I wonder if anyone really thinks about where the government derives its authority.

"The instrument by which [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty! "--Alexander Hamilton, Tully, No. 3, 1794

I think Mr. Hamilton about hit the nail on the head with the above quote. So when does the citizen stop being the master of the government and become the slave? When does the citizen cease to be served by the government and instead be forced to serve the government?

In so many instances in today’s federal policies it is hard to see the law that grants the government the authority for its actions, and if that authority does not exists then the action is instituted with just the force of the government and as Hamilton said liberty is lost. Once the force of the government is the only justification needed for an action then any action can be justified by the government. Let me say that again – once the force of the government is the only justification needed for an action - - - then ANY action can be justified by the government.

It is very easy to confuse the government with the country and both with the constitution. But they are not the same. When a person joins the military they do not swear an oath to “protect and defend the government” or even the county. They swear to “protect and defend the constitution”.

That is because the constitution is the law that all government authority flows from. The constitution is the law that protects us FROM the government. It lays out the exact duties of the government to prevent the government from taking on other duties that will surly decrease our liberty. The founding fathers understood from history the very nature of governments. They slowly take over more and more control of society until the only reason the citizen exists is to serve the government itself.

In the past I have talked about federal spending for education. In this case money that originates from the states flows to the federal government only to have some portion returned to the states. Does this system serve the cause of education? Or does it just supply the tools for the federal government to control education? Is the citizen being served by the government or the other way around? We pay federal taxes that are then used to assist states in highway construction and maintenance. Again we have the federal government collecting money from the states then re-distributing a portion back to the very state it collected it from in the first place. Then if the states do not do the federal governments bidding on highway safety laws, the federal government withholds the money. Things like mandatory seat belt use would never fall under the constitutional mandate of the federal government. But using our own taxes dollars as a club to enforce the governments will, most certainly falls under the force of government if we let it.

The constitution gives the government the authority to collect income taxes but does it give it the authority to force business owners to do the tax collecting for them? So many federal actions we just accept today would be unheard of when the country was founded and unfathomable to our founding fathers. But that’s the way tyranny is, most times it does not happen in one big dramatic event. In most cases, it is a slow loss of one small liberty after another until the people are living in chains and poverty and wondering “how the heck did we get here”.

I wonder if anyone really thinks about how much 3.5 trillion dollars is?

The main theme I have tried to follow for this blog is the inherent unconstitutional nature of so many of the well meaning but miss guided programs and laws coming out of the US federal government. But the often ignored crime of this continued infringement on our civil liberties is not only don’t they work as intended but many times they do more harm than good.

We see examples every day of money wasting government programs. A few weeks back we talked about the vast amounts of money poured into the department of education yet we see no tangible evidence it has done anything to raise the level of education in the US. Today I got an e mail from my oldest son. He is a US marine serving his second tour in Afghanistan and on his way to his new duty station he spent a couple of days in Kabul. He was fairly shocked to see the lack of improvements even in the capital city. When serving in the southern part of the country he was not surprised that there was not much evidence of improvement but with the billions of dollars spent over the last 8 years in aid he thought he would see some improvement in the capital. It is not for lack of trying or people who do not care; it is the problem that gigantic bureaucracies are inherently inefficient.

The government ignores the basic rules of the free enterprise system; there is no reward for success and no punishment for failure.

As designed, elections should be the thing that forces people in government to be accountable but the government has grown so big I bet that 95% of the personnel do not change even if the administration changes. Vast seas of federal workers perform most of the tasks that consume your tax dollars and they operate with no fear of job or income loss if their particular department or program is ineffective. There is no worry within the Department of Energy that the department will go under and they will lose their jobs if the department is not responsive to the needs of the customer (the tax payer). The only answer is to keep the federal government as small as possible to limit the level of inefficiency.

My good liberal friend Rich often accuses me of being uncaring because I don’t support federal tax dollars used as a form of charity. But even if I could get past the issue of the government redistributing the citizens wealth (which I can’t) I cannot get over the total lack of success or accountability of the vast majority of these programs.

Trillions of dollars have been spent since 1968 on the “war on poverty”. After impressive reductions in the poverty rate 4-5 years after President Johnson lunched the initiative, the poverty rate has stabilized and the trillions spent in the last 35-40 years has done nothing to reduce the % of people in poverty (3). What if all that money had been left in the hands of the people? What if every citizen had more money to contribute to private charities? What if small business had more money to expand their business and hire more employees? What if the money used to provide office space to the thousands of federal workers who administer the billions of dollars allocated to poverty programs was just used directly at the local level to actually help those living in poverty? Would the country and its citizens be worse off or better?

