Not Evil, Just Dyslexic

Here, apparently, is our President’s dyslexic interpretation of the 4^th amendment: it is unconstitutional for an Arizona cop with probable cause to ask for ID from a guy who just knocked off a liquor store, but it is ok for the TSA at Phoenix airport to reach under a nun’s skirt to see if there is anything interesting up there.     

Exactly wrong. The 4^th amendment to the Constitution protects citizens (that would be American citizens) from unwarranted searches (that would be searches without probable cause) by government officials (that would be employees of the government, like TSA).  It does not protect the federal government (that would be INS and ICE) from states (say, Arizona) or the people (that would be us clingers, tea partiers, and voters). 

And it is not just the 4^th amendment that liberals have stood on end; the 2^nd, 1^st, 9^th, 10^th and the enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 have all been beaten, twisted, hacked and tortured until their original meanings have been turned upside down.  The current outrageous TSA fondling episodes are not the most egregious of the left’s bold tyrannies; they are simply the hardest to ignore. 

For decades, the left has made an industry of fabricating victims, inventing oppressors, and exaggerating the consequences of fictional injustices.  Maybe they have played make-believe for so long that they can no longer distinguish between real and imagined rights.  Perhaps they have water-boarded the language for so long the can no longer discern the plain meaning of words.  Maybe they have lost the ability to recognize tyranny, even when it tweaks their nards or microwaves their inner organs.  

Or maybe, just maybe, they have a learning disability - Constitutional Dyslexia – that drives otherwise bright people to get our nation’s founding principles back-asswards.  Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume they are not evil, just dyslexic.  If you or someone you love is suffering from CD, simply repeat after me:             

We are not free because we are rich; we are rich because we are free. 

We do not need government’s permission to act; it needs ours.

We do not receive our rights from government; it receives its authorities from us.

Individual persons create wealth; government can only create money.   

We are not created equally; we are created equal. 

These are not difficult concepts to grasp; most of us got the drift in high school civics class, despite the distractions of sports, girls, and cars.  Yet the statists who run our government and teach in our public schools clearly don’t get the drift. They have an inverted understanding of the unique relationship ordained between Americans and our government; they confuse the private right to pursue our happiness with the public obligation to purchase theirs.  

They do not appreciate the reason that we rose from obscurity to become the greatest nation in the history of the world - freedom.  It was freedom that did that.  A collection of ordinary persons became an extraordinary people when they were liberated from government interference in economic and personal exchange. How can such a simple truth be so difficult for each generation to accept?

Freedom is the natural state of mankind.  Our Creator did not endow us with free will - a gift so precious it was denied to the angels – to have us surrender it to the petty demands of a servant government run amok; a government whose sole purpose is to protect our natural and inalienable rights. 

Our government derives its legitimacy from the Constitution by which it came into being; it has no moral authority when it colors outside the lines.  And our political dyslexics in both parties have been coloring way outside the lines for many decades now; taking us to the brink of ruin with their social engineering experiments, foreign policy adventurism, and unsound economic theories.

The government they have laid upon us can not realistically be reformed; it must be dismantled, shrunk to size, reduced in scope, de-funded and de-fanged, and returned to its constitutional mission of protecting individual rights and property against force and fraud.  We will not return to prosperity until we have tamed the beast that is devouring us.  

Returning government to its rightful place is the non-negotiable demand of the liberty movement - the coalition of purpose that has unified conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists, tea partiers, and sovereign individuals from across the political spectrum to speak with one voice.

A voice whose clear and powerful message is: “leave us alone”. 

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Corporate Welfare To Work

Commenting on last week’s post, Pension Choice, a reader questioned how we would provide jobs for younger workers if older workers postponed their retirements.  Once again, my libertarian solution for jobs is ridiculously simple: eliminate the corporate income tax.  

Before you let fly with the angry anti-corporate letters, bear in mind the corporate income tax only brings in about $300 billion in a good year, while estimates of the costs of corporate subsidies, bailouts, price supports, and the like run as high as $350 billion.  There are now over 1,800 subsidy programs, a number that has doubled in the past 20 years.     

