Jim Demint of SC: Crony Capitalism, Christmas Trees, and the Stupidest Tax of All Time

Verbatim post via Zerohedge.com

Direct link.

You really can't make this up

Crony Capitalism, Christmas Trees, and the Stupidest Tax

 of All Time

No, it’s not a joke.  President Obama really is imposing a

 special new tax on Christmas trees.

And while the policy seems a ludicrous political misstep – 

and possibly an unconstitutional one at that – in truth, the

 Obama Christmas Tree Tax is much worse than that.

The $2 million the Obama Administration expects the tax to

 raise will not reduce the deficit or cover needed

 government services.  Instead, it will serve as a marketing

 slush fund for the Christmas tree industry.

The money will set up a brand new government agency

 called (no, seriously) the Christmas Tree Promotion Board.

  The CTPB will use the $2 million to hire a staff – most

 likely the industry lobbyists who cooked up this scheme – 

 and then run advertisements to “enhance the image of

 Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry of the

 United States.”

Don’t the Christmas tree growers and retailers already do

 that?  Yes.  Isn’t marketing something that all companies

 should do with their profits, to grow their business and 

attract new customers?  Yes.

And while we’re asking questions, does anyone in America –

 anyone? – believe that Christmas trees have a bad image

 that needs taxpayer-subsidized improvement?

So why should the government-funded Christmas Tree

 Promotion Board tax us to fund a marketing campaign?  So

 the Christmas tree industry can pocket the $2 million they 

now won’t have to spend marketing their trees.

That’s it.  That’s the whole purpose of the Obama Christmas

 Tree Tax: to take money from hard-working families

 celebrating Christmas and give it to clever lobbyists and

 businessmen running a crony-capitalist subsidy scam.

And while this policy will, by design, help one group of

 people, it will hurt others: businesses that sell artificial

 Christmas trees, people who work at your local stores that

 sell them, and, don’t forget, the consumers who are out 15

 cents a tree.

Business groups using government connections to enrich 

themselves by hurting everyone else.  Makes you just want

 to break into “O Holy Night,” doesn’t it?

Hopefully, the Crony Capitalists in the Obama 

Administration have gone too far this time, and public 

backlash will force Congress to shut down the Christmas 

Tree Promotion Board and repeal the single stupidest tax of 

all time. I will soon offer an amendment on the Senate floor 

to do just that.

All I want for Christmas is a free market.

Amen, brother.

Nullification of DC: Ohio nullifies Obamacare mandate

For Immediate Release – (November 8, 2011) – On the eve of the 213^th anniversary of the passage of Thomas Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, laying the intellectual groundwork of nullification, the people of Ohio exercised their power and nullified the insurance mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Ohioans passed Issue Three, a constitutional amendment to preserve their right to choose their own health care and health care coverage. Preliminary returns indicated a wide margin of victory, with more than 60 percent approving the amendment. The amendment makes it illegal for any local, state or federal law to require Ohio residents to purchase health insurance, effectively nullifying a key component of the PPACA.

Tenth Amendment Center news release

Fox news link.

Ballad of a Southern Man

New Video from Whiskey Myers for Country Music Television.


I love the song, the glimpses of the battle flag in the video, and the defiant ending.

Northern California Sheriffs stand up to DC

The spirit of local and individual sovereignty lives!
800 patriots and uniformed LEO's gather to condemn DC policy.


Via the Tenth Amendment Center Blog:

System D: The $10 trillion black market. Or, what people do when they ignore the government

System D is a slang phrase pirated from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean. The French have a word that they often use to describe particularly effective and motivated people. They call themdébrouillards. To say a man is a débrouillard is to tell people how resourceful and ingenious he is. The former French colonies have sculpted this word to their own social and economic reality. They say that inventive, self-starting, entrepreneurial merchants who are doing business on their own, without registering or being regulated by the bureaucracy and, for the most part, without paying taxes, are part of "l'economie de la débrouillardise." Or, sweetened for street use, "Systeme D." This essentially translates as the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy. 


 In 2009, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a think tank sponsored by the governments of 30 of the most powerful capitalist countries and dedicated to promoting free-market institutions, concluded that half the workers of the world -- close to 1.8 billion people -- were working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes.


