If you are the child on the receiving end, you like Tooth Fairy Government. It promises to buy your car, pay your mortgage, send you to college, pay for your health care, create a green job for you, pay your pension, and bailout your business if you fail.

And Tooth Fairy Government promises to do all that without raising your taxes, increasing your debt, burning a single gram of carbon, costing a single job, creating a single percentage point of inflation, or leaving a single child behind.

Your end of the bargain is to remain a child; an irresponsible, selfish, demanding, jealous child, focused solely on your own needs and desires, totally oblivious to the rights of others.

You must believe you are entitled to that quarter, and you must accept that you are incapable of earning it for yourself. You must learn to hate the child who was deprived when it was stolen from his parents, and you must agree to blame them for your troubles. You must call the theft of their quarters “justice”, and describe your perpetual dependence as “the public good”.

That is the only way you will accept the lie; to squeal with delight when the stolen quarter appears; to vote for Mommy and Daddy when they promise to steal another.

Alas, there is no Tooth Fairy, and there is no Tooth Fairy Government. It you still believe in either one, you need to grow up.

We have run out of other people’s quarters, and it is time that Mommy and Daddy quit playing make believe and tell you where quarters really come from: the capitalists make them. Or we would if the government would get out of our way.

Wealth is produced; it is the product of someone’s labor. To claim an entitlement to someone else’s labor is to enslave them, to make their person your property. And slavery is immoral, whether it is done by an individual, a corporation, or a government.

Enslaving our most productive capitalists – i.e. “taxing the rich” – is not only immoral, it is stupid. It prevents those most able to create the most wealth from doing so. It means less quarters when we need more quarters.

The Tooth Fairy socialists have never understood where quarters come from. They give it no more thought than does the child peeking under his pillow hoping another one will somehow appear.

We should love both our children and our socialists, but we shouldn’t let either of them run the country.

Like the blog? Buy the book! “Tooth Fairy Government” is available now at Dr. Tim’s Moment Of Clarity www.timnerenz.com.

Entry 45                     Submitted by: Mark Musselman

Current Event

According to the Journal Sentinel June 7, 2010
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore quietly has signed on to legislation that would weaken an independent ethics board that she once supported.
The Milwaukee Democrat was one of 20 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who introduced a resolution late last month that would restrict the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics, created by Democrats after regaining control of Congress. Moore voted to create the office in 2008. The independent panel is composed of former lawmakers and other experts chosen by congressional leaders.
The move follows the ethics office’s investigation of eight black caucus members over a privately funded trip to the Caribbean. Moore was not cited in that investigation.
The resolution would prevent the office from looking into cases except in instances where they receive sworn complaints from a citizen asserting personal knowledge of alleged violations. It would also prevent the ethics committee from issuing public statements in cases where the complaints are dismissed.
————————————————————————————————————

According to the Journal Sentinel on Posted: April 5,
Washington — With health care reform notched on his belt, President Barack Obama faces tough odds when it comes to enacting the rest of his ambitious political agenda.
Democrats are too spent; Republicans are too angry.
“I wouldn’t expect anything major with the exception of the financial regulation reform Obama has been pushing for,” said Michele Swers, a political scientist at Georgetown University. “Something like cap and trade I don’t see happening. Immigration I don’t see happening. Obama has used up the political capital that he has with the Democrats to get them to do tough things before an election.”
……..
Obama and other Democrats are framing the issue as a necessary step to protect average Americans from the Wall Street excesses that contributed to the global economic meltdown. They want to set up a new consumer financial protection agency, begin regulating derivatives and other risky financial instruments and create a new authority that could dismantle financial companies that threaten to bring down the nation’s financial system.
“There is a lot of resistance to it, but we’re going to have to regulate these financial markets,” said Rep. Gwen Moore, a Milwaukee Democrat who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “There has got to be some consumer confidence restored.”
…….
VS

Federal regulation over private business vs. regulation of government.

