PostHeaderIcon Putting The Skunk Back Into The Bag – Step By Step

Assume for a moment that we the people really did want to shrink our government back into the confines established by the Constitution – could this actually be done and, if so, how? Following is my suggested process. Please note that this is a sincere suggestion, not an attempt at humor as seems to be the case with the current Congress – which just started us surging down the road toward fiscal sanity by cutting a whopping ½ of 1% from the current non-budget – which, on closer examination, turned out to be closer to 0%.

My Plan:

Step1a:
Immediately eliminate the Federal Reserve, demanding a full public accounting and a refund of any and all treasure wrongfully taken from the citizens of the U. S. Participants in this outrage should then be processed through the criminal justice system as appropriate. Congress must establish a system where the money supply is directly tied to the nation’s productivity by rules that act automatically. Let the free, competitive market determine interest rates. Return management of the nation’s finances to the Congress where it constitutionally belongs. Until this vital step is taken, we the people have no real control over our government – that control has been illegally delegated to a cartel of international financiers who operate the Fed for their own profit and to further the goal of One World Government.

Step1b:
Immediately cease all U.S. involvement in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Require both organizations to relocate any and all of their U.S. facilities to other countries. These two organizations are step children of the Federal Reserve and are used primarily to use U.S. taxpayer to bailout the international financial cartel and to fund socialism around the globe. Nothing either of these organizations do can be considered even remotely in the interests of a free America.

Step1c:
Immediately eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). This is neither an insurance company or a true corporation. Instead, like the Federal Reserve, it is another way to use taxpayer dollars to reward fraud and mismanagement in the banking system.

Step2:
Immediately eliminate the Department of Education along with all the rules and regulations it has imposed on the nation. This would allow the States and localities to experiment with new and better ways to actually educate our young, to prepare them to live as self-governing individuals fully endowed with both personal and economic liberty. The current Department of Education fully supports the so-called “dumbing down of America”, an intentional tragedy intended to produce a brainwashed, semi-literate populace which, because of its growing ignorance and subjection to propaganda, is easier to deceive, plunder, and, ultimately, to turn into slaves.

Step3:
Immediately withdraw all support for and participation in the United Nations and require that organization to relocate itself to another country.

Step4:
Propose a repeal of the following amendments to the U. S. Constitution:

-> Amendment 14. This amendment was originally enacted to ensure the rights of newly-freed slaves. It is no longer applicable to that purpose (there being no more newly-freed slaves) and, instead, is misused to secure citizenship for illegal aliens.

-> Amendment 16. This amendment authorizes the income tax. It must be repealed before newer, fairer means of federal taxation can be established (of which more later – see Step12).

-> Amendment 17. This amendment provides for direct election of senators. The effect has been to encourage unnecessary corruption in Congress at the same time denying the State Legislatures their voice in the National Congress. Repeal would revert us back to the original intent where senators were appointed by the State Legislatures.

-> Amendment 23. This amendment gives the District of Columbia (Washington, D. C.) some of the powers and privileges of statehood. The district is not a state and it enjoys sufficient special privilege without this additional perk. Should the citizens of the district object to this, then the district should become, once again, a part of the State of Maryland.

-> Amendment 26. This amendment lowers the voting age to 18 years. This is illogical given that the period of adolescence in the U. S. is growing longer, not shorter. If anything, this trend should require raising the voting age, not lowering it.

Step5a:
Stop the implementation of ANY and ALL new subsidies by the federal government, without regard to their intended purpose or recipient.

Step5b:
Determine the dollar amount for each subsidy available from the federal government in fiscal year 2011. Over the following 4 fiscal years, decrease each subsidy by 25% of the 2011 amount such that all federal subsidies of every type will have been eliminated by the end of the 4th year (2015).

Step6a:
Eliminate the so-called “payroll tax” and begin funding Social Security and Medicare through the general fund.

Step6b:
Begin the gradual phase out of Social Security by reducing initial benefit payouts by 4% for each year of age less than 65 at the end of fiscal year 2011. This means that Social Security payments would be totally eliminated for those 40 and younger at the end of fiscal 2011, that people already on Social Security at the end of fiscal 2011 would be unaffected, with those in between getting proportionally reduced benefits.

Step6c:
Begin phasing out both Medicare and Medicaid, replacing them with commercially obtained health insurance.

