Everyone complains about America’s debt, and rightly so, but how do we get out of it? As Cato’s Michael Tanner explains, spending on entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — has exploded in recent decades. We must slow their growth or they will soon swallow the entire federal budget. In five minutes, learn how America can preserve these programs and get out of debt.
Econ 101
More Business Closings Than Start-Ups Under Barack Obama
The War on Work ~ Prager University (Michael Tanner)
The U.S. government has spent trillions of dollars in recent decades attempting to combat poverty, yet the poverty rate has remained virtually unmoved. Why? As social economist Michael Tanner explains, the “War on Poverty” has both discouraged work and ensnared people in hardship. The “War on Poverty,” it turns out, is actually a “War on Work.” In five minutes, learn the truth about government’s counterproductive efforts to eliminate poverty.
How Is Obama’s Economic Recession the Worst? Larry Elder Explains
Larry Elder weighs in with an older article from 2011: Economy: Reagan Gets No Credit, Obama Gets No Blame
Ronald Reagan did nothing. Barack Obama saved the nation from total collapse.
How else to explain the absence of jobless pitchfork-wielding Americans storming the White House? How else to explain the contrast between the explosive Reagan Recovery and the dud on our hands right now? Fortunately, the left is up to the task.
“The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment,” said left-wing economist, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in 2004. Oh.
An economy that is “deeply depressed,” Krugman insists, or at least he did seven years ago, naturally comes back strong. To what principal factor did Krugman point to in calling the 1982 economy “deeply depressed”? Unemployment. It peaked in the early ’80s at 10.8 percent, even higher than during “The Great Recession” (aka the economy “inherited” by President Barack Obama). In 2010, the unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent, which means the early ’80s still holds the record for the “worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression.”
What most people care about are jobs. By that standard, Reagan faced an even tougher economy. Throw in a higher rate of inflation — 1980’s 13.5 percent average vs. 2011’s 2.6 percent — and much higher prime interest rates — 20 percent vs. 3.25 percent — and the early ’80s looked even grimmer than The Great Recession.
Krugman gives no credit to the Reagan policies of lower taxes, deregulation and a slowdown in the rate of government spending. He believes Reagan’s policies (SET ITAL) harmed (END ITAL) the economy. Krugman approvingly quotes Bill Clinton, who, as a presidential candidate, said: “The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”
Enter President Barack “Hope and Change” Obama, with a Democratic majority in the House and a supermajority filibuster-proof Senate. Out went policies like reductions in income taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains and dividends. In came transfers of money from one pocket to another to “spread the wealth.”
Under ObamaCare, the Democrats placed the entire health care system under the command and control of the federal government. Through a nearly $1 billion “stimulus” package, Democrats spent money on “shovel-ready” projects with a promise to “save or create” 3.5 million jobs. To rein in “greed” and to fight “climate change,” the Obama administration imposed billions of dollars’ worth of new regulations on businesses. Through “quantitative easting,” the Federal Reserve effectively printed money to keep interest rates low, a widely disputed policy designed to encourage banks to lend and businesses to borrow.
So where is it? When do we see the massive bounce-back from this “deeply depressed” economy, at minimum the kind of bounce-back that occurred in the ’80s in spite of the allegedly harmful policies of Reagan?
Krugman’s analysis of the Reagan recovery — a deep recession equals sharp recovery — tells us that the economy should be storming ahead, especially given Obama’s enlightened leadership. But in the seven quarters following the end of this recession, gross domestic product growth has averaged 2.8 percent. In the seven quarters following the Reagan recession, GDP growth averaged 7.1 percent.
(Below) The C.A.T.O. Institute has been proven correct in their warning!
Within Living Memory The U.S. Has Become An Entitlements Machine
Over the past 50 years, the purpose of the American government has radically transformed. Whereas its main goal in domestic matters used to be to protect liberty, it is now an entitlements machine, transferring over $2 trillion per year from some people’s pockets to others. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute explains how the explosions in social security, medicare, medicaid, and other welfare programs are changing the American character for the worse–from one that is focused on individual responsibility and giving, to one that is focused on grabbing as much of the pie as possible.
