Archives for 2013
winners and losers
When the Democrat-controlled Colorado Legislature gets through imposing restrictive gun laws upon law-abiding citizens, will we be any safer? No, we won’t, because none of the prescriptions contained in any of these new bills address any element of the crimes committed with guns that will have motivated the bills’ passage.
In the instant case, losers will be law-abiding citizens. Winners will be Democrat politicians, their adoring liberal media, their captive voters, and the criminals who will have an easier time of it going up against a less-armed law abiding citizenry. But that’s only in the instant case. There’s also winners and losers in the larger scheme of things.
The country’s Founders designed a system they hoped would protect minority rights under the governance of a majority. They contemplated that with all the checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, the 4th estate of the press, and the people, that enough pauses to consider would exist in the public discourse over new law, that the best argument, the best philosophy, the best solution, the mostly soundly reasoned answer, would tend to carry the day.
They did not anticipate ruthless progressivism with its will to win at all costs, and notwithstanding the soundness of their argument. They did not expect that all of the checks and balances in our country would fail in their primary function and become the captive organs of a single cult mythology.
Wherever progressives get a political majority, they ram through their agenda. Sound arguments to the contrary are not rebutted, nor debated. Opposed parties are procedurally silenced, crowded out, shouted down, ridiculed, overwhelmed, and ignored.
Sure, we have instant winners and losers as each issue comes up under the progressive agenda. But the bigger loser is our system, the one that brought us to this point of social evolution, the one responsible for our success.
And perhaps the biggest losers of all are the progressives themselves. The ones who have no idea what they’ve lost by damaging their fellow American minorities, whom they take such joy in suppressing. The ones dancing in the streets after each victory, the ones shouting in the streets when they’re not dancing.
They’ve lost their minds.
B_Imperial
absolute power absolutely corrupt
GOP accusation confirmed: Obama out to break it
By Jennifer Rubin ,
The [Washington] Post reported: “[President] Obama, fresh off his November reelection, began almost at once executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president. He is doing so by trying to articulate for the American electorate his own feelings — an exasperation with an opposition party that blocks even the most politically popular elements of his agenda.”
This confirms what Republicans have been saying (despite liberal pundits’ scoffing): The president is interested in breaking the back of the opposition not accommodating or passing centrist legislation. A senior GOP House aide was mattter-of-fact: “It’s been clear since December that President Obama is more interested in leading his Organizing for Action campaign than leading this nation.”
The acknowledgment of the permanent campaign is quite an admission, casting most of what the president does in a more realistic light. He is engaged in bare-knuckle campaigning, not governing, when he engages in faux negotiations and goes around the country to hammer Republicans.
Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), took the high ground. “Our country faces real challenges: cutting spending, fixing our debt and deficit, getting our economy moving and creating jobs. Hopefully, those challenges — not partisan politics — will be the focus for the White House. The American people gave us a divided government, and we all have to make it work.”
Indeed it is an odd approach only two months after the last election. Aside from dropping the mask and conceding the high ground, the revelation about the president’s 2014 strategy appears just at the time that he has been revealed to be untruthful with regard to the sequester. Now he wants the country to give him virtually unlimited power with a Democratic House? Moreover, in a midterm election the electorate is generally whiter, older and more conservative.
Is this the electorate (without Obama on the ballot) to hand him the House? Don Stewart, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) answers, “Let’s not forget, we’ve already seen what happens when he has an unchecked agenda: Stimulus, Obamacare and trillions in debt.”
Socialism’s all about the money.
Uncle Sam Now Wants Your 401(k) And IRA
Investors Business Daily Editorial, Posted 03/01/2013 06:44 PM ET
President Obama stands with Sen. Chris Dodd Rep. Barney Frankafter signing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection financial…
Dodd-Frank’s new “consumer protection” agency wants to “help” Americans manage their nearly $20 trillion in retirement savings, and President Obama has tax loopholes in his sights.
It’s mattress-stuffing time.
