Rodent Regatta

More Mass Demonstrations for Bush Impeachment
by Craig J. Cantoni

(AP) Washington, June 8, 2006 – The largest demonstration ever held on the Capitol Mall continued for the second day, with even more groups joining those that have been calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

The President, who is secluded at Camp David, said that he remains committed to letting Americans save for retirement ”without being harassed by government agents and wasting money on lawyers and accountants.”

The demonstrations began when the President proposed that hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations from the Internal Revenue Code, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation and the Health Care Finance Administration be replaced by one sentence: ”It is legal for Americans to save as much money as they want for retirement, without ever being taxed on the income earned on the savings and without filing reports with the government.”

Many of today’s protesters wore black armbands in memory of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, who died of a heart attack on the Senate floor on Tuesday after learning of Bush’s proposal. ”Over my dead body!” were the last words that he whispered to Senator Tom Daschle.

Kennedy had triggered the Bush proposal through his successful effort last month to overturn the provision in the 2003 Medicare Reform Bill that had authorized Health Savings Accounts. The accounts allowed Americans to set aside a relatively small amount of money in tax-deferred accounts for their future health care needs, if they complied with numerous restrictions and reporting requirements. Kennedy and other Democrats saw the accounts as blocking their goal of nationalized health care.

Groups that previously had nothing in common have united in solidarity to impeach Bush. Wearing brown suits and shoes, 10,000 members of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants gathered by the Lincoln Memorial and sang ”We shall overcome.”

Around the Reflecting Pool in front of the accountants, an estimated 200,000 members of the American Federation of Government Employees joined in the singing. And over at the Jefferson Memorial, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor read the U.S. Constitution to 40,000 Gucci-clad members of the American Bar Association, to make the point that Americans have no constitutional right to keep their money.

At the other end of the Mall, the president of the Society for Human Resources Management handed an impeachment petition to Congressman Dick Gephardt on the Capitol steps. Signed by SHRM’s 130,000 members, the petition claimed that an estimated 10 million Americans will be out of work if Bush eliminates the regulations that are the sole source of their income.

To drive that point home, scores of financial advisors from Merrill Lynch, Wachovia Securities, E.G. Edwards and other financial firms demonstrated in front of the Treasury building. Financial advisor Pete Dombrowski of Sioux City, Iowa brought his 12-year-old daughter Megan. ”How does the president expect me to send Megan to college if I’m no longer needed by my clients to develop complex investment plans to avoid taxes?”

Protests were even held at the French embassy, where the French ambassador said that the United States would gain an unfair competitive advantage in world trade if it shifted millions of Americans from unproductive work to productive work. ”This could have a destabilizing ripple effect throughout the world,” he said.

Only one Bush supporter could be found. Retired history teacher Mary Carver sat in a wheelchair in front of the Smithsonian, holding a sign that read, ”Hooray Bush!” She explained that before she was born in 1913, there was no income tax and people could save as much money as they wanted without giving much of it to the government. ”This incentive to save is what produced the capital that improved our standard of … ”

Her history lesson was interrupted by a protester wearing a knit shirt monogrammed with the name, ”H&R Block.” Purple with rage, he ripped the sign out of her hand, threw it on the ground, and stormed off in the direction of the IRS building, where 35,000 tax preparers had gathered for a silent memorial in honor of Form 1040.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

Has the U.S. Crossed the Line Into Oppression?
by Craig J. Cantoni

It is easy to identify oppression in the extreme. Think of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Pol Pot and Mao. It is not so easy, however, to identify less extreme kinds of oppression or to know when a government has crossed the line that separates liberty from oppression.

For instance, the Third Reich crossed the line long before Jews were incinerated in furnaces. It crossed the line around the time that it banned non-Jews from shopping in Jewish stores, thus depriving Jews of part of their income.

Has the United States crossed the line into oppression?

I am not raising the question because of the Patriot Act, the recent Supreme Court decision that limits political speech, the jackbooted SWAT teams that break down doors looking for dopers, the state harassment of cigarette smokers, the granting of privileges to some races over other races, the fining of drivers who don’t wear seat belts, the searching of automobiles under false pretenses, the expansion of federal power way beyond the enumerated powers in the Constitution, or other examples of what some people believe are abuses of state power.

