ex•tor•tion [ik-stawr-shuh n] –noun
1. An act or instance of extorting.
2. The crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.
3. Oppressive or illegal exaction, as of excessive price or interest: the extortions of usurers.
4. Anything extorted.

Early in our industrial infancy, the cheapest labor was often recent immigrants, indentured for their trip from the old world. Like many nubies, they were mocked as unsophisticated or slow witted by some in pop culture for their low socio-economic standing and lack of understanding of local norms. They were employed at a slower rate than assimilated workers. Unscrupulous business owners, and I might add, political parties, took unfair advantage of their ignorance. Workers were hired under misleading arrangements specifically worded to entice these workers into unfair contracts. The workers did what all workers in a free market do when treated dishonestly, the walked out. This wiped the gotcha-smile right off the bosses faces. The bosses could not infringe upon one’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the principles essential to the right to pursue happiness is the ability to keep the fruits of one’s pursuits, the protection of private property. The bosses wanted to get the production from the worker, and keep much of the remuneration as well.

To infringe upon this right required collusion with government.

Fraudulent employers got bigger, helped elect business friendly politicians who then enacted laws allowing employment contract skippers to be arrested and to allow local police to enforce the terms of the contracts. Railroads, coal mines, steel, were industries notorious for taking advantage of workers, enforced with the help of local and state police. They paid in script only accepted at the over priced company store. This is the part of the story we have all heard. The employees banded together and stopped working. Without production, the bosses could not buy the government they needed to keep the employees working. Such collusion only works to the advantage of the privileged few. We elect our government and the majority of Americans do not appreciate fraud and corruption, even now. Once the lights were turned on, the roaches scurried.

For most of the rest of our country’s history, unions could strike and business owners could fold. Pay and benefits were negotiated somewhere in the middle. All agreements were subject to either party simply walking away, at least temporarily. If the business folded, no amount of picketing would create money from thin air. If the employees walked, no amount of retained profit would produce. Soon equilibrium was reached whereby the employees felt favorably compensated, the business owner had labor he could count on and little changed year to year. Employees questioned the relevancy of the unions and hesitated to pay the dues for no change year to year. But politicians, as they are prone to do, followed the politically expedient source of money and grew to be on the “side” of unions, for a price. The unions used the means at their disposal to enact favorable legislation of their own. So was born the closed shop. If you wanted a job in a union shop, you had to join the union, often before applying for the job. Anyone who was not pro-union would not be allowed to join and therefore could not get the job. Friends and family were the only ones allowed to join and dissention in union matters was scarce. Even with this arrangement, employees were less and less interested in joining unions and paying the extorted dues. Non-union shops could pay less and charge less and fire people more easily, at the same time, they hired more easily and sometimes the take home pay was higher as no one was supporting a union infrastructure. This was especially true for other countries. Soon, a new generation of workers grew up only hearing stories of the labor movement. Their union loyalty faded as the union looked less and less like the savior of mistreated employees, and more and more like the bloated bureaucracies that had enslaved their grandfathers. Unions needed a better way of growing members in order to survive.

One option, the hard way, was to insist on minimum standards for members for training, ethics, dependability, etc. They could insist on eliminating poor performers from their ranks. This would give unions a reputation for the best employees for the money and guarantee a steady supply of employees wanting to join and a steady supply of employers wanting to hire them. The downside, the dues would have to be really low to keep newly employed members from leaving once they got the job. And, there is the downside of having to produce something in return for the dues after years of getting closed shop dues for relatively little. But if they could find another option, a new steel industry or a new coal industry, where the businesses hardly had any competition for employees, it would be much easier. Such a business would be staffed by employees with little choice but to work for the union. What would be even better is if they could do so in an industry with considerable profit margin from which to negotiate. The search was on for an industry with unlimited funds, relatively high tolerance of favoritism and nepotism, and a favorable political climate.

The perfect industry exists. However it was illegal to organize until the late 1950’s. Then a New York City mayor wanted to secure a few city worker votes and the public sector union was born. Democrat politicians across the country rushed to add public sector union members to their roster of campaign contributors. The unions could push the entitlement form of pay and benefits, and get the government to pull their closed shop union dues straight from the employee’s paychecks. The union could then use those dues to help elect pro-union politicians with which to negotiate those entitlements. The position normally held by the business that could go out of business was now filled by the tax payer. The tax paying public can not cease to exist due to unprofitable employment arrangements. Moreover, the union employee gets to vote for their representative on the government side of the table, same as any other tax payer. They then also get to send a second negotiator on the union side. The first places to adopt such laws were those states where a large portion of the state’s employees worked for big, heavy industries which were already union supporters. The rust belt fell first along with steel and dockworkers heavy states. More would follow as right-to-work states had uprisings to get the “right” to extort higher pay from their taxpayers as well. All went as planned, at first.

