Today, June 26, 2009, Representative Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) asked the chair if there was a copy of the 309 page amendment they were voting on available so he could read it. After a Parliamentary inquiry the chair stated that she was not aware of any rule that said a copy of what they are voting on had to be available in or near the body so the members of Congress could read it before they voted on it. Although the chair said an official copy was at the chair she could not produce it. What the chair had was 300 pages short of the bill they were voting on. Rep. Markey would not yield for some one to look at the copy to verify the bill was complete. None of our representatives had a copy to read before they vote on a bill costing us billions of dollars. The kings Party would not yield for a recess to get copies of the official bill for the representatives voting on the carbon tax bill. They are forcing a vote on legislation our representatives can’t even get a copy of to read before they vote on it!

We need a Constitutional Convention to realign our government with the principles our country and constitution were founded on. Stay tuned!

President Obama and his Democrat Party leadership keep touting that the cost of administering a carbon tax permit and carbon trade will cost us approximately only the cost of a “stamp” a day. It has been reported that this cost does not include the additional cost of energy that will be incurred as a result of this stealth and very regressive tax that will be devastating to American families. MIT and the WSJ have estimated this stealth tax will cost the average family approximately $3,100.00 per year, going to $6,800.00 per year. The king’s “Party” (Democrats) says the additional cost will be returned to the families resulting in no additional cost to them. This doesn’t come close to passing the common sense test. Why should families give part of their weekly incomes to the federal government, to hold for a year, and create a financial hardship on those families? There will be a significant cost for the administration of collecting, accounting for and returning those withheld funds. Who will pay for this unnecessary administration of funds that need not be collected in the first place? Families have to do without that operating capital for a year and get no interest on the money.

Although the 1765 Stamp Act was for a different type of stamp, they are the same in their egregious overreaching by government to control our citizens, our commerce and raise money to continue funding a new and unnecessary department in an already bloated government that is growing exponentially. Just as we lacked representation in 1765 on the first Stamp Act we are lacking representation on the second Stamp Act. Debate on the value, validity, and necessity of this Stamp Act was completely blocked by the king’s “Party” in the House. No debate or discussion was allowed. The voice of nearly half of our elected representatives was silenced in the “People’s House” by the “kings” government. This is a historical repeat of what happened 244 years ago – “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.”

This legislation is so full of flaws, pork, stacked unfair provisions taxing the 95% that were promised not to get a tax increase, that it creates an economic yoke that will choke off our ability to compete in the global market, force business to move off shore and terminate 1.1 – 2.4 million American jobs. We have already lost thousands of businesses and jobs because of our tax policies. This legislation just makes a bad situation worse.

It will take another article(s) to cover the abuses in the 1,500 page bill that very few members of Congress have had the chance to read since the last amendment of 309 pages was introduced at 3:09 in the morning of the day of the vote.

The question is: Do we still have enough backbone and concern for our rights, freedom and the liberty of our children and grandchildren to do something about it?

Taxing Our Taxes

The Senate is debating taxing what the government subsidies!

Congress places import duties (taxes) on sugar and heavily subsidizes the U.S. sugar industry so the industry can compete in its own domestic market supplying sugar to the soft drink (and candy) industry. This results in an artificially high cost to the manufacturer and consumer. That’s why Hershey moved to Canada.

Now the Senators want to tax the consumers (tax payers) on products (sodas @7 cents per can) made with the raw materials the government spends money to support so our costs are higher. In other words, the government wants to tax the money it spends to support the industry. These geniuses are proposing taxing our own tax dollars! What possible public benefit, much less jobs or a manufactured product, does this government subsidy and program taxing the subsidized products promote? How can a society survive on taxing its own taxes? This makes the Madoff ponzi scheme look like an amateur attempt to rape the public.

