The Perfect Murder

I had a conversation with our Pastor, in which he mentioned that he was personally against the death penalty.  He pointed out that the death penalty did not serve as a deterrent, therefore it should be dropped. I admit that I had not given a whole lot of thought to it, but I felt it should be available as a prosecutorial option, rarely used to be sure, but an option.  If we acknowledge that man has free will; that man is in fact a moral agent, then we have to allow the death penalty for the taking of a life.  The criminal who decides to kill another had a choice.  He was not forced to kill, a gun was not held to his head. And clearly, the law does not sanction killing other people. He could have avoided committing the crime.  I am aware of the studies that claim to show that the death penalty is not a deterrent to committing murder.  But if the same methods were used for other crimes, I doubt they would show that the penalty for robbery deters robberies either.  Thus we would have no penalties for any crime.  I don't know about you, gentle reader, but I am not ready to face the Hobbesian world that would result.

My thinking about the death penalty took a slightly different turn today when I read an article in the American Thinker entitled Crime Without Punishment by Lester Jackson. Jackson presents the practical side of eliminating the death penalty, and it is not pretty.

Out of thin air, a right has been officially and surreptitiously created exclusively for select previously convictedmurderers: the right to commit, cost-free, further violence, and even further murders. When judges, legislators, and governors make capital punishment impossible in willful defiance of great public support, they liberate those already serving life sentences to fearlessly perpetrate as many additional vicious crimes as they can because they face no greater penalty.

This sounds ominous, but aren't these guys already in prison? How can they commit more murders? Jackson tells us in gory detail:

A recent vivid illustration occurred when a lone Oregon elected officeholder joined elected officeholders from other states (e.g., New Mexico, New Jersey, Illinois, and potentially Connecticut) in defying the public. (Last July, the Supreme Court fell one vote short of saving a brutal murderer based on a never-enacted law proposed by a solitary legislator.) On November 22, Gov. John Kitzhaber declared a death penalty "moratorium" during his term in office, expressly barring Gary Haugen's scheduled December 6 execution for a barbarous slaughter while serving a life sentence. In 1981, Haugen raped Mary Archer and beat her to death with repeated blows from his fist, a hammer, and a baseball bat. In 2003, together with another inmate, Haugen murdered a third inmate, David Polin, by stabbing him 84 times and crushing his skull. After humbly seeking expert consultation with "mostly myself," Kitzhaber found all this insufficient to warrant execution.

Or this:

In 1981, while serving multiple life sentences for multiple murders, Lemuel Smith beat, strangled, bit off the nipples of, and murdered Donna Payant, a 31-year-old prison guard and mother of three, finally throwing her body into the garbage to be compacted. (This was not the first time he sank his teeth into his murder victim's nipples.) A 4-3 majority of the New York State Court of Appeals used this case to foist their unpopular moral values upon an unwilling public by declaring unconstitutional the state's death penalty law. Despite legal window dressing which the minority found specious, Smith himself left no doubt that, at bottom, the bare majority valued his life, but not the lives of the guard or Smith's previous torture-murder victims, to say nothing of possible future ones.

What is driving this seems to be yet another Leftist "do-gooder" idea that somehow we may be executing huge numbers of innocent people. Cases like the case of 57 year old Michael Morton who spent 25 years in prison, but was exonerated due to DNA evidence lend credibility to the argument. And one has to applaud the work of people such as the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence (NCCAI) who are looking into, and finding, people wrongly convicted of crimes and freeing them. At the same time, they should be going after overly zealous prosecutors who may have stepped over the line in their efforts to make a conviction. The defense should always be given more latitude than the prosecutor, and any exculpatory evidence should be turned over to the defense. Prosecutors should always be trying to find the truth, and not merely try to get convictions.

While the work of the NCCAI is important, what is the actual percentage of people convicted of a capital crime are actually innocent? Do our courts actually convict a large percentage of innocent people, while we know that they let many dangerous and violent people go free?

Frankly, I suspect it is part of the Leftists plan to create as much chaos and havoc in society as they can. Removing the death penalty, and at the same time advocating for a system that lets repeat offenders back out to commit more crimes undermines peoples confidence in the law.  A panicked public will not always make the best decisions, allowing a politician to come riding to the rescue and offer to "fix" it for them.    

Hard History Coming

I have been getting reoriented since my return on Sunday. But things continue to be busy around PolyKahr Estates, so I have had limited time. One thing I have been paying some attention to is the debt ceiling debate, in which our "brave" Republicans have once again capitulated and given the Left what it wants for a mess of pottage.  So, it was with interest that I noted that my friend, fellow blogger, and Conservative Examiner, Anthony Martin posted a piece on Saturday entitled Why Bloody Civil War is Inevitable. Go read the whole piece, including the links. I'll wait.  Then read the Curmudgeon Emeritus's post at Eternity Road entitled The Short Route to Chaos. Notice some similarities?

On Sunday, Anthony had to publish again to make clear he was not calling for civil war, but felt in was inevitable. You can read that here. I was particularly disgusted by the comments left by on the Examiner site by "Glenn Wright" who frankly looked to be a troll trying to provoke someone...anyone... into careless words that he could take and say "See, see! They are plotting to overthrow the government!" Today I read at the Summer Patriot, Winter Soldier site the following:

it seems to me inevitable that we fight them. it is because they are our enemies, as surely as vladimir putin, as sure as ahmadinejad. we owe them no apology for our views, and we should back away from them not one iota, and give them not one peppercorn's consideration.

