Realistically, we’re doomed.

All of the most self-defeating things I ever hear begin with something like, “Realistically…”

At least in a political context, whenever I hear words and phrases like “pragmatic,” “the way things are,” and, of course, “realistically,” I know what comes next is a lame rationalization of wrong.

Right?

Instead of saying, “That’s a great dream! Let’s make it happen,” the “realistic” person’s got to say, “realistically, you must choose the ‘lesser of two evils;’” or, “Whoa there; these things take time.  Realistically, you’ve got to ‘take baby steps,’ ‘work within the system,’ and ‘you can’t fight city hall.’”

Even so-called “third parties” concentrate on “winnable” races, even if that means that they sacrifice a statewide televised platform to discuss real differentiating issues.  It also means the most visible races go unchallenged or are contested by lesser candidates who put their party in a bad light.  And, of course, when they do win a “winnable” race, that means it’s such small potatoes that nobody will ever hear about it anyway.

“Realistically,” they’ll say, “you don’t stand a chance.”  “You have to,” they tell me, “play the game.”  “Start at the bottom and work your way up,” they say.

I am pretty certain this is why human civilizations have a 100% failure rate.  There are too many unwitting servants of the status quo, and far too few revolutionaries.  Too many people think like plodding, duty-bound bureaucrats, and too few think like passionate, principled visionaries.

I am sure we have a sufficient number of dreamers;  it’s just that the dream-squashing Powers-That-Be puppets outnumber them, parrot the officially-approved talking points, run the media, and are currently in charge of pretty much everything on the planet.

This so unnecessary, so sad, so self-destructive.

To cave in to odds is to shuffle toward societal collapse.  To accept even mediocrity, let alone “lesser evil,” is to voluntarily, actively, choose failure.  (see aforementioned failure rate)

And that, is a denial of our very real power and accountability to do better.

I’ve spoken to more than a few voters.  I see what they do every Election Day. Collectively, we really did choose exactly what we’ve got.  We’ve chosen badly, and keep re-electing the badly-chosen.

We can’t blame anybody else for that.  But we sure try to.  The “Two Party System,” corruption, lobbyists, and “there ought to be a law” all get blame.  And those things are, granted, terrible. terrible.

But we chose it.  All of it.

And it looks like we’ll do it again this November.

We do this over, and over, and over again.

We never learn.

My enduring hope (and I believe our culture’s only hope) is that we’ll snap out of our madness and choose better.

Now, I do understand the roadblocks.

1. There’s a vast, nearly-diametrically-opposed difference between a good candidate, and a good politician.  We expect a good candidate¹ to be a market phenomenon; sort of like a movie production with a cast of hundreds.  The very “best” candidates are usually much less impressive as individuals than they are as a puppet figurehead/mascot of a team.  You rarely hear or see the politician as a person, actually.  You see a managed message crafted by professional staff.  A good politician, on the other hand, must be an honest, scrupulous statesman; hardly the sort of performance artist who’d be a media hit in this climate…amiright?  The job of a candidate is to get elected and reelected.  The job of a statesman is to serve his fellow humans by holding a leash on that dangerous abstraction we call “politics.”  And that apparently doesn’t sell well today.
2. The best candidates are bought.  We all know it. But we never follow the money and come to the correct conclusions, do we?  In fact, we do the opposite.  We see our candidates in order of odds and money, not in order of principles and actions.  We treat this more like pro sports, and less like real life with you as a key actor.  And that’s at least partly because…
3. All the major media are bought, and not just by the best candidates.  The major media are wholly owned and operated by the same military industrialists, financial services moguls, “information” regulators and political kingmakers that own and operate all the best candidates.  Look at how media and search engines cover campaigns.  Look even at the order in which they list candidates in articles.  It’s not alphabetical, is it?  And try to look for what doesn’t even make it to your eyes and ears.  Almost all of the very best statesmen are rendered invisible and voiceless by our incessant, loud and omnipresent media – both old and new.  Your senses are overloaded by their choices such that you may never get to hear what would be better choices.  That leaves you too numb and worn-out to scour the fine print, rumors and internet threads for better choices.
4. The rules we now call election and campaign finance “laws” were written by all the best candidates, so of course they’re unconstitutional, corrupt, and serve to stifle better options.
5. We don’t want to admit that we’re responsible for our choices, and that our choices really do matter, and that we could change our choices, because that’d be the same as admitting that we’ve screwed up for years!  I get it.  I’ve been there, done that…and in ways I still don’t want to admit.

