Obama’s proposals – the good, the bad, and some better alternatives.

Inheriting countless challenges, Congress and the Obama administration have moved quickly on many fronts to implement their economic agenda. After two months of drastic interventions, has hope replaced fear, and confidence pushed aside uncertainty? Hardly.

The budget the president released last week, however, does provide some certainty about where we are headed: higher taxes on small businesses, work and capital investment.

Add to this the costly burdens of a cap-and-trade carbon emissions scheme and an effective nationalization of health care, and it is clear that the government is going to grow while the economy will shrink. In a nutshell, the president’s budget seemingly seeks to replace the American political idea of equalizing opportunity with the European notion of equalizing results.

A constructive opposition party should be willing to call out the majority when it falls short. More important, Republicans must offer alternatives. In this spirit, here is what I would do differently:

- A pro-growth tax policy. Rather than raise the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6%, it should be dropped to 25%. The lower tax brackets should be collapsed to one 10% rate on the first $100,000 for couples. And the top corporate tax rate should be lowered to 25%. This modest reform would put American companies’ tax liability more in line with the prevailing rates of our competitors.

We’ve seen 10 years of growth in our equity markets wiped out in recent months, while 401(k)s, IRAs and college savings plans are down by an average of 40%. The administration and congressional Democrats want to raise capital gains tax rates by a third. Instead, we should eliminate the capital gains tax. It supplies about 4% of federal revenues, yet it places a substantial drag on economic growth. Individuals already pay taxes on income when they earn it. They should not be socked again when they are saving and investing for their retirement and their children’s education.

Capital gains taxes are a needless burden on investment, savings and risk-taking, activities in short supply these days. Getting rid of this tax could help establish a floor on stock prices and stem the decline in the value of retirement plans by increasing the after-tax rate of return on capital.

Democrats oppose this, playing on emotions of fear and envy. But while class warfare may make good short-term politics, it produces terrible economics.

- Guarantee sound money. For the last decade, the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policy has helped fuel the housing bubble that precipitated our current crisis. We need to return to a sound money policy. That would end uncertainty, help keep interest rates down, and increase the confidence entrepreneurs and investors need to take the risks required for future growth.

I believe the best way to guarantee sound money is to use an explicit, market-based price guide, such as a basket of commodities, in setting monetary policy. A more politically realistic path to price stability would be for the Fed to explicitly embrace inflation targeting.

Transcripts from recent meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee meetings suggest that the Fed may already be moving in this direction. This would be an improvement over the status quo: It could help combat near-term deflation concerns while also calming the market’s longer-term inflation fears.

- Fix the financial sector. A durable economic recovery requires a solution to the banking crisis. There are no easy or painless solutions, but the most damaging solution over the long term would be to nationalize our financial system. Once we put politicians in charge of allocating credit and resources in our economy, it is hard to imagine them letting go.

The underlying structural problem at our financial institutions is the toxic assets infecting their balance sheets and impairing their operations. In order to help purge these assets from the system, we need a government-sponsored, comprehensive solution, but one that is transparent and temporary, and which leverages — rather than chases away — private-sector capital.

The general idea is to establish an entity or fund to purchase troubled assets from financial institutions and then hold them until they could be sold once the market has recovered. The Treasury has announced its intention to use capital from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, along with financing from the Fed’s soon-to-be operational Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, to set up such an entity. It will be a tall task to get all the details and incentives right, but the administration’s general strategy appears to be sound.

A good model for this government-sponsored entity is the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), which helped clean up bank failures in the wake of the savings-and-loan crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s by absorbing and selling off bad bank assets. The circumstances of today’s financial sector are different, but the goals of our current efforts should mirror the general merits of an RTC-like entity. We should aim to recoup a portion of our initial expenditures, and we should leave only a fleeting government footprint on the financial sector and the economy.

- Get a grip on entitlements. With $56 trillion in unfunded liabilities and our social insurance programs set to implode, we must tackle the entitlement crisis. President Barack Obama deserves credit for his recent efforts to build a bipartisan consensus on entitlement reform. But we can’t solve the entitlement problem unless we acknowledge why the costs are exploding, and then take action.

I have proposed legislation, called “A Roadmap for America’s Future,” that would bring permanent solvency to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. By transforming these open-ended entitlements into a system with a defined benefit safety net for the low-income and chronically ill, in conjunction with an individually owned, defined contribution system for health and retirement, we can reach the goal of these programs without bankrupting the next generation. It would also show the world and the credit markets that we are serious about our debt and unfunded liabilities.

Republicans can help Washington become part of the solution, not part of the problem. We can do this by pushing to enact tax policies that boost incentives for economic growth and job creation, focus the Fed on price stability, fix our banking system to get credit flowing again, stop reckless spending, and reform our entitlement programs.

Our economy is begging for clear leadership that inspires confidence and hope that the entrepreneurial spirit will flourish again. Our goal must be to offer Americans that leadership.

Mr. Ryan, from Wisconsin, is ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee and also serves on Ways and Means.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have”

- Thomas Jefferson

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Harry Reid seems to think so as do so many of the Democrats in Congress. Reid makes it perfectly clear that paying taxes is voluntary in the following interview.

I actually believe this is true. The tax code states that “…only citizens while living abroad” are required to pay taxes not “citizens living and working at home” I have studied this for some time. The original tax act of 1913 imposed a tax on all “income” of an individual or corporation. In 1916 the wording was changed after the 1913 act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. It has never been worded differently invariably because the taxation of income is an enslaving tax and therefore unconstitutional.

With all of the unconstitutional spending going on in Washington, it is more important than ever to begin a tax revolt and stop sending money to the bureaucrats in Washington. Support your state’s economy directly and not the unwise spending of the federal government.

SUMMARY

The Federal Income Tax Act of 1913 contained a sweeping, all-inclusive definition of “income”, it being the clear intention of Congress at the time to apply the “income tax” to all American citizens living at home or abroad. However, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brushaber substantially affected the government’s interpretation of the definition of “income” within the meaning of the fundamental law, and “to whom” and “where” the income tax could apply.

The Brushaber Court specifically concluded that the 16th Amendment gave Congress no new powers of taxation. The Brushaber decision prompted Congress to revise the 1913 Act, and via Section 25 of the Federal Income Tax Act of 1916, amended 1917, declared that the “income” subject to the 1913 Act was not the same “income” to be taxed under the 1916 Act. But, what was the purpose of this change in the language, and by extension, the legal effect of the 1916 Act? UNFORTUNATELY, CONGRESS DID NOT EXPLAIN WHAT WAS MEANT BY SECTION 25.

One theory of the meaning of § 25 of the 1916 Act is based on location, that Section 25 removed the application of the un-apportioned direct “income” tax on salaries, wages and compensation of ordinary Americans living and working at home, leaving the application of the un-apportioned direct “income” tax on salaries, wages and compensation of non-resident aliens and American citizens living and working abroad. This, it is argued is the reason that not a single federal income tax act since 1916 has ever mentioned the imposition of an un-apportioned direct “income” tax on the salaries, wages and compensation of citizens “at home,” although the same acts repeatedly mention citizens abroad and particularly those in the insular possessions.

Evidence of this solely external, “locational” application of the un-apportioned direct “income tax” on salaries, wages and compensation is demonstrated in several ways. First, the IRS Commissioner has been delegated via T.D.O.s published in the Federal Register authority to administer an un-apportioned direct tax on salaries, wages and compensation only in the area external to the boundaries of the 50 states of the Union.
If the Commissioner has been delegated authority to administer an un-apportioned direct tax on salaries, wages and compensation in the area internal to the boundaries of the 50 states of the Union, that authority has not been published in the Federal Register and is therefore a secret, so it could not concern American citizens “at home,” without violating their due process Rights.

