Category Archives: Theft by other means

How did this happen?

Posted on by
http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/555b43eb69bedd9a5c891f68-1200-858/461553325.jpg

NJ Governor Chris Christie

I usually don’t think much of Chris Christie. He isn’t a conservative and isn’t much of a ‘Pub, either. But today, he uttered a statement that I can agree upon. Finally!

“Some colleges are drunk on cash and embarking on crazy spending binges, just because they know they can get huge revenues from tuition.” — WSJ

In this case, Christie is right. College tuition is caught in a feed back loop. Colleges charge thousands of dollars for tuition, far beyond the means of most families. The students then file for student loans and get them. The student loans pays for the tuition. The colleges and universities, realizing they have a cash cow available in the form of government sponsored student loans, feel no restraint on raising tuition again each year.

In the mid-’60s when my wife and I went to college, we both had a teaching scholarship. Southern Illinois University, at that time, was on the quarter system, Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer quarters. My tuition costs—which included text book rental, $112 for an in-state resident. The scholarship paid for all of that except for a $12 Student Activity fee. I paid more for room and board, $298 per quarter, than I did for tuition. I also worked 40 hours/week, part-time for the university for the grand sum of $0.95 per hour. I went to school full-time and then worked 40 hours for those expenses not covered by tuition nor dorm.

Tuition for today’s colleges and universities should be investigated for RICO violations because today’s tuition is a racket.

***

You’ve heard, no doubt, that St. Louis and Kansas City want to raise the minimum wage. Regardless of all the nonsense about a ‘living wage’ that such entry level jobs were never meant to fulfill, there are other reason why these metro areas want the pay increase—more money in the city coffers.

Higher minimum wage would increase city’s tax revenues, too

Letter-to-the-Editor, June 12, 2015

Mayor Francis Slay of St. Louis is asking the Board of Aldermen to pass legislation mandating a near doubling of the current minimum wage from $7.65 to $15 an hour for certain businesses operating in the city by 2020 (“Slay seeks to increase minimum wage in city,” June 3). Naturally, this will undoubtedly appeal to all those who buy into this demagogic charade of equality and “fairness” by politicians and their followers of the Left.

But aside from undeniable economic facts, that prices will go up and seniors on fixed income will be hurt, there is something else that will result that I have not heard being talked about.

Consider, when you virtually double the current minimum wage, can you guess what benefits the city of St. Louis will receive? If you said that with higher wages comes higher tax revenue from the city earnings tax along with increased payroll tax revenue that will go to the state of Missouri, then go to the head of the class. If you add that increase wages mean higher sales taxes, you are clearly a summa cum laude candidate.

What Sleight-of-Hand Slay is attempting to do without saying so is to generate additional revenue while seeking to avoid being accused of raising taxes. Wonder if anyone else has caught on to this?

In the case of Kansas City there is an additional tax, the 1% (or is it higher now?) city income tax. If the minimum wage is increased, the city will get more revenue from its income tax.

When you get to the bottom line, it’s always about collecting more taxes. Involuntary taxation is nothing more than theft by other means.

Facebook

Petty Tyrannies

Posted on by

One of the legislative bills that passed this session and is sitting on Jay Nixon’s desk, is a bill that would place a cap on the amount of revenue a city can collect from traffic fines. This has been a problem with some municipalities for decades, Ferguson, MO, being one.

Some cities anticipate Nixon’s signature. They have chosen a different path to collect revenues from their citizens. Instead of issuing a high number of traffic tickets, they issue tickets for a plenitude of other reasons…like allowing your grass to get too high, allowing toys to be scattered across your lawn, having a BBQ pit that doesn’t comply with city codes or is visible from the front of your house. In some cases, allowing your children to play outside the house unsupervised will lead to a yellow ticket on your front door.

Municipalities ticket for trees and toys, as traffic revenue declines

May 24, 2015 12:15 pm  •  By Jennifer S. Mann

A ticket written by the city of Pagedale dated May 1, 2015 is pasted on the front door of home in the 1500 block of Engelholm Avenue on Thursday, May 21, 2015. The ticket cites the property for having high grass and gives the property owner one day to get it cut. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com

PAGEDALE • Drive through this working-class suburb filled with 1950s cottages and you will see many edged and weeded lawns. You’ll also notice orange sticky notes on the doors — at least one or two per street in many parts of town.

They are warnings the city gives to residents who violate local ordinances. And in this community of 3,304 residents, the list of what earns a ticket and fine is long.

Among the things that will be “closely monitored” through the spring and summer, according to a newsletter that recently went out to residents:

Pants worn too low or grass grown too high. Children riding bikes without helmets. Barbecue pits or toys in front yards. Basketball hoops in the streets.

There’s no loitering — described in city code as “the concept of spending time idly” or “the colloquial expression ‘hanging around.’” And, despite a citywide 20 mph speed limit, there’s no playing or walking in the street.

