The false gods of politics

reprinted from December 19, 2003

It's an idea that is so very mistaken, yet is widely prevalent. So many Americans seem to believe that because the Republican and Democratic parties are powerful, that their candidates are knowledgeable and wise, and will serve honorably. Their candidates are usually attractive, polished, and skilled at presenting themselves to the public. Their candidates have often held a series of lower-level elected offices. To the voting public, they can really look like elite citizens. They look good, they sound good, and they seem qualified... at least from a shallow look.

Another way to view R & D candidates is that they are chosen and groomed specifically to become politicians. Most have been active in their party for years, working their way up the ladder, paying the price to gain the endorsements and the money needed to seek ever-higher office.

That still doesn't sound so bad, does it?
Isn't that a good way to create government officials?

What that system actually creates is a special class of people, career politicians... individuals who are capable of being elected, over and over again, to a series of offices. When such an individual has risen as high as is likely, they're expected to retain that position as long as possible.

Still doesn't sound bad?

The original expectation of the founders of our nation was that elected officials would be "citizen legislators", not career politicians. To them, the idea of someone making a career of politics would have been repulsive, because they understood that leaders must first be citizens, meaning that they must have real connections to the citizenry. They would have been suspicious of any man who actively sought to abandon "normal" life and stay in office for an extended time.

They understood what should be obvious to all of us... that a leader must have been, and must remain, one of the people. In order to effectively represent us, a leader should understand the problems, and hopes of "ordinary" people. If they don't, they will continually produce legislation without really understanding the impact it will have on the people they represent. How can they represent people they don't understand? They can't.

Our two large political parties have subverted those ideas, substituting for the citizen legislator with the slick professional career politician or the rich, connected individual. We have the common spectacle of legislators who have never held any non-political position... have never had a job, never been laid off, never been financially strapped. Their career is politics.

We have the bizarre condition represented by Bill Clinton, George Bush, Al Gore, and thousands more in national and state politics who have never had any of the experiences that most of us share. Here in Minnesota, we have Senator Mark Dayton, whose claim to fame is inherited wealth, $8 million of which he spent to get elected. What do such people know about the people they supposedly represent? Virtually nothing.

We've been sold the idea that elected offices are some sort of specialized positions that require having political experience. It's certainly true that a novice elected to a state legislature or to Congress will have an enormous learning experience. Unfortunately, what he or she will be learning is "politics"... trying to make sense out of the intricate political complexity... learning to understand that what is said is not what is meant... and learning how rhetoric disguises motive. If that novice is an R or D, they will discover, if they weren't already aware, that their first loyalty is to their party, not to their constituents.

The two major parties have so much control, so much power, and so much money at their disposal, that they can quickly twist a newly elected official into a pretzel and literally force voting along party lines. After all, politics is about getting elected and then re-elected. A legislator who wants to vote against his party's preference knows that he may well lose the support of that party for the next election. He also knows that loyal party members are not likely to support any legislation he introduces. The pressure to "fall in line" is great.

The rewards are also high for career politicians. They've voted a great set of jobs for themselves and those who will follow in their path. They'll become very well known, make valuable connections, be fawned over, and draw truly luxurious retirement benefits. Even after retirement, their name recognition and political credentials will give them access to still more money by selling their name in support to organizations, large honorariums as speakers, or using their specialized insider political know-how as lobbyists. Career politicians have, at our expense, created a great demand for more career politicians... from the major parties only.

The power of elected officials, and the fawning respect they receive because of position and power does indeed corrupt... it twists minds. Becoming accustomed to cutting deals and trading votes removes politicians from the world the rest of us live in, and they can quickly come to represent groups that lobby with the most force, ignoring the rest of us.

Big-party politicians do not think of us as individuals... they think in terms of groups... in abstract terms. Thus, they seem to have no regard at all for how their legislation affects individuals. They deal in generalities and in mass popularity, writing legislation that will destroy some people's lives in order to try to benefit others. They cater to majorities, at the expense of minority groups, with little regard to whether their legislation is good or bad, helpful or harmful, right or wrong, moral or immoral, constitutional or not. They write legislation they know is unconstitutional... no, they're not ignorant of the Constitution; it's just too binding for their needs, so they ignore it.

You know who takes a beating from such politicians, don't you? Those of us who are not represented by power groups. All the groups who lobby Congress each take a bite out of you and me... and they don't care. They're representing their constituents. Problem is... our elected officials are supposed to represent all of us, and they don't even come close.