I’m raising the question because of something that most people do not equate with oppression: taxes. To be more specific, I’m asking if the United States has crossed a line with respect to taxes that separates a free people from an oppressed people.

Almost all Americans would agree that the government wouild be oppressive if it confiscated 100 percent of income in taxes. But at what level of taxation below 100 percent does oppression begin and liberty end? At 75 percent? At 50 percent? At 25 percent? Surveys show that the majority of Americans in all socioeconomic classes think that taxes should not be higher than 25 percent.

Then what about 53 percent, which is how much of the year that the average American has to work to pay the cost of government at the federal, state and local levels? Is that over the line?

Some might look to the Constitution for an answer, but they won’t find it there.

Although the greatest political document ever written limits government power in other important ways, it does not limit how much of your money the government can take in taxes. You have such constitutional rights as freedom of speech, religion and self-defense. In addition, the government is prohibited from taking your land and house under eminent domain unless the taking is for a public use and you are reimbursed for the loss. But there is nothing in the Constitution or its Bill of Rights that would stop the government from taxing your income at 100 percent.

For example, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and indentured servitude in 1865. However, the amendment refers to the kind of indentured servitude that had its beginning on these shores in the early 17th century, when Europeans signed voluntary contracts with the Virginia Company to work for a specified time, often under draconian terms, to pay for their voyage across the Atlantic. It does not refer to today’s form of indentured servitude, in which citizens can be forced to work for the government for however long the government says they have to work for the government.

Or take the Sixteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1913 and authorized the government to tax income. It does not limit taxes. In fact, it opened the tax flood gates.

What about Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to levy taxes? Doesn’t that put a limit on taxes, since Congress is elected to office and has to bend to the will of the people? No, that doesn’t limit taxes. All it does is give the majority of voters (who are a minority of citizens) the right to tax everyone else at whatever level they want. If you are in the minority, you are powerless to stop those in the majority from taking your money for themselves. And if you resist, the government has the legal authority to throw you in jail.

You are even powerless to stop powerful special-interest groups that are not in the majority from stealing your money through taxation. Take seniors, who comprise about 35 percent of registered voters. They were able to pass the new Medicare bill that will place a tax burden on your children. For all practical purposes, you have no defense against the theft and are powerless to protect your children.

You also have no defense against others who receive income, subsidies, grants and loans at your expense, including Iowa farmers, sugar growers, unemployed ship builders in Philadelphia, mass transit riders, SSI recipients who scam the system, wealthy homeowners who build homes in flood plains or in the middle of tinderbox forests, and millions of other fellow citizens who have government agents take your money for their own benefit and convenience or because of their own stupid choices.

It is the great failing of the Framers of the Constitution that there is no line in the Constitution between liberty and oppression with respect to taxation. Of course, the Framers lived in an agrarian society in which wealth was represented mostly by land, not by numbers on a paycheck or electronic digits in a bank account. They could not imagine today’s industrial society in which so much wealth is not in land and is so easily expropriated by government agents.

Because it is subject to different interpretations, the Framers missed a chance to draw a clear line with the General Welfare clause of Article I, Section 8. Many constitutional scholars believe that the Framers did draw such a line, because it would have been contradictory for them to spell out the enumerated powers of the government and then to write the General Welfare clause to mean that the government can levy taxes for more than the enumerated powers. But other scholars use correspondence between the Framers after the Constitution was written to show that even they had different opinions about what the clause meant.

If the clause means—as I think it should mean—that taxes should only be levied against all citizens equally for government services that benefit all citizens equally, such as national defense, then there would be little chance that taxes would result in oppression. Why? Because people are not prone to vote to tax themselves into oppression but are prone to vote to tax others into oppression.

So, if the line cannot be found in the Constitution, where can it be found? It can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which of course spells out oppression in detail, including this grievance against the King of Great Britain: ”He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.” Or this: He has imposed ”Taxes on us without our Consent.”

Did your child consent to pay the prescription bills of seniors? Did you consent to have 53 percent of your income taken by the government?

