I Will Not Comply

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Economics and Statistics Administration
U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
1201 East 10th Street
Jeffersonville IN 47132-0001

Re: American Community Survey

Dear Sirs:

I am writing to thank you for your gracious requests that I take part in your American Community Survey…the requests that also prominently contained the admonition that “YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW.”   However, despite your shotgun “invitations” to take the survey, I’m afraid I must respectfully decline.

You see, while the Census is mentioned in the Constitution, it exists for the purpose figuring out the population of the country, and where people live, so that Congressional delegation size and apportionment may be determined for the states. As a citizen, I am happy to truthfully and accurately report to you how many people reside in my home. Unfortunately, that is as much of an intrusion into my privacy and my time as I am willing to tolerate from your agency, as I already informed you when I received the “long form” in the last census.

I appreciate your efforts to be as appealing as possible, however, the disclosure that filling out the paper questionnaire, that you sent to me unsolicited, should only take me about 40 minutes really doesn’t move me to comply with your attempts at information gathering. I am a busy attorney and a full-time parent. Spending the better part of an hour revealing not just information you have absolutely no business asking me to give you, but information that is of a sensitive nature, and could be abused to my detriment, and then expecting me to simply do it for free is truly unacceptable. If you were serious, you should be offering to pay me for an hour of my time, which I bill out at $200.00 an hour, by the way. You still wouldn’t be likely to get my cooperation, but at least I wouldn’t get the distinct impression that you all sit around laughing at what rubes the people you send these coercive “requests” to must be.

I’m going to be frank with you. I’m not going to give you the names, ages, birthdate, race, and relationships to each other of everyone who lives under my roof. As I’m sure you are aware, such information would be very useful to identity thieves, and while I might voluntarily share at least some of that information with other entities, such as banks or credit card companies, I would do so with the expectation of an exchange of value.

Likewise, I am not going to tell you what kind of home I reside in, when it was built, and when each of us came to live here. Nor am I interested in telling you the acreage. Much of that information can be gleaned online from county records, and I have no interest in doing that work for you. It is also none of your business whether or not I operate a business out of any part of the property, or how much was earned in the last 12 months from the agricultural sales on the property. You could learn the answer to either of those questions from the IRS, and regardless of unequivocal rules prohibiting them from sharing taxpayer information outside of the agency, recent events have proven them all too willing to do so.

It is none of the federal government’s business if I have hot and cold running water, a flush toilet, a bathtub or a shower, a sink with a faucet, a stove or a range, a refrigerator, or a computer, let alone what kind of computer or the number of computers. You don’t need to know if I have internet access, or what kind of access I have.

I’m not telling you how many automobiles are owned by members of this household, how we heat our home, the amount of our monthly electric bill, our monthly gas bill, our sewer and water bill, or the cost of fuels used in our home.

I’m not going to tell you if we have used SNAP benefits in the last 12 months, if we have a condo fee, or if we rent. I’m not going to tell you what I think my residence is worth, what my annual property taxes cost, or the cost of fire, hazard, and flood insurance for our home. I’m not going to tell you if I have a Deed of Trust on the property, or whether my property taxes, or homeowners insurance are included in my house payment. I’m not going to tell you if I have a second mortgage on the property, or how much I pay altogether for both if I do. All of this information is already known to other governmental entities, and again, I have no interest in becoming an unpaid data collector.

I absolutely will not tell you the education level for every person in my home. It is also none of your business what kind of health insurance we may or may not have. You don’t need to know if any of us has trouble hearing or seeing, if we have trouble remembering or making decisions, if we have trouble walking or climbing the stairs, or difficulty bathing or dressing ourselves. I’m not going to tell you if any of us have trouble with daily errands because of some infirmity.

Our marital status is none of your business. Nor is whether or not any of us has ever been divorced, how many times we’ve been married, or if anyone has given birth in the last 12 months. If any of us was currently in the armed forces, or had previously served, the federal government would already know, as it would also know if anyone here was receiving disability, and for what degree.

You don’t need to know if anyone here worked for pay last week, where we worked, including address, how we got to work, whether or not we shared a ride, how long it took any of us to get to work or to get home. You don’t need to know what kind of work I do, who I work for, the industry I work in, what kind of work I do, or what my duties are. You don’t need to know my income, or the sources of my income.

While I’m sure that knowing all of this information would undoubtedly be useful to Congress in their never-ending shopping trip to buy votes with the public fisc, the fact of the matter is that the federal government continues to expand far outside of the spheres of influence that it was intended to occupy, and as I pointed out, much of this information is known already to state and local authorities, who can at least claim with a shred of honesty and a straight face that they need to know as part of the exercise of their lawful authority. Conversely, the federal government has serious trouble delivering the mail, securing the borders, maintaining the interstate highway system, and running the military, let alone responsibly budgeting the taxpayers’ money…and those are all things that it actually has the lawful authority to do. When you start requesting data that state and local governments need to have, I can only conclude that it is a precursor to yet another usurpation of power or authority that was not specifically delegated to the federal government. While this information is desirable for these purposes, as well as other more innocuous purposes which I’m sure you would be quick to cite if we were discussing this face-to-face, the fact is I can glean the “real” purpose, and I don’t trust you with the information. Yes, I know that you included a nice pamphlet assuring me that all information that I give you won’t be shared, and that it will be kept strictly confidential. Given the recent goings on at the Internal Revenue Service, you really will have to forgive me for not relying on these assurances.  And yes, I took note of the stick you made sure I could see you dangling.  I understand that 13 U.S.C 193 states that ” the Secretary may make surveys and collect such preliminary and supplementary statistics related to the main topic of the census as are necessary to the initiation, taking, or completion thereof.”  However, the information you are attempting to gather is either (a) readily available by other means; (b) information that no other individual or entity would have a right to ask me, and I could sue if they did; and (c) I’m not persuaded that the requested data is preliminary OR supplementary statistics related to the main topic of the census, the purpose of which is clearly delineated in both the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3, and 13 U.S.C. 141.  I’ve read 13 U.S.C. 221, by which the federal government means to compel its citizens to participate in this invasion of privacy.  The fine is not overly large, and I have no intention of paying such a fine when you are requesting information that is none of your business, and cannot be reasonably said to comport with the parameters which are imposed on the scope of your data collection to begin with.

