I have come to believe that a system of term limits should be established at the Constitutional level (i.e. amendment) for federal office. My proposed plan is, again, outlined already on my website, though I could be open to modifications to the lengths of those limits. States should retain control of such things for state level offices.
Dr. Richard Davis
2010 District 1 Congressional Candidate for The Maryland Libertarian PartyFrom the commentary in the mainstream media, I thought there had been a coup d'etat in Washington.
The New York Times said what happened "strikes at the heart of democracy."
The Washington Post quoted an authority who warned it "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation."
No, not the Scott Brown victory. The media were upset because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that forbidding corporations and labor unions to spend money on political speech before elections is unconstitutional. A horrendous section of the abomination known as McCain-Feingold campaign-finance "reform" had bitten the dust. It was long overdue.
The case grew out of a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton that Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, planned to show on cable television during the 2008 presidential primary season. The law said that was illegal.
The 5-4 majority consisted of the four conservative justices and the swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the main opinion. He couldn't have been more clear: "When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. ... The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves." READ MORE REASON
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Unemployment on the Rise
Employment in the U.S. peaked in November, 2007 at 146.6 million people. As of December 2009, only 137.8 million Americans were employed – a loss of 8.8 million jobs in 25 months. Using the official (U3) measurement, the unemployment rate is 10%. Using the broader, more realistic (U6) measurement, the rate is 16.3%. If you add in discouraged workers who were defined out of the calculation during the Clinton Administration, the rate has reached 22%.
That’s on a par with the 25% unemployment rate during the Great Depression. The current employment-to-population ratio of 58.2% is down to levels last seen before women entered the workforce en masse during the 1970s. And the economy continues to lose more than 200,000 jobs per month. That can’t go on forever. Recessions always end. But what are the industries that will lead us out of this horrific downturn and provide the jobs of the future?
READ MORE @ LEW ROCKWELL
Mandatory IRAs just proposed by Obama Administration on 1/25/10 is the 1st step in stealth nationalization & forced investment of our retirement benefits to support the treasury debt market! Read the veiled report in Business Week.
A Personal Note from the Author
Dear Concerned American:
I begin with a quote from a politician who believed in an all-powerful central government and in using that power to achieve his vision for a nation. "He who has his thumb on the purse has the power." ~ Otto von Bismarck, a statesman who created the modern Germany and known as the iron chancellor.
But however well-intentioned he might have been, he built the regulatory groundwork and government institutions for a centralized federal state that was later taken over by an evil political leader who created a tyranny seldom seen in the world before, or after. The tyranny started in 1933, 35 years after Bismarck's death, was National Socialism and the leader was Adolf Hitler. All of this came after Germany's military defeat in World War One and a national debt crisis, followed by hyperinflation and currency collapse
I fear that today the control, nationalization and ultimate confiscation of trillions in private US retirement plan assets is on the horizon. Rick Santelli alluded to the possible nationalization and forced investment into treasuries on CNBC as recently as January 8, 2010. There was also similar coverage on Bloomberg and Business Week.
Reports out of Washington indicate that new retirement annuities may be promoted by Obama aides. This is just the beginning! The question every successful American with substantial retirement assets must ask is "what will you do if our retirement funds are forced to become the buyer of last resort for US treasury obligations?" Unless you believe Congress and Washington bureaucrats will do a fair job of allocating and distributing your personal retirement assets between yourself and others, you must begin now to protect your assets.
As the United States moves into a new decade of military overreach abroad and national bankruptcy at home, Washington is on a desperate search for more revenue and a solution to the future financing of the trillions in national debt obligations currently held by foreign central banks and investors. Economists, politicians and smart investors know the dollar's days as the world reserve currency are numbered, as is our ability to finance the national debt.
Although the historical government solution to unsustainable government debt loads has always been the destruction of the debts by currency depreciation and eventual hyperinflation, there is always an intermediate step used to buy more time for the politicians in power. This action, usually side-stepped and downplayed by the establishment historians paid to hide the real facts of history, is wealth confiscation. Napoleon had it right when he stated, "History is a state of lies agreed upon."
The largest source of liquid private wealth remaining in the United States is the $15 trillion in private retirement funds. The ultimate ownership, control and future of these funds has already been compromised and exchanged for the favorable tax treatment of private retirement plans. Congress writes the laws, so they can tax, penalize, hold your funds hostage and, although they'd never use the word "confiscate," use your assets at their discretion.
