worths or levels of gross revenues that may donate ANY money to candidates or PAC’s – ANY money.  Perhaps companies with $50 millions in assets or $25 millions in revenue or LESS, may donate, not larger.  Also, companies that have government or military contracts may not donate.  Then trust-busting could proceed.

Already we’ve experienced reduction in job and business growth – returning to pre-Covid levels – because excessive, socialist, “rescue” or “stimulous” payments are keeping people from returning to work!  Work… where guided labor produces things, including taxes.  We know where idiots… umm, ignore that… “progressives” think economic growth comes from: unemployment checks.  Nancy Pelosi said so.  Only as employment increases will freedom, independence and tax revenues increase.

People earning their own livings strengthen both responsibility and financial freedom.  Having more taxpayers increases political freedom.  2020 has shown that weakening election laws weakens political freedom, and it disenfranchises citizens from our most fundamental and hard-won civil rights.  Adding greater responsibility to the exercise of the franchise will clarify honesty in elections – a fundament of the American promise.

Back to what Biden has forgotten… if he ever knew it.  Debt is a superb tool for growth, but not for maintenance – period.

Imagine a factory producing, say, refrigerators.  Its lines are operating, workers are working and every unit that comes off the line is sold within days.  In fact, there is a shortage of refrigerators; people are forced to devise meals for their families without foods that need refrigeration.  People are denied good nutrition for lack of a high-enough rate of refrigerator production.  Even if the government passed a law requiring more refrigerators to be made, only so many can be.

To upgrade the factory and machinery to produce a third more – a 33% increase – will cost $100 Million.  Because the refrigerator company has made a profit over the past 15 years, of $30 Million after all expenses, cost of goods sold and payroll… and taxes, it is able to borrow, or gain a debt of $70 Million.  They’ll be able to make a productive surplus of not $3 million, but $4 million per year at 133% of current production, since all costs won’t increase proportionately.  Each refrigerator will cost a little less to produce with the new machinery and facility improvements.  The $70 Million loan, combined with investment out of increased operating profits, will be paid back with interest to the lender, in less than 20 years.

The earning of profits – creation of productive surplus – enables “Refrigerators, Inc.” to become more productive and efficient, able to modernize, hire trainees who can become highly paid refrigerator builders, and pay taxes to support our civic institutions and even donate money to charitable causes.  Productive surplus also enables the company to destroy debt – make it disappear – while increasing production, the only purpose of investment.  That’s it.  It’s NOT an investment to provide living expenses for people who do not work enough to support themselves or their families; it’s an emergency… it’s charity, not a way of life.

Meanwhile, everyone who wants a refrigerator can buy one – or, contrary to socialist dogma – go to work to earn enough to buy one.

Capitalism is the only process that can destroy debt or, in fact, make investments at all.  All other bills incurred by a society that is complex, are paid, or financed, by the productive surplus of profitable, capitalist enterprises.  All of government: schools, police fire departments, hospitals, military, public works… everything, is paid for from tax revenues that derive only from productive surplus in a profit-making economy.

The growing tragedy – growing weakness – is our habit of borrowing for current expenses from generations into the future, now to the tune of $28 Trillion.  About one-third of our annual federal “budget” is borrowed, not paid from current revenues.  This part of economics Joe Biden has not forgotten, even embraced: the lie of modern politics.

For a long time the U. S. borrowed real money… from banks, individuals and even other countries.  The Treasury sold bonds: saving bonds, Treasury notes (“Treasuries”) of different maturities and yields.  Investors used real money to “invest” in U. S. debt – one step removed from investing in future productive surplus, itself.  This was bad enough; we lived beyond our means but we could afford the interest on those debts, not so much affording repayment of the loan principals.

Unfortunately we have worn out our welcome among real investors.  Now we “borrow” from the Federal Reserve. 

(See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/)

The “FED” is a private bank consortium that can legally “lend” us money they do not have – $Trillions of it.  So, they lend us “air” and we pretend it’s money and pay interest on it.  Oddly, the Federal Reserve is also granted power to set interest rates, which for a long time have been near 1%, God bless their charitable hearts.  What will we do when they decide the rate should be 3%?  On $10 Trillion?  That’s $300 Billion in real money.  That’s a lot of Meals on Wheels.

Wait a minute… wait a minute.  Did I say, “$10 Trillion?”  I meant $30 Trillion, if we fulfill Biden’s plans.  Why, that would be $900 Billion… a YEAR… close to a $Trillion, itself – just interest!  That’s a lot of everything, including our own defense.  We literally cannot afford more multi-$Trillion spending plans; they are actually taxing plans. 

Many in government believe these “air-debts” never have to be paid back!  “We owe them to ourselves,” they think.  Ooookaaaay… aren’t the UFO people going to usher in a new era of no worries?  Oh, absolutely.  And, Joe Biden is going to unite the country, end racism and borrow us into prosperity.  And equity.

Economics, Politics 2020, Taxation

KNIFE EDGE ELECTION

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Aside from violent politics and anti-Americanism, there are even larger forces at work, and psychologies behind or in front of them, that are shaping the World.   Politics, which has caused these forces to build strength, can barely affect them, now.  Every four years we become hotly exercised over “who will lead the free world,” but the crucial differences we perceive between candidates, are rarely so significant that they will materially impact the inexorable forces already underway.  “It’s the economy, stupid.”  Even James Carville had little understanding of what he had actually said in 1992.  It is the economy… of the world.

