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A Call for Healing

A Call for Healing
Democrats Call for Healing the Country

Sep 17, 2016

Explain Trump's Nomination: PTSD or Outlaw Government?




For David Rothkopf, the Editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, “Donald Trump is the Symptom of Our PTSD.”  I would like to propose an alternative analysis.  The government of the US no longer cares about obtaining the consent of the governed and the government no longer bothers with preserving even the appearance of equal justice.  Since 2010, the Democrats' strategy has been to deadlock Congress and use illegal executive orders, rogue courts and regulatory excesses to get what they want without Congress.  The power of the purse has been negated by Harry Reid blocking every spending bill until the last minute, then giving Republicans the choice of giving Democrats more or less everything that they want or shutting down the government.  

The "living Constitution" doctrine, for example, completely removes the consent of the governed.  When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, homosexual acts were illegal in every state.  The ratifiers did not ratify mandatory same sex marriage.  If same sex marriage had been explicitly part of the 14th Amendment, it would not have passed.

Regulatory agencies have no separation of powers.  They combine executive, legislative and judicial functions all in one shop.  Due to the Chevron doctrine, the courts defer to regulatory agencies expertise, so in most cases regulations get minimal judicial review.  It's clear that Congress has no power over regulatory agencies.  It's also clear that President Obama can get them to do whatever he wants, like regulate the internet as if it was a copper wire telephone utility in 1934, or maybe a steam locomotive railroad in 1887.  The Environmental Protection Agency declared War on Coal after Congress failed to do so.  Companies who sued to stop the regulations were told they had no standing to sue, because they had suffered no injury yet.

The courts generally vote a straight party line in deciding cases.  You can tell this because the news reports who appointed the judges when it reports how the cases are decided.  The 4 liberal justices on the Supreme Court are almost 100% predictable.  The judiciary is no longer independent.

In the last 7.5 years the president has operated outside the law.  Obama decided not to collect the Employer Mandate taxes which he signed into law as part of Obamacare.  He has had the Supreme Court rewrite Obamacare twice rather than submit it to Congress for a rewrite.  He has unilaterally proclaimed and enforced the Dream Act by executive order after it failed to pass Congress.  

The Department of Justice has become a mockery of its name similar to George Orwell's Ministry of Truth.  Justice department lawyers have been cited for contempt several times because they presented facts to judges which later turned out not to be facts.  The Justice Department has not prosecuted Lois Lerner for setting up IRS harassment of Tea Party nonprofit advocacy groups. It has not prosecuted IRS Commissioner John Koskinen for obstruction of Congress and perjury in covering up the IRS harassment of Tea Party groups. 

The Justice Department has not prosecuted Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information.  FBI Director Comey said the crime requires intent to be prosecuted.  It most emphatically does not.  The Justice Department has not even investigated the Clinton Foundation's pay to play aspects.  The Chicago style fix is in.

The Justice Department has not prosecuted big Democrat fundraiser Jon Corzine, former Senator and Governor of New Jersey, for using customer money to pay corporate debts in the MF Global brokerage scandal, even when Mr. Corzine testified under oath to a Congressional Committee that his financial controls were not good enough for him to know that he was using customer assets.  Failure to have good controls is a violation of Sarbanes Oxley, and using customer money to pay corporate debts is the biggest no-no in the brokerage business under the securities laws.

I think Donald Trump's nomination is a desperate attempt by Republican voters to stop the corrupt mess in Washington.  After electing a Republican House in 2010 and a Republican Congress in 2012 and 2014, they have nothing to show for it.  Congressional Republicans seem to be intimidated by the mainstream media, who operate as the propaganda arm of the Democrats without even attempting to look unbiased.  Trump's one qualification was that he is not intimidated by the Pravda Press.  I'm not saying this choice was a wise decision, but I do understand the desperation.  If, as is very likely, Trump loses, the next step will be a Constitutional Convention called by the states.  People are fed up with the corruption of the Democrats in Washington, DC and their enablers in the mainstream media.  They are willing to look for any alternative that looks promising. 

[After posting the above, I got some pushback from a liberal commenter.  He said that the Clintons had maintained enough separation from the Foundation so that they were not in violation of a law prohibiting federal employees from receiving money from foreign governments.  He said a “living Constitution” was needed to keep the 2nd Amendment as a valid part of the Constitution.  He said that Obama’s executive orders were sailing through the courts easily.  He said the deadlock in Congress was mainly the result of Republicans refusing to compromise.  My response is below.]