…

Pagedale handed out 2,255 citations for these types of offenses last year — or nearly two per household. That’s a nearly 500 percent increase from five years ago, according to an analysis of state court data by the Post-Dispatch.

And yet none of the fines and fees from these offenses count under the Macks Creek Law. The law is the state’s one tool for keeping cash-hungry municipalities from relying too much on court fines for revenue.

But it has a major blind spot: Its revenue limits apply only to traffic cases.

Cities and villages have no restrictions on raising revenue from other types of tickets.

In Pagedale, 40 percent of last year’s citations were from nontraffic matters, according to the newspaper’s analysis. More than half of tickets in Ferguson and four other communities were for nontraffic violations.

You can read the entire column on the Post-Dispatch’s website.

Not all of the petty tyrants live on the eastern side of the state. Sly James, Mayor of Kansas City, pushed a ban on open carry knowing full well the legislature would pass a measure allowing open carry in Missouri. One exception that Sly James and other petty tyrants in Missouri lobbied for and succeeded, was that only licensed CCW carriers could carry openly in cities and counties that had ordinances against it. Mayor James rammed his ordinance through the Kansas City Council before passage of the Open Carry bill for nothing more than pure spite.

Missouri’s pre-emption of these petty tyrannies is a continuing thorn in the side of liberals and statists across the state. The Columbia Daily Tribune, a well know democrat house organ, bemoaned the loss of ‘local control’, the pre-emption of the state over local ordinances that run contrary to state law.

Locus of control

Overruling local prerogatives

By Henry J. Waters III, Sunday, May 24, 2015 at 12:00 am

By nature, when cities pass laws in conflict with the general statewide status quo, local rules are more progressive. Of late, state legislatures politically dominated by conservatives have passed laws prohibiting actions by cities disapproved of by business interests.

In Missouri the General Assembly passed a law prohibiting city laws banning the use of single-use plastic bags at grocery stores and requiring businesses to pay employee sick leave, vacation or health disability and retirement benefits. Missouri has become one of 15 states that ban local minimum wages. Oil-rich states ban local restrictions on drilling. Farming states ban local restrictions on types of seeds used to grow crops.

Other states won’t allow cities to ban sugary drinks, toys in fast-food meals or to enact gun restrictions. Utah forbids city laws requiring businesses to serve bicyclists in drive-through lanes.

One might wonder why conservative state politicians would contradict their movement’s antipathy toward centralized control, but when conservatives live at the state level, they hold the reins. The U.S. Constitution says powers not specifically given to the federal government reside in the states, and cities are creatures of the state. Sen. Kurt Schaefer, running for Missouri attorney general, said city councils and mayors “don’t have some kind of organic legal authority to do whatever they want. It would be absolute bedlam what some of these communities would do to their citizens if they had that ability.”

Schaefer is right about constitutional law, but he might misread the sentiment regarding local citizen prerogatives. What if local citizens here and there would like to deviate from state dictum — by paying a higher minimum wage, for instance? Or banning plastic bags? Or … ? Schaefer & Co. justify their override in the name of statewide consistency, a powerful argument in some cases but not others. At the moment, state assumption of control is done mainly at the behest of influential business interests that don’t like certain city laws. They like their kind of uniformity.

Often state law should supersede, and with standards set by state legislatures. It makes sense for the state to have uniform gun ownership laws, for instance. In most of the other categories usurped by state lawmakers, a more open-minded debate at the local level would be reasonable – from the standpoint of political science, that is.

Apparently, Mr. Waters is fully satisfied with more regulation, more ordinances, more impositions on life and liberty, more nanny state oversight. Fortunately for the rest of us, we have conservatives in Jeff City who work to protect us from petty tyrants like Henry J. Watters, III and Sly James. If allowed, these two tyrants would no longer just be petty. No, they’d would grab and much power as they could. Petty, they would be not.

Facebook

Coup…Counter-Coup

Posted on by

All is not well in the state of Maryland. The officers and the members of the Board of Directors of Wicomico County Education Association (WCEA) have become dissatisfied with their upstream counterparts, the Maryland State Education Association and the National Education Association. In brief, the local union felt and still feels that they are not getting their money’s worth when they send their dues upstream.

They have scheduled a vote to disassociate themselves with the state and national union. Those parent organizations were not pleased. Like any third-world dictator, they struck back.

Maryland Teachers Union Shop Steward Stages Coup

posted at 9:21 am on April 22, 2014 by Mike Antonucci

My apologies if this ends up sounding like a dispatch from some war-torn Third World country, but it really is a tale from southeastern Maryland.

