Category Archives: The State

The Good, The Bad And The Banana Republic

Barack Obama, Democrats, Government, Taxation, The State

Befitting the banana republic he is fashioning, President Camacho “thinks” (and even John Stewart disagrees) that there is not a “smidgen” of corruption in the fact that Catherine Engelbrecht was visited fifteen times by four federal agencies “in a span of two years after her [conservative] group applied for tax-exempt status with the IRS in 2010.”

Reports Breitbart:

Engelbrecht’s business had never been visited by the federal government before:

The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) began a series of inquiries about her and her group; the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) began demanding to see her family’s firearms in surprise audits of her and her husband’s small gun dealership – which had done less than $200 in sales; OSHA (Occupational Safety Hazards Administration) began a surprise audit of their small family manufacturing business; and the EPA-affiliated TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environment Quality) did a surprise visit and audit due to “a complaint being called in.”

Of course, these agencies can be used in legally permissible ways to harass and sabotage any of us.

The vision of everything that’s good about America, Engelbrecht has also endured a personal assault from Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, the embodiment of all that is rotten about this country.

Just imagine: As a taxpayer, Catherine Engelbrecht pays Cummings’ way. Using her money, this bit of drek has embarks on a public campaign to smear her name and that of her organization.

The Son Of Sam Promises ‘Morning In America’

Barack Obama, Propaganda, Socialism, The State

I promised “Zero Coverage of O’s ‘Stalinesque Extravaganza,’” but you knew I’d renege.

Barack Obama began his hour-long bullshit session by conjuring a Norman-Rockwell scene of an America that is no longer. Farms, churches, close-knit communities; hard-working traditional, nuclear families awakening to … “Morning in America.” An America that progressives such as himself killed off a long time ago.

Then he ran with one lie after another. The US was poised for an economic Renaissance, even though about ninety million Americans are no longer in the workforce, our kids are, on average, dumber than kids in the rest of the developed world, and we’re divided as never before.

It would appear that “our deficits” too have been “cut by more than half,” even as we carry $17 trillion in national debt and a lot more than that in unfunded liabilities.

But it’s all good.

* As he did five times before, BHO vowed to make DC work once and for all, for this was what he promised those who sent him to the Capital.
* More empty eighth-grade level waffle about the promise of America—“opportunity for all – the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead,” all the while increasing distribution and expanding entitlement programs.
* More “strengthen-the-middle-class” promises were issued while fucking the bourgeoisie over with Obamacare.
* Finally an assertion based on … science (yeah, right), contrary to the rest of the president’s lies: The First Lady is credited with helping to “bring down childhood obesity rates for the first time in thirty years.” I guess they tested Michelle’s hypothesis.

Oh, and what would the president’s slushy speech be without mention of the “son of a single mom” who became “president of the greatest nation on Earth.”

The Sweet Sounds of Secession

Constitution, Homosexuality, Law, States' Rights, The State

Contra broadcaster Mark Levin, the healthiest and most intuitive response to deep-seated unhappiness—political or personal—is not to hold a constitutional convention, but to leave; to exit the abusive relationship.

In Utah, it was U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby who did the honors of striking down “Utah’s voter-approved law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.”

In response, a “constitutional attorney” named Joe Wolverton spoke stirringly about secession:

The federal government does hundreds of things every day that are not in the “contract,” so states have the right to rescind it, he said.

“We are absolutely within our right to secede from a political union that no longer answers to the demands of liberty and justice,” he said.

Wolverton also went after elected officials who he says have betrayed the country.

“Have we elected traitors? Yes we have, absolutely. Both parties continue to grow the federal government and burden the states and the people.”

Mark Levin has trashed secession but looks to the states for salvation:

To reclaim the republic, Levin and his listeners look to the states and their role in the amendment process, as stipulated in Article V of the Constitution. Never mind that the states, contrary to the mistaken predictions and hopes of the Constitution makers, have never initiated a constitutional amendment; and never mind that even in the event that the states demand a constitutional convention, there is no mechanism to compel Congress to act.

The great constitutional scholar James McClellan was no “neo-confederate.” Yet even an ardent defender of the Constitution as McClellan conceded that, sadly, “the Framers relied on the good faith of Congress for the observance of the requirement” and that “there was no way to force Congress to act.” (“Liberty, Order, And Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government,” p. 310.)

Levin and his listeners are deluded if they think that from the “free” states—all four of them (New Hampshire, Colorado, South Dakota and Alaska)—will come our salvation. The legislatures of two-thirds of the states have to unite to call on Congress to hold a national Constitutional convention for the purpose of amending the dead-letter Constitution.

Incidentally, as a libertarian, I want to keep the state out of marriage altogether. “In furtherance of liberty, Uncle Sam’s purview must be curtailed, not expanded. On this score, let our gay friends and family members lead the way. Let them solemnize their commitment in contract and through church, synagogue and mosque (that will be the day!).”

Conservatives Adopting Lefty Language About ‘Income Inequality’

Business, Capitalism, Conservatism, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property, The State

A more meaningful index than “income inequality”—it implies that income equality is the thing to strive for, heaven help us!—would be the correlation between the increasing balance sheets of the central banks of the world and so-called increasing wealth discrepancies.

Conservatives rarely argue the morality of capitalism and individual liberty. If they do debate, it is about the utility of freedom to the common good. The entire impetus of Republican-Party operatives is to keep up with the issues the Democrats introduce to distract from the destructive effects of galloping statism. So if the latter decry “income inequality,” the former affirm that they too worry themselves sick over whatever it is the Democrats are droning on about.

Today, Fox News reported gravely that the “World’s richest 85 people have as much as bottom half the population.” Similarly, this Townhall.com writer assures his readers that “Inequality is a Conservative Issue.”

“The Capitalist Professor” George Reisman is having none of it. He writes “In Defense of Business Fortunes and the Destructive Effects of Imposing Economic Equality,” at www.twitter.com, @GGReisman:

1. A fortune is accumulated by means of earning a high rate of profit on capital and heavily saving and reinvesting it year after year.

2. The high rate of profit is achieved by introducing newer, better products or producing existing products at a lower cost.

3. Sooner or later, competition brings down a high rate of profit to the general level. To go on earning it, further innovation is necessary.

4. For example, to maintain its high rate of profit, Apple has had to repeatedly improve its products and introduce several major new ones.

5. Had Apple stood still, its initially very profitable products, made obsolete by competition, would now be selling at huge losses.

6. The high profits are generally invested in the means of producing the very kind of products in which the innovations take place.

7. For example, Apple’s profits are invested in the expanded and improved production of Apple’s products.

8. Thus, business fortunes under capitalism represent ever better, less expensive products produced with capital constituted by those fortunes.

9. The fortunes originate in profits and are used as capital. Both ways they serve the general buying public. They also pay wages and salaries.

10. The existence of fortunes under capitalism benefits everyone in his capacity both as a buyer of products and seller of labor.

11. Imposing economic equality requires the confiscation of high profits. It would abort the earning of fortunes and stifle economic progress.

12. Advocates of economic equality know nothing about profits, innovation, or capital. They believe that wealth is a pile of consumers’ goods.

13. The capitalists, whom they depict as fat men, allegedly have too much of this pile. Some of it must be given to the starving masses.

14. Thus, imposing economic equality is also a policy of seizing capital in order to consume it—eating the seed corn and being impoverished.

15. Advocates of economic equality are wilfully ignorant of economics. They are fueled by envy and resentment, biting the hands that feed them.

16. Socialism/Communism is their philosophy. Stalin and Mao are their heroes. Famine, slave labor camps, and mass death are their legacy.