You probably thought the Dodd-Frank Act was all about reining in greedy big banks and Wall Street predators.
Well then, what is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau it established doing planning to “help” people manage the $19.4 trillion they’ve managed to save for their retirement?
CFPB director and longtime Democratic politician Richard Cordray earlier this month told Bloomberg News that managing retirement savings is “one of the things we’ve been exploring … in terms of whether and what authority we have.”
Every such new creature legislated into existence by our elected officials wastes little time before seeking to expand its power — always with the best intentions, of course.
There always ends up being an excuse to do things the law doesn’t give you any authority for, and the CFPB’s Office for Older Americans being headed by another big government Democrat, Hubert H. Humphrey III, is further cause for worry.
What business, exactly, does a U.S. government that has rung up over $16.6 trillion in red ink have giving consumers advice on how to save money?
Uncle Sam, Spendthrift
What can a consumer learn about frugality and responsibility from a corrupt, insatiable Washington leviathan that screams about the sky falling when just 2% in automatic spending cuts kick in?
In this context comes the release of a report from the liberal Brookings Institution last week suggesting a 28% cap on “the rate at which deductions and exclusions related to retirement saving reduce a taxpayer’s income tax liability.”
Don’t worry, Brookings says, because “the (mostly high-income) individuals that do alter contributions in response to changes in the return on these investments tend to simply offset these adjustments with changes in other forms of saving.”
And “the available evidence from studies of 401(k)-type programs with automatic enrollment suggests that many would stay with the program and, in turn, increase their saving.”
Elsewhere, the think tank recently argued that “New research suggests that the tax subsidy for contributions to retirement accounts only affects the behavior of certain financially sophisticated households and does not raise overall saving significantly.”
Savings Tax?
As American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries CEO Brian H. Graff charged last week, such a cash grab “would more accurately be described as double taxation” in which “a small-business owner in the 39.6% bracket would pay an 11.6% tax on contributions made to the 401(k) plan today, and pay tax again at the full rate when they retire.”
But 401(k)s come behind only the mortgage interest deduction and the employer health insurance exclusion as federal tax breaks go, amounting to “$429 billion in foregone revenue from 2013 through 2017,” as Employee Benefit News points out.
It was inevitable that these popular retirement nest eggs would be targeted for raiding.
We even have the unreal spectacle of the mutual fund industry frantically justifying its existence in the wake of President Obama talking up the closing of tax loopholes.
Investment Company Institute President Paul Schott Stevens said, “we’re trying to counter all of the doom and gloom about the 401(k) system being a failure and that it doesn’t work.”
Doesn’t work?
Mutual funds, especially when shielded from taxes, have, like discount brokerages, opened the door of successful investing to millions of ordinary Americans.
They have brought the American Dream to new heights.
What doesn’t work is the government, which should be told to stuff its offer of help at managing people’s money. Better to have Typhoid Mary run the Centers for Disease Control.
myth addicts
“A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it, in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district than an entire state.”
James Madison, Federalist no. 10.
Examples of what the Founders considered improper or wicked projects have become the norm in America. The division of interests built into our republic failed to overcome the appeal of beggar-thy-neighbor politics.
Does anyone really think the Republicans will stand up for the people at the 11th hour this Friday by drawing a line in the sand over sequestration? Based on the evidence that they’ve never drawn such a line yet?
Republicans and Democrats both know that a spending cut, however insignificant, will undermine the central myth of federal necessity that keeps them in business.
Ask the storm survivors in New Orleans and the Jersey shore, the disarmed citizens in the big cities preyed upon by armed criminals, students in failed public schools, patients who rely upon medicaid, any of the supposed beneficiaries of federal spending, how well the myth of federal necessity is working out for them.
I wouldn’t bet on Boehner’s House this Friday. They’re as addicted as Democrats to the myth.
P.S. Well bowl me over with a feather. Let’s see what they do with the CR next month.
inalienable right to resist tyrants
doublethink
“In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good[.]”