In closing, I would like to remind you of a salient fact that you, and your sister agencies in the federal government seem to have lost sight of:  Americans do not like a bully. 

As an attorney, I have become accustomed to the federal government finding new ways to waste time with various forms, demands, and entire redundant bureaucracies which delight in making citizens, the people for which it ostensibly answers to, dance like trained monkeys, and act under the mistaken belief that they have to simply accept this treatment from an entity which is out of control, and increasingly imposing burdens on the productivity and creativity of a nation while this same government insults, undermines, and lavishly lives off of these very same citizens.  Because I am used to this, I almost let it slide by me without comment, but the passive-aggressive nature of your correspondence regarding this survey was really just too much, especially in light of recent developments showing that the IRS and the Justice Department are out of control.  I hope by publishing this letter, other Americans will also resist your intrusion and presumption, at least that is my hope. 

Sincerely,
An American Citizen Fed Up With Federal Overreach, Presumption, and Arrogance.

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Friday Night Sleep Tight Thoughts: Sticky Fingers Edition

What do you get for the kleptocratic statist who has everything?

Your children.

MSNBC host and whackjob (BIRM) Melissa Harris-Perry wants you to know that we don’t spend enough on education because we just don’t realize that our children belong to everyone.

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/shorter-melissa-harris-perry-all-your-kids-are-belong-us

Of course, when you are aligned with a mindset that thinks it acceptable to kill your own children, it was probably inevitable to look upon other people’s kids as a resource for redistribution.  Afterall, it’s hard work maintaining a culture of filth, stupidity, and subservience when those most in favor of it have fewer children than those who oppose it.  And the idea that we need to pay even more to a system that already is failing and giving us dumb kids is precious.  But than, government is the only place where incompetence, illogical, and failure is rewarded.  The saddest part of this is that the majority of the people on the receiving end of this pitch are the product of …public schools, and will likely accept the opinions of the “experts” on this matter.  All it typically takes is saying that “IT’S FOR THE CHHHHIIIIIIIILLDREN!!!111!!!”

Next, who can forget that classic Obama knee-slapper “I do think that at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.”?

Well, it was probably only a matter of time before our great father Obama would let us know that “At some point, you’ve saved enough money.” too.  And thankfully, under his watch, government is right there to tell us when that is.

From The Hill:

President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.

And remember, comrade, the government has NEVER arbitrarily changed the definition of “wealthy” when there was money to be confiscated taxed.  Like when the 16th Amendment was passed to tax only “the wealthy”.

The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code.

The magic of government accounting…that fantastic world where taking someone else’s earnings, levying a not-insignificant handling charge, then distributing it to some one who didn’t earn it, or spending it on such profound endeavors as alcoholism rates among Chinese hookers, and federally funded sex-education classes for Kindergarteners is “bringing fairness to the tax code”. It should go without saying that what is being “saved” is the government’s ability to buy votes with someone else’s money.

The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”

Ahh, yes. That new benchmark of “fairness”, an arbitrary determination of the OWNER’S “needs”, decided entirely by a government that refuses to live within our means…meaning that it is really talking about ITS needs. (Those lavish vacations and hookers and blow for the Secret Service don’t come cheap, doncha know) While this same mantra has met with limited success among people who refuse take responsibility for their own safety, and don’t want YOU to either, I think it’s safe to say that government’s determination of “need” in this matter will meet with even less success than the drumbeat about not “needing” a Sig or a Glock or an AR for hunting.

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.

I can remember when $250,000 a year was the government’s benchmark for “rich”. Can you?

Romney, Obama’s 2012 opponent, had an IRA several to many times that amount, leading to questions about how the former Massachusetts governor was able to squirrel away so much money in that sort of retirement account.

The problem is not everyone donates money to the President like the heads of Solyndra, Sun Power, and other “green energy” graft schemes. Sometimes, they actually earn it through hard work. And this is why this Administration is clueless about finances. Because it NEVER occurs to them that while you might be limited in annual contributions to IRAs, not all IRAs are simply glorified bank accounts. Some are managed investments, that take risks with the money in order to get increased returns. But again, unless you made your fortune from government or your association with it, all these people see is money that they want.

And for your last thought…

I was eating lunch today and reading about another gun manufacturer that made the decision to leave one of the states that has gone full retard after Sandy Hook and passed blatantly unconstitutional gun “control” laws.  As this had been going on for a few weeks now, I have had a certain measure of amusement in watching this, but then I thought “If I were totalitarian narcissist with delusions of adequacy who chaffed at the restraints that the Constitution necessarily placed on me, and I might want to resort to a desperate ultra vires act against an industry that could be a threat to me realizing my aspirations of power, would I want to have to “seize” facilities scattered across states in all regions of the country, or would I want to only have to concentrate on one region?

