Dear Abby,
     My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit-card bills and at the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money. He says pay the minimum and let our kids worry about the rest, but we can hardly keep up with the interest. Also, he has been so arrogant and abusive toward our neighbors that most of them no longer speak to us. The few that do are an odd bunch, to whom he has been giving a lot of expensive gifts, running up our bills even more. Also, he has gotten religious. One week he hangs out with Catholics and the next with people who say the Pope is the Anti-Christ, and the next he’s with Muslims. Finally, the last straw. He’s demanding that before anyone can be in the same room with him, they must sign a loyalty oath. It’s just so horribly creepy! Can you help?     
 
Signed,   Lost    

 
Dear Lost,  Stop whining Michelle. You’re getting to live in the White House for free, travel the world, and have others pay for everything for you. You can divorce the jerk any time you want. The rest of us are stuck with the idiot for almost another year!
    
Signed,  Abby

Staggering $30M theft from tiny Ill. city

By JASON KEYSER
Associated Press
 
CHICAGO (AP) — Allegations that a finance officer for a small northern Illinois city was able to steal a staggering $30 million from government coffers to run a nationally renowned horse breeding business inspired calls Wednesday for more rigorous oversight in small communities that typically face less scrutiny.

Dixon’s mayor pledged new measures to protect the city’s finances a day after FBI agents arrested longtime comptroller Rita Crundwell. She is accused of using the money to fund one of the nation’s leading horse breeding operations and feed a lavish lifestyle that kept her outfitted with cars and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.

According to a criminal complaint, the siphoning of city funds went undetected for years until another staffer filling in as vacation relief became suspicious and discovered a secret bank account. How an enormous sum – it dwarfed the city’s current annual budget of $20 million – could be stolen and escape the notice of a yearly audit left many puzzled.

A Chicago-based corruption watchdog, the Better Government Association, called it a wakeup call for state and local officials to put in place better safeguards, especially in smaller towns that lack rigorous oversight.

“Tens of billions of our tax dollars flow through 7,000 plus units of government in Illinois every year. And we can only watch a few of them,” said the association’s president, Andy Shaw. “Most of them don’t have inspector generals. Most of them don’t have auditor generals. Most of them don’t have watchdog groups looking closely. … It’s ripe for rip-offs.”

Dixon, a city of about 16,000 people west of Chicago where Ronald Reagan grew up, was especially vulnerable because Crundwell, who has been comptroller since the early 1980s, had control over all of the city’s finances, a common arrangement in smaller cities and towns.

Federal prosecutors say she stole $3.2 million since last fall alone and misappropriated more than $30 million since 2006.

Crundwell is free on a $4,500 recognizance bond. A federal judge barred her Wednesday from selling any property while the wire fraud case proceeds and limited her travel to northern Illinois and to Wisconsin, where she has horse ranches.

Agents searching her home, office and farms in Dixon and Beloit, Wis., seized seven trucks and trailers, three pickup trucks, a $2.1 million motor home and a Ford Thunderbird convertible – all allegedly bought with illegal proceeds. Authorities also seized the contents of two bank accounts she controlled.

Between January 2007 and March of this year, she is accused of racking up more than $2.5 million on her personal American Express card – including $339,000 on jewelry – and using Dixon funds to pay back the charges.

Prosecutors say she used $450,000 in stolen funds for operations at her Meri-J Ranch, where she keeps about 150 horses.

Crundwell is one of the top horse breeders in the nation. Her ranch produced 52 world champions, according to the American Quarter Horse Association in Amarillo, Texas, the world’s largest equine breed registry and membership organization.

“Rita has owned more world champions than anyone else in our industry,” said Jim Bret Campbell, the association’s spokesman.

He said she mainly showed her horses in halter classes, competitions where the animals are led by hand rather than ridden and are judged on their beauty. A November photo from the association’s 2011 world championship in Oklahoma City shows a smiling Crundwell posing in a white cowboy hat and spotless white shirt beside a horse named Pizzazzy Lady.

She is so widely known that the association announced her arrest on its website and promised those inquiring more information when it was available.

“People are shocked,” Campbell said of the reaction from the industry.

Dixon placed Crundwell on administrative leave without pay and named a new interim comptroller.

Trying to explain how that much money could disappear unnoticed, Mayor James Burke said Dixon has struggled financially with big infrastructure expenditures, reduced revenues and cash flow problems made worse because the state is far behind on income tax disbursements. That provided plausible reasons to think the extra hole in the budget was related to those financial problems, he said.

