Dec 29, 2011 | Economy
By Dr. Harold Pease
College enrollment is now in progress and a new semester or quarter begins in January. Dare I say to a generation whose work ethic has greatly diminished, what I was told prior to my many years of college? If you get a college degree you likely will have a higher level of income and more favorable working conditions. Certainly there are notable exceptions like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who have no degrees, and those who major in medieval art, or some such discipline were there exists no real employment demand. But by in large in this country, barring an accident or unusual health concern, if you are poor by the age of forty you chose to be so.
Your choices, made between ages twenty and thirty, largely place you where you will be the rest of your life. The road to security and prosperity is education and is available to everyone willing to work. I tell my students that they may not be able to run out of the ghetto, even walk, but all can crawl.
There was no silver spoon in my mouth, being second oldest of 14 children, this option applied to me as well. Few were poorer than we. All night factory work and all day classes meant sleeping when you could. This was so for many years.
Others may find work and satisfaction outside formal education, but most will struggle in its absence. I have yet to meet a re-entry student; one who dropped out then returned years later, who did not wish they had stayed in school. The choice seems to be clear for most young people, work your butt off in school for at least four years in expectation of an easier life, or without school for forty without such.
Many, all with excuses, do not choose the education highway, dropping out of high school or college and thus choose poverty. They allow themselves to accept a lower place in society. Some pick up the visual signs of poverty such as degrading language, coarseness in their behaviors, and the appearance of one who is poor. Sometimes homes are not painted and lawns uncut, back yards dirt and weeds. In time they are easily recognizable as poor. Many come to believe that they are owed the basics, even some of the privileges of life. These become wards of the state and accepting of the philosophy that “it’s not my fault” and politicians have no problem confiscating the rewards of those who do labor to give to them. Food stamps, subsidized school lunches, housing, and healthcare and hundreds of other charity programs, instead of incentivizing this class to believe in themselves and work to be self reliant, seemingly teach, even enable, dependence.
Unscrupulous politicians learn quickly that these can be managed by subsidized gift- giving from those who do produce, which ensures that they remain in office. The “freebie class” becomes their base. Last year 47.5% of the adult population paid no federal income tax. Those who paid for all the programs of the poor were the other 52.5%. As a class, the poor want more, lose their sense of gratitude for those who are forced to subsidize them, and grow ever larger without education. The tax paying class diminishes as confiscatory taxes rob them of the benefits of their labor. They become the working poor. In time they too may be, without additional education, enticed to work less and join the poor class.
So back to the choices we make which select our future dependence or independence. Those choices remain available. Some few reenter the education highway. Now with a companion and children they sacrifice evenings to elevate themselves. Perhaps it takes twice or thrice the time but there is an end to poverty if one chooses wisely.
Stay in school my young friends and return my older friends. You will never be sorry that you made this choice. Your choices today will place you where you will be ten years from now. This law applies to all. You do not have to rob, or have the government rob for you, the fruits of others. You do not have to be the fodder for politicians who wish to give you the benefits of those who produce so that they can remain in power and addict you to the philosophy that it is owed you.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 20, 2011 | Constitution
Dr Harold Pease
Consider the dilemma of the mother of Jesus when she was told of her soon to be pregnancy without benefit of marriage. A quarter of a century ago Mrs. Mary Santomaro wrote an unusual Christmas poem that has become a personal favorite—“If Mary Had Said No.” It warrants deep and serious reflection. Normally my readers are not treated to a poem and/or something written by another but this Christmas message cannot be said more profoundly by anyone other than to whom the message was given.
She was a young Israeli girl
Living with her mother, Anne.
Thrilled that Joseph, House of David,
Sought her daughter’s hand.
Anne was happy for she felt
She had not long to live.
Joseph would be good to her,
A happy life to Mary give.
The betrothal was announced
To family and all friends.
The preparations had been made.
Soon wedding vows would blend.
But then a strange thing happened
One day as Mary prayed,
Gabriel stood by her and spoke
“Hail, full of grace…” he said,
Then, “…the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women.”
And he told her even more,
She would bear a son, this omen.
She wondered at his greeting words.
She knew no man. How could this be?
