My Occupation

The word “occupation” has another meaning.  For those of us who have one, it refers to what we do to make a living.  I am a businessman; that is my occupation.

Businessman was not always my occupation.  My undergraduate majors were art and psychology, although I did not quite exactly graduate; it was more of a mutual agreement with the college administration that instead of coming back for my final year, I would benefit from matriculating at any other institution anywhere else on the planet.  One suggested a facility with bars and guards would be a good choice.  I prefer to call it finishing early.

In 1975 the economy was in the ditch, there was little demand for an art/psych dropout, the Marines wouldn’t take me, and I was raised in the belief that it was a disgrace for an able-bodied person to accept welfare.  My parents had made it clear their home would not be occupied by adult children, and the age of dependency had not yet been raised to 26.  The party was over and it was time to grow up.

I cut my hair and shaved, ditched the jeans for chinos, put on a tie, and made up a resume that listed every job I ever held (12), all of my accomplishments and awards, my academic record and grade point, and all of my volunteer work – I didn’t mention the rowdiness that got me expelled from my one-man Occupy Carthage College movement.  No hard feelings, by the way; I had it coming. 

And I hit the streets, stopping in every business and factory and asking to see the boss. Not the personnel department, the boss; the lines were too long at the personnel department and all the people there were just filling out forms.  I didn’t stop at night; I hit on every factory night shift foreman and restaurant manager and tavern owner right up until bar time.

It took a zillion rebuffs until one boss liked how I got around his personnel department firewall and gave me a job working in a warehouse for $1.15 an hour – minimum wage.  I did not get that job because I could draw an apple or recognize obsessive compulsive traits in adolescents; I got it because I could lift 110 pound boxes over my head and that saved the company time waiting for a forklift driver. 

That was my employable skill – lifting; that was how I could add value for the firm.  But it was my foot in the door, and I was grateful to be employed.  And no, minimum wage was not a livable wage back then, either, so I added another job and then added a half-time job until I could learn enough and add enough value to cut back down to just one. 

The rest is pretty boring everyday American Dream kind of stuff - small town boy makes good. I won’t bore you with the details of how I went from human forklift to company President, and there are many more compelling stories then mine if you are looking for inspiration. 

Over the past 36 years I have made it my business to learn new ways to add value for my employers and our customers – that is what the occupation of businessman is all about.  Adding more value is how the ladder is climbed.  I look now at the Occupy Wall Street protestors and wonder if they have any idea what it will take for them to swim with the big fish if and when they get around to the grown-up business of choosing and mastering a real occupation and providing for themselves and their families. 

It is difficult for guys like me to sympathize with those protestors who expect high-paying jobs simply just because they have college degrees.  In case any of you are reading this, I have to tell you that college isn’t even that hard anymore, and your need to pay off your loan is not a reason why I should hire you to work for me.  It is on you to show me what value you can add to my firm; it is not on me to provide you with income.  And you must compete with others who want that job as much or more as you do.  Hit the gym, vocationally speaking.

Do you have 12 jobs to put on your resume?  Can you list the charity work, sports and club awards from your school days that demonstrate your commitment to excellence?  Did you figure out how to get around the personnel department to get to me?  Are you willing to start at the bottom and lift heavy things just to have the opportunity to show us what else you got? 

If you are sincere about wanting a job, start with the basics.  Pull your pants up; turn your hat around – better yet, take it off; and take that hockey puck thing out of your earlobe and all the staples out of your face – you look like a freakin’ tackle box.  Cover up your tats even if you have to wear a burqa to do it; either grow a proper beard or shave, knock off that indecisive stubble thing; comb your hair and wash those red and blue streaks out of it.  And don’t call me “dude”.

But do tell me about the charity work you have done during your extended period of unemployment.  Uh-oh…all that time on your hands, such great needs, and you couldn’t find a way to make a difference in some kid’s life?  Head Start, Big Brothers & Sisters, Junior Achievement, Boys and Girls Club, 4H, Scouts, any church, and you can't figure out how to do any of that giving back you keep talking about?  That tells me a lot more about you than your misspelled resume does...dude. 

You know who impresses me in an interview?  Those who serve in the National Guard or Reserve and the veterans returning from their active duty service, especially those who served in combat.  Many have left pieces of themselves in foreign lands, but few complain; in a job interview, the disabled veteran really stands out against the scores of inabled civilians whose first question is how much time off they will get. 

These terrific young men and women who served gave up a life of privilege and denied themselves and their family in order to do defend our liberty.  They understand sacrifice, discipline, teamwork, goal-setting, innovation, planning, strategy, and character.  They know results matter, they have demonstrated an ability to overcome obstacles, and they possess instantly transferable skill sets and vocational training.  Plus we owe them - to the serially ungrateful, this may be an incomprehensible sentiment. 

I don’t need a law to tell me to give a hiring preference to veterans; it is good business as well as good citizenship.  The Department of Defense has a program called Employer Support for the Guard and Reserves (ESGR) which helps employers reach out to current military and those leaving the service to return to civilian life.  Check it out, employers. 

The Occupier who took the dump on a cop car Wall Street is going to have a hard time finding and keeping a job – not because he took a dump on a cop car, but because he thinks taking a dump on a cop car with kids around is cool.  That brain isn’t a disability; it is a liability.  We employers don’t have the time nor the inclination to fix him. 


“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.    

Banksters

It is easy to hate the banks; bankers and tax collectors have been our favorite targets since the beginning of time.  Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple, and forgave a tax collector just to show us He really did mean everybody when we were instructed to love our neighbors as ourselves.    

The term “banksters” accurately describes the cabal of big New York banks who use the Federal Reserve to print their money, the IRS to collect their interest, and the regulators at Treasury to give them the cover of decency.  The protesters on Wall Street did not invent that term; it has been a staple of us libertarians, tea partiers, Paulista’s, and NWO paranoids for years.  

But the demand of OWS for more regulation of the banking monopoly is misguided - the answer to government-regulated corruption is not more government-regulated corruption.  You don’t bust a monopoly by wrapping even more government sanction around it; you bust a monopoly by busting a monopoly.  Let’s shall.   

It would be useful to remember what triggered the financial crisis of 2008, namely the imploding of the sub-prime mortgage industry that began to unravel in late 2007.  And let us recall how sub-prime mortgages – loaning money to people who could not pay it back – came to be a big enough deal to break the world.  If you know your local home-town banker, you know this is not an idea that they cooked up on their own after Rotary Club one Tuesday morning. 

No, making the banks loan money to people who can’t pay it back is an idea so colossally stupid that it would take an act of Congress to make it happen.  Literally - that law was the Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to loan money to unqualified borrowers.  It was a response to a call for more regulation in the 1970’s, and its provisions were strengthened in response to a call for more regulation in the 1990’s – careful what you wish for in twenty year increments.

Bank regulators wrote the rules and the banks followed. The Federal Reserve provided the money, and Fannie and Freddie guaranteed the loans against default.  The sub-prime loans were so risky that there was no market for them; they had to be pooled with other investments to disguise the risk.  The Wall Street banksters were happy to oblige, but only if they could charge hefty fees and be immunized from regulations that prohibited such wildly unethical behavior. 

Congress and Treasury gave them said immunity, but stationed federal regulators right on their premises to insure compliance with the rules the government set down.  Good sheepdogs do not spend years negotiating terms with the wolves; our government regulators did not simply allow the fleecing of America, they engineered it.  I’ll take my chances against the wolves.   

