Taxes & Regulation: The Black Hole of Government Waste and Corruption

"Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job." So stated an October 2009 report written by Brian M. Riedl, a Grover M. Hermann Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation---http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/10/50-examples-of-government-waste

Businesses are forced to provide that money. But Obama refuses to cut such spending. He demands more revenue.

Tea Party Republicans argue against raising taxes and for spending cuts. But Warren Buffett wrote that the very rich should be taxed more.

John C. Goodman, president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis---a free-market think tank---stated, "Consider that when Warren Buffett is consuming, he's benefiting himself. When he's saving and investing, he's benefiting you and me. Every time Buffett . . . puts his money in the capital market, he's doing an enormous favor for everyone else. A larger capital stock means higher productivity and that means everyone can have more income for the same amount of work."

The following day Jeff Carter, an independent speculator, published "The Buffett Deception." Mr. Carter wrote, "Mr. Buffett has had a great career buying companies and integrating them into his empire. He ought to stick to that. His recent editorial in the New York Times shows the flaws in many arguments that come from the left. . . . Buffett's logic also discounts how many Mom and Pop small businesses pay at the highest marginal rate."

Mr. Goodman and Mr. Carter's articles are premised on free markets economics. Obama and Mr. Buffett's views are premised on the political philosophy of Marx and Engels.

Free market economics is concerned with the production of values. It recognizes that individuals must be free to think in order to build businesses and create values. Businesspeople---employer and employee alike---must be efficient, organized and resourceful. Their efforts swiftly raise the standard of living for everyone when government does not interfere. When government does interfere, businesspeople's efforts are stifled and the standard of living is slowed,then curtailed, and finally reversed.

Leftist's political philosophy is focused on distributing the property of those that have created and/or earned it to those who have not. Such a focus relies on government-enforced distribution, which means government interference in the economy primarily through taxes and regulations.

Taxes and regulations do not increase business. They do not create more enterprises. They do not create values or jobs. They do not raise the standard of living.

But Obama refuses to cut spending. He demands more revenue.

Taxes are spent to finance government officials and their programs. They are spent to pay government salaries, which on average exceed that of most businesspeople. They are spent to maintain the offices of almost a thousand government agencies, each with large staffs. Taxes are spent on duplicate programs, inefficient work and mismanagement. For instance, "Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties." Taxes are wasted through fraud: "The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008."

But Obama refuses to cut spending and instead demands more revenue. When he does talk about cuts in spending he names Social Security, which owes those who were forced to pay into it out of earnings. He does not mention the 70+ programs that could be cut to save over $4.2 trillion without touching Social Security.

Taxes should be spent to pay for the three proper functions of government:
the police, the military and the courts. When tax money does not go to the proper functions of government it goes to improper functions.

Mr. Riedl writes, "A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases ongovernment credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled.
Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, including "over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold." The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece."

In addition, recall the millions of taxpayer money that Obama spent on a 500-man entourage to visit Great Britain.

But Obama refuses to cut spending. He demands more revenue.

Andrew K. Dart writing "The Pork Page," http://www.akdart.com/pork.html, lists a hundred misuses of taxpayer funds. Here are two examples:

"Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) while claiming to be a fiscal conservative, requested 149 projects worth $1.6 billion for authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010."

In December 2010, a bill "written by . . . members of the Appropriations Committee proposed spending nearly $8.3 billion." The earmarks included $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; $413,000 for peanut research in Alabama; $235,000 for noxious weed management inNevada; and $300,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii.

Onerous taxes and strangling regulations do not create prosperity. They obliterate it. Taxes drain business resources into a black hole of government avarice, corruption and waste. Regulations do not protect the consumer. They strangle the producer.

Taxes and regulations ravage the nation's savings, suffocate ambition, undermine business operations, erase certainty and penalize the successful while rewarding the indigent.

Tea Party Republicans are attacked almost every day on various interview shows and in the news. They are attacked because they refuse to give in to the Left's political philosophy of tax, spend, borrow,tax. Let us make certain to increase the number of Tea Party Republicans come 2012.

Ideas and Politics

It is not unusual to hear politicians express contempt for philosophical ideas while simultaneously claiming they are Progressives and Pragmatist---as if those words did not give title to volumes of philosophical ideas---each resting upon the most lethal premise in man’s history.

