CO State Judicial Activism

This post strays into political activism but it is grounded in political philosophy, specifically the role of the judicial system. The state supreme courts are responsible for ensuring that the constitution of the state is upheld and the rights of its citizens are protected. This post documents and egregious setup of the violation of the rights of Colorado citizens as protected by the TABOR amendment to the Colorado constitution.

Lower courts, protecting TABOR, ruled that school districts and parents could not sue the state to increase educational funding, the Colorado Supreme Court today overturned the lower courts and granted standing to sue (Lobato v. State of Colorado).

The justices participating in the majority opinion have displayed extreme arrogance. What makes them more qualified than the state legislature and the citizenry to determine what is an adequate level of educational funding? What gives them the right to open the door for the violation of the state constitution? This is clear judicial activism targeting the destruction of Colorado's TABOR constitutional amendment. TABOR limits Colorado state and local governments from increasing spending faster than inflation plus population growth without voter approval. TABOR requires all taxes to be approved by voters. TABOR has kept Colorado's governmental budgets sound. The socialists and progressives of Colorado have been working for years to overturn TABOR, bit-by-bit, as it inhibits their ability to tax and spend.

The following justices voted for the majority opinion and should be turned out of office at the next opportunity:

• Justice Michael L. Bender (Subject to retention vote in November 2010)
• Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey (Subject to retention vote in November 2010)
• Justice Gregory J. Hobbs
• Justice Alex J. Martinez (Subject to retention vote in November 2010)

Although Justice Nancy Rice dissented in this case, she is identified as a judicial activist by Clear the Bench Colorado and is subject to retention vote in November 2010. Personally, I will need to research and consider her track record more thoroughly before deciding how I will vote on her retention come November 2010. It is clear to me that she is not in the same class as the 4 justices listed above. It is clear that if Governor Ritter wins re-election, he could easily appoint someone worse than Justice Rice. This will be a decision that will be made late in the election cycle for me. Please review her record and make your own decision (as with the other 4 listed above).

The ruling and opinion can be read here.

What You Need to Know About Socialized Health Care

This morning (17 Oct) I attended a Health Care Forum in Aurora, CO sponsored by 9 News and the Denver Post. That forum provided the motivation for another post on this topic. In addition to the Democrats from the Colorado congressional delegation mentioned below, Republican Representative Mike Coffman also attended. Mr. Coffman earns partial kudos for backing free market based reforms (albeit with flaws). However, he never made the moral case nor the constitutional case against socialized health care. In that regard, he finds common cause and limitations with nearly all Republican politicians.

Of course, the moderator for the forum never asked these fundamental questions (morality and constitutionality of the proposed health care reforms). Par for the course as he is part of the "main-stream media."

Here's a quick summary of everything you need to know about socialized health care fundamentals:

1. The socialists (Sens. Udall, and Bennet, and Reps. DeGette, Perlmutter and Polis) use pity stories about those who have suffered consequences from not having health insurance. The purpose of those stories are to use your compassion against you. To make you feel so guilty that you don't notice they are enslaving you. Stand up for your rights and freedom. Ask no one to live their life for your sake and never allow anyone to assert their need is a claim to one second of your life.

2. This is a moral issue. People that would never come to your home or mine and take our property by force, for whatever reason, will demand that a 3rd party do it for them. That 3rd party is the government.

3. There is no purpose for a government option other than for someone to get something paid for by someone else. Forget any other rationalization you hear. (That is why I insist on calling it socialized health care. All proposals under consideration move us into socialized medicine.)

4. I am the one at the forum who called Senator Udall "Slave Master" as he used a pity story to justify his work to enslave us to provide for others. I stand by my statement. It applies equally to Bennet, DeGette, Polis and Perlmutter. I can have compassion and charity for people who find themselves in bad situations not of their own creation. But, ask me for my charity. Do not demand the government come and take what is mine for your benefit. If you do, do not be surprised when I hold you in the same contempt as a common thief.

Charity is a virtue because it is voluntarily given. Morality ends at the point of a gun. And, the government is wielding a gun.

An interesting side note that I will leave it to the reader to ponder:

Repeatedly, the socialists on the panel and, in particular DeGette and Perlmutter, referred to Mr. Coffman as their friend. Mr. Coffman acknowledged working with some of the socialist members of the Colorado delegation on a couple of legislative initiatives. However, I do not recall him referring to any of the socialists as friends.

