Tag Archives: honesty

Economics, Education, Family, Race, Religion, Responsibility, Sex, Taxation

AMERICA – Article III

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A major factor in the success of the United States and its economic freedom (among other freedoms) is the honesty and relative strictness of its judiciary, both federal and State. The honesty of contracts at every level, including the contract between the American people and the federal government: the Constitution, relies increasingly upon the Supreme Court, the final arbiter.

Article III details the legal circumstances that require original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which means that the supreme court is the first, and only Court, that can hear those cases and rule upon the issues in conflict. In all other cases – and there are hundreds – the Court must agree to accept an appeal from litigants who not only aren’t satisfied with the decision made, but who also believe there is a Constitutional issue involved in their conflicting claims. At least four Justices must agree to accept a case, and one of them is likely to write an opinion, if not THE opinion that will form the Court’s ruling. It takes time. When the majority opinion is delivered there usually is a dissenting opinion. Lawyers everywhere study both. Crucial interpretations of Constitutional issues will form arguments in other cases. Sometimes the issues raised in the dissenting, or minority opinion, will be refined to bolster other cases. The written words of the Supreme Court are critical to our success as a nation.

The Congress is given the power to establish inferior federal courts and charge them with certain authorities over types of crime or types of conflicts. There are courts for immigration matters, for example, or for tax issues, and several others. The country is divided into 12 “Circuits” and Justices often visit those Circuits. See https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/court-role-and-structure for a comprehensive view of federal court structure.

Leftism consistently challenges our Constitutional Republic. Socialism / Communism is inherently counter to the structure of morality and individual responsibility that is embodied in the Constitution. Freedom includes the freedom to fail, to try again and to make choices about how to advance in life. Forces of the left consistently attempt to tie individuals to government rules and regulations. This can be seen in attacks on religion and in unionized “public” education, itself. Little by little, leftist philosophies, even direct Marxism, like “minimum wage” laws, constantly distort our economy and increase dependence on government. These stresses generate social-issue conflicts that threaten domestic tranquility and even personal safety. This places immense public, if not mob pressure, on the Court and on individual Justices. Starting with Judge Robert Bork in 1987, the left – personified by Senator Ted Kennedy, an avowed socialist – has attacked and refused to compromise with “conservatism” in any form.

Leftist, or “Progressive” policies, inherently are on the attack against the premises and ideas expressed in the Constitution. The Supreme Court was and is charged with primary defense of the ideas underpinning the Constitution. Judge Bork represented a shift away from leftist activism on the Supreme Court. The retiring Justice, Lewis Powell had often been the swing vote on issues like abortion, tilting the Court to the left. Bork was a strict constructionist, unswayed by social pressures. To leftists like Kennedy, that threat of a shift away from the attack on original intent, was a threat so serious that the destruction of the reputation of an esteemed legal scholar like Bork, was well worth the effort. The attacks continue, as evidenced by the violent reaction to the reversal of Roe versus Wade in the “Dobbs” decision in 2022.

Among our “Unalienable rights” listed in the Declaration of Independence are “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Within them has developed a severe conflict, mainly due to the equality of status that women have acquired since the beginning of the United States. “Liberty” and “Happiness” both depend upon freedom of action by individuals. Pregnancy, uniquely, with its 9-month period of physical commitment and subsequent lifetime obligations, can interfere, unquestionably, with happiness and liberty of the pregnant woman. So far, we have not found a balance between the rights of the mother/parent, and those of the baby growing inside her.

Does the right to LIFE take precedence? Many think so. Do the rights of the mother take precedence? Many believe this is so. Mainly non-religious, non-Christian or anti-Christian persons, are pleased to take dominion over natural life, and grant women the absolute right to abort their child. Religious people tend to support the rights of the new life to be born and to thrive after birth. They are “pro-life.” Abortion absolutists have done their best to pervert the meaning of conception and of what a fetus actually is: a human baby, growing. Inevitably, this conflict landed in the Supreme Court. Sadly, Roe versus Wade resulted in more than 60 Million Americans being aborted, most of whom were growing inside women of color. It is a number that should give Anti-life believers some pause.

