Conservatives want SMALL government, not NO government…

Conservatives are constantly being accused of wanting no government. When we talk about wanting to eliminate things like the IRS, the Departments of Energy and Education or rein in rouge agencies like the EPA and the NLRB we are accused of wanting no government at all. That’s simply false. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a conservative speak about wanting to eliminate all government, or even the federal government.

Most conservatives understand that the absence of functional government brings chaos. In an environment where chaos reigns, at some point someone will step in and impose order. That person or group then becomes the de facto government. Perhaps the clearest example of this in recent history was the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in the mid 1990’s. Although pockets of resistance remained, by the late 90’s the Taliban were firmly in control of the country. Most Afghanis didn’t like the Taliban, but they appreciated the relative order they brought to the country.

Here in America our problem is not a lack of government, but the opposite, too much of it. The strings of regulation end up wrapped around the wheels of the American economy and ends up clogging what might otherwise be a well oiled machine. An unfettered economy would not be flawless, but it would be far more dynamic than the straitjacketed one we have today.

To put this in perspective, take the IRS tax code. According to the Heritage Foundation, it will cost America just more than $400 billion in 2011 to comply with the tax code, and that does not include the cost of the actual taxes themselves. Given that the federal government will take in approximately $2.2 trillion in taxes this year, that means Americans will spend an additional 20% of their tax bill just trying to figure out how to pay the bill in the first place!

How is that even possible? Well, the tax code is approximately 72,000 pages long and it’s broken down into 750 subchapters. Imagine if you are a widget manufacturer with 10,000 employees spread out over 20 states. How many employees would you need to have on staff to make sure that that company was complying with the regulations written on every one of those 72,000 pages? How much time (read: money) would your accounting and legal staffs have to spend to ensure that everything you did was within the IRS’s guidelines? How much time would management have to waste evaluating what product or service to provide or what energy provider to choose depending on what provides the best tax advantage? How about deciding how employee benefits should be allotted between taxable and non-taxable to maximize employee compensation?

As difficult as scenario is, at least large companies can pay for the necessary accounting and legal staffs. Imagine you are a struggling businessman with 5 employees who has to choose between spending money on another employee to help him compete in the marketplace or on someone to decipher the 72,000 pages of the IRS tax code. The fact that an employer (or homeowner or parents of a college student or someone approaching retirement…) has to base many of their financial decisions on what the IRS rules are is bad enough, but for the rules to be so numerous and incomprehensible that it restricts productivity borders on criminal. And to put a cherry on top of it, all of that effort is spent just to figure out how to give the money to the government so they can spend much of it on stuff you'd never pay for if you had the choice.

I had written:
"Eliminating all federal funding to local governments..."

cc2k replied:
"That has to be accomplished locally."

I disagree. The bills allowing for federal funding to local governments were passed in bipartisan Congress and signed by U.S. presidents. They'll be repealed at the federal level, or we'll starve your local government offices into closing.

Obviously, local government socialists haven't noticed, but we're not buying. We're going to buy less each year, until we see freedom. This country needs new competition and new families in business, politics and academia. We're going to get that.

Sorry...we'll starve our local government offices into closing. I'm in a majority Republican county, and it's officers and employees are quite dishonest, socialist and disrespectful against all that is good and old fashioned. ...came from another majority Republican county back east, and it was the same: anti-family, sadistic, scoffing, anti-production, anti-competition and sexually confused. Politicians are generally controlled by robber-constituents, rich from stolen debt.

The answer is not in politics but in rejecting politics. It's not in trying to produce for thieves but in becoming self-sufficient and cutting off their venues of thievery.

One of limited and enumerated powers. Expressly delegated only. No implied powers. No direct taxation. And quite possibly, no permanent executive branch.

In fact, I think the USA is ridiculously oversized for a real republic. One representative for every half-million citizens? The framers never would have accepted that.

We should be broken up into a confederacy of roughly 7 smaller republics. Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Plains, Mountain, West Coast, and Texas.

The USA is going to crumble under its debt at some point. It's just a matter of time now.

familyop wrote:

I disagree. The bills allowing for federal funding to local governments were passed in bipartisan Congress and signed by U.S. presidents. They'll be repealed at the federal level, or we'll starve your local government offices into closing.

Obviously, local government socialists haven't noticed, but we're not buying. We're going to buy less each year, until we see freedom. This country needs new competition and new families in business, politics and academia. We're going to get that.

Maybe the local socialists haven't noticed because haven’t told them. That was my point. Our local TEA Partiers and 9-12ers are not only focused on Washington. We are also focused on our local and state legislators and executives.

"10th Amendment Resolutions" are good talk, but we have a state Senator here who voted for one of those, then went begging Congress and the President to give us "our grant money" for the high-speed rail after our Governor told Obama and the Feds we weren't building their trains in our state.

Actually, I support Governor Scott in that decision, but I was disappointed that he didn't at least point out that nothing in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution gives the Congress the authority to spend money on transportation within a single state (for example, from Tampa to Orlando).

But we have a state senator, Mike Fasano, who voted for a "10th amendment resolution" here in Florida and then joined with the Ruling Class RINO's in begging for federal money. They wanted the funds to be diverted to other transportation projects if it wasn't used for the high speed rail.

Clearly, many in the “ruling class” don’t fully understand the 10th amendment. It will take some education from the grass roots to fully educate both the electorate and the ruling class at the lower, more local levels. That is my point.

"Maybe the local socialists haven't noticed because We the People haven’t told them. That was my point."

Yes, but told them what--the desires of the Republican socialist establishment under whatever names? Allow me to be a little more clear in speaking for many who would be more productive.

* We're going to abolish HOAs: despotic little de facto governments run by mouthy hags and their effeminate "significant others."

* We're going to abolish zoning laws against small manufacturing operations in rural areas.

* We're going to abolish anti-family efforts that were devised to stop uprisings of competition from unestablished families (efforts pursued against fatherhood and families for American peasants by both political parties). We'll probably abolish the doctrine of parens patriae.

* We're going to abolish regulations against property rights. If a rich witch potential buyer wants to know that a house is safe, she can hire a private inspector.

* We're going to abolish anti-American trade practices. Those are treasonous and unconstitutional.

* We're going to abolish the business-government links that made our nation an anti-American police state for local bosses.

And the default process is going to get us to the point in time for that. Neither Democrats nor Republicans nor Tea Party socialists can force us to buy, and we're going to buy less each year.

Who will survive the economic collapse and prosper a few years from now? I doubt that it will be those too ignorant, lazy and thieving for hands-on technology.

You continue Tea Parties. We'll go with nonpolitical politics and self-sufficiency.

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