A 2009 study by Deutsche Bank, the huge German commercial lender, suggested that people in the European countries with the largest portions of their economies that were unlicensed and unregulated -- in other words, citizens of the countries with the most robust System D -- fared better in the economic meltdown of 2008 than folks living in centrally planned and tightly regulated nations.


"I'm totally off the grid," one unlicensed jewelry designer told me. "It was never an option to do it any other way. It never even crossed my mind. It was financially absolutely impossible." The growth of System D opens the market to those who have traditionally been shut out.


Read the rest at Foreign Policy: Link


-------------------


The black market has been around for as long as governments have been around. 


Before governments, the black market was just called "the Market".  ;-)


You know, the market where you keep what you earn, and not half of what you earn.  


It is comforting to know that if the Sovereign Debt Crisis were to bring down the government,  motivated people would keep on working...


That is, work and keep what they earn, for a change. 

Vive l'systeme D.

Our Monetary policy: the death of the country's economy

Caused by central planning in Washington and the Federal Reserve:


The dilemma that this country — and no less many other countries — has to face is very serious. The extremely popular method of raising wage rates above the height the unhampered labor market would have established would produce catastrophic mass unemployment if inflationary credit expansion were not to rescue it. But inflation has not only very pernicious social effects. It cannot go on endlessly without resulting in the complete breakdown of the whole monetary system.  -- Ludwig von Mises


One of the favorite commentators on Zerohedge.com, Jim Grant:

Chinese communist "gets it"

Quote of the Day, spoken about Europe, but valid about our welfare system and nanny state as well: via al Jazeera via Drudgereport.com:

"If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society. I think the labour laws are outdated. The labour laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking. The incentive system, is totally out of whack. "Why should, for instance, within [the] eurozone some member's people have to work to 65, even longer, whereas in some other countries they are happily retiring at 55, languishing on the beach? This is unfair. The welfare system is good for any society to reduce the gap, to help those who happen to have disadvantages, to enjoy a good life, but a welfare society should not induce people not to work hard." Jin Liqun, the supervising chairman of China's sovereign wealth fund

The way the laws are written in the US, not only is there no incentive to get off welfare, there are incentives to not get married (singles can collect more welfare than a married couple), one of the factors in the erosion of the family unit among the poor in the United States:

The researchers aim to demystify welfare’s complicated rules, which even Moffitt, who has spent his career studying labor economics and the welfare system, says he sometimes has trouble understanding. While most social scientists regard marriage as better for the children involved, individual states’ welfare policies don’t appear to support married parents, Moffitt says. In general, if a mother, a father and their children are living in the same house, regardless of the parents’ marital status, the family won’t be eligible for welfare because their income will almost always be too high. Yet, if the mother and children are living on their own, with family or are cohabiting with a partner who is not the father of the children, the mother and children would be eligible for welfare, even if they are also being financially supported by other adults in the house.


“The bad part is, you are telling the mother that if she brings in a man who is not the father of her children, it’s OK, but if she brings in the father of her children, she’ll be kicked off welfare,” Moffitt said.   --Link

Secession is the talk of the patriot blogosphere.

While you might guess where my position might fall on the idea of secession, I provide these links for my readers to enjoy, and hope to make the time to read the different posts and comments and see if I can add anything substantial to the discussion:

Secession and Balkanization- Kerodin's initial post. 

Response, Dump DC

Secession and Balkanization- Kerodin's Response to Dump DC

GardenSERF weighs in.


The Arctic patriot's post

I have been trying to build up a business that I bought over the summer, and haven't even had time to read the news, let alone blog, lately, much to my disappointment. I am going to try to get out a few posts this week.

Cartoon of the Day 11/2

via townhall.com

Steven Colbert takes on Occupy Wall Street

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

via Breitbart.com

"I like Ron Paul except on foreign policy"

Great YouTube post by Jack Hunter, The SouthernAvenger:



via blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com

True America survives in the South: SC sheriff to citizens: "Carry a concealed weapon"

SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. -- The Spartanburg County Sheriff is known for speaking his mind, and at a news conference on Monday, he didn't hold back his anger and frustration after a woman was attacked in a park over the weekend.

 

Investigators said 46-year-old Walter Lance grabbed a woman who was walking her dog in Milliken Park on Sunday afternoon. They said Lance choked the woman, made her take off her clothing and tried to rape her. (Full Story)

Wright said, "It's too bad someone with a concealed weapons permit didn't walk by. That would fix it." He said people are tired of doing the right thing and criminals getting away with their actions.