The arrangement in Wisconsin threatens the golden egg laying goose for two simple reasons: Greed and incompetence. Pay is peanuts; the big money is in pensions. A public sector worker can work for 30 years as a teacher, from 25 to 55 years old, retire with a pension, live to be 85 years old, and draw more in pension in those 30 years than they were paid to actually work 30 years. Each time a teacher in Wisconsin retires, the cost of their replacement is double, one for the replacement, one for the pensioner. In a private sector business, where pensions have long gone the way of the dinosaur, the money for the pension would be set aside each year the teacher worked. The cost would be obvious as the $52,000 teacher also had $52,000 set aside for her pension in hopes that she only lived 30 years following retirement. Retired teachers who live to be 90 could see 5 years when the cost is triple. The number of retirees, who do so, increases every generation, as does the base pay, all of which is renegotiated each year. The public sector union employee in Wisconsin grew up seeing their parents get this pension, without paying into it themselves, and now expect the same. They see it as a right. They feel entitled. Public sector pay and benefits outweigh the private sector employee packages from which the public sector pensions are paid, and the private sector employee also paid for a significant portion of their own retirement. Private sector pensions are all but nonexistent because no one can predict how long a new 25 year old employee will live after retirement. No business decision can be made 30 years in advance with any security. Private sector employees must live off of the retirement they helped pay for as well as continuing to pay for the public sector pension for a retiree who did not. The cost of a public sector union employee far exceeds that of the private sector employee’s pay and benefits. Which would be OK, if the electorate feels they are getting their money’s worth. The downside of favoritism and nepotism in an environment of employees motivated by belief in entitlement to the job, is that performance will always be lackluster at best, and never approach the performance where continued employment and promotion require it. Indeed, the union can be counted on to talk higher performers into slowing down or performing less to prevent bringing undue attention to the overall lackluster performance. But the internet allows parents to realize that their students are more likely than other similar students to perform poorly, despite spending much more per capita on education. As teacher pay increased, public school student performance decreased. We understand child learning better now than in previous generations, we have computers and other teaching tools available to us like never before, and a large portion of Wisconsin public school 8th graders cannot read proficiently.

But the death knell for the public sector unions in Wisconsin and the rest of the U. S. sounded when they took a stand on the ability to renegotiate their position, on the promise of accepting pay and benefit cuts now. They got the nation’s attention when they stated flatly, that cutting pay and benefits for union members instead of raising taxes on everyone was solving a money mismanagement problem on the backs of the unions.

Really? The collective scowl from the country was palpable.

Although they were correct about the mismanagement, it was at the hands of the union-elected miss-managers. Taxes had already been raised 60% to pay for the existing packages as businesses left the state. Fewer students to educate could not be accepted as a sound reason to lay off unneeded teachers. The teacher’s union wants everyone to pay even higher taxes, following an election upset run and won on the promise of cutting spending and taxes,  The union promises that union members will take a small hit now, so long as they get the opportunity to negotiate themselves raises and increases in the future, (when they can get more union friendly politicians elected). What I heard was, “We will keep the roaches out of the kitchen so long as the light is on.” Such negotiations in the past have often been accompanied with back pay for those cut years. In other words, “Write us an IOU for the “pay cuts” we are borrowing from the next generation of workers we are under-educating, or we will shut down the underperforming school system we took an oath not to abandon. Really, we promise.” To put it in terms some of you might appreciate, they said, “Nice school system you have here. Be a shame if something bad were to happen to it. A threat?!! Heavens no, it is illegal for teachers in Wisconsin to strike! I’m just sayin’ if something were to happen, organically without our community organizers community-organizing it . . .”

We are at a crossroads in this country on so many levels, but this is ground zero for the entitlement culture war. (Wisconsin is also seen by many as the beginning, ground zero, for union solidarity of past unions. I find this ironic, but perhaps fitting that the attempt to skew the political processes in favor of the privileged few, on the backs of the many, would be exposed there and defeated there.) If Wisconsin folds, so folds the country.

I call for the formation of a new union, one representing the over 80% of all workers who are not currently represented. I suggest that membership be open to all taxpayers not belonging to a union and that membership can be begun and ended year by year, with a prorated refund of dues anytime a politician you don’t want to support is supported. I suggest that we vote ourselves the “right” to bargain and the “right” to have union members pay OUR retirement and healthcare. In fairness, the unions will likely loose the ability to negotiate pension and healthcare soon either way. Perhaps we should only reserve the one right we truly do have; the right to the pursuit of happiness; the right to keep our property. I suggest we organize a taxpayers union and strike to end the extortion of our property on the threat of public employee sickouts. I want the right to strike and put the golden egg laying goose out of the egg laying business. I want to strike to end the practice of borrowing from our children without their informed consent, to send from balanced-budget/right-to-work states like Virginia, to states like Wisconsin.

We can survive without public sector unions. They cannot survive without us.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear his words and will take it as a sign of hope that he does not want to fundamentally change America as he led me to believe.  Also, Jon Stewart, who I also disagree with frequently, elevated my respect of him by saying in part, “I wouldn’t blame our political rhetoric any more than I would blame heavy metal music for Columbine.”  Again, look up the rest of his well spoken words if you are so inclined.  Unfortunately, his view is not shared by the bulk of his more conspicuous knee-jerk supporters in the media, if I am to take them at their word.

In case you have not been watching, the local Sheriff started blaming his political foes for encouraging violence.  There was a collective gasp in the more liberal members of the media and a clamor to be the first or loudest to cheer, “Yeah, what he said!”  I had the same reaction as most of the more conservative members of the media and blamed this piling-on as following Rham Emanuel’s advice, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.  What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before”.  But earlier today, my good friend Brian shared a discovery he made.  He was discussing the ludicrous attempt to convince people that this could have been stopped, if only we did not sell guns to the public.  Among other claims are assertions that ending the Fairness Doctrine led to this tragedy, as did the “loophole” that allows people to say unflattering things about elected officials, leading the insane to get the idea that people are unhappy with the elected official’s conduct.  We should protect ourselves from insane people learning that we are unhappy with the state of affairs in Washington?

How ludicrous does a claim need to be, before we skeptically view it critically?  Has Critical thinking died?  Let me make a ludicrous claim and seemingly back it up with facts you can check.  Please tell me if you would accept my claim if it were presented in the news media as serious analysis and commentary.  I will make an attempt to identify the facts and the gratuitous assertions as we go along and ask that you correct me when I miss one, like my English teachers used to correct my grammar.  I do not expect political correctness, but critical thinking, so the use of red ink and exclamation points is encouraged.  So, here it goes.