And now they say they couldn’t see it coming?  And neither could Congressman Barney Frank, or Senator Chris Dodd, the chairmen of the House and Senate committees with responsibility for oversight of the banking system?  The head of the SEC, the FDIC, Fannie, Freddie, the IG at Treasury – none of those guys saw that the government-induced housing bubble was going to burst and take the banking system with it?    

Then how come Peter Schiff saw it coming?  How come Ron Paul saw it coming?  Wayne Allyn Root, Wes Benedict, Thomas Woods, Jim Rodgers, and hundreds of others who didn’t have offices inside Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs warned us months and years before the bubble burst that we were headed for disaster.   They are not clairvoyant, just economically literate.     

The banksters, regulators, and currency manipulators at the Fed drove housing prices out of the reach of ordinary Americans.  Their answer to each problem they created was to add another problem, including easy access to crushing debt.  And now millions of Americans who bought at the peak of the bubble have discovered that the illusion of equity can vanish overnight, but debt is forever.  The PSA’s from HUD forgot to mention that part in either language.  

To my knowledge, there have been no convictions of Wall Street bankers for violating banking laws, so it is reasonable to assume that they followed the regulations to a tee.  And if the quality of regulators stationed right inside the New York banks was so bad they either didn’t know rules were violated or were too timid to cite, then what makes us think that hiring more of them would help?  Adding second stringers does not solve a quality problem on the A team.     

We don’t need government regulation to regulate greed – the market not only does it, but does it better and faster.  There is no call to add internet penis pills to the portfolio of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco; we seem be able to avoid some scams without having to call in people with windbreakers that say ATFIPP on them.   

When Enron failed, the government refused to bail them out and their executives who broke the law went to jail.  Correct answer; there hasn’t been another Enron since and we did not run out of energy.  When the banksters failed, the government bailed them out and paid them bonuses, and nobody went to jail.  Wrong answer; they went right back to doing the same crazy stuff they were doing before, only now they are packaging toxic sovereign debt in with toxic mortgages when they engineer their incomprehensible derivative products.  And we have run out of money.   

The problem of how to protect the public from the banking cartels is no different than any other monopoly threat in the economy.  The answer to the corrupting power of monopolies is not to sanction them with the even more corrupting power of additional government regulations; the answer is to use the anti-trust laws to break up the monopolies and allow free markets to cleanse the economy of its bad actors...

...starting with the Federal Reserve. 

“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.     

Thank You, One Percenters

I wonder how many of those we-are-the-99% OWS protestors know what household income it takes to join the evil 1% they seek to destroy: the answer is $384,000.

Not exactly the millions and billions President Obama keeps talking about, but why let numbers get in the way of a good demonizing?  Did you ever think about who makes that kind of money?  Well, doctors and lawyers for sure, dentists, optometrists, small business owners, architects, builders, lobbyists, chiropractors, motivational speakers, popular authors, professional athletes, pension managers, car dealers, couples who teach in Universities (or high schools in Wisconsin if both pull that double-dip retire and come back to work maneuver), retired Democrat congressmen, union bosses – folks like that.

And of course, those devil-dog bastard CEOs.  The AFL-CIO tells us that CEO’s average income is $11.4 million, calling it immoral that our top executives earn 642 times the median secretary salary of $29,980.  Not to diminish the profession, but I am pretty sure that a committee of 642 secretaries at Caterpillar could not run the company. The unionists demand is a return to the pre-Reagan 1980 ratio of CEO pay, when top executives made 29 times the median wage of all workers.  Give me a button; I’m in.

In fact, I would bet that a majority of CEO’s would take that deal, since the median CEO pay, according to Salary.com, is $706,000 while 29 times the national median wage of $49,000 would be $1.4 million.   Who knew the AFL-CIO would be the ones to make the case for doubling the pay of CEOs?  Not even them, apparently; and I bet the guys taking dumps on police cars and sniffing feet at OWS New York didn’t see that one coming either.   Some minds are a terrible thing to waste; others are just terribly wasted.        

Maybe CEOs should form a union, because the average income of the ten highest-paid CEOs is only $27 million, while the average income of the top ten celebrities is nearly double that - $43 million - and they are all union.  Clearly, celebrity greed is the cause of CEO suffering; let’s all go occupy Rodeo Drive.

Packer linebacker Clay Matthews is another evil one-percenter.  You want to talk injustice - how is it fair that one guy gets to be so handsome, rich, athletic, smart, and cool while the rest of us can’t see our shoes anymore and have to ask what fork to use?  And what is Clay Mathews supposed to do about our man-crush envy - cut off a bicep so we can have one, too?  Spread the hair around?  Share some of his snaps with the unemployed and uncoordinated?

Clay Mathews is in the top one percent of income earners because he is exceptionally good at doing something only a few other people on the planet can do; he got that way by working harder and longer at it than the millions of other kids who dreamed about being an NFL player but didn’t put in the work.  He earned it; just like the surgeon, singer, business owner, CEO, and derivatives trader who made it into the top 1% of income earners in this nation did.  They get paid a lot because they are worth even more.  Even Lady Gaga.

Drumming all day long won't change a thing; it is the purchase of the drum that picks winners and losers.  That transaction decides which manufacturer, distributor, and retailer will take one step towards membership in the 1% club, the bane of the coveting class. The market decides who will be a one-percenter, and free market capitalism is the purest of all democracies; each dollar has one equal vote. 

$384,000 isn't an excessive amount of money to pay for exceptionalism when you think how many civil service and political patronage jobs pay six figures for mediocrity these days.  Don't you think the guy who repairs your baby daughter's heart valve is worth four times more than the fellow who will teach her to read poorly when she reaches school age?  If she ends up on food stamps, it will not be the fault of that one-percenter surgeon; it is the slack-o-crat teacher and his union protectors who will condemn her to the impoverished life of the opinionated illiterate.

There are 1.4 million Americans who make up the top one percent.  They earn 16.9% of the nation's income and they pay 37% of all the taxes.  If the eat-the-rich crowd got their way literally, our nation’s GDP would drop by 17% and taxes on the rest of us would go up 58% to make up for what we just devoured.  And we would still have a 1%, but it would be today’s second stringers.   

Is killing the one-percenters a little too extreme for you?  Ok, how about we just round up all 1.4 million of them and exile them to an island.  And then let's round up the bottom 1% and send them off to their own island, too.  The socialists’ playbook says that the rich 1% are parasites who would die without the 99% to oppress.  They would also tell you the poorest 1% only find themselves in that predicament because their opportunities have been denied by the richest 1%.

If the socialists have it right, then the citizens of Poor Island would prosper while Rich Island would perish.  What do you think - who would prosper and who would perish?  Which island would you choose to live and raise your family?  Where do you think your children would have more opportunity?  Which would you throw in with if your life depended on it?

And now quit kidding yourself that it doesn’t.

The fools who are trying to destroy our nation’s one-percenters don’t understand that it takes wealth-builders to build wealth.  Ask the folks in Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea how much fun it is when The Occupation works.  President Obama and his OWS mobs have sent a clear message that one-percenters are no longer welcome here.  Well, I have a different message for them: thank you. 

