When the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention was concluded in 1787, a woman anxious to know what the secret negotiations had produced asked Benjamin Franklin "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic,” Franklin answered, “if you can keep it."
The leading lights who had labored to produce the magnificent U.S. Constitution were deeply suspicious of government and its ability to misuse its power in mischievous ways. So they wove together an intricate system of checks and balances to prevent federalism, the uniting of the former colonies with a central government, in a way that would prevent that central government from gaining too much power, enabling it to force its will upon the states and its people.
Almost a century later in 1850, the French anti-government philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon would write: "To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.”
The Founders and the states had similar misgivings about throwing off one yoke – that of George III’s interference in their lives – and putting on another, which an empowered central government could be. Thus, there was no chance that the ratifying conventions of several states would approve the new constitution without a Bill of Rights that prevented misinterpretation or usurpation of powers never intended to be granted to the federal government. The preamble of the original ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known then as the Bill of Rights, therefore includes:
THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
The Second Amendment plainly says “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” It does not say “the people are hereby granted the right to bear arms.” This and the other amendments are clearly a prohibition on federal government interference. Unimpeachably obvious is the fact that each amendment was meant to protect a pre-existing right.
The Fourth Amendment does not grant the right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures. It protects a pre-existing right by expressly declaring that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated …”
These Bill of Rights amendments were not mere suggestions. Rights came first then government came to protect those rights. It’s not the other way round.
Just in case future generations might misunderstand even this plain language, including the Nine Nazgûl who comprise the Supreme Court, the Ninth Amendment essentially says rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights are also protected – in other words, “If we left anything out, don’t interpret it as a loophole.” And the Tenth Amendment tightens the noose even more: “The powers not delegated to the United States [i.e. the federal government] by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Thanks to the anfractuous arguments of slick-tongued lawyers, judicial activism, and the imperious overreach of Congress and White House most of these rights and the Constitution itself have been violated, abused, watered down, or flatly ignored since their original conception.
While Woodrow Wilson considered the Constitution as a quaint work in progress, the alphabet organizations of the New Deal and FDR’s attempts to regulate the economy and redistribute wealth was the first full frontal assault on the Constitution. The New Deal was so incompetent an idea that many economists today believe it prolonged the depression by years.
Lacking the crisis of a depression or war, Bill Clinton had to content himself with the Constitutional affronts of Janet Reno, Clinton’s third choice for Attorney General after his first and second choices were revealed to have illegal immigrants as servants. Reno once told a group of federal law enforcement officers “You are part of a government that has given its people more freedom … than any other government in the history of the world.” This great protector of the Constitution obviously didn’t understand it. Within her second-rate mind was a third-rate mind always struggling to get out. The Ruby Ridge killings, the incineration of 76 Branch Davidians, and the Elián Gonzalez affair showed us what happens when stupidity and power are combined in one person.
More recently were the usurpations of George Bush’s bailouts followed by Barack Obama’s constitutional travesties, the crowning one being his tendentious take-over of healthcare whose hinge is an unconstitutional mandate – whether or not it can be successfully argued as such before a court given to cheeky interpretations of the Commerce Clause. Just as the Founders feared that a strong central government would do, Obama and his obsequious congressional sycophants ignored the will of the people, and in some cases their own principles, to pass this unpopular law.
So it came as no shock to me that a Pew Research poll this week showed trust of government has sunk to 22%. Only 18% of independents – the people who decide election outcomes -- trust government. Half of them believe the government presents a "major threat" to "personal rights and freedoms," 37% are “highly dissatisfied” with government, and two-thirds are leaning toward the Republicans. – not good news for a president who is trying to transform America, unless he can get it transformed before next January when the new Congress is sworn in.
Obama’s disregard for the Constitution should not surprise anyone. Back in 2001, when he was still in training wheels as a second-term Illinois state senator, he was interviewed for the Odyssey program on Chicago Public Radio, during which he said:
“But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in the society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court [of the ‘60s], it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution …”
Before assuming the office of president, Obama, like all public officials, was required to take an oath promising to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” His understanding of Constitution (which he once taught at the University of Chicago) and – more importantly – his other-worldly contrast with how our Founding Fathers understood the document is chilling.
Further in his interview Obama said: “… generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you. It says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf …”
Compare Obama’s statement with one made by James Madison, one of the participants in the Constitutional Convention whose extensive notes tell us what was discussed in those secret meetings:
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
The Progressives, Liberals, the Left, or whatever sobriquet you wish to use to describe this political trope, view the Constitution with the same antiquated disdain with which their progenitor, Woodrow Wilson, held it – an historical document with no place in the “modern” world. E.J. Dionne, the Left’s chief spokesman today and a Washington Post editorialist, who increasingly gives editorialists a bad name, recently wrote in his column that “federal meddling in matters reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment reveal how far into the past some people want to push the nation.” How passé of us!
If the Obamaphiles win the court challenges over the individual mandate, the Left (of which I’m obviously not) will have a hunting license with which to defend any federal infringement of individual liberty in the name of regulating (there’s that Commerce Clause again) a modern national economy. Our rights as individuals will no longer be protected by the Constitution. They will, as Janet Reno’s benighted declaration revealed, become the sufferance of the federal government, free to be revised by whichever political faction is in power. The people of the United States will become an abstraction that politicians must tolerate every two years in order to be reelected, and Obama’s transformation might as well replace the opening line of the Constitution – “We the People of the United States” – with “We the Government of the United States.”
If Obama’s transformation is fulfilled, then as Vice President Biden whispered to the President at the healthcare bill signing (and 300 million other Americans unaware that his mike was open) “this is a big f---ing deal.”
Monday, April 26, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
"That memory may their deed redeem"
Today and continuing through Monday the 19th spectators and actors gathered outside of Boston to commemorate another April 19 when 235 years ago a group of farmers confronted the mightiest army in the world and started the American Revolution.
