They Crossed the Rubicon

For Immediate Release, October 31, 2016

Contact: Andrew Horning

They Crossed the Rubicon

Freedom, IN – What is human history but a litany of warnings? How many cassandric founders, US Presidents and activists warned us about the advancement and corruption of political/crony power against individual human rights?

Throughout all the human history we know, the default human state – the human norm, has been oppression, slavery, genocide and war. Liberty and justice have always been rare exceptions.

Throughout most of our history, and still today, most of “the media,” in whatever form reporters have existed, have been the mouthpiece of power and tribe; agents of propaganda rather than honest town criers.

I thank God for the chaotic angel called Wikileaks. But Wikileaks isn’t enough.

We find out about new “civil” police military tools and techniques (like bomb-bots!) only after they’re used. We learn about the effects of usurpation and trespass like the 2012 NDAA only after fully implemented and working against us.

In electoral politics today, being right is no advantage and being wrong is no demerit.

But you may want to look into my history of being right as I tell you that this is the truth: Our nation is in very, very serious trouble – the kind that people will some day look back upon, and shudder.

We could fix all this.  We could live in peace, prosperity, security, liberty and justice…for all.

But that would mean a very revolutionary change of heart, mind, and action.  No, not in the hearts and minds of our politicians…in us.

I pray for that change every day.  You should too; or pray that I’m wrong about what always comes next.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

Facebook www.facebook.com/HorningForCongress/

Campaign Twitter www.twitter.com/HorningCongress 

Blog https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/

Website http://andrewhorning.wix.com/horningforcongress

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STOP stealing our wealth, opportunity and security!

The Orwellian “Bank Secrecy Act” of 1970 forces banks to report large financial transactions to federal agents. As with all “federal” laws, since its passage, requirements have gotten tougher, more expansive, and secretive.  For example, the “Suspicious Activity Report” invokes a gag order, and nullifies the already-lowered dollar limit such that any financial activity at all may be secretly monitored by federal agents.
Some might think increasing secrecy, power and spying is good; that it keeps us safe.  

But voters make decisions on information that is increasingly missing or proven false.  It’s foolish to believe that politicians we claim we don’t trust are honest with us when it comes to programs that actually fund their cronyism; like “civil asset forfeiture” programs.

While few know it, police forces now take more money and property from USA citizens by “civil asset forfeiture” (as opposed to “criminal asset forfeiture,” which requires a conviction) than do all other criminals, combined.

This “forfeiture” at gunpoint doesn’t require charges of any crime, or any warrant.  Increasingly, this is done with foreknowledge of money movement, and taken with devices like the “Electronic Recovery and Access to Data” or ERAD (as in eradicate?) machine.

While all this was initially intended to fight drug trade and terrorism, it is in practice irrelevant to either, and is encouraged to fund police departments.

It is literally armed highway robbery. This “policing for profit” must be stopped, not expanded.

But just last week, US House Rep. Larry Bucshon touted his support of, among other anti-constitutional bills, H.R. 5607, the Enhancing Treasury’s Anti-Terror Tools Act.

ETATTA did not go through regular order, and was rushed to the floor under suspension of the rules. No amendments were considered, debate was limited, and, as usual, few representatives actually read the bill before voting on it.

This carelessness is apparent in the practical force of the law proposed – that in violation of the USA Constitution’s Article I Section I, Article II Section I, Article III Section I, and Amendment IV, bureaucrats in executive agencies are granted even more power to write rules, judge their efficacy and infractions, and at least recommend, and ultimately execute, new actions as already imposed upon Americans as by “civil asset forfeiture,” without warrant, probable cause, or conviction of any crime.  Furthermore, ETATTA expands the role of the Treasury’s power of spying and enforcement to non-monetary assets – essentially encompassing all property.

Politicians have blurred the lines between good-guy and bad-guy, dividing us by class and race, imprisoning a higher percentage of citizens than any other nation, and making us less secure and prosperous to boot.

In other words, our government has become what it’s supposed to protect us from.