What is the objective of the socialists in referring to Mr. Coffman as their friend? Do they seek to minimize differences between their positions and Mr. Coffman's? Do they seek moral equivalence? Why didn't Mr. Coffman see a need to do the same? Do you think the socialists were being honest in referring to Mr. Coffman as a friend?

Morality

It has been incredibly busy the past 3 months and I have not been able to post during that time. However, I have researched a post on the constitutionality of Government Health Care. This is not that post.

Instead, I believe it is more critical to explore the morality of Government Health Care as morality precedes politics in the conceptual and philosophic hierarchy. Let's explore the topic by analogy.

Let's say you are employed as the CFO of a company. You are kidnapped and the kidnappers demand, under threat to your life or the lives of your loved ones, that you embezzle money from your employer and that you place those funds in their Swiss back account.

In the question of morality, did you act immorally or morally? Did the kidnappers act morally or immorally?

Let's change the scenario slightly.

Again, you are the CFO of a company that is kidnapped. The kidnappers demand, under threat to your life or the lives of your loved ones, that you embezzle money from your employer. This time, the kidnappers demand that you transfer the funds to the bank account of the American Red Cross as they believe everyone should support this fine charity. Now consider the same questions asked previously. Did you act immorally or morally? Did the kidnappers act morally or immorally?

Let's take the easier situation first. In both cases, the answer to the question: Did you act immorally or morally? Is the same. As you were under coercion and given no choice in how you could act, your actions were amoral. They were neither moral or immoral. You were deprived of the ability to pursue a course of action that was consistent with your belief of what is right or wrong.

Now, let's explore the question of the morality of the actions of the kidnappers. Is there a difference between the two scenarios? In both cases, embezzlement is a crime. The only other difference between the scenarios is who benefits from the embezzled money. In the first case, the kidnappers benefit. In the second case, a well known and respected charity benefits. Virtually everyone would agree that in the first case, the actions of the kidnappers is immoral. They deprived someone of their freedom and forced them to perform acts that are illegal so that they would benefit from those actions.

Now, does the fact that a charity benefits in the 2nd scenario make the actions of the kidnappers moral? Do the ends justify the means? Is it moral to force people to do what someone else believes is the right thing to do? That is, can you force others to be moral? The answer is no. As we established previously, the question of morality applies only when a person is free to choose their actions. When that freedom is eliminated, the person's coerced actions are amoral. Therefore, the CFO's actions remain amoral. However, the kidnappers actions remain the same -- they deprived a person of their liberty and forced them to commit a crime. The beneficiary is irrelevant. The kidnappers acts are clearly immoral.

Now, we tie the analogy back to politics. Substitute the U.S. Federal Government for the kidnappers, any tax-paying citizen of the U.S. as the CFO and ObamaCare (U.S. dictated health care) as the beneficiary. Is there anything that is fundamentally different? If the U.S. Federal Government forces you to pay for someone's health care, is that really any different from a kidnapper coercing you to embezzle money to support the American Red Cross? No. The only actor that is immoral in this scenario is the U.S. Federal Government and the supporters of socialized health care who believe in mob rule (unbridled democracy) or autocracy.

The sooner we see clearly how immoral the U.S. Federal Government has become and the orders of magnitude of immorality it is attempting to shove down everyone's throats with socialized health care and nationalized businesses, the sooner we can stall their grab of absolute power and throw the leaders of tyrannical government out of power.

Perhaps a rabid statist will now report me to President Obama for exercising my rights to freedom of speech as the White House has established an email address for reporting dissenters. Our President's Deputy Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, has also incited violence against those protesting ObamaCare “If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard." (His choice of words are not accidental.)

These are not good omens. They suggest the statists are coming close to using force to take the absolute control they thought they had gained peacefully as the silent majority has awakened and are demanding that their freedoms and the constitution be restored.

(For Republicans and Conservatives, this is why another George W. Bush or John McCain can never be allowed to win nomination again. Only Jefferson, Madison and George Washington admiring and constitution loving candidates deserve nomination.)

Lies & Truth About the Financial Crisis

The Junior Senator from Colorado (Senator Michael Bennet) replied to an email I sent to him. His response included the following lie about the cause of the financial crisis:

"It is important to remember that the seeds of the current economic turmoil were planted during the past eight years, when unregulated markets allowed financial institutions to swell and the housing market to balloon to unrealistic proportions."

