Tag: Senator Dodd
One Day You’ll Wake Up and It’s Gone
by KJ Kaufman on Jun.29, 2010, under Constitutional Matters, Politics
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 4th amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been reduced due to the Patriot Act? The Patriot Act allows for warrantless wiretaps. The 4th 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 4th 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.
We Have Come Full Circle
by KJ Kaufman on Dec.22, 2009, under Constitutional Matters
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, SENATE TAKES FIRST VOTE TO RETURN TO TYRANNY
Editorial by KJ Kaufman
(Dec. 21, 2009) — Many of us were taught that the American fight for Independence began as a fight of no taxation without representation as the Colonists were being taxed by King George III when the Colonists had no representation in British Parliament. Although this characterization is certainly true, the ultimate decision to declare independence was much more than that. The colonists were developing a nation. Today, we would think of them as modern day entrepreneurs. At every turn they were being taxed so as to make their exports less attractive and imports exorbitantly expensive. Their commerce was obstructed and they were sent goods of lesser quality. American Independence truly began as a culmination of infringements of the colonists’ God given rights being usurped by a mad man in England and also by the British Parliament. I use the term mad man, not in hyperbole, but in earnest as King George III suffered throughout his life from mental illness.
As many of you know, Tea was taxed. In Boston, Patriots dumped tea (circa 1773) into the harbor in protest which sparked elevated tensions and resulted in the passage of the “Intolerable Acts” by the British Parliament, but there was trouble in Boston and elsewhere long before the dumping of tea. The Revolution began as the result of numerous punitive actions against American commerce as well as taxation. The Revolution began as the result of:
- English merchants enjoying a monopoly on raw materials and requiring importation of manufactured goods from Great Britain.
- Discriminatory trade practices where American exports were devalued and British imports were so highly valued that there was a never ending debt cycle for the American farmer and merchant.
- In 1765, seeking to alleviate their war debts, the British Parliament levied a Stamp Act tax which required all legal documents, newspapers and many other articles to have a Stamp placed upon them. The colonists had no representation in the British Parliament and maintained responsibility for levying their own taxes that they sent to the British Crown. This was the first tax against the colonists imposed by a government body in which they had no representation. The Stamp Act Tax was repealed by the British Parliament just one year after it had gone into effect.
- Even though the British Parliament had repealed the Stamp Act, during the same session, they asserted their supposed right to tax the colonists.
- The colonists retaliated by general agreement to not purchase English goods that had taxes attached.
- In Boston, the colonists were unruly, and the King sent British troops to occupy the city. By 1760, the occupation had so added to the tensions that a snowball fight between young boys in Boston against British soldiers culminated in the “Boston Massacre” where gathering Bostonians were gunned down by British soldiers. Five Americans were killed while many others were wounded.
- Tensions remained in Boston for the next three years. Even though the British Parliament repealed the Townshend Act which was the tax on tea, the British Parliament in response to the dumping of tea in the Boston harbor, passed the “Intolerable Acts” with its most restrictive measure being the closure of the port of Boston resulting in Massachusetts being under what can only be described as British martial law.
- By May of 1774 a grassroots movement began in the colonies against tyrannical rule. Many meetings throughout the colonies sprung up to reassert individual rights.
- In the summer of 1774, the “Fairfax Resolutions” were drawn up and stand today as one of the first influential documents regarding American political thought. The Fairfax Resolutions reiterated the limited powers of Parliament against the colonists and highlighted the rights of free men.