I have a written plan to restore respect for the badge and restore faith in all our important institutions.  It’s an already well-respected plan to not only police the police and govern government, but also to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

How We Fix This Mess

I like talking ideology. But right now, talking about socialism versus fascism versus libertarianism versus the Two Party System is like discussing paint colors while your house is on fire.

Forget ideology; that’s not the problem.

CORRUPTION!

Corruption is the problem. Almost everything else is just a symptom of that.

Let’s be clear about what our nation’s “corruption” really is. We have an unconstitutional (illegal) ruling class that’s intentionally violating our most fundamental laws (legal, moral, economic) to fill their pockets though it harms the rest of us.

That’s called crime when any of the rest of us do it.  When it’s done abusing power in violation of oaths of office and causing economic distress and pointless death it really ought to be called treason.

And that treasonous ruling class is mostly not the people you see on the ballot, or numbly pontificating on C-SPAN.  Heck no.  Follow the money that we’ve been voting for.  You’ll see the people who pull strings from behind a curtain.

There isn’t anybody alive who can’t be threatened, blackmailed or otherwise manipulated by the dark and twisted forces that control our “intelligence” agencies, for example.

We can’t determine to what degree and in what ways we’re being harmed because so many  of our rulers systematically and habitually lie to us about everything. So it may not be off the table to include mass murder in the list of crimes.

The unregulated militarized monster we only call “government” is really a crime ring that’s “too big to fail.”

So let’s fix it.

Here’s how:

1. Stop voting for it! And by “it,” I of course mean the global crony network whose puppets we call The Two Party System.  No, I don’t mean just Democrats and Republicans.  I mean the system of cronies and unfair legal advantages that’s more corporate than it is political.  Don’t give this monstrous mob your approval on Election Day. And do NOT, by default, grant its wishes by staying home on Election Day. Anybody left alone and unchallenged with unchecked power for too long becomes corrupt, and almost all of us have been blowing electoral kisses to the same Powers That Be for over a hundred years nonstop. STOP THAT!!

2. Vote against it. Yes, we’re supposed to vote against people. Remember, this is revolt with your vote! When your house is on fire, you need to kill the fire, not swap it for another.  So first, fire the crooks! Vote for anything or anybody but the puppet show you know to be corrupt!

Remember, even the very best Ds and Rs (and there are some great people in those parties – like Thomas Massie, or Justin Amash, for example) are powerless against this mess without more allies, and your help.  They cannot fix their party, or the people who control it.  YOU must vote against all of that!

Our nation’s founders understood that elections are messy, corrupt and problematic in themselves; so elections’ purpose is very focused – they’re for peaceful revolution. That’s why we vote; so we don’t have to shoot politicians the way our founders did.

3. Use your vote as a weapon, or somebody else might.  Seriously.  It actually happens that people who don’t vote often show up voting…even after they’re dead.  If you think staying home is a protest, you don’t understand how bad things have gotten.

4. Then, and only then, is a discussion of ideology and ‘isms something better than a time and energy wasting distraction.

In summary: Vote as though it’s war! Because, of course, it is.

 

Technology versus Politics

Technology is marvelous. It tends to make things better, cheaper, more available. It tends to make people happy.

Politics, on the contrary, is the opposite of all the above.  The most exciting, promising technology turns divisive, corrupt, costly and deadly once politicians get their mitts on it.

We should never have let them monkey with our healthcare.  I’ve said so many times in the past (see links below), and I’ll keep saying so until we snap out of our stupor …or it comes crashing down around us (at which point I will say I Told You So).

So, let me offer just one, seemingly minor, even merely clerical reason, why your healthcare sucks.

It’s called ICD-10.

First of all, in my business of healthcare information/image technology, compliance with ICD-10 has been an enormous (i.e. expen$ive) undertaking. There are seven squillion, nine hundred and ninety three fillion codes (give or take) to correlate to software hooks and data. It has made the inherently complex business of making products for patient care even more complex.

The mass of codes and interrelations is certainly a hassle for the engineers making stuff to sell to doctors – presumably to make healthcare providers’ jobs easier (at increa$ed co$t, of cour$e).

But what does ICD-10 mean to doctors, patients and the tangle of insurance companies and taxpayers who ultimately pay for all this complexity?