Even the mighty United States is barely able, now, to chart its own course, economically.

It is an interesting game, for some, to dredge up what a nickel used to buy compared to today, or what used to be a “damn good weeks pay” for 60 hours of labor.  We created the mis-named “Federal” Reserve System in 1913 to supposedly prevent the excesses and crashes of the banking system, and populated the member banks with the same thieves who had helped crash the economy more than once, but who also finally came up with the right price to purchase Congress’ acquiescence to the Federal Reserve act.  Supposedly the penalties of interest costs would keep Congress from spending beyond its means.

That worked wonders. 

The flaw was and is that there’s no profit to be made without a loan being lent.  Lending to business isn’t profitable enough; big profit comes from lending to countries – especially this one.  There simply needs to be enough crises to justify deficit spending.  That works, too.

An ounce of gold sells lately for nearly $2,000.  In 1932, before FDR stole Americans’ gold by law for $20.50 an ounce, it sold for 1/100th as much.  In other words, in fewer than 90 years the purchasing power vis a’ vis gold declined by 99%.  FDR adjusted that ratio by declaring that gold cost $35 an ounce now that the government owned it, and picked up a few billion dollars with which to “fix” the depressed economy.  Controlling the price of commodities is a useful tool in controlling people.  Many commodities define the whole economies of nations.  Oil, for example, finances several, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Russia and many others.  How belligerent they are towards their “enemies” is often tied to the market price of that single commodity.

Kings and Emperors are bought and sold on some continents for oil, gold or diamonds.  The companies that own or control those commodities, or their banks, are international these days, and tied to any nation only for tax advantage rather than for any sense of tradition or patriotism.  Indeed, the money system is virtually global, not national.  That’s our money, as well.  It’s the economy, stupid.

But the problems that will swamp virtually every nation are global and non-national.  So-called “national” banks form a web of global management – financial management, financing governments.  Our own “Federal” Reserve sits at that table, not at ours.

Global financiers are not like other people.  Their outlook on life is divorced from money worries, mortgages, keeping tight schedules or shopping.  Tailors or dressmakers come to them, employees / servants obtain food and prepare it and clean up after meals.  “Average” people are nearly an alien species to them, useful only for work and taxes.  Morally they are not bound by our concepts of right and wrong: actions are either profitable or not profitable, which is to say, good or bad, including wars… the sides don’t really matter.

For pastimes, nothing is out of reach… or bounds.  Tales of extraordinary sexual pleasures and the worst imaginable, even orgiastic parties, gatherings, have surfaced.  Who can stop them when they practically own everything?  Politicians like to join them.  There is an animal attraction to “forbidden” pleasures in a non-judgmental arena, one that only religious and honest people will resist or avoid.  The “lords” of money have a lot more to say about how and how well the population of this planet will live than any elected official, much as we’d like to believe otherwise.

Of financial national powers, only the United States has the potential to constrain or reverse the utter control by shadowy international oligarchs.  That brings us tremendous opposition from sometimes unexpected quarters.  For oligarchs, socialism is an easier system of governance to deal with.  Both abject fealty to money and socialism / communism are anti-religious, “satanic” forces.  Western civilization became dominant thanks to Judeo-Christianity, no matter how many fools passionately deny it.

Our economics are based on money as a form of barter: value for value.  This is ultimate fairness and helped form the fundaments of our legal contracts in all areas of interaction, not just financial.  Honest, enforceable agreements – contracts – have been crucial for the growth of economies and for the creation of a middle class and upward mobility for those willing to work hard enough or intelligently enough.  The United States was made strong by virtue of fundamental honesty in our economy and in our business AND social “contracts.”  The Bible requires those ethics.

Yet we need look no further than our astronomical debt to see that our own nation is not nearly as “independent” as we’d like to think.  Every dollar of debt is a measure of slavery; every dollar of tax is a loss of freedom.

The alert observer can see how most countries are in alignment financially.  Those that are not are outliers and not likely to create substantial profits for bankers.  The moment they are so likely, loans start flowing in for development of various kinds, never least of which is of natural resources.  Lately the largest source of such loan-debt-control actions is China.  Are they independently seeking hegemony, or acting in concert with the global banking oligarchy?  We’ll never find out by asking them: they are communists and dis-information is an automatic defense of their utterly secular “infallibility.”

A small example of the control of governments and people by banks, can be seen here in Washington.  When the Federal Reserve was created – by bankers – the legislation allowed it to “lend” money that did not exist, to the government.  What a terrible tool to hand to bankers; what a far more terrible tool to hand to politicians.  In a single Act politicians created both a choke-collar on the American people and a PRIVATE bank that owns the levers of economic power just relinquished by Congress through the same Act.  When the Chairman of the “Fed” testifies to Congress, he or she doesn’t come to learn what financial policy should be, but to partially inform our elected representatives how things financial are going to be.

Covid-19 and recent actions of the “Fed” should make this clear to those with eyes to see.  Following a questionable lockdown of most businesses the Congress was impelled to provide expanded “unemployment” funds and various bailouts, small and large, including forgivable loans to small businesses… TRILLIONS of dollars worth.  Where did the Federal Reserve obtain that money, an American taxpaying citizen might ask?  Where?

