Honest Debate and the Confederate Flag

Every tragedy does not require a knee-jerk public policy response such as further limitations on gun rights or the demonization and banning of a flag. Honest people should have the ability to engage in honest debate. Unfortunately the political environment in which we currently find ourselves pits us against each other rather than encouraging interaction and the sharing of ideas.

The Confederate flag controversy is yet another example of how advocacy in America is now accomplished. There is little or no tolerance for an intellectually honest debate. There is little or no consideration for the other side of an argument as advocates would rather shut down debate through name-calling, smearing, and insults.

Consider the following:

• If you think the Confederate flag controversy is overblown, you are labeled a racist and pro-slavery.
• If you don’t buy into the global warming propaganda, you are a denier, a dissenter, and/or you are pro-pollution.
• If you believe marriage is defined as between one woman and one man, you are intolerant, a homophobe, and/or a Christian zealot.
• If you believe the life of an unborn baby requires some consideration in the abortion debate, you are waging a war on women, telling women what to do with their own bodies, and/or encouraging back-alley abortions. Note: I never hear pro-lifers claim that pro-choicers are waging a war on the unborn!
• If you oppose throwing more good money after bad in our public school system, you are opposed to educating the children and/or a teacher-hater!
• If you want to repeal Obamacare, you want to deny healthcare to others and/or you are an “evil-monger”.
• If you oppose affirmative action, you are a bigot.
• If you want to reform Social Security, you are depicted in television advertisements as pushing grandma over a cliff in a wheelchair.
• If you are opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants or you want the border enforced, you are a racist and/or a xenophobe.
• If you believe in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, you are cold-blooded.
• If you are a member of the Tea Party movement, you are an obstructionist, an anarchist, a radical, and/or a racist. According to Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Waters, you are also damned to eternal damnation as she once eloquently said, “The Tea Party can go straight to hell!”
• If you are opposed to going to war, you are an isolationist.
• If you are an advocate for going to war, you are a war-monger!
• If you oppose raising the debt ceiling, you hate cops, firefighters, and teachers!
• If you oppose raising the minimum wage, you are heartless!
• If you are an advocate for welfare reform, you are callous and cruel!

Back to the Confederate flag: The flag is known as “the rebel flag” NOT “the pro-slavery flag”! It represents the rebellion of the southern states’ against the northern states which was waging war against the South in order to force them to remain in the union!

I will concede that if you asked 100 people, "what is the first thing that comes to mind when they see the confederate flag?", it is likely that “slavery” ends up as the #1 response. However, I am willing to bet that you would likely see “rebel flag” or "rebellion" as a close #2. Other responses might include “Kid Rock”, “Alabama”, “the Civil War”, “the South”, “pick-up truck with a gun rack”, “redneck”, etc. (Click here to read a recent CNN/ORC poll.)

How about we try taking a breath and starting a dialogue with each other rather than resorting to name-calling reminiscent of the fourth grade playground?

See page 65 of my book Pritical Thinking for more.

Social Engineers in Black Robes - the Intellectual Dishonesty of Ginsburg, Breyer, Kennedy, Sotomayor, and Kagan

To gain an understanding of just how openly defiant the five liberal Supreme Court Justices are of their oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution” consider this:

In 2013, the federal Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by a 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court. The five votes came from Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The primary reason given in their opinion for striking down the law was because MARRIAGE IS A STATE ISSUE, not an issue to be influenced by the federal government.

“DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment. Pp. 13–26. (a) By history and tradition the definition and regulation of marriage has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States.

Subject to certain constitutional guarantees, see, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, “regulation of domestic relations” is “an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States,” Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393, 404. The significance of state responsibilities for the definition and regulation of marriage dates to the Nation’s beginning; for “when the Constitution was adopted the common understanding was that the domestic relations of husband and wife and parent and child were matters reserved to the States,” Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U. S. 379, 383–384. Marriage laws may vary from State to State, but they are consistent within each State.”

Last week, THESE SAME FIVE justices voted for the nationwide recognition of gay marriage by the federal government!

These five justices are no different than any ideological political hack with the one exception: they are not subject to periodic reelection campaigns. They should be impeached for violating their oath of office. 

P.S.  Both Ginsburg and Kagan have, in the past, officiated gay wedding ceremonies. If they were honest brokers of their responsibilities as Supreme Court Justices, they would have recused themselves from hearing and ruling on this case.  

P.P.S. During her 2009 Senate confirmation hearings on her nomination to be Solicitor General, Kagan said, "there is no federal constitutional right to same sex marriage."

