America’s long, difficult trek from tyranny and oppression to …

North America’s colonists were necessarily daring and independent, otherwise they would not have ventured to the New World. Being so far from Mother England, they needed and were able to establish colonial governing bodies, which could levy taxes, muster troops, and enact laws.

As time passed the colonies strengthened, and began seeing themselves as independent states, and their obedience to and dependence on the British Crown was receding into the background.

As the future leaders of the United States grew into those roles in the colonial legislatures, they also studied the ideas of the Enlightenment: the social contract, limited government, the separation of powers and the consent of the governed, ideas at odds with the heavy hand of King George.

The colonies found many things imposed by England objectionable, such as the Sugar Act that increased duties on sugar imported from the West Indies; the Currency Act that devalued Colonial currencies; the Quartering Act that forced colonists to house and feed British soldiers if necessary; the cruelty of the British Army at the Boston Massacre; the Stamp Act taxing many common items; and the Tea Act that spawned the Boston Tea Party.
 

Nearly two and one-half centuries later we are again facing a heavy hand, this time not from a monarch, but from the government created by those colonists after they had had enough heavy handedness, and fought for and won their freedom.

Our government’s objectionable activities from the recent past include an inspector general’s report showing that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for lengthy and onerous review of their applications for non-profit status. And cases such as when an Army veteran heard banging on his door before dawn, then he and his two young boys spent several hours in police cars in their jammies as a Department of Education SWAT team searched his home because his wife, who didn’t live there any more, had defaulted on her education loans.

A program of the Department of Justice called “Operation Chokepoint” is used to put the financial squeeze on legal industries the administration doesn’t like, such as firearms sellers and payday lenders.

Another program known as civil asset forfeiture allows police to seize, and then keep or sell, any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.

Wonder how the colonists would have reacted to these outrages had they been perpetrated by King George?

Today, the federal government has its fingers in virtually every aspect of our lives, and often it is very involved. Its activities no longer are effectively limited as directed by the U.S. Constitution. The federal government largely controls education at the local level, regulates mud puddles on private property, and now has taken control of the way Americans receive their healthcare.

With the force of law it now espouses positions based not upon Constitutional principles, but based upon ideology and political impulses.

One of the most ominous to date is the effort announced earlier this month to use the full force of the federal government, which has adopted one side of a vigorous debate on the effects of humans on the world’s climate, to criminally charge businesses that argue against the government’s chosen position with racketeering under RICO laws.

“Treating climate change as an absolute, unassailable fact, instead of what it is — an unproven, controversial scientific theory — a group of state attorneys general have announced that they will be targeting any companies that challenge the catastrophic climate change religion,” say Hans von Spakovsky and Cole Wintheiser in The Daily Signal.

Ignoring America’s principle of freedom of thought and speech, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said last month, “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real,” and he is threatening to pursue companies he claims are committing fraud by “lying” about the dangers of climate change “to the fullest extent of the law.”

The coalition “AGs United For Clean Power” consists of 15 state attorneys general as well as the AGs of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. In addition to Schneiderman are Kamala Harris, California; William Sorrell, Vermont; Mark Herring, Virginia; Maura Healey, Massachusetts; Brian Frosh, Maryland; George Jepsen, Connecticut; and Claude Walker, the Virgin Islands, and representatives from Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington State and D.C.

Unsurprisingly, sixteen of the seventeen are Democrats, while the Virgin Islands AG is an independent. And no farcical climate inquisition would be complete without the participation of former vice president and climate change beneficiary Al Gore.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch admits that the Justice Department is discussing the possibility of pursing civil actions against climate change doubters, and that the FBI has been asked to consider if it meets the criteria for federal law enforcement to take action. Tyranny rears its ugly head.

When the political left cannot prevail through the strength of its arguments in the arena of free ideas, it resorts to force. That is unconditional surrender, a testament to the failure of liberalism as a practical ideology.

The United States of America: “a nation of laws, not a nation of men”

A primary element that has separated the United States of America from virtually every other nation in history is the concept of it being “a nation of laws, not a nation of men.”

“A nation of laws” means that laws, not people, rule. Everyone is to be governed by the same laws, regardless of their station; whether it is the most common American or Members of Congress, high-ranking bureaucrats or the President of the United States; all must be held to the just laws of America. No one is, or can be allowed to be, above the law.

This idea was paramount in the complex process of establishing the United States of America, a young nation whose brave leaders had put everything on the line to escape the tyranny and oppression of the British Crown, which at the time was a nation ruled by people, in the person of King George III.