Well, as of October 1, the wrong code can lead to not only a denied claim and/or months/years of costly hassle, but perhaps significant punishment (on basis of “Medicare Fraud” among other things too legally frightening to mention) for the doctor/institution as well.

Good, you say?

You want fewer mistakes in medicine.

Yes of course.  We all do.

Doctors must do better, certainly.  Prescription drugs, correctly taken, kill more people by far than do “illegal” drugs.  And hospital stays in general (with iatrogenic infections, drugs, mistakes, etc.) kill more Americans than everything but cancer and heart disease.

But what does “do better” mean?  And how do we help make that happen?

And how much arm-twisting, lawsuit-hurling, defrocking, fining and imprisoning force does it take to be helpful??

Let’s see how ICD-10 “helps.”

Let’s say a Farmer Andy comes to the Family Practice clinic with an infected wound that he’s not so sure he can explain. Stuff happens to farmers all the time, and he just can’t remember what this wound was from, initially. He’s always getting bangs and scrapes and cuts, after all.

(And let us be truthful. Andy is a terrible farmer. He’s mostly into quixotic politics)

So, what was the injury initiating this visit?

It’s legally critical we get this right!

Was it ICD-10 code W55.21, “Bitten by a cow,” or W61.33, “Pecked by a chicken?”

Was it when he became a V00.01 “Pedestrian on foot injured in a collision with roller skater?”
Come to think of it, he had been visiting his nephew in prison when that happened, which could add a Y92.147,“Courtyard of prison as the place of occurrence of the external cause.”

Does that qualify as a Z63.1, “Problems in relationship with in-laws?”

Anyway, the doctor knows it wasn’t Y92.253, “Hurt at the Opera,” since Farmer Andy hasn’t gone there since the last episode…(we mustn’t discuss it here.  That would be a violation of HIPAA rules which could lead to a revoked license and even prison).

Farmer Andy did mention (under his breath, seemingly ashamed) that it could have been an “Accident while knitting or crocheting,” which would be a Y93.D1.

The doctor hated to ask, but since he knew Andy and his family had been to Sea World, could Andy have been “Struck by Orca, initial encounter,” which would be a W56.22?

No, said Andy.  It certainly wouldn’t have been a Killer Whale, nor was it a strike.

There was perhaps that bite from a Sea Lion, Andy recalled.  Though it wasn’t the first time, or even the second time that had happened.

So that would be a W56.11XS “Sequela…Bitten by Sea Lion.”

Hmmm, the doctor thought. That would have a very specific look to it.  No; it must be something else.

The wound wouldn’t look like this if it were a V91.07 “Burn due to water-skis on fire,” certainly.  He’d seen plenty of those before.

And the doctor could tell just by looking at him that Farmer Andy hadn’t been “Sucked into jet engine,” or X52.

Or was he getting the codes wrong?

Damn!

Wait…X52 is actually “Prolonged stay in weightless environment.”

Was it V95.40? No…that one is the rather vague, “Unspecified spacecraft accident injuring occupant.”

How about Y37.54?  (Doctor types in code and waits…it’s a big database)

When the doctor worked in the hospital, there was an entire department of people whose only job is to “do coding.”  Here in the clinic, they’ve got a part-time/outside IT department, and sometimes their network bogs down, and…
Oh, here it comes…

Oh heck no!  Y37.54 is “Military operation involving nuclear radiation effects of nuclear weapon.”  SMH, he thought.  He should’ve remembered this one from last week’s incident.

Ah, there it is…V97.33 is the sucked-into-jet-engine code.

Dang it, he has to remember that.  The CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) “ICD-10 Ombudsman” was fairly lenient last time.

He can’t afford to make that mistake again!

OK, I have a question for you.  Does the preceding strike you as the best way to improve healthcare delivery?

No?

Now, codifying data is a great idea.  In the right hands and in the right way, when we’re ready (this is a key part), then having convenient, appropriate labels for all our data makes it easier to store, find, and use in a meaningful way.  And I’m even all in favor of people using ICD-10 exactly as it is…if they choose to.