In Tucson a lone gunman, shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat U.S. Representative of Arizona, (fact) as reprisal for her recent vote against House Minority Leader and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (gratuitous assertion).  Gifford was obviously unhappy with Pelosi (gratuitous assertion) for leading Democrats into the largest shift in party power since the 1930’s and the lowest Democrat representation in the House since the 1940’s (fact)  Former Speaker Pelosi has a reputation for holding a grudge against Democrats who publically disagree with her (common gratuitous assertion).  Recently the House of Representatives held elections for the position of Speaker.  All of the Republicans voted for current speaker Boehner, except Boehner himself who abstained from voting.  This is historically benign; nearly all such elections are without dissention, along party lines.  However, an historic 10% of Democrats did not vote for the Democrat nominee in this election.  18 Democrats, including Giffords, voted for someone other than Democrat nominee Nancy Pelosi.  One humorously voted “present”, and one dissenter had more important things to do and did not show up.  In 1923, twenty three Republicans voted against the speaker-to-be in a preliminary round, but voted the party line in the final vote.  Otherwise, there has never been a dissention numbering more than single digits in U.S. History, much less to vote for a record 7 different alternative candidates, 6 of whom were not even running as was the case in this election.  (facts)  It seems that in a calculated response to Ms. Pelosi’s hate filled desire to meet out revenge for her public humiliation, the gunman started with one of the more vocal of Pelosi dissenters, Giffords.  (Patently false fabrication)

(If replacing Pelosi with Boehner and telling you we are talking about 2006, with Bush as President makes this sound plausible when it did not before, stop reading, you are too lost to benefit from any further discussion.) If I demanded that Ms. Pelosi is a coward unless she personally denounce this gunman and deny he is an arm of her office or upholding in any way her convictions, would I be reasonable?  I think not.  I have not shown any link between Ms. Pelosi and the shooter in any stretch of my imagination.  Would this change if I inserted another political cause in place of the election of the House Speaker?  Certainly, that would not point to new connections and should not be treated with any more credibility.  What if I substituted someone for Ms. Pelosi in my assertion?  Again, no.

But this is exactly what has happened in the last few days.  The local Sheriff blames the hateful vitriol and rhetoric of the right, and, “believes the hard right is deliberately fueling the fire against public officials, elected officials, government, and the administration”, admitting when asked directly that he has no evidence of a connection between the two.  He does this with a veteran lawman’s knowledge that the gunman’s legal defense will use the Sheriff’s statements against the prosecution to establish bias in the collection of evidence or in mitigating his sentence.  A reporter characterizes Sarah Palin as a coward for not defending herself, presumably to him, for her roll in the shooting. Her website has cross hairs on a map of political opponents and she recently said after some political setback to not retreat but to reload.  The MSMBC crew seems dedicated to naming names and blacking eyes of those on the right who were warned that protesting “progressive” policies via Tea Parties et. al. would lead to such lunacy.  Our Secretary of State tries to make friends in the Mideast by painting the shooter as an extremist (not a criminal, not a lunatic) and equating him with the sane, organized extremists from their world who attack us.

Similar talk comes from all parts of the political world and practically nowhere else.  I would be guilty of the same if I did not point out that this is true, regardless of party or affiliation.  Hard core political beasts do bloodthirsty battle on a blood drenched field of combat before the ravenous gaze of vultures and sympathizers alike.  Is it irony that such violence-metaphor is the target of the current campaign?  But you and I are not political beasts, presumably.  I know hardly anyone who assigns political motivation to hardly any behavior other than perhaps the act of voting, or not.  My challenge is aimed at the pedestrians on the sidewalk outside the stadium, not into the fray inside.

How hard is it for you and I to check the facts?  Should those in the media be able to check them?  What about the Sheriff close to the investigation?  Would he not have the best information available?  Would we not be best served to believe him when he states that he does not have anything to back up his assertion that right wing rhetoric contributed in any way to the motivation of this shooter?

I find it interesting that those who are appalled at the incitement of violence by the right, are uninterested when the left demonizes President Bush.  The outrage is selective and no side is innocent in this regard, but there was no outrage in the media when a liberal director made a movie, The Death of a President, about the assassination of the President of the United States.  Would it surprise you to know that this was not a story about a generic President, but about the then current, sitting President George Bush?  There was certainly no outrage when Ms. Pelosi used metaphors about para-trouping over Republican resistance to the Democrat health care bill, no outrage when President Obama bragged about bringing a gun to a knife fight.  There was no outrage when Joe Manchin, a Democrat Governor, made a political add where he carried an actual gun, loaded it with an actual bullet, took actual aim and an actual target, and actually shot a hole in a copy of the cap and trade bill.  This was allowed since it was metaphorical, and from a Democrat.

I assert that people who think that ALL actions are politically motivated had to assume that the shooting of a Democrat in Arizona must be motivated by non-Democrat forces.  They could not conceive of a person being willing to shoot ANY, RANDOM elected official, without regard for political affiliation.  Since this was a liberal victim, and a liberal tenant is to blame the lack of government control for bad things, they immediately look to expose the gap in the law that allowed this person to snap.  Case in point, there are legislators calling for tighter gun control with the idea that the gunman would not have used an illegal gun to commit murder.  I will get back to my friend’s genius on this point in a moment.  Also, there are proposed laws to make illegal any speech or symbol that could be construed as encouraging violence against a member of Congress.  Too bad they didn’t think about such controls when people were burning effigies of  President Bush portrayed as Hitler hanging from a noose.  Rahm’s lead notwithstanding, there is no functional connection between such control of speach and the tragedy in Arizona.

I encourage you to listen critically to outrage.  When the victims of a shooting are enroute to medical treatment and a first responder blames someone, it can be excused considering the excitement of the moment.  When several days go by and they maintain this blame, consider if the one casting blame knows something to logically lead them to that determination, in other words, could it be factually based.  When people totally uninvolved with the shooting, blame everyone of a group who disagrees on unrelated issues, critically consider if the accusations could possibly be true.  Could the person making the claim have the bit of information to fill in the logical gap between them?  When someone defines a “problem” as if it were fact, without offering any facts to support the link between the “problem” and the crisis, then insists on a “solution” in the form of restrictions on people they disagree with, carefully consider that it may not be a solution at all, but a tool of political gain.  Don’t believe me, think for yourself.