How Crundwell could sustain such an extravagant lifestyle on an $80,000 salary was mostly attributed to her success in the horse industry, Burke said.

“She definitely was a trusted employee, although I’ve had some suspicion for quite a while just because of her lifestyle she lived,” Burke said in an interview. “But there wasn’t anything that was brought to my attention or that I could see that would give cause to think that there was something going on.”

He said the city has appointed an independent panel that includes a certified public accountant, a banker and an attorney to recommend internal financial controls.

Marianne Shank, director of the Illinois Government Finance Officers Association, said more training is needed for officials in setting up such controls, including requiring dual signatures in issuing checks, monthly cash flow reports to document budget shortfalls and comprehensive annual financial reports.

“The concern I hear most often is that there are not enough staff to have checks and balances,” she said.

Auditors also talk of the need to divide up financial duties among different staff members, each one acting as a potential check on the other, said Steve Carter, city manager for Champaign, Ill.

“It’s a good lesson for all cities that these things happen and can be very dramatic if you’re not careful and really stress the importance of having those checks and balances in place,” he said.

In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh ,
had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent
form of government.
A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can
vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the
most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally
collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has
been about 200 years.
During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.”
The Obituary follows:

Born 1776, Died 2012
It doesn’t hurt to read this several times.

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul , Minnesota ,
points out some interesting facts concerning the last Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: “In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was
mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.

Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income
tenements and living off various forms of government welfare…”

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the
“complacency and apathy” phase of Professor Tyler’s definition of democracy,
with some forty percent of the nation’s population already having reached
the “governmental dependency” phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal
invaders called illegal’s – and they vote – then we can say goodbye to the
USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message.

If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at
stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom..

This is truly scary!
Of course we are not a democracy, we are a Constitutional Republic .
Someone should point this out to Obama.
Of course we know he and too many others pay little attention to The Constitution.
There couldn’t be more at stake than on Nov 6, 2012.

By DAVE BARRY
McClatchy Newspapers
 
  
It was the kind of year that made a person look back fondly on the Gulf oil spill.
 
It was a year in which a significant earthquake struck Washington , D.C. , yet failed to destroy a single federal agency.
 
It was a year in which the nation was subjected to a barrage of highly publicized pronouncements from Charlie Sheen, a man who, where you have a central nervous system, has a Magic 8-Ball.
 
But all of these unfortunate developments would not, by themselves, have made 2011 truly awful. What made it truly awful was the economy, which, for what felt like the 17th straight year, continued to stagger around like a zombie on crack.
 
Nothing seemed to help. President Obama, whose instinctive reaction to pretty much everything that happens, including sunrise, is to deliver a nationally televised address, delivered numerous nationally televised addresses on the economy, but somehow these did not do the trick.
 
Neither did the 37 million words emitted by the approximately 249 Republican-presidential-contender televised debates, out of which the most memorable statement made was “oops.”
 
As the year wore on, frustration boiled over in the form of the Occupy Various Random Spaces movement, wherein people who were tired of a lot of stuff finally got off their butts and started working for meaningful change via direct action in the form of sitting around and forming multiple committees and not directly issuing any specific demands but definitely having a lot of strongly held views for and against a wide variety of things.
 
Incredibly, even this did not bring about meaningful change. The economy remained wretched, especially unemployment, which got so bad that many Americans gave up even trying to work. Congress, for example.
 
Were there any positive developments in 2011? Yes:
 
- Osama bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi and the New York Yankees all suffered major setbacks.
 
- Despite a prophecy by revered Christian radio lunatic Harold Camping, the world did not end on May 21.
 
That last development wasn’t totally positive, not when we consider all the other things that happened in 2011. Let’s take one last look back, starting with …
 
 
JANUARY … which sees a change of power in the House of Representatives, as outgoing Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi hands the gavel to Republican John Boehner, who has it checked for explosives.
 
In the State of the Union address, President Obama calls on Congress to improve the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. He is interrupted 79 times by applause, and four times by falling chunks of the Capitol ceiling.
 
