The Reactionaries Speak

With the beginning of each new year comes our typical self-assessment of days gone-by.  It is important that we as Americans take a look not only within ourselves, but within the inner workings of our country.  With a soon to be changing of the guard on the national political landscape, it is time to put our free-market ideas to work.  Our economy is still in shambles and together we need to break down the facade of mediocrity to expose the flawed, collapsing system hidden beneath.

Here are some fun, revolutionary Libertarian-esque ideas that I look forward to debating and discussing with liberals and conservatives throughout 2011.

1. Should we eliminate automatic income tax withholding?
   An idea that has long circulated in conservative political circles, the dissolution of automatic  tax withholding could serve powerful but simple purpose.  Americans would be forced to peel their faces away from television screens featuring ‘Snookie’ and ‘Lady Gaga’s hopeless mind rape of society to take a good hard look at how much money our government is spending.  In a world where numbers like ‘billion’ and ‘trillion’ no longer hold any conceptual value, we would start to understand the full gamut of implications resulting from Keynesian runaway spending. Monthly income tax bills would be paid like any other bills.  Our employers would pay us our actual REAL wages, and we would receive a monthly statement of taxes owned to Uncle Sam.  This simple idea could have massive implications, and finally restore the clarity that our government has been lacking. After all, every sheep needs a Shepard, and America has become a nation full of sheep.  So let’s let the almighty dollar start the debate for us.
2. Do our armies belong in middle-eastern wasteland or on our own borders?
   Overall, I think we have done some pretty good things in Iraq and Afghanistan, but only time will tell what we have done to hurt or help our country’s world-wide reputation.  My question isn’t whether or not we are doing the ‘right’ thing morally, but whether or not we are doing the ‘right’ thing for OUR country.  I have several lingering questions.  Financially speaking, was it worth the staggering costs of war for the results that we have thus far achieved over-seas?  Lives and money were lost in that desert, is the benefit worth the cost?  What has our presence done to future generations of Middle-Easterners?  Is our presence in their country more likely to convert foreigners into supporters, or is it more likely to expand the allure of global jihad?  It seems much more easy to convince someone to strap a bomb to their chest and blow themselves up in the name of Allah when they can see and identify their enemy.  Furthermore, with limited military assets, would we be better off protecting our own borders instead?  Would it result in a net-gain in homeland security by bringing our troops home to protect our porous borders?  How easily could potential terrorists attain access to America via our laughable northern and southern borders.  I can honestly see both sides of this debate, but I think we have gotten away from what needs to be a more serious discussion on the matter.
3. Can we just see the damned birth certificate already?
   I am so sick of this debate wasting so many 75 second blurbs of my life for 2 full years. I am so sick of hearing about ‘birthers’ and I am sick of hearing the Obama administrations stupid, half-assed responses.  Would somebody please just find a way to end this debate already?  Show your damned birth certificate Obama.  And if/when they show the damned birth certificate (if there even is one), I never want to hear “birther” again for the rest of my life.  Even Chris Matthews is pleading for the stupid piece of paper to be released, just to spare us all the lost brain cells.
4. Will Somebody tell me where our legislation comes from?
   The senate health care bill weighed in at 2,074 pages long. There have been several multiple-thousand page long bills presented in the past couple of years.  Am I the only damned person in this universe who wants to know who is writing our legislation?  I understand that we have an army of supposed non-partisan lawyers working in the Office of Legislative Council, but they simply put a language to the bill’s content. The content itself as I understand it comes from some combination of a large variety of meetings between congressmen but also, often from outside sources that the congressman seek inspiration, details and verbiage from. My suspicions tell me that with bills this large, much of this content must come from the latter.  Essentially- we don’t know who these people are, yet they have the financial assets and political know-how to get off with winching us along on a path toward serfdom.
5. Is the War on Drugs worth it?
   No.  No it is not.  When is the last time you saw someone on the news getting killed in a gang-related death fueled by the drug trade?  Last week, the prior week?  Now, when is the last time you saw someone getting shot dead in the street over a case of beer?  We have already tried prohibition in America and it was a miserable failure.  Bootlegged liquor resulted in thousands of accidental deaths due to poor production methods, violent crime shot up an astounding 24% the first year of prohibition.  We don’t know if gross consumption declined since the government couldn’t collect taxes on the product and had no way of tracking it, but it wasn’t exponentially changed.  Today, we are spending billions on police resources, court resources, prison resources and yet I can still walk down my street and buy weed from a shady character any day of the week.  Prohibition of drugs has failed just as miserably as alcohol prohibition had failed.
6. How do we control rising commodity pricing?
   Finally, the most important topic. Unfortunately the most complex and mind-spinning idea of them all.   I think it takes at least a little bit of delusion to argue that we aren’t seeing inflation.  There are some arguments on where all the inflation is coming from, and there is certainly some validity to these arguments. Keynesian economists point to a steady and even deflationary Core CPI, but the Core CPI that our government likes to report conveniently does not include commodity pricing.  Unfortunately, this is where we are seeing all the inflation. This is all due to a variety of reasons, but significant factors include: supplies taking a hit due to weird weather, rising demand in food in Asia, rising demand in what should be food instead being converted into bio-fuels and finally, and what we conservatives argue to be most important- what is being referred to as a “tsunami of liquidity” in the markets.  IE the United States Federal Reserve printing lots of MONEY!.  The increase in supply of U.S. currency through a variety of guises including but not limited to “stimulus” packages has traveled so far in world markets that it is even raining liquidity in China. In fact, many argue that we are seeing a new bubble- a commodity bubble.  This is all bad news folks. We all know how the last bubble ended!  A lot of people are already hurting from the commodity shortage.  We can chose to ignore it all we want, but this trend is hurting our wallets every day of our lives and even trickles down to increased levels of starvation in third world countries.  The first step to getting this under control is to get American debt under control.  Stop printing, start cutting programs.  It needs to happen, and it needs to happen now.

Let us have 2011 be a year where we can have honest conversations about the direction we are heading as a country.  It is time for us to return to an era of responsibility. Turn off your televisions, and turn on the debate!