The Declaration also spells out the right of the people to alter or abolish an oppressive government and to institute a new government that respects the inalienable rights of life, liberty and happiness.

Have we reached that point? Has the United States crossed the line?

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

Biting the Liberal Hand

by Craig J. Cantoni

(part of a point-counterpoint appearing in The Arizona Republic)

Since I don’t request payment for writing these columns, this won’t be a case of biting the hand that feeds me. But it will be a case of biting the hand that doesn’t feed me.

Does the media have a liberal bias?

For an answer, let’s look at examples of how this newspaper covers the news, which is the same way that almost all big-city dailies cover the news—namely, according to a formula taught in journalism schools, which of course don’t have a liberal bias (wink, wink).

– In a story earlier this year about proposed cuts in state spending, this newspaper quoted 12 people who were either government employees or on the public dole. It did not quote one taxpayer who was in favor of the cuts. Could it be that in a state of five million people, there is not one person who thinks that state spending is too high? – A more recent story on proposed early childhood development programs followed the same formula. It only quoted individuals and advocacy groups that were in favor of the government indoctrinating kids at an even earlier age. It made no mention of scholarly studies and groups that question the value of such programs. – Many ”news” stories on public education continue to say that the state ranks 48th in education spending. True to form, the stories quote the head of the teacher union but ignore the reputable studies that have called the statistic a canard. – Coverage of light rail continues to conveniently overlook the fact that riders of the system will get a subsidy of over $8 per ride from non-riders. That means that an employee of this newspaper who commutes to and from work by light rail over a 25-year career will receive a taxpayer subsidy of over $100,000. – The Goldwater Institute gets a ”conservative” label, but the liberal Morrison Institute and the leftist Children’s Action Alliance are left label-free. Reporters justify the disparate treatment by the fact that the Goldwater Institute admits that it is conservative but the other two organizations do not admit their ideology. In other words, deviousness is rewarded if it comes from the left.

Does this newspaper and other mainstream media have a liberal bias? Let me bite that left hand. Chomp, chomp. Of course they do, because their reporters do.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, public speaker and consultant. He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com

The Blob That Ate the Nation

by Craig J. Cantoni

A voracious blob is devouring the nation of its self-reliance, common sense, wealth, competitiveness and freedom. But because it is amorphous and insidious, Americans do not realize how big the blob is and what a threat it is to their standard of living and way of life.

What is the blob, or Blob? The Blob is government bureaucracy and its bureaucratic offspring in the private-sector. Yes, something as boring and seemingly innocuous as bureaucracy is indeed a major threat to the future of the nation.

How big is the Blob? Well, because it is amorphous, its dimensions cannot be determined with accuracy. However, we can discern some of its features.

For example, we know that there are 21 million government employees at the federal, state and local levels. We know that there are 1.4 million words in the Internal Revenue Code, over 100,000 pages of Medicare regulations, and 676 pages to the Medicare reform bill recently signed by President Bush—to identify just a tiny fraction of the Blob.

We know from reliable think tanks that the cost of federal and state regulations is $1.6 trillion, or 17.2 percent of national income. Moreover, we know that Americans have to work until July 11, or 53 percent of the year, to pay the cost of government and the cost of regulations.

We know that the Blob has put American manufacturing at a serious competitive disadvantage in world markets. A recent report released by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Manufacturers Alliance shows that the United States has higher manufacturing costs than all major competing countries but Germany, largely due to the cost of regulations, lawsuits and health care. Of course, health care costs are high because the Blob destroyed a consumer market in health insurance 60 years ago.

We know that U.S. manufacturing employment has plummeted to a record low of 12 million workers while government employment has skyrocketed to a record high of almost twice as much. We know that private-sector union membership also has plummeted while public-sector union membership has skyrocketed to become one of the largest special-interest groups in local and national politics.

We know that many of the fastest-growing and highest-paying occupations in the private sector have been spawned by the Blob to cater to the Blob, including millions of accountants, lawyers, consultants, administrators and lobbyists.