So, how does my friend’s revelation fit in with this?  It has to do with the cries for gun controls.  Let’s look at the facts we know.  This young man was in trouble in school more than once for disrupting class with claims such as the school is using grammar for mind control.  He was once asked to leave and refused in such a way that a security guard was posted outside the room from then on.  His classmates were afraid he would show up one day and start shooting people.  He had a similar record in college where one professor said he was afraid to turn his back on him for fear he would be shot in the back.  We know that although he was arrested more than once, the charges were dropped each time.  His mom works for the County Board of Supervisors, and although I have no reason to believe the leniency he received is related to her employment influences, such would cast more doubt, in my mind, on the Sheriff’s objectivity.  We know that he was pulled over for running a red light, hours before the shootings, and let go with a warning.  And, we know that he legally bought a handgun that he then used in this shooting.  We know these things because of the records, not the least of which was the gun purchase.  This made me realize two things.  First, making people go through the background check and waiting period and so on do not prevent committed criminals from proceeding with their plans. What would have changed if guns were not legally available?  There would be no record of where he bought the gun.

Second, and most profoundly, is that the liberal idea of relativistic enforcement of the law, the idea that they should be enforced sometimes and not sometimes, enabled this man to pass the background check.  The fact that his unacceptable behavior did not have him kicked out of school and evaluated, at the high school and collegiate levels, in the name of political correctness, allowed him to pass the background check when he should not have.  The fact that he was arrested, more than once, and allowed to go free perhaps due to favoritism, may have kept him from being diagnosed as the paranoid schizophrenic he seems to be, kept him from being treated, and allowed him to pass the background check.  It is easier to attempt to keep law abiding people from buying guns, than to admit that the system failed this man, and the people he attacked, including the 9 year old girl he shot in the face at point blank range.  It is easier to think that only the system is broke and can be fixed by new restrictions on the speech and other behavior of the law abiding.  It is too hard to realize that this man is broke and no system can catch someone committed to acting outside of it.  Utopia cannot exist in a human world, regardless of the level of government control.  This man certainly would not have been deterred from using an illegal gun when he did not hesitate to shoot a child, in the face, close enough to see her anticipation and reaction.  Believing that controlling speech on the radio, or the guns in the stores, would bring this ill man productively back into society is simply bizarre.  Do we prefer to control the largest number of people, or to discover the largest number of mentally disturbed people?  Critically consider how to best do that, and the other rhetoric seems too ludicrous even for TV.

It occurred to me that much is happening in the big-picture-philosophy world that contributes to the stress of some people. (Could it relieve the stress of some?) I recently had a discussion with one such person about their attic and property taxes. Specifically, each reassessment brings a new discussion about a storage room in the attic. It seems that the building plans show an alternate room in the attic. The alternate room was not finished when the house was built, but plywood was put down so the area could be used for storage. I’m certain many of you have space in your attic where you store stuff, (for lack of a better term.)

The situation is that each time the property is reassessed, it is based on the generic building plans, purchased from one of those plan books you can get al Lowe’s, not the actual building constructed. It would seem that this is easier that way, for the reassesser. Each time, a trip to the local tax office, a short wait in line, and the explanation that the information is already in the file, resets the floor area which establishes the amount of tax owed.

For some reason, this stuck in my craw. I can’t seem to shake it.

The tax is based purely on the assumption that the more you own, the more you are able (and obligated) to pay, every year. There is an income/wealth test for property ownership. If you cannot afford the tax then you are obligated to sell the property to someone who can. This skews property ownership towards the ones who have and against the ones who have not. The haves must take some of wealth they already have to pay for the property they intend to keep. Those who have not, must earn enough to pay income taxes and use a portion of what is left to acquire property. Then they must earn enough to pay income taxes and still have enough left to pay the property taxes. A person of moderate means often cannot inherit property and afford to pay the inheritance tax, income tax on their moderate income, and have enough to pay the recurring property taxes. There is an income/wealth test for inheritance.

How is it that the government is somehow entitled to more tax money, based simply on the wall treatment of an attic room? There is no link between that room, and any service the government provides. There is no link to the function of government. But that is not unusual; there is no link between sales taxes and the use of those taxes. So it took me a while to figure out why I could not let this one go. My conclusion is that property taxes are immoral. I believe that all confiscatory taxes are immoral.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it is easy to say such, and just as easy to discount such with the argument that there are legitimate functions of government, and that they must be funded. Even so, this is my conclusion: Just as tyranny is the opposite of freedom, the taking of a portion of a person’s property, for the simple reason that it exists, is an infringement on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Bear with me, this sounds a little like a math proof. You know the ones we had to learn in high school geometry? Ok, so nearly all of you just clicked the delete key. Kudos to you.

For the rest of you, show me where my logic fails. The founding fathers wrote the constitution, in part, to protect the ownership of private property. They believed, as I do, that the ability to keep the fruits of one’s labor is the basis for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The short version, if a person raises crops, just enough to survive, and cannot keep them, that person will starve. If a person can just feed themselves and the government takes the smallest portion, that person starves. Today, if a person lives on their own land, their own property, and never leaves, takes no service from the public at large but stays on their property for their entire life, they would loose that property in the name of supporting the common good as defined by those collecting property taxes. Today, a person is not free to live of their own devices. Today, a person who raises enough food to support themselves, has to raise enough additional to sell at market to pay the property taxes or have the property confiscated to pay said taxes.