The elected officers and members of the board of directors of the Wicomico County Education Association (WCEA) scheduled a rank-and-file vote for the 1,000-member local union to end its affiliation with the Maryland State Education Association and the National Education Association. The issues were the usual ones in such cases – the local officers felt an awful lot of dues money was going up the line to the parent unions in exchange for not much in services for the local. After last week’s events, that vote – scheduled for April 28 and 29 – is very much up in the air.

Upset by the actions of WCEA’s board, Gary Hammer, a union site representative at Bennett Middle School, began circulating petitions to recall all the WCEA officers and members of the board, and to suspend them from office until the recall took place. Hammer and his supporters claim to have gathered 700 signatures, which would constitute a majority of the bargaining unit.

Last Tuesday, Hammer and others “entered the WCEA offices, changed the locks and codes, removed or altered office equipment and purported to illegally fire the Association’s only employee.” According to WCEA president Kelly Stephenson, “These actions were not taken in accordance with the governing documents of WCEA or in accordance with the law.”

Stephenson insists the disaffiliation vote will go on as scheduled.

As any good coup plotters would, Hammer and his associates seized the radio station, er, union web page. They have posted this message while deleting much of the site’s previous content:

On April 15 a majority of the members of the Wicomico County Education Association stood together and took necessary steps to prevent a small minority of members from dismantling the union with attempts to disaffiliate from our state and national Associations. The members have spoken and have declared that we are stronger together, and the support we have from the Maryland State Education and National Education Association adds to that strength. We have collected the necessary signatures to recall the officers of WCEA and have put an interim board of managers in place, effective immediately. This board will assume day to day operations of the Association and will move to conduct an election of a new slate of officers. These actions clearly reflect the wishes of the majority of our members who are anxious to move forward and who remain committed to giving Wicomico County’s public school students the excellent instruction and service they deserve.

It seems almost beside the point to note that there is no provision in WCEA’s by-laws to remove the union’s entire elected leadership with a single petition whose signatures have not been verified by any independent authority. Nor is there any provision for the summary displacement of elected officers by an unelected “board of managers.” Nor have the charges contained in the recall petition been examined to see if they meet the recall requirements set out in the by-laws.

It is beside the point because the legality of such actions becomes secondary once you have succeeded in pulling them off. The American Federation of Teachers has turned into an art the recapture of rogue locals, with one such incident being declared illegal by the U.S. Department of Labor, and moot at the same time. A similar disaffiliation vote will take place next month in Modesto, California, though the California Teachers Association does seems to regard it as a legitimate election.

A legal battle will almost certainly arise out of this, but if the WCEA officers want to retain office, they had best respond to the coup’s tactics in like manner.

This is just another, among many, example of thuggish behavior by unions. This time it is the unions sending union goons against their own members to oust legally elected officers and Board members. It matters not that the actions of the state and national unions were illegal. If the local union doesn’t act quickly, it will become moot. The national unions have the force and assistance of the NRLB behind them.

***

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon is all in a twitter. Those nasty Republicans are planning on cutting taxes and he’s vowed to veto the bill if it arrives on his desk. He’s so upset that he and his budget director will tour the state today to announce his response against those evil Republicans who want to cut taxes.

From PoliticMO Newsletter, April 22, 2014:

NIXON’S NEW TAX MESSAGE — A FATAL LAW. Gov. Jay Nixon dispatched his legal counsel and budget director to carry a new line on monday that Senate Bill 509 carries a fatal flaw that could cost the state billions. The issue is with Line 43 on Page 2, which reads, “The bracket for income subject to the top rate of tax shall be eliminated once the top rate of tax has been reduced to five and one-half percent.” Counsel Ted Ardini: “The bracket for income subject to the top rate is… over 9,000 dollars… Once that hits 5.5 percent, this provision tells us to eliminate the top tax bracket. Once you eliminate the top tax bracket, it becomes over #8,000 and under $9,000… If your Missouri income is greater than 9,000 you have no tax bracket and no tax rate. … By the elimination of the over 9,000 tax bracket, there’s no where to go.”

State Representative John Diehl responds:

HOUSE MAJORITY FLOOR LEADER JOHN DIEHL: The “Governor’s contention of #SB509 flaw is laughable. MO SupCt would never take his position on that reading of that bill.” “It’s a pattern of scare tactics and deception to avoid the real issue… Never once did they identify some hole in the bill.… We were and are confident that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this bill.” — PoliticMO Newsletter, April 22, 2014.

Jay Nixon has never met a tax he didn’t like.

***

In my opinion, Rasmussen is and has been one of the most accurate polling groups in the country. They are not always right, but on the average, they are correct more than any of their competitors. Each week they present a rolling poll on Congress…which party is more preferred. Historically, the dems usually have the edge by a percentage point or two. In fact, I cannot remember when the ‘Pubs were on top.

This week they were.

