Posted on 10/09/2002 8:58:50 AM PDT by B. A. Conservative
The election is now only a month away. FreeRepublic blindly backs Republicans regardless of issues or the Republican platform. FreeRepublic and the Republicans expect conservatives to prefer Republicans, if nothing else, because Republicans are the lesser of two socialists. The Emperor has no clothes, and faced with a socialist or a clone, Democratic voters will have no trouble picking the real thing. Conservatives willing to demand a real choice have other options.
The "boomers" will start reaching Social Security's retirement age in October 2008. By 2012, Social Security will become cash flow negative. There are no (none; zero; nada) assets in the so-called Social Security Trust Fund. The intruments in this so-called "trust fund", at best represent promises that Congress will raise taxes, cut benefits or both sufficiently to bring Social Security back into cash flow equilibrium. Political rhetoric and political reality differ. We have all heard the derivative debate regarding counter party risk and the risk of off balance sheet accounting typified by Enron. Social Security and its so-called "trust fund" encompasses the very worst features of both counter party risk and off balance sheet liabilities. Social Security makes Enron, Worldcom, and Global Crossing look good in the off balance sheet accounting department. And Social Security makes JPM and Long Term Capital Management look good in the counter party risk department. All of the financial catastrophes that have come to the United States in our 200 year history have been linear events. If we deal with the impending Social Security crisis within the next five years using the complete voluntary privatization of SS using the Chilean model of the Cato Foundation Plan, the crisis can be contained and kept linear. If we wait longer than five years to completely privatize SS or leave SS under government control, SS becomes a non-linear event with derivative implosion a certainty. It is not financially or politically possible to fund the unfunded liabilities of Social Security much beyond 2012. Politicians will address this problem by destroying the full faith and credit of the United States or by destroying our currency or both.
Speaking as a retired physician, it is not possible to fund the unfunded liabilities of Medicare. Medicare becomes cash flow negative in 2008, well before the "boomers" become eligible for Medicare beginning in 2011. The unfunded liabilities of these two programs are too large to fund through payroll taxes alone. And these liabilities are too large to fund through combinations of benefit cuts or income tax increases. All Americans are over taxed. Government has become a monolithic vulture crippling every American family. It must end now before American families are bled dry.
Every democracy in history has ended in bankruptcy. When the Democratic Party subverted the Constitution, and turned the United States into a serfdom based on socialism, it was necessary to democratize our republic. They succeeded in spades. In order to fund the unfundable, it will be necessary for the government of the United States, no matter whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, to borrow to or beyond the limits of our credit, to print dollar bills in an unending inflationary spiral until the dollar is worthless and the United States and almost all of its citizens are bankrupt. And this reality will come to pass before there is a presidential election in 2016. All democracies in recorded history end in bankruptcy and so will ours. This is absolutely predictable and if we act now, preventable. We must restore our Constitutional Republic before it becomes too late shortly after the end of the current decade.
Democrats paved the road to socialism in 1936. That road goes off a cliff somewhere between 2012 and 2016. There is a fork in the road to the RIGHT dead ahead. This road offers the only realistic way to avoid the collapse and disintegration of the United States and the only chance to restore freedom and Constitutional law to the first country to realize these dreams or to the people from whom they have been stolen. If FreeRepublic will take the right fork, the Republicans will follow.
I do not want to mislead you into believing that enough Americans will follow the Republican lead. We have seen three clear elections where this is true. Ronald Reagan won two landslide elections running on a strong conservative Constitutional agenda. The Contract with America was a landslide success and gave Republicans control of Congress for the first time in most voters' voting lifetimes. But make no mistake, there are large numbers of Americans now addicted to socialism and serfdom. And this group of Americans is determined to impose slavery on the rest of us. Socialism spawns the unproductive and/or the weakly productive. It penalizes the productive. It is unrealistic to believe the myth that the people of this country are united. Study the map of the 2000election if you have any doubts. I am no longer willing to allow Democrats to impose their socialistic programs on me or my family. If we cannot defeat socialism with ballots, then let them have their own country and run it as they see fit. I intend to excercise my God-given rights and secede if there are sufficient like-minded souls. If not, I will simply leave and find another country that is willing to respect my freedom and the God-given rights of its citizens. And if the Democrats and other socialists choose to interfere with my right to secede or my right to leave peacefully, their blood will be on their own hands. I can speak for no other man, but I am going to live free or am willing to risk death in the attempt. Who among you will join me in demanding the return of our freedom? I am no longer willing to vote for a lesser tyranny. I invite all conservative freedom loving Americans to join me. The battle for freedom doesn't take campaign contributions nor does it require taking to the streets. All it requires is the quite determination to cast your votes only for candidates willing to act to restore the Constitutional rights that we have already lost.
