If you love freedom, then you don’t want to miss this.  Freedom Congress is an inspirational and educational event that will take you back to America’s roots.

Join Oliver North, Senator Jim DeMint, Lt General Jerry Boykin, and Stu Weber Saturday, September 11th at the World Arena from 9:30am – 3:00pm.   Questions and answers with the speakers, plus breakout educational sessions for all ages and various interests will be scheduled.

For tickets and more information, go to www.FreedomCongress.org.

Tickets will be available at the door.

General admission $30

Military admission $20

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When Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in Bloomberg.com that “the biggest problem with the labor market right now is that wages are too high,” it was the first positive sign of intelligent life in the mainstream media in some time.

Many have written about the damaging effects of minimum wage laws, federal and state unemployment insurance, and other interventions in the labor market that have kept workers out of jobs, including William Hoar, Gary North, Jacob Hornberger, and Walter Williams.

But few have offered free-market solutions to the problem of unemployment in the Great Recession. Until now.

Says Hassett: “Some observations perfectly at home in economics textbooks can be so beastly in practice that nobody is willing to mention them. Ignoring the facts, though, leads to bad policies and…we don’t need more of those.” He then takes aim at the federal minimum wage law passed during the Bush administration raising the minimum wage to its present $7.25/hour—an increase of more than 40 percent—“during the worst possible time, just as wages should have been reduced.” He makes the case that by requiring businesses to pay more for their labor costs by raising the minimum wage merely reduces employment by those workers who aren’t worth that wage to the business. He points out that “teenage workers, who as a group fill many minimum-wage jobs, have been hit disproportionately hard by the recession. Teen unemployment has increased from 17 percent in December 2007 to over 25 percent currently. And as reported by William Hoar, “teenaged black males experienced a jump in their unemployment rate to 57.1 percent [just] five months after the latest minimum wage hike kicked in.”

Hoar raised the question, “So how much should workers be paid?  $100 per hour?  $25 per hour?  $7.25 per hour?” Hornberger reminds his readers that such a decision should be a private matter between the worker and his employer.

In every economic trade, people are giving up something they value less for something they value more. That’s why they trade. They aim to improve their economic well-being through the trade…

Suppose, for example, an employer hires a worker at a monthly pay of $1,000. Both sides have gained, otherwise they wouldn’t have entered into the exchange. The employer values the money less than he values the work provided by the employee. The employee values the money more than the other things he could do with his time…All these valuations are entirely subjective.

Hornberger then illustrates his point by telling the fable of a company that hires 10 teenagers at $15 an hour. “The teenagers begin work. One week later, the [government] enacts a minimum-wage law requiring companies to pay their workers $100 an hour.”

The company lays off the teenagers. They go in search of new jobs, but every company tells them the same thing: ‘It’s just not worth it to us to pay you $100 an hour…”

For all those people whose labor is subjectively valued in the marketplace at less than the legally established minimum, the minimum-wage law becomes a death sentence.

Walter Williams says that that is almost exactly what happened to American Samoa when the 2007 minimum wage law was enacted. Prior to enactment, employers on Samoa were exempt from the law, and Chicken of the Sea and its competitor Starkist moved their operations there, paying their workers $3.26 an hour at their tuna canneries. In that economy that was a competitive wage, and the tuna industry employed over 8,000 workers.

But when the 2007 law was changed to cover American Samoa, the island’s representative, Eni Faleomavaega, said that with passage of the law “it is no longer possible for the federal government to demand mainland minimum wage rates of American Samoa without causing the collapse of our economy.” Chicken of the Sea closed their plant and moved its operations to Lyon, Georgia, putting their 2,000 workers out of work. And, according to Williams, “Starkist, Chicken of the Sea’s competitor, might leave the island as well. If that happens, increases in the minimum wage will have cost more than 8,000 jobs in Samoa’s canneries and related industries; that’s nearly half of [the island’s] labor force.”

Hassett’s opening bid is not complete abolition of minimum wage laws, but instead they “should be scaled back to $5.85, its level when the recession began in December 2007…This could have a big impact on aggregate employment.”

It’s a baby step to be sure, but at least it’s in the right direction. As Dr. Kenneth McFarland said so many years ago, “The first olive out of the bottle is always the hardest.”