We know that professions like personnel (human resources) used to help people and organizations become more productive. Now personnel people are de facto agents of the government, spending much of their time feeding reports to the Blob to keep it from devouring their companies.

It is not a coincidence that the more that the Blob has infiltrated the work place, the less caring the work place has become. Nor is it a coincidence that the largest human resources association, the Society for Human Resource Management, has grown in lockstep with the growth in work place regulations, so that it now has over 130,000 members. Other professional associations that cater to the Blob have seen similar growth and have just as many or more members.

We know that many of the Blob’s de facto agents in the private sector are Republicans. Because they make a living by catering to the Blob, they have been co-opted politically and no longer support the conservative principle of limited government.

Legislation like the recent Medicare reform bill is manna from heaven to the Blob’s many agents, who will be paid handsomely to interpret the gobbledygook that fills the bill’s 676 pages, including such indecipherable wording as the following:

”(a) Exclusion From OPD Fee Schedule – Section 1833(t)(1)(B)(iv) (42 U.S.C. 13951(t)(B)(iv)) is amended by inserting before the period at the end of the following: ’and does not include screening mammography (as defined in section 1861 (jj)) and diagnostic mammography.’”

We know that interpreting such gobbledygook is make-work, not real work. It is work that does nothing to make the nation more competitive and productive. In fact, it makes the nation less competitive and productive, for it has shifted some of the best and brightest Americans from producing goods and services of value to untangling red tape.

We know that about 25 million Americans are employed either directly by the Blob as government workers or indirectly as private-sector agents. Assuming an average pay and benefits package of $40,000 per worker, the Blob’s payroll totals $1 trillion, a staggering number that excludes the cost of office space, office equipment, travel expenses and other overhead necessary to support all of the Blob’s employees and agents.

We know that while our Blob is getting bigger, the Chinese, who had a blob beyond belief under communism, have put theirs on a severe diet. The Chinese now have more freedom than us in K-12 education and health care.

We also know that the Blob consumes something more valuable than money, time and talent. It consumes America’s entrepreneurial spirit, self-reliance, freedom and common sense. We cannot measure the loss of these things, but we have plenty of examples to show that the loss is huge.

My personal example is the 60 hours that I have spent since my father’s death six months ago filling out forms and speaking with his attorney and accountant. Thankfully, he had his assets in a trust that went to my mother, thus keeping her out of probate court and keeping the tax man at bay. But even with that, the regulatory maze has been a nightmare. Sadly, a man cannot leave his money to his family without his family jumping through regulatory hoops, and without high-paid agents taking large chunks of it for themselves in fees so that the government doesn’t take larger chunks.

Even intelligent, educated people do not understand why the Blob is growing. For example, author Diane Ravitch recently published her very disturbing book, The Language Police, which explains in horrifying detail how textbooks, curricula and tests have been censored by crackpot special interest groups and stripped of meaning, historical accuracy and intelligence. Yet as a former assistant secretary of research in the U.S. Department of Education, she advocates more educational authority being centralized in Washington.

Arrrrrgh! It makes me scream. Can’t she see that centralization makes it easy for crackpot special interests to get a small cadre of faceless bureaucrats to engage in censorship and issue diktats that affect 280 million people?

We know that most Members of Congress are attorneys and have never worked at the bottom of large organizations. Apparently, neither has Ms. Ravitch.

If she had worked, let’s say, at the bottom of a company of 20,000 employees, she would know how out of touch the executives at the top can become, and how powerless and frustrated the employees at the bottom can become over the inane policies issued by the top. Now multiply the inanity, powerlessness and frustration by a factor of 14,000, and you’ll get an idea of the Blob’s impact on the average citizen.

Why 14,000? Because the nation is 14,000 times larger in terms of population than a company of 20,000 employees. Thus, it stands to reason that politicians and bureaucrats at the top of the nation will be 14,000 times more out of touch than the executives and bureaucrats at the top of a 20,000-employee company. But that doesn’t stop them from issuing diktats about how much water a toilet should hold in Peoria, Illinois.