In Egypt , demonstrators take to the streets to protest the three-decade regime of President Hosni Mubarak after revelations that “Hosni Mubarak” can be rearranged to spell “A Bum Honks Air.” The movement grows in …
 
 
FEBRUARY … when anti-government protest demonstrations spread from Egypt to Yemen, then to Iraq, then to Libya, and finally to the streets of Madison, Wis., where thousands of protesters occupy the state capitol to dramatize the fact that it’s warmer in there than outside.
 
In Europe, the economic crisis continues to worsen, especially in Greece , which has been operating under a financial model in which the government spends approximately $150 billion a year while taking in revenues totaling $336.50.
 
Greece has been making up the shortfall by charging everything to a MasterCard that the Greek government applied for using the name ” Germany .”
 
In a historic episode of the TV quiz show “Jeopardy,” two human champions are swiftly dispatched by an IBM supercomputer named Watson, which combines an encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of subjects with the ability to launch a 60,000-volt surge of electricity 25 feet.
 
In sports, two storied NFL franchises, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers, meet in Super Bowl XLV, a tense battle won at the last minute by Watson, the IBM supercomputer.
 
Speaking of shocking, in …
 
 
MARCH … the European economic crisis worsens as Moody’s downgrades its credit rating for Spain after the discovery that the Spanish government, having run out of money, secretly sold the Pyrenees to China and is now separated from France only by traffic cones.
 
Nationally, Newt Gingrich, responding to a groundswell of encouragement from the voices in his head, reveals that he is considering seeking the Republican presidential nomination. He quickly gains the support of the voter who had been leaning toward Ross Perot.
 
Speaking of leaning, in …
 
 
APRIL … The economic outlook remains troubling, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a rare news conference, consumes an entire bottle of gin. Things are even worse in Europe, where Moody’s announces that it has officially downgraded Greece’s credit rating from “poor” to “rat mucus” after the discovery that the Acropolis has been repossessed.
 
On the political front, the field of Republican contenders considering running for presidential nomination continues to expand with the addition of Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Gary Johnson, all of whom pose a serious threat to gain traction with the Gingrich voter.
 
The month ends as millions of TV viewers around the world watch Prince William and Catherine Middleton get married in a wedding costing the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Somalia .
 
Speaking of joyous, in …
 
 
MAY … the big story takes place in Abbottabad , Pakistan , where Osama bin Laden, enjoying a quiet evening chilling in his compound with his various wives and children and porn stash, receives an unexpected visit from a team of Navy SEALs. After due consideration of bin Laden’s legal rights, the SEALs convert him into Purina brand Shark Chow; he is laid to rest in a solemn ceremony concluding upon impact with the Indian Ocean at 125 miles per hour.
 
While Americans celebrate, the prime minister of Pakistan declares that his nation is very upset about the raid, and had no idea that the world’s most wanted terrorist had been living in a major Pakistani city in a large high-walled compound with a mailbox that said Bin Laden.
 
In domestic affairs, Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals that he fathered the child of a member of his household staff; incredibly, he does not follow this up by announcing that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announces his candidacy but winds up withdrawing from the race about midway through his announcement speech when he realizes that his staff has fallen asleep.
 
Meanwhile, followers of Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping prepare for the Rapture, which Camping prophesied would occur May 21 at 6 p.m. But the fateful hour comes and goes without incident, except in New York City , where, in yet another setback for the troubled production of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” the entire cast is sucked through the theater ceiling, never to be seen again.
 
The drama continues to build in …
 
 
JUNE … when the Republican field does in fact continue to grow as Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, “Mitt” Romney, the late Sonny Bono and somebody calling himself “Jon Huntsman” all enter the race.
 
In Washington , Congress is under mounting pressure to do something about the pesky federal debt, which continues to mount as a result of the fact that the government continues to spend insanely more money than it actually has.
 
Congress, after carefully weighing its three options — stop spending so much money; get some more money somehow; or implement some combination of options one and two — decides to go with option four: continue to do nothing while engaging in relentlessly hyperpartisan gasbaggery. Incredibly, this does not solve the debt problem.
 
Perhaps the month’s most disturbing development is in the Middle East when Iran, which is believed to be close to developing nuclear weapons, test-fires 14 missiles, including some capable of threatening U.S. interests, as becomes clear when one of them plunges through the theater roof during a matinee performance of the troubled musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.”
 
Speaking of disturbing, in …
 
 
JULY … the eyeballs of the nation are riveted on Orlando, Fla., where Casey Anthony is on trial on charges of being an attractive young woman who is definitely guilty of murder, according to millions of deeply concerned individuals watching on TV.
 