Further, federal income tax returns are allegedly required to be filed at IRS service centers. But the Administrative Procedures Act demands that any part of an agency’s field structure which affects the domestic American public must be published in the Federal Register. The absence of publication in the Federal Register of these extremely important parts of the IRS field structure further indicates that the service centers do not legally affect the domestic American public and can, therefore, be ignored by the ordinary American wage earner living and working at home.

But perhaps the most compelling proof of the “locational” application of the federal income tax in the manner noted above is derived from analysis of the IRS’ compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act. The federal income tax is imposed via § 1 of the IRC. But the “information collection request” applicable to this section is Form 2555, entitled “Foreign Earned Income.” Further as shown by the OMB control number assigned to 26 C.F.R. § 1.6091-3, the specific tax return required to be filed at service centers is Form 1040NR. And a “TIN” can only be obtained by a non-resident alien; see Form W-7.

Another theory of the meaning of Section 25 of the 1916 Act is that it is based on classifications of people, distinguishing between aliens and citizens, imposing no un-apportioned direct tax on the salaries, wages and compensation of American citizens, no matter where they live and work, but authorizing an un-apportioned direct tax on the salaries, wages and compensation on resident aliens working here and on employees of the federal government who voluntarily agreed to labor for the government.

Countering the “location” theory and in support of the “classification” theory is the argument that the fundamental law prohibits the imposition of an un-apportioned tax directly on the salaries, wages and compensation of American citizens, no matter where they may be living and working, and there is no Supreme Court ruling that an un-apportioned tax can be imposed directly on the salaries, wages and compensation of American citizens living and working abroad.

Most Americans believe that today, the tax scheme of the 1913 act is still in effect, but the truth of the matter is that it is not.
In fact, the present tax scheme is the exact opposite of the 1913 tax scheme, created by the 1916 act amended by the Act of 1917.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Happy New Year! I’ve been away from the daily grind of liberal bashing and, quite honestly, enjoyed the holidays lazily with my family. We spent Christmas at Lake Tahoe, skiing and snowboarding. It was wonderful and relaxing and gave me great cause for reflection. A respite from the coming turmoil that will be 2009. I wish I could see the future but would be afraid to look at it. Sometimes, though reflection on the past is more telling of the future and following is a remarkable piece of history that should and will live on as a classic.

Despite the graininess of the video and the numbers that are quoted, if you heard the following speech by Ronald Reagan today, you would swear he was speaking of current times and current issues. However, this speech was given in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater’s campaign.

Now I was but a child in 1964 and knew nothing of nor cared in the least about politics. I knew that JFK had been assassinated in 1963 and had watched the funeral procession on our very first TV but I didn’t understand it nor did I understand the socialist movement that was well underway and known to true patriots like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagen.

I have learned more about the differences between Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives and left and right as they relate to politics in the last six months than I learned in 40 years previous. I never cared. Yet, when Ronald Reagen ran for president following the debacle of Jimmy Carter, he made sense. I knew he was honorable and patriotic and cared for our freedom and the Constitution. I just didn’t know how much he loved this country and for how long. After listening to this speech, though I, once again, have renewed my deep love for this man, for the eloquence with which he can deliver the message.

We are in for some very tough times in 2009 and beyond. The issues we face cannot be resolved by a government or even more government. Less government, much less government, is what will be required to turn this country around. Less government spending and more income retained by the people. That is the stimulus package that Americans need. However, I don’t think we can get there without a revolution. It has finally come to the battle line of those individuals that have high self esteem and strong moral character. Those that love their Liberty and the Freedom afforded us by the framers of Our Constitution against those that prefer Mother government and the Nanny state. Since the liberals have gained control of Congress and now the White House, we cannot stand idle and watch our country and the freedom it represents be disassembled by the “liberal agenda”

Human action is healthy when it is effective in the pursuit of happiness, legitimate in its respect for the rule of law, free because coercion is prohibited, cooperative when consent is voluntary, and mutual in honoring the universality of rights and justly acquired property. The economic, social and political arrangements inherent in all collectivist societies invariably render individual action less effective because it is disempowered by the state, illegitimate because it is condemned by the state, unfree because it is oppressed by the state, less cooperative because it is coerced by the state, and less mutual because it is dehumanized by the state.
Dr. Lyle Rossiter, Jr. M.D., “The Liberal Mind”

The full transcript of President Reagan’s speech follows the video…

“A Time for Choosing”

Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, “We’ve never had it so good.”

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We’ve raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don’t own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we’ve just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it’s been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down: [up] man’s old — old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the “Great Society,” or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they’ve been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, “The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.” Another voice says, “The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.” Or, “Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century.” Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as “our moral teacher and our leader,” and he says he is “hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document.” He must “be freed,” so that he “can do for us” what he knows “is best.” And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.”

Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as “the masses.” This is a term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, “the full power of centralized government” — this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

Now, we have no better example of this than government’s involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21% increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming — that’s regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we’ve spent 43 dollars in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don’t grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he’ll find out that we’ve had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He’ll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He’ll find that they’ve also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn’t keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.

At the same time, there’s been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There’s now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can’t tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how — who are farmers to know what’s best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a “more compatible use of the land.” The President tells us he’s now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we’ve only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they’ve taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we’ve sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.

They’ve just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you’re depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they’re going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer — and they’ve had almost 30 years of it — shouldn’t we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we’re told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We’re spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you’ll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we’d be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

Now — so now we declare “war on poverty,” or “You, too, can be a Bobby Baker.” Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we’re spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have — and remember, this new program doesn’t replace any, it just duplicates existing programs — do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn’t duplicated. This is the youth feature. We’re now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we’re going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we’re going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who’d come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She’s eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who’d already done that very thing.

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we’re always “against” things — we’re never “for” anything.

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

Now — we’re for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we’ve accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we’re against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they’re doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary — his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due — that the cupboard isn’t bare?

Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can’t we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn’t you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we’re for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we’re against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They’ve come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar’s worth, and not 45 cents worth?

I think we’re for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we’re against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world’s population. I think we’re against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.

I think we’re for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we’re against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We’re helping 107. We’ve spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So, governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear.

Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.

Federal employees — federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation’s work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man’s property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.

Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, “If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States.” I think that’s exactly what he will do.

But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn’t the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died — because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.

Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the — or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men — that we’re to choose just between two personalities.

Well what of this man that they would destroy — and in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I’ve been privileged to know him “when.” I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I’ve never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn’t work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, “Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such,” and they went down there, and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he’d load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their homes, fly back over to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, “There aren’t many left who care what happens to her. I’d like her to know I care.” This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, “There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start.” This is not a man who could carelessly send other people’s sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I’ve discussed academic, unless we realize we’re in a war that must be won.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy “accommodation.” And they say if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer — not an easy answer — but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.” Alexander Hamilton said, “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Now let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace — and you can have it in the next second — surrender.

Admittedly, there’s a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face — that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand — the ultimatum. And what then — when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we’re retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he’s heard voices pleading for “peace at any price” or “better Red than dead,” or as one commentator put it, he’d rather “live on his knees than die on his feet.” And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it’s a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point beyond which they must not advance.” And this — this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s “peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits — not animals.” And he said, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

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Everybody sing… ITS STARTING TO FEEL A LOT LIKE DEPRESSION (to the tune “Its Starting to feel a Lot Like Christmas”). I don’t have much more to add to Devvy’s article below except that I live in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County, CA) and people here are not immune to this recession. It is really getting bad. I wish everybody the Happiest of Holidays this holiday season. I know for some, it will be difficult. Best wishes for the new year and remember, we’re all in this together. We cannot rely on the government to save us so plan for your own survival.