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The bank run at Afghanistan’s largest bank, Kabul Bank, was precipitated by the takeover of the bank by Da Afghanistan Bank, the country’s central bank, last week. By Friday nearly all of its currency reserves and most of its capital had been withdrawn by nervous customers, with no end in sight.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai blamed the run on the bad press the bank had been getting in the United States ever since a major article about corruption at the bank appeared in the Washington Post in February. Last Thursday, the second day of the run on the bank, Karzai said, “The Western press is…printing out our decision [to take over the bank] in a negative way and in a provocative way. It’s sad to hear that. It’s unfortunate.” Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the country’s central bank governor, also claimed that the money-laundering and other allegations were “wrong and baseless.”

Attempts to deflect the cause of the run appeared to be failing as the run continued through the end of the week. The Washington Post’s February article detailed at great length the corruption and self-dealing that involved the now ex-president of the bank, Sherkhan Farnood, and former chief executive officer Khalilullah Ferozi, along with Karzai’s brother Mahmood, coincidentally the third-largest stockholder in the bank.

For instance, Farnood defended his taking of more than $160 million from the bank to buy properties in Dubai for his friends by saying, “What I’m doing is not proper…but this is Afghanistan.” He put the properties in his own personal name because “these people don’t want to reveal their names.” When pressed for details about the loans, Raja Gopalakrishnan, the bank’s chief audit officer, said the monies didn’t come directly from Kabul Bank, but instead came from “affiliated entities” controlled by Farnood. He admitted, however, that Farnood “thinks [his bank] is one big pot.”

And Farnood’s friends think it’s just friends doing business with friends. Ahmad Zia Massoud, Afghanistan’s first vice president from 2004 until last November, purchased a villa on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai for $2.3 million and put it in his wife’s name, but later transferred it to Farnood. He then claimed that Farnood had always been the owner, but had let his family use it rent-free because Farnood is “my close friend. We have played football together. We have played chess together.”

The value of the properties in Dubai are now worth considerably less than the original $160 million, which has put the bank into a bind, with the run taking it to the edge of insolvency. On Monday, August 30, the bank claimed $1.3 billion in deposits, with $1 billion in liabilities, including $500 million in cash reserves. On Wednesday, $90 million was withdrawn, followed by another $90 million on Thursday. Said Ferozi, “If this goes on, we won’t survive. If people lose trust in the banks, there will be a revolution in the financial system.”

Central bank governor Fitrat disagreed: “The bank is solvent. Kabul Bank is one of the most important banks of Afghanistan, and the Central Bank and the Afghan government will by no means let Kabul Bank be affected.”

Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal tried to assure the bank’s customers as well, saying that fears that the run on the bank will spark a “crisis” are overblown: “We are 100 per cent sure that Kabul Bank is safe. I, as finance minister, am giving you my guarantee that your money is safe—if it’s one Afghani, one dollar, one euro, up to millions…Kabul Bank is not in danger.”

And the Afghanistan Banks Association issued its own assurances as well, with a notable disclaimer: “The government of Afghanistan guarantees that every penny that they have deposited will be paid back to them if they request it, but what we are requesting of the Afghan people is not to rush because rush is not good for them, and it’s not good for the banking system. We guarantee the money.” (Emphasis added.)

One of the branches of Kabul Bank ran out of dollars in the first hour of the run, while limits on withdrawals were placed on customers elsewhere in the Kabul Bank’s branches. One of the customers trying to withdraw his funds said, “I’m nervous and I hope to get my money soon. It’s a big concern for us. Nobody is telling the truth here. We only heard that the bank is corrupted.”

All of this puts the government itself in a bind as its revenues are barely $1 billion a year, and most of that comes from the U.S. government. And that puts the Obama administration in a bind.

Seeking to “help Afghanistan develop a modern economy,” says the New York Times, the Obama administration has invested more than $40 billion in the country, along with hundreds of lives of American soldiers. But with increasing pushback from the American people about previous bank bailouts of GNMA, FHLMC, AIG, and others, as well as resistance against the war itself, the administration is running the risk of further alienation, especially in an election year. But the problem with the Kabul Bank is that it is the bank that processes the paychecks for the government contractors to the occupation forces as well as Afghan security forces. Failure of the bank would jeopardize further the administration’s efforts to shore up the credibility of the Afghan government which has itself been awash in a sea of corruption (including $14 million of Kabul Bank money which was used to back Karzai’s election campaign).