In very close elections as we have been experiencing for a decade now, I might have to reach and persuade only 1-3% of traditionally Republican voters or considerably less than half of the 5% of all voters discussed above. There are already 1-3% of voters that have left the Republican Party and joined the Libertarians and other Constitutionally oriented parties. By the time the 2004 election rolls around, we might have our 5% of all voters.
As for the current election and the immediate effects of winning or losing, your time oriented goals are both in need of realignment. In the long term scope of things, judicial appointments are significant. But with the exception of the Supreme Court appointments and those to the Circuit Courts of Appeal, it will take a decade or two before any relevant changes can occur. But even the Supreme Court appointments will have limiting influences. Liberal judges have no trouble legislating law from the bench. Judges who respect the Constitution are not going to legislate. At best they will change one unconstitutional law at a time. Your time horizon says that it took us 70 years to get to the awful state that we are presently in and that it could well take 70 years to get back what we once had.
It is delusional to believe that the United States will continue to exist in its present incarnation for 70 more years. I believe that if you will examine the evidence for yourself, that you will find that it is wishfull thinking to believe the United States can last 20 years.
The unfunded liabilities of Medicare begin maturing in 2008. The baby boom generation starts reaching the minimum Social Security retirement age in late 2008. The unfunded liabilities of Social Security begin maturing in 2012. And the boomers reach Medicare eligibility in 2011. The unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security are estimated to be roughly 12 trillion dollars. The current debt exceeds 6 trillion and will exceed 8 trillion by 2012. Current GDP is roughly 10 trillion and the federal budget is roughly 2 trillion. Assuming 3% annual growth in GDP (extremely optimistic in my opinion), in 2012 we are looking at a $13.5 trillion economy. At 5%, interest payments for the United States government will equal half of all current federal revenues and federal deficits will be ballooning. I will ask the doubters four questions:
All democracies throughout history have ended in bankruptcy. When voters discover they can vote themselves payments from the public treasury, Pandora's box has been opened. The XVIth and XVIIth Amendments (both ratified in 1913) brought the US much closer to a democracy than to the republic given to us by the Founders. Prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, federal tax revenues never exceeded 6% of GDP as opposed to our current 20%. The 1912 dollar bought 99 cents worth of 1789 goods and services. In the US today, two out of every three dollars spent by the federal government are payments to individuals or groups for which no products are delivered or no services rendered. The 2002 dollar buys 5 cents worth of 1913 goods and services. The US began life with debts from the Revolutionary War of $75 million (that's right million with an M), but had reduced that to a mere 38 thousand dollars by 1836. The debt ballooned to a staggering 3 billion (that's billion with a B) after the implementation of the Federal Reserve and WWI. By 1965 it was a mere 325 billion when LBJ began cranking up the War on Poverty reaching the first trillion by 1981 and the second trillion by 1986. And we are still adding roughly a trillion every five years.
Look back at your answers to my four questions. If we do not turn the United States around a full 180 degrees within the next three election cycles, there will be no Presidential election in 2016. It is not politically possible to tax Americans sufficiently to pay the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security while financing our existing deficits. There are only two ways these unfunded liabilities can be met:
When the "full faith and credit of the United States" is a meaningless term and no one will accept dollar bills in exchange for goods and services, like all other democracies throughout history, the United States will be bankrupt. That day is going to arrive before 2016.
Government taxes exceed the cost of housing, food, clothing and transportation for almost half of all American families. The NASDAQ bubble has burst. The DOW and S&P bubbles are rapidly deflating. The dollar and bond bubbles are precarious. The credit bubble is still inflating thanks to Americans who are taxed to the point of having to borrow to meet daily living expenses. Look at your four answers again.
Change begins at the margin. I am at the outer limits of the margin. Change has begun. America's future is the Contract with Congress. Or the United States' future will come to an abrupt halt before 2016. Your 70-year time line went up in smoke with the NASDAQ.
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