[speakoutforum] WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY UNCLE SAM!

 

Ayn Rand(1905-1982), forerunner of venitism, pointed out America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.

Now, 85% of Americans don't trust the federal government. As Ronald Reagan famously put it, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. The essence of America, namely, a respect for the dignity of the individual, which inherently involves the government leaving the individual alone, has been pretty much forgotten by politicians in Washington, D.C., the state capitals and city councils around the nation. Which explains why public employees now make on average 30% more than their private sector counterparts, and 70% more in benefits.

The political class seems to believe they have carte blanche to do as they please. While they have been turning a deaf ear to increasingly vocal expressions of frustration by the American people, if the trend in primary voting continues, our Washington elite may just be jarred awake. The most efficient political system is venitism, where everything is private, there are no taxes at all, there is no parliament, and a powerless infinitesimal government is chosen and supported not by hoi polloi, but by the most generous benefactors.

The Declaration of Independence says governments are created to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, to leave us the hell alone. It doesn't take a village, we get along fine when we each strive to achieve our own goals.

The Tea Party movement. It is made up of average Americans who are sick to death of politicians regulating, taxing, controlling, and limiting individual choice. Basil Venitis asserts that taxation is armed robbery that feeds the black hole of political corruption; it's the perfect index of corruption and tyranny. Only evil governments tax citizens and companies.

Congressmen think Americans sent them to Congress to solve problems when Americans sent them there to see to it that Americans are left alone to solve their own problems. Add to that the fact that many of American problems have been created by Congress, and Americans have the basis for a healthy, peaceful revolution.

Instead of looking at ways to truly empower community, too many organizations that claim to represent Americans continue to place their faith in government, rather than in individuals. This is disheartening. Part of the genius of America is the entrepreneurial and creative spirit, which has opened the door for prosperity and a better quality of life for all Americans. This is precisely what brought many people to America.

New York! How does the song go? "If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere!" If you can make it there, you're some kind of genius. "This is the worst fiscal downturn since the Great Depression," announced the Governor. So what's he doing? He's bringing in the biggest tax hike in New York history. If you can make it there, he can take it there—via state tax, sales tax, municipal tax, a doubled beer tax, a tax on clothing, a tax on cab rides, an "iTunes tax," a tax on haircuts, 137 new tax hikes in all. If you can make it there, you'll certainly have no difficulty making it in Greece.

To a penniless immigrant called Arnold Schwarzenegger, California was a land of plenty. Now Arnold is an immigrant of plenty in a penniless land: That's not an improvement. One of his predecessors as governor of California, Ronald Reagan, famously said, "We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around." In California, it's now the other way around: California is increasingly a government that has a state.

There is a golden American revolving door for the movement of Amerikleptocrats between roles as legislators and regulators and the industries affected by the legislation and regulation and pullpeddlers. An unhealthy relationship develops between the private sector and American government, based on the granting of reciprocated privileges to the detriment of Americans, leading to American regulatory capture.

Robert Rubin, who helped create the world that led to the 2008 financial meltdown as Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, then took a top position at Citibank and made more than $100 million before it tanked on his watch. In the fall of 2008, when Citigroup was saved from bankruptcy with a taxpayer bailout, Rubin quietly slipped out the back door with his money, resigning from his position at Citigroup. Only recently Rubin made the headlines for offering the least apologetic non-apology imaginable for taking the American people to the cleaners.

And when it comes to taking, more than 200 former Congressional aides and lawmakers are now working for financial firms as part of a multibillion-dollar effort to shape, and often scale back, federal regulatory power. In other words, the regulators and their aides legislate the rules and then simply step through that infamous revolving door and pick up a handsome check on the other side. There are, in fact, 20,000 well-employed registered pullpeddlers in Washington today. A $7 billion industry, lobbying is definitely a
field to get into, even in bad times, and when the cost of grass-roots efforts and of strategic advisers are all counted, total spending on influencing policy in Washington approaches $15 billion a year.

Venitis asserts the very existence of a central bank such as the Federal Reserve and ECB aggravates, indeed institutionalizes, moral hazard. Since there is no physical limitation on the creation of paper money, firms know that no natural constraint exists on the power of the central bank to bail them out of any serious trouble. The Central Put is the implied promise that the central bank would intervene to assist the financial sector in the event of a serious downturn. No one has a right to be surprised when market actors behave accordingly.

Everybody's money income is somebody else's cost. In the case of the stupidus stimulus, the administration paid for it through taxation, borrowing, and printing new money. With all three methods the net result was that someone was made better off but only at the expense of someone else. When the government forced up the minimum wage, there was no added amount of production to offset the increase in business costs. Instead, we have seen a record level of teenage unemployment.

Corpfare is corporate welfare, such as subsidies, bailouts, and monopolies, granted by government to davajides, pimps of kleptocrats. Corpfare destroys the level playing field that free markets depend on, creates a corrupt relationship between government authority and special interests, transforms corps to corpses, and is unconstitutional. Even loans by government-sponsored entities constitute another form of subsidy. Zombiecorps, zombie corporations, badly in need of structural reform, but kept alive by state subsidies, badly hamper growth. Basil Venitis figures that at least four trillion euros are wasted on corpfare worldwide every year.

In a welfare State, the interests of individuals are sacrificed for the interests of others. Socialism demands the equal sharing of its misery. Collectivists in America today wish for all Americans to lower their standard to be equally miserable, except for the elite class that will decide what is best for individuals in society and will live well above the level of the miserable.

America has already lost three great battles in the war between collectivists and individualists. The first defeat was the creation of the Federal Reserve and the income tax in 1913. The Federal Reserve limited competition by smaller banks in favor of larger banks, eventually ended the gold standard (debauching the currency), and created the bailout culture of the last many decades. The income tax funded the bailouts for the shadowy elite and bankers.