Generic Congressional Ballot

Generic Congressional Ballot: Republicans 41%, Democrats 40%

Republicans have edged ahead of Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot for the week ending Sunday, April 20.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Republican in their district’s congressional race if the election were held today, while 40% would choose the Democrat instead.

The last time this switch occurred was during the week of February 4th, 2014.

***

An article appeared yesterday in the American Thinker. Mark Levin spent some time discussing it on his program and his FB page. It is an analysis of John Boehner and it isn’t, by any means, complimentary.

But Seriously, Just How Slow-Witted is John Boehner?

By C. Edmund Wright, April 21, 2014

As he moves from lobbyists to the golf course, from press conferences to the tanning bed, he remains oblivious to all that is around him. He has power, incredible power, and yet to this day he has no understanding of the election that made it so. Moreover, all around him are astonishing opportunities for him to be an historic figure — one who could and should be the man who did more than any other single person in turning back the red tide of Obama. It’s all there for Speaker of the House, and yet John Boehner manages to miss it all — as he guarantees his spot as the most spectacular failure in the history of Speakers of the House.

So seriously, just how dense is this guy? I’m not being flippant, or overly dramatic. His performance, in light of the momentous circumstances, necessitates just that question in the most literal and serious sense. Mr. Boehner, I frankly think you’re sort of stupid. Either that, or you are plagued by an amazing lack of situational awareness.

Consider: For months, the IRS has done their best to guarantee that they are known as nothing but part of the Democratic Party election machine.  Lois Lerner remains such an unsympathetic figure that the last public photo of her might as well have been a set of legs with red slippers sticking out from under a house. Elijah Cummings has been exposed as a corrupt and inarticulate embarrassment, and an email trail is emerging that would make Nixon’s use of the IRS look like child’s play. This one scandal is an incredible teaching opportunity of the inherent evils of the liberal bureaucratic political state. Donald Rumsfeld understands this. Boehner? Not so much. He’s talking about immigration deform.

If that weren’t enough, there is another epoch-making story unfolding in Nevada, as the Bundy Ranch is being invaded by an army of militarized bureaucrats that most of us didn’t know exists — working for a bureaucracy that is apparently in charge of more land mass than the majority of world governments. Who the hell are these robo-crats, and who is paying for and authorizing their intimidating and dangerous cross-dressing? Apparently, in this case, the boy king of this hidden empire is a former political aide from the office of Harry Reid. Again, a silver platter of an opportunity has presented itself.

But no, Boehner would rather work behind the scenes to spoil the efforts of the Tea Party groups.

Oh, and while we’re at it, the Bundy story is far more than just some delicious viral YouTube videos. It brings up some very important questions, such as why does the Federal Government own more land in Nevada than everybody combined owns in the United Kingdom? Why does the BLM control one eighth of the entire landmass of the country? And just how many dirty Harry Reid deals are going on everywhere while most of us had no idea how big the BLM was and how little of our own country the rest of us own?

Uh, Mr. Boehner, these are questions of stupefying importance, and while millions of Americans are asking them, they will not get the traction they deserve until someone in a position of power asks them. You know, like a Speaker who is in the opposition party?

The column continues at the website. I urge you to follow the title link or the link here to read it in full. I cannot disagree with anything the writer has penned.

***

Lawfare. If you have listened to the news today, the NC Attorney General has requested a delay in the latest lawfare suit filed in federal court against the state of North Carolina. The suit complains that the state’s anti-same sex marriage ban is unconstitutional. The tactic many such groups are using around the country with, frankly success, is known as Lawfare.

Lawfare is a recently coined word not yet appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary,[1] a portmanteau of the words ‘law’ and ‘warfare’, said to describe a form of asymmetric warfare.[2] Lawfare is asserted by some to be the illegitimate use of domestic or international law with the intention of damaging an opponent, winning a public relations victory, financially crippling an opponent, or tying up the opponent’s time so that they cannot pursue other ventures such as running for public office,[1][2] similar to a SLAPP lawsuit. Other scholars see it more neutrally as a reference to both positive and negative uses of law as an instrument of warfare or even to the legal debates surrounding national security and counterterrorism.[3] — Wiki.

Lawfare is a particularly vile tactic. It does, however, have a large degree of success by cherry-picking cases that incrementally enhances the agenda of its practitioners.

Facebook

Parades, Revelations, and Bread and Circuses

Posted on by

I think I’m recovered now. Our neighboring town had a Veteran’s Day parade on Saturday and I walked in it with Mrs. Crucis and some friends. The parade wasn’t too long, a mile and a half, perhaps, but the wind was strong and cool.  According to my pedometer, we walked about 3,000 steps. I normally walk 4,000 steps, almost two miles, three times a week.

But, if you’ve ever walked in a parade, you know it is not a steady walk. The parade bunches up and you’re standing around waiting for the group ahead of you to move. Then they do, and you’re almost running to catch up. Repeat for the duration of the parade.