Thin air is where.  Sitting behind desks the 17 governors of the Federal Reserve agreed to write the world’s largest fraudulent, un-backed check, drawn on an account with barely 5% of the funds on deposit for which the check is written.  Well, that’s OK, it’s legal.  Orwell was right: debt is prosperity.  That same “Board of Governors” just voted to keep interest rates close to zero for at least another year.  While we might celebrate this good news, it exposes its own threat to the nation: these same private bankers can later vote to raise interest rates, obligating the elected Federal government and its elected representatives, to pay those higher rates.

Wait just a minute, baab-a-loo, baab-a-loo, it says in the Constitution that only the Congress can initiate “bills” of “Appropriation” including, as stated in Section 9 of Article I, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account….”  Yet here is the so-called Federal Reserve Bank able to impose financial obligation upon the country by agreement among 17 largely unknown private bankers, and not by the Congress.

If the “Treasury Notes” that the Federal Reserve “buys” with thin air are good instruments of obligation, why can’t the Congress simply authorize the printing of “money” without paying interest to anyone?  It’s the same “full faith and credit of the United States.”  What an awful position for an earlier Congress to put itself and the nation into.  What a dramatic reform and sanitization of government for an imminent Congress to perform: nationalize the Federal Reserve, a creation of the Congress in the first place.  It’s all a matter of the value of United States dollars – the U. S. should control it.  Indeed, we should no longer be beholden to international financiers.  The fact that Americans still have sufficient power to restore our true independence is why international socialism keeps attacking our system, processes and the Constitution, itself.

Can we see where this is happening?  Well, the federal Reserve was created; the dollar was separated from gold or silver backing; the dollar was shifted from U. S. currency to Federal Reserve Notes; the act of voting has been made looser and looser, with barely managed voting lists despite Federal law to the contrary; vote harvesting has been allowed; vote-by-mail has been suddenly instituted due to questionable fears of Covid-19, promising severe electoral confusion on election night; our own census has been prevented from asking about citizenship status, confusing further the apportionment of representation in Congress; and, not to overlook, leftists, communists (BLM and others) are rioting, vandalizing and burning and promising more if their candidate doesn’t win or the wrong person is confirmed to the Supreme Court.  The Left never rests.

This election year there is a knife-edge election.  The virulent left has read some marijuana leaves and discerns that the time to strike is 2020.  Thanks to President Obama the concept of compromise is gone from politics, and the freedom to actually display socialist beliefs is absolute.  The left judges that there are enough ignorant, mis-educated young fools to swing the direction of history toward socialism and communism.  Electing a virtually socialist government (anyone who is counting on Joe Biden to maintain a “centrist” direction is in immediate need of deep therapy) will effectively dissolve the United States as an independent, freedom-based, democratic republic.  The consequences will touch every one of us.

The concept of value for value, mentioned earlier, is vital to our commerce and contracts and a constant restatement of honesty in our dealings with one another.  But it also underlies our basic justice system, and requires that punishments should fit the crimes invoking them.  In both commerce and individual transactions we have slipped far away from value for value.  Our currency is backed only by our confidence and an international finance system that is willing to accept dollars in trade for commodities, a system under great international pressure for replacement.  Trust in the fundamental honesty of the United States’ government is what supports dollars as measures of value for the rest of the World.  That and the taxing power of Congress.

We are also slipping, precipitously, far down from the pinnacle of even-handed justice that guarantees our survival as a republic.  Laws governing “hate crimes” for example, shift investigations and charges from wholly evidentiary to semi-subjective, politically correct charges.  Laws that are passed under duress to satisfy threats of violence, to suggest a year 2020 example, also indicate how far we are willing to diverge from actual justice to “justice” as defined by seditious insurrectionists.  What can the future of “blind” justice possibly be?

If we are prepared, because of an onslaught of Marxist-inspired lies about crime events, and in thrall of weak politicians who have come to believe in the foggy utopianism of socialism, to relinquish truth-based, evidence-based justice, and to relinquish complete control of our weakened finances, then we deserve to lose America.  Loss of an independent United States will lead to the end of Western civilization and the demise of Judeo-Christian ethics-based culture.

Vote.

Economics, Family, Governance, Representation, Responsibility, Sex, Taxation

Hi, Jack!

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Federal Reserve Board of Governors - 1914. Every one fully aware of how to boil a frog.

The attack on western civilization by China, performed through the agency of the Wuhan coronavirus, has, finally, presented us with reasons to try to understand foreign policy, international trade, and, key to all, international banking.  To the United States, international banking means The Federal Reserve, which is neither federal nor a reserve.  It is time to remove international banking’s hands from the throats of sovereign individuals.

The existence of religion  since time immemorial is also a factor in our understandings of money, wealth and individual value – things that bankers have devised the financial system to control.  That’s an unpleasant concept: being controlled  by strangers for their own profit; being forced through economics to cede one’s future and that of his or her family to the service of financial manipulators and to perpetual indebtedness they have placed on our shoulders.  But, why religion?  Aren’t we talking about money here?  What has religion to do with my finances?

