One interesting stat from early modern England

This is one of those times where a single statistic can open up a wealth of insight, and yet it does not come from our present but our past.  This one is coming from the Open Yale courses, which are freely available for viewing and have some of the most interesting professors that can have a wealth of information.  The stat comes from the HIST 251: Early Modern England which covers the time period of the late 16th century to the early 18th century and is presented by Professor Keith E. Wrightson.  To understand the transformation of England during this period it is necessary to see where it started from circa Henry VII, just before all the major changes in England took place.  I've been watching these with my lady and our side conversations tend to make the simple presentation quite long as it is necessary to pause the presentation so we can discuss material.  Thus the insight comes from that discussion.

In the mid- to late-16th century there was a relatively stable social stratification that has the Nobility at the top, the Gentry of landed estates and 'gentle birth' next, then the Yeomen class who were not of 'gentle birth' and tended to be well considered in towns and cities running trades and businesses (as well as some farms which was necessary for the era, the Craftsmen and those earning a living via craft work, and then gradations through the poor end of the spectrum which ends in Unskilled Labor.  The Clergy are considered separate (remember pre-Henry VIII) and while they can have power, it is not by lineage (as in the Nobility and Gentry) but by appointment to position (such as Bishop or Arch Bishop) by the Pope.  Literacy was low outside of those who could afford such education or that required it for daily operation (like the Clergy).  Schooling was done at home and as soon as children could contribute in any way to a household, they did so via work, first at home and then, if coming from a poorer family, by paying a Master Craftsman to take on a boy as an apprentice or by going to a household to work in any of a variety of tasks for a one year term.

This society can be characterized as stratified and one in which survival at all but the upper ranks of society is a constant pre-occupation.  Mercantile capitalism tends to fall in to the Yeomanry and Craftsman realms of society, and while the Yeomanry were socially limited they could earn quite a lot of money and purchase land from plying business trades.  Across all strata of the non-Clergy is one particularly interesting phenomena and the statistic of interest: marriage tended to be put off until the early- to mid- 20's.  This was done because establishing a new household is a costly affair (even for the rich) and must be done with much due consideration.  At the upper ranks of society choices in one's class were limited, and matches between young men and women could take time but also required agreement between families.  Sliding down into the Gentry, Yeomanry and Craftsman realms of society, men and women had a bit more in the way of choices and leeway, but parental and family consent made marriage a multi-lateral agreement in which any single party could hold a veto.  This sort of concern lessened going down to the lowest levels of society, where there was a lot more freedom for couples, agreement tended to be limited to parents, but start-up costs of a new household was high in proportion to the income of the poor.

From that this society can be said to have a high overhead cost of maintenance to it: it costs a lot of time as well as funds to get a household going.  Child birth, statistically, would happen within 18 months of marriage and then be a cyclic affair every 2 or 3 years of the woman's childbearing years.  Added to this was the high rate of infant mortality, endemic diseases, pandemics of plague, plus the normal assort of death by accidents, and life expectancy, while better than in Neolithic times, tended to be in the mid-30's with rare individuals surviving past 60.

Why is this interesting?

My lady was startled because of the American experience with families up to the early 20th century: large families with marriage happening in the late Teens.  Many marriage laws for what society would consider 'children' today included age of consent down to 12 in some States.

There are important changes by the start of the 19th century for Americans, but the life expectancy had not increased much over the 16th century, and while the Industrial Revolution would begin to transform America after the 1820's, American family size continued to be large even with advances in medicine, public sanitation and better diet.  Taking these factors into consideration, there is one other major factor that is encountered in the US that sets it apart from its Early Modern English forbearers in the 16th century: it is a society of not much in the way of 'classes' and it is one with a low overhead for maintenance.

The first is relatively self-explanatory, and while there were major land and slave holders in the Southern States (an equivalent of the Gentry class circa 16th century England)  and huge differences between those living in cities and those in rural areas, these are not largely different from the share-cropper system and differences between city and rural folk of the 16th century.  Without the rest of the class structure to burden the system and plenty of wilderness to settle in what happened is that the Americans of the early 19th century gained a definition that stuck until the early 20th century: a Frontier Culture.

By now, of course, this has interrupted all viewing of the course as this is a vital topic but approached in an oblique way.  There are large differences between a 'Settled' culture and a 'Frontier' culture, most of which revolve around the cost of maintenance of the infrastructure necessary to sustain the culture.  It is difficult to think of Early Modern England as a 'settled culture' but it has natural geographic limits to it, even when you consider Great Britain or the UK as a whole: these are islands and have definite boundaries and no frontiers.  Once an island has undergone initial exploration and settling, that is it for new resources and to get claimed land one must purchase it, which requires capital.  If you live in a town or city you can rent space, of course, but in the villages and household settings to have a new household requires land either by purchase or lease, and then a home on it.  There are many records in England from the late 16th century onwards, which allows us to glimpse a bit of everyday life via the records of deaths and coroner's inquests.  Prof. Wrightson recounts the death of one young woman who was working as a servant in a household who, at her death, had a total of 3 Pounds, 3 cows, and a chest containing items of clothing, bedding, bowl, spoon and the like.  Indeed an average of all deaths can actually yield that individuals owned perhaps as many as 25 to 35 items, total upon death.  The savings of a young woman was that of hoping to find a husband, marry, and establish a household amongst the poorer ranks of society.  She was already bringing something to the table for a marriage: she was gathering necessary overhead capital and goods for the start of a future household.

This is a stark contrast to the American Frontier experience that included clearing land, marrying early, and settling that cleared land for little to no overhead cost beyond sweat equity.  Raw materials were readily available, land was anywhere from free to cheap (compared to Early Modern England, at least), and the idea of 'go forth and multiply' was something that was held near and dear to the heart in reverence to God.

What is the condition of America today?

Settled.

It has a high overhead cost of maintenance to start a household.  Even with politicians distorting lending markets no end, the cost of starting a household is high.  Those that learn the Trades in America, today, actually have a low overhead cost from education: there is less burden on them and a trade craft repays the cost of education in it quickly.  A distorted market in 'Higher Education' arising from the 'good deed'  in the GI Bill post-WWII flooded colleges and universities with people which then changed the requirements in the marketplace for what is a 'minimum necessary education'.  That 'Higher Education' no longer repays itself and is a debt burden to those who go through such education and have no useful job skills at the end of it.  It is a high cost that must be paid down before starting a family.  The result?  The age of marriage has increased, couples expect both parties to bring something to the new household, children are put off for a period of time after marriage, on average and yes there are exceptions to this just as there were in Early Modern England of the 16th century.

At the lowest end of the economic spectrum there is a payment of funds from tax receipts (or in added debt) to the poor to 'care for women and children' who happen to have children out of wedlock.  Women get payments based on number of children and husbands are no longer required to get support: government has taken on that role.  The result is a liquidation of the once solid poor family structure that was purposefully uprooted during the 'Urban Renewal' that started with the Truman Administration and the movement of poor families from homes they owned to tenements they rented from under the 'Great Society' programs.  Add in payments based on childbirth to women who are not required to be married and have a stable family situation, and you liquidate the foundations of the stable culture that was once a part of the urban landscape prior to the 1950's.  Although a Nation in which by any objective standard pre-1940 there is no poverty, at all, we still have the strange belief that the poor are a condition of poverty.  And yet the poor are always with us, as being poor is part of the condition of individuals within mankind. 

Poverty, as such, was transitional in America where anyone could aspire to be a 'rags to riches' story and maybe end up in the Middle Class or at least better off than one's parents in material goods and security.  What there also used to be was no support system for the rich who failed: you could go from rags to riches to rags and cycle back and forth between them.  The establishment of regulatory regimes to allow failing concerns to remain open (and even get direct government help via taxpayer funds) means that those who make poor decisions under those regulatory regimes no longer fail and they no longer succeed, either.  They become zombie concerns depending on the lifeblood of taxpayer funds and supported regulatory regimes to survive and exist.  Any comparisons between this and later English companies supported by the Crown and later found to be bankrupt is purely coincidental with the Modern England.  In the Early Modern England there was too much upheaval to allow for such things.

Thus there are similarities of type between the US of 2014 and mid- to late-16th century England, but not of kind.  There are entirely different sets of overhead concerns for starting a household, and yet they arise for the same reason of being in a settled and geographically limited society.  The Old West in America is just that: the historical Old West.  And while there are still unsettled lands in the US, no one can rightly call them a Frontier in the expansive way of the early 19th century.  Yes Alaska is still nasty, has a low population level and if you can gather the overhead costs to establish yourself there, it has a frontier-like feel to it.  Social stratification becomes more apparent in the modern US but not due to the gentleness of birth but the connectedness to corrupt government and those that serve and service its corruption.  Just as in Early Modern England this is not a stable situation.