I think it was the cool wind and the approaching cold front that did me in. Temperatures overnight dropped to 16, locally last night. But today I’m inside perched next to my heater in my office and all is right in the world.

***

The Obamacare news continues to get worse. According to Rasmussen, 55% of those polled want Obamacare to be repealed. The latest news, is that Obamacare, again, targets a specific segment of the country with less benefits than others—the military. One of the features of Obamacare that Obama and the libs have been bragging is that your adult children, until they are 26, can be added to your, the parents, health insurance. That’s true…unless you are active or retired military. Perhaps, that denial is a good thing.

Military members, veterans missing out on key ObamaCare provision

FoxNews.com

One of the most touted benefits of President Obama’s health care overhaul law is the provision allows parents to keep their adult children on their health insurance until age 26.

However, Trace Gallagher reported on “The Kelly File” Monday, this benefit is not being extended to a significant group of Americans: members of the U.S. military.

TRICARE, the Department of Defense program that provides health coverage to active duty and retired military members and their families, only covers young adult dependents up until age 21, or age 23 if they are enrolled full-time in college.

TRICARE recipients can then purchase a plan for their young adult dependents, according to their website.

Air Force veteran Eddie Grooms said he was disappointed to learn he could not add his 21-year-old daughter to his insurance provided by the military, as he thought he had been promised under the health care overhaul.

“It’d be nice if they leveled with everybody and let them know so that people could make plans, because this is going to hit all, I mean it’s going to hit thousands of retirees over time,” Grooms said.

Jessie Jane Duff of Concerned Veterans for America told Megyn Kelly the reason the benefit has not been extended to military members is the rates under TRICARE are very low because they are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.

She said “unfortunately” this means adult children cannot be covered, saying there has to be some “give and take” for the reduced rates.

“We’ve been very fortunate because legislation was passed that exempted TRICARE from a lot of the ObamaCare standings, so that actually has benefited veterans to keep the rates that they’ve had,” Duff said.

***

If you’ve been watching the news from south of the border, Venezuela is back in the headlines. The communists are still in power and still as stupid as ever. Those of you who have read anything from Ayn Rand, will recognize the term, ‘looters.’ Venezuela has become a nation of looters supported in their looting by the country’s military.

In their latest adventure, the army seized some retail outlets and forced them to sell their merchandise at a loss. They now expect to do the same to other retailers. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that when a company is forced to sell at a loss, it will soon cease to exist. No profit, no company, and no jobs, either.

Venezuela Becomes A Nation Of Looters

IBD Editorial, Posted 11/11/2013 06:48 PM ET

Looters: Venezuelan troops storm a local electronics retailer in the name of enforcing “fair prices,” brazenly blaming the private sector for state policies. Sounds familiar — and not just because it’s a communist takeover.

With municipal elections just around the corner on Dec. 8, it’s no surprise to see Venezuela’s failing socialist government turning to pork-barrel handouts to lure voters — as it always has.

Shovel the goodies to the red-shirted low-information voters and gain just enough votes in upcoming elections to claim a dictatorship is really a democracy.

Not coincidentally, President Nicolas Maduro declared that Venezuela would celebrate the beginning of Christmas in October — to distribute goodies.

But there’s a new twist here: Venezuela is out of money to shovel pork. Its foreign reserves have fallen to $21.4 billion as oil prices slump. Instead of using its vast oil earnings to buy votes, as in the past, Venezuela’s Marxist government is now making do by stealing from Venezuela’s battered private sector.

Which is what brought the bizarre spectacle of the Venezuelan military occupation of Daka — the country’s five-store equivalent of Best Buy, loaded with the flat-screen TVs, computers and smartphones favored by looters everywhere.

As troops stood by, crowds looted one Daka store, stripping its shelves bare. Call it government by looting.

Or in reality, call it communism. Because such destruction of private property in the name of redistribution has been a feature of every communist takeover from Russia to China, to Vietnam, to Cuba.

Defending his government-of-looters, Maduro officially blamed the store for charging “unfair prices,” a preposterous statement since Daka’s prices weren’t inconsistent with the official inflation rate of 56% in an economy that must pay for 90% of its goods imports, including consumer electronics, with dollars.

There is even some speculation, by bloggers such as Miguel Octavio of the Devil’s Excrement, that the viciousness of the government action could be due to the company engaging in high-profit arbitrage on the country’s two-tier exchange rates.

There’s also no doubt the government was sending a message to other retailers not to raise prices by making an example of one of them. Message received.

But the bottom line is, horrendous government policies forced retailers to do what they have. It wasn’t Daka that created price controls or a corrupt two-tier exchange system that made the resulting inflation.

The black market currency rate is now 10 times higher than the official rate, meaning they’re on the verge of hyperinflation due to a government that can’t stop spending. This explains why imported basic commodities, such as chicken, milk and toilet paper, are now scarce, just as in the old Soviet Union, or in today’s Cuba.