Thank you for employing us, feeding us, housing us, clothing us, curing our illnesses, giving us sight, bringing abundance to market, financing our startups, inventing new technology, buying our insurance, contributing to our 401k, teaching us employable skills, heating our homes, sponsoring our educations, entertaining us, paying more than your share of taxes so we can pay less than ours, funding our charities, endowing our universities, and sacking opposing quarterbacks so the Packers go back to the Superbowl, as God intended.

Thank you very much.

“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.     

Separation Anxiety

While expressing his solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement this week, President Obama said something very weird - that OWS and Tea Party protestors share the frustration of feeling separated from our government.   

No we don’t. I desperately want to be separated from my government again; separation from government is the whole purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  It draws the lines between us and our government; it is our national restraining order against a stalking pervert who climbs through our windows every chance he gets to steal our stuff and cop a feel while we are sleeping.    

I doubt if separation from government is what makes the employees of Gibson Guitars frustrated these days.  My guess is that the feds busting down their doors and shutting them down indefinitely for no reason whatsoever is probably more of a concern.  They are probably more than a little frustrated that the guy who keeps yammering on about his jobs bill is the reason they lost theirs.  

And it is a safe bet that the small regional banks that are being choked to death by regulators under the Dodd-Frank bank “reform” bill don’t see separation from government as a major problem.  Congressman Frank sees no conflict between his taking heaps of cash from the giant Wall Street banks and writing the new rules that effectively take out their smaller competitors while guaranteeing their profits.  He supports OWS, too, providing a role model for schizophrenics with political ambitions. 

And weren’t you happy to learn that First Lady Michelle Obama wants to “shape” your children for you?   Personally, I would like to establish some considerable distance between me and someone who thinks children should be shaped, like little pieces of clay.  Does she want to dress them up and take pictures, too?  We like our kids to be separated from strangers like that…and we like our First Ladies to be a little less creepy.  I’m not sure how the OWS crowd feels about it.

By linking the Tea Party and OWS, President Obama once again shows us he doesn’t know his country very well.  Most of us do not want government to sit in our lap; we want it to go lay by its dish. Americans are united in the things we are against; what divide us are the things we are for.

No one wants more crime, poverty, injustice, racism, drug abuse, inflation, illiteracy, pollution, unemployment, bankruptcy, fraud, illness, and premature death; we only disagree about how to combat them.  And everyone sees war as the last resort; we just disagree on what comes second to last. 

President Obama and his ideologically aligned liberals, Democrats, progressives, and socialists are for more government and less liberty.  Like helicopter moms, they see separation from government as way too risky for their citizen/children; they demand a government that protects us from ourselves at our grandchildren’s expense.  

Conservatives, libertarians, constitutionalists, principled Republicans, and political agnostics are for less government and more liberty.  We do not want to be mothered by government; we want to live free of government supervision and approval.  Separation from government does not cause us fear and anxiety; we crave it.  

When asked if we want more government or less of it, Americans consistently choose “less” by 2:1 margins.  That has been one of the most consistent polling questions over the past three decades.  OWS is not the 99%; it is some tiny fraction of the 33% who say “more”. 

When I went off to college, my mom and dad did not cry and neither did I; after 18 years of dependence on them, we were both happy to empty the nest. I was grateful to them for preparing me for that day, and they were even more grateful that it finally came. 

There were other kids who spent that whole day bawling with their parents; I didn’t understand why back then, but a little wisdom has stuck to me over the decades that have passed since.  We all grew older but we didn’t change much. 

Some Americans see every new day as an opportunity to learn and grow, to overcome new challenges, to succeed and prosper, to be responsible, to discover how high is up for ourselves and to help others do the same.  The happy kids.

Others wake to dread the dawn; seeing only hurdles that can’t be overcome, barriers that can’t be breached, disadvantage and unfairness, and a world so difficult to manage that only government can protect us from it.   The bawling kids.

The painful truth is that we choose which of those two worlds we will live in.  The happy kids and the bawling kids all went to the same campus.  And the awful truth is that politics is the imposition of one viewpoint upon the believers of the other.   The genius of democracy is that is allows us to change who wins without killing each other.     

In the natural order of things, the mighty fall.  The prodigal squanders, the haughty are brought low, nations decline, empires implode.  This creates space at the top for the lowly to rise.  Our iconic national story is one of humble beginnings which end in glory. 

The problem with government is that it disturbs that natural order; it props up the mighty and crushes the meek.  In a free market, privilege cannot be defended, it must be re-earned.  Enron’s separation from government allowed it to rightfully perish alone; Fannie Mae’s incestuous relationship took us all down with it. 

Maybe the bawling kids are still fooled by the teleprompter President, but the happy kids aren’t buying it.  We are not still mired in recession almost four years later because government can’t clutch us tight enough to its bosom; we are stuck in the ditch because it won’t get off our backs.  

Mr. President, with all due respect, we are not frustrated over our separation from government; it is that your separation from government can’t come fast enough.
    

“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.    

3-3-3

It didn’t take long for the establishment GOP to figure out how to dump on Herman Cain – if you can’t attack the man, attack the plan.

For the record, I don’t like Mr. Cain’s 9-9-9 either; I would much prefer 3-3-3.  Because the problem is not just how we tax; as Milton Friedman said, the real rate of taxation is the rate of spending, and we spend about 12-12-12.  We can thank both of the establishment parties for that.

And spending is what candidates should be focused on; yet to date only Ron Paul has told us specifically what he would cut - $1 trillion worth in year one.  That puts him $1 trillion into the lead in my book.  The rest talk in platitudes about economic growth and spending restraint, not unlike then-candidate Obama in 2008 who promised the moon and stars while conveniently leaving out the part about how much the spaceship would cost us in cash and lost liberty.

Here’s my plan to cut down to my ideal weight: I will only add three pounds per year instead of the five I was planning on for the next decade, and I promise to grow to 7’6” in year 10.  Economists would score that as a winner; the CBO would issue a glowing report; Joe Biden would start counting millions of pounds not gained and threatening to rape me if I quit wrapping my donuts in bacon before I deep fry them.  Or something.

I know exactly what Herman Cain is thinking with 9-9-9, because business people like us understand that human behavior changes in response to incentives.  Prices will come down when costs are lowered because competition will demand it.  Leveling the playing field will allow capital to flow to the best investments, not tax-gimmicks like Solyndra, and the jobs will come roaring back.  People will buy things based on their intrinsic value, not overpay just to get a deduction.

Markets will begin to function again and the good times will roll; it is a plan of economic liberation based upon an understanding of human action - the kind of thing a business guy would come up with and a politician would stare at dumbfounded for days on end.  The attacks on the 9-9-9 tax plan ignore human action, relying on static analysis and arithmetic comparisons to current pay rates to try and discredit it.

But economics is not arithmetic; it is the study of how people get what they want.  When the rules change, so does behavior; and in predictable ways, even if the current administration’s economic team doesn’t understand how to predict them.  Business people – the main street kind – develop a pretty good sense of human nature, as we are dependent upon the voluntary decisions of our customers to succeed.  It does not surprise me that Cain would be the one to solve a problem; or that the establishment in both political parties would hate him for it.

They like the status quo just fine, and they have orchestrated misleading attacks to thwart any effort to simplify and flatten the tax system.  When Governor Perry unveils his flat tax plan, you can count on them ripping it to shreds also.  They are betting that all of us have by now been hooked with one rock of tax-crack deduction or another that we cannot imagine living without. Most of us who will howl about losing our home mortgage deduction will never put two and two together and realize that our loophole is one of the causes of the housing bubble and economic crisis it brought about.  We all like bad things to be someone else’s fault; we just disagree about who else to hang it on.  