Eliminating both the corporate income tax and all corporate subsidies provides instant deficit relief as well as triggering an economic boom that will make China look like Sheboygan Junior Achievement.  So let’s do welfare-to-work for the Fortune 500 and let the other 2.7 million American corporations compete on a level playing field for once.   

Now, you won’t hear this proposal coming out of Washington, because the statists in both establishment parties love tax subsidies like Lindsay Lohan loves snorting coke in a stolen fur.  Subsidies are what generates the return on investment in lobbying and campaign contributions; tax breaks and earmarked spending are the only things that politicians have to offer fat-cat donors in exchange for their millions.  

Eliminate the selective corporate tax credits and subsidies and we liberate the legislative process from the corrupting grip of special interest money.  Eliminate the corporate income tax entirely and we insure that all the zombies remain in their graves.  And the static-score deficit reduction of $50 billion is mice nuts compared to the dynamic effect that eliminating corporate income tax will have on economic development and job creation. 

We don’t need a CBO score to understand the economic effect of eliminating corporate income tax. Other nations have been cutting their tax rates to lure our corporations, facilities, and jobs from us for decades. If our 35% rate is enough to chase jobs to a 25% country, think about what our 0% rate will do to bring jobs here – and I mean jobs by the millions.

Thousands of Americans leave high tax states for low tax states every day; economics works the same way for countries, and we should aim to be the Tennessee of the G-20.  Firms will be coming from all over the world to fill up all our empty industrial parks.

The number of jobs created will not just be big; it will be Joe Biden big – and not a moment too soon for the millions of Americans still unemployed and underemployed. 

In case you missed it, the Federal Reserve recently estimated it will be years – years, mind you – before the economy just gets back to where it was before the big dump and the unemployment rate falls back under 6%.  There is no reason to wait years just so President Obama can finally learn how wrong he is; we can put ourselves back to work right now and let him figure it out for himself later.    

More jobs beget more jobs as people work, save, spend, and invest.  Eliminating the corporate income tax will reverse our death spiral of higher taxes, more government spending, increasing unemployment, and corporate disinvestment in one fell swoop.  The economic vortex is a drain in one direction, and an updraft in the other.  Is there an easier or faster way to change direction and initiate the updraft than to eliminate corporate income tax?  Let’s hear it, and not from Ben Bernanke.

But what about the corporations who depend on those tax subsidies to survive, you may ask?  They will either adapt or they will fail, and good riddance to those that fail. If a firm is not economically viable without a subsidy, it is not economically viable.  Whole industries will be rationalized and economic efficiency will rule.  Free markets – unlike the Minnesota Vikings – do not keep funneling limited resources into obsolete and underperforming technologies year after year. 

And economic efficiency, not government subsidy, is the key to our prosperity.  It is ridiculous to expect free markets to operate properly with over 1,800 federal interventions managed by people with no business sense. 50% of Americans are of below-average intelligence, and there is no reason to believe that the lure of regularly updated cubicle furniture and two extra holidays per year attracts the upper half into government service.

Until such time as comprehensive tax reform gives us FairTax (my personal preference) or a universal flat tax (acceptable, too), elimination of the corporate income tax is the fastest and most practical economic stimulus we can employ.  The bill could be written on a page and passed in a day.

Not convinced yet?  Then ponder this: big business, big labor, and big government will join forces to oppose it with all their might.  The Defense rests, your Honor.

Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Pension Choice

For more than 50 years, Democrats and Republicans have known that us baby boomers were going to bankrupt the Social Security system; and for more than 50 years they have both kicked the can down the road. Welcome to the end of the road.

Only the seriously delusional still pretend that any real funds have been accumulated in the Social Security Trust Fund. You can’t spend the same dollar twice, and we have raided the fund year after year to pay for other current government services.  What is in the “Lock Box” is some worthless junk bonds issued by a government that is trillions in debt and a few months away from default - the deadbeat government in question is the United States of America. That is so painful to say out loud.  

