About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Trump - Consistency, Exposure of Anchor Baby Deception, & The Value Of Debate Performance

Following the second Republican presidential debate last week the next step is for people in the media to try to dig up old embarrassing tapes of any of these candidates that could be a threat to the Democrat nominee – Trump, Carly, or Dr. Carson.
 
In this regard I dug up the following tape of Donald Trump from decades ago – but it shows a remarkable, even Reaganesque, consistency of positions for Trump.
 
Subscribers to RTE have expressed opinions about Trump from "God help us if Trump gets in" to those who have spent their own money to buy hats that say "Make America Great Again."
 
I certainly support much of the very different dialogue & the blatant disregard of political correctness that Trump has brought to this campaign.
 
The one issue that no one can deny is that the fallacious destructive subject of "anchor babies" claim to birthright citizenship would not have been brought up @ all by any of the other over 20 professional politicians running for president in both major parties if it had not been for Trump.  For this, every lover of America should thank Trump whether or not they hate him for any or every other reason.
 
Now of course there is no birthright citizenship Clause in the Constitution as students of the Constitution fully know.
 
The 14th Amendment, exclusively cited as the basis of the claim to birthright citizenship, was designed to give citizenship to freed slaves – not people from foreign lands who plan to take advantage of America's generosity. 
 
Senator Jacob Howard worked closely with President Lincoln in writing the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery & served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction & was the author of the key phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the 14th Amendment.  Howard explained that this phrase was included in the 14th Amendment to exclude foreigners, aliens, & children of ambassadors or foreign ministers.
 
The 14th Amendment has been misused by America's enemies for the past 30 years so that foreigners can latch on to every government benefit & program imaginable thereby making fools out of us all. 
 
Trump would put an end to this abuse – legally through backing Congress through the Constitution's Naturalization Clause or even more simply through the delegated power of Section 5 of the 14th Amendment itself that gives Congress the power to enforce the Amendment through appropriate legislation, if needed – & it is needed now.
 
Now doing well in debates or even being considered the perceived winner of a debate is one thing – but your record of what you did when it counted before the debate is much more important to me than what you have been coached to say in a debate.  On this score Marco Rubio was perceived to have done very well in the CNN debate especially in answering foreign policy questions regarding Russia whereas Trump was considered woefully lacking in double talk on this issue.
 
If America is to return to being a country of citizen government we cannot expect every citizen candidate to know the answer to every question more than a year before entering office. 
 
What we can ask ourselves regarding Trump is do we think, unlike BO, he is for America, how quickly we think he would learn, & what his track record is for getting results compared to people who have been in office & have not performed even after giving polished answers that made it look like they knew what they were talking about in a debate.
 

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

SAT Practice Quiz

Following the recent Water Bucket Quiz our SC businessman replied "Lets get some toughies!" – so I have kept my eyes open for a challenge.
 
Below are four sample practice questions from last May's standardized Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) – two each on math & grammar taken from McGinty's WSJ Numbers column – May 2.  Source – The College Board.
 
Please let me know how you answered the questions on this quiz.  I will post all correct answers (please include your reasoning or explain how you got your answers) or will send the answers to anyone who requests them if no one gets the answers right.
 
Only 43% of high school students who took the SAT in 2013 scored high enough to be considered "college ready" - with only 26% of high school seniors being proficient in math & 38% being proficient in reading.  Black twelfth graders trailed whites by 29 percentage points in reading.  Eighty-six percent of Black applicants & 79% of Hispanic applicants failed the Armed Services Vocational Battery's Special Forces unit of tests meaning that these people, although willing & wanting to serve in these elite forces, were not minimally qualified to do so.  Source – Mark Levin - Plunder & Deceit – pages 76 & 77.
 
With results like those reported above is there any wonder there are claims of income inequalities between the rich & poor or better stated between those with an education & those without?  The questions below indicate what should be known & may even be what is taught (presented) but the aforementioned results show it is not what is being learned by Americans trying to compete in the global economy.
 
1.  If j, k, & n are consecutive integers such that 0<j<k<n & the units (ones) digit of the product jn is 9, what is the units digit of k?
 
A. 0, B. 1, C. 2, D. 3, E. 4
 
2.  If 10 + X is 5 more than 10, what is the value of 2X?
 
A. –5, B. 5, C. 10, D. 25, E. 50
 
3.  Many 18th & 19th century Romantic poets were believers in rebellion against social conventions, express strong emotion, & the power of imagination.
 
