Eric’s Blog

Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsay Graham are hard at work with a new plan for a universal biometric government ID card. Oh joy. I read the details they have so far and it brings up a lot of questions. They are talking about reading either finger prints or the veins in the back of your hand and requiring the card to get a job. The estimated price for the equipment is $800. The article I read left a lot more questions than answers. The first thing I note is the $800 price as they said small businesses that don’t have the machine could take a new employee to a post office or somewhere and process them. That’s convenient. Good thing your time doesn’t cost a dime.

The first question I had was why $800? What company is selling their technology to these senators and assuring their lifetime wealth? No doubt they have some strategic patent and government lock in. It is worth noting the biometric readers on laptops cost much less because all you need is a super cheap cell phone camera chip, some glass, plastic and software. Of course there are a lot more questions that arise but central to this are the arguments that the social security card is out dated and we can’t seem to verify citizenship.

First of all how do you obtain this card? I recently had to get a new social security card to get a drivers license. I didn’t even need that for a passport! You need birth certificate and things of this nature to prove your identity. Won’t you need exactly the same thing for this new ID card? Also, what if you lose the card? What kind of validation of payment with the card will the government require from companies? I hate to give these statists ideas but if they microchip the population like we do our pets and will soon do our groceries they could track us everywhere. The point is that this card would be tied to payroll from every company. If you are self employed do you need one to pay yourself?

Most people don’t remember when social security started as it was in the first half of the last century. That means that everyone today paying into social security should have their money there, right? Actually the social security lock box is full of IOUs from the government. If this happened in a business it would be jail time for raiding the pension plan. Originally and by law you are only required to give your social security number to the government for benefits or an employer for taxes. However it became a national ID number used by banks. So while you are not required to give your ID to get a loan you simply won’t get one if you don’t. Even weirder if you are Amish you don’t have to pay social security taxes because they are conscientious objectors. Given that it is in the red, is being operated like a Ponzi scheme and congress has repeatedly robbed it and left worthless IOUs I think it’s clear that only a fool would trust the government with their money any more than Bernie Madoff.

We have been assured this national ID card will not be misused like our social security number. That assurance is only as credible as the unicorn next to you. They plan on storing information on the card. Anyone who is paying attention to the bailouts knows the government is in bed with the big banks. How long until this card is networked in the financial world? How long until you need one of these cards to open a bank account? How long until this card replaces bank cards and the reader is being used for secure online purchases. How long until all currency is moved through your biometric ID card?

Granted that may seem a stretch, but the savings to the government would be huge. I doubt it would be easy to fully convert but the real motivation to fear is the government intrusion. You see if you have to carry this card with you for any reason it is quite easy to include an RFID tag that can be read if you are within 25 feet. That means anyone who has your ID number can now physically track you. Your employer could use this instead of a time clock and talk to you about your bathroom time. A store could target the rotation of marketing displays to audience. Intelligence agencies could track you even more accurately than with cameras. Your government and employer might even be able to review every purchase you make.

Granted you could say this is awfully paranoid, and you’d be right. However as the saying goes, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me. In the 1990s I met someone who was here on an expired visa from South Africa. This person was causing me grief and it downed on my I could turn him in and have him deported. I called INS and to my surprise they couldn’t be bothered. I could go on and on about borders, jobs and people I know relevant to immigration issues but the bottom line is this. If there is a failure in the government why should every citizen give up their privacy to fix it?

We’re told this card will not be able to be cheated or forged. Whatever. One of the most astonishing news items I read recently was about the theft of thousands of computers and other gear from homeland security. Yeah, think about that. First you have to prove who you are… with paper documents. Then you have to be fingerprinted like a common criminal. Then you have, let me see, something like a voting machine to assure legitimacy. Oops! We know how many scandals have hit there. Finally, after we discount the creative abilities of black hats and the rampant theft of national security equipment we come down to the real consideration…

Border security is not a top priority. Enforcing laws is not a top priority. The fallback position instead is to compromise the privacy of every citizen and add expensive infrastructure and additional hurdles to employers. Why is it that we don’t allow web sites to aggregate specific personal data, only general aggregates without personal connections? Privacy. Why is it that we don’t allow companies to dip into pensions when they are short on cash? Propriety. Why are we so willing to trust a government that has shown that it will exclude it’s own actions from the the same regulation that we would place on any other entity. Of the people… for the people… by the people… or is it of the people, for the elites, by the aristocrats?