There are, in fact, many other sites where one will find expressions like this. To a man or woman, all express the fear that a civil war is inevitable because otherwise, liberty will be wiped out on the face of the earth.  In a former time, one could emigrate to America.  But now there is no place to run.  Those who desire freedom to live their lives without some dictator telling them at every turn what he will and will not allow, will have no choice but to stand and fight, or accept slavery for themselves and their children, grand children, and all future generations.  For too long, liberty loving individuals have been giving up ground to the loony Left. It is as if we were in a primitive tribe who gives into mad man rather than provoke him, because nobody knows what he will do next.

On guns, to take one issue, we have caved, and capitulated our way to where we were back in the 1990s, when the concealed carry movement really got rolling. If gun rights activists became radicalized, it was because it was only by being radical that they made any progress regaining our former rights. I remember GCA 68, though I was in high school at the time.  All the wise men recommended appeasing the mad men because society was coming apart, "riots everywhere you know, we can't let them have guns too. It's only a small infringement on our rights, after all.  Who knows what they will do."  But once they got GCA 68, there were further demands, always more demands to "compromise" and "be reasonable" yet again.  But we began to see that we were not being asked to compromise, but to capitulate, and we began to follow Jesse Helms advice:

“Compromise, hell! … If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?”

"By any means necessary" is not just a slogan, but a modus operandus with the Left.  It was telling to me that one of the guests interviewed on Andrew Napolitano's show, Freedom Watch, Friday let slip the remarkable statement that they needed to cut a deal to raise the debt ceiling because they feared Obama would actually not send out Social Security checks or pay the troops!  If true, the President can be said not to be merely fear mongering, but committing economic terrorism on vulnerable Americans.  And what does that say about who cares more about grandma?  The "we care more" party is willing to hold Grandma hostage until they get their debt ceiling raised, because spending more is all that counts with them!

The great majority of Americans consider themselves some brand of conservative, while only 20 percent consider themselves Leftists.  Typical of conservatives, they have been slow to react to the foreign invasion of a European philosophy called Marxism.  It has not helped that the Marxist have hidden themselves behind false flags and innocuous sounding names.  But America is waking up, at the 11th hour.  It appears that the Left is currently in control of all the cards.  We just have ourselves, our faith and our guns.  So be it.  Our side is through capitulating.  With Jesse Helms, we say "Compromise, hell..."  Of course, that will not satisfy the mad men.  They have taken everything else, but the want our freedom and liberty too.  So, yes, there will be bloody civil war.  I am not calling for it, I just don't see any way to stop it, barring a miracle.  Don't shoot the messenger.

Liberal Fascism: Socialism By Other Means*

I discussed a situation, which I viewed as dire, on 22 December 2010 in a post entitled Another Power Grab, This Time by the FCC. My concern was whether we were now unequivocally diving into dictatorship, and what that meant for liberty. Today, an article at the American Thinker entitled Socialism By Other Means by Aaron Gee caught my eye because it tangentially deals with the same ideas. What could he mean "by other means." It seemed to me that Reid and Pelosi, along with Obama had rapidly finished the job started by FDR, and continued by LBJ to turn the citizens of this country from Freemen to social slaves. Lets look at the article in question:

As I pondered the direction our Government had taken over the previous year, I looked at the definition of socialism by typing "define: socialism" into Google. The first definition presented was from Princeton's wordnet and read as follows; "a political theory advocating state ownership of industry." The definition feels woefully lacking.

Ownership denotes control, and the state is certainly getting into the business of controlling industry. Over the last year our government has exerted more control over enterprise via legislative fiat than at any other time since FDR's power grab during the Great Depression. From the thousands of pages of ObamaCare, to the thousands of pages of the Dodd-Frank "financial reform" bill, government power is firmly entrenched in business and expanding. The more regulations the state adds the more control it exerts.

Mr. Gee calls this style of government "Regulationism." I think it fits the pattern of classic Fascism.  Fascism has two distinguishing characteristics.  Unlike Communism, which styles itself as an international movement of the workers rising up against their capitalist exploiters, Fascism is a national movement.  Fascists often create, or manipulate local myths to strengthen their own ties to the people, and distract people from the fact of their slavery.  Hitler, for example, created the myth of the Aryan people, and borrowed heavily from the old Norse mythology to support it. Mussolini, on the other hand, pointed to ancient Rome, and fed the Italians a steady diet of what they had once been.  The other distinguishing characteristic is that whereas Communists actually own the means of production, and therefore the responsibility for the failure to perform, the Fascists have found a way out of that predicament.  Instead of owning outright the industrial capacity of the country, they just control it, and take the profits.  But if there is a failure, they can always point back to those evil capitalists.

Fascism enslaved not just the so called capitalist class, but everybody who worked for a living as well.  Any time you illegitimately take the money that someone has rightfully earned, you violate that person's natural rights and use him to further another's interests.  That is slavery.  Of course, you can outright steal from him, hold him up at gun point.  More subtly, you can get the government to do it for you.  So, if you are taxed at a different rate than you neighbor, whether because you make more, or you have more hair on your head, that is illegitimate.  If the government decides to tax certain legitimate activities in order to discourage them, that also is illegitimate.  The other way Fascism enslaves people is to limit their legitimate choices so that, while believing themselves free, they really are not.

Once a company has cleared all of the hurdles of getting the oil out of the ground and turning it into a product for market, the tax man comes. For every gallon of gasoline the government collects between 30 to 50 cents in taxes (18 to the feds, and on average 22 to the states and quite often 2-5 cents to a local municipality). In 2007 Exxon made $40 billion dollars in profit, but it paid $100 billion in taxes and royalties. In other words government made 2.5 times more from Exxon's oil production than Exxon and its shareholders did.