We are stuck in a vicious cycle. The more bureaucratic that the nation becomes, the more important that make-work becomes. The more important that make-work becomes, the more important that people who do the make-work become. The more important that people who do the make-work become, the more that government and industry are run by lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats. And the more that people in such professions run government and industry, the more bureaucratic that government and industry become.

That explains why so many government and business leaders only see the upside of centralizing authority to gain economies of scale. They seldom see the downside. For instance, there is a movement in Arizona to consolidate school districts into mega-districts in order to save money on purchases and overhead. But the advocates, most of whom have never done real work, do not see the impossible-to-measure impact that centralization will have on employee flexibility, innovation, accountability, morale and productivity. Nor do they see how centralization will make parents even less able to influence what is taught in their neighborhood school. And for sure, they are not aware that most mega-mergers in industry have not lived up to their rosy expectations.

In conclusion, can the Blob’s growth be stopped? No, it’s too late. Too many influential people get their power, wealth and status from catering to the Blob.

What’s the answer, then? There are two answers: First, start investing your money in countries with smaller blobs; and second, make sure that your kids become lawyers or accountants instead of doing real work for a living.

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The author of a book on bureaucracy and a former executive of manufacturing companies, Mr. Cantoni is a columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT).

I Wouldn’t Grow Apples

by Craig J. Cantoni

Overhearing me complaining about taxes, my 12-year-old son said, ”Pretty soon they’ll start taxing trees.” I responded, ”Well, Chris, they already do. For instance, if you owned apple trees and sold the apples, you’d pay a tax.” He replied with the wisdom of a seventh-grader: ”Then I wouldn’t grow apples.”

Not wanting to discourage him from studying and trying to become a contributing member of society, I didn’t tell him about all of the taxes heading his way because of the profligate spending of today’s adults and their duly elected representatives—taxes that he will not avoid by not growing apples.

At least Chris won’t have to study indentured servitude in school, because he’ll experience it firsthand when he enters the work force and forks over more than half of his earnings to the government to pay for current government services plus the entitlement bills and deficit spending of the preceding generation. To compare, serfs in Medieval days forked over about a third of their crops and livestock to the Lord of the Manor.

It is said that the cost of liberty is high. But if it gets much more costly, we won’t be free. Over half of Bush’s huge increase in government spending has nothing to do with national security. Consider the following ghastly numbers:

– Current federal spending is $20,000 per household, the highest level since the Second World War, in constant 2003 dollars. On average, each household pays a whopping $16,780 in federal taxes, which leaves a deficit of $3,520 per household to be paid in the future. – The above numbers do not include state and local spending and the hidden cost of regulations. When those are added, the total cost of government is over $28,000 per household. – It is not surprising that the most socialized segments of the economy, health care and K-12 education, have seen the largest cost increases. Federal spending on education has increased 65 percent since 2001. Federal health spending has increased as follows: Medicaid, 24 percent; Medicare, 12 percent; and other health programs, 32 percent. The states have also seen huge increases in spending on health care and education. – When my son reaches the age of 39 and is earning, let’s say, $80,000 (in constant 2003 dollars), he will pay $12,240 in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, assuming that today’s rate of 15.3 percent doesn’t increase. But it will increase, because he will have to pay an additional $3,980 per year just to cover the shortfall in Medicare bequeathed him by previous generations. That comes to $16,220 in total. – If Chris were to be allowed to keep the $16,220 and invest it, he would have a nest egg of $1,360,000 in 30 years, assuming an annual compound rate of return of 6 percent. If he were to earn a return of 10 percent, which is slightly less than the average return of the stock market over the last 30 years, his nest egg would be almost $3 million. – The NEA and AARP are two of the most powerful shakedown artists, er, lobbies, in the nation. If they remain powerful, my son will pay even more than what his mom and dad currently pay in tributes to the teacher union and seniors. – Chris said that he wouldn’t grow apples, but he may want to reconsider. Federal agricultural subsidies increased 76 percent over the last five years. Maybe the government will pay him to grow apples and let them rot on the ground. He could throw the rotton apples at greedy geezers, thieving teacher unions and plundering politicians.

As the foregoing shows, stealing has become as American as apple pie. Don’t tell my son or he may not want to do anything productive with his life.

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Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com