THE POWER TO ABUSE

The legislative powers vested in the Congress of the United States consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives by the U. S. Constitution are definitely limited. These limitations are spelled out, word by word, in Article I, Section 8 in plain ordinary English language.

We have arbitrarily allowed congress to delve into taxing and spending beyond the authority given to these two bodies under the mandates of this constitutional document. There is no constitutional authority for well over two thirds of the social engineering programs for which we, the taxpayers, are compelled to cough up. We have come a long way from the principles of limited and constitutional government as the framers originally intended.

I read in a recent survey that most voters, less than ten percent, have ever read the Constitution of the United States. I hope and trust that the survey is totally inaccurate. You cannot be a good citizen of the United States of America without having read and studied this document. This was a required subject while I was in the fifth grade and also again in my junior year of high school. Do we study the Constitution of the United States in our schools anymore? Just in case, I am quoting the entire Section 8 of Article I at the end of this article so you may determine for yourself the limitations of our duly elected legislators.

The principles’ of freedom itself is the very essence of the institutions of private ownership and the exercise of free enterprise. Unless we curb the abuses of federal intervention into these institutions they will be destroyed and they will cease to exist.

The signers of our constitution understood that private ownership of property and a free market places are a prerequisite for the most effective methods and social organizations for expounding and promoting individual freedoms. Capitalism, for that matter, is defined as an economic system, characterized by a free market and open competition, in which goods are produced for profit, labor is performed for wages and the means of production and distribution are privately owned. Individual freedom depends upon maximizing these institutions.

Voluntary exchange is the engine upon which capitalism runs. Involuntary exchange should be discouraged and minimized at all costs.

Abuses of irresponsible congressmen, seeking larger and larger government control weakens our chances of the socially desired results of capitalism. These abuses are generally in the form of higher taxes and they represent claims on private property and they most always restrict free enterprise. As taxes rise, your take home pay becomes less and less. With local, state and federal taxes it is now closing in on 50 percent and if it gets to 100 percent, private property and free enterprise will cease to exist and you will be in a state of abject slavery.

The average taxpayer presently pays $8,000 to $9,000 each year and toils from January 1st to May 8th in order to pay the his total tax bill – local, state and federal.

One of the truly ironic situations within my lifetime happened during World War II when our most socialistic president, Franklin Roosevelt and the father of these abuses was compelled to maximizing the combined institutions of private ownership of property and free enterprise in order to win the war.

In the late 1980’s my wife and I traveled for approximately two years the entire mid-western and southeastern parts of the United States. The saddest part of our tour was the deterioration, waste and mismanagement of federal funded housing projects in every major metropolis we visited. Billions upon billions of dollars was wasted and ultimately squandered simply because the public tends to care less what happens to commonly owned projects. The tenants, some of them receiving housing without any cost whatsoever, ripped out the plumbing fixtures and sold them for a fraction of their cost. The government authorities could care less and finally abandoned most of these projects.

The abandoned legacies of LBJ’s great society are now eyesores in Atlanta, St. Louis, Dallas, Chicago and other metropolitan areas of any size throughout our entire nation and is something that the liberal TV news do not want us to know.

The benevolent government give away programs like free housing, medical care, equality of income, sex and race balance, orderly markets, standardized education plus dozens upon dozens of widespread government control have subjugated the masses to a point whereby personal freedom is far down the list of our concerns. We are gradually loosing our freedoms to the abuses of our elected federal office holders.

The bureaucrats of the liberal elite are telling us that they have more intelligence and wisdom than the collective masses of mankind in this country and that they have a mandate to forcibly impose this so called wisdom upon the rest of us. They have an insidious contempt for the private property rights and the economic freedom that has brought us overwhelming success in eliminating hunger, poverty, disease, pestilence and many other human problems despite the heavy tax burden.

These abusive tax burdens are the way the liberal do gooders redistribute our wealth. Congressmen and senators are not spending their own money for these programs; they are spending yours and mine. The taxpayer, is the Santa Claus from whom this wealth is confiscated by intimidation, threats and coercion or by any other degrading and immoral means. To them, the end always justifies the means!

If I were to do what the government does, I would be condemned and run out of the country as a common thief. It is for this reason that I am thoroughly convinced that the liberal social elitism is evil. To do all these niceties the government has to take involuntarily what is mine and arbitrarily give it to some one else. Government and poor people do not have the resources to create jobs for anyone. Poor people cannot get these resources without scrimping and saving until they get enough to support a business. This is how many of our wealthiest entrepreneurs got started and is how it is meant to be. Our government however, has to confiscate money from you and I to provide any job whatsoever and the minimum jobs necessary for the effective performance of those things listed under Article I, Section 8 of the constitution should be deemed just and acceptable.

Anything beyond this scope should be considered abusive conduct on the part of our duly elected federal officials.

When I was a child the federal expenditures was something like about 4 percent of the gross national product (GNP), except in wartime. Today the federal expenditures are 30 percent of the GNP or nearly $2 trillion. And get this, the state and local governments spend another trillion more. So these abuses have came about within my lifetime very gradually, as more and more groups throughout the entire nation are believing and feeling that the government owes them special privileges and favors. Presently almost every profession, occupation and trade are looking for government subsidy and a free handout at the taxpayers expense.

Ignorance and apathy got us into this state of abuse by the professional politicians who will never be satisfied until they have complete control to micro-manage our lives from the cradle to the grave. That is their purpose; they want control and they have found the one weakness in our constitution they can exploit - language explicitly protecting economic rights. We must place a specific limit on how much of our wealth they can take from us. We must do it now while we have the liberty to exercise the freedom we now have to take this action. Tomorrow will be too late!

"Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;-To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."

This will be a journey of faith and courage to undo the abuses of evil and to retrace a wrong road taken. I again repeat the following words from my introduction to my book "My Country ‘Tis of These.

Where is the ladder leading forth
From this pit of iniquity
Where man has been led,
With words of deceit, Oh, Mother Nature?
Lured by his own greed
And trapped by his own ambitions
By bartering a free soul for false security.
Then broadcasting invitations to his own kind
To dine at his table of misery and discontent,
Attended by former guests
Now reduced to mere servants and court jesters!