- The colonists began their Congresses later that year in 1774 holding the First Continental Congress in September of 1774.[i]
I have highlighted above the many events of the 1760’s and 1770’s to show the parallels to modern day America. The above illuminates egregious regulations of commerce, taxation and usurpation of individual rights. In American modern times, can the last century as well as the events thus far into the new millennium be characterized in different terms other than parallel to those described above? Is history repeating itself a mere two and a half centuries later?The United States government under liberal and progressive plans has resulted in the promotion of the collective against the individual. There can be nothing more un-American than to subvert the rights and liberties of the individual in advancement of the collective. There was a time in America where we understood that to promote a Marxist ideology, an ideology that failed miserably during the 20th Century resulting in the death of tens of millions of human beings, was simply un-American. Today, our Democratic leaders readily accept this ideology in direct contrast to our founding and in direct violation of our Constitution. Let me share with you just a few statements from our Democratic Senators, uttered on the Senate floor in yesterday’s health care debate soliloquies.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) – Quoting Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Hofstetter, Senator Whitehouse charged: “a political environment in which the rational pursuit of our well being and safety would become impossible…Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds, broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets, strange fruit has hung from southern trees…”
Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) – “And that’s really what we are trying to achieve here is to create that availability of a right. I don’t know of anyone that disagrees with the statement that health care in America ought to be a right…”
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) – “We are talking about a revolution in primary care here…Doctors, dentists, nurses and other medical professionals who agree to work in areas where there are limited medical services get help paying off their school loans.”
I led off with Senator Whitehouse’s comments because they are so offensive, they ought to be rendered moot just on their face, but unfortunately Senator Whitehouse’s attempt to use another’s words to push the deceit that if you are against health care reform with respect to this particular bill, then you are rolling fellow citizens to the guillotine or are a racist is outrageous and repulsive, utterly offensive, arrogant and self-serving. Senator Whitehouse, in our history, it has been those with opinions such as yours, that the individual and individual rights can be subverted by his fellow man through the ways and means of government, who are first to throw the rope over the branch of the tree of tyranny. You are a despicable excuse for a leader, and you are in direct violation of our Constitutional protections. Consider yourself on notice. Your tyranny will not prevail in a country of free persons.
Ascertained from the remaining quotes, it is duly noted that the Democratic Party continues to push the philosophical position and moral imperative that health care is a right. Nothing could be further from philosophical and moral fact. Health care is not a right as rights cannot be obtained through the subversion of another’s rights. The Democrats as they are wont to do set up false premises. Currently, they argue falsely that if health care is not a right, then it must be a privilege, but this is also false. Health care is not a right nor is it a privilege, rather, it is a good and service for which we all strive to procure. We all have a right to live and pursue our lives. In that pursuit, we may choose to take care of ourselves and avail ourselves of health care. However, nowhere contained within our rights can we require another to provide for our own care. We can readily accept the generosity freely given by our fellow men and women, but we cannot force them to make a contribution to ourselves.
Our Declaration of Independence assured us of our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our Constitution provided for us a bill of rights. Neither document grants health care as a right, and there is absolutely no government empowerment to legislate such. There is no philosophical moral imperative to the right of health care. There is a moral imperative to resist at every turn the encroachment on another’s rights.
The Democratic Party is simply lost. They no longer understand the American Founding nor the ideals and guarantees of our history. To willingly, unlawfully and without authority expand the powers of government so that they resemble a Politburo more than our own Constitutional Republic was once considered tyrannical rule in this Country. No more, today it is simply standard operating procedure for the Democratic Party.
Our commerce has been subjected to regulation where no enumerated power can be found for such encroachment into our free market system. Our citizenry has been taxed in ways and by means that have no Constitutional founding and are in direct violation of our rights to our own property. Our private businesses have been usurped through government infusions of money in total contradiction to its monetary powers contained in our Constitution. We have been subjected to legislative act after legislative act in direct violation of everything we once believed and knew to be the fact of our inheritance.As you can see from the events quoted at the beginning of this article, there comes a time in a man’s or a woman’s heart where he or she can take no more. It is with this understanding that we know the time draws near when the masses will rise up to reassert their God given rights. A free people will never willingly be subjected to tyranny. It is only a matter of time before the citizens of these United States rise up as their forefathers did and declare that they have had enough. Whether this revolution results in a call to arms or continues through peaceful protest and redress remains to be seen. What is certain is that the American People have only just begun to fight.
[i] Summaries of Chapters 8 and 9, Jay A. Parry and Andrew M. Allison, The Real George Washington, (National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1991, 2008, sixth printing 2009)