The result in Early Modern England was the Industrial Revolution and the great colonization effort that spanned the globe.

America, today, is at the cusp of a similar sort of transformation, as well.  It is not a dour and bleak totalitarian one, that is if we don't work to counter it.  No, it is one that also had an antecedent in Early Modern England: a New Frontier.

America has tested its endless expanse and now is home to many private concerns that dream big dreams of endless expanses of territory and wealth to be made.  It can't be made just by the rich or even with robotic systems, as those are fragile to this new and hostile wilderness.  And in this wilderness children will learn from the earliest of ages how to survive, what to do and not to do, and the rest of 'education' as we know it will be geared to those concerns first and foremost.

What happened when the English had access to new territories?  Some people were banished to them.  Others fled to them because of the freedom they offered for a new life at great risk.  They were Frontiers.  No social stratification.  Relatively low cost of overhead compared to what was left behind. Great and terrible risk to eke out a new life together with those who also decided that this was better than being settled.  Vast populations from Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Scandinavia, Spain, Italy... they followed when the cost of transportation to the Frontier was cheap enough to escape the settled lands of their old homes.

As I've said before and say again: there isn't anything so wrong with America that a New Frontier will not cure.

Freedom and Independence will beckon to us, to all mankind.

No one from the time of Henry VII could have seen the rapid changes that would follow his death.

And we can compress those massive changes of centuries down to decades, and no totalitarian power will be able to stop it once the flood gates open.

All we must do is curtail the grasp of tyranny in the present, hold it off by all means possible, and a New Frontier will open to us.  Like Early Modern England seemed a strange place to look for such transformation in its stratified ways and settled lands, so, too, does America look like a strange place to expect the push for a New Frontier.  Yet Early Modern England was pre-adapted to such things by its history and America, along with a few other Nations, is pre-adapted to Frontier culture by its cultural heritage. 

It is easy to fight tyranny in space: open an airlock.  Nature plays no favorites, but you can.

Ideology to Eschatology

Ideology

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

ideology
     n 1: an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation [syn: political orientation, political theory]
     2: imaginary or visionary theorization

Eschatology

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

eschatology
     n : the branch of theology that is concerned with such final things as death and judgment; heaven and hell; the end of the world

The modern day Left started with an ideological framework that arose out of the works of Karl Marx and then added to via the International meetings on Marxism and then put through the lenses of Progressivism, Soviet Communism, socialists like Friedrich Engels who had impact on US Socialism via his works with Marx, European Anarcho-Syndicalist movements, the works of Antonio Gramsci and cultural hegemony as seen in the Frankfort School of cultural Marxism, then onto National Socialism and Nazi Fascism.  Taken as a whole, starting with Marx, the ideology derived from this school of thought is one that is based on an end of economic systems and the final removal of the capitalist or owning class of society and the rule of the Proletariat.  As an ideology it has its roots in the post-Classical period coming after John Locke, Adam Smith, and Immanuel Kant, and as a form of response to Utilitarianism.

I have gone over the ground of Marxism multiple times, most recently in What is the value of... anything? and review some of the highlights and problems of Marxism from the time of Marx.  Economically Marxism's problems with defining value, exactly who is being exploited, explaining what alienation of labor is and why its abolition is seen as a historical imperative does not address a part of Marxism that keeps it alive, and that is its sociology.  Within the Old Left (Communists, National Socialists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, American Progressivists) there was a requirement of scholarship for those on the 'inside' of the movements.  You had to know Marx and Engels, at the very least, be able to go through the rhetoric of Marxism via Hegel's Dialectical Materialism and then continue on with how bad those owning businesses were in their exploitation of labor.  Even given misplaced basis for arguments, there had to be a rational structure of argumentation on those points and defense of the critical starting points to assert the end points of the ideology.

This formed a sociological structure within Marxists circles that I got to witness first hand growing up in a family of socialist sympathizers.  It was an old First International sort of adherence, however, and had nothing to do with the Second or Third Congresses dominated by the (so-called as they put it) Communists.  Thus the first divisions were International Congress divisions and they would break out to the 'true believers, the rest of you are wrong' First Congress types and then those seen as corrupt: Communists (Soviet sort), National Socialists (all stripes), Progressives, social hegemonists... basically anyone save the strongly influenced Anarch-Syndicalists who cribbed a lot from US First International followers who themselves cribbed from Engels.  As you can tell by the long list of Marxist derivatives, there was a lot of in-fighting, factionalism and otherwise fierce boundary disputes within Marxists circles based on who you followed and what their form of argumentation was.  This could get broken down inside factions via different argument strains and who followed which form of their own particular brand of Marxism.

What this strongly looks like is a religious movement, and that is due to the fact that human nature (which Marx criticized the Utilitarians for not understanding) is seen as something that will go through a sudden, global transformation amongst the Proletariat.  Basically from nowhere, although the Marxists will point to the evils of capitalist exploitation, etc. but the actual gripes that the actual proletarians had (versus the idealized ones of the Marxists) had more to do with banal things like pay, working conditions, bad bosses and then, lo and behold, abusive Union bosses.  Labor Unions, seen as a first step towards Socialism and this grand uplifting of proletarian thought, turned out to be just another human made and manned system with all the faults of all such systems that man makes.  Instead of uplifting worker education they served to line the pockets of Union Bosses with worker funds and then walk away richer for it and cut deals with the very people they were supposed to protect the workers from.  The First Congress types saw Trade Unions as just another corrupt system and lumped them in the 'everybody else' category of 'not true socialists' right next to the National Socialists.

A strange thing happened from the days of the Old Marxist Left (roughly up to the mid-1970's encompassing the 'New Left' which was just warmed-over Old Left) and today: the grandiose vision of Marx was retained but the rhetoric, the internal logic, the ability to argue based on it all disappeared.  Lock, stock and barrel the current Authoritarian Left no longer has intellectual roots in Marx, Marxism or even logic.  Meet up with a Leftists today and they couldn't even attempt to give a good description of the Labor Theory of Value or to even explain what Alienation of Labor is.  Handwave as much as you like at the Frankfurt School, but they sought a domination through culture and have, instead, reinvented nihilism.

Nihilism

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

nihilism
     n 1: a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake
     2: the delusion that things (or everything, including the self) do not exist; a sense that everything is unreal [syn: nihilistic delusion]
     3: complete denial of all established authority and institutions

Given that Marx gave us an Eschatology of end-times, it is little wonder that those seeking a cultural domination would come up with nihilism.  Trying to unmoor past and present, seek to remove objective reasoning and, instead, personalize all political and economic points of view and then enforce those on everyone from some intellectual elite that doesn't have rational thinking as its basis, is it any wonder that you come to nihilism?

The feel-good and warm-fuzzies of Marxism are retained, that workers paradise and everyone getting goodies for nothing and their chicks for free remains to this day the heart of the Left and, in fact, dominates it.  If the Frankfurt School is to blame for its institutional marching to the point where politicians no longer believe in balancing a check book for THEMSELVES not to speak of the governments they seek to run, is it any wonder the rest of us are left scratching our heads asking: just how the hell is THIS supposed to work?

If there is no inherent difference between work and non-work, then why work?

If you hand out a dole to everyone for just existing, then who grows the food and why?  To what end?

Being generous with tax revenue and then some, means that you are taking economic vitality and encouraging non-vitality and asking our children to pay for it.  And if you don't teach them the value of actually earning a living, and they don't repay the debts, then who is going to grow the food?

Mao had the lovely idea of whipping the intellectuals into line, even a good amount of his supporters, by putting them to grow food for others and starve as they did so.  Radical material simplification, as one professor puts it about the Dark Ages: you are poor, hungry and have a short life deprived of the benefits of a civilization that once flourished.

Marxism has always had an eschatological view of the human race: it was always an end time religion because it never got the basics of human nature right and assumed a massive change intellectually that would free the working class and remove alienation of labor.  That's right, everyone would get to do the entire job for themselves!  You would be a fisher, raise wheat and corn, have chickens, read and print books, go hunting, and have the satisfaction of knowing that your labor was no longer alienated!

Unfortunately fishing is not catching.

Unfortunately hunting is not always successful.

Unfortunately chickens get sick, as do pigs, cattle, and you have to care for them as well as yourself.

To keep warm you must chop your own wood, mine your own coal or make your own nuclear reactor.

And then you would have to find the time to write about how grand your life was and how good it was to have unalienated labor.