Good to see that government is on the case and sticking it to those evil capitalists again.  Except, they really aren't.  You see Exxon passed the costs of the royalties, taxes, and all the regulations on to drivers.  It is built into their cost of a gallon of gasoline.  YOU paid, not them.  Exxon was merely the tax collector for the State.  To the degree you paid too much for gasoline, you had less discretionary cash to spend for other things.  In other words, by stealing your money, they have also stolen your liberty.  But hey, it was done for a noble cause.

It has been said that our Constitution creates a capitalist, free market society.  It does no such thing.  Rather, unlike Marxism, which is concerned exclusively with materialism, and who gets what stuff, the Constitution is concerned with maintaining the liberty of the people.  A necessary part of that is scrupulously maintaining their individual rights in contracts and property.  We have let too much slip away through clever language that encouraged muddled thinking.  Aaron Gee again:

The goals of regulationism and socialism are the same, control over a company or business. The end result of regulationism and socialism is also the same, a lifeless economy filled with uncompetitive businesses. November's election wasn't just a rejection of a political party, or a fight over personal taxes; it was also the rejection of regulationism.

And here you have more of the same. By saying that the fight is between business and the government, the writer encourages you to yawn and go back to sleep. After all, you are not a businessman. But in reality, the fight is yours and mine. Taxes and regulations put huge burdens of excess cost on every product we have to purchase, reducing our discretionary cash and our choices, and our liberty.

* With a nod to Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism: A Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

Towards a Flat Tax

Yesterday, an article by Monte Kuligowski caught my eye at the American Thinker entitled Another Reason for a Flat Tax: Freedom of Speech. The article makes some of the same points I did in the post entitled Taxes. A quote:

Our current progressive income tax system is inherently problematic in a free society. It slaps the face of equal justice under law and repulses the 14th Amendment's requirement of "equal protection of the laws." "Spreading the wealth around" was anathema to the founding generation, as evidenced by the remarks of Thomas Jefferson:

"A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."

Asking certain people to pay at a higher rate for the same, or less benefit than others on the basis of an arbitrarily defined income level is discriminatory. That you are discriminating against people who make more money does not remove the immorality of it.  It is still discrimination against people who have likely done nothing to you except be more successful at making money.

Incidentally, wealth (what the Democrats often talk about when demagoguing the issue) and income are two different things.  Wealthy people can often make quite a bit of income from investments in tax free municipal bonds and other tax shelters that others are not able to take advantage of due to the lesser amounts available for investment.

Equal protection of the law should require everyone to pay the same percentage rate for taxes. If the income tax rate were 10%, with no loopholes or special-interest deductions, the "rich" obviously would pay much more than the "poor," but everyone would be equal under the law. And a greater incentive would exist to advance on the pay scale.

Beyond the unfairness, and illegality of taxing different people at different rates solely based on the incomes there is the fact that our tax code has become so complex that it may be used as a political weapon. Joseph Farrah, editor of WorldNetDaily.com famously accused the Clinton administration of using the IRS to harass him during those years. Then there is the Obama administration:

A recent AT article reminded me of the remarks of Mr. Obama after Arizona State University declined to award the president an honorary degree. The university cited Obama's lack of accomplishments in denying the customary degree at the president's commencement speech back in May of 2009.

In response to the perceived "snub," the New York Times reported the words of Mr. Obama: "President Crow and the [Arizona State] board of regents will soon learn about being audited by the IRS."

Do you think that might have a chilling effect on those who might otherwise wish to protest something the government is doing? Our tax code should not be a tool of tamping down protest, even if Mr. Obama's remarks were meant as a joke.

All of the above doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of whether or not the taxes collected are spent within the scope of the authorities granted under the Constitution, or the immorality of forcing one person to serve another's interests at his own expense.  I covered some of those issues in the previous post mentioned above.  Suffice it to say I could find no reason why these should be imposed on free Americans.  Let us finally fix the tax code, then reduce our spending to match what we can afford, and what is within the scope of the Constitution.

Taxes

The Curmudgeon Emeritus over at Eternity Road has a post up today that breaks through all the chaff and gets to the heart of the matter concerning government spending, Constitution limitations, and indirectly, taxation. You can find the post here. It's a good read, but here is the money quote:

To be perfectly fair, one conceivable approach to the limitation of government is a hard limit on how much it may spend. However, as Johnson makes plain, that is not the nature of the limits imposed by the federal Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t specify a federal spending limit; it specifies areas of authority, beyond which Washington is forbidden to go. In theory, Washington could Constitutionally seize every dollar any of us makes or owns, if the revenue were put toward a purpose enumerated in Article I, Section 8. Granted that we wouldn’t like it, much.

Yesterday, during the debate on whether to extend the Bush tax rates for a while longer, the unfortunately named Anthony Weiner, New York 9th District Congressman, had this to say (and I paraphrase since I don't have a means of recording these things) that Obama essentially caved, and that he would like to have the debate about weather to grant millionaires and billionaires continued tax relief.  Sigh.

Really? We have collectively had this debate. Neither side can convince the other. But, here's how it looks from my side, one more time:

1.  There is no moral basis for choosing to have millionaires and billionaires pay a higher rate than even the lowest paid person in America. Oh, someone who makes a million dollars would have to pay more, sure. But they should not also have to pay at a higher rate, since they do not benefit at a higher rate.  You, of course, will paint a picture of millionaires as Monopoly men complete with stove pipe hats and cigars.  They're the evil rich who rub their hands as they steal each unearned penny from the poor.  But then I can paint a picture of a woman I knew once, named Martha.  Martha worked at a modest level job with the Federal government.  Her husband managed properties for various owners.  Both made a comfortable living, but not very spectacular.  When I asked her how she became a millionaire, she indicated mainly living frugally, some good investments, and her Maryland home which they had owned for twenty years and was paid off.  They had no children, and she liked to contribute to environmental causes.  It was not how I would have done it, but then, it was her money.  It was HER money, right?  Martha is one of the millionaires I have known.  More are small businessmen and women who struggle every year to keep the business running and make their payroll.  They get by on thin margins, and must respond to continuing competition, over and ever changing regulation, and of course, taxes.  It seems, Mr. Weiner, that if you had this countries best interests at heart, you would be trying to help these people wherever you could, instead of demagoguing the issue.