By the way, any Colorado residents reading this: Please remember in 2010 what type of person Senator Bennet is. By promulgating lies and denying the truth, he is unfit to be elected to this office. (Senator Bennet was appointed to fill the remaining term of Secretary of the Interior Salazar.)

If the Senator is wrong about the cause of the financial crisis, then what is the truth?

First, and foremost, the cause of the financial crisis is the Federal Reserve. Allan Greenspan oversaw a massive inflation of the money supply by keeping interest rates below the rate of inflation for several years. Interest is the cost of "renting" money. If the interest rate is less than the rate of inflation, then borrowers effectively pay back in dollars that are cheaper than the dollars they borrowed.

But, that's not the only way in which Senator Bennet has lied. His assertion that the crisis was caused by "unregulated markets" is false The housing (and financial) industries in the United States are heavily regulated. A review of the agencies and laws that regulate just the housing industry clearly demonstrates that there is no free market in housing:

• The tax deductibility of mortgage interests and exemption of real estate capital gains encourages home ownership. (Let me be clear: I’m not advocating higher taxes. Quite the opposite, taxes should be lowered to stimulate the economy. If we are to have an income tax, then that tax should be devoid of incentives and penalties that influence behavior based on someone’s definition of what is in my best interest.)
• The Community Reinvestment Act forces banks to lower underwriting standards for home loans to high-risk borrowers.
• The government created Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Ginnie Mae GSEs and implicitly guaranteed their debt. That guarantee allowed the GSEs to steal market share from private mortgage companies through an unfair cost advantage. Congress then passed laws requiring these GSEs to purchase more mortgages from high-risk borrowers as part of the government’s intervention to encourage home ownership. GSEs are NOT private, unregulated entities. Of course, Congress then made clear that the guarantee was not implicit when Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were nationalized.
• Other regulatory agencies and laws that interfere with the housing market include: Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Finance Board, Federal Housing Administration, Federal Home Loan Bank, Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, Fair Housing Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Community Reinvestment Act (previously mentioned), Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, National Affordable Housing Act, Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act, Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act and American Dream Down Payment Act.

The evidence is clear: The free market is not to blame because there was no free market. The government created the crisis. Politicians don't want you to know they are responsible because the cure for the problem is to reduce their power to take your property and run your business for their purposes.

Free America Again!

Towards a Broader Republican Coalition

Senator Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats followed by Gen Colin Powell’s admonishment to Republicans to adjust to the current political fad that believes the US citizenry want a bigger government has caused much self-introspection and external criticism of the Republican Party, specifically its platform and core principles. However, no commentary has yet to get to properly define how the Republican Party can once again attain prominence and leadership in American politics. The commentators are right in one respect: The Republicans can only rise again if they broaden the people supporting their platform. None of the commentators are right on how to accomplish that goal.

People voluntarily associate because they have something in common. In the case of political party affiliation, the uniting principles are the role the government plays in the lives of its citizens. The words written into a Party’s platform are mere words. The actions of its members – specifically, the elected politicians affiliated with the party establish the de facto platform of the party. As Obama has been president for a short period and succeeds a Republican President and the President is the leader of their political party while in office, examining the policies of Bush and Obama are illustrative of their party’s platforms.

Obama has spent billions of dollars bailing out banks, insurance companies, government sponsored mortgage companies and automotive companies. He is exercising the power of the government to impose his political will on private entities – controlling the pay of bank employees, trashing contracts, working to increase taxes, egging on the Federal Reserve in its debasement of every dollar in savings and escalating the war in Afghanistan. President Bush spent billions of dollars bailing out banks, insurance companies, government sponsored mortgage companies and automotive companies. He exercised the power of the government to impose a massive enlargement of government intrusion into health care through the Medicar prescription drug program, appointed Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve and watched (even encouraged) him to debase the dollar over 8 years of deficit spending, initiated the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without a Congressional declaration of war, and significantly compromised our freedom of speech by signing the McCain-Feingold campaign speech limitations law.