Faced with the increasing expense of maintaining a large British Army in America to fight the French and Indian wars, the national debt of England had soared, almost doubling in the ten years ending in 1765. In search for new tax revenues, Parliament passed the Stamp Act of 1765. The colonies were largely self-governing and this was the first attempt to assert London’s authority over them. It was an odious precedent for taxing British Americans without the approval of their colonial legislatures, and if it wasn’t resisted, the door would be open for more taxes to follow.
The colonials rebelled with protests, tarred and feathered collectors, burned their houses, and used every stratagem to negate the stamp act. Parliament wisely concluded the act couldn’t be enforced – at least not easily – and repealed it. But Parliament didn’t give up. A tax on British tea led to the iconic Boston Tea Party in 1773 when men disguised as Indians boarded the Dartmouth laying at anchor and threw its tea cargo overboard into Boston harbor. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which among other things, closed the port of Boston to all trade – putting an economic noose around New England’s neck.
General Thomas Gage was the military governor of Boston with about 4,000 troops under his command. He was married to an American-born woman who was known to have sympathies for the colonials. Perhaps that and knowledge that he lacked the troops to put down a large-scale rebellion led Gage to govern the hotbed of anti-British sentiment in Boston with a light touch, while he governed his own troops with a heavy hand for every abuse they inflicted on the local citizens.
Among the thought leaders who were pushing the idea of independence from English meddling in America’s affairs were Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Adams was the second cousin of John Adams, a shrewd political manipulator, and a propagandist. He was likely responsible for inciting a street gang in 1770 to harass a squad of British soldiers, which resulted in the Boston “Massacre.” Hancock, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of Samuel Adams. He was wealthy, refined, naïve, and easily manipulated. Both men were visible enough in Boston society that when rumors began to circulate that the British might arrest them, they left for the small village of Lexington, about 11 miles away, where Hancock had relatives.
In Lexington Reverend Jonas Clarke had succeeded the father of John Hancock as town minister. In the 20 years since his arrival, Clarke had established himself as a key figure in the town's affairs. He was politically savvy and worked to enlighten the politically unsophisticated farmers and shopkeepers who made up the village. In 1765, Clarke had authored the town's protest of the Stamp Act, and in 1774 he had urged the remobilization of the town militia, which had essentially disbanded when there was no longer a threat from Indian raids.
Captain John Parker, a 45-year old farmer, was perhaps the most respected citizen of Lexington. That and the fact that he was a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, led to his election as the leader of the Lexington militia. In April of 1775 he was dying of tuberculosis.
Dr. Joseph Warren was a Boston surgeon who, along with Samuel Adams and John Hancock, was a prominent political figure in Boston’s political life giving him immense personal prestige as a patriot. After the Boston Massacre, Warren conducted the autopsy on one of the dead men and assembled a report on the incident. Royal officials wanted to put him on trial for an editorial he had published about the “massacre” that they considered inflammatory, but no local jury would indict him.
It’s hard to know the mind of General Gage during these days and history does little to shed light on his thoughts. He had to know that militias in communities surrounding Boston were gathering gun powder, muskets, and bullets – against British law – yet only once did he sally forth to capture gun powder in the nearby village of Somerville. That foray served to create the Colonial “Powder Alarm” prompting the Americans to be more judicious in buying and hiding their armaments. Gage was cautious to avoid escalating tensions against the British, but in April 1775 he received a direct order from London to arrest Adams and Hancock and destroy a munitions cache believed to be hidden in Concord – 5 miles beyond Lexington.
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith was chosen by Gage to lead the Concord expedition and was given Gage’s secret orders on the afternoon of April 18 that he was not to read until his troops were underway. He was to proceed from Boston "with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy... all Military stores... But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property." Major John Pitcairn was appointed second in command for the mission. Gage ignored the arrest order for Adams and Hancock, concerned that it could spark an uprising.
Things went badly from the start. The expedition was to leave around midnight but Smith arrived late and it didn’t get started until 2 a.m. Boston was crawling with colonial spies who tipped off Dr. Warren that British troops were moving out to arrest Hancock and Adams – or so it was thought. Warren sent Paul Revere and William Dawes on horseback by separate routes, in case one was captured, to warn the Lexington militia. Along the way, they were to wake up farm residents and tell them that the British were coming, sending more riders out into the countryside that night to warn other villages.
The original plan would have had the British passing through Lexington in the middle of the night when everyone in town would be asleep. As it turned out Major Pitcairn, who was detached to go ahead with a small force, arrived at sunrise. Captain Parker had assembled almost 40 militia men on Lexington Green (or Common, as it also was called) to protect their families and property and to prevent the arrest of Adams and Hancock, who by that time had been hidden in the countryside. There were about 100 onlookers at the nearby Buckman Tavern.
Of the militiamen who Parker had lined up on the Green that day, nine had the surname Harrington, seven Munroe, four Parker, three Tidd, three Locke, and three Reed. Fully one quarter of them were related to Captain Parker in some way.
Predictably, in a confrontation like this with the militia men and the British squared off, muskets loaded and pointed at each other, accounts vary as to what happened next. Allegedly, Pitcairn cursed the militia and ordered them to surrender their weapons. Parker, in a subsequent deposition said he told the militia to back away and leave the Green. A shot was fired, whether by the militia or British is unknown, but then the British opened fire at almost point blank range and charged with bayonets. Parker's cousin Jonas was run through. One militia man was mortally wounded by a musket ball but managed to crawl to his house just off the Green where he bled to death on his doorstep as his young son and wife watched. In all, eight militia men were killed, ten wounded, and one British soldier was wounded. Of the eight father-son pairs on the Common that day, three sons and two fathers were killed.
The entire incident lasted less than five minutes. Smith arrived after it was over and helped Pitcairn to get control of his men. Making no effort to help with the dead and wounded, the British regrouped and marched on to Concord, which was alerted about the Lexington affair before the British arrived.
In Concord, Smith divided his men into two groups, one to search the town and one to search the countryside. A small group was left to guard the east side of the Old North Bridge spanning the Concord River under the command of an inexperienced officer. It would prove to be a fatal error.
