Collective Bargaining

Wisconsin’s public sector unions will be joined by Democratic Socialists of America and Communist Party USA on April 4^th to protest their loss of collective bargaining privileges.  How nice - the coalition of the willing.          

Putting aside the obvious company-you-keep argument, there are two basic problems with collective bargaining for public workers:  the collective part and the bargaining part.  

None of the factors that frame collective bargaining outcomes in the private sector – competition, price, profit and loss, bankruptcy, creditworthiness – exist in the public sector.  Government workers have no “right” to collective bargaining for the same reason they have no right to strike – because government has the monopoly on government.  Besides, rights are universal, and yet only 52% of government employees in Wisconsin enjoy the collective bargaining privileges that all this fuss is about.    

Public sector employees already enjoy protections under civil service laws that far surpass those extended to private sector workers; a public sector union is redundant.  And if the state cannot be trusted to treat its own employees fairly, then it should be denied the power to regulate any workplace, public or private.  I’m down with that.

The second part of the problem is what they bargain for: mostly it is how much work not to do. Madison teachers collectively bargained not to make up the days they closed school down for their illegal protests at the Capitol, and then they collectively bargained for the ability to rescind their fraudulent medical excuses to escape punishment and get their sick days back.  Cute.

And several union locals have rushed to collectively bargain contract extensions that violate the terms of the new Budget Repair law. Can you and I collectively bargain a contract with ourselves to exempt us from Wisconsin’s tax laws?  I think not.  

Many state workers are now scrambling to retire so they can collect early on the generous pensions they have collectively bargained for themselves over the years – pensions that are 70% higher than non-union government workers receive across the nation.  Wisconsin’s unfunded pension liabilities are 32% of state GDP, and its debt is 4.6% of GDP; both are twice as high as Virginia, where collective bargaining privileges for government workers were banned in 1993.  That’s right, 1993.

Governor Douglas Wilder – black, liberal, Democrat, no Hitler moustache on his picture – signed an even tougher union-busting bill back then than the one that unleashed the dogs of hell on Wisconsin Governor Walker. I was in Virginia recently, and was shocked – shocked, I tell you - to discover they still have roads, schools, parks, libraries, airports, museums, water treatment plants, beaches, crops, and cops.  It is hardly the slave-gulag predicted by Wisconsin’s hysterical unionists.

In 1993, Virginia and Wisconsin were equal in per capita income; nearly 20 years into Virginia’s “war on the middle class”, their per capita income is 20% higher than Wisconsin’s.  You still have time to change your signs to say, "Thank You, Mr. Walker",  all you unionists, socialists, and communists coming to Madison next week.     

One of the eye-opening discoveries of the recent turbulence in Wisconsin is that our teachers’ union sells its own health insurance to school districts for as much as 50% over market price for private policies – collectively bargained, of course. 

Here’s the deal: looting the taxpayer, laundering the money through an insurance fraud that would send everybody to jail if Anthem did it, and then using that war-chest to elect the folks who will sit across the table and negotiate the next bite of the apple – that is what is wrong with collective bargaining in the public sector.  Democrats won’t admit it and Republicans won’t say it; that’s why the world needs Libertarians to write blogs that normal people can understand.         

And the taxpayer – the owner of the firm - does not participate in collective bargaining.  Unlike the public union members, we don’t get to ratify the contracts they negotiate in secret; we just get to pay for them.   

In the private sector, excessive union compensation and productivity-sapping work rules make firms uncompetitive and they fail; new competitors with better service, lower prices, and better quality come in to drive the inefficient producers out of the market.  Unions are no friend to the middle class; they make things we buy cost more than they should right up until we have to pay the unemployment for the workers whose jobs the unions high costs destroyed. Do you know the median wage for unemployed union workers?  Zero, that’s what.   

The privilege of collective bargaining for Wisconsin’s unionized government workers did not exist for the first century of statehood. That privilege was not granted until 1959 when a law was passed by a duly elected legislature and signed by a young, duly-elected Governor whose first job was working for AFSCME.  

Opponents did not seize the Capitol; legislators did not abdicate to Illinois; death threats were not issued to supporters of the bill; boycotts and recalls were not unleashed out of spite; President Eisenhower did not send 20,000 cretins to reinforce the mobs when they tired of chanting; a Republican judge did not issue an injunction and then go on vacation. 

But all those things happened when that legislative grant was partially rescinded in 2011 by the very same process; a duly elected legislature passed legislation that was signed by a young, duly-elected Governor.  

The difference between then and now is civility and respect for the rule of law.  50 years of collective bargaining has eroded both; creating a bloated bureaucracy with an infantile entitlement mentality that could only develop in a cocoon - insulated from the realities of economics and shielded from the rigors of competition. Welcome to the world, friends.

Here is what is going to happen in Wisconsin: the 52% of overprotected government workers are going to join the other 48% of government workers and 93% of private sector workers who get along just fine without collectively bargaining with ourselves. The pampered, the bitter, and the just plain awful will quit or retire – and our government and schools will be better for their leaving.  

The sun will come up; the sky will not fall.  The fish will bite, the big buck will hide, the children will swim in the lakes and jump into leaf piles, the Packers will win, and the Brewers will break our hearts.  We will shovel snow, drink beer, and eat fish in taverns on Fridays – that’s how we roll in the Badger state.

We will forgive each other for hurtful words hurled in anger and go back to hating the Bears.  Equilibrium will be restored in the universe.  Don’t worry; it will be ok.   

“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.”  

Zen Capitalist

It must be difficult to go through life as a socialist. 

If every disparity is an injustice, then every human being you encounter is either your oppressor or your victim, depending on their wealth relative to yours. Those with more incite hatred, and those with less induce guilt.

Hatred and guilt do not move others to cooperate, so socialists must rely on coercion to co-exist.  Coercion, hatred, and guilt – there is a recipe for an unhappy life. 

How much better it is to live as a free market capitalist.      

When every other human on the planet is a potential partner in mutually beneficial exchange, then each encounter begins with hope and anticipation, and ends in gratitude - the thank-you, thank-you ritual of purchase that we all know so well.