In other words, there is no fundamental difference between the Democrat and Republican parties. Instead of protecting the lives and treasures of its citizens, both parties accept the principle that the government has the power to violate the rights of its citizens. While the founders of the United States meticulously created a constitutional republic, our two political parties function as though the U.S. is an unbridled democracy where the majority has the power to do anything they choose to the minority. Gen. Powell explicitly admits that he shares this philosophy as he criticizes Republicans for failing to recognize that the majority of the citizenry wants higher taxes to pay for more government. Senator Arlen Specter has openly admitted he has no specific political philosophy and only cares about winning re-election. To that end, he sees the path of greatest opportunity to re-election comes from running as a Democrat in 2010. An unprincipled man deserves all the arbitrary, unjust and feckless consequences that reality can toss his way.

Since the Democrats are far more consistent in their ideological beliefs in the right and supremacy of the government over the individual, in their belief that the collective has priority over the individual even to the extent that the individual must be sacrificed for the collective good while the Republican party at least pays lip service to smaller, constrained government, the Republican Party must define itself in complete opposition to the fundamental ideals that form the foundation of the Democrat Platform. In so doing, the Republican Party will open itself to the widest possible diversity of ideas and participation.

The Republican Party Platform should state:

The Republican Party believes in a government strictly limited to the protection of its citizens from the initiation of force, actual or threatened (explicitly as in extortion or implicitly as in embezzlement), from any person or group of persons.

That is it. Nothing more needs to be said. Everyone is welcome to the Republican Party as long as they accept this single principle: that no one can force anyone else, that everyone is free to pursue their happiness as long as it does not result in the violation of another’s rights.

The altruist is welcome as long as they agree that they are free to try to persuade others that it is morally right to donate some or all of their wealth to others (directly or via charities) but that they cannot promote governmental action requiring others to live by their moral code (to support others through taxes that fund a welfare state).

• Born-again Christians are welcome as long as they agree that they are free to proselytize on their own property or at the invitation of others but that they cannot force anyone to belong to a church, worship their God, tithe their wealth or listen to them.
• Bigots are welcome as long as they accept that they are free to argue the inferiority of some group of people but that they cannot use laws and governmental force to infringe the rights of anyone who is associated with that group.
• Environmentalists are welcome as long as they renounce using the power of government to dictate the choices of transportation and energy that individuals select without establishing in a court of law that such transportation or energy production violates the property rights of others. They are free to persuade citizens to choose a higher, in monetary cost, product or service while accepting that they may not compel them to use a specific product or service regardless of that product or service’s advertised benefits to the ecology.
• Proponents of affirmative action are welcome as long as they agree that they may argue to private individuals and organizations that there is a moral responsibility to favor one group over another for whatever reason while agreeing that the government only recognizes individuals.
• Laissez-faire capitalists are welcome as long as they agree that they cannot prevent others from freely associating in communes where all work for the common good and production is distributed on basis of need.
• Atheists are welcome as long as they agree that the government has no right to stop others from worshipping the God or gods of their choice in the manner of their choosing.
• Homosexuals are welcome as long as they agree that a heterosexual bleeds the same as a homosexual when brutally attacked regardless of the attacker’s motivation.
• Foreign policy hawks are welcome as long as they agree that the government cannot compel servitude in the military or taxation to force doves to pay for military action they oppose.
• Foreign policy doves are welcome as long as they agree that they are free to stick their heads in the sand and ignore the dangers in the world but cannot prevent others concerned about the protection of their rights from foreign aggression from volunteering for military service and paying to support the military.

In other words, what the United States desperately needs is a political party that offers a real, fundamental choice between a government that protects the rights of its citizens and a government that violates those rights.

Will the Republican Party adopt this platform? The chances are low as the Republican Party is filled with people who want to use the power of government to compel their fellow citizens to financially support causes they believe worthy and to regulate behavior that violates no one’s rights but which they find offensive and undesirable. However, I am hopeful that the over-reaching, control-obsessed Obama administration and Democrat Congress are causing a great political awakening. If the proper leadership can ascend to the top of the Party, then there is a chance that a majority can be attained in the Party and in a future election. That majority might then set to work resuscitating the constitutional republic that our founders gave us. A constitutional republic that protects, not violates, the rights of its citizens.

Democratic Capitalism is an Oxymoron

Larry Kudlow ponders the death of Democratic Capitalism at Newsmax.com (http://tinyurl.com/cprfqa). This begs the question: What is Democratic Capitalism?

