Peacock has long believed that people will meet your expectations.

Ronald Reagan’s expectations of Americans were high. Through him we finally shook ourselves loose from the lingering malaise of the Vietnam War and began to believe again in our greatness. American morale improved quickly and our great American machine started humming again. He believed enough in each of us that he wanted dramatically less government and more reliance on the individual.

Obama’s expectations of Americans are clearly very low. Time after time he has talked about how we have created problems around the world and how injustice is common within our country. His comments work to lower our morale and our faith in ourselves. He believes so little in each of us that he is aggressively creating a larger government that is restricting our freedoms more and more.

Peacock and Spouse took the long over road trip to the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor Rally on August 28th, 2010. We agreed that it was one of the best experiences in our lives.

It was an experience successfully designed to help us believe even more strongly in ourselves and our fellow Americans. This increased belief didn’t just come from the powerful words of those on the stage. It also came from those who were there. At least 500,000 people gathered enthusiastically, cordially, and respectfully to hear and share in the positive message presented. Peacock emphasizes that is was a positive message without negative references.

This massive crowd was the friendliest I have ever experienced. At one point there was a concern that a small child had been lost in the crowd. A woman near us commented that this was the safest and most loving large crowd possible for a small lost child. I have no doubt that she was right. It was almost the cleanest and neatest crowd. The grounds were clean and the trash cans full after the event was over.

People came from all over. We met attendees from California, Arizona (they all love Jan Brewer), Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, North and South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and other states. We saw old people in wheelchairs, on crutches, using canes, and using each other to stand upright and keep going. Everyone offered help.

The message to people who believe in the principals put down on paper by our founding fathers did not disappoint any of us.

We heard about restoring the America as it was founded. Restoring faith in our free enterprise system, in self-reliance, in community. This was briefly contrasted at one point with rejecting transformation of America to something that is clearly just the opposite. We heard about our inalienable rights originating from God. That government has no right to take those away and cannot grant new inalienable rights. They can only originate from God.

We heard a lot about unity rather than division. The most significant reference to race during the day was that we all belong to one race – the human race.

We heard the granddaughter of Rev. Martin Luther King, Alveda King, say “God Bless America”.

We heard about the greatness and relevance of our founding fathers in our daily lives. We heard about acting with honor in all things. We heard about faith, hope and charity and never heard one word about anger, division or hate.

However, in watching most of the news media after the event, particularly MSNBC, we were hearing nothing positive about any of these things. Even Fox news reported as if they didn’t even have anyone there. One has to wonder what the motivation of the news media is in not reporting the positive nature of this event and instead going on a personal attack against Glenn Beck and others on the stage. Some of the attacks by MSNBC were simply outrageous and in stark contrast with the positive, uplifting nature of the event. They bore no resemblance to what we saw and experienced first hand.

The contrast is striking. Glenn Beck has high expectations of Americans and America. He knows that we will meet those expectations. He believes our inalienable rights come from God and that they were excellently defined by our founding fathers. He believes that wealth is not redistributed through government but through charitable organizations and churches. He believes that we should be asking God to bless America, not damn America.

The message from our president, supported strongly by the mainstream media, is depressing. He wants to make government larger and have it take more control over our lives. He wants us to pass on massive debt to our children and grandchildren. He says the message of our founding fathers is no longer relevant, that we must transform America and put more trust in a government that moves itself farther from God each year. He wants America to have only a participatory role in the world rather than a leading role. In short, his expectations of us are low.

For Peacock and Spouse the Restore Honor Rally was a transformational event. We will meet Glenn Beck’s expectations and will spread the word to others through our words and actions.

God Bless America. And God Bless Glenn Beck.

Popularity: 1% [?]

A  previous PeacockWatch article, Our Great Tyranny Engine, explained how our federal government has gobbled up our liberty by creating a problem or crisis, and then passing more laws that require more government and more taxes to solve the crisis of their making.  This is the basic design of that engine, but as with any engine, fuel is required to power it.  That fuel for this engine is tax dollars, and the main provider of dollars to our government is our Federal Income Tax system.

This system not only creates the means to grow government, but worse, it gives the politicians almost unlimited power to barter away tax breaks and entitlements for campaign funds and votes.  Indeed, our tax code is the big litter box when it comes to transactions between lobbyist and politicians.

The tax code is used for everything from social engineering to pitting people who pay taxes against people who do not, again, for political gain. The system is rapidly approaching a tipping point where the amount of people not paying taxes and/or deriving benefits from the government will exceed the numbers of people paying taxes and receiving very little direct benefit from government.  This creates a perceived permanent majority for the party that is deemed to have provided the most benefits.

The tax code itself is hopelessly complex (even the IRS does not understand many parts of it), costly to maintain and enforce, and intrusive into the private lives of citizens.  It has been abused by Presidents and politicians alike, having been used for retribution against political opposition.  At its core, it punishes success and rewards failure.