Volition cannot be coerced; so persuasion is the means by which capitalists co-exist.  Hope, persuasion, and gratitude – that’s how we roll.  No wonder we are so pleasant and good-natured, and no wonder those miserable socialists are insanely jealous.   

It is a choice to be socialist or capitalist; it is not a genetic assignment, like race, gender, hair color, dominant hand, or sexual preference.  Each of us is free to choose the basis from which we will interact with the rest of humanity - either the hatred-guilt-coercion paradigm, or the hope-gratitude-persuasion paradigm, or some watered-down variant of the two extremes.   

Socialists are not miserable because they are poor; a great many of them live in the cocoon of security and privilege known as government work. Even our millionaire socialists, like Michael Moore and Nancy Pelosi, and our billionaire socialists like George Soros, appear to spend nearly every waking hour pissed off that someone somewhere has more money than they do.  How awful for them.  

Young people, listen to me: if it bothers you that someone else has more than you do, the problem is yours, not theirs.  There are billions of people in this world, and you will always be able to point to someone who has more and point to someone who has less.  It is up to you decide when you will quit pointing in anger and start living in serenity.    

Capitalists, as a general rule, do not covet. We admire the wealth created by others, but we do not imagine it is rightfully ours.  We seek to learn the ways of winners, and we try to avoid the mistakes of those who have squandered what they had – capitalism is a life of learning, growing, and adapting to changing circumstances.

Socialists need capitalists to produce the wealth they redistribute, while capitalists do not need socialists for anything. It is this unequal and fundamentally parasitic relationship that drives socialists to acts of disproportionate hysteria at the slightest hint of abandonment. 

Recall that Wisconsin’s public sector unions accepted benefit concessions readily, if not happily.  It was only the prospect of having to collect dues from their own members – to survive by consent - that brought out the drums, death threats, vandalism, extortion, boycotts, harassment, intimidation, fraud, and angry protests.  

All you need to know about compulsory unionism is the compulsory part. And compulsory unionism is socialism practiced at the level of the firm. 

And what is moral about taking someone else’s money to buy the things you wish not to pay for yourself?   What is the noble principle that compels you to buy my health care, food, and train fare so that I can use my own money to get a Louis Vitton tattoo on spring break?     

The first responsibility we have to our fellow man is to not be a burden; to be economically autonomous. Charity is only possible from surplus; you can’t be your brother’s keeper if you both need to be kept.  

Are libertarian capitalists uncharitable because we oppose all forms of government assistance – programs funded by confiscatory taxation and run for the benefit of the public unions who administer them?  I’ll tell you what is uncharitable: incompetence, deceit, false hope, ignorance, and economic suicide.    

The greatest threat to the Western democracies is not Al Qaeda; it is our unsustainable public debt and the impending collapse of our currencies.  The welfare/warfare state is devouring itself to keep up the appearance of sustaining commitments it cannot possibly keep.  

Capitalists did not deliver us to the edge of the abyss; it is the enemies of capitalism who argue for deficit spending and monetizing the debt.  For 100 years, the socialists’ answer to every problem has been more government and more debt.  They have created a beast so large and slow it cannot save itself from itself. 

The capitalist knows what the socialist will never learn; redistribution destroys the wealth that was created through voluntary exchange. We prospered as a nation when we held liberty as our first principle and embraced capitalism as the only system compatible with our notions of self-sovereignty, equality, and freedom. 

True prosperity will not return until we do so again.   

“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.”  

   

Shores of Tripoli

Here is the difference between President Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush: President Obama does not just do bad things, he does bad things badly.

It’s not just that starting up our third undeclared war of regime change in the Muslim world is foolish; it is the way the President did it that disturbs. In the second half of his term, it is not unreasonable to expect our President to have a clue.

First of all, we should never send our troops to battle because the United Nations tells us to, or even asks us to.  We don’t work for them.  The United States’ vital security interests are exclusively ours to define and defend.  The Constitution only prescribes one legal means to start a war – by declaration of Congress.  That would be our Congress, Mr. President. 

Second, if the Arab League is convinced that a no-fly zone was needed to contain Colonel Kaddafi, they are perfectly capable of executing that maneuver themselves.  We have given billions upon billions in military aid, aircraft, training, and logistical support to the Egyptians, Saudi’s, Kuwaiti’s and Jordanians.  Libya is their neighborhood, he is their neighbor, and this is their problem.  It’s not ours.

Third, if the situation in Libya is important enough to go to war, it is important enough to cancel a junket to Rio to run the bloody thing.  Commander-in-Chief is not a title of nobility, it is a job description; it is a high honor, not an inconvenience, to command our troops.  Those troops are at risk and people are being killed in Benghazi and Tripoli while our President is down congratulating the Brazilians for drilling offshore?   Absurdity beats irony in triple overtime.

What kind of Fire Chief would send his best battalions in to fight a raging inferno that threatens to engulf the whole downtown, and then trundle off to Mardi Gras with the missus?  Our war fighters have only one purpose, and it is not to run errands for the U.N., the Arab League, or France.  It is to defend the United States of America in declared wars.  Has Libya attacked?  Has war been declared?  I didn’t think so.

Three days into the Teleprompter President’s war on Libya, NATO forces threatened to withdraw in a squabble over who is in charge of the operations.  I am not an expert in such things, but it seems to me prudent to have  those  disagreements away from the cameras and microphones, and perhaps before we started lobbing cruise missiles, B-52’s, and F-18s at targets surrounded by human shields.  

And a State Department official apparently told a CNN reporter that our targeting is not very good because our intelligence is not very good and we don’t have good ties to the people we are assisting.  Do these people understand that they get TV and internet in Libya?  Again, not my area of expertise, but it does not take a degree from Army War College to know that you shouldn’t announce to your enemy that you don’t know squat.  He will figure that out on his own soon enough. 

President Obama is a black George W. Bush channeling Jimmy Carter, only less competent than either one.  Did his speech announcing the Libyan operations not parrot George W. Bush’s justifications for Afghan and Iraqi interventions?  Did his fighter plane crashing in the desert not bring back humiliating memories of helicopters going down when Carter botched the Iranian hostage rescue?  