James Madison, Federalist No. 51
In the name of justice, the Left pursue social justice. In the name of the general good, the Left pursue entitlements.
Much like Islamists hide behind English translations to mask their jihad, the Left hide behind un-mutated original concepts to deceive those who can refute their substituted deceptions.
The Left took what began as universal principles for all Americans, principles essential to the American order protected by our Constitution and responsible for America’s success, and turned them into narrow principles for the benefit of only those Americans in their voting block, and to the detriment of the rest of Americans with whom they disagree.
Madison was correct, but he did not anticipate the subversion of language that the Left now routinely practices. He did not anticipate the level of malice that would make the corruption of language routine in America–that would take away our ability to speak a common language and understand each others real differences.
Now ask yourself, “Who does this imposed confusion benefit?” It’s certainly not the people, whatever their economic condition. So who does that leave? Government.
And who runs government? The schools? The bureaucracies? The regulatory agencies? The planning agencies? In every case, it’s the Left.
B_Imperial
Board Games
Oops. . .that was the Borg Game.
Theory:
Power structures create gaming constructs that enable winners to impose their will upon losers. Often this involves the transfer of wealth and power from losers through a quasi-judicial process.
Constitutional and Common Law principles get used in a manner that creates a manipulable game domain where winners and losers sort out according to rules of the game. So long as rules and judgments follow objective rules of law and ethics, justice may be served.
But when rules and judgments become self-referential to the game’s purpose, the game departs from the pursuit of objective justice and turns toward satisfying its’ own pre-determined objectives. When this happens, outsiders see a veneer of legitimate justice, while savvy players and empowered game operators prey upon the less powerful with impunity.
The existence of self-referential, non-objective rules, in a separate domain, suggest the existence of a game.
Games would not exist unless they served the ostensible purpose of their subject, a purpose we can assume is not served absent the game. Therefore, games tilt the playing field in a way it would not otherwise tilt. In other words, games serve the interests of a minority without requiring the minority to openly persuade the majority.
Reconsider the Borg.
Analysis for each game:
Construction:
- Who structures a game and sets rules for the board?
- What powers do game designers possess and how did they get those powers?
- What authorities created the powers that enabled a game to be formed?
- Were the circumstances that enabled a game to form intentional or accidental?
- What balancing powers exist outside of a game to moderate that game?
- What cost and benefit potentials accrue to those who avoid a game?
Performances inside a game:
- Rights that all players share.
- Rights granted to winners.
- Obligations forced upon losers.
- Who judges the execution of a game?
- What constructs exist for game judges to decide outcomes?
- What rewards flow back to game management as overhead costs of a game?
How are players brought into a game?
- Voluntary players.
- Involuntary players.
Example playing fields:
Government regulation:
- Consumer – Healthcare, Food and Drugs
- Industrial – Mining, Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, Communications, Labor relations
- Land use – Commercial, Private
- Federal agenda agencies, EPA, FDA, HHS, NLRB, Etc.
- Quasi-judicial public governing boards.
Pierce the veil of the game. Broadcast them.
B_Imperial
Gang Control
Obama Touts Gun Control, Not Gang Control
Investor’s Business Daily, Inc. Posted 02/19/2013 07:06 PM ET
Gun Control: On his way to a play date with the world’s most famous golfer, President Obama stops in America’s most violent city to push universal background checks that Chicago’s violent street gangs will totally ignore.
Janay McFarlane, 18, was killed late Friday just hours after her younger sister joined a group of teens onstage for President Obama’s speech in Chicago on gun violence.
McFarlane was shot to death hours after her little sister, Destini, 14, sat just feet away as Obama spoke in the aftermath of the similar murder of Hadiya Pendleton.
The 15-year-old Pendleton was gunned down in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood, a few blocks from the high school she attended and a few days after she performed with her high school band at Obama’s inauguration. The park where she was killed is less than a mile from the president’s Kenwood home.
Pendleton’s death was one of more than 40 homicides in Chicago last month, a total that made it the deadliest January in the city in more than a decade, after more than 500 murders in 2012.