The Founders wrote restrictions into the Constitution against bills or laws of attainder, which are laws that do not apply equally to everyone, but target specific persons or groups in their enforcement, and are also known as “bills of pains and penalties.” In the hands of corrupt officials, these laws could be used as a weapon that would give an incumbent politician a major advantage over anyone else.

Can there be a better way for a nation to deal with its citizens than treating all of them equally under the law? About the only people who would disagree with this concept are those who are in a position, or want to be, to abuse the law and use their official positions unfairly, or those who benefit from that abuse.

Sadly, there are plenty of these un-American folks on the loose.

If laws are too numerous, abusive, designed to help or penalize one group at the expense of others, that nation is not a nation of laws.

A nation of laws will not permit or tolerate laws designed for reasons other than justice, and it will not permit or tolerate laws that are ignored or selectively enforced because of some official’s political whim.

"We're a nation of laws, not of men and women," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared, talking about a Nevada rancher refusing to pay grazing fees on land he and his ancestors grazed for free, until recently. Someone needs to remind Sen. Reid that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. He condemns one of his constituents for not obeying the law, but himself failed to bring a federal budget before the Senate for years, as required by Article I of the US Constitution.  He has violated his oath of office and terms of the Constitution, and has done so without penalty.

Attorney General Eric Holder earned the wrath of a federal judge for directing prosecutors to pursue shorter prison sentences for drug crimes before new guidelines for sentencing had been approved. “The law provides the Executive no authority to establish national sentencing policies based on speculation about how [the U.S. Sentencing Commission] and Congress might vote on a proposed amendment,” Judge William H. Pryor, Jr. remarked. AG Holder also advised state Attorneys General that they do not have to enforce laws they disagree with, which essentially renders laws meaningless. Apparently, Mr. Holder thinks only those laws individual government officials believe in are important. He does not have authority create these policies.

And then there is the President of the United States, Barack Obama. He who rules by Executive Order is at the top of the list of those destroying the ideal of  “a nation of laws.”

It’s not about the good intentions of an Executive Order; it’s about process, and the fact that in the United States we have a detailed process for changing laws, and that process does not empower the president to do so unilaterally. Congress must amend a law, or the judiciary can strike down an unconstitutional law.

So, when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that the president so strongly advocated came up far short of the miracle we were told it would be, Mr. Obama suspended parts of the law to mitigate the harm it would cause, but that is not allowed by the Constitution. It ought to strike everyone as dangerous when the president says things like if Congress won’t do what he wants, he’ll use his pen to do it through an Executive Order. Perhaps he does not understand that the executive branch is equal to the legislative branch; the president is not more powerful than the Congress.

Speaking of Congress, it’s habit of shirking its law-making duty by passing legislation that enables administrative agencies to create and implement rules with the force of law goes a long way toward undermining the “nation of laws” concept. The Founders made Congress the law-making branch of the government, and did not allow for Congress to pass that duty to the executive branch.

The sad truth is that the United States is not functioning as a nation of laws today. That status must be restored, and soon, or our very freedom is at risk.

VA failure is a symptom of a bloated and over-reaching government

Sometimes, something beneficial results from a horrible tragedy. The intolerable chaos at Veterans Affairs is one such tragedy from which something useful emerged: America finally knows how out of control the VA has become.

It’s horrible that it took the mistreatment of thousands and the lives of at least 40 American veterans, who trusted their government to provide them adequate care in return for their service to the country, to bring this to the nation’s attention, but now people are aware, and they are angry about this disgusting situation.

The VA has had been a mixed blessing for veterans, providing good care to many, but treating others with neglect. The problems started a long time before Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, but the confusion and malfeasance we see today have grown to be far worse recently, despite Presidential assurances beginning seven years ago that it would be repaired.

“As president, I won’t stand for hundreds of thousands of veterans waiting for benefits. We’ll make sure our disabled vets received the benefits they deserve,” candidate Obama declared in 2007.

“I know you’ve heard this for years, but the leadership and resources we’re providing this time means that we’re going to be able to do it. That is our mission, and we are going to make it happen,” President Obama said in 2009.

And, he said a year later: “At the same time, every American who has ever worn the uniform must also know this:  Your country is going to take care of you when you come home.  Our nation’s commitment to our veterans, to you and your families, is a sacred trust.  And to me and my administration, upholding that trust is a moral obligation. That’s why I’ve charged Secretary Shinseki with building a 21st century VA. We’re going to keep on making historic commitments to our veterans.“

The President made similar promises in 2012 and 2013. They made no difference. Just empty words, like “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period.” Instead of action to fix the problems and discipline the bad behavior, many VA workers got bonuses.

