Littlestuff Weekender-4-14-2012

There are a number of “Tax Day” rallies going on around the fruited plain in the next few days, and I am honored to be speaking at the Perrysburg Patriots’ rally in Perrysburg, Ohio (Hood Park, 105 Front St. 12:00noon-2:00pm) today (Saturday). If you have one nearby, please try to go. Some pundits are gleefully predicting the demise of the Tea Party movement, and the time has come to change their perceptions.

Every day next week I’ll be subbing for Brian Wilson from 3:00-6:00pm on The Talk of Toledo, 1370 WSPD. ( www.wspd.com ) I’m honored to fill his seat and his shoes on the number 1 talk station in the greater Toledo market. We plan to have a number of interesting guests, a daily chance to win a prize and perhaps some of my sermonizing about liberty. On Thursday after the show, I’ll travel to Findlay to speak to the Findlay/Hancock County 9.12 Project. Sharon Butler graciously invited me, and I look forward to returning to my old haunts in the Flag City. The program begins at 6:30pm in the 3^rd floor meeting room of the Findlay Municipal Hall.  

The economic situation in Europe has shifted but not substantially changed. Spain is facing a similar situation to that of Greece. Italy and Portugal are hot on the heels of Spain and Germany’s debt to GDP ratio is now around 80%. Germany….the economic pillar of Europe is in danger of facing fiscal peril because it has been financing EU profligacy.

Meanwhile the hyper-growing Chinese economy is showing some signs of slowing because the government wants to quell inflationary pressure and also because the European and U.S. markets aren’t purchasing as many Chinese products as before. The entire global economy reminds me of the circus act where the guy balances multiple spinning plates on sticks and attempts to keep them all spinning and balancing at once. If things don’t work out just right, there could be lots of shattered pottery all over the planet.

Politically…it looks like Romney’s election to lose, and he may. Be prepared for massive voter fraud across the nation and a Department of Justice that looks the other way. Romney will have to bring his “A” game (if he has one) otherwise there may be significant leakage to the Libertarians or many GOP voters may stay at home on Election Day. You may have read or heard that the national vote tally for President will be tabulated by a Spanish company. This is the first time ever that one company has combined all the states and territories for tabulating. … an offshore one at that. Why aren’t the labor unions complaining about Obama shipping jobs to a foreign country?

This past week I read a column about the performance of the freshman House members who were elected as “Tea Party Republicans.” Already nearly 75% of them have migrated to the big-spending, big-government dark side. There appears to be a solid core of about 20-22 House members who seem to get it. That’s not nearly enough. They need help or they will burn out by giving in….or choosing not to run again. An “R” behind one’s name is no guarantee of fiscal sanity. Tea Party groups should recruit, educate and groom political “virgins.” Selecting candidates from a pool of officeholders leads to promoting career politicians….with emphasis on the career. We end up with more of the same.

Thanks to Ed Shick for sharing this link about vote fraud.

http://social.patriotactionnetwork.com/video/video/show?id=2600775%3AVideo%3A5750664

Ponder this for a second or two: This year the 16^th Amendment is 99 years old. That’s enough. We should move to eliminate it and send the 17^th Amendment with it to the ash heap of history. I believe that 1913 was the most destructive year in our nation’s history. Those two noxious amendments plus the creation of the Federal Reserve were just three of the products of that fateful year.

On one of my recent radio shows I spoke about an article wherein the author did an analysis of our national debt using the accrual method rather than the cash basis that is usually given. The difference, for example, is that on the cash accounting system the $1000 per month for a Social security recipient is factored into the debt for this year only whereas under the accrual method, we would factor the $1000 per month for the expected lifetime of the recipient. Please note….people who have not yet begun to receive benefits are NOT included….only current recipients are. Those who haven’t started receiving benefits are factored in the unfunded obligations of “out years.” Bottom line is that for those ALREADY RECEIVING benefits, the accrued debt exceeds $50 Trillion….yes, that’s right….50 Trillion dollars. Sorry ‘bout that. Now have a nice weekend.

cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

  

Defining Fair

“Whatever’s fair” is a common phrase used by folks who are trying to apportion something of value. Fairness is abstract, not concrete. It’s all in the minds of the participants. I can recall trading a silver dollar for a cheap plastic bauble when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My parents were mortified, but at the time I thought the transaction was “fair.” Today…. I have a different view. Fairness is always a matter of perspective. The privileged child, for example, will complain of unfairness when asked to share her or his toys with visiting children. In today’s American culture fairness has come to represent a difficult-to-define form of entitlement.

Another old bromide states “life isn’t fair.” And that’s the truth. Sometimes despite our best efforts and agonizing persistence, things just don’t work out. On the other hand each of us has benefited from some serendipitous occurrence that has brightened our day or lifted our spirits. Life is not fair and certainly not predictable. Those who expect perfect equity in life are doomed to a lifetime of gross disappointment. So…..why is so much government power and government force dedicated to the illusionary concept of fairness? It seems as if whenever our federal government roams beyond its constitutional obligations, it becomes entangled in impossible pie-in-the-sky ventures.

Eliminate poverty? It does have a certain moral ring to it, but “poverty” is relative. If you have a dollar, and I possess ten of them, you are poorer than I am. On the flip side if you have $50 million, and I struggle along with $5 million, I am poorer than you. For more than 45 years the United States government has waged a war on poverty. Yet the percentage of those at the bottom of our economic scale has hovered near 20% for the entire half century. Progressives cry that it’s “unfair” that so many Americans are immersed in such dire circumstances. Yet study after report has indicated that all of our income quintiles (20% portions) are quite mobile. People move out poverty, and others drop in. Maybe the lefties should heed the words of the Lord: Matthew 26:11 reminds us that there are always people who are poor. Government has proven that it is incapable of resolving the issue of economic poverty, but it should never be involved with spiritual poverty. Life is not fair, but spiritual strength will overcome many of the barriers and disadvantages of life’s curveballs.

The word “fair” should be limited to a name or description of an event that includes animals, rides and amusements. It should be stricken from our lexicon of social injustice. Fair is not measurable. Fair is not definable. Fair is not achievable. Using fair to describe relative positions is not fair. It has been a given that when an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime it is unfair, but in today’s environment even the guilty claim unfairness for a number of extraneous reasons. We are using the ruse of fairness to excuse all kinds of uncivil and anti-social behavior. Lousy childhoods, poverty and AWOL parents are often cited as unfair elements that “cause” people to behave like social deviants. Nearly every person has some obstacle to overcome. Admittedly some have greater barriers than most, but our national narrative is replete with stories about people who have overcome distressing circumstances and thrived. They beat the fairness game. Fairness or its lack thereof cannot be used as a valid alibi for animalistic behavior. Of course the lack of good parenting does have a negative effect on young people, but that’s not unfair…..that’s life. Get over it. Rise above it. Stop complaining about it. Bad neighborhoods, lousy schools and nasty relatives can all be cited as excuses for uncivil or whining behavior. The ultimate truth is that you and I are responsible for our own circumstances. If the obstacles are huge, we must climb higher. If the opposition is numerous, we must fight longer. If we have been denied and deprived, we must struggle harder to overcome our late starts.

It is really not fair to abuse the word “fair” whenever someone hasn’t gotten their own way. Too many people confuse the term fair with equal, but any reasonable person can understand that equal rarely equals fair. Equality means that everyone is treated exactly the same. Won’t those who have “special needs” or “special circumstances” feel deprived if all are treated precisely the same way? So…logically, fairness requires some discernment and subjective evaluations which in turn lead to errors in judgment and misunderstandings. So…why don’t all of us stop playing footsie with the illusive concept of “fair?” It cannot succeed and any effort to promote fairness will result in a disaster of distorted perceptions. Everyone will be frustrated. The self-defined aggrieved parties will believe themselves short changed and unfairly treated while the other members of the society or community will resent the recipients because of their special treatment. It’s a lose-lose proposition, and we should stop chasing the rainbow of fairness. There is no pot of gold at the end…..just a septic tank of misery.

cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

Picking Rocks

When I was young and growing up on the farm, one of my father’s standing rules was that whenever we encountered a rock while working in the field, we were to pick it up, place it on the tractor platform and deposit it along the fence row for later collection. I was twelve when I finally understood the relationship between rocks, costly equipment and seed displacement. You see, I was a young farm boy who was prone to daydreaming. Although I had my assigned tasks on the farm, I wasn’t very diligent in performing them because my mind was often wandering to places and events far beyond our acreage in north central Ohio.

During the spring of my seventh-grade year my father had to be hospitalized for an extended time. My mother and I were left to milk the cows, feed the hogs, gather the eggs and prepare the fields for planting. My siblings at 9 and 8 years of age were too young to materially assist us, so I missed a few days of school and we soldiered on. After we had the fields ready for planting, our neighbors and fellow church members arrived with their planting equipment and completed the job in one day. I learned about neighbors helping neighbors and the blessings of community that year. It was an eye-opening experience for my curious twelve-year old mind.

Back to the rocks… During my early years on the farm I could not fathom why rocks would appear in fields after we had picked them the previous years. One field was particularly obstinate. It consisted of 6 acres of “jackwax”… a black-blue soil that turned over in huge slabs when it was plowed with a moldboard. It was beautiful to see and extremely difficult to work as the reluctant slabs would fight every attempt by the disk, cultimulcher, cultipacker, springtooth and harrow to tame it into a seed-ready bed. That darn field was a kidney destroyer when I would drive the tractor across its massive slabs. Invariably, a few days after beating the black mass with our entire equipment inventory, my Dad would tell me to take the small tractor and a trailer and go “pick up the rocks in the jackwax field.” I was perplexed. I thought we had retrieved all the rocks the year before…and the one before that. What evil presence was pushing these rocks up to the surface just to annoy me?

That year that my father was in the hospital… the answer was revealed to me. The rocks were numerous and were lying in the rich soil quietly minding their own business when an all-day soaking rain or a 30-minute “gully-washer” would wash the soil away and expose their hiding places. The fertile black-blue soil camouflaged the rocks as they lay silently waiting to damage a disk blade or deflect some precious grains or kernels of seed. The cleansing rain washed away their cover and exposed them for what they were: impediments to our lives and prosperity. If the field were to have a good yield, the offending rocks had to be removed. Their hard-core interference had to be stopped so that our family farm might flourish.

More than a half-century later I was picking rocks from my own fields for the same purpose that my father and grandfather had. Even as I approach “golden-ager” status, my mind still wanders….and wonders. As I was driving my Gator while “rock scouting” and stopping to pick up the offending “back breakers,” I thought my exercise would provide a simple metaphor for where our nation is today. We are so blessed to live in a land of abundance and variety. We have a population that has brought the strengths of many cultures to our shores, but we are struggling…. and our yields are diminishing.

If the field represents our nation, the rich and potentially productive soil is symbolic of our natural resources and our citizens. Clearly the rocks are the faulty policies, the venal career politicians and the arrogant bureaucrats who damage our tools and suppress our yields. The Tea Party, liberty advocates and patriots are the rains. The steady downpours are the constant vigilance and insistence for accountability that our freedom warriors demand. The thunderous gully-washers represent the inflamed ire of our people when they have been “crossed,” sold-out or cheated. Freedom-loving people will expose the offending rocks and remove them….one by one until the field is cleared. We must never forget, however, the rocks will continue to appear, and we must always be vigilant rock pickers forever more. We cannot afford to be daydreamers like that young farm boy was more than a half-century ago. We must be alert. The heavy lifting never ends.

cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com

Who Owns You?