Religion, and most particularly Christianity, forms the basis of “western” beliefs and of our basic self-governance, as well as our economic beliefs and practices.  We share most of our basic beliefs, and it is Prudent to list them, however much you tend to quibble:

  • Honesty.  We value honesty in our dealings with one another and, if we are wise, in our “dealings” with ourselves.  Our contracts are enforceable; our word is our bond.
  • Independence.  We value our personal, “civil” rights, at least as we think we understand them.  That is, we have inherent value and we agree that everyone else does, too.  We believe we have the right to personal liberty that does not hurt others, and that we are “sovereign” and yield to government only as much of our rights and freedoms as we deem necessary for the safety, protection and happiness of all.
  • Responsibility.  Despite the constant corrosion of socialism we recognize that we are responsible for our actions and their consequences.  The concepts of personal responsibility have been stretched and twisted, but we still expect to pay our bills, clean up after ourselves, interact with basic civility, and keep our promises both verbal and written.
  • Sacrifice.  All sort of activities, choices and financial decisions are rooted in the belief in doing without some comfort or desire now, for a greater reward later.  For the faithful this extends to an afterlife that rewards “good” behavior and choices while on Earth; and for all of us it defines civility, and civilization and even education.  The very idea of earning  status, wealth or recognition is founded in recognition of sacrifice for later reward.  There would be no actual charity without a level of sacrifice.  Even investment for future growth and reward fits this model.
  • Health.  Virtually every religious belief structure includes a significant portion of its accumulated writings devoted to diet and food preparation or combining.  There is often an “apothecary” of useful plants and methods of animal sacrifice and religious feasting.  Their attendant cultures incorporate many of these rules and so do individuals and families.  We grow up believing in a certain amount of responsibility for the health of our bodies – some to the point of worshipping the body instead of the spiritual “powers” that gave the instruction way back when.
  • Self-defense.  Most religions view the corporal body as a mere vessel for the “soul” to use on Earth for the balancing of karma, for some, or for the fulfillment of one’s “divine plan” or other forms of good works, sacrifice and charity.  In most traditions, suicide is sinful and cowardly, showing an unwillingness to face the tests the supreme spiritual being, God, places before us.  Therefore it is inherent that the possessor of that body defend it and keep it safe.  Wasting its life is the wasting of spiritual energy that has been given – literally “gifted” – to it at conception, or at “quickening” or at birth, and renewed each morning.
  • Procreation and sex.  How to live and how to create life properly are the most vital instructions in most religions: essential fertility.  How to assure the proper upbringing and acculturation of every child, how to maintain parental responsibility until children’s age of maturity – a set date – are crucial components of how to extend belief in the God or gods issuing the instructions.  All of these are spiritual events more than they are social or simply cultural.  Strong societies and nurturing family or village environments are the result.  Breaking or flouting these rules for life yields some of the strongest sanctions in every belief structure.
  • Justice.  Every religious tradition that recognizes spiritual beings, God, gods or saints / ascended beings of some sort, is replete with how INjustice shall be dealt with or adjudicated, or, in so many, many words, how justice is to meted out to offenders of the laws laid down by God, gods, prophets and other spokespeople who have some form of direct communication with the supreme being.  In most cases these instructions (commandments) become codified law to be applied by those granted their position to specifically do so, be they “judges” or spiritual leaders.  In each of our hearts is the blueprint of what is just punishment or retribution for all sorts of infractions.

In view of our cultural / legal understandings and beliefs, it should be incumbent upon us to rise up and replace any system or group or institution that BY CHARTER steals from us daily, while it forces us to indentured servitude, which is to say, economic slavery.  Our inherent power of sovereignty should also undo the fiefdoms of any who continue or promote such servitude – most of whom we think we freely elected to begin with.

Well, fellow sovereign Americans, have you not noticed how little changes no matter who is elected or which party holds the most power?  Is it not a little disconcerting how people from “Wall Street” are always holding key budget power in every administration, as well as becoming Treasury Secretaries?  Aren’t you troubled a small, unsettling amount, by the fact that our “national debt” (which doesn’t begin to measure our national obligations) only grows, and now is in the realm of $26 Trillion – more than all the economic activity of the whole country in a year?

Please don’t throw up your hands and say there’s nothing you can do about it.  Don’t give a nickel to a politician unless he or she is willing to repeal the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.  “The what?” you say.  “What does the Federal Reserve have to do with all this moral stuff you listed earlier?”  Aside from unknown dietary habits, the Federal Reserve has  no morals, and has been stealing steadily, through good times and bad, from Americans and from the United States, since it began to operate its conspiracy in 1914.  How it abuses the procreation part is outpictured in its economic handiwork. 

“Conspiracy” could be a good word for their peculiar crimes: “Con” means together; “piracy” means piracy.  “Piracy Together” among the 12 private reserve banks.  You may think it is too complicated for your practical, day to day brain, and that is exactly why the Federal Reserve System is designed the way it is.  But it is designed to commit legal THEFT, and it affects every purchase, mortgage, car loan and candy bar or quart of milk you buy.  It threatens the integrity of the United States – its very independence – and each of our personal freedom and sovereignty.  If recent collusions between the federal government and the “Fed” over the coronavirus bailouts haven’t exposed the rot to you, you’re not paying attention.

Please, Prudence begs you to devote a bit of time to this video:

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/century-enslavement-history-federal-reserve/

The Federal Reserve is a diabolical, century-long fraud upon the American people… including you, your parents, your children and their grandchildren, if we do nothing.  Vondir!

Economics, Governance, Health Care, Representation, Responsibility, Taxation

1-2-3 ALL TOGETHER NOW…

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If you live in a “progressive” state or commonwealth with an equally soft governor, you may have heard a proclamation concerning deadly coronavirus, that ended something like this: “We can get through this.  When times have been tough in the past Americans have pulled together and that is what will get us through this today… together.  We are all in this, together.”

Governor Baker, in crisis mode, looks either deeply concerned or very disappointed.