Of course, the U.S. government is officially denying any effort to support the Kabul Bank, aside from sending a “team of advisors” to provide “technical assistance” to the Afghan government in the matter. Said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, “We are taking no steps to bail out Kabul Bank. We support the Afghan Central Bank’s efforts to uphold international standards of transparency and its decisive action in response to reports of fraud at the Kabul Bank.”

Such utterances of non-involvement except in an advisory capacity are farcical but are brought into question more vividly when Mahmood Karzai, brother of the President, and stockholder in the threatened bank, said “America could support Kabul Bank to the last penny, of course that would help. The full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind Kabul Bank—what more do you want?”

The Wall Street Journal, in a candid assessment last Friday, asked: “Why shouldn’t the Kabul Bank expect a bailout? Washington provided $700 billion to rescue U.S. financial institutions in 2008. The FDIC has estimated it could cost an additional $100 billion to cover the costs of banks that have failed since the global financial crisis…Afghanistan, which is receiving billions in…military assistance from…the US…is arguably a ward [of the US government]. What’s a few more billion to back up a failing Afghan bank?”

In his farewell address, President George Washington had the answer:

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Image from www.denbar.org

Well, at least they won’t have to change the monogrammed towels…

Governor Bill Ritter appears to have proved the cynics right (those who argued that he would base his selection on politics, rather than judicial experience) by picking Deputy Attorney General Monica Marquez as the next Colorado Supreme Court justice (replacing outgoing Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, who announced in June that she would resign rather than be held accountable by voters this November), bypassing what appeared to be two highly experienced, eminently qualified, and non-partisan judges (El Paso District Judge David Prince and Colorado Appeals Court Judge Robert Russel).

Clear The Bench Colorado was among the few who held out hope that the outgoing governor would set aside politics and do the right thing in basing his decision on qualifications and judicial experience. His apparent decision to knuckle under to special interests instead of siding with Colorado Citizens and promoting judges who will uphold the rule of law is disappointing.

Ritter’s pick of Marquez comes on the heels of an intensive lobbying campaign by the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association (Ms. Marquez is on the board of that group) both following and during the nomination process (apparently a bloc in the Supreme Court Nominating Commission advocated strongly for Ms. Marquez on the basis of politics, not qualifications).  This is not to say that Ms. Marquez is unqualified; she is undoubtedly a fine attorney. However, there is a significant difference in temperament and approach in being an attorney (which involves taking sides, often aggressively, for a client) and being a good judge (sworn to fairly and impartially apply the law, as written—not taking sides).

Although it may be possible to overcome a lifetime habit of political activism and advocacy to become a fair, impartial judge who upholds the rule of law, it requires a significant mental shift—probably best reinforced by experience gained by being a judge on a lower court, rather than going right to the top.

Unfortunately, Ritter’s selection will only serve to further erode public confidence in a Colorado Supreme Court already damaged by a decade of highly-politicized, anti-constitutional rulings, since Marquez lacks any judicial experience and seems to have built her entire career on policy & political activism.

Many of her positions on constitutional issues raise concerns about how she might rule from the bench. Marquez advocated in favor of the 2003 judicial takeover of legislative redistricting authority in the Salazar v. Davidson redistricting case, argued that “fees” are not taxes in the Barber v. Ritter case (which led to the 2009 Colorado Car Tax—er, vehicle registration “fee”—increases), and has sought to restrict the 1^st Amendment rights of citizens seeking to speak out on ballot issues in recent and ongoing cases.  She is also the lead attorney in yet another attempt to impose an unconstitutional tax increase on Colorado Citizens.

Of course, to avoid running afoul of judicial ethics violations, she would have to recuse herself from ruling on any of these cases or related issues in which she has been directly involved when they come up before the Colorado Supreme Court—which emphasizes the importance of the remaining justices.

In any case, Colorado Citizens will render their verdict on prospective Justice Marquez when she must receive voter approval to remain in office after 2 years (the first term of any judicial appointment is the so-called “probationary” term, so Marquez will appear on the 2012 ballot).

In the meantime, Colorado voters have the opportunity to render their verdict on the three remaining incumbent Colorado Supreme Court justices on this year’s ballot who are seeking an additional ten year term in office.