But now let me describe your opportunity.

1. You get what you choose.  If you choose better, you get better.  If you decide to vote against evil entirely, what’s “lesser” or “greater” won’t matter.  You really do get what you, personally, choose, because you are not as alone as you’ve told yourself.  Not everybody else is an idiot.  More people than you likely think, are thinking, and acting, just like you.  Most people are just looking for somebody else to make the first move.
2. It doesn’t take a majority to change things.  In fact, it has never worked that way.  The passionate few have always determined the course of history.  Always.  The “masses” follow the leader.  That’s how our species, and most others, work.  You want to be among the passionate few?  Then choose to be.  Be a Political Alpha that others can follow.  It’s just another choice.
3. Politicians hire themselves if you let them; we do NOT have elections to hire politicians.  Our founders and prior generations bequeathed all of us (all races, all creeds, all genders…even the new ones) the hard-won right to vote not as a numb approval of the status quo, but as a weapon of peaceful revolution.  You are SUPPOSED TO vote AGAINST some things (evil, entrenched incumbents, bad choices).  You are SUPPOSED TO vote to FIRE the best candidates, and replace them with the best politicians.
4. Picture this.  On a single day in November, you upset the status quo.  Instead of reelecting almost everybody (over 98% of House Reps were reelected last time, you know), you fire almost everybody, and replace them with people who’ve not sold you out.  It’s a choice.  Your choice.  Imagine how bright the sun would shine on that next day when the gobsmacked media pundits realize that you figured it out, and won.  Just picture it.

Would it be so scary to, just for once, use your vote more like a sword than a poker chip? Wouldn’t it be invigorating and wholesome to walk into a voting booth with the Spirit of ‘76?

Realistically, we’re all going to die, and our culture and nation will collapse.  It’s a certainty, actually.  Sooner, or later.

But we choose how we live our precious lives.  We don’t have to keep doing the same things over and over again.   While history demonstrates very well that we humans keep screwing up over and over again, we personally don’t have to.

We can choose.

Don’t we want to strive for a really great life in a great country?  I say let’s dream on that, and make it so.

1A candidate is a corporate abstraction consisting of a figurehead, several key executive members, and a bunch of supporting staff all dedicated to winning elections…often as a full-time job for many campaigns, year after year.   A politician is, when done right, an actual, moral, honest-to-goodness human being who’s trying to make politics the noble art of getting along.

Eight Steps to Success

Here’re my suggestions for Peace, prosperity, Security and Freedom in eight steps:

1. End the cronyism/corruption network and culture.  This is fundamental and critical.  Our government is captured by people and parties who do not share our collective best interests.  So we must bust up the self-appointed, inherently divisive, eternal tug-of-war “Two Party System,” and nullify the recent, unconstitutional, immoral state codes that suppress competition, create classes and sub-classes of citizens, and make taxpayers pay for the promotion of only D and R candidates at the expense of everybody else.  To do this, we need to …vote them out of power.  Not just the individual candidates – the whole power network behind the curtain.  This needs to happen.  And make no mistake…this is not just about the parties themselves, which are really just puppet shows for a much wider, deeper system of cronies that we scarcely see.  We won’t get anywhere trimming the claws of kingmakers, bundlers, lobbyists, permanent staffers and eternal bureaucrats without first replacing the 2-party puppet show and firewall that prevents us from doing the rest of what follows:
2. Stand down our military-industrial complex and global imperialism, and replace it with strong, constitutional national defense.  This of course includes killing the CIA/NSA monster to which Eisenhower also referred to in his famous Farewell Address as the “scientific-technological elite.”  Besides, we’ve been misidentifying real dangers.  China is already in a very effective, winning war against us, and we apparently don’t even know it.  Hopefully their internal problems will lessen the danger soon, because it is the worst, in my opinion, this nation has ever faced.
3. Monetary/banking reform.  Click the link for details.  I wish this could be #1.  It is a fundamental, and currently a terrible, fast-growing problem that’s about to result in massive inflation and turmoil.  The system of monetized debt begun here in 1912/13 has gone global, and is perhaps the biggest enabler of corruption.  But as with #2, it is well protected by the crony system.  
4. Rule of Law.  …Which of course means, kill “The Administrative State” of executive agencies and unelected bureaucrats that have taken unto themselves legislative, judicial and executive powers. This would cut a lot of stuff from what we’re calling “government” today. You may not like some of the cuts; but I’m certain you’d like the end result.
5. No more loaded bills. One subject at a time, and no earmarks/pork.
6. End special classes, special deals for special people – equality under law for all at long last.  This is partially implied/ included in #1, but needs to become a fundamental moral of our society if any real progress is to last.  And it would involve scaling back and phasing out many of the extraordinary powers, rights, perks and immunities granted to politically powerful corporate abstractions.  In other words, we need to stop fearing “Big Pharma,” “Big Ag,” “Big…anything.”  We’re all people here.  We should all be equal under the law.  That is certainly not the case now.
7. Sunset provision/amendment to refine and reduce the number of laws, and keep them few, simple and important so that our rules are:
   1. Few enough to actually know.
   2. Simple enough to actually obey.
   3. Important enough to enforce without exceptions or special classes.
8. Term Limits.  Let’s face it; voters haven’t been doing their part, and there’s no procedural fix for bad choices.  But term limits won’t happen until after voters make better choices.  Similarly, I have for decades favored alternative voting schemes like Condorcet, Ranked Choice or Approval Voting (RCV or AV).  And I definitely love the idea of increasing the number of representatives to better suit our population; and we have the technology to keep them in their districts with more local accountability.  But we won’t get such changes UNTIL we get rid of the politicians who like things the way they are.  That’s why I’m placing term limits last both procedurally, and in importance, because we’ll get term limits only after a sufficient number of people wake up and act appropriately such that we fire the bad guys and, at least for the short term, defuse the huge advantage of incumbency… particularly the power of “committee” rulers based on tenure.   …But after that cultural epiphany and revolution, their kids and grandkids will gradually fall asleep again.♣   That’s just how civilizations inevitably decay and die.  If we’re to delay our self-destruction at least a little, we need term limits shorter than human life expectancy…particularly in the context of tenure/corruption-based power structures.