The break even condition is unsustainable for the individual. One must make enough extra, be wealthy enough, to support the programs deemed needed by the governing body (street sweeping, welcome centers, etc.) or become a ward of that body. In the example I have chosen, the person who owns enough land to feed themselves and never leaves the property or takes any service from anyone outside their property, must sell a portion of what they raise to pay the taxes, and then presumably sign up for food stamps to eat. This person would have to give up feeding themselves to support the program that would feed them. That is, of course if they could qualify for food stamps and own property. In theory, this person would have to sell a portion of the property to pay the taxes and each year, the ability to feed themselves would diminish and a portion would have to be sold to make up the difference. Eventually, the property would be gone, and the person would be a ward of the state. This additional burden on the state routinely requires increases in revenue, which makes it more unlikely that a have not could earn enough to own property.

I call this unsustainable because you must either create enough wealth in excess of what it takes to survive at the government manipulated standard of living and pay for your share of the care of those who do not, or be one of those who do not. In other words, you must either be an excessive wealth producer and support the programs of the government or be a wealth consumer and survive on those programs. You cannot survive in the middle, there can be no sustained middle class.

A person living by one’s own labor, burdening no one else, totally free from owing anyone, is in a downward spiral. They would owe a portion of their property to the government for the simple reason that they exist and own property. Someone in the past, who earned excess wealth, (more than enough to feed themselves), paid for that property with money which was taxed as income if it happened in the last 70 years. But if for any reason the excess wealth production slows enough, to less than roughly two times that needed to live, and if they ceased to produce excess wealth to be used for government programs, the government will confiscate said property and put it in the hands of someone who will. The government comes first.

This person could loose their property because the assessor classifies attic storage space as “livable” space which moves them from the just-barely-feeding-themselves and funding the government category to the soon-to-be-a-ward-of-the-state category. I could not show up on their door and insist that they support my social agenda with a portion of their property. If I showed up with an armed person and insisted at gunpoint, I would go to jail. If I organized a municipality and showed up with a uniformed tax official and insisted that they pay a portion of the official’s salary with their property, I gain the power to imprison that person and take their property. The taking of property to spend on causes not supported by the person who just had their property taken, does not become moral when more than half of us vote together to do so. Theft by proxy is still theft.

I ask this: Are you free? Can you live alone on your own property? Are you free to live your life regardless of the unrelated decisions of someone else? I suggest you are not free. You only own your own property, keep your own income, pursue happiness, so long as you are allowed to do so. Your property is only yours if you are producing tax revenue in which case the government will “allow” you to keep it.

Are we moving toward freedom or tyranny? Can you still sell it all and go bankrupt to pay for medical procedures to save yourself or a loved one? Will that freedom be lost because it is deemed “unfair” or the process too expensive for the single payer to pay? Tyranny is the opposite of freedom. Which is more moral, freedom or tyranny?

The Great American Experiment followed the sacrifice of, “lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor” in defense of an idea. The idea that individuals, free from the tyranny of central command and control, protected their individual interests better than any unrelated protector, no matter how kind, caring or otherwise motivated. The Great American Experiment was funded, fought, and died for on the promise that freedom led to higher standards of living for everyone, greater innovation in business, agriculture, and every other aspect of life for everyone it touched, successful and failing alike. The government would be as limited as possible, the people as free as possible.

Carl Marx, believed the antithesis of these ideas. Marxism suggests that such freedom, and the fact that some people would be immensely more successful than others under such freedom, hurts the average person. Marx believed that for some people to succeed, others must fail, that the size of the pie is fixed, and who gets large pieces and who goes hungry is mostly random, except that dishonest people predisposed to fraud will skew things to their advantage. The typical honest person will suffer under the abuse of the dishonest. People are better served, in his theory, when each produce according to their abilities, and a central authority distributes according to one’s need. The average is better served when everyone follows the plan.

Every society in human existence has either answered to a central authority like a king, or had some system whereby the people chose their governors. In early history, a king who fought for the position was best able to fight to defend his people from invaders and pillagers, or to invade and pillage neighbors. Most were still farmers and hunters. Later, when technology progressed to the point where people could produce more than they consumed, trading came on the scene with the evolution of the middle man (middleous homosapien). This relied on fair play and people were hunted down and killed for foul play. Knowing who could be trusted and a person’s reputation became valued knowledge. Middleous man evolved to make a living off of what they knew instead of what they could grow or hunt. This only happened because there was enough excess produced to support people who did not directly hunt or gather food, make clothing, or build shelter, and there was efficiency in producing a couple of commodities where the climate was best suited to it and trading them for goods that could be more efficiently produced elsewhere. (This is why we raise beef and corn here, and they raise sugar cane in the tropics). It was almost unregulated. The middle men got together and formed colleges, or congresses, (groups of like minded people to serve a common end). Being a member of such could encourage producers and buyers to deal with you. The members of such groups would promise better and better prices to producers, and better and better quality to the buyers. Some would temporarily make a better living by such promises than from what they knew. They promised more than their competing middle men, until they could no longer produce and the group collapsed. They were replaced.

This system was ultimately replaced by the selection of fair play representatives (governors) by consensus. This made the selection based more on the perception of the candidate’s abilities than on actual performance. (Sound familiar?) Sometimes the selection was fair; sometimes it was coerced and intimidated. Indeed, control of all societies has been and is by governments chosen by a range of methods, with violent seizure of power after surrender on one end of the scale, and free and frequent elections on the other.

I am only concerned with the violent seizure method in that it is no more or less likely an end to any society, regardless of where their system currently lies along the scale, and is therefore mostly unpredictable. Such systems arise when the people are not able or willing to withstand its takeover. My concern is with the other end where America selects its government. Every society in human existence who chose their governors based on promises of representation have ultimately fallen to wasteful spending. The cliché is that they fell when the electorate voted themselves larger shares of the stores of grain than they were motivated to produce when fed with free grain. It is another of human’s natures. Until the mid 1900’s, these happenings were part of common education.

