A Good Thing

"The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others." — James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788

On this day in 1944, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill, an unprecedented act of legislation designed to compensate returning members of the armed services — known as G.I.s for their efforts in World War II.

As the last of its sweeping New Deal reforms, Roosevelt's administration created the G.I. Bill— officially the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 — hoping to avoid a relapse into the Great Depression after the war ended. FDR particularly wanted to prevent a repeat of the Bonus March of 1932, when 20,000 unemployed veterans and their families flocked in protest to Washington. The American Legion, a veteran's organization, successfully fought for many of the provisions included in the bill, which gave returning servicemen access to unemployment compensation, low-interest home and business loans, and--most importantly--funding for education.

In his speech at the signing of the bill, Roosevelt acknowledged the sacrifices of America's men and women in uniform and emphasized the moral responsibility of the American people not to let their veterans down once they returned to civilian life. He and his economic advisors foresaw potential problems as the then-robust wartime economy transitioned to peacetime. He hoped that the GI bill would help prevent a situation in which the return of 2.2 million servicemen from war created massive unemployment, economic depression or social unrest. Also in his speech, Roosevelt appealed to Congress to enact some sort of future legislation that would reassure current civilian workers that their services would still be needed in a post-war economy.

The GI bill, named after the slang term for soldiers whose wartime goods and services were government issued, provided funding for education, home loans, unemployment insurance, job counseling and the construction of veterans' hospital facilities. It also greatly strengthened the authority of and scope of services provided by the Veterans Administration. Tuition for advanced education or technical training was covered up to $500 per school year, along with a monthly living allowance while the veteran was in school. GIs could also apply for guaranteed home and business loans.

By giving veterans money for tuition, living expenses, books, supplies and equipment, the G.I. Bill effectively transformed higher education in America. Before the war, college had been an option for only 10-15 percent of young Americans, and university campuses had become known as a haven for the most privileged classes. By 1947, in contrast, vets made up half of the nation's college enrollment; three years later, nearly 500,000 Americans graduated from college, compared with 160,000 in 1939.

The first GI Bill was proposed and drafted by the American Legion, led by former Illinois governor John Stelle, during World War II. The public remembered a post-World War I recession, when millions of veterans returned to face unemployment and homelessness. Twice as many veterans would return from World War II, and widespread economic hardship was a real concern. A healthy postwar economy, it seemed, would depend on providing soldiers with a means to support themselves once they were back home.

Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst became the bill's most ardent and vocal supporter. Hearst and his nationwide string of newspapers lobbied the public and members of Congress to support those who served their country, and his effort was a success. The bill unanimously passed both chambers of Congress in the spring of 1944. President Franklin F. Roosevelt signed the bill into law on June 22, 1944, just days after the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

Roosevelt urged that the goal after the war should be the maximum utilization of our human and material resources. After his death and the end of the Second World War, veterans of wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and U.N.-led coalition conflicts continued to benefit from an evolving GI bill.

As a person who is wary of most government programs such as the Departments of Education, Energy, HUD, and Homeland Security and find them unconstitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution I cannot find that fault with the G.I. Bill. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power and authority to raise and support an Army and Navy.

Article I, Section 8 states:

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

1. To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

2. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

3. To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

4. To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

5. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

6. To establish post offices and post roads;

7. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

8. To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

9. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

10. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

11. To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

12. To provide and maintain a navy;

13. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

14. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

15. To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

16. To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings; — And

17. To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.”

Sections 8.11 thru 8.15 grant Congress the power and authority to raise and support a military force. This includes taking care of veterans. Therefore, in my view the granting of veterans a college or vocational education, along with medical care for their service is in line with the thinking of our Founders.

I recall having two teachers in high school who were products of the G.I. Bill. One, a biology teacher who used a cane and walked with a very pronounced limp, who must have suffered severe wounds. The other a math teacher. Both were good teachers and maintained good discipline in their classrooms conducive to learning.

The original GI Bill offered veterans up to $500 a year for college tuition and other educational costs — ample funding at the time. An unmarried veteran also received a $50-a-month allowance for each month spent in uniform; a married veteran received slightly more. Other benefits included mortgage subsidies, enabling veterans to purchase homes with relative ease.

College campuses did become grossly over-crowded in the postwar years: approximately 7.8 million World War II veterans received benefits under the original GI Bill, and 2.2 million of those used the program for higher education. By 1947 half of all college students were veterans. Prefabricated buildings and Quonset huts were used as classrooms, and military barracks were often converted into dormitories. However, having spent a large part of their youth engaged in battle, World War II veterans were highly motivated. GIs in their late twenties and early thirties returned to the United States in droves, anxious to catch up with their nonmilitary peers, marry, settle down, and support a family. The benefits provided by the GI Bill facilitated these goals.

Veterans were not the only beneficiaries of the GI Bill. Colleges, with increased enrollments, received years of financial security following its enactment. Veterans demanded more practical college course work, and this need led to a changed concept of higher education, with more emphasis on degree programs like business and engineering. The lines of race, class, and religion blurred as higher education became attainable for all veterans. No longer was a college degree — and the higher paying jobs that normally follow it — limited to members of the upper class. Federal income increased as the average income of taxpayers in the United States increased, and as the veterans graduated from colleges, women and members of minorities enrolled to fill the gaps they left. The GI Bill's mortgage subsidies led to an escalated demand for housing and the development of suburbs. One-fifth of all single-family homes built in the 20 years following World War II were financed with help from the GI Bill's loan guarantee program, symbolizing the emergence of a new middle class.

Despite initial misgivings over its success, the GI Bill proved to be enormously effective. Prior to its passage, detractors feared that paying the education expenses of veterans would lead to overcrowding at colleges, which before World War II were accessible predominantly to members of society's upper class. Critics were concerned that veterans would wreak havoc on educational standards and overburden campuses with their lack of preparation for the rigors of higher learning.

As educational institutions opened their doors to this diverse new group of students, overcrowded classrooms and residences prompted widespread improvement and expansion of university facilities and teaching staffs. An array of new vocational courses were developed across the country, including advanced training in education, agriculture, commerce, mining and fishing — skills that had previously been taught only informally.

The G.I. Bill became one of the major forces that drove an economic expansion in America that lasted 30 years after World War II. Only 20 percent of the money set aside for unemployment compensation under the bill was given out, as most veterans found jobs or pursued higher education. Low interest home loans enabled millions of American families to move out of urban centers and buy or build homes outside the city, changing the face of the suburbs. Over 50 years, the impact of the G.I. Bill was enormous, with 20 million veterans and dependents using the education benefits and 14 million home loans guaranteed, for a total federal investment of $67 billion. Among the millions of Americans who have taken advantage of the bill are former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, former Vice President Al Gore and entertainers Johnny Cash, Ed McMahon, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice John Paul Stevens, both of the U.S. Supreme Court; Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher; journalists David Brinkley and John Chancellor, and former Dallas Cowboys football coach Tom Landry.

It Finally Happened

“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” — Thomas Sowell

Before I begin this blog I want to share a video that was done by Steven Crowder of PJTV in December of 2009. In the video Crowder takes you on a tour of the motor city and shows what has and is happening to the once great manufacturing center of the world.