2. Then there is the issue of  scope of government. The Constitution grants 16 powers to the Congress. The commerce clause and the general welfare clause have been bent all out of proportion, but you know, even if you won't admit it, that the founders never intended that the Commerce clause would be stretched so that Congress can do anything it wants. Each of those powers were ones that all Americans benefit from, and therefore all Americans should pay equally.  But under the current system of taxation and spending, you have created yet more moral hazards for yourselves.  Each year, Americans spend a certain amount of time working for the government.  If a person's tax rate comes out to 25% of his income, he therefore has to work 25% of the time for the US government.  Put another way, from January to April, he is working for the government, and only after he has satisfied that debt is he "allowed" to work for himself and his family.  We are, for all intents and purposes, serfs working the land for an absentee landowner who has done very little to help us, much to hinder us and get in the way, and now wants "his" share.  We should chase you out of our fields, if we had the guts.  Such is what you have done to a land of once free men.  But it gets worse.  Much of what you take in as taxes, you redistribute to others in the form of subsidies, grants, and entitlements.  This makes us not only serfs, but actual slaves.  A slave is someone who is forced against his will to serve another.  Slavery was outlawed in this country, and yet here it is going on every day, "all nice and legal like."  It is as if the Mafia moved in and now runs our government.  How can you justify that, Mr. Weiner?

3.  Taxes are intended as a fee, if you will, that everyone pays for the Federal government to provide a few services for the Sovereign States that they can not provide for themselves as efficiently (but I note they can provide these services if called upon to do so.)  We expect the government to maintain a sound currency.  We expect the government to fund a small professional armed services.  We expect the government to defend our borders, to regularize trade between the States, and to carry on diplomacy with foreign powers.  You have failed in all of these areas, as the Wikileaks demonstrate profoundly.  Instead, you seem intent on using our resourses as a means of social engineering, or of achieving someone's idea of "social justice," or "fairness" however you define it.  That is not your job, no matter how noble it may sound.

There is ultimately one solution to our debt problems, and that is to return to Government doing the job assigned to it, and getting out of the jobs it seems to want to do.  If that doesn't sound like a good job to you, Mr. Weiner, then may I suggest you obtain honest work elsewhere.  Serving the people is supposed to be a privilege, and not a reason to pillage.

A Primer on "Social Justice"

Bruce Walker today has an article on the American Thinker entitled Social Justice and Fair Taxes. It is a good introduction to the entire issue of "social justice," which, as is usual for the Left, turns out to be no justice at all. Go read the whole article.

I have wondered all of my working life how the "progressive" income tax system can be termed fair? I have wondered how taxing one person at a higher rate than another can be justified by the equal protection of the law? Wouldn't equal protection require that everyone be treated...well...equally? Mr. Walker delves into these questions:

The snarling face of social justice lies behind the mask of fair taxes. Why should those who earn more pay higher taxes than the rest of us? Do we have some moral claim upon the wealth they create? It is just the opposite: they who produce more have a claim on the rest of us, who consume more than we produce. The titans of industry a century ago -- Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, and the rest -- turned out cheap and high-quality products which were a principal reason for our rise as a great nation. Their personal wealth represented a miniscule part of the national wealth they created.

Men like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Jonas Salk, and others lived more to create scientific and technological breakthroughs than to earn money. Indeed, for many of these men, money was simply a tool to allow them to do more good. The same is true today. Microsoft, FedEx, and Wal-Mart created wealth that we consume. These creators, in the equations of economic advantage, owe us nothing at all. We, instead, owe them much. The left's love of social justice does not rest even on the hoary, dull tomes of Marxism. Producers, not consumers, are the exploited in Marxist mythology, and huge chunks of American consumers -- the ones crying for fair taxes -- produce almost nothing.

In these two paragraphs, Walker states both the correct, and the incorrect attitudes towards money. Money is a tool, to be used to create more good. But those who envy others have a perverted sense of the use and value of money, focusing instead on the luxury it may buy, rather than on the use of it to create more good. 

Take a look at this video by Steven Crowder over at Theo Sparks site. It is an interesting look at a typical rich person. Note in the closing lines, where he discusses how his inventory is treated for tax purposes. He has not made a nickel on that inventory, and many things may happen along the way to ensure that he doesn't, yet he has to pay taxes on it in advance. Notice too that he started off making furniture by hand, but discovered that he couldn't feed his family on it. But rather than complain, he looked around and figured out how to do what he loves and feed his family, and the families of 25 other folks as well. This is an excellent film clip that really brings together what it all means.

The idea of a flat tax or now they have reworked into the "Fair Tax" has been around for a long time.  Isn't it time we all took a serious look at it, and applied its principles?

The Anger of the Public

Concerned Citizen over at the Western Rifle Shooters Association has a great piece up that highlights an article in Pajamas Media by Victor Davis Hanson which explores why Americans are so angry. A quote:

There is a growing sense that government is what I would call a new sort of Versailles — a vast cadre of royal state and federal workers that apparently assumes immunity from the laws of economics that affect everyone else.

