New Year Resolutions for the Federal Government

Government Resolutions for the New Year:  Flatten taxes and spread them out among more taxpayers, simplify government regulations, and relinquish every extra-constitutional responsibility back to the states

Job 1 should be to simplify the tax code

No more favored groups or exemptions for any person, business, or corporation.

The fact that 46.7 million earners pay no income tax creates moral hazard - incentives for perverse behavior: Free-riding people have scant incentive to restrain the growth of government they are not paying for with income taxes.(George Will)

The same goes for business and corporations who escape taxation.  Our tax code encourages people to hide their money instead of investing it in the marketplace.  It chases money overseas in search of more fertile markets.  It favors industries like homebuilding and mortgage lending over other productive activities.  This creates market inefficiencies and bubbles.  Tear it all down and let the capital flow to the projects proved worthy on the merits of the free marketplace.

The Crushing Weight of the Federal Code

The next step would be to burn down the warehouses full of the hopelessly impenetrable and exemption-riddled federal code. You can go explore it for yourself Here.  It's searchable!  The word 'feces' returns 91 hits, "candle" returns 120.  Yikes!  "Saudi" is mentioned in the federal code 119 times, and not once related to terrorism or spreading virulent hatred disguised as religion...

The federal code is an abomination.  Burn it down to the constitutional foundation!  It is a mockery of the law and a standing, stinking violation of the very concept of the rule of law.

Restore the 9th and 10th Amendments

The federal government should turn everything back to the states that is not mentioned in the constitution.

The states should then restore the sovereignty of the individual by relinquishing those tasks better left to free men and women.

To see where this rant comes from, go read Toqueville's "Democracy in America," Part 1, Chapter 4:  The Principle of the Sovereignty of the People in America, and Chapter 8: Aspects of the Federal Constitution.

The Rule of Law

The Rule of Law
We’ve lost the original definition of “Rule of Law.” Republicans abused it badly during the Clinton impeachment trials, but both parties bear responsibility for the perversion of this important concept.

Hayek gives us the classical definition:

“Government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand--rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan ones individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge."

He explains that the Rule of Law should not be ad hoc, but it should be “the rules of the game,” predictable and understandable, allowing free people to exercise their rights while refraining from violating the rights of others. No exemptions for government or for special groups. No leeway for arbitrary exercise of power by bureaucratic fiefdoms. The tax code alone violates this principle.

We Are Here
70 years ago, Hayek described what an absence of the rule of law looks like.

...The use of the government’s coercive power will no longer be limited and determined by pre-established rules. The law can ... legalize what to all intents and purposes remains arbitrary action.

If the law says that such a board or authority may do what it pleases, anything that board or authority does is legal--but its actions are certainly not subject to the rule of law.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable

The rule of law is a good and right exercise of the coercive power of government to protect the natural rights of the people. What we have today is a grotesque perversion of that Lockean principle that inspired our founders.

For a short explanation of Hayek’s classical understanding of the rule of law, see Charles W. Baird’s article, Hayek on the Rule of Law and Unions. Substitute “corporation” or “government" for his use of “union” in the article, and his point will still remain the same. A government that hands out favors and disrespects the natural rights of the free citizenry becomes debased, arbitrary and eventually, tyrannical.  

A Threat to One Right is a Threat to All Rights

I got into an argument with an old friend and fellow lifetime NRA member over that organization’s support for campaign finance legislation that restricts free speech in exchange for an exemption for itself.

Good on the NRA for defending our Second Amendment rights. Bad on them for squashing the First Amendment in the process.

Things really got heated when I excoriated our NRA for toying with the idea of endorsing Harry Reid. Reid Voted for the Brady Bill, Erik Erikson reminds us.  Politico explains how politics in America makes such bedfellows possible:

First, Reid has a fairly favorable lifetime rating from the NRA. And then there’s the $61 million for the Clark County Shooting Park, earmarked by Reid, which led Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, to call Reid “a true champion” of the Second Amendment at an event commemorating the opening of the 2,900-acre park in April. (Politico)

So Reid bribed the NRA with $61 million of taxpayer money, and they in return call this petty statist "a true champion." Disgusting.

Legislation as a Money-Making Scam
It is bad enough that congress exempts itself from its own laws. It is a truly despotic government that enacts laws threatening our individual liberties in order to sell those rights back to the highest bidder. This is extortion--a sickening theft of our birthright.

Progressive America, Negotiated Rights
Natural Rights are down the toilet. The Kagan hearings confirmed that. Congress can make us eat our veggies and progressive jurists like Kagan will stand aside because they see nothing wrong. And she will be confirmed in a cakewalk.

If government can make a free man play “mother may I” in order to keep firearms, it can also make a free woman ask permission to exercise her God-given right to free speech. Once we open negotiations on our fundamental rights, we’ve already lost. Government ceases to be the protector of our rights and now becomes the gatekeeper, telling us which rights we may exercise, when and where.

Welcome to Progressive America...