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.

About Our Guns…

Let’s get something straight about the 2^nd Amendment that has little to do with personal protection or fighting off an ungoverned government:

The second amendment is about citizens taking PERSONAL responsibility for violence!  Citizen militias are much, much less likely to reelect warmongers and meddle with other people’s countries.  And we willingly, anti-constitutionally, surrendered our militia system in 1903 to build a professional, global, war machine.   …Just what our founders warned us to never, ever do.

The USA Constitution‘s Article I, Section 8:15 does grant Congress the rather scary authority, “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Politicians (including judges) apparently stop reading here, thinking this grants the federal government essentially total military power and authority over everything, including you; you uppity citizen.

Article I, Section 8:16 further grants Congress authority “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”

This is considerable power over militias, but look at the delimiter, “…governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States…” (bold is my added emphasis)

That should make us think about what the state constitutions say about the “Part of them” not governed by the feds, but we’ll get to that shortly.

Article I, Section 10:3 provides enough confusion in today’s context that, without the state constitutions, you might get the wrong idea about militias: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress… keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace …or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
If you can’t “keep Troops” in peace time, how could a state respond to invasion or other imminent danger?

Article II Section 2 should provoke some thought, though: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

So, the POTUS is NOT the CIC of the militias until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress.  The militias aren’t “federalized” until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress.   And  an actual declaration of war by the US Congress hasn’t happened since WWII.

Again, this won’t make proper sense without state constitution context.

So, for Indiana, for example, the Indiana Constitution’s Article 5, Section 12 is where things ought to start coming together: “The Governor shall be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and may call out such forces, to execute the laws, or to suppress insurrection, or to repel invasion.” (again, boldface is my emphasis, but you really ought to be raising your eyebrows now. This is even as amended in 1984. This is still law!)

Here’s Article 12, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution, which was amended as recently as 1974:

“A militia shall be provided and shall consist of all persons over the age of seventeen (17) years, except those persons who may be exempted by the laws of the United States or of this state. The militia may be divided into active and inactive classes and consist of such military organizations as may be provided by law.”

OK, there it is, Hoosiers. I’m supposed to be in the militia, arthritis and all. So are you. Anybody over 17, unless a conscientious objector or otherwise excluded by law, is the militia. We are constitutionally to be more like Switzerland, where kids learn gun safety early on, and everybody plays a part in the defense of the Canton/County, state and nation.  And we used to be until around 1903.  Even more recently, kids still learned gun safety…in public schools!

So, now, still, by law, you are supposed to be trained in the use of weapons, as a militia member, including the sort of weapons that’d make Nancy Pelosi scream, as in Indiana’s Article I Section 32, “…for the defense of themselves and the State.”

(This is why, dammit, you have to read both your state and federal constitutions to get the whole picture when it comes to anything having to do with politics.)

There’s more, of course, but I need to get to the point:
We’re not doing any of this at all, and we need to. Pronto.  

…Why, you may ask?

I’ll repeat this because it’s important:

The second amendment is about citizens taking PERSONAL responsibility for violence!  Citizen militias are much, much less likely to reelect warmongers and meddle with other people’s countries.

Without going into how, why or when we became a global empire of fear and aggression, I want to as quickly as possible, and by big steps, nullify this self-destructive mess, and enforce/invoke/do the constitutions, as written; to restore our freedom, prosperity, opportunity, justice and security, for all.

I want to stand down our professional, global, permanent war industry.  That would not only reduce the obvious blowback of constantly blowing up other people’s countries and people and wedding parties, it would make us more secure here at home.

And a lot richer!

We could afford to actually keep the promises we make to our soldiers in both regular and “National Guard” ranks. We’ve currently no way to keep up with the escalating costs of medical care and pensions. Not until we massively cut our global monstrosity of destruction, and return our military to its proper role and structure in national defense. Real national defense.

I want kids to learn about both the danger and proper use of weapons. That would not only raise up a nation better able to defend itself, it would also greatly reduce the irresponsible, stupid accidents, and unchecked violence in places like Chicago (where guns are essentially illegal and therefore ubiquitous in all the wrong hands) we now suffer.

And I want our armies out of the control of all the wrong people. You know that our government sold out. If you’re reading this, you probably know a good part of our global weaponry is unleashed in service to our financial sector’s fiat currency scams, the “petrodollar” scheme, the CIA (which I’d like to kill, gut and mount on the wall as a warning to future generations that we must never allow such a thing again) and the military industrialists we were warned about by a dozen USA Presidents.