This carnage in the nation’s most gun-controlled city in America has been blamed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and others on the flow of guns into Chicago from elsewhere — notably suburban gun shops.
They do not explain why the areas outside Chicago don’t have anywhere near Chicago’s murder rate. The Windy City’s murder rate of 15.65 per 100,000 people looks nothing like America’s overall 4.2, the Midwest’s 4.5 or Illinois’ 5.6 rates.
As the president noted in his speech, of Chicago’s 2012 murder victims, 65 of them were 18 and under.
“That’s the equivalent of a Newtown every four months,” he said. “That’s precisely why the overwhelming majority of Americans are asking for some common sense proposals to make it harder for criminals to get their hands on a gun.”
Yet, speaking of common-sense proposals, in 1999 when a bill came up in the Illinois Senate to charge anyone carrying out a firearm attack on school property as an adult, a law that would have largely affected gang members, our current president voted “present.”
The fact is that up to 80% of Chicago’s murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police.
By one estimate, the city has 68,000 gang members, four times the number of cops. A police audit last spring identified 59 gangs and 625 factions — mostly on the south and west sides — none of which is going to submit to things like universal background checks.
A breakdown of the Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago in 2011 had criminal records. Nationally, 67% of firearm murders took place in the country’s 50 largest metro areas.
The 62 cities in those metro areas have a firearm murder rate of 9.7, more than twice the national average.
Among teenagers, the firearm murder rate is 14.6, or almost three times the national average.
These are not, as Obama said of rural Pennsylvanians, bitter people clinging to their guns and Bibles while being fearful of others not like themselves.
After his speech, worn out from his nonstop attention to the nation’s problems, Obama set off to vacation in Palm City, Fla., staying at the Floridian Yacht & Golf Club resort. And he hit the links with professional golfer Tiger Woods and resort owner Jim Crane.
We need gang control, not gun control, and policies that don’t result in 70% of African-American births being to unwed mothers, with the children growing up in fatherless homes.
The nation does not in fact face an epidemic of gun violence. No, it faces a chronic problem of urban gang violence in decaying gun-controlled cities like Chicago, which are largely run by liberal Democratic mayors who fail to create jobs and opportunities for their largely fatherless youth.
ElCo commissioners missing
Governor John Hickenlooper
136 State Capitol
Denver, CO 80203-1792
February 19, 2013
Dear Governor Hickenlooper:
Thank you for rising above the partisan squabbling that has unfortunately heightened a national oil and gas debate. Scientific evidence is being overpowered by an emotional public debate and your leadership will help us overcome this unjust polarization.
We appreciate that you are using your influence as Governor to seek a sensible energy balance – one that ensures rigorous regulation and enforcement, but in a way that is applied consistently and efficiently so that Colorado remains an attractive place to do business. Real political leadership is a rarity in the current environment. On energy issues, you have shown it, and you can be assured that a great majority of citizens, and many local elected officials, appreciate that leadership.
Those who have expressed criticism to your decision to take legal action against Longmont’s overreaching and illegal oil and gas rules do not speak for all local governments, or the thousands of people who support the energy industry statewide. The energy industry is vital to our economic stability and in reality; the majority of citizens and local governments support the industry.
The proposed Longmont regulations will create a de facto ban on oil and gas production in large segments of their community. If left unchallenged, those regulations open the flood gates for other additional regulatory responses. The resulting chaos would create unclear expectations for local governments, and would discourage future investment in energy development in Colorado.
As you well know, Colorado doesn’t take lightly its responsibility to manage, regulate and oversee oil and gas development. Our state has the most stringent, comprehensive oil and gas regulations anywhere in the country. Love them or hate them, these rules are widely acknowledged to be the most aggressive regulatory framework in the nation. Additional regulations are simply unnecessary.
Your position is backed by common sense. Colorado cannot have a quilt of hundreds of different sets of oil and gas regulations if the state is genuinely committed to a thriving oil and gas sector.