Because all of it, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, you are going to do it all and even when you do it with your fellow liberated proletarians, you dare NOT divide up labor into different parts because that will alienate your labor from the entire affair.

To support unalienated labor is impossible, but the Left has decided to support the unemployed who should be seeking a job but now get supported for nearly two years and are taught how to live off the money taken by government for them.  Their labor is lacking.  Your labor's wages are stolen via government and given to those who have decided that living on what government gives them from you is better than working for a living and supporting themselves.  This isn't labor that is no longer alienated as their labor is no longer done: that which is not done cannot be alienated as it is never present.

What drives this is no longer an ideology but the belief in the end state of an ideology: the ideology, itself, is no longer discussed or thought about as a thing in and of itself.  At this point there is a belief in Marx that is no longer intellectual and not even rooted in his texts or the body of work of those closely associated with him.  Leftists are atheists because they want to be in the belief that Marx is right, not through reading Marx and understanding Marx, but just believing in him.  Their attacks on those who read religious texts is thus an anti-intellectual attack, no matter how dressed up and how many degrees are held by those going after religion, their own belief structure is based on unread texts and only on assumptions.

The devolution of Marxism from rhetorical premise and argumentative structure that requires thought has been slow, but has become greatly accelerated as the 'March through the institutions' is no longer based on something that has definition, but on the belief that the end result is 'good'.  Yet what is 'good' is never defined in a hard, fast and discernable way: good has no end state to it of limits to how much good any bureaucratic organization can do.  In fact the growth of bureaucracy is an in-bred 'good' in the belief that more of it and more power to it will get 'good' results.  And because human nature is no longer studied, nor the very impacts of it upon prior Marxist ideology and its factionation, it is not understood that a bureaucracy has no intellect, has no fast goal, cannot become an 'expert' no matter how many it hires, and that the Iron Law of bureaucracy is that those that further the ends of the bureaucracy get rewarded as the bureaucracy expands.  Thus the end goal a bureaucracy, any bureaucracy, is the expansion of bureaucracy by the bureaucracy for the bureaucracy.  Other goals become secondary to that quest for greater power.

Marxist ideology is not, of necessity, nihilistic and was, in fact, seen as something a bit more humanized than Utilitarianism.  Yet the very problems of Utilitarianism are seen in Marxism in its later stages of demeaning the individual, of not understanding the human nature of the individual and not addressing that there is more to the individual than, in the case of Marx, labor not utility.  Yet the very way labor is posited makes it utilitarian, thus the premise of Marx is eschatology within an ideology based on a belief and criticism that is has scant difference from the ones Marx leveled at Utilitarianism.

This cannot be argued to those who follow only the nihilistic eschatology of modern Marxism/Leftism because those inside the belief system don't bother to read and grapple with Marx.  It is always about doing 'good' through government, growing government and never asking if this is good for all the individuals in society.  Yet they speak of the 'collective' but then only want to do better for parts of it, not the whole thing, and thus they even miscomprehend what collectivism is and sacrifice it on the alter of special preferences. 

I never thought I would wish for the day of actual, intellectual Marxists arguing the rhetoric of Marx for policy, but they are not to be found.  The Marxism in the halls of power today, under a Progressivist/Liberal/Left guise is one that is rudely divorced from the ideology of Marx and connected to the end state eschatology of Marx.  Even that doesn't follow Marx as they screw up the Marxist notion of collectivism and replace it with special privileges for a few.  That is a National Socialist conception from Fascism as gone through the form of its German descendent, and this one isn't the one at Frankfurt but the one that got tried at Nuremburg.  It, too, had an end state eschatology that it elevated above ideology, and it was hard to find parsers of Marx amongst the National Socialists who started out as off-shoots of the International Socialist schools.  Gramsci would have his ideas picked up the the West but his body would be killed by Italian Fascists, which demonstrates the allure of special privilege nihilistic eschatology based roughly on Marx.

Too bad those followers of this anti-human form of Marxism don't bother to read history, either, because it is littered with such examples and death tolls attributable to it.  Better to go on pushing 'forward' never looking at where the path gets you and never asking 'just where in the hell are we going?'  The moment you do that you are decried as being against this or that special privileged group, or as someone who is an anarchist, which is strange because that is just another nihilistic eschatology.  Thus point out the bad ends of the road and you are said to be using a nihilistic eschatology by those who are using a nihilistic eschatology and don't want it mentioned that this is what they are doing.  And if you ask where they get these ideas from they just say its because it 'feels good' to do these things and have government do it for them with other people's money.

Lately, though, they are finding out they have to pay for their good ideas by finding out that their health insurance policy has been canceled and that they will have to get a much more costly one that does less for them.  Only once they start to get mugged by their own creation do they realize that there is pain involved to the many for the few with their 'good feeling' policies.  Better that it be a lot of pain, swiftly and deep today, so that more will see this is not good at all so that we can start requiring that people think and work for themselves and help the collective to get out of the mess the privileged got us into with their strange religion based only on good feelings and an nihilistic eschatology.  Ideologues you can at least argue with on the basis of something.  Those with a worldview religion based on someone they never read have belief in nothing and no idea what they are actually arguing about, just that they are always right.  Religious zealots who are unlearned and don't bother to ever think about what they say, you only can argue with and never, ever get anywhere.  I'll take the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, or any other religious sect that at least honestly reads about itself than this strange sect on the Left that just believes it is right because it said so.

Obamacare train wreck and you

Commentary I left at Hot Air on Harry Reid suddenly realizing that the Obamacare system he helped to connive into being isn't solvent, needs way more cash and won't do what it was purported as its actual points of being... but it is a sinkhole of cash that is vast and black in the budget.  Just like SSA and the M&Ms and other entitlements.  The question is: what to do about it.

The answer is simple and I've repeated it often in many ways, but here it is, again for this question:

Same answer to Obamacare as to the rest of the federal government:

Start in the House… fund by agency… don’t fund some agencies fully or use funding towards other programs and leave Obamacare high and dry.

There are a ton of programs you can kill by not funding them.

Just because a prior Congress wants it doesn’t mean a current Congress is obliged to fund it. There is no law against not funding these things, none at all. This requires a wholesale change of the R party in the House, particularly the sclerotic leadership. Obama can’t stop the House from not funding items, only keep on sending the bills back TO fund parts of agencies. If he wants to kill off some government agencies by killing their funding: LET HIM DO IT VIA THE VETO.

And then THANK HIM to rub salt in the wounds.

Would he really not want to sign off on a downsized IRS? And to put the IRS FIRST to set the tone. Then HHS. Then FDA.

You want this to happen? Then the House Republican ‘we have to fund everything other Congresses started’ contingent MUST GO. There is no law that says they MUST DO THAT. One Congress cannot bind another Congress via legislation and since the House holds the purse strings, it is there that fiscal rectitude must start. Not the Senate. Not the POTUS. Not the SCOTUS. You want to get a smaller government? Start at the US House of Representatives. Want to blame someone for the deficit? Also the US House. And the Debt as well. Surely for $3.2 trillion you can run a minimal government… if the debt service payments don’t EAT IT ALL UP, of course.

That is the Obama goal to collapsing the Nation: create a debt so vast that even current revenue can’t support minimal payments.

Your Nation goes under, your currency becomes worthless, your savings disappear and no amount of POWER from DC can make that better because it CAN’T BE FUNDED ANYMORE. If we are very lucky there are two elections left before that happens. If we are unlucky there is only one. If our luck has run out, you have seen our last election as a free people.

Change doesn’t start in DC: it starts with you, holding DC accountable and telling them to ‘stop the spending’. Yes they aren’t listening there or on the compliant and submissive Left… they want a tyrant, a dictator, a despot… their freedom isn’t in question. Yours is. Act like a free man who expects government to be beholden to the people, live like a free man who expects to be held accountable for his misdeeds, and praise virtue whenever and wherever it appears and support it. You carry through the actions and you just might be able to protect your liberty and join with those who think like you to ensure them.

There is a cost to this, of course.

Your money: gone.

Your savings: gone.

Your property: ravaged and destroyed.

You: free to start over or die trying.

Remember I’m the guy in poor health who won’t survive for long if the system goes south. Yet I’m preparing for those losses as best as I can. Because my freedom is priceless beyond any value, and I am more than prepared to be impoverished to remove this system of petty tyranny of rules above law and those who think they are above any law making the rules for themselves. You can start now by pestering your Congresscritters. It won’t change them, but it will change you.

ajacksonian on May 3, 2013 at 7:11 AM

This isn't about Obamacare.

This isn't about our dysfunctional government of Progressive Elites.

It is all about you and how you live your life.