Step7a:
Amend the War Powers Act such that the President is allowed to respond to a direct attack on the United States, such defensive action to continue only until the Congress can be called into session to deliberate a formal declaration of war with corresponding funding. Should Congress fail to pass such a formal declaration after one day of deliberation, all hostilities must immediately cease.

Step7b:
Immediately end all U. S. military involvement in combat operations excepting any where the U. S. Congress has formally declared and funded a state of war.

Step7c:
Close all overseas U. S. military installations and transfer the personnel and equipment back to installations in the U. S. Seriously cut back on the size of the standing army, relying on the Navy and the Air Force for strategic defense and the Marine Corps for instant responders. The standing army should consist primarily of a high-quality officer corps that can be quickly supplemented from National Guard and Reserve units maintained by the States, should the nation come under attack.

Step8:
Begin the sale of all lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management to private interests. Once this has been completed, eliminate the Bureau of Land Management. Any constitutionally valid functions performed by the Bureau of Land Management should be transferred to the Department of the Interior.

Step9:
At the end of fiscal year 2013, eliminate the Department of Labor. See my suggestion for a constitutional amendment making all employers “open shop” under Step13.

Step10:
At the end of fiscal year 2014, eliminate the Department of Energy along with all the rules and regulations it has imposed on the nation. Allow the free, competitive marketplace to find new sources of sustainable energy – just as has happened for most of our history.

Step11:
At the end of fiscal year 2015, eliminate the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce, all subsidies having been eliminated by then. If it is discovered that either of these departments still have some constitutionally authorized functions, those functions should be transferred to the Department of the Interior. Let the free, competitive marketplace drive agriculture and commerce. For instance, let the marketplace determine whether more or less corn should be planted, and whether that corn is most productively used to make fuel, as food, as food for food, as some other use we have not yet thought of, or some combination of these.

Step12a:
At such time as the repeal of the 16th amendment is official, implement the so-called “Fair Tax”, a consumption tax whose initial rate should be set to be “revenue neutral” (that is to say, the rate at which the Fair Tax would generate the same amount of total federal revenue as those taxes it replaces). For detailed information on the “Fair Tax”, please refer to: http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_main. In subsequent fiscal years, the tax rate for the “Fair Tax” should be automatically set to the level that will equal the previous year’s total federal government spending plus 10%. At the end of each fiscal year, any budget surplus must be used to retire public debt. In years where there is no public debt, any budget surplus must be used to reduce the “Fair Tax” rate.

Step12b:
All bills for new federal government spending must include an adjustment to the “Fair Tax” rate sufficient to fully fund that spending.

Step13:
Propose several new amendments to the U. S. Constitution and/or alterations to the U. S. Code, whichever is more appropriate:

-> An amendment that demands a balanced federal budget with no exceptions allowed excepting a defensive war, duly declared and funded by the U. S Congress. This to be incorporated into the “Fair Tax” system described above.

-> An amendment that sets term limits for all members of the U. S. Congress. This amendment should also contain a “resign to run” provision such that a person holding one elected office must resign that office prior to becoming a candidate for any other elected office.

-> An amendment that requires any and all laws enacted by the U. S. Congress to apply equally to all citizens of the U. S. including members of government.

-> An amendment prohibiting the use of public funds to bail-out, rescue, or otherwise supply funding to any private enterprise, other than through valid business transactions (such as purchasing their products or services for constitutionally mandated public use).

-> An amendment requiring all employers, public and private, to operate as “open shops” such that no one can be required or compelled to join or contribute to any form of union, if they choose not to.

-> An amendment prohibiting the U. S. Congress from enacting any laws or regulations that seek to impose any form of wage or price structure or limitation on private enterprise. The would effectively end the minimum wage along with any existing attempts at price control.

-> An amendment introducing the “loser pays” rule into all U. S. tort law.

Step14:
Phase out all aspects of the current social welfare system, replacing them with a single system whereby persons unwilling or unable to care for themselves become officially designated as “wards of the state”. Under such a system, the various levels of government would guarantee the indigent access to the basic necessities of life (food, shelter, medical care) but would not allow them to vote in any election or to run for any public office. This would put an end to the current practice of unethical politicians helping the non-productive vote themselves unearned benefits from the public treasury.

Step15:
Eliminate the Internal Revenue Service. With the “Fair Tax” in place and welfare phased out, it no longer has any purpose.

Step16:
Move Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the private sector, terminating all links, regulatory or financial, with the federal government.

Step17:
Eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Steps18-??:
Continue such move toward fiscal sanity until the federal government once again operates within the confines of the U. S. Constitution. This should include privatization of any and all government functions/services that lend themselves to private operation.