Suddenly, it was less amusing than it had been a few minutes before.

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Entitlements Aren’t Just the Programs Killing the Republic, They Are the Attitudes Killing It Too.

Two weeks ago, I was reading on a professional list serv hosted through the state bar association about a new case that applied Washington’s Consumer Protection Act in a manner in which it had not been applied before, that would be useful to elder law practitioners state-wide.  About a day later, one of the older attorneys on the list serv (I’m in my 40s) posted a comment about our shameful treatment of the “greatest generation”, and how awful it is that they have to become paupers before the can make the rest of us pay for their nursing home/end-of-life care, and how they can’t leave their wealth to their kids and grandkids like we promised them in our “contract” with them, and carrying on about the immorality of it, and how awful it was that we were now contemplating cuts to the Medicare and Medicaid programs put in place in the sixties.

I was gobsmacked.  Here was an officer of the court, someone who is supposed to understand the law, and to think logically, proposing that it was immoral to expect people to pay for their own care if they had the means to do so, and suggesting that they had every right to pass their accumulated wealth on to their kids and grandkids, and make the peers of those kids and grandkids pay for their care.  As one of the people stuck with the bill according to this plan, and as someone with children whose own expectations are considerably diminished by this kind of thinking, I was angry.  As a practitioner, who can clearly see that the logic of this doesn’t work anyway, because those kids and grandkids will still be paying for the care of grandpa and grandma’s peers, I was livid.  I had to ask about the morality of presuming that this was owed to anyone, and how the mortgaging of future generations was in anyway a moral way to pay for it.  I then went on to ask how it was that the federal government had the lawful authority to engage in such largesse to begin with. 

To my relief, there were a few responses that were supportive of this view.  There were a few older members who, to their discredit, avoided the question of legal authority, and instead, somewhat condescendingly, waxed poetic about the views they held when they were “the masters of the world” back in the sixties, when they tried to change the world for the better.  I have been guilty in the past of joking about aging hippies behaving badly when discussing certain people in politics, but I had never seen generational hubris so baldly manifested.

Finally, a lawyer took up my question of the legal authority for the federal government’s largesse in this matter.  She assured me that it was found in the general welfare clause…of the preamble of the Constitution (and not in Article I, Section 8!).  I pointed out to her that it was her own unique translation, but Madison, who was one of the principal architects had a very different take which he articulated in the Federalist 41, in part in answer to the Anti-Federalist Brutus, in his paper, VI, in which he warned that its inclusion would lead to men of lesser character in succeeding generations deciding that anything and everything was “general welfare”, to the detriment of society as a whole.

Her response back to me asked “So what do we do in the alternative?”

At this point, I decided to learn more about her.  Among other things, she had been an aide to Senator George Mitchell for a very long time, and had written legislation here in Washington as well.  No doubt, she had been firmly indoctrinated to the idea that there is nothing that the federal government could not and should not do.  Therefore, while I could say “Gee, I dunno.  How about a return to limited government, in which we get its boot off our necks and its hand out of our back pockets?”, I felt reasonably certain that given her belief in the “Good and Plenty Clause” interpretation of the Constitution, it would have simply registered like a whale popping up in front of her, speaking in Russian and Mandarin.  Instead, between the utter disappointment I felt at such a manifest failure to understand our organic law in too many of my fellow lawyers, and the size of my workload, I simply chose to not respond at all, and I simply quit keeping track of the thread.

The head of that state bar section finally commented late this week about the “political” discussion that arose in that thread, and how she had been informed by the state bar that membership in that list serv fell off sharply due to the number of comments and the nature of the opinions discussed, and she asked that the thread be declared “over”, and that such “political” discussions be avoided in the future.

For my part, I didn’t see any reason to continue.  I saw a lot of supposedly intelligent people who are focused on treating symptoms, and who couldn’t be bothered with the idea of actually treating the disease, largely because they refuse to comprehend that there are limits to the compassion that they can engage in with other people’s money.  I’m afraid that we are sailing this ship of state right over the rocks and the falls beyond them, and that too many aboard are in denial about the whitewater ahead.

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The High Blood Pressure Is A Sign I’m Not Dead Yet

Obama’s campaign is now a “social welfare group”, and for only $500,000.00, you too can have access to the President. Organizing for Action is doing all the things Obama claims to hate. But then, leading by example has never been Obama’s strong suit. Still, I think when even Chuck Todd thinks that it “looks bad”, you’ve probably pushed it too far. Read more at Sweetness and Light.

And now, your moment of truth that your dear leader doesn’t want you to know:

I think I need a cigarette. You?

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The Sky Is Falling, Part 394

Obama declared, “Emergency responders like the ones who are here today, their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go.”

Let’s put aside the issue the sequester was the OBAMA Administration’s proposal for a minute.

Let’s talk about numbers.

The sequester will cut about $85 Billion from Federal Spending (I’d say from the budget, but it’s been years since we’ve had one of those).

Total Federal Spending for FY 2013 is approximately $3.8 Trillion.

By my math, that is a cut of about 2%.

The budgeted Federal Deficit for this year is $901 Billion.

By my math, that means a cut of about 9% of spending of money that the government doesn’t have to begin with.

Washington is engaged in an argument about whether to hold the plane straight while flying full speed into the ground, or whether to just let it spiral in.

But keep in mind, the roughly $2.9 Trillion in tax money isn’t enough.   It isn’t a spending problem.  It’s a revenue problem.

Government is whistling past the graveyard.