The Department of Energy was originally started to promote energy independence after the energy crisis in the 1970’s (2), yet after billions of dollars spent by the department, the country is more dependent of foreign energy than at any time in history. (4)

The examples go on and on, want to have some fun? Take the Social Security statement you receive from the government, look at the money you have been forced to ”deposit”, then calculate how much money you would have if you invested that money at even a modest return. If the government did not force you to put 12% of your income in the government program the money would be yours. If you died, it would go to who you want it to go to, die before you retire now and all the money you contributed to SS goes to the government. I know, I know, people depend on that money to retire. I read the other day where a guy said he could not afford to pay in to a retirement account and it is a good thing he had social security when he retired. Maybe if the government had not seized 12% of his income he would have had the money to save for his retirement. I think we are going to make SS a whole post in the next couple of weeks. That system is so poor it needs its own topic.

Even if you could make an argument that every program and department is of vital national interest, why is it never enough? There was a time federal spending would ebb and flow with federal income, not any more. Since 1955 federal spending has always increased. Never in the last 55 years has federal government spent less money than the year before (1).

At some point you would think it would be enough.

(1) http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy05/hist.html

Summary of receipts outlays surpluses 1789-2009



(2) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7097



(3) http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2009/pov09fig04.pdf



(4) http://willbrownsberger.com/index.php/archives/656

I wonder if anyone really thinks about what the liberals are saying Part 2

The debate on extending the Bush tax cuts gets more and more surreal. Not only do we have the president insisting keeping the tax cuts in place would be“ giving” money to the wealthy, now Ms Pelosi tells us that they are actually the “Obama tax cuts”!

To quote madam speaker during her weekly press briefing:

"What I believe the American people deserve is a tax cut for the middle class, And without getting into procedure and timing and process, what we're going to do is to say at the end of the day, the extension of the Obama middle-income tax cuts will take place, and that's what I have to say on the subject."

Yes you read that correct. The very tax cuts the democrats voted almost unanimously against almost a decade ago are not only GOOD now but if the congress votes to extend these cuts (maintain what is already in place) they will actually be Obama tax CUTS!.

Of course none of this yet explains how the democrats told us 7-8 years ago these very same tax cuts were “tax cuts for the wealthy” but now they want to keep the 97% that were for the middle class. In 2001-2003 they along with their media minions sounded like parrots……

tax cuts for the wealth!

tax cuts for the wealthy!

Tax cuts for the wealth!

I remember my good liberal friend Rich standing in my office screaming about Bush’s “tax cuts for the wealthy”. And today our liberal friends in the same harmonious fashion cry …….

tax cuts for the middle class!

tax cuts for the middle class!

THESE ARE THE EXACT SAME TAX CUTS!!!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad the democrats finally admit tax cuts (in particular the BUSH tax cuts…opps… sorry I mean the OBAMA tax cuts) are good things but I have to ask are they lying now or were they lying before?

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Now we move from how much of your money the government should take to how they are doing at spending it. From an internal report from the LA city controller we have the following.

More than a year after Congress approved $800 billion in stimulus funds, the Los Angeles city controller has released a 40-page report on how the city spent its share, and the results are not living up to expectations.

"I'm disappointed that we've only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million," said Wendy Greuel, the city's controller. "With our local unemployment rate over 12 percent we need to do a better job cutting red tape and putting Angelenos back to work.” According to the audit, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works spent $70 million in stimulus funds -- in return, it created seven private sector jobs and saved seven workers from layoffs. Taxpayer cost per job: $1.5 million.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation created even fewer jobs per dollar, spending $40 million but netting just nine jobs. Taxpayer cost per job: $4.4 million. Greuel blamed the dismal numbers on several factors:

1. Bureaucratic red tape: Four highway projects did not even go out to bid until seven months after they were authorized.

2. Projects that were supposed to be competitively bid in the private sector went instead went to city workers.

3. Stimulus money was not properly tracked within departments

4. Both departments could not report the jobs created and retained in a timely fashion.

Imagine that, red tape and politics screwing up a project in the government. I can absolutely guarantee that if the federal government decided to hand the small company I work for 1.5 million dollars to create jobs we would have been hiring a lot more than one person. Hey but let’s give the city of LA the benefit of the doubt., I am sure there were some outside jobs created by LA spending 111 million dollars, they must have had to buy something with the $111 million. Let’s say they created 10 jobs for every 1.5 million, see how well that works out, now they only paid $150,000 per job!

Which brings me back to one of my central themes, that not only are federal government wealth re-distribution and make work programs unconstitutional, but they DON”T WORK! (At least not nearly as good as just leaving the money in the hands of the citizens to start with).

This is the same as my talk about the department of education a while ago. The good citizens of LA sent their tax money to Washington, Washington used a lot of it to pay the salaries and expenses for people whose only job is to send some of that very same money back to LA.