The retirement trap I'm writing about is only a proposal at the present time and since it may well begin in the latter years of the Obama Administration, assuming the Democrats can somehow maintain their majorities in Congress, I'm calling it the "Obama Retirement Trap." But make no mistake, the government need for current revenue and their frenzied search for liquidity to monetize their debt obligations is an unspoken quest of both political parties. The establishments of both political parties will do whatever it takes to stay in power, including the raiding and pillaging of your retirement funds.
I am not a Johnny-come-lately to the area of retirement planning. Although I've been in the investment business since the early 1970's, and often write about political and freedom-oriented issues, my background has always been in retirement planning. I've been following the government move to raid private retirement funds since the early 1980's with my The Threat of the Private Retirement System book written in 1983. I warned again about this in my 1994 book Escape the Pension Trap. The threat receded somewhat with the Bush Administration, but it is now back with a vengeance and the revenue needs of Washington will eventually trump any government promises and guarantees.I created the first self-directed hard asset IRA account for gold and collectibles back in the late 1970's and I still remember the day when I was sitting in the office of James U. Blanchard III, a champion of liberty and sound money, in New Orleans. His National Committee to Legalize Gold spearheaded a nationwide grassroots campaign that restored the right of Americans to again own gold bullion following Roosevelt's gold confiscation during the 1930's Great Depression.
Congressman Ron Paul gave us a call to inform us that at the last minute, language had been inserted into the 1981 Economic Recovery Act, Section 314(b) ruling "collectibles" as not in the "public interest" of the United States and, therefore, prohibited from future retirement plan investments. This language promoted by Wall Street and the banks destroyed the opportunity to buy retirement investments performing best during those years of high inflation. More importantly, this section created a precedent for the Secretary of the Treasury to label any investment as not in the public interest in the future – and therefore prohibited from retirement plans.
You will be forced into another Social Security-like scheme with the proposed mandatory Guaranteed Retirement Annuity, with 5% of your salary confiscated into the program. You will also eventually find your existing retirement funds forced into the government program and you will lose your ability to invest and protect your retirement funds outside of the dollar, government bonds, and the US investment markets at some time in the future. The only questions are when and what the final details of this, the greatest potential wealth confiscation in the history of the world, will be.
My goal in writing this report is to make you aware of the threat with enough time to take some of my recommended actions to protect your retirement wealth, and thereby minimizing the Washington threat and their future confiscation efforts. Conventional retirement experts and most Wall Street investment advisors will say that I'm paranoid and crazy to advance such a theory because they want to retain the management, the fees and the commissions from your retirement investments.
The risks and threats of standing up to Washington’s wealth confiscation and aggression are great. But we have to take a stand. One of the greatest men in history I've studied was a relatively unknown, career army colonel coming from a respected family who lived right across the river from the nation's capitol. Just before the start of a war, the head of the nation offered this officer the opportunity to take command of the entire national army if he would only lead an invasion and turn against his state and people. This officer declined the offer and all that went with it. The head of the nation was so outraged that he had the officer’s home and plantation occupied, confiscated and used as a burial ground for the war dead, never to be returned to his family or their descendents.
The president was Abraham Lincoln, the colonel was Robert E. Lee and his home, called Arlington, is now known as Arlington National Cemetery right across the Potomac River from Washington, DC.
"Sirs, my name is the heritage of my parents. It is all I have, and it is not for sale. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less." ~ Robert E. Lee
I believe the best retirement planning advice I can offer to successful individuals is to do exactly the opposite of what the government and most retirement or investment professionals suggest. Washington always recommends what is in their best interest, as do most bankers and investment firms, the so-called financial experts who just received trillions in bailouts and guarantees with your tax dollars.
Can you appreciate the irony and hypocrisy of financial institutions like Merrill Lynch or the Bank of America, just to mention a few, who have so little respect for the American public that they can still advertise to manage your investments or even handle your day-to-day banking needs when both went technically bankrupt? They pay themselves outlandish bonuses, yet they only survive in business at all because of the billions in bailouts and guarantees paid for by you, the American taxpayers, and forced on you through the lobbyists they used to buy the bailout votes in Congress.