What was being meant, in fact, was everything including the next-to-the-last “together.”  The last sentence really wasn’t “we” are all in this together – it was “YOU are all in this together.”  You know what you thought you heard, but that’s because you haven’t recognized until right now, that when a state official, or even a minor state functionary, says “we,” he or she means “YOU,” the person with the target on your back.  So it is with coronavirus and the ‘stay at home’ and business-cessation directives.  There’s an “us” and “them” equation at work.  If you’re a state official, or a political hack who works for the state, or a unionized state employee, or the otherwise unemployable cousin of a judge or court clerk, “us” means yourself and every other person on the state payroll or receiving a generous state pension, and includes every welfare recipient and illegal entrant.  That’s who “us” is.

“Them” is you, me and every other tax-paying zhlub who actually, in reality, DOES work for the state, supporting every paycheck that “us” cashes.  See how it works?  Only people in the dreaded private sector are hurt – possibly destroyed financially – due to the absolutely essential shutdowns and lay-offs.  We are “them,” vis a’ vis the state.  We are not the people who don’t lose a penny of pay, benefits or pension; we are the ONLY people in all this togetherness who DO lose a lot, if not everything.  “You are all in this together, you saps.”  (Okay, okay, I added the “saps” part.)

Massachusetts is one of those squishy, “progressive” states with a soft, “progressive” Governor.  These kinds of states are typically one-party ruled, not Republican, although that line is blurry.  An observer can spot the squishiness thanks to a few shared qualities of how those states are governed.  Payroll is a big one.  State employees are comparatively highly paid compared to private-sector employees, sometimes egregiously so.  Massachusetts, an obvious example, has 930 or more employees making over $200,000 per year, a large number making $200K to $900K, and two who make over $1 Million per year.  Despite being on salary, many earn overtime which gets paid at a much higher rate, especially for state police officers, for whom total pay can easily exceed $300,000.  Of course, unlike the dreaded private sector (DPS), there are automatic raises for “public” employees.  All one need do is avoid murdering someone to see steady increases.

Recently a host of state police officers were “convicted” (admin slap on the wrist) of defrauding the state and its taxpayers, by claiming overtime hours not worked.  The amounts were in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, and the fraudulent activities extended to supervisors with higher ranks.  All of those found out were making a lot more than the average income of the citizens they are “sworn” to protect.  They lost their jobs but – and here you’ll want to hang on to the arms of your chair – they didn’t lose their pensions!  Our beneficent, democratically elected governors, and THE governor, who purports to be a Republican, and the shadowy boards and commissions they have placed between justice and state-employed criminals over many years, decided to not actually punish the criminals who have stolen from their ostensible bosses (pesky private sector taxpayers), unlike what the consequences would be if any of those civilian citizens had similarly defrauded the state or other citizens.

“You’re all in this together,” the Governor meant to say.  “You have to stay home; you can’t gather in groups, even with family; you can’t go to the movies, to a barber, or to the gym; you’ll have to stop working in most industries and occupations; you’ll have to file for unemployment.  Even though your customers will stop buying from you or mailing you checks for past work performed or products delivered, you will just have to suffer economic ruin even though you committed no crime except to be susceptible to a disease you only recently heard of.  Have a nice day.  Hunker down and we’ll (you’ll) get through this together.  We in state government will, at the same time, look very concerned while sacrificing none of our pay or benefits and enforcing the statewide shutdown on you, our beloved supporters.”

“(You’re) all in this together.”

Economics, Education, Governance, Representation, Taxation, Terrorism

TO CATCH A THIEF

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If only it were only our money being stolen…

Coronavirus, Covid-19, strain S or strain L – or both – is the unannounced candidate in the 2020 presidential race.  Democrats have already been calculating how to use the epidemic to make Trump look bad; they haven’t been calculating, much, as to how to protect citizens and residents from the disease, or to restore the pharmaceutical industry to the United States.  Hatred will do that: blind the carrier to its contagion, making him, or her, feverish and seeking a point of blame.  Trump will do.

Theft is very similar.  Where the blind virus can steal a person’s health, mobility, outlook and good nature, so can hatred, equally blind, make off with decorum, civility, kindness, compassion and good sense.  Both patients are… sick.

But theft, as any victim of a thief can testify, destroys belief as it reduces one’s economy.  A break-in to one’s home, for example, leaves residents distrustful, vulnerable and suspicious.  New information coming to those people is filtered through a different set of beliefs than prior to the act of thievery.  Eventually, assuming no repetition of the crime, distrust fades, safe feelings return and life goes on.  Love for others replaces fear.  But what if the nature of the theft is not precisely known… and what if the feeling of one’s safety and privacy having been breeched, one’s familial or even personal integrity being threatened by unrecognized thieves, almost continuously… what does a person believe then?

A person would certainly be angry at the violation, the assault on privacy, safety and personhood.  And that feeling would lead a person to be mad at, well… someone – whoever is stealing from him or her.  What is being stolen?  Who is it that should be punished for the constant thievery?

We live, today, right now, in a world of constant thievery, and among those things being stolen are the traditions of America’s founding.  One could posit that history, itself, is being stolen from us as “we” dis-educate our youth and restrict and belittle the beliefs that made the American experiment work and the American Dream real.  It’s unsettling.  What other thefts are being perpetrated?

Pick a state, any state.  How many of its agencies are staffed beyond need and paid beyond reason?  How many departments or programs are suspected of malfeasance, misfeasance and corruption, often political?  Surely some.  Honesty is being stolen every hour of every day.  How many have died from opioids?  How many from in-hospital errors?  How many children in state care were neglected so badly that their health or lives were threatened, perhaps lost?  How are such questions answered to the public on whose behalf all such actions are taken?  Almost never in full truth, often in blatant deception and cover-up.