Exercise your right to vote “NO” this November on the four (er, three remaining) ‘unjust justices’ of the Colorado Supreme Court’s “Mullarkey Majority”- (Justices Michael Bender, Alex Martinez, Nancy Rice — soon minus Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey) who need YOUR approval to continue taking away your constitutional rights: your right to vote on tax increases, your right to defend your home or business against seizure via eminent domain abuse, your right to be fairly represented in the legislature and Congress, and your right to enjoy the benefits of the rule of law, instead of suffering under rule by activist, agenda-driven “justices.”  Support Clear The Bench Colorado with your comments (Sound Off!) and contributions — and exercise your right to vote “NO” on giving these unjust justices another 10-year term!

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My grass was very dry and brown at the beginning of the summer this year. My wife asked me to do something about it, but I told her I turned on the sprinkler system. There’s nothing more I could do about it than that. It’s not my fault the grass is so brown. It must be some other problem over which I have no control. And, besides, it’s grass! It’s supposed to grow when it has water. But it turns out I was wrong.

For starters, I had the system set to run for ten minutes every three days. Now, if you’re reading this, I can assure you of one thing: You’re not grass. But even with that impediment, you are smart enough to know that in the high desert area of Front Range Colorado, grass must receive a healthy dose of water from sprinkler systems to survive. And 10 minutes every three days is just not enough. So I increased it to about 30 minutes every three days which had worked well in the past. But I had a second problem.

You see, I didn’t take the time to check the sprinkler heads to make sure they were in alignment. I went out to a particularly dry part of the front yard wondering why it was so brown. So I turned on the sprinkler system and–lo and behold!–the sprinkler head was turned askew. Well, I straightened that puppy out and the grass started to green up a bit. Same thing in the back yard too on the far right corner. So I adjusted the sprinkler head and wow! Results! It turns out that grass does grow if I keep the system in shape.

Based on this experience, I’ve come to the conclusion that Harry Ried is a lot like me. Now, I have to admit here that I just turned to my trash can, thinking I would get sick. But I cannot ignore the reality. I have the same it’s-not-my-fault disease with my grass that he has with the economy.

You see, Harry Ried is not to blame for the present state of the economy. He turned on the water back in 2009 with the stimulus package , but that darned George Bush really messed things up so badly he couldn’t do any better by now. Those brown spots in the economy are proof that the yard he inherited had already been trashed by the previous owner. But what Harry seems to miss is that it is the nature of economies to grow as long as the watering system is in proper shape.

You see, you need to use sprinkler heads in order for the grass of the economy to grow. Throwing money at infrastructure projects, for example, is like taking a bucket of water you just got from the spigot on the side of your house and dumping it on your lawn and expecting it to turn green. Only the grass in that one place may turn green and only for a short period of time. But all the rest of the grass turns brown. And you can’t keep running back and forth to the house refilling the bucket. You’ll get too tired and you have no method for spreading the water evenly across the entire lawn.

And what if the pipes in the sprinkler system have dirt in them. This is like regulation which gunks up the the sprinkler heads. You need a clean system for the water to flow properly. And you can’t turn the sprinkler heads in just one direction. They all must work in unison covering every part of the grass with an even spray or else you’ll have brown spots in the lawn. Economies don’t react well to similar approaches in government policy. Everyone must win or the whole system falls apart.

Harry Ried’s Washington, DC is a corrupt system which rewards only those whom he sees as worthy of his support. If you can put up the money or provide a few perks, Ol’ Harry will give you what you need. If you’re a big bank, well, as long as you allow us to demonize you, we’ll give you “too big to fail” status and protect you from destroying yourself. If you’re a car company with a lot of union workers, we’ll bail you out and give your stock to the union. If you allow your workers to unionize, we’ll praise you and give you preference in government contracts. If we can get your vote, we’ll give you a handout of some sort. But if don’t vote for us, we’ll not only withhold the handout, we’ll tax you more. And rich people are mean and cruel, but the middle class union worker is one of the gods.

The problem is, the grass of our economy is brown in most spots. And no matter how many times Harry Ried keeps running back to the Treasury Department to get a bucket of cash, he can’t get the economy back on track. And as long as interest group/voting bloc politics continues to dominate the policies coming out of Washington , we’ll have patches of brown just waiting to grow if only the caretakers would get the system in shape.

But Harry Ried can’t be bothered with such ideas.

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When former Labor Secretary Robert Reich offered his solutions for ending the Great Recession in the New York Times, he repeated the same errors expressed in a CNBC debate the week before.

Reich appears to have all the credentials for knowing what he is talking about: degrees from Dartmouth College, Yale Law School, and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. Having served as a law clerk to the chief judge of the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals and then assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, followed by an appointment by President Jimmy Carter as Director of Policy Planning at the FTC, most would accept his opinions and suggestions for ending the recession as useful and relevant.