 

He said several times, "I want you to get a concealed weapons permit." 

 

Link

Encouragement for you, from the echo of LaFayette

via Western Rifles Rifle Shooters Association, a comment left by a reader of that blog.

You were once a great Nation but you ought to be proud still having free-minded living men (as far as i have been reading this discussion).

Here, in France, we are all slaves and used to be like this for a long time.

I would say most of us enjoy it, except maybe 1 out of 50000 like me.

You have so many possibilities we do not have here (great men who fought or are still fighting for liberty, guns’ laws, large territory, large human base)

Despair is your only ennemy.
Have faith.

Marquis de LaFayette, Major General of the Continental Army, and the right hand of Washington

Your rights: Unalienable or Inalienable?

Excellent exposition on Unalienable vs Inalienable Rights at DumpDC blog, by Russel Longcore; H/T to Arctic Patriot

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights… Self-Evident. Obvious. Perhaps it was self-evident to the 18th Century common man, but I submit to you that the common 21st Century mind is not equally equipped. Much of the wisdom of the ages has been withheld from the modern man by the government schools. And why not? If you were a government, both tasked by The People to educate them and controlled by the same People, why teach generation after generation how to control you? Why not teach those generations how to be controlled? Self-evident truths bow to governmental self-preservation when The People aren’t watching vigilantly.

What a debt we today owe to Jefferson

Building a tower requires building a firm foundation FIRST…or your tower goes over when the winds blow hard. Gentle readers, we’re in a CAT 5 hurricane right now that’s going to take down our American tower. If you do not have a working understanding of unalienable rights, you’ll likely fall for the next iteration of oppressive, tyrannical government foisted upon an uneducated populace who move their lips when they read. And if you don’t truly understand this philosophy, you cannot possibly teach it to your young.

Unalienable rights are also known as Natural Law or Absolute Rights. In this article these terms will be interchangeable. Also, the use of a male pronoun or the word “man” means all humans.

We begin with a definition of “Unalienable:”

“Unalienable: incapable of being alienated, that is, sold and transferred.”Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, page 1523. One cannot sell, transfer or surrender unalienable rights. The Creator bestowed them on every individual. All human beings possess unalienable rights. Unalienable rights cannot be taken nor surrendered but they can be simply ignored.

Third American Revolution, Reasons to fight: Tactics of Syria come to Oakland

...and now the Marines are pissed off.

Marines have been flocking to the social networking/aggregator site Reddit to voice their anger at the life-threatening injury inflicted on 24-year-old Iraqi war veteran Scott Olsen by Oakland police during the recent Occupy protests. Video showed Olsen go down after taking a tear gas canister to the head. As fellow protesters tried to assist him, police lobbed a flash grenade into their midst–right next to Olsen’s already fractured skull.
The picture above, submitted by Reddit user aburger, has generated well over 1,000 comments on the site–many from fellow Marines who are absolutely livid at the injury to one of their own by police.
Here’s one from Reddit user 0311kilo33:

As God is my witness. I will fight tooth and nail to restore the decency this country was founded upon. The politicians, banks and large corporations have ruined this country. I find it difficult to notice any sense of politeness on the streets anymore. But it goes farther. As a Marine and a citizen I am outraged. I am sick to death of the world my children are being raised in.

Link

Tipping point, anyone?

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

via Townhall.com Conservative cartoon of the day

National Security Agency providing intelligence to Wall Street Banks

Link

Overt example of what Corporatism really is: Your tax dollars co-opted to support private businesses in bed with your government.

(Reuters) - The National Security Agency, a secretive arm of the U.S. military, has begun providing Wall Street banks with intelligence on foreign hackers, a sign of growing U.S. fears of financial sabotage.

The assistance from the agency that conducts electronic spying overseas is part of an effort by American banks and other financial firms to get help from the U.S. military and private defense contractors to fend off cyber attacks, according to interviews with U.S. officials, security experts and defense industry executives.

.gov authorizing military detention of US citizens on US soil

Patriot Act provisions will eventually bite you, once you become part of the opposition to the .gov: 

In a time of austerity, and with the planned drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, you might expect congressional proposals to reduce the military’s footprint around the world. You’d be wrong.