The Supreme Court makes mistakes. The “Dred Scott” decision is recognized as the worst of them, as Chief Justice Roger Taney attempted to undo several state and federal laws governing the status of slaves and even of any free negro citizen. Taney went so far as to declare the Missouri Compromise un-Constitutional and to state that the concept of “free soil” and freedom of slaves who resided there, was constitutionally unenforceable and need not be recognized by other territories or states. The decision helped to push the South to secession and proved to be recognized in its disregard among free states and territories. The 13th amendment made Taney’s decisions moot.

Another simpler, but still egregious decision was the “Kelo” decision: a 7-year battle over the “taking” of private property for public use, that was decided – many feel, wrongly – in 2005. The city of New London, Connecticut, decided that development of land next to a new Pfizer plant, would increase tax receipts to the city, and therefore qualified as a public good. Unfortunately, Suzette Kelo and her neighbors lived on that land, many on long-time homesteads, in perfectly acceptable, non-condemned homes. The city turned the land over to a new, semi-private development Commission along with the power of “eminent domain,” with which the Commission forced homeowners to sell their real estate. Tragically, The Supreme Court interpreted the “taking” clause in the 5th Amendment to include not only the clearly stated “public use,” like a school or water treatment plant, but for an amorphous “expected benefit” for the public, such as increased tax revenues might provide. In other words, amazingly, “public use” was interpreted to include “private use” if it raised more taxes than current landowners provided. Several States have amended their own laws to prevent exactly the premise of the Kelo decision.

The American public is right to challenge the Supreme Court and, through the Senate, to carefully examine the beliefs of nominees to the Supreme Court. As political conflicts, largely fomented by the Left, become more heated and hateful, the ability of Justices to ignore such matters becomes ever more difficult. It is more crucial than ever that the strength and intention of the Court must be to preserve the originating ideas and ideals of the Constitution, resisting all attempts, regardless of political heat, to drift, stumble or run-away from them.

Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Family, Politics 2023, Representation, Responsibility

ONCE UPON A TIME

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Americans are, to a greater extent than at any time since the “Great” Depression, unhappy and untrusting of others.  For all of our history as the United States of America, we have shared several senses of hope: economic, health, safety and cleanliness.  We might also add a sense of religious hope.  These hopes have slowly been… and are now quickly,  being erased from our shared beliefs.  It is unsettling.

Our origins as a people are exceptional as are our philosophies of governance and religious freedoms and numerous other rights protected by the Constitution.  The fundament of American exceptionalism is that the government(s) are formed and defined by the people.  Yet, since the beginning, those forces that believed the exact opposite: that governments are formed to control the people, their styles and means of living and their status in society, have been hard at work to undo the exceptionalism that once defined us.  Starting in 2020, the virtual Communist enemies of America have believed that success is within their grasp and, sadly, very many Americans, particularly young Americans, agree with the destruction of our culture and nation.

We are losing our hopes.

Every person has grown up with a pattern of habits and beliefs imprinted by or in reaction to our parents or guardians or lack thereof.  Other key people and childhood friends and classmates – and TEACHERS – all contributed to each of our belief structures and general outlooks and reactions to problems and opportunities.  Huge industries of psychologists, child-psychologists, counselors and psychiatrists have developed to channel our feelings, guilts or irrationalities relative to our upbringing.  In one way or another, at some level, we are, all, “screwed up” and seeking someone to blame for how we are.  How is it, then, that most of us have, throughout the history of the United States, turned out so well?

Indeed, through the times of greatest tests: The Civil War, various economic crises, World Wars One and Two and the Civil Rights movement, Americans have impressed the world with our drive to “do the right thing.”  Perfectly?  Naturally not; but, overall we used to tend toward the best response to challenges – personally and nationally.  Was it a miracle?  Was it a set of millions of coincidences?  Were children raised more perfectly then?

A qualified “yes” to the last question, but it was no accident that most of us grew up reasonably rational and morally straight despite our imperfect parents and circumstances, and the fundamental reason was culture.

We had a beautiful culture based in honesty and responsibility.  The rest of the world envied it and struggled to emigrate to our land of opportunity.  Our laws were equally applied, mostly, and our contracts were honestly enforced, mostly, and our private property – the fruit of our labor – was fairly protected by civil authorities, mostly.  We rewarded initiative and success and, mostly, forgave failure for those who strove to do better.  We honored churches and charity and respected marriage – even encouraged it in policy.  We respected learning and the learned, and the inventors who kept our economic future bright.  Parents could reasonably expect their children to have better lives than they had.  It almost sounds funny to recount these “American” qualities.