Let me restate that.

If people trained in the care of patients, in their situation (hospital, clinic, private practice) find that using ICD-10 codes helps them treat patients, then great.  Excellent, even!

But that’s not how our $y$tem work$, is it?  It’s not up to the healthcare professional how things are billed and paid anymore.  It hasn’t been for many years now.  In the most practical $en$e, politicians are more involved in healthcare decisions than doctors are.  Doctors can bill for only what they can get paid for by people other than patients; and that is determined by politicians.  In this case, technology becomes more of a parasite than an aid.

As a true-free-market technology guy, that breaks my heart.

Just imagine you’re trying to sell something; a product you make, your old car, cookies at a bake sale…but bickering politicians, lawyers and lobbyists determined what you could charge for it.  Imagine they demand you buy some things, and don’t let you buy others…and that every political intervention not only directly affects your job…it substantially changes your job.

How would that work out in the real world?

And the way “meaningful use” and other “federal” requirements are being FORCED on healthcare providers is, at this state in our knowledge and technology, madness on top of even more madness (do I even need to mention Obamacare?).

To make matters worse, healthcare has been a union shop/monopoly for over a hundred years.  There can be no serious competition with what politicians and lobbyists call healthcare.

If the rest of our technology worked like this, we’d all be clacking away on Windows 3.1, at best.

There were smart people involved in the development of ICD codes.  Lots of them.  But their seemingly dedicated work was performed in disconnection from monetary, human and practical technology concerns.  It’s another good example, in fact, of such obsessive bureaucratic “paperwork” (albeit mostly without paper), that the recording and processing of all this data can and often does compromise patient care in ways analogous to the Observer Effect.

OK, so I have another question for you.

Should we let doctors, who go to school for many years and spend a lot of time in residency and continuous training, actually do the jobs they were trained to do, or should we continue to vote for ever-more intrusion into that profession by politicians, who don’t need any education or even interest in healthcare at all?

Well, please think on it.

It’s your money, your rights, your life and health at stake here, you know.

https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/can-politicians-even-define-health-care/

https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/health-insurance…or-healthcare…choose-one/

https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/a-short-history-of-health-care-let-doctors-be-doctors/

Discouraged voters may fuel the revolution…

By poll numbers and my own observations, it seems that an unprecedented number of people are waking up to the reality that the Ds and Rs are part of a locked-arm collusion against us.  Very few are yet willing to put in such simple terms, or act on that reality, of course.  In fact I’ve never seen/heard so many people say they don’t see any reason to vote anymore.  Many now understand that elections are to at least a degree and in some way, rigged, so they are thinking of staying home next Election Day.

OK.

That would mean the passionate few among us will not only have a greater, disproportionate effect on Election Day, but we also, in discussions with these discouraged voters, need to convince them of only three things; none having anything to do with messy and contentious partisan ideology:

1. If you’d go and vote for the Two Party System again, then you’re right…you’ve got no fight in you, and you’d just be another drop in the bad guy’s big bucket. They own you.  But at least you don’t want to voluntarily approve them, so just stay home.  Let the rest of us try our might against this mess.
2. The only votes that count for positive change, the only votes that could shake the world, are those against the status quo and for an alternative…any alternative…to the Two Party System. If you don’t see that, or if you aren’t willing to try, you really aren’t mad enough yet, or don’t yet see the problem.
3. Voting is the power of protest, of saying NO, and of peaceful revolution. We’ve been wasting that power as if it were just a poker chip up to now; but we really could fire the bums on Election Day.  It’s just a choice.

Number one is the easiest.  But it should be invoked only on those who’re truly hopeless; the real sheep among us[1].  Sadly, they will be many.  Don’t worry; the passionate few always move destiny.  The sheep really don’t matter in social change.  They will follow when there’s a new shepherd.

Number two should be pretty simple, but it’s not easy to convince people that we’ve not even tried in the last century.  We’ve not just allowed the Ds and Rs to write illegal regulations granting them huge advantages over other parties and candidates; we’ve actually asked them to.  And they’ve used that advantage to entrench themselves against us.  So, yes, there is extensive fraud.  I know that and even proved it in 2004.  But if even a fifth of the people change their hearts and minds and choose to vote in favor of a new government, and if the powers that be try to fudge the elections to swing it their way once again, we’d all know about it.  And that would lead to new levels of energy and action.