Founding Document

US Constitution, Tenth Amendment

We the People:

Representative Moore voted to exceed Congressional authority by regulating the healthcare system, and favors overreaching regulation of the private financial markets. And yet she rescinds authority over a government agency. Why would such an official protect the government from the people instead of protecting the people from the government? Power!

In economic exchange, “fair” is a subjective term; what is fair to one is seen as unfair to another. It is an emotional response made after the fact. “Free” is an objective term; it is an observable attribute of the process of exchange.

Freedom in economic exchange is the absence of 3rd party interference with the will of the principals. Any voluntary exchange is inherently fair, as neither party would complete a transaction against his/her own self-interest.

Our country was founded upon the principle of self-sovereignty; we are a nation of 300 million Kings and Queens. Kings and Queens do not accept boundaries placed upon them by the minions they appoint to administer governmental affairs.

Libertarians believe in free markets, and free market capitalism in its purest forms. It is our point of departure from many Republicans and most Democrats on matters of economic philosophy.

We reject all forms of coercion on principle, and we recognize that economic liberty and personal liberty are inseparable. The regulated economy only serves the interest of the regulators. Putting a different color jersey on the regulators each election cycle does not liberate human action in economic exchange.

Anti-capitalists point to labor abuses of the 19th century industrial revolution as proof of the essential immorality of capitalism. They celebrate the creation of the Department of Labor in 1913 as the beginning of the enlightenment, the dawn of the age of regulated state capitalism, where public interest trumps self-interest in matters of economics and commerce.

They have it wrong. Self-interest is the public interest. Consider this list of goods invented during the century preceding the establishment of the regulatory state:

Automobile, telephone, elevator, escalator, refrigeration, anesthesia, airplane, camera, motion picture, air conditioning, fiber optics, dishwasher, sewing machine, fax machine, gasoline, hydrogen fuel cell, light bulb, electric motor, railway, steamships, bicycle, radio, plastic.

Would the critics of capitalism prefer to live without the products it has given us? I think not. Organized societies of humans had existed for thousands of years before 1800, so why do you think that this explosion of invention occurred in this place and in that time? What happened to unleash a century of unparalleled prosperity, charity, and improvement in living standards?

America happened, that’s what.

For the first time in history, government was limited by liberty instead of the other way around. For the first time in history, individuals truly owned the fruits of their own labors. Innovation, ingenuity, and industry were liberated in the human spirit and the result was prosperity beyond imagination. It was no accident; we were not just lucky, our prosperity was the deliberate consequence of our liberty.

Along the way, we abolished slavery, institutionalized charity, extended life expectancy, established a middle class, and introduced the dynamic of economic upward mobility. Yes, there were abuses, as there are in any human endeavor.

That was then. Now we live in a different age – the age of regulated state capitalism. What will our 21st century statists list as their greatest inventions – Credit Default Swaps? Sub-prime mortgages? The Internet kill switch?

Free markets select winners and losers on merit alone. The order goes to the best supplier, however the customer defines best. The employee joins up with the best place to work, however he/she defines best. It is the consumer who wields absolute power in the free market, not the producer. Each dollar has the same market power, regardless of what color hand is holding it – or gender, age, sexual preference, or physical state.

The consumer decides what products will be sold and at what price. The consumer rewards success and punishes failure. Producers only survive and thrive when they give consumers what they want. This is the only reliable expression of “the public good”. Those who can’t or won’t fail; failure is essential to the capitalist system, as it redistributes productive assets to those better able to meet the needs of consumers. Markets redistribute wealth more efficiently than any government could.

The state-regulated market transfers power to the producers and their regulators. Consumers are deprived of choice and their power to choose. The State places its self-interest above the individual consumer’s self-interest, and the State defines “the public good” in collusion with large and powerful producers seeking to insulate themselves from open competition in the market. Regulation, by its nature, stifles innovation, protects the bad operator, and constrains the good.