COLUMNISTS CALL FOR TAXPAYER REVOLT – WANT MORE SOCIALISM

By: Devvy

December 4, 2008
© 2008 – NewsWithViews.com

Back in September, I happened upon a column titled ‘Time for a Taxpayer Revolt.’ As I began to read the column, I thought, “This is good.” The two authors were outlining the disaster of the so-called “bail outs” underway. As I worked my way through the column, I realized it was just more blame Republicans. At the bottom of this drivel, out popped the ignorance of the authors as they spewed their socialism: the government should help people build houses, create jobs for the greenie movement and universal health care.

I don’t know where Medea Benjamin & Arun Gupta went to school, but it’s obvious they know nothing about our legal form of government or the U.S. Constitution. Yet, these socialists who hide behind the “liberals” label have a large forum where they pump out their propaganda. Because Americans are so under educated from attending the dumbing down institutions they call public schools and blind loyalty to their political party, they believe it. Benjamin and Gupta call for a Twenty-First Century New Deal, similar to the dangerous and toxic message put out by Richard C. Cookyo.

Isn’t it odd how people like Benjamin and Gupta rail about the bailouts, but how much you want to bet both of them voted for Comrade Obama who voted for this grand larceny? Allegedly Americans voted back the entire Congress (with 17 seats changing in the House out of 435) who approved this looting of the American people. So, why on earth would there be a taxpayer revolt? Americans were so happy with the performance of Congress (who had an approval rating of about 17% before the pretend elections) – they rehired 99% of the same people who are destroying this country! We’re right back to where we were before the pretend election with the same Congress and people think there’s going to be change?

I was out of the state from November 16 – December 2nd. When I travel I always try to engage Americans on current issues just to see what they know. The bail out issue has people hopping mad, yet we’re to believe Americans supposedly voted all the same crooks back into office? The one thing that did surprise me was how many folks from restaurant personnel, gas station employees, grocery store, you name it – have heard about the citizenship controversy surrounding Comrade Obama.

While on the road, I caught a segment with Bill O’Reilly who said quit listening to the gloom and doom people out there and spend! It’s important for the economy said O’Reilly, and people like yours truly and Dr. Edwin Vieira don’t know what we’re talking about. According to the big O, we’re just fear mongers. A few days later I caught a morning segment on FAUX. The subject: people are now saving their money and how bad that is for the economy. Listen. It’s real easy for a gas bag like O’Reilly to tell you to spend yourself further into debt when he likely spends cash; easy to do with an income of about $20 million bux a year. Yes, our economy depends on the exchange of goods and services for compensation. However, with pink slips dropping like leaves in fall and Americans living on the edge of financial ruin, the economy will suffer. People can’t spend what they don’t have and those who do have are weighing their options on spending. Need vs want.

Over the past few decades, Americans haven’t saved, but spent themselves into massive debt. Banking institutions, lenders and private companies have been lying and cheating about the solvency of their corporations and now the day of reckoning has come with the worst still on the horizon. As millions of Americans have no credit or bad credit, they are unable to spend, even for necessities. Millions more are finally coming to the realization that because they have no savings to speak of, they are standing on a cliff and the view isn’t pretty. The wipeout of 401(k)s has been devastating, but well paid hucksters who make their living peddling bull, knocked yours truly and others for warning about the 401(k) issue. Guess what? Tragically, it has come to pass.

Back in 2005, I told my husband we have to sell our home in Sacramento and get out because the housing market was going to crash. While I was planning to get packed up and put the house on the market, John was diagnosed with cancer so we had to push back our plans a bit. We purchased this house in West Texas in April, 2006 and sold our house in Natomas Park, Sacramento, California, several months later. We were one of the lucky ones who got out. While we had no debt on our home except the original mortgage, I knew the hurricane was building steam and sure as the sun shines, it has hit Natomas Park hard. The house across the street from ours, same floor plan except flipped, sold for $405,000 in June 2005. Today that house is appraised at $274,000. The house we sold is worth $150,000 less today than the day we signed the final escrow papers. Those buyers are saddled with huge mortgages that far exceed the value of the homes in that foreclosure capital and it will never turn around for them. The property will continue to age and eventually new houses in the area will be built commanding higher selling prices than the used ones.

I warned in a column back on September 25, 2008, the bail out disaster would be a never ending hemorrhage and we the people will be the ones bankrupted while CON-gress makes sure their banking buddies are bailed out. Congress critters continue to appear on cable networks talking about how the auto industry CEOs need to give them a plan so they can unlawfully dole out loans. Not one of them except Ron Paul has firmly stated that the U.S. Constitution forbids Congress from acting as a bank giving lines of credit, owning banks, bailing out private industry (auto and insurance) and dictating employment terms to private corporations. Now the states of the Union are lining up like beggars because they, along with their state legislatures, have mismanaged their budgets and want you and I to pay the interest on any money unlawfully loaned to these states by a corrupt Congress.

The level of lawlessness out in Washington, DC, is breath taking and will bring the entire economy to complete and total ruin because there’s no one to stop it. Congress is running amok as if the U.S. Constitution doesn’t exist. There’s no president to stop this massive looting using veto power. No checks and balances any longer. The picture is grim and sugar coating it won’t change the reality of what should begin to hit in the first quarter of next year. Back in January, I wrote about a tent city in Ontario, California. “Shantytowns” are now springing up in major cities:

November 14, 2008: “Rising unemployment and widespread foreclosures have left many homeless and living in tents and makeshift huts in cities around the nation. It’s a scene not seen since the “Hoovervilles” of the Great Depression.”

No new “stimulus” packages being thrown around by Pelosi and Obama will make a damn bit of difference. Using borrowed money to try and bail out a dead economy is simply more lunacy. Congress destroyed our major job sectors (ag, manufacturing, industrial) with all these “free” trade treaties – BOTH parties. Neither have done a thing to stop the destruction by getting America out of NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT. Their only solution is to borrow more money from the privately owned FED, slap all Americans with the interest and dole out more borrowed, worthless currency in an effort to plug the dam that is about to burst.

Who is going to pay the tab for this $8 TRILLION dollar give away called bail outs and rescues? You, me, our children and grand children will be paying the interest on all this borrowed money if the current system stays intact. With the people’s purse overdrawn $10.6 TRILLION dollars, how does Congress expect the debt load to be paid? Don’t ask Nancy Pelosi. That vile female is the quintessential example of an immoral crone who has absolutely no regard for the supreme law of the land. Come April 15, 2009, we shall see if all the money stolen from your paycheck this year via the withholding rip off taxing scheme was enough to support this massive theft from the sweat off your back. Remember the figures from 2004 and multiply them to what Congress has done over the past three months and intends to continue doing. No, this isn’t great news at “Christmas time.” Yes, it’s important for Americans to put money into the economy, but when enough of them see the big picture, they are not going to continue spending. It’s called survival.

But, I guess this is all okay with the American people because they allegedly rehired the same crooks, not just CON-gress, but the state legislatures as well. The destruction of California is voter approved. Not only do the people of California approve of the looting of their wallets by their state legislature and that nitwit governor, Arnie the Terminator, they allegedly voted in even more communists to Sacramento last month. The people of California threw out Davis and replaced him with a “movie star” who is no more qualified to be the governor of any state than I am to teach physics at MIT.