Number three will be hard.  We’re tribal, cliquish creatures, after all.  We paint our faces at football games, for Pete’s sake.  But we’ve got to convince people that the corruption that they suspect is worse than they think, because it is.

They’ve got to get mad at the Ds and Rs, and vote that way.

[1] However, I must note that I’ve never been very good at determining who are the sheep, and who will become the next shepherds (it’s easy to spot the wolves).  I’ve observed that the educated, comfortably middle class are most likely to be wasted time; while the roughest, least comfortable among us are more likely the gems.  Angry young black men, redneck whites, poor illegal aliens who’ve been working hard to get ahead, may be a whole lot smarter and more aware of their surroundings than you think.  I’ve been favorably surprised many times by society’s untouchables, and I’ve almost always been sorely disappointed by the well-coiffed and well-heeled.

Let’s chase the fox out of the henhouse

Please do me a favor and write letters to the editor, to your local radio and print broadcast, regarding a terrible, destructive, unconstitutional and criminal scam that’s been worsening for the past one hundred years.

The private clubs we call the Demoratic and Republican parties have, as you know, granted themselves special status, powers and advantages.  Taxpayers are forced to pay for political primaries that involve only Ds and Rs, and which give them a year’s head start in public attention, fundraising, and organization.  Only Ds and Rs can have Precinct Committeemen, people with many quasi-governmental powers, yet none of the restraints.  Only Ds and Rs can be on election-related committees – only they count the votes, make appointments and fill public office vacancies.  Only Ds and Rs can have electors, who really choose the President of the United States of America.

All that is immoral, unconstitutional, corrupt and destructive.

I’ve been advised that, while my case is rock solid on fact, merit and law, no court in Indiana, federal or state, would hear my case; at least not until there’s some public attention on this ongoing crime.  Without at least a little public attention, my suit would almost surely be immediately dismissed “with prejudice” as are so many other complaints against our rogue leaders.  So I take my case to you.

Please consider the gravity of my charges; and consider that you and your loved ones are also affected by our society’s worst, and potentially fatal problem.

If you’d like some supporting information to mull over, besides the links above, these might help:

https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/your-government-is-corrupt-very-very-corrupt/

https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/wanted-a-lawyer-to-save-the-law/

Click to access andys-complaint.pdf

https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2015/06/03/lets-clean-up-our-mess/

I sincerely thank you in advance.

Liberty or Bust!

Andy Horning

Freedom, Indiana

Cheerful Optimism! Yay!

It’s been twenty years, but I’ve finally taken to heart all the criticisms of my political pessimism.  It clearly does no good to be a “downer,” or “too negative” anyway.  So, as the keystone to this year’s New Year’s resolutions, I’m presenting a more optimistic, less-cynical, more trusting face to the world.

After all, there can surely never be another dictator like Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, or Adolf Hitler to spoil humanity’s natural and historically obvious state of liberty and justice for all.  How could our inherently sweet-natured humanity ever again produce somebody like Pol Pot, Talaat Pasha, Tojo, Jorge Videla, Francisco Franco, Leopold II or Augusto Pinochet?  The various Robert Mugabe, Somoza, Noriega, Ceaucescu, Mubarak, Batista, al-Bashir, Chavez, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il types are just a rare aberrance from the human norm of wise and benevolent rulers like…

Well, that’s not important now.

Sure, there may have been a time when sick and brutal tyrants like Nero, Vlad III, Herod, Caligula and Genghis Khan were more the rule than the exception.  But certainly, now that people like Ho Chi Minh, Slobodan Milosevic, Kagame, Duvalier, Erdoğan, Calderón, and Khomeini are so rare, it’s understandable and even reasonable, that most of us are lackadaisical about politics, and fully trust that our ruling class is properly and selflessly taking care of our needs.  The hundreds of millions killed in just the past century alone were just a statistical anomaly, you know.  Really, what are the odds that we will get another Chiang Kai-Shek, Enver Pasha, Hirohito, Abdul Hamid II or Yahya Khan to order inhuman terror?