Silly Supremes

The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued an opinion that, if it weren’t so sad, might be humorous. Unfortunately, it will have a long term impact on our law enforcement by creating more confusion than clarity. In the case of FLORES-FIGUEROA v. UNITED STATES the Court overruled the lower court decisions and held that an illegal alien couldn’t be prosecuted for aggravated identity theft unless it can be proven he knew he was stealing a number that had been issued to another person. The Appellant had used a false SSN to obtain and keep a job. The statute says in relevant part: the offender “knowingly . . . uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person.” 18 U. S. C. §1028A (a)(1) (emphasis added). The lower courts held that “knowingly” applied to whether Flores knew he was using the number and not to whether he knew the number had been issued to some one else. The Supreme Court interpreted (some may say revised) the language of the statute so the accused had to know the number was assigned to “another person.” Does the Court expect the theif to first research whether the number has been issued before he commits the crime?

What causes confusion is that the ruling flies in the face of common sense, fairness and basic legal principles. What the accused did was to knowingly take a SSN with out permission. It is akin to some one stealing unguarded property at the fair grounds or race track. Just because the thief doesn’t know whose property he was taking doesn’t exonerate him from the crime.

Even if he used a number not yet issued (and it wasn’t) it could be easily argued that the number (for SSN purposes) belonged to the government. He would then be stealing the number from the government (which has been held to be a “person” for statutory construction) for the purpose of assuming a false identity, committing a fraud and probably theft of government benefits. What will law enforcement do with this ruling from the highest court in the land? Will they not prosecute this particular type of theft and fraud any more? Or will they still try to apply the basic principles of fairness, common sense, and law that Congress intended and form the basis of our legal system for justice? May be they could prosecute for “attempted” identity theft, as they would for attempted robbery.

The judges concurring in this majority opinion evidently did so on a social opinion basis and not on the law. That is the kind of justice and judge that Justice Ginsberg indicated she wants to see replace Sutter. She made that clear in the case of the 13 year old girl appealing an illegal search allegedly violating her privacy rights. Ginsberg said the majority was wrong because they don’t understand what it is like to be a sensitive 13 year old girl. While that sexist statement is probably true it has nothing to do with whether the justices know the law.

Under the Ginsberg Doctrine, judges should evidently abstain, or at least defer, on cases involving appellants of the opposite sex, other religions, different national origins or sexual preference because they don’t have personal experience of what it is like to be a member of these groups. I think NOT! Their job is to interpret the law not write or establish social norms. In any event, the other judges probably have some insight as to what it is like to be a sensitive 13 year old boy. To say, or at least imply, that girls are more sensitive or need more help than boys is a blatantly sexist statement implying that girls are weaker, more fragile and in need of more help than boys.

The question remains: When it can’t be proved that the accused knew the number was issued; What would happen to the rights, especially the privacy rights the court is so adamant in protecting in other circumstances, of the person whose identity is stolen? The Court opinion attempts to completely eviscerate the protection of citizens that was the congressional intent of the statute. Where’s the outraged press on our loss of privacy rights?

If we could ask our Constitution what it thought about the state of the Republic - what do you think it would say? Here is a likely response.

The Epitome of a Republic
By the U.S. Constitution

My gestation period was about 3,000 years. Then an ingenious group of humans happened to come together at the same time in history and realized it was time for my delivery, and the birth of a Republic. Labor for my birth was induced by an oppressive system that unfairly taxed men to pay huge debts they didn’t authorize and for which others were receiving the benefit. There have been a few creatures of my geneses; however, I am a new creature – one that had never been seen before. Thank God I had some one as wise as James Madison for my delivery or I may have been still born. It was his genius that made sure there was a structure to keep my organs of individual liberties properly balanced and functional. He must have been part psychologist because it was he that realized, for me to survive, I would need a system that used man’s natural tendencies, to seek power and money, to keep my organs naturally in balance.

My functioning system consists of three appendages; an Executive limb, a Legislative limb, and a Judicial limb. As a counterbalance and overseer of the performance by these branches, states retained powers not specifically given to these three branches. This enabled the states to act as kind of a parent to keep the limbs of the Federal Government in line and protecting the Republic. If the Federal Government was reaching too far and diminishing state rights or the rights of their citizens, states had the power to openly declare the Federal Government didn’t have that power. With a limited federal power of taxation, this was an effective system.