An early indicator that something might be wrong with his thinking, however, was revealed in his blog in April, 2008, when he publicly announced his support for Obama in the presidential election. He said that “although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama’s strike me as even more so:

His plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding. His approaches to the housing crisis and the failures of our financial markets are sounder than hers…He has rightly identified the armies of lawyers and lobbyists that have commandeered our democracy, and pointed the way toward taking it back…Finally…his life history exemplifies this, as do his writings and his record of public service. For these…reasons, he offers the best possibility of restoring America’s moral authority in the world.

In his Times article, Reich admits that much of what the Obama administration has done to boost the economy hasn’t worked, pointing out correctly that the private sector isn’t generating anything like the number of jobs needed just “to keep up with the growth of the potential work force”:

The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. None of the standard booster rockets are working: near-zero interest rates from the Fed, almost record-low borrowing costs in the bond market, a giant stimulus package and tax credits for small businesses that hire the long-term unemployed have all failed to do enough.

But then he reveals, not what’s wrong with the economy, but what’s wrong with his thinking about the economy: “Consumers no longer have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services they produce as workers; for some time, their means haven’t kept up with what the growing economy could and should have been able to provide them.” (Emphasis added.) And he further exposes his lack of understanding of basic economics by adding: “Even if nearly everyone was employed, the vast middle class still wouldn’t have enough money to buy what the economy is capable of producing.”

The problem, he says, is the rich. They don’t spend enough by themselves to keep the economy rolling, and the best thing to do is to relieve them of their wealth and give it to those who didn’t earn it, who are much more likely to spend it buying the goods they are producing. Reich says: “The rich don’t…invest their earnings and savings in the American economy…They send them anywhere around the globe where they’ll summon the highest returns.” Furthermore, “the rich also put their money into [hard] assets [such as] commodities and real estate.”

Then Reich dusts off the myth that only such redistribution of wealth got the country out of the Great Depression: “There is only one way back to full recovery: through more widely shared prosperity.” (Emphasis added.) From that underlying provably false assumption, Reich offers his solutions to ending the Great Recession: exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes and paying for it with an additional tax on incomes over $250,000.

Early childhood education “should be more widely available, paid for by a small 0.5 per cent fee on all financial transactions. Public universities should be free; in return, graduates would then be required to pay back 10 per cent of their first 10 years of full-time income.”

He offers something called “earning insurance” for workers who lose their jobs and have to settle for positions that pay less, and would be paid “half the salary difference for two years [which] would probably prove less expensive than extended unemployment benefits.” He concludes that these are “policies that [would] generate more widely shared prosperity…and that’s good for everyone.” (Emphasis added.)

Peter Schiff, one of those “rich” entrepreneurs who is Reich’s target (he is the founder of Euro Pacific Capital), explains the problem with this thinking: “Reich believes that the cart pushes the horse. In his worldview, businesses produce goods and services simply because consumers spend. Therefore, anything that increases spending fuels growth.” But that is exactly backwards. It takes capital formation, and the incentives only provided by a free market (which rewards success by providing products and services that customers need and want and are willing to pay for, and punishes failure to provide such products and services), to create production. Schiff puts it neatly:  “capital formation must precede production, which then allows for consumption.”

Schiff adds:

Every consumer either lives off his own productivity or the productivity of someone else. When individuals work, the wages earned result from the productivity of [their] labor. The ability to consume is directly related to the production of goods or services that result from one’s efforts…In the Soviet Union, everyone had a job, yet workers had to stand in line for hours for basic necessities…If stimulus could produce demand, then no nation would be poor…African poverty would be wiped out if African governments simply printed money more freely. Africans are not poor because they lack currency to spend [consider Zimbabwe]; they are poor because their governments inhibit production, deny [private] property rights, abrogat[e] contracts, prevent the accumulation of capital, and nationaliz[e] profits.

Schiff says that Reich should call for greater savings by reducing taxes on the rich, allowing them to invest in the new business ventures that are the driving force behind new jobs and higher employment.

Economist Thomas Sowell agrees with Schiff:

What would probably get the economy recovering fastest and most completely would be for the President of the United States and Congressional leaders to shut up and stop meddling with the economy…[but] true believers [like Reich] have to believe that it is only because [government intervention and redistribution efforts haven’t] been tried long enough, or with enough money being spent.