Our tax code is all of the egregious things above, but first and foremost, it is the fuel for the engine designed to enslave us.

In 1903 Federal Government spending was a mere 6% of GDP.  The 16th Amendment was enacted in 1913, authorizing the federal income tax.  In the current fiscal year, spending is 45% of GDP, and climbing steeply in the out years of our current budget.

To maintain any semblance of liberty, and to strike at ever increasing federal power, this fuel must be cut off.  Yet, even a smaller engine of government needs some fuel.  If the income tax is repealed, it must be replaced with something that provides predictable fuel,  but takes power out of the hands of the politicians.

Over the past several years there have been alternatives proposed to eliminate the federal income tax, perhaps the most popular being the “Fair Tax”, basically a flat rate consumption tax which would replace the income tax, social security, and medicare taxes.  It has some popular support, but it will never see the light of day in our Congress, and very few politicians of either party will even take questions on it.  Again, it is the source of their power over us.  They will not cede this power, so it must be taken away.

Short of a bloody revolution, how can this be peacefully done?  Randy E. Barnett, professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University and author of Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, has some ideas on this.

In his Op/Ed piece (Wall Street Journal, April 23, 2009, “How the Tea Partiers can make Washington pay attention”, Professor Barnett says that the states must take back power from the Federal Government.

Tea Party Peaceful Assembly

The states have the power to call a Constitutional Convention by a vote of two-thirds of the states, and any law produced from such a convention could be passed into law by a three-quarters vote of the states.  Such a move would be feared because its scope cannot be limited in advance.  All things would be on the table.  Yet, says Professor Barnett, “It is precisely the fear of a runaway convention that states can exploit to bring Congress to heel”.  The state legislatures could petition Congress for a convention to propose a specific amendment.  Congress could then avoid such a wide-open convention by proposing this specific amendment to the states before the number of state petitions reaches two-thirds.

What would this amendment be?  It would be a proposal to repeal the 16th Amendment.  Such a threat for a general convention has worked before, and resulted in the passing of the  17th  Amendment, according to Professor Barnett.

The message here is that the states must take the lead in changing the direction of this country.  In November, we may put conservatives back in charge of one or the other of our Congressional bodies, but can we forget what the GOP did when they were last in power?  Both parties at the Federal level are the problem.  Neither is the solution. The solution must begin at the state level.

Below are several charts that show the political make-up of the states as of October, 2009.  The first is a chart that shows state senators (red is GOP, blue DEMS), and shows a lot more red than blue.  The second is state representatives (white being evenly balanced).  Again, there is a similar pattern.

State Senators (Source: Webfoot.com)

State Representatives (Source: Webfoot.com)

We need 34 states to vote for such an Amendment, and it would seem that the best agency to mobilize the electorate state by state would be the infant Tea Party Movement.  This movement sprung from local roots, and before attacking the national level, it would appear that the best chance for success would be at the local level.  After all, all politics are local.

The Tea Party Movement could also take a lesson from what has happened in Colorado between 2006 and the present.  Colorado, for its entire history has been the reddest of states.  In that year, Republicans held both Senate seats, five of seven congressional seats, the governor’s mansion, the offices of secretary of state and treasurer, and both houses of the state legislature.  After the 2008 election, in one of the most stunning reversals of political fortune in American history, the exact opposite was true.

What caused this reversal?  In 2006, three internet multi-millionaire’s who were dedicated progressives conspired to buy Colorado for their cause by using 501 C type organizations, enabled by the new campaign reform laws, to shape their message.  With discipline and focus, they have pioneered a legal architecture designed to take advantage of the new campaign finance laws and an emerging breed of progressive donors who are willing to commit unprecedented resources to local races.

The interesting thing here is that very little has been written in the press on how this historic shift was engineered.  Perhaps this is because that in Colorado the progressives feel they have found a formula to create permanent Democratic majorities across the nation.

Fortunately, this story has been captured in a new book, The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care), by Adam Schranger and Rob Witwer.  The Tea Party Movement, who seems to be wrestling with strategies and organization, should begin with this book.

This is not to say that turning 34 states red will accomplish the constitutional strategy outlined above.  Republican or Democrat, state politics has become the minor leagues where the ambitions are to advance to the big leagues of Washington DC.   Somehow, the end objective of repealing the 16th Amendment needs to be uncalculated into the process of turning these states red.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Our Great Tyranny Machine

How Governments Gobble Up Liberty

It has been said that all bureaucracies set out to solve a problem and thereby serve the public, but, in the end, they end up serving only themselves.  If there are not problems enough to solve, the government can always create new ones.

Our current financial crisis is a textbook example of how government manufactures a crisis and than creates more rules, regulations, and regulators to solve the problem of their making.  More government, less liberty.

