CONSTITUTIONALGOV.NET

As most of us know, with the exception of the Congress and Administration in D.C., the housing bubble that crashed in 2008 is the primary cause of our country’s economic woes.  Unfortunately, until this problem is fixed, which nothing the Federal Government has done is going to fix this problem, in many States, like Arizona, that rely heavily on the residential housing market, our economic woes will continue.  I proposed the following fix in an email to my State Senator, Jack Harper (R-District 4) this morning.  I’m sharing the letter I sent to him with you.  If you like the idea, and also live in a State highly dependent on residential real estate, perhaps you might share the letter with your State Legislature.

OPEN LETTER TO JACK HARPER – REPUBLICAN SENATOR FROM ARIZONA DISTRICT 4

From: KJ Kaufman
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 8:36 AM
To: ‘jharper@azleg.gov’
Subject: Fixing the Housing Problem

Good Morning State Senator Harper,

As the economic malaise in this country continues, I wanted to offer you a suggestion of a step that I think could be made in our state to dramatically improve the economy.  It is my understanding that one of the reasons Arizona has been so hard hit by this recession is high dependence on housing sales, values and construction.  If we don’t fix the housing problem, we will continue to see stagnation in our economy, and we will see very little improvement in our State’s economy in the coming years.

Although housing prices were incredibly over-inflated in our State, and a giant housing bubble ensued nationwide, I believe that there is a way for our State to help to increase home ownership and investment in residential real estate in Arizona.  My idea consists of finding a way to incentivize home ownership through property tax manipulation.  I call my plan the Allodial Title Act.  Here is how it would work.

Anyone owning a home at the time the legislation is enacted, or anyone purchasing a home while this legislation is in effect will qualify for allodial title to the property when their mortgages against the property are paid. Upon payment of all liens against the property, the property’s title is transferred to the owner and becomes an allodial title.  If you are not familiar with the term, it means the owner, owns the title and it cannot have taxes or fees assessed to it while it is in an allodial title state.  If an allodial title holder, then later encumbers the property with a lien through actively taking out a loan against the property or another legal method of placing a lien on the property, the allodial title will revert to traditional title and property taxes can again be assessed.  For those properties that are purchased solely as income generating properties, the owner will not qualify for allodial title under this program. 

With the glut of foreclosures on the market, and property values still decreasing, I believe it is critical that our State government take a proactive approach to finding some solutions to fixing the housing market in Arizona.  I believe the above approach encourages the purchase of residential properties in the state, encourages responsible home ownership, i.e., there is a benefit to paying off your mortgages.  Please advise as to your thoughts on my proposal, or what the legislature plans to do if anything to help alleviate the current housing crisis in our state.

Uniquely ours as individuals at birth
From the shores to the heartland our home
You wish to divide,
You stand on your lie
The consensus is not alone

The past with its scars is not today
The present is true liberty for all
We’ve paid the price
It’s now time to unite
The consensus is not alone

We’ve wasted much time in this land
That we’ve lost sight of gains we have made
You wish to divide
You stand on your lie
The consensus is not alone

You do not dictate our future
Just as you cannot change our past
We’ve paid the price
It’s now time to unite
The consensus is not alone

Your time is short as we’ve come to this day
With our hearts full of promises of old
You wish to divide
We wish to unite
The consensus is not alone

Today, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed its lawsuit against Arizona’s illegal immigration law (commonly referred to as SB 1070).  What is very clear from the lawsuit is that the DOJ admits that it will not enforce existing immigration law.  The DOJ admits in their complaint the following:

In exercising its significant enforcement discretion, the federal government prioritizes for arrest, detention, prosecution, and removal those aliens who pose a danger to national security or a risk to public safety. Consistent with these enforcement priorities, the federal government principally targets aliens engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage; aliens convicted of crimes, with a particular emphasis on violent criminals, felons, and repeat offenders; certain gang members; aliens subject to outstanding criminal warrants; and fugitive aliens, especially those with criminal records.

As you can see the federal government has to “prioritize” arrests for illegal immigration because it isn’t in their interest to arrest everyone who has violated their immigration laws.  It seems if the federal government just secured the borders, they may not need to “prioritize” arrests because they would have the manpower to arrest all those in violation of federal immigration law.  