I'm retired from the investment business. But I want to warn the American public about the growing threat to our retirement assets and benefits from a government gone wild, desperate for revenue, and looking for funds to buy their increasingly risky and ultimately worthless treasury obligations. You've been warned, I've done my duty as an American and an expert in the field. The rest is up to you.
Key Elements of the Obama Retirement Trap
Stealth Nationalization
Following their attempt at "so-called" health care reform in 2009 and 2010 – the first step in total nationalization of health care – Washington will next turn its attention to another broken program, the private retirement system. Although both health care and the private retirement system need real reform, the government, as usual, will use the problems to expand federal control and redirect the contributions currently going into quasi-private programs back towards the bankrupt coffers of the federal government.
Your Retirement Plan Will Soon Become Washington's ATM Machine
Today over $15 trillion is sitting in tax-favored retirement plans, including $4 trillion in IRA accounts. Retirement savings make up 35% of all private assets. Washington is broke, the deficit is soaring and Congress simply can’t wait for Americans to retire so they can start taxing these funds. The politicians are tired of waiting; they need your money now.
The Trojan Horse
The nationalization will begin with a modest proposal to increase retirement security and basically create a new, third level of mandatory retirement benefits in addition to private plans and Social Security. This will be described as a Guaranteed Retirement Annuity or Account. Teresa Ghilarducci is the author of this leftist plan which first appeared in 2007 at the Economic Policy Institute: Agenda for Shared Prosperity. In 2008, she became the new Director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research. In her book When I’m 64: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan To Save Them, she hypes her retirement solution for millions who do not have adequate retirement savings. Her ultimate solution is to confiscate most of the retirement assets of successful and wealthy Americans.
In the proposal, the government will even make an annual contribution to every citizen’s account of around $600 annually, covering the unemployed, under-employed and all working Americans. The initial problem for productive, successful Americans is that Washington will require, in exchange for their contribution, that all working Americans contribute 5% of their annual salaries or income into this new "guaranteed account" managed and run by the hard-working bureaucrats at the Social Security System. Successful Americans will of course complain about losing the deduction for this contribution, which is little more than a new 5% tax on income. But this is just the beginning of the problem for Americans with substantial retirement savings and outstanding benefits.
The Devil Is In the Details
Different proposals would delay retirement age until age 64, and some even later. The guaranteed retirement annuity would be structured to allow the government to hold and invest the money. Unlike your current private plan, it would be very difficult for members to withdraw their money before and even after retirement, except over the life expectancy of the participant.
I fear, following implementation of the contributory GRA program, a future legislative action by Congress would be to end the tax deductions and tax-deferred growth of all retirement plans, thus forcing these funds into the government controlled annuity. Your forced retirement contributions would be pooled and professionally managed by Social Security. Also, beneficiaries would be cheated out of half of any benefits remaining at the death of a participant because Ghilarducci’s plan has 50% of all balances at death reverting to the Feds, not the beneficiaries.
The Confiscation Event
At some time during the next decade, a global run on treasury debt and the dollar will also likely take the American stock market down past lows not seen since the financial meltdown crisis in 2008 and 2009. The 50% to 75% stock market pullback during the actual bankruptcy of the Washington debt and paper dollar will send shock waves through retirees and current plan participants as their private retirement plan balances plummet.
At this time, Washington will "come to the rescue" and guarantee all private retirement plan market values back to pre-crisis levels. The gullible American public will overwhelmingly support this effort by switching their dwindling funds into the Guaranteed Retirement Annuity managed by the government. For the first few years, Washington will probably label those few of us who warn that Americans have lost their retirement benefits as extremists, Ron Paul paranoids and Tea Party advocates.
Then it will become crystal clear to all Americans that their retirement benefits have been given away for a promise by an evil group of plunderers who have never in their history kept a promise, a guarantee, or their word on anything. The greatest theft of wealth in the history of the world will have taken place and only those few who took heed of an early warning will still have their retirement benefits and security.
You Will Be Forced To Become The Final Buyer of Last Resort For Collapsing Washington Treasury Obligations
Although the faltering dollar could rebound in the short run, the longer-term prognosis is terminal unless Washington dramatically reduces spending and borrowing. When the global run on treasury debt and the dollar develops, the current relative minor fluctuations in values today will be replaced by a virulent death spiral of historic proportions rarely seen in world history.