One disastrous result of our pandering legislatures is that, by favoring some at the expense of others, they DIVIDE us... they turn groups of citizens into adversaries... competitors for favoritism. When one group receives favored treatment, opposition groups must come back and try to re-level their playing field. Truly enormous amounts of money are wasted trying to influence politicians; money that could be put to far better uses, but we're trapped into contending for their influence... and they play it to their maximum advantage, bartering their support for votes and contributions.

Our government has been building its own power over us, through corrupted partisan politics. Our nation was founded with a Constitution designed specifically to limit the power of government... to charge it with only a few, limited responsibilities, so that power brokering would never be a possibility. That intent has been completely subverted.

When was the last time you heard a politician say that some task was not the responsibility of government... or say that government should keep its nose out of that issue? On the contrary, politicians instead like to assume that they have jurisdiction over everything. They like to delude themselves that they can control our economy, that they can influence our habits, control our thinking and our actions, and even dictate our morality. There is literally no escape from them.

If we allow politicians to continue to dictate every aspect of our lives, we will soon have a totalitarian government. With over 2 million people in prison, police that resemble storm troopers more each year, crippling taxation, massive debt, and constant military intervention around the globe, we are not that far from it now. Our representatives are squeezing our economic health and our civil liberties more each day.

There is only ONE reason they can do that... because we continue to fall for their lies and tricks during each election. We continue to send back incumbents, and elect still more R's and D's, who then assume that they have carte blanche for more years of even more disastrous results. Until we all stand up and prove that we're not going to be suckered any longer, our nation will continue to degrade and decay. Will 2004 be the year the U.S. voters fight back? I can only hope... it's up to each of us to take a stand.

Smoking is important?

Recently, I was a bit taken aback when someone commented to me that smoking seemed really important to me. The comment was from someone who would much rather pretend that smoking doesn't exist, or at least wouldn't invade her life. Later, it occurred to me that it's actually an interesting question; smoking is important to me. It wasn't always. Most of my adult life, smoking was of little significance... just one of life's little personal habits, like eating, drinking, driving, etc. What has changed is that smoking has been made important by others, those who propel, profit from, and buy into the unending anti-smoking campaign.

When smoking was a minor expense, and I could do it almost anywhere, it wasn't "important"... no more than one small and routine part of daily life. Now that I have to always be aware of where I cannot smoke, and the price of cigarette taxes has pushed me into making my own, it has become more important. Being confronted with continual lies and deception about smoking, smokers, and the supposed damage we're doing to all parts of society also makes the issue of smoking more important.

I've watched, and smoked, as many of the people around me have become less healthy and robust over time, fraught with allergies and overweight. I've watched, and smoked, as the War against Smoking has turned many people into judgmental, self-righteous, politically correct and outspoken bigots of personal behavior. It has made it acceptable to discriminate against others in ways that would never be acceptable if applied to any other human behavior. "No Negroes allowed" became "No Smoking allowed". Poll taxes went away and exorbitant cigarette taxes came into play. The discrimination and persecution allowed against smoking is morphing into other areas as well, like anything remotely associated with "the environment".

The success of the War against Smoking has taught us all that, unless we wish to be harassed and shunned, we had better conform to societal standards, and power-seeking governments are all too glad to enforce, and tax, to those standards. Millions of small businesses are now even more under the thumb of government, required to conform in new ways. Private clubs must comply, even when their management and members don't want to. Anti-smokers were not satisfied with having the choice of going to non-smoking or smoking-allowed businesses... they wanted to force their preference on everyone... and they largely have.

Yes, smoking has become important to me, out of necessity. I must admit to some little pride in refusing to just cave in to the pressures of a completely unscientific campaign of fear and deception. The War against Smoking has cost all of us a lot in lost freedom and is serving as a model for fanatics to inflict their ideas in many other areas.

Still, I find it quite ironic that those who rattle on about smoking being unhealthy, and of public smoking being a gross violation of "public health" often have personal habits that I know to be far unhealthier than smoking. American's obsession with eating has long baffled me. It has become, like not smoking, an ingrained obsession, to the point where not conversing about what you ate or where you ate it, or who you ate it with just leaves me out of a lot of conversations. I've taken to watching the Food Channel so that I at least know some of the terminology that others are obsessing about.