Want a better government?  Make sure you are a prepared to be a better person, first.  And help society to recover from the insane beliefs fostered by Marx and the Left for over a century about government being the source of your liberty.  It isn't.

Government is instituted amongst men.

Government does not exist first and creates man... sorry that isn't how it works.

And the best government is self-government.

Once you got that figured out, you begin to resent all these other governments trying to tell you how to live your life.  Then your choices start to become obvious and your path, simple.

Getting out of the fiscal hole

Our Nation has plied blithely past $16 trillion in debt, equal to our entire GDP, and barely rattled as it did so.  In truth the whole world is rattling and a bit more on our part isn't going to be quickly identified, although its longer term consequences will have a drastic impact on events at home and globally.  If the state of the federal level of government is unsustainable, a number of our States are as bad off if not worse off than the federal government.  CA is seeing an exodus of businesses and jobs as the tax rate, crony kick-backs to politicians, and bureaucracy seep into every area of life in an attempt to control it from the governmental level.  Like IL there is a huge debt problem of what is 'owed' to civil servants who have been lucky enough to get unionized and then enrich politicians via their unions so that they can have a say on both sides of the negotiating table.  Other States like NY, MA, PA, NJ and WI are not immune to this problem, as well, and each have similar problems of too much government promising and too little forethought as to what those promises actually mean.  WI is digging itself out the century-long hole of Leftist policies by simply cutting spending, requiring workers to put more into their own care and freeing up local counties and districts to be able to chart their own courses on fiscal needs.

The simple removal of bureaucratic overhead, spending mandates, and requirements to adhere to contracts that were done to reward the minority with the wealth of the majority in an unsustainable system are critical.  Sovereign governments are the source of contractual authority and, being that source, cannot be bound to the same laws that they pass for everyone else at all times.  That is a perilous thing to have sovereign government do, but it is essential to have a system of regular laws that are upheld for the benefit of all to the detriment of none, and that is part and parcel of the sovereign power, as well.  A sovereign government can, thusly, break promises and contracts for the survival of the sovereign entity.  Just as at the National level a sovereign government can break treaties with foreign Nations when they put the sovereign of the Nation at peril so, too, can lesser sovereigns exercise such authority in their domains of power.  Throughout history this is exercised only by the most corrupt of regimes or when a government is in dire peril of being liquidated for past problems it has caused: better to break the contracts, reform government and pursue the goals of the people as a whole than to be dissolved by that whole and start over.  Yet, as sovereign governments are the representation of the people who create the Nation, they can change or abolish the State (the government) when it no longer meets their needs and imposes unjustly upon them outrageous costs that no people should ever bear.

This part of the debt burden held by States is, then, amenable to State sovereign power which is recognized as distinct from the federal Nation State sovereign power.  The reason we have no laws for bankruptcy of States is that it is expected that this sovereign power will be used to address the localized problems and allow the people of a State to reform, amend, change, or abolish and create anew their government.  It is perilous to renounce debt as those depending on debt servicing get the shaft.  Russia learned this, to its dismay, when it renounced Czarist debt, Nationalized companies and then found that skilled management at home was absent and that no one abroad would invest in such a place that could not recognize its debt obligations.  When the USSR began to finally honor the Czarist debt and pay it off in the early 1980's, the end for their system was written in the need for outside help.  Socialist and Communist regimes are always born in debt and find it hard to do much of anything because they will not recognize this debt payment obligation. 

For the US, our States in the most dire of need will have to recognize the error of their ways, re-organize debt and stop accumulating new debt, which means breaking promises on retirement amounts (or even having any funds dedicated to such from government) so that the government can down-size and do its few basic functions and continue to pay its debt off.  Such debt can be re-negotiated, however, and offer pennies on the dollar but for those pennies it is expected that the debtor (the State) reform its ways and walk the straight and narrow and actually pay that amount.  If you want an example of what happens when that falls through, look at Greece, Italy, Spain and the rest of the EU that has huge debt and getting even pennies on the dollar is a pipedream.

To bring around States to the realization they can't finance their promises requires that those purchasing such debt recognize that it can't be reasonably repaid and stop purchasing it.  This has already happened at the Nation State level with the Federal Reserve now holding a massive portion of US debt.  That is to say that the ones running the printing presses get to call the shots in the very near term.  The flip side of easy lending to a government by a central bank is that the government becomes beholden to that central bank when spendthrift ideas are backed and paid for with debt obligation.  Once the Federal Reserve just acted as a for-profit pass-through of US debt (we paid for that service) but as our creditors have started to dump debt (read: China and Russia) the Federal Reserve holds such debt and can only balance it by creating new funds to pay in inflated dollars.  There are only two things the Federal Reserve knows how to do to deal with fiscal problems: inflate currency by printing more money or increase the interest rate to burn more money.  For all the window dressing on the Federal Reserve, that is what they do.

Total debt obligation for the US government and all the States is in the range of $70 trillion with some estimates putting it over $80 trillion, and none of that can be paid off with the current economy.  Even a booming economy for a decade can't do it.  Or two.  Why?  The spending doesn't stop and always outstrips tax revenue.  I've gone over the so-called 'entitlements' (basically taxes paid in to pay to current beneficiaries with IOUs from the Treasury for future payment now coming due) and would be remiss to point out that the next largest growing portion of the federal budget is debt servicing.  At some point in the near future the question will be: you can have 'entitlements' with debt servicing and NO other government, or you can have government's necessary functions with debt servicing and NO entitlements.  That choice will be yours.  The folly of the USSR points out what happens when you reneg on debt and it isn't pretty.

If the theme of the 2010 Tea Party election was 'Stop The Spending' then this message must be reinforced in this election to put it as 'Stop The Spending Now Damn It'.  Politicians, generally lacking in spine, find saying 'no' to goody giveaways very hard.  These politicians must be replaced, and if their replacements fail then they must be replaced and so on in a process I call 'Fire Until Competence Is Found'.  It is what President Lincoln did with Union Generals, and it works quite well and is eminently suited to the electoral process at all levels.  As citizens our duty is to get this message across AT all levels of government, and I heartily endorse taking part in any election at the local, county, State and federal level to drive this message home.  If we can get just a few more States beyond TX and VA into solvency, then a real path out for the spendthrifts can be pointed out as good examples to follow.

Stopping the spending is the most important part of this equation, and can (indeed must) act in concert with other portions of it to bring home the true bankruptcy of the 'entitlement' system.  Most citizens when they hear of the insolvency of, say, Social Security will point to 'guarantees', which were made by politicians.  Remind them that believing in a politician is the surest way to get in the hole and that these politicians must be held to account for their ill-actions.  No matter how 'good' the cause, the actions, themselves, are ill and need to be rethought.  With that said there now needs to be trust garnered by the federal government (and the States as well) that they understand that things not given to them to do in the small realm must be lopped off to show that government understands dire fiscal times.  At the federal level this means antiquated departments like the EPA, Education, Energy, Agriculture, Labor and choice portions of Interior that is holding land in States that the State legislatures have not signed off on the federal government having to control per parcel.  Perks must go, including large Secret Service details, flying first class and huge staff sizes at all levels of government. 

Structural reforms to get the federal government out of the home lending market ENTIRELY and to remove the ability of commercial banks to operate in that realm are necessary: a local banking system offers depth and flexibility that a larger system cannot achieve while remaining profitable and requiring local judgment on who is worthy of getting a loan.  The only requirement is that loans are given out based on fiscal background, type of loan, and if said loan actually is not at risk for being lost or devalued for the customer once given all of which are local decisions and can be handed to different officers in a company to judge just those factors shorn of all other outside factors completely.  This entire concept goes for student loans, as well, as we are moving out of the 13th century bricks and mortar schooling realm and into a 21st century realm with on-demand courses and self-paced systems now coming out to allow the bright to excel as fast as they can and the less bright to realize just what their limits are quickly so as to adapt to a better suite of skills to meet their individual talents.  For we all have talents in different proportion and they are least well served by diploma mill physical education institutions with a 'One Size Fits All, Fits None Well' approach.  And this is at the Primary, Secondary and Post-Secondary levels of education, not delimited to Colleges and Universities, although the loan part is aimed at them.  As a society we will adapt to the changing understanding that education is life-long, that touchstones are what one can do not how many classes one has attended, and that the greatest drive for education is self-education.  This will mean that what we consider 'vocational' systems will revive as those not suited to book learning but can learning engineering, physics, and chemistry by hands-on application will require these venues to expand, not diminish and they do require physical structures as they deal directly with our physical reality.