About 400 militia men began to assemble on a ridge above the bridge under command of Colonel Barrett but didn’t advance until they saw smoke rising above the town. Thinking the British were torching homes (when in fact they were burning a gun carriage), the militia moved to the opposite end of the bridge and formed in double file along the west side of the river. As the British were ordered into firing positions, one of them fired, followed by two more shots, killing two militia men instantly. The militia opened fire killing three of the British troops and wounding eight. Realizing that they were outnumbered and trapped in their current situation, the British broke and ran to join the British contingent returning from town.
Colonel Barrett allowed the British companies that had been sent to search the countryside to cross Old North Bridge in peace where they passed through the dead and wounded British on the east side. Smith got his men into marching formation around noon and began the return to Lexington and Boston. By then, militias from surrounding villages had swelled their number to over 2,000, outnumbering the British three to one. The march back turned into a gauntlet of fire as the militia fought Indian-style from behind trees and stone walls while British soldiers insulted them to come out and “fight like men” – i.e. in column and file as they did.
Before leaving Boston, Smith had sent back a messenger asking for reinforcements to follow him. Fortuitously, he met them entering Lexington from the east as he arrived at the town’s western outskirts. That probably saved Smith’s troops from surrendering. However, by then Parker had regrouped and joined the gauntlet of musket fire that continued until Smith finally made it back to Boston at 8 p.m. He had sustained 273 casualties – 73 killed, 174 wounded, and 26 missing. The militia suffered 93 casualties – 49 killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing.
Less than a month later, the Continental Army was formed with General George Washington as its Commander-in-Chief. On June 17, Washington’s Army took up a position on a hill in Charles Town across the Charles River from Boston and laid siege to the city. The British crossed the river and took the hill, but only after three assaults against it, losing over 1,000 men in the process. Although it was not Bunker Hill, the battle would be called by that name. Gage called it, "A dear bought victory; another such would have ruined us." It claimed the lives of Dr. Joseph Warren, who sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride, and Major John Pitcairn, Smith’s executive officer in the Lexington-Concord campaign. General Gage and his army were evacuated by sea and Boston passed into Washington’s hands. Gage was recalled to London and his military career essentially ended.
I have stood on Lexington Green where John Parker stood that April day, and I’ve stood on the doorstep where Jonathon Harrington died after crawling off of the Green and bleeding to death. The house to which Samuel Adams and John Hancock fled still stands. I’ve toured it and listened for its ghosts. And I’ve stood at the Old North Bridge, no longer the original one, and saw in my mind’s eye what happened there so many years ago. Not far from where British soldiers lay dead, Reverend William Emerson, Concord’s minister, stood behind his house that April morning and watched the fight at Old North Bridge probably unaware that history was being made before his eyes. Sixty years later his grandson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, would write these words:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
On the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Concord, the Minute Man statue was erected at the site of the Old North Bridge with Emerson’s poem on its base.
Faced with the increasing expense of maintaining a large British Army in America to fight the French and Indian wars, the national debt of England had soared, almost doubling in the ten years ending in 1765. In search for new tax revenues, Parliament passed the Stamp Act of 1765. The colonies were largely self-governing and this was the first attempt to assert London’s authority over them. It was an odious precedent for taxing British Americans without the approval of their colonial legislatures, and if it wasn’t resisted, the door would be open for more taxes to follow.
The colonials rebelled with protests, tarred and feathered collectors, burned their houses, and used every stratagem to negate the stamp act. Parliament wisely concluded the act couldn’t be enforced – at least not easily – and repealed it. But Parliament didn’t give up. A tax on British tea led to the iconic Boston Tea Party in 1773 when men disguised as Indians boarded the Dartmouth laying at anchor and threw its tea cargo overboard into Boston harbor. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which among other things, closed the port of Boston to all trade – putting an economic noose around New England’s neck.
General Thomas Gage was the military governor of Boston with about 4,000 troops under his command. He was married to an American-born woman who was known to have sympathies for the colonials. Perhaps that and knowledge that he lacked the troops to put down a large-scale rebellion led Gage to govern the hotbed of anti-British sentiment in Boston with a light touch, while he governed his own troops with a heavy hand for every abuse they inflicted on the local citizens.
Among the thought leaders who were pushing the idea of independence from English meddling in America’s affairs were Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Adams was the second cousin of John Adams, a shrewd political manipulator, and a propagandist. He was likely responsible for inciting a street gang in 1770 to harass a squad of British soldiers, which resulted in the Boston “Massacre.” Hancock, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of Samuel Adams. He was wealthy, refined, naïve, and easily manipulated. Both men were visible enough in Boston society that when rumors began to circulate that the British might arrest them, they left for the small village of Lexington, about 11 miles away, where Hancock had relatives.
In Lexington Reverend Jonas Clarke had succeeded the father of John Hancock as town minister. In the 20 years since his arrival, Clarke had established himself as a key figure in the town's affairs. He was politically savvy and worked to enlighten the politically unsophisticated farmers and shopkeepers who made up the village. In 1765, Clarke had authored the town's protest of the Stamp Act, and in 1774 he had urged the remobilization of the town militia, which had essentially disbanded when there was no longer a threat from Indian raids.
Captain John Parker, a 45-year old farmer, was perhaps the most respected citizen of Lexington. That and the fact that he was a veteran of the French and Indian Wars, led to his election as the leader of the Lexington militia. In April of 1775 he was dying of tuberculosis.
Dr. Joseph Warren was a Boston surgeon who, along with Samuel Adams and John Hancock, was a prominent political figure in Boston’s political life giving him immense personal prestige as a patriot. After the Boston Massacre, Warren conducted the autopsy on one of the dead men and assembled a report on the incident. Royal officials wanted to put him on trial for an editorial he had published about the “massacre” that they considered inflammatory, but no local jury would indict him.
It’s hard to know the mind of General Gage during these days and history does little to shed light on his thoughts. He had to know that militias in communities surrounding Boston were gathering gun powder, muskets, and bullets – against British law – yet only once did he sally forth to capture gun powder in the nearby village of Somerville. That foray served to create the Colonial “Powder Alarm” prompting the Americans to be more judicious in buying and hiding their armaments. Gage was cautious to avoid escalating tensions against the British, but in April 1775 he received a direct order from London to arrest Adams and Hancock and destroy a munitions cache believed to be hidden in Concord – 5 miles beyond Lexington.