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How DID The Republic Survive As Long As It Did…

…without our self-appointed intellectual betters to tell us how we are just too stupid to see how enlightened they are?

From the finely polished turd file, we have this latest entry from New Age manure merchant and elitist twit, Deepak Chopra. 

Now, on the one hand, I’ve gotten used to people who would have trouble finding a clue if it was nailed to the back of their hand pretending to greater intellect and wisdom (based on the consensus shared by their peers, and rarely by any objective measure or observable criteria other than the sound of their own voice) than that possessed by my friends, associates, and myself.  They played this game in the last election, when it declared that opposition to Barack Obama was simply the result of our racism, and not his razor-thin resume, and record of making principled stands on nothing other than preserving a mother’s “right” to snuff her baby.

Well now, Mr. Chopra insists that Obama has the answer that we need as a nation in one word: “Evolve”.

Of course, the piece hits all the predictable points, such as Romney pointing out the uncomfortable truth about the President:

One foresees that a simple message may prevail over a complex one. The simple message, which Romney endlessly repeats, is this: The President is a nice guy, but he’s in over his head, and his wild spending has bankrupted the country.

Now keep in mind, Mr. Chopra chooses not to demonstrate the level of denial of many Obama supporters; he doesn’t refute this message.  He tries to recharacterize it as he extolls the virtue of what he thinks Obama’s winning message is:

The complex message, which comes from Obama in mixed, varied, and confusing in ways, is this: We must revamp America in order to meet the future.

The only thing that is complex about the Obama message is the choreography that we see performed by those who would have you believe that there is still HOPE and CHANGE instead of historic and unprecedented failure and decline at the hands of someone incapable and unwilling to change either.

Because Romney has blame, impatience, and angry frustration on his side, he may succeed in his uphill climb. Already most of what the pundits told us – that Romney had been damaged in the combative primary race, that the conservative base is opposed to him, that the religious right is suspicious of him – has proved invalid. Republicans are rallying en masse behind the simple message, while seething underneath is an irrational hostility to Obama that no sensible person can quite fathom.

What is overlooked or avoided in this suspect analysis is the fact that the President has had 3 and a half years to “revamp” America, two of which with majorities in Congress that should have gotten him all his little collective salvationist heart required to get these things done.  What it has gotten us less drilling on federal lands and in the Gulf of Mexico (and climbing gas prices to go with it), a coal industry facing annihilation, which WILL see electricity prices skyrocket (a promise kept), and the worst labor market since the great depression, with the historic and unprecedented benchmarks of no new net jobs and a downgrade in the country’s credit rating.  To ask for more of the same would be like being donkey punched by an entire football team, only to ask them to do it again.

And to allege that Romney has blame on his side is cheeky, considering that instead of correcting his failures during the last three years, the President, who asked us for the job, and was briefed repeatedly throughout the campaign, gave us excuses about what he “inherited”.  Any negative has always been someone else’s fault, usually his predecessor.  And while there is angry frustration and impatience with the failure that is this administration, I believe to say it is on Romney’s side is projection…it certainly exists, but it isn’t because of anything Romney has said or done.  This is the result of an administration that put a priority on regulation, making the engines of prosperity off-limits or so restricted as to be ineffective.  It also carries the taint of irony, as it was the undertone of the campaign of HOPE and CHANGE that the President ran in the last campaign.  Romney’s momentum isn’t for a great enthusiasm for his message thus far as much as a resignation to the understanding that he represents the lesser of two evils, and the prospect of at least retaining competent management for the economy for the first time since January 2009.  Given the record that the President dares not run on, the hostility towards him is hardly” irrational”, and to suggest that those who realize this, and aren’t willing to acquiesce to a brilliance that simply isn’t in evidence is insulting.  The fact is that despite a gradual dumbing down of the population which has been exploited by those who have decided that they are our betters because they have been “trained” to rule, the average person still has a better grasp on basic economic truths than any 12 graduates of Harvard Law or the Kennedy School of Government, if only because the finite nature of money is something that they can’t escape by printing money or raising taxes.

Chopra goes on to list the factors that he wants the reader to believe that Republicans aren’t capable of addressing, while avoiding the fact that the only answers that Democrats seem willing to give are “Spend more, tax more, government more”.  These answers demonstrate a disbelief that the American people can and will come up with their own solutions if government is scaled back, and pulled off the backs of on whom the burden of making it all work.

It’s a tragic irony that the Republican Party has become the domain of white blue-collar workers, because they are the worse off and the ones who need Obama’s vision the most.  All governing classes come from the elite (after all, both candidates have Harvard degrees, just as all the leading contenders in 2004 went to Yale). The difference is that the Democratic vision is fostered by an elite that wants to retool our whole society for the benefit of the greatest number. The Republican Party wants to benefit well-off white males.

Of course, the governing class doesn’t have to come from the “elite”, and there are members of Congress who do not fit this classification thanks to the very same Tea Party that he holds in such disdain.  That is why the Republican Party is typically as hostile to it as the Democratic Party is.  And the desire to “retool society to benefit the greatest number” is nothing of the sort.  It is merely the latest incarnation of a “benevolent” spirit in government that looks to be generous with as much of other people’s property as it can, in order to purchase as much power from those voters as it can.  The elephant in the room is and always has been that entitlements have NEVER been the Federal government’s to give, and the longer that it has been able to engage in this generosity, the better it has been for government, not the subjects of its supposed benevolence.

Somehow, after forty years of reactionary conditioning, the working class has been persuaded to support rich white males while ignoring their own best interests.