Our culture was the best there was, in our capitalist democratic republic, and we tried to share it with others.  Americans, individually, were enormously charitable toward one another and with the rest of the world, and we supported our nation being the same toward other peoples.  American citizenship was a golden possession, yet anyone who applied to be one had to meet only the simplest tests and commitment to be welcomed into our nation as an equal possessor of our “gold.”  Our basic Judeo-Christian ethics made us tolerant.  What have we done?

In spite of obstacles, our young people used to grow up in pretty good shape, and the reason was culture.  Schools, churches, libraries, police departments, pronouncements from the work of Congress, the military branches, radio programming, music and lyrics, television programming and news reporting, and even cinema… all reinforced our shared cultural beliefs.  Today?  Today, nearly all of these institutions challenge, if not tear down, our basic cultural norms.  Parents are nearly alone in their efforts to pass our culture along to and in their children.  What have we done?

As society becomes, almost daily, less and less honest, and our institutions less and less trustworthy, young people facing difficulties tend toward immediate suicide or the long-term suicide of drugs.  Adults seem to have no valid response to this.  Indeed, we allow for policies that make drug-addiction SAFER!  We don’t even want to enforce sanctions for criminal behaviors!  What are we doing?

None of what is going wrong is inevitable or guaranteed by the Constitution.  We human beings created the mess we’re in and we can “un-create” it the minute we decide to be adults, again.  What are we going to do?  God save us.

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.

Economics, Governance, Representation, Responsibility

ARE-EEE-PEE, SPEAK FOR ME

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Thank Goodness they are willing to fight for us...
U.S. President Trump Addresses Joint Session of Congress – Washington, U.S. – 28/02/17 – U.S. President Donald Trump addresses Congress. REUTERS/Jim Bourg – RTS10VKB

The United States was born in a time of idealism, and “we” incorporated many ideals into our structure of distributed governance within which power is distributed across centers of responsibility: executive, legislative and judicial.  Ostensibly, the legislative center is the most powerful because it represents the people, not the government.  That’s a critical distinction: the EXECUTIVE and associated departments thereof, is the government; the REPRESENTATIVE LEGISLATURE (House and Senate) represent the people and the states, respectively, TO the government.  In other words, the legislative “branch” is not technically part of the government.  It exists to reign in the government and to make certain that the executive branch is conducting business AS THE PEOPLE WANT it done.

Unfortunately, but ideally, the system depends upon honest executives and honest representatives, and that means widespread sharing of a moral code, never a perfect circumstance, and much less so today than ever in our short history.  The trouble with dishonest representatives is that they quickly figured out that they can vote themselves riches from the federal treasury.  Taking more money required new justifications, mostly comprised of establishing one’s own importance and unique abilities to act as our representative.  Senators started out very differently than representatives, and much differently than they claim to be today.

Senators started out being chosen by the legislators in their respective states, based on the concept of states being somewhat sovereign and deserving of their own representation, specifically separately from citizens, themselves.  That is, states’ interests deserved to be watched out for, essentially to keep the federal government from encroaching on states’ rights and authority, which was a good thing for states to do.  It didn’t take too many decades before legislatures demonstrated their inability to agree on who to send to Washington, particularly in the run up to The (second) Civil War.  By 1900 vacancies in the Senate were common and years long.  Voters were really irked.

Finally, in 1913, the 17th Amendment was passed providing for direct election of senators, as there had always been for representatives.  “More democracy” always sounds good, despite its own spotty record, and there has rarely been a senatorial vacancy since then.  The upshot of direct election is that Senators, with their 6-year terms, are now simply more important “representatives,” who may or may NOT represent the interests of their state, and the Senate is the favored way for the lucky Representative to feather his or her retirement.  It’s a nice, cushy job with few responsibilities.  Senators don’t have to answer for every vote, and have found that they can depend on voters’ forgetfulness, while they campaign for re-election in the sixth year of their terms.  Those unlucky Reps have to campaign every other year, if not more, with voters remembering more of what they promised and have done in the first half of their terms.