Eating is a necessity, but most Americans eat far more than they need, and they spend an exorbitant amount of time and money doing it. Cooking for an hour to eat for half an hour and to then spend another half an hour cleaning up has never made sense to me, and doing it several times a day makes it seem even sillier. Cooking shows abound, cooking books proliferate, and people pass recipes and restaurant tips continually. There is even competition, often quite serious, among eaters... who has been to the newest restaurant, who has tried the latest food fad... who has had food from countries most people couldn't locate on a globe or otherwise give a whit about. Everyone seems to have a favorite food they just "can't live without". It really goes on and on.

I know... you're responding that you enjoy it, and it's an activity that people gather to enjoy together.

Guess what... the same is true of smoking. Smokers enjoy smoking. They get pleasure from it, and smokers do still gather to enjoy it together, when they have a chance. It's a mild habit compared to the food obsession most Americans have.

Miniscule monarchs of Metropolitan mortals

What conclusion should one draw from the fact that a major city is doing something that 90.34% of their citizens oppose? That percentage is from the St. Paul Pioneer Press poll, and the question is:

Should St. Paul relax its on-site CPR rules to allow small fitness centers like Anytime Fitness and Snap 24-7 Fitness to stay open around the clock?

That a public poll on any question can reach 90% should tell us that the question is a total head-slapper... so obvious that the question shouldn't even be needed.

St. Paul has an ordinance requiring fitness clubs to have a CPR-trained person "on duty" at all times, which they interpret as on the premises. The ordinance is a 1980's ordinance aimed at sex clubs, now being applied to fitness centers having nothing to do with sex (unless you consider sweat and bouncing flesh as sexy). The original ordinance was of course not concerned with public health but with harassing and hoping to eliminate sex clubs.

The whole point of fitness centers like Anytime and Snap is open hours and lower price. I've been working out at a Snap center for about a year, and it isn't unusual for me to be there alone, because I can and do choose my workout times to avoid crowds. Certainly, the thought has occurred to me that my strenuous activity could lead to a medical problem, but that thought occurs to me at home too, and I'm alone there much more. In fact, I started working out because I had a mini-stroke at home alone, and had to drive myself to the hospital.

The city issued a $500 fine against two fitness centers and when they were taken to court, Minnesota Administrative Law Judge Beverly Jones Heydinger, astonishingly to me, sided with the city.

In what fantasy world are these people living? Are they even cognizant of the idea of individual freedom? Customers of these fitness centers know before they sign up that there will be no attendant on duty. For some customers, that is precisely why they signed up. They want to work out alone, or at least in an uncrowded gym, for various reasons. One nationally known bodybuilder, who would be welcomed at any gym, chose a small 24/7 fitness center precisely because he wouldn't be bothered there by adoring fans. Others make the same choice because they don't want to display their current physical condition to others (solving the old dilemma of having to get in good shape before appearing at a busy "public" gym).

I've been impressed by the obese people working hard in a quiet gym, and I understand that they wouldn't be caught dead in a big gym. For them, the quiet little fitness center may be the difference between exercise and no exercise, between life and death. They should have that right... the freedom to make that choice when it is available.

As I've pointed out many times, laws, ordinances, and regulations almost always impact the poorer members of society more, and this is but one more proof. If CPR-trained attendants are required at these smaller fitness centers, their costs will go up substantially, driving the poorer of their customers back home without convenient, affordable exercise.

Not surprisingly, St. Paul City Council Member Dave Thune is one of those defending the ordinance. Thune is St. Paul's resident nanny... he simply knows what is better for each of us than we do. Thune said. "If they want to fight on this thing, I will get neighborhood groups and district councils who have suffered at the hands of adult bookstores to fight back."

Adult bookstores? Sex clubs? How can a rational adult equate those businesses to fitness centers? For those of you who don't remember, Thune was instrumental in bringing a smoking ban to St. Paul. If you blessed him for that, comprehend that your support then simply encouraged him to be convinced that he has the right to ban or control any activity he doesn't personally deem proper.

Could there be corruption behind the enforcement of this off-the-wall ordinance being applied to unattended fitness centers? I have no evidence of corruption, but the smaller centers being harassed have become very popular, taking business away from larger fitness clubs, who would love to see the ordinance applied to their upstart competitors. One might also find pressure from those who provide training in CPR. When there is a big financial advantage to be gained by larger businesses (the smoke), then there is very often political pressure brought to bear (the fire). Is it just a coincidence that as unattended, lower-cost fitness centers have become popular that an ordinance would be found to stop them in their tracks? I really doubt it.