The anti-war left’s defense of this guy is both astonishing and appalling.  Howard Dean, whose 2004 Presidential bid rested squarely on opposition to George W. Bush’s undeclared wars, now defends President Obama’s expansion of those first two and his opening of a third in Libya. The whole bogus movement was never anti-war; it is anti-Republican, just too smugly sanctimonious to admit it.  And too busy now protesting for public union privileges to be bothered with such trivia as another war ordered up like room service by their guy.

And Republican leadership is not exactly bronze statue material over the question of Libya.  Speaker Boehner “has questions”.  Really - like what kind of questions?  Ron Paul doesn’t have questions; Rand Paul doesn’t have questions; Justin Amash doesn’t have questions; the Republican Liberty Caucus doesn’t have questions.  All came out immediately against the unauthorized use of force to oust Kaddafi.

Newt Gingrich calls for even more aggressive military action, because “now is a good time”, to remove a dictator we don’t care much for.  Sarah Palin called for a no-fly zone 3 weeks before President Obama came around to the idea. Snobby Palin bashers might want to cut her some slack, considering that You-Betcha Barbie got to their guy’s answer on her own three weeks quicker than he did with his crackerjack team of advisors. 

Like Bill Clinton’s shameless missile attacks on Baghdad during his impeachment proceedings, President Obama’s war against Kaddafi conveniently pushed his $2 trillion lie about the debt in his sham budget to the back burners.  Nobody is reading CBO reports when there is live feed of crying women on CNN.  And the Supreme Court rejected the Federal Reserve’s appeal, so now the Fed will have to tell us who they gave out $9 trillion to during the banking crisis.  Expect a heavy bombardment on the day that list is released.

Doing bad things badly; that is President Obama’s modus operandi.  When he nationalized banks and automobile companies he did a bad thing badly.  His economic stimulus was a bad thing done badly.  The President’s Heath Care deform was a bad thing done badly.  His drilling ban was a bad thing done badly.  His financial reforms were a bad thing done badly.  His EPA carbon dioxide regulating is a bad thing done badly.  His budget is a bad thing done badly.  The list is too long to recite in detail here.

And now he has started a third war of choice in the Middle East – another bad thing done badly. If the President’s criteria for war is any loudmouth SOB who is mean to his people and not friendly to us, he has about 50 more of these bastards to take down before we show him the door in our peaceful method of regime change, the ballot box.

Then can hang out in Rio as often and as long as his little heart desires.

“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.”  

Middle Class

The left continues to prattle on and on about the “war on the middle class”, which is the label they attach nowadays to any serious discussion of government spending.       

For the moment, let’s put aside the rather obvious point that the middle class will be the first to be wiped out if the grown-ups don’t avert the debt-induced economic collapse and currency debasement that looms.  Instead, let’s visit a country where the pro-labor policies our American unionists demand have already been in place for 80 years.  

This nation’s Federal Labor Law was enacted in 1932.  It sets not only basic minimum wage, but a different minimum wage for each general category of employment, flexed upwards to account for education and regional cost of living disparities. Salaries must be increased annually at a minimum set by law.  Take that, Scott Walker!

For every six days of work, employees get one paid day of rest.  Overtime at double pay must be paid for exceeding any 8 hour shift, not just a weekly total. No one can work more than 9 hours of overtime in a week.  Screw you, Chris Christie!

Every worker is guaranteed a minimum of 6 days of vacation when hired, and 2 days are added for each year worked up to five.  Employees get 25% premium added to their pay while on vacation.  7 mandatory holidays, with triple time pays if worked.  How do you like me now, Jerry Brown, you hippie traitor! 

There is mandatory severance pay for both termination and resignation – three months plus additional 20 days for each year employed.  And the fired employee is entitled to sue for reinstatement at the employer’s expense; the law presumes wrongful termination unless the employer can prove otherwise. Talk to the clenched fist, Rand Paul!

Employers must fund employees’ personal retirement accounts, as well as provide housing allowance, annual bonus, government health care contributions, and other benefits totaling 29% of base salary.  Plus profit sharing at 10% of earnings must be paid to workers, with management excluded.  Eat it, lousy Koch Brothers!

Labor unions must be recognized if just 20% of the workforce registers.  Collective bargaining agreements are negotiated between the employer’s representative and the representative of the national union every two years.  Holy Card Check, Batman, only 20%?  Wait until the other occasional dishwashers hear about this…

The entrenched national unions all back one political party, a democrat-socialist party which has held serve for 72 of the 80 years since these pro-labor laws were enacted. The politicians are pro-union, the judges are pro-union, the government is pro-union and the law itself is pro-union.  Dude, where’s my passport?      

Can you guess this land of union plenty and middle-class abundance?  Mexico!  So when you see all those public union workers protesting in American state capitals, here is the translation of their war-chant: “hey, hey, ho, ho, let’s be just like Mex-i-co!”  

After 80 years of the unionist stacked-deck, oil-rich Mexico’s nominal per-capita GDP is just $9,423 ranking it 64^th, just behind rioting-as-we-speak Libya and economic juggernaut Uruguay. Eight decades of living the union dream has produced a living standard less than 1/5 of its union-busting, worker-be-damned Gringo neighbor to the north. Much worse, actually, because $25 billion of Mexico’s income is remittances sent home from the millions of Mexicans working union-free in the United States. 

The richest man in the world is Mexican, while 40% of his countrymen live in poverty.  Mexico’s income gap is greater than ours; so too its urban/rural disparity. Mexico’s middle class – and this is all about the middle class, remember - is ¼ the size of ours, proportional to population. 

So why haven’t 80 years of union privilege, strict labor laws, single party rule, and mandated wealth redistribution brought prosperity to Mexico?  For the same reason they won’t here and never have anywhere else ever - you can’t redistribute skill.     

Celine Dion is wealthy because she has a beautiful voice and has worked insanely hard her whole life to perfect her act.  While the state can force her to share her earnings with me, it can’t make that sound come out of my mouth. 

For me to get paid more than my singing is worth, she must be paid less than hers is worth.  That is the simple zero-sum arithmetic of socialism; and it works the same for masons, teachers, engineers, accountants, plumbers, store clerks, managers, and machinists, too.     

And what does Ms. Dion do when she is paid less than she is worth?  She quits singing, and we both get poorer.  Figuratively speaking, Mexico’s 80 years of pro-labor, anti-business politics has created a land of bad singers; ditto for Greece, Detroit and the Milwaukee Public School district, where even the Principals are unionized. 