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith was chosen by Gage to lead the Concord expedition and was given Gage’s secret orders on the afternoon of April 18 that he was not to read until his troops were underway. He was to proceed from Boston "with utmost expedition and secrecy to Concord, where you will seize and destroy... all Military stores... But you will take care that the soldiers do not plunder the inhabitants or hurt private property." Major John Pitcairn was appointed second in command for the mission. Gage ignored the arrest order for Adams and Hancock, concerned that it could spark an uprising.
Things went badly from the start. The expedition was to leave around midnight but Smith arrived late and it didn’t get started until 2 a.m. Boston was crawling with colonial spies who tipped off Dr. Warren that British troops were moving out to arrest Hancock and Adams – or so it was thought. Warren sent Paul Revere and William Dawes on horseback by separate routes, in case one was captured, to warn the Lexington militia. Along the way, they were to wake up farm residents and tell them that the British were coming, sending more riders out into the countryside that night to warn other villages.
The original plan would have had the British passing through Lexington in the middle of the night when everyone in town would be asleep. As it turned out Major Pitcairn, who was detached to go ahead with a small force, arrived at sunrise. Captain Parker had assembled almost 40 militia men on Lexington Green (or Common, as it also was called) to protect their families and property and to prevent the arrest of Adams and Hancock, who by that time had been hidden in the countryside. There were about 100 onlookers at the nearby Buckman Tavern.
Of the militiamen who Parker had lined up on the Green that day, nine had the surname Harrington, seven Munroe, four Parker, three Tidd, three Locke, and three Reed. Fully one quarter of them were related to Captain Parker in some way.
Predictably, in a confrontation like this with the militia men and the British squared off, muskets loaded and pointed at each other, accounts vary as to what happened next. Allegedly, Pitcairn cursed the militia and ordered them to surrender their weapons. Parker, in a subsequent deposition said he told the militia to back away and leave the Green. A shot was fired, whether by the militia or British is unknown, but then the British opened fire at almost point blank range and charged with bayonets. Parker's cousin Jonas was run through. One militia man was mortally wounded by a musket ball but managed to crawl to his house just off the Green where he bled to death on his doorstep as his young son and wife watched. In all, eight militia men were killed, ten wounded, and one British soldier was wounded. Of the eight father-son pairs on the Common that day, three sons and two fathers were killed.
The entire incident lasted less than five minutes. Smith arrived after it was over and helped Pitcairn to get control of his men. Making no effort to help with the dead and wounded, the British regrouped and marched on to Concord, which was alerted about the Lexington affair before the British arrived.
In Concord, Smith divided his men into two groups, one to search the town and one to search the countryside. A small group was left to guard the east side of the Old North Bridge spanning the Concord River under the command of an inexperienced officer. It would prove to be a fatal error.
About 400 militia men began to assemble on a ridge above the bridge under command of Colonel Barrett but didn’t advance until they saw smoke rising above the town. Thinking the British were torching homes (when in fact they were burning a gun carriage), the militia moved to the opposite end of the bridge and formed in double file along the west side of the river. As the British were ordered into firing positions, one of them fired, followed by two more shots, killing two militia men instantly. The militia opened fire killing three of the British troops and wounding eight. Realizing that they were outnumbered and trapped in their current situation, the British broke and ran to join the British contingent returning from town.
Colonel Barrett allowed the British companies that had been sent to search the countryside to cross Old North Bridge in peace where they passed through the dead and wounded British on the east side. Smith got his men into marching formation around noon and began the return to Lexington and Boston. By then, militias from surrounding villages had swelled their number to over 2,000, outnumbering the British three to one. The march back turned into a gauntlet of fire as the militia fought Indian-style from behind trees and stone walls while British soldiers insulted them to come out and “fight like men” – i.e. in column and file as they did.
Before leaving Boston, Smith had sent back a messenger asking for reinforcements to follow him. Fortuitously, he met them entering Lexington from the east as he arrived at the town’s western outskirts. That probably saved Smith’s troops from surrendering. However, by then Parker had regrouped and joined the gauntlet of musket fire that continued until Smith finally made it back to Boston at 8 p.m. He had sustained 273 casualties – 73 killed, 174 wounded, and 26 missing. The militia suffered 93 casualties – 49 killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing.
Less than a month later, the Continental Army was formed with General George Washington as its Commander-in-Chief. On June 17, Washington’s Army took up a position on a hill in Charles Town across the Charles River from Boston and laid siege to the city. The British crossed the river and took the hill, but only after three assaults against it, losing over 1,000 men in the process. Although it was not Bunker Hill, the battle would be called by that name. Gage called it, "A dear bought victory; another such would have ruined us." It claimed the lives of Dr. Joseph Warren, who sent Paul Revere on his midnight ride, and Major John Pitcairn, Smith’s executive officer in the Lexington-Concord campaign. General Gage and his army were evacuated by sea and Boston passed into Washington’s hands. Gage was recalled to London and his military career essentially ended.
I have stood on Lexington Green where John Parker stood that April day, and I’ve stood on the doorstep where Jonathon Harrington died after crawling off of the Green and bleeding to death. The house to which Samuel Adams and John Hancock fled still stands. I’ve toured it and listened for its ghosts. And I’ve stood at the Old North Bridge, no longer the original one, and saw in my mind’s eye what happened there so many years ago. Not far from where British soldiers lay dead, Reverend William Emerson, Concord’s minister, stood behind his house that April morning and watched the fight at Old North Bridge probably unaware that history was being made before his eyes. Sixty years later his grandson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, would write these words:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
On the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Concord, the Minute Man statue was erected at the site of the Old North Bridge with Emerson’s poem on its base.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Bloviator-in-Chief
When he isn’t insulting our Israeli and Afghan allies or signing nuclear disarmament agreements in a world that would happily reduce the U.S. to heat-induced glass, Obama is on the talk circuit these days trying to sell ObamaCare. This is putting his bloviation skills to their greatest test yet because the American public is as mad as hornets that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid troika defied them with their “we know what’s best for you” body slam last month. So, this week’s CBS News poll couldn’t have been good news to the political class. It showed that ObamaCare is approaching the popularity of a root canal and is now 10 percentage points less popular than it was on the day of its passage.