The second lost battle was the massive expansion of government in America through FDR's New deal policies still with us today (Social Security, health insurance through employment, farm subsidies, Union strength). The New deal failed its main stated goal of ending the depression and ended the 1930's with the same unemployment level with which it started,about 20%.

The third lost battle was the Great Society legislation implemented by FDR disciple Lyndon Baines Johnson. Medicare - created as a guarantee of health care for the elderly - destroyed the private insurance market for older Americans, still only pays 80% of the costs and has a $38 trillion unfunded liability. Medicare is a massive Ponzi scheme and con job carried out by Congress -- stealing Medicare taxes every pay check and using them for political gain, e.g. bridges to nowhere, pork, unneeded government programs, bloated unionized government worker benefits etc. Now that it is apparent that Medicare can't deliver, Congress creates higher health costs and rationing programs in a bill euphemistically named the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It does all this while creating another economically unsustainable entitlement for health insurance subsidies targeted at the nearly 60% of Americans earning under 400% of Federal Poverty level ($90,100 for a family of four!).

The final battle of the collectivist/individualist war is upon us in the form of the agenda of the current Congress and President. But it has been enabled and set up for victory by decades of Congressional, White House, and Supreme Court policy that has routinely expanded government while destroying the value of our currency and removing liberty from citizens. This final assault on individualism includes:

* Nationalized health care, nationalized auto companies, banks, student loans, and home loans;

* A taxation and regulatory scheme on energy consumption;

* Growing and monetized debt to finance grandiose political dreams of the arrogant elite;

* Control of free speech through euphemistically named Network Neutrality for the internet and Fairness Doctrine for radio;

* A national ID card to track citizens and their every move and purchase;

* Expanded police powers of the state in the name of national security;

* Irresponsible foreign policy that assumes the American citizens will bear the burden of inflation and taxation to finance entirely avoidable conflict and unnecessary worldwide military presence;

* Continued growth of government worker benefits with economically unsustainable pensions and overpriced health insurance for employees and family members of government workers;

* Continued taxation to the point where the most productive members of society will stop working to produce that which will be looted by the government; and 10) Official demonization of the free market, businesses and individuals protesting collectivism.

This is a war between the competing philosophies of collectivism versus individualism. The disastrous results of a collectivist society are present in recent history through the fall of the Berlin wall, the emerging economic disasters in New Jersey, California, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and the United States. To determine the which philosophical army to join, you must determine which result you prefer: power over others or power over yourself. Sacrifice of others for your own interest or mutually beneficial exchange of goods and services for an agreed to price.

Collectivism holds that all power and money will be put into the hands of a few arrogant, elite people and those few arrogant elitists will decide what is best through central economic planning. Individualism holds that you are in charge of your life and government must get out of the way so you can bring true prosperity to society. American collectivists say they will tell you how you can or can't spend your money, what you can or can't do and what profession you can or can't have. American individualists create jobs that have never existed before.

Collectivists say the government will seek to end poverty by making us all poor through coercive looting of wealth. Individualists will seek to end poverty by creating wealth and growing charities for voluntary participation and action. American individualists don't take from their brothers: they earn wealth themselves! Individualists are in charge of their own lives and would no more tell their government to take from their brothers to give to them than would walk into their house and steal their fortunes from them!

Collectivists seek to create rights that are granted from the state to citizens that have properly submitted themselves to the authority of the state. Individualists agree with the founders of our country who recognized that we are born with God-given or natural rights. Our first breath of air is the air of freedom simply because we are born, not because the state has chosen to grant us the right to breath.

If this generation loses its freedom, our children and grandchildren will never breathe air not rented from the government or a corporation acting as an agent of the state. Our children deserve to live under the predictable rule of law created by a constitutionally limited government that exists for the sole purpose of protecting individual liberty. Our children should not be doomed to live under the arbitrary rule of man created by an arrogant elite class that requires their sacrifice in exchange for a few temporary and anemic "rights".

We must fight this final battle for individual freedom using all the peaceful tools of given to us by our forefathers and all our energy. These are the powerful tools of free speech, free assembly, the power to petition our government, the power to elect representatives and the power of the power of the courts to restrain government. We must find candidates who will fight for individualism and work by giving the money, walking precincts, recruiting other supporters and getting them elected. We must expose the collectivist agendas of those in power and demand they change or vote them out.

We must find opportunities to sue the government when it oversteps its constitutional authority, and support those elected officials who will fight in court for our venitist rights. We must do this and more and do it all peacefully. When venitism is on the march, peaceful means are all that are required to prevail. Since this is such a critical battle in the war for venitism, you should take the following oath:

I pledge to fight every day for venitism.
I embrace peace and reject violence to achieve venitism.
I demand infinitesimal government, free markets, and individual liberty in my country.
I will keep my children free by ending programs that put them in debt.
I refuse to grab the product of others.
I accept spirituality, but not religion.
I will provide charity only when I choose.
I will avoid and evade taxes, especially VAT, as much as possible.
I will work to elect venitists who will dratically cut spending and taxes.
I will hold the government accountable to the constitution through action in the courts.
I will pass the venitist spirit to future generations.

__._,_.___

Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post | Start a New Topic

Messages in this topic (1)

Recent Activity:

• New Members 83

Visit Your Group

MARKETPLACE

Stay on top of your group activity without leaving the page you're on - Get the Yahoo! Toolbar now.

---

Get great advice about dogs and cats. Visit the Dog & Cat Answers Center.

---

Hobbies & Activities Zone: Find others who share your passions! Explore new interests.

Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use

.

__,_._,___