And there is another video from the Reason Foundation address the issues causing the demise of Detroit.

In my search of YouTube videos about Detroit I found several hundred that would have be suitable for this article, but you can do that on your own by simply typing “Detroit in Ruins” in the search field.

In December 2010 I posted an article about the “Vanishing Detroit” in which I wrote about the history and potential demise of the motor city. In the concluding paragraphs of the article I state:

“This is a condition not limited to Detroit. Cities such as Oakland, St. Louis, Cleveland, and many others are approaching the same precipice of economic bankruptcy. With the massive costs for welfare and social services, shrinking tax base, poor schools, unfunded liabilities for public service workers pensions, teachers unions with the protection of underperforming teachers and increasing demands for higher wages and guaranteed pensions and a political class that panders for votes we are approaching a time in our history when cities are beginning to fail.

Until now cities have been relying on funds from state and the federal government to bails them out of their financial woes. With states experiencing the same malaise and the rising deficits of the federal budgets money for these cities are no longer going to be available. Perhaps the time has come for these cities to realize the mess they are in and declare bankruptcy rewrite their public service and teacher union contracts and tighten their belts in all areas of spending so they can survive. No more promises, no more pandering to special interest groups and no more fountains and stadiums unless they are totally financed with private money.”

Most rational economists and rational thinking people have been predicting the demise and eventual bankruptcy of Detroit for years. Now it has become official and no amount of state or, God forbid, federal funds can solve the problem.

Last week Governor Rick Snyder filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy for the city of Detroit. The once leader of American industry has now joined the junk heap as a third world city. Chapter 9, Title 11 of the United States Code is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, available exclusively to municipalities that assists them in the restructuring of debts..

Why did this happen and will it happen to other American cities?

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and the bankruptcy specialist he appointed to fix Detroit’s unprecedented financial problems put the blame Sunday squarely on the city and defended their decision to file for Chapter 9.

The Republican governor said Detroit created the problems and stood steadfast behind his decision to file Thursday for bankruptcy, with the city roughly $19 billion in debt.

“This is a tragic, difficult decision, but a right one,” he told CBS' "Face the Nation." “It’s not about just more money, it’s about accountable government.”

He said corruption and city leaders ignoring warning signs for 60 years contributed to the problems. Among his biggest concerns, Snyder said, is the decline of municipal services for Detroit’s remaining 700,000 residents, including police response times of nearly one hour.

Snyder said the state cannot help and asking for a federal bailout is “not the right answer,” though Washington has that option.

The Obama administration has extended no offer to help, after Congress and the White House agreed to bail out Chrysler and General Motors during the recent recession.

“Can we help Detroit? We don’t know,” Vice President Joe Biden said last week. His remarks followed White House Press Secretary Jay Carney appearing to rule out such assistance.

“That's something that local leaders and creditors are going to have to resolve,” he said. “But we will be partners in an effort to assist the city and the state as they move forward.”

Among the emerging concerns is that the federal government would have to help repeatedly, considering Chicago reportedly has an unfunded pension liability of at least $19 billion while Los Angeles’ is estimate to be as much as $30 billion.

The bankruptcy filing for Detroit marks a final step in the chrome-plated city’s decades-long decline — which started with the country’s overall manufacturing slowdown and continued with the departure of U.S. automakers and residents, leaving behind a sprawling city trying to survive on dwindling coffers.

Detroit was in the 1950s a worldwide hub of auto manufacturing, making it the fourth-largest U.S. city with one of the country’s highest per-capita incomes.

However, the so-called Motor City’s decline started soon after with residents — following their counterparts in other U.S. cities — starting to move to the suburbs and take with them businesses, jobs and tax dollars.

Historians argue the deadly 1967 riot in Detroit, one of the many so-called “race riots” across the country in the 1960s, accelerated the trend.

And as the population dwindled from roughly 1.8 million to 700,000, city officials struggled to keep up with municipal services in the 142-square-mile city, with a tax base just half of what it was in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, auto companies began opening plants in other cities as Japan-made cars dominated the international market. By 2009, the U.S. auto industry collapsed with the entire economy, eventually pulling down Detroit with it. When the UAW demanded high wages and more benefits the auto companies began moving to right to work states in the south so they could better compete with the Japanese car companies that were manufacturing cars and trucks there. As this happened the unions got what they wanted, but the jobs began to vanish and with that the tax base declined.

The city’s efforts to provide and maintain such basic services as law enforcement and trash removal were further complicated by the costs of paying union contracts and benefits, which have contributed to nearly $15 billion in unfunded liabilities for the city.

Once again these public service unions got the raises and pensions they demanded and the Democrats gave into their demands to get their financial support and their votes but the city did not have the money to fund these liabilities.

In addition, Detroit has a roughly 18 percent unemployment rate, one of the country’s highest violent-crime rates and about 80,000 blighted or abandon buildings.

“Chronic budget problems have taken a significant toll on everyday life for citizens,” Snyder said recently. “Detroiters deserve to feel safe when they walk down the street, to have their street lights on, to have the bus show up to take them to work.”

However, the city also has a history of corruption that has led to its financial problems, including Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigning in a 2008 sex-and-perjury scandal that cost the city almost $9 million from a lawsuit and legal fees.

Years of Democratic Party rule, corruption, escalating social welfare programs, failing public schools, high taxes, demands of the teachers and public service unions, racial tensions, gangs, and a rising crime rate have finally taken heir toll on Detroit.

The recent bankruptcy filing in Detroit is raising red flags about other major U.S. cities also dealing with billions in under-funded retiree benefits, prompting the question — who might be next?

Just last week, Chicago’s credit rating was downgraded as a result of its $19 billion in under-funded pension liabilities.

Moody's Investors Service called the liabilities “very large and growing" and warned that Chicago, the country’s third-largest city, faces a “tremendous strain’’ in trying to meet future funding requirements and public safety demands.

A similar scenario, though decades in the making, largely doomed Detroit, whose average police response time has grown to more than 50 minutes.

And like Michigan, which appears in no position to bail out Detroit, Illinois is dealing with its own $97 billion pension shortfall.

To be sure, other smaller cities have filed for bankruptcy, most notably California’s Stockton and San Bernardino in 2012. No other city of Detroit's size appears to be on the cusp of imminent financial collapse.

However, those bankruptcy filings together have resulted in speculation about whether more are on the horizon

Other cities now on the radar include Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Portland, Ore., and Santa Fe, N.M. — following Moody’s saying in April that they and 11 other municipalities were being reviewed for a possible credit downgrade, the result of a new analysis system that further considers pension liabilities.

Though much of the national concerns have focused on pension liabilities, heath care costs for retired municipal employees pose an equally if not larger problem.

Amid the $18.5 billion in long-term debt that led Detroit to file for bankruptcy is roughly $3.5 billion in under-funded pension liabilities. However, roughly $5.7 billion of that debt is health care costs and so-called “other post-employment benefits.”

The situation is highlighted a Pew Charitable Trusts Study of 61 major U.S. cities that found they collectively had enough money to cover 74 percent of pension liabilities but only 6 percent of health care liabilities.

The total difference between what the cities owed to retired employees and what was covered equaled $217.2 billion, according the report, “A Widening Gap in Cities.” It was released in January and based on 2009 numbers, the most complete data at the time.