We are forced by police power to sacrifice our private properties – the gains from our labors – to PAY for governments that lie to us as normal operating process.  It is unsettling.  A little anger is justified.  If one is not angry, he or she isn’t paying attention.

What about our past 3 years nationally, when one political party conspired with federal agencies and officers to attempt to unseat a president?  So many lies were told to us by so many official and “news” organs that the count is without total.  The political divisions exposed over the past 20 years have been sharpened so fiercely that the next 20 years are in grave doubt.  Taxpayers pay for everyone who works in the federal government and they have been lying to us, all, and never more grotesquely than in the years 2016 through 2019 and through the impeachment of president Trump.  They, including many in congress, have lied and stolen from our present and future the innate trust we ought to be able to enjoy with regards to our representatives, so called.

That our heritage has been stolen, tossed away when we weren’t looking, can be realized by noting the groundswell of support for an old communist/socialist as he claims to be the “leader” America needs.  Young people, college students, even many adults seem enthralled by attacks on capitalism and free enterprise, the unfairness of success, the inequality of unequal results for unequal efforts.  It’s all a matter of “fortune” and “unfortune.”  The fortunate ones, regardless of their path to wealth and regardless of the millions of jobs they create and the trillions of tax dollars their enterprises and employees pay to support common goods, should not have any more than they need to live on… the rest to be divided amongst the “unfortunate.”

Truth and reason have been stolen, as have history and fact.  And, it is unsettling.  Even those espousing socialist nonsense feel stolen-from, although they refuse to recognize what their losses truly are.  It makes them hazily angry at the fortunate thieves, for they have no mirrors.

Inheritance far greater than one’s grandmother’s silver has been, is being stolen right from our dining-room buffet, and we have not only left the back door open, we’ve marked the shortest path to the buffet with bright orange duct tape.  How can we tell all these thefts have gone on?  Check the books, the ledgers of our balance sheets.  We’re out of balance.  “What happened?” we ask one another.  “How did we get $23 Trillion in debt?”  “When did it become illegal to separate boys’ and girls’ bathrooms?”

“When did people start to hate others so much that teams of thugs would be allowed to beat them up while police watched?”  “Is this what Socialism has done?  Made us hate each other?”  “They” are stealing our nation.  It’s unsettling.

Culture, Economics, Education, Politics 2020, Representation, Responsibility, Taxation

BACK TO THE FUTURE

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It seems Prudent to pray.  Humans have an urge to worship, whether unto a deity of the personal perception of each supplicant, or to a set of deities connected to important natural phenomena like trees, rains, sunlight, moonlight, stars, winds, lightning, high and low temperatures… and more. 

If not truly worshipped, natural aspects of locales are generally respected with some attribution of supernatural importance, power or influence.  Caves, mountains, bodies of water, great forests and vital rivers are considered more than just natural by populations on whose lives they have life-giving or life-threatening influence.  Whether the Holy Spirit or the Great Spirit of native tribes, life’s continuous foibles, phenomena, fertility, feelings, fears and finality cause humans in every kind of society to come to terms with what can’t be controlled through forms of spirituality or religious faith.

What does it mean to all of those who claim to have no attachment to any church, religion or spiritual belief structure?  There are many and the number grows as government schools and liberal-leftist guided private schools divest themselves of morality and other quasi-biblical philosophies.  Only “science” can satisfy agnostics and atheists, those so declared tell anyone who’ll listen.  Religions are “mumbo-jumbo.”  So certain of their cold, scientific facts are many atheists, that they feel compelled to prevent any expression of religion or faith or spirituality.  The Prudent observer might think that they protest too much.  Their innate need to worship something is simply satisfied in a different way.

An argument can be made that Socialism is the secular faith, as it were.  Those who believe in this “ism,” must take its tenets on faith, since there is no empirical evidence that Socialism has worked anywhere.  Yet they work tirelessly to impose socialism so that individuality and human nature are replaced with the collectivist ethos, and innate capitalism is replaced with Utopian premises of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  A lot of faith is required to believe such ideas in the face of utter failure in every example.

Inevitably, Socialism devolves into tyranny.  In place of “guided honesty” of free individuals, Socialism is required to impose rules for correct behavior, and they inevitably become very granular.  The logical concerns we have about the American administrative state are genuine fears about a Socialist bureaucracy that is charged with imposing a statist conformity on large populations.  Although a modern socialist state might refrain from police-state status, today’s technology empowers social engineers to gather voluminous data that help identify non-conforming citizens, whose lack of adherence to rules threatens, or are perceived to threaten, the health and safety of the group/collective for whom the state exists and is dedicated.

Power, ultimately, and before very long, concentrates in the hands of the higher echelons of bureaucracies.

Also logically, politics within socialist systems can’t be allowed to offer significant opposition to the functioning bureaucracy.  There is a certain necessity to promoting, educating about, proving and re-proving a high level of infallibility of the state.  The benign nature of the system that all benefit from and must support, has no room for serious opposition to its own quality.  Calling socialist leadership into question is simply anathema to the established rules of conformity.  Freedom and socialism are essentially antithetical.  There is no need for freedom when “everybody” already benefits from the state.