Fair is when everyone is treated the same.  9-9-9 does that, as would 3-3-3 or 29-29-29; the most ridiculous standard to hold up a tax reform plan against is what some people pay now under the current code.  If the deal-breaker is anyone paying a penny more than they did this year, then let’s just leave the most corrupted and corrupting tax scheme in the history of mankind in place and wait for the collapse to come.  Just quit making fun of people who are investing in ammo and gold; you will soon be begging them to share their MRE’s with you and they won’t need your vote. 

Zero is not a fair share, whether it is a migrant worker or GE who is the free rider.  When Buffet, Gates, Trump, Wynn, and Carlos Slim go to lunch together, somebody is in the bottom quintile – are they entitled to free lobster bisque and a pity party?  Taxing income is itself an idea so dumb they had to change the Constitution to allow it; taking at differential rates is an even worse idea that had to be stolen from the communists.

Here is the tax comparison that matters.  The federal government spends about 24% of GDP; if everyone paid our fair share we would each pay 24% of our income in federal taxes.  Do you?  Not if you are poor, and not if you are rich, not if you have deductions and exemptions, and not even if they put us all together do we pay that much.

We collectively pay about 16% of GDP in taxes; those other 8 percentage points we borrow each year is why the national debt is skyrocketing and we are speeding towards our big fat Greek collapse.  That is the destination of the status quo; the goal line that is being defended at all costs against any attempt to simplify and flatten the tax system, be it flat tax, FairTax, 9-9-9, or Ron Paul’s excise tax ideas.  Insanity.

Those who read this blog regularly know that I am a proponent of the FairTax for pragmatic reasons.  In an ideal libertarian world, I would finance a Constitutionally limited government (about 20% of our current one) with a land tax and head tax – trip on that, Michelle Bachman, former IRS attorney, mother of 6, foster mother of 23, and starter of a business who has made a payroll.  Even Romney’s one illegal gardener would have to pay $500 to live here – consider it a cover charge for the greatest rave party on the planet.  Can’t scrape up $500?  How did that tattoo get there?

But we must live in the world that is until we can create the world that should be.  The two principles behind sound practical tax reform are simple: as broad a base as possible at the lowest possible single rate.  Whether we tax income or consumption or both is not as important as that we stop using the tax code to reward and punish, to pick winners and losers, to advance political agendas, and to provoke class divisions.  Thank you Herman Cain for taking the heat to get the ball rolling.

And for exposing politics as usual in Tuesday night’s ambush.  Do you really think that all those other smart candidates for President of the United States do not understand the difference between state taxes and federal taxes?  Do you believe they don’t know that people pay both state and federal taxes now?  Do you think they honestly do not know the difference between a VAT and corporate income tax?

Or do you think a powerful lobby of special interests 100% vested in keeping the current system of preferences, loopholes, subsidies, guarantees, and pork in place might have put them up to it?  Like perhaps the same folks who are making Ron Paul invisible, and turning this whole election cycle into a made for TV Romney/Perry WWE main event. 

They think we are stupid.  They are wrong.


“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.    

American Idol

Seeing the GOP presidential debates in person is whole lot different from watching them on TV.

Thanks to our friend Herman Cain, we were seated right up front at the CNN debates last night in Las Vegas.  Our section mates included gaming moguls Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, the Romney family, Wayne Newton, and too many other notables to list.  This was not just the 1% crowd, these were decimal pointers.

If you are reading this, you undoubtedly saw the debate yourself - and perhaps noticed Joanne and me in the audience shots or up on stage with Herman immediately following the show (my son liked that part of the debates the best).  So I won't go over what you saw, just tell you a little about what you didn’t see.

We rode to the event with the Cain party, cleared by security into a large warehouse area where a fleet of RV’s awaited the candidates – identical mobile green rooms where the candidates prepared themselves.  Probably the closest any of these Republicans will get to a trailer park.

The campaign staffers milling about the campground looked to my aging eyes to be in their teens, and mostly stared at their Blackberries while furiously texting the other teens to schedule whatever it is all these teens do for the campaigns. The bodyguards were all as big as the Winnebagos and we were escorted to our seats by not one but two of the sun-blotters with the squiggly ear things.  Rock star.

One of the grown-ups in the room described this election cycle to me as "American Idol on steroids".  In a series of national televised auditions pitched as debates, the field is winnowed as the pundit class disposes of them one at a time.  I never thought of it quite that way, but it rings true; the new paradigm is being made up as we go.

This is why a candidate like Herman Cain actually has a chance in this race - all of Romney's money and boots-on-ground organization in 50 states can't win him a talent contest.  The more people see of Herman the more they like him; that's why the powers that be have stooped to smearing his 9-9-9 tax plan to try and slow him down.

I love Ron Paul.  He was rolling his eyes, shaking his head, looking around at the set visibly bored while Perry and Romney wasted large gulps of our short time on this earth pulling each other's braids.  Everybody wanted to, and Ron Paul did it; there is the man’s whole career encapsulated for you.

I got a chance to chat with Dr. Paul during a commercial break; thanked him for his service to liberty and for inspiring young people to discover the Constitution.  Since Ron Paul is my idol and Herman is my friend, I asked them both to play nice. I was surprised and happy to learn they get on well personally, and I got to see it first-hand; I wish their supporters could learn from their example.  Please.

Michelle Bachman had her hand up to say something the whole time like that Horschak character in Welcome Back, Kotter.  Could you guys hear her calling out, "Anderson, Anderson!"? It was a little annoying and very weird.  I lost $20 bucks when she didn't count her kids for us again - it's true you can bet on anything in Vegas.

In person, Rick Perry throws off a jerk vibe that makes your hairs stand up from 40 feet.  That guy has got some seriously bad juju going on; and oversized hands, in case you wondered.  The crowd booed him twice, nobody came up to talk with him on breaks, and the other candidates gave him that look of disgust I used to get from dads when I showed up to take their daughters out.
 
Newt Gingrich has to be one of the smartest guys on the planet - and he doesn't have a prayer.  Rick Santorum is not one of the smartest guys on the planet - and doesn't have a prayer, either. Huntsman didn't even show up, answering many prayers. And Gary Johnson was not invited, for which CNN should pray for forgiveness.

At each break, Mitt Romney came over to visit with his wife and son; since they sat next to us, he was standing two feet in front of me each time.  The guy looks like a President, and that might be enough to seal the deal.  For a guy who claims not to be a politician, he sure can turn that smile on an off on command, and mostly the command is the presence of a potential donor.

I don't watch TV, so I hadn't seen Anderson Cooper before.  My opinion of Communist Network News is not great, but he did ok for a guy with no first name. He is not 360; maybe 135 dripping wet.  He made tiny Michelle Bachman look statuesque.  David Gergen is a big guy.  Newt was the only fat guy in the whole room – rich people must pay someone else to go to seed for them.

So there you have it; Dr. Tim’s take on the CNN Las Vegas debates.  Does anyone remember what any of them said?  I don't.  And who cares anyway. People aren't going to vote for a tax plan or vote to eliminate fractional reserve banking. Touting experience as an IRS lawyer is suicidally stupid, to steal the best line of the evening from Newt.  And neither one of the Bickersons is going to even get their families off the couch to vote for them if they keep this up.