In a shocking verdict, Anthony is acquitted of murder and set free, only to be attacked outside the courtroom and have large clumps of her hair yanked out by outraged prominent TV legal harpy Nancy Grace.
 
Speaking of drama: In Washington, as the deadline for raising the federal debt limit nears, Congress and the Obama administration work themselves into a frenzy trying to figure out what to do about the fact that the government is spending insanely more money than it actually has.
 
After hours of negotiations, and a nationally televised presidential address, the Democrats and the Republicans announce that they have come to an agreement under which the government will continue to spend insanely more money than it actually has while a very special congressional committee — a supercommittee — comes up with a plan that will solve this problem.
 
On a positive note, NFL owners and players settle their dispute, thereby averting the very real danger that millions of Fantasy Football enthusiasts would be forced to get lives.
 
Speaking of threats, in …
 
 
AUGUST … Wall Street becomes increasingly jittery as investors react to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Bernanke’s surprise announcement that his personal retirement portfolio consists entirely of assault rifles.
 
In political news, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announces that he will seek the Republican nomination with a goal of “restoring the fundamental American right to life, liberty and a third thing.”
 
But the early GOP leader is Michele Bachmann, who scores a decisive victory in the crucial Ames , Iowa , Straw Poll, garnering a total of 11 votes. In what will become a pattern for GOP front-runners, Bachmann’s candidacy immediately sinks like an anvil in a duck pond.
 
As the end of the month nears, a rare 5.8-magnitude earthquake, with its epicenter in Virginia, rattles the East Coast, except in New York, where a theatrical set depicting a building topples over onto the cast of “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.”
 
Speaking of disasters, in …
 
 
SEPTEMBER … the worsening European debt crisis worsens still further when Italy , desperate for revenue, establishes a National Tip Jar.
 
Meanwhile, in the U.S. , Herman Cain surges to the top of the pile with his “9-9-9″ plan, which combines the quality of being easy to remember with the quality of being something that nobody thinks will ever happen. Seeking to regain momentum, Rick Perry also comes out with a tax plan, but he can remember only the first two nines. Adding spice to the mix, “Mitt” Romney unexpectedly exhibits a lifelike facial expression, but is quickly subdued by his advisers.
 
Later in the month, an anxious world looks to the skies, as a NASA satellite weighing more than 6 tons goes into an uncontrolled re-entry, breaking into fiery pieces that fortunately come down at sea, where they do no damage other than sink a passenger ship that had been chartered for a recuperation cruise for the surviving cast members of “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.”
 
The downward trend continues in …
 
 
OCTOBER … which sees yet another troubling development in the world economic crisis when an International Monetary Fund audit of the 27-nation European Union reveals that 11 of the nations are missing.
 
In the Arab world, Moammar Gadhafi steps down and receives an enthusiastic send-off from his countrymen, who then carry him, amid much festivity, to his retirement freezer.
 
On the political front, Sarah Palin announces she will not seek the Republican presidential nomination, noting that the field is “already funny enough.”
 
In sports, one of the most exciting World Series in history is won by some team other than the New York Yankees.
 
Humanity reaches a major milestone as the United Nations estimates the population of the Earth has reached 7 billion people, every single one of whom sends you irritating e-mails inviting you to join LinkedIn.
 
The month ends on a tragic note when Kim Kardashian, who only 72 days earlier had a fairy-tale $10 million wedding to the love of her life, professional basketball player whatshisname, files for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences in height.
 
Speaking of fairy tales, in …
 
 
NOVEMBER … the congressional Supercommittee announces that, in the true “can-do” bipartisan Washington spirit, it is giving up.
 
Undaunted, Democratic and Republican leaders move forward with the vital work of blaming each other.
 
In yet more political news, the Republican Party is rocked by polls showing that 43 percent of all likely voters — nearly 55 million people — claim to have been sexually harassed by Herman Cain.
 
With Mitt Romney continuing to generate the excitement level of a dump fire, the GOP front-runner becomes none other than that fresh-faced, no-baggage, anti-establishment Washington outsider: Newt Gingrich.
 
The month ends as Americans pause to observe Thanksgiving very much as the Pilgrims did in 1621, by pepper-spraying each other at malls.
 