It is very difficult to fire a federal employee for virtually any reason, because they belong to a union. Why do federal employees, who work for the entity that makes and enforces the rules of the workplace, need a union, and why did the government agree to allow a union to protect taxpayer-funded employees from discipline or dismissal for misfeasance?

The disgraceful performance of the VA is not the only example of a federal government out of control and drastically in need of overhaul. It is not just fat and sloppy, it is a danger to the freedom and safety of the citizens that it was created to serve and protect.

Several other agencies also fail their duty of service. It’s difficult to pick the worst offender from among the IRS, which used its power to attack political enemies; or the Department of Education, which sent a SWAT team to find a woman who had defaulted on a few thousand dollars in education loans; or the EPA, which has attempted to impose penalties for spilt milk and wants to regulate mud puddles on private property.

Let’s not forget the Bureau of Land Management, which has taken control of thousands of acres of state-owned land, ostensibly to protect a “threatened” species of turtle which is thriving, except for being killed off by that same federal agency; or the Department of Justice, whose Operation Choke Point goes after companies the administration considers politically objectionable, like those that sell guns, despite the fact that they are legal businesses.

These agencies could cause much less mischief with a staff half the current size. Currently, there are nearly 3 million federal civilian employees, about one for every 115 citizens. Last year the average total compensation for a federal civilian employee was about $133,000. Cutting the civilian workforce in half could save approximately $360 billion annually. What a boost to the private economy that would be, and what a relief from the overreaching of the bloated and mismanaged federal bureaucracy.

Of course, bad government is not limited to the feds, it also occurs at the state and local level, and also involves over-achieving and foolish behavior. A candidate for governor in Minnesota was in a park collecting signatures to get on the ballot. When police discovered he didn’t have the required permit, he was handcuffed and taken to headquarters.

Police were within their authority to arrest the man, but was that really necessary or desirable, or even sensible? Could they not simply have told him to stop and go get a permit? After all, in a country where a large number believe it’s wrong to require proof of citizenship in order to vote should a candidate be required to obtain a permit to “advertise” in order to get signatures to place his name on the ballot?

None of this is what America is supposed to be about. Someday enough people may figure this out and demand a return to good government.

Cattle grazing standoff in Nevada ends peacefully with BLM retreat

Thankfully, the standoff at the Bundy ranch in Nevada ended fairly peacefully. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Neil Kornze made a good decision, and the correct decision, when he pulled his officers out after returning some 400 head of seized cattle to the land on which they had been grazing. He took the action “because of our serious concern about the safety of [BLM] employees and members of the public.”

The Internet is rife with stories about this incident from national and local news outlets including ABC, the local CBS channel KLAS-TV, Newsmax.com, the Los Angeles Times, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Associated Press, and others.

Some will say that rancher Cliven Bundy was at fault in this incident. Mr. Bundy raises cattle on the ranch his grandfather started in the1870s, and he and his ancestors and neighbors have been grazing their herds on this land for well over a hundred years.

The federal government, through the BLM, took control of a huge area in Nevada when a tortoise that makes its home there was labeled “threatened” many years ago. In order to graze their cattle there, ranchers had to pay a fee. The new paradigm engendered the shutting down of several ranches, Mr. Bundy asserts, and he refused to be one of them. He continued to graze his cattle there and has refused to pay the fee on the basis that the federal government had no right to take control of the land that belonged to the State of Nevada.

He and others dispute the stated reason for the federal encroachment, the “threatened” tortoise. They say that the tortoise is not endangered at all, and that even if it was, cattle do not harm the habitat or the tortoises. Thus, the federal government had no basis for the take-over, and the court actions against him are therefore moot.

After losing court actions, Mr. Bundy still grazed his cattle on the land for years without paying. In response to a court order, the BLM recently sent an estimated 200 heavily armed officers and police dogs to the area and began rounding up the cattle.

And that’s when the revolt against what protesters viewed as over-reaching on the part of the BLM/federal government starting building steam. The protestors began rolling in from across the country. Some were armed and some were on horseback, reportedly attempting to free cattle seized by the BLM.

Tensions grew and were aggravated when Mr. Bundy’s son was shot twice with a stun gun, and a BLM officer tackled Mr. Bundy’s 57-year-old sister to the ground.

As tensions grew among the protestors, and the potential for violence grew, Director Kornze made the decision to return the captured cattle and withdraw the BLM personnel.

Some believe the federal retreat signals a victory for Mr. Bundy and his supporters. Others believe the federal intervention was a test to determine whether, and to what extent, the American people will stand up against federal over-reaching. Whatever the case, it has gotten the attention of millions of Americans.