When I look at what is happening today I see a disconnect from the quintessential distrust our founders had for powerful central government. I see power corrupting and a central government that wants to control more and more of our lives. I would consider that to enact the most oppressive control government would need the most advanced means of monitoring and gathering data. I really don’t care how rational this proposition sounds. I have two words for you… Unintended consequences. If this were a credit card I could choose to consent. As a government plan who imagines it would be rolled back?

Reflecting on my life and what I know of history I note my what is important. Several years ago if you asked me to describe our time I would have told you that at no time in the history of man have we ever had so many exciting prospects. We stand on the brink of genetic medicine, eliminating disease, ending aging and integrating technology into our bodies that could enable any person to have the wealth of human knowledge and perfect recall connected to their brain in a fraction of a second. By the middle of this century we have in our grasp not only amazing things like neural interfaces but nano machines that have the potential to obsolete virtually everything in our economy by virtualizing physical technology into information and making cell phones and food out of dirt. The technology to reach any destination on earth in a few hours using magneto hydrodynamic drive on utrasonic aircraft and travel to the planets are real. The implications are too difficult to imagine. That was then.

Today I consider that the free and enjoyable civilization that we know could possibly collapse in my lifetime. Bold statement? If you’re not concerned you’re simply not paying attention. Today I see that at no time in my life our future is as it never has been. Not only is the US government budget unsustainable but I don’t recall ever seeing such a naked grab for power for the sake of power in my lifetime. I have never seen such a huge industry of consuming the production of others and spreading insanity for the sake of irrationality. Central to my assertion regarding civilization is the governments of the world over recent centuries. Great Briton was a monarchy that had become more free than others and thus was able to grow empire most effectively. Not being free enough the American colonies broke away and on their second try formed the federal government we have today. It proved to be such a work of genius I have believed that it changed the world as country after country adopted some form of self government and free enterprise. Over the last 100 years the US has been the deciding factor in restoring peace in the world, quashing dictatorships and largely ending the type of war that had gone on for centuries. Just as the Romans felt it was their birthright to rule and dominate the continent the US is now risking not only decline but collapse. Now many intellectuals are looking at China as the new superstar and thinking that their economic success means that governments should consider their model of rule. Nothing could be more disasterous.

China does emulate some aspects of how the US traditionally operated free markets their leaders seem more familiar with US history than a great many of ours. However China has brutal solutions. They mandate the number of children, protesters mysteriously die and censorship is rampant. Due process? Consider that the Chinese prefer to arrest certain religious sects and sentence them to death because their clean lifestyle is considered beneficial when harvesting their organs and selling them on the world market, a lucrative business in China. You could argue that removing organs requires consent there but if a body is not claimed… families seem to always find out late. During the early years of Mao they had the “cultural revolution” which is a nice way of saying book burning and making sure your only access to information and history was government approved. At this time as Mao socialized the farms it is estimated 70,000,000 Chinese died of starvation over a three year period. Mao believed they had population to spare.

Without the US say goodbye to Asia and Australia. It’s an easy conquest and if you believe power comes from the barrel of a gun why not take it? Right now our government spending is exploding. What is our leadership doing? Considering social security is in the red years before expected at with a $15 trillion dollar economy we have a $60 trillion medicare liability why not add the biggest entitlement program yet. Don’t forget actual medicare costs over a decade turned out to be nine times what was initially projected. Of course it may not matter. Soon Iran or some other power could launch a nuclear weapon at the US. Instead of blowing up a city they can explode it five miles up over the center of the US and destroy every unshielded electronic device and power transformer in the US. The irony is our main transformers that could be protected for a few million dollars would take 10 years to replace. In three months we will be ripe for any banana republic to invade and take over. Of course investing in protection from high altitude EMP is less of a priority than pork barrel spending.

So why is our country in such danger? Some argue our leaders are trying to invoke the Cloward Piven strategy of bringing about a collapse so a new system can be built. Some are so intent on intellectual theories that they want to create a grand human experiment. Some have so perverted the disproven Malthusian imperative they actually want billions of people to die so the earth won’t be too crowded. Do you feel too crowded? I would say there is another major consideration. Quite simply There has been a major shift in our world from producing something useful to simply leaching off those who produce. This has empowered an insane mechanism of government and crony capitalism that threatens our very way of life.