While it may seem that our government is so much more secretive, deceptive, powerful, corrupt and invasive than in those simpler, gentler days of America’s peaceful and humanitarian past (setting aside, of course, transient errors like slavery, Jim Crow, experiments on soldiers, prisoners and children, and the genocide of millions of Native Americans), I’m sure there is no cause for concern here in the Land of The Free, where we choose our own rulers in fair and open elections!

So, no more finger-pointing warnings from me anymore.  No more tilting at windmills or charging headlong into the Electoral Brick Wall.  No sir.  My message for the New Year is … just relax!  Your nation is competently, rationally, impartially and sustainably operated by people who care about you as an individual of dignity, in liberty and justice…for all!

…Just as I’ve personally learned my lessons about overly grave sobriety, general humanity has learned its lessons about corruption and violence.  Humankind’s awful, cliquish/ clannish/ classist/ tribalist, thieving and brutish history is behind us now.

In fact, let’s erase it!  Burn the old books!  Tear down the monuments!  Quit talking about all the mean people and brutal actions of the past!

All that’s left for modern Americans to do is spend our money, pay our taxes, and enjoy the peace, prosperity, justice and equality under law we all so richly deserve.

Yes, indeed, it is time we finally get what we deserve!  Happy New Year!

Read It…Now.

It may be oddly written, and I’ve learned that it’s not the best office-party icebreaker.  But every Hoosier should read, understand and memorize Article I, Section 25 of the Indiana Constitution.  It is short, unambiguous, and very, very important right now.

“No law shall be passed, the taking effect of which shall be made to depend upon any authority, except as provided in this Constitution.”

What could these words mean, but that even legislation does not create authority; laws depend upon authority.

It’s not only the Indiana Constitution that expresses this.  All throughout our constitutional republic, all political authority comes from our constitutions.

In other words, here in Indiana, as elsewhere under the Rule of Law established by our state and federal constitutions, politicians are not allowed to authorize themselves.  All of their power is written into constitutions, or that power is denied.

Just as you mustn’t allow a bad dog to hold his own leash, we mustn’t allow politicians to “interpret” the constitutions that restrain them.  “Legal precedent” and “case law” do not exist in our constitutions and have no legitimate power over constitutions.  Therefore, for example, no federal official can interpret away any first amendment rights because federal authority over religion, speech, press, assembly and petition is very plainly prohibited (see the First Amendment to the US Constitution).  All of our constitutions say this many times and in many ways; and constitutions were agreed upon and signed as solemn contracts (see the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799).

Yet most politicians are routinely violating all of the laws that protect us from their historically demonstrated tendencies.  They have thus abrogated their legal authority, and rule by force alone.  Dick Cheney’s “nation of men, and not laws” is not just scary, it’s literally criminal.  This affects you more than you’ve been told.

Perhaps the most every-daily-relevant example is in your wallet.  State and federal constitutions mandate the use of gold and silver coin as money; and they’re clear that only our legislative assemblies have authority over this money.

But that’s not how your money works now.  And the way your money works today, is to rob you right into your grave.

With all our record-breaking taxation, regulation and litigation, there is only one private enterprise in America that has never been regulated, audited, taxed or brought to justice.  It is the so-called “Federal Reserve” Bank that’s been printing Monopoly money and charging you plenty for it since 1913.  It’s not federal, there’s no reserve, and it’s most definitely unconstitutional!

Frustratingly, many of even my political friends and allies tell me that “we’re too far from the constitutions now; we can’t demand compliance.”  But that’s like saying that once a criminal has done his deed, we, as a culture have failed, and that the criminal must therefore go free.

That is not sane.  That is self-flagellating madness.

Others claim that this is a democracy (why minorities want majority rule is beyond me), and voters can choose anything – even self-destruction.

I concede that this is pretty much what is happening.  But that’s both unconstitutional, and suicidal.