Trust building is a two-way street and government is ill-served by seeking power to control those things it is not designed to do.  Reduction in federal regulation and putting that burden on the States means adaptable responsiveness to local and regional problems as States can work with each other without the requirement of federal oversight.  So long as they do not put bias in the internal trade system of the US, States can work together to solve regional problems via State to State agreements run by the States and held accountable by the people in them.  Handing back control of natural resources (i.e. having lands held by the federal government go back to State control) means that these localized system which are adaptable to local concerns can be put into play without a straightjacket of having to put in tropical screening in facilities above the arctic circle.  As ND has shown with some spillover to MT and SD is that State and regional resource exploitation can be done competently, within reasonable accommodation to the environment and still get one heck of a return.  CA has so much oil off its coast that it comes out in seeps, but because of regulations the pressure can't be relieved by drilling because of environmental fears... which are being realized by not drilling the oil pockets.  Not everyone will succeed equally and some States may never get a clue, but that should not be for lack of good examples by other States.  As the States have demonstrated good and responsible capability for near-shore drilling and exploration, they have a track record of success and the federal government should withdraw its regulatory schema for economic zone drilling and put that in the hands of the coastal States as well.  Pipelines that cross international borders only need Nation to Nation agreement on the crossing and the internal apparatus of each Nation in Provinces and States be allowed to find the best routing solution for them.  As the Nation needs refining capacity (we are now exporting crude oil for refining) the States should serve as the focus for this local concern, as well, and perhaps provide federal land that is too contaminated to be used for much of anything to the project.  In short the federal government really can demonstrate trust by removing regulations and supporting States and the people to figure it out for themselves.

In short removal of regulations for labor, environment and agriculture, along with a host of others for education, energy and land use, puts the most capable and local of government in control of their own destiny.  Yes there will be those who don't do so well, better a few fail and we garner good examples from others, than to fail everyone by doing nothing or doing a little poorly or not well by fiat from the federal government.  Getting prosperity back requires these things and a comprehensible tax code.  As I pointed out previously to this article, exemptions must be eliminated as tax rates are lowered to get a net tax rate that is lower than the purported rate, but is closer to the rate already paid with exemptions and other write-offs.  The entire set of write-offs can be eliminated to get a flat tax, payable by all who earn income of any sort, with only some lowering of rates below the poverty line so as to lessen the impact on the poor so that their amount steps up towards the norm for those above the poverty line as they make more.  This is equality of the tax code and puts citizens into the drivers seat by not collecting taxes by having businesses do it, but by those who vote understanding the direct cost of what they vote for once per year.  This would also mean rolling in separate taxation for 'entitlements' (like FICA for Social Security) and removing them as separate line items, which simplifies the tax code.  Former Soviet States like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Albania, Russia and others have all concentrated on this as it eliminates tax avoidance and puts a stronger assurance on compliance and a better feel for revenue over time.  An assured revenue stream is mandatory for paying down debt obligations.

Now as I am not a set-size pie person, the way to remove debt is to make more in hard currency: produce more wealth.  Remove the wealth reducers in regulation, tax policy and other bureaucratic overhead is necessary and often results in economic expansion with diminished boom and bust cycle depth as artificial causes of bubbles from government disappear.  You still get such cycles, but that is because of increased technical capability removing older industries and that takes a hard change-over as expectations for existing industries go down and new ones arise.  Creative destruction is for the betterment of all mankind, to produce more worthwhile goods at a lower cost so that more people can afford them to lead better lives.  Luckily, this is a very profitable endeavor and can't be done without the profit motive to do more and gain more for any given produced unit of an item or service.  Thus the future must be examined for what it brings.

Until we get to quantum computing we will see an expansion and filling-in of the now old cyber structure of the digital age.  With hard physical limits for silicon and reduction in circuit size now being reached the realms of nanotech, quantum tech and biotech will all serve as future platforms for expansion and they are in their most nascent stages of development at this time.  Even awaiting those areas (and the new companies and industries that will make them) the older technology for personalizing computing and laboratories will create labs on a chip for home medical diagnostics when, coupled with expert systems, will expand and reduce the cost of everyday medical care.  Put robotics in with that and you get Larry Niven's autodoc, where you step into a booth or lay down on a bed with automatic scanners and medical tools to do everything from examine your daily health to stabilizing the condition of someone who has been in a horrific accident, perhaps with some surgical needs addressed immediately and specialists on-line to deal with the worst that can happen to an individual.  This will remove Medicare, Medicaid, and even medical insurance once done and the technology is starting to be integrated today to put scanners together with expert system software.  Autonomous robotics is also advancing and when applied to medicine and surgery, the cost of everyday care and even minor surgical procedures will drop as they become mass-customizable by technology.

I have already addressed schooling and the manual arts, and these, too, will be augmented by low cost computing platforms that are autonomous or semi-autonomous.  Because our structures are not designed for automated maintenance, there will always be a requirement for manual labor to repair existing infrastructure until we can adapt technology to it or supersede it with better ways of doing things.  If you do construction in New York City you must deal not only with modern pipes, power cables, conduit, etc. but those left by previous utilities dating back to the 1840's if not earlier, and that is not something that robotics or autonomous systems will handle well for some decades yet.

Returning to space for commercial activity is already on the drawing board, and going back to the moon to exploit its resources (mostly for space use and for those items that can only be made in micro or zero gravity) may start out with remotely operated vehicles or semi-autonomous vehicles, but will require some amount of direct human oversight at some point in time.  A minor asteroid brought into Earth orbit (or Lunar orbit come to that) can be easily rendered into separate elements by the process of solar mirror melting.  Put a bore hole into the interior, deploy a few square kilometers of thin film reflector to concentrate sunlight into the center of an asteroid and perhaps a thin film enclosure to capture escaping gasses and just let nature take its course.  When thoroughly melted the micro gravity will separate out the elements and then when it cools you get concentric shells of denser and denser elements presorted by atomic mass.  Other methods can be used to remove hot melt by layer and re-melt layers so that they are more easily dealt with when solid removal can't be done quickly or efficiently.  An asteroid of just a few hundred tons might yield a ton of gold or silver, and many more tons of iron, cobalt, nickel and copper.  Essentially the same can be done on the moon, as well.  In all, expansion of an economy when done on this scale is no longer that of a Nation State as we now know it, yet the basic economics never changes and no matter how much money comes into a government, it always seems to expand to absorb more and more of it.

For all the good news to come about, it is up to the citizen to put government on the strictest of diets and boil our social questions out for open and frank discussion.  The morality of taxing the unborn to pay for the current elderly and sick is one that does need to be in the open as the deceitful discussion led over the prior century has attempted to sugar coat something that no one in their right mind would agree to.  It is up to each of us to learn how to deal with the things life hands us for good and ill.  I've made no plans based on: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other 'entitlement'.  They will not last forever no matter HOW MUCH MONEY the government gets because any government that sees fit to remove liberty for this cause will do so for ANYTHING and then use its removal as a club against free men.  That money is gone and overspent many-fold, and isn't coming back, isn't in a 'lockbox' and treats our children and grandchildren as our ATMs.  We have garnered much material wealth and a bit of better health with that, and if we must do without we now have that as a cushion to fall back on when we realize that government is not a guarantor of retirement, health care or any other thing. 

We are.

As individuals and in our cooperation with each other to create accountable systems that meet our needs outside of government.

That is why we seek to have a just government that can uphold contracts amongst us, and understand that it must guarantee that system while we understand that often our best impulses come to the worst ends via government.  Our essential duty is to learn this and teach it to our children: free men take their lives into their own hands for good and ill and we also must create the means to catch those who fail in this.  That is not the task nor role of our government, to be positive to us, but to simply uphold the just means so that we can achieve the good things that create a strong society and a free population.  When we do wrong, even for the best of reasons, we admit to it, mend our ways and pay off our debts and NEVER burden others with this especially those who have NO SAY IN IT.  Which is our children and grand-children.  If we are far on the side of lax morals now, we can always straighten up, take our lumps, admit our humility and uphold our duty and right to pay off our debts and stop doing the asinine things we currently do with such good words that belie such ill outcomes.

We are can create that future and get out of this fiscal hole by forcing our government to stop trying to provide an easy life that none can afford.

Life isn't worth living because it is easy.  No it is death, death is equal to all and easily found at all times across all classes of society and respects none.

No, life is hard to fight for, hard to keep, hard to maintain and must be all those things so that we can create a better world for all mankind to enjoy the fruits of their life.  And not have it picked from them by government to go begging for the rind of the fruit while government sucks the succulent flesh from it.

It is for these reasons I vote.

I am happy to vote, but it is too important a task to not take as an earnest duty and obligation to my fellow citizens so we may all be free from government's tender mercies.