In the olden days, we the public sort of expected that the L.A. Unified School District paid the best and got the worst results. We knew that you didn’t show up at the DMV if you could help it. A trip to the emergency room was to descend into Dante’s Inferno. We accepted all that in other words, and went on with our business.

But at some point — perhaps triggered by the radical increase in the public sector under Obama, the militancy of the SEIU, or the staggering debts — the public snapped and has had it with whining union officials and their political enablers who always threaten to cut off police and fire protection if we object that there are too many unproductive, unnecessary, but too highly paid employees at the Social Service office. In short, sometime in the last ten years public employees were directly identified with most of what is now unsustainable in the U.S. The old idea that a public servant gave up a competitive salary for job security was redefined as hitting the jackpot.

That anger extends to State governments as well. When NC had a budget shortfall, the first response was to raise taxes. (For anyone who drives through our fair State, take warning, do not violate by a jot or tittle any of the traffic laws. The police, in an effort to get more money out of us, have turned law enforcement into tax collection.) I heard over and over again that if we had to shrink our lifestyle because of the economy, why so should the State-and not through reduction of legitimate services, but through reduction of benefits.

Read the whole thing. It is worth it.

Charity vs. Entitlements

Today's American Thinker has an article, by Roger Banks entitled Obama and Charity that expresses very well what I was trying to say in a one sided debate with my wife yesterday. Go read the whole thing, then come back.

Read it? Good.

Continuing his lament over what he calls an "erosion of civility in the public square," President Obama chose the setting of this year's national prayer breakfast to admonish his ill-mannered opponents. "Surely you can question my policies," he said, "without questioning my faith."


However noble the spirit to rebel against a directive that so brazenly chills the content of political speech -- scolding those who "poison the well of public opinion" while seeking to purge from that well opinions not to the liking of the lords of decorum -- responding impulsively proves unnecessary.


It's unnecessary because Obama himself, in the same speech, raises the question for us, by linking his faith to his policies. "God's grace," he said, "is expressed through ... the efforts of our entire government."

This little attempt at rhetorical blackmail conflates government entitlements with true charity, and does not reflect God's grace, but rather pure power politics. Let's take a look at it shall we? Every time Obama sends out a check for a welfare payment, he uses taxes. Taxes are payments taken out of the hands of productive citizens at the point of a gun. Oh, sure, some may give it up "voluntarily", but if they did not, you can be sure that force would be used to obtain it anyway, so that the analogy of a gun is indeed appropriate. If anyone else obtained funds from a person by arms, or the threat of arms, that person would be considered an armed robber, and be accused of theft. So, Obama uses stolen money to pay off some of the electorate for votes, then accuses the productive citizens who rightly complain of being uncharitable. Worse still, Obama now claims credit for being charitable, while using stolen money from other people to do it. I think I have read this before...oh yes, it was called Robin Hood.

And what of the person receiving such payments? Are they grateful? Are they inspired to change their ways, pull themselves up by their boot straps, and become productive citizens themselves? Sadly, the answer is often, no. You see, these welfare payments are not marketed as "charity" but rather as entitlements, something owed to these people, for what is never said. Nobody wants to hurt any one's feelings by calling it charity, you understand. Thus, by making welfare an entitlement, Obama creates a permanent dependency class, while denying people the opportunity to realize their dependency and do something about it.

Now, compare that to true Christian charity. In Christian charity, the giver gives of his own free will and accord, from his own substance, after praying and deciding for himself how much to give, and to whom. The giver could have used those funds for anything, but chooses to give to the particular person or program, so feels his money is well spent. The person receiving the funds is grateful, precisely because the person giving could have spent his funds elsewhere. Interestingly, the one who gives is also grateful for having had the opportunity to have the kind of wealth that makes giving possible in the first place. Gratitude generates more good will, which causes more giving.

Perhaps, Mr. Banks sums it up best:

At best, entitlements are based not on faith, but on fear -- fear that love and charity are not enough. Yet for people to give more, government must tax less. Now, there's a policy that really would require faith...even faith in the miracle of Scrooge on Christmas morning.

Government: Robbing Us Blind

The American Thinker has a great article up today by Mark W. Hendrickson entitled Our National Blind Spot that makes the case, again, that taxing one person to subsidize another constitutes robbery. A quote:

But if this isn't robbery, then what is it? If the state's would-be victims resist being plundered, the state will retaliate by confiscating even more of their property and/or incarcerating them. The democratic process rests on force and the implied threat of force every step of the way.

We don't bat an eye anymore when someone glibly proposes "spreading the wealth." In fact, many Americans enjoy spreading the wealth, as long as it isn't their own. In a recent survey, three out of four Americans agreed that Obama and Congress should raises taxes on that minority of Americans with annual incomes above $200,000. Apparently, most Americans believe that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and their minions have more of a right to spend those dollars than the citizens who earned them.

If you think this line of thought is crazy, then let me ask you a question: What percentage of a person's honest income should he or she be allowed to keep? The only guidelines I am aware of are "all of it" (the original American way, since income taxes were unconstitutional until 1913) or nothing beyond what anybody else (except the governing elite) can keep, according to the communist principle "from each according to his ability to each according to his need."

Between those two polar extremes, any percentage one chooses would be arbitrary. In practice, the degree to which property is redistributed depends on whatever shifting political coalition has enough votes -- enough power -- at any given moment. Stripped of grandiose pretenses and specious idealism, contemporary political life has descended into a constant, contentious squabble to see who gets what at the expense of whom.