It is delusional to imagine that the state regulators are superior to unregulated producers and consumers, that their motivations are nobler. Statists and socialists who rail against individual self-interest are the most self-interested of all, demanding that millions of us comply with their own preferences, whims, and fancies against our wishes. They will not tolerate choices that deviate from their own; their idea of diversity is for us to act on their beliefs. When they can’t convince, they coerce.

They produce nothing, and yet they dictate what is to be produced and what is to be consumed. They substitute their rigid ideologies for the rightful self-interest of the producer and consumer in voluntary exchange. They suppress innovation, ingenuity, and industry, and then curse the very free enterprise system they have just disarmed.

The statists are not a necessary annoyance, they are an affront to the dignity of every free man and woman and everyone who aspires to be free.

In the economic history of the world, progress has been achieved by the disruptors, not by the states regulators. We will not unleash another era of unimaginable prosperity until we liberate our markets, and we will not liberate our markets until we dismantle our regulatory bureaucracy. We can begin this November, and we must.

“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.

Entry 44                  Submitted by: Mark Musselman

Current Event

From CBCNews.com, June 15, 2010( full text available on-line)
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. As we speak, our nation faces a multitude of challenges. At home, our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American. Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al Qaeda wherever it exists. And tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.
…………………….
But we have to recognize that despite our best efforts, oil has already caused damage to our coastline and its wildlife. And sadly, no matter how effective our response is, there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done. That’s why the second thing we’re focused on is the recovery and restoration of the Gulf Coast.

You know, for generations, men and women who call this region home have made their living from the water. That living is now in jeopardy. I’ve talked to shrimpers and fishermen who don’t know how they’re going to support their families this year. I’ve seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers — even in areas where the beaches are not yet affected. I’ve talked to owners of shops and hotels who wonder when the tourists might start coming back. The sadness and the anger they feel is not just about the money they’ve lost. It’s about a wrenching anxiety that their way of life may be lost.

I refuse to let that happen. Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent third party.
……………

VS

Executive authority vs. the Constitution

Founding Document
US Constitution, Article II Section 2 (the powers of the presidency)

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section 3 –
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

We the People:

Article II itemizes the limits of executive authority. In violation of that and the separation of powers principle, our president violated the constitution by ordering the confiscation of private property without due process from the courts. Our ancestors rebelled against such authoritarianism.

Twenty jobs? That’s almost two dozen!

The Wisconsin Democrats’ record on job creation is so bad, their state chairman puts out a press release praising President Obama for creating jobs…in Michigan.

Now, to give Mike Tate some credit, in that same press release did boast that the trillion dollar stimulus package did create 63 jobs in Wisconsin.

Sixty three? Wow, that’s like, much more than two dozen.

Poor Mike Tate. Sixty three jobs for billions of stimulus dollars spent in Wisconsin? Nice return on investment. But as they say, when your party’s economic policies give you lemons…

Ah, but the troubles don’t stop there. On the same day Wisconsin State Senator Julie Lassa holds a press event to bash her opponent, the hand-picked candidate to be the Democratic nominee to replace Dave Obey in Congress has to stare down new jobless figures in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin lost 1,000 more private sector jobs last month.

Again.

That has to be particularly stinging for Lassa, the Chairwoman for the poorly-named State Senate Committee on Economic Development.

It would be only a slight overstatement to say the major economic development success in Wisconsin the last few years have been for the printers of over-sized checks. Governor Doyle’s Department of Workforce Development has handed out more of these babies than Publisher’s Clearinghouse and the PGA combined. Trouble is, they always seem to be for ‘worker retraining’ after yet another manufacturing plant shutters its doors in Wisconsin.

The fact of the matter is Americans in general, and Wisconsinites in particular, have not seen a return on their investment in the failed economic policies of the last several years. That fact comes as no surprise to anyone who understands how a dynamic, free market economy works.

We are already seeing political literature of incumbents crowing about their job-creation initiatives, but the unemployment numbers discredit their glossy, four-color claims.

No matter if you title legislation “The Recovery Act” or the “Jobs Act” or the “Don’t Read the Papers, Everything is Fine Act,” if you squeeze capital out of the private sector, if you unduly punish risk, if you constantly ridicule and attack job providers, you will stifle any hopes of economic growth.