Marriage plays a big role in this equation, via American Thinker:
…Just this week, CNS news published an alarming fact: 86 million full-time, private-sector workers sustain 148 million benefit-takers. Specifically, “The 147,802,000 non-veteran benefit takers outnumbered the 86,429,000 full-time private sector workers 1.7 to 1.”
Today, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (see note below), poor children living in single-parent households constitute almost two thirds of all poor children (65 percent). That figure stands in stark contrast to the time before liberal social welfare policies went into effect in 1960, when only 25 percent of all poor children lived in single-parent households….
Three things one can do to stay out of poverty: 1) finish high school, 2) Get Married ([2.a] and stay married), and 3), go to church. These three factors are anti-poverty when practiced in unison.
Who’s the Fairest of Them All? The Laffer Curve Tells Us
(Video description) Should Taxes Be Higher? It’s the million dollar question! Up? Down? No change? Where in the world should taxes go? In election years, the question of tax rates fills the airwaves. In non-election years, the question of tax rates, again, fills the airwaves. So what’s the answer? UCLA Professor of Economics Tim Groseclose explains his research on the topic. Basically, there’s a certain point at which higher tax rates actually reduce the amount of revenue the government collects. What’s that point? When are tax rates too high? Learn a valuable lesson in economics, and public policy.
Video Description:
President Obama has declared that the standard by which all policies and policy outcomes are judged is fairness. This video explores what it means for our economic system and our economic results to be “fair.” Does it mean that everyone has a fair shot? Does it mean that everyone gets the same? Does it mean the government is supposed to play the role of Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor? The surprising answer: Nations with free market systems that allow ALL people to get ahead are the fairest of them all.
Learn more in Who’s the Fairest of Them All? The Truth about Taxes, Opportunity, and Wealth in America by Stephen Moore:
http://www.encounterbooks.com/books/whos-the-fairest-of-them-all/
Are People Born Good? This View Animates Conservatism (PragerU)
This is one of two of the largest divides between the foundations of left/right philosophies.
(Video Description) In our universities, newspapers, and television shows, it is a given that external forces are the cause of crime. If not for poverty, murder and rape would be much lower. If not for racism, America’s inner cities would be far wealthier. So on and so on. At the core of this belief is that people are basically good, and it is society that makes them bad. This notion is simply not true. As Dennis Prager explains in this video, human nature is not basically good. It is not, though, basically bad. People are born more or less neutral. And it is incumbent upon parents, teachers, and yes, society, to turn children into good adults. It doesn’t happen on its own.
While Prager’s and my own theology differs a bit, ultimately the Judeo-Christian understanding of where we start is similar:
(4GospelTruth [now defunct, sadly]) ….We will examine several verses that prove that each and every human being born into this world has the same sinful nature, that we all inherited that sinful nature from Adam and Eve. We are also going to discover what it actually means to be a sinner and how God describes our sinfulness. This is VERY important because if we do not understand what God means when He tells us that we are sinners, we will not understand what God means when He tells us that we must repent of our sin.
Psalm 51:5
- Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. (KJV)
- Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. (ESV)
- I was brought forth in [a state of] wickedness; In sin my mother conceived me [and from my beginning I, too, was sinful]. (Amplified)
- Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me. (HSB)
- I have sinned and done wrong since the day I was born. (CEV)
- Look, I was guilty of sin from birth, a sinner the moment my mother conceived me. (NET)
These are the words of David, who was a man “after God’s own heart” – this means that he was pleasing to God. Yet, David tells us, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that he was shapen (formed in the womb) in iniquity–already IN sin, and that he was a sinner from the moment he was first conceived. Surely, his fallen condition could NOT be worse than our own. Surely it could not be any different from our own. The fact is, the fallen, human nature of David is the same fallen nature of EVERY other fallen human being. This verse tells us WHEN we, as sinners, inherit the sin nature. We see from this verse that we inherit the sin nature from the MOMENT we are first conceived. This means that we never have even a moment of innocence in this life. All of the innocence of man passed from the scene the moment man fell in the garden, and EVERY sinner born into the world subsequent to that fateful event, inherits a fallen, sinful nature, from the moment of his conception. This verse tells us WHEN we inherit the sin nature, and the following Bible verses tell us that all human beings DO inherit the sin nature: “For as by one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous (Romans 5:19). This verse tells us that Adam’s sin was passed on to us. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (I Corinthians 15:22). This verse tells us that our spiritual death, our fallen state of sinfulness, is the RESULT of Adam’s sin. We became sinners THROUGH Adam. …
Read more on this topic at Gospel for Life.