“The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee,”
“…the power…Most High…over shadow thee; …”
This young Israeli girl then spoke,
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord;”
She accepted what God had asked,
“… be it done … according to Thy word.”
We all know as a direct result
A Blessed Babe was born
And laid within a manger
Upon a blessed morn.
For thirty-odd years, Emmanuel,
Then we put Him to scorn,
Crucified Him on a Cross
And all man’s sins were borne
By One Who could repair
The wrongs that man had done
And once again restore to each,
Adopted daughter, son.
Since that time more have died
Willingly for His Name.
In every age, from every land,
Sprung from martyrs, they came.
Christians, they have long been called,
Followers of the Holy One,
Living what He taught and lived
That triumph over death he won.
Many people since that time
Fought great evils to live as He
Carrying the flame of Eternal Truth,
Heads bowed, on bended knee.
But what if Mary had said, “No!”?
Suppose that she had then
Told God, “It’s not convenient.”
“Can’t afford the stipend.”
She might have said, “There’s no way!
Everyone will talk!”
“I don’t want to have a child.”
Today, would any blame her balk?
But if she had, chances are
The world would long be gone
And none of us would be here
To choose the right or wrong.
Long before we even arrived
The world would have become
A more-sophisticated people,
Fewer, hedonistic, everyone.
There would be no call to peace,
No inalienable rights assumed,
The mighty would gobble up the weak,
No intercessions for the doomed.
Entire nations would disappear,
Progeny ripped asunder
For within their very bodies
Sprang no new lives to encumber.
Pretty soon God would call off the world
Knowing we would never change.
Why put up with us any more,
This people of such evil-arrange?
One thing, though, we’d have no need
To make decisions we now do…
To kill each other, do as we want,
Live our life and abort a new!
But Mary didn’t do that.
Not a wail of complaint was wrung.
“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord.”
For this Jesus Christ was sprung!
There are many, including my own daughter, that pray everyday that they might have one of these rejected babies because their own bodies will not allow their having their own. Instead, over a million and a half mothers in the United States annually choose to extinguish that which moves inside them.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. Katie is his daughter-in-law. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 17, 2011 | Healthcare
By Katie and Dr. Harold Pease
The country is now 15 trillion dollars in debt. Many erroneously believe that the only way to solve this problem is to increase taxes rather than to cut spending. Judging by the extreme laws passed the last few years, more recently the Christmas Tree Tax unsuccessfully advocated by the President this winter, a tax on Christmas could come true. Let’s follow the Ghost of Christmas Future and see what such a bill might look like.
Congress recently discovered how unfair Christmas really is, as some get more presents than others. To correct this injustice, a 1,500-page law called the Christmas Equalization Tax is working its way through judiciary committees in both the House and Senate and will be on the floor of both houses very soon.
Under the new law, to begin next year, shoppers buying gifts for loved ones are required to fill out Form 13,207, The Affidavit of Gift Recipients, indicating said recipients by name, social security number, and birth date, and completing a five-page information sheet for each named recipient. Retailers then fill out Form 13,208, The Affidavit of Christmas Gifts, and forward the information to the IRS for national list tabulation.
The total allotment per Christmas per person is 20 gifts. Totals exceeding this number in intervals of 10 will be assessed a gradual value added tax up to 70% of the value of the gifts in excess. Overall value is also taxed up to 100% for any total exceeding $400. This information is submitted on The Affidavit of Excess Christmas Value (Form 13,209). If you have problems following the formulas, so do the lawyers who made them up. However it does help create many jobs for those in that industry, and ensure employment for them for decades to come in their efforts to help us keep the rules straight or in resulting litigation.
The amount collected will be given to the New Organization to Fight Underprivileged Nations (NOFUN). This organization supports those suffering from Christmas Deprivation Syndrome, a debilitating mental disorder recently discovered by psychologists to inhibit the development of ambition and drive, drastically reducing self-esteem, self-actualization, and quality of life.
Recipients must fill out a simple 10-page form entitled The Underprivileged Christmas Affidavit (Form 13,210), which allows participants to identify favorite gifts. Unlike the shoppers, benefit recipients would not be limited to 20 gifts. No doubt they have been “gift deprived” long enough and compensation must be made. This is the only way to guarantee fairness and equality for all people across the entire lifespan.