As I write this in July 2010, we’re about to enter year three of learning that lesson.

In Wisconsin and across the country, Democrats are now poised to reap the discontent they’ve sown with their pro-meddling, pro-spending, pro taxing, anti-producer policies.

So while, Republicans may indeed be ready to win races across the nation, recent history indicates their time in power could be short-lived too. Frankly, if the GOP had been better stewards of tax money in the early 2000s they never would have lost their legislative majorities, both in Madison and Washington, DC.

The party that embraces a pro-growth agenda will gain and maintain electoral success for one reason: these policies will lead to job creation.

1. Establish some certainty in the marketplace by unequivocally rejecting any proposed new tax increases.

2. Cut spending. Cut programs. Not just stem the growth in spending. Cut government spending.

3. Promote, encourage and reward risk by incentivizing investment (and not just in trendy feel-good amorphous ‘green jobs,’but ALL sectors of private employment).

4. Control the cost of government by curbing projected health and retirement benefits for public employees.

5. Permanently eliminate the double taxation of income. Tax a dollar earned, once; not again at time of the wage earners’ death.

6. Eliminate the tax on capital gains.

7. Enforce regulations that exist and you can quiet the calls for increased regulations.

8. Quit bad-mouthing employers, risk takers and job providers. Rather, celebrate and encourage them.

9. You don’t need 10 points because it’s a nice round number. Often, less government is better.

These are not radical or new proposals. But they beat what we’ve seen from our elected leaders recently. If policy makers were to embrace a pro-jobs agenda similar to this, the economy would develop and return much more than 63 jobs per two billion dollar investment.

The best way to create jobs is to allow individuals who earn money to keep more of it. Investors will invest. Inventors will invent. Job providers will provide jobs.

And the big-check printers can drum up business elsewhere.

By Brian Fraley

A MacIver Institute Perspective

Credit or debit? It’s become a familiar part of the check-out ritual for retail transactions. Many of us, even though we are using bank debit cards, choose the “credit” option, which is actually a debit transaction that runs over the same Visa or MasterCard network that processes credit card transactions. There are lots of valid reasons for choosing “credit” but many big merchants want to take the “credit or debit” choice away from customers.

Regulations would mean lower fees for merchants but less choice for their customers. And while such regulations have no conceivable connection to the housing bubble or the financial meltdown, they are hitching a ride on the so-called Wall Street Reform bill that will soon be voted on in the U.S. Senate.

The provision that would take away the choice of credit or debit is labeled “no routing restrictions” and shreds the legitimate private contracts that Visa and MasterCard have with merchants that assure customers the ability to choose how their transactions are processed. Instead, within one year of the bill passing, new regulations would prohibit any “contract, requirement, condition, penalty” that would prevent merchants from choosing how every transaction is processed.

In effect, the federal government is tearing up legitimate contracts – that have served consumers very well – to allow merchants to choose “credit or debit” for us, based on what’s best for them. It is terrible news for consumers who rely on the value-added features of their cards that are only available when transactions are routed over credit networks. Perhaps the most familiar consumer perk is winning airline miles, shopping credits, or cashback points. But many other consumer benefits are available for credit shoppers including fraud protection, a better audit-trail including a signature, and other features like integrated lines of credit and transaction-timing flexibility offered by some banks and credit unions.

To the extent some merchants still allow consumers to choose credit, the transactions would be subject to new federal price controls. These price controls will reduce the transaction fees by as much as 90 percent, by requiring the fee be based on the “incremental cost incurred” by the bank or credit union that issued your card. That might sound like great cost savings, but government cannot make things less expensive by imposing price controls without serious consequences, as we should have learned from Nixon-era wage-and-price controls. When prices are artificially suppressed, the consequence is a precipitous drop in supply. In this case, by pushing costs toward the marginal cost of an individual transaction, banks and payment networks are unable to justify the enormous capital expenditures necessary to build, maintain, and innovate. They are also starved of cash for more routine operational expenses like staffing call centers.