If it is meant, as Kudlow apparently intends, to be a form of political-economic system, the term is a complete oxymoron. Democracy is a political system of mob rule. Whoever has the most votes, wins. Under pure Democracy, there are no limits to what the majority mob can do. It is for this reason that the founders of the United States created a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy. The founders knew the evils of unrestrained Democracy and created a constitution which protects (with some imperfections) individual rights.

Capitalism is the economic system which protects personal property rights -- the individual owns the means of production and each individual determines how they will dispose of the fruits of their production. (Fascism allows private ownership of the means of production but government control of the fruits of production. Socialism has government control of the means of production.) So, what does it mean to have the means of production or the fruits of production subject to the will of the majority? It certainly cannot mean that the property rights of production or its bounty is 100% protected as the property, by right, of the owner. After all, the majority can simply pass a law to seize any portion of that property up to and including complete expropriation and to put the property to any use that it wills.

I'm sure many would consider Mr. Kudlow a conservative. What he wishes to accomplish by using an oxymoronic term is not clear in the article as its theme is that Obama is destroying the capitalism aspect of the U.S.'s mixed economy. However, there can be only one explanation: He uses the term because he wishes to retain the escape clause that whenever laissez-faire capitalism has results that he does not like, that he can rally the support of a majority of the citizenry to violate someone's property rights to affect an outcome that would not otherwise be earned nor deserved.

Economics, Math & Politics

Imagine Jane goes shopping for jewelry and finds a nice gold chain necklace. The jeweler informs Jane the chain is a beautiful piece and worth $1,000. Jane has only $50 in cash. The jeweler arranges financing for the remaining $950. Jane leaves the store proudly wearing her new necklace.

Four months later, Jane unfortunately loses her job and can no longer afford the $100 monthly payment on the gold necklace. She visits her neighborhood pawn shop to sell the necklace. The proprietor appraises the necklace and informs her that it is worth $2 as it is made of cheap lead covered by gold paint. Flabbergasted, she watches as he uses a knife to scrape away some of the gold paint to reveal the lead. Jane leaves the pawn shop dejected and confused as to how she could have possibly overpaid for the necklace and wondering how she can ever pay back the loan.

Some time after arriving home, Jane is struck by an epiphany. If she can manufacture $600, she can pay off the loan including the interest. Taking the last $20 bill from her purse, she makes enough copies to create $600 in counterfeit 20s. She sends the money to the loan company.

Does any of this sound familiar? Well, it should. This is exactly what the U.S. government is doing, By inflating the supply of dollars, the Federal Reserve is attempting to replace the wealth that was destroyed by the bursting of the housing bubble. That wealth was destroyed because people paid more for homes than what those homes were worth just as Jane's wealth was ruined because she overpaid for a piece of jewelry. There is a key difference. Poor, desperate Jane was arrested for counterfeiting currency (a form of fraud). Ben Bernanke's actions and those of the U.S. government are not punished for inflating the dollar. Every person that has dollar denominated savings is a victim of the inflation. A value destroyed cannot be restored by substituting something that has no value backing it. Dollars that are created out of thin air, not due to the production of anything of value, serve a single purpose: reducing the value of all dollars that were earned through the production of value. A fiat currency depends on the trust of people using it as the medium of trade that it can be traded for something of tangible value. When the fiat currency is inflated, that trust is undermined as there is no certainty of value from which it was created.

Power to Cleanup the Mess They Created?

President Obama is now asking for authority to shutdown businesses using AIG as the "poster child" for such authority. Meanwhile, his Treasury Secretary is asking for authority for government to take over (nationalize) companies such as AIG.

Which is it that the Obama administration wants to do? Shut them down or take them over? In either case, what the President and the Treasury Secretary are requesting is even more arbitrary power to interfere in the market. If Obama really wanted AIG "shutdown" all he had to do was to stop bailing out the company! AIG would have gone bankrupt. Instead, AIG was too value to keep operating as the shell company by which our government has pumped billions of dollars into other companies via the contracts they had with AIG. That has kept those companies from failing or their investors from losing as much on their investments.

As for nationalizing banks and insurance companies, do we really want to allow the same people that gave us Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Amtrak and the Postal Service running even more businesses? After all, won't they already be plenty busy running GM and Chrysler? Politicians are not CEOs. They have proven that they cannot establish a proper monetary or fiscal policy. They cannot be trusted to run real businesses either.

We have an established legal process for handling these situations. It is called bankruptcy. Let them fail so the economy can being to recover.