Were even a fraction of the above to be actually proposed before the Congress, the establishment government types from both major political parties would wail and howl in distress, assuring us that such “drastic actions” would surely end life as we know it. Nonsense. All it would end is power and corruption as THEY know it. As for the “damage” that would be done to the U. S. economy by these “drastic actions”… forget about it because there would be no damage. As people are left to manage more and more of their own money, economic activity would explode. U. S. businesses would be better able to compete internationally and the U. S. would soon regain its status as the world’s center of productivity – and of decency.

Would all the jobs come back from Mexico, India, China and other parts of Asia? I certainly hope not. With our education system restored and functioning, Americans would soon be qualified for jobs that demand more mental than physical labor. An international free market will inevitably send jobs to the area of the world where they would be most effectively performed, and we want only the best of them sent to America.

For sure, some (many?) of the people would be distressed by all this because they fear change. They fear it so much that they will forgo liberty rather than take the chance that some new change might disturb whatever comfortable little niche they prefer to hide in. For instance, long held beliefs might ultimately be proven to be nonsense.

Yet, to refuse to change is to voluntarily start the dying process. A restored education system would help more of our citizens understand this. And it would also help them to understand that change is inevitable. The question is not whether there will be change, because there always will – the question is, will you have a hand in shaping the inevitable change or will you try to hide while others dominate your life by managing change to their own ends?

Do I think any of my steps are about to be performed? No, I do not.

Then what is the point of writing this? There are two points actually. The first is to show that finding a way out of this mess is actually so simple that an uneducated person from rural Arkansas can come up with a workable plan. The second is to suggest at least a starting point where ordinary people can press for meaningful change.

To be totally candid, at this point, I believe our course is set, and we are aimed toward collapse. We collectively find ourselves in a situation where both the people and their government are afraid to make meaningful change, while, at the same time, knowing clearly that without meaningful change we can only collapse as a free and independent nation.

Some will tell me that things are surely getting better:

Lie -> Unemployment is down a fraction (if you accept the government lies that so egregiously underestimate unemployment as to make the statistic a joke).

Lie -> The Federal Reserve (Fed) chairman assures us that inflation is under control. Evidently the Fed chairman does not buy his own food, his own fuel or any other of the basic essentials whose prices are soaring due to the flood of fiat money the Fed is printing. Fiat currency that STEALS part of the value of your savings, your current earnings, and your future earnings.

Misleading -> The stock market seems to be doing pretty good. However, how many of you have stocks that are gaining value faster than our dollar is losing value? Well, maybe it is not doing so well after all. Maybe it needs to go up twice as fast just to stay even? You do realize that the “good news” about the stock market comes mostly from those who operate the market. You do understand that the folks who operate the market make their money off trading volume – so long as stocks are trading, they are getting their take, even though the investor might actually be losing. So, a “good” stock market depends on one’s perspective.

Bad Joke -> We have all those new GOP guys in the Congress trying to make things even better (remember that ½ of 1% “draconian” cut they just leveraged that turned out to be practically 0?). Would the true message be clearer if the leaders of both parties just came on TV and gave us all the finger?

Really Bad Joke -> Then we have the new budget committee chairman who has a plan to reduce spending by about $6,000,000,000,000 over the next 10 years. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news Congressman Ryan but we don’t have 10 years and your “reductions” continue spending at totally unsustainable levels. Indeed, as is often the case, Ryan’s “reductions” are not reductions in real spending. Instead, they are “reductions” in the projected growth of future spending. Said another way, they are another load of misleading crap.

Sad Truth -> The actual fact of our economic horror is that, so long as the Federal Reserve continues to exist, Congress has no real control over the budget, over the economy or over much of anything that really matters. Has it not occurred to anyone that this is the reason Congress spends so much time on such meaningless issues as gay marriage and abortion? They do this because this is really the only thing they are ALLOWED to do. The international financial cartel, through its proxy, the Federal Reserve, actually runs the show. This is nothing more that an illustration of the “golden rule” in action – whoever controls the gold makes the rules. Indeed, if your Senators and Representatives to the U. S. Congress are not already demanding a full public audit of the Federal Reserve, if not its immediate elimination, then you may safely conclude that your Senators/Representatives have NO REAL INTENTION OF CHANGING ANYTHING, despite whatever fine-sounding rhetoric may spew from their mouths.