Speaking of pausing, in …
 
 
DECEMBER … Herman Cain announces that he is suspending his presidential campaign so he can go home and spend more time sleeping in his basement. This leaves the Republicans with essentially a two-man race between Gingrich and Romney.
 
Abroad, the member nations of the European Union, in a last-ditch effort to avoid an economic meltdown, announce they are replacing the “euro” with the “pean,” the exchange rate for which will be linked to the phases of the moon.
 
The economic outlook is also brighter in Washington , where Congressional leaders, still working night and day to find a solution to the problem of the federal government spending insanely more money than it actually has, announce that they will form another committee. But this one will be even better, because it will be a Superdupercommittee, and it will possess what House and Senate leaders describe as “magical powers.”
 
So the nation is in good hands, and as the year comes to an end, throngs of New Year’s revelers, hoping for better times to come, gather in Times Square to watch the descent of the famous illuminated ball, followed by the rise of what appears to be a mushroom cloud from the direction of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”
 
No need to worry: The president plans a nationally televised address. So everything will be fine. Happy New Year!

by Roger Hedgecock [former Mayor of San Diego]

12/09/2011

I live in California. If you were wondering what living in Obama’s second term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there now.
California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democratic Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%.

California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it “Medi-Cal.” Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers, and smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago. Good job, Brownie.

This week, the once and current Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown had to confess that the “balanced” state budget adopted five months ago was billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower than the airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was predicated.

After trimming legislators’ perks and reducing the number of cell phones provided to state civil servants, the governor intoned that drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state programs for the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren. California government needed more money.

Echoing the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay their fair share. Fair share? The top 1% of California income earners currently pays 50% of the state’s income tax.

California has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is 9.3%, which is slapped on the greedy rich earning at least $47,056 a year. Income of more than $1 million pays the “millionaires’ and billionaires’” surcharge tax rate of 10.3%.

Brown’s proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000. A million-dollar income would then be taxed at 12.3%. And  that’s just for the state.

Brown also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would bring sales taxes (which vary by county) up to 7.75% to [as much as] 10%. Both tax increases would be on the ballot in 2012.

The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought howls of protest from the Left (of Brown!). Charlie Eaton, a sociology grad student at UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, “We’ve paid enough. It’s time for millionaires to pay.”

At least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for signatures to get on the 2012 ballot in California. The governor’s proposals are the most conservative.

The Obama way doesn’t end with taxes.

The governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts of the California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. Even though the budget is three times the voter-approved amount, and the first segment will only connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley. But hey, if we build it, they will ride.

And we don’t want to turn down the Obama bullet-train bucks Florida and other states rejected because the operating costs would bankrupt them. Can’t happen here—we’re already insolvent.

If we get into real trouble with the train, we’ll just bring in the Chinese. It worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989 earthquake, the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was rebuilt with steel made in China. Workers from China too. Paid for with money borrowed from China. Makes perfect sense.

In California, we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in Hollywood and in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich.

Illegals get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free medical care, free schools for their kids, including meals, and of course, instate tuition rates and scholarships too. Governor Perry, California has a heart. Nothing’s too good for our guests.

To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal immigration, the California Legislature is considering a unilateral state amnesty. Democrat State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes has proposed an initiative that would bar deportation of illegals from California.

Interesting dilemma for Obama there. If immigration is exclusively a federal matter, and Obama has sued four states for trying to enforce federal immigration laws he won’t enforce, what will the President do to a California law that exempts California from federal immigration law?

California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of deindustrialization.

After driving out the old industrial base (auto and airplane assembly, for example), air and water regulators and tax policies are now driving out the high-tech, biotech and even Internet-based companies that were supposed to be California’s future.

The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing CO2 makes our state the leader in wacky environmentalism and guarantees a further job exodus from the state.

Even green energy companies can’t do business in California. Solyndra went under, taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it.

No job is too small to escape the regulators. The state has even banned weekend amateur gold miners from the historic gold mining streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

In fact, more and more of California’s public land is off-limits to recreation by the people who paid for that land. Unless you’re illegal. Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana plantations at will, bring in fertilizers that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit illegal farm workers who live in hovels with no running water or sanitation, and protect your investment with armed illegals carrying guns no California citizen is allowed to own.

The rest of us only found out about these plantations when the workers’ open campfire started one of those devastating fires that have killed hundreds of people and burned out thousands of homes in California over the last decade.