Regulated Speech

McCain-Feingold is arguably the worse government intrusion on individual rights that the U.S. has ever passed into law. In fact, it is because of this law that I was unable to support McCain for president.

The consequences of McCain-Feingold being passed by Congress, approved by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court as constitutional has been to create a significant chill in the free exchange of political ideas during elections. It has led to repeated attempts to circumvent the law by relying on American tradition of free speech. The latest example was the creation of documentary films of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the last election cycle by Republican partisans (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090321/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_clinton_movie). The Federal Election Commission ruled that ads promoting the film were political advocacy ads and not film marketing ads and prohibited them from being aired. The film production company (Citizens United) took the case to court. Federal courts have upheld the FEC's ruling. The case now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Freedom of speech is the most fundamental individual right. As long as freedom of speech is protected, then one can argue and lobby peacefully for the restoration and protection of other individual rights even if they are currently being abrogated by the government. When free speech is not an option, then force is the only alternative remaining to protect your rights from a government that fails to recognize and protect them. It is time the U.S. Supreme Court overturned McCain-Feingold and restored our constitutional right to free speech (the constitution contains no qualifiers stating you have the right for speak freely except ...).

Side note: McCain-Feingold came into being as a response to concerns that money is corrupting politics. The expenditure of money to promote or defeat a candidate or initiative is the exercise of free speech. Money in politics is not the problem. The reason that there is so much money in politics today is because our government has strayed from its strictly limited responsibilities to be intimately entangled in economics and taxation. To put it bluntly, there are trillions of dollars at stake. Much of the money being spent on the outcome of elections is viewed as the required bribe or tithe to ensure that an appropriate percentage of the spoils of government taxation and economic regulation are turned towards the person making the political contribution. There is only one way to reduce the amount of money in politics: Reduce the role of government.

Political Grand Slam -- Paying for Veteran's Service-Related Health Care

Could any single issue more blatantly expose President Obama's raw and unabashed promotion of his political philosophy than his proposal to force private health insurers to pay the cost of veteran's service-related health care needs? Politically, here's what this proposal accomplishes:

1. By pushing an unfunded cost onto private insurance, he ensures that the cost of private health insurance will increase exacerbating the existing affordability issues that have already been created by government interference in health care. Make no mistake, it is the President's objective to destroy private health insurance and leave nationalized health care as the only alternative. If Congress should pass this into law, he and the Democrats will be one step closer to accomplishing their goals.

2. This proposal clearly communicates to the world the contempt that the President holds for the U.S. military. This leaves no doubt that anyone volunteering to serve in the U.S. military will be serving a President who holds their service in contempt and from whom they can never expect to receive any acknowledgement of respect. Why else would he want to deny the U.S. has any responsibility whatsoever for health issues arising from a veteran's service to his country? President Obama is stating that that service was not honorable and therefore not deserving of the government's care.

3. The volunteer service is a racist or, at least, a form of economic repression in the eyes of many Democrats and liberals. By holding the U.S. military in contempt, the President will discourage volunteers from joining the military. This will create a crisis in recruiting which will be used as justification for re-instituting the draft. Whatever problems there may be with a volunteer military force, does that justify forcing young adults into involuntary servitude?

There is no justification for President Obama's proposed abandonment of our veterans. President Obama does not care about reducing the deficit. The proposed $500M savings is peanuts compared to the budgetary increases he proposes elsewhere. The President has disgraced his office and the United States by making such a proposal. To shame both for so shallow political purposes makes any honorable person want to vomit.

Enslavement by "Social Contract"

The "social contract" is often used as a sledgehammer to bludgeon anyone who argues against advances in authoritarianism (also known as socialism or the welfare state).

What is a social contract? www.dictionary.com defines it as: "the voluntary agreement among individuals by which, according to any of various theories, as of Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau, organized society is brought into being and invested with the right to secure mutual protection and welfare or to regulate the relations among its members."

The key parts of this definition are "voluntary agreement" and "individuals." As with any contract, a social contract is entered willfully by all parties. If you are forced to abide by some set of terms to which you had not willingly consented, then that is no longer a contract. To the extent that those terms require you to do something, anything for someone else, then it is a form of slavery (whether sanctioned by law or not). A properly constituted government would never force its citizens into servitude for others. It would only prevent them from taking actions that would cause harm to others.