Every time a panel is formed to look at Social Security reform, the answer comes back the same: extend the age of eligibility, increase the payroll tax, and reduce the benefits paid.  And Congress does none of them. Reduce the benefit and the blue-heads won’t vote for you; raise the tax and working people won’t vote for you; extend the age of eligibility and nobody will vote for you.  It is impossible for politicians to do what needs to be done – coercion is hard work. 

That’s why we Libertarians prefer to do things the easy way – ask for volunteers, and leave the politicians and bureaucrats out of it. Most people will gladly pitch in to save Social Security; you just need to ask them nicely. 

Lately, I have been asking this question when I speak to groups with lots of baby boomers in the crowd: how many of you would continue working past the age of 65 if you didn’t have to pay any taxes on what you earned? Almost all the hands go up; there you go - problem solved.  I call it Pension Choice.

The idea is ridiculously simple: at age 65, you retire….from paying taxes on earned income.  That’s right - zero, zilch, nada.  You will not pay any income tax, payroll tax, capital gains tax, or tax on dividends if you decide to keep working full time and defer the draw on your social security benefits.  Look at the gross earnings on your pay stuf - that is what will be going into direct deposit.  Sweet.

You have suffered enough; you have carried the world on your shoulders for five decades and it is time to lay your burden down.  We thank you for your service; enjoy the full fruits of your remaining labors.  You decide - if you want to retire at 65 and draw benefits under the current system, go ahead; if you want to keep working and keep everything you make, go ahead. 

No one is adversely impacted by the decision of any another person, and no one is coerced into doing something they do not want to do – the founders called that novel concept the “pursuit of happiness”, and we should put it to use more often.   

Every day past 65 that you work is one less day the government has to pay you benefits, and one less day that someone else who is working has to pay for those benefits. Win-win. Medicare and all the other unfunded pension plans (which are about to default) would be de-stressed and salvaged as well when individuals elect to defer their retirement age.  Win, win, win.  Everybody wins, but not everyone will be happy.

Socialists and statists will whine and pout and pitch a fit because they don’t get to tell you what to do; let ‘em all cry in their living-wage, eco-bean mocha latte.  We should have told them to stick it years ago, before they morphed Uncle Sam into creepy Uncle Ernie with one hand in our pockets and the other down our pants.      

But what about all the lost tax revenues from the people who keep working?  What tax revenues – they were going to retire, remember?   We weren’t going to collect any taxes anyway, so the loss of revenues to the IRS is negligible, while the savings in deferred benefits is substantial.  If only one person defers it is a good thing; if several million do, it is a really good thing.  Even the economists at CBO could get this one right – maybe. 

And besides, it is the value you add with your labor that creates prosperity and economic growth, not the taxes the government rakes off the top.  Having millions more productive, value-adding citizens engaged in bona fide economic activity is what will propel this nation out of its coma; not quantitative easing, or faux stimulus spending, or accounting gimmickry, or redistributive economic folly. 

Introducing Pension Choice does not make the Social Security system a good deal; there is nothing that can do that. Over time, it must be converted from a promise of defined public benefits to a personal asset funded with defined contributions – I think we all know that. But to do so responsibly will take a generation, and we need to save Social Security right now so people who have paid in for 50 years have something to show for it – either tax abatement or pension draw as each sees fit.

The right-here-and-now problem of extending eligibility dates and reducing benefits is easily solved without confiscation and coercion, as difficult as that notion is for statists to comprehend.  And now that there are no earmarks allowed, the Pension Choice law could be written on one page and voted in a day.

So why not; does anyone in Congress – from either party - have a better idea?  Let’s hear it.     

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Waterboy

As the debate over extending the Bush tax cuts starts up again, liberals continue to call no change a “cut”, and call a cut “spending”.  Which brings us to the most significant question in matters of fiscal policy: what is wrong with these people?

Honestly - they have diplomas from very expensive colleges and prep schools; they read a lot and have dinners with people who are really smart, and yet they can not comprehend terms whose meaning is plain to any 7^th grader – spend, earn, tax, own. 