Sometime in the next decade, the Washington dollar collapse will take its shameful place in history at the pinnacle of fiat currency robberies by politicians and central bankers. We will lead the world in wealth lost and future generations saddled by illegitimate government debts.
In the meantime, Americans should insulate themselves from the coming dollar and debt debacle by investing in gold bullion stored in the US, as well as outside, in secure facilities like the one offered by Global Gold Inc. in Switzerland, through mining shares, as well as through foreign currency diversification with the euro and Swiss franc. Don’t wait, take action now while you still have the opportunity to protect and preserve your wealth.
In the future, when the rest of the world’s investors, governments and central banks have lost enough purchasing power through their misguided investment in Washington treasury obligations, they will still have the luxury and financial freedom to diversify maturing treasury obligations and new funds into other non-dollar bonds, gold etc. But Americans will not have this choice. They will find that their retirement funds in the mandatory guaranteed retirement annuity will be used to purchase much of the rollover of treasury debt not repurchased by the Federal Reserve System.
The taxpayers will be forced to become the buyer of last resort in the final collapse of Washington treasury obligations. This is sort like being forced to purchase stock in AIG weeks before the final stock crash.
You Are A Narrow Target of Opportunity: Not A Grand Conspiracy
This is just another revenue generator for Washington and a payback for the unions, just like the planned nationalization of health care. The target is successful, productive Americans who make good annual incomes or who have been frugal and built up substantial retirement benefits in qualified plans.
There Will Be No Public Outcry Like With Nationalized Health Care
Don't expect a broad public reaction to the stealth nationalization to protect your hard-earned benefits. Most unemployed, underemployed, union workers in failing union plans, and eventually state and local government employees will benefit from this attack on the retirement assets of productive, successful Americans working in the private sector. You are a minority and the mob rule of democracy warned about by Thomas Jefferson is just doing what it has always done. But this time with you as the target.
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people take away the rights of the other forty-nine." ~ Thomas Jefferson
Don't Cry For Us Argentina
Bankrupt governments have a recent history of confiscating and nationalizing private retirement programs. Back on October 21, 2008, Fernandez de Kirchner, the president of Argentina, announced plans to take over $29 billion of private pension accounts, saying a state-run system would protect retirees from fluctuations in financial markets. Roque Fernandez, an economy minister and central bank president in the 1990’s, said the move is a "confiscation" of people's savings.
How the Government Benefits From the Guaranteed Retirement Annuity
Initially, the government will receive a dramatic increase in revenue as Americans will be required to contribute (without a deduction) 5% of their annual income (without a cap like Social Security) into the GRA. These contributions will be accounted for in some type of statement, but the actual funds will disappear into the Washington coffers just like your annual Social Security taxes.
READ THE REST AT LEW ROCKWELL
Jakubiak will run as a Democrat and plans to officially announce his candidacy today in a district-wide tour that he said will include campaign stops in Salisbury, Cambridge and Easton.
He said the cornerstone of his campaign will be improving the local economy and restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Jakubiak felt compelled to run, in part, because of Maryland's $2 billion budget deficit and the high number of residents who are unemployed or living below the poverty level in Wicomico and Dorchester counties. READ MORE AT THE DAILY TIMES"The New Deal Court essentially told Congress: It doesn't matter what the Constitution says or what limits on government it establishes, you are empowered to spend money on whatever you please. And so Congress does, even though its profligacy has placed the nation in great economic peril."
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
Dr. Richard Davis
2010 District 1 Congressional Candidate for The Maryland Libertarian PartyCommon Sense, Thomas Paine’s magnificent, vivid defense of liberty, burst on Philadelphia 234 years ago this month. “Some writers have so confounded society with government,” begins this brilliant attack on the latter, “as to leave little or no distinction between them ... [Yet s]ociety is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness.” With readers still reeling from that unanswerable logic, Paine detonates his next charge two sentences later: “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer!” And so on, through paragraph after glorious paragraph, exposing and excoriating the oppression and corruption that are the State.
Robert Bell printed 1,000 copies and began selling them from his shop on Third Street January 10. That probably had Dr. Benjamin Rush smiling slyly, though not because his fame as a Patriot would one day equal his medical reputation. He had befriended Paine soon after the British immigrant sailed into town the previous year, so sick he debarked on a stretcher. Paine carried letters of introduction from no less than Benjamin Franklin, whom he had met before leaving London and who recommended the 37-year-old radical as “an ingenious worthy young man.” That may have been a tad optimistic, considering Paine’s abject failures, whether as a corset-maker, excise-tax-collector, or husband: widowed once, he separated from his second wife about six months before his voyage to America.