Were Venezuela a true democracy, such a destructive economic record would bring down the ruling party.

But this is Venezuela. It has benefited not just from having the U.S. as its top oil customer and consumer goods supplier, but also from a lot of White House love — from President Obama’s and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s embrace of late strongman Hugo Chavez at a 2009 summit, to ex-President Jimmy Carter’s dishonest endorsement of Venezuela’s fraudulent 2004 recall, which the Bush White House meekly accepted.

And now the results: Venezuelan troops occupy electronics retailers while yelling about “fairness.”

Doesn’t this tale sound familiar? If you substitute Obama ‘phones, welfare EBT cards and Food Stamps, isn’t our federal government doing much the same? Delving into history, I hear the refrain, “BREAD and CIRCUSES!” The Roman emperors kept the Roman mob satisfied with bread and circuses—food and entertainment, (now you understand why the liberal elite controls Hollywood,) while looting the empire to pay for the bread and the circuses, and to quiet the mob. In the end, the empire could no longer pay, having been picked clean by Roman tax collectors and the Roman empire collapsed to the barbarians outside the empire…and the barbarians within.

Now, with Obama’s Redistribution of Wealth, we’re facing the same situation as did the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire is just a memory from history, its cities are a pile of rubble, some carefully preserved but most destroyed for the materials in them.

What will the United States be in a few hundred years? A viable nation leading the world, or a pile of picked rubble, destroyed by the liberal tax collectors and the Washington mob?

Facebook

Friday Follies for October 4, 2013

Posted on by

I feel vindicated. Earlier this week, I created a scenario for the creation of a new political party. Today, I saw the article below that appears to mirror those first steps I formulated on this post.

House and Senate conservatives have formed a caucus all their own, separate and apart from moderate Republicans and their own GOP leaders. Their meetings, held in person and over the phone, have helped the relatively small band of lawmakers maintain a united front and outsize influence in a budget debate that led to a government shutdown.

At the meetings, they have shared information and ideas, developed strategy and discussed how to frame the fight over Obamacare as part of a larger budget debate. They met in person most recently last Monday evening, according to Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa — just hours before the government shut down.

The private pow-wows have enabled conservative lawmakers to coalesce around some of the hallmark proposals of the government-funding fight, including the notion that they could fund government programs one at a time. — The Washington Examiner.

On Monday, I speculated that Congressional conservatives from both houses would form a caucus in defiance of the leadership of both parties. It appears now that my speculation was accurate.

***

The new conservative coalition of Senators and Representatives have clout, as Harry Reid found out this week. Reid was disappointed that Boehner reneged on a secret deal he had made with Reid. Reid thought Boehner would support funding Obamacare in the CR in return for some nebulous promises from Reid. But, when the time came for Boehner to betray his party and House members, he didn’t. The pressure from House and Senate conservatives was too great.

Harry Reid puts John Boehner and his speakership in the crosshairs

By STEVE CONTORNO | OCTOBER 3, 2013 AT 1:35 PM

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday accused House Speaker John Boehner of reneging on a deal reached in September to fund government and said the Republican leader has put his political future ahead of the country.

Reid said that when he and Boehner met in early September, the Republican leader wanted a clean continuing resolution to fund government at $988 billion, or sequestration levels. The Nevada Democrat said Boehner then backed away from that agreement after conservatives in the GOP caucus flipped.

“We didn’t like it. But we negotiated, that was our compromise. The exact bill that he now refuses to let the House vote on, that was our negotiation,” Reid said. “I didn’t twist his arm. He twisted mine a little bit to get that number. Now he refuses to let his own party vote because he’s afraid to stand up to something he originally agreed to.”

On Wednesday, Reid offered Boehner an out by promising to negotiate a host of Republican objectives, like tax reform and the health care law, in a bicameral budget committee after the House passed a measure to fund government with no strings attached. Boehner immediately turned it down as a disingenuous proposal.

“I thought we had something he couldn’t refuse,” Reid said Thursday.

Reid’s Don Corlene tactics failed. Boo. Hoo.

***

The IRS has been targeting selected conservatives for some time. Evangelist Franklin Graham, and conservative Christine O’Donnell are two from that list. Now, another conservative has been audited by the IRS, suddenly, after his famous speech before Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, Dr. Ben Carson.

The long line of conservatives targeted by the IRS

By John Solomon and Ben Wolfgang, The Washington Times, Thursday, October 3, 2013

Tea party groups, Franklin Graham, Christine O’Donnell, a pro-marriage group. And now Dr. Ben Carson.

The list of conservatives targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for audits, tax-exempt reviews or tax privacy breaches keeps growing, raising fresh questions in Washington about whether a scandal the Obama administration has blamed on bureaucratic incompetence and coincidence may in fact involve something more nefarious.