Who owns you? Who owns your labor? What if you were a furniture maker who felled the tree, trimmed it, sawed and cured the wood, then crafted artistic and functional pieces from it…..and government demanded a portion of your income after selling the furniture? Who owns you and your labor? Think about the farmer who tills the land, buys and plants the seed, anxiously watches the weather and harvests the crop. Why should government demand a portion of his proceeds? Almighty God wants a mere 10% so why should government demand more….or any? Personally speaking, I have found that God has provided me with strength and guidance whereas government has produced anxiety and interference. It resembles being forced to pay for the privilege of jamming a stick in your own eye.

Perhaps you are not woodworking craftsman. Maybe you work on an assembly line at an automobile plant. The miners who collected the raw material and the companies for whom they work paid taxes on their labor. The smelters, stampers, welders and forgers plus their companies paid taxes. The parts makers and shippers were required under the threat of government to pay taxes, and finally the parts arrive at your plant for you and your colleagues to assemble into a finished product for sale. You, your co-workers and your employer must all pay taxes based on what YOU have earned. The salespeople and owners of the dealership who receives the product of your effort must pay taxes too. To the uninformed observer taxes would appear to be necessary fee one pays for the opportunity to work. So….to some degree it makes sense that people who do not work but live off the government, pay no income tax. Is this system fair and equitable?

Why should you and I labor to fund a bloated unaccountable government apparatus? Is there a moral or ethical code that entitles the government to our labor? Are our creativity, energy and industriousness fair game for wastrels, sluggards and scofflaws? By what divine right does government lay claim to our work, our sweat and our pain? Forcing us to pay taxes on our earnings is theft. Using our taxes to subsidize those who refuse to work is criminal. There are two words that come to mind when I think of government benefiting from the labor of its citizens: serfdom and slavery. It seems logical that an industrious citizen is an asset for the nation, yet our governments choose to punish diligent people by confiscating a significant portion of their labor by means of force. Who owns you?

Although I have some constitutional quibbles with the Fair Tax, given the high-wire spending of our government at the present time, I believe that it would provide a more reasonable form of taxation for us as we struggle to reduce the size of government. Three immediate benefits of the Fair Tax are apparent: it taxes consumption rather than labor, it allows the worker to collect his or her ENTIRE gross paycheck (less voluntary contributions such as United Way or union dues), and it provides a measure of flexibility for the taxpayer to decide when to pay taxes….or at what level her or his taxes will be. Freedom is the opportunity to make our own choices, and the Fair Tax offers some level of freedom in that regard.

Ideally…. in a free nation that honors the individual sovereignty of its citizens, the government would be funded through duties, imposts, excises and fees as anticipated by our Framers in the Constitution of the United States. Sadly the Constitution has been relegated to a sentimental relic that career politicians honor with meaningless lip service. They do not understand our fundamental document, and they do not respect its precepts. To slash spending into constitutional limits (i.e. not funding non-enumerated activities) and to wean the leviathan from its blood-sucking dependence all at one time is politically impossible in the present environment. But…an early and convincing half-way measure such as the Fair Tax would begin the process of downsizing government and returning to a modicum of liberty for taxpaying citizens. Perhaps as citizens perceive how much of their earnings had been previously commandeered by government and how much they have to pay at the point of sale, they’ll become irate.

In Ohio Tax Freedom Day is April 12^th for this year 2012. As the Bush tax rates expire and toxic elements of Obamacare take root, the tax burden will be larger next year and beyond. The average Buckeye worker must work for the government for 3.5 months before paying the mortgage or rent, acquiring food and clothing, purchasing an automobile and gasoline and paying for basic utilities and staples. Nearly 30% of the typical worker’s labor is controlled by government. Can you say partial serf? Can you imagine the road to slavery where you become a tool of the state? Who owns you? Are you getting what you pay for from government or are you over-burdened, annoyed and disrespected? Who owns you? The time for reclaiming your sovereignty and your dignity is now.

cearlwriting@hotmail.com

www.littlestuff-minoosha.blogspot.com