If tough labor laws, pro-union government, and wealth redistribution were the pathway to prosperity, then it would be Mexico building that wall on our southern border, not us.  Skills, not union propaganda, are the pathway to the middle class; too bad our children are only getting the latter in the classroom these days.    

“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.”  

Recipe For A Libertarian

Here’s how you make a libertarian: take a Republican, and cut off the war, drug prison, and churchy parts; then you take a Democrat, and cut off the parts that take all of your money and tell you what to do.    

Put what’s left into a blender while stirring in the Constitution and Austrian School economic theory.  Oh, yeah, and guns – don’t forget the guns…we really like guns.  And gold…if you can’t break a tooth on it, it isn’t real money.  

Anyway, bring the mixture to a boil – any war, financial meltdown, ban, mandate, or picture of Ben Bernanke will get us boiling – and then let simmer for about 2-5 years, reducing to core principles while seasoning to taste.  Double the cook times if educated in a public school after 1985.

Voila!  There is your recipe for making a Libertarian; it only makes a single serving, because no two of us will come out exactly the same, which makes the perfect-purity sort of libertarians vibrate in place, but it makes the rest of us happy and our discussions interesting.

It is that season-to-taste step that is most crucial; add more civil liberties, or spoon in a few extra scoops of capitalism, a dash of conspiracy here and there, cut back from legalized dope to medical marijuana, pour in some “green” food coloring, or even substitute ingredients – pro-life libertarians have done that.  No need to add nuts, we have plenty already, thank you very much.

Making a libertarian is quite a bit more difficult than creating another Democrat or Republican.  Democrat is more of a birth-demographic designation than any particular political philosophy, except for that part about taking all your money and telling you what to do.  And most Republicans I know found their compass by asking the deep and probing question, “Dad, what are we?”  Libertarians had to think our way here.

Libertarians don’t do big rallies and demonstrations; we don’t have the numbers or the coercion skills to pull it off.  Besides, the argument for eliminating fractional reserve banking, privatizing currency, and ending the Fed would be a four-page sign in 12 pt font that you would have to sit down to read in good light.  USA Today prefers pictures of angry people yelling.

We don’t chant well, either: “Hey, hey…ho, ho…liberty is the absence of government in choice…and government is the absence of liberty in choice…and…um…tyranny is the absence of choice in government!”   Or, “No Justice, No Peace…peace being the abolishment of any form of government-sanctioned coercive force against persons or property with the intent to diminish individual volition!”  It just sounds like mumbling, and the megaphone batteries run out before we ever make it all the way to the end. 

And we don’t have any solid-gold protest songs to sing, either; the Canadian power trio Rush is the most famous Libertarian band, but none of us actually know all the words to “Freewill”.  Plus, you have to totally concentrate to clap to the changing rhythms of a Rush song.  It’s not like “We Shall Overcome”, where you just sing the title three times and then add…“someday”.  Cripes, there are only four notes; you could be Schlitz-face wasted and still make your difference.  Those were the days.      

So we Libertarians pretty much just glob on to somebody else’s gig.  I look like a Republican, so they let me do tea parties with them sometimes.  If I showed up on Mifflin Street, people would think I’m DEA, so we send other libertarians who blend in a little better.  The greenies like anyone with a beard, the anti-war folks love our hippies, and we have some women who can fit in anywhere – think Birkenstocks, leather, and open carry.  Mind-bending, they are.

I think a lot of people are libertarians and just don’t know it yet.  Are you conservative on economic issues, neutral on the social stuff, and non-interventionist in foreign affairs?  Are you a FLIP person – free trade, limited government, individual liberty, and private property?  When you hear “bi-partisan” do you think you are about to get screwed twice?  You might just be one of us.

In the weeks ahead, many libertarian organizations will be having their annual state conventions, which will feature speakers, information, networking, and social hours.  Campaign 4 Liberty, Libertarian Party, Republican Liberty Caucus, and Liberty On The Rocks are all good places to meet like-minded people, learn more about libertarian themes, and have fun. Consider this my annual plug to check ‘em out.

They all have websites and Facebook pages with their event schedules and locations – Wisconsin’s LP convention is April 1&2 at Olympia Resort in Oconomowoc and if there was ever a patriot family business deserving our support, my friends Rick and Rudy Eckert at Olympia are top of the charts.      

And about that churchy part - I didn’t mean throw it away, just keep it out of reach of the fools that run government. The separation of church and state is not for the benefit of the state; it is for the preservation of the church. Our rights are an endowment from our Creator, and we don’t share our birthright with the help.

And have fun.  Our Declaration of Independence did not say life, liberty, and the pursuit of somber obligatory duty.  It said happiness, and that is my sincere wish for all who follow this column and share it with their friends.  Be happy.

“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.”  

Busybodies

If nothing else, this past month of angry protests have reminded us that “the state” is not an inanimate object or legal abstraction; rather it is the people who write its laws, carry them out, and rule on disputes arising from their implementation. 

The farther removed the unit of government, the more distant and impersonal it seems to us. While the states are waging heated personal and partisan budget battles, the Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress agree on 99.4% of federal government spending in the series of continuing resolutions they both laughably describe as their budget “showdown”.  

Listening to them posture and preen over the paltry 6/10 of 1% in dispute is like watching two morbidly obese dieters haggling over how many sparkly things to pick off the Krispy Kremes before wrapping them in bacon and dropping them in the deep-fryer.  It is hard for us to fathom trillions of dollars, let alone to grasp how much unwanted intrusion into our lives is perpetrated by taxing, borrowing, and then spending that many zeros. 

But recently Senator Rand Paul personalized it for us, scolding Department of Energy official Kathleen Hogan for promulgating regulations which deny the consumer’s right to choose products, and citing appliances, toilets, and light bulbs as examples.  While the media focused on the entertaining frustration of Senator Paul over his lousy toilet, it was her response was the interesting part: she argued that since the enabling legislation had bi-partisan support, the American people did make a choice.   