This idea under-girds the philosophy of conservatism. In a section I added to the first chapter of my book, I note the strong underlying commitment in conservative philosophy (dare I say theology) by quoting Thomas Sowell, as found on my QUOTES page:
Christianity is closely tied to the success of capitalism,[1] as it is the only possible ethic behind such an enterprise. How can such a thing be said? The famed economist/sociologist/historian of our day, Thomas Sowell, speaks to this in his book A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. He whittles down the many economic views into just two categories, the constrained view and the unconstrained view.
The constrained vision is a tragic vision of the human condition. The unconstrained vision is a moral vision of human intentions, which are viewed as ultimately decisive. The unconstrained vision promotes pursuit of the highest ideals and the best solutions. By contrast, the constrained vision sees the best as the enemy of the good— a vain attempt to reach the unattainable being seen as not only futile but often counterproductive, while the same efforts could have produced a more viable and beneficial trade-off. Adam Smith applied this reasoning not only to economics but also to morality and politics: The prudent reformer, according to Smith, will respect “the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people,” and when he cannot establish what is right, “he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong.” His goal is not to create the ideal but to “establish the best that the people can bear.”[2]
Dr. Sowell goes on to point out that while not “all social thinkers fit this schematic dichotomy…. the conflict of visions is no less real because everyone has not chosen sides or irrevocably committed themselves.” Continuing he points out:
Despite necessary caveats, it remains an important and remarkable phenomenon that how human nature is conceived at the outset is highly correlated with the whole conception of knowledge, morality, power, time, rationality, war, freedom, and law which defines a social vision…. The dichotomy between constrained and unconstrained visions is based on whether or not inherent limitations of man are among the key elements included in the vision.[3]
The contribution of the nature of man by the Judeo-Christian ethic is key in this respect. One can almost say, then, that the Christian worldview demands a particular position to be taken in the socio-economic realm.* You can almost liken the constrained view of man in economics and conservatism as the Calvinist position. Pulitzer prize winning political commentator, Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), makes the above point well:
At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.[4]
A free market, then, is typically viewed through the lenses of the Christian worldview with its concrete view of the reality of man balanced with love for your neighbor;
Sean Giordano (AKA. Papa Giorgio), Worldviews: A Click Away from Binary Collisions (Religio-Political Apologetics), found in the introductive chapter, “Technology Junkies”
[1] See for instance: R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000 [originally 1926]); Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003 [originally 1904]); Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York, NY: Random House, 2005); Thomas E. Woods, Jr., How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2005).
[2] Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 27.
[3] Ibid., 33, 34.
[4] Walter lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, NY: Freee Press, 1965), 80.
BONUS:
- According to Adam Smith, it is when the businessman “intends only his own gain” that he contributes— via the process of competition— to promote the social good “more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” Smith added: “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”
Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (New York, NY: basic Books, 2007), 27.
- “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 292.
The above drives or animates conservatives, and causes us to ask fundamental questions that those on the left may ask in their household — but not in society [writ large]. It is why conservatism, while not the Gospel, will always be closer to reality in it’s cures and responses to man’s societal ills than any other viewpoint:
(Originally posted Oct 2013)
1) compared to what?
2) at what cost?
3) what hard-evidence do you have?
MODERN MAN’S MORES
Politics & The Modern Liberal Contradiction
Arbitrary Values / Relativism
In many cases, “modern liberal” positions are based on the idea of tolerance, the freedom of the individual to do as he or she pleases. This in turn is based on moral relativism, the idea that morality is relative to the individual and the situation (which distinguishes it from “classical liberalism”). Again, what is right or wrong for you may not be right or wrong for others. As a result, you cannot tell others not to have an abortion, not to look at or publish pornography, or not to live by an “alternative lifestyle.” Educational environments must be “value free,” there must be no restrictions on sexual and artistic freedom, and according to some, even activities such as recreational drug use should be decriminalized. Because there are no absolute values, each person must discover his own morality, a process taught in our schools as “values clarification.”