Still, one of the bright marks of the failure of our ideal system is the 95% re-election rate for our “elected” representatives.  Along with voting themselves (automatically!) increasing amounts of pay, Reps and Senators take part in the finest health care and pension programs in the country.  And, they have monstrous staff and support agencies who barely enable the two houses of Congress to get their work done!  The work burden is unimaginable.  There’s plenty of vacation time to provide relief from those burdens and to allow for basic mental health, there’s so much stress.

There’s so much stress, in fact, that basic work required by the Constitution and the by the citizens who send these sacrificial men and women to Washington to reign in the government on their behalf, often gets rushed through if done at all… stuff like an annual budget, for example.  Not that it must be annual; the constitution says “…from time to time.”  With all the stress noted, bi-annual budgeting would be perfectly useful IF, and only IF the Congress published a “…regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money… from time to time.”  Other burdens not listed in the Constitution are preventing this requirement from being fulfilled.  What a load… these public servants bear.

Now that the financial underpinnings of representatives and senators are firmly in place, and now that most of those same are likewise firmly in place, we find that members of Congress are mostly representing the GOVERNMENT to US, not us to the government.  If you, the employer of these elected bureaucratic swells, ever attend a meeting where one is speaking – maybe even a “Town Hall,” – you’ll find the discussion one of why things that their employers (you) want done by the “government” can’t or won’t get done.  Then you begin to recognize that our “representatives” are anything but… unless money is going to enrich a favorable someone in the district or state.  Then it’s full steam ahead.

You may also realize that the language of Congress is not freedom, justice or Prudence, it’s power.  Oh the money is nice, and all the trappings and perks, they’re okay.  If a congressperson is able to take sufficient advantage of his or her influence over public monies to become wealthy during his or her decades of sacrifice, who really cares?  But when talking power, there are but two potent factors: re-election and avoiding blame.  For these things it is crucial that voters vote at least twice: once with their checkbooks and at least once at the ballot box.  Indeed, public service has become so service-oriented that if voting at the ballot box is too great a burden for you, why friends of the congressperson will do it for you!  And if there are citizens too infirm, confused or temporarily deceased, why they’ll make sure that voting isn’t burdensome on them, either.  Re-election, step one precedes all things.

Step two, also an unending step, avoiding blame for much of anything, requires careful cultivation of scapegoats, but not just any scapegoat, he, she or they – especially “they” – must be plausibly portrayed as directly responsible (blame-worthy), probably responsible (blame-worthy), responsible for someone who made the mistake (blame-worthy), part of a group that has historically been responsible for a history of mistakes (blame-worthy).  It’s simple, but requires a number of staff to keep abreast of.  So, do you get it?  Re-election and avoiding blame… re-election and avoiding blame.  One need not be a genius to run or win for congress; just understand two principles.  The rest of us are left to deal with honesty, honor, duty, tolerance, charity, courage, wisdom, thrift, family, service to others and Prudence.  There is a point to this disparity of lifestyles.

The principles of purposeful citizenship in the United States are a burden that Americans gladly accept… at least they do if educated and prepared to do so.  But they are easily set aside amidst a land of plenty, including plenty of diversions.  Unless we are constantly reminded or constantly remind ourselves  of our exceptional responsibility in the world, the principles and responsibilities with which we are charged as U. S. citizens can be forgotten, as will our unique place in the firmament of mankind.

In other words, “America,” the ideas that created and sustain her, can be lost in a single generation.  Unfortunately our elected representatives, given their disconnectedness from the exigencies of real life and utter concentration upon the two factors outlined earlier, seem to forget the longer list of principles that must be upheld by citizens who remain the strength of our nation.  First of these to become foggy, slipping into haze and irresolution once re-election is achieved that first time, is honesty.  This no longer means lying about what one believes or does, something that can be ferreted out with evidence and records; now it means being afraid to tell the truth about what one does believe!

Now, we need courage in order to exercise honesty.  Americans have been lied-to for decades… by people who promised to “fight” for us once in office.  What does such a “fight” consist of, one wonders?  Does he or she, candidate to represent US, promise to tell the truth about, say, the budget?  Will he or she promise to read and understand every bill that comes to the floor?