There’s nothing civilized about delegating away all our violence and acting like it’s right. The damage we do to our own children’s lives, minds, bodies, careers and family lives, just to soothe our trembling nerves, is both embarrassing, and sin.

Putting this right would be a major part of making our government go legit, at long last, with world peace a possible side effect.
Would that be so bad?

It’s our decision. We can make this next Election Day a peaceful revolution to finally make good on the dreams of 1776. Please think on it.

Nullification – It already happens, all the time

“Nullification” as a legal doctrine, is very simply, invalidating a law by ignoring it, ruling against it, writing it out of existence, or refusing to enforce or obey it.  When states nullify a federal law, it’s often called “interposition,” but that’s just fancy talk.

Among too many who even understand their meaning, the words “nullification” and “interposition” have somehow acquired a simultaneously religious, conspiratorial and rebellious meaning.

That is weird, because nullification and interposition happen every day, everywhere in the USA. 

If you look up the terms on a legal site or Wikipedia, you will likely read that the practice has never been upheld in court. But that’s bunk-in-action.

Practically all legislation, Executive Orders, bureaucratic rules; practically every high court case and government action at every level nullifies some part of our constitutions, our laws and culture.  Courts nullify legislation all the time…it actually is part of their job.  And it’s absolutely the job of Executives (Governors, the POTUS) to nullify, by denying execution, unconstitutional laws, agencies, expenditures and actions.

Sometimes the nullification is subtle and by parts; such as laws restricting or licensing the right to weapons, or nationalizing our state militias, which increasingly nullify the Second Amendment and our whole constitutional and social design for peace, sane foreign policy, and self-defense.

Sometimes it’s overt; such as when President Obama and the DOJ nullified the Defense Of Marriage Act in 2011; or when Obama essentially nullified the 2006 Secure Fence Act (I’m not saying it was wrong to do so in either case).  Or when the FCC started regulating the internet in violation of a federal court order (that was wrong). …Or when Kim Davis attempted to nullify both a Judge’s and Governor’s nullification of an Amendent of the Kentucky Constitution which nullified the federal constitution (that was a lot of nullification, and I am saying that Davis was wrong to do it).

Or when states decriminalize the use of a plant that never should’ve been criminalized by “federal” “law” (both words having by now lost all their original meaning).

Sometimes the nullification is from ignorance.  Who’s read their state constitution, for instance…so how would anybody know when politicians violate it?

Sometimes it is by brute force when a ‘roid-raging cop nullifies rights literally to death.

Rarely, some smart-Alec citizen invokes a jury’s right to nullify bad laws or bad application of law.  (Juries have tremendous power; though judges never tell jurors that anymore).

Our constitutions have been effectively nullified by the endless stream of political prohibitions and mandates, subsidies and taxes, regulations and corruption absolutely prohibited in the clear writing of our constitutions, both state and federal.

However you look at it, and from every level of government, from the citizen on up, nullification happens every single day.

Every Single Day.

Let that sink in a minute.

Every day.

It happens.

All the time.

Everywhere.

Up to now, there’s been a malevolent direction to that nullification…

In order to make governments, bureaucracies, corporations and programs bigger, costlier, more heavily armed and aggressive, more intrusive, more secretive and even more corrupt (though that last part is getting very hard to do), constitutions at both state and federal levels, had to be nullified.

Not all nullification has been bad.  Courts have nullified what used to be the “settled law”  (stare decisis) of past generations in some good ways.  Slavery exists now mostly in other countries, and our Jim Crow laws are gone, thank God.  But the power the federal government gobbled up in the meantime has been used to heap entirely different evils upon us, such that now, our trans-generational debt/theft machines and their incessant wars are about to cause us horrible grief.

My vote is mine.  It is my weapon.  I won’t waste it anymore on the status quo mess.  I mean to use my power of peaceful revolution as intended.

So here’s all that I will vote for:

I want two things from every level of politics, and every politician:

1. A federal 10^th Amendment / Indiana Article I Section 25 view of our constitutions.

2. Nullification of everything else from from our lives.

I want our constitutions, state and federal, reinstated, by nullifying everything that violates them.  In other words, I want to go legit, and govern our government…as is the actual, written law.

And I won’t vote for any less than that.

But let’s take this one step further…  A big step further.

What are citizens supposed to do when the government oversteps its bounds and stomps on our rights?  Are our only weapons in the ballot box and ammo box?  Must we resort to courts that are more often than not the actual defenders of corruption and constitutional violations?

Claim our rights!  Resist!  Peacefully disobey!  In the streets, in our homes, in our businesses and in juries, we are to nullify!