These are well known facts. In the pre-American world, kings tried to motivate their subjects with a system of taxes and entitlements. Prior to America’s founding, it was generally believed that anarchy would ensue without divinely inspired and chosen leaders. Many cultures still believe that today. Our founders believed that no one is more or less divinely created than the next, and that anarchy ensues without a divinely inspired population. They conceived a system whereby people could correct tyranny by choice. They conceived, debated, and persuaded the acceptance of a system that limited the power of the government to only that which the people authorize it to have. They demanded limits on government which could not be changed by the government serving those limits. They knew that human nature would compel elected officials to promise ever increasing rations from the public stores, and that once government control got sufficiently complicated, one size-fits-all policies would be the only way to manage the complexity thereby limiting innovation and individual motivation. They believed that nearly every government activity must be controlled locally, or fail.

So here we are. We stand at the cross roads where intellect faces human nature. On the one hand, intellect can rightly lead us to the conclusion that perfect management of a well motivated populace, provided for in accordance with the needs of each, eliminates suffering caused by bad decisions made by the individual. Human nature can lead us to accept Marx’s arguments without challenging the assumptions inherent in them. Marx’s utopic theory requires that human nature be resisted by the managers so that corruption does not foul the system, and that human nature be resisted by the managed so that defense of individual best interest no interfere with the common good even when contrary to individual good. Human nature explains why corruption is so common in countries with Marxist leaning systems. The self interest of the briber is provided for by the indulgence of the self interest of the bribed. Innovation is only relevant when conceived by or recognized by the managers and no incentive exists outside of ego for the innovator or the observant manager. Likewise, human nature leads us to vote ourselves larger shares of the public stores on the promises that “they” will be sufficiently taxed and sufficiently tolerant of the taxes to continue to produce grain undeterred. Human nature leads some to believe this despite the evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, intellect can lead us to look for examples of both systems, socialist and free market, and determine which provides better conditions for the poor, or disadvantaged. Human nature would be to choose the best performing system.

Have we chosen the system whose theory stands up to rational debate when devoid of real world examples, or the system that has proven successful in practice despite being too complicated to fully explain every action rationally?

The choices, as I understand them are these: Recognize that we have the best medical system in the world BECAUSE the rich pay more than the poor, BECAUSE the rich have access to new treatment and technology before it is cheap enough for mass consumption; Recognize this it is this arrangement which makes medical care for the poor more available than it was a decade ago; Recognize that medical treatment of the poor is more available than it is in any other system in the world; Recognize that much of the medical treatment available to the world’s poor only exists as a result of the American medical system; Recognized that more treatments are available to the poor than would be if FDR had been successful in realizing socialized medicine; Recognize that a generation from now, the poor will have less access to as yet undiscovered treatments under socialized medicine than would be available if the rich continued to fund research and development; Recognize that socialism, Marxism, communism, statism, progressivism, liberalism, or however else you chose to label it, has led to the death of more people in the world than all other calamities combined; Recognize that because these systems rely on complete adherence to the common plan and surrender of the protection of individual defense of one’s best interest, violence and oppression are always used to control the population; Recognize that the wealth created by American entrepreneurs has funded the defense of most of the free world for two generations. Simply, choose to protect the rights of the individual to succeed or fail by one’s own decisions, unencumbered by agendas of social justice and wealth redistribution.

Or, choose the path chosen by every free society ever known. Choose the path dictated by emotion and human nature. Choose to bankrupt the country by trying to plan and provide an ever increasing array of goods and services, devised by a politically motivated committee that sets it own limits, provided to increasingly less motivated and demonized producers.

Will intellect win out over emotion? Am I wrong in my belief that I am on the side of intellect and not emotion? Is it arrogance that got us here in the first place, to believe that the human nature cycle of tyranny-escape-freedom-prosperity-guilt-entitlement-dependancy-tyranny can be short circuited without the pain of tyranny fresh in our minds? Are we destined to go down as the society arrogant enough to think that it manage all things for all people, just as the Romans did?

I hope not. I hope, that the success of the Great American Experiment thus far, can inspire us to not relinquish this prosperity and freedom in return for short term illusions of social justice. I hope that we recognize the success that took us from 13 colonies, too worthless to warrant the resources to control those colonies, to the most prosperous, powerful, free, and generous people in the world in less than 100 years. I hope that we collectively believe in our hearts, that the reason people immigrate here from every country in the world is freedom and opportunity and not a random coincidence. I hope that we as a country do not give in to the human nature that leads us to believe that our neighbors make poor choices at home, but perfect ones when electing officials, that these same neighbors make poor decisions at home, but perfect ones once in Washington DC.

I hope that we recognize that it is because of human nature, not despite it, that socialism and statism have always failed wherever they existed, and that free markets have succeeded everywhere they have existed. There is only so much motivation garnered from threats of fines and imprisonment, but the motivation of the hope for a better life is only limited by one’s imagination.

Today I spoke with a friend on the phone while I waited to for a little Chinese restaurant to open and I could get lunch to take back to my desk. We talked about the idea of praying for a business miracle. We agreed that such powerful mojo should not be wasted to defy the laws of reason for such an individual serving end with limited mass market appeal. One has to consider unintended consequences and trickle down economics when pondering the effects, post-miracle. Please pray responsibly.

I just got a chill. I felt the collective eye roll as you read that. “Does this guy really think he is capable of ill effect from a poorly considered prayer”? I’m just saying, be careful what you wish for.