The sustainability of my organs (Individual Liberty, Limited Accountable Government, Free Speech, the Rights to Vote, Bear Arms, Assemble, to be Secure in our Houses, Due Process and Public Trial, etc.), depended entirely on the morality and commitment by my citizens for their survival. Just as with any other being with organs, if one organ is allowed to fail it can mean the failure and loss of all the organs.

My system and equilibrium was maintained unchallenged until in 1817 when, evidently driven by the need for power and money, John C. Calhoun made the first attack on my health. He wanted to use $1.5m of the “National Road” project to benefit other transportation arterials around the country but primarily for the benefit of Pennsylvania (This is possibly the first example of “Pork” cloaked as a “national interest”). He wanted to take tax payer dollars contributed from all the states and spend it on “internal improvements” for the benefit of tax payers in a few states. Thankfully Mr. Madison was President and he told Mr. Calhoun that he could not sign it because it violated the Constitution. Mr. Madison, the father of the Constitution, believed that it was unconstitutional because such an appropriation of tax dollars was not within the enumerated powers the Constitution granted Congress. Additionally, father Madison feared it would upset the balance of powers between state and federal governments that protect the Republic’s organs of liberty.

Only a few more decades went by when President Polk defeated another attempt to infect my system with the illness of greed in the form of Pork to favor a few states. Mr. Polk vetoed another bill for “internal improvements.” It also passed under the cover of being in the “national interest” in 1846. With his veto Polk stated: “The Constitution has not, in my judgment, conferred upon the Federal Government the power to construct works of internal improvement within the States, or to appropriate money from the Treasury for that purpose.”

Human nature, being what it is, engendered numerous exposures to this contagious illness over the years. The one federally assisted project that can be said to be in the national interest was the transatlantic rail road. Although there were so many abuses to my system, conducted in the name of that project, it weakened my antibodies and left a lingering virus among the administrative cells in my branches.

Although I sustained numerous other exposures over the years, I was severely and permanently infected by a virus in 1913 with the 16th and 17th Amendments to my system. They permanently destroyed some of my antibodies designed to keep me, the Republic, healthy. The 16th made a major and irrevocable transfer of power to the Federal Government with the power to take personal incomes, in the “national interest.” This surrender of economic power enabled the Federal Government to collect everyone’s money so it can spend the money on federal and state projects for the people in states whose money it took in the first place. What made this illness worse is that this new federal tax opened the door for an eternal draft blowing the financial resources of the citizens of all the states to the less accountable treasury of the Federal Government. This draft has become an ill wind over the last 90 years spreading the sickness through out the Republic.

The 17th amendment carried an illness almost as bad when it rested control of the election of the Senators from the states. Although this was a populist Amendment, its infection made me ill because it created a permanent imbalance in the powers established to keep my functioning branches in balance and protect my organs of individual liberty and states’ rights. Senators are no longer accountable to their state legislatures – hence the flood of unfunded federal mandates on the states. Senators take credit for and tell their constituents how much they have done for them with out saying; “Oh by the way I’ve just passed a tax increase by forcing your state to raise your taxes to fund this ‘federal program’ in our state.” My health (i.e., the health of the Republic), started deteriorating rapidly from here but I didn’t contract a nearly terminal disease until the Hoover/FDR era.

The period known as the “Great Depression” was truly depressing for me. It carried the most dangerous illness I can be exposed to, the disease diagnosed as an acute reliance on the Federal Government to take control of the Republic’s organs, the Republic’s guaranteed individual liberties. This is a particularly dangerous disease because it is disguised as a cure but it is a creeping, slow developing illness that becomes addictive, takes over and debilitates my organs one at a time with hardly any public notice. In fact, each debilitative act is seen as a cure – it’s like applying leaches to some one bleeding to death. And just like applying leeches, it weakens my health and will do so until I am either beyond recovery or will need major surgery. Each act creating federal reliance and citizen dependence weakens my system. Once this misdiagnosis is established, and the addictive medication of dependence begins to be applied, the belief in this false cure is secure in its future.