Has the collectivist mindset of the politico ever been more perfectly revealed? When 535 individuals in Washington, D.C. vote to limit choices for 310 million other individuals, the political class defines that as a choice.  Wow.  She said it matter-of-factly with a straight face – the face of limitless government mildly annoyed at having to explain herself to an elected representative of the great unwashed.

There is no singular “American people” and there is no singular “choice”; there are Americans who make choices. The ability to choose is the very definition of liberty; Milton Friedman’s seminal work on economic liberty was perfectly titled, “Free To Choose”, not “Free To Comply”.  Until fairly recently, all Americans believed in liberty as our first principle, regardless of our party loyalty. 

Libertarians still do. We reject collectivist socio-economic and political theories of both the left and the right.  We recognize the full dignity of the individual, not a diluted proportion derived from membership in a government-designated herd. 

We believe the only legitimate purpose of government is to protect our rights and keep us safe – from others, not from ourselves.  We acknowledge only individual and universal rights; if a “right’ is not universal, or if someone else must be compelled to produce it, then it is a privilege, a reversible legislative whim.  

We respect the fundamental right of each individual person to make choices based upon his/her own conscience and beliefs. And we require individuals to own the consequences of their choices.  Self-government was once the defining characteristic of the American dream; it is now considered radical, even hateful. 

Senator Paul spoke for us when he told the DOE official he was insulted that she would fine us and throw us in jail for no other reason than we would not share her opinion of what we should buy.  It has been years since anyone in Washington has described the offensive nature of busybody government so succinctly. 

When she quipped that she could help him find a government-approved toilet that worked, his pitch-perfect response was, “and will you pay for it?”   No answer, face expressionless, unable to comprehend the question.  

When he went on to actually refer to the people writing regulations at DOE as "busybodies", Senator Paul was not politically correct, but he was correct.  That remark got him reprimanded by the Chairman of his committee, a fellow Republican, for being too personal in his criticisms of DOE, as if it were the marble floors and the freight elevators at DOE headquarters on Independence Ave. that drew up the regulations in question, not Ms. Hogan and her staff.  

But it is not the cubicles that do the coercing in government; it is the people who work in them. Our problem is not what we pay them; it is what we pay them to do.  We have given them entirely too much control over our lives; and we have entirely too many of them in entirely too many offices of entirely too many buildings in entirely too many agencies in entirely too many units of government whose overlaps overlap. 

Now that you have seen public sector unions use government records to assemble hit-lists of boycott targets in Wisconsin, do you still think Libertarians are overly paranoid about the amount of personal data compiled on us by state workers?  Do you now understand the danger of busybody government? 

Frank Zappa summed it up nicely when he said, “The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere in someone else’s life.” 

And what is government but the organized interference into someone else’s life?  If you think about it, most government employees make their living telling other people what they can and can’t do. Ironically, that is what made them come unhinged in Wisconsin when someone finally returned the favor.

Working for the government does not make government workers bad people; it just makes them people doing bad things.  It is those things – everything from invading foreign countries, to bailing out banks, to making us buy light bulbs that suck – that have to stop before we can get along again, and before we can even think about getting our fiscal house in order and our economy moving again. 

“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.”  

Working Man

Of all of the myths that persist about wealth and work, perhaps the most stubborn is the myth of the working man; that stoic character who toils harder, grinds longer, contributes more, and is paid less than his presumptively non-working overlords.

Socialists, liberals, and Democrats claim to be “for” the working man – as long as it’s the union-represented working man.  Capitalists, conservatives, and Republicans also claim to be “for” the working man, too – mostly they mean the tax-paying working man who owns a small business.  Both claim the other Party is out to stick it to the working man, and both claim to be the working man’s only salvation.

Get real.  Republicans and Democrats don’t care a dollop about the working man, the working woman, the working baby, the working mule, or the working space-alien.  They care about votes; enough votes to win elections and secure political power.  That is all they care about, and it is somewhere between incredibly naïve and completely delusional to think otherwise.

How about we start with dropping the class-warfare bullsnot; it is boring and tedious and this is not Germany in 1848. Do you think wealthy people don’t work?  How do you think they got that way, or stay there?  Why does Tiger Woods make tens of millions when the pro at the city course makes $50 grand?  Because Tiger Woods works his ass off, hitting the practice range, hitting the weight room, hitting on barmaids…ok, that was uncalled for…but you see the point. 

Tiger Woods doesn’t get paid millions because he is Tiger Woods; he gets paid millions because he plays like Tiger Woods.  And he plays like Tiger Woods because he has worked at it harder and longer than the guy who plays like John Daly.  Ditto Oprah, Bill Gates, villains-du-jure Koch brothers, Al Gore, and the millions of business owners who earn more than me because they produce more – more of the things that people want to buy.  Don’t hate them, thank them.

I don’t generally talk about my own employer in my blogs and speeches, but I will share this observation from over 35 years in business: the working men (and women) who come in early, stay late, work on weekends, travel on their own time, and take on the toughest assignments are generally the highest-paid employees in the firm.    

We do not work harder because we get paid more; we get paid more because we work harder and have been doing it longer.  Not just work harder, but accomplish more; ultimately our earnings are determined by the value we add.  Today is a Saturday, and the other folks who I saw in the office today were all upper-charts.  This is pretty typical.  

Several years ago I looked around at a meeting of our company’s executive team and here is what I saw: a pastor’s kid, a miner’s kid, a bartender’s kid, a laborer’s kid, two factory worker’s kids, an accountant’s kid, an air force brat. Not a single silver spoon baby around that big mahogany boardroom table.  In my experience, this is the rule, not the exception – it is what makes America such a unique and great country.  Upward mobility is the defining characteristic of capitalism, and the thing that socialists destroy along the way to making everyone equally mediocre.

When I was young and dumb and poor, I was jealous of the executives that had company cars and reserved parking spots with their names on them. One Saturday, as I was working a little OT on my $1.15/hour stockroom job and feeling sorry for myself, I noticed that the only other cars in the parking lot were the ones in the reserved places.  When I asked one of those executives what it took to get to his station in life, he answered, “you are already doing it.”  That was the Saturday I decided to quit being dumb and poor; and yes, those are choices.  The young part, sadly, is not.   