Will he or she promise to fight against  any bill that includes items unrelated to the purported title and subject of the bill?  Will he or she insist on budget, and therefore, policy approval, for every titled agency and program in the Executive branch?  You’ll be able to judge where to give your vote if the answer to any of these questions is some mealy-mouthed explanation of why things can’t be done as we ask.

The Courage to be Honest with voters – what a concept.  Maybe there’s hope for Charity (with their own money, not our great grandchildren’s), Wisdom and Thrift.  Thrift would mean reducing the profligate federal budget, something that must be done as part of Honesty.  Of course, they’d have to become conversant with the budget in the first place, and not simply enough to blame one another for wrong-headed spending.  The federal budget is essentially a Trillion dollars out of balance.  Ask any rep or senator you have a chance to meet if he or she is going to fight to cut spending?  Will he or she fight to prevent raising the “debt ceiling,” so called?  Honesty requires an answer, doesn’t it?

Will your representative and senators represent us with Honor?  No sly side-agreements that do not serve their constituents FIRST?  No personal aggrandizement through any piece of legislation?  Honesty would demand proper response to these questions.  Who, after all, is at the top of our system?  The government?  “Brrraaaap!”  You’re out.

We are at the top.  We are sovereign citizens who have ceded LIMITED power and authority to the federal and state governments, and to municipal governments; all other rights, powers and freedoms belong to each of us as sovereign individuals who possess unalienable rights.  Don’t you forget this.  People in government are there to serve us and protect us and our private properties – including our rights: private properties we are born with.

Our success as a self-governing people can be measured only by how much SMALLER we can render our governments, not by how much larger.  Ask your rep and senatorial candidates if they will fight to make government smaller.  Good luck.

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, Education, Politics 2018, Representation, Responsibility

Earning a Vote

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People elected to office in the United States, from Senators and Representatives to state’s legislators, Governors and state-wide officers, Sheriffs, Judges, District Attorneys, Registers of Probate, Deeds and what-not, to cities’ councilors, Mayors, aldermen, local selectmen and various trustees of reservations, libraries, housing authorities and conservation commissions, all have an obligation, TO WHICH EACH SWORE ON HIS OR HER HONOR, BEFORE WITNESSES, to conduct him or herself and the business of the office at stake according to the law and in defense of various charters, bylaws, state and federal constitutions.

That is, each swore to be honest. Prudence recommends honesty as the best way to conduct the people’s business. Unfortunately, honesty, truthfulness are almost NEVER part of anyone’s campaign message, platform, literature or advertising, despite each knowing that he or she will happily SWEAR to be honest during the conduct of the office being striven for. Odd, that. In practice, all oaths to the opposite, many office-holders consider that honesty, in fact, extends only to the scrupulous fealty to the letter of the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof.

We do hear a lot about “working hard for you,” or “it’s time your group is treated more fairly,” or “my opponent, the incumbent (stated in a low voice) has not been honest with you,” or, if the case, “he doesn’t even pay his parking tickets!”

Because legislation – and regulation – is devised and designed by people who are hoping to find a way to gain personally from the “loopholes” they write into it… legally of course, voters rarely get much input to the process or the content of new laws. And, we are reassured from the rooftops as to the diligent efforts made on voters’ behalf, sometimes late into the night at great sacrifice, keeping their promises to “fight” for us and to “work hard for us” if entrusted with the office. After all, they swore an oath to uphold the law and the constitution, and there they are keeping every word of at least part of what was promised. And we re-elect them, sometimes for decades, as if we can’t imagine causing them to “lose” their jobs, for goodness sake!

Most gain considerable wealth while in office, and this is a very mysterious consequence of becoming a public servant. Some are paid from the public treasury quite handsomely, even exorbitantly, yet they continue to “sacrifice” in public service instead of accepting much more lucrative positions in the “private sector.” Just look at the millions paid to people like the presidents of nationwide banks, insurance companies, invest firms, Boeing, Amazon, Facebook and Exxon-Mobil. Yet still they toil on our behalf under terrible conditions and low pay, particularly in view of the tremendous responsibilities they carry for the rest of us. [See: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/03/31/massachusetts-vaults-into-first-place/]

Congress members and Senators seem to fare the best of all – at least the crafty ones. Politics, unfortunately, seems to attract those who are always looking for an edge of some kind… not a scam, necessarily, but some special advantage, like signaling what’s in your hand to your Bridge partner. One notices that there are many laws that specifically exempt the “Royals” (those currently in Congress) from their terms or penalties. For decades, for example, members of the House and Senate could take advantage of what in the private sector is known as “insider trading.”