The lawsuit goes on to provide us with some insight into Congress’ passage of immigration laws: 

In crafting federal immigration law and policy, Congress has necessarily taken into account multiple and often competing national interests. Assuring effective enforcement of the provisions against illegal migration and unlawful presence is a highly important interest, but it is not the singular goal of the federal immigration laws. The laws also take into account other uniquely national interests, including facilitating trade and commerce; welcoming those foreign nationals who visit or immigrate lawfully and ensuring their fair and equitable treatment wherever they may reside; responding to humanitarian concerns at the global and individual levels; and otherwise ensuring that the treatment of aliens present in our nation does not harm our foreign relations with the countries from which they come or jeopardize the treatment of U.S. citizens abroad.

They state that “assuring effective enforcement of provisions against illegal migration and unlawful presence is a highly important interest,” but they also tell us that they “otherwise ensur[e] that the treatment of aliens present in our nation does not harm our foreign relations with the countries from which they come.”  Let me translate that for you all.  The federal government via the DOJ is telling us that although it’s “highly important” to enforce provisions against illegal migration, it is sometimes more important not to piss off the government of Mexico.  In other words, sometimes the interests of the federal government’s relationship with Mexico will trump the rights and obligations the federal government has to the sovereign State of Arizona. 

Throughout the lawsuit, the DOJ accuses the Arizona immigration law of attempting to regulate immigration via an “attrition through enforcement” approach.  In other words, Arizona is attempting to curtail illegal immigration by enforcing immigration law.  Wow, that seems to make sense, no wonder the federal government is so opposed to it.  

The simple facts are: the citizens of Arizona do not possess the resources to continue to pay for the medical needs and educational needs of illegal immigrants.  There are existing federal immigration laws which the federal government refuses to enforce.  For the safety of Arizona citizens, for the safety of illegal immigrants who are illegally smuggled into this country, and for the fiscal interests of the State of Arizona, it is imperative that the border be secured and the federal immigration laws be enforced.  It is clear from the federal lawsuit filed today that the federal government has no intention of protecting the citizens of Arizona or enforcing their own laws.  How is it possible in America that we are no longer a nation of laws?

On this 4th of July, if you have never read the Declaration of Independence, or if you have not read it since your youth, please take a few minutes to read the Declaration of Independence.  Please take the time to understand our founding and the promise of freedom to each and every individual in this nation.  The final line of the Declaration of Indpendence states, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”  How many of you believe that divine Providence brought forth this nation? How many of you would be willing to pledge your “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to ensure the liberties and freedom of future generations?  Look in awe upon those who gave us everything, and look within to determine if you wish to preserve it.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

As I have spent the last 2 ½ years (the time at which I became awake) trying to awake my friends and associates as to what is going on in America, I find that I have made very little progress.  Spending over two years devoted to something and seeing very little progress is disheartening to say the least, but there comes a point where one just gives up as seeing ones efforts as an exercise in futility.  For those of you who know me, you know I don’t give up that easily.  An exercise in futility or not, I will continue to hound you to wake up albeit the frequency of my requests will be diminished because frankly I have a business to run and grow and can only devote limited time to political endeavors.

The title of this piece is “One Day You’ll Wake Up and It’s Gone.”  I want to hammer this point home to you today.  From a personal perspective, I know the meaning of those words in my professional life.  Many of you have been fortunate enough to avoid the impact of this recession; I wasn’t that fortunate, but I wouldn’t trade that misfortunate for anything.  In the time that I was laid off from my job, as most of you know, I have taken great financial losses, but I’m still making it.  I may have gone through my personal and retirement savings, but I still own my home (even if it’s worth less than half what I paid for it).  I’ve started a business which is finally making enough money per month to support my expenditures, and I am happier than I have been for a very long time.

I learned a lot about myself when I was laid off, and I learned not to take anything for granted.  More important than anything else, I reacquainted myself with God, and for the first time in my life, I finally believe in God and feel a personal relationship with Christ.  This is no small thing for a former agnostic, and I am grateful everyday for having achieved this relationship with Christ.  What I wish to share with you today is that one day you will wake up and find that everything is gone.  I’m here to try to encourage you to wake up before that happens.