Currently, those applying for benefits from NOFUN do so by contacting their local Human Services Agency. Lawmakers are uncertain whether the program will remain with HSA or be turned over to ACORN, or some other reputable organization already in existence. The more likely option is to create a whole new department to oversee the program. The necessary “monitoring,” which certainly would create much needed employment to help stimulate the economy, would require at least 15,000 new federal employees.
The excess tax is thought to be sufficient for funding the under-gifted, but critics are skeptical about its ability to fund the 15,000 federal agents as well. Some say that unsympathetic shoppers will lower the number of gifts they buy to 20 per person, thus avoiding the excess tax altogether, and leaving the taxpayer to fund the $37 billion for both the “under-gifted” and the federal employees.
Proponents say this “disinformation” comes from in-compassionate right-wing extremists, who are simply in the pockets of evil money-mongering capitalists who oppose the individual gift limits. Proponents assure that the cost will be covered by the seventh stimulus package, the 3,500 paged bill now on the desk of your Congressmen and women.
Additional legislation on the table is to tax excessive tree height, Christmas decorations, and turkey size. Levels of happiness could also be taxed as soon as technology is able to measure it. Some even have suggested making the holiday illegal imposing stiff fines on violators instead to raise money. Lawmakers hope to expand the legislation to Hanukkah next year for the same reasons. So many injustices to alleviate, so little time.
Merry Christmas, my liberty loving friends.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. Katie is his daughter-in-law. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 9, 2011 | Healthcare
By Dr. Harold Pease
Civil libertarians and constitutional buffs are angrier with the Federal Government now than at any time since the Bush Patriot Act was pushed onto the American people ten years ago. Buried deep within the over 600 page, $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act is language that “would require the military to hold suspected terrorists linked to Al Qaeda or its affiliates, even those captured on U. S. soil indefinitely” and without trial, on the say so of the military through the President alone. Moreover, even Americans could be removed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba against their will and deprived of their constitutional rights.
The fury has to do with U.S. citizenship. Originally Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, who sponsored the bill, did not exempt U.S. citizens—a serious omission which dumps sizable portions of Amendments 4, 5, and 6 of the Bill of Rights. Senators Rand Paul, Dianne Feinstein and others demanding a citizen exclusion proposed amendments to do so, all of which were rejected. Senator Feinstein noted that her goal “was to ensure the military won’t be roaming our streets looking for suspected
terrorists.” The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, following the Civil War, forbade the U.S. military from performing law enforcement functions on American soil. The American Civil Liberties Union was also blunt. “Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law.” When asked if it were possible for an American to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay, John McCain, a co-author of the bill, said yes. Senator Lindsey Long was more blunt. “When they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”
Finally, Dianne Feinstein successfully got Senate colleagues to accept a weakened version of the same thing, “nothing in the bill changes current law relating to the detention of U.S. citizens and legal aliens.” Even while getting this clarification Senator Levin was still arguing, “that the June 2004 Supreme Court decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld said U.S. citizens can be detained indefinitely.” So, since it was so difficult to get an exclusion for Americans, and the co-authors of the bill, Senators Levin and McCain, say that it does include U.S. citizens as well. Why would a weak exclusion give civil libertarians any comfort? It doesn’t.
Some things are very clear. The terms “terrorists” and “affiliates” are not adequately defined, the President is given way too much power, and it violates the U.S. Constitution upon which everyone voting has sworn to uphold. It is hard to trust the government’s precise definition of terrorist when Vice President Joe Biden, a few weeks ago, referred to Tea Partiers as terrorists and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a few months prior to this referred to them as mobsters (a term also implying a threat to society). What guarantee do we have that the “new” enemy does not simply rotate to anyone defined as “anti-government,” citizen or not?