The reactions to freedom and independent sovereignty can be seen in the United States today.  Wherever the premises of socialism/atheism are challenged by Christians, in particular, the socialist response is most often anger: the public face of hatred.  If any question of this set of observations remains, just consider the nature of angry reaction to Trump and to any of his supporters.  Hatred.

For every form of governance and social cohesion, there is a beginning and some sort of end-game.  Given the ubiquitous factor of human nature, which is fundamentally, personally, independent and capitalistic, in the sense of retaining the products of one’s labor – the whole “private property” thing – the founding of the United States did the best job yet in history, to craft a Constitution and the original institutions that, in the hands of both faithful and honest officials, judges and democratically elected representatives, might survive the tyrannical tendencies it was designed to oppose.

From the beginning, the desires of some for power over others, for self aggrandizement and for monopoly economic advantage, have been trying to erode the bases of liberty.  As the philosophies of tyranny also matured, the description of socialism as the utopian supplantation of capitalism, and thereby of individual freedom, caught the interest of those who already hated the chaos of freedom as much as they distrusted the unity of thought that resulted from religious faith.  Any system of human organization that did not need the guidance of the state, was/is to be discredited and destroyed.  And so it has gone since at least the (second) Civil War.  Never let a crisis go to waste.

The blind faith in socialism is not so dissimilar to religious faith: life-changing belief in something that can’t be seen, and acceptance of various scriptures.  On the other hand, but in the same way, erstwhile conservatives show blind faith in unregulated capitalism, as if human nature were fulfilled by monopoly, government-protected wealth concentration, and as if the super-rich billionaire class were going to become benign rich uncles to us, all.  There is foolishness aplenty to go around… the world.

Rather than thinking with our human-nature selfishness, a little statesmanship is the better prescription.  We need, first, to recognize that these, again, are the times that try men’s souls.  At the founding of the independence struggle, those who signed the Declaration of Independence were placing their support for what was a civil war, not truly a revolution, out in the public eye, making themselves primary targets for the British military fighting to hold the American part of the British Kingdom tightly to England.  It took phenomenal courage, as they pledged their “… lives, fortunes and sacred honor.”

Where is sacred honor, today, as we face the United States’ greatest enemy: the failure of belief in the American Dream?  Where are the statesmen and women who will risk everything to restore America’s path?  There is no question that stepping back from the brink of tyranny – from the brink of unfathomable debt – will be quite unpleasant, uncomfortable, unpredictable and will require a continuity of leadership we have not seen since Lincoln and Washington.  It will not be possible for Americans to work 30 and 35-hour weeks, take multiple vacations each year, and waste as much income on frivolous, games, goodies or fattening foods.  Everyone will have to sacrifice.

Especially governments.

The federal budget must be rendered $1 Trillion smaller.  Sounds easy when the number is so even and simply stated.  A trillion… a thousand billion dollars.  In none of our lifetimes have we seen a congress cut – as in spend less money this year than was spent last fiscal year – ANY federal office or program, without spending much more elsewhere.

Local governments would have to assume the absolutely essential social services, and forego multiple other demands… demands like raises, fancy equipment, landscaping that isn’t done voluntarily, new school buildings and numerous non-essential municipal jobs.  States will find cutting even more difficult, since all those unionized state employees are the same people whose families donate to and work for campaigns.  Plus, there’s all that graft on enormous public works.  No more $750,000 state university presidents in those days, either.

None of these politically unlikely changes will happen, of course, until a far greater hurdle is crossed: making everyone, both parties, and everyone else, public and private, believe that eliminating debt-based government is more important than all of everyone’s private concerns.  More than during any war-time mobilization, Americans will have to agree to the importance of national sacrifice… to the importance of living within our means, Constitutionally, and with added sacrifice to pay off all of our loans.

There is no other path to financial freedom and strength.  Every dollar of debt is a loss of independence; every dollar in taxes is a loss of freedom.  Can we strike the correct balance going forward?  – the balance between independence, freedom and responsibility?  – the balance envisioned in our founding that relied upon morality and personal responsibility?

Or shall we succumb to the blandishments of socialist, identity politics, and hollow promises of greater freedom through national controls?  Shall we continue down a path that promises the slow loss of all we hold dear in America… slow, until one day we lose everything that’s left, abruptly, cataclysmically, destructively, unrecoverably?  We hope we know when that will be, but we don’t.  We hope we can pull back from the brink before all is lost, based on some arcane calculations that, literally, no one knows how to make.

Will the path to sanity commence before the next election?  Not bloody likely.  What about after the next election?  Well, not until all the other spending promises are fulfilled, and by then it will be mid-term elections and there’s no way in Hell those congressional giants are going to bear the brunt of mismanagement long before THEY were first elected.

Economics, Governance, Representation, Taxation

ARTICLE v. AMENDMENT

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If there were, finally, a convention of the States under article 5 of the Constitution, there are many concerns that people across the political spectrum would like to “fix,” and some of these are appropriately “Constitutional.”  Care must be taken to control the content of the hundreds of proposals that will likely inundate the convention.  Still, here are a few problem areas that are the result of either inadequate institutional structure for today’s technologies (communication, globalism, trade and warfare), or the result of the infusion into federal responsibility dozens if not hundreds of matters that are the appropriate business of sovereign states within a federal system.  Here is a list as seems Prudent:

Lifetime Sinecures – Senators and Representatives are in office too long.  The basic mechanism of election and re-election has become anachronistic in the age of, first, widespread and rapid communication, and, now, virtually instant and digitized communication and data analysis.  The control of data and virtual control of news/information, results in mostly “safe” seats, quantified as 94+% re-election rates.   If each were motivated by purity of public service and statesmanship, longevity in office might be laudable.  Unfortunately, we see over recent decades, that federal office-holders not only tend to ignore their constituents, preferring to deal with and respond to their confederates at the next Senate or House desk, but they become wealthy while in office, leading them to focus on pleasing those Congressional associates so that re-election is made more likely.  Once the first re-election is accomplished, relationships with lobbyists and interest-group advocates of all stripes become more and more crucial and consuming.