To summarize, I want to cut the cost, intrusiveness, abusiveness and ineffectiveness of our central government by actually cutting powers, programs, agencies…and people, from that government. I mean to establish a truly federal (instead of our increasingly unitary) government as defined by the authorizing compact.  I want to make living life more voluntary, and much less driven by deceit, tribalism, anger, fear, mandates, prohibitions, and an impenetrable thicket of taxation.

♣A good part of my reasoning for term limits is encapsulated in this quote:  “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” ― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

I believe it takes “strong men” (strong-minded, individualist, non-tribal voters) to fire bums and clean up corruption.  But the “weak men” (look around) who follow will let anything go, and continuously reelect bad politicians…or let the whole system collapse.

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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We could fix it in a Single Day

But voters, as always, must choose

Freedom, IN – Many feel that our “Major Party” choices on Election Day have been getting worse and worse, while the general condition of our society and individual lives seems to be devolving toward calamity.

That’s true, of course.

But we could fix it if only we’d acknowledge the problem, admit who freely chose this, and realize who’s got the power to turn this around. The fix itself is simple enough, and mostly written-down already.

The most important three steps are:

• Stand down our military-industrial complex and global imperialism.
• Monetary/banking reform.
• End the cronyism/corruption culture.

That’s in reverse order, unfortunately; because as congressmen I could address the first two listed only after voters take a stand against the recent (since the 1970’s), self-appointed and irretrievably corrupt, “Two Party System”…by electing me!

Only voters can topple the two-party-in-name-only, crony network, which has become little more than a front, distraction, protection and marketing group for the finance and militarism elites who run the world behind the Two Party Firewall.

So before we can nullify the unjust, profligate, unconstitutional judgments, agencies, laws and actions which produced the welfare cliff, the horrific cost of healthcare, oppressive lawless bureaucracy, and of course endless war and ever-more militarization, voters must first say something to the ruling elites that they’ve not heard in a hundred years:

…NO!

The other 8^th district candidates have no intention or ability to fix the mess they choose to represent. So, first, voters must vote against that corrupt monstrosity. Yes, it’s good to vote against what’s wrong. To say otherwise is a terrible misunderstanding of the whole point of elections; and that is for peaceful revolution. If they feel that they can vote for me, that’d be great. But first, voters must fire the Two Party System!

After voters fire that shot heard ‘round the world, we can talk about other reforms including:

• Term Limits
• Rule of Law
• End “earmarks” (pork)
• End special classes, special deals for special people – equality for all at long last
• Sunset provision/amendment to refine and reduce the number of laws so that our rules are:
  • Few enough to actually know
  • Simple enough to actually obey
  • Important enough to enforce without exceptions or special classes

None of the preceding is ideological, untested or even new. Most of it is already law.