It was said after California’s Proposition 13 in 1978 cut property tax rates and was copied in other states, that whatever happened in California would soon happen in your state.

You’d better hope that’s wrong.

By: Walter E. Williams

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/

National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers — via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association — to develop features that “disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion.” That means she wants to be able to turn off your cellphone while you’re driving.

With very little evidence, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration claims that there were some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year that involved distracted drivers. Americans ought to totally reject Hersman’s agenda. It’s the camel’s nose into the tent. Down the road, we might expect mandates against talking to passengers while driving or putting on lipstick. They may even mandate the shutdown of drive-in restaurants as a contributory factor to driver distraction through eating while driving. You say, “Come on, Williams, you’re paranoid. There are already laws against distracted driving, and it would never come to that!” Let’s look at some other camels’ noses into tents.

During the legislative debate before enactment of the 16th Amendment, Republican President William Taft and congressional supporters argued that only the rich would ever pay federal income taxes. In fact, in 1913, only one-half of 1 percent of income earners were affected. Those earning $250,000 a year in today’s dollars paid 1 percent, and those earning $6 million in today’s dollars paid 7 percent. The 16th Amendment never would have been enacted had Americans not been duped into believing that only the rich would pay income taxes. It was simply a lie to exploit American gullibility and envy.

The fact of the matter is that the founders of our nation so feared the imposition of direct taxes, such as an income tax, that Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution says, “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” It was not until the Abraham Lincoln administration that an income tax was imposed on Americans. Its stated purpose was to finance the war, but it took until 1872 for it to be repealed. During the Grover Cleveland administration, Congress enacted the Income Tax Act of 1894. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1895. It took the 16th Amendment (1913) to make permanent what the founders feared.
Another camel’s nose in the tent lie that’s threatening the economic collapse of our country is the Medicare lie. At its beginning, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Lyndon Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. That’s nine times Congress’ prediction. Today’s Medicare tab comes to $523 billion and shows no signs of leveling off. The 2009 Medicare trustees report put the unfunded Medicare liability at $89 trillion. The 1966 Medicare cost estimate was simply a congressional and White House lie to get the American people to buy into their agenda. But not to worry; the real Medicare crisis won’t hit the nation until today’s beneficiaries and political supporters are dead. It’s today’s children who’ll bear the burden of our profligacy.

But back to the proposed cellphone ban. NTSB Chairwoman Hersman said: “It’s going to be very unpopular with some people. We’re not here to win a popularity contest. We’re here to do the right thing.” C.S. Lewis warned us about people like Hersman, saying: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