That is, by virtue of knowing what laws and attendant regulations were about to be imposed, the Royals could buy stocks about to go up as a result, and short stocks that were about to go down as a result. It’s “edgy,” one could say, and we can be comforted in our beliefs that none of them would ever share that information with a mere civilian, since they all are sworn to uphold the law: every jot and tittle and loophole thereof. Moreover, they are forced to be away from their families and pay for extra housing in or near Washington, and it’s not fair to demand so much additional sacrifice on top of that already entailed in their “jobs” in Congress.

In response to negative press, Congress crafted the “STOCK” act, that essentially made insider trading by legislative employees (over 28,000 of them) and by executive department employees, illegal. President Obama signed it into law with cameras blazing. Not only was the trading illegal, finally, but everyone affected would have searchable financial disclosure statements available on some website, a requirement that was not very popular. A few months later, with most members absent, the House and Senate rushed a bill through and the President signed it with little notice or announcement. This bill kept the thousands of disclosures under lock and key in a basement room in the Capitol, where virtually anyone could review them… individually, by correct name, and even copy them for 10 cents a page. But they couldn’t be “searched,” per se, and you had to get to the Capitol and to that room during limited hours, and provide the correct name of the disclosure-owner. Nothing illegal, but just a little edge over the competition – us.

The search for truth is a competition, if you hadn’t realized that before now, and in this competition relative to our public servants, we have very wily opponents. Think of that: opponents.

How nice would it be to hear an office-seeker say in his “stump” speech: “I promise only a few things, ladies and gentlemen… just a few.” He or she holds up the fingers of one hand. “First, when you ask me a question about any part of my public job – the one you pay me to do – I will answer truthfully and fully, unless there is a specific statute that prohibits me from doing so. I will then explain that statute to the best of my ability, or get back to you promptly with the explanation. If there is a way for you to obtain the information from another person or office I will tell you and, if you need it, I will help you get the information… not just an ‘answer,’ but the information you are entitled to.

“Secondly,” holding up his pointer finger, “I will tell you the truth about the budget and about expenditures. The money we spend and allocate is all taken from your wallets and I will show you at least enough respect as American citizens, to tell you the truth about what’s being done with it.”

“And, finally, point number 3. I will not vote for any legislation that contains provisions that are ‘snuck’ into the wording because those provisions could not have passed on their own merits. In other words, some legislation is brought forth with titles that indicate it is about one issue, while hiding legislation about unrelated issues. Those bills are at least partial lies and I will not vote for them. On the other hand, I will fight to stop this practice. To do so I need your vote on Tuesday.”

Prudence declares her support for any such candidate. Sadly, none has presented him or her-self for consideration. On the other hand, if one were looking for someone who has crafted an articulate message of hate for certain groups, individuals or for the United States, there are several from which to choose.

The underlying problem with elected and appointed malfeasance is that it undermines the ideas of America. And there is no one to our West who will come to our rescue when our citizens lose all trust in our “self” governance. There is no one else with a more “free” system or where citizens have sufficient sovereignty to perfect themselves, who will ride to our salvation and help as throw off tyranny. We, the United States of America, still somewhat free, still somewhat honest, still somewhat Christian, are the last best hope on Earth. If, in our libertine libertarianism we allow Constitutionalism to perish, or if we fail to reverse our educationally slipshod descent into sexual confusion and feelings education, the whole experiment is at risk.

Indeed, for an American elected official to abuse his or her office, particularly for illicit, if not illegal personal gain, is among the worst offenses against our nation. It is virtual treason against the electorate, and utterly inexcusable. Compromised judges and law-enforcement officers naturally follow the path of rot blazed by dishonest elected officials. Tightening and increasing the penalties for official corruption should be the fourth part of our “honesty is the only policy” candidate wished-for above. Let’s hope.