It’s all in voters’ power to set things right. But first, in order to use their power, they must understand that they’ve always had it, and used it to get to where we are today. And for that to happen, they need to be better informed of their choices, and how elections have been working up to now.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

Libertarian for 8^th District US House of Representatives

Facebook www.facebook.com/HorningForCongress/

Money, Politics, and Central Banks

Politicians have robbed us for generations

Freedom, IN – I have proposed a three-step plan to fix most of our worst problems by federal legislation.  In many previous releases I detailed plans for fixing the corruption we call “the Two Party System.” That was Step #1.

Step #2 is to fix our inherently inflationary twisted-hybrid political/private crony financial system.

Money itself, as a fiduciary currency/unit of trade, can be a wonderful thing.  When scrupulously maintained as trustworthy, it facilitates honest trade, and practically guarantees peace.

Unfortunately, we’ve not had such money since 1913, though it’s still required by our state and federal constitutions.

Why?  Because the most effective way to hide the true costs of war, tax the public without their knowledge, enrich elites, and covertly monetize the massive debts incurred by impossible political promises and a military empire and industry, is to replace naturally limited money with monopolized fiat currency*, and then devalue it by making gobs of it…

And making gobs of increasingly valueless “money” is literally what inflation is.  The price of everything goes up when the value of money goes down.  And we’re headed for catastrophic hockey-stick-graph inflation very soon.  I don’t know when.  But we’ve let this corrupt, expand and fester long enough that I’m afraid it is now inevitable.

There’s a long, repetitious history of this.  In every case, from ancient Egypt to today’s Venezuela, devaluing currency represents a slide to catastrophe.

In theory, fiat currency could work fine.  But every case involving humans, the short-term political gain of devaluation outweighs the catastrophic long term costs to the society.

There are no exceptions; “fiat currency” always fails.  And it’s always by the same stupid pattern.

Politicians spend money they expect future generations to pay, so they have to find a way to devalue/inflate the supply of currency, and then point fingers of blame everywhere but at themselves when it all collapses.

The United States of America has occupied the catbird seat of fiat currencies since WWII, when our lend/lease arms trading sucked up 2/3rds of the global reserve currency, and almost 3/4 of the monetary gold.  We immediately started spending down on that when we joined the war, and through subsequent never-ending consequences of the world wars.  We spent all that gold long ago, and between the end of the Breton-Woods Agreement in ’71 and the petrodollar scheme in ’72/’73, we found a new way to further devalue what had become truly fiat currency.

But that is ending shortly, as our dollar is based purely on trust, and violence.  The world is both losing trust in us, and sick of our endless Petrodollar Wars.  We have been deceived right up to the brink of collapse, and we’re past due for some radical action.

So:

1. Audit the Fed.*  We are past-broke, and it’s time to go through an orderly and just restructuring of debts, nullifications, and dismantlings.
2. Replace the current Federal Reserve System with a truly private banking system that is not only subject to audits, reporting and SOP as with other incorporated institutions, but also has NO power to monetize political debts or create currency.
3. All money/currency authority and accountability shall be in the US Congress as per Article I Section 8:5 of the Constitution for the United States of America, so that politicians will be held accountable for greed, shortsightedness, and trans-generational theft.
4. However, people must be free to use whatever form of money or currency suits their needs.  “Cryptocurrency” (which is really a form of market fiat currency that I’m seeing as an eventual problem in itself), foreign coins, even conch shells or knotted strings are not the government’s business.  Our government’s only legitimate role in interpersonal transactions is when there is force or fraud involved.

In other words, I propose we stop lying, stealing, making promises we can’t keep, and clean our accounts for the promotion of peace, prosperity, security …and freedom.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

*One could debate the meaning of the words and concepts “money” and “currency” forever.  But for the purposes here, currency is an “official” (mandated or agreed upon) trade instrument that has no intrinsic value.  Money is a pretty abstract concept, since value is still applied by humans, but it’s generally a scarce/limited/difficult-to-reproduce thing that therefore has by itself been granted some relative value (gold, silver, rare shells, libertarians).

*The Fed gets “audited” already, but only with many glaring exclusions and only by internal government and Fed processes.  You can look up the details.  But pretty much everything significant (like actions with foreign governments and international banking groups, internal communications and discount window operations, and monetary policy itself) is excluded from GAO audits, and all “independent” auditors are hired by…(wait for it)…the Fed’s Board of Governors.

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.