The nonprofit group also released a report in March that found New York City has a combined $1.15 billion in under-funded pension and health-care costs, followed by such major cities as Philadelphia, at $8.6 billion. In comparison, that figure for Detroit was $12.9 billion.

The video clip shown here is from PJTV and the three commentators summarize the reasons Detroit and other cities will continue to fail.

As our nation continues down the road of higher taxes, more regulations, and runaway spending by politicians only interested in the next election more cities will fail. Just wait until 30 million illegal immigrants are added in the equation.

Today we have 47 million people on food stamps. That’s 15% of the population. Even college students are receiving food stamps today.

Rather than use the meager funds available to cities and states for big union contracts, luxury projects like light rail, and promoting more welfare programs they need to pay attention to the basic municipal functions of police and fire services, garbage collection, repairing crumbling sewer lines, streets, and bridges — the things people pay property taxes for.

Since the early days of the Republic, America’s cities have been centers of innovation, wealth, and power. As they grew larger and their governments more commanding, places like Boston, Chicago, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis also became battlegrounds where political machines contended for influence. The early ideal of the part-time citizen-legislator gave way to the professional pol. In his 1904 “The Shame of the Cities”, Lincoln Steffens observed that big-city governments across America had been undermined by a series of problems, including police corruption, politicians using the public till for their own gain, and rampant bribery in awarding public contracts, known at the time as “boodle.”

The Democratic Party is a party of special interest groups, or “factions” as James Madison called them. There are racial groups, LGBT groups, unions (both private and public sector), teachers unions, environmentalists, and pro-abortion advocates. All of these groups want something and the Democratic Party is who they turn to for it. They want plunder and the Democrats will give it to them as long as it brings them votes. They don’t care about the future. They only care about the next election and how to retain their power.

Decades of corruption built a mountain of liabilities, while scaring off the taxpayers needed to finance those promises. It’s like a movie trailer for the blockbuster disaster film to come, when America’s declining demographics catch up with the federal government’s vastly higher mountain of unfunded commitments. Detroit is the city our debt monster destroyed to get limbered up for the greater fiscal carnage to come.

Death spirals spin even faster when it’s possible for productive workers to escape. The population implosion in Detroit was swifter and more dramatic than our national workforce collapse, because it was relatively easy for citizens to escape the degenerate loop of declining municipal services and rising taxes but in the long run, the result will be the same. There are people capable of fleeing the United States entirely, when our moment of truth arrives. Their departure will be a good sign that the Great Crash is at hand. The loss of their capital and business acumen will hasten our collapse.

We should stop the death spiral before things get bad enough for the smart money to take a powder. Of course, there were people in Detroit who said the same thing, twenty or thirty years ago. They were drowned out by a perpetual-motion political machine, which promised the good times would keep rolling forever. Even now, frantic liberals are gibbering that Republican austerity measures somehow killed Detroit, even though Democrats held absolute power for fifty years. You’ll hear the same things right before the end at the national level too. In the very near future, you’ll be told your Social Security and Medicare benefits are being cut because evil rich people don’t want to pay enough taxes to fund them. It won’t matter that there literally isn’t enough money in the entire world to cover Uncle Sam’s long-term liabilities. Anger and resentment will be milked for power until the very end. Those who do the milking will soar away from the wreckage with millions of dollars in their pockets.

Pension and benefit liabilities are really just a concentrated form of the same toxin eating away at every level of government: deficit spending. They’re just another way to spend tomorrow’s money, which is easy, because tomorrow casts very few votes in today’s elections. The people who fret over “sustainable” development at environmentalist conferences are nowhere to be found when it’s time to discuss sustainable government. Forward-thinking “progressives” are perfectly happy to be ruled by the dead hand of past entitlement promises. Those who regard the U.S. Constitution as a dead scrap of old parchment think union benefit plans are chiseled on tablets of stone.

Here’s a trick question for you: What does the government buy with its billions in deficit money? The correct answer is: commitments. Very little of that crazy deficit spending is a one-time outlay, evaporating without trace in the next fiscal year. Governments use money they don’t have to rack up long-term spending commitments, which quickly acquire human faces. Cut a million in spending, and you’ll be putting this government employee out of work, or trimming back a program that person depends on for their livelihood. Lay a finger on the pension plans of Detroit, and you’ll outrage people who are counting on those payments to finance their lengthy retirements. Promises were made. Reform is betrayal. You’ll never see a more motivated group of voters than people who believe their well-earned benefits are at risk.

Maybe the people who made all those unsustainable promises should have thought about the grim day when it would become impossible to keep them. Perhaps the outraged beneficiaries should direct their ire at the people who bought their support by making commitments that can no longer be fulfilled. But it doesn’t work that way. The people who made the unsustainable commitments are long gone. Criticizing them is living in the past. All that’s left to discuss is how today’s young people will be indentured to pay off bills they never had a chance to vote against. Fate is written one borrowed dollar at a time, and the “progressives” tell us it cannot be unwritten. We surrender control of our fate whenever we allow the government to spend money it doesn’t have. We leave our children with a hope chest full of chains.

Liberals pretend that debt is only a concern when they want to talk about tax increases. And even then, it’s not that big of a concern. They’re not interested in balancing the budget, much less paying off the mountain of debt already incurred. Skeptics are told there’s no reason to worry, we’ll always be able to borrow more money. And then the day arrives that we can’t. It happens fast. The final promises of unlimited government credit are still ringing in our ears. Contrary to the promises of charlatans, government debt is not an abstract number floating on some spreadsheet. Money cannot be printed forever. There comes a moment that the cost of financing debt abruptly explodes, and suddenly the government’s financial commitments balloon by 30 percent, 50 percent, or more. Draconian tax increases are presented as the only possible solution. The geese that lay our golden eggs are duly strangled. And then what? It’s funny how quickly political rhetoric can shift from bright futures of unlimited possibility, to grim demands for the cash needed to fulfill ironclad entitlement commitments.

Private corporations and unions make unsustainable problems too, but at some point unsupportable demands will kill off the host organism. The company and its unions collapse together, leaving others to pick up the pieces and devise a more workable business plan. That’s what happened with the Twinkie — it’s back on store shelves following a cycle of creative destruction. But that’s not what happened with Big Auto or Detroit, is it? When the operation reaches a certain size, we’re told it can’t be allowed to undergo the cleansing cycle of death and rebirth which means suddenly it’s everyone’s problem.

As goes Detroit, so goes America. The steering wheel is lashed in place, a cement block has been dropped on the gas pedal, the emergency exits are welded shut, and nervous passengers are told to swallow their complaints. The commitments that were so very easy to make yesterday will become impossible to fulfill tomorrow. The range of options available to deal with fiscal crisis will be dramatically restricted, as every strategy to increase economic growth is pronounced unthinkable. How much flexibility does Detroit have to win investors, and attract productive labor back to the city? How much flexibility will Barack Obama’s successor have to restart the American economy? Promises become curses, then wither away into epitaphs.

For more photos of crumbling Detroit please click here.