I would be all in favor of getting rid of the income tax, and instead imposing a national sales tax at the retail level on every item bought or sold. Of course, the Left points out that such a system would hit the poor (and throw in women and minorities for good measure) the hardest. But, on the other hand, everyone would have to participate, and with some skin in the game, would actively try to keep taxes to the minimum. As it stands, 49% of Americans are constantly agitating for more, more, more at the expense of the "rich," who politicians assure us, are an endless pool of funds that we can take from whenever we identify another want. Incidentally, we can not allow a national sales tax to be hidden, but must make it visible for all to see. At the same time, we must also make visible the taxes imposed on gasoline, liquor, and everything else that gets taxed. Until we do this, I suspect we will not be able to get spending under control. If we can get out in the open just what it is costing Americans for their government, more folks will question just what they are getting for their money.

Another way to look at it comes from Eternity Road's estimable Curmudgeon Emeritus take on the issue here. However, while the Curmudgeon comes at it from a different perspective, in the end it is the same: theft. In this case, the Government is stealing from one who pays taxes to fund another whose lifestyle the person paying does not approve. The end result is not only injury but insult.

The Worst Bill Ever

The Wall Street Journal has the scoop on the Worst Bill Ever passed by the House since the New Deal. A quote:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously, even as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics.

Yet at this point, Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics as they race against the unpopularity of their own agenda. The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can claim to be "universal coverage." The result will be destructive on every level—for the health-care system, for the country's fiscal condition, and ultimately for American freedom and prosperity.

Read the whole thing, then realize that the costs of this monstrosity will eventually hit middle class Americans. By one estimate, we will be paying 199%, through premiums and tax increases, what we are paying now for health care. How's that hope 'n change working out for you?

I know that Ms. Pelosi wanted to get this through. But I would have hoped there were more adults in our House of Representatives than there turned out to be. How sad.

Does this qualify as an Intolerable Act?

Of Government and Being Conservative

Then God said "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness...." Genesis 1:26.


Shortly thereafter, mankind bit into the apple, and the rest is history. From that moment, mankind needed rules and regulations to keep him from killing everyone else. Such rules were initially provided by the strongest man in the tribe, under the unquestioned assumption that might makes right. The weaker, or less ruthless men were forced, at the point of the spear, to do whatever the Strongman desired. The point of the spear might well mean death, so folks tended to tow the line. The Strongman, of course, had the best of the women, the best of the cattle, indeed, the best that the tribe could offer. Everyone else had what was left.


It seems it wasn't long before the Strongman (now called the Chief ) looked around and realized that conquering another tribe might have advantages for himself. So, he set out to conquer all the other tribes' Chiefs around him, which he did, at the expense of his people. Of course, in the self aggrandizing ways of all men, he had to have a new title to distinguish himself from the lesser beings around him. Chief of chiefs wouldn't do. After much thought, he thought of King. How grand! The new title let him pretend that somehow he was more than just the strongest and most ruthless Strongman. Eventually, it occurred to him to strong arm the priests into declaring that their gods had decreed a divine right for him to rule his "subjects," rather like the mafia today will take over a business by offering to "protect" them from...well...themselves. It probably also occurred to him to write down his idea of laws as a legacy to "his" people. And I am sure the people were "pleased" to receive these laws.


Now, ruling a State does require cash. The enforcers..er...soldiers have to be paid. They needed weapons and gear, food, water, time to train, etc. Unfortunately, our "King" had no source of cash, but hey, since everyone else was living under his "protection" why not institute a system of payments off the top of every transaction. Yeah, that's the ticket, a tax! And while he was at it, some extra would be needed to hold grand parties, and a place to hold them, and a staff to serve them, and...well...the usual retinue of a Court. We couldn't have our King look less regal than the next King over, or the other thugs might get some ideas about taking over our Kingdom.


This went on for centuries. Kings came and went, as did kingdoms. Dynasties grew under strong Kings, then eventually died out as the decedents of the strong King became soft and indolent. History seems to revolve around the Great Men, and nobody seems to have given any thought to their "subjects." But there was thinking going on. Christ had preached that each man would be judged individually for his actions, and his inaction; for what he said, and for what he thought. He would be judged not as a member of a group, but for himself alone. This raises a dilemma. How could a subject, who was not free, indeed in many cases was a peasant who could not even decide to go elsewhere, be subject to the laws of God? The Apostle Paul answered to some extent in
his letters, and these are deemed authoritative as far as they go. But layers of thought and philosophy built up under the church, eventually culminating in the direct philosophical forbears of the Founding Fathers such as John Locke. Man is a free creature, a moral actor, who must have certain natural rights guaranteed to carry out his mission as a moral actor. Otherwise, if a man is not free, how can he be judged?


The gun, strangely enough, is what put teeth behind these philosophical ideas. Open hand techniques, like Karate, require many years of training to master. Interestingly, to be most effective, the attacker has to play along, offering up attacks which the style is designed to counter. I remember my sensei demurring when asked which style was most effective, pointing out the the true master never had to throw a punch in the first place. The sword also requires many years of training to master. Both techniques require a great deal of strength as well, leaving women, the old, or infirm unable to participate, and thus to be at the mercy of the strong, the young, and the ruthless, which tells us why the strong man was the dominant figure for so long. Initially, the invention of firearms tended to strengthen the Strong Man against his enemies. But as time wore on, firearms became more sophisticated, powerful, and easier to use. By 1776, it had become possible to target and kill a specific officer at a distance. The individual at last had a weapon at his disposal which equalized the disparity in training and strength among men. Technological innovations such as the cartridge, and smokeless powder have only made guns more powerful and easier to use.