 

Radically Reasonable

Besides the complaints about jobs, money and immigration that now seem ubiquitous on this planet, the Brexit supporters complained about the “unelected bureaucrats” in Brussels who write laws for all of Europe. This ruling cabal of commissioners was called things like, “…overpaid and arrogant, but opaque and unaccountable…”

USA wonks nodded their smug comprehension, apparently thinking that at least we elect our lawmakers on this side of the pond. At least our lawmakers can be fired.

But we don’t fire them. Nor can we; because most of our laws aren’t written by people authorized to write laws. And we didn’t elect them.

And, no, I’m not even talking about the lobbyists who write most of what Congress makes law.

You see, while the “lawmakers” in the US Congress are of course overpaid, arrogant, and almost completely corrupt, they’re practically irrelevant now.

Unelected bureaucrats in innumerable federal agencies (DOE, FDA, FCC, USDA, IRS…) and even private organizations with governing powers like “The Federal Reserve System,” make thirty times as many regulations as does the US Congress, though Article I Section I of the Constitution for the USA restricts all legislative powers to only congress. Even if counting only those regulations that affect USA citizens directly, bureaucrats wrote sixteen times as many laws as did the US Congress.

Some say the rapidly growing regulatory burden amounts to around $15K per year for every USA household. Whatever the actual cost, unregulated regulation is literally criminal, and very destructive to our prosperity, independence, opportunity and of course, freedom.

What’s worse is that these agencies are also, quite unlike our US Congress, heavily armed against us.

They have been granted legislative, judicial, and executive powers (armed with SWAT teams and military gear…the USDA has machine guns! Even the federal DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION is armed now!!!) without checks and balances, without an electoral accountability, and without any constitutional authority.

And this doesn’t even count the UN…

So,

I propose we limit lawmaking to only lawmakers, as the constitution demands.

I propose a sunset rule or constitutional amendment – a 10-year expiration date for all non-constitutionally specified agencies, laws, powers and programs to gracefully remove, or at least review for reinstatement, everything that’s not specifically written into the constitution.

I propose a Rule of Law reboot, to affirm that politicians must obey laws too…at last.

I propose we stand down our global military “whack-a-mole” machine, and concentrate on defending our homeland instead of browbeating and manipulating the world.

I propose that our government issue only sound money as constitutionally required, and allow free market trade and monetary alternatives as our constitution also demands (Amendments 9 and 10 in particular).

All this is what we’re supposed to be doing anyway. It’s what many of us think is what’s happening now.

It’s unfortunate that this sane, legal, proven sensibility would be nothing less than a revolution.

What’s fortunate is that it already belongs to us. We need only to choose it on Election Day.

Can politicians even define “health care?”

I’ve worked in healthcare since 1978 in public health, research, clinical, education and industry roles.  And I can’t tell you what healthcare is.

To my wife, it’s massage and things that smell nice.  To others, it’s Reiki, or heterodox nutrition.  Some debate that vaccines are bad medicine, but marijuana is great healthcare.  And they have convincing arguments.

Is gender-reassignment, or voodoo healthcare too?  Who decides?

I think cardiovascular science and technology is genuinely wonderful.  It’s my professional specialty, and I think it should qualify as healthcare, notwithstanding strong disagreements in the field (Are stents good, or bad?  Should we try to lower blood cholesterol, when we know high cholesterol correlates to longer life expectancy?).
But as for everything else?  I can’t even give you a clean definition of “health.”  And I’ve been in the business my whole life.

Politicians sure think they know all about it.  And by the Election Day polling numbers, well-over 90% of us believe and trust that politicians should control …everything.

But after the more than 100 years the unionized AMA has wielded political monopoly power, the 80 years of taxpayer subsidized health insurance, 60 years of socialized health, education and welfare, and the almost 50 years of even more directly socialized healthcare in the form of our rapidly swelling Medicare system, I’m appalled that we think we want more politics in healthcare.  I’m disgusted that we’ve been lead to believe that health insurance is what we want when that is often antithetical to healthcare.  And I’m embarrassed that We The People haven’t seen a better way to live that’s always been right before us.

In every field of science, technology and plain old merchandise that isn’t so political, costs decrease while quality, efficacy and availability increases with every new advance.  Luxuries of yesterday like cellphones and personal computers are now ubiquitous and powerful necessities.

The in-your-face availability and range of price/quality in shoes, coffee, kitchen gadgets and even things like used magazines and historical wristwatch reproductions has become amazing in a relative freedom from political control.