When early human society moved from bartering to trading in currency an abstract idea led to enormous opportunities. Trading what you produce no longer required you to trade with the person who had what you needed, but merely with someone who needed what you had. It was essential. Eventually we enabled larger companies by offering stock where you could buy part of the enterprise. This enabled more wealth by making it possible for people to trade currency to facilitate the creation of wealth. Wealth being created by tangible goods, infrastructure and social benefits. Eventually we came to trade derivatives, which almost nobody understands, which are speculations on currency conversion or something of that nature. The US debt clock shows us owing something over $600 trillion there. Note that the worth of everything and everyone in the country doesn’t add up to $50 trillion. People like George Soros make money trashing currencies like the British pound and the Euro. Why? Because the mechanisms are there to speculate on losses and you can legally contribute to those losses causing misery to entire populations for your own profit. Of course the ultimate boondoggle is carbon trading where you are buying and selling permission to emit a gas vital to life on this planet and producing nothing. It’s like mandating commissions to the climate exchange.

Another form of leaching is leaching through legislation. Simply put, if you want to dominate a marketplace and get rich then buy some political power and execute your plan. Say for instance you wanted to make a lot of money with huge wind turbines. Just a side note, small turbines are vastly more cost effective but they fail to be centralized and difficult to compete in. GE is close to the president and looking for laws to be passed to change energy in this country making them a de facto victor as they pretty much own the technology.

Of course the biggest example of leaching ever is the government, federal and state. Here we have people who can levee taxes, set their pay, raise taxes, grant themselves perks and then use the money to buy another term in office. Then they expand the bureaucracy and get their friends much higher paying jobs.

The big question is if the people creating the problem even see it. I don’t have an answer. What I do know is that there is a safe and sane course of action. I was taught how to handle a gun as a child because my parents believed that if you shot and killed someone by accident instead of on purpose they were just as dead. When you take office in the leadership of the good ship United States you ought to assume responsibility for the results of your decisions. “I didn’t realize I was destroying the country” will not be acceptable, but as our founders never considered our leaders would set about destroying our country I can’t point to much more than treason and some arcane laws regarding execution of duties in conflict with constitutional law. Those remedies are rarely used and are for removal from office without any criminal consequences. I think some things done by congress that would result in criminal prosecution if done by a company ought to be criminalized, like “borrowing” from social security for the general fund.

What I have realized recently is that if I were to label myself I would have to be a libertarian. I find John Stossel refreshing as he debunks big brother. I like the quote I read recently, I forget from who. “Take any three letters, arrange them in any order. There’s another government agency we can do without.” Should we be a nation of winers or a nation of winners. Winning requires the possibility of losing. The way to defeat the leaches dragging down our society is to first stop gorging government with so damn much money. Next we need to restore a balance of power to the individual by making government accountable. There is one more thing though…

Whenever anyone comes to you telling you there is this disaster or that disaster keep a cool head. Ask for definite proof they are not lying and look for who is opposing them. Look if it is an appeal to emotion or logic and if it fails the logic test it is almost certainly a manipulation. In order to enslave a world you must first have their trust. I have simple rules regarding trust. Never trust anyone to tell you who to distrust. Never trust anyone unless they are willing to prove their trust in the battleground of open debate. When someone says “trust me”… don’t! Look for the person who says instead “test me” if you want to see if someone can be trusted.

You need to look around and realize something you may never have before. You may need to lead the people you know to realize that this is a crucial time in history. We are facing a choice between an amazing life, a life where even the sting of death might fade, and a horrible world where at worst billions could die to satisfy the misguided acolytes of some stupid English professor proven horribly wrong a century and a half ago and still followed by intellectual morons today. The revolutionary war was fought and won by no more than a quarter to a third of the population and today that fraction thinks what Mao did was A OK. Are you going to be the loyal opposition?

I close with a little wisdom from life. Years ago I took a job at a portrait company where I could get cash daily. I hated how they ran it and quit after a few weeks. To my surprise I was top producer in the country my second week. This company had been around for years and was bought by some of the top sales people. I later read a book warning of what they did next. They stopped teaching what they did to become successful and started teaching and running things they way they thought they should have been. A few years later I saw the company had failed. What made this country successful was the framework laid out by our founders. I also learned in sales that the definition of a problem was a deviation from an established standard and to model the success of others. Marxism has failed! Socialism has failed. We need to realize that experimenting with what we think might work better than what made us the greatest country on earth is certain fro fail, especially if it involves socialism.