  Or maybe they realize that all the left has offered is envy and gilded chains, and that isn’t in anyone’s best interests but the Democrats.

Abortion and gay marriage are typical red herrings, as are foreign wars and stoking mass fear about terrorism.

Or abortion is a crime against the nation’s charter and a betrayal of our most cherished ideals, and gay marriage is an insult to the struggles and sacrifices that characterize the real civil rights gains our country experienced in the last century, which cheapen that history, and pretend that the morality that its proponents pretend is neutrality is of greater benefit to society than what they want to replace.  But then, I doubt Mr. Chopra is sufficiently well-versed in American history, law, and the philosophy of law to truly grok the significance of that which he would trivialize.  And considering the man he is campaigning for got us into Lybia’s war, over the objections of Congress, and still has troops in Afghanistan, is waiving Osama Bin Ladin’s bloody dress to anyone who’ll  listen, GITMO is still open for business, and American citizens still have to consign themselves to nudie scans and being felt up by unionized government subcontractors when they fly around our own country, the cheap talk about the distractions of foreign wars and terrorism is just that.  Cheap and talk.

 For all that, America must evolve on all fronts.

Why is it that we keep having to suffer the self-righteous opinions of British twits like this man and Martin Bashir?  Seriously, if we wanted to live like EUROPEONS, we never would have fought and won two wars against the Crown.  If I wanted to know how to fail, I still wouldn’t ask either of them.  There are plenty of Democrats here who I could take seriously.

Obama realizes this quite clearly; hence his programs for alternative energy,

The wind power that is proving to be a boondoggle, to such a degree that its biggest cheerleader, T. Boone Pickens has bailed on the idea, and the generously taxpayer-funded failures like Solyndra , or the taxpayer money frittered away on foreign auto companies like Fisker, or the brilliant idea of subsidizing biofuels which are harmful to engines, incredibly inefficient, and perform the stupid government trick of turning food into fuel, making food that much more expensive for the very same people who Democrats keep purporting to help?

 a cleaner environment,

And all it will cost is energy bills that will necessarily skyrocket for the average consumer, and businesses who will either go out of business, or cut their work force, further depressing an economic already gasping for air because of choking regulations and the anticipated costs of ObamaCare.

 infrastructure repairs,

Which, shockingly, as it turns out, were not so shovel ready.  But, hey, since that wasn’t HIS money, its ok to laugh about it, right?

universal health care, and on and on.

An exercise in the usurpation of power that the Federal government was NEVER intended to have, which will drive up costs until private insurers are out altogether, and which will necessarily reduce the quality of care, and destroy the most innovative health care system in the world.  But given the fact that the Federal government has done such a bang-up job with the Postal Service, Social Security, and Medicare, I’m sure that we can count on that quality, efficiency, and careful stewardship of our money to carry over into this latest venture in to the nanny state.  After all, the NHS has done wonders in Great Britain, right?

Nothing offered by Romney is remotely commensurate. One prays that in his heart he is the moderate, sensible person that the extreme right hates and fears.

If the “extreme right” had the numbers and the power that our good friend Mr. Chopra would have us believe, there would be no doubt that Mr. Obama will not be re-elected…because he never would have been elected to begin with, as he would have had a competent candidate opposing him in the LAST election, and someone other than Romney facing him in this one.

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Quick Hits

I guess playing on Twitter has made me think in some shorter bursts this week.

Attack Watch:

Really?  Really?

Aside from the terrible optics of again (see “flag@whitehouse.gov) asking Americans to inform on each other for the crime of Saying Something Bad About The Messiah pResident (corollary to the Dems-Not-In-White-House “Dissent Is the Highest Form of Patriotism”), the gang that couldn’t shoot straight chose the colors black, red, and white for Snitching is Patriotic site set up to “Fight the Smears”.  At least it provided several days of great fun with the #AttackWatch hashtag on Twitter.

Good Job, OFA.  Maybe we can set up a youth corpse to build camps for the re-education of unbelievers next.  SHOVEL READY, BABY!

Shared Sacrifice, “Fair Share”, and “Skin in the Game”:

The Great Uniter has stepped up his game from the Shared Sacrifice rhetoric, in which he implied that everyone should be happy to give up more to the government so it could do more to “help us” [insert gunfire here] and that of course, those already bearing the biggest burden of government largesse, need to bear even more, because its patriotic, to backpedaling “Shared Sacrifice” because the time had come for the evil, greedy rich people who already bear the majority of the burden of financing Fediathan to pay their “Fair Share”.  “Skin in the Game” has vanished from the White House rhetoric, as the administration discovered, much to its dismay that, Americans, including the evil greedy rich ones, and Republicans, can read tax data, including brackets and revenue data, and realized that is wasn’t the evil, greedy rich, or even the $200,000 rich who didn’t have “Skin in the Game”, it was the people who were getting refunds on “credits”, weren’t paying anything in taxes, and proportionately higher recipients of entitlements and other transfer payments who didn’t have “Skin in the Game.”

I’ve really come to enjoy Sean Hannity asking the progs, libs, and those who “know” taxes are necessary to keep Uncle Sugar’s Beneficiaries dependent “help people” because they caaaaaarrrrre more than you “How much is enough?  How much of every dollar I earn, should I be able to keep?”  He usually reminds whomever he is asking that Federal Income Taxes are not the only taxes, as someone who lives in New York State, as he does, also pays state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, etc., which in his case, ends up being in excess of 50% total.

I have yet to hear a specific answer.  I have no illusions that I will. 