Which brings us to gun control. There are two types of people who profess a belief in gun control, the pacifist and the tyrant wannabes. As to the first, I am sure there are some out there who truly abhor guns. I feel for these people because what the truly abhor is not guns, but what the gun can do in the wrong hands. These people do not feel they can judge the men who murder, rape and rob as bad or evil, so they blame the instrumentality instead. What they fail to see is that the victims of crime, with whom they are empathic, would be just as dead had they been killed by the sword, or spear, or bow and arrow, or a nail gun for that matter. It is not guns that are the problem, but evil men and women who use guns in that manner.

Then there are the tyrant wannabes. They do not believe that the individual is a moral actor, do not believe in natural rights granted by God, and do not trust the common man with the potential power to take a life. These are the people who say that only the police and military should have guns. Notice that if they had their way, government would have a monopoly of power. But governments, as we have seen, are just thugs all dressed up in a show of pomp and circumstance to appear bigger than they are. They all have fancy titles, like President, or Congressman. They call each other "The Honorable" or the "Gentleman from the Great State of", but strip all that away, and government boils down to "do as I say, or you will face the consequences, up to being killed." Of course, the tyrant wannabes believe they will be in the catbird seat, able to dictate to the rest of us, the unwashed masses. What they do not want to face up to is that government is jealous of power, does not want to share, and too late they will find that they have been used as just tools of the thug.

Which brings us to why I started this blog, and continue to publish it even though it often takes several hours a day. As a Conservative, I believe that each individual is a free, and moral actor. If that is true, then the role of government must be limited to certain enumerated duties, and that we must jealously guard against any expansion of those duties beyond the bounds set forth in the Constitution. I believe that if government truly derives its just powers from the governed, then government can not exercise any power that I myself do not have. For these reasons, I also jealously guard my guns, and choose to exercise my right to keep and bear them. As a grandfather, I do not want my grandchildren to curse me because they no longer have their natural rights honored by their government.

Finally, lest you believe I am anti government, nothing could be further from the truth. We do need government to perform certain duties it would be impractical to perform for ourselves. These include providing for the national defense, treating with foreign nations and among the several States, providing a national currency, upholding contracts and a few others. The enumerated powers of government were all set out in the Constitution, and if government would stick to doing those things, this blog would not be needed.

Waxman-Markey: Porkulus Redux

Eternity Road has a post up by the Curmudgeon entitled simply Waxman-Markey. The Curmudgeon is Francis W. Poretto's alter ego.

There's no question that this bill will radically increase the price of electricity, and of every fuel other than uranium. Indeed, several of its backers have admitted that much -- and have touted it as a feature rather than a bug. The bill amounts to the largest and longest protracted tax measure in the history of the world. Just as bad is this: given the Obama Administration's hostility to expanded exploration for coal, oil, and natural gas, the supply of all the fuels that power American society is likely to decrease.

If this bill isn't somehow killed in the Senate, it will reduce America to a penurious, has-been power, whose citizens will swelter in the summer and shiver in the winter while paying a fortune for the privilege.

I have read estimates that electricity costs may increase by 90%, never mind transportation fuels. Summers get hot here. The day time high temperatures have ranged up to 100 degrees of late, with humidity to match. I remember Ohio winters when the day time high temperature did not get above zero. If your income is, say $20,000, does it become a struggle whether to cool the home or put food on the table? Can you afford to drive to your job even?

Let's look at energy independence, so beloved by the left as a campaign slogan. This bill will mean we will explore for, and extract less fuel than we do now here at home, and thus we will be importing more of our energy under a cap and trade regime than we are now. If they think we are being blackmailed into unnecessary wars in the middle east now, what will they think when we are being blackmailed into wars in more places because we have to import more fuel from around the globe. All this while the country has abundant fuel sitting in the ground.

Then there is the question of whether you are truly being "represented" in the Congress, or are these relatively wealthy men and women (a Congressman makes $174,000 plus benefits any one of us would love to have) are just in it for themselves? If your Congressman had to live under the same rules as you do, do you think they would pass this sort of economic travesty?
I have not heard the figures, but I would imagine substantial numbers of people called the Congressional hotline to voice their opposition to this bill. Why weren't their concerns taken into account? What was so urgent about this bill, that it could not wait until after the July 4th holiday? Would one more day of delay have made a difference in the global temperature 100 years from now? Really? And we know the Congressman who voted for this bill could not have read or understood it. There we 300 pages of changes to the bill that were included by the Rules Committee at 3:00 am that morning. They did not even have a single completed copy of the bill before voting on it. Where's the outrage?

This is another Porkulus Bill, passed in a hurry, in the middle of the night, before Congressmen took off for July 4th so they wouldn't have to face the anger of the electorate.

I think I need take a page from Francis Poretto, and create an alter ego for these little rants.

Cap and Trade's Regressive Tax

Yesterday, I wrote about the $2 Trillion cap and trade proposal by the Obama administration. One of the things I mentioned was that cap and trade represented a regressive tax. Today's article by Jillian Bandes, by the same title as the post, reports on a Tax Foundation report that tells us just how regressive such a tax would be.

Greenpeace claims benefits which would offset the tax, but their first claim, that global warming would be stopped, is fictional. Their claim of "green jobs" also requires subsidies from still other taxes in order to work. The whole thing reminds me of children happily making mud pies. They show the mud pies to Mom, who declares them gorgeous, but in reality no one is going to eat them.

Bleak Winter Leads to Bleak Spring

Also from Townhall.com is this article by Emmett Tyrrell, entitled "The Bleak Winter's Behind Us, but What's Ahead." Tyrrell brings to our attention that The One's cap and trade proposal would cost yet another $2 Trillion dollars (aren't you growing tired of the huge expense of all these programs?) This is despite the utter failure to prove a man made component to the global warming scam, or the fact that cap and trade has spectacularly failed to bring about a lowering of CO2 emissions in Europe. What it would do is transfer huge amounts of wealth from the private sector to the public. It would give those 535 incompetents in Congress yet more say in our energy industries. It would jack up the cost of nearly everything you purchase, without adding value. I call that a tax, and a highly regressive one at that.