In each of my political races, and through all the years since 1995, I’ve proposed various plans to sunset all unconstitutional laws, agencies, powers and practices, and make the armed thug we call government go legit.  That is the law, it is morally right, it is proven to work…

…and our current path has proven to fail every time.

The Russian Revolution dreamed of liberty, justice and equality for all, but produced Stalinist nightmares and social collapse.  The French Revolution wielded the rhetoric but not the laws of our founders, so it was more about beheadings than freedom.  Even our own nation’s not-so-distant history illustrates oppression, slavery, genocide and war.  How can we think that now, with our government more powerful, secretive and intrusive than ever, we have put our ugly past behind us?

If you were to get curious and take the couple of hours necessary to read both the state and federal constitutions (yes, you really can read them without a federal judge telling you what they mean), you’d see that all of our biggest problems are unconstitutional.

Most taxation and government spending is unconstitutional.  All military engagements since WWII have been unconstitutional.  Pork, corruption, spiraling healthcare and education costs and tumbling dollars are all unconstitutional.

And every American constitution, both state and federal, codifies our right to alter or reform our government.  The Texas constitution couldn’t be more clear that should the federal government break its side of the constitutional contract, then Texas is specifically free and sovereign.  And that’s in the document’s very first paragraph.

You ought to read it!

Say what you will about our constitutions.  Call them outdated, call them “agrarian.”  But then read them.  We have nothing better, and we’re headed toward a truly ancient and horrible default state without them.

An open letter to my fellow patriots

My liberty-loving friends, we have lost.  We had our chance, and we muffed it.   By focusing on only our favorite parts of our constitutions, we’ve thrown away the rest.  By demanding our rights while denying others theirs, we’ve lost them all.

Some claim that human rights transcend law…but that is neither what history or our nature demonstrates in every era around the world.

Without constitutions, you’ve got no rights to property, due process or even life, because without constitutions, there are no agreed-upon, legal, contractual or practical restraints upon political power.  And it’s the nature of political power to oppose individual rights, because it’s your neighbors’ nature to serve himself at your expense, by means of political power. 

Most of us have fought for one right while opposing another for decades.  Speech activists oppose the constitutions’ religious freedom, while gun rights activists typically oppose the constitutions in moral, drug and lifestyle issues.  We demand our unconstitutional claims on other people’s incomes (Social Security, Medicare…when we’re trillions in debt.  We’re stealing from our grand kids, you know), and then whine that cops are driving tanks now.

We have stubbornly refused to unite over what it is that would serve us best (Rule of Law under our existing constitutions, as written), while our enemies represent no more than humanity’s ancient default state of oppression, slavery, genocide and war.  They win by our default in disunity.  We have torn ourselves apart and have nobody to blame but ourselves.  Our government is a global crime ring, and it’s by our collective free choice, dammit.

Sigh…

But let us not be bad sports.  Our side lost.  C’est ça.  Finito.  Now we must all Move On.

For years I have championed Rule of Law, but from now on, I want to be a Good Socialist.

Look at the positive side.  Authoritarians have always had the best uniforms.  Most people look good in a trim little cap, a neat military outfit with red epaulets and brass buttons.  And those shiny black boots sound so fetching as you’re running down side streets on a cold, rainy night, chasing down someone who just won’t fit in.

Think of the imagery.  Who else gathers thousands of cheering idolaters under triumphant banners and bold emblems?  Who else goose-steps a half-million troops with tanks and jet formations right through the heart of the capital?  What thrills!  Authoritarians have chutzpah! 

OK, I do so hope we don’t get stuck with a bad-hair ruler like the North Koreans got.  And murderous thugs like Che too often lack any cultural polish at all.  

But I, like Hitler and Mussolini, do enjoy fine cars, art, and well-choreographed young people.  I adore the martial music and stylized posters depicting gloriously happy workers.  I am ready to raise my arm in salute to our great Obama nation!

Dear friends, we must become the Übermensch; perfection in body, mind and… well, not spirit.  Who needs spirit when you have the state!

We must reject our fetish with freedom, and replace it with devotion to global citizenship.  We must grow past and even spurn the apron strings and umbilicus of “traditional” family ties and norms, in favor of service to the state!

