Category Archives: Government

From Your Pocket To Union Pensions

Economy, Government, Political Economy, Politics, Private Property, States' Rights, The State

The compliant voter keeps electing local officials who’ll use their police powers to pick from the pockets of wealth creators so as to give to a more powerful constituency: members of the public sector unions. WSJ:

“Cities across the nation are raising property taxes, largely citing rising pension and health-care costs for their employees and retirees.
In Pennsylvania, the township of Upper Moreland is bumping up property taxes for residents by 13.6% in 2011. Next door the city of Philadelphia this year increased the tax 9.9%. In New York, Saratoga Springs will collect 4.4% more in property taxes in 2011; Troy will increase taxes by 1.9%.
… Some cities have also pushed unions to reopen contracts in an attempt to pare benefits or raise workers’ contributions for pensions and health care. They have faced stiff resistance from some unions that argue it’s unfair to penalize workers for a financial crisis that isn’t their fault. Others have agreed to some cutbacks.”

“WE ARE DOOMED.”

Our Overlords Who Art in D.C.

Ancient History, Debt, Elections, Glenn Beck, Government, IMMIGRATION, Inflation, Morality, Taxation, The State

“Glenn Beck and his faithful are dead wrong. Our overlords Who Art in D.C. will forever be incapable of sympathizing with us; will never respect us or our ‘God-given rights’; and will always rob us blind. Why? Because they can.

Contrary to what some of my countrymen believe, not even praying hard will send us a fatherly figure that resembles an American Founder to deliver us of the rotating kleptocracy that has taken up permanent residence in Washington and its surrounds.

Like the migrant flotsam and jetsam inflowing from Latin America, the imperial government and governing class are going nowhere.

Yes, how about that? Americans venture into Mexico at their own peril. Some have been killed on that country’s border. Still, politicians and their enabling pointy heads have looked obedient Americans in the proverbial eyes and told them that the fabric of their communities is renewed by endless immigration; that humanity has the natural right to venture here there and everywhere; and that, although they are suffering near Grecian joblessness, they should, ‘shut-up and pay up.’

A bloodbath of a midterm election has done nothing to stop the slash-and-burn Congress — ducks that should be lamed — from concocting bogus tax relief that increases the cost and burden of government, and guarantees that Americans pay for the accreting oink sector, if not through taxes, then by way of debt and dollars devalued.

How is that possible?

Across the pond, governments have begun courageously slashing their spending so deeply as to send the moochers and the looters of their societies rioting into the streets. Stateside, the government is in the midst of orgiastic outlays. Egged on by media ‘experts,’ journos, party strategists and TV tartlets (Republican and Democrat), Washington (Left and Right) behaves as if the events underway over there have no bearing back here, in debt-laden America.

At $14 trillion, America’s OPD (Outstanding Public Debt) almost equals its GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Yet the comitatus — ‘the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals’ — see nothing wrong with a proposed 1,924 page Omnibus bill, worth 1.2 trillion gigabucks.

In the book Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of Rome, Cullen Murphy draws the unflattering parallels between the imperial rule of ancient Rome and that of modern America, down to the contemporary ‘musicians’ [that would be Bono and Bon Jovi, surely], ‘the courtesans, diviners, buffoons … the people who taste the emperor’s food before he himself does … the core groups of bureaucrats and toadies who function within the nimbus of great power.’ The domain name ‘USA.gov.’, if you will.” …

More in my new column, “Our Overlords Who Art in D.C.” Read it now on WND.COM.

Just in time for Christmas, my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is now available on Kindle.

Tax Cuts? Baloney! Government Burden Has Grown

Debt, Government, Republicans, Ron Paul, Taxation

I understand why trusted and trustworthy representatives such as Ron Paul would vote for the tax-cut deal that has passed the Senate today (Wednesday).

Ron Paul: Pro, in an interview with Andrew Napolitano.

I certainly want to support the tax extension… they may put enough stuff in there to make me reconsider, but right now I would not want to participate in raising taxes on people.

[Via Slate]

As POLITICO put it: “House Republicans trying to tamp down discontent in their ranks from fiscal conservatives are issuing a simple message: This isn’t the bill we would’ve written, but it’s good enough.”

At work is the dreaded “compromise,” a word that sounds good, but is not: “the only time you want your representative to reach across the aisle is to grab a Democrat or an errant Republican by the throat.”

Since the above are my fighting words—political compromise is always a blow to principles—I’m with Peter Schiff, with some reservations. I disagree that “the compromise extension of the Bush era tax cuts” amounts to a “$900 billion package.” Tax cuts are never a cost. Since taxation is theft, a thief that has failed to secure the loot for himself has no right to write-off his losses. besides, money that is not taken by the state is money liberated, saved from waste. (The extension of unemployment benefits in the Bill did not amount to $900 Bil.)

“In truth however, there are no real tax cuts in this proposal. The true burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes but how much it spends. Since this deal ensures that government will be more expensive next year than it was this year, American citizens will have to shoulder the added cost. Just because Congress has decided to deliver the bill with debt rather than current taxes does not mean that the spending will not be paid for. The only thing the plan accomplishes is to alter the means by which government spending is financed.”

Co-Equal, Or Colluding, Branches of Government?

Constitution, Federalism, Government, Healthcare, Law, States' Rights, The Courts

The problem with the Commonwealth of Virgina’s pleasing legal victory in challenging the constitutionality of Obama’s “healthscare” is this: The individual mandate and much of the health care bill may be manifestly violative, but most of the limits the Constitution placed on the federales (and the courts themselves) are no longer upheld by the courts (or by Congress, that other co-equal branch of government), starting with the Tenth Amendment.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So, as PBS’s News Hour reported, once again so well (appending as it always does a PDF document of the Decision), “Federal judge Henry Hudson ruled Monday afternoon that a major provision of the health care reform law is unconstitutional. In his decision, the judge sided with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who argued that the Congress does not have the authority to require Americans to purchase health insurance. ‘The Minimum Essential Coverage Provision is neither within the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution,’ Judge Hudson wrote.”

But along could come the Supreme Court Justices and nullify the health-care preferences of the people of Virginia. That’s because the framers’ constitutional dispensation is now nothing but a sad joke. The Appellate Court could beat the SCOTUS to it.