So Herman Cain will win the GOP nomination, because he is the most liked and most trusted - American Idol on steroids, like the man said.  If you are looking for a libertarian candidate, Mr. Cain is not your first choice, please quit telling me he was on the Fed board, I knew that a long time ago.  But if you are looking for a conservative candidate, he should be your guy. 

Check our his 9-9-9 plan for yourself and you will see that just about everything the others threw at it last night is bullsnot; they knew it and slung the poo anyway, all those faith-driven values candidates.  They only one who didn’t was Ron Paul, who simply proposed his own plan to replace the income tax with nothing.

Herman Cain is my friend and Ron Paul is my idol.  They are front-runners and have the whole field talking about less government and more liberty; I never thought I would see it in my lifetime.  My lasting memory of the debates is watching them share a laugh at one of the breaks – the former Fed board member and the guy who would tear it all down.

The fact that one of those two could be the next President of the United States is simply amazing.  Let that day come not a moment too soon.


“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.     

We're Number Ten!

Each year, Forbes magazine publishes a ranking of the best countries in which to do business.  The United States has fallen to tenth place.

Canada, our good neighbor to the North (and the home of Athabasca University, my grad school alma mater I may add) has moved up from number four to number one.  Sandwiched in between are Hong Kong and Singapore, some of the smaller European countries, and New Zealand.  Not a sweatshop nation in the bunch – toldya.

This is not your father’s America.  Once the undisputed economic champion of the world, we have let ourselves go to seed.  Overtaxed, overregulated, over-entitled, over-governed, we have taken our prosperity for granted and deluded ourselves into thinking that printing money is the same as creating wealth.

Tenth place is disgusting, and yet only a small fraction of Americans will be disgusted.  An even smaller fraction will feel any responsibility for our decline in the rankings.  Fewer still will feel any personal obligation to turn things around and only a tiny minority of those will actually do anything about it.  A few will even cheer that we have received our comeuppance.

And that is why we are number ten and falling fast.

A generation of stickers and hugs for trying hard has made us a nation complacent and confused about actual achievement.  Many can no longer distinguish between demanding a reward and earning it.  We have not lost our ability to compete, we have lost our will.  Those of us who are still driven to succeed in the world economy are vilified for our success.  Perhaps the call will come to occupy Canada, now that winning itself deserves punishment in the eyes of the class-obsessed. 

The governments of the countries who are climbing in the world rankings have reduced taxes on businesses, eased regulatory burdens, avoided deficit spending, pursued sound money policies, and maintained competition (and sanity) in their banking industries.  Capital loves predictability and a balance of both risk and reward.  Capitalists do not choose to dine with cannibals when there is a choice.

The best thing about Canada is that it is full of Canadians.  While it is tempting to paint the country with a broad leftist brush because of its public health care system, there are many elements of the Canadian system that libertarians and conservatives admire and all Americans can learn from.

It is ironic that while the United States central government has usurped authorities guaranteed to the states by our Constitution, Canada maintains a relatively weak central government deferential to Provincial authority - Newfies don’t get to tell Albertans what to do and Ottawa does not sue Edmonton at the drop of a hat.  And their governmental units are, by and large, competent. 

Although I am fond of teasing my Canadian friends about needing a law for everything, they take their law-making seriously in the legislatures and abide by what their elected representatives have enacted.  Not like America where Presidents and governors circumvent laws by executive order and judges just make it up as they go from the bench.

Canadians develop their natural resources.  They mine, they drill, they extract oil, they harvest timber, they make wise and responsible use of all of nature’s abundance, unlike Americans who have banned drilling, outlawed mining, and limited logging.  Canadians are happy to sell us the stuff that we sue ourselves over to leave in the ground.

The United States of America has been blessed with abundant natural resources, strategic geography, a heritage of enterprise and innovation, cultural diversity and a tradition of liberty.  There is no reason on earth why we should not be the number one place to do business; free market capitalism is largely an American invention.

We are number ten because we have chosen to be number ten; or rather number ten has been chosen for us by foolish leaders whose understanding of economics and commerce is only slightly less developed than their common sense.

Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. has proposed that President Obama declare a national emergency and take “extra-constitutional” measures to create jobs.  Note to Rep. Jackson: President Obama IS our national emergency.  Every time he talks, his mine-mine-mine tax plan drives businesses to more hospitable places.  The nine of them ahead of us are not low-wage countries; they are low-hassle countries.

As my friend Herman Cain says, “we don’t do two”.  We are Americans; we are a nation founded on an economic foundation of free market capitalism.  We are wired to prosper, to win, to reach beyond our place and dream beyond our reach; failure is not in our DNA.  We can beat the industrialists and workers in the factories of China, Mexico, Vietnam, and South Korea; we do it every day.  But we can’t beat the bureaucrats in the cubicles of Washington, D.C. and statehouses around the country.  

Those consumed with directing the allocation of a shrinking pie should get out of the way of the pie makers.  Those content to be number ten should get out of the way of those of us who know how to erase the zero behind the one.

And those who think going around the Constitution is the sure path to prosperity should read it first.

“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.     

Own That

[Author's Note:  upon publishing this column, several readers contacted me to inform that the photo referenced was taken at an earlier anti-capitalist protest in Portland, not at the OWS rally in New York, as was cited in a number of blogsites that inspired my piece.  Apparently, the OWS defecation was directed at a police vehicle, not the burning flag.  I do not "pull" my mistakes, just acknowledge and correct them.  The point of the piece is still relevant if police cars are defaced, but I apologize to my readers for the unwitting error.  Tim]

There could be no more perfect iconic image for the bowel movement that is Occupy Wall Street than the photo of the guy with his red pants around his ankles taking a dump on a burning American flag.

That single disrespectful, aimless, and irrelevant act of stupidity encapsulated the disrespectful, aimless, and irrelevant OWS protest for people like me who have spent weeks trying to understand its purpose.  I get it now – they hate America.  I feel foolish that I wasted even a minute of my time looking for something more to it, something of possible substance.

I suppose some liberal apologist might be able to torture up some absurd symbolic meaning out of this act (“we’re number two!”), but here is what it conveyed to me: this guy is an ungrateful piece of excrement - his cause personified.

To a Libertarian, the difference between Republicans and Democrats is not always clear.  But events like OWS remind us that while Republicans often lose sight of what liberty is, Democrats know it full well and hate it.  The signs say they want to end capitalism.  Crapping on a burning American flag was not an olive branch to the liberty movement from OWS; it was a challenge.  Bring it.

When someone booed a gay soldier’s question at the Republican debates, every candidate quickly denounced it.  Still, Democratic media pundits savaged the field for waiting even a few hours before issuing their rebukes.

It has now been days since I first saw the pictures of OWS flag burning and defecation but I have yet to hear a single Democrat condemn it - an act that any reasonable person would consider despicable if not criminal.

Just the opposite; President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, the head of their patron SEIU, and celebrity mouthpieces like Kanye West and Tim Robbins stepped forward to embrace and encourage the OWS protest shortly after the boy in the red pants dropped a deuce in the name of…of…exactly, there is no point to this whine-in.

Clearly, Democrats are capable of expressing outrage; that is pretty much their Johnny-one-note note.  So one can only conclude that they do not find burning and defecating upon the American flag outrageous behavior.  That is all you have to know about the current sorry state of the Democrat Party.