Leadership means learning what made America great, telling your friends about it and getting them involved in restoring our greatness. Leaching means getting a government job, putting your fingers in your ears and singing as Rome burns around you.

Imagine the worst future possible. Visualize if you will for a second the things we dread. The collapse of civilization, totalitarian big brother, financial morass, war. Throughout human history there have been examples where human life was lived under the boot of ruthless dictators and even deemed undesirable enough to march to their death. When these examples are paraded before the public consciousness they are generally decried as terrible. I say generally because in some cases there are those in media, academia and government who cannot bring themselves to condemn even the most flagrant offenses to human decency because those offenses were done under the guise of the utopian ideology of the observer.

Utopia is of course a wonderful concept of a world filled with perfection and absent any unpleasant struggle. Utopia may also be an afterlife filled with delights. Whatever the case utopia is always a destination for idealists of conjured perfection. As such there could not be anything more insidious in practice and harmful to the course of humanity. Certainly nothing has caused more untimely deaths as utopia has claimed hundreds of millions of lives. I am going to tell you why in no uncertain terms that when someone comes to you extolling utopia you should put garlic around your neck, hold up a cross, throw holy water on them and run for the hills.

Before I explain why every utopia is born under a moon of blood from a father with hoofs and a mother with scales I want to explode the myth of perfection they each hold. A world without strife is a world without challenge. Humans realize fulfillment through overcoming challenge. Without difficulty their is no overcoming and without the possibility of failure there can be no celebration of victory. If you have heard success is a journey not a destination it is because we become listless without challenge and utopia is by definition the ultimate destination. Utopias are born in the selfishness of the singular satisfaction of the recipient of the utopia and without regard to any fabric of civilization. A perfect example is the jihadi idea of being rewarded in the afterlife with a gaggle of virgins for killing unbelievers. Not only does it have no regard for those being killed but it has no regard for the young innocent women who would be subjected to the jihadist’s whims… Then again that could be a poor example as Muslims emulate their prophet who had a predilection for marrying prepubescent girls.

Of course understanding why utopia is hell really requires starting at conception. As utopia is always an alternative to reality we should start by examining social reality. For all the flaws of our civilization it functions as a collection of ideas and practices learned throughout history. I have been told a problem is a deviation from an established standard. Standard practices are established through experience. Human beings are naturally curious and experimentation as a means of learning is fraught with failure. Thus patterns and practices that yield good results are established and for better or worse we codify our societal workings. Then as human beings we progress and learn. Over time we developed more sophistication and now can apply the scientific method which means we have an effective and rational way to measure new ideas and practices. Our society can advance in this way by absorbing and adopting practical ideas.

Utopia is spawned differently. Utopia breaks from the past, ignores the collective experience of thousands of generations and is born of a deviation in response to a challenge. Utopia seeks to rewrite human nature along with human history by erasing the challenge of the frustrated utopian. Clearly this will leave anyone entering said utopia unfulfilled and devoid of victory in their life. Most importantly by pulling up civilization by it’s roots and replanting it there is turmoil and the resulting attempt at perfection begins life as a horribly imbalanced paradigm suffering the repeated failures of generations that the established protocols of civilization had learned to avoid.

Let’s look at where the utopian ideals have led us over the years. Perhaps the most audacious and common utopia is that of the commune. When I asked my parents about it they got me a book on communes in America over the last 200 years. It delivered the amazing failure rate of 100% for hundreds of communes. Of course the benefit is that if you wish to start your own utopia you are not bound by history so the past is no indicator. Actually that tongue in cheek comment illustrates perfectly the most arrogant aspect of utopian idealists, that all others who failed before them did so because they lacked their wisdom and dedication to the cause. Communes fail because they subvert the individual and in the end the expression and fulfillment of our selfish nature is the heart of excellence and accomplishment. Altruism can only flourish where we can fulfill the desires of self first.

Of course the absurd ideas of the commune led to a couple men who had done nothing in their pampered lives, including hold down a job, to write the Communist Manifesto and somehow take on a concern of a workers paradise. Of course it sought revolution, the overthrow of the established social hierarchy for an entirely new experiment. Actually Solomon said wisely there is nothing new under the sun and what was in fact being advocated was the reapplication of a great number of mistakes made by past generations. While the incremental pursuit of perfection may by definition preclude ever achieving utopia the revolutionary pursuit of utopia invariably leads to the morass of dystopia.