Investors.com said on September 3 that “all the actions this government has taken…haven’t ‘saved or created’ 3.8 million jobs, as claimed. Instead, they’ve destroyed millions of jobs. But the administration remains clueless, hinting that it may seek another “stimulus” costing billions. This bunch is either willfully doing damage to the U.S. economy, or [is] completely incompetent.

With Robert Reich’s credentials, it’s hard to believe that he is clueless or incompetent.

The title was my concluding thought in my June 8 post, Tea Party Endorsements. The post was about whether Tea Party groups should endorse candidates or not. They should.

That post continues to get a lot of hits. In fact, if you google the phrase, that post (via the Peoples Press Collective) comes up in the top ten results. Why?

It turns out that it is not about my brilliant reasoning on whether Tea Parties should or should not endorse candidates; it’s because people are looking for the actual endorsements! [Ed. We can confirm that Al’s same blog post here at TCT is in our top 15 as well, and people are using the search term “tea party endorsements” to find it.]

You see, I’m learning that political endorsements among politicians is most often all about who is friends with who; you endorse me, I’ll endorse you. There are exceptions, of course, but it is often a game of collecting the most endorsements.

Among issue-oriented organizations the endorsement is all about the narrow issue. Thus, the NRA was leaning toward endorsing Harry Reid because of his pro–Second Amendment stand. Facing massive blowback from its membership, the NRA withheld that endorsement citing Reid’s support of the very anti-Second Amendment Kagan for the Supreme Court.

I think Tea Party endorsements are endorsements of a third kind. The Tea Parties are not about personalities or issues and they’re certainly not about party. They are  solely about values. Tea Party values are clear: limited, constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. Implicit in all that is personal responsibility. Four core values. The 9–12 groups have their own set of principles and values; they don’t endorse you, you endorse their values.

Tea Party endorsements are important because they say that a candidate supports these core American values. I do that research for the candidates I endorse on my Candidates page. I think it is important that we make these endorsements because not everyone has the time or resources to do it for themselves. The establishment media frankly does not look favorably on us. Politicians lie. The truth is out there but is not always easy to find.

It is vital that we support the candidates who support our values in other tangible ways. Spread the word, walk the precincts, make the calls, donate as much as you can. Supporting our candidates means pushing as hard as you can to get them elected so that they can serve the people.

Image by lars hammar via Flickr

A rash of recent thefts may have been inspired by a Colorado Supreme Court ruling. The Colorado Supreme Court’s ‘Gang of Four’ under their ringleader Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey (who’s skipping town rather than face justice in November) have gotten away with a series of crimes against our Constitution over the last few years, including:

• Mill Levy Tax Freeze property tax increase (Freeze! Property tax! Reach for the sky!)
• Dirty Dozen tax increases (2010) and the 2009 tobacco tax increase (Hand over your tax credits & exemptions!)
• Colorado Car Tax (It ain’t a mugging—er, tax; it’s a “fee!”)
• Telluride Land Grab (What’s yours isn’t yours if we say it isn’t!)
• Mary-Mandering legislative districts (Grabbing redistricting power from the legislature, where it belongs!)

The crime spree isn’t over yet; the ‘Gang of Four’ is targeting yet more tax increases and has gun rights in their sights, too.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s rampant lawlessness has apparently inspired other, more petty crimes. Recently, your uncaped crusader for justice was the victim of such a crime: my license plate was stolen—right off my car! How is this petty crime linked to the Colorado Supreme Court, you ask?

As I discovered this morning when at the DMV to obtain replacement plates, such thefts are far from rare; indeed, there has apparently been a rash of such thefts, since the Colorado Car Tax (er, vehicle registration “fee” increase — brought to you courtesy of the Colorado Supreme Court) went into effect a year ago.  Most of the thefts seem to be inspired by the desire to avoid the punitive “late fees,” an over $31.5 Million ‘Highway Robbery’ aided and abetted by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Unintended consequences?

Criminologists (and parents) know that if bad behavior goes unpunished, it will only get worse.

Colorado has seen an intensifying pattern of bad behavior by our state supreme court over the last ten years of the Mullarkey Majority’s reign.  Colorado Citizens have the right—indeed, we have the duty—to hold those behaving badly accountable at the ballot box.