The liberal contradiction lies in the fact that every liberal position claims to be morally correct and objectively true. It is right to allow abortions and wrong to oppose them. Tolerance (in its modern definition) is good, intolerance is bad. Children should be allowed to grow up in a value-free environment; parents should not impose their own values. Modern liberalism takes a moral stance on every issue, but it undermines its own foundation by claiming that there is no moral absolute or guide to adhere to.
To put it into simple terms, yet once more, when a liberal tells you that you cannot tell other people what to do, he or she is contradicting himself by telling you what to do! And there is another side to the liberal contradiction. While many liberal positions are based on tolerance and complete individual freedom, other liberal positions are based on strict authoritarianism.
According to contemporary liberalism, the common good (what Rousseau called “the general will”) necessitates the suppression of individual rights when it comes to “saving” the environment, creating a more “equitable distribution” of wealth, achieving “equality” between races and sexes in all walks of life, and enforcing a strict separation of church and state. Paradoxically, that same “common good” takes a back seat to individual freedoms when it comes to the detrimental effects of: pornography and sexual freedom, reduced police power and criminal punishment, or drug use, or firearm mandates, etc..
Let me hasten to add that I too am for tolerance, equal rights, and ending unjust discrimination. I too am for freedom of speech, artistic freedom, academic freedom, and the separation of church and state. I too am for protecting the environment and helping the underprivileged. But I am for these things because I believe in the tenants of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition, not because I reject these absolutes.
If I were to reject the idea of moral truths, what possible motivation (moral duty) could I have to champion these or any other causes? More important, on what basis could I hope to persuade others of the importance of these causes? It is inconsistent to claim to be concerned about rights while rejecting the moral foundation from which rights are derived.
The rejection of one’s own moral foundation leads one to be not only immoral, but also illogical. It leads to positions that are inconsistent with themselves and each other (self-deleting). It leads to outcomes that directly counter one’s original intention and that threaten one’s own goals. It is unfortunate for the liberal agenda, but the liberal contradiction poses just such a threat. And it is not a threat from “conservatives” or from any outside source – it is a threat from within. Because of the rejection of the moral foundation for liberalism, liberalism is failing to protect the rights it claims to cherish. “What is is?” Please Mr. President!
A couple more recommended resources for a quick overview of this internal/foundational battle “for the soul” are as follows (the first being mine):
The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (video below)
Racism In Black and White ~ Bill Maher (+ Comedian Mike Birbiglia)
This is a gift via The Blaze:
The last comment in the above video reminded me of this stand up comedians routine:
“The Kronies” ~ Obama-Aged Action Figures
This comes via a hat-tip to MoonBattery, and the site for the figures is here: thekronies.com/
And at The Blaze you can find an interview with their creator. Here is the first video of the interview, but… before you watch it, one should familiarize themselves with what George Gilder said about a “static government,” and what Milton Friedman says about government monopolies:
“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”
~ George Gilder, Interview by Dennis Prager
{Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it” (see below) enforcers George Gilders contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works.}
Bernie `Socialist` Sanders debates Michele Bachmann on Economy (CNN)
Read more at Media’ite:
The Guarding confirms the statement of Michele Bachmann (implicitly) in the emboldened portion — GM is pulling out of Australia… Toyota probably following. Minimum wage increases adding pressures to business:
…GM Holden will cease producing cars in Australia from 2017, putting 2,900 employees out of work and Australia’s remaining car and components industry and its 45,000 workers in immediate danger.
“The decision to end manufacturing in Australia reflects the perfect storm of negative influences the automotive industry faces in the country, including the sustained strength of the Australian dollar, high cost of production, small domestic market and arguably the most competitive and fragmented auto market in the world,” GM Holden’s chairman, Dan Akerson, said.
In a statement from Detroit, Holden said “approximately 2,900 positions will be impacted over the next four years. This will comprise 1,600 from the Elizabeth vehicle manufacturing plant [in South Australia] and approximately 1,300 from Holden’s Victorian workforce…
Common Sense Questions Abaout Redistribution
This comes via Trib Live, and is by Donald J. Boudreaux who is a professor of economics and Getchell Chair at George Mason University in Fairfax. Here are his common sense questions:
- Do you teach your children to envy what other children have? Do you encourage your children to form gangs with their playmates to “redistribute” toys away from richer kids on the schoolyard toward kids not so rich? If not, what reason have you to suppose that envy and “redistribution” become acceptable when carried out on a large scale by government?