The ultimate problem for today’s citizens of exploding dystopian governments is that we tend to think as a society in the incremental mode. The inherent flaw in this is thinking that what we have now was actually subjected to any rational scientific method to prove it’s merit. The fact is for the last half century seemingly all governments have been infected with the utopian thinking that had been killing over a hundred million people in a few countries earlier in the twentieth century. So today when we talk about a massive overhaul of health care it is in fact pursuit of utopia, and while I can go point by point on the inherent flaws there mere fact it chases utopia should be all you need to know. However when you look at all our social programs you will see utopia written all over them. End all suffering and make a perfect world. Foolishness.

You should not assume I like suffering, even though in fact I believe challenges and failure are essential to shaping our lives. What I happen to believe though is that a faceless gargantuan bureaucracy assisting us is quintessential dystopia. Charitable organizations can help people more effectively and more cost effectively. Every place where we have pursued utopia we have created irrational and unsustainable messes. Social security is an example. It may have sounded good, but consider how much good all that money would have done in the investment community to grow our economy instead of yanked out. Everyone today would be millionaires if they had invested wisely. Of course millions of people plan retirement around this pittance because it’s there. What if it weren’t? I’m betting they could do better.

When someone says to you “wouldn’t it be nice if…” just remember that likely as not it is the opening to a longing for utopia. Knowing that utopia is fatally flawed is liberating. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to pay our bills?” If nobody paid their bills there would be nothing to buy because everyone would be out of business. Is it an absolute certainty that any attempt at utopia will fail? I’ve been told by physicists that it is theoretically possible for an event to happen which could have a cascade effect of changing the laws of physics in our universe. As a rule we plan on the laws of physics working. An attempt at utopia could work… and the bonds of all matter could dissolve. The success rate for utopia so far is 0% out of who knows how many thousands of tries. The methodology for arriving at utopia is clearly broken.

Utopia is at the heart of the looming financial meltdown of Western civilization. I say we root it all out. A society of compassionate individuals is vastly preferable to the pursuit of utopia which invariably is pursued through growing gargantuan faceless bureaucracy into dystopia.

My parents told me they had a simple goal, to leave the world better for me than they found it. I think that should be a morning ritual pledge. I admit I appreciate hedonism. I’d love to be on a tropical beach in a party environment misbehaving. I am willing to embrace our animal desire for indulgence and I’m not proposing that our course in life out to be absolute self sacrifice for the next generation. That’s not what I’m talking about. Several years ago I noticed a funny bumper sticker on an RV “I’m spending my grandchildrens inheritance”. Hey, why not. Of course the funny thing is if you blow it in Vegas you don’t get taxed but if you will it to them you do.

If you have saved your whole life and feel like you ought to spend it then I’m fine with that. The reason we have trust funds is because rich people like Bing Crosby found when they gave their kids a million dollars they blew through it in nothing flat. Let’s face it, money doesn’t mean the same thing to us when we don’t earn it. This is why 97% of major lottery winners are financially ruined within three years of their prize. This brings me to my point. I’ll illustrate by way of a home mortgage. I remember hearing that Japan had 100 year mortgages. Imagine being born and being in debt for a huge amount of money the day you first saw daylight.

This really is the point. Have a look at a young mother pushing a child in a stroller and think of it. This month that child takes out $325 in debt because our government is borrowing $100,000,000,000. By the time they are 18 that would add up to $70,000 but that’s not counting the $40K in debt there already, the interest, social security or medicare. It also doesn’t count numerous other factors that make it rise horribly. In fact our total amount of money promised currently exceeds the total wealth of our nation. Remember when borrowing meant paying the money back? When exactly do we pay the money back?