Too close to a Bible thump for you? How about applying the same logic to legislation, where I am obviously less reluctant to offend people. Why? One is based in belief and faith, with or without proof. The other is based in history, logic, mysticism, and superstition with or without proof. I know that was as clear as an Oreo crumbled and dissolved in a half glass of milk. Can you tell the cookie from the milk? I doubt it makes any difference. Some practice politics with religious fervor and view skepticism as heresy.

I am a Methodist, or claim to be. This was the denomination of church I started attending as a child, so I must be one. Right? It turns out it suits me. I later learned, Methodism was a label applied to the methodical, critical evaluation of the basis in the historical documentation of the teachings of the Church of England, and at times, the lack thereof. The original Methodists believed the actual words were the source of information instead of the interpretations of previous generations. Each generation could re-discover the facts instead of being bound by dogma. I wondered as I was scooping up a half a pound of coconut shrimp in a styrofoam box if this is my political belief. (Being free from dogma, not the shrimp in the box.)

So what am I? I am regularly in a conversation with someone who says, “So you are a libertarian, or conservative, or constitutionalist, or neocon, or moron,” or fill in the blank. I usually say, yes, but. . . then I have to explain exceptions. I am not a libertarian, not always. I don’t think that we should be as close to anarchy as possible without killing one another. I think that there are some limited areas where I am willing to give up some personal liberties to get some other benefits. Investors from other countries need a certain amount of confidence that our laws will protect them from anarchy, for instance. In years past I have benefited from that investment in American growth but suffer now from the hesitation caused by the political anarchy in Washington today.

Likewise, I am not always conservative, which Mike Church points out begs the question, “What are you trying to conserve”? Not everything, I think that we should constantly be attempting to improve on our current strengths, sometimes moving forward, sometimes back. This is why I don’t think that the Constitution should be left alone as a sacred document and should, from time to time, be changed. (Notice I did not say updated or improved.)

Moron . . . well . . . I’m not sure my defense would benefit me more than my silence.

We Americans have an obsession with being able to label people and put them in classifications. So I guess I have to be classified but can’t find one that always fits. Logically, there can be only one fix. I have to make one up. Then I have to change it whenever it doesn’t seem to fit, until it doesn’t need tweaking again. Here goes.

I feel ethics and emotion and empathy should be lead us when setting our goals and direction. But, I think that facts, logic, and reason should direct our actions toward those goals. I am a political protestant, unhappy with the established government priesthood scolding us into dogmatic ritual with unclear connection to the original core truths. We want to feed the less wealthy in this country, but discourage food production in this country and promote more expensive importing of it. They can’t work here in food production and can’t afford the imported food. We want to end hunger in other countries, then put free food in their market which runs local production out of business and food becomes more scarce. We want to help the poor to rise from poverty but incentivize it with protections for self esteem and other non-poverty related acts of “social justice.” We take good intentions and implement them with good intention. We ignore what has improved the standard of living for the most people in human history for fear of looking uncaring. Shouldn’t we care about helping, not looking like we care about helping?

I want to be a policy result scientist, of sorts. I believe in poli-logic. I suggest applying the scientific principles to public policy that we advocate for global warming and other scientific concerns. Test, conclude, confirm, then open the results up to public scrutiny. Simply, prove that the intended outcome actually comes out of our policy. When I am asked to give up personal liberties, I want some scientifically substantial logic that the promised benefits will actually come to pass and if it still does not, that we are committed to giving me back my liberty. Limiting American manufacturing pollution to the point that our manufacturing moves to countries where they are worse polluters, will not pass this test. If the reason for the imposition is to limit pollution, the end result cannot be higher pollution in another country.

Likewise, any restriction on Americans and American business must be shown to be important enough to extend those restrictions on any imports from other countries. Anything less is dishonest. When an idea is supported on the premise that we should “give it a chance,” it is still in the research stage and is not feasible enough to insure that infringing on someone’s freedom could be justified. The first tenant of poli-logic: Be careful what you wish for, be certain that your actions actually lead to what you wished for, and be ready to take it back if you are wrong. Pray responsibly.

Specifically, he said then candidate Obama stood a good chance of winning because he was, “light skinned” and spoke with, “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” I say, cut him some slack. Why? Mostly, because I am on the right but not a Republican. I can forgive him for letting his colors show, so to speak, but don’t feel the need to attack him because he is a Democrat.

The flack he is catching from the right is over the hypocrisy of how the left, and Democrats in particular, react to such comments from their own, verses someone from the right and Republicans in particular. Why, they say were George Allen, Jimmy the Greek, Al Campanis, James Watt, and others treated so harshly for words that were more insensitive than racist? Why does Biden get a pass for characterizing convenience store clerk jobs as requiring an Indian accent et. al.?

The public’s concern is lost in all the rhetoric. This is representative of a larger issue in American politics which I suggest is at the heart of why we are tired of American politics. I have in my head the caricature of our elected officials playing a football game. Imagine the flapping neckties and soft bodied tackle attempts and whinny insults from the bench, the breathless attempts at power-walk like blitzes and the squeak squeak squeak of plastic surgery parts stretching under the exertions. Imagine the hair; imagine errant comb overs, a muddy postiche near the Gatorade cooler, that crackling sound when hairspray teased poof scrapes Astroturf, and the hair stylist/team managers clamoring on the field when the whistle blows to attempt to save a $400 hair do. I think they are all ridiculous when they shake their fists shakily at the camera, two fingers taped together, and claim to fight for us. Where are the real athletes? But the issue that screams at me has more to do with why would people who appear to be so inept at the game on TV, choose to play the game, and how do they so passionately choose to play for one team or another? And why are we so angry at both teams?

Is the answer in Harry’s words? Let’s see, is Obama light skinned? I guess you could say so, or not. Does he have any particular dialect? I don’t think so. Could he fake one? If Hillary can get away with what she contrived as a southern draw, I am certain he can pull something out of his hat. How about the words of Trent Lott’s praise of Strom Thurmond at Strom’s 100th birthday party? “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” Is that racist? Not on the surface. The answer depends on whether you believe he was referring to Strom’s strong support of state’s rights, or his support for racial segregation. Care to guess which the Republicans chose? We can’t know a man’s heart, but the way we react to such statements shows our own.