I wonder if anyone really thinks about what the liberals are saying?

The two quotes below from our President explain the real difference how the liberals and conservatives look at tax policy and the citizen’s money.

"We can't give away $700 billion to folks who don't need it." --Barack Obama promising to raise taxes on those earning $250,000 or more a year

"You can't have Republicans running on fiscal discipline that we're gonna reduce our deficit, that the debt's out of control, and then borrow tens, hundreds of billions of dollars to give tax cuts to people who don't need them." --BO repeating the class warfare rhetoric

First, only a true liberal can look at a tax policy that lets someone keep some portion of their own money and say that is giving that person something. ("We can't give away $700 billion”) In other words the fact that the government has not taken your money yet means the government gave it to you. Only to a liberal would not raising your taxes be the same thing as the government giving you money.

To a conservative all the money you earned is yours, and we are obligated to send some to the government so the government can perform its constitutional duties. To the liberal all the money is the governments and if you get to keep any it is because the government bestowed it upon you.

The second difference between liberals and conservatives is that to a conservative it is not the government’s job to decide who “needs” the money they earn. The continuing class warfare aspect of the liberal argument is frightening. The liberal attempt to turn one group of citizens against another for political advantage is the tactic of tin pot dictators in third world countries.

Even implying that the amount of money to be seized by the federal government is somehow set by a government determination of a citizen’s “need” of that money is startlingly similar to the basic ideals of socialism.

Had a discussion with a very good friend of mine over the weekend

Had a discussion with a very good friend of mine over the weekend. Although she likes the basic content of what I was writing, she was concerned that the overall tone of my blog made me sound very anti government. This concerned me because one of the criticisms that my liberal friend Rich always has for me when we were discussing the ever expanding federal government is that I want no government at all. He suggests that I want the USA to be “just like Somalia” with no federal government what so ever. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Federal government performs a number of very vital and necessary functions. It has very defined duties and responsibilities which without would allow not only the country but the world to descend into anarchy. But saying I believe the federal government should provide for the common defense or regulate state commerce does not mean I think it should have control of everything in my life. The limited scope of our federal government is what makes this country great.

Why is it that the United States is so successful? Why is the economy of the US four times larger than the next largest economy? The US is not the largest country; it is not the country with the most land or the most natural recourses, or the largest population. What could explain the growth of wealth and power of such a young country? Why is the economy of the US as large as all the EU (European Union) countries combined?

Are the Italians or Germanys or English who immigrated to the US somehow smarter than their fellow countrymen who remained in their home country? Are the Mexicans or Brazilians who are now US citizen’s harder working or more gifted than natives of their homelands? Does the land here in the US hold some magical power that allows its citizens to have personal success like nowhere else on earth? Does the Cuban who escapes to freedom in the US gain some superhuman power that allows him to have a life far beyond anything possible in Cuba? If not, why is this country so much more prosperous? What makes the USA so special?

The one thing that allows such personal achievement in the US is liberty, in no other country has a person been freer to accomplish whatever their skill and labor will allow. The difference is our constitution and system of government that historically has provided the most level and unrestricted playing field for its citizens. A system of government that allows a poor immigrant with a 4th grade education like Andrew Carnegie to become the richest man in the world. As I travel around the world I meet people who are as hard working, as smart, and as educated as people in the US. I visit countries with vast natural resources and histories that dwarf anything in America, the difference is that people in America have not been weighed down by an intrusive government that saps the fruits of their labors and punishes their success.

Every attempt by the left to “spread the wealth around” (1), every attempt by the federal government to collect higher and higher taxes that is needed to support an ever growing government, decreases the chance for personal prosperity. A government that attempts to regulate every part of our lives in an attempt to protect us from everything draws us further and further from what made us great in the first place.

(1)Barack Obama quoted 10/12/2008

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." --Thomas Jefferson

"On Thursday the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced the federal budget deficit for 2010 will exceed $1.3 trillion. This is already on the heels of a 2009 budget deficit of $1.2 trillion and on top of a national debt of some $13.3 trillion. The word 'trillion' seems to have, almost overnight, crept into our standard economic parlance and by the looks of it is here to stay. And with the CBO's forecast of more than $6 trillion in federal budget deficits accruing over the next nine years from 2010 to 2019, many are logically wondering if the United States has effectively crossed, or is fast approaching, a virtual economic point of no return -- an economic Rubicon if you will." --columnist Matt O'Connor

This can only happen if we let it. This can only happen if we are to lazy or to disinterested to hold our elected officials responsible for their actions. Speak to your friends, speak to your neighbors, we have to convince those in Washington that if they will not return the government to a fiscally responsible path and back to a proper constitutional mandate we will find someone who will.

We must be the "irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds" that Sam Adams talked about.