The measure places too much power and trust in the office of the President which has not proved particularly trustworthy in the past with respect to the Constitution and civil liberty. Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the stroke of a pen, detained thousands of Japanese Americans in “relocation camps” in World War II on the basis of race and potential terrorism alone. Jose Padilla, allegedly an affiliate of al Qaeda, a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago for having plans to detonate a “dirty bomb,” was tortured and confined, without benefit of a lawyer for three years, by then President George W. Bush; all this within the borders of the United States. No actual evidence of a “dirty bomb” was ever produced, nor was Padilla ever charged with a crime. Two other Americans, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, had similar torture experiences as did Padilla but with less time in solitary confinement, again without charges. (See details in the December 5 issue of The New American). Ultimately, with no evidence to support their confinement, they were set free.
And if Americans are sent to Guantanamo Bay under this law, how much confidence can we have that if found innocent they would be set free, especially given President Barack Obama’s recent assertion, cited in the above reference, that were military commissions to find them innocent they still “would never be set free from prison.” This is so wrong! Why should we have confidence in any president to not use this power as seemeth him good?
The threat of potential incarceration without recourse to a lawyer, judge and trial is very serious. The military performing police duties here to for rendered by civil authorities is unconscionable in a free society. Ninety-three senators voted for this bill. Only seven understood the Constitution well enough to vote no. Should President Obama sign this bill into law, I will follow with an column on how it emasculates Amendments 4, 5, and 6 of the Bill of Rights. Until then pass this column along to others. It is your liberty at stake.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Dec 4, 2011 | Economy, Healthcare, Taxes, Tea Party
By Dr. Harold Pease
Be grateful for your right to criticize the government, whether as a Tea Party Patriot or as Occupy Wall Street. This can be lost. It helps to remember that we can vote to make things much worse if we continue to travel further into socialism. Take Austria in 1938 for example, as related by eyewitness Kitty Werthmann, whose account is herein summarized. They too voted for socialism to end dire economic conditions and died as a nation for so doing.
With unemployment and interest rates at 25%, the country was in deep depression and “people were going from house to house begging for food.” Kitty remembers her mother cooking a big kettle of soup and baking bread to feed her staving neighbors, about “30 daily.” The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party, two conflicting varieties of socialism, were fighting each other. The Germans, under Adolf Hitler, promised an environment of no crime, full employment, a high standard of living, and happiness. Austrians “became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.” The Austrian government could not deliver these conditions, so 98% of the population, believing the lies, “voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.” When this happened, the people danced for joy in the streets for three days.
Almost immediately law and order returned and “everyone was employed” in government created jobs, but what followed under fascist socialism was pure hell. In return for believing the empty promises, education was nationalized and freedom of religion in public education ended. Crosses in the predominantly Catholic schools were “replaced with Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag” and prayer, replaced with singing praises of Germany. “Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance.” If their children were not present, parents were threatened first with “a stiff letter of warning,” then with a $300.00 fine, and then with jail. The day consisted of two hours of political indoctrination followed by sports and fun. The children loved it but “lived without religion.” Having no moral compass, illegitimacy flourished. “Unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler.”
Men and women had equal rights under Hitler. They found out what that meant when workloads were equal, making no distinction on the basis of sex. When the war came in 1939, the draft was compulsory for both sexes and women served on the front lines as well. Many became “emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat.” Kitty Werthmann continues, “When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.”
Under Hitler’s socialism everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing. Healthcare was socialized as well, free to everyone. “Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.” Of course, to pay for this benefit for the less productive, “the tax rate had to be raised to 80% of our income.”
When the war started, a food bank was established. “All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death.” Socialism now controlled life and death by controlling who ate.
Small businesses were intentionally over-regulated out of business leaving the government owned large businesses the only ones existing. “We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished.” Moreover, “farmers were told what to produce, and how to produce it.”
Worse yet, finding it so easy to kill six million Jews, Hitler next moved on the mentally retarded as not having value and liquidated them as well. To prevent the population from revolting, guns had long since been registered, then outlawed, and freedom of speech ended as well. “Anyone who said something against the government was taken away.”
How close are we to having implemented some of the above socialism by false promises, as did they, too close? No wonder Tea Party Patriots have said no further. It’s not a matter of gridlock for them, but liberty. So far both groups can criticize the government, but the slippery slope for the end of such is at our backside.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