These severe price controls, combined with the new routing power given to merchants, are designed to destroy the “credit” option and force all debit card transactions onto cheaper debit networks that don’t offer meaningful fraud protection or other valuable services.

Moreover the “incremental cost” language creates the precedent that price controls for network transactions should be set at or near the marginal cost of running the transaction, which ignores the enormous investment required to build, maintain, and support the underlying network. That is a very frightening precedent for every network industry from railroads to the Internet, which could have capital investment destroyed by applying the same regulatory model of pushing transactional charges toward marginal cost.

The new rules are in section 1075 of the massive Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and were added on an unusual amendment vote on May 13. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, got 64 votes (60 were needed) including 17 Republicans. The Republicans who supported the amendment put the interests of politically connected merchants ahead of their professed free-market principles, and the interests of consumers.

In effect, the federal government is, at the behest of merchants, overturning a market arrangement that has served consumers well. And they are doing it inside a bill that is supposed to be a response to the financial crisis. The Senate still has an opportunity to reject these provisions by voting no on the deeply flawed Dodd-Frank bill. If the bill is enacted, repealing the debit card price controls should be included in any “fix bill” worthy of the name.

Mr. Kerpen is vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity.

Prompted by Ms. Couric, Ms. Crow recently informed Glamour readers that all Tea Partiers are uneducated, angry, and ignorant. She forgot to say racist and violent – perhaps she should have wrote a list on her palm. The mainstream media was happy to run with “uneducated” in a woofing contest that lasted three days.

This past March I spoke at an event that the media described as a Tea Party, so I guess that makes me a Tea Partier. There were over a dozen speakers at the event, all of us university educated, most with graduate degrees and several with doctorates. Granted, our degrees are only in economics, law, medicine, and commerce, not something rigorous like, say, music appreciation; but uneducated would not be an appropriate description for either the speakers or the crowd.

And besides, those really, really, really smart people in Washington who sneer with contempt for us common folk don’t have any reason to gloat.

Those really smart people spent $700 billion on a stimulus plan that didn’t stimulate. Every firm they took over to avoid bankruptcy went bankrupt. They gave $750 billion to banks that didn’t need it. They bought Freddie and Fannie to stop them from bleeding millions every month; now they bleed billions.

When those really smart people played nice with North Korea, Li’l Kim sank a South Korean destroyer. When they put the sanction beat-down on Iran, I’m-a-bad-Jihad told them to go pound enriched uranium. They sent a retired smart guy to fix the Israeli/Palestinian conflict once and for all, and he managed to get Turkey caught up in it. Their hand-picked commander mutinied on them in Afghanistan.

Mexican drug lords invade Arizona and those really smart people put up a sign. Millions of barrels of oil invade the Gulf beaches and they count life jackets and check the date on fire extinguishers. Their anti-terrorist plan is apparently to hope that bad guys continue to blow duds while they dither around about Gitmo.

Those really smart people have Cabinet Secretaries ordering Under Secretaries to tell Deputy Secretaries to fetch coffee for Czars. They have commissions that study committee reports on task force recommendations. Their Senators don’t ask, and their Supreme Court nominees don’t tell. They boycott states they can’t find on a map.

The Smartest One went personally to get us the Olympics and got stiffed. He went to get us Climate Change and got stiffed. He went to the G20 twice to get them to spend as much borrowed money as he does and he got stiffed both times.

The President of the European Central Bank recently called the smart people’s economic philosophy “incorrect”, and the head of the European Union said our fiscal policies have put us on “the road to hell”.

Just how bad do you have to be at running a government for the Europeans to think you suck at it? When Cash-4-Kias is your best stuff, even the Greeks laugh.

All those really smart people spent a whole year on a health care bill that none of them read and none of us wanted; now they find a two-scoop smart guy – Harvard professor and head of a think tank – to run it. He says he doesn’t believe in market forces; he says he only trusts “leaders with plans”.