If you study the collapse of empires past (the USSR being the most recent example) you will realize that, while the corruption that caused their collapse may have taken years to develop, the actual collapses are shockingly sudden. If you think you will hear a warning siren and have time to take precautions, you are sadly mistaken. Indeed, George Soros, acting alone, has the means to collapse the U.S. dollar in a day.

So, while I suspect it is too late, I still think we owe it to ourselves to go down fighting. And, who knows but what we might actually make a difference. Logic tells me that I really should just ignore this mess best I can, live whatever time I have left enjoying whatever the Fed sees fit to leave in my pocket. But, the notion of letting these bastards (1) have their way just burns me, and meek surrender is simply not in my nature. So, I will take what comfort I can in the probably false notion that I may be irritating at least one of the bastards, at least part of the time. That would be enough for me.

However, if you want to take action to try to change the course of the nation, that action must be taken NOW. If we just sit here, waiting for God, Congressman Ryan or the United Nations to save us, the best result we can expect is to soil our collective pants once reality finally demands to be acknowledged. Then who knows what happens next. Scenes from Greece and Madison, WI suggest it will not be pretty.

For those who prefer action, allow me to suggest the following as starting points:
First, as noted elsewhere, there will be no return to fiscal sanity, no return to constitutional government so long as the Federal Reserve exists. The current situation is that the Fed (and the worldwide financial cartel that owns it) are simply too powerful to take on directly. Those we send to represent us in the national government are simply to scared of the Fed to confront it head on. Besides, if they play along with the Fed, they are given fame and fortune few of them dreamed possible. This is a powerful dragon for a few of us to slay. Yet it must be slain. A logical first step is to make our representatives fear us at least as much as they fear the dragon. We do this by constantly pounding them with telephone calls, emails, comments on their Facebook pages, and by showing up to speak loudly at their public appearances.

Don’t know who your national representatives are or how to contact them? Simply go to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt?action=myreps_form, enter your ZIP code and all will be revealed.

The next logical step is to build public support for eliminating the Fed by demanding a full public audit of its operations. Start by going to http://www.auditthefed.com/ and signing the petition demanding an audit of the Fed. Then contact your national representatives and demand that they support HR 459 and S 202, pending bills that would require a Fed audit. I have no doubt that the results of such an audit will prompt most citizens to demand an end to this criminal activity.

Second, our nation has no long-term prospects for success unless our education system is taken back by the people and returned to its intended purpose. To this end, contact your national representatives and demand an immediate end to the Department of Education and the return of control of the education system to the States and localities.

A word of warning here. Getting back control of education might be the easiest task on my list. In other words, we can probably make it happen. If we do, and regaining local control means an endless argument over such nonsense as whether to teach evolution or creationism, then we will have gained nothing. If we are to truly reform our government, we must focus on those things where we are mostly in broad agreement, not on the trivial things that tend to divide us. Ah, you say, creationism is important. Perhaps it is to some of you and that is your choice. However, it is NOT important to the proper operation of our federal government. Nor is abortion, nor is gay marriage, nor are the myriad other trivialities we use and an excuse for not doing what we all know should be done. But I digress.

What our education system MUST do is prepare our young to be effective participants in self-government, and to enable them to live for their own best interests. To do this, they MUST be taught to read, to write, to do basic arithmetic, to understand the essentials of their systems of government and economics, and to have some broad understanding of human history. And, most important of all, they MUST be introduced to the skill of critical thinking. Only then will they be capable of deciding for themselves what is in their own personal best interest. In other words, only then will they be able to be truly free.

At the end of it all, life is nothing but an endless sequence of decisions. Decisions that must be made, whether we like it or not. We have but three ways of making these decisions:

1. We can base our decisions on knowledge and understanding,
2. We can base our decisions on ignorance and superstition,
3. We can delegate the decisions to others by deciding not to decide, thereby making ourselves their vassals.

So, our first decision is deciding how we will decide. I will offer a hint – only one of the above leads toward toward freedom and a life lived in one’s own best interests. Learning to be free can be a challenge. It often means learning new ways to perceive old things. In closing, please allow me a final example: at the T. E. A. party rally in Hillsboro, TX, I heard a sincere, impassioned speaker ask the question “how many of you love liberty enough that you would die for it?”. To my amazement, many hands shot into the air. With all due respect to the well-meaning people involved, might I point out the obvious folly in such thinking? What value can liberty possibly have for a dead person? OK, you are going to tell me about the nobility of sacrificing your life so that someone else can be free. Such thinking leads us to a current situation where healthy young Americans are giving the only lives they will ever have in some hopeless attempt to teach stone-age tribes in Afghanistan to get along with each other. Please do not tell me that this makes sense to you. Instead, why not desire to LIVE in liberty?