The difference is seen in who each group tolerates in their midst. In general, conservatives agree on more conservative principles than we disagree on. I like to think this is because the truths we hold are self evident, that the conclusions we reach suffer reason. We tolerate people who do not hold one or more of these beliefs, but once you do not hold several as true, it is more likely that you will side with the liberals anyway. For instance, a conservative might agree with limited government, fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense, and personal liberty, but believe that a woman should be allowed to abort a pregnancy for reasons entirely her own. Liberals and Conservatives alike would label such a person a Conservative. Liberals on the other hand, tolerate almost anyone who agrees to vote for their cause. Liberals tend to be ardent liberals with only one or two issues they are passionate about, and willing to feign passion for all the others. Each group saw themselves in candidate Obama and are puzzled when theirs was not his first priority once elected. I have a good friend, for instance who hates the Iraq War and wants to legalize marijuana, (both would be better served by Conservative policies, but another day for that) but he is rather conservative in every other way, but would never openly support a Republican program even if they were offering legislation he would otherwise support. There is considerable hypocrisy on the left and so they are rather tolerant of it as long as it does not hinder their pet agenda. Case in point; they want the government to “stay out of my womb” but insist that regulating every other health issue for everyone is OK. They believe that the government should not be able to limit the use of “medical marijuana” but should definitely criminalize incandescent light bulbs or trans-fats.

How does this relate to the racism label being thrown around differently for conservatives than for liberals? It has to do with political correctness and critical mass. When someone says or does something, like cheat on his wife, a conservative is willing to give that person time to redeem themselves. Shame on you, take a break, talk to me about it again in a year or so and convince me that you have come to your senses. The liberal does not care unless the infidel is playing for the other team. If a politician lies on his taxes, conservatives expect him to step down, if that politician is a conservative, liberals agree, if that person is also a Republican, the Democrats agree and some where along the way critical mass is reached and he is forced out. If a liberal Democrat cheats on his taxes, conservatives expect him to step down, the liberal points to this as a smear tactic and claims that he has a good heart and should be pardoned, so long as the tax cheat supports the agenda, and the Democrat will defend him because on April 15th, a Democrat cheat beats a Republican of any shade every time. Alas, no critical mass. If you think I am talking about Tim Geithner, do a Google search for “democrat tax evasion –democrats.com, and poke around a little in the 1.4 million hits, many not Geithner. Don’t think for a minute that this is somehow an endorsement for Republican tax virtue, replace the word Democrat with Republican and peruse the 324,000 hits you get. Again, I imagine the shaky little fists and Barney Frank’s lispy claims of fighting for me.

Harry Reid, a strict PC public figure “used an unfortunate phrasing” and just as importantly, President Obama immediately forgives him and hopes the whole thing will just go away, so it is misspeak, not a view into his character. George Allen makes up what he thinks is an Indian sounding name, and it is an obvious Freudian slip, indicates the deep seated white supremacy hatred he has for people not like him. Worse than that, he did it in public with a complete disdain for political correctness. What an amateur, using a fake word without focus grouping it first. He is obviously not first string material.

Give Harry a break, he has been elected to the level of his incompetence and cannot possibly be expected to get it right on light bulbs and supporting Obama for President and knowing what phrase to use when labeling African American dialects. We are, after all, just human.

The real call for his removal should come from his Nevada constituents and the non-Black community.

Oops, I heard the screeching tires and the resounding crash. Did I change gears too fast? What can I possibly be talking about? Well, in Harry Reid’s private comments he revealed that he didn’t necessarily respect Obama for his charisma or his intellect or for his commitment to principle, or ability to perform the duties, but for his electability, his packaging. He viewed Obama as a well presented candidate who would bring the Black vote along, without offending too many white people as would one with darker skin and a Black dialect. Obama voted the right way, and was minority enough, but not too minority so as to scare the White people. In one careless and revealing phrase, Harry Reid insulted Blacks by predicting they would vote for race, insulted whites by predicting that they wanted to, and insulted most moderate voters as being gullible enough to be so manipulated. President Obama was looked at as a ringer brought in from out of town to play in the Church league, and the opposition would never see it coming. Harry Reid doesn’t think Whites are better than Blacks, he is just a political hack. No shock, one has to be to become majority leader. I agree with the liberals we should give him a break on the racism front.

The truth is much more sinister than a racial bias. Harry Reid, thinks that his political allies are better than EVERYONE else. His People automatically know that everyone supporting Strom Thurmond is racist, and they KNOW that they make better decisions about YOUR personal life than you could ever make if left to your own devices. This is why we are tired of American politics. Not because Harry recognized a racial political fact, or was careless enough to let the world see that Democrats can actually see race. Not because Trent Lott should have carefully prepared a PC preface to every compliment he made to an old man at his birthday party. We have tired of hearing how hard the last game was or how hard they are training now. Both parties are campaigning for first string, which we select like we choose homecoming queen. We end up with professional campaigners but the football games look like an exhibition game with Congress and the White House officials on one side and paid, private sector lobbyist professional ball teams on the other. Guess which side has skin in the game. From the bleachers it looks ridiculous, even entertaining, you can see small groups of drunks humming the Harlem Globe Trotters theme, except that we are getting our butts handed to us by the pro’s. Any given day, the first string blames the second string and visa versa, and the opposing team takes home the spoils. The home team is getting our butts kicked and the post game talk is full of complaints about towel fights and locker room welts and who refuses to shower.

It has nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with different standards for first and second string. It has everything to do with professionalism. We are running out of money for tickets and we are tired of loosing every season.