Mine eyes have seen the glory...

Yes, yet another bit of commentary by me at Hot Air (on the Ted Cruz victory) that I'm recycling into a post.  More thoughts on this at some future time, but that will be more a summation of past posts and outlooks.  This is just a short, sweetened condensed version.  Anyone having read my works over the years will know exactly where I'm coming from and all standard non-fixing of spelling, syntax, etc. is in place:

Do note that Ted Cruz didn’t win because of MONEY.

He won because of commitment from individuals to support his campaign and to mail envelopes, place phone calls, and talk up his campaign with friends, co-workers and other like minded people. The stars of the Senate, Sarah Palin and the rest of the ‘leaders’ are only ‘leaders’ in the sense that the abolitionist movement had ‘leaders’: the movement set the tone, tenor and direction and a few were able to voice it better and help spur it on, but they in no way led the movement, itself.

This is the horrifying part to the two parties and the elite establishment. What the Tea Parties have done is coalesce, create leaderless organizations that are distributed, grass-roots and committed in a way that saves the most time to get the most results for the input given. Outspending a candidate isn’t going to change commitment for those who have had to go through the gauntlet of fire by the MFM and the simpatico elite establishment. You may not get a political ‘leader’ on the other side of that, but you do get an individual and a movement that is purified by fire in the crucible. Bring on more fire, pour it on, and the movement gets stronger as it winnows out the extras, those things that don’t fit and begins to concentrate on the pure beliefs of those involved. Then you reach out to those elements that remain unpurified, incorporate them and welcome THEM to the crucible. Not all will be allies, not all will be able to take the heat but the best from them will step forth to join with the larger movement.

In 2009 Statehouses started to change hands and not just into Republican hands but to those following the Tea Party – the beliefs of those elected were getting scrutiny and a number will be melted out by the fire.

By 2010 Scott Brown was a shot across the bow, followed up by many salvos against the elite establishment. This was not about winning elections, but to start the purification process on the elite politicians in the Republican party to start melting their power base away from the inside. You couldn’t win all those races, but you could win enough to prove the point and to establish the marker of the future.

In 2011 more Statehouses started to shift, and this was not just to Republicans but to an organized grass-roots that sought no leaders and, instead, welcomed spokesmen. By joining with other organizations and finding out what fit from them since the self-organization began, these other organizations found out that some of what is good from them gets incorporated into the larger movement, but that the movement is independent of them.

That gets you 2012 where a coalescing can get behind Ted Cruz and others, while Senators and Club for Growth now find itself against a FreedomWorks candidate in a run-off… spokesmen and ‘leaders’ are not blindly followed, and good citizens willing to risk the fire of derision and hatred spewed at them for their positions on smaller government and greater personal liberty get backed.

This is the horror to the elite establishment in both parties and the Left as a whole: the more they attack the more people come to understand those that they oppose and find them to be friends and neighbors with common-sense attitudes and simple involvement and understanding in politics that the complex fails on high, and the simple succeeds on low. Now Freedom Works reaches out to other Nations, Japan, Australia, Serbia, Israel, Italy, Greece, even into China to support those who see the rights of man as individual and personal liberty and freedom as the greatest force for good for all mankind. We will not always agree with our friends in other Nations and the venues they must choose for themselves: but we can reach out to support them in what they do.

This works.

Tyrants of the world, behold! The word of freedom and liberty with self-governance is now being whispered in the darkest corners of tyranny. And this time we vow never, ever, to forget these lessons and why freedom and liberty are the basis for the common good amongst men. The Tea Party was just the first ray of light on the horizon… soon the vast number of rays shall show the source of them and the powerful will tremble in fear.

ajacksonian on August 2, 2012 at 7:22 AM

Yes, there is something larger than just Ted Cruz, the Tea Parties and the other list of usual suspects trotted out by the MFM going on.  The establishment that they wished to yoke mankind to is falling apart because it just doesn't work.  Something that does work is already in place with each and every individual on the planet who comes to realize that they are the greatest moral actors on Earth because they are here, now, to exercise their free will to the betterment of themselves and their fellow man.

Tyrants shall tremble.

Dictators shall fall.

And the dross of tyranny will once again meet freedom and liberty unleashed not just in America, but everywhere as we uphold the promise and understanding of our Founders.  All men are, indeed, created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain, inalienable, rights – that amongst those are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness which we call Fortune.

This is the job handed to you, to me, and to each and every person on the planet.

First thoughts

On the SCOTUS decision today I only have a few thoughts.   The decision is here, and I did a quick scan of it to see what the actual decision was... again this was a comment at Hot Air and for now that is it.  I'm seeing what others have to say, of course, and take my own council not that of fear.

With no other fanfare -

= = =

From p.32 of the decision:

Under the mandate, if an individual does not maintain health insurance, the only consequence is that he must make an additional payment to the IRS when he pays his taxes. See §5000A(b). That, according to the Government,means the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition—not owning health insurance—that triggers a tax—the required payment to the IRS. Under that theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance.Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.

It MAY be within Congress’s power. MAY?

Oh, and you must take a positive action to purchase said goods he uses as examples. You do not pay a penalty for not purchasing gasoline, or for earning no income. Although if he is making THAT connection then welcome to the mandated penalty for gasoline purchase and to the penalty for not earning income. Won’t those be swell brand, spanking new taxes in the future?

And then this following:

The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a “fairly possible” one. Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932). As we have explained, “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 657 (1895). The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below.

Roberts then repeats this pattern at each instance showing that there is a similarity between a power to tax purchases and the power to tax inactivity.

He looks at the Child Labor Collection Tax which is a tax on those using child labor. An activity. For licensing taxes that is a fee given to those asking for the license to do certain regulated business. It is an activity. Nuclear waste surcharges is for an activity of shipping nuclear waste.

He then goes on to those tax incentives used to encourage conduct, and yet there is a stark difference between conducting such conduct to get a tax break, and not doing something and getting penalized for it. In the former if you do not purchase a home you are not penalized for it, you just do not get the incentives… but I’m sure that under some future Congress not owning a home can be assessed as a tax, so all you renters out there can look forward to that in the future. He also cites taxes on cigarettes, but you pay no taxes on them if you do not purchase them, so I guess we can all start to pony up for cigarettes we don’t buy as future Congress can do that, as well. Won’t that be swell?

By p. 40 we come to this lovely passage looking at the arguments against the tax:

A tax on going without health insurance does not fall within any recognized category of direct tax. It is not a capitation. Capitations are taxes paid by every person, “without regard to property, profession, or any other circumstance.” Hylton, supra, at 175 (opinion of Chase, J.) (emphasis altered). The whole point of the shared responsibility payment is that it is triggered by specific circumstances—earning a certain amount of income but not obtaining health insurance. The payment is also plainly not a tax on the ownership of land or personal property. The shared responsibility payment is thus not a direct tax that must be apportioned among the several States.
There may, however, be a more fundamental objection to a tax on those who lack health insurance. Even if only a tax, the payment under §5000A(b) remains a burden that the Federal Government imposes for an omission, not an act. If it is troubling to interpret the Commerce Clause as authorizing Congress to regulate those who abstain from commerce, perhaps it should be similarly troubling to permit Congress to impose a tax for not doing something.

And now you want to know WHY Congress can do this? This follows the above:

Three considerations allay this concern. First, and most importantly, it is abundantly clear the Constitution does not guarantee that individuals may avoid taxation through inactivity. A capitation, after all, is a tax that everyone must pay simply for existing, and capitations are expressly contemplated by the Constitution. The Court today holds that our Constitution protects us from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause so long as we abstain from the regulated activity. But from its creation, the Constitution has made no such promise with respect to taxes. See Letter from Benjamin Franklin to M. Le Roy (Nov. 13, 1789) (“Our new Constitution is now established . . . but in this world nothing can be said to be certain,except death and taxes”).

Is this a direct power GRANTED to the United States government by its people? If not it is in Amendments IX and X. Nice job on forgetting that little bit of the Constitution while doing contortions on tax powers to let Congress tax an inactivity that the Chief Justice cannot find a precedent for. Not one thing he cites is a tax power over inactivity and there is no cost for inactivity in any other tax by the federal government.

Don’t let that stop you from inventing one.

ajacksonian on June 28, 2012 at 12:03 PM

= = =

So limiting the Commerce Clause and the  Necessary and Proper Clause.

What was put in its place is the wide-open field of giving Congress the ability to tax ANYTHING YOU DO including doing NOTHING.

Don't earn any income?  They can tax you for that.

Don't have a Volt? They can tax you for that.

No home? They can tax you for that.

Say! No firearms?  They can tax you for that.