The truly amazing thing about this is the left leaning perspective. I mean think about it. China has started selling off our debt. Europe is in such disarray that it looks like Greece may default on it’s debt and Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain are now known there as PIIGS for their economic troubles. China is no longer considered our biggest creditor, Japan is, except you could argue it’s the Fed. So what does the left want? National health care. Let’s ponder it. Right now it’s estimated that medicare is being defrauded byt $70-$120 billion a year. That’s fraud, as in doctors doing 200 procedures a day and pizza parlors getting checks for performing medical procedures. In Florida the mob is getting out of drugs and into medicare fraud because it’s safer and more profitable. Last I hear the president still hadn’t nominated someone to oversee medicare and the budget isn’t there to handle this. Lefty wingnuts howl about 30% overhead in profits and some mysterious 4% administration cost for medicare. It’s probably the lack of oversight. Credit card companies charge 3% and have a fraction of a percent fraud. Profit is why. In the UK they had 4,000 babies born in hospital corridors and on sidewalks last year. One UK pol said they instituted their program after WW II when they were in a shambles. Now UK health care is the third largest employer in the world behind the Indian raliroad and the Chinese red army. They can’t vote it out.

The argument is to be compassionate to everyone today and make it so they don’t have to pay anything. Like free money. Squat down, close your eyes and grunt… Hmmm? That doesn’t smell like money, but it is free. Here’s the problem with this compassion. Let’s say you want to take all your friends out to dinner. You go to the restaurant and order drinks. They take your credit card and come back and inform you there is no money on your card. There you are trying to feed everybody and there is this little snag. Of course we know what to do, right? We email our congressman and ask them to make a law that our credit card can’t be refused, right? Wrong! At some point we have to recognize that no matter how kind and thoughtful we are somebody has to pay, and pay they will. Hand them the government sugardaddy card and have at it. Drinks for everyone, caviar and foi gras. The sky’s the limit. After all your children and grandchildren will pay. Hey, maybe you don’t even have kids. Too bad those other suckers weren’t ready for the end of the world. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we implode under the fetid debt of 40 years of excess.

When I was young I remember hearing the name George Bernard Shaw in high regard. Not long ago I saw a video clip which this video where he extolled the Marxist collectivist idea of killing those not useful to society. It is ironic that the collectivist idea that says we are our brothers keeper means we should provide for them and yet at the same time if we are engaging in generational theft we are clearly harming the collective. Of course all collective agendas must be implemented by a strong central government. Strong central governments are answerable to no one so piss on them if they don’t like us destroying society, right?

Here we are in a world I never imagined. Call me old school if you will. When I heard banks had problems with NINJA (No Income No Job no Assets) loans I was flabbergasted. How the hell do you get a loan like this. Oh yeah, the government decided it would be the good thing to do and used Fannie and Freddie who then saw the huge profits in mortgage based securities. That meant Wall street bankers could go for it and privatize the profits while socializing the losses. When people say capitalism failed I want to see if they can recognize Shinola, or say a hole in the ground. Don’t worry, your Wall street banking dollars are being well spent in the new financial capital of Washington DC. If you want to see capitalism fail you will need to look at a small business who is not too big to fail as they struggle to get a loan while all the money is now being loaned to government while they spend like crazy. Capitalism hasn’t failed, but it is getting strangled by socialism from above and below.

And that brings me to another simple principle I was taught. Be honest. I know, how silly and old fashioned is that. I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word is is. When FDR started social security he gloated that nobody would ever be able to get rid of it and get re-elected. Remember government of the people, for the people and by the people? What would happen if you set up a retirement plan for your business and then borrowed money from it and used the money from younger people coming in to pay older people. I’ll tell you. You would end up parked next to Bernie Madoff. That is exactly what was done with social security.

There is an old saying that the older I get the less I know. When we are young we are ready to change the world, but with time we come to see things differently. Where we used to challenge the ideas before us we come to see the wisdom in them. Let me tell you about some really cool guys, Madison and Jefferson. They really distrusted government. Jefferson said “government governs best that governs least”. Madison was instrumental as a key thinker in forming our constitution. You may not care about their opinions but I bet they would be dismayed with our government today.

I know this isn’t popular but I don’t want a dime from social security. Did you know that the Amish don’t have to pay in because they are conscientious objectors? It does not require a religion. However it is frightening to consider confronting the IRS and the government. On the other hand in a just world things would be different. Government employees and elected representatives would be held the the same practices and laws as private citizens and corporations. Much of congress past and present would be in court or in jail for defrauding the America tax payer. FDR would be remembered for starting a Ponzi Scheme. LBJ likewise. Thousands of laws including social security would be rolled back as unconstitutional. People would begin saving for their golden years. The average 65 year old would be a multi millionaire if they put their social security payments instead into a mutual fund.