As for those constitutional amendments I suggest? In my opinion, these are best accomplished via a Constitutional Convention. We are currently only a few states shy of an official request for such a convention. To hasten this process, contact your state representatives and demand that your state become one of those requesting a convention. Don’t know who your state representatives are or how to contact them? Simply go to http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/State_and_Territories.shtml, click on your state, then follow the instructions for that state. Many of them have a Search function – if so, search on “who represents me”.

In closing, please note this this is a plan for shrinking and regaining control of our federal government. The larger issue, that of restoring the American Republic to the position of respect and prosperity it once enjoyed will require many other actions which I have (or will) address in other papers.

Troy L Robinson

Note (1): My editors questioned my use of the word “bastard”, based on the common misconception that this word is somehow indelicate to the sensitive. This is true only when the word is misused in an attempt at profanity. Used properly, it means something that lacks legitimacy and that is exactly how I am using it. Any person or group of people who take a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, them immediately begin violating that oath have forfeited any legitimacy they may otherwise have claimed. Ergo, they are bastards in every sense of the word. TLR

5 Responses to “Putting The Skunk Back Into The Bag – Step By Step”

  • Wow! You have been busy! It looks like a workable plan. I would have included something regarding eliminating any restrictions to our developing energy independence. The EPA should be abolished and while you are amending the Constitution, how about something to abolish and proscribe any laws or regulations that prevent humans from rearranging the environment to suit our needs in favor of lesser plants and animals or vistas.

    I wish I could share your passion for attempting to actually save this country, rather than just being an interested and somewhat bemused observer of the political process. As you have tacitly acknowledged, the chances of returning to Constitutional government in what is left of our lifetimes is virtually nil. We are headed for a serious financial crash followed by anarchy. Nothing short of another Revolution could intervene, because seriously attempting to reverse 100 years of Progressivism would spark another Civil War. Pick one; but in any case it is going to get very ugly and bullets will fly.

    We are in that limbo state where it is much too late to fix things through political action, yet still too early to start shooting the bastards. Patience. It won’t last much longer. â—„Daveâ–º

    • Troy says:

      I knowingly did not cover everything that needs to be done. The result would have been too long to be readable. The main point was to show that a simple, uneducated person from Arkansas could, in a couple of hours, come up with a viable starter list of REAL actions that could be done. Naturally, I don’t have any expectation that any of it WILL be done because the corruption of our system is too… well, systemic.

      One real irony of all this is that, if we shut up and play along, the productivity and prosperity in this country has been so incredible that, even after the cartel and the politicians gobble all they can hold, what is left has still been enough to allow the rest of us to live better than the European elite did just a couple hundred years ago. Now we have allowed our financial masters to stretch the envelope past its breaking point. Now even perpetual war will not generate enough economic activity to save us. I suspect they will get their long coveted world government but they may well find themselves the emperors of nothing.

      It is hard for me to imagine the level of prosperity that could have existed here (and throughout the world), had we truly adopted laissez-faire capitalism, free of cartel or government interference.

      My conclusion, as stated elsewhere in this forum, is that most people really do not want to be free because true freedom requires too much thought, too much work and too much self discipline. It is so much easier to just be an ignorant, irresponsible fool, so long ans one’s liege lords are not too demanding or too cruel.

      As for shooting the bastards, I fear there are far more bastards than there are bullets.

      Troy

    • Troy says:

      I got to thinking further about “shooting the bastards” and I was reminded of my own definition of HELL. Imagine yourself in D.C. with a rifle and a clear shot at any bastard you choose — but your have only ONE BULLET. I fear I would collapse in a fit of analysis paralysis, trying to decide which bastard most deserves it.

      Troy

  • Daedalus says:

    A lot of good goals Troy. Don’t forget to repeal the National Forest enabling legislation (this last was not properly made law in any case) before selling off the BLM land.
    It has been proposed to start auctioning off BLM land and use the proceeds to start paying down the national debt. A caveat is that China might end up owning most of it (BLM land).

    • Troy says:

      So – let China buy it. They can’t take it to China after all and, they would be paying U.S. taxes on it. Plus, isn’t that a good bit of insurance against us by China? Why ever would they want to come blow up their own property?

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