The reason for Hillary Clinton's private email server was so she could coordinate Clinton foundation donations with State Department favors.  Here's a good place to start on the Clinton Foundation:

The purpose of the Second Amendment was to make military dictatorship, like the one Oliver Cromwell imposed on England after the English Civil War in 1653, impossible. Here's a link to the history of Oliver Cromwell:

This purpose is clearly explained in Federalist Papers Number 46.  This purpose, to prevent federal military dictatorship is still valid.  Even if it isn't, the Constitution's Article V specifies how to change the Constitution.  It says that 2/3 of each House of Congress must pass the Amendment and then 3/4 of the states must ratify it.  It does not say that a 5 to 4 vote of the Supreme Court is a valid way to change the Constitution to get rid of things we don't need anymore.  Here's a link:

Here's an account of the litigation around Obama's executive order implementing the Dream Act.  It's written by Illegal Immigration advocates, so it should be an acceptable source for you.  It doesn't sound like smooth sailing for Obama's executive order.  The ruling that currently stands is that the order violated the Constitutional provision that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."  That provision should be called the King James II clause, because it was drafted to prevent the kinds of things he did to flout parliament.  Obama is merely imitating him.  Here's the link:

Basically you are the victim of a "liberal" education.  Your effort to shout me down by stacking up manure is not going to work.  I grew up in Montana and I learned how to deal with lots of manure very young. 

[After my post above, the liberal commenter got upset.  He insisted I read a Politifact article about the Clinton Foundation.  He mentioned how many emails Bush deleted.  He said the 2nd Amendment was obsolete because it was written when the US Army had only 5,000 men.  He said that the 14th Amendment was too vague for anybody to know what it meant.  He mentioned Loving v. Virginia and Griswold v. Connecticut as two cases which would be overturned by my interpretation of the 14th Amendment.  He complained about my insulting his “liberal” education.  My response to his response to my response is below.]

I read the Politifact article on the Clinton Foundation.  It was a whitewash followed by a split decision.  The polite fiction was that the Clintons did not receive any direct benefits from the foundation.  The foundation was used as a slush fund to support friends of Bill and Hill as a campaign organization in waiting, so the polite fiction was more fiction than polite.  The lawyers were of differing opinions.  Politifact, not surprisingly, chose to take the opinions most favorable to the Clintons as gospel.  Politifact is part of the media bias you've heard so much about.  Having "fact" in your name does not make Politifact any less biased that having "truth" in Pravda's name made Pravda any more truthful.

"All anybody got was a meeting" is LOL funny as a lame excuse. If George W. Bush was selling meetings through a Bush Foundation, would you still argue that?

On the 2nd Amendment, the point, which escaped you, is that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."  That's not a conditional statement.  It doesn't depend on the whims of local government.  It doesn't depend on a "living Constitution."  It's right there in plain English.  There is no room for wishful interpretation to accommodate modern conditions here.  Any other spin on this is organic fertilizer.  Heller was rightly decided.  If people don't like it, they can amend the Constitution using either of the two procedure specified in Article V.  Getting the Supreme Court to find another penumbra is not going to work.  Attempts to confiscate some of the 300 million privately held guns in the US will lead to widespread violence.  Any Supreme Court case which moves in that direction is really a big risk, considering how angry the Deplorables are right now.

The 14th Amendment was about RACE.  The Republicans who wrote it wanted to prevent state laws and state courts from mistreating recently freed black slaves.  To pretend otherwise is to back the Humpty Dumpty school of jurisprudence:


“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”


The great benefit of the rule of law is that it's predictable.  People can make long term investment decisions based on a predictable legal environment.  The great drawback of the "living Constitution" is that it's not predictable at all.  Supreme Court cases are more like NFL games.  On any given day, depending on what Justice Kennedy had for lunch, the Court can overturn thousands of years of tradition and law on a 5 to 4 vote.  It's even more ridiculous when you consider that the "full faith and credit" clause could have been used to rule that any marriage legally performed in one state had to be recognized in all states.  Stretching the Constitution out of shape wasn't even necessary to legalize same sex marriage.


Virginia v. Loving was a case about interracial marriage.  It was decided correctly based on the 14th Amendment.  The decision said that interracial marriage could not be outlawed by the State of Virginia.  This is exactly what the 14th Amendment was designed to do.  


Griswold v. Connecticut should have been decided using the 9th and 10th Amendment.  The states do not have the right to interfere in bedrooms just because the Constitution does not forbid it.  Inventing a right to privacy based on the 5th and 14th Amendments, when it was never there, opened the door to a slippery slope where the Court is finding all sorts of other things in the Constitution that weren't there.