Article I Section 19 of our Indiana Constitution even enumerates the right of juries to nullify laws: “In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts.”

In other words, we should, as individual citizens in the ordinary course of our lives as well as in official civic duties, nullify all laws, actions, agencies, taxes, fees, programs and agents that transgress their written authority.

After all, as Ben Franklin said, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God!”

For Auld Lang Syne

Well, as some of you have guessed, I’m done blogging.  I see no point in preaching to the choir or banging my head against the reality that there are just too few of us who care about the constitution to effect any sort of workable defense.  And it looks like I have to leave the state anyway.  There’s no work here for me, and nothing to hope for politically.  I’m sorry to say this after spending the first fifty years of my life in the Hoosier State, but unless something changes soon, I’m outta here.

So here’s something of a closing statement:

Our Governor is a good man, but I don’t think he knows what’s coming.  If he did, he’d be immediately and radically chopping through state government, using our constitutions, state and federal, as written, as “The Blade.”

Of course we’ve all become dependent upon and accustomed to the unconstitutional, destructive and violent “programs” of an authoritarian state.  Nobody alive today remembers real American Liberty.  But soon, that won’t matter.  Most of what we’ve come to think government does for us will disappear as our money blows away liked scorched grass.  What will be left is a ruthless, selfish, well-armed and lawless thug – our ancient default state of rulers versus ruled.  The Land of The Free is already gone.

We’ll need to be introspective, retrospective, and a little inventive if we want to save anything at all from what used to be the US of A.

Here’s a start for our Governor: get the state out of the licensing business, and hand the job over to insurance companies and specialized groups such as motorcycle associations and racing clubs.  After all, insurance companies have a fiduciary interest in making sure that drivers know how to drive and riders know how to ride, and special interest groups’ existence depend upon their reputation for safety and education.  Yes, the Governor has cleaned up the licensing function probably as well as can be done for a government function.  But the inherent problem here is that there’s no real, tangible, monetary or structural reason for the state to do a great job.  So it won’t. 

However, companies with a vested interest in your safety (their reputation and profit) would of course do better, and without a taxpayer dime.  Good, safe drivers would get higher-grade licenses and lower rates.  Thrill-prone teenage rednecks would have to prove themselves roadworthy before endangering the rest of us…and they’d pay for their testosterone-laden odds.  Maybe the best drivers would earn higher speed limits.  Living road hazards would walk.  And all this freedom and common sense would be for profit; not for a numb and soviet bureaucracy.

What to do about our welfare state?  No problem.  Same thinking as above.  Get interested experts back into the game by getting politicians (and their involuntary collection plate) out.

Churches and voluntary associations lost their social relevance, numbers, prestige and money when politicians started competing with their services.  Even now, groups like churches, Rotary Clubs and Habitat for Humanity do a better job than FEMA or FSSA could ever do.  So why not get on the phone with these few, tattered and dying groups and say…it’s show time; build up your membership – we’ve got work for you to do.

Those of means would join these groups not just out of a desire to serve their fellow man, but also for networking, parties, prestige…selfishness as well as selflessness all rolled together in humanity’s best enterprise to date: freedom.

When I warned of our impending troubles eight years ago (and I hit the timing right on the button, I’ll add), I said we’re running out of time.  In the 2000 gubernatorial race I’d proposed cutting 7.5% out of government each year until the national/international problems hit.  This would have put Indiana in the catbird seat compared to all other world economies.  Some said my proposals were too radical.

Well, we’re out of time for what seems now like moderate trimming.

Government will cut everything we think we want, but keep all the guns and bombs we fear.  Count on it.  Don’t count on Social Security or “universal healthcare.”  The money will be gone.

It’s time now for us to figure out how we’re to live.

I suggest we do it like Americans.

John Stossel is an American Hero.

I wish I could be a tenth as effective as a Free Market missionary as is John Stossel.  Here is a video that you should watch with your kids, neighbors and coworkers.  It’s excellent.  You can also watch this 20/20 piece, “the Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics” as a six-part YouTube video.

Just do it.

 

Nobody likes “I Told You So”

Here is a younger, much skinnier Andy saying pretty much the same things I’m saying today…and predicting the troubles that you see unfolding before your eyes:

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/includes/templates/library/flash_popup.php?pID=159324-1&clipStart=&clipStop=

If we had cut the budget by 7% per year as I’d proposed back then, we’d be in good shape today.  Now I’m afraid it’s too late for gradual cutting.

I really, really hope I’m wrong about what’s about to smack us upside the head.

I’ve never so badly wanted to be wrong.