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Franklin’s imprimatur may have endeared Paine to the doctor, but even more it was “conversation…Our subjects…were political,” Rush recalled. At some point, he urged Paine to pen the treatise Rush had planned – but feared – to write on the need for American independence: “My profession and connections…tied me to Philadelphia where a great majority of the citizens…were hostile to a separation of our country from Great Britain.” Fancy-free Tom could pick up and flee if the essay’s reception were as dire as the doctor expected.
Paine enthusiastically agreed. Rush helped by proof-reading; as editors are wont to do, he changed the title: Plain Truth became Common Sense. By now, ten days after “R. Bell, Printer” first offered the piece for sale, most of the city’s 25,000 inhabitants are talking about Common Sense. A copy has probably reached New York’s printers as well, though it will be mid-February before readers there can buy copies, while residents of Providence, Rhode Island won’t savor Paine’s prose until February 24.
The Revolution divided Americans in the 1770’s as much as a shooting one would today. The Feds casually, constantly eviscerate the Constitution, yet how many of your friends and family even notice, let alone weep over it as you do? They gripe about their taxes, the dumb and dangerous public schools, or the surly airport screener who abused them, but the dissatisfaction doesn’t extend to government as a whole. Indeed, they may be as grateful for its “protection” from Islamic terrorists as some 18th-century Americans were for the British Empire’s wars against rapacious, tyrannical, Catholic France. Then there’s humanity’s inertia, as well as the belief that the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. Jefferson noted both in the Declaration: “…mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee."
"What, sir, is the use of militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. . . Whenever Government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise a standing army upon its ruins."
Elbridge Gerry
Looking at the Constitution as it was written, is a standing army unconstitutional?
Certainly we need to defend our borders and protect our people from invaders, I do not dispute that. We currently live in a world that is full of unrest and there are those who wish us harm, I do not dispute that.
In a practice that has been ongoing for years, we have spent an enormous amount of money on National Defense with a standing Army. We still have troops in Japan, Germany, Korea, Saudi Arabia and our Naval vessels are scattered throughout the world - strategically.
Why?
Is Japan such a threat we have to keep the boot at their throat? Why are we still in Europe? Is it our responsibility to provide military security for South Korea?
This is a serious debate that needs to be going on now. What is the future of our Military? Do we need to have a new Constitutional Convention and adjust it?
The facts are plain for any objective observer to see. Brown, who ran a campaign focused on opposition to the Democrats' plan to remake the health care system, represents the 41st Republican vote in the Senate, meaning that Democrats can no longer break a united GOP filibuster. Consequently, for any future bill to pass in the Senate, it must have some Republican support.
Both the House and the Senate have already passed separate health care reform bills. But these bills differ significantly in their financing mechanisms, their special interest deals, and their treatment of federal funding of abortion. For reform to become law, the two legislative bodies must reconcile their differences and each pass a unified bill. But given the Republicans' unbreakable filibuster power, it's unlikely any reconciled bill could get through the Senate. Meanwhile, as a result of both longstanding policy disagreements and an upswell in political pressure stemming from the Massachusetts election, not enough members in the House are willing to accept the Senate bill as is. READ MORE REASON
On January 3rd, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke delivered a major speech at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association. In his formal paper, "Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble," Chairman Bernanke argues that the Fed's monetary policy was not responsible for the U.S. housing bubble. He claims that faulty regulation was the primary culprit.
Chairman Bernanke's claim is a great canard. The Fed is a serial bubble blower. Let's first consider the Fed-generated demand bubbles. The easiest way to do this is to measure the trend rate of growth in nominal final sales to U.S. purchasers and then examine the deviations from that trend. As the accompanying chart shows, nominal final sales grew at a 5.4% annual rate from the first quarter of 1987 through the third quarter of 2009. This reflects a combination of real sales growth of 3% and inflation of 2.4%.