In a North Carolina lithium battery plant last Friday a woman in the carefully screened gallery possessed the gall of a brass monkey by challenging the Loquacious One’s knowledge of Economics 101 as he tried to sell the audience on the nirvana of ObamaCare. Doris of Lake Wylie, S.C. asked, "In the economic times that we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with healthcare?" She added, "Because we are overtaxed as it is."
Giving his best imitation of a Steve Spurrier reaction to an egregious ref call, Obama spent 17 minutes in a pyrotechnical discourse bewilderingly documented by Washington Post reporter Anne E. Kornblut. As her observations recall, “… [OB] then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer -- more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, ‘F-Map’). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as ‘FICA’).” If you want to read the unexpurgated soliloquy, be my guest.
As is his custom when people challenge the infallibility of his knowledge on any subject – Bret Baier’s recent Fox News interview and Rep. Paul Ryan’s smack-down of OB’s “facts” at the Blair Summit come to mind – Obama resorts to outpouring a wilderness of words to distract his interlocutors like a raccoon employs tricks to throw a pack of hounds off of its trail. Only this time it didn’t work. Every reporter noticed (and reported) that after his soiree into audience catatonia, Doris’ question remained unanswered.
So let me take a stab at it.
Doris, you have a better understanding of basic economics than the Bloviator-in-Chief. He lives in a never-never land where hopping on Air Force One to take his wife to a Broadway show, spending several hundred thousand taxpayer dollars in the process, is not the obscenity that you and I see it to be. We have to plan our vacations and budget for them. Lately, they’re a luxury we can do without. Unlike Obama, who slips over to Oslo for a few hours to ply his charisma with criminals who accept every emolument that can pass the Olympic selection committee’s red face test, you and I will likely never see Oslo. Certainly not for only a few hours. And we can’t throw government-paid parties for the beautiful people in government-paid housing like Michelle does while unemployment among the great unwashed hovers just below 10% and eight million people have lost their livelihoods. You go girl! You get it. Obama doesn’t.
I also agree with you, Doris, that we’re taxed too much. And we’re taxed unfairly. Facts are troublesome things, old John Adams said a couple of hundred years ago, and the Tax Policy Center came out with some factual doozies this week. It reported that 47% of wage earners will pay no federal tax for 2009. When almost half of the folks don’t pay taxes, raising taxes is sorta’ a non-issue to them, don’t you think? Does democracy really work when almost half the population takes what the other half has – when the top 10% of the income earners pay more than 70% of the taxes – and those making $50,000 don’t care? Is that democracy?
Unlike you and me, Doris, when our incomes are pinched, we have to cut our spending. Not this Washington crowd. Because almost 10% of the workforce isn’t working and paying taxes, Uncle Sam’s income dropped from 18% to 16% of the GDP, which is a lot of money when you’re dealing in trillions of dollars. Yet the Obama administration kept on spending money like drunken sailors – almost 25% of the GDP – the highest peacetime percentage in U.S. history.
If Obama understood economics as well as you do, Doris, he’d see that if you’re taking in 16% of the GDP and spending 25%, you get in a hole fast. Not to worry. Thanks to all of the new taxes baked into ObamaCare, families earning more than about $250,000 (that’s only 2% of the taxpayers) will see their marginal income tax rate increase from 35% to almost 40%, capital gains taxes will go from 15% to 20%, hospitals will pay a tax of 1% of income, and 3.8% will be applied to the ill-gotten gains of “passive” income – interest, dividends, and short-term capital gains. Passive income is a government euphemism for money we don’t do work to earn, Doris; it is earnings on capital and therefore fair game for federal expropriation.
Two percent pay so 98% can play? I don’t think that’s going to work for long, therefore look for Obama to renege on his promise that if our incomes are under $250,000 “not one dime” in higher taxes will be paid.
We are fast becoming a country where instead of citizens deciding how much the government should take, the government decides how much the citizens should keep. And maybe that’s the heart of the problem, Doris. Only after ObamaCare passed did Democrats ‘fess up that this was one of their motives. Obama sold it as a way to save money and cut the deficit, which it won’t do, but its real appeal to anti-capitalist elites is that it spreads the wealth around – just like OB told Joe the plumber he would do if elected. So last week, a smiling Max Baucus, the Democrat chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, proudly admitted that alleviating the "maldistribution of income in America" from the haves to the have-nots is one of healthcare reform’s real benefits.
We call that socialism down here in Georgia, Doris, and when fewer and fewer taxpayers pay more and more of the taxes, we are getting close to what Margret Thatcher said is socialism’s failure: eventually it runs out of other people's money to spend. It’s already happening at the state level where balanced budgets are required by law; therefore new taxes are being levied on funerals, haircuts, accounting and legal services, even clowns. The tax-it-if-it-moves mentality of state legislatures would be comical if it weren’t so infuriating to those of us who pay too much in state and county taxes because governors and commissioners don’t have the courage to cut spending. If Californians have to pay more taxes, they may soon decide that Waziristan isn’t so bad a place to live.
Maybe you weren’t surprised, Doris, that so sensible a question as yours launched a pontifical downpour that didn’t even answer what you asked. If Obama had answered truthfully – yes, it’s stupid to raise taxes in a struggling economy, yes you do pay too much in taxes – he’d have been at cross purposes with his ideological belief that society’s best and the brightest become politicians not proletariats who meet payrolls, create real jobs, innovate and take risks, and fail their way to success. Always anxious to lecture those of us who just don’t get it, Obama seems convinced that in true Orphan Annie enlightenment we would all break out in singing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” if we could just see the world he sees for us.
About 150 years ago Abe Lincoln said of a lawyer in his time: "He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." I think you saw the new record-holder last Friday.
In a North Carolina lithium battery plant last Friday a woman in the carefully screened gallery possessed the gall of a brass monkey by challenging the Loquacious One’s knowledge of Economics 101 as he tried to sell the audience on the nirvana of ObamaCare. Doris of Lake Wylie, S.C. asked, "In the economic times that we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with healthcare?" She added, "Because we are overtaxed as it is."