I was appalled this week when the Tea Party embarrassed civil rights icon John Lewis; the sight of a bunch of white guys shouting down a black Congressman who came to address them showed that racism still…oh, wait, that wasn’t the Tea Party, it was the OWS protestors, so never mind.  Haven’t seen mass hypnosis like that since the Manson family or Jonestown; the only question is whether the least hinged among them will end up killing themselves or someone else when they lose their grip on that last marble.  Thank you, thank you, Second Amendment.

Earlier this year, this same left-wing rent-a-mob distinguished themselves in Madison by booing the national anthem, drumming out the Pledge of Allegiance, screaming vulgarities at 14-year old girls, blowing the eardrums out of downs-syndrome kids, disrupting a Special Olympics ceremony, threatening to sodomize a gay photographer, threatening to kill opposition politicians and their families, extorting businesses, picketing a sheltered workshop, and committing mass insurance fraud.

Do you remember?  Own It, Democrats.  Now your boy lit our flag on fire and took a dump on it.  Own That, too.

That’s right - Own That.  You educated them, you encouraged them, you put them up to it, you paid them to turn out, you cheered them on as they did your dirty work – blaming others for your failed socialist policies.  Knuckleheads led by knuckledraggers – that was Madison, and it is now OWS.  Think we don’t know?

I fully support the right of every American to protest, including the right to perform stupid and outrageous acts like flag burning. But I also support the right of citizens to enact local safety ordinances and lighting things on fire is certainly prohibited in Manhattan, as is pinching a loaf on the sidewalk.

If I were the judge, his sentence would be to have a T-shirt made with a picture of his act of fecal protest and make him wear it for a day at Walter Reed Army Hospital.  Let that useless pile mingle with the brave and noble wounded warriors who have left pieces of themselves on foreign soil defending that flag. It is neither a proper Christian nor Libertarian thought, but it would be ok with me if they beat him to a pulp with their stumps, and I bet they could.  Please forgive me.

The OWS protestors demand money from those who have earned it, health care from those who must provide it, education from those who can impart it, and housing from those who build it.  In exchange, they offer nothing. 

I hate to be the one to break it to you Jedi’s, but this is not the kind of keen business acumen that employers are looking for in a tight job market.  Herman Cain is right – it is your own fault that you are unemployed.

And enjoy the sleeping bag sex with those idealist OWS girls while you can, gamers; because they will soon be grown up women with an appetite for Louis Vuitton and you will be back in your mom’s basement dating your imaginations again.  When it’s time to pick the father of their children that prick from Citibank with the BMW is going to start to look pretty good.  Hey, I did not make the rules.

Amber and Chad won’t be sharing that Condo in Boca with you, Poop Boy.  So grow up, pull up your pants, go apologize to a Vet and learn a trade.  You still have your whole life in front of you, and this is still a great country - don’t mess it up.
 

“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.     

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Many libertarians are pleased that the Defense Department’s policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been rescinded.  

 

I am not one of them; in fact, I was hoping that DADT would be expanded in scope to cover every single means of categorizing people for differential treatment, and expanded in breadth to bring every single department and agency in government to heel.

The Fourth Amendment specifically prohibits government snooping:  “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”  

Don’t Ask.

And the Fifth Amendment specifically protects us from having to answer the government: “…nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself…”

Don’t Tell.

That is how liberty is supposed to work.  They can’t ask about gender, race, age, sexual preference, religious affiliation, party membership, health status, disability, business ownership, housing status, occupation, income, charitable contributions, source of income, place of residence, firearm ownership, vehicle choice, diet, intoxicant choice, number of children, insurance status, travel destination, vaccination history, or smoking preference.  But they do anyway.

They can’t ask us what’s in our home, our cars, our boats, our tackle boxes, our computers, our phones, our pads, our emails, our phone calls, our mail, our diaries, our health records, our checkbooks, our account balances, our businesses, our transaction histories, our bank boxes, our churches, our clubs, our land, our pockets, our purses, our shoes, or our briefcases.  But they do anyway.

Given the tens of thousands of laws, statutes, ordinances, and regulations that exist, it is hard to imagine what might not be a potential criminal case these days.  One day you are a freeman making guitars at Gibson, the next day you are a criminal for doing exactly the same thing.  How do you think the government knew how many trucks to bring when they shut that factory down?  Who was forced to fill out all the forms that told them?  We are being beaten with our own belts.

Think for just a moment about all of the personal information that the government has already accumulated about you; imagine how much more they will learn when your health records are “consolidated” under ObamaCare.  We worry that identity theft may allow criminals to ruin our lives, yet they can access only a fraction of the information the Nannycrats in government have at their disposal.  Membership in the entitlement society is not free; the cover charge is your liberty, the rent is your privacy, and the dues are collected in pride. 

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution lists the specific things that the federal government is empowered to do.  Section 9 lists things the government is explicitly prohibited from doing.  Section 10 prohibits the states from doing things we have assigned to the federal government, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments prohibit the federal government from doing things reserved for the states and for the people.  It is not complicated; unless, of course, you are a liberal judge.

Nowhere in the Constitution is the government permitted to ask without a specific cause and warrant, and everywhere we are protected from self-revelation.  The whole document is a job description for a servant government, one who respects its masters’ privacy and keeps its own mouth shut.   The meanings of the words in that job description are plain; it is just that they mean things that people who seek unlimited government power to advance their own agendas wish weren’t in there.

Go get your copy of the Constitution and read Article I, Section 8 again to see if you can find a single one of those enumerated powers that would require the government to profile us in order to do their job.  Why would the feds need to track the calibers, serial numbers and clip capacities of our handguns – to maintain Postal roads? 

The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy was enacted to protect the rights of homosexuals who wished to serve in the military.  DADT is the same policy that is applied to heterosexuals everywhere - except when your wife is trying to set up one of her girlfriends with your buddy who hates football, takes his shoes off in the house without asking, and wears socks that match his sweaters. 

“Must Ask, Must Tell” is not the relationship between the citizens and their government that was envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.  And that pesky little Constitution is the only thing standing between you and the people who wish to deprive you of your liberty in the name of their “public good”.  Every abuse of power ever undertaken was justified by some noble-sounding public purpose.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will forever go down in the lexicon as a symbol of discrimination, and that is indeed unfortunate.  It should be the battle cry of a new generation committed to restore the liberty their parents squandered in a fool’s trade for the empty promises of an entitlement society whose benefits are unaffordable and a security apparatus that only keeps military spending safe. 


“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.    

Dear Occupiers

Dear Occupiers:  You are absolutely right to fight against the corrupting influence of corporatism in our political system, but your 13 point demand list is a victory dance for the very guys you are drumming against.

Do you want to actually do something worthwhile?  Then cut your list of demands down from 13 to just these 2:  abolish the Federal Reserve and enact the FairTax. 

The Government could not spend 60% more than it takes in without someone loaning them the money.  Would you loan your own money to a deadbeat who had neither the wherewithal nor the intention of ever paying it back?  Let me rephrase that.  If you had any money, would you…   And neither would the rest of the world, which has pretty much quit buying U.S. debt.

So the Federal Reserve steps in and prints money out of thin air, virtually gives it away to those Wall Street banks, which turn right around and loan it to the government at 3.7% interest at the Treasury auctions, a damn fine profit for the couple of nanoseconds it takes to process the two transactions on their servers.  You can’t rack up billions in profits one $2.00 ATM fee at a time, you know; people take too long to push the buttons.