 Andrew Roberts Historian

ANDREW ROBERTS received his Ph.D. at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he is also an honorary senior scholar. He has written or edited 12 books, including A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945, and The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War. The following are excerpts from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on October 7, 2011, at the dedication of a statue of Ronald Reagan by Hillsdale College Associate Professor of Art Anthony Frudakis. The defining feature of Ronald Reagan was his moral courage. It takes tremendous moral courage to resist the overwhelming tide of received opinion and so-called expert wisdom and to say and do exactly the opposite. It could not have been pleasant for Reagan to be denounced as an ignorant cowboy, an extremist, a warmonger, a fascist, or worse by people who thought themselves intellectually superior to him. Yet Reagan responded to those brickbats with the cheery resolve that characterized not only the man, but his entire career. What is more, he proceeded during his two terms as president to prove his critics completely wrong . . . . During Reagan’s presidency, America enjoyed its longest period of sustained economic growth in the 20th century. Meanwhile, in the realm of foreign policy, the Reagan Doctrine led to the defeat of the worst totalitarian scourge to blight the globe since the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. By the time he left office, the faith of Americans in the greatness of their country had been restored. In retrospect, Reagan’s was a great American success story. Born in rented rooms above a bank in Tampico, Illinois, he ended his days as the single most important American conservative figure of the last century. Not bad for an ignorant cowboy. From his own reading and observation of life, Reagan understood that the doctrines of Marxism and Leninism were fundamentally opposed to the deepest and best impulses of human nature. Enforcing such doctrines would require vicious oppression, including propaganda, secret police such as the KGB, a debased and corrupt judicial system, huge standing armies stationed across Eastern Europe, children spying on their parents, the Berlin Wall, a gagged media, a shackled populace, a privileged nomenklatura, prisons posing as psychiatric hospitals, puppet trade unions, a subservient academy, and above all, what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dubbed a “gulag archipelago” of concentration camps. In sum, the entire apparatus that Reagan characterized so truthfully in a March 1983 speech as an “evil empire.” Yet he was immediately accused—not just in Russia, but also here in the West—of being mad, bad, and dangerous. He was written off as stupid, provocative, and oafish by huge swaths of the Western commentariat. Today, thanks to his published correspondence, we know that he was anything but. Indeed, he was very widely read and a thoughtful man, but it suited his purposes to be underestimated by his opponents. The cultural condescension of those experts and intellectuals who denounced his evil empire speech as unacceptably simplistic—even simple-minded—might have been despicable, but it worked to Reagan’s advantage. Although history was to prove him right in every particular about the true nature of the U.S.S.R., none of his critics have ever admitted as much, at least publicly, let alone apologized. What helped to make Reagan great was that he couldn’t care less what his critics thought of him. He knew the image of the swaggering cowboy was very far removed from reality, but if his opponents chose to be mesmerized by it, all the better for him. It was he, not they, who in 1987 would stand at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and demand: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The Left’s strategy of détente had been tried for 40 years, and it had led to ever wider Communist incursions, especially during the 1970s, into territories across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Reagan Doctrine, by contrast, marked a turn away from the doctrine of containment, adhered to by every president since Harry Truman. Reagan bravely declared that communism’s global march would not merely be checked but reversed. For decades the Politburo in the Kremlin had been testing the West’s defenses, looking for weakness. Where it encountered strength and willpower, as during the Berlin airlift and the Cuban missile crisis, it pulled back. Where, as was all too often the case, it instead found vacillation and appeasement, it thrust forward until whole countries fell under its control. Under the Reagan Doctrine, non-Communist governments would be supported actively, and Communist governments, wherever they were not firmly established, would be undermined and if possible overthrown. Reagan did not act in the name of American imperialism, as his opponents predictably alleged, but rather in the name of human dignity. As he fought the Communists, he received gradually more and more support from the American people. He supported anti-Communist movements in Poland, El Salvador, and Guatemala, as well as open insurgencies in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Laos, and Nicaragua. The Kremlin soon recognized that in Reagan it had a powerful and committed ideological foe on its hands, one who took seriously JFK’s words in his Inaugural Address, that the United States “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Believing in American exceptionalism, Reagan deployed an extensive political, economic, military, and psychological arsenal to confront the Soviet Union. And he did so mostly through proxies: Except for the Caribbean island of Grenada, where American citizens were in danger, he did not commit American troops to the battle . . . . * * * In the 1980s, Americans felt confident enough in their country’s future to spend, produce, and consume in a way they hadn’t under Jimmy Carter and don’t today. Reagan genuinely believed, as the 1984 campaign slogan put it, that it was “Morning in America.” His confidence in the country and its abilities spread to the American people and to the markets. After all, strong, confident leadership is infectious. There can be a virtuous cycle in economics, just as there can be a vicious one. Reagan’s Economic Recovery Act and his Tax Reform Act were the twin pillars of America’s renaissance in the 1980s. He reduced the highest marginal tax rate to 28 percent and simplified the tax code. He deregulated industry, tightened the money supply, and reduced the growth of public expenditure. By 1983, America had completely recovered economically, and by 1988, inflation, which had been at 12.5 percent under Carter, was down to 4.4 percent. Furthermore, unemployment came down to 5.5 percent as 18 