As Stephen D. Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership, writes in the Daily Beast:

“However long it takes, bankruptcy will cut Detroit’s debt, but that’s a necessary, not sufficient condition of any revitalization. On its own, bankruptcy can’t reform city government, reduce unemployment, bring down the crime rate, or reverse depopulation. Eventually, Kevyn Orr will exit the stage, and leave those challenges for Detroit’s citizens and public officials to resolve. In the near-term, the task for Detroit city government is usefully simple: bring down the debt. If progress is made on other fronts along the way, private sector actors will most likely be responsible. Government was not the only cause of Detroit’s decline, and will play, at most, a supporting role in the city’s revival.”

Did The IRS Scandal Begin at the Top

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” ― James Madison, Federalist No. 62, 1788

When James Madison issued the words quoted above in Federalist No. 62 he could have been speaking about the current U.S. Tax Code. In Federalist 62 Madison was addressing how the Senate should be constructed and empowered. He wrote the following pertaining to voluminous, complicated, and mutable laws:

“The internal effects of a mutable policy are still more calamitous. It poisons the blessing of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW, not for the MANY.

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.”

Madison wrote these words 225 years ago in support of ratification of the newly adopted constitution. If he were alive today he would not only be appalled at the U.S. Tax Code, ObamaCare and the millions of regulations issuing forth from the various departments of executive branch. Although Congress has authorized these departments such as the IRS, Health and Human Services, the EPA, the Departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Treasury, and Interior the power to regulate and issue regulations they rarely read, or even are aware of the regulations and he impact they have on we the people.

This brings us to the current scandal brewing to a boil of the illegal actions of the IRS in targeting Tea Party and conservative organizations by slow-walking or denying their applications for a 501(c)(4) tax exemption.

The spin from Obama’s minions in the press and his spokespersons know and “strategist” is that this policy originated from some low-level drones working in the Cincinnati office of the IRS. This is pure unadulterated balderdash!

Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was.

President Obama and Company are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

Mr. Obama now professes shock and outrage that bureaucrats at the IRS did exactly what the president of the United States said was the right and honorable thing to do. "He put a target on our backs, and he's now going to blame the people who are shooting at us?" asks Idaho businessman and longtime Republican donor Frank VanderSloot.

Mr. VanderSloot is the Obama target who in 2011 made a sizable donation to a group supporting Mitt Romney. In April 2012, an Obama campaign website named and slurred eight Romney donors. It tarred Mr. VanderSloot as a "wealthy individual" with a "less-than-reputable record." Other donors were described as having been "on the wrong side of the law."

This was the Obama version of the phone call — put out to every government investigator (and liberal activist) in the land.

Twelve days later, a man working for a political opposition-research firm called an Idaho courthouse for Mr. VanderSloot's divorce records. In June, the IRS informed Mr. VanderSloot and his wife of an audit of two years of their taxes. In July, the Department of Labor informed him of an audit of the guest workers on his Idaho cattle ranch. In September, the IRS informed him of a second audit, of one of his businesses. Mr. VanderSloot, who had never been audited before, was subject to three in the four months after Mr. Obama teed him up for such scrutiny.

The last of these audits was only concluded in recent weeks. Not one resulted in a fine or penalty. But Mr. VanderSloot has been waiting more than 20 months for a sizable refund and estimates his legal bills are $80,000. That figure doesn't account for what the president's vilification has done to his business and reputation.

The Obama call for scrutiny wasn't a mistake; it was the president's strategy — one pursued throughout 2012. The way to limit Romney money was to intimidate donors from giving. Donate, and the president would at best tie you to Big Oil or Wall Street, at worst put your name in bold, and flag you as "less than reputable" to everyone who worked for him: the IRS, the SEC, the Justice Department. The president didn't need a telephone; he had a megaphone.

The same threat was made to conservative groups that might dare play in the election. As early as January 2010, Mr. Obama would, in his state of the union address, cast aspersions on the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, claiming that it "reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests" (read conservative groups).

The president derided "tea baggers." Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi compared them to "terrorists." In more than a dozen speeches Mr. Obama raised the specter that these groups represented nefarious interests that were perverting elections. "Nobody knows who's paying for these ads," he warned. "We don't know where this money is coming from," he intoned.

In case the IRS missed his point, he raised the threat of illegality: "All around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates. And they don't have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation."

On the other hand “as applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with obviously liberal names were approved in as little as nine months”, USA Today reported last Tuesday. These included Bus for Progress and Progress Florida.

According to the Daily Caller’s Charles C. Johnson, the Barack H. Obama Foundation — directed by Abongo Malik Obama, the president’s half-brother and best man at his wedding — filed IRS Form 990s for 2008 through 2010 in May 2011. It then scored 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status on June 26, 2011, retroactive to April 30, 2008. The reputedly Virginia-based foundation won this valuable designation without registering with state authorities. Evidently, IRS officials did not care that, as the Daily Caller stated, Abongo Obama “was accused of being a wife beater and seducing the newest of his twelve wives while she was a 17-year-old school girl.”

IRS also sent ProPublica, a liberal news organization, the confidential, unapproved nonprofit applications of nine conservative groups. ProPublica redacted financial information and then published six of these forms.

A pro-traditional-matrimony group called the National Organization for Marriage claims that the IRS gave copies of its tax documents to the pro-gay-marriage Human Rights Campaign. NOM says that HRC used those leaked documents to slam NOM and a donor identified therein: Mitt Romney.

IRS wants to hire 1,954 new agents to enforce 47 different provisions of ObamaCare. Combine these political leaks with the electronic medical records that doctors and insurers soon must render unto Obama’s bureaucrats. Imagine an exposé on conservative activists who use Viagra. Why not out a rising GOP star whose psychotherapist treats her exotic sex fantasies? Far-fetched? Not after this week. Indeed, 15 IRS agents are being sued in California court for allegedly swiping without a search warrant the medical records of some 10 million Americans in March 2011.

Short of directly asking federal agencies to investigate these groups, this is as close as it gets. Especially as top congressional Democrats, like Chuck Schumer and Max Baucus were putting in their own versions of phone calls, sending letters to the IRS that accused it of having "failed to address" the "problem" of groups that were "improperly engaged" in campaigns. Because guess who controls that "independent" agency's budget?

The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders — openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president's "animosity" toward Citizens United, might he have "appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those." Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with "That's a preposterous assertion."

Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is "outraged" and "angry" that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, and even law-breaking. After all, he expects the IRS to "operate with absolute integrity." Even when he does not.

So who are these low-level drones responsible for the illegal actions of the IRS?

Steven Miller — the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service while the scandal unfolded. He was fired from the post on Wednesday after an internal IRS report found that poor management, and not partisan politics, led to an "inappropriate" focus on conservative groups starting in 2010. The IRS has acknowledged Miller knew about the targeting of conservative groups in 2012 but did not disclose the practice. He was the former deputy IRS commissioner for services and enforcement and had been at the agency for more than 25 years.

At a House of Representatives hearing last Friday, Miller apologized for "foolish mistakes" made at the IRS and said they resulted from a heavy workload. He leaves the agency in June.

Douglas Shulman — IRS commissioner before Miller took over in the acting capacity in November 2012. A Democrat, he was appointed to the post under Republican President George W. Bush in 2008.

In March 2012, Shulman told lawmakers that IRS personnel applied no extra scrutiny to conservative groups, although the new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) said that Miller knew of the targeting as early as March 8, 2012.