And what do you occupationists’ demand?  Even more government spending - which means more borrowing, which means more counterfeiting of currency, which means more profits for the Wall Street banks, not less.  They are secretly cheering you on behind those brass doors you are hollering at.  And all that fiat money inflates the currency, raising prices and depressing real earnings.  You would already be making a living wage if the Fed hadn’t turned your dollars into dimes; your ideas turn them into pennies faster than they are headed already. 

Here’s an analogy the stoners among you might understand – it’s not fair that your street dealer has such fine rims and a smoking hot girlfriend so your answer is demand even more addicts.  Wrong.  Abolish the drug cartel (Federal Reserve) and shrink the number of addicts (Government programs).  Here’s what will happen; drug prices drop (currency normalization) the girlfriend leaves (externalities) and the guy in the wife-beater has to make an honest living (real GDP growth).  There is a little more to macroeconomics and monetary policy than that, but not enough to warrant taking out another student loan.

You are wasting your time on the wrong street, my friends. You aren’t even in the right town, unless Timmy Geithner still has an office there.  Go down to K Street in Washington D.C. if you want to stop corruption in politics.  That’s where all the lobbyists hang out, and that is where the actual corrupting takes place.

There are more than 14,000 lobbyists in D.C. and their job is to take the money from special interests (meaning the other guy’s association, not mine) and spread it around to Congressmen and regulators, who gladly provide a return on that investment in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, boondoggle spending, and regulatory preferences, which further enrich the special interests, who give even more money to lobbyists, who spread it around like manure – and round and round it goes, getting deeper and deeper with each lap of the spreader.

Who do you think will put an end to it – those guys?  The status quo is a win-win-win for the revolving door of special interests, lobbyists, and politicians sucking away at the public teat down on K Street.  One day you’re the nipple, the next day the lips; and the taxpayer gets milked – there’s your moment of clarity. 

Those Wall Street banks are just the errand boys that move cash from the Fed to the government to the special interests to the lobbyists to the regulators and campaigns of the folks desperate to operate the machinery for next four years.  Rich errand boys to be sure, but errand boys nonetheless. 

Want to put an end to the racket?  Then join us to enact the FairTax – a national sales tax which replaces all other federal taxes and abolishes the IRS.  With no tax breaks to give, there is no reason to lobby, and no purpose for the special interests.  Just like the dealer with the spinners, everybody with their snout in the trough down on K Street has to go get honest work.

And we save $400 billion in compliance costs that the current tax system extracts from the economy each year.  Hit the bong and contemplate that one for a moment; that is a $400 billion job stimulus - not just this year but every single year until hell freezes over.  C’mon President Obama, say it just once, I double-dog dare you - “Pass This Bill!”  I didn’t think so; there is a campaign war chest to fill.

If abolishing the Federal Reserve and implementing FairTax is a little too radical for you (in which case I have no idea why you are reading this column), then Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan and re-purposing of the Fed mandate onto sound money is the next best thing.  Keynesians mock it and Arthur Laffer loves it; good enough for me.  Mr. Cain’s plan takes the best of the FairTax, the best of the Flat Tax, and levels the playing field for all businesses while improving our global competitiveness. 

And if you want to close your own personal income gap, go occupy North Dakota.  The place is busting out at the seams with the oil boom that is going on there; 3.4% unemployment and jobs going to the highest bidder.  You lefties drew your line in the sand on fossil fuels – the unemployment line.  If you want to make a living wage, put down your bongos and get your butts out to Williston.

We just lost Steve Jobs – my generation’s Thomas Edison.  The guy secured over 300 patents and unlike the politicians and charlatans who heap praise upon themselves, he did literally change the world.  We lose phones with more computing power than the million dollar mainframe computers he liberated us from.  And he got mad, silly, stinking rich doing it.  Should we hate Steve Jobs because he climbed to the other side of the income gap?  No, we should thank our dear Lord for him and people like him with each click of the mouse that he invented.

Dear occupiers:  the liberals who have promised you hope and change don’t have either to give you.  You are waiting for a bus to prosperity that will never come.  Start walking; you will be surprised how fast you can catch up. 


“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.     

Occupied

The organizers of the Occupy Wall Street protest finally released their list of 13 demands, about two weeks into the protest.  Better never than late.

First among them is a demand for a law that raises the minimum wage to $20 per hour.  Leading with such a foolish idea makes it pretty hard to read the other 12 without thinking it is the first draft of a David Letterman Top Ten List compiled by someone who learned math in a government school.

Paying somebody $20 is easy, but it takes more than a law for someone’s work to be worth more than $20.  They have to possess employable skills that are in demand, exhibit a positive attitude, be accountable, and work well with others – and then actually do something that is worth at least $21 to someone else.  Coming in two weeks late with a badly composed single page list is not the kind of performance that is worth $20/hour to anybody - I can see why they think a law is necessary.

But they are wrong; minimum wage laws are unnecessary.  Median income in the private sector is just under $50,000 per year, or $25 per hour, which is roughly three times the minimum wage mandated by Congress.

What law makes a company pay an employee $25?  Better yet, what law forced that employee to become worth more than $25?  It is the Law of Supply and Demand; and it is apparently 3 times better, as laws go, than the one Congress passed to set a wage floor.  It is useful to remind ourselves why more than half of the people working in this country are already paid $5 more per hour than what these Wall Street occupiers consider “justice”.   The answer, of course, is that their work adds more than $25 to the value of the company which employs them.

The story is the same for the $12 wage and the $12 million salary.  Brett Favre used to be worth millions, and now he isn’t; Aaron Rodgers wasn’t worth millions watching Brett play; now he is worth every penny of the millions he makes playing, but in a few years he won’t be worth millions again.  It’s what you do that pays, not what you know.

There is no government legislation that forces companies to pay more than the minimum wage, just as there is no law that forces companies to provide benefits, or schedule 40 hour weeks, or name holidays, or grant paid vacations.  And yet most firms do.  Why?  Because the law of supply and demand tells them to; and they must obey the laws of economics or perish.  Unlike the perverted corporatism practiced in New York and Washington D.C., the free market has no mechanism to bail out fools, frauds, and failures.

In reality, there is no law that forces companies to actually pay that minimum wage either; most just eliminate the job that is only worth below-minimum.  Setting the minimum wage to $20 would eliminate all the jobs worth $19.99 and under.  This will add many tens of millions of Americans to the ranks of the unemployed and push us over 50% unemployment.

I don’t think the occupiers understood how this economics stuff works, but as luck would have it they don’t have to, since they included a separate demand that everyone who doesn’t work receive a living wage.  “Eaters”, Henry Kissinger called them; who knew it would become a professional vocation one day.

Another occupation demand is a free college education for everyone.  I’m all for that, but not for the reasons you might think.  A no-cost education is only possible if there is no cost to it – no salaries, wages, pensions, maintenance, heat, light, books, etc.  I think it is a terrific idea for University faculty and staff all across the nation to put their money where their mouth is and work for free in unheated classrooms to show their solidarity with the unionist occupation movement and stick it to us greedy, heartless, libertarian capitalists once and for all.   Fists up, anyone?
 
The rest of the demand list is pretty lame and predictable economic suicide – cut off all the energy that is charging the iPhones, Droids, Bluetooth headsets, pads, and notebooks they use to spread the word about the occupation.  And re-elect President Obama – appropriate, since their goal is to collapse the economic system.