million new jobs were created. In one area, however, Reagan knew that he had to increase public spending dramatically, if the global threats to America were to be neutered. The overly cautious, nerve-wracked, and humiliated America of 1979 and 1980—when 52 American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran for 444 days and were paraded, hooded and blindfolded, in the streets—was about to give way to a virile and self-confident America. It was no accident that, on the very day of Reagan’s inauguration, the Iranian regime released the hostages rather than face the fury of the incoming President. It was the last smart thing that regime ever did. When Reagan entered office, defense spending had fallen to less than five percent of GDP from over 13 percent in the 1950s. His belief that the Soviet system would eventually crack under steady Western pressure encouraged him to increase defense spending from $119 billion under Carter to $273 billion in 1986, a level that the U.S.S.R. simply could not begin to match. The Left criticized what they believed to be wasteful spending, but this expenditure led to a massive savings once the U.S.S.R. no longer posed the global existential threat it once had. America had achieved a huge technological advantage by the 1980s, which allowed Reagan to embark on the controversial Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars” by its opponents. The system was based on the idea that incoming ballistic missiles could be destroyed over the Atlantic or even earlier. Though the technology was still very much in its infancy, judicious leaking of suitably exaggerated test results further rattled the Soviet leadership. As Vladimir Lukin, the Soviet foreign policy expert and later ambassador to the U.S., admitted to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1992: “It is clear that SDI accelerated our catastrophe by at least five years.” Besides SDI, Reagan pursued rapid deployment forces, the neutron bomb, the MX Peacekeeper missile, Trident nuclear submarines, radar-evading stealth bombers, and new ways of looking at battlefield strategies and tactics . . . . In response to the deployment of these weapons, the Left issued strident denunciations and organized massive anti-American demonstrations all across Europe. These were faced down with characteristic moral courage by Ronald Reagan, ably supported by Margaret Thatcher. “Reagan’s great virtue,” said his former Secretary of State George Shultz, “was that he did not accept that extensive political opposition doomed an attractive idea. He would fight resolutely for an idea, believing that if it was valid, he could persuade the American people to support it.” . . . In the words of Margaret Thatcher, Reagan helped the world break free of a monstrous creed. He understood that, in addition to being morally bankrupt—as it had been since the Bolshevik Revolution—the Soviet system was also financially bankrupt. Numerous so-called five-year plans had not delivered, because human beings simply will not work hard for an all-powerful state that will not pay them fairly for their labor. By contrast, Reagan believed that low taxes, a minimal state, a reduction in bureaucratic regulation, and a commitment to free market economics would lead to a dramatic expansion of the American economy. This would enable America to pay for a defense build-up so large that the Soviets would have to declare a surrender in the Cold War. That surrender began on September 12, 1989, when a non-Communist government took office in Poland. Within two months, on the night of November 9, the people of East and West Berlin tore down the wall that had separated them for over a quarter of a century. This was the greatest of Reagan’s many fine legacies. The extension of freedom to Eastern Europe was not merely a political or military or economic phenomenon for Reagan; it was a spiritual one, too. Reagan believed that America had lost its sense of providential mission, and he meant to re-establish it. Beneath his folksy charm and anecdotes was a steely will and a determination to re-establish the moral superiority of democracy over totalitarianism, of the individual over the state, of freedom of speech over censorship, of faith over government-mandated atheism, and of free enterprise over the command economy. As the leader of the free world, he saw it as his responsibility to defend, extend, and above all proselytize for democracy and human dignity. Reagan understood leadership in a way that I fear is sadly lacking in the West today. “To grasp and hold a vision,” he said in 1994, “that is the very essence of successful leadership. Not only on the movie set where I learned it, but everywhere.” Indeed, in some ways the world is an even more perilous place than it was in Reagan’s day. For all its undoubted evil, at least the Soviet Union was predictable, and it was fearful of the consequences of mutually assured destruction. By contrast, President Ahmadinejad of Iran is building a nuclear bomb while publicly calling for Israel to be wiped off the map. We know from the experience of 9/11 that Al Qaeda and its affiliates would not hesitate to explode a nuclear device in America if they got the chance. As the IRA pronounced when it narrowly missed murdering Margaret Thatcher in 1984: “You have to be lucky every time, we only have to be lucky once.” Yet, when looking at the dangers facing civilization today, there is this one vital difference from 30 years ago: I can see no leaders of the stamp of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher presently on hand to infuse us with that iron purpose and that sense of optimism that we had in the 1980s. Indeed, some of our present-day leaders only seem to make matters worse. This is why it is all the more important to erect splendid statues like this one. “The longer you can look back,” said Winston Churchill, “the further you can look forward.” The point of raising a statue to Ronald Reagan is not just to honor him, although it rightly does do that. A statue inspires and encourages the rest of us to try and emulate his deeds, to live up to his ideals, to finish his work, and to “grasp and hold” his vision. Reagan wrote in his farewell message to the American people in November 1994 announcing his retirement from public life: “When the Lord calls me home, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America, there will always be a bright dawn ahead.” Though characteristically upbeat, it will only remain true so long as America continues to produce leaders with the moral courage and the leadership abilities of Ronald Reagan, one of America’s greatest presidents. ——————————————————————————– | More ——————————————————————————– Copyright © 2011 Hillsdale College. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. 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