While many Republicans---conservative and liberal alike---steep themselves in social issues of highly charged emotionality, such as abortion, they evade or ignore fundamental ideas. Some fail to distinguish between concretes and fundamentals completely, thus disarming themselves for a battle that requires intellectual clarity and moral certitude.

Fundamental ideas give rise to, make possible and color every concrete with which an individual deals. To evade or ignore them is to invite disaster. That’s what has happened to the Republican Party. They have for too long mouthed the same Democrat pap that we’ve heard scores of times. If the Democrats, for instance, say they want to provide universal health care, the Republicans do not denounce such a flagrant attack on individual rights. Instead they say, “Yes, we do too, but not your way.” On this issue as on every other, the Republicans are on the same page with the Democrats, singing the same tune, using the same chords, merely in a different key.

Some politicians claim that voters are not interested in ideas. This is patently false. The grassroots assuredly are interested in ideas, as witness the avalanche of interest in Ayn Rand’s books---which deal exclusively with the dramatization of ideas. American voters are not indifferent to ideas as the lines at libraries, the sales in bookstores and the explosion of blogs attests. At present they are looking for ideas more eagerly than ever before.

The Republican Party has said that it wants to figure out how to re-invigorate the GOP. They can do it if they throw out collectivist ideas. This will disassociate the party from past mistakes. In lieu of discarded collectivism, the GOP should rally Americans to the restoration of individual rights, the only effective way to counteract the Obama government's collectivist assault on the American people. The restoration of our individual rights protects our freedoms, makes possible limited government, and leads to capitalism.

The grassroots recognizes the validity and importance of the right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They understand the connection between their individual rights and their choice of work, keeping what they earn, disposing of their income as they see fit, choosing their own doctor and paying their own way. They are fully aware that when one takes from the producer/earner to give to the non-earner, one is depleting savings. They know that reducing savings reduces investment in productive enterprises, which chokes growth, which reduces the standard of living.

Collectivism holds that the individual exists for the state. For decades Democrats have advocated taking from the earner and giving to the non-earner. They have advocated enforced unionization, enforced medical care, enforced social security, enforced public education, enforced business regulation. Obama’s Administration has crystallized this practice.

The grassroots has been clearly shown the irresponsible spending that blasts through the stratosphere, the disastrous regulations and take-overs of companies, the harassment and intimidation of businessmen, the support of corrupt union leaders against the membership, the appeasement of our enemies and the snubbing of our allies, the attempts at “fishy” censorship, and now, recently, the attempt to shut down free expression on the net. They have been told the topsy-turvy collectivist line that a rich nation is a bad nation, that producers/earners are demonical threats to society, that those who create jobs are exploitative, that dissent is unpatriotic (now, but wasn't during the 1960s), that supporting countries that deserve it is intolerant but kissing thugs and bowing to savage rulers is sensitive diplomacy.

The preceding are all concrete expressions of a fundamental idea: statism. Statism is the culmination of collectivism, the rule of brute force, in which the state is supreme, the individual subservient to the ruler in all respects and instances. Statism is the complete destruction of the individual and his rights.

To stop the Obama Administration’s giddy plunge toward statism, the Republican Party would be foolish---and self-destructive---not to join the grassroots and commit itself to the restoration of individual rights. The GOP could seek no greater re-generation than to re-establish the abstract ideas this country was founded on: individual rights, limited government and capitalism, and their concrete social expression, our constitutional freedoms: freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, of worship, and to keep and bear arms.

Collectivists say might makes right. But it does not. Rights make right. If the Republican Party wants to be a viable political party, they must self-righteously proclaim the practical virtue of individual rights, a moral principle that assures peace and prosperity. Nothing more than this is needed. Nothing short of this will win.

The Nobel Peace Prize & Mr. Obama's Intentions

Americans are well aware that these are troubling times. Things have been turned upside down. We are told that obeying government edicts constitutes "freedom." We are told that government health and insurance plans are "competition." We are offered movies dramatizing the view that a free-market economy---which made this country the richest nation in the world---is barbaric and exploitative.

One sometimes feels that the entire world has gone insane. A case in point is awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Mr. Obama for his intentions.