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_6j37.pdf

Obama's Core Principles

“One of my core principles is that I will never engage in a politics in which I’m trying to divide people . . . That’s a core principle — that’s not something I’d violate.” ~ Obama

He left out a few areas where he has repeatedly divided Americans:

If you:

• Are a Christian or 
• A Republican or
• Believe the Constitution should be adhered to (especially the Second Amendment) or
• Oppose gay marriage or 
• Are a member of a Tea Party group or 
• Are Pro-life or
• Are in the military or 
• Oppose his economic policy or  
• Are a police officer or 
• Live in the South or 
• Oppose his use of executive orders or
• Are wealthy or 
• Work on Wall Street or 
• Own a business or 
• Watch Fox News or 
• Oppose his foreign policy or
• Want real investigations into Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and the IRS scandal or 
• Want the borders enforced.

Besides that, his core principle, the one that he would not violate, is never to engage in politics "in which I'm trying to divide people."

Amtrak - Another Example of the Federal Government's 100% Failure Rate

Why do we tolerate different and lower standards for government-funded enterprises than we do for the private sector?

Amtrak is "a colossal waste of taxpayer money and the very embodiment of what is wrong with state intervention in the free market economy."

1. It accounts "for well less than 1% of intercity passenger miles." 
2. Everyone of its 44 routes has bus and air travel alternatives, not to mention automobile travel.
3. "The cumulative taxpayer subsidy since 1972 totals more than $75 billion in dollars of today’s purchasing power." 
4. "During the span of nearly a half century, Amtrak has operated upwards of 40 routes that have never, ever made even an 'operating profit'”. 
5. "How in the world does it make sense to operate a lumbering passenger rail system in which the true economic cost of its capital assets alone is 65% to 130% higher than the profitable fares charged by the perfectly adequate and available alternative modes of transportation?"
6. "Amtrak’s fully loaded wage and benefits tab is about $2 billion per year and is spread over 20,000 employees. Needless to say, at $100,000 per employee Amtrak’s costs are not even in the same zip code as its far more efficient for-profit competitors in the airline and bus transit industries".
7. "Its operating costs are 3-4X the ticket price of its air and bus competitors!System revenues cover less than 45% of its all-in economic costs to society." 
5. Cost per Passenger Mile:

• Amtrak - $0.25
• Bus fare - $0.11 
• US airline fare - $0.15

"The solution is not for a bankrupt government in Washington to pour more money down the Amtrak rat hole in the name of 'infrastructure investment', as the big spenders are now braying in the wake of this week’s disaster in Philadelphia. Instead, Amtrak should be put out of its misery once and for all. Otherwise its longstanding hazard to the taxpayers is likely to be compounded by even more public safety disasters like this week’s tragic event."

Hat tip to David Stockman

Econ 101 Lesson Courtesy of the State of North Carolina

The state of North Carolina is projecting a $400 million surplus this year!

So much for the cries from the Left that tax cuts would leave our schools without teachers, our communities without police and fire protection, our children without food, our roads and bridges collapsing, and our universities closed.

Quick Econ 101 Lesson: 

• Tax cuts = more money in the pocket of producers.
• Producers use those dollars to (1) buy stuff, (2) invest, and/or (3) save. 

1. The stuff they buy must be produced by someone. That someone must be employed in order to create the stuff.
2. The dollars that are invested are put to work on something. That something requires the employed to execute and deliver it.
3. The saved dollars are loaned out by the financial institution whereby they are housed. Those loaned dollars spurs investment. See #2. 

Unlike our willfully negligent President and the national Democratic Party, the North Carolina governor and the state legislature decided they preferred a pro-business, pro-job growth agenda.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=12025

The U.S. Economy Paralyzed by Intervention and Manipulation

Hat tip to Zerohedge.com, Peter Schiff, and Jason Lewis

Given the absolute failure of all the intervention and manipulation of the (formerly) free market system by the federal government and the Federal Reserve, the Boston Federal Reserve is now floating the idea of permanently manipulating the monetary system via perpetual Quantitative Easing and perpetual zero interest rates. This willful negligence is setting the stage for inflation and the permanent devaluation of the U.S. Dollar. 

Meanwhile, the rich get richer and those of us living in the real economy continue to suffer. During the first quarter of this year, the stock market roared higher while virtually every economic indicator headed in the other direction.