As local elected officials who actually represent an energy producing area, we share your view of the importance of the energy sector, and we applaud your authentic bipartisan leadership on oil and gas issues.
Sincerely,
Commissioner W.R. “Skip” Fischer, Adams County
Commissioner Alice Nichol, Adams County
Commissioner Erik Hansen, Adams County
Commissioner Rod Bockenfeld, Arapahoe County
Commissioner Nancy Doty, Arapahoe County
Mayor Dick McLean, City of Brighton
Councilmember Wayne Scott, City of Brighton
Councilmember Chris Maslanik, City of Brighton
Councilmember Kirby Wallin, City of Brighton
Councilmember Cynthia Martinez, City of Brighton
Councilmember Rex Bell, City of Brighton
Councilmember Lynn Baca, City of Brighton
Councilmember J.W. Edwards, City of Brighton
Councilmember Wilma Rose, City of Brighton
Councilmember Ken Lucas, City of Centennial
Mayor Terry Carwile, City of Craig
Councilmember Don Jones, City of Craig
Councilmember Gene Bilodeau, City of Craig
Councilmember Joe Bird, City of Craig
Councilmember Jennifer Rily, City of Craig
Councilmember Ray Black, City of Craig
Councilmember Byron Willems, City of Craig
Councilmember Benedict Lujan Sr., Town of Dinosaur
Councilmember Lando Blakely, Town of Dinosaur
Councilmember Toby Cortez, Town of Dinosaur
Councilmember Guy Stults, Town of Dinosaur
Councilmember Devonna Wilzek, Town of Dinosaur
Councilmember Richard Blakely, Town of Dinosaur
Councilmember Bruce Long, Town of Dinosaur
Mayor Chad Auer, Town of Firestone
Councilmember Sam Susuras, City of Grand Junction
Commissioner Don Rosier, Jefferson County
Commissioner Faye Griffin, Jefferson County
Commissioner Steve Johnson, Larimer County
Councilmember John Fogle, City of Loveland
Councilmember Hugh McKean, City of Loveland
Commissioner John Justman, Mesa County
Commissioner Rose Pugliese, Mesa County
Commissioner Tom Mathers, Moffat County
Commissioner Tom Gray, Moffat County
Commissioner Audrey Danner, Moffat County
Mayor Judith Beasley, Town of Parachute
Trustee Junita Williams, Town of Parachute
Trustee Mary Allbee, Town of Parachute
Trustee Roy McClung, Town of Parachute
Trustee Tom Rugaard, Town of Parachute
Mayor Frank Huitt, Town of Rangely
Councilmember Brad Casto, Town of Rangely
Councilmember Elaine Urie, Town of Rangely
Councilmember Clayton Gohr, Town of Rangely
Councilmember Lisa Hatch, Town of Rangely
Councilmember Dan Eddy, Town of Rangely
Councilmember Joseph Nielsen, Town of Rangely
Commissioner Shawn Bolton, Rio Blanco County
Commissioner Kai Turner, Rio Blanco County
Commissioner Kenneth Parsons, Rio Blanco County
Commissioner Sean Conway, Weld County
Commissioner Barb Kirkmeyer, Weld County
Commissioner Douglas Rademacher, Weld County
Commissioner Mike Freeman, Weld County
Mayor Joe Foltmer, City of Wray
Councilmember Ronn Akey, City of Wray
Councilmember Butch Hassman, City of Wray
Councilmember Jodi Brady, City of Wray
Commissioner Trent Bushner, Yuma County
Commissioner Dean Wingfield, Yuma County
Commissioner Robin Wiley, Yuma County
Source: Letter to John Hickenlooper
Colorado tests Obama’s gun bills
Kelly Baril Dore commented on your post in Elbert County Republicans.