Reasonable people can have good faith disagreements over matters of policy, but misleading the public by torturing the vocabulary is not acting in good faith, it is deceitful, disrespectful, and disgraceful. 

David Axelrod argued the lie again today when he said we can’t afford to spend our money on a tax cut for the rich when there are more important things to spend it on.   Where to begin….a) leaving rates alone is not a cut, b) keeping your money is not spending, and c) it is not our money, it belongs to whoever earned it.  But these are the liberal talking points, repeated over and over and over again, as if the quantity of repetition might improve the quality of the argument.  It won’t.    

The no-tax-increase-is-spending argument is absurd on its face. If not raising taxes is the same as spending, then is electing not to steal money from a church the same as making a contribution?  Do you think the IRS will let me deduct all the money I was going to steal from charities but then decided to let them keep?   

And speaking of church, may I remind all you tax-the-rich liberals that the Ten Commandments admonish against stealing, testifying falsely, and coveting.  As Hannibal Lector explained to Special Agent Starling, the first pathology of the cannibal is what?  He covets.  Coveting is also the first pathology of redistributive economic theory.

The liberal notion that all money is “our money” is ridiculous and historically curious. Was it not the feminist movement that brought us separate checkbooks?  If the money that you earn cannot even be shared with your own spouse, then how in heck do you talk yourself into a joint account with all 310 million other Americans?   I guess if you spend all of your energy feeling, your thinking skills atrophy. 

Borrowing an analogy from economist Arthur Laffer, here is Keynesian economics for dummies: the liberals think you raise the water level of the pool by taking a bucketful from the deep end and pouring it into the shallow end. When it doesn’t work, their answer is more buckets – more and more and more and more buckets. This sounds like a terrific idea if you make your living hauling water. 

But the rest of us understand that the more water there is in the buckets, the less there is in the pool. That is what is wrong with our economy, and it won’t get any better until this government stops borrowing money to hire more waterboys.  Cutting taxes – actually cutting them – empties the water out of the government buckets into the private sector pool, raising the tide and lifting the boats.     

The people in the shallow end of the pool need to learn how to swim over to the better life in the deep end on their own. Pouring water on their head doesn’t help them; it only makes the waterboys feel useful. And it is bankrupting the nation.

 

Here is an easy way to put and end to this whole tax-the-rich nonsense: simply drop the threshold for “rich” down from $250,000 to $129,500 – the average compensation of federal employees.  That will allow federal workers, all the union bosses and Congressmen to help spread the wealth around. Still think it is good idea, lefties?  I didn’t think so.  

We will pay $2.4 trillion in taxes this year.  That is enough.  That was enough to run the whole government in 2006, including funding two wars and the post-Katrina cleanup. Is it so difficult to imagine that we could operate a civil government for that sum now that one of those wars is over and Katrina is four more years behind us? 

When the Statists start screaming and wailing and gnashing their teeth over “draconian” spending cuts needed to balance the budget, just think about your life in 2006.  The Dow was headed toward 14,000 and unemployment was under 5%.  Your home was worth more, your 401(k) was worth more, and the dollar was worth more.  Was it so awful? 

It’s not our money; it’s your money.  You keeping what you have earned is not a tax cut, and it is not government spending.   Anyone who says otherwise is a fool, a liar or a waterboy; and we should not let fools, liars, and waterboys run the country.  

        

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

C'mon Man!

This week there were too many absurdities to pick just one for my weekly commentary, so I decided to ape ESPN’s popular “C’mon Man!” segment where the MNF gang nominates their favorite boneheaded plays of the week.        

Boomer:  How did they hurt themselves in a bye week?  The post-election injury report is so long Gloria Alred can’t decide which ambulance to chase - Nancy Pe-lose-i, Ben weekend at Benanke’s, sing along with Mitch O’Connell, or he could…go...all…the….way…to…India Barack Obama.  Who do you like, Tom?   

TJ:   I have to go with Ben Bernanke, Boom.  Four straight 3-and-outs with monetary stimulus and the fool audibles another $800 billion of “quantitative easing” right into the teeth of a Ron Raul blitz.  Do you know how bad do you have to be at it for the Chinese to lecture you on sound money? C’mon Man!