• The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was essentially zero! We saw massive inventory build-up (the largest since 2010) which boosted GDP by nearly 3.0%. Without this build-up, Q1 GDP would have been -2.5%. 
•  April PMI Manufacturing Flash Index at 54.2 biggest miss ever.
• New home sales tumbled by 11.1% – biggest drop since July of 2013. 
•  March Durable Goods was up slightly but less transportation, the index unexpectedly declined 0.2% (an indicator of a recession). 
•  April Service Sector PMI missed lowest expectations at 57.8 – the biggest miss ever. 
• Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey recorded significant drop at -16 (biggest losing streak ever)

Negative economic news buoys the stock market because it removes fear of interest rate hikes. Weak economy means more cheap money which means higher stock prices.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-29/us-economy-grinds-halt-q1-gdp-tumbles-below-expectations-grows-only-02.

Why the Federal Reserve is Damaging America - Part I

I read and hear a lot about how bad the Federal Reserve is for America. The cries for “Audit the Fed” continue to grow louder. Inherently I understand that government intervention always causes market distortions in the market but trying to explain how the Federal Reserve detrimentally impacts the economy at a level that the average person can understand has proved daunting.

Below is a list of observations about the market with the Federal Reserve and what would happen without the Federal Reserve. Future blog posts will expand on many of these points.

With the Federal Reserve	Without the Federal Reserve
Unconstitutional government-granted monopoly on the creation of money. They fix the cost of credit.	No monopoly. Billions of transactions determine monetary policy.
Recessions and depressions linger for years as the Fed’s market manipulation interferes with free market principles – i.e. “Too Big to Fail”, zero interest rate.	Recessions and depressions self-correct with liquidation of bankrupt companies and industries.
Arbitrarily suppressed interest rates discourages savings, hurts those on fixed income, the poor, and savers. These artificial rates result in malinvestment by sending the  wrong signal to entrepreneurs to borrow at lower rates during a time when the economy may not support their expansion.	Interest rates determined in the marketplace comprised of billions of independent, voluntary transactions between millions of producers, consumers, workers, savers, investors, entrepreneurs and even speculators would return to normalized rates and encourage and reward savings. A large supply of savings would lower the interest rates offered by banks competing to make loans. Low rates send signal to entrepreneurs to borrow and invest in expansion.
Economy-wide booms and busts	No economy-wide booms and busts. Just typical localized and/or sector-specific business fluctuations
Artificially inflated stock market characterized by stock buybacks and dividend increases instead of productivity increases.	Stock market rewarded for future growth, productivity, and innovation.
Lending is suppressed. Why loan money at artificially low rates? Instead institutions seek higher yields and take more risk than otherwise necessary by taking the cheap money from the Fed and investing it in the stock market or other riskier vehicles – the carry trade.	Savings are used to finance business expansion. Depositors restrict current consumption (i.e. save) and business expands using the savings which is loaned to them. Lower consumption turns into more savings. Those saved dollars are then loaned out.
Central planning and crony capitalism.	Free market capitalism.
An unlimited amount of fiat money can be created out of thin air. No gold standard.	Sound money. Possibly backed by gold and/or silver, both of which are scarce, limited, and cannot be created out of thin air as they must be discovered, mined, and minted. They are rare, durable, portable, and divisible.
Bailouts	Bankruptcy
Inflation resulting from the increase in the money supply.	It is very difficult to increase the supply of gold and/or silver, therefore inflation is severely limited.
The welfare and warfare state are fully funded.	Neither would be financed to the insane levels they are currently as taxes would need to be raised to pay for each instead of printing money.

Lower Home Ownership is a Good Thing

The reason for the housing bubble in 2008 (which the economy still has not recovered) was due to subprime mortgages extended to borrowers without the financial means to make the mortgage payments. As these homeowners began to default on their loans, the derivatives into which those loans had been packaged began to lose value and the financial institutions that held those derivatives began to see their collective financial futures spiral into bankruptcy.

Back in the days with some semblance of sanity, with a less intrusive federal monetary apparatus, lenders required that borrowers make a down payment of 10%-20% of the loan amount. The lenders wanted the borrower to have some skin in the game. After all, how likely are you to stop making mortgage payments on a house in which you have $20,000, $50,000, or $100,000 of equity? Those who make no or low down payments have no financial incentive to stay in the house, therefore, foreclosures are more likely. 

Despite what leaders from both political parties have said over the years, home ownership is NOT for everyone.  The arguments for higher home ownership rates tend to revolve around the American Dream and fairness. These emotion-based arguments are null and void in the real world.

The American Dream does not include 0% down payment on the house of your dreams. The more accurate depiction of the American Dream, when it relates to home ownership, is you go to work for five years, save as much money as you can, and put down 20% on the purchase of your first house.

The fairness argument goes something like this: everyone should be able to buy a house regardless of income or ability to make their loan payments. This is nothing more than an intellectually lazy, politically correct way of avoiding having to participate in a debate on its merits. Anyone opposed to participating and advocating for another housing bubble is shouted down and called names. It’s like the global warming hoax. After all “the science was settled” and “the debate was over.”