A.  were believers in rebellion against social conventions, express strong emotion
 
B.  are believers in rebelling against social conventions, strong emotions being expressed
 
C.  who believed in rebellion against social conventions, express strong emotion
 
D.  believed in rebellion against social conventions, to express strong emotions
 
E.  believed in rebellion against social conventions, the expression of strong emotions
 
4.  Since last September, Patricia has been working @ the convenience store down the road.
 
A.  has been working
 
B.  works
 
C.  is working
 
D.  will be working
 
E.  worked
 

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Kentucky County Clerk Case Is About Much More Than Issuing Marriage Licenses To Homosexuals


“Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.” - Andrew Jackson

"When law & morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law." – Frederic Bastiat

***

It didn’t take long for one of the three terrible Supreme Court rulings from this past June to take hold & start its purposeful ruinous path undermining America - as it was intended to do. 

I am referring to the Supreme Court’s activist ruling that not only legalized homosexual marriage but explains that everyone who does not follow the Court’s “better informed understanding” of what constitutes marriage demeans or stigmatizes homosexual couples meaning such people are bigots subject to the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. 

(The other two rulings pertained to ObamaCare & the legal theory of disparate impact practices in housing - neighborhoods many of us have lived in for generations could very well be determined to be discriminatory & illegal in their racial make up.)

The case in point of this post is the jailing of Clerk of the Court Kim Davis, Rowan County, Kentucky, who was imprisoned, without bail, in a cell by herself, last week for contempt of court for not processing marriage licenses to homosexual couples under her signature because it violated her Apostolic Christian faith that defines marriage as the union of a man & a woman.  The legal action originated from a lawsuit against Mrs. Davis by four couples, represented by the ACLU, who were denied marriage licenses.

So we have quickly reached the collision of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object where the religious freedom rights under the First Amendment of Mrs. Davis contrast with the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling regarding the legality of homosexual marriage & the violation of anti-discrimination statutes.  

U.S. Judge David Bunning of the Eastern District of Kentucky found the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling & anti-discrimination laws take precedence over Mrs. Davis’s First Amendment rights. Talk about turning the Constitution on its head.

This matter does not offer an easy politically correct solution because Mrs. Davis is an elected official who cannot be fired – she can be impeached by the Kentucky legislature (who will not be in session again before January) or removed from office if convicted of a crime so this case is really a matter of public opinion & support & whether or not the spirit of Mrs. Davis & her family can be broken.

Earlier on Tuesday the Judge lifted the contempt sanction against Mrs. Davis & released her from prison because he was satisfied that the Clerk’s office, through her deputies (five of six), had complied with the court’s order to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples once Mrs. Davis was out of her office. Click here to read the judge’s order.   

The only thing different after the judge issued his order is that Mrs. Davis is free – if she actively holds to her convictions in the Clerk’s office by interfering with her clerks who are complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling she could return to jail & the impasse would continue.

The genesis of the homosexual marriage problem is the 1,100 federal laws that rest on the definition of marriage – over the years homosexual couples have felt left out (hiding their true feelings & sexual proclivities) & discriminated against because of these laws.  It only stands to reason that if “marriage” was defined as the union of one man & one woman since well before the founding of this country that problems could develop if suddenly the definition of “marriage” changed. 

Had the federal government not stuck its nose in regarding a matter that according to the Tenth Amendment is “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” if for no other reason than the word “marriage” is never mentioned in the Constitution the case could never have been brought or @ least not under the original line of complaint protesting the unequal protection of the 1,100 federal laws.  Do away with these laws & you have removed the equal protection of the laws argument.

Fair minded people are not for destroying one person’s rights while upholding another’s.  Many people who support homosexual marriage find it appalling that someone else's religious rights or personal beliefs can be the reason for fines or penalties – or in the case of Kim Davis jail time in an isolated cell.  But this is the situation we are in today thanks to the Supreme Court’s activist ruling this past June that legalized homosexual marriage when the majority of the Court made law out of thin air.

The enemies of America, like six of the Supreme Court justices, have quickly dropped their pretense of respect for people of faith with the jailing of Kim Davis as well as not accepting her appeal of the matter back to the Supreme Court – which rejected her appeal to block a lower court order that directed her to issue homosexual marriage licenses without explanation in a brief one-line order.

As such, County Clerks now join bakers, florists, & photographers on the list of professions who have run afoul of the law concerning homosexual weddings because they do not want to provide their services on religious grounds involving homosexual marriage ceremonies.  Accordingly it is not far fetched to one day soon in America see priests forced to officiate @ homosexual marriage ceremonies or for all faiths, except Islam, being pressured to redefine marriage to include homosexuals.

So the onslaught of our liberty with the intent to confiscate every bit of wealth created by the people of the United States will continue as long as a far too great portion of the American population takes their freedom for granted but still wants to be taken care of through one government program after another.

It has been suggested by our enemies in the media that one way to make this go away is for Mrs. Davis to resign her $80,000 per year job after twenty-seven years of service in the Clerk’s office.  They are asking her to give up her livelihood & a secure future in her later years because five lawyers in black robes that most people could not identify or name blatantly betrayed their oaths to follow the Constitution.