Salomon Wilcots, the NFL football analyst and former player, put it this way to a caller on his radio program who complained about the unfairness of high salaries of football players compared to the wages of others who do physically demanding work: “If you want what I have, then go do what I did.”  Well, here’s what I did:

I got a second job, I went back to school, I took assignments that no one else wanted, I changed fields, I earned professional credentials, I changed employers and moved, I married once and married right, I was a volunteer firefighter, I changed fields again, I changed employers and moved again, I went back to school again, I went back to church, I got involved in charities and community organizations, I quit all my favorite self-destructive habits, I went back to school again, I mentored kids, I joined university boards and advised minority business associations, I moved two more times on transfers, I got active in politics, I ran for Congress, I started writing, and I still work more hours at 57 than 98% of the 27 year-old fast-trackers gunning for my job who will read this article. Not that it matters, but I have two ADA-qualifying disabilities, and I am not even the smartest guy in my family, let alone the world.  Point being - I am not special.

So you know what I have to say to those who call me a greedy fat cat corporatist that doesn’t care about the working man?  Screw you. I am a working man.

And here is some unsolicited advice: stay dumb and poor and bitter – it suits you. Wait around like some helpless kitten with its eyes shut tight and its mouth wide open hoping that a teat will appear from nowhere to keep it alive.  Pray to your union to save you, or your Democrats to hug you, or your Republicans to liberate you. Stomp your feet, hold your breath, and covet, covet, covet.  That is the path to success your leaders have laid out for you, so follow it blindly despite what you see plainly with your own eyes. 

But enjoy your journey without me, friend, because I don’t have any more time to waste on you – I work.  There are thousands of employees and family members who depend on me, tens of thousands more in the communities where we work and live who would suffer if we fail. Caring about them is a full time job, sorry.

And don’t you dare lecture me about the hard-working public servants in this state as if they were the only ones who ever put in a full shift.  While my cane and I are knee deep in the mud of an underground mine in the Andes trying to sell equipment to keep our hardworking Midwest factories running, the trains over at Machu Pichu are packed with professors on sabbatical and public sector pensioners in their 50’s spilling pisco sours on their Birkenstocks.  Talk to the hand.     

Private sector workers produce all of the wealth that we share in this great nation.  93% of them have chosen to work free of union impairment. Those are the working people I care about; them and their children.  And I care about them deeply enough to fight for their right to discover for themselves how high is up for them.

“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.”  

 

  

Job Creation

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is wrong.  There, now all you statists can quit calling me a Republican scab.  I don’t mind the scab part, but I’m not a Republican, even though I could sell a lot more books that way.

A friend of a friend commented on one of my recent posts, challenging the Governor’s claim that the Budget Repair Bill (BRB) would create 250,000 jobs. I read the bill from start to finish and there is no provision that would create any government jobs, so that much is true. 

If the Governor did indeed say he would create 250,000 jobs, he is dead wrong, because governments cannot create jobs any more than governments can create citizens.

Job creation is like procreation; the less government interference, the better the chance of success, and the more enjoyable the experience. Just imagine if the state of Wisconsin set out to “create” 250,000 new citizens the way it “helps” businesses create new jobs. 

First, you and your partner would have to incorporate, then apply for some permits, buy a license, register for all the child taxes to come, and demonstrate your “credentials”.  Put some of those TSA scanners to use.  Some board in Madison will send you a letter telling you if you are adequate or not; there’s a self-esteem builder.

Then you must present your “construction” plans, with detailed diagrams, maps, dynamic loading calculations, schedules, budgets, and specifications - the list of wine, dinner settings, mood music, candles, along with their countries of origin and union-made certifications.

If a commission approves your idea for making another citizen, you then must conduct an environmental impact study to make sure that you will not disturb any wetlands in the process.  You will have to buy a helmet and some other safety gear before you get started – there is a pamphlet and a class.  The feds will want a mitigation plan to reduce the added CO2 emissions bought on by all that additional exhaling when the new citizens are created.  

Then there would be hearings – endless hearings.  A bunch of people you have never met will try to stop you from creating your new citizens.  They will claim that your citizens will make their cows go barren, that your little babies will do evil and vile things to the planet, or crush the middle class, or that you will cause a slug to become extinct.  Guaranteed you will disturb some heritage site or burial mound, even if you propose to create your new citizens in your own van.  And lawsuits – you won’t believe. You estimate your legal bills and choke down hard but decide to plow ahead and make some more Badgers anyway.

If you enrolled in the states "Let's Get Busy, Bucky" program and received any state incentives to help you purchase anything to get you started with your intimate little project, there will be all kinds of strings attached and you will be filling out progress forms and having auditors come to check them the whole time you are procreating. Don’t worry - they will be too bored to watch; they are on the clock. 

Then your tax accountant shows up to explain how things work down the road a bit. The more citizens you create the more you will pay in taxes, fees, state insurances, dues, and licenses.  All sorts of new mandates kick in as you expand your family from one to many new citizens – small families get punished for becoming big families. Hey, if you can afford all those kids, you can pay a lot more in taxes, you greedy fat cat.

Meanwhile, the President is berating you for not creating more citizens, for sitting on your...um...assets.  Michael Moore declares war on your family, and claims your children are a national resource – selfishly, because then he can eat them without paying sales tax.  Jesse Jackson says a prayer asking his God to protect the world from you.

The Department of Workforce Development pays you a little visit and dumps a few dozen binders with all the laws and regulations you must follow in your household – minimum allowance, acceptable and unacceptable chores, notices of rights that must be posted on the bunk beds, numbers to call for your kids to file complaints on you, ADA mandates, all the rules for discrimination and harassment that you have to follow – things like that.

The neighborhood bully stops by to drop off signature cards for your new citizens to join his union.  The law says you have to let him talk to them, but you are prohibited from telling  your own kids the truth when he lies about all the candy they will get and how late they can stay up playing PS4, once they join up with the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Kidsters. The NLRB starts cranking out ginned-up unfair labor practices that go right to the press first, then to you.  Your wife quits talking to you.

If half of your kids vote to join the union, then you can’t talk to any of them anymore.  You must negotiate all the household rules with the bully and give him the money withheld from your children’s allowance.  When he doesn’t get what he wants out of you, he calls the state in to investigate trumped up safety violations, unhealthy practices, and violations of the living contract he forced you to accept or lose your kids.  You get fined and the papers print all sorts of bad things about you that are not true. Creating more citizens sure is difficult.