Congressional leaders sent letters to Shulman inquiring about IRS targeting as early as June 2011. According to the inspector general, the IRS's Determinations Unit began targeting conservative groups in March or April of 2010.

Danny Werfel — the White House budget official selected by Obama to replace Miller as acting IRS chief on May 22.

The Obama administration's point man in overseeing the "sequestration" budget cuts, he will now tackle the IRS scandal.

Lois Lerner — director of the IRS's tax-exempt division who broke the news of the scandal on May 10 at an American Bar Association function when she publicly apologized for the discriminatory practices. The admission came just days after she testified in Congress but did not mention it. According to the inspector general, Lerner learned about the targeting as early as June 29, 2011.

Lawmakers have called for her removal from the IRS.

Miller on Friday acknowledged that the scandal-exposing question-and-answer session had been planned.

Joseph Grant — IRS acting commissioner of tax exempt/government entities division at the center of the scandal. On last Thursday he announced plans to retire on June 3 after joining the IRS in 2005. He took over the reins of the tax exempt division in late 2010 and Lerner worked under him.

Sarah Hall Ingram — Preceded Grant as head of the IRS's tax-exempt division when the targeting of conservative groups began. Since December 2010, she has headed up the IRS division handling Obama administration's healthcare reform and received $103,000 in bonuses.

William Wilkins — IRS chief counsel who is an Obama political appointee. He is the top legal adviser and takes the lead on all litigation involving the IRS. His office, although not necessarily Wilkins personally, knew of the targeting as early as August 2011, according to TIGTA. The IRS said Wilkins did not participate in the August 2011 meeting, which the agency said involved "staff attorneys several layers below Wilkins."

J. Russell George — Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration. Investigated the complaints against the IRS and issued the public report on targeting of conservative groups. The IRS is an arm of the Treasury Department and lawmakers at the hearings are scrutinizing George for not issuing warnings about the practice earlier.

IRS's Cincinnati field office employees — oversaw the reviews of tax-exempt applications. According to TIGTA, the Ohio unit set its own criteria for checking tax-exempt groups in the absence of clear guidance from more senior officials.

Republican lawmakers have named five workers they hope to bring in for questioning: Holly Paz, Washington-based director of rulings and agreements for the tax exempt division; Greg Muthert, a veteran Cincinnati office worker; Joseph Herr and Elizabeth Hofacre, who were cited by some Tea Party groups as handling their tax-exempt applications; and John Shafer, whom lawmakers described as "screening group manager."

A congressional aide said the five workers were chosen based on a timeline from the TIGTA report that listed the job roles involved in the activity. It was unclear whether these employees had any role in any wrongdoing.

President Barack Obama — has said he was not aware of the ongoing practice, calling it intolerable and inexcusable. His Press Secretary Jay Carney said the White House Counsel was notified of the IRS's targeting during the week of April 22.

Obama has appeared multiple times in public to condemn the IRS's actions and has promised to cooperate with congressional investigations and a Justice Department probe, but he has not demanded a special prosecutor look into the allegations.

Representative Dave Camp — Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that is investigating the matter. On June 3, 2011, he sent a letter to then-Commissioner Shulman, inquiring about IRS targeting of taxpayers who donated to conservative groups and audits of tax-exempt organizations. The IRS then halted reviews of any tax-exempt groups but never addressed targeting concerns.

Representative Darrell Issa — Republican chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee also conducting an investigation. He is seeking interviews with five IRS employees to learn more about the tax-exempt reviews.

Senator Max Baucus — Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who said his tax code revamp will examine rules for nonprofit group's political activities in hopes of preventing such scandals in the future.

It should be obvious to anyone who can read or watch the TV news that these individuals are not low-level drones working in the Queen City. I am sure this list will grow as the hearings

The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote that, “A bedrock principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purposes.”

In her apology, Lois G. Lerner, IRS director of exempt organization, insisted that the extra scrutiny was not politically motivated. The narrow focus on partisanship as the primary point of controversy is dangerous. This is not first and foremost a partisan issue.

It doesn’t matter whom the IRS was targeting or what specific beliefs they held: the fact remains that for years the agency used its power to coerce, discourage and intimidate Americans from speaking out against what they viewed as bad policies, stifling the First Amendment right of every citizen to hold government accountable.

The president says he was not aware of the problem. If so, then the state of our freedom is far worse than any of us has imagined — the gray suits of the administrative state are in place and already taking over.

Pundits have compared the current scandal to Watergate, but this one, frankly, is worse.

When the abuses of Watergate – which included misuse of the IRS to launch audits against Nixon’s enemies — were discovered, they stopped and the perpetrators were brought to justice.

We don’t yet know just how high the knowledge of the IRS practice reached, but it’s already clear that a broad element of the agency — including those with the power to stop it — knew about this blatant violation of basic constitutional rights for years and did nothing to stop it.

Despite Ms. Lerner’s statements to the contrary, it’s clear the IRS has been using its power for years to discourage and intimidate Americans from participating in their right to hold government accountable.

This abuse of power and “unequal treatment under the law” is truly chilling, and must not be brushed away with apologies or toothless inspector-generals’ reports.

It demands a rigorous congressional investigation and severe punishment of the power-drunk bureaucrats who carried it out.

No government agency must be allowed to abuse its powers so blatantly and get away with it. The freedom Americans hold so dearly is at stake.

We must demand that government account for its actions.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) rightly captured the problem in a written statement when he said, “this shameful abuse of power transcend partisan differences. This should not be dismissed as just another conflict between left and right; it is a conflict between the federal government and the American people.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) noted, “What’s just as concerning is the expansive role this agency is charged to take in enforcing ObamaCare. An agency that has admitted to engaging in such corrupt, political activities has no place assessing or monitoring Americans’ personal health information.”

Finally, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said, “The First Amendment cannot and should not be renegotiated depending on which party holds power… I am determined to hold the IRS accountable for these unjust acts.”

We, the people, must demand that congressional leaders and the Obama administration get to the bottom of this issue and remove not just the responsible parties but the threat to our freedoms.

The IRS’s actions are the stuff of Third World juntas, not the greatest constitutional republic in human history.

It is unacceptable for a government agency use its power to intimidate American citizens into silence. We must stop this abuse of government over the governed and ensure this never happens again to any segment of the American population, regardless of their political leanings.

Welcome to the Soviet Union

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. — Vladimir Lenin

This story should warm Mary Elizabeth Williams’ heart. Williams of course is the Salon.com blogger who recently informed her readers that “we” all need to get over the idea that parents should be the ones caring for children. According to Williams, and her partner in silliness, Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC, “the community” should be the one to do that job. Neither Williams nor Harris-Perry ever explained just why parents shouldn’t care for their children. I can only assume the two consider the statement indisputable and therefore in need of no support. Needless to say, they didn’t ask any actual parents for feedback on the idea. Nor did they let readers know just who this “community” is that’s supposed to start caring for the nation’s 74.2 million children under the age of 18. Hey, when you have such a brilliant idea, it’s OK to let someone else work out the details.