But here’s the rub:  The fact that he and others are asking the question makes a larger point than any specific answer they could give, because it indicates that the “social contract” that proggies and libs always cite as their authority for newer and better spending on increasing dependency helping the poor has already been broken.

One of the facts that you aren’t likely to hear from your proggie friends about the progressive federal income tax is that when it was permanently introduced pursuant to the 16th Amendment, its big selling point was that it was a tax that would only be levied on “the rich”, which was true (only 1% of Americans paid ANY income tax at the time), but soon changed, as the federal appetite for Other People’s Money and the power it could buy, grew, making it necessary to extend the tax to those who were never intended to fall victim to it, setting a precedent for progressive lies which continue to this day.

So when you hear your progressive friends mouthing off about how the economy can be fixed by the evil greedy rich people paying “their fair share” (i.e. even more than the more than most everyone else they already pay), ask them how much is enough, and then tell them while they’re thinking of ways to avoid answer the question, that you’d also like them to explain why what was their “fair share” last year, or the year before, or the year before that, is now suddenly less than their “fair share”.  What has changed? (Other than unbelievably reckless and profligate spending of a disingenuous narcissistic pResdent and a Democratic Congress that brought us the biggest three-year deficit in history, but couldn’t be bothered to pass a budget?)

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It Used To Be Funny. Now It’s Just Insulting.

Delusion (dĭ-lū’zhən): 

A false belief strongly held in spite of invalidating evidence, especially as a symptom of mental illness.

This week marked a new low in the worship of Barack Hussein Obama. 

Yes, I can hear you saying “No, that really isn’t possible.”, but I assure you that it is.

I know.  It can be difficult to sort out who is more disgusting in their slavish devotion to the messiahship of Obama, the man himself, or his drooling followers who were willing to carry water for him, suppress negative stories, and threaten to bring the force of the law against those who would commit the sin of “telling lies” about the cypher who was to become the first “post-racial” President.

But beyond the column backdrop and astonishingly arrogant presumptions, there lurks terrifyingly bad judgment.

Bypassing bankruptcy law in the GM failure, in the Chrysler failure, and other interferences in the market by the entity that is supposed to referee, not pick the winners and losers, the Stimulus and its “shovel-ready jobs”, and destroying new and existing job opportunities with a permatorium on drilling after a weak and ineffectual response to a spill that didn’t need to happen, but for regulations that forced drilling out to a point where it is infinitely more difficult and harder to respond to if there is a spill, bullying a nation that ousted a leader who tried to illegally seize power, then choosing only to “bear witness” to a pro-democratic revolt in one pivotal nation, and chosing to participate in another despite not knowing who the insurgents really were, asking Americans to report on each other to the White House, and taking lavish vacation at taxpayer expense while unemployment remained at the highest level in decades…all of this would be enough to force most Presidents into hiding from the world in a corner of the Oval Office.

But when you are so delusional as to believe this deserves 4 more years, and there are enough followers to agree, you double down by pushing a “jobs” bill so urgent that you have to go on a ten-day vacation to a multimillion dollar estate at Martha’s Vineyard after announcing that you will be introducing the same “urgent” “jobs” bill to Congress with the demand that they pass it RIGHT AWAY!!!11!!!  Then you attempt to summon Congress with almost no notice, on the day of YOUR chosing, to hear your platitudes and demand repeatedly that they pass your [non-existent] bill NOW!

Then, you release the actual bill, chock full of the same kind of government spending and new bureaucracies that didn’t work in previous stimulus spending, and tour to promote it, telling your loyal followers that “If you love me, then help me pass this bill.”  While at the same time, more evidence of really, really bad judgment emerges, your campaign and organizing office releases another “Snitch on your neighbor if they don’t love me” site, and you let your supporters continue to make references that fly in the face of all available evidence.

Even if I wasn’t a Christian, I’d find the comparison to Jesus incredibly outrageous, in the classical sense of the word.

Jesus doesn’t have the record of ineptitude and contempt for the law that Obama has.  It would be like insinuating that Joe Biden and this guy are the same.

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An Open Letter to The American Left (Government Shutdown Edition)

I wrote this post the on the evening of April 8, 2011, and was getting ready to publish it when the deal that was going to cut trillions billions millions not much at all was announced.  I shelved it because despite all the hyperbole and hue and cry about what was a totally foreseeable and avoidable crisis, it was avoided in the eleventh hour by a Congress that still wasn’t responsible enough to write a budget, but was afraid of the consequences of its deliberately dilatory behavior.

Since then, we faced a similarly foreseeable and avoidable crisis with the Debt Ceiling, and an intransigent Democratic Party that both refused to present a plan of its own, and then refused to “compromise” by any normal definition of the word, and which STILL refuses to see that the problem is with government spending and not revenue.  Instead, they offered platitudes about “balanced approaches” and “the rich paying their “fair” share”, despite the stark reality that every penny “the rich” make could be taken taxed and it still wouldn’t make up the deficit between what government takes in and what it spends.

This would have been infuriating enough, without the tacit agreement between “mavericky” establishment Republicans like Juan McCain and the Democratic Party to jump into the new post-Tucson civility and use every violent description their talking points writers could scribble about the one group of elected officials in Washington who had the gumption to refuse to go along with any plan that could be passed by the pResident’s artificial deadline because what was being proposed didn’t address the real problem in a meaningful way.  People who actually did what they said they were going to do and not nod admiringly at the Emperor’s new clothes were likened to “hostage takers” and “terrorists”, and breathlessly accused of putting the country at risk while their counterparts stomped on the gas pedal and flew past the sign warning of the close cliff’s edge, and without regard for the fact that by leveling these accusations at these elected officials was also leveling them at the people who elected them, or who wish they could have. 