The latest revelation came Thursday from Dr. Carson, the renowned neurosurgeon who told The Washington Times that he was targeted for an audit just months after he gave a speech in front of President Obama that challenged America’s leadership. The agency requested to review his real estate holdings and then conducted a full audit.

In the end, the IRS found no wrongdoing, Dr. Carson said, but it raised his suspicions about being singled out for his speech.

“I guess it could be a coincidence, but I never had been audited before and never really had any encounters with the IRS,” Dr. Carson said in an interview. “But it certainly would make one suspicious because we know now the IRS has been used for political purposes and therefore actions like this come under suspicion.”

The article continues at the website.

***

For weeks, since the last debt limit fight, Obama has threatened to take unilateral action to raise the debt limit citing Section 4 of the 14th Amendment as justification. He’s threatening to take action again to remove Congressional power of the purse.

If Congress Won’t Raise the Debt Ceiling, Obama Will Be Forced to Break the Law

Wouldn’t it be better to save the nation from default by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment, than to stand by and do nothing?

Back in 2011, I found myself writing (and writing and writing and writing and writing) about Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment. Afterwards, it seemed like a bizarre interlude: The brief crisis about the debt ceiling surely would not repeat itself in our lifetimes. After all, President Obama was handily reelected, the Democrats held onto the Senate, and the Republicans must surely have learned their lesson.

Or not so much.

Regardless of how the current shutdown crisis ends, it seems there will be a second debt-ceiling crisis two weeks from now. And the questions are flying again: Is the debt-ceiling statute unconstitutional? Can Obama “invoke” Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment and assert authority to breach the debt ceiling to pay “the public debt of the United States, authorized by law”? Or can one party, decisively defeated in a nationwide election and controlling only the lower house of the legislature, threaten the full faith and credit of the United states — and the health of the world economy — in pursuit of its short-term partisan advantage?

The world has heard enough from me on this subject, but three nuanced analyses are worth looking at. The first, by Henry J. Aaron of the Brookings Institution, notes that the debt-ceiling crisis threatens not just the president’s constitutional duty to make payments on the public debt but also the accompanying requirement that he spend money lawfully appropriated by Congress, either as part of a yearly budget or as part of statutes authorizing “entitlement” payments like Medicare or veterans’ benefits.

Failing to do any of these things would be a default on the president’s duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The president may not be able to obey all three sources of law; if so, Aaron argues, he should make the payments and ignore the debt ceiling. “The debt ceiling is the fiscal equivalent of the human appendix — a law with no discoverable purpose,” he writes. “If Congress leaves the debt ceiling at a level inconsistent with duly enacted spending and tax laws, the president has no choice but to ignore it.”

Aaron’s argument echoes the elegant analysis last fall by law professors Neil Buchanan of George Washington University and Michael Dorf of Cornell. These two prominent scholars concluded that paying appropriated monies and interest on the debt represents the “least unconstitutional” option open to a president when Congress refuses to approve a debt-ceiling increase.

The writer above is a liberal, as you probably noticed. Like all liberals, he sees the Constitution as an impediment—unless it can be twisted to their advantage. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment gives the President NO POWER to unilaterally raise the debt, nor spend federal funds not authorized by Congress, specifically by the House of Representatives. To do so would eliminate the Balance of Powers in the Constitution; the balance deliberately designed to constrain the excesses of government.

If Obama and the congressional dems follow this path, it can only be corrected by counter-balancing force. I would much prefer we don’t go there!

Facebook

Like Thieves in the Night.

Posted on by

First an update on yesterday’s post. The mediation talks between Hostess Brands and the Baker’s and Confectionery Worker’s union failed—as expected. Why? Because the union didn’t want a resolution. The union biggies who attended the mediation had no reason to agree to anything. Their jobs weren’t in danger. No, just those of the rank and file. Apparently the union…still…expects someone to bail them out and rehire all the union workers. They still don’t get it. Why would anyone pay to inherit someone else’s problems and troublemakers. Nope, not going to happen.

***

I was listening to Dave Ramsey this morning and one of his comments struck a cord. It was the revival of the federal Death Tax. The democrats are about to raise that tax from 35% to 55% and lower the $5M exemption to $1M.

Many aren’t concerned about this. Their estates aren’t that big and for them it’s true. No, the ones who are affected are small businesses and family farms.

Family FarmFor farmers, just the land, whether it’s tillable or not, is enough to kick them over the limit. It’s easier for farmers to reach that tax threshold when you add equipment, farm buildings and livestock.

For the small business, it doesn’t take long to reach that limit as well. A building, equipment, inventory, can reach that limit easily. For example, let’s say a businessman owned a small concrete business. He builds curbs and driveways, small business parking areas and the like. He also owns some concrete trucks that he uses to transport concrete to his and other sites.  Those concrete trucks with their supporting equipment and some raw material could kick his estate over the limit.