Let’s be honest, the relatively high rate of home ownership in America is due largely to federal government’s intervention in the free market via the mortgage interest deduction. If that tax break was repealed, we just might become a nation of renters! 

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/us-homeownership-rate-hits-20-year-low

Washington D.C. is Beyond Reform, Focus on Your State Elections

I have given up on the prospect that Washington, D.C. can be reformed. Since the founding of this nation, Washington has continued to grow at the direct expense of the people of the states. The founding fathers were afraid of this and developed a system of checks and balances to avoid it. Those checks and balances have failed leaving us with few options! Because of this, I believe the best use of American’s limited attention span toward politics and public policy is at the state level.

Consider the evidence against the federal government:

The executive and legislative branches are: overreaching, arrogant, waste-ridden, inefficient, unresponsive to their constituents, corrupt, controlled by special interests, obsessed with reelection, the architects of crony capitalism, irresponsible, unaccountable, out-of-control, and they break their own rules.

The judiciary: rather than interpreting the Constitution, it consistently legislates from the bench and creates constitutional rights out of thin air using their own, concocted precedence.

                   

The federal monetary authority (the Federal Reserve) is purposefully devaluing the dollar, causing inflation while leading the country into bankruptcy with their manipulation of the monetary system via perpetual zero interest rate policy and printing of dollars.

Describing the federal government as dysfunctional is being generous. 

They are willfully negligent in the exercise of their duties!

As we look ahead to the election in 2016, can you honestly say that there will be any significant differences between the two major political parties? Will a Hillary Clinton administration be materially different than a Jeb Bush administration? Even if Rand Paul were to win the presidency, we are still stuck with a corrupt and/or feckless Congress.

What’s the Solution?

The rightful remedy is for the states to unapologetically assume the role they were granted under the Constitution - that of a principal. The federal government is the subordinate agent of the states – NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! The states created the federal government and, presumably, the states can annul it or ignore it. 

As Ron Paul recently said, we will soon have "de facto secession." The federal government has gone too far and the American people are slowly waking up and recognizing it. The hand of the states has been forced. They must continue to nullify and ignore federal laws and regulations (over 200 bills are currently in the works) and move toward an Article V Convention of the States whereby the states bypass Congress and pass constitutional amendments.

What kind of gullible suckers are we to allow the federal government, which has a 100% failure rate, to dictate to us such things as the light bulbs and health insurance we are permitted to buy. Or the education of our children? Or our labor, environmental, drug enforcement, and gun control laws?   

This is the same federal leviathan that runs bankrupt entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid! It operates bankrupt government-sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac! It funnels billions of dollars to bankrupt entities such as the USPS, Amtrak, and green energy companies! It runs the pitifully inadequate health care system at the Veteran’s Administration! It throws billions of dollars at “Too Big to Fail” financial companies!

Are we going to continue to be at the mercy of an incompetent and defective Federal Reserve whose track record, even when measured against its own mandate, is woeful. Are we going to allow them to continue to thwart efforts to open their books to a congressional audit?

Are you comfortable with leaving future generations holding the bag of an $18+ trillion national debt (over $100 trillion when you include unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs)?

James Madison said the states are “duty bound to interpose [intervene]” when the federal government goes awry. There are two obstacles to the states assuming their constitutional power. The first is the education and engagement of the general public. The majority of Americans pay more attention to the air pressure in the tires on their car than they do to politics and public policy. So we must awaken our fellow citizens from their apathy coma.

Secondly, the states must wean themselves off of the federal funding teat. On average, states receive 30% of their revenue through various forms of federal funding. Once the states are financially self-sufficient, they will no longer be susceptible to the extortion, coercion, and blackmail that the federal government relentlessly employs against them.

This country fought a revolution to rid itself of a tyrannical central power that did not represent the people. The states signed a contract (the Constitution) with the understanding that all power not specifically delegated in the contract to the federal government would reside with them. For over two hundred years, the pendulum has swung in the wrong direction as the power of the federal government has grown and that of the states has diminished.

My challenge to you is to pay close attention to your statewide elections rather than waste your energy and attention on the national elections. Support candidates in your state that understand the looming economic disaster. Support those who have read and understand the Constitution. Support those who understand states’ rights and are willing to flip off lawmakers and bureaucrats in Washington through nullification legislation and Convention of the States Applications. Support those that will go to work reducing your state's dependency on federal funds by cutting the budget, eliminating wasteful spending, and looking for opportunities to grow the states revenue base. Maybe that person is you?