And those who mistakenly believe that government’s purpose is to give them stuff paid for by other people are emboldened, meaning we get to hear how wanting to limit the size of government and stop the insane spending are threatening the future (while ironically, running up a ginormous bill today giving stuff away that my kids will have to pay somehow doesn’t) and how big government is somehow a laudable and desirable goal, like this insufferable tool’s verbal diarrhea:

Right now, Dr. King is slowly shaking his bowed head, and saying “I NEVER knew you.”

———————————————————————————————————————

Dear Liberals, Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, Communists and other assorted moochers:

I’m going to start this correspondence with a hard fact that you either haven’t heard, or haven’t given sufficient thought to:  As of March, 2011, the federal government has spent $927.3 billion while taking in $184.2 billion in revenue.

This is not a revenue problem; this is a spending problem.

You have worked hard to confuse the basic issues and conflate a loss of power over the dependent class that you have worked so hard to cultivate with a cataclysmic event of Biblical proportions.  Oh, I’m sorry.  Did I say Biblical?  I forgot how much the mere mention of the word in any form sends you in an almost tourette’s-like response about shoving religion down your throat, and the way that it interferes with your constant kowtowing and deference to Islam.  Maybe the next time you and that noted Constitutional Scholar, Lindsey Graham have lunch at a fundraiser, you can slip him the draft legislation to limit all that nasty free speech that you don’t like.  It isn’t like he’s got any real objections to such a concept.  For the right pri…campaign donation, I’m sure he’ll be eager to be your pupp…I mean, an eager advocate for such a bill.

Anyway, I’m writing this to call you out on your latest round of stupidity and hyperbole on the budget and the looming Federal government shutdown.  Do you have any idea how stupid you all look, pissing and whining about the Republicans not wanting to borrow money to pay for things the Federal government shouldn’t be doing?  I mean, even if this wasn’t idiotic as a concept, there is the matter of your stupid execution.  After all, if killing babies, broadcasting pro-left propaganda, and empowering a federal regulatory agency to promulgate its own regulations on what we exhale is absolutely vital to the continued health and well-being of the Republic, you had all of 2010 to make it a reality.   12 long months.  365 days.   And no budget.  Time enough to take over health insurance, thus taking over the health care industry, but not time to sit down and write a budget that would have funded Planned Parenthood, an organization that took in 363 Million Dollars in taxpayer money last year, and then spent 170.4 Million Dollars on management and fundraising, and another 6.2 Million Dollars in International Family Planning.  While the 2008-2009 annual report had the organization losing money for the year, it netted a cool 85 Million Dollars in the previous year.  A look a the tax return for 2008 shows that the paid staff for the national organization averages in excess of $250,o00 a year…beyond pResident Obama’s ever lowering threshold for what is considered rich, and yet we haven’t heard a peep from you class envy pimps about this outrageous salaries.  Especially when other people who murder for money are considered criminals and immoral, even by you.  Your silence does not become you on this matter.

And for those of you who want to say that it is about providing health care to women, such as mammograms and screening for other cancers, I have one very simple question.

Where in the Constitution is Congress authorized to spend money on providing health care to some people of a specific gender?

Go ahead.  I’ll wait.  And if you are actually going to try “the good and plenty clause” argument with me, make it detailed.  Really.  Convince me.  Make your case.  Because I really want you to think about it, so you devote the same attention to the explanation why you are wrong.

And more funding for the EPA?  Seriously?  You want to give more money to people who have decided that every time you exhale, you’re releasing a pollutant?  While I’m all in favor of fining the living crap out of the Democratic Caucus every time they breathe, certainly you must see how stupid this is.  You want to further empower a federal agency that has already been told by Congress that it doesn’t have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (and thus destroy energy production and manufacturing) with a half-assed exchange scheme that limits these emissions when the developing world, which keeps expanding their own far more polluting capacities for production at an exponential rate does not follow or subscribe to this economic suicide pact at all? 

I have a better idea.  If you feel so very strongly about it, why don’t you go live in a lean-to in the middle of the desert, with none of those pesky trees and plants around you to emit all that oxygen at night.  Or if you are so willing to give up your well-being because you can’t afford to buy some of the Church of Gaia’s indulgences, you can always just kill yourself.  That will reduce your carbon footprint to zero, and the rest of us can go on living our lives without some addle-brained idiot screaming in our ears about our carbon footprint every time we get in our Ford Mustangs and do our damnedest to blow half the gas tank out the tail pipe as we smoke the tires.

And funding for NPR.  C’mon.  Its bad enough that these people and their audience stubbornly cling to the insulting fiction that they are unbiased.  That much anti-Israel hatred and condescension to Americans who don’t care for being dictated to is really tough to love, but making us borrow money that my kids will have to pay back so we can foot part of their bill?  No.  At some point, the madness has to end.   Let them get a few more minutes of underwriters’ advertising and pay their own way. 

This childish insistence that we have to keep borrowing money to pay for things that the federal government has no business doing needs to stop.  And holding actual enumerated functions hostage because you insist that we have to keep funding such things is inexcusable.

You wanna run out and have a tantrum in to the nearest microphone?  Knock yourself out.  You want to scream and howl because of a mere 60 Billion Dollars in cuts when what needs to be done is TRILLIONS in cuts?  Be my guest.  You want to howl about government being cut to the bone?  Then you need to understand that the only thing that will save this country is amputating the cash-hungry heads from the federal hydra that has been sucking the life out of prosperity for decades with a “War on Poverty” that has been a stunning and abject failure.