Chris:  I wanna know why the media busted Bristol Palin’s chops for Dancing With The Stars?  Did you see Barack and Michelle embarrassing those kids in India?  Rex Ryan and Andy Reed move better than that.  $200 million a day and you couldn’t pay for a lesson? C’mon Man!

Keyshawn:  How about this for balls over brains?  Nancy Pelosi hosts a victory party for lobbyists in the Congressional Office Building to celebrate their legislative accomplishments? Nancy, you lost 60-0; that ain’t no accomplishment.  C’mon Girl!

Coach Ditka:   Up in Wisconsin they got a hundred lawyers trying to stop the exiting Democrat governor’s high-speed rail boondoggle.  Hey, Scott - all those egg-heads over at the University of Wisconsin and you can’t find one endangered salamander or “discover” one sacred Indian burial mound?  C’mon man!

Boomer:  When it comes to tone deaf, sing-along-with Mitch O’Connell takes the cake.  The Tea Party put their guy into the Senate from McConnell’s own state and the idiot’s first move is to stand up for earmarks? C’mon Man!

And now a word from our sponsor…..

“Hi, I’m Jamie Lee Curtis, the poop yogurt lady. When yogurt isn’t enough, I just watch MSNBC – it’s kind of like running water to pee; you watch crap to poop.  It’s free and effective, and now that Keith Olbermann is gone, you don’t have to worry about dangerous side effects – vomiting, high blood pressure, or a cussing fit that lasts more than four hours.” 

Ditka:  Hey, I forgot about MSNBC and Olbermann.  How come they suspended him for making a campaign contribution to Democrats?  The whole flippin’ network is a campaign contribution to Democrats – who do they think they are, NPR?  C’mon Man!      

Chris:  If we all get two, then how about the Republican caucus not putting a single tea party candidate into a leadership position?   Do really think Steele won it for them? C’mon Man!

TJ:  Keyshawn had the right player but the wrong play.  Nancy Pelosi stays on as head of the Democratic Caucus after she serves up the worst shellacking in 70 years – even Jerry Jones had enough sense to fire Wade Phillips after the Packers spanked the Cowboys.  C’mon Man!

Keyshawn:  Did you see Chris Mathews get bitch-slapped by Michelle Bachman?  I don’t think she is even 5 feet tall and he got abused on national TV.   C’mon man! 

Boomer:  Good one, Key - Chris I-wish-I-was-Clay Mathews really got his bell rung by Michelle my belle Bachman and then pouted like Chad Ochocinco for the rest of the night.  Well, that’s it for this edition of “C’mon Man” – enjoy the game!

[Cue Hank Williams, Jr. into music]  “So get ready….I said get ready….Are you ready for some liberty?  A two-year tea par-ty?  We want the dems and ‘pubs to know that we’re just a-getting’ start-ed.  The public is psyched and we’re ready to fight – all my rowdy friends are watchin’ you day and night.”  

There you go - and like Monday Night Football, let’s all hope for a hard-fought game that is relevant, injury free, and played with respect.  Game on!

     

  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Au Revoir

No election cycle would be complete without some Hollywood liberal threatening to move to France because the Democrats lost. This year it was some B-lister I never heard of, but my reflexive response is the same as it was for Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, or that Janine person – au revoir, mon ami.

Seriously, despondent liberals should not just talk about moving to France, they should move to France. Nothing is stopping them, and if they can’t get a visa to say there, just camp out illegally – what’s good for the goose and all that.  And if the French try to deport them, then Attorney General Holder can sue and we can all boycott French goods - given that they don’t make anything in France, that will be painless and impotent symbolism, so we can all know what if feels like to be a liberal.

Our ancestors all left one country where the government was intolerable and moved to another where they could achieve their dreams.  Back then it was a lot tougher to pull off – no money, cholera, and they could not text their BFF’s in the old country to tell them how OMG awesome their new life is and how much they heart it here LOL plus that winky parenthesis thing.  Moving to France now is a piece of cake.    