Now it’s time for answers to some important questions about the BLM and its actions, and the basis for the court decisions. The most important of these questions is: Where does the federal government find the authority for the BLM to take control of land belonging to a sovereign state?

Some legal authorities say that the Bureau of Land Management action is a direct violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the US Constitution. That clause, the Enclave Clause, authorizes Congress to purchase, own and control land in a state only under specific and limited conditions, such as “for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.” It does not mention uses such as to protect endangered animals.

Legal scholar Mark Levin said that the BLM negotiated agreements with Mr. Bundy and other ranchers many years ago for water rights, grazing rights, and for building roads and irrigation. The BLM then changed the rules in what Mr. Levin called a “systematic and deliberate campaign to drive ranchers out of Southern Nevada.” The fact that Mr. Bundy is the lone remaining rancher in the area adds credence to this charge.

And why swoop in with heavily armed federal agents and forcibly take Mr. Bundy’s cattle? This action is not only uncalled for, but is dangerous and irresponsible. There are other methods for the federal government to get what it is due in fees without armed force.

It is an encouraging sign that so many Americans from so many states felt strongly enough about this issue to travel to Nevada and stand beside Mr. Bundy and his family in the face of federal tyranny.

Each time the government oversteps its bounds, the people complain, but usually to no avail. Let us hope that this time the message that the government that exists only to serve the best interests of Americans will not be allowed to endlessly abuse them.

People are more important than animals, and the American people are more important than their government. Our government and our leaders need to be reminded of their proper place.

Opportunity knocks: the IRS and the tax code badly in need of repair

Good things sometimes result after bad things happen. The growing revelations of wrongdoing at the Internal Revenue Service dramatically illustrate the agency's devolution into near anarchy, and this ought to lead to an operational revolution. It ought to also lead to something else that needs to be done, and has needed to be done for a long, long time: overhauling the current tax system.

An organization known as CCH has tracked the growth of the tax code from 1913 when it was only 400 pages to 2012 when it was 73,608 pages.

An Associated Press story noted, "At nearly 4 million words, the US tax law is so thick and complicated that businesses and individuals spend more than 6 billion hours a year complying with filing requirements, according to a report Wednesday by an independent government watchdog. That’s the equivalent of 3 million people working full-time, year-round."

“This report confirms that the code is 10 times the size of the Bible with none of the good news,” said Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House and Ways and Means Committee. “Our broken tax code has become a nightmare of loopholes and special interest provisions that create added complexities and costs for hardworking taxpayers and small businesses.”

“If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States,” according to Nina E. Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate. She said that since 2001, Congress has made an average of more than one change a day to tax law, nearly 5,000 in all.

The tax code is a chaotic mess that no one can comprehend. So, replace it with something much simpler that can be easily understood, and doesn't require 100,000 federal bureaucrats, some of whom cannot control the urge to persecute the people they work for.

Without going into great detail, there are two sensible approaches that would vastly improve the tax system. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but both the Flat Tax and the Fair Tax are far superior to the 73,000 page monstrosity we now suffer under. Even substantially lowering tax rates and reducing deductions and loopholes in the current system would improve things.

It has never made any sense to tax people's productivity, particularly when so many are excluded from paying any tax at all. Those who have no skin in the game thus don't mind raising taxes on the people that pay the freight for them.

Taxing what people spend, on the other hand, puts everyone in the game to the extent that they buy stuff subject to taxation, excluding food, medicine, medical care, and perhaps a very few other things from the tax, while protecting charitable contributions, and move ahead with replacing our asinine tax code with something that makes sense, and is immune from malfeasant bureaucrats and politicians. Then, when Congress wants to raise the consumption tax from, say, 10 percent to 12 percent instead of being frugal, nearly everyone will have a reason to care.

The current system enables politicians trying to make political hay to demonize corporations or the wealthy by criticizing the way they pay or don't pay taxes. The most recent example of this manufactured "moral outrage" concerns Apple, Inc., which earns money in the US as well as in foreign countries. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), has leapt to the front of the bandwagon to condemn Apple, which paid nearly $6 billion to the federal treasury in 2012 on money earned in the US, but keeps money earned overseas out of the US due to the high corporate tax rate. But Apple does only what the tax code allows or encourages it to do.

America's corporate tax rate, which at 35 percent is one of the highest in the world, literally drives corporations to keep money overseas that otherwise could be brought here to produce jobs, and be taxed here, if Congress wasn't so greedy. Rather than make an honest effort to fix that problem, Sen. Levin foolishly prefers to label Apple a "tax dodger."