The playing out of this Davis case provides an excellent chance to turn the mindset around that the Supreme Court is the final say on every matter.  Contrary to the writings & actions of Alexander Hamilton & Abraham Lincoln, in particular, current politicians love the cover that the Supremes provide in issuing one unconstitutional ruling after another that lets politicians off the hook of responsibility as the country becomes more & more impoverished – economically, intellectually, & morally – every day.

The Davis case is about much more than a Kentucky county clerk not issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples.  It is about statist elites making the Constitution irrelevant by not teaching it in the schools for decades; it is about falsely honoring the Supreme Court with a name that sounds like it is superior to any other branch of government when the Constitution says “the judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, & in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain & establish.”  The Davis case gives us a chance to clearly recognize this usurpation of individual freedom & take appropriate action – peaceably or otherwise.

Poor countries are prey to dictators & radicals & BO has us just about where he wants us on this score.

People take their freedom for granted & still think the statist elites care about them to provide government programs as an entitled right they deserve.  Who could believe that all of the concern described herein by the statist elites is for homosexual marriage rights?  Homosexuals are just the pawns being used following another larger agenda – like prohibiting the free exercise of religion of the American people & the destruction this will cause.

This case with Kim Davis shows the cruelty we can expect as we teeter on the apathy to dependence stage just about ready for dependence back into bondage.

Reference post:  Lincoln's Summation

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Huckabee's Funding Change For Social Security

Kim Strassel writes disparagingly in her August 20 WSJ Potomac Watch column that Republican presidential candidate "Mike Huckabee passionately defends Social Security as it is." 
 
Governor Huckabee's defense of maintaining Social Security benefits is a noble enough goal for the 59 million people receiving Social Security checks let alone the 40 million who receive @ least half their income from Social Security, the 20 million people who depend on it for 90% of their income, or the 12 million people whose only source of income is Social Security.  In short, two thirds of seniors depend on Social Security as the main source of their income.  Without Social Security half of all seniors would be living in poverty.
 
When the federal government began collecting Social Security taxes in 1937 there were 159 people paying into the system for everyone projected to receive benefits (my mother told me "they took pennies out of my pay").  By 1960 that number was reduced to 5 to 1 & today it is 3 to 1.  As the baby boomers retire @ a rate of 10,000 per day that rate will drop to 2 to 1 in the near future so we can see that a system relying on an income base with a dwindling number of workers is inferior to one that relies on a consumption base that is twice the size of the income base. 
 
The part that Miss Strassel misses in all of this is that Governor Huckabee does not defend all of the current Social Security program – in particular he wants to change the funding of the program from the dwindling income base to the FairTax.
 
About half of income earning people do not pay federal income taxes & these people, plus @ least another 20% who do not pay enough federal income tax that it is a concern to them, are prone to be disinterested in income tax reform because they think it does not directly affect them.   This 70% of the citizenry are exactly the ones who will benefit the most by strengthening Social Security by enacting the FairTax.  See above statistics regarding Social Security dependence by seniors.
 
Below is the message I sent to Miss Strassel that shows the monumental difference between Governor Huckabee trying to maintain Social Security benefits as is & strengthening its funding under the FairTax.
 
Dear Kim,
 
Please note that Governor Huckabee does not passionately defend Social Security as is.  He is trying to retain the benefits as is but advocates a gigantic change in funding Social Security going from an income base to a consumption base under the FairTax.
 
Governor Huckabee recognizes that there is & has been a dwindling number of income earners paying into Social Security ever since its inception & today a large percentage of payroll taxes that are paid are reimbursed through the EITC.  The FairTax consumption base is over twice as great as the income base – $8.8 trillion consumption versus $4.2 trillion in 2005.
 
Consumption figures have been tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis since the 1950s & taxable income has been tracked by the IRS since 1913.  It is their figures that show the relationship between consumption & taxable income. 

 

Please consider the following:

 

a.  50% of the population today does not pay federal income tax (& many do not pay the Social Security tax either because of the EITC) but they do consume.

 

b.  The personal deduction & the standard deduction (or itemized) are not part of taxable income but they are part of consumption.

 

c.  Untaxed welfare payments are part of consumption.

 

d.  Foreign tourist (50 million per year) purchases are part of consumption.

 

e.  Illegal activities in the underground economy are not taxed but are part of consumption - illicit drugs, illegal labor, & pornography alone were estimated to be higher than $1 trillion in 1998.

 

f.  The shadow economy is estimated to be $350 billion per year - part of consumption but not part of taxable income.

 

g.  Wealth spend down also is part of consumption but not taxable income.

 
All of the above will strengthen Social Security under the FairTax as Governor Huckabee knows so please do not say that he is for Social Security as is.