My link to the Dream Act case shows that the courts have not upheld all of Obama's illegal executive orders.  You said, incorrectly, that they had.  "Obama's executive orders have been dismissed by the courts."  Ain't true.  Obama didn't just violate the intent of the Constitution.  He violated the letter of the Constitution repeatedly.  If George Bush decided not to collect taxes on oil companies until next year, would that be OK?  If not, why is it OK that Obama decided not to collect the taxes of the Employer Mandate passed in the Affordable Care Act?


As a straight white Republican male, I am assumed to be an ignorant uneducated racist sexist warmongering fascist pig.  Since I'm a Vietnam Era veteran, I'm also assumed to be a crazed trained killer who could lash out at any moment.  Since making these assumptions seems fair to liberals, I don't understand why any liberal would be upset if similarly broad assumptions were made about them.  None of them bother to notice my two Master's degrees or my black sister in law, the best thing that ever happened to my little brother.  I've just decided to strike first with insults.  It makes me feel better about myself.


I assume that "liberal" education leaves things out, like English history from 1600 - 1750 for example, because that knowledge would tend to undermine key liberal ideology.  You don't want people to notice the similarity between Divine Right Monarchy and being "on the Right Side of History" with the "Fierce Urgency of Now."  You especially don't want people to notice that Barry the Brilliant and King Charles I have a lot in common, both being tyrants who tried to rule without legislatures.  You also don't want people to read John Locke's Two Treatises of Government.  It wouldn't be good if people thought they actually had a say in consenting to government.  It's better for liberals if government just does what's best for people, because the people are too dumb to know what's good for them.

The original article I reacted to.

Sep 12, 2016

Arbitrary Regulation Results in Poor Productivity Gains by Suppressing Investment


Liberals are the slave of some dead economist, in this case John Maynard Keynes.  The problem of declining productivity is positively correlated with the rise of arbitrary federal regulation.  Nobody wants to make long term investments if they can't be sure what the rules are going to be a year from now.  This regulatory uncertainty favors innovations that have low capital intensity, like Uber and Fin-tech.  Using existing assets more efficiently improves productivity by definition.  Federal spending increases put more assets into the hands of inefficient government, which only stimulates patronage political machines, not real economic growth.  If massive government spending lead to prosperity, Greece would be on easy street.  Instead, it's broke.  We need to stop growing government spending, reduce regulation and cut tax rates.  Reagan did it and it worked.  Obama did the opposite in every respect and it made a mess.



Ever increasing arbitrary federal regulation of everything lowers the velocity of money.  Since any rule might drastically change, especially including the cost of labor under Obamacare, doing nothing is the least risky alternative for both firms and individuals.  Nobody knows if they will have a job next week.  Nobody knows if they will have adequate access to healthcare, which is different than having insurance.  Since many of the administration's executive orders and regulatory actions are of questionable legality, some court could stay them or invalidate them at any time.  Then some other court could reinstate them.   The Federal Reserve is holding interest rates at zero right now, so saving for retirement is almost impossible.  However, at any given Board of Governors meeting, the Fed could decide to raise rates for reasons known only to them.  All of this chaos encourages everyone to hold cash as a hedge, not spend it.  Low interest rates lower the cost of a cash hedge.



Reagan's policies created 5.32 million jobs net in his 1st term. Our Dear Leader's policies created 1.2 million. Reagan restrained government spending, cut regulation, worked with the Federal Reserve to curb inflation, and cut tax rates across the board. The Smartest President Ever did the opposite in every respect. He increased government "stimulus" spending, increased regulation, worked with the Federal Reserve to have lots of "quantitative easing" to expand the money supply, and raised tax rates on the rich. In Reagan's second term, 10.78 million net new jobs were created. Reagan inherited a much more troubled economy that the Community Organizer in Chief, with 13.5% inflation and increasing unemployment. Based on the results, Reagan's policies worked, and Obama's policies did not. As for increasing the debt, Reagan took the debt from 32% of GDP in 1980 to 50% of GDP in 1989.  Obama took the debt from 61% of GDP in 2008 to 101% in 2015, the latest year available.



While everyone is wondering why easy monetary policy is not leading to growth, they are ignoring the unstable regulatory climate enforced by Democrats.  Reagan showed what works.  It should not be a mystery that when you do the opposite of what worked for Reagan in every respect, it doesn’t work.

"Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.  Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back” - John Maynard Keynes