The nominal final sales measure of aggregate demand contains three significant deviations from the trend (demand bubbles). The first followed the October 1987 stock market crash. The second followed the Asian financial crisis and the collapse of the Russian ruble and Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. The last jump in nominal final sales was set off by the Fed's liquidity injection to fend off a false deflation scare in 2002.
The Fed's zigzag pattern is clear: an overreaction to a so-called crisis, resulting in the excessive injection of liquidity (a sales boom), followed by a draining of liquidity and a recession (a sales slump). READ MORE @ CATO
While short-term thinking, focused on the November election, will dominate Beltway chatter about re-tooling Obama's legislative agenda, Democrats desperately need a new informing ideology to replace the 19th and 20th Century brand of statist programmatic liberalism rejected by the political center, in a choice-demanding information age.
Bill Daley, the smartest of Democratic icon Richard J. Daley’s seven children, a few months ago wrote that the party needs to “plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster.” In his first Washington Post column of the new year, democratic socialist Harold Meyerson did just the opposite, yearning for the “legislative torrents of the New Deal and the Great Society...templates that fire the liberal imagination.” And lefties on the Hill will be beating up on bankers to save themselves from their health care debacle.
Daley’s advice was good—for the devastated presidential Democratic Party of 1984. A near perfect distillation of economic left-liberalism admired on college campuses and in Latin America, Meyerson's vision might have been relevant in 1964, when party policy wonks demanded “Complete The New Deal!” READ MORE REASON
"Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships."
"It may be true … that "you can't fool all the people all the time", but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country. "
LP Texas chairman Pat Dixon speaks about "spoiling" in the Texas Tribune, January 25, 2010:
Dixon doesn’t care if his candidates take votes away from the major parties. You can’t spoil an election if the mainstream parties are already rotten, he says. “[Spoiling] would be a concern if there were candidates on the ballot on either the Democratic or Republican parties who were really close enough that we would rather have them in office,” he said. Dixon pointed to the fact that Libertarians often do not run against U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who represents the more libertarian element of the Republican Party, and who was the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1988. Ironically, this year a Libertarian will be challenging Paul for his seat.
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This certainly applies in Maryland. Dr. Richard Davis was referred to as a "Spoiler" in the 2008 election. Many people often say they are choosing the "lesser of two evils" however if that is the case, then you are still voting for evil.
For example, Maryland could largely make up for it by using $274 million in extra fund balance Gov. Martin O’Malley included in the budget he released last week. The remaining $115 million hole could be filled by using some of the state’s $635 million Rainy Day Fund.
However, if lawmakers want to leave extra money in the budget to adjust for any further revenue drops Deschenaux advised them to look for other places to find the money.
"Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election."
"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death. "
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
What's At Stake
Congress shall make no law .... abridging the freedom of speech.
The Bill of Rights in the Constitution does not get much clearer or simpler. Congress cannot make a law that restricts the purchase of air time on Television by and individual or entity to express their opinion. Simply put, McCain-Feingold was a bad law. Just because Congress can pass a law and the President (Bush, who stated it was probably unconstitutional when he signed) does not mean it is right. The checks and balance that have been set in place worked in this scenario.
Congress passed a law that was in contradiction to the Constitution, particularly the First Amendment. The President signed it. The Supreme Court has reviewed several cases that have come forth through this law and overturned several portions. The most recent dealing with a movie made during the last Presidential Campaign.
It did find that McCain-Feingold restricted free speech which is guaranteed under the First Amendment. Democrats complain that it will favor Republicans. Well then tell your tight-wad supporters to fork over more money. They complain that it is not fair, much like their reasoning behind the Fairness Doctrine. I then refer them back to the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment ..... of the press." The press is in general all media, TV, Blogs, Newspapers, Radio, etc. If you do not like what someone is writing - then don't buy it. If you do not like what someone is saying, then don't listen.
Now certainly there is responsibility that comes with providing information to the masses. There is responsibility that come with defamation of character. Most people are able to determine the idiots and nut cases from rational discourse. What we read, what we watch, what we listen too, and what we say is all a choice and we are all responsible for our choices.
A lot of people don’t realize that during communism in countries like Romania, they held presidential elections as well every so many years and the people were told that they could “choose” the president. Thing was: all the candidates belonged to the communist party so there would always be a communist president and communism would persist. In order for someone from the communist party not to be elected, a second party would somehow have to get on the ballot and in 1990 this finally happened.