Giving his best imitation of a Steve Spurrier reaction to an egregious ref call, Obama spent 17 minutes in a pyrotechnical discourse bewilderingly documented by Washington Post reporter Anne E. Kornblut. As her observations recall, “… [OB] then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer -- more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, ‘F-Map’). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as ‘FICA’).” If you want to read the unexpurgated soliloquy, be my guest.
As is his custom when people challenge the infallibility of his knowledge on any subject – Bret Baier’s recent Fox News interview and Rep. Paul Ryan’s smack-down of OB’s “facts” at the Blair Summit come to mind – Obama resorts to outpouring a wilderness of words to distract his interlocutors like a raccoon employs tricks to throw a pack of hounds off of its trail. Only this time it didn’t work. Every reporter noticed (and reported) that after his soiree into audience catatonia, Doris’ question remained unanswered.
So let me take a stab at it.
Doris, you have a better understanding of basic economics than the Bloviator-in-Chief. He lives in a never-never land where hopping on Air Force One to take his wife to a Broadway show, spending several hundred thousand taxpayer dollars in the process, is not the obscenity that you and I see it to be. We have to plan our vacations and budget for them. Lately, they’re a luxury we can do without. Unlike Obama, who slips over to Oslo for a few hours to ply his charisma with criminals who accept every emolument that can pass the Olympic selection committee’s red face test, you and I will likely never see Oslo. Certainly not for only a few hours. And we can’t throw government-paid parties for the beautiful people in government-paid housing like Michelle does while unemployment among the great unwashed hovers just below 10% and eight million people have lost their livelihoods. You go girl! You get it. Obama doesn’t.
I also agree with you, Doris, that we’re taxed too much. And we’re taxed unfairly. Facts are troublesome things, old John Adams said a couple of hundred years ago, and the Tax Policy Center came out with some factual doozies this week. It reported that 47% of wage earners will pay no federal tax for 2009. When almost half of the folks don’t pay taxes, raising taxes is sorta’ a non-issue to them, don’t you think? Does democracy really work when almost half the population takes what the other half has – when the top 10% of the income earners pay more than 70% of the taxes – and those making $50,000 don’t care? Is that democracy?
Unlike you and me, Doris, when our incomes are pinched, we have to cut our spending. Not this Washington crowd. Because almost 10% of the workforce isn’t working and paying taxes, Uncle Sam’s income dropped from 18% to 16% of the GDP, which is a lot of money when you’re dealing in trillions of dollars. Yet the Obama administration kept on spending money like drunken sailors – almost 25% of the GDP – the highest peacetime percentage in U.S. history.
If Obama understood economics as well as you do, Doris, he’d see that if you’re taking in 16% of the GDP and spending 25%, you get in a hole fast. Not to worry. Thanks to all of the new taxes baked into ObamaCare, families earning more than about $250,000 (that’s only 2% of the taxpayers) will see their marginal income tax rate increase from 35% to almost 40%, capital gains taxes will go from 15% to 20%, hospitals will pay a tax of 1% of income, and 3.8% will be applied to the ill-gotten gains of “passive” income – interest, dividends, and short-term capital gains. Passive income is a government euphemism for money we don’t do work to earn, Doris; it is earnings on capital and therefore fair game for federal expropriation.
Two percent pay so 98% can play? I don’t think that’s going to work for long, therefore look for Obama to renege on his promise that if our incomes are under $250,000 “not one dime” in higher taxes will be paid.
We are fast becoming a country where instead of citizens deciding how much the government should take, the government decides how much the citizens should keep. And maybe that’s the heart of the problem, Doris. Only after ObamaCare passed did Democrats ‘fess up that this was one of their motives. Obama sold it as a way to save money and cut the deficit, which it won’t do, but its real appeal to anti-capitalist elites is that it spreads the wealth around – just like OB told Joe the plumber he would do if elected. So last week, a smiling Max Baucus, the Democrat chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, proudly admitted that alleviating the "maldistribution of income in America" from the haves to the have-nots is one of healthcare reform’s real benefits.
We call that socialism down here in Georgia, Doris, and when fewer and fewer taxpayers pay more and more of the taxes, we are getting close to what Margret Thatcher said is socialism’s failure: eventually it runs out of other people's money to spend. It’s already happening at the state level where balanced budgets are required by law; therefore new taxes are being levied on funerals, haircuts, accounting and legal services, even clowns. The tax-it-if-it-moves mentality of state legislatures would be comical if it weren’t so infuriating to those of us who pay too much in state and county taxes because governors and commissioners don’t have the courage to cut spending. If Californians have to pay more taxes, they may soon decide that Waziristan isn’t so bad a place to live.
Maybe you weren’t surprised, Doris, that so sensible a question as yours launched a pontifical downpour that didn’t even answer what you asked. If Obama had answered truthfully – yes, it’s stupid to raise taxes in a struggling economy, yes you do pay too much in taxes – he’d have been at cross purposes with his ideological belief that society’s best and the brightest become politicians not proletariats who meet payrolls, create real jobs, innovate and take risks, and fail their way to success. Always anxious to lecture those of us who just don’t get it, Obama seems convinced that in true Orphan Annie enlightenment we would all break out in singing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” if we could just see the world he sees for us.
About 150 years ago Abe Lincoln said of a lawyer in his time: "He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met." I think you saw the new record-holder last Friday.
Monday, April 5, 2010
"We made too many wrong mistakes..."
Yogi Berra’s notable malapropism explaining the Yankee’s loss of the 1960 World Series may be the way future apologists explain the train wreck this administration has created since taking office.
Thanks to the recent partisan enactment of healthcare “reform,” the budget deficit (you know, that pesky tax revenue-government spending thing), which was about 3% of GDP in Bush’s last year, is now in excess 10% -- more than triple. And the all important debt-to-GDP ratio has gone from 40% when Bush was president to 63% today and is projected by OMB to grow to 90% by 2020. That’s Obama’s legacy to future generations.