The United States has unfortunately evolved to the point where all residents and citizens are said to be under many social contracts. For example, Social Security is a social contract to ensure everyone has a minimum retirement income. How can it be that anyone born after 14 August 1935 (when the Social Security Act became active), voluntarily agreed to participate in this contract? I know that when I started working and for every job I have had since, no one has ever asked for my consent to participate in Social Security. The same is true for unemployment insurance, medicare, medicaid and all other forms of welfare.

The other key part to the definition of a social contract is "individuals." What this means is that even though I'm a member of an organization, that organization cannot obligate me to participate in a contract without my consent. For example, I belong to the IEEE which often argues for stricter limits on immigrant visas for high technology workers. The IEEE cannot obligate me to participate in citizen patrols along the border with Mexico or to donate to Pat Buchanan's or Tom Tancredo's next political initiative. Similarly, just because a majority of the voters awarded Obama the presidency and Democrats control of Congress does not give them the right to obligate me, or even people that voted for them, to any social contract without their individual consent. The founders of the United States understand quite well the dangers of Democracy. That is why the U.S. was founded as a Constitutional Republic that protected the rights of all individuals.

So, the next time someone tells you that we are all bound together by this social contract or that social contract, simply tell them that you never signed your name providing your consent to be a party to that contract (and most likely, they never did either). Remind them the difference between a voluntary contract and involuntary servitude.

Obama Bribes CEOs

On Thursday (12 Mar 09), President Obama offered a bribe to the 65 CEOs from the Business Roundtable:

Support Obama's agenda of dramatically deepening government control over the health, energy and education industries and the President will support cutting the corporate tax rate.

The President is searching for any and all CEOs that are short-sighted and weak on fundamental political and economic principles. He needs backing by some CEOs (a majority is not required, only a handful) in order to use their backing against the arguments against broader control of these 3 key economic segments.

Any CEO that is contemplating the compromising of their positions on this matter need to reconsider what this bribe entails. It is extremely difficult to roll back government intervention in any sector of the economy. Every government disruption in the free contracting of services and product (health care, energy and education are products or services just like food, cars and cable television are products and services) inevitably results in further crisis due to the inefficient displacements within that economic segment that result from governmental interference. Those disruptions are used, by those who believe in government control, to justify further government intrusion into the economy. Therefore, supporting Obama's agenda will lead to an ever deepening cycle of problems and increasing government control of health care, energy and education.

Although the CEOs may see short-term benefit by shifting the cost of health care and, perhaps education, from direct entries on their books to the government, those costs will be more than offset by the increase in costs in taxes, regulation and an increasing less efficient economy overall.

What do they get in exchange? A token reduction in corporate tax rates. Since the corporate tax rate remains, they continue to concede the principle that the government should tax corporations (which ignores the fact that only living, breathing human beings that produce anything of economic value actually pay taxes, not fictitious entities such as corporations, more on that some other time). They are only negotiating the current rate of taxation of corporations. How long will it take before the government once again increases the rate at which corporations are taxed? It won't take long as the Obama plan will significantly increase the cost of government. If the President insists on directly raising taxes only on the top 3% or so of the population, then he will be forced to indirectly tax the population through higher corporate taxes.

The Obama CEO bribe is transparent. Its consequences obvious. The decision for the CEOs of the Business Roundtable is easy.

Logical Limit to the Amount of Stimulus?

Now that the Obama administration is lobbying for the G-20 countries to join the U.S. in massive deficit stimulus spending (National Economic Council Director Larry Summers "The right macro-economic focus for the G20 is on global demand and the world needs more global demand") and there is talk in Washington that a second stimulus package is needed for the U.S., then the question is:

How much government spending is enough to stimulate the economy?

Let's follow the logic. If the $830 billion U.S. stimulus package is good for the economy because it will save or create 3 or 4 million jobs (hard to keep track of the claims being made), then by what logic did Congress and Obama restrain the stimulus package to just $830 billion? According to the Labor Department (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm), there are 12.5 million people unemployed.

Hmmm, logic dictates that if at least 3 million jobs are saved or created by the government spending $830 billion it does not have, then the next stimulus package should be enacted immediately and it should spend at least $2.49 Trillion as that would surely save or create the 9.5 million jobs needed to put every unemployed American back to work!