So you are pondering where you should create more citizens, and you wonder if that bully can really come between you and my kids like that without the state coming in to protect you. And then you watch him order an entire Party caucus of Senators to leave the state, and then you watch him call in the goons from Illinois to ransack the state capital, make death threats, boycott businesses, and hurl profanities at you. 

You watch him yank state workers off their jobs and teachers out of the classroom and you realize the vandals who are breaking and entering and intimidating anyone who disagrees with them are the same folks who will be regulating your growing family.  You watch the police assist the looters, you watch the mayors join the protests, and you realize those are the people you will call for help when the Children of the Corn come for your kids. This is how they act when they are out of power, and you realize you are never more than one election away from having no one around to stop them.

Plan B - welcome to Texas, and howdy neighbor!  That is why job creators have been leaving northern forced-union states and moving to southern and western Right-To-Work states in recent decades.  How many more will have to leave before the taxeaters who haven’t had an original thought since the 1920’s will get it?

Government does not create jobs; that is the point that liberals, and a great many conservatives I might add, don’t get. Government can either create a climate where people who do create jobs will want to create them here; or it can create a climate where job creators will go elsewhere where they are appreciated.

Job creators are not slaves; we do not have to come here and we do not have to stay here. Most of us have deep roots in this state and would desperately like to stay; that is why we come down on the side of reforming our government institutions and improving our business climate. 

Some people will disagree, and some will get angry reading this post.  Go ahead, cuss all you want, but be sure to include the number of jobs you have created when you add your comments. 

“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.”     

Union Busting

While the Wisconsin media continues to obsess over the partisan standoff between Republicans and Democrats in Madison, the many other fronts in the war between the taxpayers and the taxeaters has received only glancing coverage.   

Idaho, Utah, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont (yes, that Vermont) have all taken measures to shrink the size of their public sector unions or to restrict collective bargaining privileges. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced federal Right-To-Work legislation which would guarantee all Americans in every state the right to work free of union impairment.   

Unionists, statists, and most liberals decry all of these measures as “union-busting”.  While most who oppose unions try to wiggle out from underneath the charge, I wear that label with pride.  Damn right we should bust them; just like we should bust all the other economic monopolies and cartels.  Unions could not even exist without the exemptions from federal anti-trust laws that they have purchased.   

Compulsory collective bargaining – key word compulsory – is incompatible with the principle of liberty.  End of argument.  If union enthusiasts would simply make membership voluntary, I would be out there stomping around with them.  But the “right” they insist upon is the right to deny the rights of others by force, and libertarians don’t swim in that end of the pool, sorry.

Whenever there is a barrier that prevents the exercise of a civil right, it should be busted. Every American has the right to work – period.  It is the most basic of civil rights, to own your person and the fruits of your labors.  Nobody has the moral authority to deny you your person - nobody.  Right To Work is no more complicated than its title; it is the denial of that right through forced-union privilege that requires tortured justifications.   

Libertarians and conservatives are allies on Right To Work; this does not arise from a perfectly shared vision of a just society, rather from our common reverence for the Constitution.  Where in the foundational documents is the principle that one right can be imposed by the state at the expense of two other co-equal rights?  Where in the Constitution is the authority granted to government to force a person to pay a third-party tribute as a condition of employment?  Show it to me.

You have a right to vote, and you are not forced to purchase that right from me.  You have a right to speak, and you are not forced to purchase it from me.  You have a right to worship, and you are not required to purchase it from me.  You have a right to bear arms, and you are not required to purchase it from me.  You have a right to due process, and you are not required to purchase it from me.

But when it comes to your right to work, in 28 states you are required to purchase it from me, as long as I call myself the amalgamated brotherhood or fraternal order of whatever, and persuade 50% of your co-workers - once , and by any means necessary - to pay the toll. And there’s the rub.    

In the past, you had to pay a poll tax to a political party to exercise the right to vote; in forced-union states, you still you must pay a tribute to the parent company of a political party in order to exercise your right to work. The second case is no less corrupt and reprehensible than the first, but many who marched against the former offense in their bell-bottomed days are now marching to protect the latter offense in their loose-fit years.    

The civil rights movement of the 1960’s busted the hold of the Ku Klux Klan over the Democratic Party in the South and abolished the poll tax.  Right To Work in the 2010’s will bust the unions’ even more powerful stranglehold on the Democratic Party in the north, and abolish the workplace toll.  Busting organizations whose sole purpose is to deny civil rights to others is a worthy and noble cause. Klan buster, trust buster, crime buster, union buster; it’s all good.     

It is the liberals who defend forced-union legislation that have the explaining to do.  They have abandoned their commitment to civil rights, trading their principles for box seats in the game of political power and control.  To continue to call themselves civil libertarians is dishonest.  They are civil rights sellouts, and we should not be squeamish about calling them on it just because they are nice.      

On one hand, they insist on a right for gay people to marry, but they would deny those same married gay people the right to work.  They claim to be the defenders of women’s rights in the workplace, yet categorically deny women their most basic workplace right – the right to work.  They claim to be the protector of children, yet work tirelessly to deny children the right to work when they grow up.  The advocates for workers with disabilities will not lift a finger to help the disabled work free of union impairment.

They will yell themselves hoarse over a 5% minority religion’s potential offense over a mural with the Ten Commandments; but they find it perfectly acceptable to force the 49% of a workforce that voted against union membership to join it anyway and for employers to withhold the dues that will be used against their interests.

There are some of us who have concluded that the mobbed-up extortionists with initials on their windbreakers are vile; and we don’t believe we should be coerced into joining their ranks by the government that represents us. That wacky notion is called freedom of association. If you think it is a proper role of government to force people into associations against their will, all I can say is that you should thank your lucky stars that I am not the Governor of your state.    

It now seems clear that the unionists strategy in Wisconsin is to disenfranchise the whole state and nullify the November elections by keeping 14 Democratic State Senators in Illinois long enough to mount a nationally-orchestrated recall effort in selected Republican districts. That is our President’s impaired vision of representative democracy in a republic.    