Here is the amazing paradox of our current dilemma. I recall in the 80s being told debt was insurmountable. it wasn’t. In WW II we fought wars on two fronts and we beat Japan with 18% of our industrial output. At the start of the war they had the best navy in the world and vastly superior aircraft. In the war of 1812 Andrew Jackson beat the British who were at the time the best army and navy in the world. In less than a decade of JFK saying we would go to the moon we were there. We can do amazing things, but only if we adhere to simple principles.

It’s time we stopped being a bunch of babies and demanding a wet nurse. It’s time we told Washington DC to get the hell out or our lives. Last year we had over $300B in charitable giving and that is with one of the worst tax burdens in the world. Imagine the explosion of greatness and dignity if we ditched Marx and instead went for Madison.

I was surprised to read a recent poll that a majority of people disagreed with the recent supreme court decision on free speech. There is actually a brilliant analysis and explanation here. Really, I mean Americans against free speech? Hello Fidel? Excuse me but I should be clear. First of all anyone opposed to the decision most likely doesn’t understand it and second of all probably doesn’t understand how it is barely relevant. However I’ve also seen supposedly respectable thinkers suggesting a constitutional amendment. I think perhaps the worst thing is the hypocrisy of our president opposing it and the extremely bad manners to chide the supreme court in the state of the union. Hey, if he would take that kind of tough posture with Iran…

First of all the decision didn’t reverse 100 years of law, it reversed 10. Second of all it didn’t change the law about companies contributing directly to candidates. What it did do is give companies the same right as individuals to have political speech. Now let me tell you why Obama is a hypocrite for opposing it.

One result of this decision was that the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform law was shot full of holes. Early on Obama swore he would accept government money and be constrained by McCain Feingold. John McCain accused him of lying because he didn’t. Deceit or not what Obama did was brilliant. By opting out he was no longer under the same spending constraints and he raised twice as much money. Can you buy an election? Maybe, maybe not, but it never hurts to have twice as much money as the other guy at crunch time. Of course McCain was fighting with one hand tied behind his back as it was his law but you can bet Obama had already killed much of McCain Feingold as dead as McCain’s presidential hopes in 2008. Nobody will ever accept government money again.

The restriction the law imposed on corporate speech led to the 527 groups. These took money from companies and unions and effectively laundered the money that was going to be used before. Nice solution. Remember what happens when you try to take freedoms. The 527s were the speakeasies where nobody knew how it got there but everybody knew it was getting out to the public. Just like banning liquor made bootleggers banning companies from speaking made 527s.

Of course there were exemptions under the law. Try newspapers, networks and magazines. Imagine if you will banning blogging. Imagine banning free speech. Actually you don’t have to imagine. President Obama has been compared to Wudrow Wilson as he was our first president out of academia. Wilson gave us the Sedition Act duing WW I. Look it up. If you said something against the government in public you could be locked up without due process. it’s frankly hard to believe so I suggest you go look for yourself. This is the point. Once you decided to allow some free speech of some types by some people but not other free speech of other types from other people… well you might as well tear up the first amendment, install censors in news outlets and close the internet because it’s only a matter of time before you are charged with sedition.

Seriously, I can’t stress this enough. Read the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

BTW I love the constitution and the amendments for their simplicity. The 2500 page bills out of this congress are so incomprehensible you need 15,000 pages of reference material to read them. Odds of understanding and conforming to such laws? You simply empower administrators to interpret it as they see fit and rule by fiat. Not so our founders. Tell me part time citizen legislators would pull this, but I digress…

If you make a law which will abridge free speech you are violating the first amendment. The exceptions are where you can prove public endangerment, inciting to riot, libel or violating the rights of another. However if there is any speech that ought to be protected it is political speech. There is no more important freedom than the freedom to peacefully change our government through elections. Once that speech has been abridged not only have we been violated but we are dis-empowered to effect peaceful change. Such a loss of empowerment could only serve to empower tyrants.

To paraphrase the president in his famous 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, this is not a red or a blue country, we are all Americans. I agree, and that means that we don’t shape a law today for it’s statistical probability of benefiting a political party, then change it later. We should especially not do this with our constitution. We should all agree that free speech is too important to play political games with. Moreover we should be thankful our supreme court continues to believe this and concerned that such questions even need be litigated. John McCain and Russ Feingold should both be removed from the senate for violating their oath to protect the constitution and subjecting us to 10 years of unconstitutional law.