Here’s an example of the actions of the “community” about whose “care” of children Williams and Harris-Perry are so thrilled. According to a report by Sacramento’s ABC News:

A Sacramento mom and dad, Anna Nikolayev and husband Alex have a little son they named Sammy. Sammy has a heart murmur, but apparently not one that risks his health. At age five months, he got the flu, so his mother and father took him to Sutter Memorial Hospital. Sutter kept him what seems to me an inordinate period of time — two weeks — during which Anna began to get the idea that Sammy wasn’t getting the best of care.

For example, one day Anna asked why a nurse was giving her son antibiotics.

“I asked her, for what is that? And she’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ I’m like, ‘you’re working as a nurse, and you don’t even know what to give to my baby for what,’” Anna explained.

According to Anna, a doctor later said Sammy shouldn’t have been on the antibiotics.

That type of negligence would give any caring parent pause. After all, hospitals make mistakes in care every day. Studies of the American health care system mark up a troubling number of deaths to medical negligence. The Journal of the American Medical Association puts the number at 230,000 per year just from hospital negligence alone.

Plus, two weeks in the hospital for the flu sounds a lot like the behavior of a business enterprise that’s trying to increase its billings. That take on the situation is corroborated by the fact that hospital personnel wanted to put Sammy into pediatric ICU in advance of performing heart surgery.

At that point, Anna took the baby out of Sutter Memorial without being discharged and over to Kaiser Permanente for a second opinion. Her entirely reasonable action apparently didn’t sit well with someone at Sutter. My guess is that at least part of the reason is that doctors at Kaiser said Sammy looked fine and sent him home with Anna and Alex.

Medical records from the doctor treating Sammy at Kaiser Permanente said the baby was clinically safe to go home with his parents. The doctor added, “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents.”

And when that happens, some skeptics, like those who work at health insurance companies, might start asking questions about the lengthy course of care Sammy was getting at Sutter. They might also decide the treatment wasn’t reasonable and necessary, and not to pay the bills. At this point, I’m going to guess that threat to getting paid is what motivated Sutter to call the police. Sutter told the police that the Nikolayevs were neglecting their son’s care, the police dutifully showed up at Kaiser, found out what the situation was and went away.

The police showed up there. They saw that the baby was fine,” Anna said. “They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought that this baby is dying on our arms.”

So police saw the report from the doctors, said, ‘okay guys, you have a good day,’ and they walked away,” Anna said.

But that wasn’t’ the script Sutter was reading from. Apparently, the idea that there was nothing about Sammy that needed lots of expensive medical attention didn’t sit well with them. Certainly Anna and Alex’s assertion of their rights as parents didn’t. So Sutter tried again. With Alex, Anna and Sammy at home the next day, the police showed up again, this time in the company of Child Protective Services.

“I was pushed against the building, smacked down. I said, ‘am I being placed under arrest?’ He smacked me down onto the ground, yelled out, ‘I think I got the keys to the house,’” Alex said.

Then police let themselves inside.

On home video shot with a camera Anna set up herself, police can be seen entering her front door on Wednesday.

“I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me ok?” a Sacramento police officer said in the video.

“He’s like, ‘okay let your son go,’ so I had to let him go, and he grabbed my arm, so I couldn’t take Sammy. And they took Sammy, and they just walked .”

To watch the video of little Sammy being taken at gun point by CPS click here, it’s horrifying and resembles the actions of a totalitarian state.

At this point, the police aren’t talking and CPS claims it’s a case of “severe neglect.” That’s “severe neglect” of the kind the Kaiser doctor didn’t notice in giving the little lad a clean bill of health. That’s “severe neglect” whose real meaning is “we can do anything we want to and no one can stop us.” CPS claimed “We conduct a risk assessment of the child’s safety and rely heavily on the direction of health care providers.”

Did CPS consult the Kaiser doctor? Apparently not. But one thing is certain, little Sammy was taken from his parents and shifted into the care of — can you guess — Sutter Memorial Hospital.

The story does not end here. The Nikolayevs, immigrants for Russia, hired an attorney and took their case to court. They are celebrating after a Sacramento county judge ordered their 5-month-old son be taken out of protective custody and transported to a Stanford hospital in Palo Alto, News 10 reported.

“The decision came one week after police and Child Protective Services removed Anna and Alex Nikolayev’s son, Sammy, from the couple’s house. The reason: They had sought a second medical opinion for their child.

The Nikolayevs can now see Sammy whenever they want and have control over the child’s medical decisions, but CPS will continue to monitor the situation.

“It’s like a special day for us,” Anna told News 10, a local ABC affiliate. “We’re like a unit with our son again.”

Now, by order of the judge, Sammy will stay at Stanford Medical Center, where he will get a second medical opinion. However, the couple must allow CPS to visit their home once Sammy is discharged, and they must agree to never take him from a hospital against medical advice.”

All Sammy’s parents wanted to do was get second opinion before subjecting him to heart surgery. This is something any responsible and ration parent would do.

Megyn Kelly, of Fox News, interviewed Anna and Alex Nikolayev and their lawyers, Joe Weinberger and Robert Powell, on America Live on April 30^th.

"They still want to control our life," said Anna, responding to Megyn's question about why authorities should still be able to make regular visits to check up on Sammy.

Weinberger said the Nikolayevs did what any parents would do in seeking a second opinion before deciding a major surgery for their child.

"It's not like they went home and sat around. They went to another hospital," said Weinberger, noting that the parents had an "antagonistic" relationship with the first doctor.

Alex Nikolayev said he received a call from his wife the next day, saying cops were outside and going to break the door down.

"I asked them if they had a warrant. Next thing you know I'm basically being pushed, dropped to the ground," he said, recalling that officers handcuffed him, then took away his keys and tried to enter the house. At that point, he said he called his wife from outside and told her to call 911.

Weinberger said he believes authorities have been lying and trying to cover up "to justify an action that is completely unjustifiable," vowing that a lawsuit is "absolutely" forthcoming.

Please watch the full interview here to hear the heart-wrenching account of government gone out of control.

A California lawmaker is now calling for a full audit of the state’s Child Protective Services after the agency helped police take Sammy from his parents. California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is (R-Twin Peaks) behind the push for an audit of Child Protective Services. “If this mother committed any crime, it’s caring about her child too much. The mother is the only rational figure here, and so I am demanding answers from CPS,” Donnelly said.

Donnelly said since looking into the Nikolayev case, he's also heard from many parents with similar complaints against CPS. He hopes to investigate each case as he did when he first heard about Anna and Alex and started contacting officials at both Sutter Memorial and CPS.

"The first question I asked them is, 'Are these parents abusive? Do you suspect that they are guilty of neglect or something along those lines,' and they said, 'Absolutely not; 99.9% these are just normal parents,' and I said then, "What the Hell are you doing?'" Donnelly said.

"They should have done the reports. They should have done all those researches before they would walk in our home, and took our son from our hands," Anna said.

The Department of Health and Human Services that oversees CPS declined Donnelly's request for more information. Now, the legislator, who sits on the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, plans to take a closer look at the agency he says has raised deep suspicions.

You can watch News 10 interview with Donnelly here.