Republican heavies and “leadership” in the state said no to Tom McClintock and convinced gullible conservatives that a pig like Arnold Schwarzenegger had “more name recognition.” Oh, did I call Da Governor a pig? I certainly did. How quickly people forget. Arnie’s photo appeared on Drudge during his run for the governor’s mansion. It was a picture of a female, buck naked except for a wisp of material covering her pubic area, sitting on Arnie’s shoulders, bare legs wrapped around his neck with big udders hanging in his face. Oh, yes, and was I shocked to see it up on Drudge’s web site. I’m sure Maria, California’s first lady, enjoyed that display of her husband for the whole world to see. Schwarzenegger is an empty bag of skin (sagging now since he no longer pumps his pecs with steroids) who has done nothing but rubber stamp the financial destruction of California.

My home state is over run with illegal aliens bankrupting the taxpayers. THAT is why I left California. BILLIONS of dollars fleeced from the hard working people of California every year to support somewhere around 8 MILLION illegal aliens who have no right to anything except being deported, but are given free medical treatment in hospitals, bankrupting them from one end of the state to the other. Crowding California’s class rooms with kids who have NO right to be in the state, much less sucking off the system. From medical treatment to food stamps, education and stealing jobs that belong to natural born and naturalized citizens, to filling the state prisons, illegals are stealing the resources of that state with the blessing of the taxpayers who voted back in the same crooks, cowards and criminals into the state house last month. I said hasta la vista to Arnie and that corrupt legislature.

The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villagarosa, who is of Mexican ancestry, protects illegals. How he whines about water shortages and not enough money, but he turns a blind eye for “his people” instead of working with Arnie to deport millions of criminals running loose in the state. How much water do you think 8 MILLION illegals use in California every day taking showers, flushing toilets, cooking and doing laundry? Quit complaining, Villagarosa. You and the terminator are nothing but hypocrites who care nothing for the law.

I was just in LA two weeks ago. There are huge areas of that basin that resemble the slums of Tijuana. A third world dump that continues to grow in size. Militant illegals who demand the productive citizens of California work their fingers to the bone to keep them in free services. The people of California asked for this chaos and plunder and now they’re getting a good dose of it up front and in their faces. The citizens in the golden state are so happy about it, they voted the same vermin back to the state house who continue to fund and protect these criminals who sneak across our borders. The same incompetent professional politicians who have destroyed California both morally and economically. That’s why I left California. We could have purchased another home anywhere in the state, but I refuse to have my pocketbook drained to fund criminals.

I continue to encourage people to diversify as much of their holdings as possible into gold. This always brings email telling me the government is going to seize all the gold “just like they did before.” Dr. Edwin Vieira recently made an excellent statement on this very issue:

“Gold confiscation will be far more difficult than confiscation was in the 1930s, when much of the gold was held in the banks, which FDR simply closed. Now very little of it is. So how will it be seized, if people do not voluntarily turn it in? By house-to-house searches? The 401k loot, however, is all in various financial institutions. It can be confiscated electronically and immediately. So, in that respect, the 401k loot is in a worse position than the 1930s gold, because much of that gold was not in the banks, and was never turned in. Of course, people might start liquidating their 401k accounts (leaving aside the tax consequences) if they feared confiscation. But if that started to occur on a massive scale, the PTB would invoke a kind of “bank holiday,” simply freezing the assets in place.”

People are free to do what they feel necessary to protect their assets and if they’re afraid to buy gold because they fear confiscation, so be it. I do not because we are a different people than back in 1933. Know what? Let them try. Some of the most powerful people in this country – including banking barons – own gold and lots of it. We’ll see if Pelosi and the gutless coward, Harry Reid, want to take them on and millions of Americans who will just say, stuff it.

I need to make a correction. In a recent column I wrote the Illinois State Lottery winning Pick 3 numbers on November 5, 2008, was 666. That is a fact. I erred when I said this drawing was on election night. For some reason, I had it stuck in my head the election was November 5th when in fact it was the 4th. An honest mistake.

The Obama citizenship controversy is reaching a full head of steam. Please click here for my last press release two days ago titled ‘Treachery Inside the U.S. Supreme Court.’ There is a second case that has the same teeth as Leo Donofrio’s and that press release covers Cort’s case and what everyone needs to do asap. Regular readers know I filed several FOIAs and the aforementioned press release contains a scan of the letter I received while on the road from the University of Hawaii under their state records act. Now that I’m home, I need to follow up on the others. The U.S. State Department has not responded; I predict those two will have to be lawsuits. I won my last lawsuit against the FAA, so do not give up hope before I even begin my battle.

Also, remember my persistent requests to James Burrus, head of election fraud at the FBI in Washington, DC, to open an investigation into Obama for violation of wire fraud laws. While the FBI will not comment on any on-going investigation, I am hopeful there is one underway. Burrus simply cannot ignore the overwhelming evidence against Obama and not expect at some point for all hell to break loose when the truth comes out and that for political reasons, the FBI knowingly and willfully ignored it. There is a rage blowing across this country and a demand for justice. We shall see if our voices are heard.

As for Phil Berg’s case, Obama and the DNC thumbed their noses at the Supreme Court. This column covers it well. The only thing I disagree with in Mr. Latino’s column is that if Phil’s case gets kicked to the curb, it’s over. Leo and Cort’s cases are clearly the cannon that will stop an impostor from being sworn in as president of these united States of America IF the U.S. Supreme Court has the guts to bring their cases to a full oral argument.

Obama has hired three law firms. Not three lawyers, but three law firms to defend him against this growing legal quagmire. I predict it won’t be long before even Obama’s staunchest supporters begin asking hard questions: Why not produce a real COLB? Why can’t you refute beyond any doubt the valid and solid allegations in Leo’s lawsuit that you, Mr. Obama, were not a natural born citizen at birth? All this can come to a halt by just proving these Americans wrong, Mr. Obama. Why do you refuse to release your records from Columbia? Is it because you obtained funding as a foreign student as has been alleged? The list goes on about this man who has managed to keep all records of his life sealed up nice and tight. There’s a reason and anyone not drowning in denial knows why.

Obama is now a private citizen. Thankfully for this country he has resigned his unlawful seat in the U.S. Senate. He is also creating a constitutional stand off and an on going legal crisis. It can all go away tomorrow, but it won’t. Obama is still gambling he can bluff his way into the Oval Office. Oops, there’s one other legal obstacle: the electoral college. They vote December 15, 2008. But, wait! It now is confirmed that one of the electoral college delegates scheduled to vote on that date from the late, great State of California is deceased! No, you can’t make this stuff up:

“A lawyer playing a major part in a California lawsuit urging officials to prevent the state’s 55 Electoral College votes from being recorded for Barack Obama until questions about his citizenship are resolved has written to county clerks around the state, seeking an investigation into a process that has allowed a dead woman to be listed as an official elector.” (Full column here.)

Not only have we the people been cheated by vote fraud for the past 30+ years, but now due to the diligence of dedicated Americans, we find the electoral college delegates may also be a con job.

The next big event is tomorrow when all nine Supreme Court justices meet in private to consider the merits of Leo’s case. As it is a Friday, likely we won’t hear anything until next week, but you never know because the clock is ticking. You can’t tell me all nine justices are not aware of the importance of Leo’s case and the huge controversy that has been boiling for months. They know the consequences of not granting Leo oral arguments and the consequences if they do. If they don’t and Obama is sworn into office, the lawsuits will be non stop. If Obama is ruled ineligible, the potential for mass riots across this country is sadly very real. However, we cannot and must not allow what “might” happen due to Obama’s deliberate conning of the American people keep us from pursuing the truth. Any negative consequences will be because of Obama’s actions and his actions alone, not Americans who care about what’s right.

Links:

1 – World Net Daily letter campaign mis-states core issue in Donofrio SCOTUS case
2 – Leo’s web site
3 – Berg v. Obama: The Day of Reckoning
4 – New Video: Dr. Ron Polarik on the authenticity of Obama’s COLB
5 – Web site tracking all the lawsuits
6 – Why Hollywood celebs and liberals support a Marxist like Barack Obama

1 – The Great American Housing Market Nightmare Next Phase
2 – 110 US banks have asked for $170B from bailout
3 – Brilliant analysis: Gold and silver market manipulation update
4 – Blue Mountain freezes withdrawals
5 – Governors May Seek $100 Billion in U.S. Social Aid
6 – FEDS to expand rescue
7 – Silicon Valley: Santa Clara County Housing Underwater
8 – Map of housing disaster above
9 – Citigroup Job Cuts Could Reach 35,000
10 – States consider billions in cuts as deficits widen
11 – Homeless illegally breaking into and squatting in foreclosed homes

© 2008 – NewsWithViews.com – All Rights Reserved

Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty; 2 million copies sold. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country, ran for Congress and is a highly sought after public speaker. Devvy belongs to no organization.

She left the Republican Party in 1996 and has been an independent voter ever since. Devvy isn’t left, right or in the middle; she is a constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not some political party. Her web site (www.devvy.com) contains a tremendous amount of information, solutions and a vast Reading Room.

Devvy’s website: www.devvy.com

Before you send Devvy e-mail, please take the time to check the FAQ section on her web site. It is filled with answers to frequently asked questions and links to reliable research sources.

E-mail is: devvyk@earthlink.net

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I have been following the Obama birth certificate issue for months. I was concerned enough about it to go and re-read the Constitution, twice. I was perplexed by the fact that, while Article IV, Section II clearly states that to attain the Office of the President of the United States, one must be a “natural born” citizen. The Constitution does not define the term “natural born” so I’ve been searching for a definition, case law or somewhere that the term has been enforced. Finally, I found the below article at The Federalist Blog. It is the best case I have seen made for the reason that the founding fathers and the framers of the Constitution used the term “natural born”. Now, there are lot of comments at The Federalist Blog site that either support or discredit P.A. Madison’s definition but they are largely partisan opinionated. Just as I have my opinion, common sense tells me that the framers were trying to avoid duel allegiances while at the same time allowing the states to make specific law regarding citizenship.

Following the Madison definition of “Natural Born Citizen” I have included an article by Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. Dr. Vieira’s article was written in October, before the election but builds the case for the impending Constitutional crisis that will be afoot if Barack Obama usurps the Presidency.

Friday, The Supreme Court will meet to discuss the Leo Donofrio v. Wells case. Unfortunately, they will not also be looking into the issue of “standing” that the judge used to reject the Berg vs. Obama case in Philadelphia. Dr. Vieira states… “The judge in Berg v. Obama dismissed the case, not because Obama has actually proven that he is eligible for “the Office of President,” but instead because, simply as a voter, Berg supposedly lacks “standing” to challenge Obama’s eligibility:

regardless of questions of causation, the grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact. * ** [A] candidate’s ineligibility under the Natural Born Citizen Clause does not result in an injury in fact to voters. By extension, the theoretical constitutional harm experienced by voters does not change as the candidacy of an allegedly ineligible candidate progresses from the primaries to the general election.

This pronouncement does not rise to the level of hogwash.”

Defining Natural-Born Citizen

By P.A. Madison

“The common law of England is not the common law of these States.” —George Mason

UPDATED 11/28/08

What might the phrase “natural-born citizen” of the United States imply under the U.S. Constitution? The phrase has always been obscure due to the lack of any single authoritative source to confer in order to understand the condition of citizenship the phrase recognizes. Learning what the phrase might have meant following the Declaration of Independence, and following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, requires detective work. As with all detective work, eliminating the usual suspects from the beginning goes a long way in quickly solving a case.

What Natural-Born Citizen Could Not Mean

Could a natural-born citizen simply mean citizenship due to place of birth?

Unlikely because we know one can be native born and yet not a native born citizen of this country prior to the year 1866. There were even disputes whether anyone born within the District of Columbia or in the territories were born citizens of the United States (they were referred to as “inhabitants” instead.) National Government could make no “territorial allegiance” demands within the several States because as Madison explained it, the “powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

Jurisdiction over citizenship via birth within the several States was part of the “ordinary course of affairs” of the States that only local laws could affect. Early acts of Naturalization recognized the individual State Legislatures as the only authority who could make anyone a citizen of a State. Citizens of each State were united together through Article IV, Sec. II of the U.S. Constitution, and thus, no act of Congress was required to make citizens of the individual States citizens of the United States.

Prior to the Revolutionary War place of birth within the dominions of the crown was the principle criterion for establishing perpetual allegiance to the crown in this country. After independence, this maxim was only recognized as far as individual States were willing to recognize it. The State of Virginia in 1777 moved to recognize parentage (citizenship of father) in determining allegiance and citizenship. States that were slow in enacting laws controlling birth and citizenship forced the courts to adjudicate citizenship disputes under common law rules.

Congress was vested only with the power to make uniform rules of naturalization in order to remove alienage from those who were already born abroad (outside of the States) who had immigrated to any one of the individual States. The best Congress could do is declare children born to fathers who were already a citizen of some State to be a citizen themselves. In other words, naturalization only provides for the removal of alienage and not for the creation of citizens within individual States.

Additionally, if the framers merely intended for birth alone on U.S. soil then all would had been necessary was to say the President shall be “native born.”

Could a natural-born citizen perhaps be synonymous with the British term “natural-born subject”?

It is very doubtful the framers adopted the doctrine found under the old English doctrine of “natural-born subject.” The British doctrine allowed for double allegiances, something the founders considered improper.

Framer Rufus King said allegiance to the United States depended on whether a person is a “member of the body politic.” King says no nation should adopt or naturalize a person of another society without the consent of that person. The reason? Because “he ought not silently to be embarrassed with a double allegiance.”

The powers of the general government were limited and defined, preventing Congress from exercising the same kind of sovereignty that Britain had over its claimed dominions within established States of the Union.

Under the old English common law doctrine of natural-born subject, birth itself was an act of naturalization that required no prior consent or demanded allegiance to the nation in advance. Furthermore, birth was viewed as enjoining a “perpetual allegiance” upon all that could never be severed or altered by any change of time or act of anyone. England’s “perpetual allegiance” due from birth was extremely unpopular in this country; often referred to as absurd barbarism, or simply perpetual nonsense. America went to war with England over the doctrine behind “natural-born subject” in June of 1812.

Because Britain considered all who were born within the dominions of the crown to be its natural-born subjects even after becoming naturalized citizens of the United States, led to British vessels blockading American ports. Under the British blockade, every American ship entering or leaving was boarded by soldiers in search of British born subjects. At least 6,000 American citizens who were found to be British natural-born subjects were impressed into military service on behalf of the British Empire, and thus, the reason we went to war.

Fourteenth Amendment

The adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment obviously affects how we view natural-born citizens because for the first time there is a national rule of who may by birth be a citizen of the United States. Who may be born citizens of the States is conditional upon being born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The legislative definition of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was defined as “Not owing allegiance to anybody else.”

This national rule prevents us from interpreting natural-born citizen under common law rules because it eliminates the possibility of a child being born with more than one allegiance.

The primary author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob M. Howard, said the “word jurisdiction, as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.”

United States Attorney General, George Williams, whom was a U.S. Senator aligned with Radical Republicans during the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, ruled in 1873 the word “jurisdiction” under the Fourteenth Amendment “must be understood to mean absolute and complete jurisdiction, such as the United States had over its citizens before the adoption of this amendment.” He added, “Political and military rights and duties” do not pertain to anyone else.

Essentially then, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means the same jurisdiction the United States exercises over its own citizens, i.e., only citizens of the United States come within its operation since citizens of the United States do not owe allegiance to some other nation at the same time they do the United States. This makes a great deal of sense for the time because there was a great deal of controversy over conflicts arising from double allegiances. In fact, Congress issued a joint congressional report on June 22, 1874 that said the “United States have not recognized a double allegiance.”

Fourteenth Amendment framer, Rep. John A. Bingham, argued before the House in 1871 that Dr. John Emilio Houard was a natural-born citizen of the United States. According to Bingham he was a natural-born citizen because he was “born of naturalized parents within the jurisdiction of the United States” by the “express words of the Constitution, as amended today.” A naturalized male (women became naturalized through their husbands) were required to “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity” to other nations, and thus, could no longer be said to owe allegiance to anyone but the United States.

Because “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” requires not owing allegiance to any other nation, and because the nation does not recognize double allegiances that can be created at common law, narrows the possibilities to what “natural-born citizen” can mean.

Natural-Born Citizen Defined

One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature – laws the founders recognized and embraced.

Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.” The first Naturalization Act passed by Congress recognized “natural-born citizens” to be those born beyond the States to resident fathers who were already established citizens of the United States.

The advantages of Natural Law is competing allegiances between nations are avoided, or at least with those nations whose custom is to not make citizens of other countries citizens without their consent. Additional alternations or conflicts due to a child’s natural citizenship are strictly a creature of local municipal law. In the year 1866, the United States for the first time adopted a local municipal law under Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes that read: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Rep. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” This national law does not endow upon any person allegiance through birth alone as was the custom under the old English common law practice but only recognizes citizenship of those born to parents who do not owe allegiance to another nation. In other words, national law prevented the creation of conflicting dual citizenships between other nation’s citizens.

Secretary of State Bayard ruled under Section 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes in 1885 that although Richard Greisser was born in the United States, his father at the time of his birth was a subject of Germany, and thus, Richard Greisser could not be a citizen of the United States. Furthermore, it was held his father was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The constitutional requirement for the President of the United States to be a natural-born citizen had one purpose according to St. George Tucker:

That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to he dreaded more than the plague. The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to, attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom. … The title of king, prince, emperor, or czar, without the smallest addition to his powers, would have rendered him a member of the fraternity of crowned heads: their common cause has more than once threatened the desolation of Europe. To have added a member to this sacred family in America, would have invited and perpetuated among us all the evils of Pandora’s Box.

Additionally, Charles Pinckney in 1800 said the presidential eligibility clause was designed “to insure … attachment to the country.”

What better way to insure attachment to the country then to require the President to have inherited his American citizenship through his American father and not through a foreign father. Any child can be born anywhere in the country and removed by their father to be raised in his native country. The risks would be for the child the return in later life to reside in this country bringing with him foreign influences and intrigues.

Therefore, we can say with confidence that a natural-born citizen of the United States means those persons born whose father the United States already has an established jurisdiction over, i.e., born to father’s who are themselves citizens of the United States. A person who had been born under a double allegiance cannot be said to be a natural-born citizen of the United States because such status is not recognized (only in fiction of law). A child born to an American mother and alien father could be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father.

Related:

What “Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof” Really Means

Wong Kim Ark Analysis

OBAMA MUST STAND UP NOW OR STEP DOWN

By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.

October 29, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

America is facing potentially the gravest constitutional crisis in her history. Barack Obama must either stand up in a public forum and prove, with conclusive documentary evidence, that he is “a natural born Citizen” of the United States who has not renounced his America citizenship—or he must step down as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President of the United States—preferably before the election is held, and in any event before the Electoral College meets. Because, pursuant to the Constitution, only “a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of th[e] Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President” (Article II, Section 1, Clause 4). And Obama clearly was not “a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of th[e] Constitution.”

Whether the evidence will show that Obama is, or is not, “a natural born Citizen” who has never renounced his American citizenship is an open question. The arguments on both sides are as yet speculative. But Obama’s stubborn refusal to provide what he claims is “his own” country with conclusive proof on that score compels the presumption that he knows, or at least strongly suspects, that no sufficient evidence in his favor exists. After all, he is not being pressed to solve a problem in quantum physics that is “above his pay grade,” but only asked to provide the public with the original copy of some official record that establishes his citizenship. The vast majority of Americans could easily do so. Why will Obama not dispel the doubts about his eligibility—unless he can not?

Now that Obama’s citizenship has been seriously questioned, the burden of proof rests squarely on his shoulders. The “burden of establishing a delegation of power to the United States * * * is upon those making the claim.” Bute v. Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, 653 (1948). And if each of the General Government’s powers must be proven (not simply presumed) to exist, then every requirement that the Constitution sets for any individual’s exercise of those powers must also be proven (not simply presumed) to be fully satisfied before that individual may exercise any of those powers. The Constitution’s command that “[n]o Person except a natural born Citizen * * * shall be eligible to the Office of President” is an absolute prohibition against the exercise of each and every Presidential power by certain unqualified individuals. Actually (not simply presumptively or speculatively) being “a natural born Citizen” is the condition precedent sine qua non for avoiding this prohibition. Therefore, anyone who claims eligibility for “the Office of President” must, when credibly challenged, establish his qualifications in this regard with sufficient evidence.

In disposing of the lawsuit Berg v. Obama, which squarely presents the question of Obama’s true citizenship, the presiding judge complained that Berg “would have us derail the democratic process by invalidating a candidate for whom millions of people voted and who underwent excessive vetting during what was one of the most hotly contested presidential primary in living memory.” This is exceptionally thin hogwash. A proper judicial inquiry into Obama’s eligibility for “the Office of President” will not deny his supporters a “right” to vote for him—rather, it will determine whether they have any such “right” at all. For, just as Obama’s “right” to stand for election to “the Office of President” is contingent upon his being “a natural born Citizen,” so too are the “rights” of his partisans to vote for him contingent upon whether he is even eligible for that “Office.” If Obama is ineligible, then no one can claim any “right” to vote for him. Indeed, in that case every American who does vote has a constitutional duty to vote against him.

The judge in Berg v. Obama dismissed the case, not because Obama has actually proven that he is eligible for “the Office of President,” but instead because, simply as a voter, Berg supposedly lacks “standing” to challenge Obama’s eligibility:

regardless of questions of causation, the grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact. * ** [A] candidate’s ineligibility under the Natural Born Citizen Clause does not result in an injury in fact to voters. By extension, the theoretical constitutional harm experienced by voters does not change as the candidacy of an allegedly ineligible candidate progresses from the primaries to the general election.

This pronouncement does not rise to the level of hogwash.

First, the Constitution mandates that “[t]he judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution” (Article III, Section 2, Clause 1). Berg’s suit plainly “aris[es] under th[e] Constitution,” in the sense of raising a critical constitutional issue. So the only question is whether his suit is a constitutional “Case[ ].” The present judicial test for whether a litigant’s claim constitutes a constitutional “Case[ ]” comes under the rubric of “standing”—a litigant with “standing” may proceed; one without “standing” may not. “Standing,” however, is not a term found anywhere in the Constitution. Neither are the specifics of the doctrine of “standing,” as they have been elaborated in judicial decision after judicial decision, to be found there. Rather, the test for “standing” is almost entirely a judicial invention.

True enough, the test for “standing” is not as ridiculous as the judiciary’s so-called “compelling governmental interest test,” which licenses public officials to abridge individuals’ constitutional rights and thereby exercise powers the Constitution withholds from those officials, which has no basis whatsoever in the Constitution, and which is actually anti-constitutional. Neither is the doctrine of “standing” as abusive as the “immunities” judges have cut from whole cloth for public officials who violate their constitutional “Oath[s] or Affirmation[s], to support this constitution” (Article VI, Clause 3)—in the face of the Constitution’s explicit limitation on official immunities (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1). For the Constitution does require that a litigant must present a true “Case[ ].” Yet, because the test for “standing” s largely a contrivance of all-too-fallible men and women, its specifics can be changed as easily as they were adopted, when they are found to be faulty. And they must be changed if the consequences of judicial ignorance, inertia, and inaction are not to endanger America’s constitutional form of government. Which is precisely the situation here, inasmuch as the purported “election” of Obama as President, notwithstanding his ineligibility for that office, not only will render illegitimate the Executive Branch of the General Government, but also will render impotent its Legislative Branch (as explained below).

Second, the notion upon which the judge in Berg v. Obama fastened—namely, that Berg’s “grievance remains too generalized to establish the existence of an injury in fact,” i.e., if everyone is injured or potentially injured then no one has “standing”—is absurd on its face.

To be sure, no one has yet voted for Obama in the general election. But does that mean that no one in any group smaller than the general pool of America’s voters in its entirety has suffered specific harm from Obama’s participation in the electoral process to date? Or will suffer such harm from his continuing participation? What about the Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton as their party’s nominee, but were saddled with Obama because other Democrats voted for him even though they could not legally have done so if his lack of eligibility for “the Office of President” had been judicially determined before the Democratic primaries or convention? What about the States that have registered Obama as a legitimate candidate for President, but will have been deceived, perhaps even defrauded, if he is proven not to be “a natural born Citizen”? And as far as the general election is concerned, what about the voters among erstwhile Republicans and Independents who do not want John McCain as President, and therefore will vote for Obama (or any Democrat, for that matter) as “the lesser of two evils,” but who later on may have their votes effectively thrown out, and may have to suffer McCain’s being declared the winner of the election, if Obama’s ineligibility is established? Or what about those voters who made monetary contributions to Obama’s campaign, but may at length discover that their funds went, not only to an ineligible candidate, but to one who knew he was ineligible?

These obvious harms pale into insignificance, however, compared to the national disaster of having an outright usurper purportedly “elected” as “President.” In this situation, it is downright idiocy to claim, as did the judge in Berg v. Obama, that a “generalized” injury somehow constitutes no judicially cognizable injury at all. Self-evidently, to claim that a “generalized” grievance negates “the existence of an injury in fact” is patently illogical—for if everyone in any group can complain of the same harm of which any one of them can complain, then the existence of some harm cannot be denied; and the more people who can complain of that harm, the greater the aggregate or cumulative seriousness of the injury. The whole may not be greater than the sum of its parts; but it is at least equal to that sum! Moreover, for a judge to rule that no injury redressable in a court of law exists, precisely because everyone in America will be subjected to an individual posing as “the President” but who constitutionally cannot be (and therefore is not) the President, sets America on the course of judicially assisted political suicide. If Obama turns out to be nothing more than an usurper who has fraudulently seized control of the Presidency, not only will the Constitution have been egregiously flouted, but also this whole country could be, likely will be, destroyed as a consequence. And if this country is even credibly threatened with destruction, every American will be harmed—irretrievably, should the threat become actuality—including those who voted or intend to vote for Obama, who are also part of We the People. Therefore, in this situation, any and every American must have “standing” to demand—and must demand, both in judicial fora and in the fora of public opinion—that Obama immediately and conclusively prove himself eligible for “the Office of President.”

Utterly imbecilic as an alternative is the judge’s prescription in Berg v. Obama that,

[i]f, through the political process, Congress determines that citizens, voters, or party members should police the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for the Presidency, then it is free to pass laws conferring standing on individuals like [Berg]. Until that time, voters do not have standing to bring the sort of challenge that [Berg] attempts to bring * * * .

Recall that this selfsame judge held that Berg has no constitutional “Case[ ]” because he has no “standing,” and that he has no “standing” because he has no “injury in fact,” only a “generalized” “grievance.” This purports to be a finding of constitutional law: namely, that constitutionally no “Case[ ]” exists. How, then, can Congress constitutionally grant “standing” to individuals such as Berg, when the courts (assuming the Berg decision is upheld on appeal) have ruled that those individuals have no “standing”? If “standing” is a constitutional conception, and the courts deny that “standing” exists in a situation such as this, and the courts have the final say as to what the Constitution means—then Congress lacks any power to contradict them. Congress cannot instruct the courts to exercise jurisdiction beyond what the Constitution includes within “the judicial Power.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 173-180 (1803).

In fact, though, a Congressional instruction is entirely unnecessary. Every American has what lawyers call “an implied cause of action”—directly under Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the Constitution—to require that anyone standing for “the Office of President” must verify his eligibility for that position, at least when serious allegations have been put forward that he is not eligible, and he has otherwise refused to refute those allegations with evidence that should be readily available if he is eligible. That “Case[ ]” is one the Constitution itself defines. And the Constitution must be enforceable in such a “Case[ ]” in a timely manner, by anyone who cares to seek enforcement, because of the horrendous consequences that will ensue if it is flouted.

What are some of those consequences?

First, if Obama is not “a natural born Citizen” or has renounced such citizenship, he is simply not eligible for “the Office of President” (Article II, Section 1, Clause 4). That being so, he cannot be “elected” by the voters, by the Electoral College, or by the House of Representatives (see Amendment XII). For neither the voters, nor the Electors, nor Members of the House can change the constitutional requirement, even by unanimous vote inter sese (see Article V). If, nonetheless, the voters, the Electors, or the Members of the House purport to “elect” Obama, he will be nothing but an usurper, because the Constitution defines him as such. And he can never become anything else, because an usurper cannot gain legitimacy if even all of the country aid, abets, accedes to, or acquiesces in his usurpation.

Second, if Obama dares to take the Presidential “Oath or Affirmation” of office, knowing that he is not “a natural born Citizen,” he will commit the crime of perjury or false swearing (see Article II, Section 1, Clause 7). For, being ineligible for “the Office of President, he cannot “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,” or even execute it at all, to any degree. Thus, his very act of taking the “Oath or Affirmation” will be a violation thereof! So, even if the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court himself looks the other way and administers the “Oath or Affirmation,” Obama will derive no authority whatsoever from it.

Third, his purported “Oath or Affirmation” being perjured from the beginning, Obama’s every subsequent act in the usurped “Office of President” will be a criminal offense under Title 18, United States Code, Section 242, which provides that:

[w]hoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States * * * shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined * * * or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, * * *, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined * * * or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

Plainly enough, every supposedly “official” act performed by an usurper in the President’s chair will be an act “under color of law” that necessarily and unavoidably “subjects [some] person * * * to the deprivation of [some] rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution * * * of the United States”—in the most general case, of the constitutional “right[ ]” to an eligible and duly elected individual serving as President, and the corresponding constitutional “immunit[y]” from subjection to an usurper pretending to be “the President.”

Fourth, if he turns out to be nothing but an usurper acting in the guise of “the President,” Obama will not constitutionally be the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States” (see Article II, Section 2, Clause 1). Therefore, he will be entitled to no obedience whatsoever from anyone in those forces. Indeed, for officers or men to follow any of his purported “orders” will constitute a serious breach of military discipline—and in extreme circumstances perhaps even “war crimes.” In addition, no one in any civilian agency in the Executive Branch of the General Government will be required to put into effect any of Obama’s purported “proclamations,” “executive orders,” or “directives.”

Fifth, as nothing but an usurper (if he becomes one), Obama will have no conceivable authority “to make Treaties”, or to “nominate, and * * * appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not * * * otherwise provided for [in the Constitution]” (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2). And therefore any “Treaties” or “nominat[ions], and * * * appoint[ments]” he purports to “make” will be void ab initio, no matter what the Senate does, because the Senate can neither authorize an usurper to take such actions in the first place, nor thereafter ratify them. One need not be a lawyer to foresee what further, perhaps irremediable, chaos must ensue if an usurper, even with “the Advice and Consent of the Senate”, unconstitutionally “appoint[s] * * * Judges of the Supreme Court” whose votes thereafter make up the majorities that wrongly decide critical “Cases” of constitutional law.

Sixth, and perhaps most importantly, Congress can pass no law while an usurper pretends to occupy “the Office of President.” The Constitution provides that “[e]very Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States” (Article I, Section 7, Clause 2). Not to an usurper posturing as “the President of the United States,” but to the true and rightful President. If no such true and rightful President occupies the White House, no “Bill” will or can, “before it become a Law, be presented to [him].” If no “Bill” is so presented, no “Bill” will or can become a “Law.” And any purported “Law” that the usurper “approve[s]” and “sign[s],” or that Congress passes over the usurper’s “Objections,”will be a nullity. Thus, if Obama deceitfully “enters office” as an usurper, Congress will be rendered effectively impotent for as long as it acquiesces in his pretenses as “President.”

Seventh, if Obama does become an usurper posturing as “the President,” Congress cannot even impeach him because, not being the actual President, he cannot be “removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (see Article II, Section 4). In that case, some other public officials would have to arrest him—with physical force, if he would not go along quietly—in order to prevent him from continuing his imposture. Obviously, this could possibly lead to armed conflicts within the General Government itself, or among the States and the people.

Eighth, even did something approaching civil war not eventuate from Obama’s hypothetical usurpation, if the Establishment allowed Obama to pretend to be “the President,” and the people acquiesced in that charade, just about everything that was done during his faux “tenure in office” by anyone connected with the Executive Branch of the General Government, and quite a bit done by the Legislative Branch and perhaps the Judicial Branch as well, would be arguably illegitimate and subject to being overturned when a constitutional President was finally installed in office. The potential for chaos, both domestically and internationally, arising out of this systemic uncertainty is breathtaking.

The underlying problem will not be obviated if Obama, his partisans in the Democratic Party, and his cheerleaders and cover-up artists in the big media simply stonewall the issue of his (non)citizenship and contrive for him to win the Presidential election. The cat is already out of the bag and running all over the Internet. If he continues to dodge the issue, Obama will be dogged with this question every day of his purported “Presidency.” And inevitably the truth will out. For the issue is too simple, the evidence (or lack of it) too accessible. Either Obama can prove that he is “a natural born Citizen” who has not renounced his citizenship; or he cannot. And he will not be allowed to slip through with some doctored “birth certificate” generated long after the alleged fact. On a matter this important, Americans will demand that, before its authenticity is accepted, any supposed documentary evidence of that sort be subjected to reproducible forensic analyses conducted by reputable, independent investigators and laboratories above any suspicion of being influenced by or colluding with any public official, bureaucracy, political party, or other special-interest organization whatsoever.

Berg v. Obama may very well end up in the Supreme Court. Yet that ought to be unnecessary. For Obama’s moral duty is to produce the evidence of his citizenship sua sponte et instanter. Otherwise, he will be personally responsible for all the consequences of his refusal to do so.

Of course, if Obama knows that he is not “a natural born Citizen” who never renounced his American citizenship, then he also knows that he and his henchmen have perpetrated numerous election-related frauds throughout the country—the latest, still-ongoing one a colossal swindle targeting the American people as a whole. If that is the case, his refusal “to be a witness against himself” is perfectly explicable and even defensible on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment. Howsoever justified as a matter of criminal law, though, Obama’s silence and inaction will not obviate the necessity for him to prove his eligibility for “the Office of President.” The Constitution may permit him to “take the Fifth;” but it will not suffer him to employ that evasion as a means to usurp the Presidency of the United States.

© 2008 Edwin Vieira, Jr. – All Rights Reserved

Edwin Vieira, Jr., holds four degrees from Harvard: A.B. (Harvard College), A.M. and Ph.D. (Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), and J.D. (Harvard Law School).

For more than thirty years he has practiced law, with emphasis on constitutional issues. In the Supreme Court of the United States he successfully argued or briefed the cases leading to the landmark decisions Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, which established constitutional and statutory limitations on the uses to which labor unions, in both the private and the public sectors, may apply fees extracted from nonunion workers as a condition of their employment.

He has written numerous monographs and articles in scholarly journals, and lectured throughout the county. His most recent work on money and banking is the two-volume Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and Disabilities of the United States Constitution (2002), the most comprehensive study in existence of American monetary law and history viewed from a constitutional perspective. www.piecesofeight.us

He is also the co-author (under a nom de plume) of the political novel CRA$HMAKER: A Federal Affaire (2000), a not-so-fictional story of an engineered crash of the Federal Reserve System, and the political upheaval it causes. www.crashmaker.com

His latest book is: “How To Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary“ … and Constitutional “Homeland Security,” Volume One, The Nation in Arms…

He can be reached at:
13877 Napa Drive
Manassas, Virginia 20112.

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I finished reading Peter Schiff’s first book Crash Proof about two weeks ago. I got it on a Friday and couldn’t put it down until I had finished it. I only wish I knew about it when it was first published in early 2007. Although it would have been hard to believe the predictions that Schiff makes and actually take action at that time, reading it with recent hind sight proved invaluable. I will definitely take action now and I will trust the government a whole lot less…

Peter Schiff’s Online Star Turn

by: Gregg Greenberg

More than a half a million people so far have tuned into a video montage called “Peter Schiff Was Right 2006-2007” on Google’s (GOOG Quote – Cramer on GOOG – Stock Picks) YouTube, turning Schiff, the president of Euro Pacific Capital, into something of a video celebrity.

The video traces a series of Schiff’s prescient calls on America’s economic woes, starting in August 2006, when Schiff told CNBC that the coming recession “is going to be pretty bad … and it’s going to last not just for quarters but for years.”

It also shows rosy forecasts, now proven incorrect, by economists and pundits including Ben Stein, Mike Norman and Arthur Laffer.

A week prior to the video’s Nov. 2 release, Schiff offered his views on the economy, gold and the tax plans of then Sen. Obama in a TheStreet.comTV video titled, “If Obama Wins, Economy’s Doomed.”

“They are trying to get Americans borrowing and spending even more money when what we need is the opposite of that,” Schiff said in the video. “We have no more savings left and I think the government can turn the next decade into something worse than the depression.”

Peter Schiff was on TheStreet.comTV promoting his book The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets. He originally called the economic collapse in his first book Crash Proof.

In a Nov. 1 video on TheStreet.comTV called, “Beat the Bear With Gold,” Schiff predicted the government’s response to the crisis would be to “print money” and socialize losses. As evidenced this week by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $200 billion plan to bail out student and credit card loans, Schiff is looking prophetic once again.

“The government is trying to solve all these economic problems or at least prevent the crisis through creating inflation by printing a lot of money. And ultimately that’s going to lead to a major collapse in the value of the dollar,” Schiff said. Check out this video…

Schiff advocates buying gold bullion to beat the bear market. Gold has pulled 20% off its highs to around $800 an ounce, but the money manager says the yellow metal has “held up a lot better than other assets” and ultimately thinks it’s the only “real store of value.”

Economic commentator and television personality Ben Stein attacks Schiff’s gloom and down scenario in the YouTube video, insisting that the subprime crisis is “a tiny problem.” Stein has since apologized to Schiff in a New York Times editorial.

To the victor, goes the spoils. Even in a downturn.

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