I don't live in St. Paul, but their ignoble ordinance requiring CPR-trained attendants will have an adverse effect outside their borders. Such nanny ordinances often spread to other city governments, just as anti-competitive, cost-increasing licensing regulations do. City officials tend to jump on the nanny bandwagon, claiming "public safety" as their justification for abolishing freedom. They also tend to respond to the wishes of the wealthy to the detriment of the poor. This seemingly idiotic ordinance, not supported by the public, could well spread to your city, and be yet one more stifling, expensive restriction on our rights.

This should be a gimme-a-break non-issue... the ordinance should be repealed or modified so that it covers only it's real original intent. The idea that the city can inflict such an onerous, ridiculous requirement is ludicrous. The whole point of working out is to push your body hard enough to make it stronger and healthier. Working out at a fitness center is hardly the only place that people work up a sweat or increase their cardio rate. Will the city require CPR-trained medical workers to follow hikers around? Should mountain-climbers have attendants? Should every bus stop have a helper for those who run to chase buses? Will they have them standing by in all our homes in case we engage in strenuous sex? Will they be required on all job sites where physical labor takes place?

The only honest excitement in Presidential politics

The 2008 presidential election is shaping up strangely. The candidates of the two major parties are eating each other alive, and they all have much to be gnawed on. The threesome of McCain, Clinton, and Obama remaining at this point are a pathetic group, certainly adding to my hypothesis that major party candidates have steadily gotten worse over the past few decades.

Meanwhile, action within the Libertarian Party is building and looking more dynamic every day. With no shortage of candidates early on, the past couple of weeks have built that list of candidates dramatically.

As a long-time admirer of Dr. Mary Ruwart, I am delighted that she has thrown her hat into the LP ring as a candidate for the nomination. Although the public will know little about her to begin with, I will tell you that there is no single person I would trust more than Ruwart to lead our nation out of the deep, dark hole in which the two major parties have buried us.

Add in two other recent announcements for the LP nomination… Mike Gravel, congressman, resigning from the Democratic Party to seek our nomination, and announcement of an exploratory campaign by Bob Barr, formerly a GOP congressman. Both Gravel and Barr are well known within their old parties.

Our choice, within the Libertarian Party, is getting tough. Who will get the nomination at our convention in May? I honestly don’t know. Among Libertarians, Ruwart is extremely well known, respected and trusted. Barr and Gravel, while better known to the general public, will have to convince Libertarians that they can and will represent libertarian ideals effectively. I cannot ignore several other candidates who have been running hard for that nomination for many months… Christine Smith, George Phillies, Steve Kubby, Wayne Allyn Root, Michael Jingozian, Daniel Imperato, Alden Link, and certainly more. That makes a baker’s dozen… people who want to represent the LP as its candidate for president.

We might well ask why. Why are these people seeking to campaign as the nominee of a party that is, in this age of “lesser of two evils” voting, is usually given little chance of winning? Why do they want to sacrifice their personal lives to campaign in a grueling uphill battle not only to garner votes but even to gain modest media recognition? Libertarian candidates have to work harder than their opposition from the major parties. They have to first hope that they can successfully get on the ballot in each state, and that effort typically takes much of the campaign financing they will be able to raise. Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura recently said that he too would run for president - if he could get ballot access. The Libertarian nominee will have to face off with reporters who will waste much time simply questioning what effect their candidacy will have on the two major candidates. While media cow-tows and tosses softballs at major party candidates, they tend to ask distorting questions of other candidates, and often cut their answers short.

Given such obstacles, why would these people voluntarily seek to abuse themselves? They cannot be seeking power, for, even if they were to win the nomination and the election, they would be in a small minority in Washington, still facing two domineering political parties on a daily basis.

There is an answer that explains the willingness to subject oneself to such a strenuous effort, and it’s an answer that the American public should ponder at length. The answer is… a personal commitment to saving our nation from the disastrous policies and actions of the two major parties. For these people, running is, without any question, a personal sacrifice with a desperate hope that this nation can yet be turned around from the calamitous actions heaped upon us by greedy and power-hungry members of the two corrupted major parties.

Can the public be brought to understand and appreciate the colossal difference between the candidacies of McCain, Obama, and Clinton and the Libertarians seeking the same office? Can the public come to understand that Libertarian candidates are not allowed (nor do they desire) to talk in platitudes, circle around issues, or simply tell each audience what they think the audience wants to hear? Can the public understand that libertarian positions are long-standing, deeply considered, and cater to no hidden agenda?