Today with agencies such as the CPS along with our K-12 public school system and their constant increasing of political correctness in the schools and curriculums parents have less and less control, or even influence, over their children and their education. This influence and control is slowly shifting more and more to the state. Sure, we need, as a civil and caring society watch out for children who are physically and sexually abused and are victims of drug addicted parents. But this has to be done with caution and oversight in order to avoid abuses from the system as happened to the Nikolayevs. Perhaps before making a Gestapo-like raid, a warrant should be obtained and abiding by the IV Amendment to the Constitution. Suspected criminals are afforded this right but it seems the Nikolayevs were not. The unbridled power of the CPS should not be allowed.

According to an article by Chris Branson, an attorney in Houston Texas writing on the ten things you should do if CPS shows up at your home. Branson relates what was told him by a CPS social worker:

"I wish I could shout from the highest mountain to parents to vigilantly learn their rights! If they knew what their legal rights were there would be significantly lower numbers of child removals. Social workers, unlike policemen making an arrest, are not required to inform the parents of their legal rights. All we had to do to remove a child was to show up at the home and tell the parents we came to remove the kids. Often times we would take a police officer with us (never telling the parents he was there for MY protection, not to enforce an order or warrant). 99% of the time we never had to get a warrant or court order to remove kids because the parents would be so intimidated by the officer that they would just hand their kids over and show up for court the next day. But if they had legally known their parental rights, they could simply have told me that I could not take the children unless I had a court order signed by the judge or had a warrant to remove the kids. The majority of times parents were just intimidated and gave consent for the whole process to begin; completely unknowing of what rights they just waived."

The problem in Sacramento was that the CPS the Nikolayevs being immigrants probably were not as familiar with the Bill of Rights as they should have been thus allowing the CPS to run roughshod over their rights while the police — who should have known better — allowed it to happen

This is only one of the most recent and public embodiments of CPS working underhandedly in concert with so-called authorities and health practitioners to literally kidnap children from their parents.

The story goes a long way in depicting the collectivist mindset being promulgated and embraced by the left, the most recent example of which had MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry declaring all children belong to the “community,” in other words, to the state. “We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” Harris-Perry recently stated in an awkward 30-second indoctrination piece aired during breaks on MSNBC.

The right to choose what’s best for your own child is a speck fading gradually in the rear view mirror, and as Sarah at the Healthy Home Economist correctly surmised, the day has come where walking through hospital doors means immediately surrendering your right to dictate what’s best medically for your child:

“Parents are increasingly becoming irrelevant when it comes to decisions regarding their children’s medical care. Jodi and Scott Ferris experienced a similar traumatic event when they questioned the Hep B vaccination for their baby at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Their baby was also taken by CPS.

The moral of this story? Tick off doctors and nurses at a hospital and they could very well sic CPS on you – with police breaking down your door in short order.

Think long and hard before taking your children to the hospital my friends. Once you go through that door, the medical decisions about your child are no longer within your control.”

Do you think seeking a second opinion is cause for CPS involvement, or should parents have a right to decide which doctors treat their child? Soon this overreaching control by the state will begin to affect home schooling, not for the benefit of the child but for the benefit of the school. The schools and the teachers unions will want that state and federal money allocated to the student to fill their coffers. Welcome to the Soviet Union.

The Cloward–Piven Strategy is Working

“The ultimate objective of this strategy—to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income — will be questioned by some. Because the ideal of individual social and economic mobility has deep roots, even activists seem reluctant to call for national programs to eliminate poverty by the outright redistribution of income.” — Cloward and Piven

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the Cloward-Piven Strategy seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue an African American man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration. "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare — about 8 million, at the time — probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls." Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces for major economic reform at the national level."

Their article called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, leftwing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all — working and non-working people alike. Local officials would clutch at this idea like drowning men to a lifeline. They would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into chaos, Washington would have to act. This was an example of what are commonly called Trojan Horse movements — mass movements whose outward purpose seems to be providing material help to the downtrodden, but whose real objective is to draft poor people into service as revolutionary foot soldiers; to mobilize poor people en masse to overwhelm government agencies with a flood of demands beyond the capacity of those agencies to meet. The flood of demands was calculated to break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down. Fear, turmoil, violence and economic collapse would accompany such a breakdown — providing perfect conditions for fostering radical change. That was the theory.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States — often violently — bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven's article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States -- often violently — bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation.

Regarding Wiley's tactics, The New York Times commented on September 27, 1970, "There have been sit-ins in legislative chambers, including a United States Senate committee hearing, mass demonstrations of several thousand welfare recipients, school boycotts, picket lines, mounted police, tear gas, arrests and, on occasion, rock-throwing, smashed glass doors, overturned desks, scattered papers and ripped-out phones." These methods proved effective. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," writes Sol Stern in the City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy." As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.

The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in "the end of welfare as we know it" — the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Both Cloward and Piven attended the White House signing of the bill as guests of President Clinton.

Most Americans to this day have never heard of Cloward and Piven. But New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attempted to expose them in the late 1990s. As his drive for welfare reform gained momentum, Giuliani accused the militant scholars by name, citing their 1966 manifesto as evidence that they had engaged in deliberate economic sabotage. "This wasn't an accident," Giuliani charged in a 1997 speech. "It wasn't an atmospheric thing, it wasn't supernatural. This is the result of policies and programs designed to have the maximum number of people get on welfare."

Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as candidly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued to rely on the tactic of overloading the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other sectors of the bureaucracy, wherever they detected weakness.

In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "voting rights movement," which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like ACORN, the organization that spear-headed this campaign, the new "voting rights" movement was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Its flagship organizations were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.

All three of these organizations — ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE — set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. The Motor-Voter bill is largely responsible for swamping the voter rolls with "dead wood" — invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people — thus opening the door to the unprecedented levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections. At this time Barack Obama was a community organizer in Chicago deeply committed to the aims and goals of ACORN and an advocate of the Cloward and Piven Strategy and the tactics of his mentor Saul Alinsky. While Obama’s Acorn connection has not gone entirely unreported, its depth, extent, and significance have been poorly understood. Typically, media background pieces note that, on behalf of Acorn, Obama and a team of Chicago attorneys won a 1995 suit forcing the state of Illinois to implement the federal “motor-voter” bill.

The new "voting rights" coalition combines mass voter registration drives — typically featuring high levels of fraud — with systematic intimidation of election officials in the form of frivolous lawsuits, unfounded charges of "racism" and "disenfranchisement," and "direct action" (street protests, violent or otherwise). Just as they swamped America's welfare offices in the 1960s, Cloward-Piven devotees now seek to overwhelm the nation's understaffed and poorly policed electoral system. Their tactics set the stage for the Florida recount crisis of 2000, and have introduced a level of fear, tension and foreboding to U.S. elections heretofore encountered mainly in Third World countries.

While Acorn holds to NWRO’s radical economic framework and its confrontational 1960’s-style tactics, the targets and strategy have changed. Acorn prefers to fly under the national radar, organizing locally in liberal urban areas — where local legislators and reporters are often “slow to grasp how radical Acorn’s positions really are.” Acorn’s new goals are municipal “living wage” laws targeting “big-box” stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks — efforts styled as combating “predatory lending.” Unfortunately, instead of helping workers, Acorn’s living-wage campaigns drive businesses out of the very neighborhoods where jobs are needed most. Acorn’s opposition to welfare reform only threatens to worsen the self-reinforcing cycle of urban poverty and family breakdown. Perhaps most mischievously Acorn uses banking regulations to pressure financial institutions into massive “donations” that it uses to finance supposedly non-partisan voter turn-out drives.