Don’t let them get away with continued bad behavior; exercise your right to vote “NO” this November on the four (er, now 3) ‘unjust justices’ of the Colorado Supreme Court’s “Mullarkey Majority” (Justices Michael Bender, Alex Martinez, Nancy Rice; soon minus Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey) who need your approval to continue taking away your constitutional rights: your right to vote on tax (er, “fee”) increases, your right to defend your home and business from being taken away through abuse of eminent domain, your right to be fairly represented in the legislature and Congress, and your right to enjoy the benefits of the rule of law, instead of suffering under rule by activist, agenda-driven “justices.”  Support Clear The Bench Colorado with your comments (Sound Off!), your contributions, and your “NO“ vote against retaining these incumbent unjust justices in office for another 10 years!

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The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth…pennies on the dollar.”

The move to confiscate those retirement dollars for government purposes was best illustrated by Christina Kirchner, President of Argentina, in 2008 when she announced plans to seize her citizens’ private pension funds. Writers at the Heritage Foundation said that while Kirchner claimed such seizure was necessary to protect her citizens’ investment accounts from the global meltdown, “most observers believe[d] her real motive [was] to use the $30 billion in seized assets to ease the massive debt obligations her leftist spendthrift government [had] run up.” The Wall Street Journal agreed, saying that “taking over the…pension fund assets [would] ease the cash crunch faced by [her] government.”

Corsi said he has a letter from the Treasury Department, Bureau of Public Debt, informing U.S. citizens that the federal government is rolling out a new program called “Treasury Direct” that will allow citizens “to purchase, manage, and redeem…savings bonds” electronically, as well as offering an option to purchase such bonds automatically through payroll savings or a personal checking account. This happened to coincide nicely, according to Corsi, with a bill offered by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to create “Automatic IRAs” that would require all employers and employees to invest in IRAs using that automatic deduction option, “whether they want to do so or not.”

And this happened to coincide also with a program being pushed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) called “Retirement USA” which would create a government-forced retirement program with assets being directed into special Treasury Retirement Bonds, or R-Bonds. “Retirement USA” is promoting the idea that all workers have a “right” to a government retirement account, in addition to Social Security and any private pension plans those workers already have in place. Others behind “Retirement USA” also support more government dependency for workers, including the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare and the Pension Rights Center.

All of this is being promoted by the idea that individual citizens aren’t saving enough for their retirement, and that consequently government has to “do something.” Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash., above photo), Chairman of the House Ways and Mean’s Committee’ Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, is confused about whose money is in those 401(k) plans: the individual contributor, or the government. He said that “since the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment [Congress is making] of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax savings], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”

The worldview of Rep. McDermott is revealing, and brings clarity to the point of view of many in the Washington establishment that the $4.5 trillion currently invested in 401(k) plans and other private pension plans that enjoy tax breaks actually belong to the government, and that when Congress loses $80 billion that would otherwise flow to Washington due to those tax breaks, it’s an “investment” that must “generate what we say it should”, or else it must be replaced with something else that works better.

The real “story behind the story” was revealed by Joe Wolverton here when he said,

…since the day of his inauguration, Barack Obama and his congressional co-conspirators have consistently and unapologetically set out to systematically nationalize the economy of the United States: first the banks; then the insurance companies; then the auto industry; then healthcare; and now the piece de resistance, the private savings accounts of millions of middle-class Americans.

But, thanks to the SEIU and their program “Retirement USA,” it’s all dressed up to look like a good deal for unsuspecting owners of retirement plans. In “Making the Case for a New System” they take the view that “A secure retirement is part of the American dream. Yet our retirement system is failing many Americans. Social Security is the cornerstone of our system, but as currently structured, is not meant to be our only retirement program. Pensions and savings plans are supposed to fill the gap, but too many workers don’t have plans, and too many plans don’t do the job.” They complain that:

• Private retirement plan coverage is not UNIVERSAL…
• For millions of Americans, private retirement benefits are not SECURE…
• And Private retirement benefits are not ADEQUATE…

And, continues “Retirement USA”’s website, “Social Security must be preserved and strengthened… [and] we must encourage employers to offer and maintain them.”[emphasis added]

Underlying all of this is, of course, the statist presumption that government knows best what’s good for the citizens, and when the citizens’ behavior fails to meet government expectations, then mandates and force must be used to do for those citizens what the government thinks is best.

And the fact that Washington is looking at annual trillion-dollar deficits “for as far as the eye can see,” that $4.5 trillion of private monies is just too tempting to ignore.