This is the power of tyrannical, compulsory taxation and this decision just gave the green light for that.

Identity Politics Calculus

President Obama has put Identity Politics on display with his attempt to put forward an immigration policy (and having that being questioned by Neil Munro from the Daily Caller) that would selectively not enforce immigration law upon certain categories of illegal aliens.  Unfortunately as Congress has already debated and not passed versions of such laws, President Obama has forgotten that his duty is to uphold the laws set by Congress as this is an Article I power given to Congress and not delegated as a policy issue to the President.  Presidents can have 'feelings' about laws, but the job of the President is to enforce the laws of Congress and to let Congress know when he thinks such laws have problems and work with Congress to get such laws amended.  That is the job of President as Head of Government: execute the laws set by Congress.

Now, beyond the fact there is no Constitutional standing for a President to set such a policy, this move can also be seen in the Identity Politics prism as a crass play (and one known by President Obama as not being able to stand a legal challenge, but that would take time) to pander to Hispanic voters.  When playing the Identity Politics game, however, an action to try and get support from one group can often show insight into how a politician views other groups within his or her support domain.  In other words, such a policy direction will give an insight into how other groups that traditionally support the Democratic Party are being viewed by President Obama.

A few groups come to mind for this:

1) Big Labor – In theory the Labor Unions would love to have new, young Hispanics as part of the dues paying membership.  Unfortunately the timing of events is such that with the defeat of the Big Labor led recall vote in WI of Gov. Scott Walker, and by the direction of Public Employee Unions (and general labor law) amongst other States such as IN, IL, NY, CA... note that these are not typical 'Red' States... and having asked for and not gotten President Obama to show up on their behalf in WI, Big Labor is getting a message from President Obama: Nice knowing you, send cash!

Unfortunately no matter how many new, young Hispanics come in, the general tenor of the population towards Unionization (not just PEUs but all Unions) is in the decline and in the modern era of being able to compare job offers, individuals can often find a better job without Union overhead than one with Union overhead.  Putting in a raft of new, young illegal aliens and helping them to find work in preference to Citizens also means that these individuals will tend to be at the lowest end of the pay scale and not readily amenable to Unionization.  Plus in shops where low skills and low costs are needed, these individuals will be in direct competition with Unionized labor.  While there are pipe dreams from Big Labor on getting a perennial raft of new union members, the fact is that unions are being side-lined to a very small part of the work force over the last 5 decades and are now in single digits for percentage of the overall workforce.

2) Hispanics – Even with a naked pander, this is something that if the Democratic Party wanted to get done in 2009-2010 it could have done so as it had majorities in both Houses of Congress.  Any promises made by Democrats are, thusly, coming with a built-in discount on future expectations: if you can't pass this as law when you have both Houses and the Presidency, then what good are you?  Naked pandering can back-fire if it is seen as an insult to the intelligence of those being pandered to, and that is the risk of this piece of political calculus by President Obama.

The other factor that plays into the identity politics game is that Hispanics are in the majority Roman Catholic.  In passing Obamacare and then setting it up as part of a 'War on Women' on mandatory payment for contraceptive services, the process of Obamacare is running straight into a 1st Amendment clash with religious organizations that provide health care, and the main point on this pushback is... the Roman Catholic Church.  It is a piece of political calculus to try and bring religious implementation of moral doctrine into secular domains, against all the protections against such in the US Constitution, and by taking on the RCC the Obama Administration also ends up taking on Hispanics.  As this is an ongoing set of legal battles, they do not fade from the view of the devout, and President Obama can be seen as giving the back of his hand to religious moral teachings while trying to offer a carrot on immigration policy.  Being coerced and cajoled to just 'play along with the man' is not a good recipe for success especially when you have railed about the excesses of the power structure when out of office.  By taking up such means beyond what is given as law, President Obama also then brings into play another splinter of Identity Politics.

3) Legal Immigrants – Play by the rules and uphold the systems.  Those who apply to become citizens, learn civics and then demonstrate what they know to get citizenship are having their hard work demeaned by President Obama who is offering goodies to those who refuse (for whatever reason) to join the legal system and play by the rules.  It doesn't matter how long they have been in the US, who brought them, or any other thing: once they are adults they are given adult decisions to make and must act as a good citizen of their Nation of origin.  Legal immigrants do this, they uphold the Law of Nations and domestic law by doing this.  Illegal aliens do not do this and erode the Law of Nations and domestic law of the US and any Nation that has treaty obligations with the US on immigration.  No matter how 'nice' someone is, there is a difference between upholding the law and not upholding it, and special favors are not to be given to those who do not uphold the law as a matter of policy.

Since a large number of Hispanic families are first or second generation of legal immigrants, they have a large stake in upholding the legal process and are demeaned by being told that now they shouldn't have done the right thing and followed the law and that those not following the law will be granted special protection from the law by not having it applied equally to them.  If a President is short of funds and personnel to uphold the laws set by Congress he needs to say so and send the ball back into Congress' court to either find more funds, amend the law or change the enforcement of it to fit the will of Congress.

4) Poor Working Citizens – If you are poor and still have a job in this economic climate, you are in a select class of people that are doing the hard scrabble work of providing for your family to keep their heads above water.  Now with a change of enforcement policy, you will be competing against illegal aliens who can undercut your pay (albeit under the table, but that is a problem of getting employers to follow the law) and take your job while being protected from deportation by the federal government.  The working poor are on the front lines of this problem and if citizenship is demeaned for them, and special favors and protections are given to those who do not follow the system, then those putting such policy in place can only be seen as hostile to the working poor.

This is a demographic that votes in preponderance for Democrats historically, although some of that has been eroding the last 20 years.  The Democratic Party was once the standard bearer for the poor in America: the citizens who vote who have been given support by Democratic politicians and institutions to continue voting in the goodies from government.  Government is, however, now broke, by and large, due to the giveaways and wealth transfer from working rich to working and non-working poor.  When nearly half of the population pays no income taxes (yes they do pay into SSA, but that is not investment, just a tax) and when half of all households get some form of government support (local, State, federal) then there is a class that is expected to show gratitude by voting for those giving them the handouts.  Those handouts are not economically based and breaking apart the budget of not just the US, but all of Europe and other Nations that have embarked on this foolhardy scheme of over-taxing the rich to give goodies to the poor.  Now the door of participation in the economy can be seen only as being undermined by protecting illegal aliens and the working poor American Citizen is being told that they will be forever in the working poor to non-working poor by government fiat of unconstitutional policy.  You aren't just being told the game is rigged against you, those doing that telling are now doing the rigging right before your very eyes and they want to shut the door on the pathway towards the middle class and achievement... as the goodies system collapses and soon won't be there for you, your children or any other of your friends who are also part of the poor in America.

5) Black Americans – This demographic represents 10% of the electorate (give or take and it varies by State) and voted in the 90% range for President Obama.  President Obama has done nothing to help out African-Americans in the US and is actively trying to hurt the working poor Black American Citizen who partake of being part of the working poor Citizenry.  All of the problems seen for the working poor, in general, are double for the Black community which has had its once coherent neighborhoods broken up through 'Urban Renewal' (started by President Truman), and then put into government supplied housing (as part of the 'Great Society' under Johnson): all large scale policies meant to impoverish Black Americans, take them out of being home owners, and then break up the multi-generational culture by putting housing in place that barely catered to a two parent family.  Putting in 'activists' and race baiters, and then adding in goodies through the CRA for home loans (after destroying the community based S&L system via 'securitization' ushered in by Nixon), the Black community has been pushed around, broken up and had its once vibrant culture eroded and corroded to the point where being young and black in America corresponds to being unemployed, single and often with a rap sheet added on.

At some point the African-American community will start to walk away from identity politics as it has now made the poor, poorer and the rich aren't even being brought down into the middle class, and yet the government coffers are running on red ink and soon won't be able to provide any support that was promised to the neediest by politicians.  If the Democratically backed 'Jim Crow' laws of the South weren't just plain awful, then the plight of Black America would be seen as the true tragedy it really is.  In many ways those who did the abusing of Black America under 'Jim Crow' then changed over to the goodie providing culture that did even worse than just killing you: it impoverished you, took your property under legal fiat, densified your population into government housing that would have made the USSR cringe, cut off pathways to excellence by degrading Public School performance by softening the rigor of education (this is the tragedy of lowered expectations), and now seeks to lock a large percentage of the Black Community into poverty by depriving yet another generation of opportunity by protecting another identity politics splinter: Hispanics.  This is pitting the legal poor against the illegal alien, and raising tensions between Black and Hispanic communities.

All in one policy presentation.