Can the public appreciate that when Libertarians choose someone to represent their party that they do it based primarily on that person’s willingness and ability to present the libertarian ideology honestly and coherently? The 2004 LP convention made that clear when Michael Badnarik prevailed over two better-known, more public candidates.

Most Libertarians are uncompromising about principles, and there’s a good reason why that’s true. Most came into the party as frustrated Republicans or Democrats; frustrated because they watched their old parties discard principles time after time until they essentially stood for nothing in particular. In the LP, they discovered a party that takes pride in not compromising principles. Ask a Libertarian whether his views on issues have changed since joining the LP, and you’ll hear that they have. Most new converts come to the LP with a few positions that are inconsistent with the Libertarian ideology, and come to change those few ideas over time… myself included. At some point, the integrated Libertarian ideology becomes apparent… it makes sense. From that point on, realization of the importance of a consistent ideology becomes apparent, and positions fit together smoothly. For me, coming from 30 years as a Republican, the War on Drugs was my big sticking point with Libertarians. It took some time in the LP for me to accept that one can be opposed to drug use without trying to force others away from them, and that force simply doesn’t produce the desired results.

My point is that anyone seeking the Libertarian Party nomination had better be prepared for challenging inquiry about the consistency and integration of their positions. They had better be prepared to not only to promote sensible positions, but to truly understand and be able to defend those positions. Any sign of glossing over, waffling, or talking around the issue will be easily detected and shunned by Libertarians.

A quick historical example here: After Jesse Ventura was elected Minnesota governor, with a campaign that sounded very libertarian; he made a speech at a Cato Institute luncheon, to a libertarian audience. He was naturally feeling like he could do no wrong, having scored a huge upset victory over two entrenched major-party politicians. Ventura took that venue, in his blustery, self-assured manner, to try to promote light rail transit, a project he came to think of as his legacy to Minnesota. He was loudly rejected by Minnesota Libertarians (including me). Ventura recognized his opposition, and responded with personal attacks. He probably still hasn’t forgiven us for daring to oppose his pet idea, although, if he really understood the libertarian ideology, he wouldn’t have been silly enough to try to push it to a libertarian audience. “Mostly libertarian” is just not good enough when the issue is billions in tax dollars to force an outdated technology on the public.

If you’re looking for excitement in politics… if you long for candidates who say what they mean and mean what they say, c’mon over to the LP. If you’re sick of hearing throngs of people cheer automatically for words that sound good and mean nothing, c’mon over to the LP. And… if you’re sick of hearing grand plans that you know will simply dig the hole deeper, c’mon over to the LP and listen to real solutions.

Can you feel us swirling around the bowl?

It may be an inevitable tendency, as one grows older, to look back and try to make sense of changes that have occurred. Rather than evaluating my own life and choices, I'm more often considering what has happened to the nation I was born into. Perhaps that shift is due to my own life being clearly finite, and that the path of our nation could continue for a much longer time. I am more concerned about how our national and local context will affect the lives of my children. Those thoughts are severely depressing, because I feel that we have failed our children... failed to provide them with a context at least as good as the one my generation grew up in. What our children face is daunting, and getting worse every day. Yes, I know that they're coping, and even having some fun, making some progress, and building their lives. What they may not be fully aware of, as they work through life, is how constricted their choices are becoming, and how precarious their successes are.

Our children are faced with hugely expanded government at all levels... government that has gradually increased its control over every aspect of our lives, and become far more intrusive and judgmental... and in the process become enormously expensive. We each pay for unending war that is completely without justification. Even if war were to stop, we will still pay for a gigantic military industry establishment that President Eisenhower warned us about 47 years ago. Every segment of government has developed an "establishment"... corporations and organizations whose success depends on government contracts and favorable legislation. Those corporations and organizations spend large sums of money lobbying government because they gain financial advantages that far outweigh their expense.

They buy legislation and regulation that will benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us, and they have enough profit to produce media campaigns to convince the public that we should have enjoyed being raped. They lie, deceive, contort the truth, and bribe to benefit themselves. They do it because they can... because it works, and it works because our governments have become so corrupted that they lay out the financial feast in plain view, waiting for them to take advantage of it.

It's a massive national publicity scam. Simply put, one can go to legislators with a grandiose, bafflingly-elaborate scam, accompanied by the promise of great publicity for the results, which will reflect back splendidly on the legislators in their next election campaign. They will be able to point to results with perhaps real but grossly inflated results that will impress voters. The voters, busy with their increasingly complex personal lives, will fail to understand the many downsides to the scam, and will believe the publicity. Over time, such scams have become so prevalent that those corporations who don't lobby for privilege are gradually withering away.