Our fore-parents’ idea of a civil society was freedom and individual responsibility, and they came here because that is what we had to offer. They left Paris to settle North Dakota – that’s how much they loved freedom.  Most arrived poor and become rich.  Liberals today would be going to France richer and would become poorer, but that is their idea of the winning formula, so the only thing holding them back is the lack of a government bailout Bill that would pay for the move.

Liberals miserable in the United States would love France, and not just for the mistresses and red berets. They have high taxes, unions, carbon limits, socialized medicine, early retirements, long lunches, generous pensions, bicycles and trains, backpacks, permanent unemployment, and lots and lots of time off.   Seriously, if that is your idea of a civil society, then go over there and live large. Why knock yourselves out trying to bring all of that stuff over here, when you can simply move yourself over there?  Go!  Vamos!  Oops, wrong country.

Most Americans don’t expect everyone else to change to accommodate our desires; we change our own circumstances when something is deemed intolerable.  People who don’t like the weather in Maine move to California.  People who don’t like being unemployed in Massachusetts move to North Carolina.  People bullied in a small town for being different move to the city.  People leave the crime of the city to move to the suburbs.  People overtaxed in Wisconsin moved to Florida.  If limited government is simply more than you can bear, then move to France – or Venezuela, or Cuba, or Myanmar or someplace where there it is not limited.  Be happy.   

Here’s where liberals get confused: the United States of America and its federal government are not the same thing.  The latter is the hired hand of the former, tasked with providing a few basic services that benefit all Americans equally – single currency, national defense, transportation infrastructure, a court system to protect rights and property – within the constraints of the Constitution and the amount of the taxes we give it to spend.  

This nation is its people, not its government.  For nearly a century we have drifted farther and farther away from this essential truth of our system of self-government.  There is nothing wrong with this nation; the problem is our government. 

The nation hires its government for $2.4 trillion in taxes; the government spends an additional $1.4 trillion that is steals from our grandchildren.

The nation last declared war in 1941; the government has initiated eight foreign conflicts on its own since then. 

The nation provides for those in need generously through private charity; the government perpetuates poverty and dependence on state-run welfare programs. 

The nation creates jobs, starts new businesses, and stimulates innovation; the government stifles economic growth and regulates mediocrity. 

The nation makes its citizens unequally richer; the government makes us equally poorer.

Liberals expect too much from government.  When Americans reflect on the richness of our lives, we remember family, friends, co-workers, team-mates, neighbors, teachers, pastors, mentors, students, congregation members, customers, employees, bosses, fellow volunteers in charities, club-mates, our favorite sports teams, authors, singers, actors, and writers – we do not recall assistant deputy undersecretaries of the Department of Interior.   

I can still name all of the starters for the Green Bay Packers of the 1960’s, but I couldn’t tell you who the Governor of Wisconsin was in any one of their championship years, or why it was that we just hadta-hadta-hadta vote for him and not the other dude. And that is exactly as it should be. Somebody ran the state for a while – must have done ok at it, because we are not part of Minnesota.   

Government should barely matter.  We have each other for the important stuff; we just need someone to plow the interstate so we can do things together. Liberals, conservatives, and libertarians get along just fine until it comes to government and politics.  Our common goal should be to limit that interruption in our otherwise happy relationship, to make it as infrequent and unimportant as humanly possible.

No one should have to move to France if Republicans win an election, or move to Singapore if the Democrats do.  I don’t know where all the hard-cores would go if we Libertarians ever won an election, but the folks coming here from all over the world to live free would be an upgrade over the mud-sticks moving out, I can promise you that.

Les goúts et les couleurs ne se dicutent pas.  Au Revoir!

 

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”

Self-inflicted

No, my dear Democrat friends, it wasn’t secret money from overseas, or the media failure to explain health care, or talk radio hosts, or Fox News, or the racist tea parties, or Americans for Prosperity that cost you the election today – you did this to yourselves.