So, why isn't President Obama or Congress proposing that the government spend $3.32 Trillion to achieve the goal of full employment? Even if you don't explicitly know the answer, you implicitly understand why it won't work. Why the politicians don't propose and enact it is quite simple: It will be all too obvious that they were wrong when we aren't living in full employment nirvana 2 years from now.

We cannot borrow $3 trillion (or even $830 billion -- not to mention the trillions more spent to prop up failed companies) to spend today and have that $3 trillion tomorrow to spend and invest. Of course, the government need not borrow the money. The President and Congress could increase taxes by $3 trillion from those who are working and transfer it to those who are not. What do you think would happen if $3 trillion is removed from the economy today? If you think times are tough now, .... Of course, the politicians recognize this. That is why no one attempts to pay for the stimulus spending with current tax dollars.

Borrowing the money does not change the outcome. It only spreads the impact over many years instead of hitting the economy and taxpayers all at once. Who pays? We all do. The politicians are simply betting that you won't recognize how good you could have had it 5 years from now if they hadn't spent all that money today! The burden on the economy will be felt for a long time. It will delay the recovery and make it shallower than it otherwise would have been.

What makes it unethical is the fact that we are burdening those who are not yet working and those not yet born with the cost of fixing our problem today. That's a burden they did not choose but for which we are obligating them.

Of course, what applies to our national economy is true for the world's economy. Deficit stimulus spending by the rest of the G20 countries will only make matters worse as we could not rely on stronger economic conditions outside the U.S. to help our own recovery. Deficit spending by the entire G20 would impoverish our international economic competitors to roughly the same extent we are impoverishing ourselves. Does it make you feel better if everyone around you suffers as much as you?

Fallacies in Political Arguments

Recently I attended the Design & Verification Conference (DVCon) in San Jose, CA. At the conference, I encountered a long time acquaintance, in fact a person who years ago had hired me at a previous employer. This person is well known in the EDA as one of the freelance journalists covering the industry. Our discussion quickly turned to politics and it very quickly became obvious we were in complete disagreement. The result of the discussion was quite disappointing to me as I lost all respect that I once had for this person.

Why did I lose my respect? Regardless of his intellect and regardless of his education and past accomplishments, this person failed to argue his political position logically and persuasively. Instead, he resorted to a collection of logical fallacies in the following order:

Example 1: I have a business degree. I know your education and you do not.
Fallacy: Appeal to authority.
Instead of arguing the logical truth of his position, he attempted to assert their truth through the fact that by attending some class at some time in the past that led to the awarding of some degree that that somehow made his position true and mine false.
Factual Aside: While this person certainly knew that I have a BS and MS in Computer Science as that information was relevant to him hiring me, he has no knowledge of the Finance, Economics, Philosophy and other courses I have taken in my life nor the extent or depth of my independent reading and study in any of these areas.

Example 2: You've been listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Fallacy: Guilt by association.
Instead of arguing based on the falsity or logical contradiction of my position, he attempted to discredit them by implying that my ideas were the same or similar to those of someone else (Rush Limbaugh in this case) that at least some people despise.
Factual Aside: I never once mentioned Rush Limbaugh in the conversation. The positions I presented and defended I have held for about 30 years, long before I had ever heard of Rush Limbaugh. The greatest influence in the development of my positions is Ayn Rand, not Rush Limbaugh. Anyone who knows both Rand and Limbaugh knows that there are areas of agreement but that there are also areas of disagreement which indicates that the foundation of their philosophical thought have important differences.

Example 3: You are a fascist!
Fallacy: Ad hominem.
Instead of debating the veracity of ideas, he indicated he willingly choose not to function in the realm of ideas by terminating the discussion by calling me names. This is the lowest that anyone can stoop in the discourse of ideas as it nakedly discards ideas for the sake of dealing in raw emotions.
Factual Aside: I was deeply offended by his name calling and deeply disappointed that someone that I had once respected had proven himself so unworthy of my respect. He physically confirmed his desire to leave the realm of ideas by walking away from the discussion while repeating multiple times that I was a fascist.
Of course, fascism is a form a socialism and both are forms of government in which the state owns the means of production, the results of production or both. In fact, fascism and socialism are the polar opposite of laissez-faire capitalism which is the form of government that I advocate and was advocating in this discussion.

Since this former acquaintance has acknowledged that he does not wish to exist in the realm of ideas, truth and falsity, I will never waste a minute of my life on him again.