While slumbering myself, during the George Bush administration, the Patriot Act was passed.  Do any of you know what is in the Patriot Act?  Do any of you know that your 4^th amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been reduced due to the Patriot Act?  The Patriot Act allows for warrantless wiretaps.  The 4^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that you have the following rights:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 

When your private telephone conversations can be tapped without a warrant said Act allowing it, and the act itself being committed is in direct violation of the 4^th Amendment.  So you say you don’t care, you are willing to give up a little portion of your rights and freedoms to stop terrorists because that was the argument made by politicians (specifically Republican politicians at the time the Act was debated and passed).  No one bothered to adhere to the maxim by our Founder Benjamin Franklin who stated:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Maybe you are willing to give up essential liberty to purchase your temporary safety, but I am not for history shows us that freedoms given up are not easily returned and eventually all freedom is lost resulting in tyranny.

When President Bush and Congress (where the Democrats were the majority in both houses) in 2008 bailed out the financial industry through the TARP program against the will of the American people, I really woke up.  For those of you who argue that this was necessary to keep America from collapsing financially, I can simply state that we will never know because we were never allowed to see what would result.  The TARP program has done nothing to fix the toxic assets held by the banks.  They still hold these toxic assets to this day.  The Federal government simply propped up the banks, but they did not solve the problem, and there were and are banks that lent responsibly and do not have a problem with toxic assets.  The TARP program has merely prolonged the inevitable.  The collapse will eventually occur if it was ever going to occur in the first place.  The only thing the TARP program did was bailout irresponsible banks while burdening responsible banks.  Whenever the government picks winners and losers, we all lose.

And picking winners and losers didn’t stop there.  The government initially under the Bush administration and then later under the Obama administration bailed out both General Motors and Chrysler.  Those of you who cried, we must bail out GM and Chrysler because their American car companies that we can’t allow to go bankrupt, I ask you, how did that work out?  After pouring several billions of dollars into each of these companies they both went bankrupt.  Even worse, instead of going through a traditional bankruptcy procedure following the long established bankruptcy rules, the Federal government once again stepped in, picking winners and losers and placing union interests above share holders in direct violation of existing bankruptcy laws.  Chrysler was sold to Fiat as part of its bankruptcy proceedings and in violation of law over 700 Chrysler dealerships were closed.  Does this sound like successful intervention by the Federal government?  Of course, it doesn’t, but we weren’t allowed to see how things would shake out if GM and Chrysler just followed the normal process of filing for bankruptcy and reorganizing their companies under the existing bankruptcy long established procedures and laws.  We weren’t allowed to see that happen because of the unions. 

For those of you who haven’t woken up yet, there’s more.  As if bailing out the banks and car companies wasn’t enough, the Obama administration decided it was now time to take control of your health care.  In direct contradiction to the will of the vast majority of Americans, the Congress rammed through a nearly 3,000 page health care overall in which to this day we are still finding all of the little Easter eggs planted in this Un-Constitutional legislation.  Businesses are already warning that they will drop their health care plans and just pay the government fines (taxes) because it will be more cost effective for them.  That means that eventually this legislation will lead to a single-payer system.  For those of you not keeping up, that means socialized medicine (government run health care).  Enjoy!

But that wasn’t enough control for the Democrats.  No my friends, they want more.  They are now about to finalize and pass financial reform another 2,000 + page bill, a legislative effort led by Senator Dodd (Countrywide scandal) and Barney Frank (who said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are fiscally sound right before they required a 65 billion dollar bailout).  Speaking of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the leading causes of the financial crisis along with AIG, nothing in the financial reform legislation says anything about reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  In fact, what many believe largely led to the financial crisis was the ending of the Glass Steagall Act provisions of the post 1929 stock market crash.  Instead of completely rewriting financial reform that has nothing to do with reforming what caused the financial crisis, the Congress simply could have reinstated the Glass Steagall Act, but that would make far too much sense, and would be too simple for such an intellectually elevated Congress to ponder.

For those of you still asleep, your peaceful slumber is nearing an end.  There is not much time left before you will be forced to awaken.  You are about to awake from your dreams to the present day reality which is a nightmare.  You are about to find that the day you wake up, it is too late, for it is already gone.