No sacrifice is too great for this dream.  You may be asked to give your life, but the promise is no more sickness, no more poverty, no more homelessness, no more injustice.  You may have to report your mother to the authorities, but you’ll be rewarded with at least a strong likelihood of a warm embrace from the global collective, very soon … from each according to ability, to each according to need … however the state defines that.

Forget the tear-filled past with its tiresome clinging to “right” and “wrong.”  Forget the laws and old ways that held you back.  Forget humility and restraint.  Forget the chains and cages of individualism and family, and embrace the Power of Pride!

We are now building a human bridge over the troubled waters of humanity’s brutal past; to embark upon a wonderful voyage so buoyed by promises, that you’ll be jubilant and grateful to give your all, right up to your very last, bullet-riddled and tasered, choking gasp.

Join me, my friends.  Let us erase and even reverse the boundaries between nations and faiths and morality, and march triumphantly toward the cliffs of a new day…

…In matching outfits!

Job Creationism debunked

All my bilious rumination against the media aside, I am pleased that the Indy Star printed what I’d submitted for their Voices pages:

 

Politicians tend to lie.  Citizens tend to believe.  The tragic, interminable history of what happens when governments go bad and citizens go silly is reason enough for a healthy condition of mistrust.  Governments are, at best, protection rackets.  They always extort some opportunity and wealth from citizens even when properly restrained to only protect our rights, property and life from others who’d take them away.  Government is a suppressive force, not a creative one.  So I’m sorry if this is news to you, but the political promise of “job creation,” is hogwash. 

 

A hundred years ago, there were no government “services” as we know them today, and government was leashed to solely a constitutionally limited, protective role.  Americans became the richest, freest and most secure people of all time because people naturally want to do well for themselves, and they were allowed to do just that. 

 

The genius of the founders was unequivocally proven.  Freedom works better than anything else ever tried.  That’s why it’s the law (see it in black and white at http://www.horningforgovernor.com/; it’s my Platform). 

 

But Americans fell for a “New Deal,” slowly devolving back to our brutish default of rulers versus ruled.  Government isn’t about protecting you anymore.  It’s about robbing Peter to pay Paul; with every election cycle merely an exercise to determine who’s Peter, and who gets to be Paul.  We’ve fallen so far toward this pre-Hammurabi authoritarianism that even the word “privatize” means the concentration of profits into the ruling class, while spreading their losses to you.  Now, if you make fat campaign donations and hire a lobbyist, you can live well on other people’s labor. 

 

This hurts Hoosiers more than most Americans.  Hoosiers once made 106% of the nation’s average salary, but we’ve lost twenty percent to that average in the past three decades.  Just in the last 4 years alone we’ve lost 72 electronics companies with over 11000 high-paying jobs; not to foreigners, but mostly to other rust-belt states.  These jobs have been only partly replaced by much lower-wage service industry jobs fueled by our political fixations on foreign corporations, sports and gambling.

 

So I’m running for the constitutional office of Indiana Governor because freedom is still the law.  I would govern government, not you.  I think it’s about time.

 

Prohibitions against firing bad workers increase resistance to hiring.  Such prohibitions are illegal, so I’d remove them and let the hiring begin.

Hiring illegal immigrants is attractive because doing so evades the mandatory costs of taxation, regulation, insurance, pensions and of course litigation.  I’d remove these illegal impediments to hiring Hoosiers, and bid illegal immigrants, ¡adios!

Because there are no impediments to buying foreign products made without our handicaps of taxation, regulation and litigation, we are competing against the world blindfolded with both hands tied behind our back.  I’d remove these illegal impediments too, and let prosperity happen.

 

I would massively cut taxation, regulation and litigation for everybody, not just for the elite.  Not only would businesses do better in Indiana, but so would the people that work for businesses.  Small businesses would no longer be at a disadvantage to the politically-connected corporate giants.  No more political class versus peons.  No more losing a home to property tax.  Everybody, including politicians, would be equal under the law.

 

Hoosiers would thrive because they could, and because they want to, and because nobody would stop them anymore.