To put this debt-to-GDP ratio in an historical perspective, the ratio during the Carter administration averaged a paltry 28%. Yet, those of us who suffered through Carter’s presidential ineptness remember the up close and personal glimpse of what economic Hell looks like, and I for one don’t want to repeat it. Yet anyone with a modicum of understanding of history and economics knows what’s in store for us after four years of Obama and (perish the thought) four more years after that.
The tax and miscellaneous revenue taken in by the federal government is recently about $2.5 trillion annually. The current national debt is about $12.5 trillion but with the accumulation of deficits in Obama’s 2011 budget the national debt will rise to over $20 trillion in 2020. That’s if his rosy future scenarios trend out as predicted, which they never do.
Most of us have trouble comprehending figures denominated in trillions, so think of ObamaNation as if it were a family. Federal tax revenues are the family’s income, and the 2020 national debt is the mortgage on their house. The mortgage would be almost 45 times greater than the family income. That is like a family earning $100,000 having a $4,500,000 mortgage! You wouldn’t find too many mortgage lenders who would take that deal, but the one that has financed this family’s abode has been on a drunken spending spree for years.
An interest-only mortgage at 5% on their house would require annual interest payments of $225,000 per year and conventional mortgage payments that retire the debt principal would require much higher outlays. This is not a happy family. Not only is there nothing available for living expenses, but also the interest exceeds the income. You might suspect that the eviction notice is being written.
That is the state of affairs in which ObamaNation now finds itself. In 2009 it spent $1.2 trillion, or about 50%, more than it brought in, and we can expect that to continue for the next ten years as the Obama budget runs deficit after deficit in a steady march toward a $20 trillion national debt – 90% of the GDP. For comparison, from 1789 (the year after the U.S. Constitution was ratified) to 2008 (Bush’s last year), this country accumulated only $5.8 trillion of public debt.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not exonerating the Bush or Republican reckless spending binges, but Obama and the Democrat House have given new meaning to deficits and debt.
Spanish philosopher Jorge Santayana said if we do not learn from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to repeat them. Obama said healthcare reform was essential to restoring fiscal sanity. So let’s look at the promises of similar social programs in past administrations. I’ll try to make this short, because it’s painful.
The Social Security program was conceived in 1935 by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When it was launched, there were roughly 16 workers for every beneficiary, more than enough to support a modest pay-as-you-go retirement program. That’s how Social Security was sold almost 75 years ago. Today, however, there are 3.3 workers per beneficiary and by 2030 when the last Boomer retires, the ratio will be 2.
Instead of “pay as you go” the Social Security program is really “you pay and I’ll go” because it was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme from the start. Any demographer who can find his rear end in a dark room will tell you that family sizes fall as a nation gets wealthier. Children, who were the source of the family’s well-being in an agricultural/industrial era become the beneficiaries of family well-being in a more sophisticated economy, so family sizes decrease. Parents averaged 3.6 children when Social Security was hatched. Today it’s barely 2 children – enough for the parents to replace themselves, but not enough to produce population growth. Life expectancy at birth in 1935 was less than 62 years; today it’s over 78 years.
Instead of incenting an old age security system that would have made possible independency and self-funded retirement – a sensible use of government policy – the patrician FDR’s program forever more made people dependent on government. And, unlike a privately funded retirement plan or annuity, which is your individual property whether you live or die, your Social Security account belongs to the government, not your estate. So if you die the day you’re scheduled to start receiving payments, your heirs get nothing for all of the years you paid into this Ponzi scheme.
This year, for the first time, Social Security paid out more than it took in by $29 billion. This wasn’t supposed to happen until 2017. But recent high unemployment produced fewer paychecks to pay Social Security taxes, and many who can’t find work are taking their place at the trough as beneficiaries earlier than they planned. Instead of junking this flawed program, some hapless future president and congress will try to fix it.
Now take Medicare, a product of Wibur Mills’ alcohol-soaked brain and his tag-team partner Lyndon Baines Johnson. Like FDR, LBJ thought big when it came to spending other people’s money and he gave us the Great Society programs.
In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, Wilbur Mills, the Chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990. The actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] ‘experience’ was 165% higher than the estimate.” Shocking.
Medicare A and B was predicted to cost $12 billion in 1990. It cost $110 billion – off by a factor of 10. Medicare’s home care benefit was projected to cost less than $1 billion by 1992; its actually costs were $17 billion. Thinking we weren’t spending enough on Medicare, congress added in 1988 a catastrophic coverage benefit to take effect in 1990. In July 1989, the CBO doubled its cost estimate for the four-year period 1990-1993 from $5.7 billion to $11.8 billion.
Wilbur Mills was forced out of congress after the Washington Park Police stopped his car for suspicion of drunk driving and his stripper girl friend fled the scene by jumping into the Tidal Basin. But while Mills and Johnson have since been gathered to the loathsome bosom of their reward, we’re forced to pay for Medicare and Medicaid.
According to the most recent Social Security and Medicare trustees report, the unfunded liabilities of these New Deal and Great Society programs now exceed $100 trillion dollars. Add the unfunded Medicaid mandates imposed on the states along with the pension liabilities of millions of federal, state, and local government employees and the total unfunded liabilities our government has given taxpayer is beyond comprehension. The entire net worth of the U.S., if appropriated by the government is only about $55 trillion.
You get the picture. FDR and LBJ promised what they couldn’t deliver and both died before the public saw the consequences of their perfidious handiwork. Can anyone really believe Obama’s assertion that his healthcare program will not only pay for itself but will generate savings that can be used to reduce the deficit?
Recently, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri confessed that the Democrat party had probably oversold healthcare reform. “The side which I’m on, that voted for the bill, probably is over-promising, [has] not been clear enough about the fact that this is going to be an incremental approach over time, [and] the benefits aren’t going to be felt by most Americans immediately,” McCaskill said.
How enchanting is the simplicity of pure stupidity.