Certainly, Mr. Obama has shown us his intentions.
1. He intends to force every American into government health care and insurance plans whether they want it or not, and to force us to pay a penalty if we refuse.
2. He intends to enact censorship. His "fishy" expedition was merely a trial balloon. He has now gone a step farther. He wants the FBI to monitor the net and fine and/or jail those who dare to dissent from his views.
3. He intends to disarm every American, thereby violating our right to keep and bear arms.
4. He intends to violate our right to peaceably assemble. Police are instructed to arrest those who form a group of more than ten. Others are arrested without cause.

These are only some of Mr. Obama's intentions. Are any of them good? Do they take cognizance of our freedoms stated in the Constitution? Do they acknowledge our individual rights to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? They do not. Every one of Mr. Obma's intentions promises to generate hostility, anger and violence, if not outright rebellion. Should such intentions be awarded a peace prize? They should not.

It is not surprising that Norwegian officials would consider Mr. Obama's intention to crush Americans' individual rights as meriting an award. Like most European countries, individuals there regard themselves as subjects---not citizens---and have no idea what a right is. The Nobel Committee would be composed of such individuals. They would be pre-disposed to award the intention to destroy the characteristic unique to Americans, i.e., the recognition that each individual is a sovereign and autonomous intellect. That is the essential meaning of individualism. It is what Mr. Obama intends to destroy. From his actions, there is no other conclusion to reach.

The result of Mr. Obama's acts and intentions is that he and his administration have driven an angry and bitter wedge between Americans and their government. Franklin D. Roosevelt was widely disliked and referred to disdainfully as "that man in the White House." But Americans--- thanks to enterprising businessmen---got on with their lives, found jobs, moved to less-congested areas and discovered ways to pick up the pieces left by government interference in the economy. McCarthy and Nixon were tarred and feathered by the media, but generally Americans were split on their assessment of both men's effectiveness. Johnson was distrusted for his back-room politicking, but Americans were more concerned about Civil Rights. Government shortcomings did not create a hostile gulf between our representatives and us.

Mr. Obama has changed things. As promised. Never has there been such deep alienation between Americans and government officials as presently exists in this country. As his acts took form and his intentions unfolded, many Americans for the first time in their lives began to fear the government. Then, as violations of our rights followed more such violations, fear turned into outrage and Americans started to fight back. Their fight is paying off. Those in government are now starting to fear Americans.

That's understandable. Most government officials are no longer Americans. As a nationality, Americans are identified around the world and in their own minds as champions of individual rights, limited government and free markets. But the majority of government personnel---elected, appointed and hired---no longer hold such values. They retain the nationality but that is all. They have betrayed their loyalty to fundamental American values for "pull," for private jets and fine houses, for special medical and insurance plans and salaries that exceed most middle class incomes, all of which the American producer/earner pays for.

The decline of our representative republic toward statism has been gradual and is at present incomplete. Mr. Obama is seeking to complete it. Most government officials and their supporters are rushing to help him.

His Organizing for America, for instance, brazenly performed a skit in which collectivism destroyed individualism. OFA members laughed raucously and loudly applauded. Knowing full well that decades of Soviet collectivism murdered millions on farms and in cities, in frozen Siberian gulags, in the dungeons of the Soviet "police," in countless, unrecorded suicides, Mr. Obama's OFA cheers for collectivism. Knowing full well the terror and agony in which people existed under communism, and refusing to consider the strangled ambitions, the corruption and repeated "Five Year Plans" promising utopia in the future but requiring that wheat be imported from the USA, Mr. Obama's OFA members chanted "Go Communism!"

No matter whether one calls their efforts progressivism, socialism, communism or fascism, it is all the same and it's all collectivism. And collectivism is what Mr. Obama intends for the United States of America.

I hope Americans will embrace their values and not let go of them. I hope they will vote into public office those who will advocate the restoration of our individual rights. We must not allow Mr. Obama to get away with his intentions. 2010 is not that far away. It is time to start working to replace all those who support Mr. Obama and his intentions.

Capitalism vs the Welfare State: The Next Vote

Let's sort out some things.

As a political and economic system, socialism is government ownership and management of the means of production and distribution of goods, the control of money, and the abolition of profit and private property. These ideas also describe communism and progressivism.