The sad, disappointing and frustrating thing is that we have the same situation here in America but the pixy-dust-sniffing majority in this country doesn’t realize it. Last presidential election I voted for the candidate of my choice, Ron Paul, and the state of Georgia threw my vote away because Ron Paul was not an official state-approved candidate. He had not done what the state decided he would need to do to be on the ballot so therefore he was not considered an “official” candidate and was not on the ballot. If you chose to vote for him as a write-in, then they simply did not count your vote.
How is having only two major parties who are always on the ballot and an election system designed by the state to keep those two parties in power and which makes it almost financially and logistically impossible for other parties to get on the ballot so much different from the communist system of having only one party on the ballot and an election system that makes it financially and logistically impossible for other parties? There’s no freedom of choice in selecting our government. We as Americans are constantly voting for the lesser of two evils and seem to be content to do so.
Well how about in the market place then? Surely we must have freedom of choice in the market place. Look at all the choices we have to choose from. Unfortunately, this is a big negative as well. Just because there are a hundred different types of food or drugs, for example, from which to choose, in reality you can only choose from the ones that the state has approved for you.
The FDA is a federal agency with an annual budget in 2010 of $3.2 billion and is planning on hiring another 1,200 new employees to help construct the list of state-approved food and drugs (see, the government can create new jobs).
Now I’ve heard the argument a thousand times: sure the FDA is a government agency and it’s not perfect but without an agency like the FDA there would be harmful foods and drugs on the market that people would voluntarily choose to purchase and people could be maimed, sickened and even die. We need the FDA. Regulating food and drugs is too big a job, only the federal government has the resources to do it. Thank God for the FDA!
This argument assumes a couple of things. First, that the FDA has found the gold at the end of rainbow so the government already has the financial resources necessary to pay for their activities and so that money doesn’t have to come from the people. Secondly, that the FDA is in fact not staffed with people from the same social pool that says the federal government already has the necessary resources to regulate food and drugs but rather with wizards that posses special magical powers that the rest of us don’t and can somehow determine the “goodness” of foods and drugs for human consumption. It assumes the FDA doesn’t even need humans to determine the human effects of foods and drugs. They can simply dip a piece of litmus paper into a sample and if it turns red then it is not state approved.
Of course this is not the case. The FDA has only the resources that they take from the private sector in the way of taxes, debt, inflation and manpower. Furthermore, it conducts clinical trials on humans who volunteer to participate. Basically, that means that the FDA gets volunteers to try new foods and drugs and then they sit back and watch what happens. If the volunteers have bad side effects, like their heads turn purple, their hair falls out, they are maimed, sickened or die, then the FDA disseminates this information to the public and the food or drug is not approved for sale in the U.S. and so people have no choice: they cannot buy it even if they wanted to.
Compare this to a new food or drug appearing in the market place and people voluntarily choosing to buy it and consume it. If people have adverse side effects to the new good then this information will be disseminated naturally by the market and people will choose to stop buying it.
A famous example of this was the Tylenol poisoning case of 1982 in which someone went into stores in the Chicago area and laced extra strength Tylenol capsules with potassium-cyanide. The first death occurred on September 29, 1982. Within 6 days, and completely of its own accord, Johnson & Johnson had recalled all its bottles of extra strength Tylenol with a retail market value of some $100 million. By November of the same year, Johnson & Johnson had already re-engineered its pill bottle packaging – a new triple-sealed package – and within a year Tylenol was once again a major competitor in the market place.
What was the FDA doing during this time? Sitting on its hands trying to figure out who to blame and seeing what kind of new packaging Johnson & Johnson came up with so they could copy it and modify their food and drug packaging regulations accordingly and take the credit for keeping Americans safe. As with any government agency, the FDA didn’t want this crisis to go to waste so they also used it to expand their budget and payroll. After all, with the new regulations they would need more people and money to enforce them.
In the end the FDA cannot do anymore than the market can do in identifying harmful foods and drugs. In fact, historical evidence shows that the market does a better, faster and more efficient job of identifying these things than the FDA. The FDA is always one step behind the markets. Reacting and taking the credit at a cost of $3.2 billion to the tax payer and limiting real freedom of choice in America.
Don Cooper [send him mail] is a Florida native, Navy veteran, economist, and editor of the daily non-partisan column Qaoss.com.
Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com.
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