More and more of us become direct or indirect employees of government... we become part of the problem. Once inside the system, it becomes to our own advantage to see the system continue and expand. I check the local job market often. I look for jobs that won't involve me in working for government or in a business that is dependent on government. That eliminates most jobs. Most amazing to me is that the majority of jobs available now are in the healthcare industry. That is a direct result of government involvement in health care... Medicare, Medicaid, health regulations, insurance regulations, etc. As part of that huge change, most jobs are now from giant corporations. The larger the corporation, the more profitable they can be at "working the government system". Thus, in Minnesota, for example, we have a state moratorium on building hospitals, which means we're all driven to those ever-expanding conglomerate hospital organizations already in existence.

A look in almost any industry will undoubtedly reveal the same corrupt system, benefiting those who can afford to seek and gain government privilege at the expense of the rest of us. The results are all around us, and are terrible. Bigger corporations swallowing up their competition, fewer choices for all of us, higher prices for all of us, and the continuation and expansion of the corruption. Of course, once a corporation reaches a certain size, employing large numbers of people, they will actually have even more of a wedge in dealing with government. Even their financial failure would then result in large enough job loss that government will "come to their rescue" with more favorable legislation or even financial "bailout" help.

Each government concession to lobbying also serves as precedent for more. If one proposal is granted, others will appear, wanting their "fair share". Every purported success with government privilege, touted publicly and paid for with the spoils, will encourage even more help next year. Legislators point with seeming pride to their "accomplishments", many of which were simply giving in to lobbying and perpetrating the massive scam. They claim "job creation", disregarding the simple fact that the new government-subsidized jobs took workers from other employment. They point to splendid new government-subsidized structures, disregarding the homes and businesses that were taken and destroyed to make room for the new government teat-suckers.

Government itself has expanded enormously. Ten years ago, several major corporations were the largest employers in our state. Now, our state government is the largest employer in Minnesota, with nearly 50,000 full-time employees.

Power is concentrating in government, and in large corporations that thrive by taking advantage of government power. It has become a bitter joke that the closer one works to government, the higher the income, the greater the personal benefits, and the sloppier the work becomes. Government power eliminates free market competition and substitutes competitive lobbying. The potential revenue from working as part of or in close connection with government naturally leads to bloated, inefficient results. Projects involving government have become synonymous with over-budget, wasteful, and corrupted ends that would quickly cause failure in a truly free and competitive market. As one small current example, the city of St. Paul is seeking "forgiveness" on loans from the state of Minnesota, used to build the RiverCentre Convention Center and Xcel Energy Center. It appears that St. Paul will succeed in paying back only $6.5 million of the original $48 million loan. The rest of the state will suck up the loss on what was touted as a grand investment for the future. While Minnesota citizens are losing their homes at a shameful rate, the state government will simply bail out the city's mess, and pass on even more taxes and debt to the citizenry.

The more power concentrates in government, the worse the results will become, yet the response of our politicians to bad results is to first blame any private sector involvement and then to concentrate even more power, regulation, and resources on what has now become a bigger problem. It is the epitome of a vicious cycle... if it doesn't work well, do even more of the same.

Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Harry Browne wrote "Why Government Doesn't Work", but the tragic reality is that it does work very well... for those involved in it. Politicians and all those who cater to or suck benefit from close association with government do benefit on a grand scale. The almost $109 million in income since 2000 of Bill and Hillary Clinton is but one example.

The benefits gained by those who are part of that government/industrial complex come at the expense of everything that once made our nation the envy of the world. We are witness to the strangulation of the once-awesome spirit of America. We are being beaten in competition with other nations, falling in literacy and educational capability, and have lost respect around the globe. Our currency is diminishing in value, our debt is being bought up by other nations, and we continue down the same destructive paths.

The American people, in desperation for change, are watching as the two major political parties respond to these disastrous results. Their response is to again offer far more of the same... even greater government power. "More" is the only answer those parties have... more money, more control, more promises, more programs... more government... and more of the same.