Socialism originated at the end of the 18th century in several "social studies." The studies evaded the Enlightenment's giant strides in providing jobs and raising the standard of living of hundreds of thousands who had been far worse off before the advent of the Industrial Revolution.

In the 1840s, the term communism was coined to describe a militant form of socialism. Marx and Engels used the word in the title of their work, The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. Later both Marx and Engels referred to themselves as socialists, and Marx's work remains the basis of socialist thought.

In 1878, a schism split communists from socialists. The socialists advocated "gradualism," the idea that capitalist society could be changed by reform from within. The communists advocated the violent overthrow of government. It was only a matter of methodology. They remained glued together by their fundamental ideas.

Progressivism started sometime after the Civil War as an attempt to help poor people through self-help programs operated by private charities. Progressives usurped the effort. They, too, evaded the advances achieved by the Industrial Revolution.

As early as the 1890s, progressives elected politicians who promised to take over utilities, improve city services and tenement housing codes. Other states joined in. By 1903 a wide range of progressive political and economic ideas were adopted to regulate railroads and utilities. They pressured government to raise corporate taxes. They advocated workmen's compensation---paid for by businesses---and child labor laws, which denied income to the very poor.

In 1906 progressives passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1913 progressives established the Federal Reserve. In 1914, they established the Federal Trade Commission and the Anti-Trust Act, extending government regulation of business. In 1916, they again raised corporate taxes, organized a railroad commission to set rates and established a conservation commission.

World War I interrupted the progressive's juggernaut lumbering toward total government control of the economy. However, it was resumed with the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, although now referred to as the welfare state. Another name, the same ideas.

The sameness of these doctrines, which many people believe represent different points of view, arises from a single source.

There are only two ways to regard man's relationship to society: either he has the right to live for his own sake, or he must live for others. Whichever principle you espouse places you in one or the other of opposing camps.

If you accept the principle that man has the right to live for his own sake, you are an individualist. If you believe that man must live for others, you are a collectivist.

If man has the right to live for his own sake, then that right must be protected and so, the initiation of physical force must be outlawed. In such a society no one's rights may be violated with impunity; so, government has only one job: to protect individual rights domestically by means of the courts and the police, and by means of the military in matters of foreign aggression. Individualism limits government.

In a society in which rights are protected and from which the initiation of physical force is banned, men are free to trade value for value as they choose, working at what they choose, disposing of their earnings and property as they see fit, enjoying their life as they like. This is capitalism, the economic system in which all property is privately owned.

Our constitution explicitly states the individual's right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Enumerated, too, are freedoms that follow from individual rights---such as, for example, the freedom to peaceably assemble, the freedom to petition the government to redress wrongs, the freedom to keep and bear arms, and so forth.

If you believe that man must live for others, government becomes your ruler. There is no alternative. A large group seeking to plan and execute some plan requires by its nature a leader, or leadership. In a nation of people who believe man should live for others, the government becomes that leader simply by claiming that it represents everyone in the group.

But the government is a group of men. If you believe you must live for others, it is that group of men that will tell you what to do, how to do it and when to do it. It is that group of men that will regulate and control every aspect of your life, from hopscotch to hospital.

Progressivism, socialism, communism are all expressions of collectivism. But collectivism as repeatedly shown in countless examples throughout history cannot work. So, necessarily, the collectivist seeks an accommodation. He is willing to allow vestiges of capitalism, not too much but enough to keep the leaders in shoes and jets to fly to their vacation spots. All else is controlled and regulated by government, which is what we have today: A "mixed economy."

No matter how you describe him politically, Mr. Obama is a collectivist. It doesn't matter whether you say he's a socialist, a progressive or a communist. It all adds up to collectivism. It all adds up to---like it or not, accept it or not---everyone being forced to live for others.

The question is: why should men live for others when they can better live their own life? They "should," according to collectivists, because it gives collectivists power over men's actions, which is what all forms of collectivism are about.

So, if you wonder about those who seek power over other men, it's instructive to recognize that all collectivist doctrines depend on the values that the able create.

Consider, for instance, the slogans of both socialism and communism. Socialists declare, "From each according to his ability; to each according to work performed." Communists declare, "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

Notice "from each." Who are they? They are the men of ability. If you're one, you might want to think about whether you want to be an individualist or a collectivist when you cast your next vote.

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Suggested Reading:
Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels