Quit Your Job, Pursue Your Dream, Let Others Pay

On Jan. 27, 1998, President Bill Clinton, in his State of the Union Speech, said, "A strong nation rests on the rock of responsibility. A society rooted in responsibility must first promote the value of work, not welfare. We can be proud that ... together we ended the old welfare system, and we are now replacing welfare checks with paychecks."

Now 16 years later, on Feb. 4, 2014, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has reported that The Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare -- will lead to about 2.5 million fewer full-time workers by 2024 because those full-time employees are expected to voluntarily forgo working so as to be eligible for government-subsidized health insurance.

If the CBO's report is to be believed, people either are -- or will be -- quitting their jobs or working less hours to get free or heavily subsidized government health insurance. And because to get free health insurance they reduce their earned incomes, they may also become eligible for other welfare benefits. In short, President Obama's Affordable Care Act relegates President Clinton's notion that "a society rooted in responsibility must first promote the value of work, not welfare" to the Democrat Party trash heap.

If you doubt that, consider the Feb. 4 remarks of White House press secretary Jay Carney. Rather than "promote the value of work, not welfare," the Obama administration now pooh-poohs the value of work: "At the beginning of this year, we noted that as part of this new day in health care, Americans would no longer be trapped in a job just to provide coverage for their families, and would have the opportunity to pursue their dreams."

"Work" is no longer a "value;" now a "job" is a "trap." For the administration, Obamacare gives Americans the opportunity to quit working "to pursue their dreams," while at the same time providing them with health insurance and welfare benefits" paid for by their neighbors!

If you think Carney's pronouncement was a slip of the tongue, think again. It is the Democrat "answer" to the fact that Obamacare is killing full-time employment. Look at what James P. Hoffa, Teamsters president, Joseph Hansen, United Food and Commercial Workers president, and and D. Taylor, president of UNITE-HERE have written: "The Affordable Care Act that will destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans."

Compare Carney's statement to what Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, told Meet the Press on Feb. 9: "The single mom, who's raising three kids (and) has to keep a job because of health care, can now spend some time raising those kids. That's a family value."

Translated, the new Democrat platform is this: "Be a single mother. Have kids. We offer you a choice. Work, or don't work -- or at least, cut back your working hours. If you choose to work, you can support yourself and your children. If you choose not to work, you can have free insurance and other welfare benefits, paid for by your neighbor."

But where is the personal responsibility in having children outside a stable marriage? Where is the personal responsibility in birthing children you can't support? Where is personal responsibility in having children and expecting your neighbor to support them? Where is the personal"responsibility in quitting your job and and taking government handouts to provide for your children?

The president never tires of preaching "fairness." But, why is it "fair" that I should support my children as well as yours, while you support neither and "pursue your dreams?"

What if every American selfishly put him or herself first, quit his or her job, and looked to his or her neighbor to support his children? Why wouldn't it be "fair" if no one worked? Why wouldn't it be "fair" if no one paid taxes? Why wouldn't it be "fair" for everybody to get free Obamacare and welfare benefits? And how long would it be before the whole selfish system collapsed?

If equality is the goal, either all able-bodied person should work, or no able-bodied person should work. It is hardly "fair" for one person to work, while his neighbor sits under a tree "pursuing his dreams."

Once upon a time, within my lifetime, it was a disgrace to go on welfare. Now its encouraged by the government. It's a choice, a lifestyle, a pursuit of dreams.

This administration is the most irresponsible this nation has ever known. Bread and circuses.

Welfare (and I am not talking about earned old-age pensions) should be reserved for the disabled. For the able-bodied, welfare should be short-term and engineered to encourage a return to work. It should not incentivize not working. President Clinton understood that, and took pride in creating jobs and cutting welfare. The Obama administration thinks that it is smarter.
So how well are President Obama's "smarter policies" working? Here is the indictment -- in his own words -- found in his Jan. 28 State of the Union Speech:

"Average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that ... too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by; let alone to get ahead. And too many still aren't working at all."


Posted Online:  Feb. 28, 2014, 12:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2014
John Donald O'Shea

In America, is the Income Tax Becoming an Instrument of Plunder?

What is worse? Taxation without representation? Or representation without taxation?

I suggest they are two sides of the same coin. Both are equally bad.
Prior to the American Revolution, citizens of England's colonies in America were adamant against the British Parliament imposing taxes upon them.

They didn't care what tax Parliament sought to impose. The British "constitution" guaranteed that no free man could be taxed without his consent. That consent was given by the member of the House of Commons representing the citizen's district. But American colonists had no representatives in Parliament. As such, they objected to Parliament taxing them.

They opposed the Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, and the tax on tea of 1773. The amount of the tax was not the issue. It was the principle. They objected to the power of the English Parliament to impose any tax at all.

This is not to say that the colonists opposed all taxation. They recognized the right of their elected representatives in the colonial assemblies to tax them. But they denied the right of Parliament -- across the ocean -- where they had no representatives to tax them.

In May 1764, Samuel Adams of Boston set forth what came to be the position of the colonies:

"For if our Trade may be taxed, why not our Lands? Why not the Produce of our Lands & every thing we possess or make use of?

"This we apprehend annihilates our Charter Right to govern & tax ourselves -- It strikes our British Privileges, which as we have never forfeited them, we hold in common with our Fellow Subjects who are Natives of Britain: If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?"

The American federal income tax is a graduated tax. Persons with higher incomes pay at greater rates than persons with little or no income. But in America, every citizen gets one vote.

Samuel Adams and our founding fathers realized there was something wrong with people who aren't going to pay the tax voting to impose a tax on other people who will be required to pay the tax. In Adams' time, the danger came from across the sea. Englishmen, who weren't going to pay the tax, were voting to impose a tax that Americans would have to pay.

For the colonists, it was "taxation without representation. For the English, who weren't going to pay the tax, and who had representation in Parliament, it was "representation without taxation." To Americans who would be paying the tax, it was two sides of the same coin.

Once the principle was established, there were no limits. A one-penny tax imposed by Englishmen on Americans in 1765 could be increased to a one-pound tax a year later, and so on.

Two hundred and fifty years later, middle class Americans face a similar threat. According to the Tax Policy Center and Forbes Magazine, 43 percent of American households will pay no federal income tax in 2013. (They point out that this is down from 47 percent in 2009.)

But Americans who pay no taxes have power to elect representatives pledged to raise the income tax on all who do. The difference, of course, is that the Americans who will be taxed, do have representation in Congress. But in the very near future those who do pay income taxes may not have sufficient" representation in Congress to prevent the majority -- the non-paying majority -- from working its will.

Samuel Adams was not a Chicken Little when he worried that small taxes would morph into big taxes over time. The 16th Amendment, which allows for the graduated income tax, became law in 1913. The 1913 income tax created seven tax brackets. Rates ranged from 1 percent to 7 percent.
When a poor man pays 1 percent of his income, it hurts. And if he votes for congressmen pledged to raise taxes, that should include his own taxes. When the federal income tax imposed on middle class Americans is raised, that hurts, too.

The principle should be, if I am willing to raise my neighbor's taxes, I should be willing to raise my own. If I am willing to hurt the guy next door, I should be willing to hurt myself.

But when 43 percent pay no tax, and can vote to elect representatives to raise taxes of their neighbors who pay income taxes, is not Adams query true?

"Are we not reduced from the Character of free Subjects to the miserable State of tributary Slaves?"

Those who see nothing wrong with 43 percent paying no income tax, will respond that those who pay no income tax may still be paying FICA and state, real estate and sales taxes. But the people who are paying federal income taxes are also paying those taxes. And if the "poor" vote to raise FICA or state taxes, they are also sharing the burden. That is fair.

But it simply is not fair to increase the income tax on your neighbor -- generally the biggest tax of them all -- while at the same time not paying that tax yourself. This is converting the graduated income tax into an instrument of plunder.


Posted Online:  Feb. 16, 2014, 12:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2014
John Donald O'Shea

Should Americans Go to Jail for Lying?

On June 28, 2012, in U.S. v Alvarez, the United States Supreme Court decided what was, in my humble opinion, among the most important of all the First Amendment Cases it has ever decided.

Alvarez, the defendant, had introduced himself, after being elected to a Water District Board as follows: "I'm a retired marine of 25 years.... (I)n 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor."

Alvarez's medal claim was false. He was prosecuted under a law which provides "Whoever falsely represents himself or herself, verbally or in writing, to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States ... shall be fined."

The press correctly reported the reversal of Alvarez's conviction, but failed to warn the American people what the Obama administration had argued to sustain the conviction. Had the court accepted the administration's position, the administration would have been handed the tool it needed to shut down and destroy Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, the tea party and any other American it believed to be lying. Had the administration prevailed, it would have been in position to criminalize telling any simple lie.

The Obama administration, in the words of the court, cited to the court "language from some of this Court's precedents to support its contention that false statements have no value and hence no First Amendment protection."

The court added, "In those decisions the falsity of the speech at issue was not irrelevant to our analysis, but neither was it determinative. The Court has never endorsed the categorical rule the Government advances: that false statements receive no First Amendment protection."

The government then set out three examples of "false speech" being regulated.

-- False statements made to a government official

-- Perjury

-- False representation that one is speaking on behalf of the government

The court considered and rejected the government's notion that there should be a "new category of unprotected speech," pointing out that in all the examples given by the government, more was involved than a simple false statement. "These restrictions, however, do not establish a principle that all proscriptions of false statements are exempt from exacting First Amendment scrutiny. ... Perjury, for example, undermines the function and province of the law and threatens the integrity of judgments that are the basis of the legal system. ...

"The Government has not demonstrated that false statements generally should constitute a new category of unprotected speech on this basis."

The court set out the logical consequences of the government's position.

"Here the lie was made in a public meeting, but the statute would apply with equal force to personal, whispered conversations within a home. The statute seeks to control and suppress all false statements on this one subject in almost limitless times and settings. And it does so entirely without regard to whether the lie was made for the purpose of material gain.

"Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful discourse alone is sufficient to sustain a ban on speech, absent any evidence that the speech was used to gain a material advantage, it would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court's cases or in our constitutional tradition."

Finally, the Court put the kibosh on the administration's reach to limit the right of American's to engage in free speech.

"Although the objectives the Government seeks to further by the statute are not without significance, the Court must, and now does, find the Act does not satisfy exacting scrutiny. ...

"To recite the Government's compelling interests is not to end the matter. The First Amendment requires that the Government's chosen restriction on the speech at issue be 'actually necessary' to achieve its interest.

"The Government has not shown, and cannot show, why counter speech (refutation) would not suffice to achieve its interest. ...

"Once the lie was made public, (Alvarez) was ridiculed online, ... his actions were reported in the press, ... and a fellow board member called for his resignation. ...

"The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. ...

"Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from the inalienable rights of the person."

The Justice Department lawyers who advanced the arguments before the Supreme Court were trained lawyers. It is inconceivable to me that they did not understand that if they could put Alvarez in jail for telling a simple lie, they could use the power of the FCC to silence Limbaugh, Fox News, and all others who disagreed with the policy positions of the Obama administration. Had the court acceded to the administration's position, upon a simple majority vote of Congress, the hated Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 could once again have been made law, and the First Amendment rendered a dead letter.

And who would have had power to decide if a lie had been told? The government, of course!

Posted Online:  Feb. 02, 2014, 12:00 am - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2014
John Donald O'Shea