Make no mistake... more government will benefit those who are in government or eating from its trough, but it will continue the disintegration of our nation. I'm sorry to say that I think we may see the complete and utter collapse of America in my lifetime. I'm even sorrier to say that I really doubt that anything can stop it, or even slow it. Any chance of preventing collapse depends on the remaining wit and will of the American people, and I am no longer optimistic about either. Americans are not dumb, but we can be blind, deaf, and unthinking, and too lazy or distracted to do anything about it. We will be faced with an election where most will choose between two of the most pathetic candidates in history... two who will, without any doubt, make our problems even worse by doing STILL MORE of what got us here.

I'm getting stimulated

Last week, I mailed off my Federal tax return, sort of. It was an abbreviated 1040A, intended only to elicit my "Stimulus Payment" from our beneficent government. It marks the first time I've ever filed a tax return before the 2nd week of April. Since my income is paltry, I would not otherwise be required to file. Surprisingly, the IRS mailed a special packet to me just so I could make that filing. I'm impressed. I had checked online, and knew I had to file in order to receive the "stimulus", and was wavering whether it was worth the effort of a normal 1040A to receive $300. After spending untold weeks wrangling with my own income tax returns over a period of 40 years of so, being able to bypass that annual annoyance is one of the best benefits of living poor. April is now one of the best months of the year, the core month of glorious spring rather than the month of stressful, often painful, tax filing.

However, the special mailing from the IRS was, I'm amazed to have to admit, was not only convenient but understandable and easy. Would that filing was that easy for the rest of you. Like many of you, I became adept at filing taxes, and at minimizing payments or maximizing refunds. One year, long ago, I managed to get money back after having paid none in during the year. No, it wasn't supposed to work that way, but it did. It involved the Earned Income Credit. At the time, I had children at home and low self-employment income for the year. I did my usual first-try at calculating for my return, with no business deductions... just to see how bad it was going to be. Then I went through it again with some business deductions, and it came out costing me more! Whoa! How could that be? My curiosity seriously aroused, I analyzed the tax tables and the Earned Income Credit tables, and determined that the EIC table was strange... there was a maximum benefit, but NOT at the lowest taxable income, as one might expect. To reach the maximum EIC benefit, I had to RAISE my taxable income. By eliminating legitimate deductions, I maximized my use of the EIC, and got a "refund" of what I hadn't paid in.

Later, in a phone conversation with an IRS auditor, I explained that peculiar return. She was aware that it was possible, and legal, but told me that she thought it was still "wrong" to take advantage of it. I just smiled to myself.

So... presumably, I'll be receiving $300 from the IRS one day soon. Ah, but there's the rub, isn't it? The money isn't from the IRS, or even from the federal government. The truth is that my $300 (and yours) will undoubtedly just get added to the national debt. Wouldn't it be nice to try to use that same convoluted argument with our credit card companies... "I'm not paying my bill... I've used that money to patriotically stimulate the economy, so you really should just erase my debt from your records."

Sure, the stimulus payments are more government "magic money". They taketh, and sometimes they giveth some back. Will these payments stimulate the economy? No more than any debt will. Sure, more money will be spent, but the piper must be paid. The government will borrow more money without reducing any other spending. The Japanese, Chinese, and who knows who else, will buy up a little more of the U.S., and our dollar will degrade proportionally.

One of the few foreign currencies I've ever exchanged dollars for was long ago, in Japan. In 1960, one could get 360 Japanese yen for an American dollar. Today, the dollar is worth about 100 yen. Until recently, most people around the world still wanted American dollars. Today the preferred currency is the Euro. That preference is an indicator of confidence in the currency. All my life, Canadian money was worth less than ours. Today, it's worth slightly more than ours. Somewhere, I have a wooden nickel from some old centennial celebration. It may be worth more now than American currency.

A "stimulus" is something that "incites or rouses to action". Like almost all government actions, the Stimulus won't work to stimulate the economy, but it will make many people temporarily happy to have extra cash. Few will understand that it will be just one more economic boondoggle designed to distract us from many decades of government selling our nation down the river.

"Because you can" is a poor reason

How foolish we can be when life seems easy. For some 20 years, I've watch friends and neighbors acting foolishly, feasting on the liberal mortgage market and a home market that seemed forever escalating in value. Easy credit and a housing-value bubble seemed to go on forever, sucking in more and more people who seemed to assume that the "boom" would last forever. Many are now faced with grim outlooks... homes that are decreasing in value while mortgages and income to pay them are not. Many simply overextended themselves by any standards, because easy mortgage credit made it possible.

