A Stimulus it Isn’t

 In America, it is the energy and industry of business and private enterprise that creates our wealth, our jobs and our standard of living. Our citizens are free to invest and apply their resources (i.e. labor and capital) towards any pursuit they wish reaping the risks and the rewards accordingly. The American system of republican governance coupled with our version of free market capitalism has led us to become the most powerful and wealthy nation in history. 

America’s "Free Market" is governed by the Rule of Law whose authority is vested in our Constitution and whose guardianship lies in our Government as elected by our citizens. It is the proper and established role of Government to exercise oversight of the Free Market to ensure fair dealings and adherence to the Law. It is not the proper or established role of government to actively and consistently intercede in the marketplace to the benefit or detriment of a particular group or constituency.

 Left to its own devices our Free Market can be relied upon to enact a brutally efficient form of economic Darwinism. The strong enterprises will survive and the weak will perish. This efficiency is beneficial in that it separates the strong and useful ideas from the weak and ineffective ones. Society benefits from the enactment of the best ideas and all boats rise with the tide. The benefits of this “natural selection” are clear, but there is also a downside which mainly consists of the loss born by those who invested their resources in the losing endeavors. Thus the social and economic strata or ‘inequities’ inherent in our free market system.

 To ensure that these inequities do not grow too great and thus precipitate a societal breakdown we devise and enact rules that seek to establish a reasonable balance between the opportunity for individual prosperity and the greater need for societal health and stability. We want our enterprises to be successful, but not so successful that they wax tyrannical in their power and influence. Left unchecked, individual or group interest has a habit of detracting from the overarching requirement for a stable and healthy society (without which nothing else works). Striking the correct balance between freedom of enterprise and the regulation thereof is an imperfect and constantly evolving science.

 Our current economic “crisis” was both entirely predictable and predicted. It was precipitated by Government meddling in the Free Market to the benefit of a particular group – low income voters, a.k.a. those who couldn’t afford houses. Politicians thought it a good idea to curry favor with these low income voters by forcing banks and financial institutions to extend them credit so they could buy a house. The logic being that they would in turn of course vote for those politicians who made it all possible. Quid pro quo.

 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9c0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

The free market responded to this new profit incentive by generating loans to “sub-prime” (a.k.a. “unqualified’) borrowers and then sold them down the line to the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who were mandated to buy these loans and thus created a market for them. Large financial institutions and banks looking for a quick profit also bought these sub-prime loans, packaged them into derivatives and sold them off to numerous other institutions around the world as a high-quality, low risk investment. As it turns out they were neither high-quality nor low risk.

The Proper Way to Stimulate the U.S. Economy 

1. Get the Government out of the Market. They more they try to “help” the bigger the mess they make. It was Government who precipitated our predictament through political manipulation of the market in the first place. No one is going into the china shop to clean up the mess so long as the bull is still stomping around in it. Until the government stops playing market maker/breaker/fixer the private sector is going to stay away. Government intervention only retards the correction process and prolongs the pain for everyone. 

2. Cut Taxes. Effect a true economic stimulus by slashing tax rates across the board. Drastically reducing Income Taxes on both Businesses and Individual’s will leave more money with the people who earned it in the first place. Businesses will use the money to strengthen their balance sheet helping them to hire and retain employees. Individual’s like you and I will use the money to pay off debt, build our savings and buy the things we need. This is the most efficient form of Economic Stimulus possible. It requires no governmental oversight, no allocation of funds and no politically charged apportionment. This is of course Heresy to those who believe that Big Brother (i.e. Government) knows best. 

3. Cut Spending. In the short term, the government can compensate for the revenue shortfall by drastically cutting spending. Just ask anybody who works for any branch of government how much money they waste and your brain will promptly melt and run out your ears. Researching the mating habits of Western Dung Beatles is nice but it isn’t necessary to the functioning of government at this time.

In the long run the tax cuts will help to grow the economy leading to more economic commerce and thus greater tax revenues for the government. Tax Cuts have been historically proven to yield a net increase in government revenues when allowed to play out over the mid to long term. 

4. Contact your Congressman and Senator to tell them what you think. It works and they do read your message. http://www.senate.gov  http://www.house.gov 

5. Enact smart and appropriate regulations of financial institutions to prevent the careless lending practices that perpetuated this financial crisis from reoccurring in the future.

America has created a huge mess for itself over the past several decades by spending money that we do not have. We have done this at the Federal, State, Local and Personal level. We cannot consistently spend more money than we make and expect that everything will be ok, it won’t. 

We cannot spend our way to prosperity. We must unhitch the yoke of government and allow the Free Market to wield its scythe and separate the winners from the losers. The results will be painful in the short term, but in the long term we will be leaner and healthier for it. The alternative is to put the responsibility for cleaning up this mess back in the hands of the people who created it in the first place. In other words, asking the inmates to reform the asylum. 

Borrowing Trillions that we don’t have now to pay off debts created by spending money we didn’t have then is the mother of all Ponzi schemes. It is criminal conduct by any standard other than the one our Federal Government sets for itself.

 - Civis Americus

civisamericus@yahoo.com

What follows here is written for the events of April 15^th, 2009. On this day, American Citizens will gather by the thousands in cities across our land. We will raise our voice and hoist our flag, we will hold our government accountable. To those elected officials who would ignore us, know that you do so at the peril of your office. King George did not listen either.

It is a speech, give it your voice.