Many Americans agree with him. Those who think corporations are misbehaving by using provisions of the tax code to pay less tax should do a little personal reflection. Anyone who has ever taken a deduction for mortgage interest or other adjustment to earned income is just as guilty of being a tax dodger as Apple.

Managers and employees who lack character and integrity have fatally soiled the IRS. It has violated the most sacred tenet of American government: to honorably serve its citizens. At the very least it must be overhauled and slashed in size and power, but better yet, let's rid ourselves of the need for an agency like the IRS.

A final thought: The Affordable Care Act is a 2,700-page bill hatched in the dark of night by one political party, passed on a partisan vote by elected representatives who had not read the bill, controls 14 percent of the private economy, opens private medical data of every American to government scrutiny, and will be controlled by 16,000 new IRS employees. What could possible go wrong?

What scandals? There are no scandals here. Please keep moving.

The broiling controversies of the Benghazi scandal, the IRS wrongdoing, and the questionable seizure of Associated Press telephone records by the Department of Justice have forced those on the left and those that don't pay much attention to what goes on in the political realm to recognize that our government indulges in improper and oppressive behavior. And this tumultuous atmosphere has spawned some wild and crazy things.     

Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program and vociferous gun control advocate, had an epiphany brought on by the federal government's improper behavior. During a roundtable discussion on the show he said, “My argument [for gun control] is less persuasive today because of these scandals.” He went on to explain that “People say, ‘Hey, if they do this with the IRS, asking people what books you read, then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights?’” There was general agreement among the show’s other participants.

Another unusual thing was former White House senior advisor David Axelrod’s defense of President Barack Obama. He said that the president can't be held responsible for what underlings do. The reason is that our government is so large that no one person can control what all of the two million Executive Branch employees do.

He's right: government is way too big and far too powerful. David Axelrod is a limited government guy. Who knew?

But the fact that government is too big doesn't relieve the President of the United States, whomever that might be at any given time, of the duty to manage the Executive Branch and keep it within its constitutional limits, and to always respect the citizens it serves. Plainly, Mr. Obama has not done that.

In our highly charged political environment, not everything that the president's loyal opposition calls a scandal is truly a scandal. But conversely, everything that Mr. Obama's sycophantic fans wish was not a scandal isn't a scandal, and their efforts to explain them away often border on silliness. Columnist Reg Henry ably demonstrated that with inadequate attempts to downplay a few of them and make them go away.

Of the Fast and Furious debacle Mr. Henry said it "was a crackpot scheme to trace guns to Mexican drug cartels, but it was a hard sell because, as you know, guns don't kill people."

He is obviously correct about it being a crackpot scheme, although that characterization does not do justice to this colossal idiocy. And his sarcastic comment about guns not killing people unintentionally conveyed the truth.

But he's totally wrong about whether Fast and Furious is a scandal. Not only did the the Justice Department fail to achieve the fundamental goal of this misadventure — to trace the guns they provided to the Mexican cartels — but an American Border Patrol officer was murdered with one of them. That indeed is a scandal.

Next, in trying to wish away the Green Energy fiasco, he states, "The Solyndra scandal involved a big waste of public money, but the real offense seemed to be that the administration was promoting solar power. Oh, the horror."

So-called "public money" is money taxed away from taxpayers ostensibly to be used responsibly and for beneficial purposes, not so that billions can be wasted on the personal whim of the president to prop up a preferred industry, one that is so unstable that it cannot succeed even after being propped up. Mr. Henry is apparently unaware that it is neither within the president's nor the federal government's authority to decide which industries succeed and which do not.

In reference to what he called "Benghazi-gate," he cautions us that "it's far from clear what the president knew and when he knew it." But again he misses the point. What makes Benghazi a scandal is not what Mr. Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew and when they knew it, although that certainly deserves an explanation, it's the fact that his administration and/or her department disgracefully failed to provide requested and needed security upgrades before the attack began. Had they acted properly it just might have prevented all four of the murders that resulted from the attack on the Benghazi consulate. And then, there’s the video smoke screen to explain.

Some believe the Obama administration overtly engineered the effort by the IRS to target conservatives, Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations. But others blame this oppressive behavior on a "culture of suspicion" of conservative organizations created by President Obama's near-continuous public criticism of those individuals and organizations. After all, if the president repeatedly makes public statements saying these people are up to no good, shouldn't good bureaucrats try to please the boss and go after the bad guys?                                  

President Obama told graduates of The Ohio State University earlier this month that “you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. ... They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.” But the swirling controversies that demonstrate actual government tyranny render that advice dangerous and unworthy.