- Do you not worry that creating government power today to take from Smith and give to Jones — simply because Smith has more material wealth than Jones — might eventually be abused so that tomorrow, government takes from Jones and gives to Smith simply because Smith is more politically influential than Jones?
- Suppose that Jones chooses a career as a poet. Jones treasures the time he spends walking in the woods and strolling city streets in leisurely reflection; his reflections lead him to write poetry critical of capitalist materialism. Working as a poet, Jones earns $20,000 annually. Smith chooses a career as an emergency-room physician. She works an average of 60 hours weekly and seldom takes a vacation. Her annual salary is $400,000. Is this “distribution” of income unfair? Is Smith responsible for Jones’ relatively low salary? Does Smith owe Jones money? If so, how much? And what is the formula you use to determine Smith’s debt to Jones?
- While Dr. Smith earns more money than does poet Jones, poet Jones earns more leisure than does Dr. Smith. Do you believe leisure has value to those who possess it? If so, are you disturbed by the inequality of leisure that separates leisure-rich Jones from leisure-poor Smith? Do you advocate policies to “redistribute” leisure from Jones to Smith — say, by forcing Jones to wash Smith’s dinner dishes or to chauffeur Smith to and from work? If not, why not?
- Surveys show that Americans in general are not as bothered by income inequality as are academics and media pundits. Are the many Americans who don’t suffer deep envy of others’ monetary incomes naïve? Do the professors and pundits who fret incessantly over income inequality know something that most Americans don’t? If so, what?
- You allege that great differences in incomes are psychologically harmful to poor people even if these poor people are, by historical standards, quite wealthy. So how do you explain the great demand of very poor immigrants to come to America — where these immigrants are relatively much poorer than they are in their native lands?
- Do you believe that someone to whom government gives, say, $100,000 year in and year out, simply because that person is a citizen of the country, feels as much psychological satisfaction as that person would feel if he learned a trade or a profession at which he earns an annual salary of, say, $80,000?
- Would you prefer to live in a society in which everyone’s annual income is $50,000 or in a society with an average annual income of $75,000 but in which annual incomes range from $10,000 to $1 million? And regardless of the choice you would make, do you think others who choose differently are in error?
Another Bailout Around the Corner ~ `The Hammer` Was Right!
Economic Laws
✿ “A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”
{Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it” (see below) enforcers George Gilders contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works.}
Via Gateway Pundit:
This come via the Weekly Standard, but note that Charles “the Hammer” Krauthammer predicted this at the end of last year:
Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers. For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses. Here, US-RUSSIA talks about some of the key differences between the Russia of today and the USSR of yesteryear: …But what Russia does not suffer from is what the Soviet Union suffered from: massive economic distortion through state subsidies and outright fiat. The Soviet Union’s policy to contain inflation was not to raise interest rates or limit bank lending but to make inflation illegal. Inflation was banned and prices on a host of important goods were frozen (consumers, of course, paid the increased cost through ever-more-pervasive shortages). The Soviet treatment of unemployment was similar. The Soviet Union sought to lower unemployment not through tax credits or through loose monetary policy but by making unemployment a crime and forcing enterprises to boost their payrolls. Stories abound of Soviet grocery stores that had four different ticketing systems and ten different cashiers. This sort of inefficiency wasn’t some mysterious manifestation of eastern barbarism, it was an entirely predictable result of Soviet economic policy… The question is, what is the healthiest direction/pulse of the nation to go? Making market “realities” a fiction, and artificially insulated from what the public wants… thus increasing the government’s involvement (increasing it’s growth and stripping away freedoms in order to artificially prop-up parts of the market) in our personal lives and restricting of choices? Or a free’er market which increases our freedoms and allows products and reforms to be MOST affected and guided by the people? One last point, the most important. Unlike big business when it makes mistakes, big government cannot go out of business. Unlike corrupt government, corrupt business cannot print money and thereby devalue a nation’s currency. Businesses cannot coerce you by force (tax liens, garnishing of wages, or armed IRS officials, etc) into an action. So the “greed” of the corporation pales in comparison to the greed of government.[6] Which is why our Founders stated that, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government” (Patrick Henry); “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master” (George Washington). (Read More)
Obamacare