-          The Author

Civis Americus Sum

I Am an American Citizen

America! Lend me your ear. Put aside all activity and distraction, focus here and let your mind wander not. Matters of the greatest importance are upon us and your undivided attention as Citizen is required. Today, two hundred and thirty three years from our glorious Revolution the American People stand on the pinnacle of all mankind, rich in our purse and strong in our back, leader among nations. We are as free, as powerful as any nation the world has ever known and yet, as is the habit of a people long in their years, our history grows distant in mind. We forget that our freedom and prosperity were never given, they were extracted at the greatest expense of blood and treasure from the grip of a despot king. We forget, that monarchy and slavery are not long behind us, that liberty survives only under the watchful eye of a concerned and vigilant people. Our prosperity has brought us complacency, a sense that all is well, that tomorrow is as certain as today. It is not. While we have slumbered our elected leaders have lost their way, lost their attachment to that old wisdom of austerity and restraint. Driven like a fox before hounds they seek to curry favor with the vocal minority. To appease those ignoble masses who so brazenly demand that another carry water on their behalf. They have lost their nerve. They cower at the feet of adversity, refusing to make that hard choice, refusing to say that right thing, refusing to do that which must be done. Decisions are avoided, compromises found, present put before future, the survival of the fox placed above all else. Behold! A Tax Payer is sacrificed on the alter of the fairness, his wealth distributed for the greater good.

And so a free people, a Silent Majority stand inexplicably transfixed by the gaze of a distant and arrogant power. An institution, a Federal Government ignorant of its own history, its purpose and its constitutional bounds. Like a ship with no rudder it follows the winds, the cry of the nescient masses. Its hull is laid low in the water, heavy with barnacles of debt and obligation. An incompetent crew sails her straight for the rocks while we, her people, her Captain slumber below. If our ship has no rudder, if our crew be incompetent then we alone stand responsible. Our government has no authority other than that which we grant it. It does not exist without the consent of the governed. Its Constitution is not a permanent fixture among the stars, it is a thing of our own making, a compact among the States. So then, let us come together. Let us right our ship and admonish her crew. Let us survey her hull and put forth a bold and noble plan for the repair of her Constitution. Our ship, our beloved America requires her Captain.

These three Repairs are placed before you for consideration. If it be determined that they are worthy then let a Constitutional Convention be called for their enactment.

I.                   The Enactment of a Balanced Budget Amendment

II.                Repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment and Enactment of The Fair Tax

III.             The Enactment of Congressional Term Limits

Articles for Consideration

I.                   The Enactment of a Balanced Budget Amendment

Our Federal Government has proven without question that it is entirely incapable of fiscal restraint. Gluttony is her name. Our Executive proposes that America incur new debt in the amount of Ten Trillion dollars over the next decade. Deficit spending of this magnitude will sink us, it cannot be sustained. We must force our Federal Government, by Law to live within its financial means. It can no more be trusted with our money than a wolf to guard our sheep. Let a Constitutional Amendment be passed requiring that our Federal Government balance its budget each and every year.

II.                Repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment and Enactment of the Fair Tax

We hold and proclaim that Progressive Taxation is theft by another name. That our Tax Code has become an instrument of discrimination. That its complexity is that of a Gordian Knot. It cannot be fixed, it cannot be untied. It is fundamentally flawed and must be cut out in its entirety. Let us repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. Let us put an end to the taxation of productivity and savings. Passage of the Fair Tax will ensure the proper funding of our government. It will remove a favorite tool of social engineering from the hands of our politicians. It will free us from that wretched instrument of oppression that is the Internal Revenue Service.

III.             The Enactment of Congressional Term Limits

America is a Constitutional Republic of more than three hundred million people. As we cannot all have voice in each and every affair, we elect Representatives and send them forth that they may defend our interests in the halls of government. The demands of the many fall on the few. It is left to them, our representatives to wield discretion, to pick winner from loser, to decide what to embrace and what to abandon, it cannot all be kept. Herein lies our Achilles heel, chink in the armor of our Republic. For with discretion comes power, and power corruption. It is a flaw in the human condition. Let us repair our armor and amend our Constitution let us install a limitation of term for members of Congress. Eight years or four terms for members of the House and twelve years or two terms for members of the Senate. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, our forbearers, bound by common interest and mutual affection defeated through arms their despot King and sowed the seeds of a mighty American Republic. Their triumph is our legacy, it is our heritage, it is the stuff that we are made of. Liberty is ours, it was acquired by the blood of our soldiers, enshrined in our constitution by the wisdom of our founders, guarded by generations hence and bequeathed to us that we should defend it with our very lives. The American Ideal is that of our own making. Drawn from the lessons of history, fired in the oven of adversity and forged on the anvil of courage it defines our national character. It holds that America stands for more than herself. She stands for that which is by nature right and just. That man is capable of self determination, that regardless of parentage each is free to pursue his own path in the world. America holds industry close to her heart. She believes in the Free Market. She celebrates determined work and the rise of the self-made man. Collectivism, Socialism these are words we do not understand.

I bid you now go forth, take these words to heart and teach them to your children. May the Silent Majority rest in peace, may all the world take heed, America’s People, her Citizens have awoken! We will not be silent, we will not stand idle. We will not cower at the feet of adversity. We will stand and defend that which is ours, our Liberty, our Land our beloved America. Do not tread on me, for Civis Americus Sum… I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN!

civisamericus@yahoo.com