Note to Dr. Berwick: every bankrupted CEO is a leader with a plan; every defeated general is a leader with a plan; every tin horn dictator is a leader with a plan; Jimmy Carter was a leader with a plan; the Detroit Lions have a leader with a plan. Market forces eat leaders with plans for lunch, as you are about to discover. Buckle up.

We tried all this stuff before. In May of 1939, President Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau had this to say about the New Deal our modern day smart people so revere: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work…..We have never made good on our promises … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot”.

The Liberty movement is not complicated: the socialists are ruining our country, and we are trying to stop them before they finish the job. You don’t need a Grammy to understand the choice and you don’t need a Ph.D. from Georgetown to pick a side. You need only to decide whether their theories are worth your liberty.

Well, are they?

“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.

Entry 43                       Submitted by: Mark Musselman

Current Event

According to the New York Times on June 10, 2010 (full article available on-line)
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday defeated a Republican-led effort to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from curbing greenhouse gases as lawmakers road-tested arguments for a future fight over climate change legislation.
The Senate voted 53-47 to reject an attempt by Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, to block the E.P.A. from imposing new limits on carbon emissions based on its 2009 finding that such gases from industry, vehicles and other sources represent a threat to human health and the environment.
Ms. Murkowski and others, including six Democrats, contended that the E.P.A. was engaging in a bureaucratic power grab and usurping Congressional authority with regulations that would stifle the economy and kill jobs.
“The sweeping powers being pursued by the E.P.A. are the worst possible option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ms. Murkowski, who tried to thwart the agency’s action using a rarely employed procedure called a resolution of disapproval.
The resolution of disapproval, created in a 1996 law, is a vehicle to allow Congress to overturn an executive branch action and is not subject to filibuster in the Senate. It is seldom used, however, due to the likelihood of a veto.
Democratic opponents of the Murkowski proposal said its backers were protecting oil companies and other industrial interests at the expense of public welfare and were ignoring science that substantiated the hazards of greenhouse gas emissions. They said Ms. Murkowski and her allies wanted to prevent the E.P.A. from taking action while simultaneously stalling Congressional action, essentially protecting the status quo.
………..
Supporters of the plan to block the E.P.A. said they were trying to stop a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to regulate carbon emissions without waiting for Congress to weigh in. They said the E.P.A. approach would produce little environmental reward while putting the United States at a severe disadvantage to nations that were not imposing such controls on their own industries.

VS.

Abuse of the Clean Air Act vs. the people

Founding Document

The Constitution, Amendment 10

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

“There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person.”
–Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

We the People:

Only Congress, (not the executive branch) has the authority to define a pollutant through law. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.gov) website, “The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 List of Hazardous Air Pollutants” (http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/orig189.html ), carbon dioxide is not a listed pollutant. So the executive branch, which is responsible for law enforcement, is violating a law. And the peoples’ house, the House of Representatives is silent; as the states’ house, the Senate, blocks this challenge. People, our government is out of our control.

MILWAUKEE—The Wisconsin chapter of the free market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP-WI) today applauded U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson for signing the group’s “No Climate Tax Pledge.” Johnson joins more than 625 bipartisan lawmakers and candidates on the federal, state and local levels pledging to “oppose legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.”

“The one thing elected officials should be able to agree on is that global warming shouldn’t be used as an excuse to hike taxes on citizens and businesses,” said AFP-WI State Director Mark Block. “We encourage all of Wisconsin’s elected officials and candidates for office to sign the pledge.”

Wisconsin signers include: U.S. Senate candidate Dave Westlake; U.S. House candidates Chad Lee, Peter Theron, Dan Kapanke, Dan Sebring, Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble; gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neumann; Lieutenant Gubernatorial candidates Brett Davis, Rebecca Kleefisch and Dave Ross; as well as numerous state lawmakers and candidate.

Cap-and-trade took its first step toward enactment last year when the U.S. House narrowly passed the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill, which escaped the lower chamber by a scant seven votes despite significant bipartisan opposition. The Senate has struggled to pass companion legislation, with several Democratic senators expressing opposition to attempting to pass the energy tax bill.