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I can personally guarantee my husband is fighting all of this nonsense and is working diligently to get his colleagues on the other side to oppose. They thought they might have had the chance until the Vice President called the swing Democrats and threatened them. They are the ones who need to be flooded with phone calls. We are asking that citizens call and write letters to all of the D representatives and senators, especially Reps. Moreno, Exum, Petterson and McLaughlin and Senator Morse. Senator Morse, especially, has a bill ready to be introduced in the senate that will hold shop owners responsible if they legally sell and that gun is used in a crime later on. It will in effect shut down all stores in Colorado. These bills are test bills from the White House and need to be fought. Biden, himself, said none of these laws will do anything for safety, except make it easier for criminals. Shameful. Please contact not only your Reps, but also opposing ones who are on the fence. |
Posted this morning to Elbert County Republicans Facebook group, 2-18-2013. (italics mine)
Kelly Baril Dore is married to Tim Dore, State Representative for House District 64 in the Colorado Legislature.
CONTACT
 Moreno, Dominick |
32 | Adams | D | Legislator | Cap: 303-866-2964 E-mail: dominick.moreno.house@state.co.us |
Majority Assistant Caucus Chair Vice-Chair of Transportation & Energy Member of State, Veterans, & Military Affairs |
| Exum, Thomas “Tony” |
17 | El Paso | D | Retired Firefighter | Cap: 303-866-3069 E-mail: thomas.exum.house@state.co.us |
Member of Business, Labor, Economic & Workforce Developoment Business, Labor, Economic, & Workforce Development Local Government |
| Pettersen, Brittany |
28 | Jefferson | D | Legislator | Cap: 303-866-2939 E-mail: brittany.pettersen.house@state.co.us |
Member of Education Judiciary |
| McLachlan, Mike (Wife: Barbara) |
59 | Archuleta Gunnison Hinsdale La Plata Ouray San Juan |
D | Lawyer | Cap: 303-866-2914 E-mail: mike.mclachlan.house@state.co.us |
Member of Agriculture, Livestock, & Natural Resources Judiciary |
| Morse, John P. |
11 | El Paso | D | Executive | Cap: 303-866-6364 E-mail: john.morse.senate@state.co.us |
President of the Senate Chair of Executive Committee of the Legislative Council Legal Services Legislative Council Senate Services |
James Madison, Property
29 Mar. 1792
Papers 14:266–68
This term in its particular application means “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho’ from an opposite cause.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.
According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.
More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man’s religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.
That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the economical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!
A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.
If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.
If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.
The Papers of James Madison. Edited by William T. Hutchinson et al. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962–77 (vols. 1–10); Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977–(vols. 11–).
Evocations
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| From Evocations |
Oil & Gas edit committee 2-12-13
Note: The above MOU and Addendum were not discussed this evening, though many subjects discussed sound in both the MOU and the surrounding zoning law.
The following streams contain discussions of the proposed enabling zoning law, of which the MOU is one component.
The next edit committee meeting will be Feb 26th.
2-12-2013 Part 1
2-12-2013 Part 2
on publishing public meetings
“In America today we have television and the Internet, vehicles of instant mass communication unimagined previously. One might say that these prove Madison wrong. What do they show in the political debate except a clamor of distortion and cock-and-bull, self-serving and partisan? But does it not often happen that someone gets a camera and a microphone into a political meeting not meant for the whole public? And when that happens, one hears a tone that is very different. The person who yesterday was saying in a televised interview that he had great respect for his opponents and hoped to reach agreement with them says in private company that he hopes to push them in the ditch. Open communication must be more civil; it must appeal to a wider sense of justice. The effort to seem fair elevates the public debate and confines our speech to more reasonable points. Also it is harder to get away with pushing someone in the ditch if you have promised not to do it.”
Larry P. Arnn, The Founders’ Key, 2012, p. 104.
See you on Bambuser. . .
on Central Planners
“Central Planners Do Not Make Good Prophets”
Investors Business Daily, Thursday, February 7, 2013
by Thomas Sowell
Perhaps Richard Miller finally figured this out.
MOU trouble in paradise
MOU impact excerpt
Full Session
sunset visitors
almost invisible transparency