When you hear the number 300 what comes to mind. In the past maybe a car but now that military history has been made into a movie once again we think of the 300 Spartans who led the defense of the pass at Thermopylae. Of course the movie did as all movies about history and grossly oversimplified. There is no fault in telling a good story and the key to this story on screen is the bravery and convictions of the men who stood there. In truth it is more complex, but the historical perspective is far more dramatic. Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Athens was the birthplace of democracy. It was in fact Alexander who spread the culture and shaped the world. He was a brilliant conqueror who took an entirely different approach to empire, a politically savvy approach. None of this would have been possible without stopping the massive Persian assault. The truly dramatic aspect of the 300 men from Sparta is that they forever changed the world.

One of the things that makes any culture great is to look back into it’s history and learn the lessons of the great failures and successes. We are forever infatuated with legends. I don’t recall learning about men walking barefoot in the revolutionary war and civil war and leaving a trail of blood, but I recall being moved upon learning of it as an adult. Today there are those seeking to create their own legends with history. Today there is a new 300 and it is all the buzz being repeated on all the news shows by all the talking heads.

The 300 I am talking about though are not men of honor, at least not according to our principles. In congressional hearings attorney general Eric Holder told senator Kyl that there were 300 terror convictions in the Bush administration. It seems it went like this, 300 were caught, tried and all convicted and you will never get that kind of success in military tribunals. After all even the president and AG both assured us that after a fair trial KSM would be convicted and executed. That has to show how just we are. There’s just one small problem. Senator Kyl asked for a list of these supposed 300 convictions. Holder agreed to provide it, shined it on and eventually said they could not legally provide the information. Wow! Handy!

You see one of the things that the administration says is they are doing exactly what the Bush administration did. They mention the shoe bomber in 2001. Compared to the underwear bomber he was from the US but it turns out there is a lot more going on. He was arrested months after 9/11 and Bush tried to have him sent to a military tribunal by executive order. The ACLU and others went ballistic and it went to the supreme court which said he could not be sent to a military tribunal. That was not possible until 2006 when congress finally hashed it all out, which is why KSM hasn’t been tried yet. I happened to catch O’Reilly today when he had Ann Coulter on talking about how the legal resistance on the left had forced the shoe bomber to have no other option but civilian court.

I’m not going to take a position on the legality of the shoe bomber case. Whatever we may think it is clear that we should not abuse or legal system to get a result and we must abide the decision of the court. What I have a problem with is pretty much everything coming out of the Obama administration on this. First of all why aren’t the left upset if he wants to do what Bush did? Wasn’t Bush the devil incarnate? Second of all is “he did it” ever an adult answer for why you make a given decision? Finally, if people like your attorney general were working to thwart military tribunals and defend terrorists in their civilian business is it right to claim that what you forced someone to do was their idea? The real toxin here seems to be the lie about success and failure in civilian and military courts. Who are these 300 and why has the military option been so very difficult to execute?

I would not deny that Obama has has some notable successes in the war on terror. He has been doing a good job killing them, a lessor job capturing them and a horrible job extracting intelligence from them. One could argue many points and directions pro or con so I will offer some simple observations. For one if you got everything you needed to know in 50 minutes and now you are getting more does that qualify as too much information? For another if you disband CIA interrogation and set up a new program and six months later that program isn’t available isn’t that a problem? Finally if you have an AG calling the shots and not consulting anyone else involved with national security then really why the hell do you have anybody in your administration working national security?

Obama became famous in a 2004 speech where he said there is no red or blue America but we are all Americans. Certainly in the realm of the security and safety of our people it should not be politicized. We should put aside our differences and work together. I ask you, if at the heart of the administration there is an attorney general playing fast and loose with the truth and operating in a political manner and the talking points are all structured to revise history how we accomplish that. If even a right wing ideologue like Sean Hannity is letting these talking points pass as he yammers his narrow view then I guess the administration can claim a small victory.

In ancient times the military loss by a group of city states led by 300 brave men turned to a political victory as it set the stage for occupation to be too expensive. Those 300 men forever changed the world. Today the fiction of 300 convictions is taking the same brave hedge against the weight of a nation seething for a popular revolt at the ballot box. A political victory here would come at the cost of honesty, decency and the common understanding of the war we are in and the word forbidden to use for fear we upset those intent on murdering all of us… jihadists. I have more trust in the truth of a thousands of years old mythology than the mythology being spun now about the new 300.