But this one is bold: wipe out all debt all over the world. Private, public, corporate, sovereign – just forgive it all.  Write off the tens of trillions owed to bond-holders and bank stockholders and start over; one giant global financial mulligan.  I don’t suppose it has occurred to them that the entire U.S. Social Security system and every other pension plan in the country would be immediately wiped out and nobody would ever loan a penny to anyone ever again.  Dark Ages, Part Dieux, and not one of those fools could shoot his dinner once Taco Bell goes dark.

Maybe if the occupiers had another two weeks to think about it, they would demand we annul all the marriages in the world, too – as long as we are tossing aside solemn commitments.  Just throw the whole world’s car keys into one giant swingers’ bowl to give everybody a fair chance at landing Miss Venezuela or George Clooney, as you prefer.

Why not – this is all about fairness and privilege, right?  It is certainly not fair that the privileged 1% are so unnecessarily beautiful while us 99%ers have to struggle just to be presentable.  That is the whole point of this occupation thing – forcing the privileged few to give it up.  I bet most of those guys, and a bunch of the girls, would take Eva Mendes over Trump’s money if you gave them the choice of which unjust deprivation they would cure first. 

Don’t get me wrong; the protestors have every right to protest, and watching them comforts me that we are still a free country, Hank Jr. notwithstanding.  What they don’t have a right to do is occupy; private property is private and public property belongs every bit as much to those Wall Street brokers as it does the dude in the dreads calling them names.

The occupiers should watch and learn from the Tea Party: get your permit, hold your rally, pick up your trash, and go back to work.  Ask Nancy Pelosi if that was effective.  And not to rub it in, but it is a safe bet that the Tea Party will send more of its own to Congress in 2012 again than will the Occupation Movement.  Gingrich has a better shot of getting candidate pledges for his Contract Addendum with America than do the occupiers with their 13 points of light.     

The good news, if you are an occupier, is that you got our attention and made your point; the bad news is that you got our attention and you have no point.  You demand that we surrender our liberty to a mob that couldn’t even get your list of demands typed up on time.  Sorry, I’m taking “or else”.

Want to do something useful to stand up to the Wall Street banksters?  Why don’t you take a break from your occupation to read Ron Paul’s book “End The Fed” and then get back to us.  Some of us have been rousing the rabble long before you occupiers were even born.  Maybe we can do something useful together.


“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.     

Roll Your Own

The Cowboy was once a symbol of freedom, a uniquely American icon. He wore his guns with pride, he said "thank you, ma'am", he prayed before supper, he rolled his own smokes, and if anyone would dare tell him he couldn't, well, "them's fightin' words!"

When we were kids, we all wanted to be one. We wore little cowboy outfits, we said "howdy, pardner", we rode the pony machine outside the A&P store, we went to the Saturday matinees and we cheered when the good guys in the white hats shot the bad guys in the black hats - saving the town and winning the gal.

What the hell happened to us?  When did we start hating the good guys?  When did we become the nation that cheers for that fat guy in the paisley vest, the slimy lawyer that forged the deed, the crooked judge who ignored the law, and the sneering tax man who foreclosed on the orphanage?

Wisconsin's Department of Revenue apparently has enough excess cube monkeys on its payroll to waste our money closing down stores that sell loose tobacco and provide the machines for people to roll their own cigarettes.  I don't smoke myself, but I understand these Roll Your Own (RYO) stores have become pretty popular since the government taxed the bejesus out of manufactured cigarettes.  To quote that great economist Gomer Pyle, “surprise, surprise, surprise!” 

The owners of these small businesses earn their own way, employ other people, pay a boatload of taxes, and sell a legal product to adults who want to buy it with money they earned themselves.  That is called liberty; it drives some people nuts.

One such driven group calls itself Smoke Free Wisconsin, who has nothing but praise for Governor Scott Walker's ham-fisted RYO crackdown. These are the same folks who led the drive to ban smoking on private property.  There should be an injunction against them using the word "free"; real liberty lovers would insert one more little word to get our priorities straight: Smoke [in] Free Wisconsin.

Where is the outrage from the left over the RYO beat-down? Rich people can afford to buy manufactured cigarettes and pay all that tax; it is the poor and middle class who roll their own at these locally-owned stores.  Why aren't you Madison moonbats drumming on Walker about taxing the poor and hammering small businesses?  And aren't you guys supposed to be pro-choice, or does a woman only own her body while a second life shares it?

I have no idea what the Governor was thinking, but it's stupid crap like this that turns Republicans into Libertarians.  He may want to take a mulligan with another recall season just around the corner, but hey - I’m not the coach of their team.

Look, if someone wants to smoke that is their business; I am not threatened by their choice.  The real danger to the public is not smokers or RYO stores, it is allowing ourselves to be ruled by self-righteous prigs with so many sticks up their butts they fart sawdust.

We are not safe from the Sawdust People when they are awake, so I say coffee is a public health hazard, too.  Let's tax the snot out of it; make it a dollar for each word it takes to order a cup of the stuff at Snob-bucks.  Extra grande fair-trade iced minty whipped mocha mocha latte?  Ten bucks tax - welcome to Marlboro country, Tiffany.

That’s it - tax Big Coffee and then send out the goons from DOR to start shutting down all those brew-your-own, tax-evading sons of bitches with their subversive don't-tread-on-me Mr. Coffee machines. Make them pay fines and permit fees and buy licenses and keep bleeding them until they die.  Start with the quickie oil change joints; theirs are the most disgusting, anyway.  Then roust the mom-and-pop motels, the real estate agencies, the hair salons, the bridal shops and work your way up to the Indian casinos.

On second thought, why not start with the Indian casinos, and why not start tomorrow?  Forget the free coffee - why do those rich guys get to smoke, give away tax-free drinks, gamble, and sell untaxed cigarettes in their businesses while the State is stomping down the tiny RYO stores for doing none of the above?  And don't say respect for their traditional way of life unless you think "ding-ding-ding-ding-ding" is some kind of sacred rain chant that makes prairie grass grow to fatten the buffalo.  They bought their privilege with campaign cash and it was the last Governor, not this one, who sold us out to get re-elected.

Here's a radical idea - how about our government respect everyone's way of life, including the poor working stiffs who feel like rolling a smoke after putting in a double shift?  And how about we let the Constitution tell the government what to do instead of letting the Sawdust People tell the government what to do to us?

And before you uber-caring heart-bleeders start thumb-typing your anonymous comments wishing me a fatal disease because I dared to defend smokers' rights, don't waste your time.  I've lost as many family members to cancer as anyone, but I won’t force everyone else to suffer for my loss, ok?  I cry on my own time.

The phrase "roll your own" is a slang expression meaning to do something your own way; and doing things your own way is what liberty is all about. It is not about forcing someone else to conform to your idea of a proper lifestyle - that is called tyranny.  Crushing those little RYO entrepreneurs is a fitting symbol of government over-reach; it is do-gooder tyranny, the most insidious kind, the easiest to ignore.

So go ahead and look the other way while the brutes shake down the RYO industry and throw even more people out of work.  But when you brew that next cup of java at home on your own subversive Mr. Coffee, just remember that someone somewhere in the Department of Revenue is reading this post and thinking, "hmmmmm...coffee tax...now there's an interesting idea."

Maybe then you will understand why we libertarians keep fussing over silly things like the Fourth amendment...and why we thank our Founding Fathers for the Second. If you do too, support your RYO  entrepreneurs and share this post with your friends.


“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.