Instead, the defense spending bill passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee and now heading for a vote in the full Senate would dramatically expand the U.S. military’s role in counterterrorism — potentially inciting more attacks on U.S. interests.

this defense authorization bill marks the first time since the McCarthy era that Congress has sought to create a system of military detention without charge or trial — including U.S. citizens arrested on U.S. soil.

Well, isn't that special?

Now it may be al-Qaida and Taliban American citizens, but that means any American citizen can be instantly stripped of habeas corpus by Executive will.  This is one of the elements of Empire; arbitrary absolute power in the hands of an executive, in our case, the President.


So if a left wing President is elected, the right might be arbitrarily imprisoned, and vice versa. I am not thinking of this occurring 2 weeks or 2 years from now. I am saying that a precedent is set, and future administrations may turn authoritarian/absolutist and use the precedent against internal political opposition.  Of course, it would be legal...just not Constitutional, American, decent, or compatible with a free society.  Think gulag, lager, detention camp. No difference whatsoever, except for the accent of the thug guarding the detainee.


This is why federal powers were to be limited and enumerated by the Constitution. This is what the Founders feared.


link to Politico


H/T to iiipercent.blogspot.com

Mr. Schiff goes to Washington, and schools Congressmen on the economy

Peter Schiff, president of EuroPacific Capital, adherent to the Austrian School of Economics, son of Irwin Schiff, imprisoned for federal income tax protest (refusal to pay on political/constitutional grounds), friend and contributor to LewRockwell.com, testifies before the House Subcommittee on Government Reform and Stimulus Oversight.


Watch his comments and answers, and compare with those of the female commentator, who is a liberal/keynesian. Worth the 22 minutes.

Threat to the eagle: even the little guy can do it.

from pictures of the day on telegraph.co.uk

CBS reporter Sheryl Atkisson under White House fire for Gunwalker scandal reports

The era of  "transparent" government under Obama/Holder continues apace:

Link to The Weekly Standard

The Fast and Furious scandal, in which the Justice Department knowingly gave Mexican criminal gangs thousands of guns, just keeps escalating. The latest development centers around whether or not Attorney General Eric Holder lied to Congress about having knowledge of the controversial gun trafficking operation. Recently released documents say Holder was briefed about the operation long before he told the Judiciary Committee he was first aware of what was going on. (Holder now claims he misunderstood the question was being asked.)


What's more, CBS News investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson -- who's been covering the scandal from the beginning -- says in an interview on the Laura Ingraham Show today that the White House and Justice Department have taken to screaming at her for reporting on the story. You can listen to the full interview below...:



Finally, Attkisson notes that the White House is claiming that a thorough investigation of the scandal is unwarranted:


[The White House and Justice Department] will tell you that I'm the only reporter--as they told me--that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I'm the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I'm unfair and biased by pursuing it.

Translation: Here "reasonable" means either "shill" or "willing to play ball".

Occupy Wall Street protestor: End the Fed, bring back gold and States' Rights!

Wish I could shake this guy's hand. I hope there are a lot more like him out there.


Good job.


Keep in mind: that is a NY accent. If a Yankee can speak like this, that is a reason for hope in my mind.


The cause of States' Rights and the Free Market will be vidicated. :-)


via dailypaul.com

Homer Simpson: Gun Shop

Oh, I don't need anything like that...yet...
:-)

History of the modern Israeli-Arab conflict in 11 min.

H/T to FreeNorthCarolina.blogspot.com




Well done video, historically accurate as far as my reading of the conflict, although very unfavorable to the Pals. Poor and oppressed as they may be, they lie in a bed they and their leaders made for themselves.


Esau hates Jacob...struggle began in the womb.

Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.--Golda Meir

"Don't tread on me" in Hebrew

Legend of Confederate submarine commander's gold coin is true

THE LEGEND: For over a century, an oral tradition-a legend-was passed down involving Lt. George Dixon, who commanded the 

The front side of Dixon's gold coin.

Hunley on its final assignment, which turned out to be one of the most important missions in naval history. According to the legend, Dixon was in love with a beautiful young woman from Mobile, Alabama, named Queenie Bennett.


To keep her sweetheart safe from harm, Queenie gave George Dixon a gold coin, as a good luck charm. Again, according to the legend, George kept the coin with him always, in his pocket, rubbing it with his thumb while he dreamed of the day when he and Queenie would be reunited.
During the Battle of Shiloh, George was shot point blank. A bullet ripped into the pocket of his trousers and struck the center of the gold coin. The impact was said to have left the gold piece bent, with the bullet embedded in it. Queenie's good luck gift had saved his life.

- Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen holding Dixon's gold coin. This photograph was taken only minutes after the coin's discovery.

Many such legends were created during the war. Was this one true? For 137 years, no one knew whether the story was true or merely a romantic tale from long ago.
During the excavation of the H.L. Hunley, the gold coin was discovered next to the remains of Lt. George Dixon. It was deeply indented from the impact of a bullet and traces of lead were discovered on the coin. The coin, a $20 dollar gold piece, was minted in 1860. One side bears an image of Lady Liberty. The other side, which has a federal shield-and-eagle symbol, had been sanded and inscribed by hand. It clearly bears four lines of cursive script with the following words:
Shiloh
April 6, 1862
My life Preserver
G. E. D.

The reverse side ofDixon's gold coin.

Maria Jacobsen, Senior Archaeologist on the Hunley project and the one who actually first found the coin, said shortly after her amazing discovery, "Some people may think this is a stroke of luck, but perhaps it's something else. They tell me that Lt. Dixon was a lady's man, perhaps he winked at us yesterday to remind us that he still is."

link


via Rebellion Blog.

Petition of Virginia's challenge to Obamacare's individual mandate goes to Supreme Court

The state of Virginia, seeking to revive its constitutional challenge to a key part of the new federal health care law, asked the Supreme Court on Friday to rule that the state has a right to be in court.   This is the fifth of the petitions seeking review of the new law’s mandate that virtually all Americans must have health insurance by the year 2014.  Virginia is the only challenger now at the Court to have been denied ”standing” in lower courts.  Its petition, with a lengthy appendix, is here 

Virginia’s challenge to the insurance mandate, unlike that of others who have appealed, is tied to a state law that declared that no resident of the state could be compelled to obtain a health care policy, as required by the federal law.  The legislature passed it in anticipation of Congress’s enactment of the health care law, and, relying upon its statute, Virginia was the first to file a federal court case against the mandate.  The Fourth Circuit Court, however, ruled last month that Virginia had no basis for challenging the mandate,; it found that the  provision imposed no burden at all on the state.


The Circuit Court said that the mandate is imposed on individuals, not on states.  It also found that the Virginia law seeking to head off the mandate actually had no enforcement mechanism, so the law did not clash with the federal mandate.  The Circuit Court also ruled that a state has no power as a sovereign to nullify a federal law which acts durectly upon a state”s citizens, who are citizens of the federal system, too.


Link to SCOTUS blog

Breast Cancer patient molested by TSA retards at JFK

Verbatim post:

At what point does the need for security eclipse human dignity and compassion?

Yesterday I went through the imaging scanner at JFK Terminal 4 for my Virgin America flight to San Francisco.  Evidently they found something, because after the scan, I was asked to step aside to have my breast area examined.  I explained to the agent that I was a breast cancer patient and had a bilateral mastectomy in April and had tissue expanders put in to make way for reconstruction at a later date.  

TSA jerks wouldn't let her retrieve this medical device card...

I told her that I was not comfortable with having my breasts touched and that I had a card in my wallet that explains the type of expanders, serial numbers and my doctor’s information (pictured) and asked to retrieve it.  This request was denied.  Instead, she called over a female supervisor who told me the exam had to take place.  I was again told that I could not retrieve the card and needed to submit to a physical exam in order to be cleared.  She then said, “And if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly” loud enough for other passengers to hear.  And they did.  And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor. 

To my further dismay, my belongings, including my computer, were completely out of sight. I had no choice but to allow an agent to touch my breasts in front of other passengers.  

I just didn’t understand why these agents were so insensitive to the situation. I would have been happy to show her which bag was mine and have her retrieve the card, but she did not allow even that. I have been through emotional and physical hell this past year due to breast cancer.  The way I was treated by these TSA agents added a shitload of insult to injury and caused me a great deal of humiliation.

I understand the need for safety when flying, but there is also a need for those responsible to be compassionate and sensitive to each situation.  These agents were neither.

I can only comfort myself with the fact that Karma is always circular.

link to her blog. Story via Drudge

America is no longer free

The Judge uses irony to get the point across:



H/T to Michael at Southernnationalist.com/blog