Thanks to the recent partisan enactment of healthcare “reform,” the budget deficit (you know, that pesky tax revenue-government spending thing), which was about 3% of GDP in Bush’s last year, is now in excess 10% -- more than triple. And the all important debt-to-GDP ratio has gone from 40% when Bush was president to 63% today and is projected by OMB to grow to 90% by 2020. That’s Obama’s legacy to future generations.
To put this debt-to-GDP ratio in an historical perspective, the ratio during the Carter administration averaged a paltry 28%. Yet, those of us who suffered through Carter’s presidential ineptness remember the up close and personal glimpse of what economic Hell looks like, and I for one don’t want to repeat it. Yet anyone with a modicum of understanding of history and economics knows what’s in store for us after four years of Obama and (perish the thought) four more years after that.
The tax and miscellaneous revenue taken in by the federal government is recently about $2.5 trillion annually. The current national debt is about $12.5 trillion but with the accumulation of deficits in Obama’s 2011 budget the national debt will rise to over $20 trillion in 2020. That’s if his rosy future scenarios trend out as predicted, which they never do.
Most of us have trouble comprehending figures denominated in trillions, so think of ObamaNation as if it were a family. Federal tax revenues are the family’s income, and the 2020 national debt is the mortgage on their house. The mortgage would be almost 45 times greater than the family income. That is like a family earning $100,000 having a $4,500,000 mortgage! You wouldn’t find too many mortgage lenders who would take that deal, but the one that has financed this family’s abode has been on a drunken spending spree for years.
An interest-only mortgage at 5% on their house would require annual interest payments of $225,000 per year and conventional mortgage payments that retire the debt principal would require much higher outlays. This is not a happy family. Not only is there nothing available for living expenses, but also the interest exceeds the income. You might suspect that the eviction notice is being written.
That is the state of affairs in which ObamaNation now finds itself. In 2009 it spent $1.2 trillion, or about 50%, more than it brought in, and we can expect that to continue for the next ten years as the Obama budget runs deficit after deficit in a steady march toward a $20 trillion national debt – 90% of the GDP. For comparison, from 1789 (the year after the U.S. Constitution was ratified) to 2008 (Bush’s last year), this country accumulated only $5.8 trillion of public debt.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not exonerating the Bush or Republican reckless spending binges, but Obama and the Democrat House have given new meaning to deficits and debt.
Spanish philosopher Jorge Santayana said if we do not learn from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to repeat them. Obama said healthcare reform was essential to restoring fiscal sanity. So let’s look at the promises of similar social programs in past administrations. I’ll try to make this short, because it’s painful.
The Social Security program was conceived in 1935 by then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When it was launched, there were roughly 16 workers for every beneficiary, more than enough to support a modest pay-as-you-go retirement program. That’s how Social Security was sold almost 75 years ago. Today, however, there are 3.3 workers per beneficiary and by 2030 when the last Boomer retires, the ratio will be 2.
Instead of “pay as you go” the Social Security program is really “you pay and I’ll go” because it was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme from the start. Any demographer who can find his rear end in a dark room will tell you that family sizes fall as a nation gets wealthier. Children, who were the source of the family’s well-being in an agricultural/industrial era become the beneficiaries of family well-being in a more sophisticated economy, so family sizes decrease. Parents averaged 3.6 children when Social Security was hatched. Today it’s barely 2 children – enough for the parents to replace themselves, but not enough to produce population growth. Life expectancy at birth in 1935 was less than 62 years; today it’s over 78 years.
Instead of incenting an old age security system that would have made possible independency and self-funded retirement – a sensible use of government policy – the patrician FDR’s program forever more made people dependent on government. And, unlike a privately funded retirement plan or annuity, which is your individual property whether you live or die, your Social Security account belongs to the government, not your estate. So if you die the day you’re scheduled to start receiving payments, your heirs get nothing for all of the years you paid into this Ponzi scheme.
This year, for the first time, Social Security paid out more than it took in by $29 billion. This wasn’t supposed to happen until 2017. But recent high unemployment produced fewer paychecks to pay Social Security taxes, and many who can’t find work are taking their place at the trough as beneficiaries earlier than they planned. Instead of junking this flawed program, some hapless future president and congress will try to fix it.
Now take Medicare, a product of Wibur Mills’ alcohol-soaked brain and his tag-team partner Lyndon Baines Johnson. Like FDR, LBJ thought big when it came to spending other people’s money and he gave us the Great Society programs.
In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, Wilbur Mills, the Chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990. The actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] ‘experience’ was 165% higher than the estimate.” Shocking.
Medicare A and B was predicted to cost $12 billion in 1990. It cost $110 billion – off by a factor of 10. Medicare’s home care benefit was projected to cost less than $1 billion by 1992; its actually costs were $17 billion. Thinking we weren’t spending enough on Medicare, congress added in 1988 a catastrophic coverage benefit to take effect in 1990. In July 1989, the CBO doubled its cost estimate for the four-year period 1990-1993 from $5.7 billion to $11.8 billion.
Wilbur Mills was forced out of congress after the Washington Park Police stopped his car for suspicion of drunk driving and his stripper girl friend fled the scene by jumping into the Tidal Basin. But while Mills and Johnson have since been gathered to the loathsome bosom of their reward, we’re forced to pay for Medicare and Medicaid.
According to the most recent Social Security and Medicare trustees report, the unfunded liabilities of these New Deal and Great Society programs now exceed $100 trillion dollars. Add the unfunded Medicaid mandates imposed on the states along with the pension liabilities of millions of federal, state, and local government employees and the total unfunded liabilities our government has given taxpayer is beyond comprehension. The entire net worth of the U.S., if appropriated by the government is only about $55 trillion.
You get the picture. FDR and LBJ promised what they couldn’t deliver and both died before the public saw the consequences of their perfidious handiwork. Can anyone really believe Obama’s assertion that his healthcare program will not only pay for itself but will generate savings that can be used to reduce the deficit?
Recently, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri confessed that the Democrat party had probably oversold healthcare reform. “The side which I’m on, that voted for the bill, probably is over-promising, [has] not been clear enough about the fact that this is going to be an incremental approach over time, [and] the benefits aren’t going to be felt by most Americans immediately,” McCaskill said.
How enchanting is the simplicity of pure stupidity.
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