President Obama has made no secret of his support for the bill, which would be the largest tax increase in American history. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has scored the House plan as an $846 billion increase in federal revenue, a burden that will be borne by taxpayers and consumers for decades to come. Recent analysis by the Institute for Energy Research found the Kerry-Lieberman Senate bill would cost the nation more than 500,000 jobs by 2015 and decrease household income by over $1,000 by 2020.

“Using the guise of climate change to transfer dollars from hard-working citizens to bureaucratic big government is unacceptable,” said Block. “Regardless of their stance on global warming, this should be common ground for all of our elected officials at all levels of government.”

The pledge is available online at www.NoClimateTax.com. AFP does not endorse candidates. All elected officials and candidates are encouraged to sign the pledge and go on the record in opposition to using the climate change issue to increase taxes and grow the size of government.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual’s right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best way to safeguard individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. AFP has more than 1,000,000 members, including members in all 50 states, and 30 state chapters and affiliates. More than 60,000 Americans in all 50 states have made a financial investment in AFP or AFP Foundation. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

Published July 09, 2010 | FoxNews.com

President Obama has circumvented the Senate and the American public by using a recess appointment to install Dr. Donald Berwick at the helm of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It not only confirms the president’s disregard for the legitimate legislative process, but also exposes the frightening big government extremism of the president’s health care agenda.

The same president who, throughout the health care debate, dismissed concerns about rationing of care as a crazy right-wing “death panels” claim, has now bypassed the Senate to appoint a man who is a strong proponent not just of rationing care, but of politicizing all health care decisions.

Berwick supports the rationing of medical care using the British National Health Service as a model, and is now in a position to experiment with rationing of care in the Medicare and Medicaid programs Obama has unilaterally empowered him to run.

In an interview last year, Berwick said: “The decision is not whether we will ration care. The decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

The inevitability of rationing – that is, government deciding, instead of patients and doctors, what treatments will be available – would come as a shock to anyone who listened to the president explain how his plan would boost the availability of care.

Obama’s new health care boss goes even further, it openly supports giving the government centralized control over health care. Berwick specifically looks to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in Britain as a model, with its measure of “quality adjusted life years.” In Britain, they estimate that a year of your life – adjusted for “quality,” (i.e., meaning how sick you are), is worth about $45,000. If you’re too old or too sick to justify the cost, you’re denied treatment.

Berwick said of this system: “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country. The NHS is one of the astounding human endeavors of modern times. Because you use a nation as the scale and taxation as the funding, the NHS is highly political.”

Not only does he love rationing, but he rhapsodizes about politicizing health care decisions. Now, thanks to Obama, he is in a position to impose his views on Medicare.

How could the president successfully install such an extreme advocate of rationing and government control of health care? By cheating the process. The Senate didn’t hold a single hearing. Berwick wasn’t filibustered, because Republicans didn’t even have a chance – he was never put on the calendar.

Even Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, one of the key architects of Obamacare who steered the law through tough Senate negotiations, broke with the president over the way he sidestepped Congress to get Berwick in, saying: “I’m troubled that, rather than going through the standard nomination process, Dr. Berwick was recess appointed. Senate confirmation of presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on executive power and protects Montanans and all Americans by ensuring that crucial questions are asked of the nominee – and answered.”

Senate Republicans have been even more critical, but the president sidestepped the Senate and unilaterally installed Berwick.

With Obama’s rationer in power now, the tragic “cost containment” mechanism under Obamacare — denying essential treatments — is now on full, grotesque display.

Obama’s political gambit is that by avoiding the Senate he can avoid public scrutiny. Outraged citizens must therefore counter by doing everything possible to make an issue of Berwick and demand that Congress repeal Obamacare and start over with real reforms that put patients first.

Mr. Kerpen is vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity. He can be reached on Twitter, Facebook, and through PhilKerpen.com.