It’s time for serious people with serious solutions and your five minutes are up.  You can leave, or you can get the bums rush, but we’re sick of your nonsense.  Its time for you to go.

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Because Honesty and Clarity Wouldn’t Favor the Agenda of Dependency…

*sigh*

Where do I start?

 Entitlement [en-tahy-tl-muhnt]

–noun

1.  the act of entitling.

2.  the state of being entitled.

3.  the right to guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation.

 

Since no one else seems to be concerned with the question, I guess its up to me to ask.  How is it that certain people became entitled to have their healthcare paid for by the taxpayer, on no other basis than their age or their income?

 

Certain entitlements are at least rooted in the country, and by extension the taxpayer, having benefitted and therefore owing the recipient a quid pro quo or two.  These would be entitlements like the right to burial in a national cemetery, the G.I. Bill, or V.A. Benefits.  There is at least a semblance of a corolation between the grantor and the grantees of this entitlement. 

 

However, this doesn’t explain why it is that I am expected to reduce the options for my own family so that I can contribute to the care of Mrs. Jones up the street.  Especially when Mrs. Jones is engaged in a “spend down” of her assets by making inter vivos transfers of her money, real property, and other assets to family members, so that “when the time comes”, she will be eligible for Medicare? 

 

Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen.  As part of my duties as an estate planning attorney, I have been asked to give advice to help the client to do just that, so that they can make sure that their kids and grandkids “get something”, which is frequently considerably more than merely. Even in today’s battered real estate market, a completely paid-for home can fetch a tidy sum, even when sold at a loss.  And I know many attorney’s who can apparently give that advice without even thinking, let alone asking “What in the Hell makes you think I want to subsidize your gifts to your heirs by paying for your medical care?”

 

What I find to be the real “entitlement” is the too-often held belief that this is perfectly ok.  Honestly, Mrs. Jones never even asks herself “Is this right that I make everyone else pay for my care, including these heirs that I want to give my assets to?”

 

For some it is a mindset.  Like Social Insecurity, they have “paid into it” all their lives, and cling to the fantasy that there is an account somewhere in Washington D.C. with their name on it, and all they are doing is “getting back what they paid in”, despite ample evidence that no such account exists, that the benefits that many receive would far outstrip the amounts paid in, and that sticky fingered politicians long ago used their “payments” to buy votes from some other sucker they wanted to make dependent upon their largesse.  This isn’t the case, and sadly, we’re rapidly approaching the point where this nation can no longer afford to indulge the fantasies of grumpy Mr. Wilburson, Mrs. Jones, or even our parents.  The time has come and gone for some brutal honesty and tough love.

 

Medicare is failing.  It isn’t just that the program is going broke, (which it is), but it is also the fact that payments on medicare claims are so delayed and so pitifully low that many healthcare providers refuse to accept medicare patients.  They can’t afford to do it for free, and “I’ll gladly pay you next year for a cheeseburger today is a crummy business model.

 

I have long admired Harry S. Truman, if only for the fact that a common man could so flummox the establishment, time and time again, with a certain flair that few people could carry off.  That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he did.  Desegregation of the military?  Thumbs Up.  The Steel cases?  Thumbs Down.  Recognizing Israel?  Thumbs Up.  Pissing off the D.C. Establishment?  Thumbs Up.  Clemency for his would-be assassins?  Thumbs Down.  His enthusiastic support for Medicare?  That deserved a Gibbs-style headslap, but the guy was a senior citizen, and I’m not a grandpa-beater.

 

I still challenge the notion of such an entitlement to begin with.  It was a building block for other dubious entitlements, all generous, in part because of the myth that someone else was the one who had to pay for it.  This is a delusion that is only harming the country now.   Debt limits choices, as any law school grad is well-aware, and the nation’s growing debt doesn’t just limit our generation’s choices, it threatens the choices of my children and my grandchildren.  Pretending that its ok to continue to borrow money from China so politicians can continue to buy votes from those they would enslave and pretending that there is no reason to change the practice is an unserious answer, and it is time to be serious.

 

And since some would say that conservatives never have proposals, here are mine:

 

(1) I understand that today’s retirees have planned on these programs, and although I find them extravagant and repellant, I would preserve them for anyone age 50 or over with means testing…real means testing, that will not permit a spend down, and that will only provide partial benefits based up on your ability to pay.   Yes, I understand that means grandchildren and children like me might only get the photo album and a few small possessions, and I’m ok with that, if it means that the entitlement stops.

 

(2) For those age 50 to 21, you continue to pay into Medicare to support those on it, but it is with the understanding that it won’t be there for you.  This means that you have to do your own planning.  Maybe this means that you don’t have all the possessions that Grandpa and Grandma had, but at the same time, they wouldn’t have had them either, if they were actually saving for their own old age.

 

(3) Under 21, you don’t pay into Medicare, and maybe you have to help with taking care of your own Grandpa and Grandma when they get old.  Worse sacrifices have been made, and they are your family.

 

I know.  It will horrify those who like to talk about the wealth of this country, and how shameful such an idea might be.  But keep in mind, these are the same people who know damn well that the wealth they are referring to actually was earned by and belongs to someone else, and for all their lip service about it, their only real interest is in confiscating it so they can buy votes with it.  Say “No.” and reserve entitlements for something more significant than simply drawing breath and living long enough.

 

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