This means that change #1 should be Term Limits which, most Prudently, should be stated in terms of continuous service.  That is, being a past Senator or Representative should not preclude running for that office at some future date.  The issue is: How many terms must pass before an individual can run again?  Prudence suggests that one full Senate term and two House terms are appropriate periods.

Administrative Statism – For many reasons we are devolving into a national, rules-based control system, rather than a willing federation of semi-sovereign states, based on laws and shared cultural mores.  Since the Great Depression, the many Congresses and 13 more or less feckless Presidents have overseen massive growth in administrative departments and programs.  Erstwhile “representatives” have successfully divested themselves of most of their governing responsibilities, save two critical ones: Expanding the scope of issues that must be federalized, and Debt Creation.  This massive, unelected, regulatory bloat must be reversed, and the only way to do so is to regain control over federal budgeting.

Federal Budgeting – Of the three key covenants the federal government holds with the citizens of the several states and with the states, themselves, how tax monies are spent is the one that affects everyone, every day.  For the past 50 years, or so, there has not been a “budget,” in fact, for a budget would limit expenditures to match, virtually, the revenues raised.  Moreover, the revenues raised would, in an honest federal system, be expended only by vote of the two houses of Congress and agreement of the President.  We are told this is the case, still, but in truth, most of the budget is “entitlements,” and these are rarely, if ever, considered as manageable by Congress, and if some slight study of them is attempted, the result is generally to increase them by increasing the indebtedness of the United States.  That is, we have outlived our means for decades – a most mendacious process.

By itself, the failure of a string of Congresses to debate, analyze and produce an expenditure plan that is honest with the citizenry, and affordable through taxation, is proof of the utter failure of political leadership since the inception of the Great Society.  These failed potentates of promiscuous promises get re-elected at a 90+% rate, while their “work” product becomes smaller and smaller.  They receive automatic pay raises.

So, correcting the budget process will solve multiple losses of freedom.  There should be an amendment that requires that the “budget” of EVERY Department, Agency, Program and Title within them, shall be approved separately by the Congress through legislation.  In short order this will be seen as “impossible,” and the impossibility of financing more “line items” than can be understood or even counted, should become clear.  The redundancy and overlap of purposes for the thousands of expensive programs, must be cleared away and reduced to fewer than one hundred.  The federal government must get out of much of the peoples’ business that it is in.  Some of it is best managed by States with overarching direction by federal laws that ARE APPROVED by Congress, not by relatively hidden agencies and functionaries.  Americans deserve REPRESENTATION in all matters lawful and budgetary.  This brings us to another section of this amendment.

Legislation – There shall be no “omnibus” bills or laws.  That is, no bill shall be brought forth the content of which is not directly related to a single purpose clearly described in its title, nor should the text of any section be longer than 250 words, with budgetary supporting statements of account allowed, nor should any bill in its entirety contain more than 2,000 words.  Prudence would dictate that unrelated attachments to “must-pass” legislation should be banned.

Further, no new policies or expenditures may be included in any “budget” or taxation legislation without a separate bill that shall be studied and approved by committee and brought to a vote by the whole Congress.  Legislation for such “new” federal activities must contain provisions for financing said actions or policies WITHOUT causing any increase in the indebtedness of the United States.

Balanced Budget – Having established over many decades that Congress is incapable of limiting or cutting virtually ANY expenses other than by shifting expenses from the Defense Department toward domestic expenditures, elected Representatives and Senators shall establish a balanced budget.  However, a limit must be set as a percentage of, what?  Gross Domestic Product?  Some percentage of all taxable income?  Can any “federal” metrics be even trusted?  Some clear standard of measure must be set, else the habitual connivance of re-election interests will modify and obfuscate the intention of this amendment.  Further, no budget shall be passed that increases the indebtedness of the United States except in times of national emergency  or declared war.

Citizenship – No person shall be counted among the census, nor be part of any apportionment of Congressional representation except he or she be a naturally born or legally naturalized citizen of the United States.  No person may be considered a naturally born citizen unless one or both parents shall be a legal citizen at the time of birth.

Sanctuary – No state may interfere with legitimate and proper execution of federal laws, nor with the proper functions and procedures of federal law enforcement personnel.  No law passed by any state or subdivision thereof shall be deemed enforceable if it shall interfere with execution of federal laws or attempt any form of nullification of federal laws.  Federal law enforcement agencies may withhold financial support from those state or local law enforcement agencies that attempt to inhibit, delay or interfere with proper federal law enforcement procedures and personnel.  Interference with proper and appropriate federal law enforcement and personnel shall be adjudicated in federal courts.

Prudence tells us that once a Convention of the States has come to pass, the prospects of another are much greater.  The actions of the organizers and participants of the first such convocation will form crucial precedents that may, one hopes, set a pattern similar to the traditions of the supreme Court, the membership of which has been only discussed, never changed.  Consideration might be given to yet another amendment that limits the frequency  of Article V. conventions.