There are over 5 million citizens in the state of Wisconsin.  The vast majority of us do not live and breathe politics 24/7/365. We like to stay generally informed, and then every two years, we would like to weigh in on the performance of our representatives and the direction of our state. Then we want to get back to important things like business, work, family, church, clubs, charities, neighbors, friends, entertainment, romance, hobbies, intellectual pursuits, music, education, and sports, sports, sports.       

But there is a tiny little minority who think they are so bloody important that they should hold the entire state hostage to their partisan sparring and self-absorbed tantrums.  Their arrogance and condescension would be infuriating if we weren’t so bored with it.

They think their passions are more important than ours.  They think their uses for our money for are more important than our own. They think the perks of their own jobs are more important than the hundreds of thousands that won’t be created here now that they have shown potential employers that we are a state run by folks who have lost their minds or folks who are losing their nerve.   

They have a right to their opinions. But far more importantly, the rest of us have a right to work. And this would be a good time for the new government that was elected last fall to protect our rights to show us the respect of actually doing it. Right To Work – right now.   

“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.”  

I'm Ok, You're Not Ok

A popular book on Transactional Analysis entitled, "I'm Ok, You're Ok" sold millions of copies when it came out in 1969.  A lot of us baby boomers just read the title; we took it as a permission slip to do whatever we wanted. That’s pretty much our signature move. 

We created our own delusional definition of liberty – freedom from consequence – and built an entire ideological framework to support it.  It was a shaky lattice constructed of moral relativism, cultural diversity, notional entitlement, positive collective "rights", the nanny state, subjugation of individual rights, perpetual debt, and the decoupling of status from achievement. 

After nearly a month of unionist protests in Wisconsin and across the nation, it should be clear to even us boomers that the time has come to grow up and admit that some of us, sadly, are not ok.

For example, the people who vandalized the Capitol building - not ok.  And the teachers who took their classrooms to the protest - not ok.  Workers who walked off the job - not ok. Cops who refused to enforce the law - not ok.  Doctors who wrote fraudulent permission slips - not ok. People who took their protests to opponents' private residences - not ok.  The bomb-threat guy – not ok.

People who slung profanity and hate speech at public rallies in public places with children were present - not ok. The guy with sign proposing gang-rape of female news reporters - not ok.  The self-titled feminists whose silence on that matter was deafening - not ok.  Threatening anal rape of a gay camera man - not ok.  The silence of the LGBT community on that one - not ok.  The legislator in a union T-shirt threatening to kill another legislator - not ok.  The silence from the members of that union - not ok.

And the media covering all of this ugliness like it was a conference of angels blocking a foreign dictator from microwaving American kittens on Wisconsin soil - not ok.  

We have become a not-ok nation.  Most of us have come to expect someone else will pick up the tab, clean up the mess, rebuild from the rubble, and catch us when we fall.  When 90% of us carried the misfortunate 10% to a life of quiet dignity, that was ok.  When 50% of us are carrying the other 50% to a life of arrogant privilege and noisy ingratitude, that is not ok.  

There is unfortunately only one budget proposal for us to consider in Wisconsin, and it balances the budget with $4.2 billion in spending cuts.  The smarter alternative from the leftist elites, who ridicule Governor Walker for his lack of a University degree, is...oh, that's right, nothing. 

A million brainiacs with enough degrees to trigger a solar flare and all they can come up with is a collective pout delivered in four-syllable word diatribes and four-letter word tantrums.  Duh, winning.

Even us wacky Libertarians can improve on the GOP plan without getting sweaty: add up the costs of incarceration, prosecution, and street enforcement of simple possession, and tell me again this is the best we can do.  Or how about this: repeal all the tax loopholes and subsidies, instead of just the ones that Republicans don't like. How about School Choice?  Nullification, anyone?  C'mon, at least try.

Democrats never did have game; they yell like Tarzan and play like Jane. Their guy "fixed" his budget gaps by robbing trust funds, raising taxes, reneging on debts, misappropriating stimulus money, and accounting voodoo. He gave out more silly tax breaks to his friends than Walker has friends.  When it was their turn, the Democrats now hiding in Illinois did nothing, unless you want to count the smoking ban.  That seems to be a recurring theme – doing nothing.

Would you not-ok people like this Governor to punt, too?  How about he raids that $66 billion in the state employee pension trust fund?  Since Michael Moore says that all money is a national resource, maybe Walker should just withdraw $4.2 billion of everybody’s money from the fund and avoid all this unpleasantness.  

Or how about he sells off state lands to mining and logging companies, so funding could be restored for mandatory recycling?  And how much of a tuition increase did you sit-in student protestors volunteer so the University faculty won't have to pay 12% of their flu shot?  Oh, that's right, nothing – it’s your default setting.

Let me explain balancing a budget to all the faux-mensas out there who majored in social sciences or victimhood studies: you either spend less or you pay more.

It's a simple math problem; and I hate to break it to you, but "effin" is not a number.  $4.2 billion works out to $2,366 per household, excluding the disabled and those below poverty line.  If you don't want to cut spending, then just attach your check to the Recall Walker petition; no, double it to $4,732 since the Walker voters have already made their preference for spending cuts quite clear.

Better yet, have a telethon on Wisconsin Public Radio to raise the $4.2 billion in voluntary tax contributions; there’s a nice libertarian solution to your partisan standoff.  Let all the people of Wisconsin decide how much spending they want "spared" with their contributions, instead of running countless polls rigged to come out either against or in favor of the Governor’s plan. How far do you think that campaign would get - a million dollars, maybe?  Half that? 

And there is the problem distilled to its essence: the not-ok people demand more government than they are willing to pay for.  After decades of just going along with the flow, the ok people have decided not to give them any more of either one – government or money.    

Every dollar that government spends is either a right or pork, depending on whether you are the butcher or the hog.  All across the nation, the ok people have decided we do not want to be the hog anymore, and the not-ok butcher is angry about having to learn a new trade.  

And if you happen to read this, Mr. Moore, the wealth you recently described as a national resource is actually the most personal thing there is.  It is the warehouse that stores value between the time you labor and the time you consume. If it is not yours, then neither is your person or your pantry, the source and use of the wealth you find so troubling – except for your own $50 million, of course.  

You, sir, are definitely not ok. 

“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.”