Cap and trade is a bad idea, to solve a non-existent problem which is based on unproven theories. It should be stopped in its tracks.

The Porkulus Bill

I discovered this tid bit, at Bloomberg.com, while reading about the proposed "Stimulus" that doesn't stimulate.

I have known for many years now that socialized medicine, as practiced in the UK and Canada does not work as advertized. The elderly especially are treated cruelly in these systems, because it is not deemed economically practical to treat them, despite treatments being available. How does this stack up with the Biblical command to honor your Mother and Father?

In my own case, my Dad is 80 years old, and just recently had a bout of cancer of the prostate gland. Of the two types of prostate cancer, this was the aggressive variety, and it surely would have killed him in 6 months. However, it was successfully treated through a combination of radiation and homone treatments. Would he have been treated under this proposed system? My Dad continues to operated a business at 80, and to be a productive member of society.

So, first the government has the blood of unborn children on its hands through Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions. Now it will murder the elderly as well. When did they decide that they own our lives, and that it is theirs to do with as they please? When did we have that debate? The last I heard, we are citizens of this country, not slaves to a Fascist State. When are we going to act like it? Not to put too fine a point on this, how is this different than a farmer, whose prize bull no longer performs as a stud, so is euthanized? The farmer can do that because he owns the bull. In the same way, by witholding treatments that are available, if expensive, is the State not doing the same thing to senior citizens?

Third Way

Roberta X has this to say about "lines in the sand."

I have not been actively posting lately, because frankly, I have had nothing new to say. Never the less, I find Roberta's "third way" says a lot of what I feel about government, and our ability to do something about it. I however, while recognizing the nature of government, am a conservative. I see the need for a very limited government, one which does only a few things and leaves the rest up to the people. Personal liberty is very important to me.

Like Roberta, I participate in political action, including elections, in hopes of getting less of the bad consequences of government action, and more of the benefits of government inaction. One of the things I will be doing this weekend is helping to man the Grass Roots North Carolina booth at the Raleigh Gun Show. Stop by and talk a while. Join up if you haven't already. Sign up for the Raffle while you are there.

H/T to the Smallest Minority.

Thoughts on the Bailout

A lot has been written explaining, apologizing, condemning, or praising the various bailouts that have raised our collective debt some $7 trillion. Michelle Malkin adds to the confusion surrounding bailouts with this piece, that proves you just can't satire leftists. Anything you come up with as a joke will soon be offered by these guys with a straight face.

Case in point, the newspapers in Connecticut are complaining that not enough readers are buying their papers, so they want a bailout too. Really, this is apparently no joke. It just boggles the mind that the newspapers, and other media, who gave us a choice between John McCain and Barack Obama, then made sure no one would know who the heck Barack Obama actually is, while allowing Obama to make pretty much any charge against McCain without challenge, just don't have enough subscribers anymore. Gee, who would have thunk it!

These newspapers deserve to fail. A lot of other newspapers deserve to fail as well. When a business that depends on advertising fails to provide anything to attract half the potential audience, it is not surprising that half the audience just might go elsewhere for their news.

Conservatives have nothing similar to the "fairness doctrine" to force media to include conservative content, and frankly it would go against our principles to enforce such a thing if we did have it. The only way we can change how the newspapers present the news is by voting with our pocketbooks. If enough newspapers fail, perhaps they will get the message. But they won't get it if government keeps bailing them out.

I can't help but feel that the same thing might be said about all the other bailouts being offered right now.

On the Meaning of Money

Andrew Tallman had a good explanation of the meaning of money, and it's value, in his column today over at Townhall.com. The heart of the explanation is here:

In truth, it’s simple. The wealthy don’t owe us. Literally, we owe them. That’s what money means.

If I have $50,000 in a bank somewhere, that means that society owes me goods and services in the amount of $50,000. If I spend $20,000 of it on a car, society doesn’t owe me as much anymore because they’ve compensated me in the form of that car. Everyone collectively still owes me $30,000, which I can collect on in a variety of ways.

Money is an IOU from society that we give people when they give us things we desire or do things for us we want. So when a person makes a lot of money, it means that he has done beneficial things for a lot of people. If he accumulates these IOUs in a storage facility somewhere, he is amassing wealth not because he owes society, but precisely because society owes him the value of all those accumulated and uncollected debts.

I had never thought about it quite like that.

Thomas Sowell makes a good point as well when he says that very few people remain in the same station in life over their lifetime. A student may be initially living below the poverty line. But when he gets a job after college, he may find himself among the lower middle class. Later, with more affluence, he may get married, have children, and, as his children go off to college, may find himself among the "Richest Americans," as The One would describe him. After retirement, he may find himself a member of the middle class again, having paid off his mortgage, driving less, and with fewer expenditures for daily living.

What the Obamamessiah is trying to do is to perform works of charity with other peoples money. Charity can only be done by someone giving of himself. When someone takes from others, which is what taxes are, and gives it to someone else, that is not charity. That is cheap and dishonest. Any politician with principles would know that, and would discourage it whenever it reared it's ugly head.

In talking to people about this, a number say, in essence, "Society is already taxed, and money is given for welfare, so this is just taking it a little farther. We aren't going to stop, so if we are already doing it, why shouldn't I get some." Such people tacitly admit that a wrong is being done, but then go one to say we should do more of it! Bah! I have little tolerance for such thinking.