This is the problem with 'identity politics': no one is just one thing.  And when you promise new goodies and protections at the expense of other parts of the splinters that are at the root of 'identity politics', the end state is not a coherent group voting for you and, in fact, the likelihood of chaos increases no end as faction is set against faction on the most personal of scales possible: within families and communities.  At that point government is seen as the causer of the problem, not the upholder of equality of application of the law.  Chaos is what happens when you don't apply the law equally to all: it makes the system one of favors, not of process.

That is why we have a Constitution guaranteeing equal application of the law and protecting the rights of all Citizens.

When you announce you are no longer doing that, you are announcing that your will is above that of the elected representatives of the People.

That never ends well.

Fusionism

When I had originally written about Fusionist Republicans or, more correctly, Fusionist Conservatism I had used it as a term to describe the fundamental alignment that happens with SoCons and TP FiCons, and only to a lesser extent with Libertarians.  I described it like this:

Fiscal Conservatism has deep roots in not only societal good but the teachings from the Judeo-Christian heritage about duty to God and one's fellow man.  Unlike libertarians the Fusionists recognize that not all of man's liberties and rights are positive, as Nature gives us both equally (although not in equal amounts), so that the necessity of society to generate organs to watch over and stop the exercise of negative liberties and rights within society requires government.  Man is not wholly good nor evil, but has positive and negative rights and liberties which we can bias via moral teachings to curb the negative rights and liberties and enshrine the positive ones worthy of protection.  Government is to recognize that these positive liberties and rights are to be protected, not infringed upon, and the case for this comes not from legal proceedings but from moral teachings, upholding society, and holding government accountable for the negative powers we grant it to safeguard society and the individual.  This is a deeply libertarian approach, yes, but it is not made by modern libertarian channels but through ones of religious observance, religious teachings and understanding man's duty to God and his fellow man.  Fusionist Conservatism is, at once, deeply conservative and extremely expansive in this day and age as it is the naturally recognized antidote to tyrannical or despotic government.

When I had been asked, many times, why I was not a Libertarian, I put forward that the main reason is the lack of the concept of Honor beyond mere agreements in the Libertarian lexicon.  Personal honor is something that has a foundation on the understanding that one is not only to follow through on agreements, but to state them explicitly and back them up.  Honor extends past mere commercial and personal liberty realms and is a responsibility system that one must take upon themselves to limit their negative Natural rights and liberties added to the upholding of the positive ones in full for oneself.

The substance of Fusionism is that deeply moral roots of personal behavior see that man is invested with his Natural rights by God (Moral Law), that our nature in this Natural world is unchanging in that we get both the positive and negative aspects of our Natural rights (Natural Law), and through the conscious decisions to marry and protect our families we create the foundation for society (Law of Nations) which must be administered via common agreement amongst our fellow man so as to restrict those liberties that would harm all of us if exercised by any of us (Civil Law).  Moral Law informs us what is good and bad behavior so as to create a stronger society, and what administrative functions must be put in place so as to punish the exercise of those liberties and rights that put individuals and society at peril via their exercise.  We exercise our honor in respecting the Moral Law when exercising our positive Natural rights and liberties, and also acknowledge that the function of our society is to create a government that has acceptable laws to all members of society and imposes penalties upon those who wish to transgress those boundaries and that those boundaries are respected in our actions.

This concept of Fusionism was one I hadn't researched nor examined, but just stated.

I am surprised that not only the content but name of the idea is in use for this, but then the self-evident is the self-evident in the way of things.  In reading Instapundit he linked to an article on 05 MAR 2012 by Dan Mitchell - How to Reconcile Liberty, Morality, Conservatism and Libertarianism.  In his discussion he reveals that his view was sparked by Timothy P. Carney at the Washington Examiner on 04 MAR 2012 entitled Santorum, liberty, morality and the culture wars.  The key part that Mr. Mitchell picks out from Mr. Carney is this one:

When liberals cry that conservatives are trying to legislate morality, that's typically projection and misdirection from liberal attempts to legislate morality -- they say we're trying to outlaw buying contraception because we oppose their efforts to mandate buying contraception. Santorum is the most frequent target of the bogus "condom police" arguments, even though he has repeatedly stated and written that he doesn't think government at any level should outlaw contraception. But the confusion is not totally unfounded, considering how often Santorum does try to legislate morality.
St. Augustine wisely asked "what does it really matter to a man whose days are numbered what government he must obey, so long as he is not compelled to act against God or his conscience?" This ought to be the Right's threshold in the culture wars. More often than not, in the United States these days, it's the secular Left imposing its morality on the religious Right.

Don't want to photograph a gay wedding? You're fined. Don't want to sell the morning-after pill at your pharmacy? You're driven out of your job. Don't want to pay for your employees' sterilization? You're a criminal. Don't want to subsidize Planned Parenthood with your tax dollars? Tough, pay up.

An alliance between libertarians and conservatives is natural and right today. But Santorum has not only behaved as if he wants to drive the libertarians away, he has openly stated so -- repeatedly.

The legislation of morality, as such, is done via stopping the exercise of negative rights and liberties by individuals that will harm other individuals and society as a whole.  Government is an organ of society that does just this, and that is its role and purpose.  In addition the Nation State gets duties to perform (via Law of Nations) and a population grants negative powers to do so (via Civil Law).  When government seeks to promote positive liberty via its actions, it infringes upon the positive rights and liberties of individuals and society and, thusly, lessen them.  From the perspective of the political left, the necessity of an 'activist' government that does 'more' for people has required the 'finding' of 'new' rights by government and putting forward that those rights need to be 'supported' by government 'regulation'.

The word for this is: tyranny.

Imposing positive rights by government is neither the function nor role of government, and each and every single time any government has gone on this path it has collapsed itself because it has collapsed the society beneath it.  There is the story of Augustus Caesar who, in his old age, looked at the rapidly decaying Roman society and realized that his laws and edicts had removed the final vestiges of the old Roman Republic, and spent his last years trying to legislate positive morality back into existence when it no longer had any to uphold it actively in society and government.  It does not matter if the government is that of the bloody French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, the ascension of Mussolini into totalitarian rule, the advance of Mao via his bloody rise and even more bloody rule, Pol Pot and the Killing Fields, or the wonderful kingdom of the Kim's in NoKo when the end is pure and total government power, then society degrades and diminishes and only the continued lashing of the subservient can keep anything running.  Some of these societies started out in a high state of decay, in fact most did, while others had never tasted freedom or liberty before and would not do so through their revolutions.  In each case these governments see fit to be totalitarian, that is taking up the totality of all powers positive and negative, and then finds that government is only a tool to stop the exercise of the negative.

It is very strange that this needs to be enshrined as Carney's Law - The moral law should guide our personal actions and individual liberty should guide our personal decisions.

Why strange?

Anyone who has read my review of Pufendorf's On the Duty of Man and Citizen, would see that this has already been described in 1673 (and just a bit prior to that in the much longer, multi-volume work by Pufendorf on the subject).

With that said the thought is in the air and while Rick Santorum is a flawed, human vessel, perhaps unable to unite these trends that are beginning to come together, the idea that they will come together and reunite and fuse into a coherent whole is the direction that our society is taking.  The main trend of trying to break society apart by isolating Moral Law, Natural Law, Law of Nations and Civil Law is one that has reached its zenith some decades ago.  The century and more of Progressivism, Socialism, Communism and Leftism from Bismarck's Statism as an attempt to stop Socialism and, thusly, mimicking it, all the way to the idea that health care is a 'right' and not an exercise of liberty, that arc has reached its end and has trashed societies across the world.

Yet the self-evident, no matter its source, is self-evident: all rights and liberties are born within you and you are the moral actor in this world, and it is your duty to uphold those positive aspects of common agreement as well as support the punishment of those who wish to destroy society via the exercise of negative rights and liberty on their own.  From this concept, born from many places and guided by Moral Law, does man, of necessity, rule himself, first.  Instead of ushering in a great age of plenty, those who have supported taking over the positive liberties and rights from individuals are now finding them faced with the Abyss of Tyranny.  Those seeking Tyranny are attempting to push their fellow man into that Abyss.  Joining in our understanding to step back will be painful for us, and a joy to our children and a blessing to those who follow us.

Fusionism is coming as part of the Third Great Awakening and no longer will we believe we must give up the stars to spend on the poor and, instead, let all mankind know that nothing can fix the poverty of the soul of those wishing to take our dreams from us.  This will not be done because it is easy, no, that is not the case.  It will be done because it is worth the sacrifice of our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to each other to have a future of freedom and turn one last time from tyranny and leave it in our dust.

Forever.