This illness develops to the point where it not only fosters the belief of dependence as a cure but it stifles and inhibits any efforts to apply an effective cures such as self reliance, support of the individual’s rights and the power of states to keep the system in balance as a check on federal power. In the 1930’s one of my branches tried to protect me from this illness when, in a series of cases, the Supreme Court struck down FDR’s attempt to apply the addiction of dependence and stifling of individual rights. Unfortunately, the Court inoculation was not strong enough to resist the therapy controlled by FDR and the treatment of Federal Government dependence was applied in even higher doses. This vicious cycle created by the illness of dependence, results in the surrender of liberties in exchange for more addictive injections of dependence. The cycle has continued and gotten worse right up to the present time.

One of the clearest examples of the illness FDR created is LBJ’s “Great Society.” It mandated the restructuring of my core system element of the family structure – it debilitated my very backbone. This one massive legislation replaced the interdependence and values of the family with dependence on Federal Government payments. It went so far as to require fathers to leave their families so they could collect the government payments they had come to depend on for their survival. This legislation created and cut loose uncontrolled agencies to do their will on citizens made subservient to agency authority and it became an epidemic. To speed up the illness by incubating the virus, my educational system has been in a steep decline since the federal Department of Education was created and states became dependant on federal money. This agency is not accountable to the states much less parents, but it exercises more control and infects my children with the disease of the belief in dependency.

To avoid being held accountable the Executive and Legislative branches abdicated their responsibilities by passing laws creating an even more unaccountable and uncontrollable 4th appendage, the branch known as Agencies (Of course it would help if Congressmen read the laws before they voted on them.). This completely upset my balance to preserve the Republic’s guaranteed liberties necessary to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This FDR, and post FDR, abuse of power by the creation of massive uncontrollable Agencies planted the lethal tumor of mandatory government dependency. And this tumor grows unchecked and without accountability. This disease destroys the cells of family units and values upon which the Republic depends for survival. The tumor feeds on money (taxes) and has been growing uncontrollably ever since the Great Depression. It continues to grow with out restraint, as recently demonstrated by Speaker Pelosi. When asked about her 30 agency briefings on that agency’s water boarding she replied; “There’s nothing I can do about it.” Of course, if she wanted to she could shrink the tumor by choking off what feeds it – tax revenues. But that may reduce her personal political power.

Now, in 2009, I’m afraid my illness may be terminal and I thought you should know so you can make arrangements. The disease has not only spread throughout the addicted citizens, upon which my existence depends, but it has also infected the states who are also craving for more injections of dependence (the “cure” is euphemistically called a “stimulus”) in exchange for the slow surrender of their freedoms that sustained their health for 200 years. Their belief is strong and the addiction blinding – no one wants to see the real cure because they would have to go through withdrawal from the addiction of government dependence. Now, again in the name of the “national interest”, government dependence is being legislatively forced upon us by the surrender of control of our economy to the government when it took control of our financial institutions. A Central Planed Economy, the “stress test” for government approved success, is already under way.

The addiction cycle created by the pretended cure used to treat this disease of government dependence results in the willingness, even desire, to surrender individual freedoms and the opportunities to succeed. These are surrendered in exchange for a voucher for the promise of Federal Government security – the security of citizens to be equal in perpetual poverty. Similarly failed experimental treatments have been applied in the past (i.e., Russia, East Germany, Yugoslavia, China, etc.). They all failed. As in previous attempts, we just don’t know how many of the limited number of dependency vouchers (government payments) there are to be passed out and to whom the government will grant them.

At my delivery and the birth of the Republic, Ben Franklin warned us of this illness when he told us; “When the people find that they can vote themselves money; that will herald the end of the Republic.” The people found that out in the 30’s. They became addicted to it, and it heralded my end that now seems to be near. I expect I need major surgery to survive. If I don’t make it, use this epitome for my obituary. Take care and good luck!

Your U.S. Constitutional Republic.