It is pretty much agreed that our financial meltdown in 2008 was the direct result of:

1.  Interest rates being kept too low for too long by the Federal Reserve

2.  The Carter Administrations passing of the Community Re-investment Act

3.  The repeal of Glass-Seagull by the Clinton Administration (1999)

4.  Creation of government backed agencies such as Fannie Mae (1938) and Freddy Mac (1970)

5.  Lack of financial oversight by the regulatory agencies that turned a blind eye

6.  Wall Street greed that was encouraged and emboldened by all of the above

Out of the six items above, five were the result of government policy.  These government actions gave Wall Street the encouragement and enough rope to hang themselves, and millions of investors and homeowners along with them.

The result of all this was that in 2007 a family with an income of $50,000 a year could land a $400,000 interest only mortgage with no money down.  An idiot could do the math on this and understand that as soon as interest rates began to move these situations would begin to fall over like dominoes.  Coincidently it all came crashing down one month before the Presidential election.

So now, we face a classic government move of “not wasting a good crisis”.  Ignore the first five causes and go after the easy target: private enterprise, those greedy bastards who believe that enough is never enough.

This week Congress is about to pass a 2300 page  financial reform bill which creates 243 new regulations along with new government employees to enforce these new regulations, and new taxes.  The new regulations are targeted strictly at Wall Street and do nothing to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, or to make anyone in government accountable for their actions.  Ironically, this is the Dodd-Frank Bill, probably the two individuals in Congress most responsible for the debacle.  The bill is so flawed and so complicated that there is more legislation forthcoming to “fix” its flaws, and no one has any idea of the impact this bill will have on our financial system. These new regulations are more likely to adversely impact the farmer in Iowa who needs to hedge their crop prices than it will any of the agencies and banks who caused this crisis.  More government, less liberty.

This is just not an Obama Administration issue, although they have taken it to a fine art.  It has been the response from every administration for any crisis the nation faces.  The Great Depression, The Savings and Loan Crisis, Enron and associated corporate scandals of the 1990’s, 911, the list goes on and on.  The crises are all different, but the pathology is the same:  failed government policy (financial or in foreign policy), lax oversight, implosion, new laws and regulation, more government, less liberty.

The chart below is mislabeled.  It should be called The Liberty Chart.  It shows that at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, a citizen of this country was 94% free.  Today we are about 55% free.  In 107 years, we have lost 39% of our liberty.

How have we lost so much of our liberty in such a short period?  It is not the hand of the free market, but rather the hand of intelligent design by people who are elitists and feel they know far better than you how you should live every detail of your life.  They seek a better world brought to you by their superior thought and insight.  They are Hobbesian’s who will gladly sacrifice your liberty for what they perceive as the greater good, while feathering their own nest and insuring their future security in the bargain.

Our next crisis has already been manufactured and is shipping from the factory in the form of un-sustainable debt, promises to push us fully and forever into serfdom.

Next Week: “Fuel for the Machine”

Popularity: 2% [?]

It is interesting to learn that many people are unaware that the United States Department of Justice recently dropped voter intimidation charges against the New Black Panther Party for their 2008 activities at polling locations. Not only do they not know that the DOJ dropped charges — they don’t know why!

In conversations with two intelligent associates recently Peacock heard one say, “There is no Black Panther Party. That was in the 60’s”. The other one said that she was “unaware of any activity recently surrounding Black Panther intimidation of voters. That is two year old news.” So, one did not know that the Black Panther party was alive and active. The other didn’t know that the DOJ wasn’t pursuing action against the Black Panther party because it refused to take action against blacks. Neither knew that a senior attorney in the DOJ resigned because of the racist decision by the DOJ leaders. It looks like justice may not be blind but the American public may be mostly blind because the mainstream media works overtime to keep them that way.

The reason that neither of these people knew about this is because it is not appearing at all in the mainstream media and certainly not on MSNBC!

Then there is the Congressman who was totally unaware that the DOJ had recently dropped the investigation of voter intimidation by the Black Panthers

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The reason this congressman supposedly didn’t know is probably because his news sources come only from the mainstream media.

A quick search on Google confirms what is happening in the mainstream video media. If one puts in the search term “new black panther party voter intimidation” in the Google search bar there is page after page of coverage by Fox News. There is no coverage by the mainstream video media. There is essentially no coverage to very limited coverage by major newspapers.

The “Fourth Estate” of the press has abandoned its duty to the American public. News is no longer reported without bias. It is either analyzed or commented on while being presented. Or, if it doesn’t fit the political agenda of the owners of the news media it may not be reported at all. Freedom of the press is guaranteed under the very first amendment to the United States Constitution. Our founding fathers believed that a free press was essential to keep government honest. But that only works if the press is honest. Clearly it is not.

Popularity: 2% [?]