There’ve been innumerable healthcare advances in the last century that would’ve made healthcare cheap, effective, and easily available to all…if not for all the politics that’s been creeping in since Teddy Roosevelt’s time.
Politicians have already made everything related to medicine unfair, complicated, ever-changing, severely limited, and ghastly expensive.

And they’re not done yet.

However, none of the preceding is any part of my main objection to more politics in healthcare.
I’ll let others quibble over whether politicians will finally be able to keep a promise, or make something work at all as advertised.  The real problem, whenever we rub that genie’s lamp of politics, is corruption, and calamity.

Everything government does, it does by force.  Politics can’t do anything without at least the threat of fines, taxes, courts, guns and prisons.

It’s easy to dream that this kind of force can be used for good.  But the usual reality, as evidenced by all of human history, is a scale and degree of injustice and death that only politics can achieve.  Power is of course a seduction for those who’d wield it.  But it’s just as attractive to those who can simply buy the portion of such power as suits their purposes.

And make no mistake.  All power is for sale.

Whenever politicians are allowed to steal a new power, there’s a new industry in lobbying for the use of that power.  We can see how that lobby has worked for the military industrialists and bankers, and we should see what it has done to our health, education and welfare as well.

Adding more power to government, with more snooping into things that are more personal than ever before possible, only makes the resulting corruption more dangerous.

Hitler’s infamous “T4” eugenics/euthanasia program under Germany’s socialized healthcare system certainly demonstrated one hazard in giving politicians so much power over life.  But think about what we already know of our own government; what they’ve admitted to from the past (testing plutonium on school kids, syphilis experiments on black men, experiments on soldiers), and what they’ve been forced to admit recently about their spying, militarization and deceit.   Think hard about how much more secretive, powerful and deceitful we know our government to be now than ever before; and just what such a government is capable of doing with the actual coding in our cells.

And changing the role of healthcare workers from healers to government agents who’ll give to politicians everything from your DNA to your intimate personal and family details, will, over time, change the sort of people who’d seek out such a career.
You really shouldn’t want that to happen.

I fear what will happen when healthcare becomes a tool of global domination.  Our fear of sickness, combined with too much trust in politicians, could prove deadly when another health crisis, real or manufactured, like AIDS or mad cow disease, entices politicians into massive power grabs at our expense.

We The People have exactly and only what we have freely and repetitiously chosen not just every every day we sigh, and yield to what we know is wrong and isn’t working; but also every Election Day.

Elections were meant to be a means of peaceful revolution.  We’d better finally use them for that purpose, because the power over our bodies we’re granting to politicians now will have no good end, unless that end is determined by our change of heart and mind.

RELATED POSTS:
https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/a-short-history-of-health-care-let-doctors-be-doctors/
https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/health-insurance%E2%80%A6or-healthcare%E2%80%A6choose-one/

Rule of Law Reboot

What follows is a resolution that’d be a good first step to a better course for our nation.
If elected to congress, I’d introduce it immediately.
But don’t wait for me…please feel free to send this to your representatives in local, state or federal office.
PLEASE do this or something like it!
I’d of course prefer that this be passed as a Bill or Joint Resolution.  But even as a Concurrent or Simple Resolution, it’d open a discussion on what sort of nation we’re to be; a nation with governed government, or a great big crime syndicate:

Whereas the plain wording of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America is binding law;

Be it resolved that;

No federal law, agency, program or international treaty that depends upon authority not specifically granted by the Constitution for the United States of America shall be valid;

Any federal agency, law,  program or international treaty transcending authority specifically granted by the Constitution for the United States of America is null and void;

Unconstitutional laws, agencies, programs and treaties have created both problems and dependencies that will take time to rectify;

All unconstitutional federal powers, delegations, laws, programs, treaties and entities that cannot be immediately nullified must be phased out within no more than ten years.

 

An Indiana/local version of this could be (SOMEBODY PLEASE INTRODUCE THIS HERE IN INDIANA!):

Whereas the plain wording of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America, and Article I Section 25 of the Indiana Constitution is binding law;

Be it resolved that;

No federal or state law, agency, program or international treaty that depends upon authority not specifically granted by the Constitution for the United States of America  or the Constitution of the State of Indiana shall be valid;

Any federal or state agency, law,  program or international treaty transcending authority specifically granted by the Constitution for the United States of America is null and void;

Unconstitutional laws, agencies, programs and treaties have created both problems and dependencies that will take time to rectify;

All unconstitutional governing powers, delegations, laws, programs, treaties and entities that cannot be immediately nullified must be phased out within no more than ten years.

Your vote’s not a poker chip; it’s weapon.