I was fortunate to bail out of home ownership before the nosedive. I made personal choices that decreased my income severely, and sold my house, at a profit, and under threat of foreclosure. Probably dumb luck, but 20 years ago, after a costly divorce, I had such bad credit that I never expected to own another house anyway. Bailing out of a pension is all that made it possible. By the time I sold, the "bubble" was still inflated, my children were grown and I no longer had need of all the space.

Despite bad credit and a foreclosure in progress, I still could have refinanced to keep the house. That astonished me. I told a mortgage rep that "I wouldn't loan money to me"... but, mortgage companies would. I had enough sense to decline. Many others did not. A significant number of people are now forced to simply walk away from their homes, leaving them to the holder of their mortgage... because their mortgage(s) are higher than the deflated value of their home.

For most of my life, it just wasn't possible to get into such trouble. Credit was sensibly tight. The first house I bought was with zero down payment, but only because it was under the GI Bill. At the time, that was the only way to buy without a substantial down payment. People used to save for many, many years to accumulate a down payment. My parents didn't own a home until my father was past the age of 60. Since then, expectations of young people have skyrocketed, and home ownership has seemed available almost from the time they began earning an income, and so many simply dove into debt.

What changed? People loaning money didn't just get stupid. They were pushed and prodded, and lured, by government, into loosening credit and taking on riskier borrowers. Politicians, perhaps actually believing the farce that they could "control" our economy, encouraged bad risk and even lured lenders by buying mortgage debts and forcing interest rates down at the same time they were deflating the value of the dollar. Politicians campaigned against what they called "discriminatory lending" (which was actually common-sense risk assessment), demanding that lenders lower their standards and lend to prospects they would have once justifiably rejected.

That pressure lured in lenders and borrowers alike... it set aside financially reasonable evaluation. Easy credit did create a housing boom, but, in so doing, it may have set up our economy for serious destruction. The housing boom (bubble is more accurate) pulled in untold new developers and contractors to supply the houses for all the new buyers. Shoddy contractors found a ready and gullible market of younger and trusting buyers. Realty firms grew far larger to handle all the buying and selling (churning) that accompanied rapidly-escalating home prices. Remodeling even relatively new homes using 2nd mortgage money became common, giving rise to big-box do-it-yourself stores.

Government, meanwhile, became accustomed to being involved in housing matters, and cities began facilitating developments themselves, through TIFF financing, taking older homes and businesses via eminent domain, and pushing new and expensive housing construction. Along with their push for newer housing, cities made building codes more restrictive and expensive to follow, again helping to handicap older homes to the advantage of newer ones.

All of this government interference raised the cost of everything involved in home construction and maintenance. Taxes climbed, maintenance costs climbed, insurance costs climbed. Licensing of all kinds of contractors reduced competition, which raised prices.

Who is suffering as a result of all this government tinkering of housing? The answer to that is obvious... the poorest of those who got sucked into the housing bubble... the very ones government was pretending to give advantage to. I use the word "pretending" with intent, because any objective observer during this period of time knew what the downside to all that intervention had to be. Any politician who didn't know should never have had the power to interfere. Either we're electing people with no financial sense at all, or we're electing people who have their own ways of profiting from the inevitable suffering of the casualties of a government-induced catastrophe.

Government power always has destructive results, which is why libertarians push so hard for the reduction of government power. Government had no business interfering in the mortgage or building industries, and they have taken what was once a sensible part of our lives and turned it into a financial trap for the unsuspecting. Now they're tinkering more, in a feeble attempt to help some of those they've destroyed. We should all know that those new "efforts" are political in nature too, and will only make the damage worse.

Nothing works like the free market. No individual or company, without the influence of government, would have written the mortgages that are failing now. Most of those people now losing their homes wouldn't have been able to finance them, and wouldn't have been sucked into a busted housing bubble. Only government can create catastrophes of such proportions.

Government officials refuse to accept the title of this article. They believe that because they can do something that will sound good and even benefit some people, that they should do it. They are notorious for not looking into the future, because they know they will not be held accountable for future results, nor will the future losses affect them personally. Their natural tendency is to do whatever will please voters or contributors in the short run, at the expense of everyone else in the long run.

Politicians, of both major parties, have screwed our economy almost beyond recognition. What was an exciting, vibrant, and rapidly-expanding economy has turned so sour that it's in danger of causing recession around the globe. Despite that, Americans will no doubt go to the polls in November and return precisely more of the same into office. We do have a choice, but in order to choose it, we will all have to ignore all the money being spent to lure us once more into self-destruction.