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and his Shadow Party, through whose support the Cloward-Piven strategy continues to provide a blueprint for some of the Left's most ambitious campaigns.

The now-infamous Cloward-Piven Strategy is a clear roadmap to socialism: get so many people addicted to government entitlements that the economic system collapses, and in the resulting chaos the populace will demand and vote for a new economic system in which everyone is supported by the state.

Sounds logical (if nefarious), and President Obama seems hell-bent on bringing it to fruition in the United States. The problem for Obama’s inner socialist is that he’s also required for appearance’s sake to attempt a rescue of the American economy using Keynesian principles. This self-cancelling combo-strategy is the underlying cause of our economic stagnation.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report that said that the labor force participation rate (LFPR) dropped to 63.6%, the lowest rate since Jimmy Carter was in office. Essentially that means that of the population of 16 year and older, 37.4% of them decided not to work or not to seek work. That’s 88.8 million people! To put that in perspective, when George Bush took office the LFPR was 67.2% and eight years later it was 1.5% lower at 65.7%. It has dropped 2.1% in Barack Obama’s first four years, the most precipitous drop in workforce participation since they started keeping records in 1948.

But percentages only tell you so much. Each of those percentage points represents approximately 2.5 million people. Since Barack Obama became president over 5 million people have simply stopped trying to find a job. If just half of those 5 million people were still looking for jobs, the unemployment rate would actually be 9.4% rather than the official 7.8%. Now some of those are students who chose to go to college because they couldn’t find a job and others are senior citizens who’ve retired from the workforce, but the overwhelming majority of those 5 million are people who have simply given up hope.

And that’s the point, and the problem. Not since the 1970’s have the American people felt so discouraged about the prospects for the nation in general and their individual economic circumstances in particular. For most of American history the notion of having a job, doing something productive for your family and your community was the norm. Barack Obama is seeking to rapidly change that, and he got a good head start during his first term. The President has doubled the number of people on food stamps and he gutted Bill Clinton’s welfare reform. That’s his version of Supply Side Economics, he supplies the benefits and people will be happy to give him four more years. Add to this the regulatory nightmare he has unleashed on businesses and four years of demagoguing those who drive American productivity and you have an ever increasing number of Americans who believe they either can’t or don’t have to find jobs.

For much of the 20th century the United States was looked at as the place to come to seek your fortune, to make or do something with your life, basically where anything was possible. Although Hollywood, Coke, and Levis brought the American Dream to the rest of the world, far more importantly, most Americans were pursuing it here at home, if not living it. Today something altogether different is occurring. As the Gallop poll demonstrated, much diminished is that “Can do” feeling that most Americans had for most of our history, the feeling that prosperity and success were just around the corner and anyone could achieve it if they worked hard enough. America has become a state of dependence, where half the population pays no income taxes and where 40% of the population suckles at the public tit, either in the form of government handouts or as employees of a bloated bureaucracy.

How long can a population survive when fewer and fewer people are supporting an ever increasing population of non-producers? As Cloward and Piven predicted in 1966 you could overload the welfare system in an effort to bring about a redistribution of wealth. If you read their manifesto, you can’t help but recognize their methods in Barack Obama’s policies.

While it’s impossible to know what the future holds, it’s not difficult to wonder what the situation of the country might be in 4 years if the same policies that brought us to where we are today were implemented during the president’s second term.

If Food Stamp growth were to decline to 25% (vs. 50% over the President’s first term) there will still be 60 million Americans on the program. If Social Security Disability (which is at its highest level on record) increases by another 25% as it did in the last four years, a total of 13 million Americans will be on disability. (What’s most heart breaking about this programs is that the rampant fraud and bureaucratic incompetence are keeping benefits out of the hands of the truly needy.) Those measures alone would bring the total of people receiving government checks (i.e. money taken from taxpayers or borrowed that will have to be paid back by taxpayers) from 18% of our population today to almost 23%. Add in the 8 million or so people receiving unemployment benefits and the 4.4 million on welfare and you have over a quarter of the population on the receiving end of some wealth redistribution program. On the workforce side, if the LFPR declines another two percent it will sit at 61.6%, a level not seen since 1977. With a LFPR of 61.6% and an unemployment rate that stayed at today’s 7.9%, we would have only 141 million workers supporting a population of 323 million people verses today’s 144 million supporting a population of 313. That’s 3 million fewer workers supporting a population that would have grown by 10 million! Inverted pyramids like that don’t last for long.

At the end of the day, one has to wonder what exactly were those 65 million voters hoping for when they voted for Barack Obama? If it was more of the same they just might be in luck at least in the short run. It appears that the President plans on doubling down on his policies. He appears to be executing the socialist Cloward Piven Strategy perfectly. While his devotees may be happy with his rhetoric today, they will likely not be happy when his grand strategy succeeds tomorrow. The problem with socialism in America is that it assumes a static nature of the citizenry, i.e. that government can impose whatever requirements on workers and producers and they will have no choice but to comply. Nothing could be farther from the truth. With countries from Australia to Canada to Singapore to Estonia to Denmark offering greater levels of economic freedom, those who fund what the government redistributes have many options available to them. Money, like water, flows to the areas of least resistance and the resistance is increasing in the United States. Eduardo Saverin (of Facebook fame), Tina Turner and a record number of other American citizens are making it clear that do indeed have options. Lots of companies do too. When all of the producers have finally left the country, all that will be left of Barack Obama’s redistributive state will be those who no longer know how to fend for themselves. Somehow I can’t imagine that being the Nirvana that Obama voters were thinking of.

But the economy, while the main focus point of the Cloward and Piven Strategy, it is not the only thing happening in the Obama administration. Their other factor is chaos. Right now the Obama masterminds are overloading the Congress, press, and people with numerous issues that are dulling the senses of the voters. Immigration, gun control, sequesters gay marriage, health care, regulations, crony capitalism, government bail-outs, North Korea, Afghanistan and an overblown and ridiculous budget — a budget that will only reduce the increase in spending, the deficit, and the national debt. All of these factors are creating chaos and diverting the efforts of those in opposition to Obama’s plans.

The Democratic controlled Senate is rushing immigration and gun control bills through the Congress with little or no debate or hearings. The “path to citizenship” proposed in the various proposed immigration bills will add somewhere between 10-20 million new welfare recipients to the mix along with dramatically increasing the cost of health care and bankrupting the states through their Medicare payments thus further overloading the system.

The proposed gun control legislation, while not adding much to the deficit or debt, will increase government control over the citizenry by watering down the Bill of Rights. These measures are only a part of the chaos being fostered by Obama and his minions with little or no oversight from Congress.

While Richard Andrew Cloward is dead Frances Fox Piven is still pushing their strategy of redistribution towards the socialist state. This is a far cry from those men of the Gilded Age who built the greatest economic power in the world and our Founders who gave us the most unrestricted and freest government in the history of the world where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were the paramount factors in their thinking. Today the Cloward Piven Strategy seems to be working and our lawmakers are marching in lockstep while the voters are lining up to have their rice bowls filled by Uncle Sam.