Corrupt Government, Not Big Business, Is The Problem

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100310/OPINION03/3100317/1008/opinion01/Tea-Party-protesters-pick-wrong-target  


James Hoffa wants me to believe that it is big business that is the bogey man, not big government. Now there is a real surprise. Next he’ll tell me that the solution is organized labor.

Mr. Hoffa, where do you think major corporations get their ‘unrestrained power’? How do you think they get the laws that enable them to charge outrageous credit card interest rates; how do you think insurance companies get the power to limit competition in their markets; who do you think is pressuring big banks to lend to the government rather than to business?

In a free market, no business, no enterprise, no commercial venture is too big to fail; nor is any too small to succeed. It is only when some outside force interferes that the free market is thwarted. And guess who that outside force is? It is the government.

Our Founding Fathers were smart enough to understand that whenever authority is delegated to a third party, that authority will be abused. It is never a question of “if”; the only questions are “how soon; how much; how long”?

The COTUS is the contract that created the federal government and defined it’s delegated responsibilities and authorities. Our Founding Fathers went to great lengths to attempt to make it as difficult as possible for the government to abuse it’s delegated powers. In the first 8 Amendments of the Bill of Rights, they listed a number of inalienable rights over which the federal government was specifically denied any authority. In the 9th and 10th Amendments they specifically denied to the federal government any authorities not specifically delineated in the COTUS.

The other remarkable safeguard that the Founders included was to deny the federal government a source of funding that penalized the people, by limiting their revenue to the duty on exports. Unfortunately this safeguard was destroyed by the 16th Amendment that directly contradicted a restriction of the COTUS that the people could not be taxed directly. The 17th Amendment also corrupted the safeguards of the COTUS by changing the method for selecting Senators from appointment by State legislatures to popular vote.

The 16th Amendment has given Congress way too much revenue that they can redistribute, providing Congressmen with a revenue source for selling access to those funds. The other major source of corruption for Congressmen is the selling of favors in the form of exclusions from regulations; exemptions from competition; imposition of mandates or protocols. Every government decision is subject to prior sale to the highest bidder. Unfortunately that tends to exclude the average citizen and favor the special interest group with the money to buy key votes.

The Tea Party Movement is the reaction by citizens to the excesses of government in violation of their Constitutional authorities in general; and to unrestrained deficit spending in particular. To suggest that the TPM is under the direction of big business is a fallacy of the first order. To suggest that the TPM favors one political party or another is equally absurd. Any candidate who promises to abide by the Constitution and has the experience to demonstrate that is likely to get the support of the TPM regardless of their political party affiliation.

It is never the American consumer that determines an enterprise is “too big to fail” as the demise of GM and Chrysler clearly indicates. These companies lost the favor of customers when they failed to provide sufficient or competitive value. It was the government that decided that these failed enterprises were too big to fail. It was the government that unilaterally confiscated these companies from their rightful owners and gave them to foreign companies and labor unions (in violation of the 5th Amendment).

The beauty of the free market is that the people can decide when an enterprise no longer deserves to exist. That the federal government opted to override the decision of the people is regrettable.

The lobbyists and cronies of the large investment banks purchased reckless right of way from their supposed watchdogs in Congress to enable them to pursue financial speculation that any reasonable person would reject. When the stupidity of those financial speculations came to fruition; threatening the survival of these previously bottomless sources of campaign contributions once again the government stepped in to protect their chosen contributors using taxpayer funds. To add insult to injury, Goldman Sachs alumni in the government included active Goldman Sachs employees into the decision making process to determine who would survive and who would fail. This is an outrage of Olympic proportions and reflects a government no longer bound by decency or reason.

It is just and reasonable that the people should rise-up against such a tyrannical government and force it back into compliance with the contract that gives it existence. Hopefully the TPM is the first sign of a resurgent citizenry prepared to force the federal government back into compliance.

No, Mr. Hoffa, big business isn’t the problem. Rather it is corrupt big government that must be reigned in to fix the many problems facing America today. To restore America, restore the COTUS.