When it comes time to pay the death taxes, it usually means the farm or the business must be sold just to pay the tax. Another business gone. Another farm gone. The city, county and state loses a tax revenue stream. No one wins…except for the FedGov…one time.

The irony of this is that these assets, the business, the farm, has already been taxed. The money used to build or buy the land, the equipment, has already been taxed. The Death Tax taxes the family and the inheritors; stealing the birthright of those inheritors.

Like thieves in the night.

In this case, the thief strikes boldly in full daylight. No matter how you paint it, it’s still theft.

The Daily Caller has this column about the Death Tax.

The Senate Democrats’ outrageous death tax hike

There is no more vivid or offensive example of the “you didn’t build that” philosophy on the books than the federal death tax, which supposes that when you die a hefty portion of everything you built up over a lifetime ought to go to government. It’s a vestige of the feudal days when all property was owned by the king.

That’s probably why the death tax is the “worst tax — that is, the least fair” according to polling by the Tax Foundation. And it’s also why our founders thought the idea of seizing an estate at death so outrageous that they prohibited it as a penalty for treason in the U.S. Constitution (Article III, Section 3). And yet now, seizing more than half of it as a penalty for accomplishing the American dream is the preferred policy of Democrats in the United States Senate.

You’re born. You work hard. You pay your taxes all your life. Maybe, you build something along the way. But when you die the IRS can tax you again.

This year, they can take 35 percent of everything above $5 million. Senate Democrats announced yesterday that as of January 1, they want to raise that to 55 percent of everything above $1 million. And because the $1 million is not indexed to inflation, over time this confiscatory tax would hit almost everyone who achieves some success and wants to pass it on.

That means family farms and businesses will be forced to shut down when the founder dies just to pay the tax bill.

Former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin estimates that the Democrats’ 55 percent death tax would destroy as many as 1.5 million small-business jobs, walloping an already weak economy. That’s the problem with taxing “the rich” — even after they die — the real pain is suffered by the people they employ, who lose their jobs.

Unfortunately, rather than seize the moral high ground by advocating full repeal of the death tax, Senate Republicans have included a compromise position in their alternative tax package: they want to keep the tax at its current 35 percent rate. The study from Holtz-Eakin found that would destroy 857,000 jobs — which can only be described as “less bad” than the economic damage Democrats are proposing.

Senate Republicans are compromising even though they know the right position is full repeal because they fear the political implications of advocating full repeal at a time when the media and left-wing agitators are even more obsessed than usual with class warfare and the politics of envy.

Continue reading here.

The column continues. It would be worth your time to read it all and then contact your US Representative and Senator. It may be too little and too late but perhaps we can minimize the damage.

Maybe.

Facebook

Wednesday Thoughts

Posted on by

Today was my quarterly visit to the vampire. Those of you who’ve reached five decades know what I mean. Every quarter you have a blood test done to check on various physical aspects—cholesterol, blood sugar levels, protein levels, ad nauseum. It also means no breakfast for me. Instead of following my usual routine, I sat this morning listening to a local talk-show radio program.

The subject was comparisons. A caller was upset about the Department of Education sending a SWAT team to collect on overdue college student loans. (UPDATE: It appears that the article has been pulled from the local TV station’s website. Here’s an alternate link to another website.) In addition, they went to the wrong address and terrorized a young man and his two children—for six hours. The SWAT team had a no-knock search warrant (How? Why?) for the man’s estranged wife. He wasn’t signatory on the loans and had nothing to do with them.

(By the way, why does the Department of Education need a SWAT team? To terrorize loan deadbeats?)

The show moved to comparing those SWAT team actions with that of your local loan shark. You own money to the shark, he breaks into your house at Oh-Dark-Thirty, rousts you and your children demanding repayment. Look at the laws broken:

  1. Breaking and Entering.
  2. Assault and Battery.
  3. Assault with a Deadly Weapon.
  4. Commission of a crime using a weapon.
  5. Child endangerment.
  6. Kidnapping.
  7. Extortion.
  8. Vandalism.

The list can go on. But—when the feds or local LEOs do the same, they get off without being charged.

Theft: when a mugger sticks a gun in your ribs and takes your money, it’s theft. When the government seizes your assets, breaks in your door with a search warrant, it’s taxation and revenue recovery.

Home Invasion: when a thug breaks in your door in the wee hours of the morning, it’s breaking and entering and a slew of other crimes. When the fed/LEOs break into the wrong house, it’s a mistake. And, if they leave you dead on the floor, it’s still your fault for daring to protect your family in the face of an illegal entry.

When such occurrences by government become the norm, what difference is there from thugs and gangsters and law enforcement agents?

Not too much.