It started with the TARP bank bailouts; the American people were 8:1 opposed and you passed it anyway – twice.  Then the stimulus; overwhelmingly opposed but you passed that, too.  Then you hosed the bond-holders and gave GM and Chrysler to the unions – they took our $50 billion and went bankrupt anyway.  Don’t forget foreclosure relief that let people default twice on our nickel – it was the bankruptcy attorneys that loved you for that one, not us.  

And then there was health care; you had three chances to bail out with dignity but you rammed it down our throats instead. You threatened to “deem it” if you couldn’t get the votes, even though two thirds of the American people were against your bill – a bill so ridiculous you had to pass it to learn what was in it. Just to rub it in, you nationalized student loans in an 11^th hour amendment.   

Next came the BP oil spill; three months of looking around for an ass to kick but having no trouble finding the right one to kiss – preventing foreign assistance to please your union masters again. And then there was the bailout of the teachers’ unions – overriding every single school board and state department of education in the nation who had not seen fit to raise compensation in a fiscal crisis. 

Should I go on?  Cap and Trade, Cash-4-Clunkers, the President’s 60 rounds of golf, Michelle’s Spanish vacation, your two any-gal-will-do Supreme Court appointments, tanking the Fed audit, suing Arizona, ACORN’s hidden camera fiasco, letting the Black Panthers walk, re-appointing Ben Bernanke, and the internet kill switch.  

You adjourned your session, allowing the largest tax increase in the history of the world to take effect without the courtesy of a vote. You failed to adjust the AMT in your haste to hit the campaign trail.  You offered a $250 check to seniors after you gutted their Medicare and hit them with a 55% inheritance tax – as if you could bribe the Greatest Generation anyway.    

Your economic plan was worse than nothing. 15 million Americans are out of work, 9 million more are underemployed, and another 1.2 million have quit looking altogether.  Home values are falling, the dollar is falling, real GDP is falling; the only thing going up is gold, unless you count the national debt and the number of troops you keep sending to a war you don’t know how to win. 

You called us racist.  You called us dumb.  You called us enemies, hicks, astro-turf, the great unwashed. You made fun of our reverence for the Constitution and our commitment to our faiths. You don’t like our guns, our trucks, our groceries, our hobbies, our rallies, our Facebook Pages, or our women who think for themselves - witches, bitches, and whores, you called them. You hate it when we prosper, and you hate us when we speak our minds.  

How could you possibly expect that we would vote for you after all that?  No, seriously – did you really think we would reward you at the polls? Did you?       

Your wounds are all self-inflicted.  You turned the Democratic Party of JFK into the Social Democrat Party of Dean, Pelosi, Obama, Frank, Klugman, and ACORN.  You turned government into an ultimatum and we picked “or else”.  You tried to make America into France, so we said, “au revoir”.  You thought your ends justified your means, so we introduced you to our ends. That’s what happened today - it wasn’t done to you by anyone else, you did it to yourselves.          

The coalition of conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists, and independents that purged unprincipled Republicans in the primaries and cleansed the Congress today will not go lay by our dish just because Nancy Pelosi has been dethroned.  Our mission did not end yesterday, it has only begun.      

So my advice to all of the new Republican members of the next Congress is this: don’t sign a three year lease on that townhouse in Georgetown.  Do what we sent you to do and you will be re-elected; if not, then you will be tossed onto the gut-pile of phonies who say one thing to get our vote and then do another once they are in Washington.  

You guys work for us, not the other way around.  We fired the Republicans in 2006; they brought it on themselves.  And we fired the Democrats today; they brought it on themselves.  Here’s a tip: if you want to avoid being on the receiving end in 2012, try being a little nicer to the boss.     

You have four jobs to do: revive the economy, revive the economy, revive the economy, and revive the economy. 

You have just seen four years of what not to do from Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, Ben Bernanke, and President Obama.  If they passed it, repeal it; if they raised it, cut it; if they banned it, liberate it; if they were for it, don’t do it; if they were against it, then let ‘er rip.

Yes, it is that easy.  We did our part, now go do yours.   

  

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”